At the worst, I thought, I could pick up a man at the club; but the few men in the smoking-room had either to go back to their wives or had some dinner engagement. So it came that I started alone for Earl's Court.
I had written for a table to be kept for me at eight o'clock, and a few minutes before the hour I disembarked at the entrance by the lake. It was between the lights, and the great white globes aglow with electricity looked garish against the delicate opal of the sky, and cast strange reflections on the water. I paused for a moment to listen to the blue-coated musicians on their island bandstand commencing the march from "Aïda," and then went past the bronze Gordon on his camel, past a buffet where a little crowd were dining frugally off sandwiches and pale ale, over the long bridge, through the gardens, and at last to the restaurant. In front of the broad awning which stretches before the restaurant, standing by a red rope, which keeps the public from coming too near, are two janitors, who, in their dark blue and peaked caps, look rather like warders: a clerk at a desk, with a big open book before him, sits opposite to the entrance.
Had I booked a table? the clerk asked me as I came up. Certainly I had. I had written that I wanted a particularly good table at eight o'clock. The clerk looked up at a tall gentleman with a reddish beard and moustache who stood behind him, M. Gerard, Messrs. Spiers and Pond's manager, and the gentleman with the beard looked at his watch. It was a quarter-past eight. M. Gerard explained that no tables were kept after eight, and drew a vivid picture of a well-dressed but famished crowd standing outside at the red ropes and threatening to tear down the place if they were not admitted to the vacant places. My table had been given to an eminently respectable couple who did not look as if they would tear down anything, and I was about to go over the way to the Welcome, in wrath, when it was found that there was a table for four, right up against the barrier, vacant; and I settled down in solitary dignity at one of the best tables in the place. A smart young waiter, in white apron and brown coat with pink facings, put the menu in front of me. I ordered a pint of Deutz and Gelderman to be put in ice, and then looked round me.