Chapter II

The house to which John was carried was in the Brixton Road, near to the White House public-house. Fifty years ago it had been a rich merchant's home and was almost a country house, but now, like many similar houses, it had fallen to a dingy estate: it was, without embroidery of description, a lodging-house. Miss Squibb, who opened the door to him, had a look of settled depression on her face that was not, as he at first imagined, due to disapproval of him, but, as he speedily discovered, to a deeply-rooted conviction that the rest of humanity was engaged in a conspiracy to defraud her. She eyed the cabman with so much suspicion that he became uneasy in his mind and deposited the trunk and the bag in the hall in silence, nor did he make any comment on the amount of his fare.

Miss Squibb helped John to carry the luggage to his room. Her niece, Lizzie, who usually performed such work, was spending the week-end with another aunt in North London, so Miss Squibb said, and she was due to return before midnight, but Miss Squibb would expect her when she saw her. It would not surprise her to find that Lizzie did not return to her home until Monday evening. Nothing would surprise Miss Squibb. Miss Squibb had long since ceased to be surprised at anything. No one had had more cause to feel surprised than Miss Squibb had had in the course of her life, but now she never felt surprised at anything. She prophesied that a time would come when John would cease to feel surprise at things....

She stood in the centre of his bedroom in a bent attitude, with her hands folded across her flat chest, and regarded him with large, protruding eyes. "You're Irish, aren't you?" she said, accusingly.

"Yes, Miss Squibb," he said, using her name with difficulty, because it created in him a desire to laugh.

"Like Mr. 'Inde?"

"Inde!" he repeated blankly, and then comprehension came to him. "Oh, Mr. Hinde! Yes! Oh, yes, yes!"

"I thought so," she continued. "You have the syme sort of talk. Funny talk, I calls it. Wot time du want your breakfis?"

"Eight o'clock," he said.

"I s'pose you'll do syme as Mr. 'Inde ... leave it to me to get the things for you, an' charge it up?"

"Oh, yes," John replied. "I'll do just what Mr. Hinde does!"

He looked around the dingy room, and as he did so, he felt depression coming over him; but Miss Squibb misjudged his appraising glance.

"It's a nice room," she said, as if she were confirming his judgment on it.

"Yes," he said dubiously, glancing at the bed and the table and the ricketty washstand. There were pictures and framed mottoes on the walls. Over his bed was a large motto-card, framed in stained deal, bearing the word: ETERNITY; and on the opposite wall, placed so that he should see it immediately he awoke, was a coloured picture of Daniel in the Lions' Den, in which the lions seemed to be more dejected than Daniel.

"A gentleman wot used to be a lodger 'ere done that," said Miss Squibb when she saw that he was looking at the picture. "'E couldn't py 'is rent an' 'e offered to pynt the bath-room, but we 'aven't got a bath-room so 'e pynted that instead. It used to be a plyne picture 'til 'e pynted it. 'E sort of livened it up a bit. Very nice gentleman 'e was, only 'e did get so 'orribly drunk. Of course, 'e was artistic!"

The drawing was out of perspective, and John remarked upon the fact, but Miss Squibb, fixing him with her protruding eyes, said that she could not see that there was anything wrong with the picture. It was true, as she admitted, that if you were to look closely at the lion on the extreme right of the picture, you would find he had two tails, or rather, one tail and the remnant of another which the artist had not completely obliterated. But that was a trifle.

"Pictures ain't meant to be looked at close," said Miss Squibb, "an' any'ow you can't expect to 'ave everythink in this world. Some people's never satisfied without they're finding fault in things!"

John, feeling that her final sentence was a direct rebuke to himself, hurriedly looked away from the picture.

"There's a good view from the window," he said to console her for his depreciation of the picture.

"That's wot I often says myself," she replied. "People says it's 'igh up 'ere an' a long way to climb, but wot I says is, it's 'ealthy when you get 'ere, _and_ you 'ave a view. I'll leave you now," she concluded. "When you've 'ad a wash, your supper'll be waitin' for you. in Mr. 'Inde's sitting-room. I expect you'll be glad to 'ave it!"

"I shall," he replied. "I'm hungry!"

"Yes, I expect so," she said, closing the door.

He sat down on the bed and again looked about the room, and the dreariness of it filled him with nostalgia. He had not yet unpacked his trunk or his bag, and he felt that he must immediately carry them down the stairs again, that he must call for a cabman and have his luggage and himself carried back to Euston Station so that he might return to his home. The clean air of Ballyards and the bright sunlit bedroom over the shop seemed incomparably lovely when he looked about the dingy Brixton bedroom. If this was the beginning of adventure!... He gazed at the picture of Daniel in the Lions' Den, and wished that a lion would eat Daniel or that Daniel would eat a lion!...

Then he went to the washstand and washed his face and hands, and when he had done so, he went downstairs and ate his supper.