ON the day after Isabel’s departure, diligent Mr. Troy set forth for the Head Office in Whitehall to consult the police on the question of the missing money. He had previously sent information of the robbery to the Bank of England, and had also advertised the loss in the daily newspapers.
The air was so pleasant, and the sun was so bright, that he determined on proceeding to his destination on foot. He was hardly out of sight of his own offices when he was overtaken by a friend, who was also walking in the direction of Whitehall. This gentleman was a person of considerable worldly wisdom and experience; he had been officially associated with cases of striking and notorious crime, in which Government had lent its assistance to discover and punish the criminals. The opinion of a person in this position might be of the greatest value to Mr. Troy, whose practice as a solicitor had thus far never brought him into collision with thieves and mysteries. He accordingly decided, in Isabel’s interests, on confiding to his friend the nature of his errand to the police. Concealing the name, but concealing nothing else, he described what had happened on the previous day at Lady Lydiard’s house, and then put the question plainly to his companion.
“What would you do in my place?”
“In your place,” his friend answered quietly, “I should not waste time and money in consulting the police.”
“Not consult the police!” exclaimed Mr. Troy in amazement. “Surely, I have not made myself understood? I am going to the Head Office; and I have got a letter of introduction to the chief inspector in the detective department. I am afraid I omitted to mention that?”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” proceeded the other, as coolly as ever. “You have asked for my advice, and I give you my advice. Tear up your letter of introduction, and don’t stir a step further in the direction of Whitehall.”
Mr. Troy began to understand. “You don’t believe in the detective police?” he said.
“Whocanbelieve in them, who reads his newspaper and remembers what he reads?” his friend rejoined. “Fortunately for the detective department, the public in general forgets what it reads. Go to your club, and look at the criminal history of our own time, recorded in the newspapers. Every crime is more or less a mystery. You will see that the mysteries which the police discover are, almost without exception, mysteries made penetrable by the commonest capacity, through the extraordinary stupidity exhibited in the means taken to hide the crime. On the other hand, let the guilty man or woman be a resolute and intelligent person, capable of setting his (or her) wits fairly against the wits of the police—in other words, let the mystery reallybea mystery—and cite me a case if you can (a really difficult and perplexing case) in which the criminal has not escaped. Mind! I don’t charge the police with neglecting their work. No doubt they do their best, and take the greatest pains in following the routine to which they have been trained. It is their misfortune, not their fault, that there is no man of superior intelligence among them—I mean no man who is capable, in great emergencies, of placing himself above conventional methods, and following a new way of his own. There have been such men in the police—men naturally endowed with that faculty of mental analysis which can decompose a mystery, resolve it into its component parts, and find the clue at the bottom, no matter how remote from ordinary observation it may be. But those men have died, or have retired. One of them would have been invaluable to you in the case you have just mentioned to me. As things are, unless you are wrong in believing in the young lady’s innocence, the person who has stolen that bank-note will be no easy person to find. In my opinion, there is only one man now in London who is likely to be of the slightest assistance to you—and he is not in the police.”
“Who is he?” asked Mr. Troy.
“An old rogue, who was once in your branch of the legal profession,” the friend answered. “You may, perhaps, remember the name: they call him ‘Old Sharon.’”
“What! The scoundrel who was struck off the Roll of Attorneys, years since? Is he still alive?”
“Alive and prospering. He lives in a court or lane running out of Long Acre, and he offers advice to persons interested in recovering missing objects of any sort. Whether you have lost your wife, or lost your cigar-case, Old Sharon is equally useful to you. He has an inbred capacity for reading the riddle the right way in cases of mystery, great or small. In short, he possesses exactly that analytical faculty to which I alluded just now. I have his address at my office, if you think it worth while to try him.”
“Who can trust such a man?” Mr. Troy objected. “He would be sure to deceive me.”
“You are entirely mistaken. Since he was struck off the Rolls Old Sharon has discovered that the straight way is, on the whole, the best way, even in a man’s own interests. His consultation fee is a guinea; and he gives a signed estimate beforehand for any supplementary expenses that may follow. I can tell you (this is, of course, strictly between ourselves) that the authorities at my office took his advice in a Government case that puzzled the police. We approached him, of course, through persons who were to be trusted to represent us, without betraying the source from which their instructions were derived; and we found the old rascal’s advice well worth paying for. It is quite likely that he may not succeed so well in your case. Try the police, by all means; and, if they fail, why, there is Sharon as a last resort.”
