Stanch Mrs. Morey! She was a little roly-poly kind of woman, with eyes like ripe sloes, and she worked for Jimmy for six months without ever receiving a penny.
“My ’usband ’ud kill me if ’e knowed,” she said, smiling plaintively as she scrubbed the boards. “’E’s bin out o’ work for nearly a year. It’s hard work for me to fill the kids’ mouths and keep ’im in grub and pocket money. But ’e’s a good ’usband when ’e aint drunk. I wish ’e ’ad more luck, that’s all.”
“What is his trade?” asked Jimmy languidly—he was always languid until the gas lamps were lighted.
The little woman tossed her head.
“My ’usband aint that sort, jest able to do one kind o’ work. ’E can turn ’is ’and to anythin’. But I wish ’e wasn’t quite so partikler.”
She came to me privately when Jimmy’s health began to break. She said that he didn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive, that it worried her awful, that she feared he was going off in a galloping decline.
“It’s jest the way my niece’s ’usband was took,” she concluded. “’E used to drive a vegetable cart, and ’e’s layin’ in the Brompton Simmetery. As nice a young man as ever you see, and played the flute bootiful. ’E was took bad in May and dead in December. He was indeed, and ’er with six little children—all babies, as you might say, and another on the road—if you’ll excuse my free way of speakin’. My niece she’s got the flute under a glass case in the parlor window, for the mountings is silver.”
But Jimmy was too far gone for my care, or anyone else’s. No doubt he had been consumptive for years, and a constitution kept up principally on “nipping” never thrives. There was a doctor living in the Inn at the time—a very good fellow. He visited him and gave him medicine—don’t believe Jimmy ever took it. His cough got gradually worse and his face fell in more than ever. But he was always full of jokes, rather grim jokes sometimes. I’ve seen girls shiver and scream with laughter at the same time. He went to a music hall every night, spending most of his time at the bar. He called the artistes by their Christian names—Queenie this, or Dan the other. The Queenies gave him their full confidence. Big, flashy girls, these music-hall girls, with free, not over-clean tongues and very good hearts. They would frighten you, but they don’t mean any harm. Jimmy used to write songs for them—which they very seldom bought. He did both words and music. His airs were most melodious and “catchy,” but his words were never quite vulgar enough. None of his songs “caught on.”
I never knew a man with such a marvelous ear. If he went to a comic opera he would come straight home and play all the lyrics without a false note. He played Chopin by ear; he used to sit for hours extemporizing the most weird, fascinating, tantalizing music. He ought to have made his fortune. Instead of that, he went into consumption and died—for want of proper food.
Now and again someone sent him a postal order. He never said who. He was a bit of a mystery. They were only small orders—under a pound, as if they had been scraped by some woman out of the housekeeping money, or her dress allowance. But I never knew. The last one he had was for fifteen shillings. He was on his last legs. The steward of the Inn, who was most forbearing—because it was Jimmy—had sent a deprecating note in to say that he must distrain if something, ever so little, was not paid on account of the year’s rent. Mrs. Morey had left him at last. Even his top hat was rough. Yet what do you think he did? Went out and bought a bath sponge for fifteen and six, promising to leave the sixpence next time he was passing.