A House to Let

Upon which Mr. Jarber ambled in, in his usual absurd way, saying:

“Sophonisba!”

Which I am obliged to confess is my name. A pretty one and proper one enough when it was given to me: but, a good many years out of date now, and always sounding particularly high-flown and comical from his lips. So I said, sharply:

“Though it is Sophonisba, Jarber, you are not obliged to mention it, that I see.”

In reply to this observation, the ridiculous man put the tips of my five right-hand fingers to his lips, and said again, with an aggravating accent on the third syllable:

“Sophonisba!”

I don’t burn lamps, because I can’t abide the smell of oil, and wax candles belonged to my day. I hope the convenient situation of one of my tall old candlesticks on the table at my elbow will be my excuse for saying, that if he did that again, I would chop his toes with it. (I am sorry to add that when I told him so, I knew his toes to be tender.) But, really, at my time of life and at Jarber’s, it is too much of a good thing. There is an orchestra still standing in the open air at the Wells, before which, in the presence of a throng of fine company, I have walked a minuet with Jarber. But, there is a house still standing, in which I have worn a pinafore, and had a tooth drawn by fastening a thread to the tooth and the door-handle, and toddling away from the door. And how should I look now, at my years, in a pinafore, or having a door for my dentist?

Besides, Jarber always was more or less an absurd man. He was sweetly dressed, and beautifully perfumed, and many girls of my day would have given their ears for him; though I am bound to add that he never cared a fig for them, or their advances either, and that he was very constant to me. For, he not only proposed to me before my love-happiness ended in sorrow, but afterwards too: not once, nor yet twice: nor will we say how many times. However many they were, or however few they were, the last time he paid me that compliment was immediately after he had presented me with a digestive dinner-pill stuck on the point of a pin. And I said on that occasion, laughing heartily, “Now, Jarber, if you don’t know that two people whose united ages would make about a hundred and fifty, have got to be old, I do; and I beg to swallow this nonsense in the form of this pill” (which I took on the spot), “and I request to, hear no more of it.”

After that, he conducted himself pretty well. He was always a little squeezed man, was Jarber, in little sprigged waistcoats; and he had always little legs and a little smile, and a little voice, and little round-about ways. As long as I can remember him he was always going little errands for people, and carrying little gossip. At this present time when he called me “Sophonisba!” he had a little old-fashioned lodging in that new neighbourhood of mine. I had not seen him for two or three years, but I had heard that he still went out with a little perspective-glass and stood on door-steps in Saint James’s Street, to see the nobility go to Court; and went in his little cloak and goloshes outside Willis’s rooms to see them go to Almack’s; and caught the frightfullest colds, and got himself trodden upon by coachmen and linkmen, until he went home to his landlady a mass of bruises, and had to be nursed for a month.

Jarber took off his little fur-collared cloak, and sat down opposite me, with his little cane and hat in his hand.

“Let us have no more Sophonisbaing, if you please, Jarber,” I said. “Call me Sarah. How do you do? I hope you are pretty well.”

“Thank you. And you?” said Jarber.

“I am as well as an old woman can expect to be.”

Jarber was beginning:

“Say, not old, Sophon – ” but I looked at the candlestick, and he left off; pretending not to have said anything.

“I am infirm, of course,” I said, “and so are you. Let us both be thankful it’s no worse.”

“Is it possible that you look worried?” said Jarber.

“It is very possible. I have no doubt it is the fact.”

“And what has worried my Soph-, soft-hearted friend,” said Jarber.

“Something not easy, I suppose, to comprehend. I am worried to death by a House to Let, over the way.”

Jarber went with his little tip-toe step to the window-curtains, peeped out, and looked round at me.

“Yes,” said I, in answer: “that house.”

After peeping out again, Jarber came back to his chair with a tender air, and asked: “How does it worry you, S-arah?”

“It is a mystery to me,” said I. “Of course every house is a mystery, more or less; but, something that I don’t care to mention” (for truly the Eye was so slight a thing to mention that I was more than half ashamed of it), “has made that House so mysterious to me, and has so fixed it in my mind, that I have had no peace for a month. I foresee that I shall have no peace, either, until Trottle comes to me, next Monday.”

I might have mentioned before, that there is a lone-standing jealousy between Trottle and Jarber; and that there is never any love lost between those two.

“Trottle,” petulantly repeated Jarber, with a little flourish of his cane; “how is Trottle to restore the lost peace of Sarah?”

