Selected Short Fiction Read online

  Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the utmost freedom. When he become flushed with the heated stimulant referred to, he again demanded pen and paper, and passed the succeeding two hours in producing a manuscript, which he put in the fire when completed. He then went up to bed, attended by Mrs Pratchett. Mrs Pratchett (who was aware of my emotions) told me on coming down that she had noticed his eye rolling into every comer of the passages and staircase, as if in search of his Luggage, and that, looking back as she shut the door of 24 B, she perceived him with his coat already thrown off immersing himself bodily under the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of machinery.

  The next day - I forbear the horrors of that night - was a very foggy day in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to light the Coffee Room gas. We was still alone, and no feverish words of mine can do justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at No. 4 table, increased by there being something wrong with the meter.

  Having again ordered his dinner he went out, and was out for the best part of two hours. Inquiring on his return whether any of the answers had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his instant call was for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy.

  Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt that I must be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he took, I would take. Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him over the curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne Pepper, and Orange Brandy. And at a later period of the day, when he again said ‘Orange Brandy,’ I said so too, in a lower tone, to George, my Second Lieutenant (my First was absent on leave), who acts between me and the bar.

  Throughout that awful day, he walked about the Coffee Room continually. Often he came close up to my partition, and then his eye rolled within, too evidently in search of any signs of his Luggage. Half-past six came, and I laid his cloth. He ordered a bottle of old Brown. I likewise ordered a bottle of old Brown. He drank his. I drank mine (as nearly as my duties would permit) glass for glass against his. He topped with coffee and a small glass. I topped with coffee and a small glass. He dozed. I dozed. At last, ‘Waiter! ’ - and he ordered his bill. The moment was now at hand when we two must be locked in the deadly grapple.

  Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution; in other words, I had hammered it out between nine and nine. It was, that I would be the first to open up the subject with a full acknowledgement, and would offer any gradual settlement within my power. He paid his bill (doing what was right by attendance) with his eye rolling about him to the last, for any tokens of his Luggage. One only time our gaze then met, with the lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct in imputing that character to it?) of the well-known Basilisk.3 The decisive moment had arrived.

  With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I laid The Proofs before him.

  ‘Gracious Heavens!’ he cries out, leaping up and catching hold of his hair. ‘What’s this! Print!’

  ‘Sir,’ I replied, in a calming voice, and bending forward, ‘I humbly acknowledge to being the unfortunate cause of it. But I hope, sir, that when you have heard the circumstances explained, and the innocence of my intentions — ’

  To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching me in both his arms, and pressing me to his breast-bone; where I must confess to my face (and particular nose) having undergone some temporary vexation from his wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons being uncommon hard.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ he cries, releasing me with a wild laugh, and grasping my hand. ‘What is your name, my Benefactor?’

  ‘My name, sir?’ (I was crumpled, and puzzled to make him out), ‘is Christopher; and I hope, sir, that as such when you’ve heard my ex — ’

  ‘In print!’ he exclaims again, dashing the proofs over and over as if he was bathing in them. ‘In print!! Oh, Christopher! Philanthropist! Nothing can recompense you - but what sum of money would be acceptable to you?’

  I had drawn a step back from him, or I should have suffered from his buttons again.

  ‘Sir, I assure you I have been already well paid, and — ’

  ‘No, no, Christopher! Don’t talk like that! What sum of money would be acceptable to you, Christopher? Would you find twenty pounds acceptable, Christopher?’

  However great my surprise, I naturally found words to say, ‘Sir, I am not aware that the man was ever yet born without more than the average amount of water on the brain, as would not find twenty pound acceptable. But - extremely obliged to you, sir, I’m sure;’ for he had tumbled it out of his purse and crammed it in my hand in two bank-notes; ‘but I could wish to know, sir, if not intruding, how I have merited this liberality?’

  ‘Know then, my Christopher,’ he says, ‘that from boyhood’s hour, I have unremittingly and unavailingly endeavoured to get into print. Know, Christopher, that all the Booksellers alive - and several dead-have refused to put me into print. Know, Christopher, that I have written unprinted Reams. But they shall be read to you, my friend and brother. You sometimes have a holiday?’

  Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence of mind to answer, ‘Never!’ To make it more final, I added, ‘Never! Not from the cradle to the grave.’

  ‘Well,’ says he, thinking no more about that, and chuckling at his proofs again. ‘But I am in print! The first flight of ambition emanating from my father’s lowly cot, is realized at length! The golden bowl’ - he was getting on - ‘struck by the magic hand, has emitted a complete and perfect sound! When did this happen, my Christopher?’

