Chapter Seventeen.
The Empty House.
Some pages are missing here... place, what electro or veneer is to the precious metal or solid wood. There were plate-glass windows, but the frames had warped; handsome balustrades to green shrunken stairs; the floor-boards had shrunk one from another and curled up; the ceilings had cracked; and where the rain had found its way in, through defective spouts at the side, or bad slating and plumbing of the roof, the walls told tales, in the unpleasant-smelling efflorescence of microscopic fungi, that, in place of good honest sand-mixed mortar, the house had been built, by a scamping contractor, with rubbish ground up with a dash of lime stuff, that is good for two or three years, and then crumbles away.
From room to room of the desolate place we went, to find every window closely shut. There was the pleasant prospect, beyond the tiny square of grass-grown earth called a garden, of the blank end wall of the row of houses in the next street. Over the wall, next door, an attempt had been made to brighten the prospect; but the plants looked melancholy, and a Virginia creeper that ought to have been displaying its gorgeous autumnal tints was evidently suffering from a severe bilious attack, due to low spirits, bad drainage, and a clay soil. The very sparrows on the ledges were moulting, and appeared depressed; and on going higher up, there was a blank hideous cistern in one of the attics, that looked so much like a sarcophagus on a humid principle, and suggested such horrors of some day finding a suicidal servant-maid within, that any lingering ideas of recommending the house vanished like dirty snow-crystals before a pelting rain.
“It’s a very convenient house,” said the old gentleman.
“And will let some day at a far higher rent,” piped the old lady.
“You’d better come down to the breakfast-room now,” said the old gentleman.
“And see the kitchen too,” echoed the old lady.
So I went down—to find, as I expected, the breakfast-room showing a cloudy mountainous line of damp on the paper for about two feet above the wainscot; and here again the window was closely shut, and the strange mephitic odour of damp and exhausted air stronger than ever.
This apartment was the one utilised by the old couple for bed and sitting-room combined, and their spare furniture was spread neatly over it, according to the homely old rule of “making the most of things.”
I finished my inspection, with the old folks most eager in their praise of all, and when I pointed to the damp the old gentleman exclaimed—
“Oh! you’ll find that in all the houses about here. It rises up the wall, you see.”
“Yes, from bad building,” I answered.
“But it’s much worse at the house opposite,” said the old lady.
“Where the tenant died?” I said.
“Yes,” she answered innocently enough.
“Why, you seem anxious to let the house,” I said smiling.
“Well, yes,” said the old gentleman, combing his few hairs with one end of his spectacles. “You see, the agents like us to let the houses; and if we’re in one very long—”
“He don’t like it,” said the old lady.
“Then you often have to change?”
“It all depends; sometimes we’ve been in houses where they’ve been let in a week.”
“Not in new neighbourhoods,” said the old lady; “people’s shy of coming to the very new places. You see they’re only just run up, and the roads ain’t made.”
“Ah!” said the old gentleman, “sometimes the roads ain’t made till the houses are all let.”
“And people often won’t take the houses till the roads are made,” said the old lady.
“So sometimes we’re a year or two in a place. People are so particular about damp, you see,” said the old gentleman.
“And many of the houses are damp?” I asked inquiringly.
“Well, ma’am, what can you expect,” he replied confidentially, “seeing how things goes? Here’s, say, a field here to-day, and the surveyor marks it out into roads. Then one speculative builder runs up a lot of carcases on it, and fails. Then another buys the carcases, and finishes ’em in a showy, flashy way; and then they put them at very low rents, to tempt people to take ’em.”
“And raises the rents as soon as one or two tenants have been in them,” said the old lady.
“It tempts people like,” continued the old gentleman; “they see nice showy-looking houses in an open place, and they think they’re healthy.”
“And they’re not?” I said.
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
“Healthy? No!” cried the old lady. “How can they be healthy, with the mortar and bricks all wet, and the rain perhaps been streaming into them for months before they were finished? Why, if you go and look in some of those big half-finished houses, just two streets off, you see the water lying in the kitchens and breakfast-rooms a foot deep. That’s how he got his rheumatics.” Here she nodded at her husband.
“Don’t bother the lady about that, Mary,” said the old man, mildly.
“You’ve lived in some of these very new damp places, then?”
“Well,” said the old gentleman smiling, “beggars mustn’t be choosers, you see. We have to take the house the agent has on hand.”
