BENEDETTO.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2101, 9 April 1925, Page 2

BENEDETTO.

He hobbled, and the young waiters called him "bunions"; for the long years of service which had greyed his head and bowed his thin shoulders had made his feet tender. He had been so long at the Cafe Corbeau that he seemed inseparably part of the place; plodding with swift, tireless patience among the tables, bearing dishes, taking orders. Not even Andrea Lemnos, the proprietor, knew anything of his life outside the Cafe Corbeau. He locked away his private concerns in his old age, as he had done in his youth, while he still had Virginia. His baby girl had been the centre of his existence since her mother's death. He had toiled and schemed to give her all he could on the scanty wages of a waiter. In those days he had had dreams of rising to head-waiter—-manager even; but he was absentminded, and an attack of diphtheria had left him a little deaf. So he remained where he was, without promotion, and as the years rolled on Lemnos plumed himself on his charity that he stayed on at all. The child was a joy to Benedetto, but one which made him tremble. Her actual needs were many; those he imagined. for her were legion.

There came a widow from Western Australia, childless, and rich as Croesus, so Benedetto was assured. She came hunting Chinese ivories in the little curiosity shop above which Benedetto lodged with Virginia, and saw the child. Whatever she had wanted in her life the widow had had. She saw no reason why it should be otherwise. She was of the earth's elect. She wanted Virginia and her baby loveliness. At first Benedetto scorned the idea, but the owner of the curiosity shop, being shrewd, pointed out to him the advantages the three-year-old Virginia would reap from the exchange of the penniless wretch of a waiter who was her father for the wealthy, doting widow who would be her mother, and, his heart rent within him, Benedetto yielded, for Virginia's good.

To the end of his life he remembered the smell of freshly ironed muslin as he crushed the baby to his breast and kissed her farewell, voicelessly praying her to remember him, and come back some day. He had had to promise solemnly never to reveal himself, never to obtrude his identity upon his child's life in the future. He gave his word, buoyed up by the certainty that fate would send her back, if only, if only for a moment.

Benedetto picked up an evening paper a customer had left behind. On the first page was the portrait of a girl, a newly-risen operatic star. The old waiter's heart stood still. Line for line, it was his dead wife. This could only be her daughter and his. No other mould could have shaped that head, those lips, the throat, and shoulders. It was all Virginia. Andrea called to him angrily. He turned and set about his work with his usual patience. He could wait. Fate was sending her back. A few nights later, she came to supper with an adoring admirer, who was an old customer at the Cafe Corbeau. They made straight for a corner table allotted to Benedetto.

He straightened himself as well as he could for the painful throbbing in heart and head, and took the order. His eyes devoured her in her white dress, her black hat with the yellow pansies, golden as spring sunshine, at her left hip. She was his, his very own, flesh of his flesh, surely doubly his by virtue of the love which had been great enough to crucify itself for her well-being. He hovered round the table, hanging on her words, every nerve in him aching for her recognition, his unslaked soul crying out, "I am your father. Don't you know me?" But he felt certain that she must know him before she left, that some intuition would stir and speak in her. She, gay, careless, murmured once to her companion, "Isn't our waiter a funny old stick? He looks like.Methusaleh, and hobbles like our old rheumatic collie, Bingo. They ought to have young men at a place like this." And the man said: "Oh, Benedetto's

a bit ancient, but he knows his work al right. He's been here ever-since I can remember." The meal went on, a tangle of girl's coquetry, rapture and worship of two men, and —for Benedetto—an agony of frustrated longing for his child. It came to an end.

It was almost more than he could bear to see them rise to go; see the white arms held up to receive the black feather-wrap the lover laid over the slim shoulders; see her pick up her small belongings, and move down the aisle of tables. His heart was crying famishedly, "Virginia, my baby; my little one!" He stood there, his eyes fixed, doglike, on her face as he humbly drew aside to let her pass.

Something in his look touched her, and she smiled at him. His features contorted frightfully. He took a step forward, his hands, scraggy, venose, pathetic, with the pathos of old age, stretched out imploringly. Startled, half-frightened, she hurried on.

He turned back to the table. A little vellm-bound prayer book lay beside her place, and on the floor her feet had blessed a yellow pansy had had fallen from her belt. He picked up the flower, his back turned to the room with its glare and babel. He presesd his dry lips to the velvet of the wilting petals, and became aware of her presence. She had come back for her book. Mutely he handed it to her, but her eyes travelled from his face to the flower he still held between fingers that trembled. They framed a question. "The signorina must excuse," he stammed; "but she reminds me of one I lost long ago." "When you were young?" Her warm voice was vibrant with the quick, facile sympathy of the artist. "Si—Signorina; when I was young." Impulsively she disengaged the pansies at her hip, and taking the book from him, placed them in exchange in his shaking hand. Then, without a word, turned and passed down again between the tables.

At the door she looked back, nestling close on her lover's arm. The head-waiter was. swearing in voluble Neapolitan at Benedetto, but he stood there unheeding, his thin shoulders bowed, his old, futile hands filled to overflowing with golden pansies. —By M. d'Albret, in the "Australasian."