A House to Let, et al by Charles Dickens (spicy books to read TXT) đ
- Author: Charles Dickens
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âI say,â says he, looking round sharply over his shoulder, âwhat are you two stopping here for? Iâm going to bed nowâand so I tell you!â
With that, he opened the door, and walked into the front room. Seeing Trottle take a step or two to follow him, Benjaminâs mother opened her wicked old eyes in a state of great astonishment.
âMercy on us!â says she, âhavenât you seen enough of him yet?â
âNo,â says Trottle. âI should like to see him go to bed.â
Benjaminâs mother burst into such a fit of chuckling that the loose extinguisher in the candlestick clattered again with the shaking of her hand. To think of good Mr. Forleyâs friend taking ten times more trouble about the imp than good Mr. Forley himself! Such a joke as that, Benjaminâs mother had not often met with in the course of her life, and she begged to be excused if she took the liberty of having a laugh at it.
Leaving her to laugh as much as she pleased, and coming to a pretty positive conclusion, after what he had just heard, that Mr. Forleyâs interest in the child was not of the fondest possible kind, Trottle walked into the front room, and Benjaminâs mother, enjoying herself immensely, followed with the candle.
There were two pieces of furniture in the front garret. One, an old stool of the sort that is used to stand a cask of beer on; and the other a great big ricketty straddling old truckle bedstead. In the middle of this bedstead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of sacking, was a kind of little island of poor beddingâan old bolster, with nearly all the feathers out of it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counterpane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up on the bedstead with the help of the beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer rim of sacking with the shred of counterpane in his hands, just making ready to tuck it in for himself under the chair cushions.
âIâll tuck you up, my man,â says Trottle. âJump into bed, and let me try.â
âI mean to tuck myself up,â says the poor forlorn child, âand I donât mean to jump. I mean to crawl, I doâand so I tell you!â
With that, he set to work, tucking in the clothes tight all down the sides of the cushions, but leaving them open at the foot. Then, getting up on his knees, and looking hard at Trottle as much as to say, âWhat do you mean by offering to help such a handy little chap as me?â he began to untie the big shawl for himself, and did it, too, in less than half a minute. Then, doubling the shawl up loose over the foot of the bed, he says, âI say, look here,â and ducks under the clothes, head first, worming his way up and up softly, under the blanket and counterpane, till Trottle saw the top of the large nightcap slowly peep out on the bolster. This over-sized head-gear of the childâs had so shoved itself down in the course of his journey to the pillow, under the clothes, that when he got his face fairly out on the bolster, he was all nightcap down to his mouth. He soon freed himself, however, from this slight encumbrance by turning the ends of the cap up gravely to their old place over his eyebrowsâlooked at Trottleâsaid, âSnug, ainât it? Good-bye!â- -popped his face under the clothes againâand left nothing to be seen of him but the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the middle of the bolster.
âWhat a young limb it is, ainât it?â says Benjaminâs mother, giving Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow. âCome on! you wonât see no more of him to-night!â
âAnd so I tell you!â sings out a shrill, little voice under the bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old womanâs last words.
If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret prison, bedclothes and all. As it was, he put a strong check on himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjaminâs mother to lead him downstairs again.
