Rough-Hew Them How We Will
Paul Boielle was a waiter. The word 'waiter' suggests a soft-voiced,
deft-handed being, moving swiftly and without noise in an atmosphere of
luxury and shaded lamps. At Bredin's Parisian Cafe and Restaurant in
Soho, where Paul worked, there were none of these things; and Paul
himself, though he certainly moved swiftly, was by no means noiseless.
His progress through the room resembled in almost equal proportions the
finish of a Marathon race, the star-act of a professional juggler, and
a monologue by an Earl's Court side-showman. Constant acquaintance
rendered regular habitues callous to the wonder, but to a stranger the
sight of Paul tearing over the difficult between-tables course, his
hands loaded with two vast pyramids of dishes, shouting as he went the
mystic word, 'Comingsarecominginamomentsaresteaksareyessarecomingsare!'
was impressive to a degree. For doing far less exacting feats on the
stage music-hall performers were being paid fifty pounds a week. Paul
got eighteen shillings.
What a blessing is poverty, properly considered. If Paul had received
more than eighteen shillings a week he would not have lived in an
attic. He would have luxuriated in a bed-sitting-room on the second
floor; and would consequently have missed what was practically a
genuine north light. The skylight which went with the attic was so
arranged that the room was a studio in miniature, and, as Paul was
engaged in his spare moments in painting a great picture, nothing could
have been more fortunate; for Paul, like so many of our public men,
lived two lives. Off duty, the sprinting, barking juggler of Bredin's
Parisian Cafe became the quiet follower of Art. Ever since his
childhood he had had a passion for drawing and painting. He regretted
that Fate had allowed him so little time for such work; but after all,
he reflected, all great artists had had their struggles--so why not
he? Moreover, they were now nearly at an end. An hour here, an hour
there, and every Thursday a whole afternoon, and the great picture was
within measurable distance of completion. He had won through. Without
models, without leisure, hungry, tired, he had nevertheless triumphed.
A few more touches, and the masterpiece would be ready for purchase. And
after that all would be plain sailing. Paul could forecast the scene so
exactly. The picture would be at the dealer's, possibly--one must not
be too sanguine--thrust away in some odd corner. The wealthy
connoisseur would come in. At first he would not see the masterpiece;
other more prominently displayed works would catch his eye. He would
turn from them in weary scorn, and then!... Paul wondered how big the
cheque would be.
There were reasons why he wanted the money. Looking at him as he
cantered over the linoleum at Bredin's, you would have said that his
mind was on his work. But it was not so. He took and executed orders as
automatically as the penny-in-the-slot musical-box in the corner took
pennies and produced tunes. His thoughts were of Jeanne Le Brocq, his
co-worker at Bredin's, and a little cigar shop down Brixton way which
he knew was in the market at a reasonable rate. To marry the former and
own the latter was Paul's idea of the earthly paradise, and it was the
wealthy connoisseur, and he alone, who could open the gates.
Jeanne was a large, slow-moving Norman girl, stolidly handsome. One
could picture her in a de Maupassant farmyard. In the clatter and
bustle of Bredin's Parisian Cafe she appeared out of place, like a cow
in a boiler-factory. To Paul, who worshipped her with all the fervour
of a little man for a large woman, her deliberate methods seemed all
that was beautiful and dignified. To his mind she lent a tone to the
vulgar whirlpool of gorging humanity, as if she had been some goddess
mixing in a Homeric battle. The whirlpool had other views--and
expressed them. One coarse-fibred brute, indeed, once went so far as to
address to her the frightful words, ''Urry up, there, Tottie! Look
slippy.' It was wrong, of course, for Paul to slip and spill an order
of scrambled eggs down the brute's coatsleeve, but who can blame him?
