Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

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To say that Mrs. Tippens wished to leave the house when her lodgers and children began to see visions is but to say she was a woman. She told her husband she “didn't know how she felt,” which meant, as he was too well aware, that she desired to move. She likewise casually mentioned that “she seemed all nerves,” and that “she was getting afraid of her own shadow.”

To this Mr. Tippens replied he was very sorry, but he hoped she would try and pull herself together a bit, and not be frightened by a lot of lying stories. If they only held their tongues and stayed in the house for a while, people would soon quit talking about old Mrs. Jones, and then their lodgers would remain and not give notice because a door creaked.

He reminded her how he was answerable for the rent for three years, that he was not likely ever to get such cheap and convenient premises again, and he implored her, like a good girl, not to be foolish and believe the house was haunted just because a parcel of old women, with Mrs. Jubb at their head, chose to give it a bad name.

“But, d**k,” remonstrated Mrs. Tippens, “you know it is said that nobody thrives who stops here. There was old Mrs. Smith broke her leg in two places, and Mrs. Curtiss's child was run over in the street; and Mr. Perks, that was so respected, fell to robbing his employer, and is in jail now for taking more than a hundred pounds. And John Coombe turned teetotaller, and took to beating his wife—and—”

Mr. Tippens laughed outright. “Make your mind easy, Luce,” he said; “I'm not likely either to turn teetotaller or take to beating you, lass; and as for the children, if you don't like them sleeping out of your sight, bring them in here till you get some of those notions blown off your mind; and when the days draw out a little, you and they shall have a week at the seaside, and you'll get so strong and well you'll laugh at ghosts, and make quite a joke of old Mrs. Jones.”

Poor Mrs. Tippens! She only wished her lodgers could see the joke as well, for they were always going; except one old lady on the top floor who was blind and slightly deaf, not a soul stopped any time with her.

“I don't know how it is,” she said to them, “for I have never seen anything in the house myself.” Whereupon she was told “she was fortunate,” or reminded “there were none so blind as those that would not see,” or assured “her turn was certain to come,” or advised, “clear out of the house before harm befell her and hers,” “for it is just a-tempting of Providence to stop in it,” said one person.

“Upon the other hand,” as Mr. Tippens, determined to look on the bright side of things, remarked, “if lodgers were always going they were always coming; and you get such long prices for the rooms, Lucy, they can afford to stay empty part of a week now and then; and see how well the children are, having the yard to play in, which gives them plenty of air and keeps them out of the streets; and you are stronger and better yourself, and would be hearty if you would only stir about a bit more and not sit so constant at your needle.” Further, business with Mr. Tippens was so good he had been forced to buy another horse, for which he paid seven pounds. “That very same horse,” he often afterwards stated, “no more nor a month later I sold, as true as I am standing here, for twenty guineas. A fare took a fancy to him and bid me the money, and you may be sure I didn't say 'no.'”

It was, perhaps, on the strength of this transaction Mrs. Tippens and family travelled to Southend for the week previously mentioned to eat shrimps and repair dilapidations, returning to Doctor Jones's former residence, as Mr. Tippens declared, “in the best of health and spirits.”

It was not long, however, after their return before Mrs. Tippens again began to feel her nerves troubling her. She did not say anything to her husband about the matter, but she mentioned to a few friends she had a “sort of weight on her,” as if there was “something wrong, she did not know what,” and “a fluttering round her” and “a weakness in her limbs,” and “a creeping sensation at the back of her neck, when she came along the passage, as though, on the warmest day, a chill, clammy hand was laid there,” after which lucid description of symptoms the whole question of old Mrs. Jones was again thoroughly gone into; the statements of all the lodgers repeated in extenso, and the gossip current in the neighbourhood retailed for the twentieth time.

