Chapter 7

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 glass 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 Béraud 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 Café 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 glasses--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 assistant 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 class--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 buttons, 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 Béraud, 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 glass 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.

Then, bending over me, he added:

"Monsieur, I do not think I am mistaken. Were you not painting along the river this morning?"

"Yes."

"And a little child stood beside you while you worked?" Something in his voice as he spoke made me raise my head. To my intense amazement the listless eyes were alight with a tenderness that seemed to permeate his whole being, and a smile of infinite sweetness was playing about his mouth--the smile of the old saint--the Ribera of the Prado!

"Yes, of course; the one playing with the priest," I answered, quickly. "But--"

"No; that was me, Monsieur. I have often been taken for a priest, especially when I am off duty. It is the smooth face that misled you--" and he passed his hand over his cheeks and chin.

"You the priest!" This came as a distinct surprise. "Ah, yes, I do see the resemblance now. And so your sweetheart is the woman in the white cap." At last I had reached his tender spot.

"No, you are wrong again, Monsieur. The woman in the white cap is my sister. My sweetheart is the little girl--my granddaughter, Susette."

* * * * *

I raised my own white umbrella over my head, picked up my sketch-trap, and took the path back to the river. The rain had ceased, the sun was shining--brilliant, radiant sunshine; all the leaves studded with diamonds; all the grasses strung with opals, every stone beneath my feet a gem.

I didn't know when I left what became of Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud, with her last lover under the sod, and the new one shut up in the kiosk, and I didn't care. I saw only a little girl--a little girl in a brown-madder dress and yellow-ochre hat; with big, blue eyes, a tiny pug-nose, a wee, kissable mouth, and two long pig-tails down her back. Looking down into her bonny face from its place, high up on the walls of the Prado, was an old cracked saint, his human eyes aglow with a light that came straight from heaven.

"DOC" SHIPMAN'S FEE

It was in the Doctor's own office that he told me this story. He has told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience, like strands of worsted from an old-fashioned reticule. Some were bright-colored, some were gray and dull--some black; most of them, in fact, sombre in tone, for the Doctor has spent much of his life climbing up the rickety stairs of gloomy tenements. Now and then there comes out a thread of gold which he weaves into the mesh of his talk--some gleam of pathos or heroism or unselfishness, lightening the whole fabric. This kind of story he loves best to tell.

The Doctor is not one of your new-fashioned doctors quartered in a brownstone house off the Avenue, with a butler opening the door; a pair of bob-tailed grays; a coupé with a note-book tucked away in its pocket bearing the names of various millionnaires; an office panelled in oak; a waiting-room lined with patients reading last month's magazines until he should send for them. He has no such abode nor belongings. He lives all alone by himself in an old-fashioned house on Bedford Place--oh, Such a queer, hunched-up old house and such a quaint old neighborhood poked away behind Jefferson Market--and he opens the door himself and sees everybody who comes--there are not a great many of them nowadays, more's the pity.

There are only a few such houses left up the queer old-fashioned street where he lives. The others were pulled down long ago, or pushed out to the line of the sidewalk and three or four stories piled on top of them. Some of these modern ones have big, carved marble porticos, made of painted zinc and fastened to the new brickwork. Inside these portals are a row of bronze bells and a line of speaking tubes with cards below bearing the names of those who dwell above.

The Doctor's house is not like one of these. It would have been had it not belonged to his old mother, who died long ago and who begged him never to sell it while he lived. He was thirty years younger then, but he is still there and so is the old house. It looks a little ashamed of its shabbiness when you come upon it suddenly hiding behind its pushing neighbors. First comes an iron fence with a gate never shut, and then a flagged path dividing a grass-plot, and then an old-fashioned wooden stoop with two steps, guarded by a wooden railing (many a day since these were painted); and over these railings and up the supports which carry the roof of the portico straggles a honeysuckle that does its best to hide the shabbiness of the shingles and the old waterspout and sagging gutter, and fails miserably when it gets to the farther cornice, which has rotted away, showing under its dismal paint the black and brown rust of decaying wood.

Then way in under the portico comes the door with the name-plate, and next to it, level with the floor of the piazza or portico--either you please, for it is a combination of both--are two long French windows, always open in summer evenings and a-light on winter nights with the reflection of the Doctor's soft-coal fire, telling of the warmth and cheer within.

For it is a cheery place. It doesn't look like a doctor's office. There are dingy haircloth sofas, it is true, and a row of shelves with bottles, and funny-looking boxes on the mantel--one an electric battery--and rows and rows of books on the walls. But there are no dreadful instruments about. If there are, you don't see them.

The big chair he sits in would swallow up a smaller man. It is covered with Turkey red and has a roll cushion for his head. There are two of these chairs--one for you, or me; this last has big arms that come out and catch you under the elbows, a mighty help to a man when he has just learned that his liver or lungs or heart or some other part of him has gone wrong and needs overhauling.

