The Little Blue Devil/Boots at the Lafayette

The Hôtel Lafayette was large and, for a Cairo hotel, ill-manned. Tony probably worked harder than anyone there, except the manager, for he had no fixed place and was at the orders of the lazy regiment of servants. They employed their privilege to the full; it was something to have a Frank to serve you, even such a little one as that. So Tony’s hours of work stretched out and his sleep-time diminished, and his meals were snatched at odd and unsatisfactory moments, when they were not missed altogether, till he was wearied past speech, and yet winced at a footfall.

The weeks drew on till the season was practically ended, but his work did not slacken. There were fewer servants, but those that remained were just as ready to order him about. The management had forgotten the existence of its small slave, lost in the kitchen or flitting ghost-like down the passages in the dawn, gathering the boots and shoes before each door.

His principal work was blacking boots in the morning and washing dishes at night. He did quite as much as the four boys who were retained as bootblacks, not from love of labour, but out of prudence. They were all bigger than he. He dreaded facing the ring of grinning faces in the basecourt at meal-times, faces with latent cruelty in nearly all of them, and pity in none. They hated him as he hated them, for they could not get much sport out of him. But he was being slowly cowed, all the same; his meals were ​sketchy and bad, his short sleeps were cursed with nightmares of boots—miles and miles of boots all in need of blacking, and to be finished before 7 a.m. Or, if he fell asleep in the daytime (and such sleep was bound to be brief and broken) it was of dish-washing he dreamed, and that was as bad.

Which smell he hated worse, blacking or grease, he never knew; but it was as if he had been blacking boots and washing dishes all his thousand-year-long life—as if he could never hope to get away from boots and plates. At first wild thoughts of running away from it all used to cross his mind, but hunger-fear tied him; that homeless fortnight was vivid still.

It was not wonderful that towards the end of Tony’s three weeks at the Hôtel Lafayette his work was often badly done. When Walter Robertson rose one morning and gathered in his boots he found that they were merely smeared—the poorest apology for cleaning. It annoyed him considerably; he had received worrying letters by the early post that morning, and he was in no pleasant mood. This was the last straw. Looking down the passage, he caught sight of a small boot-laden figure stooping at door after door.

“Hi, you!” he called.

The figure laid its complicated burden down and came towards him, dragging its feet. Its slowness aggravated Robertson. He spoke his mind roughly but explicitly, setting out his views on slackness and neglect, and ending with a threat of telling the manager. It was not like Robertson to use his heaviest guns on a small boy, but that morning he needed someone on whom to vent his annoyance; any excuse would have served him.

“What’ve you got to say for yourself?” he ended.

“Give me back the boots.” Tony’s voice was quite dull.

​“Do you call them cleaned?”

“No, they aren’t. I’ll clean them, I won’t be long.”

He swayed on his feet.

“What’s the matter?” said Robertson quickly.

“It’s all right.”

Tony’s eyes closed and half opened again, showing only the whites. He put out a hand to feel for the wall, and Robertson steadied him with an arm round his shoulders.

“What’s up? Are you ill? And—good heavens, you’re an English boy———!”

“Give me the boots.”

“Oh, damn the boots! I’ll wear another pair. Sit down a bit. What’s wrong?”

“I’m—just—tired,” said Tony, and his head fell forward. Robertson stared at him, dismayed.

“I’m—sorry I rowed you,” he said.

“That’s all right,” said Tony, his voice thick with sleep; “the boots were filthy. Give them to me and I’ll———”

“Oh, rot! Stay where you are. Isn’t that chair comfortable? And tell me what under the sun you’re doing here. I thought you were a native at first.”

“Yes, they dress me like ’em,” Tony answered, sitting up and trying to shake off the creeping sleep that was like unconsciousness. “I came here because I had no money and nowhere else to go. . . . I must go now. There are all those other boots to put back.”

“But look here—you seem about done. I’ll make that all right. And surely there are plenty of them to—How did you get into this state?”

“I’ve got to do it.” Sleep was clutching him again.

“You need a day off, kid.”

Tony laughed, one small, short bark.

“Well—could you do as a guide? . . . h’m . . . I need a guide. Would they let you take me to—to—the ​Pyramids, for instance, or anywhere outside town? I haven’t seen anything of this place.”

“You could ask,” said Tony. His big grey eyes were wide open now, and a gleam had lightened their dreariness.

“Well, you go off now, and I’ll speak at the office as soon as I’m dressed. I wish it wasn’t so early.”

Tony’s laugh sounded again, just as short as before, but with more mirth in it. “Early! I’ve been up five hours.”

“Five—But, I say, that’s slavery. What time do you go to bed?”

“Any time, after twelve.”

“Humph! Be off and pick up your boots—I’ll see about it all; don’t you worry.”

Tony delivered the other boots quickly, having acquired new energy. He did not worry; in fact, he did not think much while he was doing it, except to wonder that nobody had “gone for him” for being late. That came after, when he went downstairs, but with this new hope to feed on he was well able to bear it.

