A HOUSE TO LET by Charles Dickens (read and download)

A HOUSE TO LET
by Charles Dickens

Contents:

Over the Way
The Manchester Marriage
Going into Society
Three Evenings in the House
Trottle’s Report
Let at Last

OVER THE WAY

I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for ten
years, when my medical man–very clever in his profession, and the
prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist, which was
a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of–said to me, one
day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa which my poor dear
sister Jane worked before her spine came on, and laid her on a board for
fifteen months at a stretch–the most upright woman that ever lived–said
to me, “What we want, ma’am, is a fillip.”

“Good gracious, goodness gracious, Doctor Towers!” says I, quite startled
at the man, for he was so christened himself: “don’t talk as if you were
alluding to people’s names; but say what you mean.”

“I mean, my dear ma’am, that we want a little change of air and scene.”

“Bless the man!” said I; “does he mean we or me!”

“I mean you, ma’am.”

“Then Lard forgive you, Doctor Towers,” I said; “why don’t you get into a
habit of expressing yourself in a straightforward manner, like a loyal
subject of our gracious Queen Victoria, and a member of the Church of
England?”

Towers laughed, as he generally does when he has fidgetted me into any of
my impatient ways–one of my states, as I call them–and then he began,–

“Tone, ma’am, Tone, is all you require!” He appealed to Trottle, who
just then came in with the coal-scuttle, looking, in his nice black suit,
like an amiable man putting on coals from motives of benevolence.

Trottle (whom I always call my right hand) has been in my service two-and-
thirty years. He entered my service, far away from England. He is the
best of creatures, and the most respectable of men; but, opinionated.

“What you want, ma’am,” says Trottle, making up the fire in his quiet and
skilful way, “is Tone.”

“Lard forgive you both!” says I, bursting out a-laughing; “I see you are
in a conspiracy against me, so I suppose you must do what you like with
me, and take me to London for a change.”

For some weeks Towers had hinted at London, and consequently I was
prepared for him. When we had got to this point, we got on so
expeditiously, that Trottle was packed off to London next day but one, to
find some sort of place for me to lay my troublesome old head in.

Trottle came back to me at the Wells after two days’ absence, with
accounts of a charming place that could be taken for six months certain,
with liberty to renew on the same terms for another six, and which really
did afford every accommodation that I wanted.

“Could you really find no fault at all in the rooms, Trottle?” I asked
him.

“Not a single one, ma’am. They are exactly suitable to you. There is
not a fault in them. There is but one fault outside of them.”

“And what’s that?”

“They are opposite a House to Let.”

“O!” I said, considering of it. “But is that such a very great
objection?”

“I think it my duty to mention it, ma’am. It is a dull object to look
at. Otherwise, I was so greatly pleased with the lodging that I should
have closed with the terms at once, as I had your authority to do.”

Trottle thinking so highly of the place, in my interest, I wished not to
disappoint him. Consequently I said:

“The empty House may let, perhaps.”

“O, dear no, ma’am,” said Trottle, shaking his head with decision; “it
won’t let. It never does let, ma’am.”

“Mercy me! Why not?”

“Nobody knows, ma’am. All I have to mention is, ma’am, that the House
won’t let!”

“How long has this unfortunate House been to let, in the name of
Fortune?” said I.

“Ever so long,” said Trottle. “Years.”

“Is it in ruins?”

“It’s a good deal out of repair, ma’am, but it’s not in ruins.”

The long and the short of this business was, that next day I had a pair
of post-horses put to my chariot–for, I never travel by railway: not
that I have anything to say against railways, except that they came in
when I was too old to take to them; and that they made ducks and drakes
of a few turnpike-bonds I had–and so I went up myself, with Trottle in
the rumble, to look at the inside of this same lodging, and at the
outside of this same House.