This arrangement commended itself to Mr. Troy’s professional caution. He went on to Whitehall, and he tried the detective police.
They at once adopted the obvious conclusion to persons of ordinary capacity—the conclusion that Isabel was the thief.
Acting on this conviction, the authorities sent an experienced woman from the office to Lady Lydiard’s house, to examine the poor girl’s clothes and ornaments before they were packed up and sent after her to her aunt’s. The search led to nothing. The only objects of any value that were discovered had been presents from Lady Lydiard. No jewelers’ or milliners’ bills were among the papers found in her desk. Not a sign of secret extravagance in dress was to be seen anywhere. Defeated so far, the police proposed next to have Isabel privately watched. There might be a prodigal lover somewhere in the background, with ruin staring him in the face unless he could raise five hundred pounds. Lady Lydiard (who had only consented to the search under stress of persuasive argument from Mr. Troy) resented this ingenious idea as an insult. She declared that if Isabel was watched the girl should know of it instantly from her own lips. The police listened with perfect resignation and decorum, and politely shifted their ground. A certain suspicion (they remarked) always rested in cases of this sort on the servants. Would her Ladyship object to private inquiries into the characters and proceedings of the servants? Her Ladyship instantly objected, in the most positive terms. Thereupon the “Inspector” asked for a minute’s private conversation with Mr. Troy. “The thief is certainly a member of Lady Lydiard’s household,” this functionary remarked, in his politely-positive way. “If her Ladyship persists in refusing to let us make the necessary inquiries, our hands are tied, and the case comes to an end through no fault of ours. If her Ladyship changes her mind, perhaps you will drop me a line, sir, to that effect. Good-morning.”
So the experiment of consulting the police came to an untimely end. The one result obtained was the expression of purblind opinion by the authorities of the detective department which pointed to Isabel, or to one of the servants, as the undiscovered thief. Thinking the matter over in the retirement of his own office—and not forgetting his promise to Isabel to leave no means untried of establishing her innocence—Mr. Troy could see but one alternative left to him. He took up his pen, and wrote to his friend at the Government office. There was nothing for it now but to run the risk, and try Old Sharon.
THE next day, Mr. Troy (taking Robert Moody with him as a valuable witness) rang the bell at the mean and dirty lodging-house in which Old Sharon received the clients who stood in need of his advice.
They were led up stairs to a back room on the second floor of the house. Entering the room, they discovered through a thick cloud of tobacco smoke, a small, fat, bald-headed, dirty, old man, in an arm-chair, robed in a tattered flannel dressing-gown, with a short pipe in his mouth, a pug-dog on his lap, and a French novel in his hands.
“Is it business?” asked Old Sharon, speaking in a hoarse, asthmatical voice, and fixing a pair of bright, shameless, black eyes attentively on the two visitors.
“Itisbusiness,” Mr. Troy answered, looking at the old rogue who had disgraced an honorable profession, as he might have looked at a reptile which had just risen rampant at his feet. “What is your fee for a consultation?”
“You give me a guinea, and I’ll give you half an hour.” With this reply Old Sharon held out his unwashed hand across the rickety ink-splashed table at which he was sitting.
Mr. Troy would not have touched him with the tips of his own fingers for a thousand pounds. He laid the guinea on the table.
Old Sharon burst into a fierce laugh—a laugh strangely accompanied by a frowning contraction of his eyebrows, and a frightful exhibition of the whole inside of his mouth. “I’m not clean enough for you—eh?” he said, with an appearance of being very much amused. “There’s a dirty old man described in this book that is a little like me.” He held up his French novel. “Have you read it? A capital story—well put together. Ah, you haven’t read it? You have got a pleasure to come. I say, do you mind tobacco-smoke? I think faster while I smoke—that’s all.”
Mr. Troy’s respectable hand waved a silent permission to smoke, given under dignified protest.
“All right,” said Old Sharon. “Now, get on.”
He laid himself back in his chair, and puffed out his smoke, with eyes lazily half closed, like the eyes of the pug-dog on his lap. At that moment, indeed there was a curious resemblance between the two. They both seemed to be preparing themselves, in the same idle way, for the same comfortable nap.
Mr. Troy stated the circumstances under which the five hundred pound note had disappeared, in clear and consecutive narrative. When he had done, Old Sharon suddenly opened his eyes. The pug-dog suddenly opened his eyes. Old Sharon looked hard at Mr. Troy. The pug looked hard at Mr. Troy. Old Sharon spoke. The pug growled.
