Page 191 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

world; not like these—s here, who couldn’t come down if
they tried. We chaps who have come down ought to hang
together a bit. Youth will be still in our faces—you know.
May I offer you a drink?’
He produced a bottle of cherry brandy, and at the same
moment lost his balance and fell heavily across my legs.
Paddy, who was undressing, pulled him upright.
‘Get back to yer bed, you silly ole—!’
The old Etonian walked unsteadily to his bed and crawled
under the sheets with all his clothes on, even his boots. Sev-
eral times in the night I heard him murmuring, ‘M—, you
are past redemption,’ as though the phrase appealed to him.
In the morning he was lying asleep fully dressed, with the
bottle clasped in his arms. He was a man of about fifty, with
a refined, worn face, and, curiously enough, quite fashion-
ably dressed. It was queer to see his good patent-leather
shoes sticking out of that filthy bed. It occurred to me, too,
that the cherry brandy must have cost the equivalent of a
fortnight’s lodging, so he could not have been seriously
hard up. Perhaps he frequented common lodging-houses in
search of the ‘nancy boys’.
The beds were not more than two feet apart. About mid-
night I woke up to find that the man next to me was trying
to steal the money from beneath my pillow. He was pretend-
ing to be asleep while he did it, sliding his hand under the
pillow as gently as a rat. In the morning I saw that he was a
hunchback, with long, apelike arms. I told Paddy about the
attempted theft. He laughed and said:
‘Christ! You got to get used to dat. Desc lodgin’ houses

1 0 Down and Out in Paris and London