The Admiral began to grow uncomfortable. He hated tittle-tattle.
"Where's that cat of yours, ma'am?" he cried, with sudden suspicion.
"Sempronius? The dear thing is so happy. He 's in the front garden,
listening to your dear thrush."
"By Jehoshaphat!" cried the Admiral, half rising.
"Oh, don't be alarmed! Sempronius adores him. He would n't touch a
hair of his head."
"I warn you, ma'am," growled Sir Peter, reluctantly sinking back into
his seat, "if he does, I 'll wing him." From which you might gather the
speakers thought that thrushes had hair and cats wings.
Now Basil Pringle, who had carefully laid his famous Strad in its case
and covered it with a magnificent silk handkerchief, joined the little
group under the elm. He was--apart from a very slight malformation of
one shoulder--a good-looking fellow. He had the musician's pensive
face, and a pair of very tender brown eyes, and his hands were the true
violinist's hands, with long and lissome fingers. Jim hobbled up at the
same time with a fresh pewter of ale.
"Ah, Mr. Pringle," said the Admiral, hospitably, "here 's your pewter."
But Basil waved it away. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Poskett--Gentlemen.
Thank you, Admiral, but I 'm sure you 'll excuse me. I have a long
night's work."
Jim was ready for the occasion. He hobbled back quicker than he had
come, and drained the pewter at one draught under the very nose of the
Eyesore.
"Fiddling at Vauxhall?" asked the Admiral.
"As usual, Sir Peter. It is a gala night. Fireworks."
Mrs. Poskett gave a little scream of delight.
"Fireworks! Oh, ravishing!"
"And Mrs. Poole is to sing; and Incledon."
Up jumped the Admiral, slapping his thigh. "Incledon! Then, by gum, I
must be there! He was a sailor, y' know. I remember him in '85, on the
_Raisonable_. Lord Hervey, and Pigot and Hughes--they 'd have him up to
sing glees together!--Lord! Did ye ever hear him sing:
'A health to the Captain and officers too,
And all who belong to the jovial crew
On board of the Arethusa'?"
Now, the Admiral's voice was an admirable substitute for a fog-horn, but
as a vehicle for a ballad, it left much to be desired. Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn
writhed in melodramatic agony, and even Mrs. Poskett winced. Basil
tried to turn the enthusiast's thoughts into a gentler channel by
interpolating that to-night Incledon was to sing "Tom Bowling." At once
the Admiral's face took on an expression of the tenderest pathos. "Tom
Bowling?--Ah!" and he was off again, in a roar he intended for a mere
sentimental whisper
"Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling--"
This was too much for Jim's feelings, never more receptive to melodious
sorrow than when he had just absorbed a pint of ale, and he joined his
master in a sympathetic howl.
Mrs. Poskett was overcome. "Oh, don't, Sir Peter," she cried.
"Alderman Poskett used to sing just like that. You could hear him a
mile off, but you could never tell what the tune was." The tender
recollection very nearly moved her to tears.
Sir Peter stopped his song abruptly, with a penitent, "Gobblessmysoul!
I beg your pardon!"
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn felt he had been out of the conversation long enough.
He turned condescendingly to Basil. "Are we not to see the Misses
Pennymint to-day?"
"They are very busy," replied the young violinist.
Mrs. Poskett saw her opportunity. "I saw Miss Ruth sewing at a
ball-dress," she said; and then added with a meaning look at Mr.
Brooke-Hoskyn, "I wonder which of them is going to a ball?"
Basil knew from experience what was coming. Mrs. Poskett continued,
"I've seen them making wedding-dresses, and even," with pretty
confusion, "even christening robes."
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn turned to her with an outraged expression: "I trust
you do not insinuate Pomander Walk harbours mantua-makers?"
"It harbours a poor, hunchback fiddler," remarked Basil, very quietly.
Sir Peter was getting red in the face. "The Misses Pennymint are
estimable ladies, and we are fortunate to have them among us.
Frequently when I have my periodical headaches--"
"Hum," said Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn.
"The result, sir, of voyages in unhealthy regions!--they have sent me
their home-made lavender water. When you had your last fit of asthma,
Mrs. Poskett, did n't they come and sit with you and give you
treacle-posset? And when Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn presented you with your
fourth daughter, whose calves-foot jelly comforted her? We have nothing
to do with their means of livelihood; we are, I am happy to say, like
one family. What, Brooke?"
Thus appealed to, Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn could only assent: but he did so
with a bad grace, and with a contemptuous glance at Basil. It was
really too bad of Sir Peter to suggest that he, Jerome Brooke-Hoskyn,
the Man of Fashion, the friend of the Right Honourable Charles James
Fox, had anything in common with this shabby musician.
Mrs. Poskett bridled. "Do you include the French people at Number
Four?" she said.
"They are not French, ma'am," retorted the Admiral, "and if they were,
they couldn't help it."
Mrs. Poskett pointed with a giggle to the Eyesore, who was at that
moment lovingly fixing one more worm on his hook. "Do you include the
Eyesore?"
"No, I do not!" roared the Admiral, in a rage. "He doesn't live here.
If England were under a proper government, he would be hanged for
trespassing. I 've tried to remove him, as you know, but--ha!--it
appears he has as much right here as any of us."
"After all," said Basil, soothingly, "he never moves from one spot."
"He never speaks to anybody," added Mrs. Poskett.
"He'd better not, ma'am!"
And Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn summed up with a laugh, "And I will do him the
justice to say, he never catches a fish!"
Basil held up a warning hand, for the door of Number Four had just
opened.
