第36章 Mr. Smellingscheck(1)

I met him in a sixpenny restaurant -- "All meals, 6d. -- Good beds, 1s."

That was before sixpenny restaurants rose to a third-class position, and became possibly respectable places to live in, through the establishment, beneath them, of fourpenny hash-houses (good beds, 6d.), and, beneath THEM again, of THREE-penny "dining-rooms -- CLEAN beds, 4d."

There were five beds in our apartment, the head of one against the foot of the next, and so on round the room, with a space where the door and washstand were. I chose the bed the head of which was near the foot of his, because he looked like a man who took his bath regularly. I should like, in the interests of sentiment, to describe the place as a miserable, filthy, evil-smelling garret; but I can't -- because it wasn't. The room was large and airy; the floor was scrubbed and the windows cleaned at least once a week, and the beds kept fresh and neat, which is more -- a good deal more -- than can be said of many genteel private boarding-houses. The lodgers were mostly respectable unemployed, and one or two -- fortunate men! -- in work; it was the casual boozer, the professional loafer, and the occasional spieler -- the one-shilling-bed-men -- who made the place objectionable, not the hard-working people who paid ten pounds a week for the house; and, but for the one-night lodgers and the big gilt black-and-red bordered and "shaded" "6d." in the window -- which made me glance guiltily up and down the street, like a burglar about to do a job, before I went in -- I was pretty comfortable there.

They called him "Mr. Smellingscheck", and treated him with a peculiar kind of deference, the reason for which they themselves were doubtless unable to explain or even understand.

The haggard woman who made the beds called him "Mr. Smell-'is-check".

Poor fellow! I didn't think, by the look of him, that he'd smelt his cheque, or anyone else's, or that anyone else had smelt his, for many a long day.

He was a fat man, slow and placid. He looked like a typical monopolist who had unaccountably got into a suit of clothes belonging to a Domain unemployed, and hadn't noticed, or had entirely forgotten, the circumstance in his business cares -- if such a word as care could be connected with such a calm, self-contained nature.

He wore a suit of cheap slops of some kind of shoddy "tweed".

The coat was too small and the trousers too short, and they were drawn up to meet the waistcoat -- which they did with painful difficulty, now and then showing, by way of protest, two pairs of brass buttons and the ends of the brace-straps; and they seemed to blame the irresponsive waistcoat or the wearer for it all. Yet he never gave way to assist them. A pair of burst elastic-sides were in full evidence, and a rim of cloudy sock, with a hole in it, showed at every step.

But he put on his clothes and wore them like -- like a gentleman.

He had two white shirts, and they were both dirty. He'd lay them out on the bed, turn them over, regard them thoughtfully, choose that which appeared to his calm understanding to be the cleaner, and put it on, and wear it until it was unmistakably dirtier than the other; then he'd wear the other till it was dirtier than the first.

He managed his three collars the same way. His handkerchiefs were washed in the bathroom, and dried, without the slightest disguise, in the bedroom.