“I know who you are—you’re a lawyer. Don’t be alarmed! I never saw you before; and I don’t know your name. What I do know is a lawyer’s statement of facts when I hear it. Who’s this?” Old Sharon looked inquisitively at Moody as he put the question.
Mr. Troy introduced Moody as a competent witness, thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances, and ready and willing to answer any questions relating to them. Old Sharon waited a little, smoking hard and thinking hard. “Now, then!” he burst out in his fiercely sudden way. “I’m going to get to the root of the matter.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, and began his examination of Moody. Heartily as Mr. Troy despised and disliked the old rogue, he listened with astonishment and admiration—literally extorted from him by the marvelous ability with which the questions were adapted to the end in view. In a quarter of an hour Old Sharon had extracted from the witness everything, literally everything down to the smallest detail, that Moody could tell him. Having now, in his own phrase, “got to the root of the matter,” he relighted his pipe with a grunt of satisfaction, and laid himself back in his old armchair.
“Well?” said Mr. Troy. “Have you formed your opinion?”
“Yes; I’ve formed my opinion.”
“What is it?”
Instead of replying, Old Sharon winked confidentially at Mr. Troy, and put a question on his side.
“I say! is a ten-pound note much of an object to you?”
“It depends on what the money is wanted for,” answered Mr. Troy.
“Look here,” said Old Sharon; “I give you an opinion for your guinea; but, mind this, it’s an opinion founded on hearsay—and you know as a lawyer what that is worth. Venture your ten pounds—in plain English, pay me for my time and trouble in a baffling and difficult case—and I’ll give you an opinion founded on my own experience.”
“Explain yourself a little more clearly,” said Mr. Troy. “What do you guarantee to tell us if we venture the ten pounds?”
“I guarantee to name the person, or the persons, on whom the suspicion really rests. And if you employ me after that, I guarantee (before you pay me a halfpenny more) to prove that I am right by laying my hand on the thief.”
“Let us have the guinea opinion first,” said Mr. Troy.
Old Sharon made another frightful exhibition of the whole inside of his mouth; his laugh was louder and fiercer than ever. “I like you!” he said to Mr. Troy, “you are so devilish fond of your money. Lord! how rich you must be! Now listen. Here’s the guinea opinion: Suspect, in this case, the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly fall.”
Moody, listening attentively, started, and changed color at those last words. Mr. Troy looked thoroughly disappointed and made no attempt to conceal it.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“All?” retorted the cynical vagabond. “You’re a pretty lawyer! What more can I say, when I don’t know for certain whether the witness who has given me my information has misled me or not? Have I spoken to the girl and formed my own opinion? No! Have I been introduced among the servants (as errand-boy, or to clean the boots and shoes, or what not), and have I formed my own judgement ofthem?No! I take your opinions for granted, and I tell you how I should set to work myself if they weremyopinions too—and that’s a guinea’s-worth, a devilish good guinea’s-worth to a rich man like you!”
Old Sharon’s logic produced a certain effect on Mr. Troy, in spite of himself. It was smartly put from his point of view—there was no denying that.
“Even if I consented to your proposal,” he said, “I should object to your annoying the young lady with impertinent questions, or to your being introduced as a spy into a respectable house.”
Old Sharon doubled his dirty fists and drummed with them on the rickety table in a comical frenzy of impatience while Mr. Troy was speaking.
