Michael looked at it all, as if he had never seen it before. In an angle of the room was the straw paillasse still empty which awaited him, and around which the dying instincts of gentle birth had caused him to erect a kind of unseen barrier between that corner and the rest of the room. Here the floor was clean, the straw was fresh; above the paillasse the wall had been carefully wiped clean and rubbed over with lime, and on an overturned wooden case beside the miserable bed there were one or two books, and a small metal crucifix which profane fingers had apparently never dared to touch.
But these very trifling attempts at cleanliness were the only luxury which had come within Michael's reach, ever since he came home from that last campaign in Brandenburg and sent his last crown to his mother in Kent. And remember that such garrets, such degrading propinquity, such misery and such dirt represented the only kind of life which London offered in those days to the poor, to the outcast and the homeless. There was nothing else except the gutter itself.
Michael stood in the centre of this garret and looked upon the picture—his life! His life such as it had been for the past eighteen months, such as it would continue to be until he became too old and too feeble to drag himself up from that straw paillasse in the corner. Then he would lie there sick and starving until he was taken away feet foremost down the rickety stairway to the paupers' graveyard out beyond St. Paul's.
With arms akimbo, hands resting on his hips and feet firmly planted on the dust-covered floor, Michael looked and laughed; not bitterly or mirthlessly. Bitterness had gone—strangely enough—at sight of the picture. He laughed, mocking himself for the few scruples which had assailed him awhile ago, for having conjured up—yes! conjured up himself—those phantoms of honour which accused him of selling his self-respect.
Was this self-respect, this den of rogues, this herd of miserable ne'er-do-wells, these filthy walls, this life of misery, of wretchedness, of shifts—growing day by day more unavowable for obtaining bread for the morrow? Was this manhood to stand against such odds? Was this honour to endure such a life?
Bah! if it was, then far better sell it for the price of oak boards sufficient to make two coffins: one for the man, the other for the old woman living the same life and enduring the same misery.
Michael turned back to the window and with a brusque, impatient gesture tore open the second casement. A gust of wind found its way into the musty corners of the garret and scattered the vitiated air, the while the moon emerging triumphantly from her long imprisonment behind the clouds searched with bluish and ghostly rays the grey walls opposite, the drunken sleepers on the floor, the vermin scuttling between those litters of straw more fit for cattle than for human beings.
The blustering wind, as it tore at the rickety casements roused some of the sleepers from their dreams. Volleys of oaths were flung at Michael, but he heard nothing now. He leaned out of the narrow window—as far out as he could—and looked on the forest of chimney stacks, the irregular roofs and tall spires of this great and heartless city.
How peacefully she lay beneath the cool kiss of the moon! Invisible arms seemed to be stretched out toward the lonely watcher bidding him to come and conquer.
There was no longer any compunction in Michael's heart, and certainly no shame.