A tapping came to the door; not timid, nor yet menacing; a sort of double knock, delivered with a walking-cane; on the whole a sharp but gentlemanlike summons, to which the little company assembled there were unused. The children lifted their eyes from the book before them, and stared at the door without answering. It opened with a latch, which, without more ado, was raised, and a tall, white-haired gentleman, with a stoop, and a very brown skin, looked in inquisitively, and said, with a smile that was not pleasant, and a voice not loud but somewhat harsh and cold —
“Mrs. or Miss Rumble hereabouts, my dears?”
“Miss Rumble; that’s aunt, please, sir;” answered the little girl, slipping down from her chair, and making a courtesy.
“Well, she’s the lady I want to speak with, my love. Where is she?” said the gentleman, glancing round the homely chamber from under his white eyebrows with a pair of cold, gray, restless eyes.
“She’s — she’s” —— hesitated the child.
“Not in bed, I see; nor in the cupboard” (the cupboard door was open). “Is she up the chimney, my charming child?”
“No, sir, please; she’s gone to Mrs. Chalk’s for the bacon.”
“Mrs. Chalk’s for the bacon?” echoed the gentleman. “Very good! Excellent woman! excellent bacon, I dare say. But how far away is it? — how soon shall we have your aunt back again?”
“Just round the corner, please, sir; aunt’s never no time,” answered the child. “Would you please call in again?”
“Charming young lady! So accomplished! Who taught you your grammar? So polite — so suspicious. Do you know the meaning of that word, my dear?”
“No, sir, please.”
“And I’m vastly obliged for your invitation to call again; but I find your company much too agreeable to think of going away; so, if you allow me — and do shut that door, my sweet child; many thanks — I’ll do myself the honour to sit down, if I may venture, and continue to enjoy your agreeable conversation, till your aunt returns to favour us with her charming presence — and bacon.”
The old gentleman was glancing from under his brows, from corner to corner of this homely chamber; an uneasy habit, not curiosity; and, during his ceremonious speech, he kept bowing and smiling, and set down a black leather bag that he had in his hand, on the deal table, together with his walking-cane, and pulled off his gloves, and warmed his hands at the tiny bit of fire. When his back was toward them the children exchanged a glance, and the little boy looked frightened, and on the point of bursting into tears.
“Hish!” whispered the girl, alarmed, for she could not tell what effect the demonstration might have upon the stranger— “quiet!” — and she shook her finger in urgent warning at Jemmie. “A very nice gent, as has money for aunty — there!”
So the tears that stood in Jemmie’s big eyes were not followed by an outcry, and the gentleman, with his hat and outside wrapper on, stood, now, with his back to the little fire, looking, in his restless way, over the children’s heads, with his white, cold eyes, and the same smile. There was a dreamy idea haunting Lucy Maria’s head that this gentleman was very like a white animal she had seen at the Surrey Zoological Gardens when her uncle had treated her to that instructive show; the same sort of cruel grin, and the same restless oscillation before the bars of its cage.
“Hey! so she’ll be back again?” said he, recollecting the presence of the two children; “the excellent lady, your aunt, I mean. Superb apartment this is, but it strikes me, hardly sufficiently lighted, hey? One halfpenny candle, however brilliant, can hardly do justice to such a room; pretty taper — very pretty — isn’t it? Such nice mutton fat, my dear young lady, and such a fine long snuff — like a chimney, with a Quaker’s hat on the top of it — you don’t see such fine things everywhere! And who’s this young gentleman, who enjoys the distinction of being admitted to your salon; a page, or what?”
“It’s Jemmie, sir; stand up, and bow to the gentleman, Jemmie.”
Jemmie slipped down on the floor, and made a very alarmed bow, with his great eyes staring deprecatingly in the visitor’s face.
“I’m charmed to make your acquaintance. What grace and ease! It’s perfectly charming! I’m too much honoured, Mr. Jemmie. And so exquisitely got up, too! There’s only one little toilet refinement I would venture to recommend. The worthy lady, Mrs. Chalks, who contributes bacon to this house, and, I presume, candles — could, I dare say, also supply another luxury, with which you are not so well acquainted, called soap — one of the few perfectly safe cosmetics. Pray try it; you’ll find it soluble in water. And, ho? reading too! What have you been reading out of that exquisite little volume?”
