The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, by Charles Dickens This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings Author: Charles Dickens Release Date: April 4, 2005 [eBook #1416] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS***
Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall “Christmas Stories” edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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 godmothers 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 church-yard outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of 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 to-morrow 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 scene 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 Airy 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, 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 “O 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.
In what way Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way reconciled it to her feelings as a lady (which she is not) to entice Mary Anne Perkinsop from my service is best known to herself, I do not know and I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at Wozenham’s on any point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I behaved handsomely to her and she behaved unhandsomely to me was worth her weight in gold as overawing lodgers without driving them away, for lodgers would be far more sparing of their bells with Mary Anne than I ever knew them to be with Maid or Mistress, which is a great triumph especially when accompanied with a cast in the eye and a bag of bones, but it was the steadiness of her way with them through her father’s having failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne’s looking so respectable in her person and being so strict in her spirits that conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he weighed them both in a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had to deal with and no lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to me that Miss Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in the milk of a milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think no worse of him) with every girl in the street but was quite frozen up like the statue at Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne’s value in the lodging business and went as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently Mary Anne with not a word betwixt us says “If you will provide yourself Mrs. Lirriper in a month from this day I have already done the same,” which hurt me and I said so, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that her father having failed in Pork had laid her open to it.
My dear I do assure you it’s a harassing thing to know what kind of girls to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell’d off their legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in complaints and if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and if they are smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers’ bonnets and if they are musical I defy you to keep them away from bands and organs, and allowing for any difference you like in their heads their heads will be always out of window just the same. And then what the gentlemen like in girls the ladies don’t, which is fruitful hot water for all parties, and then there’s temper though such a temper as Caroline Maxey’s I hope not often. A good-looking black-eyed girl was Caroline and a comely-made girl to your cost when she did break out and laid about her, as took place first and last through a new-married couple come to see London in the first floor and the lady very high and it was supposed not liking the good looks of Caroline having none of her own to spare, but anyhow she did try Caroline though that was no excuse. So one afternoon Caroline comes down into the kitchen flushed and flashing, and she says to me “Mrs. Lirriper that woman in the first has aggravated me past bearing,” I says “Caroline keep your temper,” Caroline says with a curdling laugh “Keep my temper? You’re right Mrs. Lirriper, so I will. Capital D her!” bursts out Caroline (you might have struck me into the centre of the earth with a feather when she said it) “I’ll give her a touch of the temper that I keep!” Caroline downs with her hair my dear, screeches and rushes up-stairs, I following as fast as my trembling legs could bear me, but before I got into the room the dinner-cloth and pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor with a crash and the new-married couple on their backs in the firegrate, him with the shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and a mercy it was summer-time. “Caroline” I says “be calm,” but she catches off my cap and tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then pounces on the new-married lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes her by the two ears and knocks the back of her head upon the carpet Murder screaming all the time Policemen running down the street and Wozenham’s windows (judge of my feelings when I came to know it) thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out from the balcony with crocodile’s tears “It’s Mrs. Lirriper been overcharging somebody to madness—she’ll be murdered—I always thought so—Pleeseman save her!” My dear four of them and Caroline behind the chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But I couldn’t bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says “Gentlemen Policemen pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them and you!” And there she was sitting down on the ground handcuffed, taking breath against the skirting-board and them cool with their coats in strips, and all she says was “Mrs. Lirriper I’m sorry as ever I touched you, for you’re a kind motherly old thing,” and it made me think that I had often wished I had been a mother indeed and how would my heart have felt if I had been the mother of that girl! Well you know it turned out at the Police-office that she had done it before, and she had her clothes away and was sent to prison, and when she was to come out I trotted off to the gate in the evening with just a morsel of jelly in that little basket of mine to give her a mite of strength to face the world again, and there I met with a very decent mother waiting for her son through bad company and a stubborn one he was with his half-boots not laced. So out came Caroline and I says “Caroline come along with me and sit down under the wall where it’s retired and eat a little trifle that I have brought with me to do you good,” and she throws her arms round my neck and says sobbing “O why were you never a mother when there are such mothers as there are!” she says, and in half a minute more she begins to laugh and says “Did I really tear your cap to shreds?” and when I told her “You certainly did so Caroline” she laughed again and said while she patted my face “Then why do you wear such queer old caps you dear old thing? if you hadn’t worn such queer old caps I don’t think I should have done it even then.” Fancy the girl! Nothing could get out of her what she was going to do except O she would do well enough, and we parted she being very thankful and kissing my hands, and I nevermore saw or heard of that girl, except that I shall always believe that a very genteel cap which was brought anonymous to me one Saturday night in an oilskin basket by a most impertinent young sparrow of a monkey whistling with dirty shoes on the clean steps and playing the harp on the Airy railings with a hoop-stick came from Caroline.
