"His face was very large and pale, and it was looking upwards: it seemed
very angry, I thought, but maybe it was angry from pain; and sometimes
one side of it used to twitch and tremble for a minute, and then to grow
quite still again; and all the time he was speaking to me, he never
looked at me once, but always kept his face and eyes turned upwards; but
his voice was very soft, and he called me little Fanny, and gave me this
pound to buy toys with; so I was not so frightened in a little time, and
then he sent a long message to you, papa, and told me if I forgot it he
would beat me; but I knew he was only joking, so that did not frighten
me either."
"And what was the message, my girl?" I asked, patting her pretty head
with my hand.
"Now, let me remember it all," she said, reflectively; "for he told it to
me twice. He asked me if there was a good bedroom at the top of the
house, standing by itself--and you know there is, so I told him so; it
was exactly the kind of room that he described. And then he said that his
friend would pay two hundred pounds a-year for that bedroom, his board
and attendance; and he told me to ask you, and have your answer when he
should next meet me."
"Two hundred pounds!" ejaculated my poor little wife; "why that is nearly
twice as much as we expected."
"But did he say that his friend was sick, or very old; or that he had any
servant to be supported also?" I asked.
"Oh! no; he told me that he was quite able to take care of himself, and
that he had, I think he called it, an asthma, but nothing else the
matter; and that he would give no trouble at all, and that any friend who
came to see him, he would see, not in the house, but only in the garden."
"In the garden!" I echoed, laughing in spite of myself.
"Yes, indeed he said so; and he told me to say that he would pay one
hundred pounds when he came here, and the next hundred in six months, and
so on," continued she.
"Oh, ho! half-yearly in advance--better and better," said I.
"And he bid me say, too, if you should ask about his character, that he
is just as good as the master of the house himself," she added; "and when
he said that, he laughed a little."
"Why, if he gives us a hundred pounds in advance," I answered, turning to
my wife, "we are safe enough; for he will not find half that value in
plate and jewels in the entire household, if he is disposed to rob us. So
I see no reason against closing with the offer, should it be seriously
meant--do you, dear?"
"Quite the contrary, love," said she. "I think it most desirable--indeed,
most _providential_."
"Providential! my dear little bigot!" I repeated, with a smile. "Well, be
it so. I call it _lucky_ merely; but, perhaps, you are happier in your
faith, than I in my philosophy. Yes, you are _grateful_ for the chance
that I only rejoice at. You receive it as a proof of a divine and tender
love--I as an accident. Delusions are often more elevating than truth."
And so saying, I kissed away the saddened cloud that for a moment
overcast her face.
"Papa, he bid me be sure to have an answer for him when we meet again,"
resumed the child. "What shall I say to him when he asks me?"
"Say that we agree to his proposal, my dear--or stay," I said, addressing
my wife, "may it not be prudent to reduce what the child says to writing,
and accept the offer so? This will prevent misunderstanding, as she may
possibly have made some mistake."
My wife agreed, and I wrote a brief note, stating that I was willing to
receive an inmate upon the terms recounted by little Fanny, and which I
distinctly specified, so that no mistake could possibly arise owing to
the vagueness of what lawyers term a parole agreement. This important
memorandum I placed in the hands of my little girl, who was to deliver
it whenever the old gentleman in the yellow waistcoat should chance to
meet her. And all these arrangements completed, I awaited the issue of
the affair with as much patience as I could affect. Meanwhile, my wife
and I talked it over incessantly; and she, good little soul, almost wore
herself to death in settling and unsettling the furniture and
decorations of our expected inmate's apartments. Days passed away--days
of hopes deferred, tedious and anxious. We were beginning to despond
again, when one morning our little girl ran into the breakfast-parlour,
more excited even than she had been before, and fresh from a new
interview with the gentleman in the yellow waistcoat. She had
encountered him suddenly, pretty nearly where she had met him before,
and the result was, that he had read the little note I have mentioned,
and desired the child to inform me that his friend, _Mr. Smith_, would
take possession of the apartments I proposed setting, on the terms
agreed between us, that very evening.
"This evening!" exclaimed my wife and I simultaneously--_I_ full of the
idea of making a first instalment on the day following; _she_, of the
hundred-and-one preparations which still remained to be completed.
"And so Smith is his name! Well, that does not tell us much," said I;
"but where did you meet your friend on this occasion, and how long is
it since?"
"Near the corner of the wall-flower lane (so we indicated one which
abounded in these fragrant plants); he was leaning with his back against
the old tree you cut my name on, and his crutch was under his arm."
"But how long ago?" I urged.
"Only this moment; I ran home as fast as I could," she replied.
"Why, you little blockhead, you should have told me that at first," I
cried, snatching up my hat, and darting away in pursuit of the yellow
waistcoat, whose acquaintance I not unnaturally coveted, inasmuch as a
man who, for the first time, admits a stranger into his house, on the
footing of permanent residence, desires generally to know a little more
about him than that his name is Smith.
The place indicated was only, as we say, a step away; and as yellow
waistcoat was fat, and used a crutch, I calculated on easily overtaking
him. I was, however, disappointed; crutch, waistcoat, and all had
disappeared. I climbed to the top of the wall, and from this commanding
point of view made a sweeping observation--but in vain. I returned
home, cursing my ill-luck, the child's dulness, and the fat old
fellow's activity.
