第55章

The Undeserving Persons and the Upper and Nether Millstones Hunter had take on three more painters that morning.Bundy and two labourers had commenced the work of putting in the new drains; the carpenters were back again doing some extra work, and there was also a plumber working on the house; so there was quite a little crowd in the kitchen at dinner-time.Crass had been waiting for a suitable opportunity to produce the newspaper cutting which it will be remembered he showed to Easton on Monday morning, but he had waited in vain, for there had been scarcely any `political' talk at meal-times all the week, and it was now Thursday.As far as Owen was concerned, his thoughts were so occupied with the designs for the drawing-room that he had no time for anything else, and most of the others were only too willing to avoid a subject which frequently led to unpleasantness.As a rule Crass himself had no liking for such discussion, but he was so confident of being able to `flatten out'

Owen with the cutting from the Obscurer that he had several times tried to lead the conversation into the desired channel, but so far without success.

During dinner - as they called it - various subjects were discussed.

Harlow mentioned that he had found traces of bugs in one of the bedrooms upstairs and this called forth a number of anecdotes of those vermin and of houses infested by them.Philpot remembered working in a house over at Windley; the people who lived in it were very dirty and had very little furniture; no bedsteads, the beds consisting of dilapidated mattresses and rags on the floor.He declared that these ragged mattresses used to wander about the rooms by themselves.The house was so full of fleas that if one placed a sheet of newspaper on the floor one could hear and see them jumping on it.In fact, directly one went into that house one was covered from head to foot with fleas! During the few days he worked at that place, he lost several pounds in weight, and of evenings as he walked homewards the children and people in the streets, observing his ravaged countenance, thought he was suffering from some disease and used to get out of his way when they saw him coming.

There were several other of these narratives, four or five men talking at the top of their voices at the same time, each one telling a different story.At first each story-teller addressed himself to the company generally, but after a while, finding it impossible to make himself heard, he would select some particular individual who seemed disposed to listen and tell him the story.It sometimes happened that in the middle of the tale the man to whom it was being told would remember a somewhat similar adventure of his own, which he would immediately proceed to relate without waiting for the other to finish, and each of them was generally so interested in the gruesome details of his own story that he was unconscious of the fact that the other was telling one at all.In a contest of this kind the victory usually went to the man with the loudest voice, but sometimes a man who had a weak voice, scored by repeating the same tale several times until someone heard it.

Barrington, who seldom spoke and was an ideal listener, was appropriated by several men in succession, who each told him a different yarn.There was one man sitting on an up-ended pail in the far corner of the room and it was evident from the movements of his lips that he also was relating a story, although nobody knew what it was about or heard a single word of it, for no one took the slightest notice of him...

When the uproar had subsided Harlow remembered the case of a family whose house got into such a condition that the landlord had given them notice and the father had committed suicide because the painters had come to turn 'em out of house and home.There were a man, his wife and daughter - a girl about seventeen - living in the house, and all three of 'em used to drink like hell.As for the woman, she COULDshift it and no mistake! Several times a day she used to send the girl with a jug to the pub at the corner.When the old man was out, one could have anything one liked to ask for from either of 'em for half a pint of beer, but for his part, said Harlow, he could never fancy it.They were both too ugly.

The finale of this tale was received with a burst of incredulous laughter by those who heard it.

`Do you 'ear what Harlow says, Bob?' Easton shouted to Crass.

`No.What was it?'

`'E ses 'e once 'ad a chance to 'ave something but 'e wouldn't take it on because it was too ugly!'

`If it 'ad bin me, I should 'ave shut me bl--y eyes,' cried Sawkins.

`I wouldn't pass it for a trifle like that.'

`No,' said Crass amid laughter, `and you can bet your life 'e didn't lose it neither, although 'e tries to make 'imself out to be so innocent.'

`I always though old Harlow was a bl--y liar,' remarked Bundy, `but now we knows 'e is.'

Although everyone pretended to disbelieve him, Harlow stuck to his version of the story.

`It's not their face you want, you know,' added Bundy as he helped himself to some more tea.

`I know it wasn't my old woman's face that I was after last night,'

observed Crass; and then he proceeded amid roars of laughter to give a minutely detailed account of what had taken place between himself and his wife after they had retired for the night.

This story reminded the man on the pail of a very strange dream he had had a few weeks previously: `I dreamt I was walkin' along the top of a 'igh cliff or some sich place, and all of a sudden the ground give way under me feet and I began to slip down and down and to save meself from going over I made a grab at a tuft of grass as was growin' just within reach of me 'and.And then I thought that some feller was 'ittin me on the 'ead with a bl--y great stick, and tryin' to make me let go of the tuft of grass.And then I woke up to find my old woman shouting out and punchin' me with 'er fists.She said I was pullin'

'er 'air!'