And so on, a tedious tale, commonplace, trivial. Now listless, patient, hard working, they had arrived at an animal-like indifference to their fate, content so long as they could obtain the bare necessities of existence, passive when these were not forthcoming, their interest in life limited to the one luxury of the poor--an occasional glass of beer or spirits. Often days would go by without his obtaining any work, and then they would more or less starve. Law documents are generally given out to such men in the evening, to be returned finished the next morning. Waking in the night, I would hear through the thin wooden partition that divided our rooms the even scratching of his pen.
Thus cheek by jowl we worked, I my side of the screen, he his: youth and age, hope and realisation.
Out of him my fears fashioned a vision of the future. Past his door I would slink on tiptoe, dread meeting him upon the stairs. Once had not he said to himself: "The world's mine oyster?" May not the voices of the night have proclaimed him also king? Might I not be but an idle dreamer, mistaking desire for power? Would not the world prove stronger than I? At such times I would see my life before me: the clerkship at thirty shillings a week rising by slow instalments, it may be, to one hundred and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was not this the more likely picture?
Our second floor front was a young fellow in the commercial line.
Jarman was Young London personified--blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. "Never say die" was his motto, and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long he was noisy, and all night long he snored. He woke with a start, bathed like a porpoise, sang while dressing, roared for his boots, and whistled during his breakfast. His entrance and exit were always to an orchestration of banging doors, directions concerning his meals shouted at the top of his voice as he plunged up or down the stairs, the clattering and rattling of brooms and pails flying before his feet. His departure always left behind it the suggestion that the house was now to let; it came almost as a shock to meet a human being on the landing. He would have conveyed an atmosphere of bustle to the Egyptian pyramids.
Sometimes carrying his own supper-tray, arranged for two, he would march into my room. At first, resenting his familiarity, I would hint at my desire to be alone, would explain that I was busy.
"You fire away, Shakespeare Redivivus," he would reply. "Don't delay the tragedy. Why should London wait? I'll keep quiet."
But his notion of keeping quiet was to retire into a corner and there amuse himself by enacting a tragedy of his own in a hoarse whisper, accompanied by appropriate gesture.
"Ah, ah!" I would hear him muttering to himself, "I 'ave killed 'er good old father; I 'ave falsely accused 'er young man of all the crimes that I 'ave myself committed; I 'ave robbed 'er of 'er ancestral estates. Yet she loves me not! It is streeange!" Then changing his bass to a shrill falsetto: "It is a cold and dismal night: the snow falls fast. I will leave me 'at and umbrella be'ind the door and go out for a walk with the chee-ild. Aha! who is this?
'E also 'as forgotten 'is umbrella. Ah, now I know 'im in the pitch dark by 'is cigarette! Villain, murderer, silly josser! it is you!"
Then with lightning change of voice and gesture: "Mary, I love yer!"
"Sir Jasper Murgatroyd, let me avail myself of this opportunity to tell you what I think of you--" "No, no; the 'ouses close in 'alf an hour; there is not tee-ime. Fly with me instead!" "Never! Un'and me!" "'Ear me! Ah, what 'ave I done? I 'ave slipped upon a piece of orange peel and broke me 'ead! If you will kindly ask them to turn off the snow and give me a little moonlight, I will confess all."
Finding it (much to Jarman's surprise) impossible to renew the thread of my work, I would abandon my attempts at literature, and instead listen to his talk, which was always interesting. His conversation was, it is true, generally about himself, but it was none the less attractive on that account. His love affairs, which appeared to be numerous, formed his chief topic. There was no reserve about Jarman: his life contained no secret chambers. What he "told her straight," what she "up and said to him" in reply was for all the world that cared to hear. So far his search after the ideal had met with but ill success.
"Girls," he would say, "they're all alike, till you know 'em. So long as they're trying to palm themselves off on yer, they'll persuade you there isn't such another article in all the market. When they've got yer order--ah, then yer find out what they're really made of. And you take it from me, 'Omer Junior, most of 'em are put together cheap.
Bah! it sickens me sometimes to read the way you paper-stainers talk about 'em-angels, goddesses, fairies! They've just been getting at yer. You're giving 'em just the price they're asking without examining the article. Girls ain't a special make, like what you seem to think 'em. We're all turned out of the same old slop shop."
"Not that I say, mind yer," he would continue, "that there are none of the right sort. They're to be 'ad--real good 'uns. All I say is, taking 'em at their own valuation ain't the way to do business with 'em."
What he was on the look out for--to quote his own description--was a really first class article, not something from which the paint would come off almost before you got it home.
"They're to be found," he would cheerfully affirm, "but you've got to look for 'em. They're not the sort that advertises."