第20章

Three working girls came along, and one looked pityingly at me; as she passed I followed her with my eyes, and she still looked pityingly back at me.The old men she did not notice.Dear Christ, she pitied me, young and vigorous and strong, but she had no pity for the two old men who stood by my side! She was a young woman, and I was a young man, and what vague sex promptings impelled her to pity me put her sentiment on the lowest plane.Pity for old men is an altruistic feeling, and besides, the workhouse door is the accustomed place for old men.So she showed no pity for them, only for me, who deserved it least or not at all.Not in honor do gray hairs go down to the grave in London Town.

On one side the door was a bell handle, on the other side a press button.

'Ring the bell,' said the Carter to me.

And just as I ordinarily would at anybody's door, I pulled out the handle and rang a peal.

'Oh! Oh!' they cried in one terrified voice.'Not so 'ard!'

I let go, and they looked reproachfully at me, as though I had imperilled their chance for a bed and three parts of skilly.Nobody came.Luckily, it was the wrong bell, and I felt better.

'Press the button,' I said to the Carpenter.

'No, no, wait a bit,' the Carter hurriedly interposed.

From all of which I drew the conclusion that a poorhouse porter, who commonly draws a yearly salary of from thirty to forty dollars, is a very finicky and important personage, and cannot be treated too fastidiously by paupers.

So we waited, ten times a decent interval, when the Carter stealthily advanced a timid forefinger to the button, and gave it the faintest, shortest possible push.I have looked at waiting men where life and death was in the issue; but anxious suspense showed less plainly on their faces than it showed on the faces of these two men as they waited for the coming of the porter.

He came.He barely looked at us.'Full up,' he said, and shut the door.

'Another night of it,' groaned the Carpenter.In the dim light the Carter looked wan and gray.

Indiscriminate charity is vicious, say the professional philanthropists.Well, I resolved to be vicious.

'Come on; get your knife out and come here,' I said to the Carter, drawing him into a dark alley.

He glared at me in a frightened manner, and tried to draw back.

Possibly he took me for a latter day Jack-the-Ripper, with a penchant for elderly male paupers.Or he may have thought I was inveigling him into the commission of some desperate crime.Anyway, he was frightened.

It will be remembered, at the outset, that I sewed a pound inside my stoker's singlet under the armpit.This was my emergency fund, and Iwas now called upon to use it for the first time.

Not until I had gone through the acts of a contortionist, and shown the round coin sewed in, did I succeed in getting the Carter's help.Even then his hand was trembling so that I was afraid he would cut me instead of the stitches, and I was forced to take the knife away and do it myself.Out rolled the gold piece, a fortune in their hungry eyes; and away we stampeded for the nearest coffee-house.

Of course I had to explain to them that I was merely an investigator, a social student, seeking to find out how the other half lived.And at once they shut up like clams.I was not of their kind;my speech had changed, the tones of my voice were different, in short, I was a superior, and they were superbly class conscious.

'What will you have?' I asked, as the waiter came for the order.

'Two slices an' a cup of tea,' meekly said the Carter.

'Two slices an' a cup of tea,' meekly said the Carpenter.

Stop a moment, and consider the situation.Here were two men, invited by me into the coffee-house.They had seen my gold piece, and they could understand that I was no pauper.One had eaten a ha penny roll that day, the other had eaten nothing.And they called for 'two slices an' a cup of tea!' Each man had given a tu'penny order.'Two slices,' by the way, means two slices of bread and butter.

This was the same degraded humility that had characterized their attitude toward the poorhouse porter.But I wouldn't have it.Step by step I increased their orders,- eggs, rashers of bacon, more eggs, more bacon, more tea, more slices, and so forth,- they denying wistfully all the while that they cared for anything more, and devouring it ravenously as fast as it arrived.

'First cup o' tea I've 'ad in a fortnight,' said the Carter.

'Wonderful tea, that,' said the Carpenter.

They each drank two pints of it, and I assure you that it was slops.