if there is one thing that is unpleasant in a small hotel, it is to have anybody very ill in it. i dare say it is unpleasant in a big hotel; but there it isn’t noticed so much, as, of course, nothing is noticed much in a large place, which makes up hundreds of beds every night.
a gentleman, who used to stay with us now and then—an artist, who had been all over the world nearly, and every year went away abroad—was very fond of gossiping with us of an evening, and he told me a lot about these big hotels, which was very interesting, and especially so to harry and myself, we being in the hotel business, though, of course, only in a small way, compared with the huge concerns that call themselves grand hotel something or other, and are small towns.
mr. stuart—that was the artist’s name who stayed with us—said that he hated these huge hotels, because you were only a number; that you ceased to be a human being, and became no. 367 or no. 56 or no. 111, as the case might be, and if you were ill, or if you died, it was all the same to the management. he said he always had visions of lying ill in one of these places, and hearing somebody call down the speaking-tube outside in the corridor, “doctor wanted, no. 360,” and perhaps after that, “coffin wanted, no. 360.” and if ever he felt the least bit ill he always got out of a big hotel as quickly as possible, and went to a small one, so as to leave off being a number, and become a human being again.
he said it was bad enough in the big hotels in our{169} country, but abroad it was something awful to be ill in them. he had a friend of his taken very ill in italy, in a grand hotel, and he used to go and sit with him and try to cheer him up, and he said directly he began to be ill and it was thought he was going to die, the hotel tariff went up about two hundred per cent. for everything. the poor gentleman died in the hotel, and the friends had to be telegraphed for to come and settle up, and a nice settle up it was. not only was the bill something terrible—such a thing as a cup of beef-tea being about five shillings, and double and treble charged for every little thing in the way of refreshment for the invalid, brought up into the room—but, after the poor gentleman was dead, the manager of the hotel sent the friends in a bill, charging them for the bed, the bed-linen, the curtains, the carpets, and the furniture, and even the wall-paper.
when mr. stuart told me that, i said, “good gracious! whatever for?” and then he explained to me that it is the custom in some of the countries in the south of europe to be awfully afraid of death—especially in naples, where the poor gentleman died—and everybody shrinks away from death; the friends leaving the poor invalid to die alone, with only a priest in the room, even though the dying person has all his senses about him; and after there has been death in a room no one will touch anything that has been in it, and so everything is given away or sold cheap to the poor, and everything is had in new, even the walls being stripped and all new paper put on them.
you may be sure in a grand hotel in these places the refurnishing is made as expensive as possible, because it is all put down in the corpse’s friends’ bill.
mr. stuart—or, as we got to call him, after he’d stayed at the ‘stretford arms’ hotel several times, “the traveller”—when he found that harry and i were interested in these things about hotels abroad, and the ways of the people, told us a lot of things, and i put them down in my book, thinking perhaps they would be useful to me some day.
what brought it up about people dying in hotels, was our having a young lady very, very ill indeed, in our house at the time, and we were really afraid that she was going{170} to die, for the doctor shook his head over her; and it was talking about the case, and the worry it was to us having it in the hotel, that led mr. stuart to tell us what he did.
fancy everybody going away and leaving their own relations directly the doctor says that their last moments are coming! it must be awful to the dying people to look round and find all the faces that they love gone from the bedside. mr. stuart told us that this custom is so well known among the naples people, that one day a little girl, who was dying of consumption and had come to her last hour, opened her eyes and saw her father, who was her only relation, stealing out of the room. she looked at him a moment, and then, in a feeble voice and with tears in her eyes, she whispered, “ah, papa, i see it is all over with me now, for you are going away.”
that made her father feel so sorry that he came back, and sat down, and held his little girl’s hand till she died. but everybody in naples, when they heard of it, said, “how awful! and how could he do such a thing?” and for a long time afterwards people seemed to shrink from him.
i shouldn’t like to live in a country like that, especially as you are put under ground in twenty-four hours, and the men who put you in your coffin, and go to your funeral, are covered with a long white sack from head to foot, with two holes cut in it for their eyes. so mr. stuart said, and he showed us some photographs of them, and made me feel ill for a week.
i said to harry, when mr. stuart had gone to his room and left us thinking over what he had told us, that i hoped the young lady wasn’t going to die in our hotel. to have anybody die in the place—especially a small place like ours—is most unfortunate, and makes everybody uncomfortable, besides interfering with business.
