A House to Let (11 page)

"You'll please to excuse my son, Benjamin, won't you, sir?" says this
witch without a broomstick, pointing to the man behind her, propped
against the bare wall of the dining-room, exactly as he had been propped
against the bare wall of the passage. "He's got his inside dreadful bad
again, has my son Benjamin. And he won't go to bed, and he will follow
me about the house, up-stairs and downstairs, and in my lady's chamber,
as the song says, you know. It's his indisgestion, poor dear, that sours
his temper and makes him so agravating—and indisgestion is a wearing
thing to the best of us, ain't it, sir?"

"Ain't it, sir?" chimes in agravating Benjamin, winking at the candle-
light like an owl at the sunshine.

Trottle examined the man curiously, while his horrid old mother was
speaking of him. He found "My son Benjamin" to be little and lean, and
buttoned-up slovenly in a frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his
ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very watery, his cheeks very pale,
and his lips very red. His breathing was so uncommonly loud, that it
sounded almost like a snore. His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous
big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, lazy hands pottered about the
wall on either side of him, as if they were groping for a imaginary
bottle. In plain English, the complaint of "My son Benjamin" was
drunkenness, of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind. Drawing this
conclusion easily enough, after a moment's observation of the man,
Trottle found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes fixed much longer
than was necessary on the ugly drunken face rolling about in the
monstrous big coat collar, and looking at it with a curiosity that he
could hardly account for at first. Was there something familiar to him
in the man's features? He turned away from them for an instant, and then
turned back to him again. After that second look, the notion forced
itself into his mind, that he had certainly seen a face somewhere, of
which that sot's face appeared like a kind of slovenly copy. "Where?"
thinks he to himself, "where did I last see the man whom this agravating
Benjamin, here, so very strongly reminds me of?"

It was no time, just then—with the cheerful old woman's eye searching
him all over, and the cheerful old woman's tongue talking at him,
nineteen to the dozen—for Trottle to be ransacking his memory for small
matters that had got into wrong corners of it. He put by in his mind
that very curious circumstance respecting Benjamin's face, to be taken up
again when a fit opportunity offered itself; and kept his wits about him
in prime order for present necessities.

"You wouldn't like to go down into the kitchen, would you?" says the
witch without the broomstick, as familiar as if she had been Trottle's
mother, instead of Benjamin's. "There's a bit of fire in the grate, and
the sink in the back kitchen don't smell to matter much to-day, and it's
uncommon chilly up here when a person's flesh don't hardly cover a
person's bones. But you don't look cold, sir, do you? And then, why,
Lord bless my soul, our little bit of business is so very, very little,
it's hardly worth while to go downstairs about it, after all. Quite a
game at business, ain't it, sir? Give-and-take that's what I call
it—give-and-take!"

With that, her wicked old eyes settled hungrily on the region round about
Trottle's waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle like her son,
holding out one of her skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm
with the knuckles of the other. Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was
about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got
an idea of his own into his muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it
out charitably for the benefit of Trottle.

"I say!" says Benjamin, settling himself against the wall and nodding his
head viciously at his cheerful old mother. "I say! Look out. She'll
skin you!"

Assisted by these signs and warnings, Trottle found no difficulty in
understanding that the business referred to was the giving and taking of
money, and that he was expected to be the giver. It was at this stage of
the proceedings that he first felt decidedly uncomfortable, and more than
half inclined to wish he was on the street-side of the house-door again.

He was still cudgelling his brains for an excuse to save his pocket, when
the silence was suddenly interrupted by a sound in the upper part of the
house.

It was not at all loud—it was a quiet, still, scraping sound—so faint
that it could hardly have reached the quickest ears, except in an empty
house.

"Do you hear that, Benjamin?" says the old woman. "He's at it again,
even in the dark, ain't he? P'raps you'd like to see him, sir!" says
she, turning on Trottle, and poking her grinning face close to him. "Only
name it; only say if you'd like to see him before we do our little bit of
business—and I'll show good Forley's friend up-stairs, just as if he was
good Mr. Forley himself.
My
legs are all right, whatever Benjamin's
may be. I get younger and younger, and stronger and stronger, and
jollier and jollier, every day—that's what I do! Don't mind the stairs
on my account, sir, if you'd like to see him."

"Him?" Trottle wondered whether "him" meant a man, or a boy, or a
domestic animal of the male species. Whatever it meant, here was a
chance of putting off that uncomfortable give-and-take-business, and,
better still, a chance perhaps of finding out one of the secrets of the
mysterious House. Trottle's spirits began to rise again and he said
"Yes," directly, with the confidence of a man who knew all about it.

Benjamin's mother took the candle at once, and lighted Trottle briskly to
the stairs; and Benjamin himself tried to follow as usual. But getting
up several flights of stairs, even helped by the bannisters, was more,
with his particular complaint, than he seemed to feel himself inclined to
venture on. He sat down obstinately on the lowest step, with his head
against the wall, and the tails of his big great-coat spreading out
magnificently on the stairs behind him and above him, like a dirty
imitation of a court lady's train.

"Don't sit there, dear," says his affectionate mother, stopping to snuff
the candle on the first landing.

"I shall sit here," says Benjamin, agravating to the last, "till the milk
comes in the morning."

The cheerful old woman went on nimbly up the stairs to the first floor,
and Trottle followed, with his eyes and ears wide open. He had seen
nothing out of the common in the front-parlour, or up the staircase, so
far. The House was dirty and dreary and close-smelling—but there was
nothing about it to excite the least curiosity, except the faint scraping
sound, which was now beginning to get a little clearer—though still not
at all loud—as Trottle followed his leader up the stairs to the second
floor.

