The Man With Two Left Feet

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'Not so much of it,' I says. 'Not so much of it. I'm glad to see you,
Katie.'

'Three cheers! Jimmy, I want to introduce you to my friend, Uncle Bill.
Ted, this is Uncle Bill. Violet, this is Uncle Bill.'

It wasn't my place to fetch her one on the side of the head, but I'd of
liked to have; for she was acting like she'd never used to act when I
knew her--all tough and bold. Then it come to me that she was nervous.
And natural, too, seeing young Andy might pop out any moment.

And sure enough out he popped from the back room at that very instant.
Katie looked at him, and he looked at Katie, and I seen his face get
kind of hard; but he didn't say a word. And presently he went out
again.

I heard Katie breathe sort of deep.

'He's looking well, Uncle Bill, ain't he?' she says to me, very soft.

'Pretty fair,' I says. 'Well, kid, I been reading the pieces in the
papers. You've knocked 'em.'

'Ah, don't Bill,' she says, as if I'd hurt her. And me meaning only to
say the civil thing. Girls are rum.

When the party had paid their bill and give me a tip which made me
think I was back at the Guelph again--only there weren't any Dick
Turpin of a head waiter standing by for his share--they hopped it. But
Katie hung back and had a word with me.

'He _was_ looking well, wasn't he, Uncle Bill?'

'Rather!'

'Does--does he ever speak of me?'

'I ain't heard him.'

'I suppose he's still pretty angry with me, isn't he, Uncle Bill?
You're sure you've never heard him speak of me?'

So, to cheer her up, I tells her about the piece in the paper I showed
him; but it didn't seem to cheer her up any. And she goes out.

The very next night in she come again for supper, but with different
nuts and different girls. There was six of them this time, counting
her. And they'd hardly sat down at their table, when in come the
fellers she had called Jimmy and Ted with two girls. And they sat
eating of their suppers and chaffing one another across the floor, all
as pleasant and sociable as you please.

'I say, Katie,' I heard one of the nuts say, 'you were right. He's
worth the price of admission.'

I don't know who they meant, but they all laughed. And every now and
again I'd hear them praising the food, which I don't wonder at, for
Jules had certainly done himself proud. All artistic temperament, these
Frenchmen are. The moment I told him we had company, so to speak, he
blossomed like a flower does when you put it in water.

'Ah, see, at last!' he says, trying to grab me and kiss me. 'Our fame
has gone abroad in the world which amuses himself, ain't it? For a good
supper connexion I have always prayed, and he has arrived.'

Well, it did begin to look as if he was right. Ten high-class
supper-folk in an evening was pretty hot stuff for MacFarland's. I'm
bound to say I got excited myself. I can't deny that I missed the
Guelph at times.

On the fifth night, when the place was fairly packed and looked for all
the world like Oddy's or Romano's, and me and the two young fellers
helping me was working double tides, I suddenly understood, and I went
up to Katie and, bending over her very respectful with a bottle, I
whispers, 'Hot stuff, kid. This is a jolly fine boom you're working for
the old place.' And by the way she smiled back at me, I seen I had
guessed right.

Andy was hanging round, keeping an eye on things, as he always done,
and I says to him, when I was passing, 'She's doing us proud, bucking
up the old place, ain't she?' And he says, 'Get on with your work.' And
I got on.

Katie hung back at the door, when she was on her way out, and had a
word with me.

'Has he said anything about me, Uncle Bill?'

'Not a word,' I says.

And she goes out.

You've probably noticed about London, mister, that a flock of sheep
isn't in it with the nuts, the way they all troop on each other's heels
to supper-places. One month they're all going to one place, next month
to another. Someone in the push starts the cry that he's found a new
place, and off they all go to try it. The trouble with most of the
places is that once they've got the custom they think it's going to
keep on coming and all they've got to do is to lean back and watch it
come. Popularity comes in at the door, and good food and good service
flies out at the window. We wasn't going to have any of that at
MacFarland's. Even if it hadn't been that Andy would have come down
like half a ton of bricks on the first sign of slackness, Jules and me
both of us had our professional reputations to keep up. I didn't give
myself no airs when I seen things coming our way. I worked all the
harder, and I seen to it that the four young fellers under me--there
was four now--didn't lose no time fetching of the orders.

