The Drapery
He was persuaded, he knew not how; he never meant to be. The something
which was in him, the craving for food which was life, was on her side;
he did have tea with her, a gargantuan tea. He ate of everything there
was to eat, while she showed that the necessity that she should have
something to eat of which she had spoken was a fiction, by trifling
with odds and ends, while she watched that his plate was kept well
supplied, and kept on talking. She was even autobiographical.
"Compared with what I have gone through, with my course of training in
life's hard school, what you've endured is nothing, and you see that
outwardly I'm none the worse for it. I used to think that there wasn't
such a thing in the world as laughter for me, that it was just as
improbable that I should have a good time as that I should jump over
the moon. Yet, I've learnt to laugh at times, nearly all the time; and
as for a good time, I've acquired the knack even of getting that. It
will be the same with you, and more."
"I doubt it."
"Of course, all green hands do; they take life too seriously."
"Do they? When you left me I don't remember; when I remembered anything
again I was in the workhouse infirmary. I'd been found senseless and
practically stripped in an alley off the Gray's Inn Road. I'd been in
the infirmary more than a week before I came to my senses, after a
fashion; then they wanted me to account for myself. I couldn't, or I
wouldn't, they were not sure which, so they put me out again into the
street. I'm not certain, but I fancy that they gave me the choice of
that or of being an able-bodied pauper. It was snowing on the day they
turned me out; you should have seen the clothes I was wearing, and the
boots!"
"I know the Christian charity of the parish and of the workhouse
master!"
"It's rather more than two months ago, and since then I've never had a
square meal nor a comfortable night's lodging. You know what kind of
weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating
we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I
have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have,
men, women, and children; I've herded with them. What a world! And for
what I've suffered I have to thank you."
"That's not true."
"That's a lie. I'm eating your food--I can't help eating it, I've got
to that--but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you
because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay
you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I
will."
"You talk nonsense; would you rather I had let you go to gaol?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you forgotten that when I first had the honour of meeting you I
saved you from the police? I came on the scene in the very nick of
time. In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched
you to the station."
He laid down his knife and fork.
"So I was right."
"About what?"
"It's all been a haze; something must have happened to me, something
must have cracked in here." He laid his hand on his head. "I don't seem
to remember anything beyond a certain point. I don't remember how it
was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and
drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was
still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me
to enable you to bring off some swindle--what it was I've never
understood--and that then you left me in the street, as if I were
carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get
into your house I have never been able to make out."
"I have upstairs the watch, chain and purse of which you relieved an
old gentleman in Hyde Park, just before I came upon the scene. There's
his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner--I
know all about him--and you'll be sentenced to a long term of
imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than
anything you've had to bear because of me."
"Is that true, that I did what you say?"
"Perfectly, honestly; do you mean to say that you can't remember?"
"Now that you speak of it I do seem to recall something; it's coming
back."
"I should think that it probably was; it will all of it come back if
you give it time. I know all about you. I know your name, your record,
the whole dirty story; you were as deep in the gutter when I first met
you as you are now, and perhaps deeper--certainly you had no more
chance of getting out of it; men with your record never do, I know."
"What's my name?"
"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know?"
"Not--not clearly; sometimes I nearly know, it's on the tip of my
tongue, I can see it written, somewhere; but the writing is not
plain--I can't quite make it out."
"What do you call yourself?"
"They call me 'Balmy."'
"Who's they?"
"Oh, some of them; some of the swine with whom I herd. I didn't know
what 'balmy' meant before they told me; it seems that it means a man
who's not right in his head--not quite mad, but very nearly. I don't
think I'm mad, or even nearly, but, looking back, I can't get beyond a
certain point--beyond you. What did you do to me that caused it? Can't
you undo it?"
"Personally, I did nothing. There was somebody else there besides me;
can't you remember him?"
"I do seem to remember someone; wasn't it a man?" She nodded. "I do
seem to remember a man, a black-faced man. I suppose he was your tool,
and what he did to me was done by your orders."
"He certainly was not my tool. You say they tell you that you're not in
your right mind; you were not when I first met you. I should say that
you were practically starving and had been living the life of a London
gutter man; that bolt from the police finished you; we had to do
something to get life back into you. You certainly had your senses no
more about you than you say you had in the workhouse infirmary. I
declare to you that when I left you you were in a much better condition
than when I met you. You had your senses more about you; you had been
well fed, I believe the food I gave you saved your life; you were well
dressed, you had money in your pocket. I don't see how I can fairly be
held responsible for what happened to you afterwards; if you were in
your right mind now, you'd see I can't."