What you lay yourself open to my dear in the way of being the object of uncharitable suspicions when you go into the Lodging business I have not the words to tell you, but never was I so dishonourable as to have two keys nor would I willingly think it even of Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way sincerely hoping that it may not be, though doubtless at the same time money cannot come from nowhere and it is not reason to suppose that Bradshaws put it in for love be it blotty as it may. It is a hardship hurting to the feelings that Lodgers open their minds so wide to the idea that you are trying to get the better of them and shut their minds so close to the idea that they are trying to get the better of you, but as Major Jackman says to me, “I know the ways of this circular world Mrs. Lirriper, and that’s one of ’em all round it” and many is the little ruffle in my mind that the Major has smoothed, for he is a clever man who has seen much. Dear dear, thirteen years have passed though it seems but yesterday since I was sitting with my glasses on at the open front parlour window one evening in August (the parlours being then vacant) reading yesterday’s paper my eyes for print being poor though still I am thankful to say a long sight at a distance, when I hear a gentleman come posting across the road and up the street in a dreadful rage talking to himself in a fury and d’ing and c’ing somebody. “By George!” says he out loud and clutching his walking-stick, “I’ll go to Mrs. Lirriper’s. Which is Mrs. Lirriper’s?” Then looking round and seeing me he flourishes his hat right off his head as if I had been the queen and he says, “Excuse the intrusion Madam, but pray Madam can you tell me at what number in this street there resides a well-known and much-respected lady by the name of Lirriper?” A little flustered though I must say gratified I took off my glasses and courtesied and said “Sir, Mrs. Lirriper is your humble servant.” “Astonishing!” says he. “A million pardons! Madam, may I ask you to have the kindness to direct one of your domestics to open the door to a gentleman in search of apartments, by the name of Jackman?” I had never heard the name but a politer gentleman I never hope to see, for says he, “Madam I am shocked at your opening the door yourself to no worthier a fellow than Jemmy Jackman. After you Madam. I never precede a lady.” Then he comes into the parlours and he sniffs, and he says “Hah! These are parlours! Not musty cupboards” he says “but parlours, and no smell of coal-sacks.” Now my dear it having been remarked by some inimical to the whole neighbourhood that it always smells of coal-sacks which might prove a drawback to Lodgers if encouraged, I says to the Major gently though firmly that I think he is referring to Arundel or Surrey or Howard but not Norfolk. “Madam” says he “I refer to Wozenham’s lower down over the way—Madam you can form no notion what Wozenham’s is—Madam it is a vast coal-sack, and Miss Wozenham has the principles and manners of a female heaver—Madam from the manner in which I have heard her mention you I know she has no appreciation of a lady, and from the manner in which she has conducted herself towards me I know she has no appreciation of a gentleman—Madam my name is Jackman—should you require any other reference than what I have already said, I name the Bank of England—perhaps you know it!” Such was the beginning of the Major’s occupying the parlours and from that hour to this the same and a most obliging Lodger and punctual in all respects except one irregular which I need not particularly specify, but made up for by his being a protection and at all times ready to fill in the papers of the Assessed Taxes and Juries and that, and once collared a young man with the drawing-room clock under his coat, and once on the parapets with his own hands and blankets put out the kitchen chimney and afterwards attending the summons made a most eloquent speech against the Parish before the magistrates and saved the engine, and ever quite the gentleman though passionate. And certainly Miss Wozenham’s detaining the trunks and umbrella was not in a liberal spirit though it may have been according to her rights in law or an act I would myself have stooped to, the Major being so much the gentleman that though he is far from tall he seems almost so when he has his shirt-frill out and his frock-coat on and his hat with the curly brims, and in what service he was I cannot truly tell you my dear whether Militia or Foreign, for I never heard him even name himself as Major but always simple “Jemmy Jackman” and once soon after he came when I felt it my duty to let him know that Miss Wozenham had put it about that he was no Major and I took the liberty of adding “which you are sir” his words were “Madam at any rate I am not a Minor, and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof” which cannot be denied to be the sacred truth, nor yet his military ways of having his boots with only the dirt brushed off taken to him in the front parlour every morning on a clean plate and varnishing them himself with a little sponge and a saucer and a whistle in a whisper so sure as ever his breakfast is ended, and so neat his ways that it never soils his linen which is scrupulous though more in quality than quantity, neither that nor his mustachios which to the best of my belief are done at the same time and which are as black and shining as his boots, his head of hair being a lovely white.
It was the third year nearly up of the Major’s being in the parlours that early one morning in the month of February when Parliament was coming on and you may therefore suppose a number of impostors were about ready to take hold of anything they could get, a gentleman and a lady from the country came in to view the Second, and I well remember that I had been looking out of window and had watched them and the heavy sleet driving down the street together looking for bills. I did not quite take to the face of the gentleman though he was good-looking too but the lady was a very pretty young thing and delicate, and it seemed too rough for her to be out at all though she had only come from the Adelphi Hotel which would not have been much above a quarter of a mile if the weather had been less severe. Now it did so happen my dear that I had been forced to put five shillings weekly additional on the second in consequence of a loss from running away full dressed as if going out to a dinner-party, which was very artful and had made me rather suspicious taking it along with Parliament, so when the gentleman proposed three months certain and the money in advance and leave then reserved to renew on the same terms for six months more, I says I was not quite certain but that I might have engaged myself to another party but would step down-stairs and look into it if they would take a seat. They took a seat and I went down to the handle of the Major’s door that I had already began to consult finding it a great blessing, and I knew by his whistling in a whisper that he was varnishing his boots which was generally considered private, however he kindly calls out “If it’s you, Madam, come in,” and I went in and told him.
“Well, Madam,” says the Major rubbing his nose—as I did fear at the moment with the black sponge but it was only his knuckle, he being always neat and dexterous with his fingers—“well, Madam, I suppose you would be glad of the money?”
I was delicate of saying “Yes” too out, for a little extra colour rose into the Major’s cheeks and there was irregularity which I will not particularly specify in a quarter which I will not name.
“I am of opinion, Madam,” says the Major, “that when money is ready for you—when it is ready for you, Mrs. Lirriper—you ought to take it. What is there against it, Madam, in this case up-stairs?”
“I really cannot say there is anything against it, sir, still I thought I would consult you.”
“You said a newly-married couple, I think, Madam?” says the Major.
I says “Ye-es. Evidently. And indeed the young lady mentioned to me in a casual way that she had not been married many months.”
The Major rubbed his nose again and stirred the varnish round and round in its little saucer with his piece of sponge and took to his whistling in a whisper for a few moments. Then he says “You would call it a Good Let, Madam?”
“O certainly a Good Let sir.”
“Say they renew for the additional six months. Would it put you about very much Madam if—if the worst was to come to the worst?” said the Major.
“Well I hardly know,” I says to the Major. “It depends upon circumstances. Would you object Sir for instance?”
“I?” says the Major. “Object? Jemmy Jackman? Mrs. Lirriper close with the proposal.”
So I went up-stairs and accepted, and they came in next day which was Saturday and the Major was so good as to draw up a Memorandum of an agreement in a beautiful round hand and expressions that sounded to me equally legal and military, and Mr. Edson signed it on the Monday morning and the Major called upon Mr. Edson on the Tuesday and Mr. Edson called upon the Major on the Wednesday and the Second and the parlours were as friendly as could be wished.
The three months paid for had run out and we had got without any fresh overtures as to payment into May my dear, when there came an obligation upon Mr. Edson to go a business expedition right across the Isle of Man, which fell quite unexpected upon that pretty little thing and is not a place that according to my views is particularly in the way to anywhere at any time but that may be a matter of opinion. So short a notice was it that he was to go next day, and dreadfully she cried poor pretty, and I am sure I cried too when I saw her on the cold pavement in the sharp east wind—it being a very backward spring that year—taking a last leave of him with her pretty bright hair blowing this way and that and her arms clinging round his neck and him saying “There there there. Now let me go Peggy.” And by that time it was plain that what the Major had been so accommodating as to say he would not object to happening in the house, would happen in it, and I told her as much when he was gone while I comforted her with my arm up the staircase, for I says “You will soon have others to keep up for my pretty and you must think of that.”
