A House to Let (2 page)

In all that month's time, I never saw anyone go into the House nor come
out of the House. I supposed that such a thing must take place
sometimes, in the dead of the night, or the glimmer of the morning; but,
I never saw it done. I got no relief from having my curtains drawn when
it came on dark, and shutting out the House. The Eye then began to shine
in my fire.

I am a single old woman. I should say at once, without being at all
afraid of the name, I am an old maid; only that I am older than the
phrase would express. The time was when I had my love-trouble, but, it
is long and long ago. He was killed at sea (Dear Heaven rest his blessed
head!) when I was twenty-five. I have all my life, since ever I can
remember, been deeply fond of children. I have always felt such a love
for them, that I have had my sorrowful and sinful times when I have
fancied something must have gone wrong in my life—something must have
been turned aside from its original intention I mean—or I should have
been the proud and happy mother of many children, and a fond old
grandmother this day. I have soon known better in the cheerfulness and
contentment that God has blessed me with and given me abundant reason
for; and yet I have had to dry my eyes even then, when I have thought of
my dear, brave, hopeful, handsome, bright-eyed Charley, and the trust
meant to cheer me with. Charley was my youngest brother, and he went to
India. He married there, and sent his gentle little wife home to me to
be confined, and she was to go back to him, and the baby was to be left
with me, and I was to bring it up. It never belonged to this life. It
took its silent place among the other incidents in my story that might
have been, but never were. I had hardly time to whisper to her "Dead my
own!" or she to answer, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust! O lay it on my
breast and comfort Charley!" when she had gone to seek her baby at Our
Saviour's feet. I went to Charley, and I told him there was nothing left
but me, poor me; and I lived with Charley, out there, several years. He
was a man of fifty, when he fell asleep in my arms. His face had changed
to be almost old and a little stern; but, it softened, and softened when
I laid it down that I might cry and pray beside it; and, when I looked at
it for the last time, it was my dear, untroubled, handsome, youthful
Charley of long ago.

—I was going on to tell that the loneliness of the House to Let brought
back all these recollections, and that they had quite pierced my heart
one evening, when Flobbins, opening the door, and looking very much as if
she wanted to laugh but thought better of it, said:

"Mr. Jabez Jarber, ma'am!"

Upon which Mr. Jarber ambled in, in his usual absurd way, saying:

"Sophonisba!"

Which I am obliged to confess is my name. A pretty one and proper one
enough when it was given to me: but, a good many years out of date now,
and always sounding particularly high-flown and comical from his lips. So
I said, sharply:

"Though it is Sophonisba, Jarber, you are not obliged to mention it, that
I
see."

In reply to this observation, the ridiculous man put the tips of my five
right-hand fingers to his lips, and said again, with an aggravating
accent on the third syllable:

"Sophon
is
ba!"

I don't burn lamps, because I can't abide the smell of oil, and wax
candles belonged to my day. I hope the convenient situation of one of my
tall old candlesticks on the table at my elbow will be my excuse for
saying, that if he did that again, I would chop his toes with it. (I am
sorry to add that when I told him so, I knew his toes to be tender.) But,
really, at my time of life and at Jarber's, it is too much of a good
thing. There is an orchestra still standing in the open air at the
Wells, before which, in the presence of a throng of fine company, I have
walked a minuet with Jarber. But, there is a house still standing, in
which I have worn a pinafore, and had a tooth drawn by fastening a thread
to the tooth and the door-handle, and toddling away from the door. And
how should I look now, at my years, in a pinafore, or having a door for
my dentist?

Besides, Jarber always was more or less an absurd man. He was sweetly
dressed, and beautifully perfumed, and many girls of my day would have
given their ears for him; though I am bound to add that he never cared a
fig for them, or their advances either, and that he was very constant to
me. For, he not only proposed to me before my love-happiness ended in
sorrow, but afterwards too: not once, nor yet twice: nor will we say how
many times. However many they were, or however few they were, the last
time he paid me that compliment was immediately after he had presented me
with a digestive dinner-pill stuck on the point of a pin. And I said on
that occasion, laughing heartily, "Now, Jarber, if you don't know that
two people whose united ages would make about a hundred and fifty, have
got to be old, I do; and I beg to swallow this nonsense in the form of
this pill" (which I took on the spot), "and I request to, hear no more of
it."