“What the devil do you know about my way of doing my business?” he burst out when the lawyer had done. “One of us two is talking like a born idiot—and (mind this) it isn’t me. Look here! Your young lady goes out for a walk, and she meets with a dirty, shabby old beggar—I look like a shabby old beggar already, don’t I? Very good. This dirty old wretch whines and whimpers and tells a long story, and gets sixpence out of the girl—and knows her by that time, inside and out, as well as if he had made her—and, mark! hasn’t asked her a single question, and, instead of annoying her, has made her happy in the performance of a charitable action. Stop a bit! I haven’t done with you yet. Who blacks your boots and shoes? Look here!” He pushed his pug-dog off his lap, dived under the table, appeared again with an old boot and a bottle of blackening, and set to work with tigerish activity. “I’m going out for a walk, you know, and I may as well make myself smart.” With that announcement, he began to sing over his work—a song of sentiment, popular in England in the early part of the present century—“She’s all my fancy painted her; she’s lovely, she’s divine; but her heart it is another’s; and it never can be mine! Too-ral-loo-ral-loo’. I like a love-song. Brush away! brush away! till I see my own pretty face in the blacking. Hey! Here’s a nice, harmless, jolly old man! sings and jokes over his work, and makes the kitchen quite cheerful. What’s that you say? He’s a stranger, and don’t talk to him too freely. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak in that way of a poor old fellow with one foot in the grave. Mrs. Cook will give him a nice bit of dinner in the scullery; and John Footman will look out an old coat for him. And when he’s heard everything he wants to hear, and doesn’t come back again the next day to his work—what do they think of it in the servants’ hall? Do they say, ‘We’ve had a spy among us!’ Yah! you know better than that, by this time. The cheerful old man has been run over in the street, or is down with the fever, or has turned up his toes in the parish dead-house—that’s what they say in the servants’ hall. Try me in your own kitchen, and see if your servants take me for a spy. Come, come, Mr. Lawyer! out with your ten pounds, and don’t waste any more precious time about it!”
“I will consider and let you know,” said Mr. Troy.
Old Sharon laughed more ferociously than ever, and hobbled round the table in a great hurry to the place at which Moody was sitting. He laid one hand on the steward’s shoulder, and pointed derisively with the other to Mr. Troy.
“I say, Mr. Silent-man! Bet you five pounds I never hear of that lawyer again!”
Silently attentive all through the interview (except when he was answering questions), Moody only replied in the fewest words. “I don’t bet,” was all he said. He showed no resentment at Sharon’s familiarity, and he appeared to find no amusement in Sharon’s extraordinary talk. The old vagabond seemed actually to produce a serious impression on him! When Mr. Troy set the example of rising to go, he still kept his seat, and looked at the lawyer as if he regretted leaving the atmosphere of tobacco smoke reeking in the dirty room.
“Have you anything to say before we go?” Mr. Troy asked.
Moody rose slowly and looked at Old Sharon. “Not just now, sir,” he replied, looking away again, after a moment’s reflection.
Old Sharon interpreted Moody’s look and Moody’s reply from his own peculiar point of view. He suddenly drew the steward away into a corner of the room.
“I say!” he began, in a whisper. “Upon your solemn word of honor, you know—are you as rich as the lawyer there?”
“Certainly not.”
“Look here! It’s half price to a poor man. If you feel like coming back, on your own account—five pounds will do fromyou. There! there! Think of it!—think of it!”
“Now, then!” said Mr. Troy, waiting for his companion, with the door open in his hand. He looked back at Sharon when Moody joined him. The old vagabond was settled again in his armchair, with his dog in his lap, his pipe in his mouth, and his French novel in his hand; exhibiting exactly the picture of frowzy comfort which he had presented when his visitors first entered the room.
“Good-day,” said Mr. Troy, with haughty condescension.
“Don’t interrupt me!” rejoined Old Sharon, absorbed in his novel. “You’ve had your guinea’s worth. Lord! what a lovely book this is! Don’t interrupt me!”
“Impudent scoundrel!” said Mr. Troy, when he and Moody were in the street again. “What could my friend mean by recommending him? Fancy his expecting me to trust him with ten pounds! I consider even the guinea completely thrown away.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Moody, “I don’t quite agree with you there.”
“What! you don’t mean to tell me you understand that oracular sentence of his—‘Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly fall.’ Rubbish!”
“I don’t say I understand it, sir. I only say it has set me thinking.”
“Thinking of what? Do your suspicions point to the thief?”
“If you will please to excuse me, Mr. Troy, I should like to wait a while before I answer that.”
Mr. Troy suddenly stood still, and eyed his companion a little distrustfully.
“Are you going to turn detective-policeman on your own account?” he asked.
“There’s nothing I won’t turn to, and try, to help Miss Isabel in this matter,” Moody answered, firmly. “I have saved a few hundred pounds in Lady Lydiard’s service, and I am ready to spend every farthing of it, if I can only discover the thief.”
Mr. Troy walked on again. “Miss Isabel seems to have a good friend in you,” he said. He was (perhaps unconsciously) a little offended by the independent tone in which the steward spoke, after he had himself engaged to take the vindication of the girl’s innocence into his own hands.
“Miss Isabel has a devoted servant and slave in me!” Moody answered, with passionate enthusiasm.
