Part 7 (1/2)

”Press the b.u.t.ton,” I said to the Carpenter.

”No, no, wait a bit,” the Carter hurriedly interposed.

From all of which I drew the conclusion that a poorhouse porter, who commonly draws a yearly salary of from seven to nine pounds, is a very finicky and important personage, and cannot be treated too fastidiously by--paupers.

So we waited, ten times a decent interval, when the Carter stealthily advanced a timid forefinger to the b.u.t.ton, and gave it the faintest, shortest possible push. I have looked at waiting men where life or death was in the issue; but anxious suspense showed less plainly on their faces than it showed on the faces of these two men as they waited on the coming of the porter.

He came. He barely looked at us. ”Full up,” he said and shut the door.

”Another night of it,” groaned the Carpenter. In the dim light the Carter looked wan and grey.

Indiscriminate charity is vicious, say the professional philanthropists.

Well, I resolved to be vicious.

”Come on; get your knife out and come here,” I said to the Carter, drawing him into a dark alley.

He glared at me in a frightened manner, and tried to draw back. Possibly he took me for a latter-day Jack-the-Ripper, with a penchant for elderly male paupers. Or he may have thought I was inveigling him into the commission of some desperate crime. Anyway, he was frightened.

It will be remembered, at the outset, that I sewed a pound inside my stoker's singlet under the armpit. This was my emergency fund, and I was now called upon to use it for the first time.

Not until I had gone through the acts of a contortionist, and shown the round coin sewed in, did I succeed in getting the Carter's help. Even then his hand was trembling so that I was afraid he would cut me instead of the st.i.tches, and I was forced to take the knife away and do it myself. Out rolled the gold piece, a fortune in their hungry eyes; and away we stampeded for the nearest coffee-house.

Of course I had to explain to them that I was merely an investigator, a social student, seeking to find out how the other half lived. And at once they shut up like clams. I was not of their kind; my speech had changed, the tones of my voice were different, in short, I was a superior, and they were superbly cla.s.s conscious.

”What will you have?” I asked, as the waiter came for the order.

”Two slices an' a cup of tea,” meekly said the Carter.

”Two slices an' a cup of tea,” meekly said the Carpenter.

Stop a moment, and consider the situation. Here were two men, invited by me into the coffee-house. They had seen my gold piece, and they could understand that I was no pauper. One had eaten a ha'penny roll that day, the other had eaten nothing. And they called for ”two slices an' a cup of tea!” Each man had given a tu'penny order. ”Two slices,” by the way, means two slices of bread and b.u.t.ter.

This was the same degraded humility that had characterised their att.i.tude toward the poorhouse porter. But I wouldn't have it. Step by step I increased their order--eggs, rashers of bacon, more eggs, more bacon, more tea, more slices and so forth--they denying wistfully all the while that they cared for anything more, and devouring it ravenously as fast as it arrived.

”First cup o' tea I've 'ad in a fortnight,” said the Carter.

”Wonderful tea, that,” said the Carpenter.

They each drank two pints of it, and I a.s.sure you that it was slops. It resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne. Nay, it was ”water-bewitched,” and did not resemble tea at all.

It was curious, after the first shock, to notice the effect the food had on them. At first they were melancholy, and talked of the divers times they had contemplated suicide. The Carter, not a week before, had stood on the bridge and looked at the water, and pondered the question. Water, the Carpenter insisted with heat, was a bad route. He, for one, he knew, would struggle. A bullet was ”'andier,” but how under the sun was he to get hold of a revolver? That was the rub.

They grew more cheerful as the hot ”tea” soaked in, and talked more about themselves. The Carter had buried his wife and children, with the exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his little business. Then the thing happened. The son, a man of thirty-one, died of the smallpox. No sooner was this over than the father came down with fever and went to the hospital for three months. Then he was done for.

He came out weak, debilitated, no strong young son to stand by him, his little business gone glimmering, and not a farthing. The thing had happened, and the game was up. No chance for an old man to start again.

Friends all poor and unable to help. He had tried for work when they were putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade. ”An' I got fair sick of the answer: 'No! no! no!' It rang in my ears at night when I tried to sleep, always the same, 'No! no! no!'” Only the past week he had answered an advertis.e.m.e.nt in Hackney, and on giving his age was told, ”Oh, too old, too old by far.”

The Carpenter had been born in the army, where his father had served twenty-two years. Likewise, his two brothers had gone into the army; one, troop sergeant-major of the Seventh Hussars, dying in India after the Mutiny; the other, after nine years under Roberts in the East, had been lost in Egypt. The Carpenter had not gone into the army, so here he was, still on the planet.

”But 'ere, give me your 'and,” he said, ripping open his ragged s.h.i.+rt.