The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs

CHAPTER I.

“Signor Ricardo, Prof. of the Italian Language!” That was the legend that was engraved on the small brass plate that surmounted the bell that admitted visitors to Mrs. Battleby’s lodging-house in Soho. Signor Ricardo was everything that was estimable in Mrs. Battleby’s eyes, only he was, as she observed to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Blamey, “a Mystery”. He was a tall, attenuated man, who stooped slightly in the shoulders--had dark-grey eyes, keen as those of a hawk, and shaded by bushy eyebrows--a perfect aquiline nose--and a grave, almost solemn mouth, which seldom smiled, and ended in a pointed beard, like that of Vandyke. He was very poor, being an Italian refugee, whose estates had been confiscated for some political error, but he was eminently a gentleman of the ancienne noblesse, and preserved the dignity of his birth, even whilst pursuing an occupation which is considered to place a man beyond the pale of Society.

“He’s as good a lodger as ever I had,” said Mrs. Battleby, on the occasion referred to, “as reglar as a clock, both in his ’abits and his payments--every Saturday mornin’ he dislocates my little bill, though I believe he’s sometimes sorely put-to to find the money, and every evenin’ he’s ’ome by eight o’clock and has his bit of supper and puts his light out by ten, but arter that--well! he’s a Mystery!”

“Lor! Mrs. Battleby, ma’am, you don’t go to think he’s murdered anybody, do yer?”

“Murdered anybody!” repeated the other, with withering contempt, “why, he’s the aimabeloust gentleman you ever come acrost. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, the Sig-nor” (Mrs. Battleby pronounced the word Signor, with a decided accentuation on the letter g), “not to save his own life! And got no temper in him. Never ’eard a ’arsh word, nor a hoath pass his lips. If you’d only seen him onst, you’d never arsk if he was a murderer, Mrs. Blamey!”

“Then ’ow is he a Mystery, which it’s a word I never could abear.”

“Well! it’s this way. When the Sig-nor come to me, now three years ago, he hired three rooms at the top of the ’ouse. I had better rooms I could have let him ’ave, on the floor below, but no! nothing would suit him but my top rooms, hattics as I call ’em, and I had to turn Mary Ann--that gal as went off with the postman--out of her bedroom in order to accommodate him, and he’s lived there ever since. One is his bedroom and the other his parlour, as you may suppose, but would you believe it, Mrs. Blamey, as I’ve never seen the inside of my own third room, ever since the Sig-nor has been with me!”

“My! what do he do with it?”

“’Ow can I tell? I tell you he’s a Mystery! The first day I went up to clean his floor, I found the door locked, and when I arsked for the key, the Sig-nor he says to me, ‘Excuge me,’ he says, for he’s the politest of gentlemen, ‘but I will see after that room myself.’ ‘Lor! Sir,’ I says, ‘but if it’s books or papers, I’ll be as careful as careful,’ I says, ‘but you can’t never struggle with the dust yourself.’ But he was as firm as a rock, and that there door has never been unclosed to my knowledge since.”

“Mrs. Battleby, ma’am, you gives me the cold creeps all down my back! Suppose he should be Jack the Ripper, and congeals the corpusses in your third room. Stranger things ’ave ’appened before now! I think it be’oves you as an ’ouseholder to break open the door!”

At this suggestion, Mrs. Battleby looked for a moment confounded, but in a short time her confidence in the respectability of her lodger, not to say the remembrance of his regularity in paying his rent, restored her equanimity.

“No! Mrs. Blamey, no!” she replied, “wild ’orses shouldn’t make me do it! I’ll never believe no bad of the Sig-nor, though he is a foreigner, and many’s the one as has warned me against him. And he has the respectablelest of friends. Doctor Steinberg is here five days out of the seven, and I’ve heard tell as the Sig-nor teaches Royalty to speak the I-talian langwidge. In course he is a foreigner, there’s no denying that, but it ain’t ’is fault, and I’d be the last to throw it in his teeth! But lor! here’s the Doctor coming along as usual, and he and the Sig-nor will be closeted for hours together.”

The conversation was here interrupted by the arrival of a young man of about thirty, who had fair hair, worn longer than is usual in this country, and whose short-sighted eyes appeared abnormally large through the powerful glasses he was compelled to wear. He was a German of the name of Steinberg, and the profession of medicine--a clever fellow who was rising fast, and knew how to make the best of his opportunities. He was interested in Signor Ricardo for several reasons, and was, as Mrs. Battleby had said, a frequent visitor there.

“Is the Signor in?” he demanded, as he came up with her.

“Yes, Sir! he came in half an hour ago. You might be sure of that! He is so regular that I calls him my clock.”

“And alone?” continued Steinberg.

“Quite alone, Sir!”

“Very good! Don’t disturb yourself, Mrs. Battleby. I will find my way up to his rooms.”

And so saying, he passed her and ran lightly up the stairs.

“Anyways I must go,” observed the landlady, as he disappeared, “for that gal of mine is so stupid I can’t trust her to do a single thing alone. I don’t know what my old friend Mary Stubbs was thinking of to arsk me to take her. She’s no more good than the fifth wheel of a coach! I believe she’s got a maggot in her brain. I found her making the kitchen table hop round the room yesterday, and when I told her not to be fooling like a child of five year old, she said she hadn’t touched it. If I hadn’t been a fool myself, I shouldn’t never have consented to try a gal, as had never been to service before, and come fresh from the country, like a turnip out of a field. But her mother and me, we was brought up together, and she wanted to get Hannah into service away from Settlefield where they live--something to do with a lad as she wanted to marry, I believe--and I gave in. But she’s likely to prove a plague to me, for she’s always crying after her lad, and if I do hate one thing before another, it is a love-sick gal. You might as well have a basin of gruel to help you in the ’ouse!”

“She’ll soon forget ’im in London,” said Mrs. Blamey consolingly, “there are plenty of lads about! She’ll ’ave another in a fortnight!”

“I dessay,” returned Mrs. Battleby, “but meanwhile she’ll do more damage than she’s worth. She broke half a dozen bits of crockery this week, a rattling them about, and when I tell ’er to keep ’em quiet, she cries and says she can’t ’elp it! Well, good evening, Mrs. Blamey! P’r’aps the Sig-nor will be wanting a little something extry for his supper, now that the Doctor’s come to spend the evening with him.”

And the neighbours parted until the next idle moment should arrive, in which they could relieve their minds by chattering like two magpies to each other.

Meanwhile Doctor Steinberg had run lightly up the staircase until he had reached the third story and tapped at his friend’s door. The Signor gave the permission to enter, and his thin face lighted up with pleasure as he caught sight of Steinberg.

“Ah! the dear young man!” he exclaimed, in English, which was quite intelligible, though rather broken, “and have you come to cheer my solitude? That is very good! Now I shall have a pleasant evening! I want it, my good friend, for I have had a most fatiguing day.”

“I can see that you are weary,” said the young doctor, as he grasped his hand, “and more than that, Signor, you are weak. I am afraid that amidst your multifarious duties to others, you forget your duty to yourself! Your pulse is very feeble. You have neither eaten nor drunk enough to-day. I hope you have prepared a hearty supper for yourself!”

“I know nothing! My good Mrs. Battleby arranges all these little affairs for me! I had a good breakfast before I started this morning, but as for the mid-day meal--well, it is difficult for me to eat when I am tired, and even if I could, it would be still more difficult to digest. My stomach is feeble, Steinberg. If you could give me a new stomach, my kind friend, I know you would, but it is impossible. The machine will go on working a little longer, and for myself I care not how soon it may stop altogether!”

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