The Greatest Murder Mysteries - G.A. Henty Edition. G. A. Henty
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were quite an advertisement for him.
Sophy seeing that Robert was about to express an opinion respecting the portraits which would irreparably injure the feelings of their landlady, hastily said, "That, beyond question, they were remarkable paintings; but that she had been ill, and that the eyes had such a very lifelike expression, that she should never feel quiet and alone with them looking at her."
Mrs. Billow thereupon acceded, and the cherished portraits were removed upstairs to her own bedroom, leaving two large light patches upon the dingy paper. They were, however, partially covered by two framed prints, which were displaced upstairs to make room for the portraits.
After a few days, when they were settled, and found that they should be comfortable, Robert wrote to Miss Harmer, requesting that Sophy's things might be forwarded to her there.
In a few days a railway van arrived with quite a number of packages. All Sophy's wearing apparel, her work-table, her desk and music-stand; all the paintings she had executed under a master at school, and which had been framed and hung in the drawing-room at Harmer Place; her books; her grand piano, given to her by Mr. Harmer when she left school, and which was much too large to go into their little room, and was therefore sent to a warehouse for the present, to be reclaimed or sold, according as their circumstances might demand; and lastly, a pony-carriage, with two beautiful ponies, which Mr. Harmer had presented to her a few months before his death.
This was at once sent to be sold, and the money it fetched was a welcome addition to their little store, which the amount to be paid for the conveyance of all these things had nearly exhausted.
The ponies and carriage fetched seventy guineas, and Robert was at once anxious to move into larger lodgings; but Sophy persuaded him to wait as they were for the present, at any rate, until they saw what success attended her project for teaching. The only thing to which she would agree was that a few shillings should be laid out in repapering their sitting-room; and when this was done with a light, pretty paper, all the tea-tray landscapes removed, and her own paintings hung up in their place, the room looked so different that Sophy was quite delighted with it, and even Robert allowed that, although very small, it was really a pretty, snug little room.
In a short time, Sophy went round to the various tradesmen in the neighbourhood with whom they dealt, and asked them to allow her modest little cards to appear in their windows; and in a month she had obtained two pupils, three times a week, for an hour in French or German, and three every day for an hour in music—in all twenty-four shillings a week.
It was tedious work, no doubt; but Sophy felt so much pleasure in bringing home her earnings at the end of the week, that, as she said, she really liked it. Besides this, it was a break to the monotony of her life; for, after a while, Robert took to going out after breakfast and not returning until five o'clock to dinner, being engaged, as he said, in looking for something to do; and, indeed, he did believe that he was trying very hard to get employment, although he had not the least idea what kind of work he needed. He sauntered across the bridge, went into a public-house to read the paper, and look through all the advertisements in the vague hope of seeing something to suit him. Three or four advertisements, indeed, he answered; but received no reply. Still he comforted himself with the assurance that it did not matter for that—the will was sure to be found; and that it was therefore really as well that he should not undertake a situation which he should, when he became a rich man, be sorry that he had filled. For the same reason he tried hard to persuade Sophy not to enter into the teaching business, as it would be humiliating to look back upon afterwards; but Sophy replied that she could see nothing to be ashamed of in the remembrance that she had tried her best to get her living, at a time when she had thought it necessary that she should do so. And in this particular she insisted on having her own way.
After another month Sophy got four more pupils, but two of them were in the evening, and this brought with it a more than countervailing drawback; for Robert was now left at home by himself on the evenings when she gave her lessons. Finding his own society dull, he would saunter out to seek other companionship, and on one or two of these occasions he came back with his face flushed, his tread unsteady, and his voice thick and uncertain; and Sophy felt with a terrible fear that his old habits were coming back upon him, and that, even for her sake, he could not keep from drink. On the morning after the first time that this happened, he was very penitent, called himself hard names, and promised that it should not happen again; but after a time he ceased to make excuses for himself, but was only sulky and sullen of a morning as if he resented the reproaches which Sophy never made. Sophy's evil time was coming, and she felt it; the bright smile with which she had lit up their little home, came only with an effort now; the roses which had began to bloom in her pale cheeks, faded out again, but she bore it unflinchingly. Sophy was a quiet, undemonstrative girl, but she had a brave heart; she felt that she deserved any punishment she might receive, and she tried hard to bear it uncomplainingly. When Robert found this, and that no cold looks or reproaches greeted him, he did try hard to please the patient loving woman who had suffered so much for his sake, and withdrew himself, for awhile, from the new friends he was making. Sophy on her part gave up her evening pupils, and stopped at home with him; and so for a time things went on smoothly again.
Sophy had now become accustomed to the place, and had learned from Mrs. Billow—who was a good-hearted, talkative old woman, in a very large cap, and who waited upon them herself—all about their various neighbours. King Edward Street was a quiet, semi-respectable little street, and although it was a thoroughfare leading into the Westminster Bridge Road, very few people except its own inhabitants ever passed through it. It was, it seemed, quite a little professional colony. Next door, in the parlours, played first violin at a theatre on that side of the water, and the one beyond that was second cornet at the Adelphi. The two sisters in the house opposite danced in the ballet at the opera, and worked as milliners in their spare time; next door was a comic singer at Cremorne; and beyond him again lived a leading star and his wife—who was a singing chambermaid, both at the Victoria. They were a kindly, cheerful lot, sociable among themselves, and ready to do any kindness or service to each other. There were a few black sheep among them, but the very blackest of all, Robert and Sophy now suspected Mr. Billow himself, to be.
Mr. Billow was a bad-tempered, cross-grained old man, dirty, and almost always unshaven, very unlike the pink and white gentleman which his portrait represented him to have been; indeed it is almost certain that his habits must have changed greatly for the worse since that was taken; for it was otherwise inconceivable how he could ever have got himself up in that dazzling degree of cleanliness, both of face and shirt front. Mr. Billow's ordinary custom was to get drunk three or four times a day, and then to doze by the fireside into a state of comparative sobriety. All this was bad, but it was not the worst.
Mr. Billow was supposed to be a retired watchmaker, living upon his savings, but he was in reality engaged in a far more profitable trade than that had ever been. At various times of the day ill-looking fellows would lounge in at the little front gate, and instead of going up the stairs to the front door, would knock at the window, and be admitted by a little door under the steps into the kitchen. Mr. Billow would then postpone his sleep for a few minutes, tell Mrs. Billow to "hook it;" and when alone, would enter into a low but animated conversation with his visitors, who had generally small parcels of goods to display to him; the ownership of these, after much altercation, generally changed hands—that is to say the nominal ownership, the real owner being some third person, whose rights and interests were entirely unrepresented and overlooked. Sometimes men would come in the same way late of an evening, with a bundle too large to be carried openly through the streets in the broad daylight; and on all these occasions Mrs. Billow was dismissed while the conversation was going on. Once, too, at three or four in the morning, Robert Gregory hearing a noise below, went down, stairs and found Mr. Billow engaged over a fire in the kitchen, apparently cooking. Finding that all was safe, Robert had gone up to bed again, and in the morning, Mrs. Billow mentioned casually that Mr. Billow had started very early, and that Robert had found him cooking his breakfast. But Robert knew that if Mr. Billow had required breakfast at any hour, his wife would have had to get up to prepare it; he had moreover detected that the smell of the ingredients in the pot on the fire, much more resembled the fumes of melting metal, than the savory steam of Mr. Billow's breakfast. He was therefore confirmed in what he had previously