“You take charge of a house, then, on condition of living rent-free?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s it,” said the old lady smiling.
“And how long have you lived in this way?”
“Oh! close upon fifteen years, ma’am,” replied the old gentleman; “but things are not so good as they were. More than once I’ve nearly had to take a place—much building as there is going on.”
“Yes, and pay rent,” said the old lady.
“You see it’s the police,” the old gentleman went on.
“The police?”
“Yes, the police,” said the old lady. “The boys do so much mischief.”
“Boys, you see, from the thick parts of London,” said the old gentleman explaining. “Rough lads on Sundays. They get amongst the empty and unfinished houses, troops of them, to play pitch-and-toss, and they throw stones and break windows and slates.”
“And knock down the plaster and bricks,” added the old lady.
“Ah! they most levelled one wall close by,” said the old gentleman.
“They’re so fond of making seesaws of the wood, too,” said the old lady.
“And splashing about in the pools of water,” said the old gentleman.
“And the agents, on account of this, have took to having the police,” said the old lady.
“To keep the boys away?” I asked.
“Yes; you see, it’s the married police and their wives take charge of the houses, and when the boys know that there’s policemen about, why, of course they stay away.”
“But it makes it very bad for such as we,” said the old lady.
“Fifteen years is a long time to live rent-free,” I said smiling.
“Yes, ma’am, it is, and you see we have a deal to do for it. We have lots of people come to look at the houses before one’s let.”
“Specially women,” chimed in the old gentleman. “There’s some come regular, and do it, I s’pose, because they likes it. They look at all the houses in the neighbourhood, same as some other ladies always go to sales. They never buy anything; and they never mean to take a house; but they come and look at ’em, all the same.”
“But we always know them,” said the old lady.
“Yes, they’re easy enough to tell,” chuckled the old man. And then, seeing me look inquiringly at him, he went on, “They finds fault with everything, ma’am. The hall’s too narrow, or else too broad, and the staircase isn’t the right shape. Then they want folding doors to the dining-room; or they don’t want folding doors. Sometimes six bed-rooms is too many; some times eight ain’t enough. And they always finds fault with the kitchen.”
“And they always want a fresh paper in the dining-room,” said the old lady chiming in; “and the drawing-room paper’s too light; and we don’t mind them a bit.”
“No,” chuckled the old gentleman; “we’re used to them. We know, bless you!”
“And I suppose you felt that I did not want a house, eh?”
“No, that we didn’t,” said the old lady; “you see, you came with an order from the agent; while people as don’t want houses never takes the trouble to get that, but drops in promiskus where they see the bills up.”
“One gets to understand people in fifteen years,” said the old gentleman, in a quiet subdued way; “and we don’t mind. We say all we can for a house, as in dooty bound, for the agent; but it goes against one, same time.”
“You could not conscientiously recommend this house, then, for a family?” I asked.
The old gentleman tightened his lips, and looked at his wife; and the old lady tightened hers, and looked at her husband; but neither spoke.
“I see,” I said; then, turning the conversation, “you have been at this for years?”
“Fifteen ma’am,” said the old lady. “You see, when our poor—”
“Don’t trouble the lady about that,” said the old man, with appeal in his voice; but the old lady liked to talk, and went on—
“When our poor Mary died—aged nineteen, ma’am, and as beautiful a girl as ever you saw, and used to help us in the business, keeping the books and writing letters—all seemed to go wrong, and at last we sold out for the best we could make of it, and that just paid our debts—”
“All but Tompkins’ bill,” said the old man correcting.
“Yes, all but Tompkins’ bill,” said the old lady; “but that we paid afterwards. We should have had to go to the parish, only an aunt of mine died and left us a bit of property that brings us in ten shillings a week; which is enough for us so long as we don’t pay rent and taxes.”
“That’s how we came to be here,” said the old gentleman, smiling sadly at his wife, “and we’ve seen some strange changes since; living in houses where people died of fevers; in old houses; in new houses that ought to be knocked down by Act of Parliament, they’re so bad; in houses where the people’s been extravagant, and gone to ruin. But there, it does for us while we’re here.”
He looked at his wife on this, and the old lady placed her thin veiny hand on his arm, telling, by that one action, of trust, love, and faith in her old companion over a very stony path; and I left them together trying very hard to close the front door, the old man’s last words being—
“It sticks so, on account of the wood warping, and that great crack”—the said crack being one from the first to the second-floor.