Up to this Moment no portion of my order had materialized. No cover for one, nor filet, nor _vin ordinaire_, nor waiter had appeared. The painter was growing impatient. The man inside was becoming hungry.
I waited until he emerged with an empty dish, watched him grasp the giant umbrella, teeter on the edge of the kiosk for a moment, and plunge through the gravel, now rivers of water, toward my kiosk, the "omnibus"
following as best he could.
"A thousand pardons, Monsieur--" he cried from beneath his shelter, as he read my face. "It will not be long now. It is coming--here, you can see for yourself--" and he pointed across the garden, and tramped on, the water spattering his ankles.
I looked and saw a solemn procession of huge umbrellas, the ones used over the _tete-a-tete_ tables beneath the trees, slowly wending its way toward where I sat, with all the measured movement and dignity of a file of Eastern potentates out for an airing.
Under each umbrella were two waiters, one carrying the umbrella and the other a portion of my breakfast. The potentate under the first umbrella, who carried the wine, proved to be a waiter-in-chief; the others bearing the filet, plates, dishes, and gla.s.ses were ordinary "omnibuses," pressed into service as palanquin-bearers by reason of the storm.
The waiter-in-chief, with the bottle, dodged from under his bungalow, leaving it outside and still open, like a stranded circus-tent, stepped into my kiosk, mopped the rain from his coat-sleeves and hands with a napkin, and, bowing solemnly, pointed to the label on the bottle. This meeting my approval, he relieved the rear-guard of the dishes, arranged the table, drew the cork of the St. Julien, filled my gla.s.s, dismissed the a.s.sistants and took his place behind my chair.
The closeness of the quarters, the protection it afforded from the raging elements, the perils my companion had gone through to serve me, made possible a common level on which we could stand. We discussed the storm, the prospect of its clearing, the number of unfortunates in the adjacent Bois who were soaked to the skin, especially the poor little bicycle-girls in their cotton bloomers, now collapsed and bedraggled. We talked of the great six-day cross-country bicycle-race, and how the winner, tired out, had wabbled over the Bridge that same morning, with the whole pack behind him, having won by less than five minutes. We talked of the people who came and went, and who they were, and how often they dined, and what they spent, and ate and drank, and of the rich American who had given the waiter a gold Louis for a silver franc, and who was too proud to take it back when his attention was called to the mistake (which my companion could not but admit was quite foolish of him); and, finally, of the dark-skinned Oriental with the lambent eyes, and the adorable Ernestine with the pointed shoes and open-work silk stockings and fluffy skirts, who occupied the kiosk within ten feet of where I sat and he stood.
During the conversation I was busy with my knife and fork, my eyes at intervals taking in the scene before me; the comings and goings of the huge umbrellas--one, two, or three, as the serving of the dishes demanded, the rain streaming from their sides; now the fish, now the salad, now a second bottle of wine in a cooler, and now the last course of all on an empty plate, which my companion said was the bill, and which he characterized as the most important part of the procession, except the _pour boire_. Each time the procession came to a full stop outside the kiosk until the sentinel waiter relieved them of their burdens. My sympathies constantly went out to this man. There was no room for him inside, and certainly no wish for his company, and so he must, perforce, balance himself under his umbrella, first on one leg and then on the other, in his effort to escape the spatter which now reached his knees, quite as would a wet chicken seeking shelter under a cart-body.
I say my companion and I "talked" of these several sights and incidents as I ate my luncheon. And yet, really, up to this time I had not once looked into his face, quite a necessary thing in conducting a conversation of any duration. But then one rarely does in talking to a waiter when he is serving you. My remarks had generally been addressed to the dish in front of me, or to the door opposite, through which I looked, and his rejoinders to the back of my shirt-collar. If he had sat opposite, or had moved into the perspective, I might once in a while have caught a glimpse, over my gla.s.s or spoon, of his smileless, mask-like face, a thing impossible, of course, with him constantly behind my chair.