The consequence was that the difference between us and most popular
restaurants was that we kept our popularity. We fed them well, and we
served them well; and once the thing had started rolling it didn't
stop. Soho isn't so very far away from the centre of things, when you
come to look at it, and they didn't mind the extra step, seeing that
there was something good at the end of it. So we got our popularity,
and we kept our popularity; and we've got it to this day. That's how
MacFarland's came to be what it is, mister.

* * * * *

With the air of one who has told a well-rounded tale, Henry ceased, and
observed that it was wonderful the way Mr Woodward, of Chelsea,
preserved his skill in spite of his advanced years.

I stared at him.

'But, heavens, man!' I cried, 'you surely don't think you've finished?
What about Katie and Andy? What happened to them? Did they ever come
together again?'

'Oh, ah,' said Henry, 'I was forgetting!'

And he resumed.

* * * * *

As time went on, I begin to get pretty fed up with young Andy. He was
making a fortune as fast as any feller could out of the sudden boom in
the supper-custom, and he knowing perfectly well that if it hadn't of
been for Katie there wouldn't of been any supper-custom at all; and
you'd of thought that anyone claiming to be a human being would have
had the gratitood to forgive and forget and go over and say a civil
word to Katie when she come in. But no, he just hung round looking
black at all of them; and one night he goes and fairly does it.

The place was full that night, and Katie was there, and the piano
going, and everybody enjoying themselves, when the young feller at the
piano struck up the tune what Katie danced to in the show. Catchy tune
it was. 'Lum-tum-tum, tiddle-iddle-um.' Something like that it went.
Well, the young feller struck up with it, and everybody begin clapping
and hammering on the tables and hollering to Katie to get up and dance;
which she done, in an open space in the middle, and she hadn't hardly
started when along come young Andy.

He goes up to her, all jaw, and I seen something that wanted dusting on
the table next to 'em, so I went up and began dusting it, so by good
luck I happened to hear the whole thing.

He says to her, very quiet, 'You can't do that here. What do you think
this place is?'

And she says to him, 'Oh, Andy!'

'I'm very much obliged to you,' he says, 'for all the trouble you
seem to be taking, but it isn't necessary. MacFarland's got on very
well before your well-meant efforts to turn it into a bear-garden.'

And him coining the money from the supper-custom! Sometimes I
think gratitood's a thing of the past and this world not fit for
a self-respecting rattlesnake to live in.

'Andy!' she says.

'That's all. We needn't argue about it. If you want to come here and
have supper, I can't stop you. But I'm not going to have the place
turned into a night-club.'

I don't know when I've heard anything like it. If it hadn't of been
that I hadn't of got the nerve, I'd have give him a look.

Katie didn't say another word, but just went back to her table.

But the episode, as they say, wasn't conclooded. As soon as the party
she was with seen that she was through dancing, they begin to kick up a
row; and one young nut with about an inch and a quarter of forehead and
the same amount of chin kicked it up especial.

'No, I say! I say, you know!' he hollered. 'That's too bad, you know.
Encore! Don't stop. Encore!'

Andy goes up to him.

'I must ask you, please, not to make so much noise,' he says, quite
respectful. 'You are disturbing people.'

'Disturbing be damned! Why shouldn't she--'

'One moment. You can make all the noise you please out in the street,
but as long as you stay in here you'll be quiet. Do you understand?'

Up jumps the nut. He'd had quite enough to drink. I know, because I'd
been serving him.

'Who the devil are you?' he says.

'Sit down,' says Andy.

And the young feller took a smack at him. And the next moment Andy had
him by the collar and was chucking him out in a way that would have
done credit to a real professional down Whitechapel way. He dumped him
on the pavement as neat as you please.

That broke up the party.

You can never tell with restaurants. What kills one makes another. I've
no doubt that if we had chucked out a good customer from the Guelph
that would have been the end of the place. But it only seemed to do
MacFarland's good. I guess it gave just that touch to the place which
made the nuts think that this was real Bohemia. Come to think of it, it
does give a kind of charm to a place, if you feel that at any moment
the feller at the next table to you may be gathered up by the slack of
his trousers and slung into the street.

Anyhow, that's the way our supper-custom seemed to look at it; and
after that you had to book a table in advance if you wanted to eat with
us. They fairly flocked to the place.

But Katie didn't. She didn't flock. She stayed away. And no wonder,
after Andy behaving so bad. I'd of spoke to him about it, only he
wasn't the kind of feller you do speak to about things.

