A House to Let (3 page)

"Then that is a bad beginning. I cannot deny that George Forley stands
in the relation of first cousin to me; but I hold no communication with
him. George Forley has been a hard, bitter, stony father to a child now
dead. George Forley was most implacable and unrelenting to one of his
two daughters who made a poor marriage. George Forley brought all the
weight of his band to bear as heavily against that crushed thing, as he
brought it to bear lightly, favouringly, and advantageously upon her
sister, who made a rich marriage. I hope that, with the measure George
Forley meted, it may not be measured out to him again. I will give
George Forley no worse wish."

I was strong upon the subject, and I could not keep the tears out of my
eyes; for, that young girl's was a cruel story, and I had dropped many a
tear over it before.

"The house being George Forley's," said I, "is almost enough to account
for there being a Fate upon it, if Fate there is. Is there anything
about George Forley in those sheets of paper?"

"Not a word."

"I am glad to hear it. Please to read on. Trottle, why don't you come
nearer? Why do you sit mortifying yourself in those arctic regions? Come
nearer."

"Thank you, ma'am; I am quite near enough to Mr. Jarber."

Jarber rounded his chair, to get his back full to my opinionated friend
and servant, and, beginning to read, tossed the words at him over his
(Jabez Jarber's) own ear and shoulder.

He read what follows:

Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw came from Manchester to London and took the House
To Let. He had been, what is called in Lancashire, a Salesman for a
large manufacturing firm, who were extending their business, and opening
a warehouse in London; where Mr. Openshaw was now to superintend the
business. He rather enjoyed the change of residence; having a kind of
curiosity about London, which he had never yet been able to gratify in
his brief visits to the metropolis. At the same time he had an odd,
shrewd, contempt for the inhabitants; whom he had always pictured to
himself as fine, lazy people; caring nothing but for fashion and
aristocracy, and lounging away their days in Bond Street, and such
places; ruining good English, and ready in their turn to despise him as a
provincial. The hours that the men of business kept in the city
scandalised him too; accustomed as he was to the early dinners of
Manchester folk, and the consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was
pleased to go to London; though he would not for the world have confessed
it, even to himself, and always spoke of the step to his friends as one
demanded of him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him
by a considerable increase of salary. His salary indeed was so liberal
that he might have been justified in taking a much larger House than this
one, had he not thought himself bound to set an example to Londoners of
how little a Manchester man of business cared for show. Inside, however,
he furnished the House with an unusual degree of comfort, and, in the
winter time, he insisted on keeping up as large fires as the grates would
allow, in every room where the temperature was in the least chilly.
Moreover, his northern sense of hospitality was such, that, if he were at
home, he could hardly suffer a visitor to leave the house without forcing
meat and drink upon him. Every servant in the house was well warmed,
well fed, and kindly treated; for their master scorned all petty saving
in aught that conduced to comfort; while he amused himself by following
out all his accustomed habits and individual ways in defiance of what any
of his new neighbours might think.

His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. He
was forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft and
yielding. They had two children or rather, I should say, she had two;
for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs. Openshaw's child by Frank
Wilson her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, who could
just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in the broadest
and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keep up what he
called the true Saxon accent.

Mrs. Openshaw's Christian-name was Alice, and her first husband had been
her own cousin. She was the orphan niece of a sea-captain in Liverpool:
a quiet, grave little creature, of great personal attraction when she was
fifteen or sixteen, with regular features and a blooming complexion. But
she was very shy, and believed herself to be very stupid and awkward; and
was frequently scolded by her aunt, her own uncle's second wife. So when
her cousin, Frank Wilson, came home from a long absence at sea, and first
was kind and protective to her; secondly, attentive and thirdly,
desperately in love with her, she hardly knew how to be grateful enough
to him. It is true she would have preferred his remaining in the first
or second stages of behaviour; for his violent love puzzled and
frightened her. Her uncle neither helped nor hindered the love affair
though it was going on under his own eyes. Frank's step-mother had such
a variable temper, that there was no knowing whether what she liked one
day she would like the next, or not. At length she went to such extremes
of crossness, that Alice was only too glad to shut her eyes and rush
blindly at the chance of escape from domestic tyranny offered her by a
marriage with her cousin; and, liking him better than any one in the
world except her uncle (who was at this time at sea) she went off one
morning and was married to him; her only bridesmaid being the housemaid
at her aunt's. The consequence was, that Frank and his wife went into
lodgings, and Mrs. Wilson refused to see them, and turned away Norah, the
warm-hearted housemaid; whom they accordingly took into their service.
When Captain Wilson returned from his voyage, he was very cordial with
the young couple, and spent many an evening at their lodgings; smoking
his pipe, and sipping his grog; but he told them that, for quietness'
sake, he could not ask them to his own house; for his wife was bitter
against them. They were not very unhappy about this.

