The Lodger | Page 2

of making a

respectable, if not a happy, living--and the submerged multitude who,
through some lack in themselves, or owing to the conditions under
which our strange civilisation has become organised, struggle
rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison.
Had the Buntings been in a class lower than their own, had they
belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to
so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours
ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they
belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk
whom they had spent so much of their lives in serving.
There was only one person in the world who might possibly be brought
to help them. That was an aunt of Bunting's first wife. With this woman,
the widow of a man who had been well-to-do, lived Daisy, Bunting's
only child by his first wife, and during the last long two days he had
been trying to make up his mind to write to the old lady, and that
though he suspected that she would almost certainly retort with a cruel,
sharp rebuff.
As to their few acquaintances, former fellow-servants, and so on, they
had gradually fallen out of touch with them. There was but one friend
who often came to see them in their deep trouble. This was a young
fellow named Chandler, under whose grandfather Bunting had been
footman years and years ago. Joe Chandler had never gone into service;
he was attached to the police; in fact not to put too fine a point upon it,
young Chandler was a detective.
When they had first taken the house which had brought them, so they
both thought, such bad luck, Bunting had encouraged the young chap to
come often, for his tales were well worth listening to--quite exciting at
times. But now poor Bunting didn't want to hear that sort of
stories--stories of people being cleverly "nabbed," or stupidly allowed
to escape the fate they always, from Chandler's point of view, richly
deserved.
But Joe still came very faithfully once or twice a week, so timing his
calls that neither host nor hostess need press food upon him --nay, more,

he had done that which showed him to have a good and feeling heart.
He had offered his father's old acquaintance a loan, and Bunting, at last,
had taken 30s. Very little of that money now remained: Bunting still
could jingle a few coppers in his pocket; and Mrs. Bunting had 2s. 9d.;
that and the rent they would have to pay in five weeks, was all they had
left. Everything of the light, portable sort that would fetch money had
been sold. Mrs. Bunting had a fierce horror of the pawnshop. She had
never put her feet in such a place, and she declared she never
would--she would rather starve first.
But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had nursed
faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness. There had also
vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning ring, both gifts of
former employers.
When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
from the insecure--when they see themselves creeping closer and closer
to its dread edge--they are apt, however loquacious by nature, to fall
into long silences. Bunting had always been a talker, but now he talked
no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but then she had always been a
silent woman, and that was perhaps one reason why Bunting had felt
drawn to her from the very first moment he had seen her.
It had fallen out in this way. A lady had just engaged him as butler, and
he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to take, into the
dining-room. There, to use his own expression, he had discovered Ellen
Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port wine which her then
mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning. And as he, the new
butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he had watched her
carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into the old wine-cooler,
he had said to himself, "That is the woman for me!"
But now her stillness, her--her dumbness, had got on the unfortunate
man's nerves. He no longer felt like going into the various little shops,
close by, patronised by him in more prosperous days, and Mrs. Bunting

also went afield to make the slender purchases which still had to be
made every day or two, if they were to