A House to Let (7 page)

"Norah!" said Mr. Openshaw, in his kindest voice, "the brooch is found.
It was hanging to Mrs. Chadwick's gown. I beg your pardon. Most truly I
beg your pardon, for having troubled you about it. My wife is almost
broken-hearted. Eat, Norah,—or, stay, first drink this glass of wine,"
said he, lifting her head, pouring a little down her throat.

As she drank, she remembered where she was, and who she was waiting for.
She suddenly pushed Mr. Openshaw away, saying, "O, sir, you must go. You
must not stop a minute. If he comes back he will kill you."

"Alas, Norah! I do not know who 'he' is. But some one is gone away who
will never come back: someone who knew you, and whom I am afraid you
cared for."

"I don't understand you, sir," said Norah, her master's kind and
sorrowful manner bewildering her yet more than his words. The policeman
had left the room at Mr. Openshaw's desire, and they two were alone.

"You know what I mean, when I say some one is gone who will never come
back. I mean that he is dead!"

"Who?" said Norah, trembling all over.

"A poor man has been found in the Thames this morning, drowned."

"Did he drown himself?" asked Norah, solemnly.

"God only knows," replied Mr. Openshaw, in the same tone. "Your name and
address at our house, were found in his pocket: that, and his purse, were
the only things, that were found upon him. I am sorry to say it, my poor
Norah; but you are required to go and identify him."

"To what?" asked Norah.

"To say who it is. It is always done, in order that some reason may be
discovered for the suicide—if suicide it was. I make no doubt he was
the man who came to see you at our house last night. It is very sad, I
know." He made pauses between each little clause, in order to try and
bring back her senses; which he feared were wandering—so wild and sad
was her look.

"Master Openshaw," said she, at last, "I've a dreadful secret to tell
you—only you must never breathe it to any one, and you and I must hide
it away for ever. I thought to have done it all by myself, but I see I
cannot. Yon poor man—yes! the dead, drowned creature is, I fear, Mr.
Frank, my mistress's first husband!"

Mr. Openshaw sate down, as if shot. He did not speak; but, after a
while, he signed to Norah to go on.

"He came to me the other night—when—God be thanked—you were all away
at Richmond. He asked me if his wife was dead or alive. I was a brute,
and thought more of our all coming home than of his sore trial: spoke out
sharp, and said she was married again, and very content and happy: I all
but turned him away: and now he lies dead and cold!"

"God forgive me!" said Mr. Openshaw.

"God forgive us all!" said Norah. "Yon poor man needs forgiveness
perhaps less than any one among us. He had been among the
savages—shipwrecked—I know not what—and he had written letters which
had never reached my poor missus."

"He saw his child!"

"He saw her—yes! I took him up, to give his thoughts another start; for
I believed he was going mad on my hands. I came to seek him here, as I
more than half promised. My mind misgave me when I heard he had never
come in. O, sir I it must be him!"

Mr. Openshaw rang the bell. Norah was almost too much stunned to wonder
at what he did. He asked for writing materials, wrote a letter, and then
said to Norah:

"I am writing to Alice, to say I shall be unavoidably absent for a few
days; that I have found you; that you are well, and send her your love,
and will come home to-morrow. You must go with me to the Police Court;
you must identify the body: I will pay high to keep name; and details out
of the papers.

"But where are you going, sir?"

He did not answer her directly. Then he said:

"Norah! I must go with you, and look on the face of the man whom I have
so injured,—unwittingly, it is true; but it seems to me as if I had
killed him. I will lay his head in the grave, as if he were my only
brother: and how he must have hated me! I cannot go home to my wife till
all that I can do for him is done. Then I go with a dreadful secret on
my mind. I shall never speak of it again, after these days are over. I
know you will not, either." He shook hands with her: and they never
named the subject again, the one to the other.

