“I should expect it would fall altogether to you shortly. Why don’t you do it up?”
“How can I? I am poor.”
“I suppose that you are bound by the terms of the lease to maintain the house in repair?”
“I dare say. The agent, Mr. Macduff, has threatened me; but no one can make me do it when I haven’t a shilling. You can’t make one dance who is born without legs.”
“Then, properly this house belongs to his lordship. Why does not he do it up? I can make something out of this! A Day in the Country, something to fill a column and a-half in a Monday morning paper. Contrast his lordship’s princely residence with the ruins in which he pigs his tenants. Compare Saltren’s place, Chillacot, which is his own, all in spic-and-span order, with this, and then a word about the incubus of the great holders on the land, and the advantage of the enfranchisement of the soil. It will do. And so, madam, they have tried to evict you?”
“Yes; the sanitary officer ordered me to leave, the Board of Guardians went to the magistrates, and issued a summons to me to quit, and my lord has sent Mr. Macduff to me, to threaten proceedings against me if I will not put the house in repair or quit it. But what can they do when I won’t budge, and could prosecute ’em if they laid fingers on me? The police daren’t touch me. They’ve come and looked at me and argued, but they can’t force me to leave.”
“So his lordship wants to evict you, eh?”
“Mr. Macduff has declared he’ll send masons and strip the roof, and pull down the chimney, and rebuild the walls, but they can’t do it without driving me out first, and that is more than they can with me having the house as my own for life.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Welsh, “it’s a case—a poor widow, I suppose you are a widow; it doesn’t matter if you are not; it sounds best—a widow, a victim to his lordship’s tyranny—tearing down the roof that shelters her grey head, casting down her chimney, desecrating her hearthstone, the sacred penates, with the foot of violence—or hoof, which shall it be? By George! I’ll make something out of it, harrowing to the feelings, and as rousing as tartaric acid and soda! Who cares for a contradiction or a correction? We can always break the lines and make nonsense of it, and lay the blame on the printer, if called to task. I’m glad I came here for a Sunday. You will let me inside, I suppose, ma’am, to cast an eye round; particulars are so useful in a description, lend such a vraisemblance to an account.”
But Mrs. Kite’s tumble-down cottage was not the only material Mr. Welsh collected for use on that Sunday. He heard from Saltren about the stoppage of the manganese.