CHAPTER XV

MR. DUCKIE, WITH HIS NAPKIN ON HIS ARM, SUGGESTS A SCHEME FOR HUMAN HAPPINESS

To-day I carried out my promise of lunching at the Golden Horn and testing the quality not only of the house's famous saddle, but also of Mr. Duckie's skill as a waiter. He had reserved a corner seat in one of the pews, and had evidently given orders to his assistant that I was to be well looked after: an agreeable attention, but carrying with it the necessary corollary, in an English eating-house, that other guests were neglected.

I was amused by a father and son who occupied the same compartment. This father was evidently of the Temple--a man of about fifty, and intensely proud of his son, a youth from Oxford, who, however, no matter what learning his head might hold, was too callow to fancy exhibitions of paternal interest--young enough to be self-conscious and vigilant as to form, and even, I am afraid, the least little bit in doubt as to his father's satisfactoriness as a judge of life. He would grow out of such foibles, I think, for he had a good face. The core of the little comedy lay in the father's desire to let me, a stranger, into the secret of his son's success. He stood sufficiently in fear of the boy to refrain from talking to me about him, or indeed talking to me at all. Young Oxford, he knew instinctively, would not like that, and the honest fellow, who was clearly of a sociable communicative cast, with a very agreeable vein of naïve snobbishness, had to content himself by making such remarks to his son as carried important information with them.

His great chance, however, came at the end of the meal, at which the boy hitherto had been drinking water. "Will you have a glass of port, old man?" the proud father asked. Young Oxford consented, and when their glasses were filled, the father, with half a glance towards me to see that I was attentive, gave the toast, "Well, old man, here's to another First!"

After they had gone I was alone in the pew, and as the other customers' needs grew fewer, Mr. Duckie paused now and then by the table and talked to me. He had been there, he said, for twenty-four years.

"Then you have seen many changes?" I asked him.

No, he said, not there. Everything was the same. It was their strength to be the same. The young governor, he'd tried some new notions, such as a foreign waiter or two, but it was a mistake. Gentlemen didn't like it. Gentlemen liked what they'd been accustomed to. Foreign waiters might be nippier with the plates, but gentlemen didn't like to have to teach them English. It was not that gentlemen wanted to talk much; but when they did talk they wanted to be understood and replied to in their own language.

Mr. Duckie was now head-waiter and proud of his post. I asked him if he was satisfied generally with his life.

He said that he was, except for tired feet; and now and then, he added, he could not help wishing that some one would invent a new joint. Beef and mutton, pork and veal, he said, that's all there is. When he first came there they had had venison once a week, but it had gone right out of favour. Gentlemen never inquired for it any more.

I asked him how he kept his temper when customers were unreasonable.

"Oh, that's all in the day's work," he said. "I know they don't mean it. It's not the gentlemen who are snappish, it's their empty stomachs. But there's less grumbling here than in any other eating-house in London," he said; "and I'll tell you for why. I know how to deal with them. All my men have instructions to take the order for drinks with the food, and execute it at once. That's the way to soothe them. In the ordinary restaurant, gentlemen aren't asked what they'll drink until they've got their food, and even then there's a delay. It's that that sours them. They can't bear waiting. It's just the same with little crying babies. Give them the bottle and they're all right. Gentlemen aren't really difficult if you think a little."

"But I suppose," I said, "that there are always a few who can't be satisfied any way."

"Of course there are," said Mr. Duckie (who, by the way, sinks familiarly here to plain John); "but, Lor' bless you, we don't mind them. That's their way. If it wasn't--if they really meant all they said--they'd go somewhere else. But they don't, and so we just put up with it. Why, there's gentlemen so much in love with grumbling that they'd call for a toothpick after eating clear soup. It's their nature.

"It is not the gentlemen," he went on, "that break a waiter's heart; it's the kitchen. That's where our trouble is. It's cooks that ruin eating-houses. A cook who has a grudge against a head-waiter can cost his governor pounds and pounds a day. It's all in his hands; he can spoil things, or he can keep them back till the customers bang out in a fury. Just now we've got as nice a lot in the kitchen as you'd wish to meet in a day's march, but we have had some fair terrors. Gentlemen who blame waiters for being slow don't remember that the food has got to be cooked and served up, and that the waiter doesn't do either.

"But there;" Mr. Duckie said, "an empty stomach can't remember everything. I often think this would be a better-tempered and happier world if we ate a little all the time instead of saving up our appetites for real meals. But speaking as a waiter, I can see it's best as it is."

"Does your son ever come and see you here?" I asked.

"You mean the comedian?" he said. "Yes, now and again. But I don't encourage him. I don't think it's a good thing for a father to wait on his son. Not that I think there's any shame in it, nor that I feel unwilling, knowing as I do what genius is. But it's not good for Herbert. It's better for young men never to see their fathers at a disadvantage; and suppose some bad-tempered gent was to be rude to me while he was here, and I of course not able to answer back or do anything (because of course waiters mustn't), that wouldn't be right, would it?--not a good thing for a son to see?"

"But he's a good son," I said.

"Oh yes, he's all right. But he's only twenty-five, and he's on the Halls, and he makes a lot of money. It's a strange life, different from anything we're accustomed to. They turn night into day, and they get all this applause, and everything's got to be funny, and you don't know where you are. And then, of course, he's got his touring to look after--a week here and a week there, all over the country. It wouldn't suit me. I'm all for regularity."

"Do you ever go and hear him sing?" I asked.

"Not much. The Halls aren't much in my line. I prefer real music. The Queen's Hall is my mark. There's a gentleman who comes here who gives me tickets for that, and when I've got a free evening--which is not often, for I wait at City dinners and such things most nights after we close here--off I go to a symphony. They're beautiful, and so soothing. We had Mr. Henry J. Wood here once, and I saw to it that he had a good lunch, I can promise you. I picked out his chop myself. But the man I'd like to wait on is Tchaikovsky. Wouldn't I enjoy looking after him? He'd go away hungry--I don't think."

"Tchaikovsky?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "The composer of the Pathetic Symphony. It's the most beautiful thing I ever heard. If you were to go to that you'd understand why, with the exception of a fatherly pride, I don't much care about Herbert's turns."

And here I bade him good afternoon, and took my way to Lionel's chambers, murmuring as I went--

"I want to know a butcher paints."