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The scene is laid in a lodging-house, and the discomforts of one Monsieur Choufleur, an elderly gentleman in a flowered dressing-gown and a gigantic nightcap, furnish forth all the humor of the piece.
Something for aught Blakeney knew might have occurred in the past twenty-four hours to change an amiable and accommodating lodging-house keeper into a surly or dangerous spy. Fortunately, the concierge had once more gone within; there was no one abroad, and if there were, no one probably would take any notice of a burly ruffian brow-beating a child.
Here we had a cup of coffee apiece, several tough doughnuts, and some blocks of venerable spongecake. The young lady who attended on us, whatever her age was then, must have been a mere child when that sponge-cake was made. The Admiral's acquaintance with Boston hotels was slight; but he knew of a quiet lodging-house near by, much patronized by sea-captains, and kept by a former friend of his.
The weary time dragged on, days and weeks passed by; Raeburn was growing weaker, but clung to life with extraordinary tenacity. And now very bitterly they felt the evils of this voluntarily embraced poverty, for the summer heat was for a few days almost tropical, and the tiny little rooms in the lodging-house were stifling.
"Well, if you have any sandal-wood left over, you can work it into your Boys' Lodging-house, you know." "Don't be foolish! And then the ballroom, ninety feet long it looks small on the paper. And do you think we'd better have those life-size figures all round, mediaeval statues, with the incandescents? Carmen says she would prefer a row of monks something piquant about that in a ballroom.
There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls. A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior lodging-house keeper. "You'd find my rooms quite quiet, sir," she said gently. "And just now I have four to let.
In this way I passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made fast my craft, and in a spirit of diablerie spent the night in a common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive bonne camaraderie which the prevailing fear of death could not altogether repress.
Three chairs and a couple of armchairs, scarcely fit for the shabbiest lodging-house in the street, completed the inventory. The dirty, cheerless room told a tale of a restless life and a want of self-respect; some one came hither to sleep and work at high pressure, staying no longer than he could help, longing, while he remained, to be out and away.
"But if she bears the stamp as well as the name ! Do tell me all it is possible to tell. Come and sit down, Harold." He sat down and entered into details. "I was called to a lady who, though not ill, seemed fatigued from a hurried journey and, as it seemed to me, the effects of anxiety and repressed excitement. I found her in a third-class lodging-house in a third-class street.
What could any impression of Lord Blandamer's matter to her? she would probably never see him again unless she opened the door when he went out. Why should he think anything at all about a commonplace lodging-house, and its inmates?
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