Norah went home to Alice the next day. Not a word was said on the cause
of her abrupt departure a day or two before. Alice had been charged by
her husband in his letter not to allude to the supposed theft of the
brooch; so she, implicitly obedient to those whom she loved both by
nature and habit, was entirely silent on the subject, only treated Norah
with the most tender respect, as if to make up for unjust suspicion.

Nor did Alice inquire into the reason why Mr. Openshaw had been absent
during his uncle and aunt's visit, after he had once said that it was
unavoidable. He came back, grave and quiet; and, from that time forth,
was curiously changed. More thoughtful, and perhaps less active; quite
as decided in conduct, but with new and different rules for the guidance
of that conduct. Towards Alice he could hardly be more kind than he had
always been; but he now seemed to look upon her as some one sacred and to
be treated with reverence, as well as tenderness. He throve in business,
and made a large fortune, one half of which was settled upon her.

Long years after these events,—a few months after her mother died,
Ailsie and her "father" (as she always called Mr. Openshaw) drove to a
cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to a certain mound
by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage. There was a head-
stone, with F. W. and a date. That was all. Sitting by the grave, Mr.
Openshaw told her the story; and for the sad fate of that poor father
whom she had never seen, he shed the only tears she ever saw fall from
his eyes.

"A most interesting story, all through," I said, as Jarber folded up the
first of his series of discoveries in triumph. "A story that goes
straight to the heart—especially at the end. But"—I stopped, and
looked at Trottle.

Trottle entered his protest directly in the shape of a cough.

"Well!" I said, beginning to lose my patience. "Don't you see that I
want you to speak, and that I don't want you to cough?"

"Quite so, ma'am," said Trottle, in a state of respectful obstinacy which
would have upset the temper of a saint. "Relative, I presume, to this
story, ma'am?"

"Yes, Yes!" said Jarber. "By all means let us hear what this good man
has to say."

"Well, sir," answered Trottle, "I want to know why the House over the way
doesn't let, and I don't exactly see how your story answers the question.
That's all I have to say, sir."

I should have liked to contradict my opinionated servant, at that moment.
But, excellent as the story was in itself, I felt that he had hit on the
weak point, so far as Jarber's particular purpose in reading it was
concerned.

"And that is what you have to say, is it?" repeated Jarber. "I enter
this room announcing that I have a series of discoveries, and you jump
instantly to the conclusion that the first of the series exhausts my
resources. Have I your permission, dear lady, to enlighten this obtuse
person, if possible, by reading Number Two?"

"My work is behindhand, ma'am," said Trottle, moving to the door, the
moment I gave Jarber leave to go on.

"Stop where you are," I said, in my most peremptory manner, "and give Mr.
Jarber his fair opportunity of answering your objection now you have made
it."

Trottle sat down with the look of a martyr, and Jarber began to read with
his back turned on the enemy more decidedly than ever.

At one period of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of a
Showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of
the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of any
clue to his name. But, he himself was less easy to be found; for, he had
led a wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and
people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting
that they had ever known anything of him. At last, among the marsh lands
near the river's level, that lie about Deptford and the neighbouring
market-gardens, a Grizzled Personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up
by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was
found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels. The wooden
house was laid up in ordinary for the winter, near the mouth of a muddy
creek; and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes, and
the steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled man. In
the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house
on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a
companionable manner.

On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to Let,
Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his name was
Magsman? That was it, Toby Magsman—which lawfully christened Robert;
but called in the line, from a infant, Toby. There was nothing agin Toby
Magsman, he believed? If there was suspicion of such—mention it!

There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But, some
inquiries were making about that House, and would he object to say why he
left it?

Not at all; why should he? He left it, along of a Dwarf.

Along of a Dwarf?

Mr. Magsman repeated, deliberately and emphatically, Along of a Dwarf.

Might it be compatible with Mr. Magsman's inclination and convenience to
enter, as a favour, into a few particulars?

Mr. Magsman entered into the following particulars.

