by Unknown
This eminent professor is No. 2 of the men I have known, and during the three weeks in which I belonged to him he called me his new umbrella. Once I heard his daughter (whose umbrella I should have liked to be) ask him why he took me everywhere except to the college, and the good old man replied that the students were given to taking away other people’s umbrellas. Once during this time I set eyes upon my first owner, and for a moment I thought I was to be restored to him. He and some other students came to the house to tea, and when he saw me standing in the professor’s rack he exclaimed:
“That umbrella,” he said, pointing to me, “is the very image of one I lost at the college the other day.”
The professor was standing by, telling his guests as they came in one by one that it had been a frosty day, and when he heard this remark about me he said, in his kindly voice, that one umbrella was very like another.
“You students,” he added, “ought to be more careful about your umbrellas. I am constantly hearing complaints about their going astray.”
Then he took them all into his study, but after a little he came out and hid me behind the hall clock.
That, I thought, was the last I would see of my first owner, but it was not so. The daughter of the house, to whom I have already referred, had overheard the talk about me, and I saw her at the time look queerly at her father. When the student was going she came to the door with him, and I heard them say something about “the usual place at five o’clock.” Then she called him back, and running to the clock, felt for me with her hand, just as if she knew that her father often put umbrellas there. She thrust me into the student’s hand, muttering something about papa’s being very absent-minded.
Thus was I restored to the student, but only for a brief space. On the following Friday he took me to the class again, and once more the professor was the first to leave. His eye lighted up when he saw me, and he half drew me from the rack. Then he caught sight of another umbrella with an ebony handle, the owner of which was also a student. He compared us for a moment, felt the materials, and finally went off with the other one. When its owner could not find it he said that I was the next best, and half an hour afterward I was standing in a corner of his room.
Hardly can this gentleman be included among the men I have known, for he vanished from my sight, or I vanished from his, on the following evening. On that evening a friend called on him, a gentleman in a light suit and a white hat, with a mean moustache, and a foolish expression of countenance — a maker of pipes, as I gathered from the conversation. It was a fine evening when he called, but not when he got up to go; and not having an umbrella, he was distressed lest his hat should suffer.
“Can you not lend me an umbrella?” he asked; but my new owner shook his head.
“You never brought back the last one,” he replied. “Never mind,” said the visitor; “give me one and I’ll bring them both back together.”
“I don’t have one,” said my owner.
“Why, what is that in the corner? “Oh, I had forgotten; but that is a very valuable one. I paid twentyfive shillings for it last week.”
“It will do very well,” said the gentleman, seizing hold of me.
He promised to bring or send me back next day, but a week passed, and every evening found him strutting along the pier, with me in his right hand. Late one afternoon, however, when he was in his workshop, making another pipe, the student came to the door and said that he wanted his umbrellas. Then the gentleman received him hospitably, but declared that he had taken back both umbrellas three days before. So solemnly did he insist on this that the other knew not what to say, and went off in a daze.
The next man I knew was introduced to me, so to speak, by his wife. My owner had taken me to a dinner-party, and I was in the umbrella-stand when two of the company left. They were the first to go, and I saw at once that they were husband and wife. The gentleman was taking his own umbrella from the stand (for he was weak-minded) when the lady handed me to him, saying, “This is a much better one.” Thus it was that I again changed owners.
From this house I was taken by the first gentleman who called, but he lost me on the way. We went by rail, and another gentleman in the carriage left, taking me with him. He was the gentleman who had me in his hand when he walked home from soirees with young ladies. Three of them he told (but all at different times) that he loved them passionately, but could not afford to marry; and they all promised to be sisters to him, which pleased him vastly more, I think, than if they had promised to marry him.
He left me at the outside of his door one day because I was very wet, and there I was found by a policeman, who took me in charge and ran me into the police station. The magistrate picked me out as the best of six, and took me home, where I lay for a week, when I was abstracted from the stand by a town councillor. He took me to a meeting of his friends, where there was talk of presenting something to an Irish statesman, and at first I thought they were to present me to him, but it turned out to be something else. This town councillor I heard boasting that he never carried any but the best umbrellas, and he also boasted that he had not bought an umbrella since he was sixteen years of age.
A councillor took me away from the council chamber, and had a rim of silver put round me, with his name and address on it, “for,” he said, “if you do not take some such precaution you are sure to lose your umbrella, the public are so careless or so dishonest.” In his possession I remained for nearly a month, but one day he took me to a club, and I had not been in the umbrella-stand for more than five minutes when an advocate came out, and selecting me with care, walked away with me. He took the silver rim off with his pocket-knife, and then carried me to a shop, where he instructed the shopman to put a band round me saying that I was presented to John Smith, Esq., by his affectionate son-in-law, June 24, 1889. My new owner was the man who abused me because I would not open, and he also grumbled because once I was open I was reluctant to shut, for now I had become somewhat stiff. Once he was in such a rage at me that he hit me savagely against the hat-stand, and that was how my first rib was broken.
