The Child Wife

“Wishes to see me! Who is it, Maggie?”

“Dinna ken who. It’s a rank stranger – a quare-lookin’ callant, wi’ big beard, and them sort o’ whiskers they ca’ moostachoes. I made free to axe him his bisness. He sayed ’twas aboot taakin’ the hoos.”

“About taking the house?”

“Yis, maister. He sayed he’d heared o’ its bein’ to let.”

“Show him in!”

McTavish sprang to his feet, overturning the chair on which he had been seated. Mrs M., and her trio of flaxen-haired daughters, scuttled off into the back parlour – as if a tiger was about to be uncaged in the front one.

They were not so frightened, however, as to hinder them from, in turn, flattening their noses against a panel of the partition door, and scrutinising the stranger through the keyhole.

“How handsome he is!” exclaimed Elspie, the eldest of the girls.

“Quite a military-looking man!” said the second, Jane, after having completed her scrutiny. “I wonder if he’s married.”

“Come away from there, children?” muttered the mother. “He may hear you, and your papa will be very angry. Come away, I tell you?”

The girls slunk back from the door, and took seats upon a sofa.

But their mother’s curiosity had also to be appeased; and, with an example that corresponded ill with her precept, she dropped down upon her knees, and first placing her eye, and afterward her ear, to the keyhole, listened to every word spoken between her husband and his strange visitor with the “whiskers called moostachoes.”

Chapter Fifty Five.

A Tenant Secured

The visitor thus introduced to the South Bank villa was a man of about thirty years of age, with the air and demeanour of a gentleman.

The city clerk could tell him to be of the West End type. It was visible in the cut of his dress, the tonsure of his hair, and the joining of the moustache to his whiskers.

“Mr McTavish, I presume?” were the words that came from him, as he passed through the parlour door.

The Scotchman nodded assent. Before he could do more, the stranger continued:

“Pardon me, sir, for this seeming intrusion. I’ve heard that your house is to let.”

“Not exactly to let. I’m offering it for sale – that is, the lease.”

“I’ve been misinformed then. How long has the lease to run, may I ask?”

“Twenty-one years.”

“Ah! that will not suit me. I wanted a house only for a short time. I’ve taken a fancy to this South Bank – at least, my wife has; and you know, sir – I presume you’re a married man – that’s everything.”

McTavish did know it, to a terrible certainty: and gave an assenting smile.

“I’m sorry,” pursued the stranger. “I like the house better than any on the Bank. I know my wife would be charmed with it.”

“It’s the same with mine,” said McTavish.

“How you lie?” thought Mrs Mac, with her ear at the keyhole.

“In that case, I presume there’s no chance of our coming to terms. I should have been glad to take it by the year – for one year, certain – and at a good rent.”

“How much would you be inclined to give?” asked the lessee, bethinking him of a compromise.

“Well; I scarcely know. How much do you ask?”

“Furnished, or unfurnished?”

“I’d prefer having it furnished.”

The bank clerk commenced beating his brains. He thought of his pennies, and the objection his wife might have to parting with them. But he thought also, of how they had been daily dishonoured in that unhallowed precinct.

Even while reflecting, a paean of spasmodic revelry, heard on the other side of the paling, sounded suggestive in his ears?

It decided him to concede the furniture, and on terms less exacting than he might otherwise have asked for.

“For a year certain, you say?”

“I’ll take it for a year; and pay in advance, if you desire it.”

A year’s rent in advance is always tempting to a landlord – especially a poor one. McTavish was not rich, whatever might be his prospects in regard to the presidency of the bank.

His wife would have given something to have had his ear at the opposite orifice of the keyhole; so that she could have whispered “Take it?”

“How much, you ask, for the house furnished, and by the year?”

“Precisely so,” answered the stranger.

“Let me see,” answered McTavish, reflecting. “My own rent unfurnished – repairs covenanted in the lease – price of the furniture – interest thereon – well, I could say two hundred pounds per annum.”

“I’ll take it at two hundred. Do you agree to that?”

The bank clerk was electrified with delight. Two hundred pounds a year would be cent-per-cent on his own outlay. Besides he would get rid of the premises, for at least one year, and along with them the proximity of his detestable neighbours. Any sacrifice to escape from this.

He would have let go house and grounds at half the price.

But he, the stranger, was not cunning, and McTavish was shrewd. Seeing this, he not only adhered to the two hundred, but stipulated for the removal of some portion of his furniture.

“Only a few family pieces,” he said; “things that a tenant would not care to be troubled with.”

The stranger was not exacting, and the concession was made.

“Your name, sir?” asked the tenant intending to go out.

“Swinton,” answered the tenant who designed coming in. “Richard Swinton. Here is my card, Mr McTavish; and my reference is Lord – .”