“Very creditable; I haven’t a word to say against it,” Mr. Troy rejoined. “But don’t forget that the young lady has other devoted friends besides you. I am her devoted friend, for instance—I have promised to serve her, and I mean to keep my word. You will excuse me for adding that my experience and discretion are quite as likely to be useful to her as your enthusiasm. I know the world well enough to be careful in trusting strangers. It will do you no harm, Mr. Moody, to follow my example.”
Moody accepted his reproof with becoming patience and resignation. “If you have anything to propose, sir, that will be of service to Miss Isabel,” he said, “I shall be happy if I can assist you in the humblest capacity.”
“And if not?” Mr. Troy inquired, conscious of having nothing to propose as he asked the question.
“In that case, sir, I must take my own course, and blame nobody but myself if it leads me astray.”
Mr. Troy said no more: he parted from Moody at the next turning.
Pursuing the subject privately in his own mind, he decided on taking the earliest opportunity of visiting Isabel at her aunt’s house, and on warning her, in her future intercourse with Moody, not to trust too much to the steward’s discretion. “I haven’t a doubt,” thought the lawyer, “of what he means to do next. The infatuated fool is going back to Old Sharon!”
RETURNING to his office, Mr. Troy discovered, among the correspondence that was waiting for him, a letter from the very person whose welfare was still the uppermost subject in his mind. Isabel Miller wrote in these terms:
“Dear Sir—My aunt, Miss Pink, is very desirous of consulting you professionally at the earliest opportunity. Although South Morden is within little more than half an hour’s railway ride from London, Miss Pink does not presume to ask you to visit her, being well aware of the value of your time. Will you, therefore, be so kind as to let me know when it will be convenient to you to receive my aunt at your office in London? Believe me, dear sir, respectfully yours, ISABEL MILLER. P.S.—I am further instructed to say that the regrettable event at Lady Lydiard’s house is the proposed subject of the consultation. The Lawn, South Morden. Thursday.”
Mr. Troy smiled as he read the letter. “Too formal for a young girl!” he said to himself. “Every word of it has been dictated by Miss Pink.” He was not long in deciding what course he should take. There was a pressing necessity for cautioning Isabel, and here was his opportunity. He sent for his head clerk, and looked at his list of engagements for the day. There was nothing set down in the book which the clerk was not quite as well able to do as the master. Mr. Troy consulted his railway-guide, ordered his cab, and caught the next train to South Morden.
South Morden was then (and remains to this day) one of those primitive agricultural villages, passed over by the march of modern progress, which are still to be found in the near neighborhood of London. Only the slow trains stopped at the station and there was so little to do that the station-master and his porter grew flowers on the embankment, and trained creepers over the waiting-room window. Turning your back on the railway, and walking along the one street of South Morden, you found yourself in the old England of two centuries since. Gabled cottages, with fast-closed windows; pigs and poultry in quiet possession of the road; the venerable church surrounded by its shady burial-ground; the grocer’s shop which sold everything, and the butcher’s shop which sold nothing; the scarce inhabitants who liked a good look at a stranger, and the unwashed children who were pictures of dirty health; the clash of the iron-chained bucket in the public well, and the thump of the falling nine-pins in the skittle-ground behind the public-house; the horse-pond on the one bit of open ground, and the old elm-tree with the wooden seat round it on the other—these were some of the objects that you saw, and some of the noises that you heard in South Morden, as you passed from one end of the village to the other.
About half a mile beyond the last of the old cottages, modern England met you again under the form of a row of little villas, set up by an adventurous London builder who had bought the land a bargain. Each villa stood in its own little garden, and looked across a stony road at the meadow lands and softly-rising wooded hills beyond. Each villa faced you in the sunshine with the horrid glare of new red brick, and forced its nonsensical name on your attention, traced in bright paint on the posts of its entrance gate. Consulting the posts as he advanced, Mr. Troy arrived in due course of time at the villa called The Lawn, which derived its name apparently from a circular patch of grass in front of the house. The gate resisting his efforts to open it, he rang the bell.
