The Last Tenant

The Last Tenant

CHAPTER I.

MY WIFE MAKES UP HER MIND TO MOVE

From a peculiar restlessness in my wife's movements, I gathered that she was considering some scheme which threatened to disturb the peaceful surroundings of my life. Upon two or three occasions lately she had reproached me for not being sufficiently lofty in my social views, and although the tone in which she addressed me was free from acerbity, her words conveyed the impression that in some dark way I was inflicting an injury upon her. Familiar with her moods, and understanding the best way in which to treat them, I made no inquiries as to the precise nature of this injury, but waited for her to disclose it-which I was aware she would not do until she was quite prepared.

I am not, in any sense of the term, an ambitious man, being happily blessed with a peaceful and contented mind which renders me unwilling to make any departure from my usual habits. As regards old-fashioned ways I am somewhat of a conservative; I do not care for new things and new sensations, and I am not forever looking up at persons above me, and sighing for their possessions and enjoyments. Indeed, I am convinced that the happiest lot is that of the mortal who is neither too high nor too low, and who is in possession of a competence which will serve for modest pleasures, without exciting the envy of friends and acquaintances. Such a competence was mine; such pleasures were mine. Secure from storms and unnecessary worries-by which I mean worries self-inflicted by fidgety persons, or persons discontented with their lot-I should have been quite satisfied to remain all my life in our cozy ten-roomed house, which we had inhabited for twenty years, and in which we had been as comfortable as reasonable beings can expect to be in life. Not so my wife, the best of creatures in her way, but lately (as I subsequently discovered) tormented with jealousy of certain old friends who, favored by fortune, had moved a step or two up the social ladder. It was natural, when these friends visited us, that they should dilate with pride upon their social rise, and should rather loftily, and with an air of superiority, seize the opportunity of describing the elegances of their new houses and furniture. Their fine talk amused me, and I listened to it undisturbed; but it rendered my wife restless and uneasy, and the upshot of it was that one morning, during breakfast, she said:

"You have nothing particular to do to-day, my dear?"

"No, nothing particular," I replied.

"Then you won't mind coming with me to see some new houses."

I gasped. The murder was out.

"Some new houses!" I cried.

"You can't expect me to go alone," she said calmly. "It would hardly be safe-to say nothing of its impropriety-for a lady, unaccompanied, to wander through a number of empty houses with the street door shut. We read of such dreadful things in the papers."

"Quite true; they are enough to make one's hair stand on end. It would not be prudent. But what necessity is there for you to go into a number of empty houses?"

"How stupid you are!" she exclaimed. "You know we must move; you know that it is impossible for us to remain in this house any longer."

"Why not?"

"Such a question! And the house in the state it is!"

"A very comfortable state, Maria. There is nothing whatever the matter with it."

"There is everything the matter with it."

"Oh, if you say so-"

"I do say so."

A man who has been long married learns from experience, and profits by what he learns, if he has any sense in him. I am a fairly sensible man, and experience has taught me some useful lessons. Therefore I went on with my breakfast in silence, knowing that my wife would soon speak again.

"The house is full of inconveniences," she said.

"You have been a long time finding them out, Maria."

"I found them out years ago, but I have borne with them for your sake."

I laughed slyly, took the top off an egg, and requested her to name the inconveniences of which she complained.

She commenced. "We want a spare room."

"We have one," I said, "and it is never used."

"It isn't fit to use."

"Oh! I had an idea that there was no demand for it."

"If it was a comfortable room there would be, Edward, I wish you would recognize that things cannot always remain as they are."

"More's the pity."

"Nonsense. You talk as if we were shellfish."

"It did not occur to me. Proceed with your wants, Maria."

"Our wants, my dear."

"Well, our wants."

"You want a nice, cozy study, where you can sit and smoke."

"I want nothing of the kind. I can sit and smoke anywhere. Don't forget that I am fifty years of age, and that my habits are fixed."

"My dear, it is never too late to learn."

"Keep to the point," I said.

"As if I am not keeping to it! I have no morning room."