His letter never came when it ought to have come and what she went through morning after morning when the postman brought none for her the very postman himself compassionated when she ran down to the door, and yet we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt the feelings to have all the trouble of other people’s letters and none of the pleasure and doing it oftener in the mud and mizzle than not and at a rate of wages more resembling Little Britain than Great. But at last one morning when she was too poorly to come running down-stairs he says to me with a pleased look in his face that made me next to love the man in his uniform coat though he was dripping wet “I have taken you first in the street this morning Mrs. Lirriper, for here’s the one for Mrs. Edson.” I went up to her bedroom with it as fast as ever I could go, and she sat up in bed when she saw it and kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare came upon her. “It’s very short!” she says lifting her large eyes to my face. “O Mrs. Lirriper it’s very short!” I says “My dear Mrs. Edson no doubt that’s because your husband hadn’t time to write more just at that time.” “No doubt, no doubt,” says she, and puts her two hands on her face and turns round in her bed.
I shut her softly in and I crept down-stairs and I tapped at the Major’s door, and when the Major having his thin slices of bacon in his own Dutch oven saw me he came out of his chair and put me down on the sofa. “Hush!” says he, “I see something’s the matter. Don’t speak—take time.” I says “O Major I’m afraid there’s cruel work up-stairs.” “Yes yes” says he “I had begun to be afraid of it—take time.” And then in opposition to his own words he rages out frightfully, and says “I shall never forgive myself Madam, that I, Jemmy Jackman, didn’t see it all that morning—didn’t go straight up-stairs when my boot-sponge was in my hand—didn’t force it down his throat—and choke him dead with it on the spot!”
The Major and me agreed when we came to ourselves that just at present we could do no more than take on to suspect nothing and use our best endeavours to keep that poor young creature quiet, and what I ever should have done without the Major when it got about among the organ-men that quiet was our object is unknown, for he made lion and tiger war upon them to that degree that without seeing it I could not have believed it was in any gentleman to have such a power of bursting out with fire-irons walking-sticks water-jugs coals potatoes off his table the very hat off his head, and at the same time so furious in foreign languages that they would stand with their handles half-turned fixed like the Sleeping Ugly—for I cannot say Beauty.
Ever to see the postman come near the house now gave me such I fear that it was a reprieve when he went by, but in about another ten days or a fortnight he says again, “Here’s one for Mrs. Edson.—Is she pretty well?” “She is pretty well postman, but not well enough to rise so early as she used” which was so far gospel-truth.
I carried the letter in to the Major at his breakfast and I says tottering “Major I have not the courage to take it up to her.”
“It’s an ill-looking villain of a letter,” says the Major.
“I have not the courage Major” I says again in a tremble “to take it up to her.”
After seeming lost in consideration for some moments the Major says, raising his head as if something new and useful had occurred to his mind “Mrs. Lirriper, I shall never forgive myself that I, Jemmy Jackman, didn’t go straight up-stairs that morning when my boot-sponge was in my hand—and force it down his throat—and choke him dead with it.”
“Major” I says a little hasty “you didn’t do it which is a blessing, for it would have done no good and I think your sponge was better employed on your own honourable boots.”
So we got to be rational, and planned that I should tap at her bedroom door and lay the letter on the mat outside and wait on the upper landing for what might happen, and never was gunpowder cannon-balls or shells or rockets more dreaded than that dreadful letter was by me as I took it to the second floor.
A terrible loud scream sounded through the house the minute after she had opened it, and I found her on the floor lying as if her life was gone. My dear I never looked at the face of the letter which was lying, open by her, for there was no occasion.
Everything I needed to bring her round the Major brought up with his own hands, besides running out to the chemist’s for what was not in the house and likewise having the fiercest of all his many skirmishes with a musical instrument representing a ball-room I do not know in what particular country and company waltzing in and out at folding-doors with rolling eyes. When after a long time I saw her coming to, I slipped on the landing till I heard her cry, and then I went in and says cheerily “Mrs. Edson you’re not well my dear and it’s not to be wondered at,” as if I had not been in before. Whether she believed or disbelieved I cannot say and it would signify nothing if I could, but I stayed by her for hours and then she God ever blesses me! and says she will try to rest for her head is bad.
“Major,” I whispers, looking in at the parlours, “I beg and pray of you don’t go out.”
The Major whispers, “Madam, trust me I will do no such a thing. How is she?”
I says “Major the good Lord above us only knows what burns and rages in her poor mind. I left her sitting at her window. I am going to sit at mine.”
It came on afternoon and it came on evening. Norfolk is a delightful street to lodge in—provided you don’t go lower down—but of a summer evening when the dust and waste paper lie in it and stray children play in it and a kind of a gritty calm and bake settles on it and a peal of church-bells is practising in the neighbourhood it is a trifle dull, and never have I seen it since at such a time and never shall I see it evermore at such a time without seeing the dull June evening when that forlorn young creature sat at her open corner window on the second and me at my open corner window (the other corner) on the third. Something merciful, something wiser and better far than my own self, had moved me while it was yet light to sit in my bonnet and shawl, and as the shadows fell and the tide rose I could sometimes—when I put out my head and looked at her window below—see that she leaned out a little looking down the street. It was just settling dark when I saw her in the street.
So fearful of losing sight of her that it almost stops my breath while I tell it, I went down-stairs faster than I ever moved in all my life and only tapped with my hand at the Major’s door in passing it and slipping out. She was gone already. I made the same speed down the street and when I came to the corner of Howard Street I saw that she had turned it and was there plain before me going towards the west. O with what a thankful heart I saw her going along!
She was quite unacquainted with London and had very seldom been out for more than an airing in our own street where she knew two or three little children belonging to neighbours and had sometimes stood among them at the street looking at the water. She must be going at hazard I knew, still she kept the by-streets quite correctly as long as they would serve her, and then turned up into the Strand. But at every corner I could see her head turned one way, and that way was always the river way.
It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the Adelphi that caused her to strike into it but she struck into it much as readily as if she had set out to go there, which perhaps was the case. She went straight down to the Terrace and along it and looked over the iron rail, and I often woke afterwards in my own bed with the horror of seeing her do it. The desertion of the wharf below and the flowing of the high water there seemed to settle her purpose. She looked about as if to make out the way down, and she struck out the right way or the wrong way—I don’t know which, for I don’t know the place before or since—and I followed her the way she went.
