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+Project Gutenberg Etext of A House to Let, by Dickens and Others
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+A House to Let
+
+by Charles Dickens and Others
+
+September, 2000 [Etext #2324]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of A House to Let, by Dickens and Others
+******This file should be named hslet10.txt or hslet10.zip******
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+This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1903 Chapman and Hall edition.  Proofing was by David, Edgar
+Howard, Dawn Smith, Terry Jeffress and Jane Foster.
+
+
+
+
+
+"House to Let".  All, however, is not as it seems and she is drawn into
+the mystery which surrounds the house.  Originally published in 1858 in
+the Christmas edition of "House Worlds Magazine", Dickens and his fellow
+contributors wrote a chapter each and Dickens edited the whole.
+
+We have already released Dicken's chapter which was "Going into Society".
+However, its good to have the whole book too so that people know how the
+story starts and ends.
+
+
+
+
+A HOUSE TO LET
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Over the Way
+The Manchester Marriage
+Going into Society
+Three Evenings in the House
+Trottle's Report
+Let at Last
+
+
+
+OVER THE WAY
+
+
+
+I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for
+ten years, when my medical man--very clever in his profession, and
+the prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist,
+which was a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of--
+said to me, one day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa
+which my poor dear sister Jane worked before her spine came on, and
+laid her on a board for fifteen months at a stretch--the most
+upright woman that ever lived--said to me, "What we want, ma'am, is
+a fillip."
+
+"Good gracious, goodness gracious, Doctor Towers!" says I, quite
+startled at the man, for he was so christened himself:  "don't talk
+as if you were alluding to people's names; but say what you mean."
+
+"I mean, my dear ma'am, that we want a little change of air and
+scene."
+
+"Bless the man!" said I; "does he mean we or me!"
+
+"I mean you, ma'am."
+
+"Then Lard forgive you, Doctor Towers," I said; "why don't you get
+into a habit of expressing yourself in a straightforward manner,
+like a loyal subject of our gracious Queen Victoria, and a member of
+the Church of England?"
+
+Towers laughed, as he generally does when he has fidgetted me into
+any of my impatient ways--one of my states, as I call them--and then
+he began, -
+
+"Tone, ma'am, Tone, is all you require!"  He appealed to Trottle,
+who just then came in with the coal-scuttle, looking, in his nice
+black suit, like an amiable man putting on coals from motives of
+benevolence.
+
+Trottle (whom I always call my right hand) has been in my service
+two-and-thirty years.  He entered my service, far away from England.
+He is the best of creatures, and the most respectable of men; but,
+opinionated.
+
+"What you want, ma'am," says Trottle, making up the fire in his
+quiet and skilful way, "is Tone."
+
+"Lard forgive you both!" says I, bursting out a-laughing; "I see you
+are in a conspiracy against me, so I suppose you must do what you
+like with me, and take me to London for a change."
+
+For some weeks Towers had hinted at London, and consequently I was
+prepared for him.  When we had got to this point, we got on so
+expeditiously, that Trottle was packed off to London next day but
+one, to find some sort of place for me to lay my troublesome old
+head in.
+
+Trottle came back to me at the Wells after two days' absence, with
+accounts of a charming place that could be taken for six months
+certain, with liberty to renew on the same terms for another six,
+and which really did afford every accommodation that I wanted.
+
+"Could you really find no fault at all in the rooms, Trottle?" I
+asked him.
+
+"Not a single one, ma'am.  They are exactly suitable to you.  There
+is not a fault in them.  There is but one fault outside of them."
+
+"And what's that?"
+
+"They are opposite a House to Let."
+
+"O!" I said, considering of it.  "But is that such a very great
+objection?"
+
+"I think it my duty to mention it, ma'am.  It is a dull object to
+look at.  Otherwise, I was so greatly pleased with the lodging that
+I should have closed with the terms at once, as I had your authority
+to do."
+
+Trottle thinking so highly of the place, in my interest, I wished
+not to disappoint him.  Consequently I said:
+
+"The empty House may let, perhaps."
+
+"O, dear no, ma'am," said Trottle, shaking his head with decision;
+"it won't let.  It never does let, ma'am."
+
+"Mercy me!  Why not?"
+
+"Nobody knows, ma'am.  All I have to mention is, ma'am, that the
+House won't let!"
+
+"How long has this unfortunate House been to let, in the name of
+Fortune?" said I.
+
+"Ever so long," said Trottle.   "Years."
+
+"Is it in ruins?"
+
+"It's a good deal out of repair, ma'am, but it's not in ruins."
+
+The long and the short of this business was, that next day I had a
+pair of post-horses put to my chariot--for, I never travel by
+railway:  not that I have anything to say against railways, except
+that they came in when I was too old to take to them; and that they
+made ducks and drakes of a few turnpike-bonds I had--and so I went
+up myself, with Trottle in the rumble, to look at the inside of this
+same lodging, and at the outside of this same House.
+
+As I say, I went and saw for myself.  The lodging was perfect.
+That, I was sure it would be; because Trottle is the best judge of
+comfort I know.  The empty house was an eyesore; and that I was sure
+it would be too, for the same reason.  However, setting the one
+thing against the other, the good against the bad, the lodging very
+soon got the victory over the House.  My lawyer, Mr. Squares, of
+Crown Office Row; Temple, drew up an agreement; which his young man
+jabbered over so dreadfully when he read it to me, that I didn't
+understand one word of it except my own name; and hardly that, and I
+signed it, and the other party signed it, and, in three weeks' time,
+I moved my old bones, bag and baggage, up to London.
+
+For the first month or so, I arranged to leave Trottle at the Wells.
+I made this arrangement, not only because there was a good deal to
+take care of in the way of my school-children and pensioners, and
+also of a new stove in the hall to air the house in my absence,
+which appeared to me calculated to blow up and burst; but, likewise
+because I suspect Trottle (though the steadiest of men, and a
+widower between sixty and seventy) to be what I call rather a
+Philanderer.  I mean, that when any friend comes down to see me and
+brings a maid, Trottle is always remarkably ready to show that maid
+the Wells of an evening; and that I have more than once noticed the
+shadow of his arm, outside the room door nearly opposite my chair,
+encircling that maid's waist on the landing, like a table-cloth
+brush.
+
+Therefore, I thought it just as well, before any London Philandering
+took place, that I should have a little time to look round me, and
+to see what girls were in and about the place.  So, nobody stayed
+with me in my new lodging at first after Trottle had established me
+there safe and sound, but Peggy Flobbins, my maid; a most
+affectionate and attached woman, who never was an object of
+Philandering since I have known her, and is not likely to begin to
+become so after nine-and-twenty years next March.
+
+It was the fifth of November when I first breakfasted in my new
+rooms.  The Guys were going about in the brown fog, like magnified
+monsters of insects in table-beer, and there was a Guy resting on
+the door-steps of the House to Let.  I put on my glasses, partly to
+see how the boys were pleased with what I sent them out by Peggy,
+and partly to make sure that she didn't approach too near the
+ridiculous object, which of course was full of sky-rockets, and
+might go off into bangs at any moment.  In this way it happened that
+the first time I ever looked at the House to Let, after I became its
+opposite neighbour, I had my glasses on.  And this might not have
+happened once in fifty times, for my sight is uncommonly good for my
+time of life; and I wear glasses as little as I can, for fear of
+spoiling it.
+
+I knew already that it was a ten-roomed house, very dirty, and much
+dilapidated; that the area-rails were rusty and peeling away, and
+that two or three of them were wanting, or half-wanting; that there
+were broken panes of glass in the windows, and blotches of mud on
+other panes, which the boys had thrown at them; that there was quite
+a collection of stones in the area, also proceeding from those Young
+Mischiefs; that there were games chalked on the pavement before the
+house, and likenesses of ghosts chalked on the street-door; that the
+windows were all darkened by rotting old blinds, or shutters, or
+both; that the bills "To Let," had curled up, as if the damp air of
+the place had given them cramps; or had dropped down into corners,
+as if they were no more.  I had seen all this on my first visit, and
+I had remarked to Trottle, that the lower part of the black board
+about terms was split away; that the rest had become illegible, and
+that the very stone of the door-steps was broken across.
+Notwithstanding, I sat at my breakfast table on that Please to
+Remember the fifth of November morning, staring at the House through
+my glasses, as if I had never looked at it before.
+
+All at once--in the first-floor window on my right--down in a low
+corner, at a hole in a blind or a shutter--I found that I was
+looking at a secret Eye.  The reflection of my fire may have touched
+it and made it shine; but, I saw it shine and vanish.
+
+The eye might have seen me, or it might not have seen me, sitting
+there in the glow of my fire--you can take which probability you
+prefer, without offence--but something struck through my frame, as
+if the sparkle of this eye had been electric, and had flashed
+straight at me.  It had such an effect upon me, that I could not
+remain by myself, and I rang for Flobbins, and invented some little
+jobs for her, to keep her in the room.  After my breakfast was
+cleared away, I sat in the same place with my glasses on, moving my
+head, now so, and now so, trying whether, with the shining of my
+fire and the flaws in the window-glass, I could reproduce any
+sparkle seeming to be up there, that was like the sparkle of an eye.
+But no; I could make nothing like it.  I could make ripples and
+crooked lines in the front of the House to Let, and I could even
+twist one window up and loop it into another; but, I could make no
+eye, nor anything like an eye.  So I convinced myself that I really
+had seen an eye.
+
+Well, to be sure I could not get rid of the impression of this eye,
+and it troubled me and troubled me, until it was almost a torment.
+I don't think I was previously inclined to concern my head much
+about the opposite House; but, after this eye, my head was full of
+the house; and I thought of little else than the house, and I
+watched the house, and I talked about the house, and I dreamed of
+the house.  In all this, I fully believe now, there was a good
+Providence.  But, you will judge for yourself about that, bye-and-
+bye.
+
+My landlord was a butler, who had married a cook, and set up
+housekeeping.  They had not kept house longer than a couple of
+years, and they knew no more about the House to Let than I did.
+Neither could I find out anything concerning it among the trades-
+people or otherwise; further than what Trottle had told me at first.
+It had been empty, some said six years, some said eight, some said
+ten.  It never did let, they all agreed, and it never would let.
+
+I soon felt convinced that I should work myself into one of my
+states about the House; and I soon did.  I lived for a whole month
+in a flurry, that was always getting worse.  Towers's prescriptions,
+which I had brought to London with me, were of no more use than
+nothing.  In the cold winter sunlight, in the thick winter fog, in
+the black winter rain, in the white winter snow, the House was
+equally on my mind.  I have heard, as everybody else has, of a
+spirit's haunting a house; but I have had my own personal experience
+of a house's haunting a spirit; for that House haunted mine.
+
+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:
+
+"SophonISba!"
+
+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."
+
+"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:
+
+
+
+THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE
+
+
+
+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.
+
+Mr. Openshaw had been too busy, all his life, to be introspective.
+He did not know that he had any tenderness in his nature; and if he
+had become conscious of its abstract existence, he would have
+considered it as a manifestation of disease in some part of his
+nature.  But he was decoyed into pity unawares; and pity led on to
+tenderness.  That little helpless child--always carried about by one
+of the three busy women of the house, or else patiently threading
+coloured beads in the chair from which, by no effort of its own,
+could it ever move; the great grave blue eyes, full of serious, not
+uncheerful, expression, giving to the small delicate face a look
+beyond its years; the soft plaintive voice dropping out but few
+words, so unlike the continual prattle of a child--caught Mr.
+Openshaw's attention in spite of himself.  One day--he half scorned
+himself for doing so--he cut short his dinner-hour to go in search
+of some toy which should take the place of those eternal beads.  I
+forget what he bought; but, when he gave the present (which he took
+care to do in a short abrupt manner, and when no one was by to see
+him) he was almost thrilled by the flash of delight that came over
+that child's face, and could not help all through that afternoon
+going over and over again the picture left on his memory, by the
+bright effect of unexpected joy on the little girl's face.  When he
+returned home, he found his slippers placed by his sitting-room
+fire; and even more careful attention paid to his fancies than was
+habitual in those model lodgings.  When Alice had taken the last of
+his tea-things away--she had been silent as usual till then--she
+stood for an instant with the door in her hand.  Mr. Openshaw looked
+as if he were deep in his book, though in fact he did not see a
+line; but was heartily wishing the woman would be gone, and not make
+any palaver of gratitude.  But she only said:
+
+"I am very much obliged to you, sir.  Thank you very much," and was
+gone, even before he could send her away with a "There, my good
+woman, that's enough!"
+
+For some time longer he took no apparent notice of the child.  He
+even hardened his heart into disregarding her sudden flush of
+colour, and little timid smile of recognition, when he saw her by
+chance.  But, after all, this could not last for ever; and, having a
+second time given way to tenderness, there was no relapse.  The
+insidious enemy having thus entered his heart, in the guise of
+compassion to the child, soon assumed the more dangerous form of
+interest in the mother.  He was aware of this change of feeling,
+despised himself for it, struggled with it nay, internally yielded
+to it and cherished it, long before he suffered the slightest
+expression of it, by word, action, or look, to escape him.  He
+watched Alice's docile obedient ways to her stepmother; the love
+which she had inspired in the rough Norah (roughened by the wear and
+tear of sorrow and years); but above all, he saw the wild, deep,
+passionate affection existing between her and her child.  They spoke
+little to any one else, or when any one else was by; but, when alone
+together, they talked, and murmured, and cooed, and chattered so
+continually, that Mr. Openshaw first wondered what they could find
+to say to each other, and next became irritated because they were
+always so grave and silent with him.  All this time, he was
+perpetually devising small new pleasures for the child.  His
+thoughts ran, in a pertinacious way, upon the desolate life before
+her; and often he came back from his day's work loaded with the very
+thing Alice had been longing for, but had not been able to procure.
+One time it was a little chair for drawing the little sufferer along
+the streets, and many an evening that ensuing summer Mr. Openshaw
+drew her along himself, regardless of the remarks of his
+acquaintances.  One day in autumn he put down his newspaper, as
+Alice came in with the breakfast, and said, in as indifferent a
+voice as he could assume:
+
+"Mrs. Frank, is there any reason why we two should not put up our
+horses together?"
+
+Alice stood still in perplexed wonder.  What did he mean?  He had
+resumed the reading of his newspaper, as if he did not expect any
+answer; so she found silence her safest course, and went on quietly
+arranging his breakfast without another word passing between them.
+Just as he was leaving the house, to go to the warehouse as usual,
+he turned back and put his head into the bright, neat, tidy kitchen,
+where all the women breakfasted in the morning:
+
+"You'll think of what I said, Mrs. Frank" (this was her name with
+the lodgers), "and let me have your opinion upon it to-night."
