And an hour later, when the English servant came to his master’s door, he found him still awake and sitting in the dark by the open window, holding something in his arms and looking out over the sleeping city.

“James,” he said, “you can make up a place for me here on the lounge.  Miss Caruthers, my daughter, will sleep in my room to-night.”

VAN BIBBER’S MAN-SERVANT

Van Bibber’s man Walters was the envy and admiration of his friends.  He was English, of course, and he had been trained in the household of the Marquis Bendinot, and had travelled, in his younger days, as the valet of young Lord Upton.  He was now rather well on in years, although it would have been impossible to say just how old he was.  Walters had a dignified and repellent air about him, and he brushed his hair in such a way as to conceal his baldness.

And when a smirking, slavish youth with red cheeks and awkward gestures turned up in Van Bibber’s livery, his friends were naturally surprised, and asked how he had come to lose Walters.  Van Bibber could not say exactly, at least he could not rightly tell whether he had dismissed Walters or Walters had dismissed himself.  The facts of the unfortunate separation were like this: 

Van Bibber gave a great many dinners during the course of the season at Delmonico’s, dinners hardly formal enough to require a private room, and yet too important to allow of his running the risk of keeping his guests standing in the hall waiting for a vacant table.  So he conceived the idea of sending Walters over about half-past six to keep a table for him.  As everybody knows, you can hold a table yourself at Delmonico’s for any length of time until the other guests arrive, but the rule is very strict about servants.  Because, as the head waiter will tell you, if servants were allowed to reserve a table during the big rush at seven o’clock, why not messenger boys?  And it would certainly never do to have half a dozen large tables securely held by minute messengers while the hungry and impatient waited their turn at the door.

But Walters looked as much like a gentleman as did many of the diners; and when he seated himself at the largest table and told the waiter to serve for a party of eight or ten; he did it with such an air that the head waiter came over himself and took the orders.  Walters knew quite as much about ordering a dinner as did his master; and when Van Bibber was too tired to make out the menu, Walters would look over the card himself and order the proper wines and side dishes; and with such a carelessly severe air and in such a masterly manner did he discharge this high function that the waiters looked upon him with much respect.

But respect even from your equals and the satisfaction of having your fellow-servants mistake you for a member of the Few Hundred are not enough.  Walters wanted more.  He wanted the further satisfaction of enjoying the delicious dishes he had ordered; of sitting as a coequal with the people for whom he had kept a place; of completing the deception he practised only up to the point where it became most interesting.