Nothing on the second-floor landing, but cobwebs above and bits of broken
plaster below, cracked off from the ceiling. Benjamin's mother was not a
bit out of breath, and looked all ready to go to the top of the monument
if necessary. The faint scraping sound had got a little clearer still;
but Trottle was no nearer to guessing what it might be, than when he
first heard it in the parlour downstairs.

On the third, and last, floor, there were two doors; one, which was shut,
leading into the front garret; and one, which was ajar, leading into the
back garret. There was a loft in the ceiling above the landing; but the
cobwebs all over it vouched sufficiently for its not having been opened
for some little time. The scraping noise, plainer than ever here,
sounded on the other side of the back garret door; and, to Trottle's
great relief, that was precisely the door which the cheerful old woman
now pushed open.

Trottle followed her in; and, for once in his life, at any rate, was
struck dumb with amazement, at the sight which the inside of the room
revealed to him.

The garret was absolutely empty of everything in the shape of furniture.
It must have been used at one time or other, by somebody engaged in a
profession or a trade which required for the practice of it a great deal
of light; for the one window in the room, which looked out on a wide open
space at the back of the house, was three or four times as large, every
way, as a garret-window usually is. Close under this window, kneeling on
the bare boards with his face to the door, there appeared, of all the
creatures in the world to see alone at such a place and at such a time, a
mere mite of a child—a little, lonely, wizen, strangely-clad boy, who
could not at the most, have been more than five years old. He had a
greasy old blue shawl crossed over his breast, and rolled up, to keep the
ends from the ground, into a great big lump on his back. A strip of
something which looked like the remains of a woman's flannel petticoat,
showed itself under the shawl, and, below that again, a pair of rusty
black stockings, worlds too large for him, covered his legs and his
shoeless feet. A pair of old clumsy muffetees, which had worked
themselves up on his little frail red arms to the elbows, and a big
cotton nightcap that had dropped down to his very eyebrows, finished off
the strange dress which the poor little man seemed not half big enough to
fill out, and not near strong enough to walk about in.

But there was something to see even more extraordinary than the clothes
the child was swaddled up in, and that was the game which he was playing
at, all by himself; and which, moreover, explained in the most unexpected
manner the faint scraping noise that had found its way down-stairs,
through the half-opened door, in the silence of the empty house.

It has been mentioned that the child was on his knees in the garret, when
Trottle first saw him. He was not saying his prayers, and not crouching
down in terror at being alone in the dark. He was, odd and unaccountable
as it may appear, doing nothing more or less than playing at a
charwoman's or housemaid's business of scouring the floor. Both his
little hands had tight hold of a mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly
any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on
the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work
for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of
Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He
just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright,
sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had
happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a
handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of
slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with.
After scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he took the bit of rag, and
mopped up, and then squeezed make-believe water out into his make-believe
pail, as grave as any judge that ever sat on a Bench. By the time he
thought he had got the floor pretty dry, he raised himself upright on his
knees, and blew out a good long breath, and set his little red arms
akimbo, and nodded at Trottle.

"There!" says the child, knitting his little downy eyebrows into a frown.
"Drat the dirt! I've cleaned up. Where's my beer?"

Benjamin's mother chuckled till Trottle thought she would have choked
herself.

"Lord ha' mercy on us!" says she, "just hear the imp. You would never
think he was only five years old, would you, sir? Please to tell good
Mr. Forley you saw him going on as nicely as ever, playing at being me
scouring the parlour floor, and calling for my beer afterwards. That's
his regular game, morning, noon, and night—he's never tired of it. Only
look how snug we've been and dressed him. That's my shawl a keepin his
precious little body warm, and Benjamin's nightcap a keepin his precious
little head warm, and Benjamin's stockings, drawed over his trowsers, a
keepin his precious little legs warm. He's snug and happy if ever a imp
was yet. 'Where's my beer!'—say it again, little dear, say it again!"

If Trottle had seen the boy, with a light and a fire in the room, clothed
like other children, and playing naturally with a top, or a box of
soldiers, or a bouncing big India-rubber ball, he might have been as
cheerful under the circumstances as Benjamin's mother herself. But
seeing the child reduced (as he could not help suspecting) for want of
proper toys and proper child's company, to take up with the mocking of an
old woman at her scouring-work, for something to stand in the place of a
game, Trottle, though not a family man, nevertheless felt the sight
before him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and the most pitiable
that he had ever witnessed.

"Why, my man," says he, "you're the boldest little chap in all England.
You don't seem a bit afraid of being up here all by yourself in the
dark."

"The big winder," says the child, pointing up to it, "sees in the dark;
and I see with the big winder." He stops a bit, and gets up on his legs,
and looks hard at Benjamin's mother. "I'm a good 'un," says he, "ain't
I? I save candle."

Trottle wondered what else the forlorn little creature had been brought
up to do without, besides candle-light; and risked putting a question as
to whether he ever got a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit. O,
yes, he had a run now and then, out of doors (to say nothing of his runs
about the house), the lively little cricket—a run according to good Mr.
Forley's instructions, which were followed out carefully, as good Mr.
Forley's friend would be glad to hear, to the very letter.

As Trottle could only have made one reply to this, namely, that good Mr.
Forley's instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions of an
infernal scamp; and as he felt that such an answer would naturally prove
the death-blow to all further discoveries on his part, he gulped down his
feelings before they got too many for him, and held his tongue, and
looked round towards the window again to see what the forlorn little boy
was going to amuse himself with next.