+
+Alice was thankful that her mother and Norah were too busy talking
+together to attend much to this speech.  She determined not to think
+about it at all through the day; and, of course, the effort not to
+think made her think all the more.  At night she sent up Norah with
+his tea.  But Mr. Openshaw almost knocked Norah down as she was
+going out at the door, by pushing past her and calling out "Mrs.
+Frank!" in an impatient voice, at the top of the stairs.
+
+Alice went up, rather than seem to have affixed too much meaning to
+his words.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Frank," he said, "what answer?  Don't make it too long;
+for I have lots of office-work to get through to-night."
+
+"I hardly know what you meant, sir," said truthful Alice.
+
+"Well!  I should have thought you might have guessed.  You're not
+new at this sort of work, and I am.  However, I'll make it plain
+this time.  Will you have me to be thy wedded husband, and serve me,
+and love me, and honour me, and all that sort of thing?  Because if
+you will, I will do as much by you, and be a father to your child--
+and that's more than is put in the prayer-book.  Now, I'm a man of
+my word; and what I say, I feel; and what I promise, I'll do.  Now,
+for your answer!"
+
+Alice was silent.  He began to make the tea, as if her reply was a
+matter of perfect indifference to him; but, as soon as that was
+done, he became impatient.
+
+"Well?" said he.
+
+"How long, sir, may I have to think over it?"
+
+"Three minutes!" (looking at his watch).  "You've had two already--
+that makes five.  Be a sensible woman, say Yes, and sit down to tea
+with me, and we'll talk it over together; for, after tea, I shall be
+busy; say No" (he hesitated a moment to try and keep his voice in
+the same tone), "and I shan't say another word about it, but pay up
+a year's rent for my rooms to-morrow, and be off.  Time's up!  Yes
+or no?"
+
+"If you please, sir,--you have been so good to little Ailsie--"
+
+"There, sit down comfortably by me on the sofa, and let us have our
+tea together.  I am glad to find you are as good and sensible as I
+took for."
+
+And this was Alice Wilson's second wooing.
+
+Mr. Openshaw's will was too strong, and his circumstances too good,
+for him not to carry all before him.  He settled Mrs. Wilson in a
+comfortable house of her own, and made her quite independent of
+lodgers.  The little that Alice said with regard to future plans was
+in Norah's behalf.
+
+"No," said Mr. Openshaw.  "Norah shall take care of the old lady as
+long as she lives; and, after that, she shall either come and live
+with us, or, if she likes it better, she shall have a provision for
+life--for your sake, missus.  No one who has been good to you or the
+child shall go unrewarded.  But even the little one will be better
+for some fresh stuff about her.  Get her a bright, sensible girl as
+a nurse:  one who won't go rubbing her with calf's-foot jelly as
+Norah does; wasting good stuff outside that ought to go in, but will
+follow doctors' directions; which, as you must see pretty clearly by
+this time, Norah won't; because they give the poor little wench
+pain.  Now, I'm not above being nesh for other folks myself.  I can
+stand a good blow, and never change colour; but, set me in the
+operating-room in the infirmary, and I turn as sick as a girl.  Yet,
+if need were, I would hold the little wench on my knees while she
+screeched with pain, if it were to do her poor back good.  Nay, nay,
+wench! keep your white looks for the time when it comes--I don't say
+it ever will.  But this I know, Norah will spare the child and cheat
+the doctor if she can.  Now, I say, give the bairn a year or two's
+chance, and then, when the pack of doctors have done their best--
+and, maybe, the old lady has gone--we'll have Norah back, or do
+better for her."
+
+The pack of doctors could do no good to little Ailsie.  She was
+beyond their power.  But her father (for so he insisted on being
+called, and also on Alice's no longer retaining the appellation of
+Mama, but becoming henceforward Mother), by his healthy cheerfulness
+of manner, his clear decision of purpose, his odd turns and quirks
+of humour, added to his real strong love for the helpless little
+girl, infused a new element of brightness and confidence into her
+life; and, though her back remained the same, her general health was
+strengthened, and Alice--never going beyond a smile herself--had the
+pleasure of seeing her child taught to laugh.
+
+As for Alice's own life, it was happier than it had ever been.  Mr.
+Openshaw required no demonstration, no expressions of affection from
+her.  Indeed, these would rather have disgusted him.  Alice could
+love deeply, but could not talk about it.  The perpetual requirement
+of loving words, looks, and caresses, and misconstruing their
+absence into absence of love, had been the great trial of her former
+married life.  Now, all went on clear and straight, under the
+guidance of her husband's strong sense, warm heart, and powerful
+will.  Year by year their worldly prosperity increased.  At Mrs.
+Wilson's death, Norah came back to them, as nurse to the newly-born
+little Edwin; into which post she was not installed without a pretty
+strong oration on the part of the proud and happy father; who
+declared that if he found out that Norah ever tried to screen the
+boy by a falsehood, or to make him nesh either in body or mind, she
+should go that very day.  Norah and Mr. Openshaw were not on the
+most thoroughly cordial terms; neither of them fully recognising or
+appreciating the other's best qualities.
+
+This was the previous history of the Lancashire family who had now
+removed to London, and had come to occupy the House.
+
+They had been there about a year, when Mr. Openshaw suddenly
+informed his wife that he had determined to heal long-standing
+feuds, and had asked his uncle and aunt Chadwick to come and pay
+them a visit and see London.  Mrs. Openshaw had never seen this
+uncle and aunt of her husband's.  Years before she had married him,
+there had been a quarrel.  All she knew was, that Mr. Chadwick was a
+small manufacturer in a country town in South Lancashire.  She was
+extremely pleased that the breach was to be healed, and began making
+preparations to render their visit pleasant.
+
+They arrived at last.  Going to see London was such an event to
+them, that Mrs. Chadwick had made all new linen fresh for the
+occasion-from night-caps downwards; and, as for gowns, ribbons, and
+collars, she might have been going into the wilds of Canada where
+never a shop is, so large was her stock.  A fortnight before the day
+of her departure for London, she had formally called to take leave
+of all her acquaintance; saying she should need all the intermediate
+time for packing up.  It was like a second wedding in her
+imagination; and, to complete the resemblance which an entirely new
+wardrobe made between the two events, her husband brought her back
+from Manchester, on the last market-day before they set off, a
+gorgeous pearl and amethyst brooch, saying, "Lunnon should see that
+Lancashire folks knew a handsome thing when they saw it."
+
+For some time after Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick arrived at the Openshaws',
+there was no opportunity for wearing this brooch; but at length they
+obtained an order to see Buckingham Palace, and the spirit of
+loyalty demanded that Mrs. Chadwick should wear her best clothes in
+visiting the abode of her sovereign.  On her return, she hastily
+changed her dress; for Mr. Openshaw had planned that they should go
+to Richmond, drink tea and return by moonlight.  Accordingly, about
+five o'clock, Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw and Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick set
+off.
+
+The housemaid and cook sate below, Norah hardly knew where.  She was
+always engrossed in the nursery, in tending her two children, and in
+sitting by the restless, excitable Ailsie till she fell asleep.
+Bye-and-bye, the housemaid Bessy tapped gently at the door.  Norah
+went to her, and they spoke in whispers.
+
+"Nurse! there's some one down-stairs wants you."
+
+"Wants me!  Who is it?"
+
+"A gentleman--"
+
+"A gentleman?  Nonsense!"
+
+"Well! a man, then, and he asks for you, and he rung at the front
+door bell, and has walked into the dining-room."
+
+"You should never have let him," exclaimed Norah, "master and missus
+out--"
+
+"I did not want him to come in; but when he heard you lived here, he
+walked past me, and sat down on the first chair, and said, 'Tell her
+to come and speak to me.'  There is no gas lighted in the room, and
+supper is all set out."
+
+"He'll be off with the spoons!" exclaimed Norah, putting the
+housemaid's fear into words, and preparing to leave the room, first,
+however, giving a look to Ailsie, sleeping soundly and calmly.
+
+Down-stairs she went, uneasy fears stirring in her bosom.  Before
+she entered the dining-room she provided herself with a candle, and,
+with it in her hand, she went in, looking round her in the darkness
+for her visitor.
+
+He was standing up, holding by the table.  Norah and he looked at
+each other; gradual recognition coming into their eyes.
+
+"Norah?" at length he asked.
+
+"Who are you?" asked Norah, with the sharp tones of alarm and
+incredulity.  "I don't know you:" trying, by futile words of
+disbelief, to do away with the terrible fact before her.
+
+"Am I so changed?" he said, pathetically.  "I daresay I am.  But,
+Norah, tell me!" he breathed hard, "where is my wife?  Is she--is
+she alive?"
+
+He came nearer to Norah, and would have taken her hand; but she
+backed away from him; looking at him all the time with staring eyes,
+as if he were some horrible object.  Yet he was a handsome, bronzed,
+good-looking fellow, with beard and moustache, giving him a foreign-
+looking aspect; but his eyes! there was no mistaking those eager,
+beautiful eyes--the very same that Norah had watched not half-an-
+hour ago, till sleep stole softly over them.
+
+"Tell me, Norah--I can bear it--I have feared it so often.  Is she
+dead ?"  Norah still kept silence.   "She is dead!"  He hung on
+Norah's words and looks, as if for confirmation or contradiction.
+
+"What shall I do?" groaned Norah.  "O, sir! why did you come? how
+did you find me out? where have you been?  We thought you dead, we
+did, indeed!"  She poured out words and questions to gain time, as
+if time would help her.
+
+"Norah! answer me this question, straight, by yes or no--Is my wife
+dead?"
+
+"No, she is not!" said Norah, slowly and heavily.
+
+"O what a relief!  Did she receive my letters?  But perhaps you
+don't know.  Why did you leave her?  Where is she?  O Norah, tell me
+all quickly!"
+
+"Mr. Frank!" said Norah at last, almost driven to bay by her terror
+lest her mistress should return at any moment, and find him there--
+unable to consider what was best to be done or said-rushing at
+something decisive, because she could not endure her present state:
+"Mr. Frank! we never heard a line from you, and the shipowners said
+you had gone down, you and every one else.  We thought you were
+dead, if ever man was, and poor Miss Alice and her little sick,
+helpless child!  O, sir, you must guess it," cried the poor creature
+at last, bursting out into a passionate fit of crying, "for indeed I
+cannot tell it.  But it was no one's fault.  God help us all this
+night!"
+
+Norah had sate down.  She trembled too much to stand.  He took her
+hands in his.  He squeezed them hard, as if by physical pressure,
+the truth could be wrung out.
+
+"Norah!"  This time his tone was calm, stagnant as despair.  "She
+has married again!"
+
+Norah shook her head sadly.  The grasp slowly relaxed.  The man had
+fainted.
+
+There was brandy in the room.  Norah forced some drops into Mr.
+Frank's mouth, chafed his hands, and--when mere animal life
+returned, before the mind poured in its flood of memories and
+thoughts--she lifted him up, and rested his head against her knees.
+Then she put a few crumbs of bread taken from the supper-table,
+soaked in brandy into his mouth.  Suddenly he sprang to his feet.
+
+"Where is she?  Tell me this instant."  He looked so wild, so mad,
+so desperate, that Norah felt herself to be in bodily danger; but
+her time of dread had gone by.  She had been afraid to tell him the
+truth, and then she had been a coward.  Now, her wits were sharpened
+by the sense of his desperate state.  He must leave the house.  She
+would pity him afterwards; but now she must rather command and
+upbraid; for he must leave the house before her mistress came home.
+That one necessity stood clear before her.
+
+"She is not here; that is enough for you to know.  Nor can I say
+exactly where she is" (which was true to the letter if not to the
+spirit).  "Go away, and tell me where to find you to-morrow, and I
+will tell you all.  My master and mistress may come back at any
+minute, and then what would become of me with a strange man in the
+house?"
+
+Such an argument was too petty to touch his excited mind.
+
+"I don't care for your master and mistress.  If your master is a
+man, he must feel for me poor shipwrecked sailor that I am--kept for
+years a prisoner amongst savages, always, always, always thinking of
+my wife and my home--dreaming of her by night, talking to her,
+though she could not hear, by day.  I loved her more than all heaven
+and earth put together.  Tell me where she is, this instant, you
+wretched woman, who salved over her wickedness to her, as you do to
+me."
+
+The clock struck ten.  Desperate positions require desperate
+measures.
+
+"If you will leave the house now, I will come to you to-morrow and
+tell you all.  What is more, you shall see your child now.  She lies
+sleeping up-stairs.  O, sir, you have a child, you do not know that
+as yet--a little weakly girl--with just a heart and soul beyond her
+years.  We have reared her up with such care:  We watched her, for
+we thought for many a year she might die any day, and we tended her,
+and no hard thing has come near her, and no rough word has ever been
+said to her.  And now you, come and will take her life into your
+hand, and will crush it.  Strangers to her have been kind to her;
+but her own father--Mr. Frank, I am her nurse, and I love her, and I
+tend her, and I would do anything for her that I could.  Her
+mother's heart beats as hers beats; and, if she suffers a pain, her
+mother trembles all over.  If she is happy, it is her mother that
+smiles and is glad.  If she is growing stronger, her mother is
+healthy:  if she dwindles, her mother languishes.  If she dies--
+well, I don't know:  it is not every one can lie down and die when
+they wish it.  Come up-stairs, Mr. Frank, and see your child.
+Seeing her will do good to your poor heart.  Then go away, in God's
+name, just this one night-to-morrow, if need be, you can do
+anything--kill us all if you will, or show yourself--a great grand
+man, whom God will bless for ever and ever.  Come, Mr. Frank, the
+look of a sleeping child is sure to give peace."
+
+She led him up-stairs; at first almost helping his steps, till they
+came near the nursery door.  She had almost forgotten the existence
+of little Edwin.  It struck upon her with affright as the shaded
+light fell upon the other cot; but she skilfully threw that corner
+of the room into darkness, and let the light fall on the sleeping
+Ailsie.  The child had thrown down the coverings, and her deformity,
+as she lay with her back to them, was plainly visible through her
+slight night-gown.  Her little face, deprived of the lustre of her
+eyes, looked wan and pinched, and had a pathetic expression in it,
+even as she slept.  The poor father looked and looked with hungry,
+wistful eyes, into which the big tears came swelling up slowly, and
+dropped heavily down, as he stood trembling and shaking all over.