I need hardly say that Mr. Smith, in all his aspects, moral, social,
physical, and monetary, formed a fruitful and interesting topic of
speculation during dinner. How many phantom Smiths, short and long, stout
and lean, ill-tempered and well-tempered--rich, respectable, or highly
dangerous merchants, spies, forgers, nabobs, swindlers, danced before us,
in the endless mazes of fanciful conjecture, during that anxious
_tête-à-tête_, which was probably to be interrupted by the arrival of the
gentleman himself.
My wife and I puzzled over the problem as people would over the possible
_dénouement_ of a French novel; and at last, by mutual consent, we came
to the conclusion that Smith could, and would turn out to be no other
than the good-natured valetudinarian in the yellow waistcoat himself, a
humorist, as was evident enough, and a millionaire, as we unhesitatingly
pronounced, who had no immediate relatives, and as I hoped, and my wife
"was certain," taken a decided fancy to our little Fanny; I patted the
child's head with something akin to pride, as I thought of the
magnificent, though remote possibilities, in store for her.
Meanwhile, hour after hour stole away. It was a beautiful autumn evening,
and the amber lustre of the declining sun fell softly upon the yews and
flowers, and gave an air, half melancholy, half cheerful, to the dark-red
brick piers surmounted with their cracked and grass-grown stone urns, and
furnished with the light foliage of untended creeping plants. Down the
short broad walk leading to this sombre entrance, my eye constantly
wandered; but no impatient rattle on the latch, no battering at the gate,
indicated the presence of a visited, and the lazy bell hung dumbly among
the honey-suckles.
"When will he come? Yellow waistcoat promised _this evening_! It has
been evening a good hour and a half, and yet he is not here. When will
he come? It will soon be dark--the evening will have passed--will he
come at all?"
Such were the uneasy speculations which began to trouble us. Redder and
duskier grew the light of the setting sun, till it saddened into the
mists of night. Twilight came, and then darkness, and still no arrival,
no summons at the gate. I would not admit even to my wife the excess of
my own impatience. I could, however, stand it no longer; so I took my hat
and walked to the gate, where I stood by the side of the public road,
watching every vehicle and person that approached, in a fever of
expectation. Even these, however, began to fail me, and the road grew
comparatively quiet and deserted. Having kept guard like a sentinel for
more than half an hour, I returned in no very good humour, with the
punctuality of an expected inmate--ordered the servant to draw the
curtains and secure the hall-door; and so my wife and I sate down to our
disconsolate cup of tea. It must have been about ten o'clock, and we were
both sitting silently--she working, I looking moodily into a paper--and
neither of us any longer entertaining a hope that anything but
disappointment would come of the matter, when a sudden tapping, very loud
and sustained, upon the window pane, startled us both in an instant from
our reveries.
I am not sure whether I mentioned before that the sitting-room we
occupied was upon the ground-floor, and the sward came close under the
window. I drew the curtains, and opened the shutters with a revived hope;
and looking out, saw a very tall thin figure, a good deal wrapped up,
standing about a yard before me, and motioning with head and hand
impatiently towards the hall-door. Though the night was clear, there was
no moon, and therefore I could see no more than the black outline, like
that of an _ombre chinoise_ figure, signing to me with mop and moe. In a
moment I was at the hall-door, candle in hand; the stranger stept in--his
long fingers clutched in the handle of a valise, and a bag which trailed
upon the ground behind him.
The light fell full upon him. He wore a long, ill-made, black surtout,
buttoned across, and which wrinkled and bagged about his lank figure; his
hat was none of the best, and rather broad in the brim; a sort of white
woollen muffler enveloped the lower part of his face; a pair of prominent
green goggles, fenced round with leather, completely concealed his eyes;
and nothing of the genuine man, but a little bit of yellow forehead, and
a small transverse segment of equally yellow cheek and nose, encountered
the curious gaze of your humble servant.
"You are--I suppose"--I began; for I really was a little doubtful
about my man.
"Mr. Smith--the same; be good enough to show me to my bedchamber,"
interrupted the stranger, brusquely, and in a tone which, spite of the
muffler that enveloped his mouth, was sharp and grating enough.
"Ha!--Mr. Smith--so I supposed. I hope you may find everything as
comfortable as we desire to make it--"
I was about making a speech, but was cut short by a slight bow, and a
decisive gesture of the hand in the direction of the staircase. It was
plain that the stranger hated ceremony.
Together, accordingly, we mounted the staircase; he still pulling his
luggage after him, and striding lightly up without articulating a word;
and on reaching his bedroom, he immediately removed his hat, showing a
sinister, black scratch-wig underneath, and then began unrolling the
mighty woolen wrapping of his mouth and chin.
"Come," thought I, "we _shall_ see something of your face after all."
This something, however, proved to be very little; for under his muffler
was a loose cravat, which stood up in front of his chin and upon his
mouth, he wore a respirator--an instrument which I had never seen before,
and of the use of which I was wholly ignorant.
There was something so excessively odd in the effect of this piece of
unknown mechanism upon his mouth, surmounted by the huge goggles which
encased his eyes, that I believe I should have laughed outright, were
it not for a certain unpleasant and peculiar impressiveness in the
_tout ensemble_ of the narrow-chested, long-limbed, and cadaverous
figure in black. As it was, we stood looking at one another in silence
for several seconds.
"Thank you, sir," at last he said, abruptly. "I shan't want anything
whatever to-night; if you can only spare me this candle."