Admitted by a trim, clean, shy little maid-servant, Mr. Troy looked about him in amazement. Turn which way he might, he found himself silently confronted by posted and painted instructions to visitors, which forbade him to do this, and commanded him to do that, at every step of his progress from the gate to the house. On the side of the lawn a label informed him that he was not to walk on the grass. On the other side a painted hand pointed along a boundary-wall to an inscription which warned him to go that way if he had business in the kitchen. On the gravel walk at the foot of the housesteps words, neatly traced in little white shells, reminded him not to “forget the scraper”. On the doorstep he was informed, in letters of lead, that he was “Welcome!” On the mat in the passage bristly black words burst on his attention, commanding him to “wipe his shoes.” Even the hat-stand in the hall was not allowed to speak for itself; it had “Hats and Cloaks” inscribed on it, and it issued its directions imperatively in the matter of your wet umbrella—“Put it here!”
Giving the trim little servant his card, Mr. Troy was introduced to a reception-room on the lower floor. Before he had time to look round him the door was opened again from without, and Isabel stole into the room on tiptoe. She looked worn and anxious. When she shook hands with the old lawyer the charming smile that he remembered so well was gone.
“Don’t say you have seen me,” she whispered. “I am not to come into the room till my aunt sends for me. Tell me two things before I run away again. How is Lady Lydiard? And have you discovered the thief?”
“Lady Lydiard was well when I last saw her; and we have not yet succeeded in discovering the thief.” Having answered the questions in those terms, Mr. Troy decided on cautioning Isabel on the subject of the steward while he had the chance. “One question on my side,” he said, holding her back from the door by the arm. “Do you expect Moody to visit you here?”
“I amsurehe will visit me,” Isabel answered warmly. “He has promised to come here at my request. I never knew what a kind heart Robert Moody had till this misfortune fell on me. My aunt, who is not easily taken with strangers, respects and admires him. I can’t tell you how good he was to me on the journey here—and how kindly, how nobly, he spoke to me when we parted.” She paused, and turned her head away. The tears were rising in her eyes. “In my situation,” she said faintly, “kindness is very keenly felt. Don’t notice me, Mr. Troy.”
The lawyer waited a moment to let her recover herself.
“I agree entirely, my dear, in your opinion of Moody,” he said. “At the same time, I think it right to warn you that his zeal in your service may possibly outrun his discretion. He may feel too confidently about penetrating the mystery of the missing money; and, unless you are on your guard, he may raise false hopes in you when you next see him. Listen to any advice that he may give you, by all means. But, before you decide on being guided by his opinion, consult my older experience, and hear what I have to say on the subject. Don’t suppose that I am attempting to make you distrust this good friend,” he added, noticing the look of uneasy surprise which Isabel fixed on him. “No such idea is in my mind. I only warn you that Moody’s eagerness to be of service to you may mislead him. You understand me.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Isabel coldly; “I understand you. Please let me go now. My aunt will be down directly; and she must not find me here.” She curtseyed with distant respect, and left the room.
“So much for trying to put two ideas together into a girl’s mind!” thought Mr. Troy, when he was alone again. “The little fool evidently thinks I am jealous of Moody’s place in her estimation. Well! I have done my duty—and I can do no more.”
He looked round the room. Not a chair was out of its place, not a speck of dust was to be seen. The brightly-perfect polish of the table made your eyes ache; the ornaments on it looked as if they had never been touched by mortal hand; the piano was an object for distant admiration, not an instrument to be played on; the carpet made Mr. Troy look nervously at the soles of his shoes; and the sofa (protected by layers of white crochet-work) said as plainly as if in words, “Sit on me if you dare!” Mr. Troy retreated to a bookcase at the further end of the room. The books fitted the shelves to such absolute perfection that he had some difficulty in taking one of them out. When he had succeeded, he found himself in possession of a volume of the History of England. On the fly-leaf he encountered another written warning:—“This book belongs to Miss Pink’s Academy for Young Ladies, and is not to be removed from the library.” The date, which was added, referred to a period of ten years since. Miss Pink now stood revealed as a retired schoolmistress, and Mr. Troy began to understand some of the characteristic peculiarities of that lady’s establishment which had puzzled him up to the present time.
He had just succeeded in putting the book back again when the door opened once more, and Isabel’s aunt entered the room.
If Miss Pink could, by any possible conjuncture of circumstances, have disappeared mysteriously from her house and her friends, the police would have found the greatest difficulty in composing the necessary description of the missing lady. The acutest observer could have discovered nothing that was noticeable or characteristic in her personal appearance. The pen of the present writer portrays her in despair by a series of negatives. She was not young, she was not old; she was neither tall nor short, nor stout nor thin; nobody could call her features attractive, and nobody could call them ugly; there was nothing in her voice, her expression, her manner, or her dress that differed in any appreciable degree from the voice, expression, manner, and dress of five hundred thousand other single ladies of her age and position in the world. If you had asked her to describe herself, she would have answered, “I am a gentlewoman”; and if you had further inquired which of her numerous accomplishments took highest rank in her own esteem, she would have replied, “My powers of conversation.” For the rest, she was Miss Pink, of South Morden; and, when that has been said, all has been said.
