It was one of the curious features of his situation that the house he chose to live in at Tottenham was a triumph of architectural mendacity; the same kind of house, in fact, as those with which he himself had disfigured London, but some grades lower than his own flimsiest performances. The doors were badly hung and would not close; the wainscots, fashioned of green wood, were already shrunken; the window frames rattled and let in the cold air; the chimneys smoked; the ceiling plaster was already in process of disintegration; there was nothing in the house that was not eloquent of fraud. Perhaps he had been moved by the spirit of irony in the selection of such a house as his final habitation. He might have lived elsewhere; but nowhere else could he have gratified his perversity with such completeness. Grimes employed him; well, let him live in one of Grimes's houses too; in doing so he anticipated the world's laughter by laughing himself.
"He's a holy terror, is Grimes," he would remark. "I thought I knew how to build a thirty-pound house myself pretty well; but Grimes beats me hands down. He can give me points every time."
And then he would recapitulate with sardonic skill all the building tricks of which Grimes had been guilty, specifying each with bitter humour.
"I did sometimes use sand in my mortar; but Grimes uses mud—mere road mud at that. And I did put down drains of some sort; but Grimes beats me there—he don't appear to have heard of drains. And his party-walls, holy Moses! I believe if I spat at them they'd fall down."
When Arthur came home in the evening, he would meet him at the door with ironic warnings.
"Here, mind you shut that door quietly. If you bang it, it's my belief the whole gimcrack will be about your ears. And be careful you take your boots off before you go upstairs. Those stairs weren't meant for boots. And, whatever you do, don't you be leaning against the walls. They kind o' shake every time a fly walks over them. I guess it wouldn't need much of a Samson to pull them down. He wouldn't need to touch 'em; I reckon a sneeze would do the trick."
"Father, I can't bear to see you so bitter."
"Bitter? Oh no, I'm not bitter. I'm amused, that's all."
"I wish you wouldn't live here, father. There's no need. Let me find another house. Between us, we've money enough."
"Well, Arthur, you see I kind of like living here. It's exciting. You never know what's going to happen. And, besides, it's instructive. I'm studying the methods of my friend Grimes, in case I should want to start again presently as a contractor. I'm learning every day. There's more than meets the eye in this contracting business; and, since I've worked for Grimes, I begin to think I never knew a thing about it."