I was saved from this man by an elderly lady, who took me away beneath her waterproof, thinking I should do for an office umbrella for her son. When they discovered, however, that the rib was in two, and that I was spotted with holes, they raged together at the old gentleman for owning such an umbrella. I was kept at the office, until one of the clerks fell over me and broke two more ribs. My owner now declared that I had been an admirable new umbrella when he bought me the week before, and the unhappy young man had to give him another, whereupon he got me as a gift. I was sorry for him, for he told his master that the new umbrella had cost him fifteen shillings, but soon I discovered that he had picked it out of the stand at a doctor’s house. He tried to mend me with a bootlace, but my appearance was now hopelessly plebeian, and I heard him tell his sister, who lived with him, that he was ashamed to be seen in the street with me. One day our door stood wide open, and so did the door that was only separated from ours by an iron railing; so she took me into the next house and left me in the umbrella-stand there, taking away a new umbrella in exchange. It is in this house I am lying now. They offered me to the milkman and the postman, but neither would have me; so I was carried contemptuously into the closet where I now lie.
THE INCONSIDERATE WAITER.
FREQUENTLY I have to ask myself in the street for the name of the man I bowed to just now, and then, before I can answer, the wind of the first corner blows him from my memory. I have a theory, however, that those puzzling faces, which pass before I can see who cut the coat, all belong to club-waiters.
Until William forced his affairs upon me, that was all I did know of the private life of waiters, though I have been in the club for twenty years. I was even unaware whether they slept downstairs or had their own homes, nor had I the interest to inquire of other members, nor they the knowledge to inform me. I hold that this sort of people should be fed and clothed and given airing and wives and
children, and I subscribe yearly, I believe, for these purposes; but to come into closer relation with waiters is bad form; they are club fittings, and Williams should have kept his distress to himself or taken it away and patched it up, like a rent in one of the chairs. His inconsiderateness has been a pair of spectacles to me for months.
It is not correct taste to know the name of a club-waiter, so that I must apologize for knowing William’s, and still more for not forgetting it. If, again, to speak of a waiter is bad form, to speak bitterly is the comic degree of it. But William has disappointed me sorely. There were years when I would defer dining several minutes that he might wait on me. His pains to reserve the window-seat for me were perfectly satisfactory. I allowed him privileges, as to suggest dishes, and would give him information, as that someone had startled me in the reading-room by slamming a door. I have shown him how I cut my finger with a piece of string. Obviously he was gratified by these attentions, usually recommending a liqueur; and I fancy he must have understood my sufferings, for he often looked ill himself. Probably he was rheumatic, but I cannot say for certain, as I never thought of asking, and he had the sense to see that the knowledge would be offensive to me.
In the smoking-room we have a waiter so independent that once, when he brought me a yellow Chartreuse, and I said I had ordered green, he replied, “No, sir; you said yellow.” William could never have been guilty of such effrontery. In appearance, of course, he is mean, but I can no more describe him than a milkmaid could draw cows. I suppose we distinguish one waiter from another much as we pick our hat from the rack. We could have plotted a murder safely before William. He never presumed to have opinions of his own. When such was my mood he remained silent, and if I announced that something diverting had happened to me he laughed before I told him what it was. He turned the twinkle in his eye off or on at my bidding as readily as if it was the gas. To my “Sure to be wet tomorrow,” he would reply, “Yes, sir;” and to Trelawney’s “It doesn’t look like rain,” two minutes afterward, he would reply, “No, sir.” It was one member who said Lightning Bolt would win the Derby and another who said Lightning Rod had no chance, but it was William who agreed with both. He was like a cheroot, which may be smoked from either end. So used was I to him that, had he died or got another situation (or whatever it is such persons do when they disappear from the club), I should probably have told the head waiter to bring him back, as I disliked changes.
It would not become me to know precisely when I began to think William an ingrate, but I date his lapse from the evening when he brought me oysters. I detest oysters, and no one knew it better than William. He has agreed with me that he could not understand any gentleman’s liking them. Between me and a certain member who smacks his lips twelve times to a dozen of them, William knew I liked a screen to be placed until we had reached the soup, and yet he gave me the oysters and the other man my sardine. Both the other member and I called quickly for brandy and the head waiter. To do William justice, he shook, but never can I forget his audacious explanation, “Beg pardon, sir, but I was thinking of something else.”
In these words William had flung off the mask, and now I knew him for what he was.
