Esther Waters Part 44

"Yes, dear, you may."

"And may I go downstairs and help Jane to make it?"

"Yes, you can do that too; it will save her the trouble of coming up. Let me take off your coat--give me your hat; now run along, and help Jane to make the toast."

Esther opened a gla.s.s door, curtained with red silk; it led from the bar to the parlour, a tiny room, hardly larger than the private bar, holding with difficulty a small round table, three chairs, an arm-chair, a cupboard. In the morning a dusty window let in a melancholy twilight, but early in the afternoon it became necessary to light the gas. Esther took a cloth from the cupboard, and laid the table for Jackie's tea. He came up the kitchen stairs telling Jane how many marbles he had won, and at that moment voices were heard in the bar.

It was William, tall and gaunt, b.u.t.toned up in a grey frock-coat, a pair of field gla.s.ses slung over his shoulders. He was with his clerk, Ted Blamy, a feeble, wizen little man, dressed in a shabby tweed suit, covered with white dust.

"Put that bag down, Teddy, and come and have a drink."

Esther saw at once that things had not gone well with him.

"Have the favourites been winning?"

"Yes, every b.l.o.o.d.y one. Five first favourites straight off the reel, three yesterday, and two second favourites the day before. By G.o.d, no man can stand up against it. Come, what'll you have to drink, Teddy?"

"A little whisky, please, guv'nor."

The men had their drink. Then William told Teddy to take his bag upstairs, and he followed Esther into the parlour. She could see that he had been losing heavily, but she refrained from asking questions.

"Now, Jackie, you keep your father company; tell him how you got on at school. I'm going downstairs to look after his dinner."

"Don't you mind about my dinner, Esther, don't you trouble; I was thinking of dining at a restaurant. I'll be back at nine."

"Then I'll see nothing of you. We've hardly spoken to one another this week; all the day you're away racing, and in the evening you're talking to your friends over the bar. We never have a moment alone."

"Yes, Esther, I know; but the truth is, I'm a bit down in the mouth. I've had a very bad week. The favourites has been winning, and I overlaid my book against Wheatear; I'd heard that she was as safe as 'ouses. I'll meet some pals down at the 'Cri'; it will cheer me up."

Seeing how disappointed she was, he hesitated, and asked what there was for dinner. "A sole and a nice piece of steak; I'm sure you'll like it.

I've a lot to talk to you about. Do stop, Bill, to please me." She was very winning in her quiet, grave way, so he took her in his arms, kissed her, and said he would stop, that no one could cook a sole as she could, that it gave him an appet.i.te to think of it.

"And may I stop with father while you are cooking his dinner?" said Jackie.

"Yes, you can do that; but you must go to bed when I bring it upstairs. I want to talk with father then."

Jackie seemed quite satisfied with this arrangement, but when Esther came upstairs with the sole, and was about to hand him over to Jane, he begged l.u.s.tily to be allowed to remain until father had finished his fish. "It won't matter to you," he said; "you've to go downstairs to fry the steak."

But when she came up with the steak he was unwilling as ever to leave. She said he must go to bed, and he knew from her tone that argument was useless. As a last consolation, she promised him that she would come upstairs and kiss him before he went to sleep.

"You will come, won't you, mummie? I shan't go to sleep till you do."

Esther and William both laughed, and Esther was pleased, for she was still a little jealous of his love for his father.

"Come along," Jackie cried to Jane, and he ran upstairs, chattering to her about the toys he had seen in Oxford Street. Charles was lighting the gas, and Esther had to go into the bar to serve some customers. When she returned, William was smoking his pipe. Her dinner had had its effect, he had forgotten his losses, and was willing to tell her the news. He had a bit of news for her. He had seen Ginger; Ginger had come up as cordial as you like, and had asked him what price he was laying.

"Did he bet with you?"

"Yes, I laid him ten pounds to five."

Once more William began to lament his luck. "You'll have better luck to-morrow," she said. "The favourites can't go on winning. Tell me about Ginger."

"There isn't much to tell. We'd a little chat. He knew all about the little arrangement, the five hundred, you know, and laughed heartily.

Peggy's married. I've forgotten the chap's name."

"The one that you kicked downstairs?"

"No, not him; I can't think of it. No matter, Ginger remembered you; he wished us luck, took the address, and said he'd come in to-night to see you if he possibly could. I don't think he's been doing too well lately, if he had he'd been more stand-offish. I saw Jimmy White--you remember Jim, the little fellow we used to call the Demon, 'e that won the Stewards' Cup on Silver Braid?... Didn't you and 'e 'ave a tussle together at the end of dinner--the first day you come down from town?"

"The second day it was."

"You're right, it was the second day. The first day I met you in the avenue I was leaning over the railings having a smoke, and you come along with a heavy bundle and asked me the way. I wasn't in service at that time. Good Lord, how time does slip by! It seems like yesterday.... And after all those years to meet you as you was going to the public for a jug of beer, and 'ere we are man and wife sitting side by side in our own 'ouse."

Esther had been in the "King's Head" now nearly a year. The first Mrs.

