The ten years' tenant, and other stories

Front matter

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Contents

THE TEN YEARS’ TENANT.

CHAPTER PAGE L How I Mer Hm . : . : « go Ti. How I pip Hm A Sranat Service ‘ So JY [Ul How He Rewarpep Mz. : : 4 . 16 1V. How Ha Conrrpep iy Meg 4 » . 28 V. How He vsep His most Excuntent Gira , ‘ » do

SWHET NELLY, MY HEART'S DELIGHT.

CHAPTER I. Iy rue Port or Boscastrn

IV. Ramsay, atras ANGEL. A V. Tue Coursr or Trus Lovr . , VI. Noruine Bur A Common PICK-ME-UP,.

VII. Tur CLEvERNESS oF THE ComMMODORE VIII. THe Wreck or tHe MaryLanp .

IX. Art ton Way By THE UNDERGROUND

THe WHIRLPOOL or NIAGARA

THE

TEN YEARS’ TENANT,

CHAPTER IL now I MET HIM.

Ir is now twenty years ago. I was staying at an hotel in Scarborough, one of the great places where they have a couple of hundred people every day at their table d’héte. In the ‘evening some of the company who had been long enough in the place to make each other’s acquaintance had got up an entertainment for the rest in the shape of private theatricals, which was given, after the Elizabethan manner, without the accessories of scenery, in the dining-hall. I forget what the play was; but it needed no scenery, being a comedy of the last century, for which the actors were dressed in the fashions of the second George, stately and splendid, though rather stiff.

I am not very fond of private theatricals. It always seems to me that the best amateur actors are those who have most carefully studied the gestures and tricks of professionals in the same parts. Therefore my attention was gradually diverted from the performance to the audience, where were all the materials from which an old-fashioned moralist would have drawn his weary old moral, with a tag of ‘telle est la vie’ about the group met together that night, never again, perhaps, to gather under the same roof. There was the doddering old gentleman; there was the bright and happy girl of seventeen, to whom life seemed made up of lovers and sugar-candy, a most delightful object of contemplation for men of all ages; there were the two elderly maiden ladies, who were enjoying the representation enormously, with a fearful joy, because they had been taught to regard the drama as wicked beyond allthings: could, it was always asked, a serious person, with a regard to his soul, look even at the outside of a

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$ THE TEN YEARS TENANT.

theatre without shuddering ? There was a comfortable old widow, sound asleep with her mouth open; there was a group of children, in happy raptures; there were young men and maidens, half listening and half flirting; there were the usual superior young men from Oxford, who looked on with tolerant pity; there were the country cousins, half ashamed of enjoying the performance too much; there were the waiters and servants at the door, mouths and eyes wide open. Presently my eyes fell upon a listener who somehow compelled my attention, so that I forgot all the rest, even that sweet rosebud of seventeen, and gazed steadfastly upon him alone.

Ile was a man between fifty and sixty years of age; his hair was ‘grayed,’ but not white; his whiskers were grayer than his hair; his face was puffy and red; his nose was certainly swollen with good living and little exercise; his lips were rather thick ; his eyes were bright; his forehead was broad; his chin was square. It was the face of a man who had lived and enjoyed all his fifty years.

He was listening to the performance with a curious intentness which the subject scarcely deserved. What did he see in the old-fashioned play? The dialogue was stilted, the sentiment was false. Lord Bellamour, Captain Lovelace, and Amanda were tedious to me, with their parade of musty epigrams and stale claptrap, though their dresses were fine. Yet to this man they seemed full of interest. Yet he neither laughed nor sighed; what pathos there was in the piece moved him not, nor did the low-comedy servant provoke a smile. There was.a good deal of ‘ business’ with snuff-boxes and fans: at this he shook his head critically, as if the by-play left much to be desired; when they performed a minuet he turned away his head despondingly, as if he must draw the line of endurance somewhere, and he could not stand that. Yet I thought the minuet gracefully danced.

