Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (400 page)

Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his complaint was other than bodily.  The ill-looking birds that gathered to the house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in the dead hours of night, the careless attendance and intemperate habits of the nurse, the entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of Mr. Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn to in a court of justice — all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man’s mind.  A sense of something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in his mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of observing the features of his tenant.  It fell in this way.  The young landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise in the hall.  Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the library, he saw the tall man, candle in hand, in earnest conversation with the gentleman who had taken the rooms.  The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in that of his tenant, Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease, but every sign of health, energy, and resolution.  While he was still looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of lassitude.

That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into the hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed the practice of his art with careless hand and an abstracted mind.  The day was destined to be fertile in surprises; nor had he long been seated at the easel ere the first of these occurred.  A cab laden with baggage drew up before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly mounted the steps and began to pound upon the knocker.  Somerset hastened to attend the summons.

‘My dear fellow,’ she said, with the utmost gaiety, ‘here I come dropping from the moon.  I am delighted to find you faithful; and I have no doubt you will be equally pleased to be restored to liberty.’

Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and the spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on the threshold of the dining-room.  The sight that met her eyes was one well calculated to inspire astonishment.  The mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and empty bottles; on the fire some chops were frying; the floor was littered from end to end with books, clothes, walking-canes and the materials of the painter’s craft; but what far outstripped the other wonders of the place was the corner which had been arranged for the study of still-life.  This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous upon which, according to the principles of the art of composition, a cabbage was relieved against a copper kettle, and both contrasted with the mail of a boiled lobster.

‘My gracious goodness!’ cried the lady of the house; and then, turning in wrath on the young man, ‘From what rank in life are you sprung?’ she demanded.  ‘You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a greengrocer’s man.  Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let me see no more of you.’

‘Madam,’ babbled Somerset, ‘you promised me a month’s warning.’

‘That was under a misapprehension,’ returned the old lady.  ‘I now give you warning to leave at once.’

‘Madam,’ said the young man, ‘I wish I could; and indeed, as far as I am concerned, it might be done.  But then, my lodger!’

‘Your lodger?’ echoed Mrs. Luxmore.

‘My lodger: why should I deny it?’ returned Somerset.  ‘He is only by the week.’

The old lady sat down upon a chair.  ‘You have a lodger? — you?’ she cried.  ‘And pray, how did you get him?’

‘By advertisement,’ replied the young man. ‘O madam, I have not lived unobservantly.  I adopted’ — his eyes involuntarily shifted to the cartoons — ’I adopted every method.’

Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset’s experience, she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her trilling and soprano laughter.

‘Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!’ she cried.  ‘I do hope you had them in the window.  M’Pherson,’ she continued, crying to her maid, who had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, ‘I lunch with Mr. Somerset.  Take the cellar key and bring some wine.’

In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M’Pherson bring up from the cellar — ’as a present, my dear,’ she said, with another burst of tearful merriment, ‘for your charming pictures, which you must be sure to leave me when you go;’ and finally, protesting that she dared not spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent of Europe.

She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the corridor the Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly strong emotion.  It was made to appear, from her account, that Mr. Jones had already suffered acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore’s visit, and that nothing short of a full explanation could allay the invalid’s uneasiness.  Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he thought fit of the affair.

‘Is that all?’ cried the woman.  ‘As God sees you, is that all?’

‘My good woman,’ said the young man, ‘I have no idea what you can be driving at.  Suppose the lady were my friend’s wife, suppose she were my fairy godmother, suppose she were the Queen of Portugal; and how should that affect yourself or Mr. Jones?’

‘Blessed Mary!’ cried the nurse, ‘it’s he that will be glad to hear it!’

And immediately she fled upstairs.

Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with a very thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the remainder of the bottle.  It was port; and port is a wine, sole among its equals and superiors, that can in some degree support the competition of tobacco.  Sipping, smoking, and theorising, Somerset moved on from suspicion to suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing braver and rosier as the bottle ebbed.  He was a sceptic, none prouder of the name; he had no horror at command, whether for crimes or vices, but beheld and embraced the world, with an immoral approbation, the frequent consequence of youth and health.  At the same time, he felt convinced that he dwelt under the same roof with secret malefactors; and the unregenerate instinct of the chase impelled him to severity.  The bottle had run low; the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same moment, night and the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.

