“You seem to be pretty miserable. What's wrong?”
He turned bleared, yet honest-looking eyes upon me.
“The whole blasted show!” said he. “There's nothing right in it, s'welp me Gawd.”
I gave a modified assent to the proposition and drew my coat-collar over my eyes. “Being wet through doesn't make it any better,” said I.
“Who would ha' thought it would come down as it has to-day? Tell me that. It's enough to make a man cut his throat!”
I was somewhat surprised. “You're not in such a great distress just because it has been a rainy day!”
“Ain't I just!” he exclaimed. “It's been and gone and ruined me, this day has. Look 'ere, guv'nor, I'll tell you all about it. I've been out of work, see? I was in 'orspital for three months and I couldn't get nothing regular to do when I come out. I'm a packer by trade. I did odd jobs, see, and the wife she earned a little, too, and we managed to keep things going and to scrape together five shillings, that's three months' savings, against Whitsun Bank Holiday. And as the weather was so fine, I laid it all out in paper windmills to sell to the kids on 'Amstead 'Eath. And I started out this morning with the basket full of them all so fine and pretty, and no sooner do I get on the 'Eath than the rain comes down and wipes out the whole blooming lot, before I could sell one. Look 'ere!”
He drew a bedraggled sheet of newspaper from the clothes-basket and displayed a piteous sodden welter of sticks and gaudy pulp. At the sight of it he broke down again and sobbed like a child.
“And there's not a bite in the 'ouse, nor not likely to be for days; and I daren't go home and face the missus and the kids—and I wish I was dead.”
I had already seen many pitiful tragedies during my brief experience with Campion; but the peculiar pitifulness of this one wrung my heart. It taught me as nothing had done before how desperately humble are the aspirations of the poor. I thought of the cosy comfort that awaited me in my own home; the despair that awaited him in his.