I must not be accused of bad form for looking at William on the following evening. What prompted me to do so was not personal interest in him, but a desire to see whether I dare let him wait on me again. So, recalling that a castor was off a chair yesterday, one is entitled to make sure that it is on to-day before sitting down. If the expression is not too strong, I may say that I was taken aback by William’s manner. Even when crossing the room to take my orders he let his one hand play nervously with the other. I had to repeat “Sardine on toast” twice, and instead of answering “Yes, Sir,” as if my selection of sardine on toast was a personal gratification to him, which is the manner one expects of a waiter, he glanced at the clock, then out at the window, and, starting, asked, “Did you say sardine on toast, sir?”
It was the height of summer, when London smells like a chemist’s shop, and he who has the dinner-table at the window needs no candles to show him his knife and fork. I lay back at intervals, now watching a starved-looking woman asleep on a doorstep, and again complaining of the club bananas. By and by, I saw a little girl of the commonest kind, ill-clad and dirty, as all these arabs are. Their parents should be compelled to feed and clothe them comfortably, or at least to keep them indoors, where they cannot offend our eyes. Such children are for pushing aside with one’s umbrella; but this girl I noticed because she was gazing at the club windows. She had stood thus for perhaps ten minutes, when I became aware that someone was leaning over me, to look out at the window. I turned round. Conceive my indignation on seeing that the rude person was William.
“How dare you, William?” I said, sternly. He seemed not to hear me. Let me tell, in the measured words of one describing a past incident, what then took place. To get nearer the window, he pressed heavily on my shoulder.
“William, you forget yourself!” I said, meaning — as I see now — that he had forgotten me.
I heard him gulp, but not to my reprimand. He was scanning the street. His hands chattered on my shoulder, and, pushing him from me, I saw that his mouth was agape.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
He stared at me, and then, like one who had at last heard the echo of my question, seemed to be brought back to the club. He turned his face from me for an instant, and answered, shakily “I beg your pardon, sir! I — I shouldn’t have done it. Are the bananas too ripe, sir?”
He recommended the nuts, and awaited my verdict so anxiously while I ate one that I was about to speak graciously, when I again saw his eyes drag him to the window.
“William,” I said, my patience giving way at last; “I dislike being waited on by a melancholy waiter.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, trying to smile, and then broke out passionately, “For God’s sake, sir, tell me, have you seen a little girl looking in at the club windows?”
He had been a good waiter once, and his distracted visage was spoiling my dinner.
“There,” I said, pointing to the girl, and no doubt would have added that he must bring me coffee immediately, had he continued to listen. But already he was beckoning to the child. I had not the least interest in her (indeed it had never struck me that waiters had private affairs, and I still think it a pity that they should have); but as I happened to be looking out at the window I could not avoid seeing what occurred. As soon as the girl saw William she ran into the middle of the street, regardless of vehicles, and nodded three times to him. Then she disappeared.
I have said that she was quite a common child, without attraction of any sort, and yet it was amazing the difference she made in William. He gasped relief, like one who has broken through the anxiety that checks breathing, and into his face there came a silly laugh of happiness. I had dined well, on the whole, so I said:
“I am glad to see you cheerful again, William.”
I meant that I approved his cheerfulness, because it helped my digestion, but he must needs think I was sympathizing with him.
“Thank you, sir,” he answered. “Oh, sir! when she nodded and I saw it was all right, I could have gone down on my knees to God.”
I was as much horrified as if he had dropped a plate on my toes. Even William, disgracefully emotional as he was at the moment, flung out his arms to recall the shameful words.
“Coffee, William!” I said, sharply.
I sipped my coffee indignantly, for it was plain to me that William had something on his mind.
“You are not vexed with me, sir?” he had the hardihood to whisper.
“It was a liberty,” I said.
“I know, sir; but I was beside myself.”
“That was a liberty also.”
He hesitated, and then blurted out:
“It is my wife, sir. She” —
I stopped him with my hand. William, whom I had favored in so many ways, was a married man! I mig
ht have guessed as much years before had I ever reflected about waiters, for I knew vaguely that his class did this sort of thing. His confession was distasteful to me, and I said, warningly:
“Remember where you are, William.”
“Yes, sir; but, you see, she is so delicate” —
“Delicate! I forbid your speaking to me on unpleasant topics.”
“Yes, sir; begging your pardon.”
It was characteristic of William to beg my pardon and withdraw his wife like some unsuccessful dish, as if its taste would not remain in the mouth. I shall be chided for questioning him further about his wife, but, though doubtless an unusual step, it was only bad form superficially, for my motive was irreproachable. I inquired for his wife, not because I was interested in her welfare, but in the hope of allaying my irritation. So I am entitled to invite the wayfarer who has bespattered me with mud to scrape it off.
I desired to be told by William that the girl’s signals meant his wife’s recovery to health. He should have seen that such was my wish and answered accordingly. But, with the brutal inconsiderateness of his class, he said: