A HOUSE TO LET (FULL TEXT)
by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Ann
Procter
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:
“Sophon_is_ba!”
I don’t burn lamps, because I can’t abide the smell of oil, and wax
candles belonged to my day. I hope the convenient situation of one of my
tall old candlesticks on the table at my elbow will be my excuse for
saying, that if he did that again, I would chop his toes with it. (I am
sorry to add that when I told him so, I knew his toes to be tender.) But,
really, at my time of life and at Jarber’s, it is too much of a good
thing. There is an orchestra still standing in the open air at the
Wells, before which, in the presence of a throng of fine company, I have
walked a minuet with Jarber. But, there is a house still standing, in
which I have worn a pinafore, and had a tooth drawn by fastening a thread
to the tooth and the door-handle, and toddling away from the door. And
how should I look now, at my years, in a pinafore, or having a door for
my dentist?
Besides, Jarber always was more or less an absurd man. He was sweetly
dressed, and beautifully perfumed, and many girls of my day would have
given their ears for him; though I am bound to add that he never cared a
fig for them, or their advances either, and that he was very constant to
me. For, he not only proposed to me before my love-happiness ended in
sorrow, but afterwards too: not once, nor yet twice: nor will we say how
many times. However many they were, or however few they were, the last
time he paid me that compliment was immediately after he had presented me
with a digestive dinner-pill stuck on the point of a pin. And I said on
that occasion, laughing heartily, “Now, Jarber, if you don’t know that
two people whose united ages would make about a hundred and fifty, have
got to be old, I do; and I beg to swallow this nonsense in the form of
this pill” (which I took on the spot), “and I request to, hear no more of
it.”
After that, he conducted himself pretty well. He was always a little
squeezed man, was Jarber, in little sprigged waistcoats; and he had
always little legs and a little smile, and a little voice, and little
round-about ways. As long as I can remember him he was always going
little errands for people, and carrying little gossip. At this present
time when he called me “Sophonisba!” he had a little old-fashioned
lodging in that new neighbourhood of mine. I had not seen him for two or
three years, but I had heard that he still went out with a little
perspective-glass and stood on door-steps in Saint James’s Street, to see
the nobility go to Court; and went in his little cloak and goloshes
outside Willis’s rooms to see them go to Almack’s; and caught the
frightfullest colds, and got himself trodden upon by coachmen and
linkmen, until he went home to his landlady a mass of bruises, and had to
be nursed for a month.
Jarber took off his little fur-collared cloak, and sat down opposite me,
with his little cane and hat in his hand.
“Let us have no more Sophonisbaing, if _you_ please, Jarber,” I said.
“Call me Sarah. How do you do? I hope you are pretty well.”
“Thank you. And you?” said Jarber.
“I am as well as an old woman can expect to be.”
Jarber was beginning:
“Say, not old, Sophon—” but I looked at the candlestick, and he left
off; pretending not to have said anything.
“I am infirm, of course,” I said, “and so are you. Let us both be
thankful it’s no worse.”
“Is it possible that you look worried?” said Jarber.
“It is very possible. I have no doubt it is the fact.”
“And what has worried my Soph-, soft-hearted friend,” said Jarber.
“Something not easy, I suppose, to comprehend. I am worried to death by
a House to Let, over the way.”
Jarber went with his little tip-toe step to the window-curtains, peeped
out, and looked round at me.
“Yes,” said I, in answer: “that house.”
After peeping out again, Jarber came back to his chair with a tender air,
and asked: “How does it worry you, S-arah?”
“It is a mystery to me,” said I. “Of course every house _is_ a mystery,
more or less; but, something that I don’t care to mention” (for truly the
Eye was so slight a thing to mention that I was more than half ashamed of
it), “has made that House so mysterious to me, and has so fixed it in my
mind, that I have had no peace for a month. I foresee that I shall have
no peace, either, until Trottle comes to me, next Monday.”
I might have mentioned before, that there is a lone-standing jealousy
between Trottle and Jarber; and that there is never any love lost between
those two.
“_Trottle_,” petulantly repeated Jarber, with a little flourish of his
cane; “how is _Trottle_ to restore the lost peace of Sarah?”
“He will exert himself to find out something about the House. I have
fallen into that state about it, that I really must discover by some
means or other, good or bad, fair or foul, how and why it is that that
House remains To Let.”
“And why Trottle? Why not,” putting his little hat to his heart; “why
not, Jarber?”
“To tell you the truth, I have never thought of Jarber in the matter. And
now I do think of Jarber, through your having the kindness to suggest
him—for which I am really and truly obliged to you—I don’t think he
could do it.”
“Sarah!”
“I think it would be too much for you, Jarber.”
“Sarah!”