He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in consonance, not so much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had discussed.  What with one thing and another, it was long past midnight when he returned home.  A cab was at the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found himself face to face with one of the most regular of the few who visited Mr. Jones: a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a chin-beard in the American fashion.  This person was carrying on one shoulder a black portmanteau, seemingly of considerable weight.  That he should find a visitor removing baggage in the dead of night, recalled some odd stories to the young man’s memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now, in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of a drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor.  With a face struck suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard called lamentably on the name of his maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat at the foot of the stairs.  At the same time, though only for a single instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish nurse popped out like rabbits over the banisters of the first floor; and on both the same scare and pallor were apparent.

The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and he continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together, and, with the help of the handrail and audibly thanking God, scrambled once more upon his feet.

‘What in Heaven’s name ails you?’ gasped the young man as soon as he could find words and utterance.

‘Have you a drop of brandy?’ returned the other.  ‘I am sick.’

Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the man with the chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound himself in apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness, the result, he said, of a long course of dumb ague; and having taken leave with a hand that still sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen and departed.

Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.  What, he asked himself, had been the contents of the black portmanteau?  Stolen goods? the carcase of one murdered? or — and at the thought he sat upright in bed — an infernal machine?  He took a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest; and with the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await and profit by the earliest opportunity.

The hours went heavily by.  Within the house there was no circumstance of novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more frequently made little journeys round the corner of the square, and before afternoon was somewhat loose of speech and gait.  A little after six, however, there came round the corner of the gardens a very handsome and elegantly dressed young woman, who paused a little way off, and for some time, and with frequent sighs, contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.  It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man had already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage, and had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye.  He hailed her coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little nearer to the window to enjoy the sight.  What was his surprise, however, when, as if with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps and tapped discreetly at the door!  He made haste to get before the Irish nurse, who was not improbably asleep, and had the satisfaction to receive this gracious visitor in person.

She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the young man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he thought he could perceive her to be smiling), ‘because,’ she added, ‘if you are, I should like to see some of the other rooms.’  Somerset told her he was under an engagement to receive no other lodgers; but she assured him that would be no matter, as these were friends of Mr. Jones’s.  ‘And,’ she continued, moving suddenly to the dining-room door, ‘let us begin here.’  Somerset was too late to prevent her entering, and perhaps he lacked the courage to essay.  ‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘how changed it is!’

‘Madam,’ cried the young man, ‘since your entrance, it is I who have the right to say so.’

She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious droop of the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the mingled litter, now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the wonders of the two apartments.  She gazed upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a heightened colour, and in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high opinion of their merits.  She praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration.  ‘How simple and manly!’ she cried: ‘none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a man!’  Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, and ascended the staircase alone.

For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr. Jones; and at the end of that time, the night being now come completely, they left the house in company.  This was the first time since the arrival of his lodger, that Somerset had found himself alone with the Irish widow; and without the loss of any more time than was required by decency, he stepped to the foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name.  She came instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head; and when the young man politely offered to introduce her to the treasures of his art, she swore that nothing could afford her greater pleasure, for, though she had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently observed his beautiful pictures through the door.  On entering the dining-room, the sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared her to be a gentle critic; and as soon as the pictures had been viewed and praised, she was easily persuaded to join the painter in a single glass.  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘are my respects; and a pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to see a gentleman like yourself, so affable and free, and a very nice painter, I am sure.’  One glass so agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the acceptance of a second; at the third, Somerset was free to cease from the affectation of keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she asked it of her own accord.  ‘For indeed,’ said she, ‘what with all these clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would be impossible entirely.  And you seen yourself that even M’Guire was glad to beg for it.  And even himself, when he is downhearted with all these cruel disappointments, though as temperate a man as any child, will be sometimes crying for a glass of it.  And I’ll thank you for a thimbleful to settle what I got.’  Soon after, she began with tears to narrate the deathbed dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband.  Then she declared she heard ‘the master’ calling her, rose to her feet, made but one lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her head upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.

Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of the drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps.  It was a great apartment; looking on the square with three tall windows, and joined by a pair of ample folding-doors to the next room; elegant in proportion, papered in sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, and adorned with a majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles.  Such was the room that Somerset remembered; that which he now beheld was changed in almost every feature: the furniture covered with a figured chintz; the walls hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified by the curtained recesses for no less than seven windows.  It seemed to himself that he must have entered, without observing the transition, into the adjoining house.  Presently from these more specious changes, his eye condescended to the many curious objects with which the floor was littered.  Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks and clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars and bottles; a carpenter’s bench and a laboratory-table.