MISS LOUISA COLEMAN
That the house over the way was tenanted was plain to all the
world,--at least one occupant sat gazing through the window of the
first floor front room. An old woman in a cap,--one of those large
old-fashioned caps which our grandmothers used to wear, tied with
strings under the chin. It was a bow window, and as she was seated in
the bay looking right in our direction she could hardly have failed to
see us as we advanced,--indeed she continued to stare at us all the
while with placid calmness. Yet I knocked once, twice, and yet again
without the slightest notice being taken of my summons.
Sydney gave expression to his impatience in his own peculiar vein.
‘Knockers in this part of the world seem intended for ornament
only,--nobody seems to pay any attention to them when they’re used. The
old lady upstairs must be either deaf or dotty.’ He went out into the
road to see if she still was there. ‘She’s looking at me as calmly as
you please,--what does she think we’re doing here, I wonder; playing a
tune on her front door by way of a little amusement?--Madam!’ He took
off his hat and waved it to her. ‘Madam! might I observe that if you
won’t condescend to notice that we’re here your front door will run the
risk of being severely injured!--She don’t care for me any more than if
I was nothing at all,--sound another tattoo upon that knocker. Perhaps
she’s so deaf that nothing short of a cataclysmal uproar will reach her
auditory nerves.’
She immediately proved, however, that she was nothing of the sort.
Hardly had the sounds of my further knocking died away than, throwing
up the window, she thrust out her head and addressed me in a fashion
which, under the circumstances, was as unexpected as it was uncalled
for.
‘Now, young man, you needn’t be in such a hurry!’
Sydney explained.
‘Pardon me, madam, it’s not so much a hurry we’re in as pressed for
time,--this is a matter of life and death.’
She turned her attention to Sydney,--speaking with a frankness for
which, I imagine, he was unprepared.
‘I don’t want none of your imperence, young man. I’ve seen you
before,--you’ve been hanging about here the whole day long!--and I
don’t like the looks of you, and so I’ll let you know. That’s my front
door, and that’s my knocker,--I’ll come down and open when I like, but
I’m not going to be hurried, and if the knocker’s so much as touched
again, I won’t come down at all.’
She closed the window with a bang. Sydney seemed divided between mirth
and indignation.
‘That’s a nice old lady, on my honour,--one of the good old crusty
sort. Agreeable characters this neighbourhood seems to grow,--a sojourn
hereabouts should do one good. Unfortunately I don’t feel disposed just
now to stand and kick my heels in the road.’ Again saluting the old
dame by raising his hat he shouted to her at the top of his voice.
‘Madam, I beg ten thousand pardons for troubling you, but this is a
matter in which every second is of vital importance,--would you allow
me to ask you one or two questions?’
Up went the window; out came the old lady’s head.
‘Now, young man, you needn’t put yourself out to holler at me,--I won’t
be hollered at! I’ll come down and open that door in five minutes by
the clock on my mantelpiece, and not a moment before.’
The fiat delivered, down came the window. Sydney looked rueful,--he
consulted his watch.
‘I don’t know what you think, Champnell, but I really doubt if this
comfortable creature can tell us anything worth waiting another five
minutes to hear. We mustn’t let the grass grow under our feet, and time
is getting on.’
I was of a different opinion,--and said so.
‘I’m afraid, Atherton, that I can’t agree with you. She seems to have
noticed you hanging about all day; and it is at least possible that she
has noticed a good deal which would be well worth our hearing. What
more promising witness are we likely to find?--her house is the only
one which overlooks the one we have just quitted. I am of opinion that
it may not only prove well worth our while to wait five minutes, but
also that it would be as well, if possible, not to offend her by the
way. She’s not likely to afford us the information we require if you
do.’
‘Good. If that’s what you think I’m sure I’m willing to wait,--only
it’s to be hoped that that clock upon her mantelpiece moves quicker
than its mistress.’
Presently, when about a minute had gone, he called to the cabman.
‘Seen a sign of anything?’
The cabman shouted back.
‘Ne’er a sign,--you’ll hear a sound of popguns when I do.’
Those five minutes did seem long ones. But at last Sydney, from his
post of vantage in the road, informed us that the old lady was moving.