+Norah was angry with herself for growing impatient of the length of
+time that long lingering gaze lasted.  She thought that she waited
+for full half-an-hour before Frank stirred.  And then--instead of
+going away--he sank down on his knees by the bedside, and buried his
+face in the clothes.  Little Ailsie stirred uneasily.  Norah pulled
+him up in terror.  She could afford no more time even for prayer in
+her extremity of fear; for surely the next moment would bring her
+mistress home.  She took him forcibly by the arm; but, as he was
+going, his eye lighted on the other bed:  he stopped.  Intelligence
+came back into his face.  His hands clenched.
+
+"His child?" he asked.
+
+"Her child," replied Norah.  "God watches over him," said she
+instinctively; for Frank's looks excited her fears, and she needed
+to remind herself of the Protector of the helpless.
+
+"God has not watched over me," he said, in despair; his thoughts
+apparently recoiling on his own desolate, deserted state.  But Norah
+had no time for pity.  To-morrow she would be as compassionate as
+her heart prompted.  At length she guided him downstairs and shut
+the outer door and bolted it--as if by bolts to keep out facts.
+
+Then she went back into the dining-room and effaced all traces of
+his presence as far as she could.  She went upstairs to the nursery
+and sate there, her head on her hand, thinking what was to come of
+all this misery.  It seemed to her very long before they did return;
+yet it was hardly eleven o'clock.  She so heard the loud, hearty
+Lancashire voices on the stairs; and, for the first time, she
+understood the contrast of the desolation of the poor man who had so
+lately gone forth in lonely despair.
+
+It almost put her out of patience to see Mrs. Openshaw come in,
+calmly smiling, handsomely dressed, happy, easy, to inquire after
+her children.
+
+"Did Ailsie go to sleep comfortably?" she whispered to Norah.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her mother bent over her, looking at her slumbers with the soft eyes
+of love.  How little she dreamed who had looked on her last!  Then
+she went to Edwin, with perhaps less wistful anxiety in her
+countenance, but more of pride.  She took off her things, to go down
+to supper.  Norah saw her no more that night.
+
+Beside the door into the passage, the sleeping-nursery opened out of
+Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw's room, in order that they might have the
+children more immediately under their own eyes.  Early the next
+summer morning Mrs. Openshaw was awakened by Ailsie's startled call
+of "Mother! mother!"  She sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and
+went to her child.  Ailsie was only half awake, and in a not
+uncommon state of terror.
+
+"Who was he, mother?  Tell me!"
+
+"Who, my darling?  No one is here.  You have been dreaming love.
+Waken up quite.  See, it is broad daylight."
+
+"Yes," said Ailsie, looking round her; then clinging to her mother,
+said, "but a man was here in the night, mother."
+
+"Nonsense, little goose.  No man has ever come near you!"
+
+"Yes, he did.  He stood there.  Just by Norah.  A man with hair and
+a beard.  And he knelt down and said his prayers.  Norah knows he
+was here, mother" (half angrily, as Mrs. Openshaw shook her head in
+smiling incredulity).
+
+"Well! we will ask Norah when she comes," said Mrs. Openshaw,
+soothingly.  "But we won't talk any more about him now.  It is not
+five o'clock; it is too early for you to get up.  Shall I fetch you
+a book and read to you?"
+
+"Don't leave me, mother," said the child, clinging to her.  So Mrs.
+Openshaw sate on the bedside talking to Ailsie, and telling her of
+what they had done at Richmond the evening before, until the little
+girl's eyes slowly closed and she once more fell asleep.
+
+"What was the matter?" asked Mr. Openshaw, as his wife returned to
+bed.  "Ailsie wakened up in a fright, with some story of a man
+having been in the room to say his prayers,--a dream, I suppose."
+And no more was said at the time.
+
+Mrs. Openshaw had almost forgotten the whole affair when she got up
+about seven o'clock.  But, bye-and-bye, she heard a sharp
+altercation going on in the nursery.  Norah speaking angrily to
+Ailsie, a most unusual thing.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw listened
+in astonishment.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Ailsie I let me hear none of your dreams; never
+let me hear you tell that story again!" Ailsie began to cry.
+
+Mr. Openshaw opened the door of communication before his wife could
+say a word.
+
+"Norah, come here!"
+
+The nurse stood at the door, defiant.  She perceived she had been
+heard, but she was desperate.
+
+"Don't let me hear you speak in that manner to Ailsie again," he
+said sternly, and shut the door.
+
+Norah was infinitely relieved; for she had dreaded some questioning;
+and a little blame for sharp speaking was what she could well bear,
+if cross-examination was let alone.
+
+Down-stairs they went, Mr. Openshaw carrying Ailsie; the sturdy
+Edwin coming step by step, right foot foremost, always holding his
+mother's hand.  Each child was placed in a chair by the breakfast-
+table, and then Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw stood together at the window,
+awaiting their visitors' appearance and making plans for the day.
+There was a pause.  Suddenly Mr. Openshaw turned to Ailsie, and
+said:
+
+"What a little goosy somebody is with her dreams, waking up poor,
+tired mother in the middle of the night with a story of a man being
+in the room."
+
+"Father!  I'm sure I saw him," said Ailsie, half crying.  "I don't
+want to make Norah angry; but I was not asleep, for all she says I
+was.  I had been asleep,--and I awakened up quite wide awake though
+I was so frightened.  I kept my eyes nearly shut, and I saw the man
+quite plain.  A great brown man with a beard.  He said his prayers.
+And then he looked at Edwin.  And then Norah took him by the arm and
+led him away, after they had whispered a bit together."
+
+"Now, my little woman must be reasonable," said Mr. Openshaw, who
+was always patient with Ailsie.  "There was no man in the house last
+night at all.  No man comes into the house as you know, if you
+think; much less goes up into the nursery.  But sometimes we dream
+something has happened, and the dream is so like reality, that you
+are not the first person, little woman, who has stood out that the
+thing has really happened."
+
+"But, indeed it was not a dream!" said Ailsie, beginning to cry.
+
+Just then Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick came down, looking grave and
+discomposed.  All during breakfast time they were silent and
+uncomfortable.  As soon as the breakfast things were taken away, and
+the children had been carried up-stairs, Mr. Chadwick began in an
+evidently preconcerted manner to inquire if his nephew was certain
+that all his servants were honest; for, that Mrs. Chadwick had that
+morning missed a very valuable brooch, which she had worn the day
+before.  She remembered taking it off when she came home from
+Buckingham Palace.  Mr. Openshaw's face contracted into hard lines:
+grew like what it was before he had known his wife and her child.
+He rang the bell even before his uncle had done speaking.  It was
+answered by the housemaid.
+
+"Mary, was any one here last night while we were away?"
+
+"A man, sir, came to speak to Norah."
+
+"To speak to Norah!  Who was he?  How long did he stay?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't tell, sir.  He came--perhaps about nine.  I went
+up to tell Norah in the nursery, and she came down to speak to him.
+She let him out, sir.  She will know who he was, and how long he
+stayed."
+
+She waited a moment to be asked any more questions, but she was not,
+so she went away.
+
+A minute afterwards Openshaw made as though he were going out of the
+room; but his wife laid her hand on his arm:
+
+"Do not speak to her before the children," she said, in her low,
+quiet voice.  "I will go up and question her."
+
+"No!  I must speak to her.  You must know," said he, turning to his
+uncle and aunt, "my missus has an old servant, as faithful as ever
+woman was, I do believe, as far as love goes,--but, at the same
+time, who does not always speak truth, as even the missus must
+allow.  Now, my notion is, that this Norah of ours has been come
+over by some good-for-nothin chap (for she's at the time o' life
+when they say women pray for husbands--'any, good Lord, any,') and
+has let him into our house, and the chap has made off with your
+brooch, and m'appen many another thing beside.  It's only saying
+that Norah is soft-hearted, and does not stick at a white lie--
+that's all, missus."
+
+It was curious to notice how his tone, his eyes, his whole face
+changed as he spoke to his wife; but he was the resolute man through
+all.  She knew better than to oppose him; so she went up-stairs, and
+told Norah her master wanted to speak to her, and that she would
+take care of the children in the meanwhile.
+
+Norah rose to go without a word.  Her thoughts were these:
+
+"If they tear me to pieces they shall never know through me.  He may
+come,--and then just Lord have mercy upon us all:  for some of us
+are dead folk to a certainty.  But he shall do it; not me."
+
+You may fancy, now, her look of determination as she faced her
+master alone in the dining-room; Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick having left
+the affair in their nephew's hands, seeing that he took it up with
+such vehemence.
+
+"Norah!  Who was that man that came to my house last night?"
+
+"Man, sir!"  As if infinitely; surprised but it was only to gain
+time.
+
+"Yes; the man whom Mary let in; whom she went up-stairs to the
+nursery to tell you about; whom you came down to speak to; the same
+chap, I make no doubt, whom you took into the nursery to have your
+talk out with; whom Ailsie saw, and afterwards dreamed about;
+thinking, poor wench! she saw him say his prayers, when nothing,
+I'll be bound, was farther from his thoughts; who took Mrs.
+Chadwick's brooch, value ten pounds.  Now, Norah!  Don't go off!  I
+am as sure as that my name's Thomas Openshaw, that you knew nothing
+of this robbery.  But I do think you've been imposed on, and that's
+the truth.  Some good-for-nothing chap has been making up to you,
+and you've been just like all other women, and have turned a soft
+place in your heart to him; and he came last night a-lovyering, and
+you had him up in the nursery, and he made use of his opportunities,
+and made off with a few things on his way down!  Come, now, Norah:
+it's no blame to you, only you must not be such a fool again.  Tell
+us," he continued, "what name he gave you, Norah?  I'll be bound it
+was not the right one; but it will be a clue for the police."
+
+Norah drew herself up.  "You may ask that question, and taunt me
+with my being single, and with my credulity, as you will, Master
+Openshaw.  You'll get no answer from me.  As for the brooch, and the
+story of theft and burglary; if any friend ever came to see me
+(which I defy you to prove, and deny), he'd be just as much above
+doing such a thing as you yourself, Mr. Openshaw, and more so, too;
+for I'm not at all sure as everything you have is rightly come by,
+or would be yours long, if every man had his own."  She meant, of
+course, his wife; but he understood her to refer to his property in
+goods and chattels.
+
+"Now, my good woman," said he, "I'll just tell you truly, I never
+trusted you out and out; but my wife liked you, and I thought you
+had many a good point about you.  If you once begin to sauce me,
+I'll have the police to you, and get out the truth in a court of
+justice, if you'll not tell it me quietly and civilly here.  Now the
+best thing you can do is quietly to tell me who the fellow is.  Look
+here! a man comes to my house; asks for you; you take him up-stairs,
+a valuable brooch is missing next day; we know that you, and Mary,
+and cook, are honest; but you refuse to tell us who the man is.
+Indeed you've told one lie already about him, saying no one was here
+last night.  Now I just put it to you, what do you think a policeman
+would say to this, or a magistrate?  A magistrate would soon make
+you tell the truth, my good woman."
+
+"There's never the creature born that should get it out of me," said
+Norah.  "Not unless I choose to tell."
+
+"I've a great mind to see," said Mr. Openshaw, growing angry at the
+defiance.  Then, checking himself, he thought before he spoke again:
+
+"Norah, for your missus's sake I don't want to go to extremities.
+Be a sensible woman, if you can.  It's no great disgrace, after all,
+to have been taken in.  I ask you once more--as a friend--who was
+this man whom you let into my house last night?"
+
+No answer.  He repeated the question in an impatient tone.  Still no
+answer.  Norah's lips were set in determination not to speak.
+
+"Then there is but one thing to be done.  I shall send for a
+policeman."
+
+"You will not," said Norah, starting forwards.  "You shall not, sir!
+No policeman shall touch me.  I know nothing of the brooch, but I
+know this:  ever since I was four-and-twenty I have thought more of
+your wife than of myself:  ever since I saw her, a poor motherless
+girl put upon in her uncle's house, I have thought more of serving
+her than of serving myself!  I have cared for her and her child, as
+nobody ever cared for me.  I don't cast blame on you, sir, but I say
+it's ill giving up one's life to any one; for, at the end, they will
+turn round upon you, and forsake you.  Why does not my missus come
+herself to suspect me?  Maybe she is gone for the police?  But I
+don't stay here, either for police, or magistrate, or master.
+You're an unlucky lot.  I believe there's a curse on you.  I'll
+leave you this very day.  Yes!  I leave that poor Ailsie, too.  I
+will! No good will ever come to you!"
+
+Mr. Openshaw was utterly astonished at this speech; most of which
+was completely unintelligible to him, as may easily be supposed.
+Before he could make up his mind what to say, or what to do, Norah
+had left the room.  I do not think he had ever really intended to
+send for the police to this old servant of his wife's; for he had
+never for a moment doubted her perfect honesty.  But he had intended
+to compel her to tell him who the man was, and in this he was
+baffled.  He was, consequently, much irritated.  He returned to his
+uncle and aunt in a state of great annoyance and perplexity, and
+told them he could get nothing out of the woman; that some man had
+been in the house the night before; but that she refused to tell who
+he was.  At this moment his wife came in, greatly agitated, and
+asked what had happened to Norah; for that she had put on her things
+in passionate haste, and had left the house.
+
+"This looks suspicious," said Mr. Chadwick.  "It is not the way in
+which an honest person would have acted."
+
+Mr. Openshaw kept silence.  He was sorely perplexed.  But Mrs.
+Openshaw turned round on Mr. Chadwick with a sudden fierceness no
+one ever saw in her before.
+
+"You don't know Norah, uncle!  She is gone because she is deeply
+hurt at being suspected.  O, I wish I had seen her--that I had
+spoken to her myself.  She would have told me anything."  Alice
+wrung her hands.
+
+"I must confess," continued Mr. Chadwick to his nephew, in a lower
+voice, "I can't make you out.  You used to be a word and a blow, and
+oftenest the blow first; and now, when there is every cause for
+suspicion, you just do nought.  Your missus is a very good woman, I
+grant; but she may have been put upon as well as other folk, I
+suppose.  If you don't send for the police, I shall."
+
+"Very well," replied Mr. Openshaw, surlily.  "I can't clear Norah.
+She won't clear herself, as I believe she might if she would.  Only
+I wash my hands of it; for I am sure the woman herself is honest,
+and she's lived a long time with my wife, and I don't like her to
+come to shame."
+
+"But she will then be forced to clear herself.  That, at any rate,
+will be a good thing."
+
+"Very well, very well!  I am heart-sick of the whole business.
+Come, Alice, come up to the babies they'll be in a sore way.  I tell
+you, uncle!" he said, turning round once more to Mr. Chadwick,
+suddenly and sharply, after his eye had fallen on Alice's wan,
+tearful, anxious face; "I'll have none sending for the police after
+all.  I'll buy my aunt twice as handsome a brooch this very day; but
+I'll not have Norah suspected, and my missus plagued.  There's for
+you."
