“Thank you,” Scripps said. He eyed the waitress Mandy. She had a gift for the picturesque in speech, that girl. It had been that very picturesque quality in her speech that had first drawn him to his present wife. That and her strange background. England, the Lake Country. Scripps striding through the Lake Country with Wordsworth. A field of golden daffodils. The wind blowing at Windermere. Far off, perhaps, a stag at bay. Ah, that was farther north, in Scotland. They were a hardy race, those Scots, deep in their mountain fastnesses. Harry Lauder and his pipe. The Highlanders in the Great War. Why had not he, Scripps, been in the war? That was where that chap Yogi Johnson had it on him. The war would have meant much to him, Scripps. Why hadn’t he been in it? Why hadn’t he heard of it in time? Perhaps he was too old. Look at that old French General Joffre, though. Surely he was a younger man than that old general. General Foch praying for victory. The French troops kneeling along the Chemin des Dames, praying for victory. The Germans with their
Mandy, the waitress, placed his T-bone steak and hashed-brown potatoes on the counter before him. As she laid the plate down, just for an instant, her hand touched his. Scripps felt a strange thrill go through him. Life was before him. He was not an old man. Why were there no wars now? Perhaps there were. Men were fighting in China, Chinamen, Chinamen killing one another. What for? Scripps wondered. What was it all about, anyway?
Mandy, the buxom waitress, leaned forward. “Say,” she said, “did I ever tell you about the last words of Henry James?”
“Really, dear Mandy,” Mrs. Scripps said, “you’ve told that story rather often.”
“Let’s hear it,” Scripps said. “I’m very interested in Henry James.” Henry James, Henry James. That chap who had gone away from his own land to live in England among Englishmen. Why had he done it? For what had he left America? Weren’t his roots here? His brother William. Boston. Pragmatism. Harvard University. Old John Harvard with silver buckles on his shoes. Charley Brickley. Eddie Mahan. Where were they now?
“Well,” Mandy began, “Henry James became a British subject on his death-bed. At once, as soon as the king heard Henry James had become a British subject he sent around the highest decoration in his power to bestow—the Order of Merit.”
“The O. M.,” the elderly Mrs. Scripps explained.
“That was it,” the waitress said. “Professors Gosse and Saintsbury came with the man who brought the decoration. Henry James was lying on his death-bed, and his eyes were shut. There was a single candle on a table beside the bed. The nurse allowed them to come near the bed, and they put the ribbon of the decoration around James’s neck, and the decoration lay on the sheet over Henry James’s chest. Professors Gosse and Saintsbury leaned forward and smoothed the ribbon of the decoration. Henry James never opened his eyes. The purse told them they all must go out of the room, and they all went out of the room. When they were all gone, Henry James spoke to the nurse. He never opened his eyes. ‘Nurse,’ Henry James said, ‘put out the candle, nurse, and spare my blushes.’ Those were the last words he ever spoke.”
“James was quite a writer,” Scripps O’Neil said. He was strangely moved by the story.
“You don’t always tell it the same way, dear,” Mrs. Scripps remarked to Mandy. There were tears in Mandy’s eyes. “I feel very strongly about Henry James,” she said.
“What was the matter with James?” asked the drummer. “Wasn’t America good enough for him?”
Scripps O’Neil was thinking about Mandy, the waitress. What a background she must have, that girl! What a fund of anecdotes! A chap could go far with a woman like that to help him! He stroked the little bird that sat on the lunch-counter before him. The bird pecked at his finger. Was the little bird a hawk? A falcon, perhaps, from one of the big Michigan falconries. Was it perhaps a robin? Pulling and tugging at the early worm on some green lawn somewhere? He wondered.
“What do you call your bird?” the drummer asked.
“I haven’t named him yet. What would you call him?”
“Why not call him Ariel?” Mandy asked.
“Or Puck,” Mrs. Scripps put in.
“What’s it mean?” asked the drummer.
“It’s a character out of Shakespeare,” Mandy explained.
“Oh, give the bird a chance.”
“What would you call him?” Scripps turned to the drummer.
“He ain’t a parrot, is he?” asked the drummer. “If he was a parrot you could call him Polly.”
“There’s a character in ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ called Polly,” Mandy explained.
Scripps wondered. Perhaps the bird was a parrot. A parrot strayed from some comfortable home with some old maid. The untilled soil of some New England spinster.
“Better wait till you see how he turns out,” the drummer advised. “You got plenty of time to name him.”