<h2><SPAN name="page189"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XXII.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Henry Butson</span> had fallen on good
fortune. No more would he endure the humiliation of begging
a job of an unsympathetic gaffer. In future his life would
be one of ease, free from ignoble exertion and unshamed by
dungaree overalls. And he made it so. For a little
while, his wife seemed to indulge in an absurd expectation that
he would resume his search for occupation of one sort or
another. Once she even hinted it, but he soon demolished
that fancy, and in terms that prevented any more hints. He
had little patience with such foolishness, indeed. The
matter was simple enough. Why did a man work? Merely
to get shelter and food and clothes and comfort, and hair-oil,
whatever he wanted to drink and smoke, and his necessary
pocket-money. A man who could get these things without
working would be a fool to work; more, he would behave inhumanly
to his fellow man by excluding him from a job. As for
himself, he got what he needed easily enough, without the trouble
of even taking down the shop-shutters: a vulgar act repellent to
his nature.</p>
<p>So he rose at ten, or eleven, or twelve, as the case might be,
and donned fine raiment; the most fashionable <SPAN name="page190"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>suit
procurable from the most fashionable shop in Aldgate. He
began at Aldgate; but in time he grew more fastidious, and went
to a tailor in Leadenhall Street, a tailor whose daily task was
to satisfy the tastes of the most particular among the
ship-brokers’ clerks of St. Mary Axe. His toilet
complete, his curls well oiled, Mr. Butson descended to a
breakfast of solitary state—Nan’s had been hurried
over hours ago. The rest of the day was given as occasion
prompted. When the weather was fine, nothing pleased him
better, nor more excellently agreed with his genteel
propensities, than to go for a stroll up West. When Harbour
Lane was quiet and empty (he seemed to choose such times for
going out) he would slip round to the station, and by train and
omnibus gain the happy region. He was careful to take with
him enough money to secure some share of the polite
gratifications proper to the quarter, and minutely acquainted
himself with the manners and customs of all the bars in the
Strand and about Piccadilly Circus. And although he was a
little astonished when first he was charged eighteenpence for an
American drink, he was careful not to show it, and afterwards
secretly congratulated himself on the refined instinct that had
pitched on so princely a beverage in the dark, so to speak.
He took air, too, in Hyde Park, to the great honour of his
whiskers, and much improved his manner of leaning on a rail and
of sitting in a green chair. In the evening <SPAN name="page191"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>he tried,
perhaps, a music hall, but always some of the bars, and arrived
home at night rather late, sometimes a trifle unsteady, and
usually in a bad temper. Bad temper was natural, indeed, in
the circumstances; after so many hours’ indulgence in the
delights of fashionable society it revolted his elegant nature to
have to return at last to a vulgar little chandler’s-shop
in a riverside street, where a wife in a print bodice and a white
apron was sitting up for him; sometimes even crying—for
nothing at all—as if the circumstances were not depressing
enough for him already.</p>
<p>These little excursions cost money, of course, but then what
was the good of keeping an ignoble little shop if you
couldn’t get money out of it? And the shop did very
well. Mrs. Butson and the girl—the cripple—were
boiling bacon (the smell was disgusting) all day long, and they
sold it as fast as it was cold. And other things sold
excellently too. From the time when she took the shutters
down in the morning to the time when the lad Johnny put them up
at night, Mrs. Butson was unceasingly at work
serving—unless she were boiling—and scarce had five
minutes for her meals; and often the girl had to leave the bacon
and help in the shop too. Very well—all that meant
profit. The woman couldn’t make him believe that it
didn’t, merely because the wretched details of trade failed
to interest him. That was the way of people in that class
of life—there was a <SPAN name="page192"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>touch of the miser about all of
them. No matter how the money came in, they persisted in
their narrow views as to spending it. And there was other
income, in addition. The lad Johnny—he was almost a
man to look at—brought his mother eight shillings a week at
the time of the wedding, and then ten shillings, and then twelve;
more, it would increase two shillings a year; but in truth his
mother was unduly extravagant in buying him clothes. Still
at anyrate there was something, and there might be more if only
Mrs. Butson would turn the girl out to earn a little, instead of
letting her waste her time reading, and confirming her in habits
of idleness. And there was the rent from the cottage.
This came every week by postal order from Bob Smallpiece, and
since it was fitting that a husband should open letters sent his
wife by a single man, Mr. Butson cashed the orders without
troubling her in the matter at all.</p>
<p>So that indeed he was not at all wasteful, considering both
his income and the society he moved in—for he was not slow
in making acquaintances among the affable gentility of the
bars. In fact he would have done it cheaper still but for
the pestilent uncertainty of Spring Handicaps. It would
seem impossible for him to put half a sovereign on any horse
without dooming it to something very near the last place.
The distinguished society of the bars was profoundly astonished,
indeed distressed, at his ill-luck; but gave him more excellent
<SPAN name="page193"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
193</span>information for future events; information, however,
that brought even worse luck with it.</p>
<p>His wife showed no sympathy for his troubles—and of
course there are vexations and disappointments (such as those of
the Spring Handicaps) which are inseparable from fashionable
life—but rather aggravated them with hole-and-corner
snivelling, and ridiculous attempts at persuading him to a mean
and inglorious way of life. She even hinted vulgar
suspicion of his west-end friends, and suggested that he should
associate with a long fool called Hicks, living next door—a
common working man. For a long time—many months in
fact—he bore it with what patience he might, retaliating
only in such terms as seemed necessary to close her mouth, and to
convince her of his contempt for her low habit of mind, and
indeed, for herself; and when at last it grew plain that personal
punching was what was needed, he was so considerate as not to
punch her about the face, where marks would advertise the state
of his domestic affairs; careful, also, to operate not other than
quietly, when they were alone, on the same grounds of
decency. And he knew that she would tell nobody, for at
least she had self-respect enough for that.</p>
<p>Of these things Johnny knew nothing, and Bessy only a
little. Both were glad that their stepfather was so much
from home, and though Johnny’s sentiment <SPAN name="page194"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>toward him
was a mere sullen contempt, the lad made no parade of the
fact,—rather aimed indeed at keeping things quiet for his
mother’s sake. But Bessy fretted in secret.</p>
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