Among those who did not see eye to eye with Paul in his views on
deportment in waitresses was M. Bredin himself, the owner of the
Parisian Cafe; and it was this circumstance which first gave Paul the
opportunity of declaring the passion which was gnawing him with the
fierce fury of a Bredin customer gnawing a tough steak against time
during the rush hour. He had long worshipped her from afar, but nothing
more intimate than a 'Good morning, Miss Jeanne', had escaped him,
till one day during a slack spell he came upon her in the little
passage leading to the kitchen, her face hidden in her apron, her back
jerking with sobs.
Business is business. Paul had a message to deliver to the cook
respecting 'two fried, coffee, and one stale'. He delivered it and
returned. Jeanne was still sobbing.
'Ah, Miss Jeanne,' cried Paul, stricken, 'what is the matter? What is
it? Why do you weep?'
'The _patron_,' sobbed Jeanne. 'He--'
'My angel,' said Paul, 'he is a pig.'
This was perfectly true. No conscientious judge of character could have
denied that Paul had hit the bull's eye. Bredin was a pig. He looked
like a pig; he ate like a pig; he grunted like a pig. He had the lavish
embonpoint of a pig. Also a porcine soul. If you had tied a bit of blue
ribbon round his neck you could have won prizes with him at a show.
Paul's eyes flashed with fury. 'I will slap him in the eye,' he roared.
'He called me a tortoise.'
'And kick him in the stomach,' added Paul.
Jeanne's sobs were running on second speed now. The anguish was
diminishing. Paul took advantage of the improved conditions to slide an
arm part of the way round her waist. In two minutes he had said as much
as the ordinary man could have worked off in ten. All good stuff, too.
No padding.
Jeanne's face rose from her apron like a full moon. She was too
astounded to be angry.
Paul continued to babble. Jeanne looked at him with growing wrath. That
she, who received daily the affectionate badinage of gentlemen in
bowler hats and check suits, who had once been invited to the White
City by a solicitor's clerk, should be addressed in this way by a
waiter! It was too much. She threw off his hand.
'Wretched little man!' she cried, stamping angrily.
'My angel!' protested Paul.
Jeanne uttered a scornful laugh.
'You!' she said.
There are few more withering remarks than 'You!' spoken in a certain
way. Jeanne spoke it in just that way.
Paul wilted.
'On eighteen shillings a week,' went on Jeanne, satirically, 'you would
support a wife, yes? Why--'
Paul recovered himself. He had an opening now, and proceeded to use it.
'Listen,' he said. 'At present, yes, it is true, I earn but eighteen
shillings a week, but it will not always be so, no. I am not only a
waiter. I am also an artist. I have painted a great picture. For a
whole year I have worked, and now it is ready. I will sell it, and
then, my angel--?'
Jeanne's face had lost some of its scorn. She was listening with some
respect. 'A picture?' she said, thoughtfully. 'There is money in
pictures.'
For the first time Paul was glad that his arm was no longer round her
waist. To do justice to the great work he needed both hands for
purposes of gesticulation.
'There is money in this picture,' he said. 'Oh, it is beautiful. I call
it "The Awakening". It is a woodland scene. I come back from my work
here, hot and tired, and a mere glance at that wood refreshes me. It is
so cool, so green. The sun filters in golden splashes through the
foliage. On a mossy bank, between two trees, lies a beautiful girl
asleep. Above her, bending fondly over her, just about to kiss that
flower-like face, is a young man in the dress of a shepherd. At the
last moment he has looked over his shoulder to make sure that there is
nobody near to see. He is wearing an expression so happy, so proud,
that one's heart goes out to him.'
'Yes, there might be money in that,' cried Jeanne.
'There is, there is!' cried Paul. 'I shall sell it for many francs to a
wealthy connoisseur. And then, my angel--'
'You are a good little man,' said the angel, patronizingly. 'Perhaps.
We will see.'
Paul caught her hand and kissed it. She smiled indulgently. 'Yes,' she
said. 'There might be money. These English pay much money for pictures.'
