CHAPTER VII

The handle of the street door of Mr. Chester's house could be so worked from without by any person initiated into the secret that it yielded easily to practised fingers. This was Mr. Chester's ingenious invention. Early in his married life he had found it not agreeable to his sensitive feelings that, after a night's carouse, the door should be opened for him by his wife. Hence the device.

At one o'clock on this morning he opened his street door and entered his house. Mrs. Chester was still up, mending Sally's clothes. On a corner of the table at which she was working, his supper of bread-and-cheese was laid. As he entered, his wife glanced at him, and then bent her eyes to her work, without uttering a word. Receiving no favourable response to his weak smile, he fell-to upon his supper.

By the time Mr. Chester had finished, the silence had become intolerable to him. His wife, having mended Sally's clothes, was now gathering them together. He made another conciliatory step.

"How is Sally?" he asked.

Mrs. Chester's lip curled. "Sally's asleep," she answered.

"Did you get her any-any strengthening things?"

"No. All the shops were shut-except the public-houses."

"Ah, yes, I forgot. But you might have asked her if she fancied anything."

"I said to her last week," replied the mother, with a dark, fierce flash into her husband's face, "when she came out of one of her faints, 'Sally, what would you like?' 'I'd like some gin, mother,' she answered. I was afraid she might give me the same answer again."

He quailed before the look, and the strong reproach conveyed in the mother's words.

"Don't let's have any more quarrelling to-night, old woman," he said.

"I don't want any quarrelling: I'm not a match for you, Dick."

"That's as it should be, old woman," he said, recovering his spirits. "Man's the master."

"You're good at words, Dick."

"That's so," he chuckled vainfully.

"But better at something else."

"At what, old woman?"

With a scornful glance she laid before him the strap with which he was in the habit of striking her.

"There's no arguing with a woman," he said, with rare discretion. "Come, it's time to get to bed. I suppose the new lodger is in."

"He came in an hour ago."

"And the little girl?"

"She's asleep with Sally."

Mr. Chester, who had risen, stood silent for a few moments, drumming gently with his fingers on the table.

"Did you see him when he came home?"

Mrs. Chester's anger was spent, and her husband's kinder tone now met with a kindred response.

"No, Dick."

"Ah, then, there's no use asking. But you might have heard something, Loo."

"What might I have heard, Dick?" she asked, approaching close to his side. He passed his arms around her.

"Something that would have reminded you-" He broke off abruptly with, "No matter."

"But tell me, Dick."

"When I was at the Royal George I fancied I heard a man playing on a tin whistle."

Mrs. Chester's lips quivered, and a shudder ran through her frame.

"The new tenant," pursued Mr. Chester, "hang him! he's got into my head like a black fog! – the new tenant had just gone away, and good riddance to him, when I heard the music, as I thought, and I went to the door to look. I saw nobody, and a man in the Royal George said that our new lodger had something in his pocket that looked like a whistle or a flute. As he came straight home, I thought you might have heard him play it."

"I was asleep, Dick, when he came home; the slamming of the street door woke me." She paused and played nervously with a button of her husband's coat. "Dick, I dreamt of our Ned to-night."

"Ay, Loo," he answered softly.

"What can have become of him? Where is he now, the dear lad?"

"Best for us not to know, perhaps," replied Mr. Chester gloomily.

"I've thought of him a good deal lately," said Mrs. Chester; "more than I've done for a long time past. And my dreaming of him to-night is a good sign. Dick, I've got it into my head that he'll open the door one day, as handsome as ever, and rich too, and that he'll make it up to us-"

Mr. Chester interrupted her with a bitter laugh.

"If my head doesn't ache till then-There! Stop talking of him, and let's get to bed."

They went into the bedroom together, and Mrs. Chester held the candle over the sleeping children, turning the coverlid down, so that their faces could be seen. They were both fast asleep: the baby's head was lying on Sally's bare shoulder, and their lips almost touched.

It was not upon Sally's face that Mr. Chester's eyes rested. He gazed intently upon the child sleeping in Sally's arms, much as though he were striving to find the solution of some perplexing problem.

"What's bothering you, Dick?" asked Mrs. Chester.

"The difference between this new child and the man upstairs," he replied. "There's our Sally now. She's dark, and skinny, and queer-looking all round; but anybody can see with half an eye that she's our child. It's the same with Ned; he was about the handsomest lad that you could see in a mile's walk-"

"Ay, that he was, Dick," said the fond mother.