After that, he conducted himself pretty well. He was always a little
squeezed man, was Jarber, in little sprigged waistcoats; and he had
always little legs and a little smile, and a little voice, and little
round-about ways. As long as I can remember him he was always going
little errands for people, and carrying little gossip. At this present
time when he called me "Sophonisba!" he had a little old-fashioned
lodging in that new neighbourhood of mine. I had not seen him for two or
three years, but I had heard that he still went out with a little
perspective-glass and stood on door-steps in Saint James's Street, to see
the nobility go to Court; and went in his little cloak and goloshes
outside Willis's rooms to see them go to Almack's; and caught the
frightfullest colds, and got himself trodden upon by coachmen and
linkmen, until he went home to his landlady a mass of bruises, and had to
be nursed for a month.

Jarber took off his little fur-collared cloak, and sat down opposite me,
with his little cane and hat in his hand.

"Let us have no more Sophonisbaing, if
you
please, Jarber," I said.
"Call me Sarah. How do you do? I hope you are pretty well."

"Thank you. And you?" said Jarber.

"I am as well as an old woman can expect to be."

Jarber was beginning:

"Say, not old, Sophon—" but I looked at the candlestick, and he left
off; pretending not to have said anything.

"I am infirm, of course," I said, "and so are you. Let us both be
thankful it's no worse."

"Is it possible that you look worried?" said Jarber.

"It is very possible. I have no doubt it is the fact."

"And what has worried my Soph-, soft-hearted friend," said Jarber.

"Something not easy, I suppose, to comprehend. I am worried to death by
a House to Let, over the way."

Jarber went with his little tip-toe step to the window-curtains, peeped
out, and looked round at me.

"Yes," said I, in answer: "that house."

After peeping out again, Jarber came back to his chair with a tender air,
and asked: "How does it worry you, S-arah?"

"It is a mystery to me," said I. "Of course every house
is
a mystery,
more or less; but, something that I don't care to mention" (for truly the
Eye was so slight a thing to mention that I was more than half ashamed of
it), "has made that House so mysterious to me, and has so fixed it in my
mind, that I have had no peace for a month. I foresee that I shall have
no peace, either, until Trottle comes to me, next Monday."

I might have mentioned before, that there is a lone-standing jealousy
between Trottle and Jarber; and that there is never any love lost between
those two.

"
Trottle
," petulantly repeated Jarber, with a little flourish of his
cane; "how is
Trottle
to restore the lost peace of Sarah?"

"He will exert himself to find out something about the House. I have
fallen into that state about it, that I really must discover by some
means or other, good or bad, fair or foul, how and why it is that that
House remains To Let."

"And why Trottle? Why not," putting his little hat to his heart; "why
not, Jarber?

"To tell you the truth, I have never thought of Jarber in the matter. And
now I do think of Jarber, through your having the kindness to suggest
him—for which I am really and truly obliged to you—I don't think he
could do it."

"Sarah!"

"I think it would be too much for you, Jarber."

"Sarah!"

"There would be coming and going, and fetching and carrying, Jarber, and
you might catch cold."

"Sarah! What can be done by Trottle, can be done by me. I am on terms
of acquaintance with every person of responsibility in this parish. I am
intimate at the Circulating Library. I converse daily with the Assessed
Taxes. I lodge with the Water Rate. I know the Medical Man. I lounge
habitually at the House Agent's. I dine with the Churchwardens. I move
to the Guardians. Trottle! A person in the sphere of a domestic, and
totally unknown to society!"

"Don't be warm, Jarber. In mentioning Trottle, I have naturally relied
on my Right-Hand, who would take any trouble to gratify even a whim of
his old mistress's. But, if you can find out anything to help to unravel
the mystery of this House to Let, I shall be fully as much obliged to you
as if there was never a Trottle in the land."