As I say, I went and saw for myself. The lodging was perfect. That, I
was sure it would be; because Trottle is the best judge of comfort I
know. The empty house was an eyesore; and that I was sure it would be
too, for the same reason. However, setting the one thing against the
other, the good against the bad, the lodging very soon got the victory
over the House. My lawyer, Mr. Squares, of Crown Office Row; Temple,
drew up an agreement; which his young man jabbered over so dreadfully
when he read it to me, that I didn’t understand one word of it except my
own name; and hardly that, and I signed it, and the other party signed
it, and, in three weeks’ time, I moved my old bones, bag and baggage, up
to London.

For the first month or so, I arranged to leave Trottle at the Wells. I
made this arrangement, not only because there was a good deal to take
care of in the way of my school-children and pensioners, and also of a
new stove in the hall to air the house in my absence, which appeared to
me calculated to blow up and burst; but, likewise because I suspect
Trottle (though the steadiest of men, and a widower between sixty and
seventy) to be what I call rather a Philanderer. I mean, that when any
friend comes down to see me and brings a maid, Trottle is always
remarkably ready to show that maid the Wells of an evening; and that I
have more than once noticed the shadow of his arm, outside the room door
nearly opposite my chair, encircling that maid’s waist on the landing,
like a table-cloth brush.

Therefore, I thought it just as well, before any London Philandering took
place, that I should have a little time to look round me, and to see what
girls were in and about the place. So, nobody stayed with me in my new
lodging at first after Trottle had established me there safe and sound,
but Peggy Flobbins, my maid; a most affectionate and attached woman, who
never was an object of Philandering since I have known her, and is not
likely to begin to become so after nine-and-twenty years next March.

It was the fifth of November when I first breakfasted in my new rooms.
The Guys were going about in the brown fog, like magnified monsters of
insects in table-beer, and there was a Guy resting on the door-steps of
the House to Let. I put on my glasses, partly to see how the boys were
pleased with what I sent them out by Peggy, and partly to make sure that
she didn’t approach too near the ridiculous object, which of course was
full of sky-rockets, and might go off into bangs at any moment. In thisF
way it happened that the first time I ever looked at the House to Let,
after I became its opposite neighbour, I had my glasses on. And this
might not have happened once in fifty times, for my sight is uncommonly
good for my time of life; and I wear glasses as little as I can, for fear
of spoiling it.

I knew already that it was a ten-roomed house, very dirty, and much
dilapidated; that the area-rails were rusty and peeling away, and that
two or three of them were wanting, or half-wanting; that there were
broken panes of glass in the windows, and blotches of mud on other panes,
which the boys had thrown at them; that there was quite a collection of
stones in the area, also proceeding from those Young Mischiefs; that
there were games chalked on the pavement before the house, and likenesses
of ghosts chalked on the street-door; that the windows were all darkened
by rotting old blinds, or shutters, or both; that the bills “To Let,” had
curled up, as if the damp air of the place had given them cramps; or had
dropped down into corners, as if they were no more. I had seen all this
on my first visit, and I had remarked to Trottle, that the lower part of
the black board about terms was split away; that the rest had become
illegible, and that the very stone of the door-steps was broken across.
Notwithstanding, I sat at my breakfast table on that Please to Remember
the fifth of November morning, staring at the House through my glasses,
as if I had never looked at it before.

All at once–in the first-floor window on my right–down in a low corner,
at a hole in a blind or a shutter–I found that I was looking at a secret
Eye. The reflection of my fire may have touched it and made it shine;
but, I saw it shine and vanish.

The eye might have seen me, or it might not have seen me, sitting there
in the glow of my fire–you can take which probability you prefer,
without offence–but something struck through my frame, as if the sparkle
of this eye had been electric, and had flashed straight at me. It had
such an effect upon me, that I could not remain by myself, and I rang for
Flobbins, and invented some little jobs for her, to keep her in the room.
After my breakfast was cleared away, I sat in the same place with my
glasses on, moving my head, now so, and now so, trying whether, with the
shining of my fire and the flaws in the window-glass, I could reproduce
any sparkle seeming to be up there, that was like the sparkle of an eye.
But no; I could make nothing like it. I could make ripples and crooked
lines in the front of the House to Let, and I could even twist one window
up and loop it into another; but, I could make no eye, nor anything like
an eye. So I convinced myself that I really had seen an eye.

