The Observations of Henry | Page 6

do what you like?"
"That's just it," she snaps out; "you can't. It would not be doing the straight thing by the family. No," she says, "I've spent their money, and I'm spending it now. They don't love me, but they shan't say as I have disgraced them. They've got their feelings same as I've got mine."
"Why not chuck the money?" I says. "They'll be glad enough to get it back," they being a poor lot, as I heard her say.
"How can I?" she says. "It's a life interest. As long as I live I've got to have it, and as long as I live I've got to remain the Marchioness of Appleford."
She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. "As long as I live," she says, talking to herself.
"By Jove!" she says, starting up "why not?"
"Why not what?" I says.
"Nothing," she answers. "Get me an African telegraph form, and be quick about it!"
I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter then and there; and, that done, she sat down and finished her dinner.
She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to keep my own place.
In the morning she got an answer that seemed to excite her, and that afternoon she left; and the next I heard of her was a paragraph in the newspaper, headed--"Death of the Marchioness of Appleford. Sad accident." It seemed she had gone for a row on one of the Italian lakes with no one but a boatman. A squall had come on, and the boat had capsized. The boatman had swum ashore, but he had been unable to save his passenger, and her body had never been recovered. The paper reminded its readers that she had formerly been the celebrated tragic actress, Caroline Trevelyan, daughter of the well-known Indian judge of that name.
It gave me the blues for a day or two--that bit of news. I had known her from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest in her. You can call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed to me less interesting now there was no chance of ever seeing her come into one again.
I went from Paris to one of the smaller hotels in Venice. The missis thought I'd do well to pick up a bit of Italian, and perhaps she fancied Venice for herself. That's one of the advantages of our profession. You can go about. It was a second-rate sort of place, and one evening, just before lighting-up time, I had the salle-a-manger all to myself, and had just taken up a paper when I hears the door open, and I turns round.
I saw "her" coming down the room. There was no mistaking her. She wasn't that sort.
I sat with my eyes coming out of my head till she was close to me, and then I says:
"Carrots!" I says, in a whisper like. That was the name that come to me.
"'Carrots' it is," she says, and down she sits just opposite to me, and then she laughs.
I could not speak, I could not move, I was that took aback, and the more frightened I looked the more she laughed till "Kipper" comes into the room. There was nothing ghostly about him. I never see a man look more as if he had backed the winner.
"Why, it's 'Enery," he says; and he gives me a slap on the back, as knocks the life into me again.
"I heard you was dead," I says, still staring at her. "I read it in the paper--'death of the Marchioness of Appleford.'"
"That's all right," she says. "The Marchioness of Appleford is as dead as a door-nail, and a good job too. Mrs. Captain Kit's my name, nee 'Carrots.'"
"You said as 'ow I'd find someone to suit me 'fore long," says "Kipper" to me, "and, by Jove! you were right; I 'ave. I was waiting till I found something equal to her ladyship, and I'd 'ave 'ad to wait a long time, I'm thinking, if I 'adn't come across this one 'ere"; and he tucks her up under his arm just as I remember his doing that day he first brought her into the coffee-shop, and Lord, what a long time ago that was!
* * * * *
That is the story, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. I have, at his request, substituted artificial names for real ones. For Henry tells me that at Capetown Captain Kit's First-class Family and Commercial Hotel still runs, and that the landlady is still a beautiful woman with fine eyes and red hair, who might almost be taken for a duchess--until she opens her mouth, when her accent is found to be still slightly reminiscent of the Mile-End Road.

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