"So you are to sit in your morning room, and I am to sit in my study, instead of sitting and chatting together, as we have always done. A cheerful prospect! What next?"

"We have very good servants," she said pensively.

"Has that anything to do with the inconveniences you speak of?"

"I shouldn't like to lose the girls, especially cook. They sleep in the attic, you know, and the roof is shockingly out of repair."

"It is the chronic condition of roofs. Go where you will, you hear the same story. Have the girls complained?"

"No, but I can see what is coming."

"Ah!"

"The kitchen is not what it should be; the range causes us the greatest anxiety. The next dinner party we give we must have the dinner cooked out. Think what a trouble it will be, and how awkward it will look. Everything brought to the table lukewarm, if not quite cold."

"The thought is heartrending."

"And you so particular as you are. I am not blaming you for these things, my dear."

"You are very considerate. Is your catalogue of ills finished?"

"By no means. Look at the wine cellar-it positively reeks. As for the store cupboard, not a thing can I keep in it for the damp. Then there's the bath. Every time I turn the hot water tap I am frightened out of my life. It splutters, and chokes, and gurgles-we shall have an explosion one day. Then there's-"

"No more!" I cried, in a tragic tone. "Give me two minutes to compose myself. My nerves are shattered."

I finished my eggs and toast, I emptied my breakfast cup, I shifted my chair.

"You wish to move," I then said.

"Do you not see the impossibility of our remaining where we are?" was her reply.

"Frankly, I do not, but we will not argue; I bend my head to the storm."

"Edward, Edward!" she expostulated. "Must not a woman have a mind? Must it always be the man?"

"I meant nothing ill-natured, Maria. Have you any particular house in view?"

"Several, and I have made out a list of them. I have been to the house agents and have got the keys. I did not wish you to have the bother of it, so I took it all on myself. And here are the orders to view the houses where there are care-takers. Of course we don't want the keys of those houses; all we have to do is to ring."

"How many empty houses are there on your list?"

"Twenty-three."

I repressed a shudder. "And you have the keys of-"

"Eleven. I can get plenty more. We must be careful they don't get mixed up. Perhaps you had better keep them."

"Not for worlds. Do you propose to go over the whole twenty-three to-day?"

"Oh, no, my dear, but we will continue till we are tired. With what I have and what I am promised I dare say it will be a long job before we are suited. Days and days."

"Perhaps weeks and weeks," I suggested faintly.

"Perhaps. Do you remember how we hunted and hunted till we found this house?"

"Can I ever forget it? I grew so sick of tramping about that I thought seriously of buying a traveling caravan, and living in it. Well, Maria, I confess I don't like the prospect, but as your mind is made up I will put a good face on it."

"I was sure you would, my dear. You are the best man in the world." And she gave me a hearty kiss.

"All right, my dear. When do we start?"

"I shall be ready in half an hour."

In less than that time we were off, I resigned to my fate, and my wife as brisk as a young maid about to enter into housekeeping for the first time. I could not but admire her courage. Her bag was stuffed with keys, and in her hand she carried a book in which were set down the particulars of the houses we were to look over.

CHAPTER II.

HOUSE-HUNTING À LA MODE

It was a satisfaction to me that my wife did not entertain the idea of deserting the northwestern part of London, in which I have lived from my boyhood, and which I regard as the pleasantest district in our modern Babylon. In no other part of London can you see in such perfection the tender green of spring, and enjoy air so pure and bracing, and there are summers when my wife agrees with me that it is a mistake to give up these advantages for the doubtful enjoyment and the distinct discomforts of a few weeks in the country. So, with my mind somewhat relieved, I started upon the expedition which was to lead me to the deserted house in Lamb's Terrace, and thence to the strange and thrilling incidents I am about to narrate. And I may premise here that I do not intend to attempt any explanation of them; I shall simply describe them as they occurred, and I shall leave the solution to students more deeply versed than myself in the mysteries of the visible and invisible life by which we are surrounded. I must, however, make one observation. There is in my mind no doubt that I was the chosen instrument in bringing to light the particulars of a foul and monstrous crime, which might otherwise have remained unrevealed till the Day of Judgment, when all things shall be made clear. Why I was thus inscrutably chosen, and was haunted by the Skeleton Cat until the moment arrived when I was to lay my hand upon the shoulder of the criminal and say, "Thou art the man!" is to me the most awful and inexplicable mystery in my life.