It was noticeable that all this time she never once looked back. But there was now a great change in the manner of her going, and instead of going at a steady quick walk with her arms folded before her,—among the dark dismal arches she went in a wild way with her arms opened wide, as if they were wings and she was flying to her death.
We were on the wharf and she stopped. I stopped. I saw her hands at her bonnet-strings, and I rushed between her and the brink and took her round the waist with both my arms. She might have drowned me, I felt then, but she could never have got quit of me.
Down to that moment my mind had been all in a maze and not half an idea had I had in it what I should say to her, but the instant I touched her it came to me like magic and I had my natural voice and my senses and even almost my breath.
“Mrs. Edson!” I says “My dear! Take care. How ever did you lose your way and stumble on a dangerous place like this? Why you must have come here by the most perplexing streets in all London. No wonder you are lost, I’m sure. And this place too! Why I thought nobody ever got here, except me to order my coals and the Major in the parlours to smoke his cigar!”—for I saw that blessed man close by, pretending to it.
“Hah—Hah—Hum!” coughs the Major.
“And good gracious me” I says, “why here he is!”
“Halloa! who goes there?” says the Major in a military manner.
“Well!” I says, “if this don’t beat everything! Don’t you know us Major Jackman?”
“Halloa!” says the Major. “Who calls on Jemmy Jackman?” (and more out of breath he was, and did it less like life than I should have expected.)
“Why here’s Mrs. Edson Major” I says, “strolling out to cool her poor head which has been very bad, has missed her way and got lost, and Goodness knows where she might have got to but for me coming here to drop an order into my coal merchant’s letter-box and you coming here to smoke your cigar!—And you really are not well enough my dear” I says to her “to be half so far from home without me. And your arm will be very acceptable I am sure Major” I says to him “and I know she may lean upon it as heavy as she likes.” And now we had both got her—thanks be Above!—one on each side.
She was all in a cold shiver and she so continued till I laid her on her own bed, and up to the early morning she held me by the hand and moaned and moaned “O wicked, wicked, wicked!” But when at last I made believe to droop my head and be overpowered with a dead sleep, I heard that poor young creature give such touching and such humble thanks for being preserved from taking her own life in her madness that I thought I should have cried my eyes out on the counterpane and I knew she was safe.
Being well enough to do and able to afford it, me and the Major laid our little plans next day while she was asleep worn out, and so I says to her as soon as I could do it nicely:
“Mrs. Edson my dear, when Mr. Edson paid me the rent for these farther six months—”
She gave a start and I felt her large eyes look at me, but I went on with it and with my needlework.
“—I can’t say that I am quite sure I dated the receipt right. Could you let me look at it?”
She laid her frozen cold hand upon mine and she looked through me when I was forced to look up from my needlework, but I had taken the precaution of having on my spectacles.
“I have no receipt” says she.
“Ah! Then he has got it” I says in a careless way. “It’s of no great consequence. A receipt’s a receipt.”
From that time she always had hold of my hand when I could spare it which was generally only when I read to her, for of course she and me had our bits of needlework to plod at and neither of us was very handy at those little things, though I am still rather proud of my share in them too considering. And though she took to all I read to her, I used to fancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all to His gentle compassion for us poor women and to His young life and to how His mother was proud of Him and treasured His sayings in her heart. She had a grateful look in her eyes that never never never will be out of mine until they are closed in my last sleep, and when I chanced to look at her without thinking of it I would always meet that look, and she would often offer me her trembling lip to kiss, much more like a little affectionate half broken-hearted child than ever I can imagine any grown person.
One time the trembling of this poor lip was so strong and her tears ran down so fast that I thought she was going to tell me all her woe, so I takes her two hands in mine and I says:
“No my dear not now, you had best not try to do it now. Wait for better times when you have got over this and are strong, and then you shall tell me whatever you will. Shall it be agreed?”
With our hands still joined she nodded her head many times, and she lifted my hands and put them to her lips and to her bosom. “Only one word now my dear” I says. “Is there any one?”
She looked inquiringly “Any one?”
“That I can go to?”
She shook her head.
“No one that I can bring?”
She shook her head.
“No one is wanted by me my dear. Now that may be considered past and gone.”
Not much more than a week afterwards—for this was far on in the time of our being so together—I was bending over at her bedside with my ear down to her lips, by turns listening for her breath and looking for a sign of life in her face. At last it came in a solemn way—not in a flash but like a kind of pale faint light brought very slow to the face.
She said something to me that had no sound in it, but I saw she asked me:
“Is this death?”
And I says:
“Poor dear poor dear, I think it is.”
Knowing somehow that she wanted me to move her weak right hand, I took it and laid it on her breast and then folded her other hand upon it, and she prayed a good good prayer and I joined in it poor me though there were no words spoke. Then I brought the baby in its wrappers from where it lay, and I says:
“My dear this is sent to a childless old woman. This is for me to take care of.”
The trembling lip was put up towards my face for the last time, and I dearly kissed it.
“Yes my dear,” I says. “Please God! Me and the Major.”
I don’t know how to tell it right, but I saw her soul brighten and leap up, and get free and fly away in the grateful look.
