CHAPTER I.
BLACK AND WHITE.
Jones! I mention him here because he is the first and last word of the story. It is the story of what might be called a game of chess between me and him; for I never made a move, but he made a counter-move. You must remember though that he played, so to speak, blindfold, while I started the game, not with the view of mating him, but merely for the fun of playing.
There was to be a Review of the Fleet, and the inhabitants of Ryde rejoiced, as befitted sons of the sea. Although many of them would be reduced to living in their cellars, like their own black-beetles, so that they might harbour the patriotic immigrant, they sacrificed themselves ungrudgingly. No, it was not the natives who grumbled.
My friends, Jack Woolwich and Merton Towers, being in the Civil Service, naturally desired to pay a compliment to the less civil department of State, and picked their month's holiday so as to include the Review. They took care to let the Review come out at the posterior extremity of the holiday, so as to find them quite well and in the enjoyment of excellent quarters at economical rates. They selected a comfortable but unfashionable hotel, at moderate but uninclusive terms, and joyously stretched their free limbs unswaddled by red-tape. Soon London became a forgotten nightmare.
They wrote to me irregularly, tantalising me unwittingly with glimpses of buoyant wave and sunny pasture. It fretted me to be immured in the stone-prison of the metropolis, and my friends' letters did but sprinkle sea-salt on my wounds; for I was working up a medical practice in the northern district, and my absence might prove fatal—not so much, perhaps, to my patients as to my prospects. I was beginning to be recognised as a specialist in throats and eyes, and I invariably sent my clients' ears to my old hospital chum, Robins, which increased the respect of the neighbourhood for my professional powers. Your general practitioner is a suspiciously omniscient person, and it is far sager to know less and to charge more.
"My dear Ted," wrote the Woolwich Infant (of course we could not escape calling Jack Woolwich thus), "I do wish we had you here. Such larks! We've got the most comical cuss of a waiter you ever saw. I feel sure he would appeal irresistibly to your sense of humour. He seems to boss the whole establishment. His name is Jones; and when you have known him a day you feel that he is the only Jones—the only Jones possible. He is a middle-aged man, with a slight stoop and a cat-like crawl. His face is large and flabby, ornamented with mutton-chop whiskers, streaked as with the silver of half a century of tips. He is always at your elbow—a mercenary Mephistopheles—suggesting drives or sails, and recommending certain yachts, boats, and carriages with insinuative irresistibleness. He has the tenacity of an army of able-bodied leeches, and if you do not take his advice he spoils your day. You may shake him off by fleeing into the interior of the Isle, or plunging into the sea; but you cannot be always trotting about or bathing; and at mealtimes he waits upon those who have disregarded his recommendations. He has a hopelessly corruptive effect on the soul, and I, who have always prided myself on my immaculate moral get-up, was driven to desperate lying within twenty-four hours of my arrival. I told him how much I had enjoyed the carriage-drive he had counselled, or the sail he had sanctioned by his approval; and, in return, he regaled me with titbits at our table d'hôte dinner. But the next day he followed me about with large, reproachful eyes, in grieved silence. I saw that he knew all; and I dragged myself along with my tail between my legs, miserably asking myself how I could regain his respect.
"THE INFANT."
"Wherever I turned I saw nothing but those dilated orbs of rebuke. I took refuge in my bedroom, but he glided in to give me a bad French halfpenny the chambermaid had picked up under my bed; and the implied contrast to be read in those eyes, between the honesty of the establishment and my own, was more than I could bear. I flew into a passion—the last resource of detected guilt—and irrelevantly told him I would choose my own amusements, and that I had not come down to increase his commissions.
"Ted, till my dying day I shall not forget the dumb martyrdom of those eyes! When he was sufficiently recovered to speak, he swore, in a voice broken by emotion, that he would scorn taking commissions from the quarters I imagined. Ashamed of my unjust suspicions, I apologised, and went out that afternoon alone for a trip in the Mayblossom, and was violently sick. Merton funked it because the weather was rough, and had a lucky escape; but he had to meet Jones in the evening.