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{171} 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{172} 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.
the gentleman was there. he was sitting fully dressed at the table in the room. in front of him was a letter which he had been writing; but his head was down on the table, as if he had fallen asleep writing it.
the landlord went up to him and touched him on the shoulder. then he started back, with an exclamation of horror.
the poor gentleman was dead.
he had evidently died as he was writing the letter; but he looked for all the world as if he was sleeping peacefully.
my master saw the letter, and read it.
it was this:—
“my dear mary,
this will, i think, reach you only just before i arrive. i am counting the hours, my darling, till i see you and the children again. you will be so pleased to see how well and strong i look. oh, how i long to be home once more! it is the longest parting we have had, dear, since god gave you to me for my wife; but it will soon be over now. i shall post this letter to-morrow early. i find that the train i shall come by arrives at 4.30 in the afternoon. so at five, my darling, all being well, you may expect to see me. i should like——”
and there the letter ended. the last three words were written differently to the others. there must have been{173} a sudden trembling of the hand, a mist before the eyes, perhaps, and then the pen dropped where it was found—on the floor. and the poor gentleman fell forward and died—died just as he was thinking of the happy meeting with his wife and little ones, and bidding them be ready to welcome him.
of course, the doctor was sent for, and there had to be an inquest. the doctor said that it was heart disease, and that the gentleman had died in a moment.
it was very awful, and most painful to my master and the landlord, or, rather, the landlord’s brother, who managed the hotel.
of course the poor wife had to be told what had happened. at first they were going to send her a telegram to the address they found on a letter in the gentleman’s pocket, but they decided it would be such a terrible shock, and so the landlord’s brother, “mr. arthur,” as he was called, and quite a character, so master said, decided that he would go himself and break the terrible news to the poor lady as gently as possible.
he couldn’t go till the next day. and so it happened that he arrived by the very train that the poor gentleman was to have gone by himself. he took a fly from the station to the house—a lovely little villa, standing in its own grounds—and when he drove up, two sweet little girls came rushing down the garden-path, crying out, “papa, dear papa! mamma, mamma, papa’s come home—papa’s come home!”
and then their mamma, her face flushed with joy, came quickly out, and ran down after the children to the gate to welcome her husband.
poor mr. arthur! master said that when he told him about it his eyes filled with tears, and he could hardly speak.
he said it was a minute before he could open his lips; but the poor lady had read bad news in his face, and she gasped out,
“my husband! he is ill! he is worse! oh, tell me; tell me. for god’s sake, tell me!”
and the little girls looked up with terrified faces, and ran to their mamma, and clung to her.{174}
and then mr. arthur begged the lady to come into the house; and then, as gently as he could, he told her the terrible news.
wasn’t it dreadful?
oh, dear me! if anything of that sort had happened in our house it would almost have broken my heart.
harry would have had to go; and all the time he was away i should have been picturing that poor lady——
but i won’t write any more about it. it makes me feel so unhappy. oh dear, oh dear! what terrible sorrows there are in the world! when one thinks of them, and contrasts one’s own happy lot with them, how thankful one ought to be! fancy, if my harry were ever away, and—— no! no! no! i will not think of such things. i’m a little low to-day and out of sorts, and when i am like that i get the most melancholy ideas, and find myself crying before i know what i’m doing.
harry says i want a change; that i’ve been working too hard, and been too anxious—and that’s quite true, for our business has got almost beyond us, and the trouble of servants and one thing and another has upset me.
but i must get this memoir done while i have a few minutes to spare. i call them memoirs from the old habit; but, of course, they are hardly that, though i suppose an hotel could have memoirs.
it was about the young lady who was taken so seriously ill in our house, and that we were afraid was going to die.
she came down with her mamma early in the spring, having been recommended for change of air; but not wanting to be too far away, because she was under a great london doctor—a specialist i think he was called—and she had to go up and see him once a week.
her mamma was about fifty—a very grave, i might say “hard,” lady. i didn’t like her much when she first came; there was something about her that seemed to keep you at your distance—“stand-offish” harry called it—and she never unbent an atom, no matter how civil you tried to be.
but the daughter, who was about two-and-twenty, was the sweetest young lady, so pale and delicate-looking; but with a sweet, sad smile that harry said was heavenly.{175} and certainly it was, though i couldn’t say myself what is the difference between a heavenly smile and an earthly one: but there must be, or people wouldn’t use the word.