“Catechism, please sir,” answered the little girl.
“Ho, Catechism? Delightful! What a wonderful people we English are!” The latter reflection was made for his own entertainment, and he laughed over it in an undertone. “Then your aunt teaches you the art of godliness? You’ve read about Babel, didn’t you? — the accomplishment of getting up to heaven is so nice!”
“Sunday school, sir, please,” said the girl.
“Oh, it’s there you learn it? Well, I shall ask you only one question in your Catechism, and that’s the first — what’s your name?”
“Lucy Maria.”
“Well, Lucy Maria and Mr. Jemmie, I trust your theological studies may render you at last as pious as I am. You know how death and sin came into the world, and you know what they are. Sin is doing anything on earth that’s pleasant, and death’s the penalty of it. Did you ever see any one dead, my sweet child — not able to raise a finger or an eyelid? rather a fix, isn’t it? — and screwed up in a stenching box to be eaten by worms — all alone, under ground? You’ll be so, egad, and your friend, Jemmie, there, perhaps before me — though I’m an old boy. Younkers go off sometimes by the score. I’ve seen ‘em trundled out in fever and plague, egad, lying in rows, like plucked chickens in a poulterer’s shop. And they say you have scarlatina all about you here, now; bad complaint, you know, that kills the little children. You need not frighten yourselves though, because it must happen, sooner or later — die you must. It’s the penalty, you know, because Eve once eat an apple.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rather hard lines on us, isn’t it? She eat an apple, and sin, and death, and colic — I never eat an apple in consequence — colic came into the world, and cider, as a consequence — the worst drink ever invented by the devil. And now go on and learn your Church Catechism thoroughly, and you’ll both turn into angels. Upon my life, I think I see the feathers beginning to sprout from your shoulders already. You’ll have wings, you know, if all goes right, and tails for anything I know.”
The little boy looked in his face perplexed and frightened — the little girl, answering his haggard grin with an attempted smile, showed also bewilderment and dismay in her eyes. They were both longing for the return of their aunt.
Childish nature, which is only human nature without its scarf skin, is always afraid of irony. It is not its power, but its treachery that is dreadful — the guise of friendship hiding a baleful purpose underneath. One might fancy the seasoned denizens of Gehenna welcoming, complimenting, and instructing new comers with these profound derisions. How children delight in humour! how they wince and quail under irony! Be it ever so rudely fashioned and clumsily handled, still it is to them a terrible weapon. If children are to be either ridiculed or rebuked, let it be honestly, in direct terms. We should not scare them with this jocularity of devils.
Having thus amused himself with the children for a time, he unlocked his leather bag, took out two or three papers, ordered the little girl to snuff the candle, and pulled it across the table to the corner next himself, and, sitting close by, tried to read, holding the letter almost in the flame, screwing his white eyebrows together, and shifting his position, and that of the candle also, with very little regard to the studious convenience of the children.
He gave it up. The red and smoky light tried his
eyes too severely. So, not well pleased, he locked his letters up again.
“Cat’s eyes — owls! How the devil they read by it passes my comprehension. Any more candles here — hey?” he demanded with a sudden sharpness that made the children start.
“Three, please sir.”
“Get ‘em.”
“On the nail in the closet, please sir.”
“Get ‘em, d — n it!”
“Closet’s locked, please sir. Aunt has the key.”
“Ha!” he snarled, and looked at the children as if he would like to pick a quarrel with them.
“Does your aunt allow you to let the fire out on nights like this — hey? You’re a charming young lady, you — and this young gentleman, in manners and appearance, everything the proudest aunt could desire; but I’m curious to know whether either one or the other is of the slightest earthly use; and secondly, whether she keeps a birch-rod in that closet — hey? — and now and then flogs you — ha, ha, ha! The expense of the rod is trifling, the pain not worth mentioning, and soon over, but the moral effects are admirable, better and more durable — take my word for it — than all the catechisms in Paternoster Row.”
