The Van Buren press., 1895-04-27
MY CHARMING LODGER.


MY CHARMING LODGER.
To young curate not long from col
lege, and accustomed to a home, that
remote Fellside parsonage at Brigend
was essentially exile, hard enough to
bear, II not quite as bad as Siberia. 1
had no one to whom could fall back
as q companion. My sister was bound
70 remain at home with my mother;
and she and composed the family.
For her own part. my mother was too
delicate to undertake the long journey
from London TO the north, or to en-
dure the roughness inseparable from
such place as Brigend when she got
therc. We were eight miles from a
station, and the road we had to travel
over was more like the dry bed Of a
river than civilized highway which
had once been macadamized, and was
presumably still kept in repair by the
ratepayers and occupiers.
Things being SO, and the long au-
tumn evenings daily deepening and
lenghtening. with the prospect of that
dreary. lonely winter before me, de-
termined to advertise for some young
man to whom plain living and high
thinking, with plenty Of leisure and
little to pay, would be powerful In
ducements to come-thus sharing while
tightening my solitude, as well as
hslving, the very moderate expenses Of
my housekeeping. Moderate, how
ever, as they were, my exiguous
stipend could barely meet them; and q
company In the weekly bills would be
. gain.
l therefore put into the paper an ad-
vertisement for a paying companion,
aDd in due course received reply. As
1t was the only one did receive had
no difficulty in making choice, and
was thus spared both trouble and re-
sponsibility. After the interchange Of
q few letters, setting times and terms,
The die was cast and things were ar
ranged and Montgomery Somerset was
booked to come on October 2l-which
day, pace the Thirteen club, well re-
member fell on Friday. Meanwhile
l undertook to meet him at the station
with some difficulty securing fly
for his transit to the parsonage. The
roads were so bad that few jobmasters
cared to send their cattle along them.
Which fact added to the desolation OF
the place.
Unpunctual as usual, and a good half
hour late, the train drew up at the lit
tie Fellside station which served this
desolate tract of country. The one
solitary first-class passenger alighted,
/ was pleasantly impressed by his ap.
pearance. Tall, good-looking, well.
dressed, he was also well mannered-in
= way-not wholly SO, but quite passa-
bly,. He was tribe nervous, for !
noticed how sharply he looked about
him, and how rapid but eager the
glances which scanned the car
riages behind his own and the few
loiterers on the platform. Even Bob
Liant, the stolid old constable Of the
district, came in for look which
seemed to take him In from his helmet
TO his boots. OF the two thought al
the time that Montgomery Somerset
was more of a detective than our own
local Sherlock Holmes, and more like.
ly to track a criminal and hunt him
down. BE that, however, as 1t may, In
q short time we were both seated In
the rattle-trap old shandrydan, which
was all that Fellside had to offer, and
jolting over the dry watercourse to the
isolation of Brigend. ~
As the days passed by had cause tc
congratulate myself on my good for.
tune; though, indeed, it was so good as
to make me wonder how it ever came
about. My lodger was simply charm
ing, always good-bumored, ,complaisant,
contented. He was not, perhaps, SO
we'll educated as might have been ex-
pected, and knew less than an ordinary
gentleman of classics, mathematics and
the rest of the subjects known as OF
course TO educated men. In fact, he
knew nothing at all of these things,
and his reading was not above the
average of schoolboy's laundering
pronunciation. He explained this by
saying that he had never been sent to
any good school-at least not for long
together. His father had been In the
army; he was the only child, and pa
rental love had got the better Of pa
rental foresight, for neither father nor
mother would part with him. Hence
his education had been desultory-and
he had learned nothing from the root
upward, having forgotten, indeed, all
that he had ever acquired. AS he was
anxious to know more than he did, his
ignorance was not so much bar rier as
q spur, and we passed the long even.
ings in study, which strove to make
ss interesting and little irksome as l
could.
Meanwhile, was glad to see how,
under the regular regime and brisk
Fellside air, my dodgers nervousness
gradually subsidized, and he became less
watchful, more composed and, as one
might say, sleeker altogether than he
had been when he came.
One thing struck me: Montgomery
received no letters. He had been with
me now for six weeks, and he had not
had one single letter. lie seemed to
think must find this strange, for one
day when the bag had brought me two
letters from homo and others from