The seed of future unhappiness lay rather in Frank's vehement, passionate
disposition; which led him to resent his wife's shyness and want of
demonstration as failures in conjugal duty. He was already tormenting
himself, and her too, in a slighter degree, by apprehensions and
imaginations of what might befall her during his approaching absence at
sea. At last he went to his father and urged him to insist upon Alice's
being once more received under his roof; the more especially as there was
now a prospect of her confinement while her husband was away on his
voyage. Captain Wilson was, as he himself expressed it, "breaking up,"
and unwilling to undergo the excitement of a scene; yet he felt that what
his son said was true. So he went to his wife. And before Frank went to
sea, he had the comfort of seeing his wife installed in her old little
garret in his father's house. To have placed her in the one best spare
room was a step beyond Mrs. Wilson's powers of submission or generosity.
The worst part about it, however, was that the faithful Norah had to be
dismissed. Her place as housemaid had been filled up; and, even had it
not, she had forfeited Mrs. Wilson's good opinion for ever. She
comforted her young master and mistress by pleasant prophecies of the
time when they would have a household of their own; of which, in whatever
service she might be in the meantime, she should be sure to form part.
Almost the last action Frank Wilson did, before setting sail, was going
with Alice to see Norah once more at her mother's house. And then he
went away.

Alice's father-in-law grew more and more feeble as winter advanced. She
was of great use to her step-mother in nursing and amusing him; and,
although there was anxiety enough in the household, there was perhaps
more of peace than there had been for years; for Mrs. Wilson had not a
bad heart, and was softened by the visible approach of death to one whom
she loved, and touched by the lonely condition of the young creature,
expecting her first confinement in her husband's absence. To this
relenting mood Norah owed the permission to come and nurse Alice when her
baby was born, and to remain to attend on Captain Wilson.

Before one letter had been received from Frank (who had sailed for the
East Indies and China), his father died. Alice was always glad to
remember that he had held her baby in his arms, and kissed and blessed it
before his death. After that, and the consequent examination into the
state of his affairs, it was found that he had left far less property
than people had been led by his style of living to imagine; and, what
money there was, was all settled upon his wife, and at her disposal after
her death. This did not signify much to Alice, as Frank was now first
mate of his ship, and, in another voyage or two, would be captain.
Meanwhile he had left her some hundreds (all his savings) in the bank.

It became time for Alice to hear from her husband. One letter from the
Cape she had already received. The next was to announce his arrival in
India. As week after week passed over, and no intelligence of the ship's
arrival reached the office of the owners, and the Captain's wife was in
the same state of ignorant suspense as Alice herself, her fears grew most
oppressive. At length the day came when, in reply to her inquiry at the
Shipping Office, they told her that the owners had given up Hope of ever
hearing more of the Betsy-Jane, and had sent in their claim upon the
underwriters. Now that he was gone for ever, she first felt a yearning,
longing love for the kind cousin, the dear friend, the sympathising
protector, whom she should never see again,—first felt a passionate
desire to show him his child, whom she had hitherto rather craved to have
all to herself—her own sole possession. Her grief was, however,
noiseless, and quiet—rather to the scandal of Mrs. Wilson; who bewailed
her step-son as if he and she had always lived together in perfect
harmony, and who evidently thought it her duty to burst into fresh tears
at every strange face she saw; dwelling on his poor young widow's
desolate state, and the helplessness of the fatherless child, with an
unction, as if she liked the excitement of the sorrowful story.