* * * * *
So this is the why and wherefore of its coming to pass my dear that we called him Jemmy, being after the Major his own godfather with Lirriper for a surname being after myself, and never was a dear child such a brightening thing in a Lodgings or such a playmate to his grandmother as Jemmy to this house and me, and always good and minding what he was told (upon the whole) and soothing for the temper and making everything pleasanter except when he grew old enough to drop his cap down Wozenham’s Airy and they wouldn’t hand it up to him, and being worked into a state I put on my best bonnet and gloves and parasol with the child in my hand and I says “Miss Wozenham I little thought ever to have entered your house but unless my grandson’s cap is instantly restored, the laws of this country regulating the property of the Subject shall at length decide betwixt yourself and me, cost what it may.” With a sneer upon her face which did strike me I must say as being expressive of two keys but it may have been a mistake and if there is any doubt let Miss Wozenham have the full benefit of it as is but right, she rang the bell and she says “Jane, is there a street-child’s old cap down our Airy?” I says “Miss Wozenham before your housemaid answers that question you must allow me to inform you to your face that my grandson is not a street-child and is not in the habit of wearing old caps. In fact” I says “Miss Wozenham I am far from sure that my grandson’s cap may not be newer than your own” which was perfectly savage in me, her lace being the commonest machine-make washed and torn besides, but I had been put into a state to begin with fomented by impertinence. Miss Wozenham says red in the face “Jane you heard my question, is there any child’s cap down our Airy?” “Yes Ma’am” says Jane, “I think I did see some such rubbish a-lying there.” “Then” says Miss Wozenham “let these visitors out, and then throw up that worthless article out of my premises.” But here the child who had been staring at Miss Wozenham with all his eyes and more, frowns down his little eyebrows purses up his little mouth puts his chubby legs far apart turns his little dimpled fists round and round slowly over one another like a little coffee-mill, and says to her “Oo impdent to mi Gran, me tut oor hi!” “O!” says Miss Wozenham looking down scornfully at the Mite “this is not a street-child is it not! Really!” I bursts out laughing and I says “Miss Wozenham if this ain’t a pretty sight to you I don’t envy your feelings and I wish you good-day. Jemmy come along with Gran.” And I was still in the best of humours though his cap came flying up into the street as if it had been just turned on out of the water-plug, and I went home laughing all the way, all owing to that dear boy.
The miles and miles that me and the Major have travelled with Jemmy in the dusk between the lights are not to be calculated, Jemmy driving on the coach-box which is the Major’s brass-bound writing desk on the table, me inside in the easy-chair and the Major Guard up behind with a brown-paper horn doing it really wonderful. I do assure you my dear that sometimes when I have taken a few winks in my place inside the coach and have come half awake by the flashing light of the fire and have heard that precious pet driving and the Major blowing up behind to have the change of horses ready when we got to the Inn, I have half believed we were on the old North Road that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to see that child and the Major both wrapped up getting down to warm their feet and going stamping about and having glasses of ale out of the paper matchboxes on the chimney-piece is to see the Major enjoying it fully as much as the child I am very sure, and it’s equal to any play when Coachee opens the coach-door to look in at me inside and say “Wery ’past that ’tage.—’Prightened old lady?”
But what my inexpressible feelings were when we lost that child can only be compared to the Major’s which were not a shade better, through his straying out at five years old and eleven o’clock in the forenoon and never heard of by word or sign or deed till half-past nine at night, when the Major had gone to the Editor of the Times newspaper to put in an advertisement, which came out next day four-and-twenty hours after he was found, and which I mean always carefully to keep in my lavender drawer as the first printed account of him. The more the day got on, the more I got distracted and the Major too and both of us made worse by the composed ways of the police though very civil and obliging and what I must call their obstinacy in not entertaining the idea that he was stolen. “We mostly find Mum” says the sergeant who came round to comfort me, which he didn’t at all and he had been one of the private constables in Caroline’s time to which he referred in his opening words when he said “Don’t give way to uneasiness in your mind Mum, it’ll all come as right as my nose did when I got the same barked by that young woman in your second floor”—says this sergeant “we mostly find Mum as people ain’t over-anxious to have what I may call second-hand children. You’ll get him back Mum.” “O but my dear good sir” I says clasping my hands and wringing them and clasping them again “he is such an uncommon child!” “Yes Mum” says the sergeant, “we mostly find that too Mum. The question is what his clothes were worth.” “His clothes” I says “were not worth much sir for he had only got his playing-dress on, but the dear child!—” “All right Mum” says the sergeant. “You’ll get him back Mum. And even if he’d had his best clothes on, it wouldn’t come to worse than his being found wrapped up in a cabbage-leaf, a shivering in a lane.” His words pierced my heart like daggers and daggers, and me and the Major ran in and out like wild things all day long till the Major returning from his interview with the Editor of the Times at night rushes into my little room hysterical and squeezes my hand and wipes his eyes and says “Joy joy—officer in plain clothes came up on the steps as I was letting myself in—compose your feelings—Jemmy’s found.” Consequently I fainted away and when I came to, embraced the legs of the officer in plain clothes who seemed to be taking a kind of a quiet inventory in his mind of the property in my little room with brown whiskers, and I says “Blessings on you sir where is the Darling!” and he says “In Kennington Station House.” I was dropping at his feet Stone at the image of that Innocence in cells with murderers when he adds “He followed the Monkey.” I says deeming it slang language “O sir explain for a loving grandmother what Monkey!” He says “Him in the spangled cap with the strap under the chin, as won’t keep on—him as sweeps the crossings on a round table and don’t want to draw his sabre more than he can help.” Then I understood it all and most thankfully thanked him, and me and the Major and him drove over to Kennington and there we found our boy lying quite comfortable before a blazing fire having sweetly played himself to sleep upon a small accordion nothing like so big as a flat-iron which they had been so kind as to lend him for the purpose and which it appeared had been stopped upon a very young person.
My dear the system upon which the Major commenced and as I may say perfected Jemmy’s learning when he was so small that if the dear was on the other side of the table you had to look under it instead of over it to see him with his mother’s own bright hair in beautiful curls, is a thing that ought to be known to the Throne and Lords and Commons and then might obtain some promotion for the Major which he well deserves and would be none the worse for (speaking between friends) L. S. D.-ically. When the Major first undertook his learning he says to me:
“I’m going Madam,” he says “to make our child a Calculating Boy.
“Major,” I says, “you terrify me and may do the pet a permanent injury you would never forgive yourself.”
“Madam,” says the Major, “next to my regret that when I had my boot-sponge in my hand, I didn’t choke that scoundrel with it—on the spot—”
“There! For Gracious’ sake,” I interrupts, “let his conscience find him without sponges.”
“—I say next to that regret, Madam,” says the Major “would be the regret with which my breast,” which he tapped, “would be surcharged if this fine mind was not early cultivated. But mark me Madam,” says the Major holding up his forefinger “cultivated on a principle that will make it a delight.”
“Major” I says “I will be candid with you and tell you openly that if ever I find the dear child fall off in his appetite I shall know it is his calculations and shall put a stop to them at two minutes’ notice. Or if I find them mounting to his head” I says, “or striking anyways cold to his stomach or leading to anything approaching flabbiness in his legs, the result will be the same, but Major you are a clever man and have seen much and you love the child and are his own godfather, and if you feel a confidence in trying try.”
“Spoken Madam” says the Major “like Emma Lirriper. All I have to ask, Madam, is that you will leave my godson and myself to make a week or two’s preparations for surprising you, and that you will give me leave to have up and down any small articles not actually in use that I may require from the kitchen.”
