MRS. PREEDY’S YOUNG MAN LODGER.

The door of the kitchen opened outwards into the passage, and the man, turning the handle with his right hand, stood upon the threshold with his left raised and resting, for support, upon the framework. In Mrs. Preedy’s imagination, the concealed hand held the deadly weapon with which she was to be murdered. There was, however, nothing very murderous in the intruder’s face, and when he advanced a step and his arms fell peaceably by his sides, Mrs. Preedy saw, with a sigh of relief, that his hands were empty. This sigh of relief was accompanied by a recognition of the man, in whom she beheld a lodger named Richard Manx, who had been her tenant for exactly three weeks, and was exactly three weeks in arrear of his rent. Mrs Preedy called him her young man lodger.

He was probably younger than he looked, for his complexion was dark and his black hair was thick and long. His eyes were singularly bright, and had a cat-like glare in them—so that one might be forgiven the fancy that, like a cat’s, they would shine in the dark. He spoke with a slightly foreign accent, and his mode of expression may be described as various, affording no clue to his nationality.

Mrs. Preedy was re-assured. The frightful impressions produced by her dream died away, and the instincts of the professional landlady asserted themselves. “My young man lodger has come to pay his rent,” was her first thought, and a gracious and stereotyped smile appeared on her lips. The sweet illusion swiftly vanished, and her second thought was, “He is drunk.” This, also, did not hold its ground, and Mrs. Preedy then practically summed up the case: “He has come to beg—a candle, a piece of bread, a lump of soap—somethink he is in want of, and ain’t got money to pay for. And his excuse is that he is a foringer, or that all the shops are shut. I don’t believe he’s got a penny in his pocket. You don’t deceive me, young man; I wasn’t born yesterday!”

Mrs. Preedy glanced towards the clock, and her glance was arrested on its way by the weather indicator, with the old wooden farmer in full view. Grotesque and improbable as were the fancies in which he had played a tragic part, Mrs. Preedy could not resist the temptation of ascertaining with her own eyes whether the young wooden woman, whom she dreamt he had murdered, was in existence; and she rose and pushed the old farmer into his bower. Out sailed the young woman, with her vacant face and silly leer, as natural as life, and an impetus having been given to the machinery, she and her male companion who had lived under the same roof for years, and yet were absolute strangers to each other (a striking illustration of English manners), swung in and out, in and out, predicting fair weather foul weather, fair weather foul weather, with the most reckless indifference of consequences. In truth, without reference to the mendacious prophets, the weather gave every indication of being presently very foul indeed. Thunder was in the air; the wind was sobbing in the Square, and a few heavy drops of rain had fallen with thuds upon roof and pavement.

The hands of the clock pointed to twelve.

“A nice time,” thought Mrs. Preedy, “to come creeping downstairs into my kitchen! I never did like them foringers! But I’d give anything to get my ’ouse full—whether the lodgers paid or not for a week or two. Did the young man expect to find me out, or asleep? Is there anything goin’ on atween ’im and Becky?”

This dark suspicion recommended itself to her mind, and she readily gave it admittance. It is to be feared that Mrs. Preedy’s experiences had not led her to a charitable opinion of maids-of-all-work. Becky, as Mrs. Preedy called her servant, was a new girl, and had been in her service for nearly a fortnight. Mrs. Preedy had been agreeably disappointed in the girl, whom she did not expect to stay in the house a week. Since the murder at No.119, she had had eight different servants, not one of whom stayed for longer than a few days—two had run away on the second day, declaring that the ghost of the murdered man had appeared to them on the first night, and that they wouldn’t sleep another in such a place for “untold gold.” But Becky remained.

“Is there anything goin’ on atween ’im and Becky?” was Mrs. Preedy’s thought, as she looked at the clock.

Richard Manx’s eyes followed hers.

“It is—a—what you call wrong,” he muttered.

“Very wrong,” said Mrs. Preedy, aloud, under the impression that he had unwittingly answered her thought, “and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You may do what you like in your own country, but I don’t allow such goings on in my ’ouse.”

“I was—a—thinking of your watch-clock,” said Richard Manx. “It is not—a—right. Five, ten, fifteen minutes are past, and I counted twelve by the church bells. Midnight, that is it—twelve of the clock.”

“It’s time for all decent people to be abed and asleep,” remarked Mrs. Preedy.

“In bed—ah!—but in sleep—that is not the same thing. You are not so.”

“I’ve got my business to look after,” retorted Mrs. Preedy. “I suppose you ’aven’t come to pay your rent?”

“To pay? Ah, money! It is what you call it, tight. No, I have not come money to pay.”

“And ’ow am I to pay my rent, I should like to know, if you don’t pay yours? Can you tell me that, young man?”

“I cannot—a—tell you. I am not a weezard.”

Although Mrs. Preedy had fully regained her courage she could not think of a fitting rejoinder to this remark; so for a moment she held her tongue.

She had occupied her house for thirty years, living, until a short time since, in tolerable comfort upon the difference between the rent she received from her lodgers and the rent she paid to the agent of the estate upon which Great Porter Square was situated. It was a great and wealthy estate. Mrs. Preedy had never seen her aristocratic landlord, who owned not only Great Porter Square but a hundred squares and streets in the vicinity, in addition to lovely tracts of woodland and grand mansions in the country. The income of this to-be-envied lord was said to be a sovereign a minute. London, in whose cellars and garrets hundreds of poor wretches yearly die of starvation, contains many such princes.

