When Mrs. Bastien-Melland went to Egypt in January, she only took three of the small dogs with her, for she could not be bothered with the society of a groom, and three dogs were as many as her two maids could spare time for, after devoting their energies to Mrs. Bastien-Melland’s toilette. Consequently, Meads was left behind, and was held directly responsible for seven, five Chows, and two Pekinese, or, as he expressed it, over a thousand pounds’ worth of dogs. It was a position of enormous responsibility. They had to be fed on the very best food, all carefully prepared and cooked, and in small quantities. They had to be taken for regular exercise, and washed in specially prepared condiments. Moreover, at the slightest symptom of indisposition he was to telephone to Sir Andrew Fossiter, the great veterinary specialist in Hanover Square. It is not to be wondered at that Meads became a person of considerable standing and envy, and that little Minnie Birdle was intensely flattered when he occasionally condescended to look in her direction. She had been in Mrs. Bastien-Melland’s service now for seven months, and the attentions of the dog groom had not only been a matter of general observation, for some time past, but had become a subject of reckless mirth and innuendo among the other servants.
One night she was hurrying home. Her mother had been rather worse than usual of late, and she was carrying a few scraps that the cook had given her. It was a wretched night and she was not feeling well herself: a mood of tired dejection possessed her. She crossed a drab street off Lisson Grove and, as she reached the curb her eye lighted on “Old Fags.” He did not see her. He was walking along the gutter, patting the road occasionally with his stick. She had not spoken to him since the occasion we have mentioned. For once he was not talking—his eyes were fixed in listless apathy on the road. As he passed, she caught the angle of his chin silhouetted against the window of a shop. For the rest of her walk the haunting vision of that chin beneath the drawn cheeks, and the brooding hopelessness of those sunken eyes, kept recurring to her. Perhaps, in some remote past, he had been as good to look upon as Meads, the groom! Perhaps some one had cared for him! She tried to push this thought from her, but some chord in her nature seemed to have been awakened and to vibrate with an unaccountable sympathy toward this undesirable fellow lodger.
She hurried home, and in the night was ill. She could not go to Mrs. Melland’s for three days and she wanted the money badly. When she got about again she was subject to fainting fits and sickness. On one such occasion, as she was going upstairs at the Buildings, she felt faint and leant against the wall just as “Old Fags” was going up.
He stopped and said: “Hullo, now what are we doing? Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” And she said: “It’s all right, old ’un.” These were the kindest words she had ever spoken to “Old Fags.”
During the next month there were strange symptoms about Minnie Birdle that caused considerable comment, and there were occasions when old Mrs. Birdle pulled herself together, and became the active partner and waited on Minnie. On one such occasion, “Old Fags” came home late and, after drawing a cork, varied his usual programme of talking and snoring by singing in a maudlin key, and old Mrs. Birdle came banging at his door and shrieked out: “Stop your row, you old—. My daughter is ill. Can’t you hear?”
And “Old Fags” came to his door and blinked at her and said: “Ill, is she? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Would she like some stew, eh?”
And old Mrs. Birdle said: “No, she don’t want any of your muck,” and bundled back. But they did not hear any more of “Old Fags” that night, or any other night when Minnie came home queer.
Early in March Minnie got the sack from Hyde Park Square. Mrs. Melland was still away—having decided to winter in Rome—but the Housekeeper assumed the responsibility of this action, and in writing to Mrs. Melland, justified the course she had taken by saying that “she could not expect the other maids to work in the same house with an unmarried girl in that condition.” Mrs. Melland, whose letter in reply was full of the serious illness of poor little Annisette, one of the Chows, that had suffered in Egypt on account of a maid giving it too much rice, with its boned chicken; and how much better it had been in Rome under the treatment of Dr. Lascati,—made no special reference to the question of Minnie Birdle, only saying that “she was so sorry if Mrs. Bellingham was having trouble with these tiresome servants.”
The spring came, and the summer, and the two inhabitants of Room 476 eked out their miserable existence. One day Minnie would pull herself together and get a day’s charring and occasionally Mrs. Birdle would struggle along to a laundry in Maida Vale, where a benevolent proprietress would pay her one shilling and threepence to do a day’s ironing; for the old lady was rather neat with her hands. And once, when things were very desperate, the brother of a nephew from Walthamstow turned up. He was a small cabinet-maker by trade, and he agreed to allow them three shillings a week, “till things righted themselves a bit.” But nothing was seen of Meads, the groom. One night Minnie was rather worse and the idea occurred to her that she would like to send a message to him. It was right that he should know. He had made no attempt to see her since she had left Mrs. Melland’s service. She lay awake thinking of him and wondering how she could send a message, when she suddenly thought of “Old Fags.” He had been quiet of late; whether the demand for cigarette ends was abating and he could not afford the luxuries that their disposal seemed to supply, or whether he was keeping quiet for any ulterior reason, she was not able to determine. In the morning she sent her mother across to ask him if he would “oblige by calling at Hyde Park Square and asking Mr. Meads if he would oblige by calling at 476 Bolingbroke Buildings, to see Miss Birdle.”