“There would be coming and going, and fetching and carrying, Jarber, and
you might catch cold.”
“Sarah! What can be done by Trottle, can be done by me. I am on terms
of acquaintance with every person of responsibility in this parish. I am
intimate at the Circulating Library. I converse daily with the Assessed
Taxes. I lodge with the Water Rate. I know the Medical Man. I lounge
habitually at the House Agent’s. I dine with the Churchwardens. I move
to the Guardians. Trottle! A person in the sphere of a domestic, and
totally unknown to society!”
“Don’t be warm, Jarber. In mentioning Trottle, I have naturally relied
on my Right-Hand, who would take any trouble to gratify even a whim of
his old mistress’s. But, if you can find out anything to help to unravel
the mystery of this House to Let, I shall be fully as much obliged to you
as if there was never a Trottle in the land.”
Jarber rose and put on his little cloak. A couple of fierce brass lions
held it tight round his little throat; but a couple of the mildest Hares
might have done that, I am sure. “Sarah,” he said, “I go. Expect me on
Monday evening, the Sixth, when perhaps you will give me a cup of
tea;—may I ask for no Green? Adieu!”
This was on a Thursday, the second of December. When I reflected that
Trottle would come back on Monday, too, I had my misgivings as to the
difficulty of keeping the two powers from open warfare, and indeed I was
more uneasy than I quite like to confess. However, the empty House
swallowed up that thought next morning, as it swallowed up most other
thoughts now, and the House quite preyed upon me all that day, and all
the Saturday.
It was a very wet Sunday: raining and blowing from morning to night. When
the bells rang for afternoon church, they seemed to ring in the commotion
of the puddles as well as in the wind, and they sounded very loud and
dismal indeed, and the street looked very dismal indeed, and the House
looked dismallest of all.
I was reading my prayers near the light, and my fire was growing in the
darkening window-glass, when, looking up, as I prayed for the fatherless
children and widows and all who were desolate and oppressed,—I saw the
Eye again. It passed in a moment, as it had done before; but, this time,
I was inwardly more convinced that I had seen it.
Well to be sure, I _had_ a night that night! Whenever I closed my own
eyes, it was to see eyes. Next morning, at an unreasonably, and I should
have said (but for that railroad) an impossibly early hour, comes
Trottle. As soon as he had told me all about the Wells, I told him all
about the House. He listened with as great interest and attention as I
could possibly wish, until I came to Jabez Jarber, when he cooled in an
instant, and became opinionated.
“Now, Trottle,” I said, pretending not to notice, “when Mr. Jarber comes
back this evening, we must all lay our heads together.”
“I should hardly think that would be wanted, ma’am; Mr. Jarber’s head is
surely equal to anything.”
Being determined not to notice, I said again, that we must all lay our
heads together.
“Whatever you order, ma’am, shall be obeyed. Still, it cannot be
doubted, I should think, that Mr. Jarber’s head is equal, if not
superior, to any pressure that can be brought to bear upon it.”
This was provoking; and his way, when he came in and out all through the
day, of pretending not to see the House to Let, was more provoking still.
However, being quite resolved not to notice, I gave no sign whatever that
I did notice. But, when evening came, and he showed in Jarber, and, when
Jarber wouldn’t be helped off with his cloak, and poked his cane into
cane chair-backs and china ornaments and his own eye, in trying to
unclasp his brazen lions of himself (which he couldn’t do, after all), I
could have shaken them both.
As it was, I only shook the tea-pot, and made the tea. Jarber had
brought from under his cloak, a roll of paper, with which he had
triumphantly pointed over the way, like the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father
appearing to the late Mr. Kemble, and which he had laid on the table.
“A discovery?” said I, pointing to it, when he was seated, and had got
his tea-cup.—“Don’t go, Trottle.”
“The first of a series of discoveries,” answered Jarber. “Account of a
former tenant, compiled from the Water Rate, and Medical Man.”
“Don’t go, Trottle,” I repeated. For, I saw him making imperceptibly to
the door.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, I might be in Mr. Jarber’s way?”
Jarber looked that he decidedly thought he might be. I relieved myself
with a good angry croak, and said—always determined not to notice:
“Have the goodness to sit down, if you please, Trottle. I wish you to
hear this.”
Trottle bowed in the stiffest manner, and took the remotest chair he
could find. Even that, he moved close to the draught from the keyhole of
the door.
“Firstly,” Jarber began, after sipping his tea, “would my Sophon—”
“Begin again, Jarber,” said I.
“Would you be much surprised, if this House to Let should turn out to be
the property of a relation of your own?”
“I should indeed be very much surprised.”
“Then it belongs to your first cousin (I learn, by the way, that he is
ill at this time) George Forley.”
“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 you
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.”