The old gentleman seemed much tickled by his own pleasantries, and laughed viciously as he eyed the children.
“You did not tell me a fib, I hope, my dear, about your aunt? She’s a long time about coming; and, I say, do put a little coal on the fire, will you?”
“Coal’s locked up, please sir,” said the child, who was growing more afraid of him every minute.
“‘Gad, it seems to me that worthy woman’s afraid you’ll carry off the bricks and plaster. Where’s the poker? Chained to the wall, I suppose. Well, there’s a complaint called kleptomania — it comes with a sort of irritation at the tips of the fingers, and I should not be surprised if you and your friend Jemmie, there, had got it.”
Jemmie looked at his fingers’ ends, and up in the gentleman’s face, in anxious amazement.
“But there’s a cure for it — essence of cane — and if that won’t do, a capital charm — nine tails of a gray cat, applied under competent direction. Your aunt seems to understand that disorder — it begins with an itching in the fingers, and ends with a pain in the back — ha, ha, ha! You’re a pair of theologians, and, if you’ve read John Bunyan, no doubt understand and enjoy an allegory.”
“Yes, sir, please, we will,” answered poor Lucy Maria, in her perplexity.
“And we’ll be very good friends, Miss Maria Louise, or whatever your name is, I’ve no doubt, provided you play me no tricks and do precisely whatever I bid you; and, upon my soul, if you don’t, Til take the devil out of my pocket and frighten you out of your wits, I will — ha, ha, ha! — so sure as you live, into fits!”
And the old gentleman, with an ugly smile on his thin lips, and a frown between his white eyebrows, fixed his glittering gaze on the child and wagged his head.
You may be sure she was relieved when, at that moment, she heard her aunt’s well-known step on the lobby, and the latch clicked, the door opened, and Miss Rumble entered.
* * *
CHAPTER VII.
MR. DINGWELL MAKES HIMSELF COMFORTABLE.
“Ah! — ho! you are Miss Rumble — hey?” said the old gentleman, fixing a scrutinising glance from under his white eyebrows upon Sally Rumble, who stood in the doorway, in wonder, not unmixed with alarm; for people who stand every hour in presence of Giant Want, with his sword at their throats, have lost their faith in fortune, and long ceased to expect a benevolent fairy in any stranger who may present himself dubiously, and anticipate rather an enemy. So, looking hard at the gentleman who stood before the little fire, with his hat on, and the light of the solitary dipt candle shining on his by no means pleasant countenance, she made him a little frightened courtesy, and acknowledged that she was Sally Rumble, though she could not tell what was to follow.
“I’ve been waiting; I came here to see you — pray, shut the door — from two gentlemen, Jews whom you know — friends — don’t be uneasy — friends of mine, friends of yours — Mr. Goldshed and Mr. Levi, the kindest, sweetest, sharpest fellows alive, and here’s a note from them — you can read?”
“Read! Law bless you — yes, sir,” answered Sally.
“Thanks for the blessing: read the note; it’s only to tell you I’m the person they mentioned this morning, Mr. Dingwell. Are the rooms ready? You can make me comfortable — eh?”
“In a humble way, sir,” she answered, with a courtesy.
“Yes, of course; I’m a humble fellow, and — I hear you’re a sensible young lady. These little pitchers here, of course, have ears: I’ll say all that’s necessary as we go up: there’s a fellow with a cab at the door, isn’t there? Well, there’s some little luggage of mine on it — we must get it up stairs; give the Hamal something to lend a hand; but first let me see my rooms.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sally, with another courtesy, not knowing what a Hamal meant. And Mr. Dingwell, taking up his bag and stick, followed her in silence, as with the dusky candle she led the way up the stairs.
She lighted a pair of candles in the drawingroom. There was some fire in the grate. The rooms looked better than he had expected; there were curtains, and an old Turkish carpet, and some shabby, and some handsome, pieces of furniture.
“It will do, it will do — ha, ha, ha! How like a pawnbroker’s store it looks — no two things match in it; but it is not bad: those Jew fellows, of course, did it? All this stuff isn’t yours?” said Mr. Dingwell.
“Law bless you, no, sir,” answered Sally, with a dismal smile and a shake of her head.