"I don't know how much of what you're telling me is true. What do you
want with me now? Why have you brought me here, do you want to use me
as a catspaw again?"
"Let me tell you my story, and then you'll begin to understand. Do you
mind if I have a cigarette? I can always talk better when I am smoking.
And won't you have a cigar?"
"I had a cigar when I saw you last."
"You remember that? Have another now that we meet again. You'll find
that there's nothing the matter with those cigars, they're good
tobacco."
She placed a box of cigars in front of him. He glared at them as if he
would rather they had not been there, but the craving that was in him
got the upper hand again. He took and lighted one, puffing at it while
she talked.
"My father was a country schoolmaster; I don't remember my mother, but
my father died when I was, I suppose, about fourteen. My only relative,
an uncle, found me a situation in a draper's shop, where I got no pay
because I was so young, but where they worked me from the first thing
in the morning till the last thing at night, and gave me in return my
food and lodging--such lodging and such food. When I had been there
three years they turned me out because I objected to the attentions of
the master's son. I knew my uncle wouldn't have me; I'd known that all
along. I should have been without a penny, absolutely, if it hadn't
been for one of the assistants who lent me a sovereign. With that I
came to town--I had ever an adventurous spirit. I went to a big shop, a
famous shop; they took me on at once. A sale was coming on, they were
in want of extra hands; with people of that sort they didn't want
references; the assistants there never had a chance of being dishonest,
they were too well looked after. They wanted no character when you
came, and they gave you none when you left; you were liable to be
discharged at a moment's notice, without any cause being given, and
assistants were being discharged like that continually, and they gave
you no character though you had been there ten years; they never do
give characters, it's a rule of the house. I was there rather more than
two years. I was in the mantles when I left. One afternoon just as I
was going down for tea, they called me into the office, gave me my
wages, and told me I could go; trade was slack, the season was over;
they gave me no reason, but that was the only one I could guess that
they had for sacking me."
She stopped to knock the ash off her cigarette, smiling to herself as
she did so.
"I got another berth after--well, after experiences something like
those which you have lately had; I was looking a nice sort of drab by
the time I got it. It was in a shop which did a cutting trade, a
low-class shop, an open-to-all-hours-of-the-night sort of shop, in a
low-class neighbourhood in which people did not start buying till an
hour when the shops ought to be closed. What a life I had there! You
talk about what you've been doing, and you're a man."
Her thoughts seemed to be harking back, but she still smiled.
"I've seen columns of gush in the papers about the woes of shop
assistants; if the British public only knew--if every woman had to
serve a term as assistant in some of the shops I could tell them of,
things would be altered pretty quick."
She leaned towards him over the table.
"You say you'd like to wring my neck; if you only knew the number of
people there were in that shop to whom I would have given almost
anything for the chance of wringing theirs--I almost did wring one
woman's, who was, ironically, called a housekeeper, and who was an
unspeakable thing! You talk of the swine with whom you've herded;
you've never had to associate with the likes of her, and be under her
thumb--and that's why I left."
Restlessness seemed all at once to seize her. She rose from her seat
and stood in front of the fire.
"I did some more starving, and--that sort of thing, then I got another
berth, no better than the other. They said my accounts were wrong--they
couldn't prove it, and I don't believe they were, but they sent me
packing that very day. You've no notion for how little, for nothing at
all, a draper's assistant, who may have given months and years good
service, is thrown into the ditch, no reason vouchsafed, no remedy
obtainable, no character to be had."
She swept out her hands, as if she were brushing from her a flood of
memories.
"Oh, I had all sorts of experiences; I was in the place you mentioned
for years, although I'm not an old woman now; you see, I got there
first when I was so very young; that does make a difference. Oh, I saw
the drapery in all its phases; to this hour I can't enter a draper's
shop without feeling a chill at the bottom of my spinal column; my skin
goes all goose-fleshy; I think of what drapers' shops once meant to me.
But there came a time when I had done with them--I'll take care that
it's for ever; that was when I reached the very lowest circle in the
pit. How many circles were there in Dante's hell? I'm convinced I
reached the bottom one."