He was, perhaps, an actor himself; or he might be a London manager on the look-out for talent. That, no doubt, was the meaning of it. Managers in strange towns always go to see the play, I believe, just as the attendants at one Turkish bath spend

8 ee, their little holiday in visiting rival establishments, or conecientious mutes off duty haunt cemeteries. Yes, he must be a London manager.

After the performance some of the men found themselves presently in the smoking-room. Here, instead of gloomily staring at each other, we fell to talking over the evening’s entertainment. Hither came my friend with the red face and thick lips. He took a chair next to mine, and, calling for a brandy-and-soda, began to talk. His utterance was slow and measured.

‘It is always,’ he said, when his mixture was set before him, ‘advisable to fall in with the habits of the current generation. A hundred years ago—in 1760, for instance—gentlemen did not drink brandy-and-soda, nor did they smoke tobacco. Common people, country clergy, light porters, and the like took their pipes. But not gentlemen.’

These propositions, thus baldly stated, produced on my mind much the same effect as two or three copy-book texts.

‘TI suppose,’ I replied, presently rallying, ‘that one cannot help adopting the manners of his own generation.’

‘ Perhaps,’ he said, ‘ it is difficult for ordinary people to avoid doing so. As for myself, I confess it is sometimes pleasant to live again in the past—sometimes to dine off peacock-pie at noon, to eat a larded swan, to order a plum-porridge, now and then to exchange claret for mead, and to breakfast off that neglected beverage, sinall ale.’

Not a London manager: an antiquary, an eccentric of uncommon type. It would, perhaps, reward one to encourage him by a nod of approval, as if mead, larded swans, and plum-porridge were within the art of every plain cook at sixteen pounds a year.

‘It gratified me to-night,’ he went on, ‘ to witness an attempt, laudable though unsuccessful, to revive something of the great and glorious eighteenth century. The dresses were fairly correct; it is difficult to go wrong in the matter of dress with so many pictures before one; at the same time the fashion of one wig waa

6 THE TEN YEARS TENANT, that of 1750, andof another that of 1770, while I think the patches in the year 1760 were worn quite differently. But perhaps I am thinking of 1745; one’s memory sometimes plays one false in the matter of ten years or so. As for the language, it was, of course, that of the time; where they failed was in the tone, the pitch, the management of the voice. Good Heavens, sir! ’—he turned quite red with emotion as he said this—‘ what would be your surprise and indignation were a modern actor to represent a young gentleraan of the Victorian age talking in the cockney accent and the nasal twang of an omnibus cad ? And the management of the fan and snuff-box! Deplorable, sir! Quite pitiable! And the minuet! How contemptible a failure! To think of that courtly dance being executed as if by clumsy boys and girls in a dancing academy !’

‘But, my dear sir,’ I ventured to say, ‘it is not everybody who has studied the period so deeply as yourself. What, for instance, was wrong about the snuff-box?’

‘They handed it so;’ he imitated with exaggeration the offering of the box as rendered by our actors of the evening. ‘So. Did one ever see the like? Why, sir, a cit at Vauxhall, a London mercer trying to pass for a gentleman at Epsom Wells or Tunbridge, a country bumpkin thinking to put on the manner of St. James’s at Bath, would have done better! The true way to offer the snuff-box, the courtly way, is—thus.’

He stood up and assumed an attitude which, in his frock ¢ oat seemed profoundly ridiculous. ‘he body was slightly bent, the head inclined in an attitude of courteous and deferential invitation, the right hand held out the snuff-box with the lid open, the left was raised as if partly to protect the snuff-box and partly to emphasise the offering. The attitude of the legs was similarly studied, the right leg being advanced and slightly bent at the knee, the left being held in readiness for immediate action.

‘That, sir,’ said the antiquary, ‘was the courtly method of offering the snuff-box, and, of course, with the lid open. I would I could by any attitude of mine figure to you the elegance and ease with which the charming ladies of the period handled their fans. Believe me, they as far surpassed the present age in their grace and beauty (which was the triumph of Art practising on Nature in her most generous mood) as the beaux of the time surpassed the uncouth moderns in carriage, wit, and politeness.’