‘She’s getting up;--she’s leaving the window;--let’s hope to goodness
she’s coming down to open the door. That’s been the longest five
minutes I’ve known.’
I could hear uncertain footsteps descending the stairs. They came along
the passage. The door was opened--‘on the chain.’ The old lady peered
at us through an aperture of about six inches.
‘I don’t know what you young men think you’re after, but have all three
of you in my house I won’t. I’ll have him and you’--a skinny finger was
pointed to Lessingham and me; then it was directed towards
Atherton--‘but have him I won’t. So if it’s anything particular you
want to say to me, you’ll just tell him to go away.’
On hearing this Sydney’s humility was abject. His hat was in his
hand,--he bent himself double.
‘Suffer me to make you a million apologies, madam, if I have in any way
offended you; nothing, I assure you, could have been farther from my
intention, or from my thoughts.’
‘I don’t want none of your apologies, and I don’t want none of you
neither; I don’t like the looks of you, and so I tell you. Before I let
anybody into my house you’ll have to sling your hook.’
The door was banged in our faces. I turned to Sydney.
‘The sooner you go the better it will be for us. You can wait for us
over the way.’
He shrugged his shoulders, and groaned,--half in jest, half in earnest.
‘If I must I suppose I must,--it’s the first time I’ve been refused
admittance to a lady’s house in all my life! What have I done to
deserve this thing?--If you keep me waiting long I’ll tear that
infernal den to pieces!’
He sauntered across the road, viciously kicking the stones as he went.
The door reopened.
‘Has that other young man gone?’
‘He has.’
‘Then now I’ll let you in. Have him inside my house I won’t.’
The chain was removed. Lessingham and I entered. Then the door was
refastened and the chain replaced. Our hostess showed us into the front
room on the ground floor; it was sparsely furnished and not too
clean,--but there were chairs enough for us to sit upon; which she
insisted on our occupying.
‘Sit down, do,--I can’t abide to see folks standing; it gives me the
fidgets.’
So soon as we were seated, without any overture on our parts she
plunged _in medias res_.
‘I know what it is you’ve come about,--I know! You want me to tell you
who it is as lives in the house over the road. Well, I can tell
you,--and I dare bet a shilling that I’m about the only one who can.’
I inclined my head.
‘Indeed. Is that so, madam?’
She was huffed at once.
‘Don’t madam me,--I can’t bear none of your lip service. I’m a
plain-spoken woman, that’s what I am, and I like other people’s tongues
to be as plain as mine. My name’s Miss Louisa Coleman; but I’m
generally called Miss Coleman,--I’m only called Louisa by my relatives.’
Since she was apparently between seventy and eighty--and looked every
year of her apparent age--I deemed that possible. Miss Coleman was
evidently a character. If one was desirous of getting information out
of her it would be necessary to allow her to impart it in her own
manner,--to endeavour to induce her to impart it in anybody else’s
would be time clean wasted. We had Sydney’s fate before our eyes.
She started with a sort of roundabout preamble.
‘This property is mine; it was left me by my uncle, the late George
Henry Jobson,--he’s buried in Hammersmith Cemetery just over the
way,--he left me the whole of it. It’s one of the finest building sites
near London, and it increases in value every year, and I’m not going to
let it for another twenty, by which time the value will have more than
trebled,--so if that is what you’ve come about, as heaps of people do,
you might have saved yourselves the trouble. I keep the boards
standing, just to let people know that the ground is to let,--though,
as I say, it won’t be for another twenty years, when it’ll be for the
erection of high-class mansions only, same as there is in Grosvenor
Square,--no shops or public houses, and none of your shanties. I live
in this place just to keep an eye upon the property,--and as for the
house over the way, I’ve never tried to let it, and it never has been
let, not until a month ago, when, one morning, I had this letter. You
can see it if you like.’
She handed me a greasy envelope which she ferreted out of a capacious
pocket which was suspended from her waist, and which she had to lift up
her skirt to reach. The envelope was addressed, in unformed characters,
‘Miss Louisa Coleman, The Rhododendrons, Convolvulus Avenue, High Oaks
Park, West Kensington.’--I felt, if the writer had not been of a
humorous turn of mind, and drawn on his imagination, and this really
was the lady’s correct address, then there must be something in a name.
