Try and pity him, for the temptation was over-great; pity him because Fate had struck him one blow after another, each more and more difficult to bear since his soul, his mind, his entire self had scarcely time to recover from one before the next came crashing down, leaving him with one hope the less, one more ideal shattered, one more misery to bear.
One hundred and twenty thousand pounds!—Michael kept repeating the half dozen wonderful words to himself over and over again as he walked.
Thus tottering, buffeted by the wind, drunk with the magic of the thought which the words evoked, he reached his lodgings at last.
He rapped loudly at a low door with his knuckles, but had to wait some time before it was opened. A gnome-like figure wrapped in a tattered dressing gown and wearing a cotton night-cap appeared in the doorway. It was difficult to distinguish if the figure was that of man or woman. In brown and wrinkled hands it held a guttering tallow dip which threw a trembling light on the dank walls of the narrow passage and feebly illumined the approach to the rickety stairs beyond.
Michael paid no heed to the muttered grumblings of the creature, but walked straight past it along the passage, and then up the creaky stairs which led to the garret above. As he reached the several landings he nearly fell over various prostrate bundles made up of human rags from out of which issued sleepy oaths, as Michael's foot stumbled against them.
His own garret was not much better than those open landings across which he had tottered and fumbled in the dark. Here the roof sloped down to the tiny dormer window, innocent of curtains, and made up of some half dozen tiny panes, mostly cracked and covered with thick coatings of grime.
Along the low wall opposite the window a row of ragged bundles—human only in shape—and similar to those which encumbered the landings, told their tale of misery and of degradation. There were some half dozen of these bundles lying all of a row against the wall. They were Michael's room companions, the wreckages of man and womankind, with whom he had lived now for close on eighteen months.
Snores and drunken oaths, blasphemy too and noisome words spoken in sleep came from these bundles, greeting Michael's somewhat stormy entrance into this den.
He shut the rickety door behind him, and made his way to the little window, through which the light of some street lanthorn opposite came shyly peeping through.
Michael threw the casement open, allowing that feeble light to enter more fully, then he turned and surveyed his surroundings,—those bundles along the floor, the wooden boards across which a crowd of vermin were scrampering out of sight, the two chairs, innocent of seats, the wooden packing case in lieu of table, the walls dank and grey, covered with obscene writing scribbled with shaky fingers dipped in grime!