“Sir,” said I, speaking very sharply, with the idea of startling him, “what are you doing here in this chamber?”
“ ’Deed, then, and I’m sorry I’ve waked ye, my boy,” said the stout gentleman.
“Will you have the goodness, Sir, to tell me what you are doing here?”
“Bedad, then, just at this moment it’s brushing my clothes, I am. It was badly they wanted it.”
“I dare say they did. And you were doing it with my clothes-brush.”
“And that’s thrue too. And if a man hasn’t a clothes-brush of his own, what else can he do but use somebody else’s?”
“I think it’s a great liberty, Sir,” said I.
“And I think it’s a little one. It’s only in the size of it we differ. But I beg your pardon. There is your brush. I hope it will be none the worse.”
Then he put down the brush, seated himself on one of the two chairs which the room contained, and slowly proceeded to pull off his shoes, looking me full in the face all the while.
“What are you going to do, Sir?” said I, getting a little further out from under the clothes, and leaning over the table.
“I am going to bed,” said the gentleman.
“Going to bed! where?”
“Here,” said the gentleman; and he still went on untying the knot of his shoestring.
It had always been a theory with me, in regard not only to my own country, but to all others, that civilisation displays itself never more clearly than when it ordains that every man shall have a bed for himself. In older days Englishmen of good position—men supposed to be gentlemen—would sleep together and think nothing of it, as ladies, I am told, will still do. And in outlandish regions, up to this time, the same practice prevails. In parts of Spain you will be told that one bed offers sufficient accommodation for two men, and in Spanish America the traveller is considered to be fastidious who thinks that one on each side of him is oppressive. Among the poorer classes with ourselves this grand touchstone of civilisation has not yet made itself felt. For aught I know there might be no such touchstone in Connaught at all. There clearly seemed to be none such at Ballymoy.
“You can’t go to bed here,” said I, sitting bolt upright on the couch.
“You’ll find you are wrong there, my friend,” said the elderly gentleman. “But make yourself aisy, I won’t do you the least harm in life, and I sleep as quiet as a mouse.”
It was quite clear to me that time had come for action. I certainly would not let this gentleman get into my bed. I had been the first comer, and was for the night, at least, the proprietor of this room. Whatever might be the custom of this country in these wild regions, there could be no special law in the land justifying the landlord in such treatment of me as this.
“You won’t sleep here, Sir,” said I, jumping out of the bed, over the table, on to the floor, and confronting the stranger just as he had succeeded in divesting himself of his second shoe. “You won’t sleep here tonight, and so you may as well go away.”
With that I picked up his two shoes, took them to the door, and chucked them out. I heard them go rattling down the stairs, and I was glad that they made so much noise. He would see that I was quite in earnest.
“You must follow your shoes,” said I, “and the sooner the better.”
I had not even yet seen the man very plainly, and even now, at this time, I hardly did so, though I went close up to him and put my hand upon his shoulder. The light was very imperfect, coming from one small farthing candle, which was nearly burnt out in the socket. And I, myself, was confused, ill at ease, and for the moment unobservant. I knew that the man was older than myself, but I had not recognised him as being old enough to demand or enjoy personal protection by reason of his age. He was tall, and big, and burly—as he appeared to me then. Hitherto, till his shoes had been chucked away, he had maintained imperturbable good-humour. When he heard the shoes clattering downstairs, it seemed that he did not like it, and he began to talk fast and in an angry voice. I would not argue with him, and I did not understand him, but still keeping my hand on the collar of his coat, I insisted that he should not sleep there. Go away out of that chamber he should.
“But it’s my own,” he said, shouting the words a dozen times. “It’s my own room. It’s my own room.”
So this was Pat Kirwan himself—drunk probably, or mad.
“It may be your own,” said I; “but you’ve let it to me for tonight, and you shan’t sleep here;” so saying I backed him towards the door, and in so doing I trod upon his unguarded toe.
“Bother you, thin, for a pigheaded Englishman!” said he. “You’ve kilt me entirely now. So take your hands off my neck, will ye, before you have me throttled outright?”
I was sorry to have trod on his toe, but I stuck to him all the same. I had him near the door now, and I was determined to put him out into the passage. His face was very round and very red, and I thought that he must be drunk; and since I had found out that it was Pat Kirwan the landlord, I was more angry with the man than ever.
“You shan’t sleep here, so you might as well go,” I said, as I backed him away towards the door. This had not been closed since the shoes had been thrown out, and with something of a struggle between the doorposts, I got him out. I remembered nothing whatever as to the suddenness of the stairs. I