The letter within was written in the same straggling, characterless
caligraphy,--I should have said, had I been asked offhand, that the
whole thing was the composition of a servant girl. The composition was
about on a par with the writing.
‘The undersigned would be oblidged if Miss Coleman would let her empty
house. I do not know the rent but send fifty pounds. If more will send.
Please address, Mohamed el Kheir, Post Office, Sligo Street, London.’
It struck me as being as singular an application for a tenancy as I
remembered to have encountered. When I passed it on to Lessingham, he
seemed to think so too.
‘This is a curious letter, Miss Coleman.’
‘So I thought,--and still more so when I found the fifty pounds inside.
There were five ten-pound notes, all loose, and the letter not even
registered. If I had been asked what was the rent of the house, I
should have said, at the most, not more than twenty pounds,--because,
between you and me, it wants a good bit of doing up, and is hardly fit
to live in as it stands.’
I had had sufficient evidence of the truth of this altogether apart
from the landlady’s frank admission.
‘Why, for all he could have done to help himself I might have kept the
money, and only sent him a receipt for a quarter. And some folks would
have done,--but I’m not one of that sort myself, and shouldn’t care to
be. So I sent this here party,--I never could pronounce his name, and
never shall--a receipt for a year.’
Miss Coleman paused to smooth her apron, and consider.
‘Well, the receipt should have reached this here party on the Thursday
morning, as it were,--I posted it on the Wednesday night, and on the
Thursday, after breakfast, I thought I’d go over the way to see if
there was any little thing I could do,--because there wasn’t hardly a
whole pane of glass in the place,--when I all but went all of a heap.
When I looked across the road, blessed if the party wasn’t in
already,--at least as much as he ever was in, which, so far as I can
make out, never has been anything particular,--though how he had got
in, unless it was through a window in the middle of the night, is more
than I should care to say,--there was nobody in the house when I went
to bed, that I could pretty nearly take my Bible oath,--yet there was
the blind up at the parlour, and, what’s more, it was down, and it’s
been down pretty nearly ever since.
‘“Well,” I says to myself, “for right down imperence this beats
anything,--why he’s in the place before he knows if I’ll let him have
it. Perhaps he thinks I haven’t got a word to say in the matter,--fifty
pounds or no fifty pounds, I’ll soon show him.” So I slips on my
bonnet, and I walks over the road, and I hammers at the door.
‘Well, I have seen people hammering since then, many a one, and how
they’ve kept it up has puzzled me,--for an hour, some of them,--but I
was the first one as begun it. I hammers, and I hammers, and I kept on
hammering, but it wasn’t no more use than if I’d been hammering at a
tombstone. So I starts rapping at the window, but that wasn’t no use
neither. So I goes round behind, and I hammers at the back door,--but
there, I couldn’t make anyone hear nohow. So I says to myself, “Perhaps
the party as is in, ain’t in, in a manner of speaking; but I’ll keep an
eye on the house, and when he is in I’ll take care that he ain’t out
again before I’ve had a word to say.”
‘So I come back home, and as I said I would, I kept an eye on the house
the whole of that livelong day, but never a soul went either out or in.
But the next day, which it was a Friday, I got out of bed about five
o’clock, to see if it was raining, through my having an idea of taking
a little excursion if the weather was fine, when I see a party coming
down the road. He had on one of them dirty-coloured bed-cover sort of
things, and it was wrapped all over his head and round his body, like,
as I have been told, them there Arabs wear,--and, indeed, I’ve seen
them in them myself at West Brompton, when they was in the exhibition
there. It was quite fine, and broad day, and I see him as plainly as I
see you,--he comes skimming along at a tear of a pace, pulls up at the
house over the way, opens the front door, and lets himself in.
‘“So,” I says to myself, “there you are. Well, Mr Arab, or whatever, or
whoever, you may be, I’ll take good care that you don’t go out again
before you’ve had a word from me. I’ll show you that landladies have
their rights, like other Christians, in this country, however it may be
in yours.” So I kept an eye on the house, to see that he didn’t go out
again, and nobody never didn’t, and between seven and eight I goes and
I knocks at the door,--because I thought to myself that the earlier I
was the better it might be.