He sat down again, and drank off his tumbler of soda-andbrandy.

‘A theory,’ I said very weakly, ‘which you would have to defend against a formidable array of facts.’

‘Facts! what facts?’ he burst in. ‘Where are they? Can literature, books, letters, poetry, reconstitute a salon? Can we actually see Horace Walpole amusing old Madame du Deffand, for instance, or can we again hear the witty Mrs. Montague, or see the beautiful Peggy Banks, or cry over the fate of the lovely Miss Ray cut off in her prime? Can you even imagine the atmosphere, the light, the grace of an evening when men met ladies, not to rush round the room with them, but to talk? [ say advisedly, talk. Why, sir, every sentence was an epigram; the meaner wits studied their phrases before they came; the ladies were as ready as the men—ay, readier sometimes—with their arrows, whose points were so sharp, though they were no longer than the point of a pin. A dance in such an assembly was a stately thing, in which every lady walked as if she were a goddess, and every man as if he were a great lord. Attitudes were taught and studied in those days; a proper carriage of the body was part of a gentleman’s education, and the art of deportment, now lost, was a thing which could never be truly acquired save at Courts and under the wing of great ladies. ‘This art alone, sir, marked the distinctions of rank, and taught the classes who work for their bread that between themselves and the nobility was fixed a gulf never to be bridged over. Why, why did the nobility of England and France resign that inestimable advantage? Why has a school of manners been allowed to grow up which opens the salons of the greatest to every scrub who can boast that he does not jump a counter and can buy a black tail-coat? A dress-coat! Saw one ever a more frightful, a more meaningless, a more levelling garb? Into what days are we fallen, when our gentlemen sit down to dinner in the same dress as the lacqueys and fellows who wait upon them !’

This was given with such earnestness, that one felt exactly as if the man were delivering himself of a personal reminiscence, Of course that was nonsense. But one felt so. The other men in the room were attracted, and chairs were pushed closer to the table at which we sat. Presently conversation ceased, and all listened.

‘Every century,’ he went on, his eyes having a far-off look, ‘takes something away with it which can never be restored. I dare say there is something, if one knew it, in this dull and driving age of yours which is to be prized; but one by one the old things leave us. What I most regret in the eighteenth century is its politeness. What have you gained to compensate for the loss of politeness? Think what it means. The attitude of body proper for every circumstance in life—can one ever forget the dignity with which, for instance, Lord Ferrers went to be hanged ?—that is one thing; the tone of voice suitable for every kind of necessary or complimentary speech, such as that proper for a tradesman or a servant, that for a lady, that for a pretty woman. Lord Foppington in the play may show you what I mean. There is the true manner of estimating your own position and rank compared with those of other people. None of your accursed revolutionary levelling down; no freedom in print over a nobleman’s name; a gentleman was a gentleman; rank had a real meaning; every younger son of a squire did not consider himself as good as an earl; and lawyers, doctors, chaplains, ushers, actors, artists, writers, curates, and such cattle, worthy enough in their way, did not pretend to be gé/lemen. Think of the absurdity of any man who earns his living by work calling himself a gentleman! When levelling began, politeness vanished, Where are your manners now? How do you treat ladies? What respect remains for rank? What have you got in exchange for the good old rules which laid down the deference to be paid to woman and the aristocracy? I saw, only a month ago,’ here he shuddered, ‘1 actually saw a common man, whom I knew to be a person in the City, tap a Duke—a Duke!—upon the shoulder !’

The men laughed. One of them replied conventionally :

‘We have railways. We can travel.’

‘The better sort travelled then,’ replied the antiquary, ‘and quite fast enough. As for the rest, they stayed at home, did their work, went to church, died, and went to the heaven set apart for the unbred and the illbred.’

‘ Electric telegraph,’ proposed a second.

‘Rubbish! what good to know bad news a minute before you need?’

‘Free-trade,’ said a third. ‘ You will allow that

‘That the farmers are on the high road to ruin.’