One day I says to him to cheer him up, 'What price this restaurant now,
Mr Andy?'

'Curse the restaurant,' he says.

And him with all that supper-custom! It's a rum world!

Mister, have you ever had a real shock--something that came out of
nowhere and just knocked you flat? I have, and I'm going to tell you
about it.

When a man gets to be my age, and has a job of work which keeps him
busy till it's time for him to go to bed, he gets into the habit of not
doing much worrying about anything that ain't shoved right under his
nose. That's why, about now, Katie had kind of slipped my mind. It
wasn't that I wasn't fond of the kid, but I'd got so much to think
about, what with having four young fellers under me and things being in
such a rush at the restaurant that, if I thought of her at all, I just
took it for granted that she was getting along all right, and didn't
bother. To be sure we hadn't seen nothing of her at MacFarland's since
the night when Andy bounced her pal with the small size in foreheads,
but that didn't worry me. If I'd been her, I'd have stopped away the
same as she done, seeing that young Andy still had his hump. I took it
for granted, as I'm telling you, that she was all right, and that the
reason we didn't see nothing of her was that she was taking her
patronage elsewhere.

And then, one evening, which happened to be my evening off, I got a
letter, and for ten minutes after I read it I was knocked flat.

You get to believe in fate when you get to be my age, and fate certainly
had taken a hand in this game. If it hadn't of been my evening off,
don't you see, I wouldn't have got home till one o'clock or past that
in the morning, being on duty. Whereas, seeing it was my evening off,
I was back at half past eight.

I was living at the same boarding-house in Bloomsbury what I'd lived at
for the past ten years, and when I got there I find her letter shoved
half under my door.

I can tell you every word of it. This is how it went:

_Darling Uncle Bill,_

_Don't be too sorry when you read this. It is nobody's fault,
but I am just tired of everything, and I want to end it all. You
have been such a dear to me always that I want you to be good to
me now. I should not like Andy to know the truth, so I want you
to make it seem as if it had happened naturally. You will do this
for me, won't you? It will be quite easy. By the time you get this,
it will be one, and it will all be over, and you can just come up
and open the window and let the gas out and then everyone will
think I just died naturally. It will be quite easy. I am leaving
the door unlocked so that you can get in. I am in the room just
above yours. I took it yesterday, so as to be near you. Good-bye,
Uncle Bill. You will do it for me, won't you? I don't want Andy to
know what it really was._

KATIE

That was it, mister, and I tell you it floored me. And then it come to
me, kind of as a new idea, that I'd best do something pretty soon, and
up the stairs I went quick.

There she was, on the bed, with her eyes closed, and the gas just
beginning to get bad.

As I come in, she jumped up, and stood staring at me. I went to the
tap, and turned the flow off, and then I gives her a look.

'Now then,' I says.

'How did you get here?'

'Never mind how I got here. What have you got to say for yourself?'

She just began to cry, same as she used to when she was a kid and
someone had hurt her.

'Here,' I says, 'let's get along out of here, and go where there's some
air to breathe. Don't you take on so. You come along out and tell me
all about it.'

She started to walk to where I was, and suddenly I seen she was
limping. So I gave her a hand down to my room, and set her on a chair.

'Now then,' I says again.

'Don't be angry with me, Uncle Bill,' she says.

And she looks at me so pitiful that I goes up to her and puts my arm
round her and pats her on the back.

'Don't you worry, dearie,' I says, 'nobody ain't going to be angry with
you. But, for goodness' sake,' I says, 'tell a man why in the name of
goodness you ever took and acted so foolish.'

'I wanted to end it all.'

'But why?'

She burst out a-crying again, like a kid.

'Didn't you read about it in the paper, Uncle Bill?'

'Read about what in the paper?'

'My accident. I broke my ankle at rehearsal ever so long ago, practising
my new dance. The doctors say it will never be right again. I shall
never be able to dance any more. I shall always limp. I shan't even be
able to walk properly. And when I thought of that ... and Andy ... and
everything ... I....'

I got on to my feet.

'Well, well, well,' I says. 'Well, well, well! I don't know as I blame
you. But don't you do it. It's a mug's game. Look here, if I leave you
alone for half an hour, you won't go trying it on again? Promise.'

'Very well, Uncle Bill. Where are you going?'

'Oh, just out. I'll be back soon. You sit there and rest yourself.'

It didn't take me ten minutes to get to the restaurant in a cab. I
found Andy in the back room.

