The Observations of Henry | Page 6

on; so she was still only a Marchioness, and her fortune,
though tidy, was nothing very big--not as that class reckons. By luck I
was told off to wait on her, she having asked for someone as could

speak English. She seemed glad to see me and to talk to me.
"Well," I says, "I suppose you'll be bossing that bar in Capetown now
before long?"
"Talk sense," she answers. "How can the Marchioness of Appleford
marry a hotel keeper?"
"Why not," I says, "if she fancies him? What's the good of being a
Marchioness if you can't 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";