He ventured apologetically into the lift. In his private corridor a
young man respectfully waited, hat in hand, the paternal red-and-black
waistcoat by his side for purposes of introduction. The young man was
wearing a rather shabby blue suit, but a rich and distinguished overcoat
that fitted him ill. In another five minutes Edward Henry had engaged a
skilled valet, aged twenty-four, name Joseph, with a testimonial of
efficiency from Sir Nicholas Winkworth, Bart., at a salary of a pound a
week and all found.
Joseph seemed to await instructions. And Edward Henry was placed in a
new quandary. He knew not whether the small bedroom in the suite was
for a child, or for his wife’s maid, or for his valet. Quite probably
it would be a sacrilegious defiance of precedent to put a valet in the
small bedroom. Quite probably Wilkins’s had a floor for private valets
in the roof. Again, quite probably, the small bedroom might be after
all specially destined for valets! He could not decide, and the most
precious thing in the universe to him in that crisis was his reputation
as a man about town in the eyes of Joseph.
But something had to be done.
"You’ll sleep in this room," said Edward Henry, indicating the door. "I
may want you in the night."
"Yes, sir," said Joseph.
"I presume you’ll dine up here, sir," said Joseph, glancing at the
lounge suit. His father had informed him of his new master’s
predicament.
"I shall," said Edward Henry. "You might get the menu."
IV.
He had a very bad night indeed, owing no doubt partly to a general
uneasiness in his unusual surroundings, and partly also to a special
uneasiness caused by the propinquity of a sleeping valet; but the main
origin of it was certainly his dreadful anxiety about the question of a
first-class tailor. In the organisation of his new life a first-class
tailor was essential, and he was not acquainted with a first-class
London tailor. He did not know a great deal concerning clothes, though
quite passably well dressed for a provincial, but he knew enough to be
sure that it was impossible to judge the merits of a tailor by his
sign-board, and therefore that if, wandering in the precincts of Bond
Street, he entered the first establishment that "looked likely," he
would have a good chance of being "done in the eye." So he phrased it
to himself as he lay in bed. He wanted a definite and utterly reliable
address.
He rang the bell. Only, as it happened to be the wrong bell, he
obtained the presence of Joseph in a round-about way, through the agency
of a gentleman in waiting. Such, however, is the human faculty of
adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an
error which, on the previous night, would have put him into a sweat.
"Good morning, sir," said Joseph.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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