+
+He and his wife left the room.  Mr. Chadwick quietly waited till he
+was out of hearing, and then aid to his wife; "For all Tom's
+heroics, I'm just quietly going for a detective, wench.  Thou
+need'st know nought about it."
+
+He went to the police-station, and made a statement of the case.  He
+was gratified by the impression which the evidence against Norah
+seemed to make.  The men all agreed in his opinion, and steps were
+to be immediately taken to find out where she was.  Most probably,
+as they suggested, she had gone at once to the man, who, to all
+appearance, was her lover.  When Mr. Chadwick asked how they would
+find her out? they smiled, shook their heads, and spoke of
+mysterious but infallible ways and means.  He returned to his
+nephew's house with a very comfortable opinion of his own sagacity.
+He was met by his wife with a penitent face:
+
+"O master, I've found my brooch!  It was just sticking by its pin in
+the flounce of my brown silk, that I wore yesterday.  I took it off
+in a hurry, and it must have caught in it; and I hung up my gown in
+the closet.  Just now, when I was going to fold it up, there was the
+brooch! I'm very vexed, but I never dreamt but what it was lost!"
+
+Her husband muttering something very like "Confound thee and thy
+brooch too!  I wish I'd never given it thee," snatched up his hat,
+and rushed back to the station; hoping to be in time to stop the
+police from searching for Norah.  But a detective was already gone
+off on the errand.
+
+Where was Norah?  Half mad with the strain of the fearful secret,
+she had hardly slept through the night for thinking what must be
+done.  Upon this terrible state of mind had come Ailsie's questions,
+showing that she had seen the Man, as the unconscious child called
+her father.  Lastly came the suspicion of her honesty.  She was
+little less than crazy as she ran up-stairs and dashed on her bonnet
+and shawl; leaving all else, even her purse, behind her.  In that
+house she would not stay.  That was all she knew or was clear about.
+She would not even see the children again, for fear it should weaken
+her.  She feared above everything Mr. Frank's return to claim his
+wife.  She could not tell what remedy there was for a sorrow so
+tremendous, for her to stay to witness.  The desire of escaping from
+the coming event was a stronger motive for her departure than her
+soreness about the suspicions directed against her; although this
+last had been the final goad to the course she took.  She walked
+away almost at headlong speed; sobbing as she went, as she had not
+dared to do during the past night for fear of exciting wonder in
+those who might hear her.  Then she stopped.  An idea came into her
+mind that she would leave London altogether, and betake herself to
+her native town of Liverpool.  She felt in her pocket for her purse,
+as she drew near the Euston Square station with this intention.  She
+had left it at home.  Her poor head aching, her eyes swollen with
+crying, she had to stand still, and think, as well as she could,
+where next she should bend her steps.  Suddenly the thought flashed
+into her mind that she would go and find out poor Mr. Frank.  She
+had been hardly kind to him the night before, though her heart had
+bled for him ever since.  She remembered his telling her as she
+inquired for his address, almost as she had pushed him out of the
+door, of some hotel in a street not far distant from Euston Square.
+Thither she went:  with what intention she hardly knew, but to
+assuage her conscience by telling him how much she pitied him.  In
+her present state she felt herself unfit to counsel, or restrain, or
+assist, or do ought else but sympathise and weep.  The people of the
+inn said such a person had been there; had arrived only the day
+before; had gone out soon after his arrival, leaving his luggage in
+their care; but had never come back.  Norah asked for leave to sit
+down, and await the gentleman's return.  The landlady--pretty secure
+in the deposit of luggage against any probable injury--showed her
+into a room, and quietly locked the door on the outside.  Norah was
+utterly worn out, and fell asleep--a shivering, starting, uneasy
+slumber, which lasted for hours.
+
+The detective, meanwhile, had come up with her some time before she
+entered the hotel, into which he followed her.  Asking the landlady
+to detain her for an hour or so, without giving any reason beyond
+showing his authority (which made the landlady applaud herself a
+good deal for having locked her in), he went back to the police-
+station to report his proceedings.  He could have taken her
+directly; but his object was, if possible, to trace out the man who
+was supposed to have committed the robbery.  Then he heard of the
+discovery of the brooch; and consequently did not care to return.
+
+Norah slept till even the summer evening began to close in.  Then
+up.  Some one was at the door.  It would be Mr. Frank; and she
+dizzily pushed back her ruffled grey hair, which had fallen over her
+eyes, and stood looking to see him.  Instead, there came in Mr.
+Openshaw and a policeman.
+
+"This is Norah Kennedy," said Mr. Openshaw.
+
+"O, sir," said Norah, "I did not touch the brooch; indeed I did not.
+O, sir, I cannot live to be thought so badly of;" and very sick and
+faint, she suddenly sank down on the ground.  To her surprise, Mr.
+Openshaw raised her up very tenderly.  Even the policeman helped to
+lay her on the sofa; and, at Mr. Openshaw's desire, he went for some
+wine and sandwiches; for the poor gaunt woman lay there almost as if
+dead with weariness and exhaustion.
+
+"Norah!" said Mr. Openshaw, in his kindest voice, "the brooch is
+found.  It was hanging to Mrs. Chadwick's gown.  I beg your pardon.
+Most truly I beg your pardon, for having troubled you about it.  My
+wife is almost broken-hearted.  Eat, Norah,--or, stay, first drink
+this glass of wine," said he, lifting her head, pouring a little
+down her throat.
+
+As she drank, she remembered where she was, and who she was waiting
+for.  She suddenly pushed Mr. Openshaw away, saying, "O, sir, you
+must go.  You must not stop a minute.  If he comes back he will kill
+you."
+
+"Alas, Norah!  I do not know who 'he' is.  But some one is gone away
+who will never come back:  someone who knew you, and whom I am
+afraid you cared for."
+
+"I don't understand you, sir," said Norah, her master's kind and
+sorrowful manner bewildering her yet more than his words.  The
+policeman had left the room at Mr. Openshaw's desire, and they two
+were alone.
+
+"You know what I mean, when I say some one is gone who will never
+come back.  I mean that he is dead!"
+
+"Who?" said Norah, trembling all over.
+
+"A poor man has been found in the Thames this morning, drowned."
+
+"Did he drown himself?" asked Norah, solemnly.
+
+"God only knows," replied Mr. Openshaw, in the same tone.  "Your
+name and address at our house, were found in his pocket:  that, and
+his purse, were the only things, that were found upon him.  I am
+sorry to say it, my poor Norah; but you are required to go and
+identify him."
+
+"To what?" asked Norah.
+
+"To say who it is.  It is always done, in order that some reason may
+be discovered for the suicide--if suicide it was.  I make no doubt
+he was the man who came to see you at our house last night.  It is
+very sad, I know."  He made pauses between each little clause, in
+order to try and bring back her senses; which he feared were
+wandering--so wild and sad was her look.
+
+"Master Openshaw," said she, at last, "I've a dreadful secret to
+tell you--only you must never breathe it to any one, and you and I
+must hide it away for ever.  I thought to have done it all by
+myself, but I see I cannot.  Yon poor man--yes! the dead, drowned
+creature is, I fear, Mr. Frank, my mistress's first husband!"
+
+Mr. Openshaw sate down, as if shot.  He did not speak; but, after a
+while, he signed to Norah to go on.
+
+"He came to me the other night--when--God be thanked--you were all
+away at Richmond.  He asked me if his wife was dead or alive.  I was
+a brute, and thought more of our all coming home than of his sore
+trial:  spoke out sharp, and said she was married again, and very
+content and happy:  I all but turned him away:  and now he lies dead
+and cold!"
+
+"God forgive me!" said Mr. Openshaw.
+
+"God forgive us all!" said Norah.  "Yon poor man needs forgiveness
+perhaps less than any one among us.  He had been among the savages--
+shipwrecked--I know not what--and he had written letters which had
+never reached my poor missus."
+
+"He saw his child!"
+
+"He saw her--yes!  I took him up, to give his thoughts another
+start; for I believed he was going mad on my hands.  I came to seek
+him here, as I more than half promised.  My mind misgave me when I
+heard he had never come in.  O, sir I it must be him!"
+
+Mr. Openshaw rang the bell.  Norah was almost too much stunned to
+wonder at what he did.  He asked for writing materials, wrote a
+letter, and then said to Norah:
+
+"I am writing to Alice, to say I shall be unavoidably absent for a
+few days; that I have found you; that you are well, and send her
+your love, and will come home to-morrow.  You must go with me to the
+Police Court; you must identify the body:  I will pay high to keep
+name; and details out of the papers.
+
+"But where are you going, sir?"
+
+He did not answer her directly.  Then he said:
+
+"Norah!  I must go with you, and look on the face of the man whom I
+have so injured,--unwittingly, it is true; but it seems to me as if
+I had killed him.  I will lay his head in the grave, as if he were
+my only brother:  and how he must have hated me!  I cannot go home
+to my wife till all that I can do for him is done.  Then I go with a
+dreadful secret on my mind.  I shall never speak of it again, after
+these days are over.  I know you will not, either."  He shook hands
+with her:  and they never named the subject again, the one to the
+other.
+
+Norah went home to Alice the next day.  Not a word was said on the
+cause of her abrupt departure a day or two before.  Alice had been
+charged by her husband in his letter not to allude to the supposed
+theft of the brooch; so she, implicitly obedient to those whom she
+loved both by nature and habit, was entirely silent on the subject,
+only treated Norah with the most tender respect, as if to make up
+for unjust suspicion.
+
+Nor did Alice inquire into the reason why Mr. Openshaw had been
+absent during his uncle and aunt's visit, after he had once said
+that it was unavoidable.  He came back, grave and quiet; and, from
+that time forth, was curiously changed.  More thoughtful, and
+perhaps less active; quite as decided in conduct, but with new and
+different rules for the guidance of that conduct.  Towards Alice he
+could hardly be more kind than he had always been; but he now seemed
+to look upon her as some one sacred and to be treated with
+reverence, as well as tenderness.  He throve in business, and made a
+large fortune, one half of which was settled upon her.
+
+
+Long years after these events,--a few months after her mother died,
+Ailsie and her "father" (as she always called Mr. Openshaw) drove to
+a cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to a
+certain mound by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage.
+There was a head-stone, with F. W. and a date.  That was all.
+Sitting by the grave, Mr. Openshaw told her the story; and for the
+sad fate of that poor father whom she had never seen, he shed the
+only tears she ever saw fall from his eyes.
+
+* * *
+
+"A most interesting story, all through," I said, as Jarber folded up
+the first of his series of discoveries in triumph.  "A story that
+goes straight to the heart--especially at the end.  But"--I stopped,
+and looked at Trottle.
+
+Trottle entered his protest directly in the shape of a cough.
+
+"Well!" I said, beginning to lose my patience.  "Don't you see that
+I want you to speak, and that I don't want you to cough?"
+
+"Quite so, ma'am," said Trottle, in a state of respectful obstinacy
+which would have upset the temper of a saint.  "Relative, I presume,
+to this story, ma'am?"
+
+"Yes, Yes!" said Jarber.  "By all means let us hear what this good
+man has to say."
+
+"Well, sir," answered Trottle, "I want to know why the House over
+the way doesn't let, and I don't exactly see how your story answers
+the question.  That's all I have to say, sir."
+
+I should have liked to contradict my opinionated servant, at that
+moment.  But, excellent as the story was in itself, I felt that he
+had hit on the weak point, so far as Jarber's particular purpose in
+reading it was concerned.
+
+"And that is what you have to say, is it?" repeated Jarber.  "I
+enter this room announcing that I have a series of discoveries, and
+you jump instantly to the conclusion that the first of the series
+exhausts my resources.  Have I your permission, dear lady, to
+enlighten this obtuse person, if possible, by reading Number Two?"
+
+"My work is behindhand, ma'am," said Trottle, moving to the door,
+the moment I gave Jarber leave to go on.
+
+"Stop where you are," I said, in my most peremptory manner, "and
+give Mr. Jarber his fair opportunity of answering your objection now
+you have made it.
+
+Trottle sat down with the look of a martyr, and Jarber began to read
+with his back turned on the enemy more decidedly than ever.
+
+
+
+GOING INTO SOCIETY
+
+
+
+At one period of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of
+a Showman.  He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish
+books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore
+no need of any clue to his name.  But, he himself was less easy to
+be found; for, he had led a wandering life, and settled people had
+lost sight of him, and people who plumed themselves on being
+respectable were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything
+of him.  At last, among the marsh lands near the river's level, that
+lie about Deptford and the neighbouring market-gardens, a Grizzled
+Personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of
+weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was found smoking
+a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels.  The wooden house
+was laid up in ordinary for the winter, near the mouth of a muddy
+creek; and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes,
+and the steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled
+man.  In the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the
+wooden house on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the
+rest in a companionable manner.
+
+On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to Let,
+Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes.  Then his name
+was Magsman?  That was it, Toby Magsman--which lawfully christened
+Robert; but called in the line, from a infant, Toby.  There was
+nothing agin Toby Magsman, he believed?  If there was suspicion of
+such--mention it!
+
+There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured.  But, some
+inquiries were making about that House, and would he object to say
+why he left it?
+
+Not at all; why should he?  He left it, along of a Dwarf.
+
+Along of a Dwarf?
+
+Mr. Magsman repeated, deliberately and emphatically, Along of a
+Dwarf.
+
+Might it be compatible with Mr. Magsman's inclination and
+convenience to enter, as a favour, into a few particulars?
+
+Mr. Magsman entered into the following particulars.
+
+It was a long time ago, to begin with;--afore lotteries and a deal
+more was done away with.  Mr. Magsman was looking about for a good
+pitch, and he see that house, and he says to himself, "I'll have
+you, if you're to be had.  If money'll get you, I'll have you."
+
+The neighbours cut up rough, and made complaints; but Mr. Magsman
+don't know what they WOULD have had.  It was a lovely thing.  First
+of all, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Giant,
+in Spanish trunks and a ruff, who was himself half the heighth of
+the house, and was run up with a line and pulley to a pole on the
+roof, so that his Ed was coeval with the parapet.  Then, there was
+the canvass, representin the picter of the Albina lady, showing her
+white air to the Army and Navy in correct uniform.  Then, there was
+the canvass, representin the picter of the Wild Indian a scalpin a
+member of some foreign nation.  Then, there was the canvass,
+representin the picter of a child of a British Planter, seized by
+two Boa Constrictors--not that WE never had no child, nor no
+Constrictors neither.  Similarly, there was the canvass, representin
+the picter of the Wild Ass of the Prairies--not that WE never had no
+wild asses, nor wouldn't have had 'em at a gift.  Last, there was
+the canvass, representin the picter of the Dwarf, and like him too
+(considerin), with George the Fourth in such a state of astonishment
+at him as His Majesty couldn't with his utmost politeness and
+stoutness express.  The front of the House was so covered with
+canvasses, that there wasn't a spark of daylight ever visible on
+that side.  "MAGSMAN'S AMUSEMENTS," fifteen foot long by two foot
+high, ran over the front door and parlour winders.  The passage was
+a Arbour of green baize and gardenstuff.  A barrel-organ performed
+there unceasing.  And as to respectability,--if threepence ain't
+respectable, what is?
