The other furnishings of the room were in keeping. The kitchen range; the dresser, with its useful array of plates and dishes, and pots and pans; the sideboard, with its obstinate drawers, which, when they did allow themselves to be pulled out, gave way with a suddenness which brought confusion on the operator; the six odd chairs, one of black horsehair, bits of which peeped up, curious to see what was going on; one very sad, of green rep, representing faded gentility; two of wood and two of cane, and all of different breeds; the sofa, with a treacherous sinking in its inside, indicative of spasms and rickets; the solid, useful kitchen table, upon which many a pudding had been made, and many a slice cut from lodger’s joints; the what-not of walnut wood, utterly useless, despite its pretension; the old-fashioned high-backed piano, with very little music in it, which had been taken for a debt from two old maiden sisters who had seen better days, and who had drifted, drifted, till they had drifted to Great Porter Square; the extraordinary production in water colours, which might have been a ship on fire, or a cornfield in a fit, or a pig cut open, or a castle on a sunlit mountain, or the “last-day,” or a prairie of wild buffaloes, executed by one of Mrs. Preedy’s nephews, and regarded as a triumph of art; the two coloured prints, one of the Queen, the other of Prince Albert; the six odd volumes of books, all tattered and torn, like the man in the nursery rhyme;—these were the elegant surroundings which set the stamp upon Mrs. Preedy’s social standing in the neighbourhood of Great Porter Square.
There were four doors in the kitchen—one leading into the passage which communicated with the upper portion of the house, another affording an entrance into Mrs. Preedy’s bedchamber, another disclosing a dark cupboard, apparently about four feet square, but which, being used as a bedroom by the maid-of-all-work, must have been slightly larger, and the last conducting to the scullery, which opened into the area, through the iron grating of which in the pavement above, human nature monotonously presented itself in a panoramic prospect of definite and indefinite human legs and ankles. Here, also, glimpses of a blissful earthly paradise were enjoyed by the various maids-of-all-work who came and went (for none stopped long at No. 118), through the medium of the baker, and the butcher, and even of the scavenger who called to collect the dust. Many a flirtation had been carried on in that dark nook. Beneath area railings, as in the fragrant air of fashionable conservatories, Love is lord of all.
Mrs. Preedy was alone. Not a soul was in the kitchen but herself. In the dark cupboard the maid-of-all-work was enjoying, apparently, a sleep as peaceful and noiseless as the sleep of a flower. It was nearly twelve o’clock at night, and not a sound was to be heard but Mrs. Preedy’s heavy breathing, as, with many a sigh, she read, in the columns of a much-thumbed newspaper, an item of news in the shape of a police report, which must have possessed a singular magnetic power, inasmuch as she had read it so often that she ought to have known it by heart. Nevertheless, upon the present occasion, she did not miss a single word. Spectacles on nose, she followed the report line by line, keeping faithful mark with her forefinger until she reached the end; and then she commenced it all over again, and inflicted what was evidently a serious mortification upon herself. For it was not to be doubted, from the various shades of inquietude and distress which passed over her face as she proceeded, that the subject matter was exceedingly distasteful to her. It would have been the dryest of dry work but for the glass of gin and water from which Mrs. Preedy occasionally took a sip—moistening her grief, as it were. The liquid might have been supposed to have some kind of sympathy for her, exciting her to tears, which flowed the more freely the more she sipped.
Once, treading very softly, she crept out of the room into the passage, and looked up the dark staircase. As she did so, she was seized with a fit of trembling, and was compelled to cling to the balustrade for support. She crept upstairs to the street door, at which she listened for a familiar sound. With her hand on the handle she waited until she heard the measured tread of a policeman; then she opened the door suddenly. It was a complaining, querulous door, and as she opened it a jarring sound escaped from its hinges. This sound produced an effect upon the policeman. He started back in affright, and with one leap placed himself outside the kerb of the pavement. No cause for reasonable alarm presenting itself, he looked up, and saw Mrs. Preedy standing upon the threshhold.
“O, it’s you, Mrs. Preedy?” he said, half-questioning.
“Yes,” she replied, “it’s me.”
“You startled me,” he said, coming close to her. “As the door opened it sounded like a smothered cry for ‘Help,’ and I won’t deny that it startled me.”
“I don’t wonder at it,” said Mrs. Preedy; “sometimes the least sound sends my ’eart into my mouth.”
By one impulse they both looked at the house next door, No. 119 Great Porter Square. The next moment they turned their heads away from the house.
“Will you have a glass of gin?” asked Mrs. Preedy.