  ‘Which happen, sir?’

  ‘This,’ he held it out at arm’s length to admire it, ‘this Per-rint.’

  When I had given him my detailed account of it, he grasped me by the hand again, and said:

  ‘Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to know that you are an instrument in the hands of Destiny. Because you are.’

  A passing Something of a melancholy cast put it into my head to shake it, and to say: ‘Perhaps we all are.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ he answered; ‘I don’t take that wide range; I confine myself to the special case. Observe me well, my Christopher! Hopeless of getting rid, through any effort of my own, of any of the manuscripts among my Luggage - all of which, send them where I would, were always coming back to me - it is now some seven years since I left that Luggage here, on the desperate chance, either that the too too faithful manuscripts would come back to me no more, or that some one less accursed than I might give them to the world. You follow me, my Christopher?’

  ‘Pretty well, sir.’ I followed him so far as to judge that he had a weak head, and that the Orange the Boiling and Old Brown combined was beginning to tell. (The old Brown being heady, is best adapted to seasoned cases.)

  ‘Years elapsed, and those compositions slumbered in dust. At length, Destiny, choosing her agent from all mankind, sent You here, Christopher, and lo! the Casket was burst asunder, and the Giant was free!’

  He made hay of his hair after he said this, and he stood a tiptoe.

  ‘But,’ he reminded himself in a state of great excitement, ‘we must sit up all night, my Christopher. I must correct these Proofs for the press. Fill all the inkstands and bring me several new pens.’

  He smeared himself and he smeared the Proofs, the night through, to that degree, that when Sol give him warning to depart (in a four-wheeler4), few could have said which was them, and which was him, and which was blots. His last instructions was, that I should instantly run and take his corrections to the office of the present Journal. I did so. They most likely will not appear in print, for I noticed a message being brought round from Beaufort Printing House5 while I was a throwing this concluding statement on paper, that the ole resources of that establishment was unable to make out what they meant. Upon which a certain gentleman in company, as I will not more particularly name- but of whom it will be sufficient to remark, standing on the broad basis of
a wave-girt isle, that whether we regard him in the light of- y laughed, and put the corrections in the fire.

  MRS LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS

  How Mrs Lirriper carried on the Business

  WHOEVER would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn’t a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me my dear, excuse the familiarity but it comes natural to me in my own little room when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust and I should be truly thankful if they were all mankind but such is not so, for have but a Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the mantelpiece and farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second however gentlemanly the manners, nor is being of your own sex any safeguard as I have reason in the form of sugar-tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman she was) got me to run for a glass of water on the plea of going to be confined, which certainly turned out true but it was in the Station-House.

  Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand — situated midway between the City and St James’s and within five minutes’ walk of the principal places of public amusement — is my address. I have rented this house many years as the parish rate-books will testify and I could wish my landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself, but no bless you not a half a pound of paint to save his life nor so much my dear as a tile upon the roof though on your bended knees.

  My dear you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand advertised in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide and with the blessing of Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there are who do not think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap and even going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a blot in every window and a coach and four at the door, but what will suit Wozenham’s lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham having her opinions and me having mine, though when it comes to systematic underbidding capable of being proved on oath in a court of justice and taking the form of ‘If Mrs Lirriper names eighteen shillings a week, I name fifteen and six’ it then comes to a settlement between yourself and your conscience supposing for the sake of argument your name to be Wozenham which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy and the porter stuff.

  It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married at St Clement’s Danes where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant pew with genteel company and my own hassock and being partial to evening service not too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road- ‘a dry road, Emma my dear,’ my poor Lirriper says to me ‘where I have to lay the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma’ - and this led to his running through a good deal and might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel my poor Lirriper and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a handsome figure of a man and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet temper, but if they had come up then they never could have given you the mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a new-ploughed field..

  My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and being buried at Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place but that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms where we went upon our wedding-day and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went round to the creditors and I says Gentlemen I am acquainted with the fact that I am not answerable for my late husband’s debts but I wish to pay them for I am his lawful wife and his good name is dear to me. I am going into the Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I prosper every farthing that my late husband owed shall be paid for the sake of the love I bore him, by this right hand.’ It took a long time to do but it was done, and the silver cream-jug which is between ourselves and the bed and the mattress in my room up-stairs (or it would have found legs so sure as ever the Furnished bill was up) being presented by the gentlemen engraved ‘To Mrs Lirriper a mark of grateful respect for her honourable conduct’ gave me a turn which was too much for my feelings, till Mr Betley which at that time had the parlours and loved his joke says ‘Cheer up Mrs Lirriper, you should feel as if it was only your christening and they were your godfathers and god-mothers which did promise for you.’ And it brought me round, and I don’t mind confessing to you my dear that I then put a sandwich and a drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to Hatfield churchyard outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of a proud and swelling love on my husband’s grave, though bless you it had taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding ring was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the green green waving grass.

