Well, in the meantime, William Penarden did not care much in what room he failed to get to sleep, and he accepted the bedroom that was offered. He even managed to sleep in it, until in the early hours he was aroused by the waiter (in dress trousers and the jacket of his pyjamas), who told him that the building opposite was well alight, and that they hoped that the annexe would not catch, the wind being favourable to them, but that Mr Penarden had better get down at once and bring his travelling bag with him.
"Right," said Penarden, and sent the waiter to wake up the others. Then he dressed quickly, and looked out of his window down to the alley beneath. The fire brigade had not yet arrived. Two policemen were doing their best to keep the narrow alley clear. An ugly old woman, in violent hysterics, was screaming, "They're up there!" and a man was trying to quiet her. Then Penarden gave a great sigh of relief, for here was the chance of expiation. He took the longest of the planks that the painters had left and ran it through his own window so that it dropped on a window-ledge of the burning house opposite. As a rule, he had no head at all for heights, but now he felt perfectly unperturbed. He did not attempt to walk along the plank, for he was not giving a circus exhibition, but he began to work himself along it slowly in a sitting position, taking great care not to jolt the end of it off the window-ledge opposite. An authoritative voice below shouted to him to go back. He went on. He reached the window opposite and flung it open. A volley of black and stifling smoke poured forth and he nearly fell. Then he climbed into the room, and the last that was seen of him was that he stood at the window, taking off his coat to put it over his head before he could go further. He was not seen again alive.
And, as his mother, Lady Quyne, observed, it was all so absolutely futile. The people in the house had already got out, and he had let himself be guided by the hysterical raving of some chance woman in the crowd. So he annoyed her almost as much in death as he had done in life. But it is possible that his death, horrible though it was, was for him of an extreme happiness.
THE PATHOS OF THE COMMONPLACE
He was a middle-aged man when he first came to the town. He had taken an appointment as clerk to a firm of solicitors, and he was happy in that appointment, regarding it as a step upwards. He was small in stature and wild in manner. His eyes had a hesitating look in them, and he pressed his thin lips tightly together, as though to counterbalance his look of hesitation and make himself appear rather firm. He found himself furnished apartments in a house that was one of a row on the very outskirts of the great town. They were two rooms at the top of the house, small and shabbily furnished, looking out on a piece of waste land at the back. On this piece of waste land there was one large tree growing. At the time when he first took the rooms he was talkative and told the landlady all about himself.
"My name is Peters. You see, I've just got a step upwards rather, by being appointed clerk to Grantham & Flynders. Formerly, I used to keep the books for Flynders's cousin, who's a grocer in a small way at Melstowe—oh, quite a comparatively small way."
"Really now," said Mrs Marks, a good woman, but not always logical; "and then for this Flynders to give himself those airs—and his cousin no more than that! Ah! I've many a time said that half the world doesn't know who the other half's relations are!"
"So it is!" replied Peters. "I may say—I think I may say—that I've done a good deal for Flynders's cousin. He's taken my advice more than once, notably in an extension of the counter-trade in effervescents during the hot weather, and he's found it pay him. Well, he knew that I could do a good deal better than I was doing. I'd taught myself things, you see. There was shorthand now. At Melstowe my shorthand was, if it's not to use too strong a term, going to rot, simply going to rot—in a grocery and general, there's no use for it. I pointed that all out to Flynders's cousin, and he—being good-natured and seeing what I was—got me this berth with this Flynders himself. So I left Melstowe, and I left Flynders's cousin—left him, thanks to me, doing to my certain knowledge some gross more in the lemonade than he had ever done in the past." Peters paused, and looked proud of himself. "Mind," he went on, rather weakly, "I'm telling you all this not from any—any desire to tell anyone anything, but because I may be giving up these rooms in two or three years, or even less. You see, I've taken one of those steps upwards that may lead to anything. In a post like mine you just work yourself up and work yourself up. Starting with what I may call family influence, and having rather a strong natural turn, I may be made managing clerk in no time; then, perhaps, Flynders dies, and I'm took in. 'Grantham & Peters' wouldn't sound bad. Only then, of course, I shouldn't keep these rooms—I should be taking a house of my own."