A House to Let (12 page)

The child had gathered up his blacking-brush and bit of rag, and had put
them into the old tin saucepan; and was now working his way, as well as
his clothes would let him, with his make-believe pail hugged up in his
arms, towards a door of communication which led from the back to the
front garret.

"I say," says he, looking round sharply over his shoulder, "what are you
two stopping here for? I'm going to bed now—and so I tell you!"

With that, he opened the door, and walked into the front room. Seeing
Trottle take a step or two to follow him, Benjamin's mother opened her
wicked old eyes in a state of great astonishment.

"Mercy on us!" says she, "haven't you seen enough of him yet?"

"No," says Trottle. "I should like to see him go to bed."

Benjamin's mother burst into such a fit of chuckling that the loose
extinguisher in the candlestick clattered again with the shaking of her
hand. To think of good Mr. Forley's friend taking ten times more trouble
about the imp than good Mr. Forley himself! Such a joke as that,
Benjamin's mother had not often met with in the course of her life, and
she begged to be excused if she took the liberty of having a laugh at it.

Leaving her to laugh as much as she pleased, and coming to a pretty
positive conclusion, after what he had just heard, that Mr. Forley's
interest in the child was not of the fondest possible kind, Trottle
walked into the front room, and Benjamin's mother, enjoying herself
immensely, followed with the candle.

There were two pieces of furniture in the front garret. One, an old
stool of the sort that is used to stand a cask of beer on; and the other
a great big ricketty straddling old truckle bedstead. In the middle of
this bedstead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of sacking, was a kind of
little island of poor bedding—an old bolster, with nearly all the
feathers out of it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of
patchwork counter-pane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a
little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions
of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When
Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up on the
bedstead with the help of the beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer
rim of sacking with the shred of counterpane in his hands, just making
ready to tuck it in for himself under the chair cushions.

"I'll tuck you up, my man," says Trottle. "Jump into bed, and let me
try."

"I mean to tuck myself up," says the poor forlorn child, "and I don't
mean to jump. I mean to crawl, I do—and so I tell you!"

With that, he set to work, tucking in the clothes tight all down the
sides of the cushions, but leaving them open at the foot. Then, getting
up on his knees, and looking hard at Trottle as much as to say, "What do
you mean by offering to help such a handy little chap as me?" he began to
untie the big shawl for himself, and did it, too, in less than half a
minute. Then, doubling the shawl up loose over the foot of the bed, he
says, "I say, look here," and ducks under the clothes, head first,
worming his way up and up softly, under the blanket and counterpane, till
Trottle saw the top of the large nightcap slowly peep out on the bolster.
This over-sized head-gear of the child's had so shoved itself down in the
course of his journey to the pillow, under the clothes, that when he got
his face fairly out on the bolster, he was all nightcap down to his
mouth. He soon freed himself, however, from this slight encumbrance by
turning the ends of the cap up gravely to their old place over his
eyebrows—looked at Trottle—said, "Snug, ain't it? Good-bye!"—popped
his face under the clothes again—and left nothing to be seen of him but
the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the
middle of the bolster.

"What a young limb it is, ain't it?" says Benjamin's mother, giving
Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow. "Come on! you won't see no more
of him to-night!"

"And so I tell you!" sings out a shrill, little voice under the
bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old woman's last
words.

If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the
wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its
turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably
snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret
prison, bed-clothes and all. As it was, he put a strong check on
himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjamin's
mother to lead him down-stairs again.

"Mind them top bannisters," says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them.
"They are as rotten as medlars every one of 'em."

"When people come to see the premises," says Trottle, trying to feel his
way a little farther into the mystery of the House, "you don't bring many
of them up here, do you?"

"Bless your heart alive!" says she, "nobody ever comes now. The outside
of the house is quite enough to warn them off. Mores the pity, as I say.
It used to keep me in spirits, staggering 'em all, one after another,
with the frightful high rent—specially the women, drat 'em. 'What's the
rent of this house?'—'Hundred and twenty pound a-year!'—'Hundred and
twenty? why, there ain't a house in the street as lets for more than
eighty!'—Likely enough, ma'am; other landlords may lower their rents if
they please; but this here landlord sticks to his rights, and means to
have as much for his house as his father had before him!'—'But the
neighbourhood's gone off since then!'—'Hundred and twenty pound,
ma'am.'—'The landlord must be mad!'—'Hundred and twenty pound,
ma'am.'—'Open the door you impertinent woman!' Lord! what a happiness
it was to see 'em bounce out, with that awful rent a-ringing in their
ears all down the street!"

She stopped on the second-floor landing to treat herself to another
chuckle, while Trottle privately posted up in his memory what he had just
heard. "Two points made out," he thought to himself: "the house is kept
empty on purpose, and the way it's done is to ask a rent that nobody will
pay."

"Ah, deary me!" says Benjamin's mother, changing the subject on a sudden,
and twisting back with a horrid, greedy quickness to those awkward money-
matters which she had broached down in the parlour. "What we've done,
one way and another for Mr. Forley, it isn't in words to tell! That nice
little bit of business of ours ought to be a bigger bit of business,
considering the trouble we take, Benjamin and me, to make the imp
upstairs as happy as the day is long. If good Mr. Forley would only
please to think a little more of what a deal he owes to Benjamin and me—"

"That's just it," says Trottle, catching her up short in desperation, and
seeing his way, by the help of those last words of hers, to slipping
cleverly through her fingers. "What should you say, if I told you that
Mr. Forley was nothing like so far from thinking about that little matter
as you fancy? You would be disappointed, now, if I told you that I had
come to-day without the money?"—(her lank old jaw fell, and her
villainous old eyes glared, in a perfect state of panic, at that!)—"But
what should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was only waiting for
my report, to send me here next Monday, at dusk, with a bigger bit of
business for us two to do together than ever you think for? What should
you say to that?"