âMind them top bannisters,â says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them. âThey are as rotten as medlars every one of âem.â
âWhen people come to see the premises,â says Trottle, trying to feel his way a little farther into the mystery of the House, âyou donât bring many of them up here, do you?â
âBless your heart alive!â says she, ânobody ever comes now. The outside of the house is quite enough to warn them off. Mores the pity, as I say. It used to keep me in spirits, staggering âem all, one after another, with the frightful high rentâspecially the women, drat âem. âWhatâs the rent of this house?âââHundred and twenty pound a-year!âââHundred and twenty? why, there ainât a house in the street as lets for more than eighty!ââLikely enough, maâam; other landlords may lower their rents if they please; but this here landlord sticks to his rights, and means to have as much for his house as his father had before him!âââBut the neighbourhoodâs gone off since then!âââHundred and twenty pound, maâam.âââThe landlord must be mad!âââHundred and twenty pound, maâam.âââOpen the door you impertinent woman!â Lord! what a happiness it was to see âem bounce out, with that awful rent aringing in their ears all down the street!â
She stopped on the second-floor landing to treat herself to another chuckle, while Trottle privately posted up in his memory what he had just heard. âTwo points made out,â he thought to himself: âthe house is kept empty on purpose, and the way itâs done is to ask a rent that nobody will pay.â
âAh, deary me!â says Benjaminâs mother, changing the subject on a sudden, and twisting back with a horrid, greedy quickness to those awkward money-matters which she had broached down in the parlour. âWhat weâve done, one way and another for Mr. Forley, it isnât in words to tell! That nice little bit of business of ours ought to be a bigger bit of business, considering the trouble we take, Benjamin and me, to make the imp upstairs as happy as the day is long. If good Mr. Forley would only please to think a little more of what a deal he owes to Benjamin and meââ
âThatâs just it,â says Trottle, catching her up short in desperation, and seeing his way, by the help of those last words of hers, to slipping cleverly through her fingers. âWhat should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was nothing like so far from thinking about that little matter as you fancy? You would be disappointed, now, if I told you that I had come to-day without the money?ââ(her lank old jaw fell, and her villainous old eyes glared, in a perfect state of panic, at that!)ââBut what should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was only waiting for my report, to send me here next Monday, at dusk, with a bigger bit of business for us two to do together than ever you think for? What should you say to that?â
The old wretch came so near to Trottle, before she answered, and jammed him up confidentially so close into the corner of the landing, that his throat, in a manner, rose at her.
âCan you count it off, do you think, on more than that?â says she, holding up her four skinny fingers and her long crooked thumb, all of a tremble, right before his face.
âWhat do you say to two hands, instead of one?â says he, pushing past her, and getting downstairs as fast as he could.
What she said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful shower of blessings on Trottleâs head, that his hair almost stood on end to hear her. He went on downstairs as fast as his feet would carry him, till he was brought up all standing, as the sailors say, on the last flight, by agravating Benjamin, lying right across the stair, and fallen off, as might have been expected, into a heavy drunken sleep.
The sight of him instantly reminded Trottle of the curious half likeness which he had already detected between the face of Benjamin and the face of another man, whom he had seen at a past time in very different circumstances. He determined, before leaving the House, to have one more look at the wretched muddled creature; and accordingly shook him up smartly, and propped him against the staircase wall, before his mother could interfere.
âLeave him to me; Iâll freshen him up,â says Trottle to the old woman, looking hard in Benjaminâs face, while he spoke.
The fright and surprise of being suddenly woke up, seemed, for about a quarter of a minute, to sober the creature. When he first opened his eyes, there was a new look in them for a moment, which struck home to Trottleâs memory as quick and as clear as a flash of light. The old maudlin sleepy expression came back again in another instant, and blurred out all further signs and tokens of the past. But Trottle had seen enough in the moment before it came; and he troubled Benjaminâs face with no more inquiries.
âNext Monday, at dusk,â says he, cutting short some more of the old womanâs palaver about Benjaminâs indisgestion. âIâve got no more time to spare, maâam, to-night: please to let me out.â
With a few last blessings, a few last dutiful messages to good Mr. Forley, and a few last friendly hints not to forget next Monday at dusk, Trottle contrived to struggle through the sickening business of leave-taking; to get the door opened; and to find himself, to his own indescribable relief, once more on the outer side of the House To Let.
LET AT LASTâThere, maâam!â said Trottle, folding up the manuscript from which he had been reading, and setting it down with a smart tap of triumph on the table. âMay I venture to ask what you think of that plain statement, as a guess on my part (and not on Mr. Jarberâs) at the riddle of the empty House?â
For a minute or two I was unable to say a word. When I recovered a little, my first question referred to the poor forlorn little boy.
âTo-day is Monday the twentieth,â I said. âSurely you have not let a whole week go by without trying to find out something more?â
âExcept at bed-time, and meals, maâam,â answered Trottle, âI have not let an hour go by. Please to understand that I have only come to an end of what I have written, and not to an end of what I have done.
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