"Merton's theory is, that Jones doesn't get commissions, for the simple reason that the wagonettes and broughams and bath-chairs and boats and yachts he recommends all belong to him, and that the nominal proprietors are men of straw, stuffed by the only Jones. This theory is, I must admit, borne out by the evidence of O'Rafferty, a jolly old Irishman, whose wife died here early in the year, and who has been making holiday ever since. He says that Jones had a week off in March when there was hardly anybody in the hotel, and he was to be seen driving a wagonette between Ryde and Cowes daily. And, indeed, there is something curiously provincial and plebeian about Jones's mind which suggests a man who has risen from the cab-ranks.
"His ideas of tips are delightfully democratic, and you cannot insult him even with twopence. He handles a bottle of cheap claret as reverently as a Russian the image of his saint, and he has never got over his awe of champagne. To drink Monopole at dinner is to mount a pedestal of dignity, and I completely recovered his esteem by drowning the memories of that awful marine experience in a pint of 'dry.' When he draws the champagne cork he has a sacerdotal air, and he pours out the foaming liquid with the obsequiousness of an archbishop placing on his sovereign's head the crown he may never hope to do more than touch. But perhaps the best proof of the humbleness of his origin is his veneration for the aristocracy. An average waiter is, from the nature of his occupation, liable to be brought into contact with the bluest of blood, and to have his undiminished reverence for it tempered with a good-natured perception of mortal foibles. But Jones's attitude is one of awestruck unquestioning worship. He speaks of a lord with bated breath, and he dare not, even in conversation, ascend to a duke.
"THE ONLY JONES."
"It would seem that this is not one of the hotels which the aristocrat's fancy turns to thoughts of; for apparently only one lord has ever stayed here, judging by the frequency with which Jones whispers his name. Though some of us seem to have a beastly lot of money, and to do all the year round what Merton and I can only indulge in for a month, we are a rather plebeian company I fear, and it is simply overwhelming the way Jones rams Lord Porchester down our throats.
"'When his lordship stayed here he partic'larly admired the view from that there window.' 'His lordship wouldn't drink anything but Pommery Green-oh; he used to swallow it by tumblersful, as you or I might rum-and-water, sir.' 'Ah, sir! Lord Porchester hired the Mayblossom all to himself, and often said: "By Jove! she's like a sea-gull. She almost comes near my own little beauty. I think I shall have to buy her, by gad I shall! and let them race each other."'
"And the fellow is such an inveterate gossip that everybody here knows everybody else's business. The proprietor is a quiet, gentlemanly fellow, and is the only person in the place who keeps his presence of mind in the presence of Jones, and is not in mental subjugation to the flabby, florid, crawling boss of the rest of the show.
"You may laugh, but I warrant you wouldn't be here a day before Jones would get the upper hand of you. On the outside, of course, he is as fixedly deferential as if every moment were to be your last, and the cab were waiting to take you to the Station; but inwardly, you feel he is wound about you like a boa-constrictor. I do so long to see him swathing you in his coils! Won't you come down, and give your patients a chance?"
"My dear Jack," I wrote back to the Infant, "I am so sorry that you are having bad weather. You don't say so, but when a man covers six sheets of writing-paper I know what it means. I must say you have given me an itching to try my strength with the only Jones; but, alas! this is a musical neighbourhood, and there is a run on sore throats, so I must be content to enjoy my Jones by deputy. Is there any other attraction about the shanty?"
Merton Towers took up the running:
"Barring ourselves and Jones," he wrote, "and perhaps O'Rafferty, there isn't a decent human being in the hotel. The ladies are either old and ugly, or devoted to their husbands. The only ones worth talking to are in the honeymoon stage. But Jones is worth a hundred petticoats: he is tremendous fun. We've got a splendid spree on now. I think the Infant told you that Jones has not enjoyed that actual contact with the 'hupper suckles' which his simple snobbish soul so thoroughly deserves; and that, in spite of the eternal Lord Porchester, his acquaintance is less with the beau monde than with the Bow and Bromley monde. Since the Infant and I discovered this we have been putting on the grand air. Unfortunately, it was too late to claim titles; but we have managed to convey the impression that, although commoners and plain misters, we have yet had the privilege of rubbing against the purple. We have casually and carelessly dropped hints of aristocratic acquaintances, and Jones has bowed down and picked them up reverently.
