[CHAPTER XXXII]
SCOTT'S (PICCADILLY CIRCUS)
He was the junior subaltern when I commanded H company in the old regiment, and a very good subaltern he was. It was only the other day that I read how in one of the first skirmishes in an Indian trouble he had distinguished himself by standing over a wounded man and keeping off the hillmen till assistance came; and it seemed strange to meet him now in crumpled, sun-scorched clothes, with a soft handkerchief round his neck, and with a very thin white face, walking up the Haymarket.
"They hit me, you know," he said, in answer to a question. "The wound in my shoulder healed directly, but the wound in the neck gave a lot of trouble, and the doctors packed me home as soon as they could."
I particularly wanted to hear of the deed that the boy had done, and asked him to come and dine at a club; but his dress clothes were stored away somewhere in the Punjab—where, he did not know—with the heavy baggage of the regiment, and his London tailor had not made him new ones yet. Besides, he would not be able to put on a collar for weeks, perhaps months, and though he would be glad to dine quietly with me, he asked that it might be somewhere where he would not feel uncomfortable at not being in dress clothes. We were standing at the top of the Haymarket, my eye caught the two great smoked salmon hung up in Scott's window, and I asked the junior subaltern if oysters and a lobster à l'Américaine were to his taste.
He had not eaten any oysters, except the Karachi ones, which are brought in ice to the towns of the Punjab, since he left England six years ago; and though he did not know what his surgeon and doctor would say to his eating lobster, he was prepared to risk their wrath. Half-past seven was the hour I appointed to meet him, and then I went into Scott's to secure a table and to order dinner.
Scott's, springing from its ashes, has become a gorgeous place, with pillars of some material which looks like black marble inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with stained glass and much ornamentation in worked brass, and with a great plate-glass window which displays a show of ice and fish and lobsters and crabs and salad-stuff that looks most appetising.
Inside, it may be said to be divided into four parts. There is the wide entrance hall, at either side of which are marble counters with many plates and little bottles upon them, and piles of sandwiches made with fish delicacies, and piles of slices of brown bread and butter. Behind the counters stand men in white samite, who are constantly opening oysters, and behind them are mirrors with, on shelves above the glass, piles of little kegs which suggest how suitable a small barrel of oysters is as a Christmas present. In the midst of this entrance hall sacred to the oysters a staircase leads down to the lower regions, "The Dive," as it is labelled, where there are comfortable curved divans with a little table as the pearl in the midst of these brown leather shells, and on the walls a Japanese fantasy in tiles where strange fish swim in and out of weeds. Upstairs on the first floor are the regular dining-rooms with red blinds, red shades to the electric lamps, and a warm red paper; and behind the hall, with its oyster bars, is the grill-room, shut off from draughts by a great screen of glass and brown wood which reaches from floor to ceiling.
I ordered our dinner in the grill-room. A dozen of oysters, some mock-turtle soup, homard à l'Américaine, and a steak.