IX
For well-nigh eighteen months Wynne Rendall, seeker of eminence, destroyer of symmetry, professor of æsthetic thought, worked with his hands in little byways of the unfriendly city.
He had come to look on Paris as the unfriendly city, for very shabbily she served him after his money gave out. They laughed at his frail stature and careful, elegant speech when he sought work in the Covent Garden of the French capital, and it was a desperately gaunt and hungry boy who at last found employment in a small pâtisserie somewhere in the neighbourhood of Boulevard Magenta. Things had gone so ill with him that he was rocking on his heels, staring greedily at the cakes in the pastry-cook’s window like any starving urchin. He did not notice the printed card, “Youth wanted,” which stood among the trays. A stout woman behind the counter saw and beckoned him to enter.
“You look hungry,” she said.
“I am.”
Even short sentences were difficult.
“D’you want work?”
“I want to eat.”
“Eating is for people who work. Would you care for a place here, delivering bread? I need some one.”
“I could not be trusted with a loaf,” he said, and fainted.
The stout lady was comparatively kind. She threw water over his face, and when he came to, gave him coffee, a piece of sausage, and some bread. She allowed him to finish, and then told him very plainly he might express gratitude by accepting the post of errand boy at a small wage.
To Wynne it seemed that any wage was acceptable which could be earned in an atmosphere so rich in odours of cooked corn. He said “Yes” almost before she had framed the offer. Later he repented, for the hours of labour were incessant, the food scarce, and the room in which he slept was dirty, damp, and ill-ventilated. Of his weekly earnings, when he had bought himself cigarettes and paid back a certain proportion for lodging, there remained little or nothing. Books, which had hitherto been the breath of life to him, were of necessity denied. Very occasionally he scraped together a few coppers and bought some dusty, broken-backed volume which he scarcely ever found leisure to read. He was too physically fatigued at night for reading, and during the day was kept continually on the run.
He did not stay with the stout lady for long, but the changes he made were rarely of great advantage. Once he found employment at a small stationer’s, which bade fair to prove pleasanter, but from here he fled precipitately on account of the amorous importunities of the stationer’s younger daughter. She, poor child, had lost the affections of a certain artisan, who lodged in the same house, and sought to regain them by exciting jealousy. In the pursuance of this time-worn device she proposed to sacrifice Wynne, and was prepared to go to no mean lengths in order to give the affair a colourable pretence of reality. Wherefore Wynne ran, not so much from the probable fury of the artisan as from a vague fear which he did not entirely understand.
After this episode he became a waiter—or, to be exact, a wine boy. In this branch of employment he was rather happier, although much of it proved irksome and distasteful. He found that a waiter is allowed, and even encouraged, to possess a personality. In the other callings in which he had worked personality was condemned, but customers welcome an individual note in a waiter. It helps them to identify him among his similarly arrayed companions, and affords them opportunity for a lavish expenditure of wit and sarcasm not always in the best taste.
For the first time Wynne was able to save a little money, which he put by towards paying the price of a passage to England. He had decided to leave Paris as soon as he had accumulated enough to pay the cost of travel. In this matter, however, a certain inconsistency forced him to remain. He would save the best part of the two pounds required, and, a day or so before departure, would yield to an irresistible impulse and spend several francs on the purchase of a book. He did this about a dozen times altogether, and although the habit formed the nucleus of a library, it postponed his departure indefinitely.
At last he had in his possession the required sum, and determined to leave Paris at the close of the week, but certain pneumonic cocci floating in the atmosphere and seeking a human abiding place, had other plans for him, and by the Sunday morning, high-temperatured and semi-conscious, he lay in his bed with a perilously slender hold upon life.
M. le Patron had been aware of Wynne’s intention to depart, and had been wishful of retaining his services. Without Wynne it would be impossible for an honest man to display in his window the legend “English spoken,” an announcement which stimulated trade among foreigners.
Accordingly he put himself to the trouble of engaging a doctor, whose injunctions in regard to the treatment of the invalid he very faithfully followed. It should be stated that he was no less faithful in recording the out-of-pocket expenses incurred, which at the close of a six weeks’ illness were presented to Wynne in the manner of a debt.
“It will now be necessary that you shall remain until this sum is restored to me,” he said. “I am generous not to have increased the liability, for times were many when it seemed that I had incurred upon myself the cost of a burial.”
Wynne reckoned that the least time in which he could reasonably hope to clear the score would be from three to four months, and raised his voice in protest.
“But my career, monsieur—what will become of my career?”
Money is one of the few things a Frenchman takes seriously; in nearly all other matters he is possessed of an enchanting elasticity. Wynne’s lamentations were heard without sympathy.
“The debt must be discharged,” said M. le Patron.
So once more Wynne donned his evening clothes with the break of day, once more a serviette swung from the bend of his arm.
Strange to say menial service did not break his spirit or lessen his conceit. There are certain compensations in the life of a waiter if he be an observant fellow. Many and various are the types in which he comes into contact, and there is no surer way of fathoming the character of man than is afforded by watching him at his meat.
To a certain extent Wynne took a pride in his waiting, and made an especial study of the craft. It amused him to “bank” his corners perilously with a pile of plates on his hand; it amused him to whip off the cover of an omelette and introduce it most exquisitely to its future consumer; it amused him to theorise on a customer’s likely choice of wine, and to suggest the vintage as he handed the card. But most of all it amused him to reflect that he, Wynne Rendall, was a waiter. Not for an instant did it occur to him that, up to this point, his achievements had not merited his occupation of a more illustrious position. In the back of his head was a comfortable assurance that he was a very important and valuable person, and this being so, that it was exceedingly droll for him to minister to the wants of the vulgar-minded.
He acquired the habit of jotting down his daily thoughts on odd scraps of paper as he lay in bed at night, and some of these would have made good reading had they been preserved. Also they would have served to show very clearly the streak of egoism which outcropped his entire personality. Occasionally he flew to verse of a style and metre very much his own.
Here is an example:
“Garçon!”
In black and white I serve their bellies’ need,
Paid with a frown, a curse, a penny in the franc.
Will they thank
Me with a smile, when, playing on my reed,
I bid them hear, and from my cathedra
Their silly loves and lusts, dull thoughts and empty creed,
In black and white I show them as they are?
The verse in itself has few merits, but it afforded him a sense of luxury to produce such lines. He felt as a king might feel who lay hidden in a hovel, conscious of greatness in little places.
To his brother waiters Wynne was ever remote and a shade cynical. He laughed at, but never with them, and affected a tolerant attitude which they found far from endearing. Occasionally one of the sturdier would attempt to bully him, but in this would seldom prosper. A Frenchman, as a rule, bullies with his tongue rather than his hands, and Wynne’s tongue was ever ready with a lightning counterstroke. These passages were in some respects a repetition of the old schoolday affairs, and since he never forgot a lesson he was well armed to defend himself.
And so the weeks dragged into months and the debt gradually diminished.