‘Universal education is fast coming,’ said a fourth. ‘That alone

‘Will complete the ruin of the world. Society will dissolve into universal anarchy when you have taught even your farmlabourers to read, write, learn, and compare. Stick to your old Church Catechism: “ Learn and labour to get your own living in that state of life’—ah, good and honest teaching, how is it disregarded! Your own state! You would like my state!’

“Come, sir,’ said a man who looked as if he belonged to Birmingham—that is, he had an intensely practical and selfsatisfied air, so that one felt sure that, if he was not really a native of that illustrious town, he must sympathise with the opinions of the majority.—‘ Come, sir, what do you say to the spread of Radical ideas and the progress of national freedom? What do you think of universal suffrage and the ballot, which we are bound to introduce?’

‘Tut, tut!’ The learned antiquary put him aside with a wave of his hand, and declined to reply. As no one else made any suggestion, he went on himself:

‘Your steam has turned the working man into a machine. He is no longer an intelligent man; he makes a little bit of something, always the same little bit; away from his work he is a barrel for the reception of beer, which you have not the sense

10 THE TEN YVARS TRHNANT,

-—— to supply unadulterated; he can read, but he cannot think, therefore he is a tool in the hands of any agitator. Your railways incite people to travel about and look for visionary joys abroad instead of finding substantial ones at home; your electricity threatens to upset everything left that we value—but never mind, Of all your boasted inventions, only two deserve to be mentioned with respect. One is the use of chloroform. This shows that when mankind begin to pay one-tenth the attention to medicine which they pay for the accursed arts by which accidents are multiplied and life made noisy and noxious, they will be on the right path. I believe the sewing machine is also a useful invention. And upon my word, gentlemen ’—he rose and took a candle from the table—‘ upon my word, there is no other invention of modern days worth a thought, and your losses are greater than your gains. Politeness, rank, conversation, dress, dancing, cookery—all these are gone.’

‘Pardon me, sir ’—it was a young fellow who had played in the piece—‘ you have forgotten one thing. Permit me to suggest that we have gained by the loss of the tallow candle.’

The antiquary set down his candlestick, and regarded the speaker with a benignant admiration.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is the most sensible speech I have heard to-night. You are the young man who made an exhibition ot ignorance with a snuff-box just now, are you not? Come to me to-morrow morning, and I will teach you better, as a reward for this reminder. Yes; you have gained by the adoption of a composite candle. Hverything which adds to the comfort of the upper classes is a distinct gain to humanity, if only because it promotes admiration of their happy lot. I allow, gentlemen, that the tallow candle was, in the last century, a serious grievance. No house, however rich, could afford wax candles for the kitchen; few, indeed, of the middle classes could afford a sufhciency of common dips. From the palace to the tavern we wera cursed with the continual dropping of tallow. The servants smeared the loaf with it and poisoned the butter with it; they snuffed candles with their fingers, and then handled tke white

French bread for breakfast; the cook held a tallow candle with one hand while she fried a cutlet with the other; the tallow mingled with the hot bread-crumbs; you found a melted drop in the soup; it lurked in the sauce; it poisoned the gravy; it lay upon the browning; it corrupted the pudding; you smelt it in the air, espevially when you passed a bevy of servant-girls on a Sunday; the smell of the candle-snufling destroyed the illusion at the theatre and shocked the flow of devotion in the church. The saloon, lit with wax candles and crowded with high-bred ladies and gentlemen who knew the value of manners, more nearly resembled heaven than anything you have to show; but to reach these sweet and pleasant places you had to pass through a purgatory of stinking tallow. Gentlemen, I wish you good-night.’

CHAPTER IL

HOW I DID HIM A SIGNAL SERVICE.

By the simple process of asking the waiter, who consulted the visitors’ book, I discovered before going to bed that this remarkable lover of the past was named Mr. Montagu Jekyll, and that his room in the hotel was next to my own, both being at the end of a long passage on the first-floor. The name taught me nothing. I knew of no books written, so far as I could remember, by anyone of that name; I had never heard of any great historian or scholar of the name. Possibly he was one of those tittle known but learned antiquaries who grub along among their books in the country, acquire immense knowledge, keep it to themselves, chuckling over the ignorance of mankind, and never write anything except, perhaps, a paper for a meeting of the Archeological Institute, should that rambling body pass their way.