'What's the matter, Henry?' he says.

'Take a look at this,' I says.

There's always this risk, mister, in being the Andy type of feller what
must have his own way and goes straight ahead and has it; and that is
that when trouble does come to him, it comes with a rush. It sometimes
seems to me that in this life we've all got to have trouble sooner or
later, and some of us gets it bit by bit, spread out thin, so to speak,
and a few of us gets it in a lump--_biff_! And that was what
happened to Andy, and what I knew was going to happen when I showed him
that letter. I nearly says to him, 'Brace up, young feller, because
this is where you get it.'

I don't often go to the theatre, but when I do I like one of those
plays with some ginger in them which the papers generally cuss. The
papers say that real human beings don't carry on in that way. Take it
from me, mister, they do. I seen a feller on the stage read a letter
once which didn't just suit him; and he gasped and rolled his eyes and
tried to say something and couldn't, and had to get a hold on a chair
to keep him from falling. There was a piece in the paper saying that
this was all wrong, and that he wouldn't of done them things in real
life. Believe me, the paper was wrong. There wasn't a thing that feller
did that Andy didn't do when he read that letter.

'God!' he says. 'Is she ... She isn't.... Were you in time?' he says.

And he looks at me, and I seen that he had got it in the neck, right
enough.

'If you mean is she dead,' I says, 'no, she ain't dead.'

'Thank God!'

'Not yet,' I says.

And the next moment we was out of that room and in the cab and moving
quick.

He was never much of a talker, wasn't Andy, and he didn't chat in that
cab. He didn't say a word till we was going up the stairs.

'Where?' he says.

'Here,' I says.

And I opens the door.

Katie was standing looking out of the window. She turned as the door
opened, and then she saw Andy. Her lips parted, as if she was going to
say something, but she didn't say nothing. And Andy, he didn't say
nothing, neither. He just looked, and she just looked.

And then he sort of stumbles across the room, and goes down on his
knees, and gets his arms around her.

'Oh, my kid' he says.

* * * * *

And I seen I wasn't wanted, so I shut the door, and I hopped it. I went
and saw the last half of a music-hall. But, I don't know, it didn't
kind of have no fascination for me. You've got to give your mind to it
to appreciate good music-hall turns.

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

The feelings of Mr J. Wilmot Birdsey, as he stood wedged in the crowd
that moved inch by inch towards the gates of the Chelsea Football
Ground, rather resembled those of a starving man who has just been
given a meal but realizes that he is not likely to get another for many
days. He was full and happy. He bubbled over with the joy of living and
a warm affection for his fellow-man. At the back of his mind there
lurked the black shadow of future privations, but for the moment he did
not allow it to disturb him. On this maddest, merriest day of all the
glad New Year he was content to revel in the present and allow the
future to take care of itself.

Mr Birdsey had been doing something which he had not done since he left
New York five years ago. He had been watching a game of baseball.

New York lost a great baseball fan when Hugo Percy de Wynter
Framlinghame, sixth Earl of Carricksteed, married Mae Elinor, only
daughter of Mr and Mrs J. Wilmot Birdsey of East Seventy-Third Street;
for scarcely had that internationally important event taken place when
Mrs Birdsey, announcing that for the future the home would be in
England as near as possible to dear Mae and dear Hugo, scooped J.
Wilmot out of his comfortable morris chair as if he had been a clam,
corked him up in a swift taxicab, and decanted him into a Deck B
stateroom on the _Olympic_. And there he was, an exile.

Mr Birdsey submitted to the worst bit of kidnapping since the days of
the old press gang with that delightful amiability which made him so
popular among his fellows and such a cypher in his home. At an early
date in his married life his position had been clearly defined beyond
possibility of mistake. It was his business to make money, and, when
called upon, to jump through hoops and sham dead at the bidding of his
wife and daughter Mae. These duties he had been performing
conscientiously for a matter of twenty years.

It was only occasionally that his humble role jarred upon him, for he
loved his wife and idolized his daughter. The international alliance
had been one of these occasions. He had no objection to Hugo Percy,
sixth Earl of Carricksteed. The crushing blow had been the sentence of
exile. He loved baseball with a love passing the love of women, and the
prospect of never seeing a game again in his life appalled him.

And then, one morning, like a voice from another world, had come the
news that the White Sox and the Giants were to give an exhibition in
London at the Chelsea Football Ground. He had counted the days like a
child before Christmas.