“Pray be seated, sir. We have had a beautiful day, after the long-continued wet weather. I am told that the season is very unfavorable for wall-fruit. May I offer you some refreshment after your journey?” In these terms and in the smoothest of voices, Miss Pink opened the interview.
Mr. Troy made a polite reply, and added a few strictly conventional remarks on the beauty of the neighborhood. Not even a lawyer could sit in Miss Pink’s presence, and hear Miss Pink’s conversation, without feeling himself called upon (in the nursery phrase) to “be on his best behavior”.
“It is extremely kind of you, Mr. Troy, to favor me with this visit,” Miss Pink resumed. “I am well aware that the time of professional gentlemen is of especial value to them; and I will therefore ask you to excuse me if I proceed abruptly to the subject on which I desire to consult your experience.”
Here the lady modestly smoothed out her dress over her knees, and the lawyer made a bow. Miss Pink’s highly-trained conversation had perhaps one fault—it was not, strictly speaking, conversation at all. In its effect on her hearers it rather resembled the contents of a fluently conventional letter, read aloud.
“The circumstances under which my niece Isabel has left Lady Lydiard’s house,” Miss Pink proceeded, “are so indescribably painful—I will go further, I will say so deeply humiliating—that I have forbidden her to refer to them again in my presence, or to mention them in the future to any living creature besides myself. You are acquainted with those circumstances, Mr. Troy; and you will understand my indignation when I first learnt that my sister’s child had been suspected of theft. I have not the honor of being acquainted with Lady Lydiard. She is not a Countess, I believe? Just so! Her husband was only a Baron. I am not acquainted with Lady Lydiard; and I will not trust myself to say what I think of her conduct to my niece.”
“Pardon me, madam,” Mr. Troy interposed. “Before you say any more about Lady Lydiard, I really must beg leave to observe—”
“Pardonme,” Miss Pink rejoined. “I never form a hasty judgment. Lady Lydiard’s conduct is beyond the reach of any defense, no matter how ingenious it may be. You may not be aware, sir, that in receiving my niece under her roof her Ladyship was receiving a gentlewoman by birth as well as by education. My late lamented sister was the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England. I need hardly remind you that, as such, she was a born lady. Under favoring circumstances, Isabel’s maternal grandfather might have been Archbishop of Canterbury, and have taken precedence of the whole House of Peers, the Princes of the blood Royal alone excepted. I am not prepared to say that my niece is equally well connected on her father’s side. My sister surprised—I will not add shocked—us when she married a chemist. At the same time, a chemist is not a tradesman. He is a gentleman at one end of the profession of Medicine, and a titled physician is a gentleman at the other end. That is all. In inviting Isabel to reside with her, Lady Lydiard, I repeat, was bound to remember that she was associating herself with a young gentlewoman. She hasnotremembered this, which is one insult; and she has suspected my niece of theft, which is another.”
Miss Pink paused to take breath. Mr. Troy made a second attempt to get a hearing.
“Will you kindly permit me, madam, to say a few words?”
“No!” said Miss Pink, asserting the most immovable obstinacy under the blandest politeness of manner. “Your time, Mr. Troy, is really too valuable! Not even your trained intellect can excuse conduct which is manifestlyinexcusable on the face of it. Now you know my opinion of Lady Lydiard, you will not be surprised to hear that I decline to trust her Ladyship. She may, or she may not, cause the necessary inquiries to be made for the vindication of my niece’s character. In a matter so serious as this—I may say, in a duty which I owe to the memories of my sister and my parents—I will not leave the responsibility to Lady Lydiard. I will take it on myself. Let me add that I am able to pay the necessary expenses. The earlier years of my life, Mr. Troy, have been passed in the tuition of young ladies. I have been happy in meriting the confidence of parents; and I have been strict in observing the golden rules of economy. On my retirement, I have been able to invest a modest, a very modest, little fortune in the Funds. A portion of it is at the service of my niece for the recovery of her good name; and I desire to place the necessary investigation confidentially in your hands. You are acquainted with the case, and the case naturally goes to you. I could not prevail on myself—I really could not prevail on myself—to mention it to a stranger. That is the business on which I wished to consult you. Please say nothing more about Lady Lydiard—the subject is inexpressibly disagreeable to me. I will only trespass on your kindness to tell me if I have succeeded in making myself understood.”
