Boarding

MRS. MOONEY was a butcher's daughter. She was a woman who was

quite able to keep things to herself: a determined woman. She had

married her father's foreman and opened a butcher's shop near Spring

Gardens. But as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr. Mooney began to

go to the devil. He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong into debt. It

was no use making him take the pledge: he was sure to break out again a

few days after. By fighting his wife in the presence of customers and by

buying bad meat he ruined his business. One night he went for his wife

with the cleaver and she had to sleep a neighbour's house.

After that they lived apart. She went to the priest and got a separation

from him with care of the children. She would give him neither money nor

food nor house-room; and so he was obliged to enlist himself as a

sheriff's man. He was a shabby stooped little drunkard with a white face

and a white moustache white eyebrows, pencilled above his little eyes,

which were veined and raw; and all day long he sat in the bailiff's room,

waiting to be put on a job. Mrs. Mooney, who had taken what remained of

her money out of the butcher business and set up a boarding house in

Hardwicke Street, was a big imposing woman. Her house had a floating

population made up of tourists from Liverpool and the Isle of Man and,

occasionally, artistes from the music halls. Its resident population was

made up of clerks from the city. She governed the house cunningly and

firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things

pass. All the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam.

Mrs. Mooney's young men paid fifteen shillings a week for board and

lodgings (beer or stout at dinner excluded). They shared in common

tastes and occupations and for this reason they were very chummy with

one another. They discussed with one another the chances of favourites

and outsiders. Jack Mooney, the Madam's son, who was clerk to a

commission agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard

case. He was fond of using soldiers' obscenities: usually he came home in

the small hours. When he met his friends he had always a good one to tell

them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing-that is to say, a

likely horse or a likely artiste. He was also handy with the mits and sang

comic songs. On Sunday nights there would often be a reunion in Mrs.

Mooney's front drawing-room. The music-hall artistes would oblige; and

Sheridan played waltzes and polkas and vamped accompaniments. Polly

Mooney, the Madam's daughter, would also sing. She sang:

I'm a ... naughty girl.

You needn't sham:

You know I am.

Polly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small full

mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through them,

had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which

made her look like a little perverse madonna. Mrs. Mooney had first sent

her daughter to be a typist in a corn-factor's office but, as a disreputable

sheriff's man used to come every other day to the office, asking to be

allowed to say a word to his daughter, she had taken her daughter home

again and set her to do housework. As Polly was very lively the intention

was to give her the run of the young men. Besides young men like to feel

that there is a young woman not very far away. Polly, of course, flirted

with the young men but Mrs. Mooney, who was a shrewd judge, knew

that the young men were only passing the time away: none of them

meant business. Things went on so for a long time and Mrs. Mooney

began to think of sending Polly back to typewriting when she noticed that

something was going on between Polly and one of the young men. She

watched the pair and kept her own counsel.

Polly knew that she was being watched, but still her mother's persistent

silence could not be misunderstood. There had been no open complicity

between mother and daughter, no open understanding but, though people

in the house began to talk of the affair, still Mrs. Mooney did not

intervene. Polly began to grow a little strange in her manner and the

young man was evidently perturbed. At last, when she judged it to be the

right moment, Mrs. Mooney intervened. She dealt with moral problems as

a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.