Jarber rose and put on his little cloak. A couple of fierce brass lions
held it tight round his little throat; but a couple of the mildest Hares
might have done that, I am sure. "Sarah," he said, "I go. Expect me on
Monday evening, the Sixth, when perhaps you will give me a cup of
tea;—may I ask for no Green? Adieu!"

This was on a Thursday, the second of December. When I reflected that
Trottle would come back on Monday, too, I had My misgivings as to the
difficulty of keeping the two powers from open warfare, and indeed I was
more uneasy than I quite like to confess. However, the empty House
swallowed up that thought next morning, as it swallowed up most other
thoughts now, and the House quite preyed upon me all that day, and all
the Saturday.

It was a very wet Sunday: raining and blowing from morning to night. When
the bells rang for afternoon church, they seemed to ring in the commotion
of the puddles as well as in the wind, and they sounded very loud and
dismal indeed, and the street looked very dismal indeed, and the House
looked dismallest of all.

I was reading my prayers near the light, and my fire was growing in the
darkening window-glass, when, looking up, as I prayed for the fatherless
children and widows and all who were desolate and oppressed,—I saw the
Eye again. It passed in a moment, as it had done before; but, this time,
I was inwardly more convinced that I had seen it.

Well to be sure, I
had
a night that night! Whenever I closed my own
eyes, it was to see eyes. Next morning, at an unreasonably, and I should
have said (but for that railroad) an impossibly early hour, comes
Trottle. As soon as he had told me all about the Wells, I told him all
about the House. He listened with as great interest and attention as I
could possibly wish, until I came to Jabez Jarber, when he cooled in an
instant, and became opinionated.

"Now, Trottle," I said, pretending not to notice, "when Mr. Jarber comes
back this evening, we must all lay our heads together."

"I should hardly think that would be wanted, ma'am; Mr. Jarber's head is
surely equal to anything."

Being determined not to notice, I said again, that we must all lay our
heads together.

"Whatever you order, ma'am, shall be obeyed. Still, it cannot be
doubted, I should think, that Mr. Jarber's head is equal, if not
superior, to any pressure that can be brought to bear upon it."

This was provoking; and his way, when he came in and out all through the
day, of pretending not to see the House to Let, was more provoking still.
However, being quite resolved not to notice, I gave no sign whatever that
I did notice. But, when evening came, and he showed in Jarber, and, when
Jarber wouldn't be helped off with his cloak, and poked his cane into
cane chair-backs and china ornaments and his own eye, in trying to
unclasp his brazen lions of himself (which he couldn't do, after all), I
could have shaken them both.

As it was, I only shook the tea-pot, and made the tea. Jarber had
brought from under his cloak, a roll of paper, with which he had
triumphantly pointed over the way, like the Ghost of Hamlet's Father
appearing to the late Mr. Kemble, and which he had laid on the table.

"A discovery?" said I, pointing to it, when he was seated, and had got
his tea-cup.—"Don't go, Trottle."

"The first of a series of discoveries," answered Jarber. "Account of a
former tenant, compiled from the Water Rate, and Medical Man."

"Don't go, Trottle," I repeated. For, I saw him making imperceptibly to
the door.

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, I might be in Mr. Jarber's way?"

Jarber looked that he decidedly thought he might be. I relieved myself
with a good angry croak, and said—always determined not to notice:

"Have the goodness to sit down, if you please, Trottle. I wish you to
hear this."

Trottle bowed in the stiffest manner, and took the remotest chair he
could find. Even that, he moved close to the draught from the keyhole of
the door.

"Firstly," Jarber began, after sipping his tea, "would my Sophon—"

"Begin again, Jarber," said I.

"Would you be much surprised, if this House to Let should turn out to be
the property of a relation of your own?"

"I should indeed be very much surprised."

"Then it belongs to your first cousin (I learn, by the way, that he is
ill at this time) George Forley."