So passed away the first days of Alice's widowhood. Bye-and-bye things
subsided into their natural and tranquil course. But, as if this young
creature was always to be in some heavy trouble, her ewe-lamb began to be
ailing, pining and sickly. The child's mysterious illness turned out to
be some affection of the spine likely to affect health; but not to
shorten life—at least so the doctors said. But the long dreary
suffering of one whom a mother loves as Alice loved her only child, is
hard to look forward to. Only Norah guessed what Alice suffered; no one
but God knew.

And so it fell out, that when Mrs. Wilson, the elder, came to her one day
in violent distress, occasioned by a very material diminution in the
value the property that her husband had left her,—a diminution which
made her income barely enough to support herself, much less Alice—the
latter could hardly understand how anything which did not touch health or
life could cause such grief; and she received the intelligence with
irritating composure. But when, that afternoon, the little sick child
was brought in, and the grandmother—who after all loved it well—began a
fresh moan over her losses to its unconscious ears—saying how she had
planned to consult this or that doctor, and to give it this or that
comfort or luxury in after yearn but that now all chance of this had
passed away—Alice's heart was touched, and she drew near to Mrs. Wilson
with unwonted caresses, and, in a spirit not unlike to that of, Ruth,
entreated, that come what would, they might remain together. After much
discussion in succeeding days, it was arranged that Mrs. Wilson should
take a house in Manchester, furnishing it partly with what furniture she
had, and providing the rest with Alice's remaining two hundred pounds.
Mrs. Wilson was herself a Manchester woman, and naturally longed to
return to her native town. Some connections of her own at that time
required lodgings, for which they were willing to pay pretty handsomely.
Alice undertook the active superintendence and superior work of the
household. Norah, willing faithful Norah, offered to cook, scour, do
anything in short, so that, she might but remain with them.

The plan succeeded. For some years their first lodgers remained with
them, and all went smoothly,—with the one sad exception of the little
girl's increasing deformity. How that mother loved that child, is not
for words to tell!

Then came a break of misfortune. Their lodgers left, and no one
succeeded to them. After some months they had to remove to a smaller
house; and Alice's tender conscience was torn by the idea that she ought
not to be a burden to her mother-in-law, but ought to go out and seek her
own maintenance. And leave her child! The thought came like the
sweeping boom of a funeral bell over her heart.

Bye-and-bye, Mr. Openshaw came to lodge with them. He had started in
life as the errand-boy and sweeper-out of a warehouse; had struggled up
through all the grades of employment in the place, fighting his way
through the hard striving Manchester life with strong pushing energy of
character. Every spare moment of time had been sternly given up to self-
teaching. He was a capital accountant, a good French and German scholar,
a keen, far-seeing tradesman; understanding markets, and the bearing of
events, both near and distant, on trade: and yet, with such vivid
attention to present details, that I do not think he ever saw a group of
flowers in the fields without thinking whether their colours would, or
would not, form harmonious contrasts in the coming spring muslins and
prints. He went to debating societies, and threw himself with all his
heart and soul into politics; esteeming, it must be owned, every man a
fool or a knave who differed from him, and overthrowing his opponents
rather by the loud strength of his language than the calm strength if his
logic. There was something of the Yankee in all this. Indeed his theory
ran parallel to the famous Yankee motto—"England flogs creation, and
Manchester flogs England." Such a man, as may be fancied, had had no
time for falling in love, or any such nonsense. At the age when most
young men go through their courting and matrimony, he had not the means
of keeping a wife, and was far too practical to think of having one. And
now that he was in easy circumstances, a rising man, he considered women
almost as incumbrances to the world, with whom a man had better have as
little to do as possible. His first impression of Alice was indistinct,
and he did not care enough about her to make it distinct. "A pretty yea-
nay kind of woman," would have been his description of her, if he had
been pushed into a corner. He was rather afraid, in the beginning, that
her quiet ways arose from a listlessness and laziness of character which
would have been exceedingly discordant to his active energetic nature.
But, when he found out the punctuality with which his wishes were
attended to, and her work was done; when he was called in the morning at
the very stroke of the clock, his shaving-water scalding hot, his fire
bright, his coffee made exactly as his peculiar fancy dictated, (for he
was a man who had his theory about everything, based upon what he knew of
science, and often perfectly original)—then he began to think: not that
Alice had any peculiar merit; but that he had got into remarkably good
lodgings: his restlessness wore away, and he began to consider himself as
almost settled for life in them.