Miss Pink leaned back in her chair, at the exact angle permitted by the laws of propriety; rested her left elbow on the palm of her right hand, and lightly supported her cheek with her forefinger and thumb. In this position she waited Mr. Troy’s answer—the living picture of human obstinacy in its most respectable form.
If Mr. Troy had not been a lawyer—in other words, if he had not been professionally capable of persisting in his own course, in the face of every conceivable difficulty and discouragement—Miss Pink might have remained in undisturbed possession of her own opinions. As it was, Mr. Troy had got his hearing at last; and no matter how obstinately she might close her eyes to it, Miss Pink was now destined to have the other side of the case presented to her view.
“I am sincerely obliged to you, madam, for the expression of your confidence in me,” Mr. Troy began; “at the same time, I must beg you to excuse me if I decline to accept your proposal.”
Miss Pink had not expected to receive such an answer as this. The lawyer’s brief refusal surprised and annoyed her.
“Why do you decline to assist me?” she asked.
“Because,” answered Mr. Troy, “my services are already engaged, in Miss Isabel’s interest, by a client whom I have served for more than twenty years. My client is—”
Miss Pink anticipated the coming disclosure. “You need not trouble yourself, sir, to mention your client’s name,” she said.
“My client,” persisted Mr. Troy, “loves Miss Isabel dearly.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” Miss Pink interposed.
“And believes in Miss Isabel’s innocence,” proceeded the irrepressible lawyer, “as firmly as you believe in it yourself.”
Miss Pink (being human) had a temper; and Mr. Troy had found his way to it.
“If Lady Lydiard believes in my niece’s innocence,” said Miss Pink, suddenly sitting bolt upright in her chair, “why has my niece been compelled, in justice to herself, to leave Lady Lydiard’s house?”
“You will admit, madam,” Mr. Troy answered cautiously, “that we are all of us liable, in this wicked world, to be the victims of appearances. Your niece is a victim—an innocent victim. She wisely withdraws from Lady Lydiard’s house until appearances are proved to be false and her position is cleared up.”
Miss Pink had her reply ready. “That is simply acknowledging, in other words, that my niece is suspected. I am only a woman, Mr. Troy—but it is not quite so easy to mislead me as you seem to suppose.”
Mr. Troy’s temper was admirably trained. But it began to acknowledge that Miss Pink’s powers of irritation could sting to some purpose.
“No intention of misleading you, madam, has ever crossed my mind,” he rejoined warmly. “As for your niece, I can tell you this. In all my experience of Lady Lydiard, I never saw her so distressed as she was when Miss Isabel left the house!”
“Indeed!” said Miss Pink, with an incredulous smile. “In my rank of life, when we feel distressed about a person, we do our best to comfort that person by a kind letter or an early visit. But then I am not a lady of title.”
“Lady Lydiard engaged herself to call on Miss Isabel in my hearing,” said Mr. Troy. “Lady Lydiard is the most generous woman living!”
“Lady Lydiard is here!” cried a joyful voice on the other side of the door.
At the same moment, Isabel burst into the room in a state of excitement which actually ignored the formidable presence of Miss Pink. “I beg your pardon, aunt! I was upstairs at the window, and I saw the carriage stop at the gate. And Tommie has come, too! The darling saw me at the window!” cried the poor girl, her eyes sparkling with delight as a perfect explosion of barking made itself heard over the tramp of horses’ feet and the crash of carriage wheels outside.
Miss Pink rose slowly, with a dignity that looked capable of adequately receiving—not one noble lady only, but the whole peerage of England.
“Control yourself, dear Isabel,” she said. “No well-bred young lady permits herself to become unduly excited. Stand by my side—a little behind me.”
Isabel obeyed. Mr. Troy kept his place, and privately enjoyed his triumph over Miss Pink. If Lady Lydiard had been actually in league with him, she could not have chosen a more opportune time for her visit. A momentary interval passed. The carriage drew up at the door; the horses trampled on the gravel; the bell rung madly; the uproar of Tommie, released from the carriage and clamoring to be let in, redoubled its fury. Never before had such an unruly burst of noises invaded the tranquility of Miss Pink’s villa!