"The other day, when he brought us our Chartreuse after dinner, the Infant said: 'Ah! I suppose you haven't got Damtidam in stock?' The only Jones stared awestruck. 'Of course not! How can it possibly have penetrated to these parts yet?' I struck in with supercilious reproach. 'Damtidam! What is that, sir?' faltered Jones. 'What! you don't mean to say you haven't even heard of it?' cried the Infant in amaze. Jones looked miserable and apologetic. 'It's the latest liqueur,' I explained graciously. 'Awfully expensive; made by a new brotherhood of Anchorites in Dalmatia, who have secluded themselves from the world in order to concoct it. They only serve the aristocracy; but, of course, now and then a millionaire manages to get hold of a bottle. Lord Everett made me a present of some a couple of months ago, but I use it very, very sparingly, and I daresay the flask's at least half-full. I have it in my portmanteau.' 'How does it taste, sir?' enquired Jones, in a hushed, solemn whisper. 'Damtidam is not the sort of thing that would please the uncultured palate,' I replied haughtily. 'It's what they call an acquired taste, ain't it, sir?' he asked wistfully. 'Would you like to have a drop?' I said affably. 'Oh, Towers!' cried the Infant, 'what would Lord Everett say?' 'Well, but how is Lord Everett to know?' I responded. 'Jones will never let on.' 'His lordship shall never hear a word from my lips,' Jones protested gratefully. 'But you won't like it at first. To really enjoy Damtidam, you'll have to have several goes at it. Have you got a little phial?' Jones ran and fetched the phial, and I fished out of my portmanteau the bottle of dyspepsia mixture you gave us and filled Jones's phial. I watched him glide into the garden and put the phial to his lips with a heavenly expression, through which some suggestions of purgatory subsequently flitted. That was yesterday.
"'Well, Jones, how do you like Damtidam?' I enquired genially this morning. 'Very 'igh-class, very 'igh-class in its taste, thank you, sir,' he replied. 'It's 'ardly for the likes o' me, I'm afraid; but as you've been good enough to give me some, I'll make so bold as to enjoy it. I 'ad a second sip at it this morning, and I liked it a deal better than yesterday. It requires time to get the taste, sir; but, depend upon it, I'll do my best to acquire it.' 'I wish you success!' I cried. 'Once you get used to it, it's simply delicious. Why, I'd never travel without a bottle of it. I often take it in the middle of the night. You finish that phial, Jones; never mind the cost. I'm writing to Lord Everett to-day, and I'll drop him a broad hint that I should like another.'
"Eureka! As I write this a glorious idea has occurred to me. I am writing to you to-day, and you are the giver of the Damtidam, alias dyspepsia mixture. Oh, if you could only come down and pose as Lord Everett! What larks we should have! Do, old boy; it'll be the greatest spree we've ever had. Don't say 'no.' You want a change, you know you do; or you'll be on the sick-list yourself soon. Come, if only for a week! Surely you can find a chum to take your practice. How about Robins? He can't be all ears. I daresay he's equal to looking after your throats and eyes for a week. The Infant joins with me, and says that if you don't come he'll kill off Jones, and deprive you for ever of the pleasure of knowing him.
"I remain,
"Yours till Jones's death,
"Merton Towers.
"P.S.—When you come, bring a dozen of Damtidam."
The prospect of becoming Lord Everett flattered and tickled me, and was a daily temptation to me in my dreary drudgery. To the appeal of the pictured visions of woods and waters was added the alluring figure of Jones, standing a little bent amid the smiling landscape, acquiring a taste for Damtidam; his pasty face kneaded ecstatically, his hand on the pit of his stomach. At last I could stand it no longer, I went to see Robins, and I wrote to my friends:
"Jones wins! Expect me about ten days before the Review, so that we can return to town together.
"When I first asked Robins to take my eyes, he was inclined to dash them; but the moment I let him into the plot against Jones, he agreed to do all my work on condition of being informed of the progress of the campaign.
"I shan't tell anyone I'm leaving town, and Robins will forward my letters in an envelope addressed to Lord Everett.
"P.S.—I am bottling a special brand of Damtidam."