and you have told it with infinite vivacity. I was much affected towards
the end, as I held at one time very liberal opinions, and should
certainly have joined a secret society if I had been able to find one.
But the whole tale came home to me; and I was the better able to feel
for you in your various perplexities, as I am myself of somewhat hasty
temper."
"I do not understand you," said Mrs. Luxmore, with some marks of
irritation. "You must have strangely misinterpreted what I have told
you. You fill me with surprise."
Somerset, alarmed by the old lady's change of tone and manner, hurried
to recant.
"Dear Mrs. Luxmore," said he, "you certainly misconstrue my remark. As a
man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience repeatedly pricked me when I
heard what you had suffered at the hands of persons similarly
constituted."
"Oh, very well indeed," replied the old lady; "and a very proper spirit.
I regret that I have met with it so rarely."
"But in all this," resumed the young man, "I perceive nothing that
concerns myself."
"I am about to come to that," she returned. "And you have already before
you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one of the elements of the
affair. I am a woman of the nomadic sort, and when I have no case before
the courts I make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I have
ever been ill; but then I am no longer young, and I am always happy in a
crowd. Well, to come more shortly to the point, I am now on the wing for
Evian; this incubus of a house, which I must leave behind and dare not
let, hangs heavily upon my hands; and I propose to rid myself of that
concern, and do you a very good turn into the bargain, by lending you
the mansion, with all its fittings, as it stands. The idea was sudden;
it appealed to me as humorous; and I am sure it will cause my relatives,
if they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible chagrin. Here,
then, is the key; and when you return at two to-morrow afternoon, you
will find neither me nor my cats to disturb you in your new possession."
So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but
Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to protest.
"Dear Mrs. Luxmore," said he, "this is a most unusual proposal. You know
nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed both impudence and
timidity. I may be the worst kind of scoundrel; I may sell your
furniture--"
"You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!" cried Mrs.
Luxmore. "It is in vain to reason. Such is the force of my character
that, when I have one idea clearly in my head, I do not care two straws
for any side consideration. It amuses me to do it, and let that suffice.
On your side, you may do what you please--let apartments, or keep a
private hotel; on mine, I promise you a full month's warning before I
return, and I never fail religiously to keep my promises."
The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed a sudden
and significant change in the old lady's countenance.
"If I thought you capable of disrespect!" she cried.
"Madam," said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration,
"madam, I accept. I beg you to understand that I accept with joy and
gratitude."
"Ah, well," returned Mrs. Luxmore, "if I am mistaken, let it pass. And
now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish you a good-night."
Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she hurried
Somerset out of the front door, and left him standing, key in hand, upon
the pavement.
The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found his way to
the square, which I will here call Golden Square, though that was not
its name. What to expect, he knew not; for a man may live in dreams, and
yet be unprepared for their realisation. It was already with a certain
pang of surprise that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day,
a solid among solids. The key, upon trial, readily opened the front
door; he entered that great house, a privileged burglar; and, escorted
by the echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed the empty chambers. Cats,
servant, old lady, the very marks of habitation, like writing on a
slate, had been in these few hours obliterated. He wandered from floor
to floor, and found the house of great extent; the kitchen offices
commodious and well appointed; the rooms many and large; and the
drawing-room, in particular, an apartment of princely size and tasteful
decoration. Although the day without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a
ruffling wind from the quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of
suspended animation, inhabited the house. Dust and shadows met the eye;
and but for the ominous procession of the echoes, and the rumour of the
wind among the garden trees, the ear of the young man was stretched in
vain.
Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by the old
lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and netted cupolas of the
kitchen quarters; and on a second visit, this room appeared to greet him
with a smiling countenance. He might as well, he thought, avoid the
expense of lodging: the library fitted with an iron bedstead which he
had remarked, in one of the upper chambers, would serve his purpose for
the night; while in the dining-room, which was large, airy, and
lightsome, looking on the square and garden, he might very agreeably
pass his days, cook his meals, and study to bring himself to some
proficiency in that art of painting which he had recently determined to
adopt. It did not take him long to make the change: he had soon returned
to the mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman who brought him was
readily induced, by the young man's pleasant manner and a small
gratuity, to assist him in the installation of the iron bed. By six in
the evening, when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back
upon the mansion with a sense of pride and property. Four-square it
stood, of an imposing frontage, and flanked on either side by family
hatchments. His eye, from where he stood whistling in the key, with his
back to the garden railings, reposed on every feature of reality; and
yet his own possession seemed as flimsy as a dream.
In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square began
to remark the customs of their neighbour. The sight of a young gentleman
discussing a clay pipe, about four o'clock of the afternoon, in the
drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more,
his periodical excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and
his unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised to
a high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants of
the square. The disfavour of some of these gentlemen at first proceeded
to the length of insult; but Somerset knew how to be affable with any
class of men; and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses
amicably shared, gained for him the right of toleration.
The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of
its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear
the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the
dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he
amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen,
the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent his days in
smiling assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead
lay, like a load, upon his imagination. To hold so great a stake and to
do nothing, argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined to
act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick, with
wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small hand-bill announcing
furnished lodgings. At half-past six of a fine July morning, he affixed
the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result. It seemed,
to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the
drawing-room balcony to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty
problem of how much he was to charge.
Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of painting.
Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day in
the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his float; and
the better to support the tedium, he would frequently console himself
with his clay pipe. On several occasions passers-by appeared to be
arrested by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen drove
to the very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared there was
something repulsive in the appearance of the house; for, with one
accord, they would cast but one look upward, and hastily resume their
onward progress, or direct the driver to proceed. Somerset had thus the
mortification of actually meeting the eye of a large number of
lodging-seekers; and though he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to
compose his features to an air of invitation, he was never rewarded by
so much as an inquiry. "Can there," he thought, "be anything repellent
in myself?" But a candid examination in one of the pier-glasses of the
drawing-room led him to dismiss the fear.
Something, however, was amiss. His vast and accurate calculations on the
fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to have been
an idle sacrifice of time. By these, he had variously computed the weekly
takings of the house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty-shillings, up
to the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet, in despite of
the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making literally nothing.
This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful
leisure on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had
detected the error of his method. "This," he reflected, "is an age of
generous display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears'
legendary soap, and of Eno's fruit salt which, by sheer brass and
notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have
seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough's pyretic
saline. Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough was trite,
Eno original and abominably vulgar; and here have I, a man of some
pretensions to knowledge of the world, contented myself with half a
sheet of note-paper, a few cold words which do not directly address the
imagination, and the adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four
red wafers! Am I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno? Am
I to adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to
take hold of the red facts of life with the emphasis of the tradesman
and the poet?"
Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the very
largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints, proceeded to
compose an ensign that might attract the eye and at the same time, in
his own phrase, directly address the imagination of the passenger.
Something taking in the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words,
and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to
lead within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
must be the elements of his advertisement. It was possible, upon the one
hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire,
blond-headed urchins, and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was
possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to
set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range, or,
boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan. So long did the artist waver
between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion, he had
finally conceived and completed both designs. With the proverbially
tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice either
of these offspring of his art; and decided to expose them on alternate
days. "In this way," he thought, "I shall address myself indifferently
to all classes of the world."
The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and the more
imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune and appeared first
in the window of the mansion. It was of a high fancy, the legend
eloquently writ, the scheme of colour taking and bold; and but for the
imperfection of the artist's drawing, it might have been taken for a
model of its kind. As it was, however, when viewed from his favourite
point against the garden railings, and with some touch of distance, it
caused a pleasurable rising of the artist's heart. "I have thrown away,"
he ejaculated, "an invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of
my first Academy picture."
The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit. A crowd would
certainly, from time to time, collect before the area-railings; but they
came to jeer and not to speculate; and those who pushed their inquiries
further, were too plainly animated by the spirit of derision. The racier
of the two cartoons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive merit;
and though it had a certain share of that success called scandalous,
failed utterly of its effect. On the day, however, of the second
appearance of the companion work, a real inquirer did actually present
himself before the eyes of Somerset.
This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent merriment, and his
voice under inadequate control.
"I beg your pardon," said he, "but what is the meaning of your
extraordinary bill?"
"I beg yours," returned Somerset hotly. "Its meaning is sufficiently
explicit." And being now, from dire experience, fearful of ridicule, he
was preparing to close the door, when the gentleman thrust his cane into
the aperture.
"Not so fast, I beg of you," said he. "If you really let apartments,
here is a possible tenant at your door; and nothing would give me
greater pleasure than to see the accommodation and to learn your terms."
His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor, showed him
over the various apartments, and, with some return of his persuasive
eloquence, expounded their attractions. The gentleman was particularly
pleased by the elegant proportions of the drawing-room.
"This," he said, "would suit me very well. What, may I ask, would be
your terms a week, for this floor and the one above it?"
"I was thinking," returned Somerset, "of a hundred pounds."
"Surely not," exclaimed the gentleman.
"Well, then," returned Somerset, "fifty."
The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement. "You seem to
be strangely elastic in your demands," said he. "What if I were to
proceed on your own principle of division, and offer twenty-five?"
"Done!" cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden embarrassment,
"you see," he added apologetically, "it is all found money for me."
"Really?" said the stranger, looking at him all the while with growing
wonder. "Without extras, then?"
"I--I suppose so," stammered the keeper of the lodging-house.
"Service included?" pursued the gentleman.
"Service?" cried Somerset. "Do you mean that you expect me to empty your
slops?"
The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest. "My dear
fellow," said he, "if you take my advice, you will give up this
business." And thereupon he resumed his hat and took himself away.
This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the artist of
the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his rosier illusions.
First one and then the other of his great works was condemned, withdrawn
from exhibition, and relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the
decoration of the dining-room. Their place was taken by a replica of the
original watered announcement, to which, in particularly large letters,
he had added the pithy rubric: "_No service._" Meanwhile he had fallen
into something as nearly bordering on low spirits as was consistent with
his disposition; depressed, at once by the failure of his scheme, the
laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial blindness of the
public to the merit of the twin cartoons.
Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the note of
the knocker. A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and somewhat military
air, yet closely shaven and wearing a soft hat, desired in the politest
terms to visit the apartments. He had (he explained) a friend, a
gentleman in tender health, desirous of a sedate and solitary life,
apart from interruptions and the noises of the common lodging-house.
"The unusual clause," he continued, "in your announcement, particularly
struck me. 'This,' I said, 'is the place for Mr. Jones.' You are
yourself, sir, a professional gentleman?" concluded the visitor, looking
keenly in Somerset's face.
"I am an artist," replied the young man lightly.
"And these," observed the other, taking a side glance through the open
door of the dining-room, which they were then passing, "these are some
of your works. Very remarkable." And he again and still more sharply
peered into the countenance of the young man.
Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to lead his
visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.
"Excellent," observed the stranger, as he looked from one of the back
windows. "Is that a mews behind, sir? Very good. Well, sir: see here. My
friend will take your drawing-room floor; he will sleep in the back
drawing-room; his nurse, an excellent Irish widow, will attend on all
his wants and occupy a garret; he will pay you the round sum of ten
dollars a week; and you, on your part, will engage to receive no other
lodger? I think that fair."
Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude and joy.
"Agreed," said the other; "and to spare you trouble, my friend will
bring some men with him to make the changes. You will find him a
retiring inmate, sir; receives but few, and rarely leaves the house
except at night."
"Since I have been in this house," returned Somerset, "I have myself,
unless it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad except in the evening.
But a man," he added, "must have some amusement."
An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and Somerset sat
down to compute in English money the value of the figure named. The
result of this investigation filled him with amazement and disgust; but
it was now too late; nothing remained but to endure; and he awaited the
arrival of his tenant, still trying, by various arithmetical expedients,
to obtain a more favourable quotation for the dollar. With the approach
of dusk, however, his impatience drove him once more to the front
balcony. The night fell, mild and airless; the lamps shone around the
central darkness of the garden; and through the tall grove of trees that
intervened, many warmly illuminated windows on the farther side of the
square told their tale of white napery, choice wine, and genial
hospitality. The stars were already thickening overhead, when the young
man's eyes alighted on a procession of three four-wheelers, coasting
round the garden railing and bound for the Superfluous Mansion. They
were laden with formidable boxes; moved in a military order, one
following another; and, by the extreme slowness of their advance,
inspired Somerset with the most serious ideas of his tenant's malady.
By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the
pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the military
gentleman of the morning and two very stalwart porters. These proceeded
instantly to take possession of the house; with their own hands, and
firmly rejecting Somerset's assistance, they carried in the various
crates and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and transferred to the
back drawing-room the bed in which the tenant was to sleep; and it was
not until the bustle of arrival had subsided, and the arrangements were
complete, that there descended, from the third of the three vehicles, a
gentleman of great stature and broad shoulders, leaning on the shoulder
of a woman in a widow's dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and
muffled in a coloured comforter.
Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into the
back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended on the
house; and had not the nurse appeared a little before half-past ten,
and, with a strong brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house in
the neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to be
alone in the Superfluous Mansion.
Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
sight of his mysterious lodger. The doors of the drawing-room flat were
never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro, the
tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apartments. Visitors,
indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours
of night or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some
decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of
Somerset, displeasing. A certain air of fear and secrecy was common to
them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the
military gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at
all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners were
not suggestive of a university career. The nurse, again, was scarcely a
desirable house-fellow. Since her arrival, the fall of whisky in the
young man's private bottle was much accelerated; and though never
communicative, she was at times unpleasantly familiar. When asked about
the patient's health, she would dolorously shake her head, and declare
that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.
Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his
complaint was other than bodily. The ill-looking birds that gathered to
the house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in the
dead hours of night, the careless attendance and intemperate habits of
the nurse, the entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of
Mr. Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn
to in a court of justice--all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man's
mind. A sense of something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and
depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in
his mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of
observing the features of his tenant. It fell in this way. The young
landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise in the hall.
Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the library, he saw the
tall man, candle in hand, in earnest conversation with the gentleman who
had taken the rooms. The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in
that of his tenant Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease,
but every sign of health, energy, and resolution. While he was still
looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having
carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of
lassitude.
That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into the
hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed the
practice of his art with careless hand and an abstracted mind. The day
was destined to be fertile in surprises; nor had he long been seated at
the easel ere the first of these occurred. A cab laden with baggage
drew up before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly mounted the
steps and began to pound upon the knocker. Somerset hastened to attend
the summons.
"My dear fellow," she said, with the utmost gaiety, "here I come
dropping from the moon. I am delighted to find you faithful; and I have
no doubt you will be equally pleased to be restored to liberty."
Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and the
spirited old lady pushed briskly by him, and paused on the threshold of
the dining-room. The sight that met her eyes was one well calculated to
inspire astonishment. The mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and
empty bottles; on the fire some chops were frying; the floor was
littered from end to end with books, clothes, walking-canes, and the
materials of the painter's craft; but what far outstripped the other
wonders of the place was the corner which had been arranged for the
study of still-life. This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous upon
which, according to the principles of the art of composition, a cabbage
was relieved against a copper kettle, and both contrasted with the mail
of a boiled lobster.