The old wretch came so near to Trottle, before she answered, and jammed
him up confidentially so close into the corner of the landing, that his
throat, in a manner, rose at her.

"Can you count it off, do you think, on more than that?" says she,
holding up her four skinny fingers and her long crooked thumb, all of a
tremble, right before his face.

"What do you say to two hands, instead of one?" says he, pushing past
her, and getting down-stairs as fast as he could.

What she said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old
hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect
before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which
ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful
shower of blessings on Trottle's head, that his hair almost stood on end
to hear her. He went on down-stairs as fast as his feet would carry him,
till he was brought up all standing, as the sailors say, on the last
flight, by agravating Benjamin, lying right across the stair, and fallen
off, as might have been expected, into a heavy drunken sleep.

The sight of him instantly reminded Trottle of the curious half likeness
which he had already detected between the face of Benjamin and the face
of another man, whom he had seen at a past time in very different
circumstances. He determined, before leaving the House, to have one more
look at the wretched muddled creature; and accordingly shook him up
smartly, and propped him against the staircase wall, before his mother
could interfere.

"Leave him to me; I'll freshen him up," says Trottle to the old woman,
looking hard in Benjamin's face, while he spoke.

The fright and surprise of being suddenly woke up, seemed, for about a
quarter of a minute, to sober the creature. When he first opened his
eyes, there was a new look in them for a moment, which struck home to
Trottle's memory as quick and as clear as a flash of light. The old
maudlin sleepy expression came back again in another instant, and blurred
out all further signs and tokens of the past. But Trottle had seen
enough in the moment before it came; and he troubled Benjamin's face with
no more inquiries.

"Next Monday, at dusk," says he, cutting short some more of the old
woman's palaver about Benjamin's indisgestion. "I've got no more time to
spare, ma'am, to-night: please to let me out."

With a few last blessings, a few last dutiful messages to good Mr.
Forley, and a few last friendly hints not to forget next Monday at dusk,
Trottle contrived to struggle through the sickening business of leave-
taking; to get the door opened; and to find himself, to his own
indescribable relief, once more on the outer side of the House To Let.

"There, ma'am!" said Trottle, folding up the manuscript from which he had
been reading, and setting it down with a smart tap of triumph on the
table. "May I venture to ask what you think of that plain statement, as
a guess on my part (and not on Mr. Jarber's) at the riddle of the empty
House?"

For a minute or two I was unable to say a word. When I recovered a
little, my first question referred to the poor forlorn little boy.

"To-day is Monday the twentieth," I said. "Surely you have not let a
whole week go by without trying to find out something more?"

"Except at bed-time, and meals, ma'am," answered Trottle, "I have not let
an hour go by. Please to understand that I have only come to an end of
what I have written, and not to an end of what I have done. I wrote down
those first particulars, ma'am, because they are of great importance, and
also because I was determined to come forward with my written documents,
seeing that Mr. Jarber chose to come forward, in the first instance, with
his. I am now ready to go on with the second part of my story as shortly
and plainly as possible, by word of mouth. The first thing I must clear
up, if you please, is the matter of Mr. Forley's family affairs. I have
heard you speak of them, ma'am, at various times; and I have understood
that Mr. Forley had two children only by his deceased wife, both
daughters. The eldest daughter married, to her father's entire
satisfaction, one Mr. Bayne, a rich man, holding a high government
situation in Canada. She is now living there with her husband, and her
only child, a little girl of eight or nine years old. Right so far, I
think, ma'am?"

"Quite right," I said.

"The second daughter," Trottle went on, "and Mr. Forley's favourite, set
her father's wishes and the opinions of the world at flat defiance, by
running away with a man of low origin—a mate of a merchant-vessel, named
Kirkland. Mr. Forley not only never forgave that marriage, but vowed
that he would visit the scandal of it heavily in the future on husband
and wife. Both escaped his vengeance, whatever he meant it to be. The
husband was drowned on his first voyage after his marriage, and the wife
died in child-bed. Right again, I believe, ma'am?"

"Again quite right."

"Having got the family matter all right, we will now go back, ma'am, to
me and my doings. Last Monday, I asked you for leave of absence for two
days; I employed the time in clearing up the matter of Benjamin's face.
Last Saturday I was out of the way when you wanted me. I played truant,
ma'am, on that occasion, in company with a friend of mine, who is
managing clerk in a lawyer's office; and we both spent the morning at
Doctors' Commons, over the last will and testament of Mr. Forley's
father. Leaving the will-business for a moment, please to follow me
first, if you have no objection, into the ugly subject of Benjamin's
face. About six or seven years ago (thanks to your kindness) I had a
week's holiday with some friends of mine who live in the town of
Pendlebury. One of those friends (the only one now left in the place)
kept a chemist's shop, and in that shop I was made acquainted with one of
the two doctors in the town, named Barsham. This Barsham was a first-
rate surgeon, and might have got to the top of his profession, if he had
not been a first-rate blackguard. As it was, he both drank and gambled;
nobody would have anything to do with him in Pendlebury; and, at the time
when I was made known to him in the chemist's shop, the other doctor, Mr.
Dix, who was not to be compared with him for surgical skill, but who was
a respectable man, had got all the practice; and Barsham and his old
mother were living together in such a condition of utter poverty, that it
was a marvel to everybody how they kept out of the parish workhouse."