I
I am still uncertain which surprised me more, the telegram calling my
attention to the advertisement, or the advertisement itself. The
telegram is before me as I write. It would appear to have been handed
in at Vere Street at eight o’clock in the morning of May 11, 1897, and
received before half-past at Holloway B.O. And in that drab region it
duly found me, unwashen but at work before the day grew hot and my
attic insupportable.
“See Mr. Maturin’s advertisement _Daily Mail_ might suit you earnestly
beg try will speak if necessary —— ——”
I transcribe the thing as I see it before me, all in one breath that
took away mine; but I leave out the initials at the end, which
completed the surprise. They stood very obviously for the knighted
specialist whose consulting-room is within a cab-whistle of Vere
Street, and who once called me kinsman for his sins. More recently he
had called me other names. I was a disgrace, qualified by an adjective
which seemed to me another. I had made my bed, and I could go and lie
and die in it. If I ever again had the insolence to show my nose in
that house, I should go out quicker than I came in. All this, and more,
my least distant relative could tell a poor devil to his face; could
ring for his man, and give him his brutal instructions on the spot; and
then relent to the tune of this telegram! I have no phrase for my
amazement. I literally could not believe my eyes. Yet their evidence
was more and more conclusive: a very epistle could not have been more
characteristic of its sender. Meanly elliptical, ludicrously precise,
saving half-pence at the expense of sense, yet paying like a man for
“Mr.” Maturin, that was my distinguished relative from his bald patch
to his corns. Nor was all the rest unlike him, upon second thoughts. He
had a reputation for charity; he was going to live up to it after all.
Either that, or it was the sudden impulse of which the most calculating
are capable at times; the morning papers with the early cup of tea,
this advertisement seen by chance, and the rest upon the spur of a
guilty conscience.
Well, I must see it for myself, and the sooner the better, though work
pressed. I was writing a series of articles upon prison life, and had
my nib into the whole System; a literary and philanthropical daily was
parading my “charges,” the graver ones with the more gusto; and the
terms, if unhandsome for creative work, were temporary wealth to me. It
so happened that my first check had just arrived by the eight o’clock
post; and my position should be appreciated when I say that I had to
cash it to obtain a _Daily Mail_.
Of the advertisement itself, what is to be said? It should speak for
itself if I could find it, but I cannot, and only remember that it was
a “male nurse and constant attendant” that was “wanted for an elderly
gentleman in feeble health.” A male nurse! An absurd tag was appended,
offering “liberal salary to University or public-school man”; and of a
sudden I saw that I should get this thing if I applied for it. What
other “University or public-school man” would dream of doing so? Was
any other in such straits as I? And then my relenting relative; he not
only promised to speak for me, but was the very man to do so. Could any
recommendation compete with his in the matter of a male nurse? And need
the duties of such be necessarily loathsome and repellent? Certainly
the surroundings would be better than those of my common lodging-house
and own particular garret; and the food; and every other condition of
life that I could think of on my way back to that unsavory asylum. So I
dived into a pawnbroker’s shop, where I was a stranger only upon my
present errand, and within the hour was airing a decent if antiquated
suit, but little corrupted by the pawnbroker’s moth, and a new straw
hat, on the top of a tram.
The address given in the advertisement was that of a flat at Earl’s
Court, which cost me a cross-country journey, finishing with the
District Railway and a seven minutes’ walk. It was now past mid-day,
and the tarry wood-pavement was good to smell as I strode up the Earl’s
Court Road. It was great to walk the civilized world again. Here were
men with coats on their backs, and ladies in gloves. My only fear was
lest I might run up against one or other whom I had known of old. But
it was my lucky day. I felt it in my bones. I was going to get this
berth; and sometimes I should be able to smell the wood-pavement on the
old boy’s errands; perhaps he would insist on skimming over it in his
bath-chair, with me behind.
I felt quite nervous when I reached the flats. They were a small pile
in a side street, and I pitied the doctor whose plate I saw upon the
palings before the ground-floor windows; he must be in a very small
way, I thought. I rather pitied myself as well. I had indulged in
visions of better flats than these. There were no balconies. The porter
was out of livery. There was no lift, and my invalid on the third
floor! I trudged up, wishing I had never lived in Mount Street, and
brushed against a dejected individual coming down. A full-blooded young
fellow in a frock-coat flung the right door open at my summons.
“Does Mr. Maturin live here?” I inquired.
“That’s right,” said the full-blooded young man, grinning all over a
convivial countenance.
“I—I’ve come about his advertisement in the _Daily Mail_.”
“You’re the thirty-ninth,” cried the blood; “that was the thirty-eighth
you met upon the stairs, and the day’s still young. Excuse my staring
at you. Yes, you pass your prelim., and can come inside; you’re one of
the few. We had most just after breakfast, but now the porter’s heading
off the worst cases, and that last chap was the first for twenty
minutes. Come in here.”
And I was ushered into an empty room with a good bay-window, which
enabled my full-blooded friend to inspect me yet more critically in a
good light; this he did without the least false delicacy; then his
questions began.
“’Varsity man?”
“No.”
“Public school?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”