Quality and Others | Page 5

the door, I would hear the tip-tap of his bast slippers
restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream of boots. But if it were some
new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet made me, then indeed he
would observe ceremony--divesting me of my boot and holding it long
in his hand, looking at it with eyes at once critical and loving, as if
recalling the glow with which he had created it, and rebuking the way
in which one had disorganized this masterpiece. Then, placing my foot
on a piece of paper, he would two or three times tickle the outer edges

with a pencil and pass his nervous fingers over my toes, feeling himself
into the heart of my requirements.
I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him; "Mr.
Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know."
He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to
withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:
"Id shouldn'd 'ave greaked."
"It did, I'm afraid."
"You goddem wed before dey found demselves?"
"I don't think so."
At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots,
and I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.
"Zend dem back!" he said; "I will look at dem."
A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so
well could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he
would bend on them.
"Zome boods," he said slowly, "are bad from birdt. If I can do noding
wid dem, I dake dem off your bill."
Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of
boots bought in an emergency at some large firm's. He took my order
without showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating
the inferior integument of my foot. At last he said:
"Dose are nod my boods."
The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but
there was in it something quiet that froze the blood. He put his hand
down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot,
endeavouring to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.
"Id 'urds you dere,", he said. "Dose big virms 'ave no self-respect.
Drash!" And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke
long and bitterly. It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the
conditions and hardships of his trade.
"Dey get id all," he said, "dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work.
Dey dake it away from us, who lofe our boods. Id gomes to this--
bresently I haf no work. Every year id gets less you will see." And
looking at his lined face I saw things I had never noticed before, bitter
things and bitter struggle--and what a lot of grey hairs there seemed
suddenly in his red beard!

As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of those
ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made so deep impression that
during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs. Nemesis fell! They
lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to go
to him for nearly two years.
When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one of the two
little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of a
bootmaker-making, of course, for the Royal Family. The old familiar
boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were huddled in the single
window. Inside, the now contracted well of the one little shop was
more scented and darker than ever. And it was longer than usual, too,
before a face peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast slippers began. At
last he stood before me, and, gazing through those rusty iron spectacles,
said:
"Mr.-----, isn'd it?"
"Ah! Mr. Gessler," I stammered, "but your boots are really too good,
you know! See, these are quite decent still!" And I stretched out to him
my foot. He looked at it.
"Yes," he said, "beople do nod wand good hoods, id seems."
To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily remarked:
"What have you done to your shop?"
He answered quietly: "Id was too exbensif. Do you wand some boods?"
I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and quickly left. I
had, I do not know quite what feeling of being part, in his mind, of a
conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much against him as against
his idea of boot. One does not, I suppose, care to feel like that; for it
was again many months before my next visit to his shop, paid, I
remember, with