The dramatic moment of the evening came when Juliette, the new French maid, with despair painted on her face, out of breath, and with her bonnet on one side of her head, came running into the dining-room at the Midland Hotel, and told Miss Dainty that the dog had escaped. Miss Dainty for one moment was overwhelmed, for she pictured Jack in fierce combat with every big dog in London; but, recovering herself, said that she wanted boy messengers. The wild duck was getting cold, the manager was beginning to look unhappy, the waiter was sympathetic but helpless, the French maid was weeping. If messenger boys could straighten out the difficulties Miss Dainty should have had a dozen; but she said that she only wanted three. So three little boys stood in a row and received their instructions. One was to go, in a cab, to Miss Dainty's flat to see whether Jack had returned there; another, in a cab, was to go round to all the places that Jack had been taken to during the day, chiefly milliners' and dress-makers' and bonnet-makers' shops, to see whether he had wandered away to any of those localities; the third was, in a cab, to go to all the places where Jack had special canine enemies to see whether he had gone to fight a parting fight with any of them. The three small boys were sent on their way, the weeping maid dismissed to mount guard over the pile of baggage, and then I told the manager to serve us our duck and he smiled again, while the waiter allowed the look of sympathy to die out in his face and woke to sudden activity.
Miss Dainty was going out to America to play what she called "a thinking part," with an English company on tour there. She was to have gone to Liverpool by a morning train, and a little crowd, male and female, assembled to see her off, to give her the customary bouquets, and to wish her the customary good voyage. But no Miss Dainty arrived. In her place appeared an agitated French maid, who explained that her mistress could not possibly go by this train, because one of her new hats had not been sent home. The lady section of the crowd was sympathetic, the male section gave their bouquets to the maid to take back to Miss Dainty, and we all went our separate ways.
In the afternoon I got this telegram: "Alone in London and starving. Going night train. Will you give me dinner?—Dainty." I was of course delighted to give the little lady dinner; telegraphed to her that I would meet her at the station and give her dinner at the Midland Grand Hotel, and sent a note to the manager of the French restaurant at the hotel asking him to keep a table for me, and to order a small dinner for two.
A cab with a pile of boxes on the top brought Miss Dainty with her bouquets, and her maid, and Jack, the fighting dog, to the station.
"Are you going to take the dog?" I asked; and Miss Dainty said, "Certainly. I am going to take him to bite the Custom-house officers if they interfere with my sealskin cloak." Of course, such a reason as this was unanswerable.
The maid and the baggage and the dog were left on the platform, the former being given strict injunctions to keep a watchful eye on the two latter, and I took Miss Dainty off to the hotel.
Through the long curving corridor, with its brightly-painted walls and blaze of electric light, we went to the lift, and were quickly deposited on the first floor, where the restaurant is.
As a rule one does not expect to get a good dinner at a railway hotel; but I knew that the Midland was one of the exceptions which prove the rule, and that I had not done wrong in asking Miss Dainty to dine with me there. The room, a fine large saloon, has a comfortable red paper with handsomely framed mirrors to break the monotony of its surface, and what painting there is on pillars and cornice has something of an Egyptian brilliancy of colour. At one end a semicircular screen of curtains shuts off the serving-room. At the other end great doors lead into a drawing-room. The chairs, of red velvet, have a comfortable look. The lights on the tables are electric globes with yellow shades.
This was the dinner that the manager had ordered for us. When I saw petite marmite on the menu I groaned. I am beginning to believe that it is a sort of fetish that restaurant managers worship:—