“From the kitchen Major?” I says half feeling as if he had a mind to cook the child.
“From the kitchen” says the Major, and smiles and swells, and at the same time looks taller.
So I passed my word and the Major and the dear boy were shut up together for half an hour at a time through a certain while, and never could I hear anything going on betwixt them but talking and laughing and Jemmy clapping his hands and screaming out numbers, so I says to myself “it has not harmed him yet” nor could I on examining the dear find any signs of it anywhere about him which was likewise a great relief. At last one day Jemmy brings me a card in joke in the Major’s neat writing “The Messrs. Jemmy Jackman” for we had given him the Major’s other name too “request the honour of Mrs. Lirriper’s company at the Jackman Institution in the front parlour this evening at five, military time, to witness a few slight feats of elementary arithmetic.” And if you’ll believe me there in the front parlour at five punctual to the moment was the Major behind the Pembroke table with both leaves up and a lot of things from the kitchen tidily set out on old newspapers spread atop of it, and there was the Mite stood upon a chair with his rosy cheeks flushing and his eyes sparkling clusters of diamonds.
“Now Gran” says he, “oo tit down and don’t oo touch ler people”—for he saw with every one of those diamonds of his that I was going to give him a squeeze.
“Very well sir” I says “I am obedient in this good company I am sure.” And I sits down in the easy-chair that was put for me, shaking my sides.
But picture my admiration when the Major going on almost as quick as if he was conjuring sets out all the articles he names, and says “Three saucepans, an Italian iron, a hand-bell, a toasting-fork, a nutmeg-grater, four potlids, a spice-box, two egg-cups, and a chopping-board—how many?” and when that Mite instantly cries “Tifteen, tut down tive and carry ler ’toppin-board” and then claps his hands draws up his legs and dances on his chair.
My dear with the same astonishing ease and correctness him and the Major added up the tables chairs and sofy, the picters fenders and fire-irons their own selves me and the cat and the eyes in Miss Wozenham’s head, and whenever the sum was done Young Roses and Diamonds claps his hands and draws up his legs and dances on his chair.
The pride of the Major! (“Here’s a mind Ma’am!” he says to me behind his hand.)
Then he says aloud, “We now come to the next elementary rule,—which is called—”
“Umtraction!” cries Jemmy.
“Right,” says the Major. “We have here a toasting-fork, a potato in its natural state, two potlids, one egg-cup, a wooden spoon, and two skewers, from which it is necessary for commercial purposes to subtract a sprat-gridiron, a small pickle-jar, two lemons, one pepper-castor, a blackbeetle-trap, and a knob of the dresser-drawer—what remains?”
“Toatin-fork!” cries Jemmy.
“In numbers how many?” says the Major.
“One!” cries Jemmy.
(“Here’s a boy, Ma’am!” says the Major to me behind his hand.) Then the Major goes on:
“We now approach the next elementary rule,—which is entitled—”
“Tickleication” cries Jemmy.
“Correct” says the Major.
But my dear to relate to you in detail the way in which they multiplied fourteen sticks of firewood by two bits of ginger and a larding needle, or divided pretty well everything else there was on the table by the heater of the Italian iron and a chamber candlestick, and got a lemon over, would make my head spin round and round and round as it did at the time. So I says “if you’ll excuse my addressing the chair Professor Jackman I think the period of the lecture has now arrived when it becomes necessary that I should take a good hug of this young scholar.” Upon which Jemmy calls out from his station on the chair, “Gran oo open oor arms and me’ll make a ’pring into ’em.” So I opened my arms to him as I had opened my sorrowful heart when his poor young mother lay a dying, and he had his jump and we had a good long hug together and the Major prouder than any peacock says to me behind his hand, “You need not let him know it Madam” (which I certainly need not for the Major was quite audible) “but he is a boy!”
In this way Jemmy grew and grew and went to day-school and continued under the Major too, and in summer we were as happy as the days were long, and in winter we were as happy as the days were short and there seemed to rest a Blessing on the Lodgings for they as good as Let themselves and would have done it if there had been twice the accommodation, when sore and hard against my will I one day says to the Major.
“Major you know what I am going to break to you. Our boy must go to boarding-school.”
It was a sad sight to see the Major’s countenance drop, and I pitied the good soul with all my heart.
“Yes Major” I says, “though he is as popular with the Lodgers as you are yourself and though he is to you and me what only you and me know, still it is in the course of things and Life is made of partings and we must part with our Pet.”
Bold as I spoke, I saw two Majors and half-a-dozen fireplaces, and when the poor Major put one of his neat bright-varnished boots upon the fender and his elbow on his knee and his head upon his hand and rocked himself a little to and fro, I was dreadfully cut up.
“But” says I clearing my throat “you have so well prepared him Major—he has had such a Tutor in you—that he will have none of the first drudgery to go through. And he is so clever besides that he’ll soon make his way to the front rank.”
“He is a boy” says the Major—having sniffed—“that has not his like on the face of the earth.”
“True as you say Major, and it is not for us merely for our own sakes to do anything to keep him back from being a credit and an ornament wherever he goes and perhaps even rising to be a great man, is it Major? He will have all my little savings when my work is done (being all the world to me) and we must try to make him a wise man and a good man, mustn’t we Major?”
“Madam” says the Major rising “Jemmy Jackman is becoming an older file than I was aware of, and you put him to shame. You are thoroughly right Madam. You are simply and undeniably right.—And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take a walk.”
So the Major being gone out and Jemmy being at home, I got the child into my little room here and I stood him by my chair and I took his mother’s own curls in my hand and I spoke to him loving and serious. And when I had reminded the darling how that he was now in his tenth year and when I had said to him about his getting on in life pretty much what I had said to the Major I broke to him how that we must have this same parting, and there I was forced to stop for there I saw of a sudden the well-remembered lip with its tremble, and it so brought back that time! But with the spirit that was in him he controlled it soon and he says gravely nodding through his tears, “I understand Gran—I know it must be, Gran—go on Gran, don’t be afraid of me.” And when I had said all that ever I could think of, he turned his bright steady face to mine and he says just a little broken here and there “You shall see Gran that I can be a man and that I can do anything that is grateful and loving to you—and if I don’t grow up to be what you would like to have me—I hope it will be—because I shall die.” And with that he sat down by me and I went on to tell him of the school of which I had excellent recommendations and where it was and how many scholars and what games they played as I had heard and what length of holidays, to all of which he listened bright and clear. And so it came that at last he says “And now dear Gran let me kneel down here where I have been used to say my prayers and let me fold my face for just a minute in your gown and let me cry, for you have been more than father—more than mother—more than brothers sisters friends—to me!” And so he did cry and I too and we were both much the better for it.
