FATAL FRIENDSHIP.
The house in Bloomsbury.
“What about?” There are some houses whereof
the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability—houses
which inspire confidence in the minds of the most
sceptical of butchers and bakers—houses
at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods
undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the
vagabond children of the neighbourhood recoil as from
a shrine too sacred for their gambols.
Such a house made its presence obvious, some years
ago, in one of the smaller streets of that west-central
region which lies between Holborn and St. Pancras
Church. It is perhaps the nature of ultra-respectability
to be disagreeably conspicuous. The unsullied
brightness of No. 14 Fitzgeorge-street was a standing
reproach to every other house in the dingy thorough-fare.
That one spot of cleanliness made the surrounding
dirt cruelly palpable. The muslin curtains in
the parlour windows of No. 15 would not have appeared
of such a smoky yellow if the curtains of No. 14 had
not been of such a pharisaical whiteness. Mrs.
Magson, at No. 13, was a humble letter of lodgings,
always more or less in arrear with the demands of
quarter-day; and it seemed a hard thing that her door-steps,
whereon were expended much labour and hearthstone—not
to mention house-flannel, which was in itself no unimportant
item in the annual expenses—should be always
thrown in the shade by the surpassing purity of the
steps before No. 14.
Not satisfied with being the very pink and pattern
of respectability, the objectionable house even aspired
to a kind of prettiness. It was as bright, and
pleasant, and rural of aspect as any house within earshot
of the roar and rattle of Holborn can be. There
were flowers in the windows; gaudy scarlet geraniums,
which seemed to enjoy an immunity from all the ills
to which geraniums are subject, so impossible was it
to discover a faded leaf amongst their greenness, or
the presence of blight amidst their wealth of blossom.
There were birdcages within the shadow of the muslin
curtains, and the colouring of the newly-pointed brickwork
was agreeably relieved by the vivid green of Venetian
blinds. The freshly-varnished street-door bore
a brass-plate, on which to look was to be dazzled;
and the effect produced by this combination of white
door-step, scarlet geranium, green blind, and brass-plate
was obtrusively brilliant.
Those who had been so privileged as to behold the
interior of the house in Fitzgeorge-street brought
away with them a sense of admiration that was the
next thing to envy. The pink and pattern of propriety
within, as it was the pink and pattern of propriety
without, it excited in every breast alike a wondering
awe, as of a habitation tenanted by some mysterious
being, infinitely superior to the common order of
householders.