“Thanks again for your blessing. And the bedroom?” inquired he.
She pushed open the door.
“Capital looking-glass,” said he, standing before his dressing-table— “cap-i-tal! if it weren’t for that great seam across the middle — ha, ha, ha! funny effect, by Jove! Is it colder than usual, here?”
“No, sir, please; a nice evening.”
“Devilish nice, by Allah! I’m cold through and through my great coat. Will you please poke up that fire a little? Hey! what a grand bed we’ve got! what tassels and ropes! and, by Jove, carved angels or Cupids — I hope Cupids — on the foot-board!” he said, running the tip of his cane along the profile of one of them. “They must have got this a wonderful bargain. Hey! I hope no one died in it last week?”
“Oh, la! sir; Mr. Levi is a very pitickler gentleman; he wouldn’t for all he’s worth.”
“Oh! not he, I know; very particular.”
Mr. Dingwell was holding the piece of damask curtain between his finger and thumb, and she fancied was sniffing at it gently.
“Very particular, but I’m more so. We, English, are the dirtiest dogs in the world. They ought to get the Turks to teach ‘em to wash and be clean. I travelled in the East once, for a commercial house, and know something of them. Can you make coffee?”
“Yes, sir, please.”
“Very strong?”
“Yes, sir, sure.”
“Very, mind. As strong as the devil it must be, and as clear as — as your conscience.” He was getting out a tin case, as he spoke. “Here it is. I got it in — I forget the name — a great place, near one of your bridges. I suppose it’s as good as any to be had in this place. Of course it isn’t all coffee. We must go to the heathen for that; but if they haven’t ground up toasted skeletons, or anything dirty in it, I’m content. I’m told you can’t eat or drink a mouthful here without swallowing something you never bargained for. Everything is drugged. Look at our Caiquejees! You have no such men in your padded Horseguards. And what do they live on? Why, a crust of brown bread and a melon, and now and then a dish of pilauf! But it’s good — it’s pure — it’s what it calls itself. You d —— d Christian cheats, you’re an opprobrium to commerce and civilisation; you’re the greatest oafs on earth, with all your police and spies. Why it’s only to will it, and you don’t; you let it go on. We are assuredly a beastly peop
le!”
“Sugar, please, sir?”
“No, thank you.”
“Take milk, sir?”
“Heaven forbid! Milk, indeed! I tell you what, Mrs. — What’s your name? — I tell you, if the Sultan had some of your great fellows — your grocers, and bakers, and dairymen, and brewers, egad! — out there, he’d have ‘em on their ugly faces and bastinado their great feet into custard pudding! I’ve seen fellows — and devilish glad I was to see it, I can tell you — screaming like stuck pigs, and their eyes starting out of their heads, and their feet like bags of black currant jelly, ha, ha, ha! — for a good deal less. Now, you see, ma’am, I have high notions of honesty; and this tin case I’m going to give you will give me three small cups of coffee, as strong as I’ve described, six times over; do you understand? — six times three, eighteen; eighteen small cups of coffee; and don’t let those pretty little foxes’ cubs down stairs meddle with it. Tell ‘em I know what I’m about, and they’d better not, ha, ha, ha! nor with anything that belongs to me, to the value of a single piastre.”
Miss Sarah Rumble was a good deal dismayed by the jubilant severity of Mr. Dingwell’s morals. She would have been glad had he been of a less sharp and cruel turn of pleasantry. Her heart was heavy, and she wished herself a happy deliverance, and had a vague alarm about the poor little children’s falling under suspicion, and of all that might follow. But what could she do? Poverty is so powerless, and has so little time to weigh matters maturely, or to prepare for any change; its hands are always so full, and its stomach so empty, and its spirits so dull.
“I wish those d —— d curtains were off the bed,” and again they underwent the same disgusting process; “and the bedclothes, egad! They purify nothing here. You know nothing about them either, of course? No — but they would not like to kill me. No; — that would not do. Knock their little game on the head, eh? I suppose it is all right. What’s prevalent here now? What sort of — I mean what sort of death — fever, smallpox, or scarlatina — eh? Much sickness going?”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 358