From that time forth he was true to his word and ever blithe and ready, and even when me and the Major took him down into Lincolnshire he was far the gayest of the party though for sure and certain he might easily have been that, but he really was and put life into us only when it came to the last Good-bye, he says with a wistful look, “You wouldn’t have me not really sorry would you Gran?” and when I says “No dear, Lord forbid!” he says “I am glad of that!” and ran in out of sight.
But now that the child was gone out of the Lodgings the Major fell into a regularly moping state. It was taken notice of by all the Lodgers that the Major moped. He hadn’t even the same air of being rather tall than he used to have, and if he varnished his boots with a single gleam of interest it was as much as he did.
One evening the Major came into my little room to take a cup of tea and a morsel of buttered toast and to read Jemmy’s newest letter which had arrived that afternoon (by the very same postman more than middle-aged upon the Beat now), and the letter raising him up a little I says to the Major:
“Major you mustn’t get into a moping way.”
The Major shook his head. “Jemmy Jackman Madam,” he says with a deep sigh, “is an older file than I thought him.”
“Moping is not the way to grow younger Major.”
“My dear Madam,” says the Major, “is there any way of growing younger?”
Feeling that the Major was getting rather the best of that point I made a diversion to another.
“Thirteen years! Thir-teen years! Many Lodgers have come and gone, in the thirteen years that you have lived in the parlours Major.”
“Hah!” says the Major warming. “Many Madam, many.”
“And I should say you have been familiar with them all?”
“As a rule (with its exceptions like all rules) my dear Madam” says the Major, “they have honoured me with their acquaintance, and not unfrequently with their confidence.”
Watching the Major as he drooped his white head and stroked his black mustachios and moped again, a thought which I think must have been going about looking for an owner somewhere dropped into my old noddle if you will excuse the expression.
“The walls of my Lodgings” I says in a casual way—for my dear it is of no use going straight at a man who mopes—“might have something to tell if they could tell it.”
The Major neither moved nor said anything but I saw he was attending with his shoulders my dear—attending with his shoulders to what I said. In fact I saw that his shoulders were struck by it.
“The dear boy was always fond of story-books” I went on, like as if I was talking to myself. “I am sure this house—his own home—might write a story or two for his reading one day or another.”
The Major’s shoulders gave a dip and a curve and his head came up in his shirt-collar. The Major’s head came up in his shirt-collar as I hadn’t seen it come up since Jemmy went to school.
“It is unquestionable that in intervals of cribbage and a friendly rubber, my dear Madam,” says the Major, “and also over what used to be called in my young times—in the salad days of Jemmy Jackman—the social glass, I have exchanged many a reminiscence with your Lodgers.”
My remark was—I confess I made it with the deepest and artfullest of intentions—“I wish our dear boy had heard them!”
“Are you serious Madam?” asked the Major starting and turning full round.
“Why not Major?”
“Madam” says the Major, turning up one of his cuffs, “they shall be written for him.”
“Ah! Now you speak” I says giving my hands a pleased clap. “Now you are in a way out of moping Major!”
“Between this and my holidays—I mean the dear boy’s” says the Major turning up his other cuff, “a good deal may be done towards it.”
“Major you are a clever man and you have seen much and not a doubt of it.”
“I’ll begin,” says the Major looking as tall as ever he did, “to-morrow.”
My dear the Major was another man in three days and he was himself again in a week and he wrote and wrote and wrote with his pen scratching like rats behind the wainscot, and whether he had many grounds to go upon or whether he did at all romance I cannot tell you, but what he has written is in the left-hand glass closet of the little bookcase close behind you.
I have the honour of presenting myself by the name of Jackman. I esteem it a proud privilege to go down to posterity through the instrumentality of the most remarkable boy that ever lived,—by the name of JEMMY JACKMAN LIRRIPER,—and of my most worthy and most highly respected friend, Mrs. Emma Lirriper, of Eighty-one, Norfolk Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
It is not for me to express the rapture with which we received that dear and eminently remarkable boy, on the occurrence of his first Christmas holidays. Suffice it to observe that when he came flying into the house with two splendid prizes (Arithmetic, and Exemplary Conduct), Mrs. Lirriper and myself embraced with emotion, and instantly took him to the Play, where we were all three admirably entertained.
Nor is it to render homage to the virtues of the best of her good and honoured sex—whom, in deference to her unassuming worth, I will only here designate by the initials E. L.—that I add this record to the bundle of papers with which our, in a most distinguished degree, remarkable boy has expressed himself delighted, before re-consigning the same to the left-hand glass closet of Mrs. Lirriper’s little bookcase.
Neither is it to obtrude the name of the old original superannuated obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his degradation) of Wozenham’s, long (to his elevation) of Lirriper’s. If I could be consciously guilty of that piece of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, now that the name is borne by JEMMY JACKMAN LIRRIPER.
No, I take up my humble pen to register a little record of our strikingly remarkable boy, which my poor capacity regards as presenting a pleasant little picture of the dear boy’s mind. The picture may be interesting to himself when he is a man.
Our first reunited Christmas-day was the most delightful one we have ever passed together. Jemmy was never silent for five minutes, except in church-time. He talked as we sat by the fire, he talked when we were out walking, he talked as we sat by the fire again, he talked incessantly at dinner, though he made a dinner almost as remarkable as himself. It was the spring of happiness in his fresh young heart flowing and flowing, and it fertilised (if I may be allowed so bold a figure) my much-esteemed friend, and J. J. the present writer.
There were only we three. We dined in my esteemed friend’s little room, and our entertainment was perfect. But everything in the establishment is, in neatness, order, and comfort, always perfect. After dinner our boy slipped away to his old stool at my esteemed friend’s knee, and there, with his hot chestnuts and his glass of brown sherry (really, a most excellent wine!) on a chair for a table, his face outshone the apples in the dish.
We talked of these jottings of mine, which Jemmy had read through and through by that time; and so it came about that my esteemed friend remarked, as she sat smoothing Jemmy’s curls:
“And as you belong to the house too, Jemmy,—and so much more than the Lodgers, having been born in it,—why, your story ought to be added to the rest, I think, one of these days.”