Well, to be sure I could not get rid of the impression of this eye, and
it troubled me and troubled me, until it was almost a torment. I don’t
think I was previously inclined to concern my head much about the
opposite House; but, after this eye, my head was full of the house; and I
thought of little else than the house, and I watched the house, and I
talked about the house, and I dreamed of the house. In all this, I fully
believe now, there was a good Providence. But, you will judge for
yourself about that, bye-and-bye.

My landlord was a butler, who had married a cook, and set up
housekeeping. They had not kept house longer than a couple of years, and
they knew no more about the House to Let than I did. Neither could I
find out anything concerning it among the trades-people or otherwise;
further than what Trottle had told me at first. It had been empty, some
said six years, some said eight, some said ten. It never did let, they
all agreed, and it never would let.

I soon felt convinced that I should work myself into one of my states
about the House; and I soon did. I lived for a whole month in a flurry,
that was always getting worse. Towers’s prescriptions, which I had
brought to London with me, were of no more use than nothing. In the cold
winter sunlight, in the thick winter fog, in the black winter rain, in
the white winter snow, the House was equally on my mind. I have heard,
as everybody else has, of a spirit’s haunting a house; but I have had my
own personal experience of a house’s haunting a spirit; for that House
haunted mine.

In all that month’s time, I never saw anyone go into the House nor come
out of the House. I supposed that such a thing must take place
sometimes, in the dead of the night, or the glimmer of the morning; but,
I never saw it done. I got no relief from having my curtains drawn when
it came on dark, and shutting out the House. The Eye then began to shine
in my fire.

I am a single old woman. I should say at once, without being at all
afraid of the name, I am an old maid; only that I am older than the
phrase would express. The time was when I had my love-trouble, but, it
is long and long ago. He was killed at sea (Dear Heaven rest his blessed
head!) when I was twenty-five. I have all my life, since ever I can
remember, been deeply fond of children. I have always felt such a love
for them, that I have had my sorrowful and sinful times when I have
fancied something must have gone wrong in my life–something must have
been turned aside from its original intention I mean–or I should have
been the proud and happy mother of many children, and a fond old
grandmother this day. I have soon known better in the cheerfulness and
contentment that God has blessed me with and given me abundant reason
for; and yet I have had to dry my eyes even then, when I have thought of
my dear, brave, hopeful, handsome, bright-eyed Charley, and the trust
meant to cheer me with. Charley was my youngest brother, and he went to
India. He married there, and sent his gentle little wife home to me to
be confined, and she was to go back to him, and the baby was to be left
with me, and I was to bring it up. It never belonged to this life. It
took its silent place among the other incidents in my story that might
have been, but never were. I had hardly time to whisper to her “Dead my
own!” or she to answer, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust! O lay it on my
breast and comfort Charley!” when she had gone to seek her baby at Our
Saviour’s feet. I went to Charley, and I told him there was nothing left
but me, poor me; and I lived with Charley, out there, several years. He
was a man of fifty, when he fell asleep in my arms. His face had changed
to be almost old and a little stern; but, it softened, and softened when
I laid it down that I might cry and pray beside it; and, when I looked at
it for the last time, it was my dear, untroubled, handsome, youthful
Charley of long ago.

–I was going on to tell that the loneliness of the House to Let brought
back all these recollections, and that they had quite pierced my heart
one evening, when Flobbins, opening the door, and looking very much as if
she wanted to laugh but thought better of it, said:

“Mr. Jabez Jarber, ma’am!”

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:

“Sophon_is_ba!”

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.

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