The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes (color ebook reader txt) 📕

say breakfast, Mrs. Bunting?”

“I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure! I meant supper.” He looked at her fixedly. It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that there was a terrible questioning look in his dark, sunken eyes.

“Aren’t you well?” he said slowly. “You don’t look well, Mrs. Bunting.”

“No, sir,” she said. “I’m not well. I went over to see a doctor this afternoon, to Ealing, sir.”

“I hope he did you good, Mrs. Bunting”—the lodger’s voice had become softer, kinder in quality.

“It always does me good to see the doctor,” said Mrs. Bunting evasively.

And then a very odd smile lit up Mr. Sleuth’s face. “Doctors are a maligned body of men,” he said. “I’m glad to hear you speak well of them. They do their best, Mrs. Bunting. Being human they are liable to err, but I assure you they do their best.”

“That I’m sure they do, sir”—she spoke heartily, sincerely. Doctors had always treated her most kindly, and even generously.

And then, having laid the cloth, and put the lodger’s one hot dish upon it, she went towards the door. “Wouldn’t you like me to bring up another scuttleful of coals, sir? it’s bitterly cold—getting colder every minute. A fearful night to have to go out in—” she looked at him deprecatingly.

And then Mr. Sleuth did something which startled her very much. Pushing his chair back, he jumped up and drew himself to his full height.

“What d’you mean?” he stammered. “Why did you say that, Mrs. Bunting?”

She stared at him, fascinated, affrighted. Again there came an awful questioning look over his face.

“I was thinking of Bunting, sir. He’s got a job tonight. He’s going to act as waiter at a young lady’s birthday party. I was thinking it’s a pity he has to turn out, and in his thin clothes, too”—she brought out her words jerkily.

Mr. Sleuth seemed somewhat reassured, and again he sat down. “Ah!” he said. “Dear me—I’m sorry to hear that! I hope your husband will not catch cold, Mrs. Bunting.”

And then she shut the door, and went downstairs.

******

Without telling Bunting what she meant to do, she dragged the heavy washhand-stand away from the chimneypiece, and lighted the fire.

Then in some triumph she called Bunting in.

“Time for you to dress,” she cried out cheerfully, “and I’ve got a little bit of fire for you to dress by.”

As he exclaimed at her extravagance, “Well, ‘twill be pleasant for me, too; keep me company-like while you’re out; and make the room nice and warm when you come in. You’ll be fair perished, even walking that short way,” she said.

And then, while her husband was dressing, Mrs. Bunting went upstairs and cleared away Mr. Sleuth’s supper.

The lodger said no word while she was so engaged—no word at all.

He was sitting away from the table, rather an unusual thing for him to do, and staring into the fire, his hands on his knees.

Mr. Sleuth looked lonely, very, very lonely and forlorn. Somehow, a great rush of pity, as well as of horror, came over Mrs. Bunting’s heart. He was such a—a—she searched for a word in her mind, but could only find the word “gentle”—he was such a nice, gentle gentleman, was Mr. Sleuth. Lately he had again taken to leaving his money about, as he had done the first day or two, and with some concern his landlady had seen that the store had diminished a good deal. A very simple calculation had made her realise that almost the whole of that missing money had come her way, or, at any rate, had passed through her hands.

Mr. Sleuth never stinted himself as to food, or stinted them, his landlord and his landlady, as to what he had said he would pay. And Mrs. Bunting’s conscience pricked her a little, for he hardly ever used that room upstairs—that room for which he had paid extra so generously. If Bunting got another job or two through that nasty man in Baker Street,—and now that the ice had been broken between them it was very probable that he would do so, for he was a very well-trained, experienced waiter—then she thought she would tell Mr. Sleuth that she no longer wanted him to pay as much as he was now doing.

She looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at his long, bent back.

“Good-night, sir,” she said at last.

Mr. Sleuth turned round. His face looked sad and worn.

“I hope you’ll sleep well, sir.”

“Yes, I’m sure I shall sleep well. But perhaps I shall take a little turn first. Such is my way, Mrs. Bunting; after I have been studying all day I require a little exercise.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go out tonight,” she said deprecatingly. “‘Tisn’t fit for anyone to be out in the bitter cold.”

“And yet—and yet”—he looked at her attentively—“there will probably be many people out in the streets tonight.”

“A many more than usual, I fear, sir.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Sleuth quickly. “Is it not a strange thing, Mrs. Bunting, that people who have all day in which to amuse themselves should carry their revels far into the night?”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of revellers, sir; I was thinking”—she hesitated, then, with a gasping effort Mrs. Bunting brought out the words, “of the police.”

“The police?” He put up his right hand and stroked his chin two or three times with a nervous gesture. “But what is man—what is man’s puny power or strength against that of God, or even of those over whose feet God has set a guard?”

Mr. Sleuth looked at his landlady with a kind of triumph lighting up his face, and Mrs. Bunting felt a shuddering sense of relief. Then she had not offended her lodger? She had not made him angry by that, that—was it a hint she had meant to convey to him?

“Very true, sir,” she said respectfully. “But Providence means us to take care o’ ourselves too.” And then she closed the door behind her and went downstairs.

But Mr. Sleuth’s landlady did not go on, down to the kitchen. She came into her sitting-room, and, careless of what Bunting would think the next morning, put the tray with the remains of the lodger’s meal on her table. Having done that, and having turned out the gas in the passage and the sitting-room, she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

The fire was burning brightly and clearly. She told herself that she did not need any other light to undress by.

What was it made the flames of the fire shoot up, shoot down, in that queer way? But watching it for awhile, she did at last doze off a bit.

And then—and then Mrs. Bunting woke with a sudden thumping of her heart. Woke to see that the fire was almost out—woke to hear a quarter to twelve chime out—woke at last to the sound she had been listening for before she fell asleep—the sound of Mr. Sleuth, wearing his rubber-soled shoes, creeping downstairs, along the passage, and so out, very, very quietly by the front door.

But once she was in bed Mrs. Bunting turned restless. She tossed this way and that, full of discomfort and unease. Perhaps it was the unaccustomed firelight dancing on the walls, making queer shadows all round her, which kept her so wide awake.

She lay thinking and listening—listening and thinking. It even occurred to her to do the one thing that might have quieted her excited brain—to get a book, one of those detective stories of which Bunting had a slender store in the next room, and then, lighting the gas, to sit up and read.

No, Mrs. Bunting had always been told it was very wrong to read in bed, and she was not in a mood just now to begin doing anything that she had been told was wrong… .