It was not hard for Robertson to get Tony’s permission of absence from the manager, who was all smiles and affability. He offered a wide choice of guides, all infinitely superior to Tony, but Robertson stood firm. He wanted to atone to the child for having attacked him that morning; he still felt a bully when he thought of it, and that was all the time; for the moment it had quite cleared his other worries away. The boy—by the way, he had never asked his name!—was interesting. He had taken the tongue-lashing as a matter of course, and yet he had shrunk back suggestively when he was first spoken to. He looked half starved too—and what ungodly hours for a kid to work! As if a baby of that age-he looked about nine, though his face was old enough for sixteen—ought to be working at all. . . . It was disgusting that such a state of things should be possible in a decent hotel. . . . He had a gentle​man’s voice too—what on earth could have brought him to this?

At half-past nine Tony was sent for to attend on Mr. Robertson, much to the astonishment of the brown kitchen world. They went out together, Tony doing his best to be a conscientious guide, but without much result, for Robertson was in no mood for sight-seeing. As soon as possible he suggested that they should stop for lunch. They had a very good one—it hurt Robertson’s soft heart that Tony did not expect to sit with him, and it hurt him still more to see how much the food meant to the boy—and afterwards he said he felt inclined for a smoke and a sleep after it.

“Could you go to sleep too? It’s too hot to be rushing about.”

Tony smiled, and his face looked four years younger.

“Could I? Standing—easy!” he said, and curling up, he shut his eyes and was asleep before Robertson had finished lighting his cigar.

He watched for a long time; Tony did not stir; his breathing was so light as to be almost imperceptible.

“He’s a good boy,” Robertson thought. “He’s a grafter. Quite worried he was, this morning, because he wasn’t showing me things. Beastly life for him here . . . it’s killing him. What a brute that old Austrian must have been to leave him adrift! . . . I never saw such a proud mouth on a child—he is a child, only ten. ‘Nearly eleven,’ he says—how anxious he is to grow up! An uncommunicative little beggar, though. I wonder where he came from originally? He spoke of ‘my people’ as if they were royalty, by Jove!”

Robertson chuckled, remembering the grimy little bootblack of the early morning, but softly, for fear of awaking the sleeping boy. He was no knight errant, no Don Quixote—not a remarkable person in any way, this kindly hearted ​Robertson—merely a very ordinary young middle-class Englishman with a strong sense of championship where anything forlorn and helpless was concerned. A lost dog, a frightened child, never appealed to him in vain, and this boy was leading something less than a dog’s life. A sudden thought came to Robertson. He was not a man of tremendous impulses—not impulses with far-reaching consequences, anyway, but this thought struck home very forcibly. There was certainly something in Tony which arrested quick interest, if not sympathy.

“I don’t believe it would be a bad line,” Robertson thought, “if I could take him out of this and put him on Paranui. He’d have a chance of growing up strong and sound. It wouldn’t be any trouble to me, and I’d like to do something for the kid. Antony St. Croix—C-r-o-i-x . . . it’s a Jersey name, he said. . . . He’s so anxious to be a man! I wonder how long he’ll sleep? Poor little beggar, he needed it. . . .”

It was late in the afternoon when Tony woke, with a start and a shuddering sob, to find Robertson standing over him.

“What is it?” he gasped, scrambling to his feet.

“It’s all right. I never called you. You’ve been asleep too? No, it’s not time to go back to the hotel yet . . . I want to have a bit of a talk with you before we go, St. Croix.”

Tony looked rather apprehensive, and Robertson laughed.

“It’s all right, I say. You know what I was telling you about my place in New Zealand? I’ve been out there ten years now; this was my first visit home. Well, I wondered if you’d care to come out there with me.”

Tony’s eyes stretched wide; he looked almost afraid.

“But—what would I do there?” he said.

“Do? Oh, there’s always work on a station. Never fear, there’ll be enough for you to do. And you could ​come straight off with me next Monday—I want company on the voyage. Will you?”

“Will I? But I can’t say thank you—I———”

“Don’t,” said Robertson, and held out his hand. Tony clutched it; he literally could not speak.

“That’s decided then.”

“But—will they let me go?”

“Nonsense, how could ‘they’ stop you?”

“Oh, you don’t know. It’s—it’s been so long, and there’s never time to sleep, and I’m getting afraid—they’re making me afraid and I hate it.” He hid his face.

“Well, I’ll talk to them. Don’t you worry. There’s nothing to be afraid of really.”

There was a long pause, at the end of which Tony raised his head. “What do you want to see now?”

“Oh—nothing just now. I’ve had enough of sight-seeing for one day.”

Another pause, and Tony spoke again with a touch of anxiety. “Are there horses on your station?”

“Heaps of horses.”

“Ah—h! And cattle?”

“Not many—it’s a sheep-station.”

“And can I learn to ride?”

“You must.”

“I’ve never ridden properly—only in baby-ways. And will I learn other things too?”

“Yes, you’ve a lot to learn. Swimming, and shooting, and—all sorts of things.”

“Good—oh, good!” said Tony, and fell into a happy dream which lasted till they reached the hotel. Once there, the darkness closed over him again, but he was strong and refreshed with the food and sleep, and stronger still with the knowledge of coming freedom that he hugged to himself, and nothing mattered now.