I don’t say this in a hard-hearted way; but I am sure everybody who knows anything about our business will understand what I mean. The other people staying in the house don’t like it, and they generally leave, and, if it gets about, people avoid the hotel for a time, for fear they should be put in the same room directly after. I dare say they are in big hotels, because I know that when anybody dies in them they are fetched away at once, and nothing is said about it. Harry told me about an hotel a friend of his was manager of in the City, where the undertaker in the same street kept a special room for hotel customers. I said, “Oh, Harry, don’t talk like that!” And Harry said, “It’s quite true, and the undertaker’s man calls round the last thing of a night and asks if there are any orders.”
I knew that couldn’t be true, so I told Harry it was very dreadful of him to make light of such awful things. It always seems strange to me, but how many people there are who will make jokes about death and tell comic stories about it! I think there is some reason for it in human nature, but I am not clever enough to say what it is. I always notice, in our parlour, if one of the customers tells a very awful story, and the conversation gets on things to freeze your blood, there’s always somebody ready with another, and they go on until, when it’s closing time, I’m sure that some of them are half afraid to go home in the dark.
Writing about people dying in hotels reminds me of what I heard one of my masters tell one of my missuses, while I was in service. He had been down to Brighton, staying at an hotel, and one Sunday afternoon, in the smoking-room, he met a nice, middle-aged gentleman, and they got into conversation. The middle-aged gentleman told my master that he had been very ill, and had been travelling about for six months in search of health, but that he was quite well now, and that the day after to-morrow he was going to his house in the country. He seemed so pleased, for he said he had not seen his wife and children for six months, and they would be so delighted to see him well and strong again.
That evening, my master and the gentleman dined together in the coffee-room, and over their dinner it was arranged that they would go for a long walk together in the morning to the Devil’s Dyke. They would have breakfast early and start directly after, so as to take their time for the excursion.
The next morning my master was down early to his breakfast; but the other gentleman hadn’t come down at nine o’clock, so my master asked the number of his room, and thought he would go and hurry him up.
He went upstairs, and knocked at the bedroom door, but got no answer. Then he knocked louder, and said, “What about our walk to the Dyke? It’s nine o’clock now.”
Still no answer.
“He must be very fast asleep,” said master to himself; and then he banged quite hard.
Still no answer.
It was so strange, that my master got frightened, and called the waiter up; and when they had both banged and could hear nothing, they sent for the landlord, and he ordered the door to be burst open.