“He will exert himself to find out something about the House. I have fallen into that state about it, that I really must discover by some means or other, good or bad, fair or foul, how and why it is that that House remains To Let.”

“And why Trottle? Why not,” putting his little hat to his heart; “why not, Jarber?

“To tell you the truth, I have never thought of Jarber in the matter. And now I do think of Jarber, through your having the kindness to suggest him – for which I am really and truly obliged to you – I don’t think he could do it.”

“Sarah!”

“I think it would be too much for you, Jarber.”

“Sarah!”

“There would be coming and going, and fetching and carrying, Jarber, and you might catch cold.”

“Sarah! What can be done by Trottle, can be done by me. I am on terms of acquaintance with every person of responsibility in this parish. I am intimate at the Circulating Library. I converse daily with the Assessed Taxes. I lodge with the Water Rate. I know the Medical Man. I lounge habitually at the House Agent’s. I dine with the Churchwardens. I move to the Guardians. Trottle! A person in the sphere of a domestic, and totally unknown to society!”

“Don’t be warm, Jarber. In mentioning Trottle, I have naturally relied on my Right-Hand, who would take any trouble to gratify even a whim of his old mistress’s. But, if you can find out anything to help to unravel the mystery of this House to Let, I shall be fully as much obliged to you as if there was never a Trottle in the land.”

Jarber rose and put on his little cloak. A couple of fierce brass lions held it tight round his little throat; but a couple of the mildest Hares might have done that, I am sure. “Sarah,” he said, “I go. Expect me on Monday evening, the Sixth, when perhaps you will give me a cup of tea; – may I ask for no Green? Adieu!”

This was on a Thursday, the second of December. When I reflected that Trottle would come back on Monday, too, I had my misgivings as to the difficulty of keeping the two powers from open warfare, and indeed I was more uneasy than I quite like to confess. However, the empty House swallowed up that thought next morning, as it swallowed up most other thoughts now, and the House quite preyed upon me all that day, and all the Saturday.

It was a very wet Sunday: raining and blowing from morning to night. When the bells rang for afternoon church, they seemed to ring in the commotion of the puddles as well as in the wind, and they sounded very loud and dismal indeed, and the street looked very dismal indeed, and the House looked dismallest of all.

I was reading my prayers near the light, and my fire was growing in the darkening window-glass, when, looking up, as I prayed for the fatherless children and widows and all who were desolate and oppressed, – I saw the Eye again. It passed in a moment, as it had done before; but, this time, I was inwardly more convinced that I had seen it.

Well to be sure, I had a night that night! Whenever I closed my own eyes, it was to see eyes. Next morning, at an unreasonably, and I should have said (but for that railroad) an impossibly early hour, comes Trottle. As soon as he had told me all about the Wells, I told him all about the House. He listened with as great interest and attention as I could possibly wish, until I came to Jabez Jarber, when he cooled in an instant, and became opinionated.

“Now, Trottle,” I said, pretending not to notice, “when Mr. Jarber comes back this evening, we must all lay our heads together.”

“I should hardly think that would be wanted, ma’am; Mr. Jarber’s head is surely equal to anything.”

Being determined not to notice, I said again, that we must all lay our heads together.

“Whatever you order, ma’am, shall be obeyed. Still, it cannot be doubted, I should think, that Mr. Jarber’s head is equal, if not superior, to any pressure that can be brought to bear upon it.”

This was provoking; and his way, when he came in and out all through the day, of pretending not to see the House to Let, was more provoking still. However, being quite resolved not to notice, I gave no sign whatever that I did notice. But, when evening came, and he showed in Jarber, and, when Jarber wouldn’t be helped off with his cloak, and poked his cane into cane chair-backs and china ornaments and his own eye, in trying to unclasp his brazen lions of himself (which he couldn’t do, after all), I could have shaken them both.

As it was, I only shook the tea-pot, and made the tea. Jarber had brought from under his cloak, a roll of paper, with which he had triumphantly pointed over the way, like the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father appearing to the late Mr. Kemble, and which he had laid on the table.

“A discovery?” said I, pointing to it, when he was seated, and had got his tea-cup. – “Don’t go, Trottle.”

“The first of a series of discoveries,” answered Jarber. “Account of a former tenant, compiled from the Water Rate, and Medical Man.”

“Don’t go, Trottle,” I repeated. For, I saw him making imperceptibly to the door.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, I might be in Mr. Jarber’s way?”