Then there is a canary that sings all the time, and a small dog--oh, such a low-down, ill-bred, tousled dog; kind of a dog that might have been raised around a lumber-yard--was, probably--one ear gone, half of his tail missing; and there are some pots of flowers, and on the wall near the window where everybody can see is a case of butterflies impaled on pins and covered by a glass. No, you wouldn't think the Doctor's office a grewsome place, and you certainly wouldn't think the Doctor was a grewsome person--not when you come to know him.

If you met him out on Sunday afternoon in his black clothes, white neck-cloth, and well-brushed hat, his gray hair straggling over his coat-collar, pounding his cane on the pavement as he walked, you would say he had a Sunday-school class somewhere. If you should come upon him suddenly, seated before his fire, his gold spectacles clinging to his finely chiselled nose, his thoughtful face bending over his book, you would conclude that you had interrupted some savant, and bow yourself out.

But you must ring his bell at night--say two o'clock A.M.; catch his cheery voice calling through the tube from his bedroom in the rear--"Yes; coming right away--be there soon as I get my clothes on"--feel the strength and sympathy and readiness to help in the man, and try to keep step with him as he hurries on, and then watch him when he enters the sick-room, diffusing hope and cheer and confidence, and listen to the soft, soothing tones of his voice, before you really get at the inside lining of "Doc" Shipman.

All this brings me to the story. Of course, I could have told you the bare facts without giving you an idea of the man and his surroundings, but that wouldn't be fair to you, for you would have missed knowing the Doctor, and I the opportunity of introducing him to you.

We were sitting in the old-fashioned office, then, one snowy night in January, the Doctor leaning back in his chair, his meerschaum pipe in his mouth--the one with the gold cap that a long-ago patient gave him--when he straightened his back and tugged at his fob, bringing to the surface a small gold watch--one I had not seen before.

"Where's the silver one?" I asked, referring to an old silver-backed watch I had seen him wear.

The Doctor looked up and smiled.

"That's in the drawer. I don't wear it any more--not since I got this one back."

"What happened? Was it broken?"

"No, stolen."

"When?"

"Oh, some time ago. Help yourself to a cigar and I'll tell you about it.

"One night last summer I came in late, took off my coat and vest, hung them on a chair by the window and went to bed, leaving the sashes ajar, for it was terribly hot and I wanted a draught of air through from my bedroom."

(I must tell my reader here that the Doctor is a born story-teller and something of an actor as well. He seldom explains his characters or situations as he goes on by putting in "I said" and "he said" and similar expressions. You know by the tones of his voice who is speaking, and his gestures supply the rest.)

"I always carried this watch in my vest-pocket. I carry it now inside my waistband so they will have to pull me to pieces to get it.

"Well, about three o'clock in the morning--I had just heard the old clock in the tower strike, and was dozing off to sleep again--a footstep awoke me to consciousness. I looked through these doors"--here the Doctor was pointing to the folding doors of the office where we sat--"and through my bedroom saw the dim outline of a man moving about this room. He had my vest and trousers over his arm. I sprang up, but he was too quick for me, and before I could reach him he had slipped through the windows out on to the porch, down the yard, through the gate, and was gone.

"With him went my mother's watch, which was in the upper vest-pocket, and some fifty dollars in money. I didn't mind the money, but I did the watch. It was my mother's, a present from my father when they were first married, and had the initials '_E.M.S. from J.H.S_.' engraved on the under side of the case. When she died I pasted the dear old lady's photograph inside the upper lid. I know almost everybody around here, and they all know me; they come in here with broken heads for me to sew up, and stab wounds, and such-like misfortunes, and when they heard what had happened to me they all did what they could.

"The Captain of the precinct came around, and everybody was very sorry, and they hunted the pawnshops, and I offered a reward--in fact, did all the foolish things you do when you have lost something you think a heap of. But no trace of the watch could be found, and so I gave it up and tried to forget it and couldn't. That's why I bought that cheap silver one. My only clew to the thief was the glimpse I had of a scar on his cheek and a slight dragging of his foot as he stepped about my room.

"One night last autumn there came a ring at the bell, and I let in a man with a slouch hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of his coat turned up. He was soaking wet, the water oozing from his shoes and slopping the oilcloth in the hall where he stood. I had never seen him before.

"'Doc,' he said, 'I want you.' They all call me 'Doc' around here--especially this kind of a man--and I saw right away where he belonged.

"'What for?'

"'My pal's sick.'

"'What's the matter with him?'

"'Well, he's sick--took bad. He'll die if he don't git help.'

"'Where is he?'

"'Down in Washington Street.'

"'Queer,' I said to myself, 'his wanting me to go two miles from here, when there are plenty of doctors nearer by,' and so I said to him:

"'You can get a doctor nearer than me. I'm waiting for a woman case and may be sent for any minute. Try the Dispensary on Canal Street; they've always a doctor there.'

"'No--we don't want no Dispensary sharp. We want you. Pal's sent me for you--he knows you, but you mightn't remember him.'