In our search for a new house the story of one day is (with the single exception to which I have incidentally referred) the story of all the days so employed. We set out every morning, my wife fresh and cheerful, and I trotting patiently by her side; we returned home every evening worn out, disheartened, bedraggled, and generally demoralized. My condition was, of course, worse than that of my wife, whom a night's rest happily restored to strength and hope. I used to look at her across the breakfast table in wonder and admiration, for truly her vigor and powers of recuperation were surprising.

"Are you quite well this morning?" I would ask.

"Quite well," she would reply, smiling amiably at me. "I had a lovely night."

Wonderful woman! A lovely night! While I was tossing about feverishly, going up and down innumerable flights of stairs with thousands upon thousands of steps, opening thousands upon thousands of doors, and pacing thousands upon thousands of rooms, measuring their length, breadth, and height with a demon three-foot rule which mocked my most earnest and conscientious efforts to take correct measurements! The impression these expeditions produced upon me was that, of all the trials to which human beings are subject, house-hunting is incomparably the most exasperating and afflicting. Were I a judge with the power to legislate, I would make it a punishment for criminal offenses: "Prisoner at the bar, a jury of your countrymen have very properly found you guilty of the crime for which you have been tried, and it is my duty now to pass sentence upon you. I have no wish to aggravate your sufferings in the painful position in which you have placed yourself, but for the protection of society the sentence must be one of extreme severity. You will be condemned to go house-hunting, and never getting suited, from eight o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night, for a term of three years, and I trust that the punishment inflicted upon you will deter you from crime for the rest of your natural life." I should almost be tempted to add, "And the Lord have mercy upon your soul!"

I could not have wished for a better leader than my wife, who continued to take charge of the keys and to keep a record of the premises we had looked over and were still to look over; and in the little book in which this record is made were set down in admirable English-occasionally, perhaps, somewhat too forcible-the reasons why there was not a single house to let which answered her requirements. Many of the houses had been tenantless for years, and reminded me in a depressingly odd way of unfortunate men who had fallen too soon into "the sere and yellow," and were sinking slowly and surely into damp and weedy graves. The discolored ceilings, the moldy walls, the moist basements, the woe-begone back yards, and the equally dismal gardens, the twisted taps, the rusty locks and keys, the dark closets which the agents had the effrontery to call bedrooms, supplied ample evidence that their fate was deserved. There were some in a better condition, having been newly patched and painted; but even to these more likely tenements there was always, I was ever thankful to hear, an objection, from one cause or another, raised by my wife. In one the dining room was too small; in another it was too large; in another the bath was on an unsuitable floor-down in the basement or up on the roof; in another the range was old-fashioned; in another there was no getting into the garden unless you passed through the kitchen or flung yourself out of the drawing-room window; in another there were no cupboards, and so on, and so on, without end. Again and again did I indulge in the hope that she was thoroughly exhausted and would give up the hunt, and again and again did the wonderful woman, a few hours afterward, impart to me the disheartening news-smiling cheerfully as she spoke-that she had been to a fresh house agent and was provided with another batch of keys and "orders to view." After every knock-down blow she "came up smiling," as the sporting reporters say. Meekly I continued to accompany her, knowing that the least resistance on my part would only strengthen her determination to prolong the battle. At the end of a more than usually weary day she observed:

"My dear, if we were rich we would build."

"We would," I said, and, with a cunning of which I felt secretly proud, I encouraged her to describe the house she would like to possess. I am a bit of a draughtsman, and from the descriptions she gave me of the house that would complete her happiness I drew out the plans of an Ideal Residence which I was convinced could not be found anywhere on the face of the earth. This, however, was not my wife's opinion.