+
+But, the Dwarf is the principal article at present, and he was worth
+the money.  He was wrote up as MAJOR TPSCHOFFKI, OF THE IMPERIAL
+BULGRADERIAN BRIGADE.  Nobody couldn't pronounce the name, and it
+never was intended anybody should.  The public always turned it, as
+a regular rule, into Chopski.  In the line he was called Chops;
+partly on that account, and partly because his real name, if he ever
+had any real name (which was very dubious), was Stakes.
+
+He was a un-common small man, he really was.  Certainly not so small
+as he was made out to be, but where IS your Dwarf as is?  He was a
+most uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and what he
+had inside that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself:  even supposin
+himself to have ever took stock of it, which it would have been a
+stiff job for even him to do.
+
+The kindest little man as never growed!  Spirited, but not proud.
+When he travelled with the Spotted Baby--though he knowed himself to
+be a nat'ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby's spots to be put upon him
+artificial, he nursed that Baby like a mother.  You never heerd him
+give a ill-name to a Giant.  He DID allow himself to break out into
+strong language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an
+affair of the 'art; and when a man's 'art has been trifled with by a
+lady, and the preference giv to a Indian, he ain't master of his
+actions.
+
+He was always in love, of course; every human nat'ral phenomenon is.
+And he was always in love with a large woman; I never knowed the
+Dwarf as could be got to love a small one.  Which helps to keep 'em
+the Curiosities they are.
+
+One sing'ler idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant
+something, or it wouldn't have been there.  It was always his
+opinion that he was entitled to property.  He never would put his
+name to anything.  He had been taught to write, by the young man
+without arms, who got his living with his toes (quite a writing
+master HE was, and taught scores in the line), but Chops would have
+starved to death, afore he'd have gained a bit of bread by putting
+his hand to a paper.  This is the more curious to bear in mind,
+because HE had no property, nor hope of property, except his house
+and a sarser.  When I say his house, I mean the box, painted and got
+up outside like a reg'lar six-roomer, that he used to creep into,
+with a diamond ring (or quite as good to look at) on his forefinger,
+and ring a little bell out of what the Public believed to be the
+Drawing-room winder.  And when I say a sarser, I mean a Chaney
+sarser in which he made a collection for himself at the end of every
+Entertainment.  His cue for that, he took from me:  "Ladies and
+gentlemen, the little man will now walk three times round the
+Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain."  When he said anything
+important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with this form of
+words, and they was generally the last thing he said to me at night
+afore he went to bed.
+
+He had what I consider a fine mind--a poetic mind.  His ideas
+respectin his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat
+upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned.  Arter the wibration
+had run through him a little time, he would screech out, "Toby, I
+feel my property coming--grind away!  I'm counting my guineas by
+thousands, Toby--grind away!  Toby, I shall be a man of fortun!  I
+feel the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I'm swelling out into the
+Bank of England!"  Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind.
+Not that he was partial to any other music but a barrel-organ; on
+the contrary, hated it.
+
+He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the Public:  which is a
+thing you may notice in many phenomenons that get their living out
+of it.  What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was, that
+it kep him out of Society.  He was continiwally saying, "Toby, my
+ambition is, to go into Society.  The curse of my position towards
+the Public is, that it keeps me hout of Society.  This don't signify
+to a low beast of a Indian; he an't formed for Society.  This don't
+signify to a Spotted Baby; HE an't formed for Society.--I am."
+
+Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money.  He had
+a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came
+round, besides having the run of his teeth--and he was a Woodpecker
+to eat--but all Dwarfs are.  The sarser was a little income,
+bringing him in so many halfpence that he'd carry 'em for a week
+together, tied up in a pocket-handkercher.  And yet he never had
+money.  And it couldn't be the Fat Lady from Norfolk, as was once
+supposed; because it stands to reason that when you have a animosity
+towards a Indian, which makes you grind your teeth at him to his
+face, and which can hardly hold you from Goosing him audible when
+he's going through his War-Dance--it stands to reason you wouldn't
+under them circumstances deprive yourself, to support that Indian in
+the lap of luxury.
+
+Most unexpected, the mystery come out one day at Egham Races.  The
+Public was shy of bein pulled in, and Chops was ringin his little
+bell out of his drawing-room winder, and was snarlin to me over his
+shoulder as he kneeled down with his legs out at the back-door--for
+he couldn't be shoved into his house without kneeling down, and the
+premises wouldn't accommodate his legs--was snarlin, "Here's a
+precious Public for you; why the Devil don't they tumble up?" when a
+man in the crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon, and cries out, "If
+there's any person here as has got a ticket, the Lottery's just
+drawed, and the number as has come up for the great prize is three,
+seven, forty-two!  Three, seven, forty-two!"  I was givin the man to
+the Furies myself, for calling off the Public's attention--for the
+Public will turn away, at any time, to look at anything in
+preference to the thing showed 'em; and if you doubt it, get 'em
+together for any indiwidual purpose on the face of the earth, and
+send only two people in late, and see if the whole company an't far
+more interested in takin particular notice of them two than of you--
+I say, I wasn't best pleased with the man for callin out, and wasn't
+blessin him in my own mind, when I see Chops's little bell fly out
+of winder at a old lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over,
+exposin the whole secret, and he catches hold of the calves of my
+legs and he says to me, "Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a
+pail of water over me or I'm a dead man, for I've come into my
+property!"
+
+Twelve thousand odd hundred pound, was Chops's winnins.  He had
+bought a half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had
+come up.  The first use he made of his property, was, to offer to
+fight the Wild Indian for five hundred pound a side, him with a
+poisoned darnin-needle and the Indian with a club; but the Indian
+being in want of backers to that amount, it went no further.
+
+Arter he had been mad for a week--in a state of mind, in short, in
+which, if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I
+believe he would have bust--but we kep the organ from him--Mr. Chops
+come round, and behaved liberal and beautiful to all.  He then sent
+for a young man he knowed, as had a wery genteel appearance and was
+a Bonnet at a gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father
+havin been imminent in the livery stable line but unfort'nate in a
+commercial crisis, through paintin a old gray, ginger-bay, and
+sellin him with a Pedigree), and Mr. Chops said to this Bonnet, who
+said his name was Normandy, which it wasn't:
+
+"Normandy, I'm a goin into Society.  Will you go with me?"
+
+Says Normandy:  "Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that
+the 'ole of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?"
+
+"Correct," says Mr. Chops.  "And you shall have a Princely allowance
+too."
+
+The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair, to shake hands with him,
+and replied in poetry, with his eyes seemingly full of tears:
+
+
+"My boat is on the shore,
+And my bark is on the sea,
+And I do not ask for more,
+But I'll Go:- along with thee."
+
+
+They went into Society, in a chay and four grays with silk jackets.
+They took lodgings in Pall Mall, London, and they blazed away.
+
+In consequence of a note that was brought to Bartlemy Fair in the
+autumn of next year by a servant, most wonderful got up in milk-
+white cords and tops, I cleaned myself and went to Pall Mall, one
+evening appinted.  The gentlemen was at their wine arter dinner, and
+Mr. Chops's eyes was more fixed in that Ed of his than I thought
+good for him.  There was three of 'em (in company, I mean), and I
+knowed the third well.  When last met, he had on a white Roman
+shirt, and a bishop's mitre covered with leopard-skin, and played
+the clarionet all wrong, in a band at a Wild Beast Show.
+
+This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said:  "Gentlemen,
+this is a old friend of former days:" and Normandy looked at me
+through a eye-glass, and said, "Magsman, glad to see you!"--which
+I'll take my oath he wasn't.  Mr. Chops, to git him convenient to
+the table, had his chair on a throne (much of the form of George the
+Fourth's in the canvass), but he hardly appeared to me to be King
+there in any other pint of view, for his two gentlemen ordered about
+like Emperors.  They was all dressed like May-Day--gorgeous!--And as
+to Wine, they swam in all sorts.
+
+I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done
+it), and then mixed 'em all together (to say I had done it), and
+then tried two of 'em as half-and-half, and then t'other two.
+Altogether, I passed a pleasin evenin, but with a tendency to feel
+muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say, "Mr.
+Chops, the best of friends must part, I thank you for the wariety of
+foreign drains you have stood so 'ansome, I looks towards you in red
+wine, and I takes my leave."  Mr. Chops replied, "If you'll just
+hitch me out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me
+down-stairs, I'll see you out."  I said I couldn't think of such a
+thing, but he would have it, so I lifted him off his throne.  He
+smelt strong of Maideary, and I couldn't help thinking as I carried
+him down that it was like carrying a large bottle full of wine, with
+a rayther ugly stopper, a good deal out of proportion.
+
+When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kep me close to him
+by holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:
+
+"I ain't 'appy, Magsman."
+
+"What's on your mind, Mr. Chops?"
+
+"They don't use me well.  They an't grateful to me.  They puts me on
+the mantel-piece when I won't have in more Champagne-wine, and they
+locks me in the sideboard when I won't give up my property."
+
+"Get rid of 'em, Mr. Chops."
+
+"I can't.  We're in Society together, and what would Society say?"
+
+"Come out of Society!" says I.
+
+"I can't.  You don't know what you're talking about.  When you have
+once gone into Society, you mustn't come out of it."
+
+"Then if you'll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops," were my remark,
+shaking my head grave, "I think it's a pity you ever went in."
+
+Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his, to a surprisin extent, and
+slapped it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more Wice than
+I thought were in him.  Then, he says, "You're a good fellow, but
+you don't understand.  Good-night, go along.  Magsman, the little
+man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind
+the curtain."  The last I see of him on that occasion was his tryin,
+on the extremest werge of insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one
+by one, with his hands and knees.  They'd have been much too steep
+for him, if he had been sober; but he wouldn't be helped.
+
+It warn't long after that, that I read in the newspaper of Mr.
+Chops's being presented at court.  It was printed, "It will be
+recollected"--and I've noticed in my life, that it is sure to be
+printed that it WILL be recollected, whenever it won't--"that Mr.
+Chops is the individual of small stature, whose brilliant success in
+the last State Lottery attracted so much attention."  Well, I says
+to myself, Such is Life!  He has been and done it in earnest at
+last.  He has astonished George the Fourth!
+
+(On account of which, I had that canvass new-painted, him with a bag
+of money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a
+lady in Ostrich Feathers fallin in love with him in a bag-wig,
+sword, and buckles correct.)
+
+I took the House as is the subject of present inquiries--though not
+the honour of bein acquainted--and I run Magsman's Amusements in it
+thirteen months--sometimes one thing, sometimes another, sometimes
+nothin particular, but always all the canvasses outside.  One night,
+when we had played the last company out, which was a shy company,
+through its raining Heavens hard, I was takin a pipe in the one pair
+back along with the young man with the toes, which I had taken on
+for a month (though he never drawed--except on paper), and I heard a
+kickin at the street door.  "Halloa!" I says to the young man,
+"what's up!"  He rubs his eyebrows with his toes, and he says, "I
+can't imagine, Mr. Magsman"--which he never could imagine nothin,
+and was monotonous company.
+
+The noise not leavin off, I laid down my pipe, and I took up a
+candle, and I went down and opened the door.  I looked out into the
+street; but nothin could I see, and nothin was I aware of, until I
+turned round quick, because some creetur run between my legs into
+the passage.  There was Mr. Chops!
+
+"Magsman," he says, "take me, on the old terms, and you've got me;
+if it's done, say done!"
+
+I was all of a maze, but I said, "Done, sir."
+
+"Done to your done, and double done!" says he.  "Have you got a bit
+of supper in the house?"
+
+Bearin in mind them sparklin warieties of foreign drains as we'd
+guzzled away at in Pall Mall, I was ashamed to offer him cold
+sassages and gin-and-water; but he took 'em both and took 'em free;
+havin a chair for his table, and sittin down at it on a stool, like
+hold times.  I, all of a maze all the while.
+
+It was arter he had made a clean sweep of the sassages (beef, and to
+the best of my calculations two pound and a quarter), that the
+wisdom as was in that little man began to come out of him like
+prespiration.
+
+"Magsman," he says, "look upon me!  You see afore you, One as has
+both gone into Society and come out."
+
+"O!  You ARE out of it, Mr. Chops?  How did you get out, sir?"
+
+"SOLD OUT!" says he.  You never saw the like of the wisdom as his Ed
+expressed, when he made use of them two words.
+
+"My friend Magsman, I'll impart to you a discovery I've made.  It's
+wallable; it's cost twelve thousand five hundred pound; it may do
+you good in life--The secret of this matter is, that it ain't so
+much that a person goes into Society, as that Society goes into a
+person."
+
+Not exactly keepin up with his meanin, I shook my head, put on a
+deep look, and said, "You're right there, Mr. Chops."
+
+"Magsman," he says, twitchin me by the leg, "Society has gone into
+me, to the tune of every penny of my property."
+
+I felt that I went pale, and though nat'rally a bold speaker, I
+couldn't hardly say, "Where's Normandy?"
+
+"Bolted.  With the plate," said Mr. Chops.
+
+"And t'other one?" meaning him as formerly wore the bishop's mitre.
+
+"Bolted.  With the jewels," said Mr. Chops.
+
+I sat down and looked at him, and he stood up and looked at me.
+
+"Magsman," he says, and he seemed to myself to get wiser as he got
+hoarser; "Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs.  At the court
+of St. James's, they was all a doing my old business--all a goin
+three times round the Cairawan, in the hold court-suits and
+properties.  Elsewheres, they was most of 'em ringin their little
+bells out of make-believes.  Everywheres, the sarser was a goin
+round.  Magsman, the sarser is the uniwersal Institution!"
+
+I perceived, you understand, that he was soured by his misfortunes,
+and I felt for Mr. Chops.