We continued to talk of him after he went away at eleven o’clock. ‘The reality and vividness which he had thrown into his talk concerning the past; the confidence with which he spoke of such little details as the snuff-box, whose lid was always to be open when offered; the attitude with which he illustrated his teaching; the way in which he spoke of us and our gaucheries as ‘you’ and ‘yours,’ just as if he did not belong to the century at all—all these things pointed to an absorbing study of our period. ‘Then we began to recollect similar instances from our own experience and from the pages of history.

‘I knew a man,’ said one, ‘ who never read anything which was not connected with the history of his own cathedral.’

‘I knew a man,’ said a second, ‘who never read anything that did not bear on the subject of infant baptism.’

‘I knew a man,’ said a third, ‘who was always engaged in finding out mysterious things about the Great Pyramid.’

‘I knew a man,’ said a fourth, ‘who was for ever occupied with the site of Solomon’s Temple. He couldn’t talk about anything but the Temple.’

‘IT knew a man 7 said a fifth; and so on.

They went on telling anecdotes about men they had known, I listened until two superior undergraduates began to relate marvels about the men of their college. Then I left them and went to bed.

I found the antiquary putting his boots outside the door. He looked up and nodded.

‘Very interesting conversation to-night,’ I said, ‘thanks to you.’

‘About the last century? Yes, you know nothing, any of you—nothing at all, conceited though you are—of that most remarkabie period.’

‘In what books,’ I asked, ‘can a man find those curious details which you presented to us to-night in the smoking-room ?’

‘Books! books! ’—he spoke with great contempt—‘I never read. Men—and women—women especially—are the only books worth studying.’

‘Then how in the name of goodness

‘Good-night, sir. It is past twelve o'clock.’

I went to my own room and sat down on the bed, pondering over this very singular person. Perhaps he was mad; perhaps he was only affected. Men have been known to study repartees and bons mots, which they afterwards bring out under the pretence of their being impromptu. No doubt this humbug had carefully got up the whole scene beforehand. Not read books! Of course he must read books. How else could he know things? To be sure it was possible, and perhaps not unlikely, that he invented. Anybody, with the necessary impudence and a little practice beforehand, could have invented the whole thing. Likely enough he was posturing before his looking-glass at that very moment in an eighteenth-century attitude. Or was he the Devil?

I went to bed with just that little touch of nervousness which always comes over a man when he seems to touch upon the domain of the supernatural; and I confess that I should have been better pleased had my room been at the other end of the house. ‘There was a door of communication between my room and his; there was a bolt on my side, which I drew. The key was on his side, to be sure; but it was useless while my bolt held. With such reflections to soothe me, I fell asleep.

I was awakened an hour or so later by a suffocating smell of smoke. I sprang to my feet, rushed to the door, and looked into the passage; there the gas was burning tranquilly, and I could see no sign of fire. I ran to the end of the passage; all was quiet and safe. I returned to my own room: there was no mistake possible, the room was filled with smoke. But where was the fire? My candle had long been out. The fire, I said to myself, must be below me; the ceiling very likely was already on fire. At any moment the flames might break through the floor. At least, I thought, rapidly weighing the chances, the joists might hold out long enough to enable me to escape either through the door or the window.

One thinks quickly in moments of great danger. I bethought me, next, of my neighbour, the man in the next room. I ran to the door of communication, unbolted it, and tried to open it. It was locked on the other side. With one firm ard judicious kick, I burst the lock open and rushed in. Good Heavens! the man was lying in a heavy sleep on the right side of the bed, while on the left, close to him, the curtains, sheets, mattress and all, were in flames. I threw myself upon him, dragged him, still half asleep, from the bed, and began to pile the blankets upon the flaming mass. ‘There were a couple of cans full of water, for the bath in his room and my own. I poured the whole over the bed, pulled down the curtains, and succeeded, at the expense of a few slight burns, in rapidly subduing a fire which might have burned the house down. When I saw that there was no more danger, I opened the windows in both rooms, and lit a candle in my own. Then, and not till then, I remembered my friend the antiquary. He was sitting on a sofa in his room in the dark, shivering and shaking. He had taken no part in extinguishing the fire; he had said nothing; and now, when it was all over, he sat still in helplessness, terrified out of his wits.

