While the Billy Boils by Henry Lawson (best value ebook reader .txt) 📕

known Jones’s Alley, one or two of them, who were medical students, might probably have objected. The landlady charged them just twice as much for repairing their shirts as she paid the haggard woman, who, therefore, being unable to buy the cuffs and collar-bands ready-made for sewing on, had no lack of employment with which to fill in her spare time.

Therefore, she was a “respectable woman,” and was known in Jones’s Alley as “Misses” Aspinall, and called so generally, and even by Mother Brock, who kept “that place” opposite. There is implied a world of difference between the “Mother” and the “Misses,” as applied to matrons in Jones’s Alley; and this distinction was about the only thing⁠—always excepting the everlasting “children”⁠—that the haggard woman had left to care about, to take a selfish, narrow-minded sort of pleasure in⁠—if, indeed, she could yet take pleasure, grim or otherwise, in anything except, perhaps, a good cup of tea and time to drink it in.

Times were hard with Mrs. Aspinall. Two coppers and two halfpence in her purse were threepence to her now, and the absence of one of the halfpence made a difference to her, especially in Paddy’s market⁠—that eloquent advertisement of a young city’s sin and poverty and rotten wealth⁠—on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and nervously as a thirsty deadbeat does. And her house was “falling down on her” and her troubles, and she couldn’t get the landlord to do a “han’stern” to it.

At last, after persistent agitation on her part (but not before a portion of the plastered ceiling had fallen and severely injured one of her children) the landlord caused two men to be sent to “effect necessary repairs” to the three square, dingy, plastered holes⁠—called “three rooms and a kitchen”⁠—for the privilege of living in which, and calling it “my place,” she paid ten shillings a week.

Previously the agent, as soon as he had received the rent and signed the receipt, would cut short her reiterated complaints⁠—which he privately called her “clack”⁠—by saying that he’d see to it, he’d speak to the landlord; and, later on, that he had spoken to him, or could do nothing more in the matter⁠—that it wasn’t his business. Neither it was, to do the agent justice. It was his business to collect the rent, and thereby earn the means of paying his own. He had to keep a family on his own account, by assisting the Fat Man to keep his at the expense of people⁠—especially widows with large families, or women, in the case of Jones’s Alley⁠—who couldn’t afford it without being half-starved, or running greater and unspeakable risks which “society” is not supposed to know anything about.

So the agent was right, according to his lights. The landlord had recently turned out a family who had occupied one of his houses for fifteen years, because they were six weeks in arrears. He let them take their furniture, and explained: “I wouldn’t have been so lenient with them only they were such old tenants of mine.” So the landlord was always in the right according to his lights.

But the agent naturally wished to earn his living as peacefully and as comfortably as possible, so, when the accident occurred, he put the matter so persistently and strongly before the landlord that he said at last: “Well, tell her to go to White, the contractor, and he’ll send a man to do what’s to be done; and don’t bother me any more.”

White had a look at the place, and sent a plasterer, a carpenter, and a plumber. The plasterer knocked a bigger hole in the ceiling and filled it with mud; the carpenter nailed a board over the hole in the floor; the plumber stopped the leak in the kitchen, and made three new ones in worse places; and their boss sent the bill to Mrs. Aspinall.

She went to the contractor’s yard, and explained that the landlord was responsible for the debt, not she. The contractor explained that he had seen the landlord, who referred him to her. She called at the landlord’s private house, and was referred through a servant to the agent. The agent was sympathetic, but could do nothing in the matter⁠—it wasn’t his business; he also asked her to put herself in his place, which she couldn’t, not being any more reasonable than such women are in such cases. She let things drift, being powerless to prevent them from doing so; and the contractor sent another bill, then a debt collector and then another bill, then the collector again, and threatened to take proceedings, and finally took them. To make matters worse, she was two weeks in arrears with the rent, and the wood-and-coalman’s man (she had dealt with them for ten years) was pushing her, as also were her grocers, with whom she had dealt for fifteen years and never owed a penny before.

She waylaid the landlord, and he told her shortly that he couldn’t build houses and give them away, and keep them in repair afterwards.

She sought for sympathy and found it, but mostly in the wrong places. It was comforting, but unprofitable. Mrs. Next-door sympathized warmly, and offered to go up as a witness⁠—she had another landlord. The agent sympathized wearily, but not in the presence of witnesses⁠—he wanted her to put herself in his place. Mother Brock, indeed, offered practical assistance, which offer was received in breathlessly indignant silence. It was Mother Brock who first came to the assistance of Mrs. Aspinall’s child when the plaster accident took place (the mother being absent at the time), and when Mrs. Aspinall heard of it, her indignation cured her of her fright, and she declared to Mrs. Next-door that she would give “that woman”⁠—meaning Mother Brock⁠—“in char-rge the instant she ever dared to put her foot inside her (Mrs. A.’s) respectable doorstep again. She was a respectable, honest, hardworking woman, and⁠—” etc., etc.

Whereat Mother Brock laughed good-naturedly. She was a broad-minded bad woman, and was right according to her lights.