Volume Two—Chapter Nine.
The Love of Nature.
Harry Clayton had been gone three months, and, clothed in a perfect Joseph’s coat of a dressing-gown, Lionel Redgrave lolled upon his sofa, talking pettishly to his landlord, who stood before him holding a slip of paper in his hand.
“Cert’nly, sir, it goes again the grain,” said Mr Stiff; “but what am I to do, Mr Redgrave, sir? Here’s the cheque again from your ’pa, and there’s the receipt, all as regular as the month comes round, which is more than can be said of some people with titles and who calls themselves officers. You see, you know, sir, I rent the whole of this upper of the people who has the shop, and I’m bound not to do nothing as shall annoy them in their business.”
“Bother!” growled Lionel, fidgeting about, while Mr Stiff went on—
“I wouldn’t part with you, sir, only you see, if so be I don’t, why, they’ll part with me.”
“But it’s a nuisance, man, and I should have to look out for fresh chambers,” said Lionel; “and the place suits me. I don’t want to go.”
“Well, you see, sir, that’s where we agree. But you see, things can’t go on like this. One dog we didn’t like, but we’d say nothing about it, though he don’t do no good to the cushins; but look there, sir—there’s your bull-tarrier on the couch—your Skye wiry on the heasy-chair—your spannel under the table, as vicious as stinging nettles; and them two pugs on the hearthrug.”
Lionel made a hasty gesture.
“Can’t help it, sir; it ain’t no good for you to be cross; I must speak. Then there’s the Cunnle as has the second floor—Cunnle Mart’nitt, sir—says if that there parrot don’t go, he will; for it’s a shrieking and swearing from morning to night. Not as I must say as ever I did hear it say anything worse than ‘Corpus backus,’ which may be wickedness in Greek or some other furren tongue; like an old master of mine who was a major in the Indian army, and came back eat up with curry, and bad liver—yellow as one of his own guineas, sir. Well, he’d swear at me, sir, hawful I do believe; but then as it was all in Hindoo, and I never understood a word about what it meant, it never used to fidget me a bit more than if it was all blessings. But parrots will swear, sir, I know; for I’ve heard two in a cage go on at one another worse than—”
“Do you want me to set to and swear at you, Stiff?” said Lionel.
“No, sir, as you’d be too much of a gentleman, I’m sure.”
“Pish!” ejaculated Lionel.
“Then the Cunnle says, sir, as the singin’ birds is getting a perfect nuisance; but the squirrel and the ferrets, he says as he don’t mind. But now I’m speaking, sir, I must say as I do; for I put it to you, sir, are they sootable for a first-floor in Regent Street? I know what gents is, sir, having lived in good families till the wife and me retired on her savings and took to letting; and I must say, sir, as I never in all my experience see anything like this here before; while the worst of it is as we never know what’s coming next. It drives my missus a most wild, it do indeed, sir, to see that little foxy old chap with the thick boot come jigging and grinning up to the door as if he’d got a hingin inside to work him, and now bringing a bird, or a hanimal, or something else to wherrit us.”
“Nearly done?” growled Lionel, angrily.
“Not quite, sir,” said the landlord, desperately; for he had been lectured into speaking to his perverse lodger, and he knew that the ear of his lecturer was at the keyhole. “You see, sir, my wife says as we must have an alteration. She says only last night, ‘James,’ she says—it was after we was in bed, sir—‘how do we know what Mr Redgrave’ll be a havin’ next? He’s a makin’ a reg’lar Wombwell’s show of that drawing-room, as we shall have to re-furnish as soon as ever he’s gone, what with tobacco-smoke, dirty feet, and wild beasts. We shall be having a helephant or a monkey next; and with a monkey in the house,’ she says, ‘I won’t put up. For, if there is a ojus thing as I can’t abear, it’s a monkey. What does a gent like him, with his father a barrynit, want with tortushes a-scrawming about the room, and under your feet, and giving you a turn as sends cold shudders all down your back?’”
“Now, look, here!” burst out Lionel; “I’m not going either to stand or to believe all this, so I tell you. You want to raise the rent, Stiff. Now that’s it.”
“Which it just ain’t nothink of the sort, Mr Redgrave!” exclaimed a corroded voice—sharp, worn, and acid—and a new actor appeared on the scene, in the person of Mrs Stiff, the landlord’s lady. “I wonder, sir, at a gentleman—a nobleman’s son—bemeaning himself to insult honest people in this way. We don’t want the rent raised, sir; but what we do want is a halteration, or else our rooms empty, or let to some one else, as there’s plenty of gents as would be glad to have them; though, if you was to go, no one would be sorrier than I should, to lose you, sir.”
Lionel made a gesture of dismay, throwing himself farther back upon his lounge, with every token of succumbing to this fresh attack, as he stared grimly at the ceiling.
“You see, sir,” said Mrs Stiff, for her husband, literally as well as metaphorically, had now subsided into the background, “ever since Mr Clayton, as was as nice and pleasant a gent as ever walked in shoe-leather, has been gone, things has been growing worse. We ain’t the folks, sir, to take notice of late hours, or smoking, or friends to supper, as won’t go in Hansom cabs without a noise, and a bit of racketing now and then—of course not. We know our place, sir, and what gents is—young and old—as lives in eligibly-situated bachelor chambers, overlooking one of the best streets in the metropolis; but I put it to you, sir, as a gent of sense, is that right—and that—and THAT?”
Mrs Stiff’s forefinger was pointed at first one and then another quadru- or bi-ped intruder.
