The Lodger

The Lodger

Marie Belloc Lowndes

Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning,

carefully-banked-up fire.

The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house

standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare, was

exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger, more

particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly opening

the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr. and Mrs.

Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of comfortable married

life. Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep leather arm-chair, was

clean-shaven and dapper, still in appearance what he had been for many

years of his life—a self-respecting man-servant.

On his wife, now sitting up in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair,

the marks of past servitude were less apparent; but they were there all

the same—in her neat black stuff dress, and in her scrupulously clean,

plain collar and cuffs. Mrs. Bunting, as a single woman, had been what

is known as a useful maid.

But peculiarly true of average English life is the time-worn English

proverb as to appearances being deceitful. Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were

sitting in a very nice room and in their time—how long ago it now

seemed!—both husband and wife had been proud of their carefully chosen

belongings. Everything in the room was strong and substantial, and each

article of furniture had been bought at a well-conducted auction held

in a private house.

Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden,

drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and

yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A

great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which

covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat

forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair had

been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband to be

comfortable after the day’s work was done, and she had paid

thirty-seven shillings for the chair. Only yesterday Bunting had tried

to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at it,

guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve

shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping

their arm-chair.

But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort, much

as that is valued by the Buntings of this world. So, on the walls of

the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded

photographs—photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting’s various former

employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had

separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not unhappy

servitude.

But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than usually

deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In spite of their

good furniture—that substantial outward sign of respectability which is

the last thing which wise folk who fall into trouble try to dispose

of—they were almost at the end of their tether. Already they had learnt

to go hungry, and they were beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the

last thing the sober man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up

some time ago by Bunting. And even Mrs. Bunting—prim, prudent, careful

woman as she was in her way—had realised what this must mean to him. So

well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had crept out

and bought him a packet of Virginia.

Bunting had been touched—touched as he had not been for years by any

woman’s thought and love for him. Painful tears had forced themselves

into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in their odd,

unemotional way, moved to the heart.

Fortunately he never guessed—how could he have guessed, with his slow,

normal, rather dull mind?—that his poor Ellen had since more than once

It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to

investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world of men

and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister mysteries,

that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes; and before that

extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into the public mind there

took place yet another murder, and again the murderer had been to

special pains to make it clear that some obscure and terrible lust for

vengeance possessed him.

Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes! Even the man

who left their ha’porth of milk at the door each morning had spoken to

Bunting about them that very day.

Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild

excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of weary,

mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him. He felt he

could have shaken her!

Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had come

back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had said. In

fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that she didn’t

like hearing about such horrid things.

It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of pathos

and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to the details of

a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories of immorality or of

physical violence. In the old, happy days, when they could afford to

buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper daily, Bunting had often had

to choke down his interest in some exciting “case” or “mystery” which

was affording him pleasant mental relaxation, because any allusion to

it sharply angered Ellen.

But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she felt.

Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards the

door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his

close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which a

child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.

But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders just

showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting, bolt

upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.

Bunting turned round, opened the door, and quickly he went out into the

dark hall—they had given up lighting the gas there some time ago—and

opened the front door.

Walking down the small flagged path outside, he flung open the iron

gate which gave on to the damp pavement. But there he hesitated. The

coppers in his pocket seemed to have shrunk in number, and he

remembered ruefully how far Ellen could make even four pennies go.

Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting,

being sorely tempted—fell. “Give me a _Sun_,” he said roughly, “_Sun_

or _Echo!_”

But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head. “Only

penny papers left,” he gasped. “What’ll yer ’ave, sir?”

With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny

out of his pocket and took a paper—it was the _Evening Standard_—from

the boy’s hand.

Then, very slowly, he shut the gate and walked back through the raw,

cold air, up the flagged path, shivering yet full of eager, joyful

anticipation.

Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass a

happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable

self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite

from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with

careworn, troubled Ellen.

A hot wave of unease, almost of remorse, swept over Bunting. Ellen

would never have spent that penny on herself—he knew that well