" – Not a bit like Sal, and not much like us to speak of, in a general way. And yet nobody could doubt that they were brother and sister, and that he was our boy. Nature works out these things in her own way. Very well, then. In what way has Nature worked out a likeness between this new baby and the man sleeping upstairs?"

"In no way that I can see," replied Mrs. Chester, receiving with favour this evidence against a man to whom she had taken a dislike at first sight.

"There ain't a feature in their faces alike-not one. Nature doesn't tell lies as a rule; but she has told a whopper if that man is this young un's father. Do you mean to tell me that a father would behave to his own flesh and blood as that fellow behaved to this little one to-night? Look here, old woman. I go wrong more often than I go right. I might be a better man to you, I dare say, and a better father to Sal; but things have gone too far for me to alter. But for all that, I think I've got the feelings of a father towards our lass, and I wouldn't part with her for her weight in gold."

Which speech, uttered with rough, genuine feeling, was a recompense to Mrs. Chester for months of neglect and unfair usage.

"Well, Dick," she said, "don't bother any more about it now. We've got two weeks' rent in advance, at any rate."

And this practical commentary Mrs. Chester considered a satisfactory termination to the conversation-at least, for the present.

Mr. Chester was a heavy sleeper. Being an earnest man, he was as earnest in his sleep as in other matters, and his wife had often observed that it would take the house on fire to rouse him. It was singular, therefore, that on this night he should wake up within an hour of his closing his eyes, with an idea in his mind which had not before presented itself in an intelligible shape.

"I say, old woman," he mumbled, "are you awake?" The instinct of habit caused Mrs. Chester to answer drowsily, "Yes, Dick," and to instantly fall asleep again.

"Rouse yourself." (Assisting her by a push.) "What time was it you told me the new lodger came in?"

Under the impression that the question had been put to her many hours since, and therefore not quite clear as to its purport, Mrs. Chester said,

"Eh, Dick?"

"Eh, Dick! and eh, Dick!" retorted Mr. Chester. "Now, then, are you listening?"

"Of course I am," she said reproachfully, throwing upon him the onus of evading the question. "Go on."

"I'm going on. Slow." (With a pause between each word.) "What-time – did-you-tell-me-that-the-new-lodger-came-in-to-night?"

"He came home about an hour before you."

"And you were asleep?"

"Yes, and I'm almost asleep now. That's enough for to-night, Dick."

"Not half enough, old woman," he said, shaking her without mercy. "If you were asleep, how do you know what time he came in?"

"He woke me up," replied Mrs. Chester, goaded to desperation, "with the way he slammed the door. I'll give him a bit of my mind in the morning. There's other lodgers in the house besides him, and I ain't going to have them disturbed in that way. I shouldn't wonder if some of 'em don't give us warning to-morrow. For the Lord's sake, don't talk to me any more! I've got to be up at six o'clock."

He proceeded, without paying the slightest regard to her appeal:

"When the new lodger comes home a couple of hours ago, you are asleep. He wakes you up with the way he bangs the door. He comes into the house, and goes upstairs to his room. That's it, isn't it?"

"That's it, Dick," replied Mrs. Chester listlessly.

"And you don't set your eyes on him?"

"No, and don't want to."

"Now, old woman, just keep your mind on what I'm saying-" but here Mr. Chester interrupted himself by exclaiming, "What's that row upstairs? It comes from his room."

The noise proceeded undoubtedly from the room let to the new lodger, and, as well as she could judge, was caused by the stealthy moving about of furniture. It did not last long and presently all was quiet again.

"I shall have to go up to him," said Mr. Chester, shaking his head at himself in the dark, "if he gives us any more of that fun. He's a stranger in the neighbourhood. Not a soul in the Royal George ever set eyes on him before to-night. He comes here with a child-a mere baby-that don't seem as if it had any right to be here at all. He takes the room and pays a fortnight in advance, without ever asking for a receipt, and without ever saying his name is George, or Jim, or Jo or whatever else it might be. He pulls out a handful of money, too. Does this sound suspicious, or doesn't it?"

"It does, as you put it," acquiesced Mrs. Chester, now awake.

"And, by Jove! there's something more suspicious behind. Who showed him his bedroom?"

"I didn't."

"And I didn't. Who showed him how to open the street-door without a key?"

"I didn't."

"And I didn't. Then how the devil does he open it without being shown how it is done? and how the devil does he find his way, without a light, to a room he's never seen? I'm going to look into this, Loo, before I close my eyes again."