miss elmore—that was the young lady’s name—always had a kind word for me when i went into her room; but she talked very little, only thanking me for any little attention i showed her, and saying she was afraid she was giving a great deal of trouble.
of course i said, “oh dear no,” and it was a pleasure to wait on her. and so it was, for she was so patient, and i could see that she was a great sufferer, and it seemed to me that she was very unhappy.
her mother was generally sitting by her when she didn’t get up, and used to read to her; but whenever i heard her reading, it was a religious book, and full of things about death—solemn and sad things, not at all fit to be continually dinned into the ears of an invalid.
perhaps it was the lady herself being so stern, and having such a hard, rasping voice, that made the things i heard her read seem so unsympathetic. of course, i don’t want to say that people who are very ill oughtn’t to have religious books read to them—we ought all to be prepared, and to think of our future; but i never could see that sick people, who, of course, are low and cast down, ought to be continually preached at and reminded of their sins. when i told harry the things i’d heard mrs. elmore reading to her daughter, he said it wasn’t right. he said it was like giving an invalid “a religious whacking,” when what was wanted for a person in such delicate health was religious coddling. i think the way he put it was quite right. it seemed to me that if a person’s body is too weak for anything but beef-tea their mind couldn’t be able to digest a beef-steak. not that i think a sick person wants feeding on religious slops, but certainly they want whatever they take in that way to be nourishing and comforting. there was too much cayenne pepper for an invalid in mrs. elmore’s religious beef-tea. i couldn’t help hearing a lot of it when i was tidying up the room, which i always did myself, and some of the passages out of the books might be part of a bad-tempered gaol chaplain’s sermon to convicted murderers. i could{176}n’t believe that a sweet, quiet girl, like miss elmore, could have done anything bad enough to be read at in such a scarifying fashion.
but the poor girl used to lie and listen—only sometimes i thought her face would flush a little, as though she felt she didn’t deserve such a lecture. her mother had a way of reading passages at her, if you know what i mean, as much as to say, “there, you wicked girl, that’s what you deserve!”
i never heard them talk about anything. when the mother wasn’t reading to the young lady, she would sit and knit, looking as hard and cold as a stone statue.
after they had been with us a fortnight, and the day came round for the young lady to go to london to see the doctor, she wasn’t well enough; but had to keep her bed all day.
after that she grew rapidly worse, and our nearest doctor was called in. he looked very grave, and asked a lot of questions, and said he should like a consultation with the london specialist.
the mother said it would be very expensive to have him down, so our doctor said he was going to town, and he would go up and see him, as he wanted particulars of her case from him, and to know what the treatment had been.
after he came back from london he appeared graver still, and i could see that he was getting nervous about the case.
the young lady didn’t get any better; and i could see myself she was getting weaker and weaker. so one day i said to the doctor, “doctor, i should be obliged if you will tell me what you think. is there any danger?”
“yes, mrs. beckett,” he said; “there is danger; but i haven’t given up hope yet.”
“what is it, sir?” i said. “i mean, what is the young lady suffering from?”
he looked at me a minute, and then he said in a quiet way, “a broken heart. that’s not the professional term, but that’s the plain english for it.”
and then he put his hat on, and went out before i could ask him any more.
what he’d told me made me more interested in the young{177} lady than ever, and i felt as sorry for her as though she had been my own sister.
the next day, when the doctor had been, i caught him before he got to the front door, and asked him to come into our parlour. and then i tackled him straight.
“did he think the young lady was going to die in our house?”
“do you want her moved?” he said, in his quiet way, looking at me over his spectacles.
“no, sir; i don’t want anything unfeeling, i hope; but i should like to know.”
“my dear lady,” he said, “i can’t tell you what i don’t know myself. doctors are no good in these cases. i won’t say that the young lady will not get strength enough to be taken to her home; but i see no signs of any improvement at present.”
“do you know her story, sir?”
“yes.”
“won’t you tell me?”
he hesitated.
