'Exactly. And those who live in furnished lodgings are kept continually in the King of Israel's frame of mind. Whatever the landlady does, whatever she leaves undone, when she rolls her eyes round the room, when she sweeps with them the carpet, one is always saying to one's self, see how this woman seeketh a quarrel against me. Landladies are the cantharides of our nineteenth century civilization, the great source of blister and irritation. Even a man of means, who has not to count his shillings, must feel his wretchedness in lodgings; but consider the apprehensions, the unrest that must possess a man, pinched in his circumstances who lives among landladies. Her eye,' continued Philip, who had warmed to his subject, 'is ever searching for spots on the carpet, fraying of sofa edges, tears in the curtains, scratches in the mahogany, chips in the marble mantelpiece. I think it was among Quarles' emblems that I saw a picture of man's career among traps and snares on every side. In lodgings every article of furniture is a gin ready to snap on you if you use it.'
Then Philip took up two hyacinth glasses, one yellow, the other blue, but put down that which was blue, and took up another that was yellow, not for æsthetic predilection, but to prolong the time. It was a real relief to him to unburden his memory of its gall, to go through his recollections, like a Jew on the Paschal preparation, searching for and casting out every scrap of sour leaven.
'I dare say you are wondering, Miss Cusworth,' he said, 'to what this preamble on landladies is leading.'
Salome looked amused and puzzled; so perhaps is the reader.
Philip had been, as he said, for so many years in furnished lodgings, and had for so many years had before his eyes nothing but a prospect of spending all his days in them, and of expiring in the arms of lodging-house keepers, that he had come to loathe the life. Now that his financial position was altered, and before him opened a career unhampered and unsoured by pecuniary difficulties, a desire woke up in him to enjoy a more cheerful, social life than that of his experience. Now the difference between the days in his uncle's house at Mergatroyd and those he had spent in lodgings at Nottingham did not differ radically. It was true that he no longer had the tongue of a landlady hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, but his day was no brighter, quite as colourless.
He was beneath the same roof with an old lady who belonged, as his suspicious eye told him, to the same clay as that out of which the landlady is modelled, only circumstances had not developed in her the pugnacity and acridity of the class. In herself, she was an uninteresting person, whom only the love and respect of her daughters could invest with any favour. But those daughters were both charming. His prejudice against Salome was gone completely, that against Janet almost gone. As his suspicions of Salome left, his dislike of Janet faded simultaneously. He had conceived a mistrust of Salome because he had conceived an aversion against Janet; now that he began to like Salome, this liking influenced his regard for the sister.
The society of his aunt was no gain to Philip. He disapproved of her lack of principle and disliked her selfishness. The tone of her mind and talk were repugnant to him, and Lambert and he would never become friends, because the cement of common interests was lacking.
Philip discovered himself not infrequently during the day looking at the office clock, and wishing that worktime were over; not that he wearied of his work, but that he was impatient to be home and have a chance of a word with Salome. When he returned from the factory, if he did not meet her in the hall, or on the stairs, or see her in the garden, he was disappointed. It was remarkable how many wants he discovered that necessitated a descent to Mrs. Cusworth's apartments, and how, when he entered and found that one of the daughters was present, his visit was prolonged, and the conversation was not confined to his immediate necessity. If on his entering, the tea-table was covered, he was easily persuaded to remain for a cup. His reserve, his coldness, did not wholly desert him, except when he was alone with Salome, when her freshness and frankness exercised on him a relaxing fascination; all his restraint fell away at once, and he became natural, talkative, and cheerful.
'The fact of the matter is,' said Philip, 'I have been lifting the veil to you that covers furnished lodging-house life, and exposing my wretchedness to enlist your sympathy because I am about to ask a considerable favour.'
'I am sure we need no persuasion to do what we can for you.'