There is no record of how “Old Fags” delivered this message, but it is known that same afternoon Mr. Meads did call. He left about three-thirty in a great state of perturbation, and in a very bad temper. He passed “Old Fags” on the stairs, and the only comment he made was: “I never have any luck! God help me!” And he did not return, although he had apparently promised to do so.
In a few weeks’ time the position of the occupants of Room 476 became desperate. It was, in fact, a desperate time all round. Work was scarce and money scarcer. Waves of ill-temper and depression swept Bolingbroke Buildings. Mrs. Read had gone—Heaven knows where. Even “Old Fags” seemed at the end of his tether. True, he still managed to secure his inevitable bottle, but the stews became scarcer and less potent. All Mrs. Birdle’s time and energy were taken up in nursing Minnie, and the two somehow existed on the money—now increased to four shillings a week—which the sympathetic cabinet-maker from Walthamstow allowed them. The question of rent was shelved. Four shillings a week for two people means ceaseless, gnawing hunger. The widow and her daughter lost pride and hope, and further messages to Mr. Meads failed to elicit any response. The widow became so desperate that she even asked “Old Fags” one night if he could spare a little stew for her daughter who was starving. The pungent odour of the hot food was too much for her.
“Old Fags” came to the door: “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said, “what trouble there is! Let’s see what we can do!” He messed about for some time and then took it across to them. It was a strange concoction. Meat that it would have been difficult to know what to ask for at a butcher’s, and many bones, but the onions seemed to pull it together. To any one starving it was good. After that it became a sort of established thing: whenever “Old Fags” had a stew, he sent some over to the widow and daughter. But apparently things were not going too well in the cigarette-end trade, for the stews became more and more intermittent, and sometimes were desperately “boney.”
And then one night a climax was reached. “Old Fags” was awakened in the night by fearful screams. There was a district nurse in the next room, and also a student from a great hospital. No one knows how it all affected “Old Fags.” He went out at a very unusual hour in the early morning, and seemed more garrulous and meandering in his speech. He stopped the widow in the passage and mumbled incomprehensible solicitude.
Minn
ie was very ill for three days, but she recovered, faced by the insoluble proposition of feeding three mouths, instead of two, and two of them requiring enormous quantities of milk. This terrible crisis brought out many good qualities in various people. The cabinet-maker sent ten shillings extra, and others came forward as though driven by some race instinct. “Old Fags” disappeared for ten days after that. It was owing to an unfortunate incident in Hyde Park, when he insisted on sleeping on a flower bed with a gin bottle under his left arm, and on account of the unreasonable attitude that he took up toward a policeman in the matter. When he returned things were assuming their normal course. Mrs. Birdle’s greeting was: “Ullo, old ’un, we’ve missed your stoos.”
“Old Fags” had undoubtedly secured a more stable position in the eyes of the Birdles, and one day he was even allowed to see the baby. He talked to it from the door.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said. “What a beautiful little baby! What a dear little baby! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” The baby shrieked with unrestrained terror at sight of him, but that night some more stew was sent in.
Then the autumn came on. People, whose romantic instincts had been touched at the arrival of the child, gradually lost interest and fell away. The cabinet-maker from Walthamstow wrote a long letter, saying that after next week the payment of the four shillings would have to stop, he hoped he had been of some help in their trouble, but that things were going on all right now; of course he had to think of his own family first, and so on.
The lawyers of the remote landlord, who was assiduously killing stags in Scotland, regretted that their client could not see his way to allow any further delay in the matter of the payment of rent due. The position of the Birdle family became once more desperate. Old Mrs. Birdle had become frailer, and though Minnie could now get about, she found work difficult to obtain, owing to people’s demand for a character reference from the last place. Their thoughts once more reverted to Meads, and Minnie lay in wait for him one morning as he was taking the dogs out. There was a very trying scene ending in a very vulgar quarrel, and Minnie came home and cried all the rest of the day and through half the night.
“Old Fags’” stews became scarcer and less palatable. He, too, seemed in dire straits.
We now come to an incident that, we are ashamed to say, owes its inception to the effect of alcohol. It was a wretched morning in late October, bleak and foggy. The blue-grey corridors of Bolingbroke Buildings seemed to exude damp. The strident voices of the unkempt children, quarrelling in the courtyard below, permeated the whole Buildings. The strange odour, that was its characteristic, lay upon it like the foul breath of some evil god. All its inhabitants seemed hungry, wretched and vile. Their lives of constant protest seemed, for the moment, lulled to a sullen indifference, whilst they huddled behind their gloomy doors and listened to the raucous railings of their offspring.
The widow Birdle and her daughter sat silently in their room. The child was asleep. It had had its milk, and it would have to have its milk, whatever happened. The crumbs from the bread the women had had at breakfast lay ungathered on the bare table. They were both hungry and very desperate. There was a knock at the door. Minnie went to it, and there stood “Old Fags.” He leered at them meekly and under his arm carried a gin bottle, three parts full.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said. “What a dreadful day! What a dreadful day! Will you have a little drop of gin to comfort you? Now! What do you say?”
