He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite. Settled there, he remembered the position of a near-by bell, just under the window-curtain.... Yes, there it was. He rang, and a waiter came--a rotund, pink-faced, John-Bullish waiter, with little white tufts on each cheek. Ayling ordered a whisky-and-soda, and when presently the waiter brought it Ayling asked how long he had been in the service of the club.
Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he asked.
The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir--I couldn't just at the moment say--"
"And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here, to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?"
"Seems familiar--" He shook his head. "You don't recall a Mr. Ayling--twenty-five or thirty years ago?"
"Ayling, sir? I recall there _was_ a member of that name.... _You're_ not Mr. Ayling, sir?"
"We're not very flattering, either of us, it seems. But then, privilege of the aged, I suppose."
"Beg pardon, sir. I'm sorry--I ought to remember you."
"We're wearing masks, Chedsey, you and I."
They regarded each other, those two, Chedsey, rotund and pink, looking down upon Ayling, long and lean, with fine wrinkles about his eyes, and hair considerably grayed, wondering, both of them, why names should be so much more enduring than they themselves had been.
It was not until Ayling had begun to ask Chedsey for news of old friends, and chanced almost at once to mention Lonsdale, that both he and the old waiter exclaimed in the same breath, "Major Lonsdale!" as if the Major's name had been a key to open the doors of both their memories.
"And you're young Mr. Dick Ayling! I remember you perfectly now!" Chedsey beamed. How could he have failed to remember any one of those gay young friends of the major's?
"And where," asked Ayling, "is the major now?"
"Major Lonsdale, sir--has been gone seven years. Hadn't you heard?"
Lonsdale gone! Lonsdale dead! Lonsdale had begun life so brilliantly. Ayling did feel left over and old.
"What happened?" he asked, and Chedsey, glad to talk of the major, told how he had left the club to be Major Lonsdale's man just after he came back from the Boer War. How things hadn't seemed to go well with the major after that; he lost money--just how, Chedsey didn't say, but gave one to understand that it was a misfortune beyond the major's control. In the end he was forced to give up his house, and Chedsey came back to the club. A few years later the major was taken with pneumonia, quite suddenly, and died. Did Mr. Ayling know Major Lonsdale's wife?