"It is the exact thing, Edward," she said, and she took my plans to the agents, who said they were very nice, and that they had on their books just the place she was looking for-with one trifling exception scarcely worth mentioning. But this trifling exception proved ever to be of alarming proportions, was often hydra-headed, and was always insurmountable. Then would she glow with indignation at the duplicity of the agents, and would call them names which, had they been publicly uttered, would have laid us open to a great number of actions for libel and slander. Thus a month passed by, and, except for prostration of spirits, we were precisely where we had been when we commenced. The Ideal Residence was still a castle in Spain.

One evening, when we were so tired out that we could hardly crawl along, my indomitable wife, after slamming the last street door behind her, informed me that she intended to call upon another house agent whom she had not yet patronized.

"That will be the ninth, I think," I said, in a mild tone.

"Yes, the ninth," she said. "They are a dreadful lot. You can't place the slightest dependence upon them."

Gascoigne was the name of the agent we now visited, and he entertained us in the old familiar way. As a matter of course, he had the very house to suit us; in fact, he had a dozen, and he went through them seriatim. But my wife, who during the past month had learned something, managed, by dint of skillful questioning, to lay her hand on the one weak spot which presented itself in all.

"I am afraid they will not do," she said, "but we will look at them all the same."

I sighed; I was in for it once more. A dozen fresh keys, a dozen fresh orders to view-in a word, a wasted, weary week. Mr. Gascoigne drummed with his fingers on his office table, and, after a pause, said:

"I have left the best one to the last."

"Indeed!" said my wife, brightening up.

"The house that cannot fail," said he; "a chance seldom met with-perhaps once in a lifetime. I shall not have it long on my books; it will be snapped up in no time. It possesses singular advantages."

"Where is it?" asked my wife eagerly.

"In Lamb's Terrace, No. 79. Detached and charmingly situated. Ten bedrooms, three reception rooms, two bath rooms, hot and cold water to top floor, commodious kitchen and domestic offices, conservatory, stabling, coach house, coachman's rooms over, two stalls and loose box, large garden well stocked with fruit trees, and two greenhouses."

My wife's eyes sparkled. I also was somewhat carried away, but I soon cooled down. Such an establishment would be far beyond my means.

"To be let on lease?" I inquired.

"To be let on lease," Mr. Gascoigne replied.

"The rent would be too high," I observed.

"I don't think so. Ninety pounds a year."

"What?" I cried.

"Ninety pounds a year," he repeated.

I looked at my wife; her face fairly beamed. She whispered to me, "A prize! Why did we not come here before? It would have saved us a world of trouble."

For my part, I could not understand it. Ninety pounds a year! It was a ridiculous rent for such a mansion.

I turned to the agent. "Is there a care-taker in the house?"

"No," he replied, "it is quite empty."

"Has it been long unlet?"

"Scarcely any time."

"The tenant has only just left it, I suppose?"

"The tenant has not been living in it."

"He has been abroad?"

"I really cannot say. I know nothing of his movements. You see, we are not generally acquainted with personal particulars. A gentleman has a house which he wishes to let, and he places it in our hands. All that we have to do is to ascertain that the particulars with which he furnishes us are correct. We let the house, and there is an end of the matter so far as we are concerned."

I recognized the common sense of this explanation, and yet there appeared to me something exceedingly strange in such a house being to let at so low a rent, and which had just lost a tenant who had not occupied it.

"Is it in good repair?" I asked.

"Frankly, it is not; but that is to your advantage."

"How do you make that out?"

"Because the landlord is inclined to be unusually liberal in the matter. He will allow the incoming tenant a handsome sum in order that he may effect the repairs in the manner that suits him best. There is a little dilapidation, I believe, in one or two of the rooms, a bit of the flooring loose here and there, some plaster has dropped from the ceilings, and a few other such trifling details to be seen to; and the garden, I think, will want attention."

"The house seems to be completely out of repair?"