“i don’t know why i shouldn’t,” he said. “it was told me by the london doctor, who knows her family, and he didn’t bind me to secrecy.”
then he told me all about the poor young lady, and what had made her so ill.
it seems she had fallen in love with a handsome young gentleman, who had been staying for a long time at a boarding-house, where she and her mother were living.
he was quite a gentleman in every way, and as soon as he found they were falling in love with each other—as young people will do, in spite of all rules and regulations and etiquette, or whatever you call it—he asked the young lady if he might pay his addresses to her.
i think that’s the society name for what we call “walking out and keeping company;” but i only go by what i’ve read in novels.
well, miss elmore, who was an honest, straightforward, pure-minded young lady, with no fashionable nonsense about her, told the young gentleman that she loved him—of course, not straight out like that, but in a modest, ladylike way, and said that he must ask her mamma.{178}
the young fellow did, and the mamma, who hadn’t taken the slightest notice of her daughter—being wrapped up in the local methodist clergyman and the chapel people in the place—was very much astonished. she said she had never thought of such a thing; but if the young gentleman wished to marry her daughter, he had better tell her what his position was, etc.
the young gentleman told her about his family, which was a very good one—almost county people, in fact—and then, after a lot of stammering, he let out that he was only a younger son, and that he was by profession an actor.
an actor!
the doctor told me that the london doctor told him that, when mrs. elmore heard this, she dropped her knitting, and nearly had a fit.
it seems that she was one of the sort that look upon the theatre, and everything connected with it, as awful.
as soon as she had recovered from her horror, she told the young gentleman that, rather than allow her daughter to marry a man who was such a lost sinner, she would see her in her coffin.
the young fellow tried to argue the point a little, but it was no use. mrs. elmore forbade him ever to speak to her daughter again, and she went at once and packed up, and took her daughter away to another boarding-house, telling the landlady that she was surprised that she received such people as the young gentleman.
she gave the poor young lady a terrible lecture, and forbade her ever to mention the young man’s name. and then she called in her favourite clergyman, the methodist parson, and the two of them went at the poor girl hammer and tongs, just as if she had committed some awful crime.
after that the young people didn’t meet. the young lady wouldn’t disobey her mother, and so the young fellow, who had been taking a long rest during the summer, went back to london; and in the autumn, when his theatre reopened—the one he belonged to—he began to play again, and made quite a hit. poor fellow, it was natural he should; for the part he played was that of a young man, who loves a girl and is told he shall never have her, and isn’t able to see her. i wonder how many of the people who applauded him{179} for that knew that he wasn’t acting at all, but just being himself?
after he was gone, and the young lady couldn’t even see him, she began to get ill, and went home, and the doctor said it was debility, and care must be taken of her or she might go into a decline.
then her mother, to get the young man out of her head, began to read her those unkind books about sinners, and tried in that manner to show her the error of her ways.
the treatment didn’t answer, for the young lady got slowly worse, until she came to our place, and then you know what happened.
“oh, harry,” i said, after the doctor had told me the story; “isn’t it dreadful? fancy that sweet young lady dying of a broken heart, and at the ‘stretford arms,’ too!”
it quite upset me, and i was so miserable that i began to feel ill myself.
harry was grieved too; but men don’t show grief the same way we do. harry swore. he said mrs. elmore was a wicked old woman, and she ought to be ashamed of herself. what did it matter how a gentleman earned his living, if he earned it honestly, and as a gentleman should?
mr. wilkins, who got hold of the story—i never knew anything to go on in our house that that little man didn’t get hold of—must, of course, take a different view of the matter. it was just his contrariness.
he said that, after all, perhaps the mother wasn’t so much to blame. he knew the time when actors weren’t thought much of—in fact, in the history of our parish there was a record of actors having been put in the stocks; and in the eyes of the law, not so very long ago, they were rogues and vagabonds, and the parish beadle could order them off, and do all manner of things to them.
i said, “if it came to what was done once, people had their noses cut off for speaking their opinions.”
“oh,” said mr. wilkins, “that hasn’t gone out yet. i know a place where a man has his nose taken off still, if he ventures to have an opinion of his own.”
and then the horrid little man looked straight at me, and nodded his head and said, “ahem!”
