This time I didn't even succeed in getting to sleep; he must have been
waiting round the corner. Once more he beat upon my door.
I made no attempt to speak to him; I could not have expressed my
feelings even in English; I seized him by the shoulders (luckily he
was a good-tempered man) and shook him. Apparently, judging from the
sound, I had shaken him to pieces. I looked on the ground and saw that
he had dropped--my boots! This restored my speech. "Boots!" I shrieked,
as he picked them up and politely offered them to me. "I want peace,
not boots. Have I as much as mentioned boots to you? Does any sane man
want his boots at three o'clock? Do you think I sleep in them? Do you
imagine that's what's keeping me awake, not having them?"
I think it was the man's perfect placidity that made me so mad. Had he
lost _his_ temper, had he only sworn in Hungarian--a language admirably
suited for the art, by the way--I should have felt better. But no; he
maintained a perfect silence; he appeared to regard me as a lunatic on
whom speech would be wasted. Realizing at last, however, that I was
not yearning at that moment for my boots, he put them on one side--to
be introduced again at a more suitable moment. Next he pointed to my
pyjamas.
"What about them?" I demanded, furiously. "What's wrong with them?
Is it the colour, or what?" As a matter of fact they looked rather
neat--a sort of chocolate with blue stripes. In any case, I didn't want
to be awakened in the middle of the night to have a boots tell me he
didn't admire my pyjamas. They weren't meant to be admired; they were
intended to be slept in. I wished he would realize that.
"Perhaps you would rather I wore a night-shirt," I continued, as he
remained speechless. "Well, I'm not going to. I'm an Englishman,
Englander, Angol--do you understand?--and I'll wear what I like. Now
I'm going to bed again. If I so much as hear you breathe near my door
before nine o'clock I'll shoot you." With that I retired and slammed
the door.
I was half-way towards the bed when the door opened and boots inserted
his head. Then a hand followed, and he scratched his head in a puzzled
manner. Words, I felt, were wasted on him. In as dignified a manner as
possible I climbed into bed and switched off the light hanging over
it. Immediately boots turned on the light near the door. I sat up,
indignant.
"Look here," I said, "I've had enough of it." I raised a cautioning
forefinger. "I will _not_ play games with you. Understand that, once
for all. Go and wake somebody else up--somebody who knows these
national customs of yours. I'm speaking seriously now. When I engaged
this room I engaged it to sleep in. Sleep! Do you understand? It's an
English custom. You're wasting your time trying to talk to me. I don't
understand your language, and I'm not going to learn--not immediately,
anyhow. Now, go! Go, you----!" As I rushed at him he turned and fled,
and, locking the door, for the fifth time that night I got into bed.
I was by this time in such a mood that I was awakened with a start
at four o'clock by the sound of whispering outside my door. Without
stopping to consider how I should dispose of the corpse of my intended
victim, I again vacated my bed. This time boots was accompanied by
another person, who turned out to be the manager.
"I hev' come to apologize," he remarked, blandly.