It was a long time ago, to begin with;—afore lotteries and a deal more
was done away with. Mr. Magsman was looking about for a good pitch, and
he see that house, and he says to himself, "I'll have you, if you're to
be had. If money'll get you, I'll have you."

The neighbours cut up rough, and made complaints; but Mr. Magsman don't
know what they
would
have had. It was a lovely thing. First of all,
there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Giant, in Spanish
trunks and a ruff, who was himself half the heighth of the house, and was
run up with a line and pulley to a pole on the roof, so that his Ed was
coeval with the parapet. Then, there was the canvass, representin the
picter of the Albina lady, showing her white air to the Army and Navy in
correct uniform. Then, there was the canvass, representin the picter of
the Wild Indian a scalpin a member of some foreign nation. Then, there
was the canvass, representin the picter of a child of a British Planter,
seized by two Boa Constrictors—not that
we
never had no child, nor no
Constrictors neither. Similarly, there was the canvass, representin the
picter of the Wild Ass of the Prairies—not that
we
never had no wild
asses, nor wouldn't have had 'em at a gift. Last, there was the canvass,
representin the picter of the Dwarf, and like him too (considerin), with
George the Fourth in such a state of astonishment at him as His Majesty
couldn't with his utmost politeness and stoutness express. The front of
the House was so covered with canvasses, that there wasn't a spark of
daylight ever visible on that side. "MAGSMAN'S AMUSEMENTS," fifteen foot
long by two foot high, ran over the front door and parlour winders. The
passage was a Arbour of green baize and gardenstuff. A barrel-organ
performed there unceasing. And as to respectability,—if threepence
ain't respectable, what is?

But, the Dwarf is the principal article at present, and he was worth the
money. He was wrote up as MAJOR TPSCHOFFKI, OF THE IMPERIAL BULGRADERIAN
BRIGADE. Nobody couldn't pronounce the name, and it never was intended
anybody should. The public always turned it, as a regular rule, into
Chopski. In the line he was called Chops; partly on that account, and
partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name (which was
very dubious), was Stakes.

He was a uncommon small man, he really was. Certainly not so small as he
was made out to be, but where
is
your Dwarf as is? He was a most
uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and what he had inside
that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself: even supposin himself to have
ever took stock of it, which it would have been a stiff job for even him
to do.

The kindest little man as never growed! Spirited, but not proud. When
he travelled with the Spotted Baby—though he knowed himself to be a
nat'ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby's spots to be put upon him artificial,
he nursed that Baby like a mother. You never heerd him give a ill-name
to a Giant. He
did
allow himself to break out into strong language
respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an affair of the 'art;
and when a man's 'art has been trifled with by a lady, and the preference
giv to a Indian, he ain't master of his actions.

He was always in love, of course; every human nat'ral phenomenon is. And
he was always in love with a large woman; I never knowed the Dwarf as
could be got to love a small one. Which helps to keep 'em the
Curiosities they are.

One sing'ler idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant
something, or it wouldn't have been there. It was always his opinion
that he was entitled to property. He never would put his name to
anything. He had been taught to write, by the young man without arms,
who got his living with his toes (quite a writing master
he
was, and
taught scores in the line), but Chops would have starved to death, afore
he'd have gained a bit of bread by putting his hand to a paper. This is
the more curious to bear in mind, because HE had no property, nor hope of
property, except his house and a sarser. When I say his house, I mean
the box, painted and got up outside like a reg'lar six-roomer, that he
used to creep into, with a diamond ring (or quite as good to look at) on
his forefinger, and ring a little bell out of what the Public believed to
be the Drawing-room winder. And when I say a sarser, I mean a Chaney
sarser in which he made a collection for himself at the end of every
Entertainment. His cue for that, he took from me: "Ladies and gentlemen,
the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire
behind the curtain." When he said anything important, in private life,
he mostly wound it up with this form of words, and they was generally the
last thing he said to me at night afore he went to bed.