The house to which John was carried was in the Brixton Road, near to
the White House public-house. Fifty years ago it had been a rich
merchant's home and was almost a country house, but now, like many
similar houses, it had fallen to a dingy estate: it was, without
embroidery of description, a lodging-house. Miss Squibb, who opened the
door to him, had a look of settled depression on her face that was not,
as he at first imagined, due to disapproval of him, but, as he speedily
discovered, to a deeply-rooted conviction that the rest of humanity was
engaged in a conspiracy to defraud her. She eyed the cabman with so
much suspicion that he became uneasy in his mind and deposited the
trunk and the bag in the hall in silence, nor did he make any comment
on the amount of his fare.
Miss Squibb helped John to carry the luggage to his room. Her niece,
Lizzie, who usually performed such work, was spending the week-end with
another aunt in North London, so Miss Squibb said, and she was due to
return before midnight, but Miss Squibb would expect her when she saw
her. It would not surprise her to find that Lizzie did not return to
her home until Monday evening. Nothing would surprise Miss Squibb. Miss
Squibb had long since ceased to be surprised at anything. No one had
had more cause to feel surprised than Miss Squibb had had in the course
of her life, but now she never felt surprised at anything. She
prophesied that a time would come when John would cease to feel
surprise at things....
She stood in the centre of his bedroom in a bent attitude, with her
hands folded across her flat chest, and regarded him with large,
protruding eyes. "You're Irish, aren't you?" she said, accusingly.
"Yes, Miss Squibb," he said, using her name with difficulty, because it
created in him a desire to laugh.
"Like Mr. 'Inde?"
"Inde!" he repeated blankly, and then comprehension came to him. "Oh,
Mr. Hinde! Yes! Oh, yes, yes!"
"I thought so," she continued. "You have the syme sort of talk. Funny
talk, I calls it. Wot time du want your breakfis?"
"Eight o'clock," he said.
"I s'pose you'll do syme as Mr. 'Inde ... leave it to me to get the
things for you, an' charge it up?"
"Oh, yes," John replied. "I'll do just what Mr. Hinde does!"
He looked around the dingy room, and as he did so, he felt depression
coming over him; but Miss Squibb misjudged his appraising glance.
"It's a nice room," she said, as if she were confirming his judgment on
it.
"Yes," he said dubiously, glancing at the bed and the table and the
ricketty washstand. There were pictures and framed mottoes on the
walls. Over his bed was a large motto-card, framed in stained deal,
bearing the word: ETERNITY; and on the opposite wall, placed so that he
should see it immediately he awoke, was a coloured picture of Daniel in
the Lions' Den, in which the lions seemed to be more dejected than
Daniel.
"A gentleman wot used to be a lodger 'ere done that," said Miss Squibb
when she saw that he was looking at the picture. "'E couldn't py 'is
rent an' 'e offered to pynt the bath-room, but we 'aven't got a bath-room
so 'e pynted that instead. It used to be a plyne picture 'til 'e
pynted it. 'E sort of livened it up a bit. Very nice gentleman 'e was,
only 'e did get so 'orribly drunk. Of course, 'e was artistic!"
The drawing was out of perspective, and John remarked upon the fact,
but Miss Squibb, fixing him with her protruding eyes, said that she
could not see that there was anything wrong with the picture. It was
true, as she admitted, that if you were to look closely at the lion on
the extreme right of the picture, you would find he had two tails, or
rather, one tail and the remnant of another which the artist had not
completely obliterated. But that was a trifle.
"Pictures ain't meant to be looked at close," said Miss Squibb, "an'
any'ow you can't expect to 'ave everythink in this world. Some people's
never satisfied without they're finding fault in things!"
John, feeling that her final sentence was a direct rebuke to himself,
hurriedly looked away from the picture.
"There's a good view from the window," he said to console her for his
depreciation of the picture.
"That's wot I often says myself," she replied. "People says it's 'igh
up 'ere an' a long way to climb, but wot I says is, it's 'ealthy when
you get 'ere, _and_ you 'ave a view. I'll leave you now," she
concluded. "When you've 'ad a wash, your supper'll be waitin' for you.
in Mr. 'Inde's sitting-room. I expect you'll be glad to 'ave it!"
"I shall," he replied. "I'm hungry!"
"Yes, I expect so," she said, closing the door.
He sat down on the bed and again looked about the room, and the
dreariness of it filled him with nostalgia. He had not yet unpacked his
trunk or his bag, and he felt that he must immediately carry them down
the stairs again, that he must call for a cabman and have his luggage
and himself carried back to Euston Station so that he might return to
his home. The clean air of Ballyards and the bright sunlit bedroom over
the shop seemed incomparably lovely when he looked about the dingy
Brixton bedroom. If this was the beginning of adventure!... He gazed at
the picture of Daniel in the Lions' Den, and wished that a lion would
eat Daniel or that Daniel would eat a lion!...
Then he went to the washstand and washed his face and hands, and when
he had done so, he went downstairs and ate his supper.