"Oh, you have some rooms to let.""Mother!""Well, what is it?""'Ere's a gentleman about the rooms.""Ask 'im in. I'll be up in a minute.""Will yer step inside, sir? Mother'll be up in a minute."So you step inside and after a minute "mother" comes slowly up thekitchen stairs, untying her apron as she comes and calling downinstructions to some one below about the potatoes.
"Good-morning, sir," says "mother," with a washed-out smile. "Willyou step this way, please?""Oh, it's hardly worth while my coming up," you say. "What sort ofrooms are they, and how much?""Well," says the landlady, "if you'll step upstairs I'll show them toyou."So with a protesting murmur, meant to imply that any waste of timecomplained of hereafter must not be laid to your charge, you follow"mother" upstairs.
At the first landing you run up against a pail and a broom, whereupon"mother" expatiates upon the unreliability of servant-girls, and bawlsover the balusters for Sarah to come and take them away at once. Whenyou get outside the rooms she pauses, with her hand upon the door, toexplain to you that they are rather untidy just at present, as thelast lodger left only yesterday; and she also adds that this is theircleaning-day--it always is. With this understanding you enter, andboth stand solemnly feasting your eyes upon the scene before you. Therooms cannot be said to appear inviting. Even "mother's" face betraysno admiration. Untenanted "furnished apartments" viewed in themorning sunlight do not inspire cheery sensations. There is alifeless air about them. It is a very different thing when you havesettled down and are living in them. With your old familiar householdgods to greet your gaze whenever you glance up, and all your littleknick-knacks spread around you--with the photos of all the girls thatyou have loved and lost ranged upon the mantel-piece, and half a dozendisreputable-looking pipes scattered about in painfully prominentpositions--with one carpet slipper peeping from beneath the coal-boxand the other perched on the top of the piano--with the well-knownpictures to hide the dingy walls, and these dear old friends, yourbooks, higgledy-piggledy all over the place--with the bits of old bluechina that your mother prized, and the screen she worked in those farby-gone days, when the sweet old face was laughing and young, and thewhite soft hair tumbled in gold-brown curls from under thecoal-scuttle bonnet--Ah, old screen, what a gorgeous personage you must have been in youryoung days, when the tulips and roses and lilies (all growing from onestem) were fresh in their glistening sheen! Many a summer and winterhave come and gone since then, my friend, and you have played with thedancing firelight until you have grown sad and gray. Your brilliantcolors are fast fading now, and the envious moths have gnawed yoursilken threads. You are withering away like the dead hands that woveyou. Do you ever think of those dead hands? You seem so grave andthoughtful sometimes that I almost think you do. Come, you and I andthe deep-glowing embers, let us talk together. Tell me in your silentlanguage what you remember of those young days, when you lay on mylittle mother's lap and her girlish fingers played with your rainbowtresses. Was there never a lad near sometimes--never a lad who wouldseize one of those little hands to smother it with kisses, and whowould persist in holding it, thereby sadly interfering with theprogress of your making? Was not your frail existence often put injeopardy by this same clumsy, headstrong lad, who would toss youdisrespectfully aside that he--not satisfied with one--might hold bothhands and gaze up into the loved eyes? I can see that lad now throughthe haze of the flickering twilight. He is an eager bright-eyed boy,with pinching, dandy shoes and tight-fitting smalls, snowy shirt frilland stock, and--oh! such curly hair. A wild, light-hearted boy! Canhe be the great, grave gentleman upon whose stick I used to ridecrosslegged, the care-worn man into whose thoughtful face I used togaze with childish reverence and whom I used to call "father?" Yousay "yes," old screen; but are you quite sure? It is a serious chargeyou are bringing. Can it be possible? Did he have to kneel down inthose wonderful smalls and pick you up and rearrange you before he wasforgiven and his curly head smoothed by my mother's little hand? Ah!
old screen, and did the lads and the lassies go making love fiftyyears ago just as they do now? Are men and women so unchanged? Didlittle maidens' hearts beat the same under pearl-embroidered bodicesas they do under Mother Hubbard cloaks? Have steel casques andchimney-pot hats made no difference to the brains that work beneaththem? Oh, Time! great Chronos! and is this your power? Have youdried up seas and leveled mountains and left the tiny humanheart-strings to defy you? Ah, yes! they were spun by a Mightier thanthou, and they stretch beyond your narrow ken, for their ends are madefast in eternity. Ay, you may mow down the leaves and the blossoms,but the roots of life lie too deep for your sickle to sever. Yourefashion Nature's garments, but you cannot vary by a jot thethrobbings of her pulse. The world rolls round obedient to your laws,but the heart of man is not of your kingdom, for in its birthplace "athousand years are but as yesterday."I am getting away, though, I fear, from my "furnished apartments," andI hardly know how to get back. But I have some excuse for mymeanderings this time. It is a piece of old furniture that has led meastray, and fancies gather, somehow, round old furniture, like mossaround old stones. One's chairs and tables get to be almost part ofone's life and to seem like quiet friends. What strange tales thewooden-headed old fellows could tell did they but choose to speak! Atwhat unsuspected comedies and tragedies have they not assisted! Whatbitter tears have been sobbed into that old sofa cushion! Whatpassionate whisperings the settee must have overheard!
New furniture has no charms for me compared with old. It is the oldthings that we love--the old faces, the old books, the old jokes. Newfurniture can make a palace, but it takes old furniture to make ahome. Not merely old in itself--lodging-house furniture generally isthat--but it must be old to us, old in associations and recollections.
The furniture of furnished apartments, however ancient it may be inreality, is new to our eyes, and we feel as though we could never geton with it. As, too, in the case of all fresh acquaintances, whetherwooden or human (and there is very little difference between the twospecies sometimes), everything impresses you with its worst aspect.
The knobby wood-work and shiny horse-hair covering of the easy-chairsuggest anything but ease. The mirror is smoky. The curtains wantwashing. The carpet is frayed. The table looks as if it would goover the instant anything was rested on it. The grate is cheerless,the wall-paper hideous. The ceiling appears to have had coffee spiltall over it, and the ornaments--well, they are worse than thewallpaper.
There must surely be some special and secret manufactory for theproduction of lodging-house ornaments. Precisely the same articlesare to be found at every lodging-house all over the kingdom, and theyare never seen anywhere else. There are the two--what do you callthem? they stand one at each end of the mantel-piece, where they arenever safe, and they are hung round with long triangular slips ofglass that clank against one another and make you nervous. In thecommoner class of rooms these works of art are supplemented by acouple of pieces of china which might each be meant to represent a cowsitting upon its hind legs, or a model of the temple of Diana atEphesus, or a dog, or anything else you like to fancy. Somewhereabout the room you come across a bilious-looking object, which atfirst you take to be a lump of dough left about by one of thechildren, but which on scrutiny seems to resemble an underdone cupid.
This thing the landlady calls a statue. Then there is a "sampler"worked by some idiot related to the family, a picture of the"Huguenots," two or three Scripture texts, and a highly framed andglazed certificate to the effect that the father has been vaccinated,or is an Odd Fellow, or something of that sort.
You examine these various attractions and then dismally ask what therent is.
"That's rather a good deal," you say on hearing the figure.
"Well, to tell you the truth," answers the landlady with a suddenburst of candor, "I've always had" (mentioning a sum a good deal inexcess of the first-named amount), "and before that I used to have" (astill higher figure).
What the rent of apartments must have been twenty years ago makes oneshudder to think of. Every landlady makes you feel thoroughly ashamedof yourself by informing you, whenever the subject crops up, that sheu............