* * * * *
It is pretty generally admitted that Geoffrey Chaucer, the eminent poet
of the fourteenth century, though obsessed with an almost Rooseveltian
passion for the new spelling, was there with the goods when it came to
profundity of thought. It was Chaucer who wrote the lines:
The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th' assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering.
Which means, broadly, that it is difficult to paint a picture, but a
great deal more difficult to sell it.
Across the centuries Paul Boielle shook hands with Geoffrey Chaucer.
'So sharpe the conquering' put his case in a nutshell.
The full story of his wanderings with the masterpiece would read like
an Odyssey and be about as long. It shall be condensed.
There was an artist who dined at intervals at Bredin's Parisian Cafe,
and, as the artistic temperament was too impatient to be suited by
Jeanne's leisurely methods, it had fallen to Paul to wait upon him. It
was to this expert that Paul, emboldened by the geniality of the
artist's manner, went for information. How did monsieur sell his
pictures? Monsieur said he didn't, except once in a blue moon. But when
he did? Oh, he took the thing to the dealers. Paul thanked him. A
friend of him, he explained, had painted a picture and wished to sell
it.
'Poor devil!' was the artist's comment.
Next day, it happening to be a Thursday, Paul started on his travels.
He started buoyantly, but by evening he was as a punctured balloon.
Every dealer had the same remark to make--to wit, no room.
'Have you yet sold the picture?' inquired Jeanne, when they met. 'Not
yet,' said Paul. 'But they are delicate matters, these negotiations. I
use finesse. I proceed with caution.'
He approached the artist again.
'With the dealers,' he said, 'my friend has been a little unfortunate.
They say they have no room.'
'_I_ know,' said the artist, nodding.
'Is there, perhaps, another way?'
'What sort of a picture is it?' inquired the artist.
Paul became enthusiastic.
'Ah! monsieur, it is beautiful. It is a woodland scene. A beautiful
girl--'
'Oh! Then he had better try the magazines. They might use it for a
cover.'
Paul thanked him effusively. On the following Thursday he visited
divers art editors. The art editors seemed to be in the same unhappy
condition as the dealers. 'Overstocked!' was their cry.
'The picture?' said Jeanne, on the Friday morning. 'Is it sold?'
'Not yet,' said Paul, 'but--'
'Always but!'
'My angel!'
'Bah!' said Jeanne, with a toss of her large but shapely head.
By the end of the month Paul was fighting in the last ditch, wandering
disconsolately among those who dwell in outer darkness and have grimy
thumbs. Seven of these in all he visited on that black Thursday, and
each of the seven rubbed the surface of the painting with a grimy
thumb, snorted, and dismissed him. Sick and beaten, Paul took the
masterpiece back to his skylight room.
All that night he lay awake, thinking. It was a weary bundle of nerves
that came to the Parisian Cafe next morning. He was late in arriving,
which was good in that it delayed the inevitable question as to the
fate of the picture, but bad in every other respect. M. Bredin,
squatting behind the cash-desk, grunted fiercely at him; and, worse,
Jeanne, who, owing to his absence, had had to be busier than suited her
disposition, was distant and haughty. A murky gloom settled upon Paul.
Now it so happened that M. Bredin, when things went well with him, was
wont to be filled with a ponderous amiability. It was not often that
this took a practical form, though it is on record that in an exuberant
moment he once gave a small boy a halfpenny. More frequently it merely
led him to soften the porcine austerity of his demeanour. Today,
business having been uncommonly good, he felt pleased with the world.
He had left his cash-desk and was assailing a bowl of soup at one of
the side-tables. Except for a belated luncher at the end of the room
the place was empty. It was one of the hours when there was a lull in
the proceedings at the Parisian Cafe. Paul was leaning, wrapped in the
gloom, against the wall. Jeanne was waiting on the proprietor.
M. Bredin finished his meal and rose. He felt content. All was well
with the world. As he lumbered to his desk he passed Jeanne. He
stopped. He wheezed a compliment. Then another. Paul, from his place by
the wall, watched with jealous fury.