There had been obstacles to overcome before he could attend the game,
but he had overcome them, and had been seated in the front row when the
two teams lined up before King George.

And now he was moving slowly from the ground with the rest of the
spectators. Fate had been very good to him. It had given him a great
game, even unto two home-runs. But its crowning benevolence had been to
allot the seats on either side of him to two men of his own mettle, two
god-like beings who knew every move on the board, and howled like
wolves when they did not see eye to eye with the umpire. Long before
the ninth innings he was feeling towards them the affection of a
shipwrecked mariner who meets a couple of boyhood's chums on a desert
island.

As he shouldered his way towards the gate he was aware of these two
men, one on either side of him. He looked at them fondly, trying to
make up his mind which of them he liked best. It was sad to think that
they must soon go out of his life again for ever.

He came to a sudden resolution. He would postpone the parting. He would
ask them to dinner. Over the best that the Savoy Hotel could provide
they would fight the afternoon's battle over again. He did not know who
they were or anything about them, but what did that matter? They were
brother-fans. That was enough for him.

The man on his right was young, clean-shaven, and of a somewhat
vulturine cast of countenance. His face was cold and impassive now,
almost forbiddingly so; but only half an hour before it had been a
battle-field of conflicting emotions, and his hat still showed the dent
where he had banged it against the edge of his seat on the occasion of
Mr Daly's home-run. A worthy guest!

The man on Mr Birdsey's left belonged to another species of fan. Though
there had been times during the game when he had howled, for the most
part he had watched in silence so hungrily tense that a less
experienced observer than Mr Birdsey might have attributed his
immobility to boredom. But one glance at his set jaw and gleaming eyes
told him that here also was a man and a brother.

This man's eyes were still gleaming, and under their curiously deep tan
his bearded cheeks were pale. He was staring straight in front of him
with an unseeing gaze.

Mr Birdsey tapped the young man on the shoulder.

'Some game!' he said.

The young man looked at him and smiled.

'You bet,' he said.

'I haven't seen a ball-game in five years.'

'The last one I saw was two years ago next June.'

'Come and have some dinner at my hotel and talk it over,' said Mr
Birdsey impulsively.

'Sure!' said the young man.

Mr Birdsey turned and tapped the shoulder of the man on his left.

The result was a little unexpected. The man gave a start that was
almost a leap, and the pallor of his face became a sickly white. His
eyes, as he swung round, met Mr Birdsey's for an instant before they
dropped, and there was panic fear in them. His breath whistled softly
through clenched teeth.

Mr Birdsey was taken aback. The cordiality of the clean-shaven young
man had not prepared him for the possibility of such a reception. He
felt chilled. He was on the point of apologizing with some murmur about
a mistake, when the man reassured him by smiling. It was rather a
painful smile, but it was enough for Mr Birdsey. This man might be of a
nervous temperament, but his heart was in the right place.

He, too, smiled. He was a small, stout, red-faced little man, and he
possessed a smile that rarely failed to set strangers at their ease.
Many strenuous years on the New York Stock Exchange had not destroyed a
certain childlike amiability in Mr Birdsey, and it shone out when he
smiled at you.

'I'm afraid I startled you,' he said soothingly. 'I wanted to ask you
if you would let a perfect stranger, who also happens to be an exile,
offer you dinner tonight.'

The man winced. 'Exile?'

'An exiled fan. Don't you feel that the Polo Grounds are a good long
way away? This gentleman is joining me. I have a suite at the Savoy
Hotel, and I thought we might all have a quiet little dinner there and
talk about the game. I haven't seen a ball-game in five years.'

'Nor have I.'

'Then you must come. You really must. We fans ought to stick to one
another in a strange land. Do come.'

'Thank you,' said the bearded man; 'I will.'

When three men, all strangers, sit down to dinner together,
conversation, even if they happen to have a mutual passion for
baseball, is apt to be for a while a little difficult. The first fine
frenzy in which Mr Birdsey had issued his invitations had begun to ebb
by the time the soup was served, and he was conscious of a feeling of
embarrassment.

There was some subtle hitch in the orderly progress of affairs. He
sensed it in the air. Both of his guests were disposed to silence, and
the clean-shaven young man had developed a trick of staring at the man
with the beard, which was obviously distressing that sensitive person.

'Wine,' murmured Mr Birdsey to the waiter. 'Wine, wine!'

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