*CHAPTER III*
*CONCERNING NUMBER FOUR AND WHO LIVED IN IT*
[Illustration: Chapter III headpiece]
If I had had to give an account of Number Four even six months before
this story opens I should have been forced to admit it was a blot on the
Walk. The people who occupied it had left without paying their rent,
which was in itself a thing likely to cast discredit on the whole Walk.
But they did worse than that. Just before leaving, they managed, on one
plausible pretext or another, to wheedle sums of varying amounts out of
almost all their neighbours. Out of every one of them, in fact, except
the Reverend Jacob Sternroyd, D.D., who lived all alone in the sixth and
last house, and about whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. For
weeks the Walk remained hopeful of seeing its money back. Then came
doubt, and lastly, a period of very bad temper during which everybody
told everybody else they had said so all along, and if people had only
listened to them--! The owner of the house, a very fat brewer at
Brentford, put in a dreadful old Irishwoman as caretaker, and she would
sit on the front door-steps--the actual door-steps, in the open, where
the whole Walk could not avoid seeing her--and smoke a filthy short
black pipe: a sight terrible to behold.
When remonstrated with, she retorted volubly in incomprehensible
Milesian. The Admiral himself had attacked her.
"Now, my good woman, we can't have you smoking here."
The old woman looked up at him with bleary eyes, and puffed in his face.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"What for should I not hear, darlint?"
"You are not to smoke here!"
"Who says so?"
"I say so. If you don't go indoors, I 'll come and take the pipe out of
your mouth."
"Will you so? You bring your ugly face inside that gate and see phwat
I'll do to ye!"
"Do you know who I am?"
"Sure an' I do. Yer father sowld stinkin' fish on Dublin quay when I
was ridin' in me carriage."
"You foul-mouthed old woman--!"
"Don't you 'ould woman' me, neither. You go to hell and watch ould Nick
stirrin' up yer grandmother!"
[Illustration: THE REVEREND JACOB STERNROYD, D.D.]
No gentleman could hope to carry on a conversation on these lines with
any success when all the windows of the Walk were open, and all the
inhabitants listening behind the curtains. The Admiral went straight to
the Brentford brewer, but the latter gave him no redress. He only asked
whether the Admiral had taken the old lady's advice.
She was not only in herself an intolerable nuisance, but she prevented
desirable tenants from taking the house. Whenever any candidate
appeared she had an excruciating toothache; or she was doubled up with
rheumatism; or she shook the whole house with a ghastly churchyard
cough. The sympathy of the enquirer forced the information from her
that she had been sprightly and well, a picture of a woman, till she
came to Pomander Walk. Mind you, she was n't saying anything against
the house. It was a good enough house; though, to be sure, the rats
were something awful. Still, some people liked rats. In desperate
cases she even went so far as to hint that the house was haunted. She
was a foolish old woman, of course, but why did locked doors open of
themselves? Doors she had locked with her own hands. They did say that
the last tenant had hanged himself in the garret. And by that time the
enquirer had given her half-a-crown, and had left her in the undisputed
possession of her cutty-pipe on the doorstep.
This fertility of imagination led to her undoing, however. For upon
hearing of it (from the Admiral, of course) the brewer sent his wife in
the guise of an enquiring tenant, and subsequently turned the old woman
out without any ceremony whatever.
But the Walk did not recover its self-respect for some time. The house
was still undeniably empty. The windows got dirty; dead leaves covered
the door-step; the paint peeled off the woodwork and the railings; some
wretched boys threw a dead dog into the garden, where it lay hidden for
days; and, besides, the old woman's suggestion that the house was
haunted, left its poison behind. Presently Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn's nurse
saw a face gibbering behind the window, and had hysterics; and next Miss
Barbara Pennymint distinctly saw a hand beckoning to her from the same
window and fled, shrieking, to her sister.
The Admiral pooh-poohed the whole thing and made elaborate arrangements
to spend a night in the house with Jim. Jim expressed his delight at
the prospect of such an adventure, and went about describing exactly
what he would do to the ghost if he saw it; but he had very bad luck
when the time came, with a sudden attack of sciatica which glued him to
his bed. The curious thing was that however often the Admiral postponed
the day for the undertaking, Jim's sciatica inevitably returned when the
day came. So time slipped away. The Admiral said he would explore the
mystery alone, but it slipped his memory.
So the house remained tenantless, and when the Walk was painted
according to the Admiral's instructions, Number Four had to be passed
over, and consequently looked more woe-begone than ever.
And the next thing the Walk knew was that it woke one morning to find
strange men bringing loads of furniture, amongst which was a harp, a
_forte-piano_, and a guitar-case, and that painters--not their own
painters, but an entirely unknown lot--were at work scraping off the old
paint.
The Admiral rushed out--I am shocked to say, in his slippers and
shirt-sleeves--and was told that the house was let; let, without any
sort of warning or notice; let, so to speak, over the heads of the Walk;
over his own head. And the men could not tell him the name of the new
tenant. All they knew was that it was a lady. A lady with a name they
could n't pronounce. A foreign name. Foreign? _Foreign_?--Yes; French,
by the sound of it.
This was beyond anything the Admiral or the Walk had ever had to cope
with. However, the Admiral mastered his indignation and contented
himself with giving the painters strict and minute instructions as to
the precise shade of green they were to use so as to make the house
uniform with the rest.
He had to go to London next day to draw his pay. We know the inevitable
consequences of that excursion. The following morning he woke at midday
in a very bad humour. The first thing he saw when he threw open his
window, was Sempronius digging up his sweet peas; and the next was
Number Four painted a creamy white.