  I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone but that’s me my dear over the plate-warmer and considered like in the times when you used to pay two guineas on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you came out, which made you very careful how you left it about afterwards because people were turned so red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing it was somebody else quite different, and there was once a certain person that had put his money in a hop business that came in one morning to pay his rent and his respects being the second floor that would have taken it down from its hook and put it in his breast pocket - you understand my dear - for the L, he says, of the original- only there was no mellowness in his voice and I wouldn’t let him, but his opinion of it you may gather from his saying to it ‘Speak to me Emma!’ which, was far from a rational observation no doubt but still a tribute to its being a likeness, and I think myself it was like me when I was young and wore that sort of stays.

  But it was about the Lodgings that I was intending to hold forth and certainly I ought to know something of the business having been in it so long, for it was early in the second year of my married life that I lost my poor Lirriper and I set up at Islington directly afterwards and afterwards came here, being two houses and eight and thirty years and some losses and a deal of experience.

  Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse than what I call the Wandering Christians, though why they should roam the earth looking for bills and then coming in and viewing the apartments and stickling about terms and never at all wanting them or dreaming of taking them being already provided, is a mystery I should be thankful to have explained if by any miracle it could be. It’s wonderful they live so long and thrive so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy, knocking so much and going from house to house and up and down stairs all day, and then their pretending to be so particular and punctual is a most astonishing thing, looking at their watches and saying ‘Could you give me the refusal of the rooms till twenty minutes past eleven the day after tomorrow in the forenoon, and supposing it to be considered essential by my friend from the country could there be a small iron bedstead put in the little room upon the stairs?’ Why when I was new to it my dear I used to consider before I promised and to make my mind anxious with calculations and to get quite wearied out with disappointments, but now I says ‘Certainly by all means’ well knowing it’s a Wandering Christian and I shall hear no more about it, indeed by this time I know most of the Wandering Christians by sight as well as they know me, it being the habit of each individual revolving round London in that capacity to come back about twice a year, and it’s very remarkable that it runs in families and the children grow up to it, but even were it otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend from the country which is a certain sign than I should nod and say to myself You’re a Wandering Christian, though whether they are (as I have heard) persons of small property with a taste for regular employment and frequent change of sce
ne I cannot undertake to tell you.

  Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your lasting troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions and never cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they cut you, and then you don’t want to part with them which seems hard but we must all succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a will nine times out of ten you’ll get a dirty face with it and naturally lodgers do not like good society to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose or a smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house half starved poor thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing Sophy down upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but always smiling with a black face. And I says to Sophy ‘Now Sophy my good girl have a regular day for your stoves and keep the width of the Airy1 between yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair with the bottoms of the saucepans and do not meddle with the snuffs of the candles and it stands to reason that it can no longer be’ yet there it was and always on her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end seemed to boast of it and caused warning from a steady gentleman and excellent lodger with breakfast by the week but a little irritable and use of a sitting-room when required, his words being ‘Mrs Lirriper I have arrived at the point of admitting that the Black is a man and a brother, 2 but only in a natural form and when it can’t be got off.‘ Well consequently I put poor Sophy on to other work and forbid her answering the door or answering a bell on any account but she was so unfortunately willing that nothing would stop her flying up the kitchen stairs whenever a bell was heard to tingle. I put it to her ‘Oh Sophy Sophy for goodness goodness sake where does it come from?’ To which that poor unlucky willing mortal bursting out crying to see me so vexed replied ‘I took a deal of black into me ma‘am when I was a small child, being much neglected and I think it must be, that it works out,’ so it continuing to work out of that poor thing and not having another fault to find with her I says Sophy ‘what do you seriously think of my helping you away to New South Wales where it might not be noticed?’ Nor did I ever repent the money which was well spent, for she married the ship’s cook on the voyage (himself a Mulotter) and did well and lived happy, and so far as ever I heard it was not noticed in a new state of society to her dying day.