M. Bredin chucked Jeanne under the chin.
As he did so, the belated luncher called 'Waiter!' but Paul was
otherwise engaged. His entire nervous system seemed to have been
stirred up with a pole. With a hoarse cry he dashed forward. He would
destroy this pig who chucked his Jeanne under the chin.
The first intimation M. Bredin had of the declaration of war was the
impact of a French roll on his ear. It was one of those nobbly, chunky
rolls with sharp corners, almost as deadly as a piece of shrapnel. M.
Bredin was incapable of jumping, but he uttered a howl and his vast
body quivered like a stricken jelly. A second roll, whizzing by,
slapped against the wall. A moment later a cream-bun burst in sticky
ruin on the proprietor's left eye.
The belated luncher had been anxious to pay his bill and go, but he
came swiftly to the conclusion that this was worth stopping on for. He
leaned back in his chair and watched. M. Bredin had entrenched himself
behind the cash-desk, peering nervously at Paul through the cream, and
Paul, pouring forth abuse in his native tongue, was brandishing a
chocolate eclair. The situation looked good to the spectator.
It was spoiled by Jeanne, who seized Paul by the arm and shook him,
adding her own voice to the babel. It was enough. The eclair fell to
the floor. Paul's voice died away. His face took on again its crushed,
hunted expression. The voice of M. Bredin, freed from competition, rose
shrill and wrathful.
'The marksman is getting sacked,' mused the onlooker, diagnosing the
situation.
He was right. The next moment Paul, limp and depressed, had retired to
the kitchen passage, discharged. It was here, after a few minutes, that
Jeanne found him.
'Fool! Idiot! Imbecile!' said Jeanne.
Paul stared at her without speaking.
'To throw rolls at the _patron_. Imbecile!'
'He--' began Paul.
'Bah! And what if he did? Must you then attack him like a mad dog? What
is it to you?'
Paul was conscious of a dull longing for sympathy, a monstrous sense
of oppression. Everything was going wrong. Surely Jeanne must be
touched by his heroism? But no. She was scolding furiously. Suppose
Andromeda had turned and scolded Perseus after he had slain the
sea-monster! Paul mopped his forehead with his napkin. The bottom had
dropped out of his world.
'Jeanne!'
'Bah! Do not talk to me, idiot of a little man. Almost you lost me my
place also. The _patron_ was in two minds. But I coaxed him. A
fine thing that would have been, to lose my good place through your
foolishness. To throw rolls. My goodness!'
She swept back into the room again, leaving Paul still standing by the
kitchen door. Something seemed to have snapped inside him. How long he
stood there he did not know, but presently from the dining-room came
calls of 'Waiter!' and automatically he fell once more into his work,
as an actor takes up his part. A stranger would have noticed nothing
remarkable in him. He bustled to and fro with undiminished energy.
At the end of the day M. Bredin paid him his eighteen shillings with a
grunt, and Paul walked out of the restaurant a masterless man.
He went to his attic and sat down on the bed. Propped up against the
wall was the picture. He looked at it with unseeing eyes. He stared
dully before him.
Then thoughts came to him with a rush, leaping and dancing in his mind
like imps in Hades. He had a curious sense of detachment. He seemed to
be watching himself from a great distance.
This was the end. The little imps danced and leaped; and then one
separated itself from the crowd, to grow bigger than, the rest, to
pirouette more energetically. He rose. His mind was made up. He would
kill himself.
He went downstairs and out into the street. He thought hard as he
walked. He would kill himself, but how?
His preoccupation was so great that an automobile, rounding a corner,
missed him by inches as he crossed the road. The chauffeur shouted
angrily at him as he leapt back.
Paul shook his fist at the retreating lights.
'Pig!' he shouted. 'Assassin! Scoundrel! Villain! Would you kill me? I
will take your number, rascal. I will inform the police. Villain!'