"Oh, no, not at all; I am making the worst of it, so that you shall not be disappointed. But there is the money provided to set things in order."

"Roughly speaking, what sum does the landlord propose to allow?"

"Roughly speaking, a hundred pounds or so."

"About one-third," I remarked, "of what I should judge to be necessary."

"Not at all; a great deal can be done with a hundred pounds; and my client might feel disposed to increase the amount. You can examine the house and see if it suits you, which I feel certain it will."

Here my wife broke in. She had listened impatiently to my questions, and had nodded her head in approval of every answer given by the agent to the objections I had raised.

"I am sure it will suit us," she said. "The next best thing to building a house for one's self is to have a sufficient sum of money allowed to spend on one already built; to repair it, and paint and paper it after our own taste."

"I agree with you, madam," said the agent, "and you will find the landlord not at all a hard man to deal with. He makes only one stipulation-that whoever takes the house shall live in it."

"Why, of course we should live in it," said my wife. "What on earth should we take it for if we didn't?"

"Quite so," said the agent.

"I should like to ask two more questions," I said. "Are the drains in good order?"

"The drains," replied the agent, "are perfection."

"And is it damp?"

"It is as dry," replied the agent, "as a bone."

Some further conversation ensued, in which, however, I took no part, leaving the management to my wife, who had evidently set her heart upon moving to No. 79 Lamb's Terrace. The agent handed her the keys with a bow and a smile, and we left his office.

CHAPTER III.

AN OLD FRIEND UNEXPECTEDLY PRESENTS HIMSELF

During the interview my attention had been attracted several times to a peculiar incident. At the extreme end of Mr. Gascoigne's office, close against the wall, was a high desk, with an old-fashioned railing around it, the back of the desk being toward me. When we entered the office no person was visible behind the desk, and no sounds of it being occupied reached my ears; but, happening once to look undesignedly in that direction, I saw a gray head raised above the railings, the owner of which was regarding me, I thought, with a certain eagerness and curiosity. The moment I looked at the head, which I inferred was attached to the body of a clerk in the service of Mr. Gascoigne, it disappeared, and I paid no attention to it. But presently, turning again, I saw it bob up and as quickly bob down; and as this was repeated five or six times during the interview, it made me, in turn, curious to learn the reason of the proceedings. Finally, upon my leaving the office, the head bobbed up and remained above the desk, seemingly following my departure with increasing eagerness.

"My dear," said my wife, as we walked along the street-very slowly, because of the weary day we had had-"at last we have found what we have been searching for so long."

It did not strike me so, but I did not express my opinion. All I said was, "I am tired out, and I am sure you must be."

"I do feel tired, but I'm repaid for it. Yes, this is the very house we have been hunting for; just the number of rooms we want, just the kind of garden we want, and so many things we thought we couldn't afford. Then the stable and coach-house-not that we have much use for them, but it looks well to have them, and to speak of them to our friends in an off-hand way. Then the fruit trees-what money it will save us, gathering the fruit quite fresh as we want it! I have in my eye the paper for the drawing and dining rooms; and your study, my dear, shall be as cozy as money can make it. I have something to tell you-a secret. I have put away-never mind where-a long stocking, and in it there is a nice little sum saved up out of housekeeping pennies. That money shall be spent in decorating No. 79 Lamb's Terrace."

Thus rattled on this wonderful wife of mine, working herself into such a state of rapture at the prospect of obtaining the Ideal Residence I had drawn out for her, and which she believed she had obtained, that I could not help admiring more and more her sanguine temperament and her indomitable resolution. Her pluck, her endurance, her persistence, were beyond praise; such women are cut out for pioneers in difficult undertakings; they never give in, they never know when they are beaten. In the midst of her glowing utterances I heard the sound of rapid steps behind us, and, turning, saw the elderly man, whose head, bobbing up and down in Mr. Gascoigne's office, had so engaged my attention. He had been running after us very quickly, and his breath was almost gone.

"I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon," he said, speaking with difficulty, "but-excuse me, I must get my breath."