Small marvel that when, after these conversations, almost exhaustive as they were of the Jones topic, Mrs. Tippens, returning to her house, felt a “waft of raw air” meet her the moment she opened the street door, and something “brush along the hall after her,” as she passed into the sitting-room. She was braver than most women, and would, had she seen anything tangible, have tried to solve the enigma. But this pursuit by a shadow, this terror of the unseen, the feeling that there was a presence in the room with her which yet eluded her sight, began to prey on both her mind and body. She longed to cry out, “Take me away from this evil house or I shall die”; but when d**k entered, his honest face radiant with smiles, his tongue ready to tell of the gentlemen who had hired him to drive them to Chiswick, and given him about four times his proper fare, and some present in his hands for “Luce, old girl,” the words died away on her lips, and she could only thank d**k for thinking so constantly about her, and hang round his neck with a fervour Mr. Tippens was not accustomed to from a somewhat undemonstrative wife.

“Who do you think I have had a letter from?” he asked one morning in the early summer, as he came in to breakfast, after a stroll down the street in search of a dried haddock or something savoury for Luce, who “seemed a bit peaked and off her feed”—Luce cannot speak of those days, and of her husband's constant thought for her, now without tears—“why, from my cousin, Anne Jane; I met the postman—and Luce, I couldn't get anything worth buying for you, only a nasty kipper, but I thought kippers were better than nothing, as you're tired of rashers; well, as I was saying, I met the postman, and he gave me a letter from Anne Jane. Her mistress and the whole family are going abroad, but they are keeping on Anne Jane, you see, though she doesn't go with them. While they are away she has a fancy for a change. She's tired of the sea and Brighton, and thinks she'd like to spend her holiday in London, so she writes to ask if we can take her in; she wants to pay for her board and lodging, but, of course, that's all nonsense; I shouldn't let my uncle's daughter pay a halfpenny for bread as long as I had a penny roll; what do you say, Luce? Shall I tell her to come; she's a good girl, as you know, and a quiet, and she'd be company for you while I am away. What d'ye say, girl?”

“I'd be only too glad for her to come, d**k; but where is she to sleep; we could only give her the room at the end of the passage, and—”

“If that's all, make your mind quite easy; she doesn't come of a family which trouble themselves about what you can't lay hold of. Then you're agreeable to have her, my girl; if you're not, just say the word—”

“I can't tell you how pleased I should be to have her, only—”

“I'll make that all right, old woman,” and accordingly that very same day d**k went out and bought three sheets of notepaper for a penny, and three envelopes for the same price; and in the silent seclusion of the stable, while the horsekeeper was away for his dinner, indited an epistle to his cousin, in which he assured her of a warm welcome, of his determination not to take a farthing of her hard-earned wages, and of Lucy's delight at the prospect of showing her the London sights.

“My wife's the best wife ever lived,” he finished, “but she's a bit down at present, and I know you'll cheer her up.

“So no more at present, from your loving cousin,

“R. TIPPENS.

“P.S. I hope you're not afraid of ghosts, for folks will have it this house is haunted, though neither Luce or myself have ever seen anything worse nor ourselves.”

All in good time Miss Anne Jane Tippens arrived at the house tenanted by her cousins from London Bridge Station in a four-wheeler, on the top of which appeared a trunk, encased in a neat holland cover, bound with red, the handiwork of Anne Jane, who paid the cabman his exact fare duly ascertained beforehand, and walked in the hall old Mrs. Jones was supposed to haunt, laden with all the impedimenta perishable creatures of the frailer s*x are so fond of carrying whithersoever they go—a withered nosegay, a basket filled with seaweed and shells, a bandbox, another paper-box, oblong, and a few paper parcels were amongst the baggage; but at length everything was stowed away in the room Doctor Jones had used as a surgery, and Mrs. Tippens stood surveying the “very genteel figure” of her husband's cousin, as that young person, after refreshing laving of her dusty face, stood before the glass, “doing up” her hair.

Miss Tippens was the incarnation of the ideal sewing-maid in a good family. Tall, but not too tall; thin, but not too thin; with pallid face, brown eyes, thick hair brushed back, and tightly plaited till it looked of no account, not pretty or ugly, quiet of movement, soft of voice; a good girl who—at last her toilet finished—turned to Mrs. Tippens and said: “Now, dear, you'll let me help you all I can while I stay here.”