“Ever since Mr Clayton’s been gone, sir, here you’ve had these things a coming in. And now, is it right, sir? Is tortushes—six of ’em—proper things to be a-scrawming over a Brussels carpet as cost us six-and-six a yard, without the planning and making? And let me tell you, sir, as six-and-sixes to buy yards of carpet ain’t scraped out of the gutters; let alone the other expenses of furnishing a house, with upholsterers and furniture shops thrusting veneer down your throat when you go in for solid; and if, to save your money, you go to one of the auction-rooms, you’re a’most ragged to pieces by the Jew brokers; and if you won’t employ ’em, them a-running up things and bidding against you shameful. Furnishing a house don’t mean marrying a lady and putting her in it, I can tell you, Mr Redgrave, sir; and when it’s your own Brussels as you’re a walking on, and your own sofas as you sit on, you won’t destroy ’em with all sorts of nasty filthy animals, as is that full of insecks as makes it miserable to come in the room.”
“Now, look here!” exclaimed Lionel, whose countenance wore a comical aspect of trouble and despair,—“look here!” he exclaimed, starting up; “I don’t want to go—I don’t want the trouble. There, I’ll promise you, I won’t buy any more, will that suit you?”
But the long-suffering Mrs Stiff was now fully roused, and determined to hold the ground which she had gained. She said, and very justly, that she could not afford to go on upon such terms, as the result must be notice to quit from their own landlord. She was determined now to have a thorough clearance, or Mr Redgrave must get apartments where people did not mind having their rooms made into a “wild beast show.”
This being the climax of Mrs Stiff’s speech, that lady flounced out of the room, the centre of an aërial vortex raised by her voluminous garments, leaving Lionel Redgrave and his landlord staring very hard at one another.
“I say, you know, what’s to be done?” said the young man, at last.
Mr Stiff shook his head as solemnly as a sexton welcoming a fully furnished funeral, when, leaping up angrily, to his landlord’s great astonishment, Lionel threw up the window, and then, though not without some difficulty, set at liberty the whole of his birds, the parrot rewarding him for his kindness by nipping a piece out of his finger.
“There, now!” said Lionel, binding a handkerchief round his bleeding finger, after directing a blow right from the shoulder at the offending parrot, which, it is hardly necessary to say, missed its aim—“there now! take those empty cages away, and send the girl to sweep up the bits.”
Mr Stiff winked to himself as he obeyed, and rattled out of the room with quite a load of cages, but only to return at the end of five minutes.
“Well,” said Lionel, inquiringly, “what now?”
“About them there ferrets, sir?” said Mr Stiff.
“Oh! take them away by all means,” said Lionel, impatiently.
“Yes, sir, in course; but what shall I do with them?”
“Wring their necks—sell them—send them down the drains after the rats,” exclaimed Lionel; and the wire-fronted box, containing the furry, snakey animals, was carried down; but only for Mr Stiff to return at the end of ten minutes, hot, henpecked, and nervous, to encounter Lionel’s savage glances.
“Well, what next?” cried the young man to the troubled ambassador, who, open to receiving both fires, had now come charged with a message which he hardly dared to deliver, for, after the sweep made of birds and cages, he felt that it was rather dangerous to ask for fresh concessions, and therefore he remained silent until Lionel fiercely repeated his question.
“Please, sir, there’s them tortushes,” said Stiff, at last.
“Con-found the tortoises!” cried Lionel; “give them to some of the street boys.” And, moving to the window, he hailed a doctor’s boy passing with his medicine-basket. “Catch, my lad,” he shouted; and he threw him down—one after the other—three of the sluggish little reptiles, with heads and legs drawn within their shells so as to be out of danger. “Now, I hope you are satisfied,” he said to his landlord; who, after a good hunt had continued to discover in out-of-the-way corners the other three offenders.
Mr Stiff’s only response was a shake of the head—a motion kept up until he reached the lower regions, whence he returned, more hot and flustered than ever, to be greeted with a storm of abuse from his angry young tenant.
No, he would not give up the dogs, that he wouldn’t, and Mr Stiff might go and tell his wife so. He had already thrown away above thirty pounds’ worth of things to satisfy them. He gave twelve pounds for that parrot, he said, and now they wanted him to part with his dogs. Why! he had only got back the bull-terrier after paying ten pounds one day, and five the next, through losing it in Decadia, let alone the heavy sums he had paid for the others. Part with his dogs! No, that he wouldn’t, so there was an end of it; and if Mr Stiff came bothering him again, hang him if he wouldn’t serve him as he had served the tortoises.
There might have been an end of it, so far as Mr Stiff was concerned; but when he returned to the kitchen, he was soon sent back to the drawing-room, with fresh diplomatic charges, which he delivered in spite of the window-throwing threat; but, still failing to make satisfactory arrangements, he was accompanied in a further visit to the first-floor by the irate landlady herself—hot, out of breath, and voluminous in her discourse.
And now the wordy warfare recommenced, charge after charge being made by Mrs Stiff, to the discomfiture of Lionel Redgrave, till a truce had been agreed upon: the young tenant was to retain his chambers on condition that he brought no more “wild beasts” or birds—so Mrs Stiff put it—and did not, as, one by one, the four dogs he was allowed to keep were lost, either try to recover them, or supply their places with fresh favourites.
“Confound the pair!” cried Lionel, as they left the room; and, according to custom, proceeded to solace himself with a cigar.
“I don’t care,” exclaimed Mrs Stiff, as she reached her best kitchen, and sat down panting; “we ought to have persevered, and then we should have had the house clear of his rubbish. How do we know how long the silly young noodle—all money and no brains—will be before he loses even one of his dogs?”
“Don’t you fret about that,” laughed her husband; “that won’t be long first. Why, he never hardly goes out now without some ill-looking vagabond dodging him; and there’s one in particular follows him home as regular as clockwork. Do you think he’s always slinking about for nothing? Not he. You wait a bit, and you’ll see.”