A policeman had strolled up and was eyeing him curiously. Paul turned
to him, full of his wrongs.
'Officer,' he cried, 'I have a complaint. These pigs of chauffeurs!
They are reckless. They drive so recklessly. Hence the great number of
accidents.'
'Awful!' said the policeman. 'Pass along, sonny.'
Paul walked on, fuming. It was abominable that these chauffeurs--And
then an idea came to him. He had found a way.
* * * * *
It was quiet in the Park. He had chosen the Park because it was dark
and there would be none to see and interfere. He waited long in the
shadow by the roadside. Presently from the darkness there came the
distant drone of powerful engines. Lights appeared, like the blazing
eyes of a dragon swooping down to devour its prey.
He ran out into the road with a shout.
It was an error, that shout. He had intended it for an inarticulate
farewell to his picture, to Jeanne, to life. It was excusable to the
driver of the motor that he misinterpreted it. It seemed to him a cry
of warning. There was a great jarring of brakes, a scuttering of locked
wheels on the dry road, and the car came to a standstill a full yard
from where he stood.
'What the deuce--' said a cool voice from behind the lights.
Paul struck his chest and folded his arms.
'I am here,' he cried. 'Destroy me!'
'Let George do it,' said the voice, in a marked American accent. 'I
never murder on a Friday; it's unlucky. If it's not a rude question,
which asylum are you from? Halloa!'
The exclamation was one of surprise, for Paul's nerves had finally
given way, and he was now in a heap on the road, sobbing.
The man climbed down and came into the light. He was a tall young man
with a pleasant, clean-cut face. He stopped and shook Paul.
'Quit that,' he said. 'Maybe it's not true. And if it is, there's
always hope. Cut it out. What's the matter? All in?'
Paul sat up, gulping convulsively. He was thoroughly unstrung. The
cold, desperate mood had passed. In its place came the old feeling of
desolation. He was a child, aching for sympathy. He wanted to tell his
troubles. Punctuating his narrative with many gestures and an
occasional gulp, he proceeded to do so. The American listened
attentively.
'So you can't sell your picture, and you've lost your job, and your
girl has shaken you?' he said. 'Pretty bad, but still you've no call to
go mingling with automobile wheels. You come along with me to my hotel,
and tomorrow we'll see if we can't fix up something.'
* * * * *
There was breakfast at the hotel next morning, a breakfast to put heart
into a man. During the meal a messenger dispatched in a cab to Paul's
lodgings returned with the canvas. A deferential waiter informed the
American that it had been taken with every possible care to his suite.
'Good,' said the young man. 'If you're through, we'll go and have a
look at it.'
They went upstairs. There was the picture resting against a chair.
'Why, I call that fine,' said the young man. 'It's a cracker jack.'
Paul's heart gave a sudden leap. Could it be that here was the wealthy
connoisseur? He was wealthy, for he drove an automobile and lived in an
expensive hotel. He was a connoisseur, for he had said that the picture
was a crackerjack.
'Monsieur is kind,' murmured Paul.
'It's a bear-cat,' said the young man, admiringly.
'Monsieur is flattering,' said Paul, dimly perceiving a compliment.
'I've been looking for a picture like that,' said the young man, 'for
months.'
Paul's eyes rolled heavenwards.
'If you'll make a few alterations, I'll buy it and ask for more.'
'Alterations, monsieur?'
'One or two small ones.' He pointed to the stooping figure of the
shepherd. 'Now, you see this prominent citizen. What's he doing!'
'He is stooping,' said Paul, fervently, 'to bestow upon his loved one a
kiss. And she, sleeping, all unconscious, dreaming of him--'
'Never mind about her. Fix your mind on him. Willie is the "star" in
this show. You have summed him up accurately. He is stooping. Stooping
good. Now, if that fellow was wearing braces and stooped like that,
you'd say he'd burst those braces, wouldn't you?'
With a somewhat dazed air Paul said that he thought he would. Till now
he had not looked at the figure from just that view-point.