When, however, in the course of his monotone, he mentioned the name of Mademoiselle Ernestine Beraud and that of the distinguished kinsman of His Serene Highness, the Grand Pan-Jam of the Orient, I turned my head in his direction.
"You know the Mademoiselle, then?"
My waiter shrugged his shoulders, his face still impenetrable.
"Monsieur, I know everybody in Paris. Why not? Twenty-three years a waiter. Twenty years at the Cafe de la Paix in Paris, and three years here. Do you wonder?"
There are in my experience but four kinds of waiters the world over.
First, the thin, nervous waiter, with a set smile, who is always brushing away imaginary crumbs, adjusting the gla.s.ses--an inch this way, an inch that way, and then back again to their first position, talking all the time, whether spoken to or not, and losing interest the moment you pay him his fee. Then the stolid, half-asleep waiter, fat and perpetually moist, who considers his duties over when he has placed your order on the cloth and moved the wine within reach of your hand. Next the apprentice waiter, promoted from a.s.sistant cook or scullion-boy, who carries on a conversation in signs behind your back with the waiter opposite him, smothering his laughter at intervals in the same napkin with which he wipes your plate, and who, when he changes a course, slants the dishes up his sleeve, keeping the top one in place with his chin, replacing the plates again with a wavy motion, as if they were so many quoits, each one circling into its place--a trick of which he is immensely proud.
And last--and this is by no means a large cla.s.s--the grave, dignified, self-possessed, well-mannered waiter; smooth-shaven, spotlessly clean, noiseless, smug and attentive. He generally walks with a slight limp, an infirmity due to his sedentary habits and his long acquaintance with his several employers" decanters. He is never under fifty, is round of form, short in the legs, broad of shoulder, and wears his gray hair cut close.
He has had a long and varied experience; he has been b.u.t.tons, valet, second man, first man, lord high butler, and then down the scale again to plain waiter. This has not been his fault but his misfortune--the settling of an estate, it may be, or the death of a master. He has, with unerring judgment, summed you up in his mind before you have taken your seat, and has gauged your intelligence and breeding with the first dish you ordered. Intimate knowledge of the world and of men and of women--especially the last--has developed in him a distrust of all things human. He alone has seen the pressure of the jewelled hands as they lay on the cloth or under it, the lawful partner opposite. He alone has caught the last whispered word as the opera-cloak fell about her shoulders, and knows just where they dined the next day, and who paid for it and why. Being looked upon as part of the appointments of the place, like the chandeliers or the mirrors or the electric bell that answers when spoken to but never talks back, he has, unconsciously to those he serves, become the custodian of their closest secrets. These he keeps to himself. Were he to open his mouth he could not only break up a score or more of highly respectable families, but might possibly upset a ministry.
My waiter belonged to this last group.
I saw it in every deferential gesture of his body, and every modulated tone of his voice. Whether his moral nature had become warped and cracked and twisted out of all shape by constant daily and nightly contact--especially the last--with the sort of life he had led, or whether some of the old-time refinement of his better days still clung to him, was a question I could not decide from the exhibits before me--certainly not from the calm eyes which never wavered, nor the set mouth which never for a moment relaxed, the only important features in the face so far as character-reading is concerned.
I determined to draw him out; not that he interested me in any way, but simply because such studies are instructive. Then, again, his account of his experiences might be still more instructive. When should I have a better opportunity? Here was a man steeped in the life of Paris up to his very eyelids, one thoroughly conversant with the peccadilloes of innumerable _viveurs_--peccadilloes interesting even to staid old painters, simply as object-lessons, especially those committed by the other gay Lothario: the fellow, for instance, who did not know she was dangerous until his letter of credit collapsed; or the peccadilloes of the beautiful moth who believed the candle lighting her path to be an incandescent bulb of joy, until her scorched wings hung about her bare shoulders: That kind of peccadillo.