Richard Manx rented a room in the garret of Mrs. Preedy’s house, for which he had to pay three shillings a week. It was furnished, and the rent could not be considered unreasonable. Certainly there was in the room nothing superfluous. There were a truckle bed, with a few worn-out bed clothes, a japanned chest of drawers, so ricketty that it had to be propped up with bits of paper under two of its corners, a wreck of a chair, an irregular piece of looking-glass hooked on to the wall, an old fender before the tiniest fire-place that ever was seen, a bent bit of iron for a poker, an almost bottomless coal scuttle, a very small trunk containing Richard Manx’s personal belongings, a ragged towel, and a lame washstand with toilet service, every piece of which was chipped and broken. In an auction the lot might have brought five shillings; no broker in his senses would have bid higher for the rubbish.

“If you ’aven’t come to pay your rent,” demanded Mrs. Preedy, “what ’ave you come for?”

Richard Manx craned his neck forward till his face was at least six inches in advance of his body, and replied in a hoarse whisper:

“I have—a—heard it once more again!”

The effect of these words upon Mrs. Preedy was extraordinary. No sooner had they escaped her lodger’s lips than she started from her chair, upsetting her glass of gin in her excitement, and, pulling him into the room, shut the door behind him. Then she opened the door of the little cupboard in which the servant slept, and called softly:

“Becky!” and again, “Becky! Becky!”

The girl must have been a sound sleeper, for even when her mistress stepped to her bedside, and passed her hand over her face, she did not move or speak. Returning to the kitchen, Mrs. Preedy closed the door of the sleeping closet, and said to Richard Manx:

“Look ’ere, young man, I don’t want none of your nonsense, and, what’s more, I won’t stand none!” And instantly took the heart out of her defiance by crying, in an appealing tone: “Do you want to ruin me?”

“What think you of me?” asked Richard Manx, in return. “No, I wish not to ruin. But attend. You call your mind back to—a—one week from now. It is Wednesday then—it is Wednesday now. I sit up in my garret in the moon. I think—I smoke. Upon my ear strikes a sound. I hear scratching, moving. Where? At my foot? No. In my room? No; I can nothing see. Where, after that? In this house? Who can say? In the next to this? Ah! I think of what is there done, three months that are past. My blood—that is it—turn cold. I cannot, for a some time, move. You tell me, you, that there is no—a—man, or—a—woman, or—a—child in the apartment under-beneath where I sit. I am one myself in that room—no wife, no—a—child. I speak myself to—I answer myself to. No— I am not—a—right. Something there is that to me speaks. The wind, the infernal—like a voice, it screams, and whistles, and what you call, sobs. That is it. Like a child, or a woman, or a man for mercy calling! Ah! it make my hair to rise. Listen you. It speaks once more again!”

It was the wind in the streets that was moaning and sobbing; and during the pause, a flash of lightning darted in, causing Richard Manx to start back with the manner of a man upon whom divine vengeance had suddenly fallen. It was followed, in a little while, by a furious bursting of thunder, which shook the house. They listened until the echoes died away, and even then the spirit of the sound remained in their ears with ominous portent.

“It is an angry night,” said Richard Manx. “I will—a—continue what I was saying. It is Wednesday of a week past. I in my garret sit and I smoke. I hear the sound. It is what you call—a—secret. To myself I think there is in that house next to this the blood of a man murdered. Why shall there not be in this house, to-morrow that rises, the blood of one other man murdered. And that man! Who shall it be? Myself—I. So I rouse my courage up, and descend from my garret in the moon to the door of the street. Creeping—is that so, your word?—creeping after me a spirit comes—not for me to see, not for me to touch—but to hear with my ears. All is dark. In the passage appear you, and ask me what? I tell you, and you laugh—but not laugh well, it is like a cry—and you say, it is—a fancy; it is nothing I hear. And you, with hands so”—(clasping his hands together, somewhat tragically)—“beg of me not to any speak of what I hear. I consent; I say, I will not of it speak.”

“And you ’aven’t?” inquired Mrs. Preedy, anxiously.

Richard Manx laid his hand on his breast. “On my honour, no; I speak not of it. I think myself, ‘The lady of the house is—a—right. I hear only—a—fancy. I will not trouble. I will let to-morrow come.’ It come, and another to-morrow, and another, and still another. Nothing I hear. But to-night—again! I am smoking myself in bed. Be not afraid—I shall not put your house in a fire. It would not be bad. You are what they call insured?” Mrs. Preedy nodded. “Listen you—comes the rain. Ah—and the wind. God in heaven! that fire-flash!”

It blinded them for a moment or two. Then, after the briefest interval, pealed the thunder, with a crash which almost deafened them. Instinctively, Richard Manx drew nearer to Mrs. Preedy, and she also moved closer to him. At such times as this, when nature appears to be warring against mortals, the human craving for companionship and visible, palpable sympathy most strongly asserts itself.

Either the breaking of the storm, or some other cause, had produced a strange effect upon Becky, whom Mrs. Preedy supposed to be sleeping in the little room adjoining the kitchen; for the girl in her night-dress was kneeling on the ground, with her head close to the door, listening, with her heart and soul in her ears, to the conversation between her mistress and the young man lodger. It would have astonished Mrs. Preedy considerably had she detected her maid-of-all-work in such a position.

The thunder and lightning continued for quite five minutes, and then they wandered into the country and awoke the echoes there, leaving the rain behind them, which poured down like a deluge over the greater part of the city.