+
+"As to Fat Ladies," he says, giving his head a tremendious one agin
+the wall, "there's lots of THEM in Society, and worse than the
+original.  HERS was a outrage upon Taste--simply a outrage upon
+Taste--awakenin contempt--carryin its own punishment in the form of
+a Indian."  Here he giv himself another tremendious one.  "But
+THEIRS, Magsman, THEIRS is mercenary outrages.  Lay in Cashmeer
+shawls, buy bracelets, strew 'em and a lot of 'andsome fans and
+things about your rooms, let it be known that you give away like
+water to all as come to admire, and the Fat Ladies that don't
+exhibit for so much down upon the drum, will come from all the pints
+of the compass to flock about you, whatever you are.  They'll drill
+holes in your 'art, Magsman, like a Cullender.  And when you've no
+more left to give, they'll laugh at you to your face, and leave you
+to have your bones picked dry by Wulturs, like the dead Wild Ass of
+the Prairies that you deserve to be!"  Here he giv himself the most
+tremendious one of all, and dropped.
+
+I thought he was gone.  His Ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so
+hard, and he fell so stoney, and the sassagerial disturbance in him
+must have been so immense, that I thought he was gone.  But, he soon
+come round with care, and he sat up on the floor, and he said to me,
+with wisdom comin out of his eyes, if ever it come:
+
+"Magsman!  The most material difference between the two states of
+existence through which your unhappy friend has passed;" he reached
+out his poor little hand, and his tears dropped down on the
+moustachio which it was a credit to him to have done his best to
+grow, but it is not in mortals to command success,--"the difference
+this.  When I was out of Society, I was paid light for being seen.
+When I went into Society, I paid heavy for being seen.  I prefer the
+former, even if I wasn't forced upon it.  Give me out through the
+trumpet, in the hold way, to-morrow."
+
+Arter that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been
+iled all over.  But the organ was kep from him, and no allusions was
+ever made, when a company was in, to his property.  He got wiser
+every day; his views of Society and the Public was luminous,
+bewilderin, awful; and his Ed got bigger and bigger as his Wisdom
+expanded it.
+
+He took well, and pulled 'em in most excellent for nine weeks.  At
+the expiration of that period, when his Ed was a sight, he expressed
+one evenin, the last Company havin been turned out, and the door
+shut, a wish to have a little music.
+
+"Mr. Chops," I said (I never dropped the "Mr." with him; the world
+might do it, but not me); "Mr. Chops, are you sure as you are in a
+state of mind and body to sit upon the organ?"
+
+His answer was this:  "Toby, when next met with on the tramp, I
+forgive her and the Indian.  And I am."
+
+It was with fear and trembling that I began to turn the handle; but
+he sat like a lamb.  I will be my belief to my dying day, that I see
+his Ed expand as he sat; you may therefore judge how great his
+thoughts was.  He sat out all the changes, and then he come off.
+
+"Toby," he says, with a quiet smile, "the little man will now walk
+three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain."
+
+When we called him in the morning, we found him gone into a much
+better Society than mine or Pall Mall's.  I giv Mr. Chops as
+comfortable a funeral as lay in my power, followed myself as Chief,
+and had the George the Fourth canvass carried first, in the form of
+a banner.  But, the House was so dismal arterwards, that I giv it
+up, and took to the Wan again.
+
+
+"I don't triumph," said Jarber, folding up the second manuscript,
+and looking hard at Trottle.  "I don't triumph over this worthy
+creature.  I merely ask him if he is satisfied now?"
+
+"How can he be anything else?" I said, answering for Trottle, who
+sat obstinately silent.  "This time, Jarber, you have not only read
+us a delightfully amusing story, but you have also answered the
+question about the House.  Of course it stands empty now.  Who would
+think of taking it after it had been turned into a caravan?"  I
+looked at Trottle, as I said those last words, and Jarber waved his
+hand indulgently in the same direction.
+
+"Let this excellent person speak," said Jarber.  "You were about to
+say, my good man?" -
+
+"I only wished to ask, sir," said Trottle doggedly, "if you could
+kindly oblige me with a date or two in connection with that last
+story?"
+
+"A date!" repeated Jarber.  "What does the man want with dates!"
+
+"I should be glad to know, with great respect," persisted Trottle,
+"if the person named Magsman was the last tenant who lived in the
+House.  It's my opinion--if I may be excused for giving it--that he
+most decidedly was not."
+
+With those words, Trottle made a low bow, and quietly left the room.
+
+There is no denying that Jarber, when we were left together, looked
+sadly discomposed.  He had evidently forgotten to inquire about
+dates; and, in spite of his magnificent talk about his series of
+discoveries, it was quite as plain that the two stories he had just
+read, had really and truly exhausted his present stock.  I thought
+myself bound, in common gratitude, to help him out of his
+embarrassment by a timely suggestion.  So I proposed that he should
+come to tea again, on the next Monday evening, the thirteenth, and
+should make such inquiries in the meantime, as might enable him to
+dispose triumphantly of Trottle's objection.
+
+He gallantly kissed my hand, made a neat little speech of
+acknowledgment, and took his leave.  For the rest of the week I
+would not encourage Trottle by allowing him to refer to the House at
+all.  I suspected he was making his own inquiries about dates, but I
+put no questions to him.
+
+On Monday evening, the thirteenth, that dear unfortunate Jarber
+came, punctual to the appointed time.  He looked so terribly
+harassed, that he was really quite a spectacle of feebleness and
+fatigue.  I saw, at a glance, that the question of dates had gone
+against him, that Mr. Magsman had not been the last tenant of the
+House, and that the reason of its emptiness was still to seek.
+
+"What I have gone through," said Jarber, "words are not eloquent
+enough to tell.  O Sophonisba, I have begun another series of
+discoveries!  Accept the last two as stories laid on your shrine;
+and wait to blame me for leaving your curiosity unappeased, until
+you have heard Number Three."
+
+Number Three looked like a very short manuscript, and I said as
+much.  Jarber explained to me that we were to have some poetry this
+time.  In the course of his investigations he had stepped into the
+Circulating Library, to seek for information on the one important
+subject.  All the Library-people knew about the House was, that a
+female relative of the last tenant, as they believed, had, just
+after that tenant left, sent a little manuscript poem to them which
+she described as referring to events that had actually passed in the
+House; and which she wanted the proprietor of the Library to
+publish.  She had written no address on her letter; and the
+proprietor had kept the manuscript ready to be given back to her
+(the publishing of poems not being in his line) when she might call
+for it.  She had never called for it; and the poem had been lent to
+Jarber, at his express request, to read to me.
+
+Before he began, I rang the bell for Trottle; being determined to
+have him present at the new reading, as a wholesome check on his
+obstinacy.  To my surprise Peggy answered the bell, and told me,
+that Trottle had stepped out without saying where.  I instantly felt
+the strongest possible conviction that he was at his old tricks:
+and that his stepping out in the evening, without leave, meant--
+Philandering.
+
+Controlling myself on my visitor's account, I dismissed Peggy,
+stifled my indignation, and prepared, as politely as might be, to
+listen to Jarber.
+
+
+
+THREE EVENINGS IN THE HOUSE
+
+
+
+NUMBER ONE.
+
+I.
+
+Yes, it look'd dark and dreary
+That long and narrow street:
+Only the sound of the rain,
+And the tramp of passing feet,
+The duller glow of the fire,
+And gathering mists of night
+To mark how slow and weary
+The long day's cheerless flight!
+
+II.
+
+Watching the sullen fire,
+Hearing the dreary rain,
+Drop after drop, run down
+On the darkening window-pane;
+Chill was the heart of Bertha,
+Chill as that winter day, -
+For the star of her life had risen
+Only to fade away.
+
+III.
+
+The voice that had been so strong
+To bid the snare depart,
+The true and earnest will,
+And the calm and steadfast heart,
+Were now weigh'd down by sorrow,
+Were quivering now with pain;
+The clear path now seem'd clouded,
+And all her grief in vain.
+
+IV.
+
+Duty, Right, Truth, who promised
+To help and save their own,
+Seem'd spreading wide their pinions
+To leave her there alone.
+So, turning from the Present
+To well-known days of yore,
+She call'd on them to strengthen
+And guard her soul once more.
+
+V.
+
+She thought how in her girlhood
+Her life was given away,
+The solemn promise spoken
+She kept so well to-day;
+How to her brother Herbert
+She had been help and guide,
+And how his artist-nature
+On her calm strength relied.
+
+VI.
+
+How through life's fret and turmoil
+The passion and fire of art
+In him was soothed and quicken'd
+By her true sister heart;
+How future hopes had always
+Been for his sake alone;
+And now, what strange new feeling
+Possess'd her as its own?
+
+VII.
+
+Her home; each flower that breathed there;
+The wind's sigh, soft and low;
+Each trembling spray of ivy;
+The river's murmuring flow;
+The shadow of the forest;
+Sunset, or twilight dim;
+Dear as they were, were dearer
+By leaving them for him.
+
+VIII.
+
+And each year as it found her
+In the dull, feverish town,
+Saw self still more forgotten,
+And selfish care kept down
+By the calm joy of evening
+That brought him to her side,
+To warn him with wise counsel,
+Or praise with tender pride.
+
+IX.
+
+Her heart, her life, her future,
+Her genius, only meant
+Another thing to give him,
+And be therewith content.
+To-day, what words had stirr'd her,
+Her soul could not forget?
+What dream had fill'd her spirit
+With strange and wild regret?
+
+X.
+
+To leave him for another:
+Could it indeed be so?
+Could it have cost such anguish
+To bid this vision go?
+Was this her faith?  Was Herbert
+The second in her heart?
+Did it need all this struggle
+To bid a dream depart?
+
+XI.
+
+And yet, within her spirit
+A far-off land was seen;
+A home, which might have held her;
+A love, which might have been;
+And Life:  not the mere being
+Of daily ebb and flow,
+But Life itself had claim'd her,
+And she had let it go!
+
+XII.
+
+Within her heart there echo'd
+Again the well-known tune
+That promised this bright future,
+And ask'd her for its own:
+Then words of sorrow, broken
+By half-reproachful pain;
+And then a farewell, spoken
+In words of cold disdain.
+
+XIII.
+
+Where now was the stern purpose
+That nerved her soul so long?
+Whence came the words she utter'd,
+So hard, so cold, so strong?
+What right had she to banish
+A hope that God had given?
+Why must she choose earth's portion,
+And turn aside from Heaven?
+
+XIV.
+
+To-day!  Was it this morning?
+If this long, fearful strife
+Was but the work of hours,
+What would be years of life?
+Why did a cruel Heaven
+For such great suffering call?
+And why--O, still more cruel! -
+Must her own words do all?
+
+XV.
+
+Did she repent?  O Sorrow!
+Why do we linger still
+To take thy loving message,
+And do thy gentle will?
+See, her tears fall more slowly;
+The passionate murmurs cease,
+And back upon her spirit
+Flow strength, and love, and peace.
+
+XVI.
+
+The fire burns more brightly,
+The rain has passed away,
+Herbert will see no shadow
+Upon his home to-day;
+Only that Bertha greets him
+With doubly tender care,
+Kissing a fonder blessing
+Down on his golden hair.
+
+
+NUMBER TWO.
+
+
+I.
+
+The studio is deserted,
+Palette and brush laid by,
+The sketch rests on the easel,
+The paint is scarcely dry;
+And Silence--who seems always
+Within her depths to bear
+The next sound that will utter -
+Now holds a dumb despair.
+
+II.
+
+So Bertha feels it:  listening
+With breathless, stony fear,
+Waiting the dreadful summons
+Each minute brings more near:
+When the young life, now ebbing,
+Shall fail, and pass away
+Into that mighty shadow
+Who shrouds the house to-day.
+
+III.
+
+But why--when the sick chamber
+Is on the upper floor -
+Why dares not Bertha enter
+Within the close-shut door?
+If he--her all--her Brother,
+Lies dying in that gloom,
+What strange mysterious power
+Has sent her from the room?
+
+IV.
+
+It is not one week's anguish
+That can have changed her so;
+Joy has not died here lately,
+Struck down by one quick blow;
+But cruel months have needed
+Their long relentless chain,
+To teach that shrinking manner
+Of helpless, hopeless pain.
+
+V.
+
+The struggle was scarce over
+Last Christmas Eve had brought:
+The fibres still were quivering
+Of the one wounded thought,
+When Herbert--who, unconscious,
+Had guessed no inward strife -
+Bade her, in pride and pleasure,
+Welcome his fair young wife.
+
+VI.
+
+Bade her rejoice, and smiling,
+Although his eyes were dim,
+Thank'd God he thus could pay her
+The care she gave to him.
+This fresh bright life would bring her
+A new and joyous fate -
+O Bertha, check the murmur
+That cries, Too late! too late!
+
+VII.
+
+Too late!  Could she have known it
+A few short weeks before,
+That his life was completed,
+And needing hers no more,
+She might-- O sad repining!
+What "might have been," forget;
+"It was not," should suffice us
+To stifle vain regret.
+
+VIII.
+
+He needed her no longer,
+Each day it grew more plain;
+First with a startled wonder,
+Then with a wondering pain.
+Love:  why, his wife best gave it;
+Comfort:  durst Bertha speak?
+Counsel:  when quick resentment
+Flush'd on the young wife's cheek.
+
+IX.
+
+No more long talks by firelight
+Of childish times long past,
+And dreams of future greatness
+Which he must reach at last;
+Dreams, where her purer instinct
+With truth unerring told
+Where was the worthless gilding,
+And where refined gold.
+
+X.
+
+Slowly, but surely ever,
+Dora's poor jealous pride,
+Which she call'd love for Herbert,
+Drove Bertha from his side;
+And, spite of nervous effort
+To share their alter'd life,
+She felt a check to Herbert,
+A burden to his wife.
+
+XI.
+
+This was the least; for Bertha
+Fear'd, dreaded, KNEW at length,
+How much his nature owed her
+Of truth, and power, and strength;
+And watch'd the daily failing
+Of all his nobler part:
+Low aims, weak purpose, telling
+In lower, weaker art.
+
+XII.
+
+And now, when he is dying,
+The last words she could hear
+Must not be hers, but given
+The bride of one short year.
+The last care is another's;
+The last prayer must not be
+The one they learnt together
+Beside their mother's knee.
+
+XIII.
+
+Summon'd at last:  she kisses
+The clay-cold stiffening hand;
+And, reading pleading efforts
+To make her understand,
+Answers, with solemn promise,
+In clear but trembling tone,
+To Dora's life henceforward
+She will devote her own.
+
+XIV.
+
+Now all is over.  Bertha
+Dares not remain to weep,
+But soothes the frightened Dora
+Into a sobbing sleep.
+The poor weak child will need her:
+O, who can dare complain,
+When God sends a new Duty
+To comfort each new Pain!
+
+
+NUMBER THREE.
+
+
+I.
+
+The House is all deserted
+In the dim evening gloom,
+Only one figure passes
+Slowly from room to room;
+And, pausing at each doorway,
+Seems gathering up again
+Within her heart the relics
+Of bygone joy and pain.
