Only a clod
much as inquiring what the terms would be, which, considering the
haggling and beating down I’d been accustomed to in the very best part
of the season, seemed almost like a dream.”
Mrs. Burfield had warmed with her subject, and had refrained for some
time from the relief of a sigh; but she paused now to indulge herself in
a very heavy one, and then, after a general disquisition upon the
sorrows of a lodging-house keeper, went on,--
“He really was one of the handsomest, easiest-spoken gentlemen I ever
met with, and he seemed to take away one’s breath almost; he had such a
dashing kind of way with him that, if you’d have shut your eyes, you’d
almost have fancied him on horseback, galloping away for dear life. He
seemed all upon the prance, as it were, if I may use the observation.
‘Now I dare say you’ll want references,’ he said, ‘and if so I can’t
jive you any without putting myself to more trouble than I care about.
But you can have some rent in advance if that’ll do; and I’ve no end of
luggage, if that’ll do.’ And then he flung himself into one of the
arm-chairs, and burst out laughing when it creaked and groaned, as it
were, under him; for lodgers have no more feeling for an unprotected
female’s furniture than if they was so many Ojibbeway Indians--and I
can’t deny that the parlour chairs were uncertain. But I didn’t mind the
strange gentleman making game of them, somehow, for he had such a
pleasant way with him, and showed his white teeth, and looked so
handsome, that he seemed quite to brighten up the place.
“‘Well,’ he said presently, ‘can you guess why I came to Coltonslough in
the month of November?’ And of course I told him no, I couldn’t, not
having the pleasure of being acquainted with him. Upon which he burst
out laughing, again. ‘I came here,’ he said, ‘because I was told
Coltonslough was about the dullest place upon the surface of the earth;
and I mean to stay here till after Christmas. So you may tell the man
outside to bring in my luggage, and look sharp about it.’ Upon which the
flyman brought in a couple of big portmanteaus, and a gun-case, and a
hat-box, and two of the heaviest trunks that ever came into my passage.
‘Books, ma’am, books, every one of them, and all as heavy as lead,’ said
the young gentleman, as the corners of the boxes went scratching and
bumping upon the paper,--and the way lodgers’ boxes do scratch and bump
an unprotected female’s paper is something awful. But for all that I
wasn’t sorry to see plenty of luggage, though the books might have been
brickbats neatly packed in hay, as has been known to happen in this very
terrace. ‘Well, ma’am,’ says the gentleman, when his luggage had all
been brought in and the flyman paid, ‘now I can settle down comfortably.
Do I look as if I’d been plucked, do you think, ma’am?’ he asked,
looking at me very hard, and sticking his hands deep down in his
pockets, which was one of those ways of his that I venture to call
prancing. I didn’t quite catch his meaning, but I thought he alluded to
something unpleasant; so I said, ‘No, indeed, I should think not.’ ‘But
I have, ma’am,’ he answered, looking at me in a measuring sort of way,
as if I’d been a five-barred gate, and he was just going to fly clean
over me; and that measuring look of his was another of his galloping
ways. ‘But I _have_ been plucked, ma’am,’ he said, ‘as clean as any fowl
that they ever send you home from the poulterer’s. I’m a featherless
biped, ma’am. So I’ve come down to Coltonslough, being, as I understand,
the dullest hole upon the earth’s crust, and I mean to go in a
perisher.’ A ‘perisher’ was his expression. ‘And I mean to read like old
boots; so you may let your servant light me a fire, ma’am, and get me
some chops; for I suppose I must resign myself to an existence sustained
upon chops so long as I’m at Coltonslough.’”
Once more Mrs. Burfield stopped to take breath. Francis Tredethlyn
listened in silence, with a moody frown upon his face. Already he hated
this man, of whose share in his cousin’s history he was yet ignorant. He
felt as we feel sometimes at a play, when we see the villain first
appear upon the stage, and know he is a villain, yet do not know what
his special crime is to be.
“Well, sir, of all the pleasant lodgers that ever darkened a widow’s
door, the plucked young gentleman was the pleasantest. He got up early,
and went to his books and papers as soon as he was dressed, and had
chops and strong green tea for breakfast; and he sat at his books all
day, till it was too dark for him to sit any longer, and then he went
and strolled up and down the Esplanade, smoking for an hour or so; and
then he came in and had more chops and cold brandy-and-water for his
dinner, except when I took the liberty of roasting him a fowl, or
getting some other little nicety, just by way of variety; and then,
after dinner, he went to his books and papers again, and sat up till
very late, reading and writing and drinking strong green tea.”
“But my cousin Susan,” cried Francis. He was getting impatient under
this minute description of the lodger’s habits. “What has all this to do
with my cousin?”