“if you mean me, mr. wilkins,” i said, “i think you’ve{180} made a mistake. i’m not in the habit of snapping people’s noses off, as you call it. and i think you must have a good many noses, for i’m sure you’ve got an opinion of your own about everything that is said, whether it concerns you or not.”
with that i took my work, and went into our little inner room to get away from him, for i wasn’t in the humour for an argument. and i wasn’t going to sit still and listen to that poor young lady’s lover being abused by an ignorant parish clerk, who had never lived in london and seen the world, as i had, with her perhaps dying upstairs.
i shut my door, but i could hear wilkins keeping on the conversation, and talking loud, for me to hear, just for aggravation, and running down actors, just as if he knew anything at all about them. i don’t suppose he ever saw one in his life, except at a country fair, and, of course, that was not at all the sort of person that the young gentleman was.
of course i knew what had made mr. wilkins so disagreeable of late. i had had to keep him in his place about my “memoirs.” after he found out that i was going to use old gaffer gabbitas’s story in my book, he came to me one day, with a lot of scrawl in a penny copy-book, and said he’d begun to collect things for his own “memoirs,” and would i look over them and help him to do them? i said, “your ‘memoirs’! what do you mean, mr. wilkins?”
he said, “i’ve been thinking that we might do ‘the memoirs of a parish clerk’ together. i’ve seen a lot of strange things in my time, and they’d be very nice reading. if you like to help me, we’ll go halves in the money.”
i said, “let me look at what you’ve written.”
you never saw such stuff in your life. it is really ridiculous what an idea some people have of writing books. mr. wilkins had begun about his being born, and everybody saying what a fine baby he was, as if he could possibly have heard the remark; and then he had put in a lot of nonsense, which i suppose he thought very funny, about his father and mother quarrelling what name he was to have, and going through the bible to find one, and his{181} father wanting to call him genesis, which made his mother go to the other extreme, and insist on revelations.
that’s the sort of stuff you’d expect a parish clerk to write; but the impudence of the thing amused me. as if anybody would care two pins about the christening of mr. wilkins.
i looked at some of the other notes, and i saw quite enough. he’d put a lot about his being sent to the national school, and had made out that he was quite a scholar directly, and then there was something about his learning a trade, and his falling in love with the young woman at jones’s farm; and if he hadn’t gone and written out some poetry that he sent the girl, which was nothing more than some valentine words as old as the hills.
when i gave him the book back i was obliged to tell him that that sort of stuff wasn’t writing—not writing for books—and that i didn’t think his “memoirs” would be of much interest to anybody but himself.
the little man was disappointed. i could see that. i dare say he put it down to me being jealous of him; but he never mentioned the subject again. only, after that, he was always making some nasty remark or other, and if ever i had an opinion about anything, he always started arguing the other way. i knew i had offended him; but you can’t help offending somebody now and then, if you’ve got any spirit of your own. i’m sorry i ever let him give me any information at all. i dare say he’ll go to his grave believing that he’s as much the author of these tales about the ‘stretford arms’ as i am myself.
it was through this having happened that made mr. wilkins so nasty about the young lady’s lover. at another time he would have sided with me. he didn’t drop it even the next day, for in the evening, when the room was full, he pulled out a newspaper, and asked me if i’d seen the case in the police-court, of an actor having pawned the sheets from his lodgings.
i saw he was going to begin again, so i said “mr. wilkins, will you let me have a word with you, please?” and i beckoned him outside the door.
then i said to him, “mr. wilkins, what you heard yesterday about that young lady’s affairs was a private{182} conversation between me and my husband. you’ll oblige me by not referring to it again. i can’t have ladies and gentlemen who stay at this hotel talked over in the bar-parlour—at least, not their private affairs, which you have only learned through being considered a friend of ours.”
he winced a little. but he said, “mrs. beckett, ma’am, i hope i know myself better than to do anything that is not right and gentlemanly.”
“thank you, mr. wilkins,” i said; and then we went in, and if that horrid graves the farrier didn’t say, “all right, wilkins, i’ll tell mr. beckett.” and then they all roared, and that wretched little wilkins giggled, and said, “they’re only jealous, aren’t they, mrs. beckett?”
i declare i could have boxed his ears. i went quite red, and then they all roared again. and that graves said, “all right, we won’t tell this time; but, wilkins, old man, you must be careful. beckett’s got a pistol.”
i gave graves a look, and went into the bar. i’m glad he doesn’t come often; he ought to go to the tap-room at the other house. it’s more in his line.
but about the poor young lady, whose lover was an actor——
* * * * *
oh, harry, how you frightened me, coming behind me like that! supper been ready half an hour! has it? all right, dear, i’m coming.
