A Man and the Abyss.
After a momentary silence spake Some vessel of a more ungainly make;They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
What! did the hand then of the Potter shake?
-OMAR KHAYYAM.
'I SAY, CAN YOU LET A LODGING?'
These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout and elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy coffee-house down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse.
'Oh, yus,' she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not approximating the standard of affluence required by her house.
I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea in silence.Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out of my pocket.The expected result was produced.
'Yus, sir,' she at once volunteered; 'I 'ave nice lodgin's you'd likely tyke a fancy to.Back from a voyage, sir?'
'How much for a room?' I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.
She looked me up and down with frank surprise.'I don't let rooms, not to my reg'lar lodgers, much less casuals.'
'Then I'll have to look along a bit,' I said, with marked disappointment.
But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen.'I can let you 'ave a nice bed in with two hother men,' she urged.'Good respectable men, an' steady.'
'But I don't want to sleep with two other men,' I objected.
'You don't 'ave to.There's three beds in the room, an' hit's not a very small room.'
'How much?' I demanded.
'Arf a crown a week, two an' six, to a regular lodger.You'll fancy the men, I'm sure.One works in the ware'ouse, an' 'e's bin with me two years, now.An' the hother's bin with me six.Six years, sir, an' two months comin' nex' Saturday.
''E's a scene-shifter,' she went on.steady, respectable man, never missin' a night's work in the time 'e's bin with me.An' 'e likes the 'ouse; 'e says as it's the best 'e can do in the w'y of lodgin's.I board 'im, an' the hother lodgers too.'
'I suppose he's saving money right along,' I insinuated innocently.
'Bless you, no! Nor can 'e do as well helsewhere with 'is money.'
And I thought of my own spacious West, with room under its sky and unlimited air for a thousand Londons; and here was this man, a steady and reliable man, never missing a night's work, frugal and honest, lodging in one room with two other men, paying two dollars and a half per month for it, and out of his experience adjudging it to be the best he could do! And here was I, on the strength of the ten shillings in my pocket, able to enter in with my rags and take up my bed with him.The human soul is a lonely thing, but it must be very lonely sometimes when there are three beds to a room, and casuals with ten shillings are admitted.
'How long have you been here?' I asked.
'Thirteen years, sir; an' don't you think you'll fancy the lodgin'?'
The while she talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also boarders.When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had she let up once throughout the conversation.Undoubtedly she was a busy woman.'Up at half-past five,' 'to bed the last thing at night,'
'workin' fit ter drop,' thirteen years of it, and for reward, gray hairs, frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly figure, unending toil in a foul and noisome coffee-house that faced on an alley ten feet between the walls, and a waterside environment that was ugly and sickening to say the least.
'You'll be hin hagain to 'ave a look?' she questioned wistfully, as I went out of the door.
And as I turned and looked at her, I realized to the full the deeper truth underlying that very wise old maxim: 'Virtue is its own reward.'
I went back to her.'Have you ever taken a vacation?' I asked.
'Vycytion!'
'A trip to the country for a couple of days, fresh air, a day off, you know, a rest.'
'Lor' lumme!' she laughed, for the first time stopping from her work.'A vycytion, eh? for the likes o' me? Just fancy, now!- Mind yer feet!'- this last sharply, and to me, as I stumbled over the rotten threshold.
Down near the West India Dock I came upon a young fellow staring disconsolately at the muddy water.A fireman's cap was pulled down across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered unmistakably of the sea.
'Hello, mate,' I greeted him, sparring for a beginning.'Can you tell me the way to Wapping?'
'Worked yer way over on a cattle boat?' he countered, fixing my nationality on the instant.
And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a public house and a couple of pints of 'arf an' arf.' This led to closer intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling's worth of coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a bed, and sixpence for more arf an' arf, he generously proposed that we drink up the whole shilling.
'My mate, 'e cut up rough las' night,' he explained.'An' the bobbies got 'm, so you can bunk in wi' me.Wotcher say?'
I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole shilling's worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in a miserable den, I knew him pretty fairly for what he was.And that in one respect he was representative of a large body of the lower-class London workman, my later experience substantiates.
He was London-born, his father a fireman and a drinker before him.
As a child, his home was the streets and the docks.He had never learned to read, and had never felt the need for it- a vain and useless accomplishment, he held, at least for a man of his station in life.
He had had a mother and numerous squalling brothers and sisters, all crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself.In fact, he never went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his own food.Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks, a trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer, and then, a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of his life.