“I’m coming to that,” Mrs. Burfield answered, with a sigh that was more
profound than usual. “You see, sir, it happened at this time, being the
end of the season, and Coltonslough as empty as it could be; it happened
that we were without a servant; so myself and Susan Turner took it in
turns to wait upon the young gentleman. Not that I ever asked her to do
anything that you can call menial; but she’d take him up his tea, and
clear away his dinner things, and light his candles for him, and such
like; and knowing her to be a respectable young woman, I didn’t keep
that sharp watch over her that some folks might have done. If she
stopped ten minutes or so in his room, talking to him, I usen’t to think
anything about it--you can hear almost every sound in these houses, and
it was quite pleasant to hear her soft voice and his laugh ringing out
every now and then. He wasn’t the sort of gentleman you could suspect of
any harm, he had such a happy kind of way with him, as if he was good
friends with himself and all the world. He lent Susan books--books of
poetry, with all sorts of pencil-writing upon the edges of them; and I
used sometimes to fancy Susan cared more for the pencil-writing than she
did for the poetry itself; she’d sit and pore over it so when the
children were gone to bed and we were alone in this room. Sometimes the
plucked young gentleman would come down here of an evening to fetch
himself another candle, or to tell us that he’d let his fire out, or
something of that kind; for he wasn’t a bit proud; and then, instead of
going back directly, he’d sit down and make himself as much at home as
if he had lived among us all his life; and Oh, dear me, sir, how he
would talk!--all about books and poetry, and the foreign places he’d
seen, and plays, and music, and writers, and actors, and singers. He
seemed to know everything in the world. So, you see, one way and
another, he saw a good deal of Susan; for I found out afterwards from
the children that when he went out in the dusk to smoke his cigar he
generally contrived to meet Susan, and then he’d walk with her and the
children till it was time for them to go indoors. She was a good girl,
and she wasn’t the girl to throw herself in his way. If they were much
together, it was because he followed her. I might have known the meaning
of his sitting in this room for hours together of a night; but he had
such a natural way of doing everything that it threw one off one’s
guard, somehow.”
“The scoundrel!” muttered Francis Tredethlyn, between his clenched
teeth. “But you haven’t told me his name. I want to know his name.”
“He’d been with us more than a fortnight before ever I asked him what
his name was, and then somehow or other the question came up, and he
said his name was Lesley--Robert Lesley; but somehow, looking back upon
it afterwards, it seemed to me as if he hesitated a little before he
said the name. Well, things went on as comfortable as possible for more
than two months, and then he went away, taking all his luggage with him,
and paying me very liberal for everything he’d had, besides half-a-crown
apiece to the children, which at that time of year came very welcome;
and of course I took it from them immediately to go towards their new
boots. He went away; and as I thought, somehow, he’d had a kind of a
liking for Susan, and Susan for him, I half expected the poor girl would
fret a little when he was gone; but she didn’t, and looking at her
sometimes as she sat at work opposite to me, I used to fancy there was a
kind of happy smile like upon her face. She’d been with me six months by
this time, and I paid her the little trifle that was due; and what did
she do next day but go out and spend ever so much in toys and such-like
for the children, which, as I told her, was very wrong, considering how
badly off she was for clothes. But she made no answer, except to look at
me with the same smile I’d seen so often on her face since Mr. Lesley
had gone.”
“Poor girl--poor, helpless, innocent girl!”
The dark frown melted into a softer expression as Francis Tredethlyn
muttered these few broken words. He was no longer thinking of the
stranger--the nameless villain of this common story. He was thinking of
his cousin Susy’s innocent face, with the smile of girlish trustfulness
upon it.
“One day, when Mr. Lesley had been gone a little better than three
weeks, a letter came for Susan--I’d need to notice it, for it was the
first she’d had since she’d been with me. She ran upstairs directly she
heard the postman’s knock, and took the letter from him with her own
hands, and stopped to read it in the passage. She was putting it in her
pocket as she came back into this room, and her cheeks were flushed as
bright as two red roses; but she didn’t say a word about the letter. All
that afternoon she seemed in a kind of flutter, and every now and then
she would come all over in a tremble, and drop her work in her lap. She
was making some pinafores for the boys, and I said to her, ‘Susan, what
ever is the matter?’ but she turned it off somehow, and nothing more was
said until after tea, when the children were safe out of the way, and we
were sitting alone together. Then I never did see anybody so restless as
she was, laying her work down and taking it up again, and fetching a
book--one of the books he’d left with her,--and opening and shutting it,
and then pretending to read, but all in the same restless way; till at
last she came suddenly behind my chair, and flung her arms round my
neck, and began to sob fit to break her poor loving heart. And it was
ever so long before she could get calm enough to say anything; but at
last she cried out, ‘Oh, Mrs. Burfield, I’m afraid I’m very ungrateful;
you’ve been so good to me, and we’ve been so happy together.’ And so we
had; though I do think, poor tender-hearted dear, she’d gone through as
much on account of the taxes as if she’d been the householder instead of
me. ‘I’m going to leave you, Mrs. Burfield,’ she said; ‘I’m going to
leave you, and the children that love me so dearly. I’m going away to be
married to Mr. Lesley. I’m to go by the first train to-morrow morning,
and he’s to meet me at the station, and at eleven o’clock we’re to be
married.’
“You may guess how she took my breath away when she told me this. But I
said, ‘Oh, my dear, you can’t mean to do anything so mad as go alone to
meet Mr. Lesley, which is little better than a stranger to you?’ ‘A
stranger!’ she cried out, ‘my darling Robert a stranger! Oh, if you only
knew how noble he is, and how much he is going to give up to marry a
poor girl like me!’ And then she went on about him as if he’d been