Minnie looked at her mother—in other days the door would have been slammed in his face, but “Old Fags” had certainly been kind in the matter of stews. They asked him to sit down. Then old Mrs. Birdle did accept just a tiny drop of gin, and they both persuaded Minnie to have a little. Now neither of the women had had food of any worth for days, and the gin went straight to their heads. It was already in “Old Fags’” head, firmly established. The three immediately became garrulous. They all talked volubly and intimately. The women railed “Old Fags” about his dirt, but allowed that he had “a good ’eart.” They talked longingly and lovingly about “his stoos” and “Old Fags” said: “Well, my dears, you shall have the finest stoo you’ve ever had in your lives tonight.”
He repeated this nine times, only each time the whole sentence sounded like one word.
Then the conversation drifted to the child, and the hard lot of parents, and by a natural sequence to Meads, its father. Meads was discussed with considerable bitterness, and the constant reiteration of the threat by the women that they meant to ’ave the Lor on ’im all right, mingled with the jeering sophistries of “Old Fags” on the genalman’s behaviour, and the impossibility of expecting a dog groom to be a sportsman, lasted a considerable time. “Old Fags” talked expansively about leaving it to him, and somehow as he stood there with his large, puffy figure, looming up in the dimly lighted room, and waving his long arms, he appeared to the women a figure of portentous significance. In the eyes of the women he typified powers they had not dreamt of. Under the veneer of his hidebound depravity Minnie seemed to detect some slow moving force trying to assert itself.
He meandered on in a vague monologue, using terms and expressions they did not know the meaning of. He gave the impression of some fettered animal, launching a fierce indictment against the fact of its life. At last he took up the gin bottle and moved to the door and then leered round the room.
“You shall have the finest stoo you’ve ever had in your life tonight, my dears.”
He repeated this seven times again and then went heavily out.
That afternoon a very amazing fact was observed by several inhabitants of Bolingbroke Buildings. “Old Fags” washed his face! He went out about three o’clock without his sack. His face had certainly been cleaned up and his clothes seemed in some mysterious fashion to hold together. He went across Lisson Grove and made for Hyde Park Square. He hung about for nearly an hour at the corner, and then he saw a man come up the area steps of a house on the south side and walk rapidly away. “Old Fags” followed him. He took a turning sharp to the left through a Mews, and entered a narrow street at the end. There he entered a deserted-looking pub, kept by an ex-butler and his wife. He passed right through to a room at the back and called for some beer. Before it was brought, “Old Fags” was seated at the next table ordering gin.
“Dear, oh, dear! What a wretched day!” said “Old Fags.”
The groom grunted assent. But “Old Fags” was not one to be put off by mere indifference. He broke ground on one or two subjects that interested the groom, one subject in particular being Dog. He seemed to have a profound knowledge of Dog, and before Mr. Meads quite realised what was happening he was trying gin in his beer at “Old Fags’” expense.
The groom was feeling particularly morose that afternoon. His luck seemed out. Bookmakers had appropriated several half-crowns that he sorely begrudged, and he had other expenses. The beer-gin mixture comforted him, and the rambling eloquence of the old fool, who seemed disposed to be content paying for drinks and talking, fitted in with his mood. They drank and talked for a full hour, and at length got to a subject that all men get to sooner or later if they drink and talk long enough—the subject of Woman.
Mr. Meads became confiding and philosophic. He talked of women in general and what triumphs and adventures he had had among them in particular. But what a trial and tribulation they had been to him in spite of all! “Old Fags” winked knowingly and was splendidly comprehensive and tolerant of Meads’ peccadillos.
“It’s all a game,” said Meads. “You’ve got to manage ’em. There ain’t much I don’t know, old bird!” Then suddenly “Old Fags” leaned forward in the dark room and said: “No, Mr. Meads, but you ought to play the game, you know. Oh, dear, yes!”
“What do you mean, Mister Meads?” said that gentleman sharply.
“Minnie Birdle, eh, you haven’t mentioned Minnie Birdle yet!” said “Old Fags.”
“What the Devil are you talking about?” said Meads drunkenly.
“She’s
starving,” said “Old Fags,” “starving, wretched, alone with her old mother and your child. Oh, dear! Yes, it’s terrible!”
Meads’ eyes flashed with a sullen frenzy, but fear was gnawing at his heart, and he felt more disposed to placate this mysterious old man than to quarrel with him.
“I tell you I have no luck,” he said after a pause.
“Old Fags” looked at him gloomily and ordered some more gin. When it was brought he said, “You ought to play the game, you know, Mr. Meads. After all—luck? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Would you rather be the woman? Five shillings a week, you know, would—”
“No, I’m damned if I do!” cried Meads fiercely. “It’s all right for all these women—Gawd! How do I know if it’s true? Look here, old bird, do you know I’m already done in for two five bobs a week, eh! One up in Norfolk and the other at Enfield. Ten shillings a week of my—money goes to these blasted women. No fear, no more, I’m through with it!”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said “Old Fags,” and he moved a little further into the shadow of the room and watched the groom out of the depths of his sunken eyes.
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