+
+II.
+
+There is an earnest longing
+In those who onward gaze,
+Looking with weary patience
+Towards the coming days.
+There is a deeper longing,
+More sad, more strong, more keen:
+Those know it who look backward,
+And yearn for what has been.
+
+III.
+
+At every hearth she pauses,
+Touches each well-known chair;
+Gazes from every window,
+Lingers on every stair.
+What have these months brought Bertha
+Now one more year is past?
+This Christmas Eve shall tell us,
+The third one and the last.
+
+IV.
+
+The wilful, wayward Dora,
+In those first weeks of grief,
+Could seek and find in Bertha
+Strength, soothing, and relief.
+And Bertha--last sad comfort
+True woman-heart can take -
+Had something still to suffer
+And do for Herbert's sake.
+
+V.
+
+Spring, with her western breezes,
+From Indian islands bore
+To Bertha news that Leonard
+Would seek his home once more.
+What was it--joy, or sorrow?
+What were they--hopes, or fears?
+That flush'd her cheeks with crimson,
+And fill'd her eyes with tears?
+
+VI.
+
+He came.  And who so kindly
+Could ask and hear her tell
+Herbert's last hours; for Leonard
+Had known and loved him well.
+Daily he came; and Bertha,
+Poor wear heart, at length,
+Weigh'd down by other's weakness,
+Could rest upon his strength.
+
+VII.
+
+Yet not the voice of Leonard
+Could her true care beguile,
+That turn'd to watch, rejoicing,
+Dora's reviving smile.
+So, from that little household
+The worst gloom pass'd away,
+The one bright hour of evening
+Lit up the livelong day.
+
+VIII.
+
+Days passed.  The golden summer
+In sudden heat bore down
+Its blue, bright, glowing sweetness
+Upon the scorching town.
+And sights and sounds of country
+Came in the warm soft tune
+Sung by the honey'd breezes
+Borne on the wings of June.
+
+IX.
+
+One twilight hour, but earlier
+Than usual, Bertha thought
+She knew the fresh sweet fragrance
+Of flowers that Leonard brought;
+Through open'd doors and windows
+It stole up through the gloom,
+And with appealing sweetness
+Drew Bertha from her room.
+
+X.
+
+Yes, he was there; and pausing
+Just near the open'd door,
+To check her heart's quick beating,
+She heard--and paused still more -
+His low voice Dora's answers -
+His pleading--Yes, she knew
+The tone--the words--the accents:
+She once had heard them too.
+
+XI.
+
+"Would Bertha blame her?"  Leonard's
+Low, tender answer came:
+"Bertha was far too noble
+To think or dream of blame."
+"And was he sure he loved her?"
+"Yes, with the one love given
+Once in a lifetime only,
+With one soul and one heaven!"
+
+XII.
+
+Then came a plaintive murmur, -
+"Dora had once been told
+That he and Bertha--"  "Dearest,
+Bertha is far too cold
+To love; and I, my Dora,
+If once I fancied so,
+It was a brief delusion,
+And over,--long ago."
+
+XIII.
+
+Between the Past and Present,
+On that bleak moment's height,
+She stood.  As some lost traveller
+By a quick flash of light
+Seeing a gulf before him,
+With dizzy, sick despair,
+Reels to clutch backward, but to find
+A deeper chasm there.
+
+XIV.
+
+The twilight grew still darker,
+The fragrant flowers more sweet,
+The stars shone out in heaven,
+The lamps gleam'd down the street;
+And hours pass'd in dreaming
+Over their new-found fate,
+Ere they could think of wondering
+Why Bertha was so late.
+
+XV.
+
+She came, and calmly listen'd;
+In vain they strove to trace
+If Herbert's memory shadow'd
+In grief upon her face.
+No blame, no wonder show'd there,
+No feeling could be told;
+Her voice was not less steady,
+Her manner not more cold.
+
+XVI.
+
+They could not hear the anguish
+That broke in words of pain
+Through that calm summer midnight, -
+"My Herbert--mine again!"
+Yes, they have once been parted,
+But this day shall restore
+The long lost one:  she claims him:
+"My Herbert--mine once more!"
+
+XVII.
+
+Now Christmas Eve returning,
+Saw Bertha stand beside
+The altar, greeting Dora,
+Again a smiling bride;
+And now the gloomy evening
+Sees Bertha pale and worn,
+Leaving the house for ever,
+To wander out forlorn.
+
+XVIII.
+
+Forlorn--nay, not so.  Anguish
+Shall do its work at length;
+Her soul, pass'd through the fire,
+Shall gain still purer strength.
+Somewhere there waits for Bertha
+An earnest noble part;
+And, meanwhile, God is with her, -
+God, and her own true heart!
+
+
+I could warmly and sincerely praise the little poem, when Jarber had
+done reading it; but I could not say that it tended in any degree
+towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House.
+
+Whether it was the absence of the irritating influence of Trottle,
+or whether it was simply fatigue, I cannot say, but Jarber did not
+strike me, that evening, as being in his usual spirits.  And though
+he declared that he was not in the least daunted by his want of
+success thus far, and that he was resolutely determined to make more
+discoveries, he spoke in a languid absent manner, and shortly
+afterwards took his leave at rather an early hour.
+
+When Trottle came back, and when I indignantly taxed him with
+Philandering, he not only denied the imputation, but asserted that
+he had been employed on my service, and, in consideration of that,
+boldly asked for leave of absence for two days, and for a morning to
+himself afterwards, to complete the business, in which he solemnly
+declared that I was interested.  In remembrance of his long and
+faithful service to me, I did violence to myself, and granted his
+request.  And he, on his side, engaged to explain himself to my
+satisfaction, in a week's time, on Monday evening the twentieth.
+
+A day or two before, I sent to Jarber's lodgings to ask him to drop
+in to tea.  His landlady sent back an apology for him that made my
+hair stand on end.  His feet were in hot water; his head was in a
+flannel petticoat; a green shade was over his eyes; the rheumatism
+was in his legs; and a mustard-poultice was on his chest.  He was
+also a little feverish, and rather distracted in his mind about
+Manchester Marriages, a Dwarf, and Three Evenings, or Evening
+Parties--his landlady was not sure which--in an empty House, with
+the Water Rate unpaid.
+
+Under these distressing circumstances, I was necessarily left alone
+with Trottle.  His promised explanation began, like Jarber's
+discoveries, with the reading of a written paper.  The only
+difference was that Trottle introduced his manuscript under the name
+of a Report.
+
+
+
+TROTTLE'S REPORT
+
+
+
+The curious events related in these pages would, many of them, most
+likely never have happened, if a person named Trottle had not
+presumed, contrary to his usual custom, to think for himself.
+
+The subject on which the person in question had ventured, for the
+first time in his life, to form an opinion purely and entirely his
+own, was one which had already excited the interest of his respected
+mistress in a very extraordinary degree.  Or, to put it in plainer
+terms still, the subject was no other than the mystery of the empty
+House.
+
+Feeling no sort of objection to set a success of his own, if
+possible, side by side with a failure of Mr. Jarber's, Trottle made
+up his mind, one Monday evening, to try what he could do, on his own
+account, towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House.
+Carefully dismissing from his mind all nonsensical notions of former
+tenants and their histories, and keeping the one point in view
+steadily before him, he started to reach it in the shortest way, by
+walking straight up to the House, and bringing himself face to face
+with the first person in it who opened the door to him.
+
+It was getting towards dark, on Monday evening, the thirteenth of
+the month, when Trottle first set foot on the steps of the House.
+When he knocked at the door, he knew nothing of the matter which he
+was about to investigate, except that the landlord was an elderly
+widower of good fortune, and that his name was Forley.  A small
+beginning enough for a man to start from, certainly!
+
+On dropping the knocker, his first proceeding was to look down
+cautiously out of the corner of his right eye, for any results which
+might show themselves at the kitchen-window.  There appeared at it
+immediately the figure of a woman, who looked up inquisitively at
+the stranger on the steps, left the window in a hurry, and came back
+to it with an open letter in her hand, which she held up to the
+fading light.  After looking over the letter hastily for a moment or
+so, the woman disappeared once more.
+
+Trottle next heard footsteps shuffling and scraping along the bare
+hall of the house.  On a sudden they ceased, and the sound of two
+voices--a shrill persuading voice and a gruff resisting voice--
+confusedly reached his ears.  After a while, the voices left off
+speaking--a chain was undone, a bolt drawn back--the door opened--
+and Trottle stood face to face with two persons, a woman in advance,
+and a man behind her, leaning back flat against the wall.
+
+"Wish you good evening, sir," says the woman, in such a sudden way,
+and in such a cracked voice, that it was quite startling to hear
+her.  "Chilly weather, ain't it, sir?  Please to walk in.  You come
+from good Mr. Forley, don't you, sir?"
+
+"Don't you, sir?" chimes in the man hoarsely, making a sort of gruff
+echo of himself, and chuckling after it, as if he thought he had
+made a joke.
+
+If Trottle had said, "No," the door would have been probably closed
+in his face.  Therefore, he took circumstances as he found them, and
+boldly ran all the risk, whatever it might be, of saying, "Yes."
+
+"Quite right sir," says the woman.  "Good Mr. Forley's letter told
+us his particular friend would be here to represent him, at dusk, on
+Monday the thirteenth--or, if not on Monday the thirteenth, then on
+Monday the twentieth, at the same time, without fail.  And here you
+are on Monday the thirteenth, ain't you, sir?  Mr. Forley's
+particular friend, and dressed all in black--quite right, sir!
+Please to step into the dining-room--it's always kep scoured and
+clean against Mr. Forley comes here--and I'll fetch a candle in half
+a minute.  It gets so dark in the evenings, now, you hardly know
+where you are, do you, sir?  And how is good Mr. Forley in his
+health?  We trust he is better, Benjamin, don't we?  We are so sorry
+not to see him as usual, Benjamin, ain't we?  In half a minute, sir,
+if you don't mind waiting, I'll be back with the candle.  Come
+along, Benjamin."
+
+"Come along, Benjamin," chimes in the echo, and chuckles again as if
+he thought he had made another joke.
+
+Left alone in the empty front-parlour, Trottle wondered what was
+coming next, as he heard the shuffling, scraping footsteps go slowly
+down the kitchen-stairs.  The front-door had been carefully chained
+up and bolted behind him on his entrance; and there was not the
+least chance of his being able to open it to effect his escape,
+without betraying himself by making a noise.
+
+Not being of the Jarber sort, luckily for himself, he took his
+situation quietly, as he found it, and turned his time, while alone,
+to account, by summing up in his own mind the few particulars which
+he had discovered thus far.  He had found out, first, that Mr.
+Forley was in the habit of visiting the house regularly.  Second,
+that Mr. Forley being prevented by illness from seeing the people
+put in charge as usual, had appointed a friend to represent him; and
+had written to say so.  Third, that the friend had a choice of two
+Mondays, at a particular time in the evening, for doing his errand;
+and that Trottle had accidentally hit on this time, and on the first
+of the Mondays, for beginning his own investigations.  Fourth, that
+the similarity between Trottle's black dress, as servant out of
+livery, and the dress of the messenger (whoever he might be), had
+helped the error by which Trottle was profiting.  So far, so good.
+But what was the messenger's errand? and what chance was there that
+he might not come up and knock at the door himself, from minute to
+minute, on that very evening?
+
+While Trottle was turning over this last consideration in his mind,
+he heard the shuffling footsteps come up the stairs again, with a
+flash of candle-light going before them.  He waited for the woman's
+coming in with some little anxiety; for the twilight had been too
+dim on his getting into the house to allow him to see either her
+face or the man's face at all clearly.
+
+The woman came in first, with the man she called Benjamin at her
+heels, and set the candle on the mantel-piece.  Trottle takes leave
+to describe her as an offensively-cheerful old woman, awfully lean
+and wiry, and sharp all over, at eyes, nose, and chin--devilishly
+brisk, smiling, and restless, with a dirty false front and a dirty
+black cap, and short fidgetty arms, and long hooked finger-nails--an
+unnaturally lusty old woman, who walked with a spring in her wicked
+old feet, and spoke with a smirk on her wicked old face--the sort of
+old woman (as Trottle thinks) who ought to have lived in the dark
+ages, and been ducked in a horse-pond, instead of flourishing in the
+nineteenth century, and taking charge of a Christian house.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+LET AT LAST
+
+
+
+"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."
+
+"Benjamin and Benjamin's mother!"
+
+"Exactly, ma'am.  Last Thursday morning (thanks to your kindness,
+again) I went to Pendlebury to my friend the chemist, to ask a few
+questions about Barsham and his mother.  I was told that they had
+both left the town about five years since.  When I inquired into the
+circumstances, some strange particulars came out in the course of
+the chemist's answer.  You know I have no doubt, ma'am, that poor
+Mrs. Kirkland was confined while her husband was at sea, in lodgings
+at a village called Flatfield, and that she died and was buried
+there.  But what you may not know is, that Flatfield is only three
+miles from Pendlebury; that the doctor who attended on Mrs. Kirkland
+was Barsham; that the nurse who took care of her was Barsham's
+mother; and that the person who called them both in, was Mr. Forley.
+Whether his daughter wrote to him, or whether he heard of it in some
+other way, I don't know; but he was with her (though he had sworn
+never to see her again when she married) a month or more before her
+confinement, and was backwards and forwards a good deal between
+Flatfield and Pendlebury.  How he managed matters with the Barshams
+cannot at present be discovered; but it is a fact that he contrived
+to keep the drunken doctor sober, to everybody's amazement.  It is a
+fact that Barsham went to the poor woman with all his wits about
+him.  It is a fact that he and his mother came back from Flatfield
+after Mrs. Kirkland's death, packed up what few things they had, and
+left the town mysteriously by night.  And, lastly, it is also a fact
+that the other doctor, Mr. Dix, was not called in to help, till a
+week after the birth AND BURIAL of the child, when the mother was
+sinking from exhaustion--exhaustion (to give the vagabond, Barsham,
+his due) not produced, in Mr. Dix's opinion, by improper medical
+treatment, but by the bodily weakness of the poor woman herself--"
+
+"Burial of the child?" I interrupted, trembling all over.  "Trottle!
+you spoke that word 'burial' in a very strange way--you are fixing
+your eyes on me now with a very strange look--"
+
+Trottle leaned over close to me, and pointed through the window to
+the empty house.
+
+"The child's death is registered, at Pendlebury," he said, "on
+Barsham's certificate, under the head of Male Infant, Still-Born.
+The child's coffin lies in the mother's grave, in Flatfield
+churchyard.  The child himself--as surely as I live and breathe, is
+living and breathing now--a castaway and a prisoner in that
+villainous house!"