So I pushed back my chair, opened my cigar-case, and proceeded to adjust the end of my mental probe. There was really nothing better to do, even if I had no such surgical operation in view. It was still raining, and neither I nor the waiter could leave our Chinese-junk of an island until the downpour ceased or we were rescued by a lifeboat or an umbrella.
"And this nephew of the Sultan," I began again between puffs, addressing my remark to the match in my companion"s hand, which was now burning itself out at the extreme end of my cigar. "Is he a new admirer?"
"Quite new--only ten days or so, I think."
"And the one before--the old one--what does he think?" I asked this question with one of those cold, hollow, heartless laughs, such as croupiers are supposed to indulge in when they toss a five-franc piece back to a poor devil who has just lost his last hundred Napoleons at baccarat--I have never seen this done and have never heard the laugh, but that is the way the storybooks put it--particularly the blood-curdling part of the laugh.
"You mean Pierre Channet, the painter, Monsieur?"
I had, of course, never heard of Pierre Channet, the painter, in my life, but I nodded as knowingly as if I had been on the most intimate relations with him for years. Then, again, this was my only way of getting down to his personal level, the only way I could draw him out and get at his real character. By taking his side of the question, he would unbosom himself the more freely, and, perhaps, incidentally, some of the peccadilloes--some of the most wicked.
"He will _not think_, Monsieur. They pulled him out of the river last month."
"Drowned?"
His answer gave me a little start, but I did not betray myself.
"So they said. The water trickled along his nose for two days as he lay on the slab, before they found out who he was."
"In the morgue?" I inquired in a tone of surprise. I spoke as if this part of the story had not reached me.
"In the morgue, Monsieur."
The repeated words came as cold and merciless as the drops of water that fell on poor Channet as he lay under the gas-jets.
"Drowned himself for love of Mademoiselle Beraud, you say?"
"Quite true, Monsieur. He is not the only one. I know four."
"And she began to love another in a week?" My indignation nearly got the better of me this time, but I do not think he noticed it.
"Why not, Monsieur? One must live."
As he spoke he moved an ash-tray deliberately within reach of my hand, and poured the balance of the St. Julien into my gla.s.s without a quiver.
I smoked on in silence. Every spark of human feeling had evidently been stifled in him. The Juggernaut of Paris, in rolling over him, had broken every generous impulse, flattening him into a pulp of brutal selfishness. That is why his face was so smooth and cold, his eyes so dull and his voice so monotonous. I understood it all now. I changed the subject. I did not know where it would lead if I kept on. Drowned lovers were not what I was looking for.
"You say you have only been two years in Suresne?" I resumed, carelessly, flicking the ashes from my cigar.
"But two years, Monsieur."
"Why did you leave Paris?"
"Ah, when one is over fifty it is quite done. Is it not so, Monsieur?"--this made with a little deferential wave of his hand. I noted the tribute to the staid painter, and nodded approvingly. He was evidently climbing up to my level. Perhaps this plank, slender as it was, might take him out of the slough and land him on higher and better ground.
"Yes, you are right. And so you came to Suresne to be quiet."
"Not altogether, Monsieur. I came to be near--Well! we are never too old for that--Is it not so?" He said it quite simply, quite as a matter of course, the tones of his voice as monotonous as any he had yet used--just as he had spoken of poor Channet in the morgue with the water trickling over his dead face.
"Oh, then, even at fifty you have a sweetheart!" I blurted out with a sudden twist of my probe. I felt now that I might as well follow the iniquity to the end.
"It is true, Monsieur."
"Is she pretty?" As long as I was dissecting I might at least discover the root of the disease. This remark, however, was not addressed to his face, but to a crumb of ashes on the cloth, which I was trying to remove with the point of a knife. He might not have answered, or liked it, had I fired the question at him point-blank.
"Very pretty--" still the same monotone.
"And you love her!" It was up to the hilt now.
"She is the only thing I have left to love, Monsieur," he answered, calmly.