Latch had got her divorce without much difficulty; and Esther had begun to realise that she had got a good husband long before they slipped round to the nearest registry office and came back man and wife.

Charles opened the door. "Mr. Randal is in the bar, sir, and would like to have a word with you."

"All right," said William. "Tell him I'm coming into the bar presently."

Charles withdrew. "I'm afraid," said William, lowering his voice, "that the old chap is in a bad way. He's been out of a place a long while, and will find it 'ard to get back again. Once yer begin to age a bit, they won't look at you. We're both well out of business."

Mr. Randal sat in his favourite corner by the wall, smoking his clay. He wore a large frock-coat, vague in shape, pathetically respectable. The round hat was greasy round the edges, brown and dusty on top. The shirt was clean but unstarched, and the thin throat was tied with an old black silk cravat. He looked himself, the old servant out of situation--the old servant who would never be in situation again.

"Been 'aving an 'ell of a time at Newmarket," said William; "favourites romping in one after the other."

"I saw that the favourites had been winning. But I know of something, a rank outsider, for the Leger. I got the letter this morning. I thought I'd come round and tell yer."

"Much obliged, old mate, but it don't do for me to listen to such tales; we bookmakers must pay no attention to information, no matter how correct it may be.... Much obliged all the same. What are you drinking?"

"I've not finished my gla.s.s yet." He tossed off the last mouthful.

"The same?" said William.

"Yes, thank you."

William drew two gla.s.ses of porter. "Here's luck." The men nodded, drank, and then William turned to speak to a group at the other end of the bar.

"One moment," John said, touching William on the shoulder. "It is the best tip I ever had in my life. I 'aven't forgotten what I owe you, and if this comes off I'll be able to pay you all back. Lay the odds, twenty sovereigns to one against--" Old John looked round to see that no one was within ear-shot, then he leant forward and whispered the horse's name in William's ear. William laughed. "If you're so sure about it as all that,"

he said, "I'd sooner lend you the quid to back the horse elsewhere."

"Will you lend me a quid?"

"Lend you a quid and five first favourites romping in one after another!--you must take me for Baron Rothschild. You think because I've a public-house I'm coining money; well, I ain't. It's cruel the business we do here. You wouldn't believe it, and you know that better liquor can't be got in the neighbourhood." Old John listened with the indifference of a man whose life is absorbed in one pa.s.sion and who can interest himself with nothing else. Esther asked him after Mrs. Randal and his children, but conversation on the subject was always disagreeable to him, and he pa.s.sed it over with few words. As soon as Esther moved away he leant forward and whispered, "Lay me twelve pounds to ten shillings. I'll be sure to pay you; there's a new restaurant going to open in Oxford Street and I'm going to apply for the place of headwaiter."

"Yes, but will you get it?" William answered brutally. He did not mean to be unkind, but his nature was as hard and as plain as a kitchen-table. The chin dropped into the unstarched collar and the old-fashioned necktie, and old John continued smoking unnoticed by any one. Esther looked at him. She saw he was down on his luck, and she remembered the tall, melancholy, pale-faced woman whom she had met weeping by the sea-sh.o.r.e the day that Silver Braid had won the cup. She wondered what had happened to her, in what corner did she live, and where was the son that John Randal had not allowed to enter the Barfield establishment as page-boy, thinking he would be able to make something better of him than a servant.

The regular customers had begun to come in. Esther greeted them with nods and smiles of recognition. She drew the beer two gla.s.ses at once in her hand, and picked up little zinc measures, two and four of whisky, and filled them from a small tap. She usually knew the taste of her customers.

When she made a mistake she muttered "stupid," and Mr. Ketley was much amused at her forgetting that he always drank out of the bottle; he was one of the few who came to the "King's Head" who could afford sixpenny whisky. "I ought to have known by this time," she said. "Well, mistakes will occur in the best regulated families," the little b.u.t.terman replied.

He was meagre and meek, with a sallow complexion and blond beard. His pale eyes were anxious, and his thin, bony hands restless. His general manner was oppressed, and he frequently raised his hat to wipe his forehead, which was high and bald. At his elbow stood Journeyman, Ketley's very opposite. A tall, harsh, angular man, long features, a dingy complexion, and the air of a dismissed soldier. He held a gla.s.s of whisky-and-water in a hairy hand, and bit at the corner of a brown moustache. He wore a threadbare black frock-coat, and carried a newspaper under his arm. Ketley and Journeyman held widely different views regarding the best means of backing horses. Ketley was preoccupied with dreams and omens; Journeyman, a clerk in the parish registry office, studied public form; he was guided by it in all his speculations, and paid little heed to the various rumours always afloat regarding private trials. Public form he admitted did not always come out right, but if a man had a headpiece and could remember all the running, public form was good enough to follow. Racing with Journeyman was a question of calculation, and great therefore was his contempt for the weak and smiling Ketley, whom he went for on all occasions. But Ketley was pluckier than his appearance indicated, and the duels between the two were a constant source of amus.e.m.e.nt in the bar of the "King's Head."