‘Come,’ I said, taking him by the arm, ‘ you must not sit there any longer; you will catch cold. The fire’s out, however ; that’s the great thing. Get up and come into my room, out of this horrible mess.’ '

He followed without a word. His teeth were chattering, his fuce was horribly pale, his limbs shook with terror.

I had a spirit-flask containing brandy. J made him drink a couple of glasses, one after the other; then he looked up, gasped, and said incoherently—

‘T lost it in the eighteenth century.’

‘What did you lose?’ I asked, to humour his wandering wits.

‘TI lost my Religion. In a moment like this one feels to want it; but it is quite gone. I have not looked after it for close upon two hundred years.’

‘You had better get between my blankets and go to sleep,’ I said, wondering if the man was really mad, or only frightened out of his wits. ‘This business has upset you. Come.’

_——

T laid him in my bed and covered him up likea child. Then I stole to look at the extinguished fire—what a mess the place was in !—shut the windows, wrapped myseif in my rug, and went to sleep on my sofa.

In the morning I awoke and found my guest still sleeping. I rang for the waiter and explained things; the manager was called; he came and saw the mischief and heard my story. He used bad words about the cause of the accident, still asleep, and good words about my promptitude in action. Truly, the house had had a most narrow escape.

After breakfast I found my antiquary still sleeping. In fact, it was not until past eleven that he awoke; then he sat up with lack-lustre eyes and looked round. If it was a remarkable face which I had observed the night before, the face of the morning was still more remarkable: it seemed the face of a very, very old man, older than any man one has ever read of, full of wrinkles, crows’ feet, and lines; shrunken were the cheeks and feeble were the eyes. As TI looked on, the sleep passed from him, a change came upon him; the lines rapidly disappeared, the cheeks filled out, the eyes brightened. The face became again that of a man of fifty or so.

‘I know now,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘I remember now what happened last night. I was reading in bed. I went to sleep. (I shall never, never, never read again in bed, unless by daylight, as long as I escape accident.) The bed caught fire. You got in, somehow, and dragged me out. You saved my life. I do not know your name, sir, but I thank you.’

‘That is nothing,’ I replied. ‘ Of course I did what i

‘You call it nothing’—he had by this timé got one leg out of bed—‘ you call it nothing? Sir, the life you have saved is no common ephemeral existence. It is a most remarkable life, sir, although you know it not.’

I bowed.

‘It is a life to which history affords no parallel, one of which the world is ignorant.’

‘Really !’

One naturally felt a little angry at this extraordinary boastfulness. Both legs were out of bed.

‘Sir ’—he stood upright with the blanket round him—‘ the life you have saved is a unique life.’

He strode with the grandest air into his own room and closed the door of communication. Presently, while I was packing my portmanteau, he opened it again.

‘In case I do not see you again to-day,’ he said, ‘ would you kindly give me your card? Thank you. I will do myself the pleasure, if you will allow me, of calling upon you in town. You have saved, sir, a life which is unique in history.’

Chapter III. How He Rewarded Me

Arter my return to town, I thought little more about the strange old antiquary. Perhaps the adventure, with its hero, made with too much learning, served for an after-dinner story more than once. But I hardly expected to see him, and nothing ever surprised me more than to receive his card, brought to my room by a clerk one afternoon in the following winter. He followed his card. He called, he said, to thank me again for the presence of mind and courage I had displayed, and begged me to believe that he was not insensible nor ungrateful. Having satisfied me upon this point, he invited me to dine with him that evening at a well-known private hotel in Jermyn Street. I accepted, and he went away. When he was gone I began to recall the many curious things connected with the fire; how old and worn he looked when he woke up in the morning, the strange words he used about his own life.