+
+I sank back in my chair.
+
+"It's guess-work, so far, but it is borne in on my mind, for all
+that, as truth.  Rouse yourself, ma'am, and think a little.  The
+last I hear of Barsham, he is attending Mr. Forley's disobedient
+daughter.  The next I see of Barsham, he is in Mr. Forley's house,
+trusted with a secret.  He and his mother leave Pendlebury suddenly
+and suspiciously five years back; and he and his mother have got a
+child of five years old, hidden away in the house.  Wait! please to
+wait--I have not done yet.  The will left by Mr. Forley's father,
+strengthens the suspicion.  The friend I took with me to Doctors'
+Commons, made himself master of the contents of that will; and when
+he had done so, I put these two questions to him.  'Can Mr. Forley
+leave his money at his own discretion to anybody he pleases?'  'No,'
+my friend says, 'his father has left him with only a life interest
+in it.'  'Suppose one of Mr. Forley's married daughters has a girl,
+and the other a boy, how would the money go?'  'It would all go,' my
+friend says, 'to the boy, and it would be charged with the payment
+of a certain annual income to his female cousin.  After her death,
+it would go back to the male descendant, and to his heirs.'
+Consider that, ma'am!  The child of the daughter whom Mr. Forley
+hates, whose husband has been snatched away from his vengeance by
+death, takes his whole property in defiance of him; and the child of
+the daughter whom he loves, is left a pensioner on her low-born boy-
+cousin for life!  There was good--too good reason--why that child of
+Mrs. Kirkland's should be registered stillborn.  And if, as I
+believe, the register is founded on a false certificate, there is
+better, still better reason, why the existence of the child should
+be hidden, and all trace of his parentage blotted out, in the garret
+of that empty house."
+
+He stopped, and pointed for the second time to the dim, dust-covered
+garret-windows opposite.  As he did so, I was startled--a very
+slight matter sufficed to frighten me now--by a knock at the door of
+the room in which we were sitting.
+
+My maid came in, with a letter in her hand.  I took it from her.
+The mourning card, which was all the envelope enclosed, dropped from
+my hands.
+
+George Forley was no more.  He had departed this life three days
+since, on the evening of Friday.
+
+"Did our last chance of discovering the truth," I asked, "rest with
+HIM?  Has it died with HIS death?"
+
+"Courage, ma'am!  I think not.  Our chance rests on our power to
+make Barsham and his mother confess; and Mr. Forley's death, by
+leaving them helpless, seems to put that power into our hands.  With
+your permission, I will not wait till dusk to-day, as I at first
+intended, but will make sure of those two people at once.  With a
+policeman in plain clothes to watch the house, in case they try to
+leave it; with this card to vouch for the fact of Mr. Forley's
+death; and with a bold acknowledgment on my part of having got
+possession of their secret, and of being ready to use it against
+them in case of need, I think there is little doubt of bringing
+Barsham and his mother to terms.  In case I find it impossible to
+get back here before dusk, please to sit near the window, ma'am, and
+watch the house, a little before they light the street-lamps.  If
+you see the front-door open and close again, will you be good enough
+to put on your bonnet, and come across to me immediately?  Mr.
+Forley's death may, or may not, prevent his messenger from coming as
+arranged.  But, if the person does come, it is of importance that
+you, as a relative of Mr. Forley's should be present to see him, and
+to have that proper influence over him which I cannot pretend to
+exercise."
+
+The only words I could say to Trottle as he opened the door and left
+me, were words charging him to take care that no harm happened to
+the poor forlorn little boy.
+
+Left alone, I drew my chair to the window; and looked out with a
+beating heart at the guilty house.  I waited and waited through what
+appeared to me to be an endless time, until I heard the wheels of a
+cab stop at the end of the street.  I looked in that direction, and
+saw Trottle get out of the cab alone, walk up to the house, and
+knock at the door.  He was let in by Barsham's mother.  A minute or
+two later, a decently-dressed man sauntered past the house, looked
+up at it for a moment, and sauntered on to the corner of the street
+close by.  Here he leant against the post, and lighted a cigar, and
+stopped there smoking in an idle way, but keeping his face always
+turned in the direction of the house-door.
+
+I waited and waited still.  I waited and waited, with my eyes
+riveted to the door of the house.  At last I thought I saw it open
+in the dusk, and then felt sure I heard it shut again softly.
+Though I tried hard to compose myself, I trembled so that I was
+obliged to call for Peggy to help me on with my bonnet and cloak,
+and was forced to take her arm to lean on, in crossing the street.
+
+Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock.  Peggy went
+back, and I went in.  He had a lighted candle in his hand.
+
+"It has happened, ma'am, as I thought it would," he whispered,
+leading me into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour.  "Barsham and
+his mother have consulted their own interests, and have come to
+terms.  My guess-work is guess-work no longer.  It is now what I
+felt it was--Truth!"
+
+Something strange to me--something which women who are mothers must
+often know--trembled suddenly in my heart, and brought the warm
+tears of my youthful days thronging back into my eyes.  I took my
+faithful old servant by the hand, and asked him to let me see Mrs.
+Kirkland's child, for his mother's sake.
+
+"If you desire it, ma'am," said Trottle, with a gentleness of manner
+that I had never noticed in him before.  "But pray don't think me
+wanting in duty and right feeling, if I beg you to try and wait a
+little.  You are agitated already, and a first meeting with the
+child will not help to make you so calm, as you would wish to be, if
+Mr. Forley's messenger comes.  The little boy is safe up-stairs.
+Pray think first of trying to compose yourself for a meeting with a
+stranger; and believe me you shall not leave the house afterwards
+without the child."
+
+I felt that Trottle was right, and sat down as patiently as I could
+in a chair he had thoughtfully placed ready for me.  I was so
+horrified at the discovery of my own relation's wickedness that when
+Trottle proposed to make me acquainted with the confession wrung
+from Barsham and his mother, I begged him to spare me all details,
+and only to tell me what was necessary about George Forley.
+
+"All that can be said for Mr. Forley, ma'am, is, that he was just
+scrupulous enough to hide the child's existence and blot out its
+parentage here, instead of consenting, at the first, to its death,
+or afterwards, when the boy grew up, to turning him adrift,
+absolutely helpless in the world.  The fraud has been managed,
+ma'am, with the cunning of Satan himself.  Mr. Forley had the hold
+over the Barshams, that they had helped him in his villany, and that
+they were dependent on him for the bread they eat.  He brought them
+up to London to keep them securely under his own eye.  He put them
+into this empty house (taking it out of the agent's hands
+previously, on pretence that he meant to manage the letting of it
+himself); and by keeping the house empty, made it the surest of all
+hiding places for the child.  Here, Mr. Forley could come, whenever
+he pleased, to see that the poor lonely child was not absolutely
+starved; sure that his visits would only appear like looking after
+his own property.  Here the child was to have been trained to
+believe himself Barsham's child, till he should be old enough to be
+provided for in some situation, as low and as poor as Mr. Forley's
+uneasy conscience would let him pick out.  He may have thought of
+atonement on his death-bed; but not before--I am only too certain of
+it--not before!"
+
+A low, double knock startled us.
+
+"The messenger!" said Trottle, under his breath.  He went out
+instantly to answer the knock; and returned, leading in a
+respectable-looking elderly man, dressed like Trottle, all in black,
+with a white cravat, but otherwise not at all resembling him.
+
+"I am afraid I have made some mistake," said the stranger.
+
+Trottle, considerately taking the office of explanation into his own
+hands, assured the gentleman that there was no mistake; mentioned to
+him who I was; and asked him if he had not come on business
+connected with the late Mr. Forley.  Looking greatly astonished, the
+gentleman answered, "Yes."  There was an awkward moment of silence,
+after that.  The stranger seemed to be not only startled and amazed,
+but rather distrustful and fearful of committing himself as well.
+Noticing this, I thought it best to request Trottle to put an end to
+further embarrassment, by stating all particulars truthfully, as he
+had stated them to me; and I begged the gentleman to listen
+patiently for the late Mr. Forley's sake.  He bowed to me very
+respectfully, and said he was prepared to listen with the greatest
+interest.
+
+It was evident to me--and, I could see, to Trottle also--that we
+were not dealing, to say the least, with a dishonest man.
+
+"Before I offer any opinion on what I have heard," he said,
+earnestly and anxiously, after Trottle had done, "I must be allowed,
+in justice to myself, to explain my own apparent connection with
+this very strange and very shocking business.  I was the
+confidential legal adviser of the late Mr. Forley, and I am left his
+executor.  Rather more than a fortnight back, when Mr. Forley was
+confined to his room by illness, he sent for me, and charged me to
+call and pay a certain sum of money here, to a man and woman whom I
+should find taking charge of the house.  He said he had reasons for
+wishing the affair to be kept a secret.  He begged me so to arrange
+my engagements that I could call at this place either on Monday
+last, or to-day, at dusk; and he mentioned that he would write to
+warn the people of my coming, without mentioning my name (Dalcott is
+my name), as he did not wish to expose me to any future
+importunities on the part of the man and woman.  I need hardly tell
+you that this commission struck me as being a strange one; but, in
+my position with Mr. Forley, I had no resource but to accept it
+without asking questions, or to break off my long and friendly
+connection with my client.  I chose the first alternative.  Business
+prevented me from doing my errand on Monday last--and if I am here
+to-day, notwithstanding Mr. Forley's unexpected death, it is
+emphatically because I understood nothing of the matter, on knocking
+at this door; and therefore felt myself bound, as executor, to clear
+it up.  That, on my word of honour, is the whole truth, so far as I
+am personally concerned."
+
+"I feel quite sure of it, sir," I answered.
+
+"You mentioned Mr. Forley's death, just now, as unexpected.  May I
+inquire if you were present, and if he has left any last
+instructions?"
+
+"Three hours before Mr. Forley's death," said Mr. Dalcott, "his
+medical attendant left him apparently in a fair way of recovery.
+The change for the worse took place so suddenly, and was accompanied
+by such severe suffering, to prevent him from communicating his last
+wishes to any one.  When I reached his house, he was insensible.  I
+have since examined his papers.  Not one of them refers to the
+present time or to the serious matter which now occupies us.  In the
+absence of instructions I must act cautiously on what you have told
+me; but I will be rigidly fair and just at the same time.  The first
+thing to be done," he continued, addressing himself to Trottle, "is
+to hear what the man and woman, down-stairs, have to say.  If you
+can supply me with writing-materials, I will take their declarations
+separately on the spot, in your presence, and in the presence of the
+policeman who is watching the house.  To-morrow I will send copies
+of those declarations, accompanied by a full statement of the case,
+to Mr. and Mrs. Bayne in Canada (both of whom know me well as the
+late Mr. Forley's legal adviser); and I will suspend all
+proceedings, on my part, until I hear from them, or from their
+solicitor in London.  In the present posture of affairs this is all
+I can safely do."
+
+We could do no less than agree with him, and thank him for his frank
+and honest manner of meeting us.  It was arranged that I should send
+over the writing-materials from my lodgings; and, to my unutterable
+joy and relief, it was also readily acknowledged that the poor
+little orphan boy could find no fitter refuge than my old arms were
+longing to offer him, and no safer protection for the night than my
+roof could give.  Trottle hastened away up-stairs, as actively as if
+he had been a young man, to fetch the child down.
+
+And he brought him down to me without another moment of delay, and I
+went on my knees before the poor little Mite, and embraced him, and
+asked him if he would go with me to where I lived?  He held me away
+for a moment, and his wan, shrewd little eyes looked sharp at me.
+Then he clung close to me all at once, and said:
+
+"I'm a-going along with you, I am--and so I tell you!"
+
+For inspiring the poor neglected child with this trust in my old
+self, I thanked Heaven, then, with all my heart and soul, and I
+thank it now!
+
+I bundled the poor darling up in my own cloak, and I carried him in
+my own arms across the road.  Peggy was lost in speechless amazement
+to behold me trudging out of breath up-stairs, with a strange pair
+of poor little legs under my arm; but, she began to cry over the
+child the moment she saw him, like a sensible woman as she always
+was, and she still cried her eyes out over him in a comfortable
+manner, when he at last lay fast asleep, tucked up by my hands in
+Trottle's bed.
+
+"And Trottle, bless you, my dear man," said I, kissing his hand, as
+he looked on:  "the forlorn baby came to this refuge through you,
+and he will help you on your way to Heaven."
+
+Trottle answered that I was his dear mistress, and immediately went
+and put his head out at an open window on the landing, and looked
+into the back street for a quarter of an hour.
+
+That very night, as I sat thinking of the poor child, and of another
+poor child who is never to be thought about enough at Christmas-
+time, the idea came into my mind which I have lived to execute, and
+in the realisation of which I am the happiest of women this day.
+
+"The executor will sell that House, Trottle?" said I.
+
+"Not a doubt of it, ma'am, if he can find a purchaser."
+
+"I'll buy it."
+
+I have often seen Trottle pleased; but, I never saw him so perfectly
+enchanted as he was when I confided to him, which I did, then and
+there, the purpose that I had in view.
+
+To make short of a long story--and what story would not be long,
+coming from the lips of an old woman like me, unless it was made
+short by main force!--I bought the House.  Mrs. Bayne had her
+father's blood in her; she evaded the opportunity of forgiving and
+generous reparation that was offered her, and disowned the child;
+but, I was prepared for that, and loved him all the more for having
+no one in the world to look to, but me.
+
+I am getting into a flurry by being over-pleased, and I dare say I
+am as incoherent as need be.  I bought the House, and I altered it
+from the basement to the roof, and I turned it into a Hospital for
+Sick Children.
+
+Never mind by what degrees my little adopted boy came to the
+knowledge of all the sights and sounds in the streets, so familiar
+to other children and so strange to him; never mind by what degrees
+he came to be pretty, and childish, and winning, and companionable,
+and to have pictures and toys about him, and suitable playmates.  As
+I write, I look across the road to my Hospital, and there is the
+darling (who has gone over to play) nodding at me out of one of the
+once lonely windows, with his dear chubby face backed up by
+Trottle's waistcoat as he lifts my pet for "Grandma" to see.
+
+Many an Eye I see in that House now, but it is never in solitude,
+never in neglect.  Many an Eye I see in that House now, that is more
+and more radiant every day with the light of returning health.  As
+my precious darling has changed beyond description for the brighter
+and the better, so do the not less precious darlings of poor women
+change in that House every day in the year.  For which I humbly
+thank that Gracious Being whom the restorer of the Widow's son and
+of the Ruler's daughter, instructed all mankind to call their
+Father.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of A House to Let, by Dickens and Others
+