The stranger said nothing until Neville put his key in his door; then, seeming to make sure of his identity from the action, he spoke:
“I beg your pardon,” he said, coming from the window with a frank and smiling air, and a prepossessing address; “the beans.”
Neville was quite at a loss.
“Runners,” said the visitor. “Scarlet. Next door at the back.”
“Oh!” returned Neville. “And the mignonette and wallflower?”
“The same,” said the visitor.
“Pray walk in.”
“Thank you.”
Neville lighted his candles, and the visitor sat down. A handsome gentleman, with a young face, but an an older figure in its robustness and its breadth of shoulder; say a man of eight-and-twenty, or at the utmost thirty; so extremely sunburnt that the contrast between his brown visage and the white forehead shaded out of doors by his hat, and the glimpses of white throat below the neckerchief, would have been almost ludicrous but for his broad temples, bright blue eyes, clustering brown hair, and laughing teeth.
“I have noticed,” said he; “—my name is Tartar.”
Neville inclined his head.
“I have noticed (excuse me) that you shut yourself up a good deal, and that you seem to like my garden aloft here. If you would like a little more of it, I could throw out a few lines and stays between my windows and yours, which the runners would take to directly. And I have some boxes, both of mignonette and wallflower, that I could shove on along the gutter (with a boathook I have by me) to your windows, and draw back again when they wanted watering or gardening, and shove on again when they were shipshape; so that they would cause you no trouble. I couldn’t take this liberty without asking your permission, so I venture to ask it. Tartar, corresponding set, next door.”
“You are very kind.”
“Not at all. I ought to apologise for looking in so late. But having noticed (excuse me) that you generally walk out at night, I thought I should inconvenience you least by awaiting your return. I am always afraid of inconveniencing busy men, being an idle man.”
“I should not have thought so, from your appearance.”
“No? I take it as a compliment. In fact, I was bred in the Royal Navy and was First Lieutenant when I quitted it. But, an uncle disappointed in the service leaving me his property on condition that I left the Navy, I accepted the fortune and resigned my commission.”
“Lately, I presume?”
“Well, I had had twelve or fifteen years of knocking about first. I came here some nine months before you; I had had one crop before you came. I chose this place, because, having served last in a little corvette, I knew I should feel more at home where I had a constant opportunity of knocking my head against the ceiling. Besides, it would never do for a man who had been aboard ship from his boyhood to turn luxurious all at once. Besides, again; having been accustomed to a very short allowance of land all my life, I thought I’d feel my way to the command of a landed estate, by beginning in boxes.”
Whimsically as this was said, there was a touch of merry earnestness in it that made it doubly whimsical.
“However,” said the Lieutenant, “I have talked quite enough about myself. It is not my way, I hope; it has merely been to present myself to you naturally. If you will allow me to take the liberty I have described, it will be a charity, for it will give me something more to do. And you are not to suppose that it will entail any interruption or intrusion on you, for that is far from my intention.”
Neville replied that he was greatly obliged, and that he thankfully accepted the kind proposal.
“I am very glad to take your windows in tow,” said the Lieutenant. “From what I have seen of you when I have been gardening at mine, and you have been looking on, I have thought you (excuse me) rather too studious and delicate. May I ask, is your health at all affected?”
“I have undergone some mental distress,” said Neville, confused, “which has stood me in the stead of illness.”
“Pardon me,” said Mr. Tartar.
With the greatest delicacy he shifted his ground to the windows again, and asked if he could look at one of them. On Neville’s opening it, he immediately sprang out, as if he were going aloft with a whole watch in an emergency, and were setting a bright example.
“For Heaven’s sake,” cried Neville, “don’t do that! Where are you going Mr. Tartar? You’ll be dashed to pieces!”
“All well!” said the Lieutenant, coolly looking about him on the housetop. “All taut and trim here. Those lines and stays shall be rigged before you turn out in the morning. May I take this shortcut home, and say good night?”
“Mr. Tartar!” urged Neville. “Pray! It makes me giddy to see you!”
But Mr. Tartar, with a wave of his hand and the deftness of a cat, had already dipped through his scuttle of scarlet runners without breaking a leaf, and “gone below.”
Mr. Grewgious, his bedroom window-blind held aside with his hand, happened at that moment to have Neville’s chambers under his eye for the last time that night. Fortunately his eye was on the front of the house and not the back, or this remarkable appearance and disappearance might have broken his rest as a phenomenon. But, Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there, not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet—or seem likely