'You'd say he'd bust them?'
'Assuredly, monsieur.'
'No!' said the young man, solemnly, tapping him earnestly on the chest.
'That's where you're wrong. Not if they were Galloway's Tried and
Proven. Galloway's Tried and Proven will stand any old strain you care
to put on them. See small bills. Wear Galloway's Tried and Proven, and
fate cannot touch you. You can take it from me. I'm the company's
general manager.'
'Indeed, monsieur!'
'And I'll make a proposition to you. Cut out that mossy bank, and make
the girl lying in a hammock. Put Willie in shirt-sleeves instead of a
bath-robe, and fix him up with a pair of the Tried and Proven, and I'll
give you three thousand dollars for that picture and a retaining fee of
four thousand a year to work for us and nobody else for any number of
years you care to mention. You've got the goods. You've got just the
touch. That happy look on Willie's face, for instance. You can see in a
minute why he's so happy. It's because he's wearing the Tried and
Proven, and he knows that however far he stoops they won't break. Is
that a deal?'
Paul's reply left no room for doubt. Seizing the young man firmly round
the waist, he kissed him with extreme fervour on both cheeks.
'Here, break away!' cried the astonished general manager. 'That's no
way to sign a business contract.'
* * * * *
It was at about five minutes after one that afternoon that Constable
Thomas Parsons, patrolling his beat, was aware of a man motioning to
him from the doorway of Bredin's Parisian Cafe and Restaurant. The man
looked like a pig. He grunted like a pig. He had the lavish
_embonpoint_ of a pig. Constable Parsons suspected that he had a
porcine soul. Indeed, the thought flitted across Constable Parsons'
mind that, if he were to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck, he
could win prizes with him at a show.
'What's all this?' he inquired, halting.
The stout man talked volubly in French. Constable Parsons shook his
head.
'Talk sense,' he advised.
'In dere,' cried the stout man, pointing behind him into the
restaurant, 'a man, a--how you say?--yes, sacked. An employe whom I
yesterday sacked, today he returns. I say to him, "Cochon, va!"'
'What's that?'
'I say, "Peeg, go!" How you say? Yes, "pop off!" I say, "Peeg, pop
off!" But he--no, no; he sits and will not go. Come in, officer, and
expel him.'
With massive dignity the policeman entered the restaurant. At one of
the tables sat Paul, calm and distrait. From across the room Jeanne
stared freezingly.
'What's all this?' inquired Constable Parsons. Paul looked up.
'I too,' he admitted, 'I cannot understand. Figure to yourself,
monsieur. I enter this cafe to lunch, and this man here would expel
me.'
'He is an employe whom I--I myself--have but yesterday dismissed,'
vociferated M. Bredin. 'He has no money to lunch at my restaurant.'
The policeman eyed Paul sternly.
'Eh?' he said. 'That so? You'd better come along.'
Paul's eyebrows rose.
Before the round eyes of M. Bredin he began to produce from his pockets
and to lay upon the table bank-notes and sovereigns. The cloth was
covered with them.
He picked up a half-sovereign.
'If monsieur,' he said to the policeman, 'would accept this as a slight
consolation for the inconvenience which this foolish person here has
caused him--'
'Not half,' said Mr Parsons, affably. 'Look here'--he turned to the
gaping proprietor--'if you go on like this you'll be getting yourself
into trouble. See? You take care another time.'
Paul called for the bill of fare.
It was the inferior person who had succeeded to his place as waiter who
attended to his needs during the meal; but when he had lunched it was
Jeanne who brought his coffee.
She bent over the table.
'You sold your picture, Paul--yes?' she whispered. 'For much money? How
glad I am, dear Paul. Now we will--'
Paul met her glance coolly.
'Will you be so kind,' he said, 'as to bring me also a cigarette, my
good girl?'
-THE END-
P G Wodehouse's short story: Rough-Hew Them How We Will
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