‘Pooh! the doctor,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir,’ he answered.
‘Have you been married long, William?’
‘Eight years, sir. Eight years ago she was – I – I mind her when… and now the doctor says–’
The fellow gaped at me. ‘More coffee, sir?’ he asked.
‘What is her ailment?’
‘She was always one of the delicate kind, but full of spirit, and – and you see, she has had a baby lately–’
‘William!’
‘And she – I – the doctor is afeard she’s not picking up.’
‘I feel sure she will pick up.’
‘Yes, sir?’
It must have been the wine I had drunk that made me tell him:
‘I was once married, William. My wife – it was just such a case as yours.’
‘She did not get better, sir?’
‘No.’
After a pause he said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ meaning for the sympathy that made me tell him that. But it must have been the wine.
‘That little girl comes here with a message from your wife?’
‘Yes; if she nods three times it means my wife is a little better.’
‘She nodded thrice to-day.’
‘But she is told to do that to relieve me, and maybe those nods don’t tell the truth.’
‘Is she your girl?’
‘No; we have none but the baby. She is a neighbour’s; she comes twice a day.’
‘It is heartless of her parents not to send her every hour.’
‘But she is six years old,’ he said, ‘and has a house and two sisters to look after in the daytime, and a dinner to cook. Gentlefolk don’t understand.’
‘I suppose you live in some low part, William.’
‘Off Drury Lane,’ he answered, flushing; ‘but – but it isn’t low. You see, we were never used to anything better, and I mind when I let her see the house before we were married, she – she a sort of cried because she was so proud of it. That was eight years ago, and now – she’s afeard she’ll die when I’m away at my work.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Never; she always says she is feeling a little stronger.’
‘Then how can you know she is afraid of that?’
‘I don’t know how I know, sir; but when I am leaving the house in the morning I look at her from the door, and she looks at me, and then I – I know.’
‘A green chartreuse, William!’
I tried to forget William’s vulgar story in billiards, but he had spoiled my game. My opponent, to whom I can give twenty, ran out when I was sixty-seven, and I put aside my cue pettishly. That in itself was bad form, but what would they have thought had they known that a waiter’s impertinence caused it! I grew angrier with William as the night wore on, and next day I punished him by giving my orders through another waiter.
As I had my window-seat, I could not but see that the girl was late again. Somehow I dawdled over my coffee. I had an evening paper before me, but there was so little in it that my eyes found more of interest in the street. It did not matter to me whether William’s wife died, but when that girl had promised to come, why did she not come? These lower classes only give their word to break it. The coffee was undrinkable.
At last I saw her. William was at another window, pretending to do something with the curtains. I stood up, pressing closer to the window. The coffee had been so bad that I felt shaky. She nodded three times, and smiled.
‘She is a little better,’ William whispered to me, almost gaily.
‘Whom are you speaking of?’ I asked, coldly, and immediately retired to the billiard-room, where I played a capital game. The coffee was much better there than in the dining-room.
Several days passed, and I took care to show William that I had forgotten his maunderings. I chanced to see the little girl (though I never looked for her) every evening, and she always nodded three times, save once, when she shook her head, and then William’s face grew white as a napkin. I remember this incident because that night I could not get into a pocket. So badly did I play that the thought of it kept me awake in bed, and that, again, made me wonder how William’s wife was. Next day I went to the club early (which was not my custom) to see the new books. Being in the club at any rate, I looked into the dining-room to ask William if I had left my gloves there, and the sight of him reminded me of his wife; so I asked for her. He shook his head mournfully, and I went off in a rage.
So accustomed am I to the club that when I dine elsewhere I feel uncomfortable next morning, as if I had missed a dinner. William knew this; yet here he was, hounding me out of the club! That evening I dined (as the saying is) at a restaurant, where no sauce was served with the asparagus. Furthermore, as if that were not triumph enough for William, his doleful face came between me and every dish, and I seemed to see his wife dying to annoy me.
I dined next day at the club for self-preservation, taking, however, a table in the middle of the room, and engaging a waiter who had once nearly poisoned me by not interfering when I put two lumps of sugar into my coffee instead of one, which is my allowance. But no William came to me to acknowledge his humiliation, and by-and-by I became aware that he was not in the room. Suddenly the thought struck me that his wife must be dead, and I – it was the worst cooked and the worst served dinner I ever had in the club.
I tried the smoking-room. Usually the talk there is entertaining, but on that occasion it was so frivolous that I did not remain five minutes. In the card-room a member told me excitedly that a policeman had spoken rudely to him; and my strange comment was:
‘After all, it is a small matter.’
In the library, where I had not been for years, I found two members asleep, and, to my surprise, William on a ladder dusting books.
‘You have not heard, sir?’ he said, in answer to my raised eyebrows. Descending the ladder, he whispered tragically: ‘It was last evening, sir. I – I lost my head, and I – swore at a member.’
I stepped back from William, and glanced apprehensively at the two members. They still slept.
‘I hardly knew,’ William went on, ‘what I was doing all day yesterday, for I had left my wife so weakly that–’
I stamped my foot.
‘I beg your pardon for speaking of her,’ he had the grace to say, ‘but I couldn’t help slipping up to the window often yesterday to look for Jenny, and when she did come, and I saw she was crying, it – it sort of confused me, and I didn’t know right, sir, what I was doing. I hit against a member, Mr. Myddleton Finch, and he – he jumped and swore at me. Well, sir, I had just touched him after all, and I was so miserable, it a kind of stung me to be treated like – like that, and me a man as well as him; and I lost my senses, and – and I swore back.’
William’s shamed head sank on his chest, but I even let pass his insolence in likening himself to a member of the club, so afraid was I of the sleepers waking and detecting me in talk with a waiter.
‘For the love of God,’ William cried, with coarse emotion, ‘don’t let them dismiss me!’
‘Speak lower!’ I said. ‘Who sent you here?’
‘I was turned out of the dining-room at once, and told to attend to the library until they had decided what to do with me. Oh, sir, I’ll lose my place!’
He was blubbering, as if a change of waiters was a matter of importance.
‘This is very bad, William,’ I said. ‘I fear I can do nothing for you.’
‘Have