Jemmy’s eyes sparkled at this, and he said, “So I think, Gran.”
Then he sat looking at the fire, and then he began to laugh in a sort of confidence with the fire, and then he said, folding his arms across my esteemed friend’s lap, and raising his bright face to hers. “Would you like to hear a boy’s story, Gran?”
“Of all things,” replied my esteemed friend.
“Would you, godfather?”
“Of all things,” I too replied.
“Well, then,” said Jemmy, “I’ll tell you one.”
Here our indisputably remarkable boy gave himself a hug, and laughed again, musically, at the idea of his coming out in that new line. Then he once more took the fire into the same sort of confidence as before, and began:
“Once upon a time, When pigs drank wine, And monkeys chewed tobaccer, ’Twas neither in your time nor mine, But that’s no macker—”
“Bless the child!” cried my esteemed friend, “what’s amiss with his brain?”
“It’s poetry, Gran,” returned Jemmy, shouting with laughter. “We always begin stories that way at school.”
“Gave me quite a turn, Major,” said my esteemed friend, fanning herself with a plate. “Thought he was light-headed!”
“In those remarkable times, Gran and godfather, there was once a boy,—not me, you know.”
“No, no,” says my respected friend, “not you. Not him, Major, you understand?”
“No, no,” says I.
“And he went to school in Rutlandshire—”
“Why not Lincolnshire?” says my respected friend.
“Why not, you dear old Gran? Because I go to school in Lincolnshire, don’t I?”
“Ah, to be sure!” says my respected friend. “And it’s not Jemmy, you understand, Major?”
“No, no,” says I.
“Well!” our boy proceeded, hugging himself comfortably, and laughing merrily (again in confidence with the fire), before he again looked up in Mrs. Lirriper’s face, “and so he was tremendously in love with his schoolmaster’s daughter, and she was the most beautiful creature that ever was seen, and she had brown eyes, and she had brown hair all curling beautifully, and she had a delicious voice, and she was delicious altogether, and her name was Seraphina.”
“What’s the name of your schoolmaster’s daughter, Jemmy?” asks my respected friend.
“Polly!” replied Jemmy, pointing his forefinger at her. “There now! Caught you! Ha, ha, ha!”
When he and my respected friend had had a laugh and a hug together, our admittedly remarkable boy resumed with a great relish:
“Well! And so he loved her. And so he thought about her, and dreamed about her, and made her presents of oranges and nuts, and would have made her presents of pearls and diamonds if he could have afforded it out of his pocket-money, but he couldn’t. And so her father—O, he WAS a Tartar! Keeping the boys up to the mark, holding examinations once a month, lecturing upon all sorts of subjects at all sorts of times, and knowing everything in the world out of book. And so this boy—”
“Had he any name?” asks my respected friend.
“No, he hadn’t, Gran. Ha, ha! There now! Caught you again!”
After this, they had another laugh and another hug, and then our boy went on.
“Well! And so this boy, he had a friend about as old as himself at the same school, and his name (for He had a name, as it happened) was—let me remember—was Bobbo.”
“Not Bob,” says my respected friend.
“Of course not,” says Jemmy. “What made you think it was, Gran? Well! And so this friend was the cleverest and bravest and best-looking and most generous of all the friends that ever were, and so he was in love with Seraphina’s sister, and so Seraphina’s sister was in love with him, and so they all grew up.”
“Bless us!” says my respected friend. “They were very sudden about it.”
“So they all grew up,” our boy repeated, laughing heartily, “and Bobbo and this boy went away together on horseback to seek their fortunes, and they partly got their horses by favour, and partly in a bargain; that is to say, they had saved up between them seven and fourpence, and the two horses, being Arabs, were worth more, only the man said he would take that, to favour them. Well! And so they made their fortunes and came prancing back to the school, with their pockets full of gold, enough to last for ever. And so they rang at the parents’ and visitors’ bell (not the back gate), and when the bell was answered they proclaimed ‘The same as if it was scarlet fever! Every boy goes home for an indefinite period!’ And then there was great hurrahing, and then they kissed Seraphina and her sister,—each his own love, and not the other’s on any account,—and then they ordered the Tartar into instant confinement.”
“Poor man!” said my respected friend.
“Into instant confinement, Gran,” repeated Jemmy, trying to look severe and roaring with laughter; “and he was to have nothing to eat but the boys’ dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer every day. And so then the preparations were made for the two weddings, and there were hampers, and potted things, and sweet things, and nuts, and postage-stamps, and all manner of things. And so they were so jolly, that they let the Tartar out, and he was jolly too.”
“I am glad they let him out,” says my respected friend, “because he had only done his duty.”
“O, but hadn’t he overdone it, though!” cried Jemmy. “Well! And so then this boy mounted his horse, with his bride in his arms, and cantered away, and cantered on and on till he came to a certain place where he had a certain Gran and a certain godfather,—not you two, you know.”
“No, no,” we both said.
“And there he was received with great rejoicings, and he filled the cupboard and the bookcase with gold, and he showered it out on his Gran and his godfather because they were the two kindest and dearest people that ever lived in this world. And so while they were sitting up to their knees in gold, a knocking was heard at the street door, and who should it be but Bobbo, also on horseback with his bride in his arms, and what had he come to say but that he would take (at double rent) all the Lodgings for ever, that were not wanted by this a boy and this Gran and this godfather, and that they would all live together, and all be happy! And so they were, and so it never ended!”
“And was there no quarrelling?” asked my respected friend, as Jemmy sat upon her lap and hugged her.
“No! Nobody ever quarrelled.”
“And did the money never melt away?”
“No! Nobody could ever spend it all.”
“And did none of them ever grow older?”
“No! Nobody ever grew older after that.”
“And did none of them ever die?”
“O, no, no, no, Gran!” exclaimed our dear boy, laying his cheek upon her breast, and drawing her closer to him. “Nobody ever died.”
“Ah, Major, Major!” says my respected friend, smiling benignly upon me, “this beats our stories. Let us end with the Boy’s story, Major, for the Boy’s story is the best that is ever told!”
In submission to which request on the part of the best of women, I have here noted it down as faithfully as my best abilities, coupled with my best intentions, would admit, subscribing it with my name,
J. JACKMAN.
THE PARLOURS.
MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS.
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