‘If you’ll believe me, no more notice was taken of me than if I was one
of the dead. I hammers, and I hammers, till my wrist was aching, I
daresay I hammered twenty times,--and then I went round to the back
door, and I hammers at that,--but it wasn’t the least good in the
world. I was that provoked to think I should be treated as if I was
nothing and nobody, by a dirty foreigner, who went about in a bed-gown
through the public streets, that it was all I could do to hold myself.
‘I comes round to the front again, and I starts hammering at the
window, with every knuckle on my hands, and I calls out, “I’m Miss
Louisa Coleman, and I’m the owner of this house, and you can’t deceive
me,--I saw you come in, and you’re in now, and if you don’t come and
speak to me this moment I’ll have the police.”
‘All of a sudden, when I was least expecting it, and was hammering my
very hardest at the pane, up goes the blind, and up goes the window
too, and the most awful-looking creature ever I heard of, not to
mention seeing, puts his head right into my face,--he was more like a
hideous baboon than anything else, let alone a man. I was struck all of
a heap, and plumps down on the little wall, and all but tumbles head
over heels backwards. And he starts shrieking, in a sort of a kind of
English, and in such a voice as I’d never heard the like,--it was like
a rusty steam engine.
‘“Go away! go away! I don’t want you! I will not have you,--never! You
have your fifty pounds,--you have your money,--that is the whole of
you,--that is all you want! You come to me no more!--never!--never no
more!--or you be sorry!--Go away!”
‘I did go away, and that as fast as ever my legs would carry me,--what
with his looks, and what with his voice, and what with the way that he
went on, I was nothing but a mass of trembling. As for answering him
back, or giving him a piece of my mind, as I had meant to, I wouldn’t
have done it not for a thousand pounds. I don’t mind confessing,
between you and me, that I had to swallow four cups of tea, right
straight away, before my nerves was steady.
‘“Well,” I says to myself, when I did feel, as it might be, a little
more easy, “you never have let that house before, and now you’ve let it
with a vengeance,--so you have. If that there new tenant of yours isn’t
the greatest villain that ever went unhung it must be because he’s got
near relations what’s as bad as himself,--because two families like his
I’m sure there can’t be. A nice sort of Arab party to have sleeping
over the road he is!”
‘But after a time I cools down, as it were,--because I’m one of them
sort as likes to see on both sides of a question. “After all,” I says
to myself, “he has paid his rent, and fifty pounds is fifty pounds,--I
doubt if the whole house is worth much more, and he can’t do much
damage to it whatever he does.”
‘I shouldn’t have minded, so far as that went, if he’d set fire to the
place, for, between ourselves, it’s insured for a good bit over its
value. So I decided that I’d let things be as they were, and see how
they went on. But from that hour to this I’ve never spoken to the man,
and never wanted to, and wouldn’t, not of my own free will, not for a
shilling a time,--that face of his will haunt me if I live till Noah,
as the saying is. I’ve seen him going in and out at all hours of the
day and night,--that Arab party’s a mystery if ever there was one,--he
always goes tearing along as if he’s flying for his life. Lots of
people have come to the house, all sorts and kinds, men and
women--they’ve been mostly women, and even little children. I’ve seen
them hammer and hammer at that front door, but never a one have I seen
let in,--or yet seen taken any notice of, and I think I may say, and
yet tell no lie, that I’ve scarcely took my eye off the house since
he’s been inside it, over and over again in the middle of the night
have I got up to have a look, so that I’ve not missed much that has
took place.
‘What’s puzzled me is the noises that’s come from the house. Sometimes
for days together there’s not been a sound, it might have been a house
of the dead; and then, all through the night, there’ve been yells and
screeches, squawks and screams,--I never heard nothing like it. I have
thought, and more than once, that the devil himself must be in that
front room, let alone all the rest of his demons. And as for
cats!--where they’ve come from I can’t think. I didn’t use to notice
hardly a cat in the neighbourhood till that there Arab party
came,--there isn’t much to attract them; but since he came there’s been
regiments. Sometimes at night there’s been troops about the place,
screeching like mad,--I’ve wished them farther, I can tell you. That
Arab party must be fond of ’em. I’ve seen them inside the house, at the
windows, upstairs and downstairs, as it seemed to me, a dozen at a time.’