Vain Fortune | Page 7

than five or six shillings
a week for a room, and he thought of Holloway, as being a
neighbourhood where creditors would not be able to find him. So he
retraced his steps, and, tired and footsore, entered the Tottenham Court
Road by the Oxford Street end.
There the omnibuses stopped. A conductor shouted for fares, with the
light of the public-house lamps on his open mouth. There was smell of
mud, of damp clothes, of bad tobacco, and where the lights of the
costermongers' barrows broke across the footway the picture was of a
group of three coarse, loud-voiced girls, followed by boys. There were
fish shops, cheap Italian restaurants, and the long lines of low houses
vanished in crapulent night. The characteristics of the Tottenham Court
Road impressed themselves on Hubert's mind, and he thought how he
would have to bear for at least three weeks with all the grime of its
poverty. It would take about that time to finish his play, and the
neighbourhood would suit his purpose excellently well. So long as he

did not pass beyond it he ran little risk of discovery, and to secure
himself against friends and foes he penetrated farther northward, not
stopping till he reached the confines of Holloway.
Then a little dim street caught his eye, and he knocked at the door of
the first house exhibiting a card in the parlour window. But they did not
let their bedroom under seven shillings, and this seemed to Hubert to be
an extravagant price. He tried farther on, and at last found a clean room
for six shillings. Having no luggage, he paid a week's rent in advance,
and the landlady promised to get him a small table, on which he could
write, a small table that would fit in somewhere near the window. She
asked him when he would like to be called, and put the candlestick on
the chair. Hubert looked round the room, and a moment sufficed to
complete the survey. It was about seven feet long. The lower half of the
window was curtained by a piece of muslin hardly bigger than a
good-sized pocket-handkerchief; to do anything in this room except to
lie in bed seemed difficult, and Hubert sat down on the bed and
emptied out his pockets. He had just four pounds, and the calculation
how long he could live on such a sum took him some time. His
breakfast, whether he had it at home or in the coffee-house, would cost
him at least fourpence. He thought he would be able to obtain a fairly
good dinner in one of the little Italian restaurants for ninepence. His tea
would cost the same as his breakfast. To these sums he must add
twopence for tobacco and a penny for an evening paper--impossible to
do without tobacco, and he must know what was going on in the world.
He could therefore live for one shilling and eightpence a day--eleven
shillings a week--to which he would have to add six shillings a week
for rent, altogether seventeen shillings a week. He really did not see
how he could do it cheaper. Four times seventeen are sixty-eight;
sixty-eight shillings for a month of life, and he had eighty
shillings--twelve shillings for incidental expenses; and out of that
twelve shillings he must buy a shirt, a sponge, and a tooth brush, and
when they were bought there would be very little left. He must finish
his play under the month. Nothing could be clearer than that.
Next morning he asked the landlady to let him have a cup of tea and
some bread and butter, and he ate as much bread as he could, to save

himself from being hungry in the middle of the day. He began work
immediately, and continued until seven, and feeling then somewhat
light-headed, but satisfied with himself, went to the nearest Italian
restaurant. The food was better than he expected; but he spent
twopence more than he had intended, so, to accustom himself to a life
of strict measure and discipline, he determined to forego his tea that
evening. And so he lived and worked until the end of the week.
But the situation he had counted on to complete his fourth act had
proved almost impracticable in the working out; he laboured on,
however, and at the end of the tenth day at least one scene satisfied him.
He read it over slowly, carefully, thought about it, decided that it was
excellent, and lay down on his bed to consider it. At that moment it
struck him that he had better calculate how much he had spent in the
last ten days. He gathered himself into a sitting posture and counted his
money; he had spent thirty shillings, and at that