Benjamin Farjeon - Devlin the Barber

"I suppose so, sir," she said, with an awestruck look.

"Why suppose?" I asked. "In such a case, supposition is absurd. He is, or is not, a man."

"Let us call him so, sir. It'll make things easier."

"Very much easier, and they will be easier still if you will be more explicit. I seem to be getting more and more in the dark. In looking again upon your portrait, Fanny-"

"Yes, sir?"

"I can almost discern a likeness to-"

"For the merciful Lord's sake, sir," she cried, "don't say that! If I thought so, I should go mad. I'm scared enough already with what has occurred and the trouble I'm in-and Lemon talking in his sleep all the night through, and having the most horrible nightmares-and me trembling and shaking in my bed with what I'm forced to hear-it's unbearable, sir; it's unbearable!"

I was becoming very excited. Unless Mrs. Lemon had lost her senses, there was in this common house a frightful and awful mystery. And Mrs. Lemon had sent for me to fathom it! What was I about to hear-what to discover?

I strove to speak in a calm voice.

"You say your husband took to his bed yesterday, and that you fear he will never rise from it. Then he is in bed at this moment?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where is his bedroom?"

"On the first floor back, sir."

"Can he hear us talking?"

"No, sir."

"And you want me to see him?"

"Before you go, sir, if you have no objections. I sha'n't know how to thank you."

"I will do what I can for you, Fanny. First for your own sake, and next because there appears to be something going on in this house that ought to be brought to light."

"You may well say that, sir. Not only in this house, but out of this house. The good Lord above only knows what is going on! But Lemon's done nothing wrong, sir. I won't have him thought badly of, and I won't have him hurt. He's been weak, yes, sir, but he ain't been guilty of a wicked, horrible crime. It ain't in his nature, sir. When I first begun to hear things that he used to say in his sleep, and sometimes when he was awake and lost to everything, my hair used to stand on end. I could feel it stirring up, giving me the creeps all over my skin, and my heart'd beat that quick that it was a mercy it didn't jump out of my body. But after a time, frightened as I was, and getting no satisfaction out of Lemon, who only glared at me when I spoke to him, I thought the time might come-and I ain't sure it won't be this blessed day-when I should have to come forward as a witness to save him from the gallows. I am his wife, sir, and if he ain't fit to look after hisself, it's for me to look after him, and so, sir, I thought the best thing for me to do was to keep a dairy."

"A dairy!" I echoed, in wonder.

"Yes, sir, a dairy-to put down in writing everything what happened at the very time."

"O," I said, "you mean a diary!"

"If that's what you call it, sir. I got an old lodger's book that wasn't all filled up. I keep it locked in my desk, sir. Perhaps you'd like to look at it?"

"It may be as well, Fanny."

"If," she said, fumbling in her pocket for a key, and placing one by one upon the table the most extraordinary collection of oddments that female pocket was ever called upon to hold, "if, when we come into this house to retire and live genteel, after Lemon had sold his business, I'd have known what was to come out of my notion to let the second floor front to a single man, I'd have had my feet cut off before I'd done it. But I did it for the best, to keep down the egspenses. Here it is, sir."

She had found the key she had been searching for, and now she opened a mahogany desk, from which she took a penny memorandum-book. She handed it to me in silence, and I turned over the leaves. Most of the pages were filled with weekly accounts of her lodgers, in which "ham and eggs, 8 d .;" "a rasher, 5 d .;" "chop, 8 d .;" "two boyled eggs, 3 d .;" "bloater, 2 d .;" "crewet, 4 d .;" and other such-like items appeared again and again. There was also, at the foot of pages, receipts for payment, "Paid, Fanny Lemon." And this, in the midst of the presumably tragic business upon which we were engaged, brought to my mind an anomaly which had often occurred to me, namely, that landladies should present their accounts to their lodgers in penny memorandum-books, should receive the money, should sign a receipt, and then take away the books containing their acknowledgment of payment. In view of the grave issues impending, it is a trivial matter to comment upon, but it was really a relief to me to dwell for a moment or two upon it. At the end of the memorandum-book which I was looking through were five or six leaves which had not been utilised for lodgers' accounts, and these Mrs. Lemon had pressed into service for her diary. She was a bad writer and an indifferent speller, and the entries were brief, and, to me, at that point, incomprehensible.

"I see, Fanny," I said "that your first entry is made on a Thursday, a good many weeks ago."

"Yes, sir."

"I must confess I can make nothing of it. It states that Lemon rose at eight o'clock on that morning, that he had breakfast at half-past eight, that he ate four slices of bread and butter, two rashers of bacon, and two eggs-"

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Lemon, interrupting me. "He had his appetite then, had Lemon! He ain't got none now to speak of."

"And," I continued, "that he went out of the house at nine o'clock with a person whose name is unintelligible. It commences, I think, with a D."

"D-e-v-l-i-n," said Mrs. Lemon, her eyes almost starting out of her head as she spelt the name, letter by letter.

"I can make it out now. That is it, Devlin. A peculiar name, Fanny."

"Everything about him is that, sir, and worse."

"Had it been a common name, I daresay I should have made it out at once. Now, Fanny, who is this Devlin?"

"You called him a man, sir," said Mrs. Lemon, striving unsuccessfully to keep her eyes from the portrait of her husband, from the evil-beaked bird, and from the image of the stone monster on the mantelshelf.

The magnetism was not in her, it was in the objects, and as she turned from one to the other I also turned-as though I were a piece of machinery and she was setting me in motion. But it is likely that my eyes would have wandered in those directions without her silent prompting. One peculiarity of the fascination-growing more horrible every moment-exercised by the three objects, was that I could not look upon the one without being compelled to complete the triangle formed by the positions in which they were placed-the wall, the window, the mantelshelf.

"It was Devlin, then," I said, "who painted the portraits and stuffed the bird and gave you the stone monster?"

"You've guessed it, sir. It was him."

Referring to the entry in the memorandum-book, I asked, "Did this Devlin call for your husband on the Thursday morning that they went out together?"

"No, sir, he lodged here."

"Does he lodge here now?"

"Yes, sir, I am sorry to say. If I could only see the last of him I'd give thanks on my bended knees morning, noon, and night."

"Why don't you get rid of him, then?"

"I can't, sir."

I accepted this as part of the mystery, and did not press her on the point, but I asked why she would feel so grateful if he were gone from the house.

"Because," she replied, "it's all through him that Lemon is as he is."

"Am I to see this man before I leave?"

"It ain't for me to say, sir."

"Is he in the house now?"

"No, sir."

I inwardly resolved if he came into the house before I left it, that I would see the man of whom Mrs. Lemon so evidently stood in dread.