Five days after the above-mentioned dialogue took place they went to
London, and, with scarcely a minute’s pause, to the solicitors’ offices
in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
They alighted opposite one of the characteristic entrances about the
place--a gate which was never, and could never be, closed, flanked by
lamp-standards carrying no lamp. Rust was the only active agent to be
seen there at this time of the day and year. The palings along the
front were rusted away at their base to the thinness of wires, and the
successive coats of paint, with which they were overlaid in bygone
days, had been completely undermined by the same insidious canker, which
lifted off the paint in flakes, leaving the raw surface of the iron on
palings, standards, and gate hinges, of a staring blood-red.
But once inside the railings the picture changed. The court and offices
were a complete contrast to the grand ruin of the outwork which enclosed
them. Well-painted respectability extended over, within, and around the
doorstep; and in the carefully swept yard not a particle of dust was
visible.
Mr. Nyttleton, who had just come up from Margate, where he was staying
with his family, was standing at the top of his own staircase as the
pair ascended. He politely took them inside.
‘Is there a comfortable room in which this young lady can sit during our
interview?’ said Miss Aldclyffe.
It was rather a favourite habit of hers to make much of Cytherea when
they were out, and snub her for it afterwards when they got home.
‘Certainly--Mr. Tayling’s.’ Cytherea was shown into an inner room.
Social definitions are all made relatively: an absolute datum is only
imagined. The small gentry about Knapwater seemed unpractised to Miss
Aldclyffe, Miss Aldclyffe herself seemed unpractised to Mr. Nyttleton’s
experienced old eyes.
‘Now then,’ the lady said, when she was alone with the lawyer; ‘what is
the result of our advertisement?’
It was late summer; the estate-agency, building, engineering, and
surveying worlds were dull. There were forty-five replies to the
advertisement.
Mr. Nyttleton spread them one by one before Miss Aldclyffe. ‘You will
probably like to read some of them yourself, madam?’ he said.
‘Yes, certainly,’ said she.
‘I will not trouble you with those which are from persons manifestly
unfit at first sight,’ he continued; and began selecting from the heap
twos and threes which he had marked, collecting others into his hand.
‘The man we want lies among these, if my judgment doesn’t deceive me,
and from them it would be advisable to select a certain number to be
communicated with.’
‘I should like to see every one--only just to glance them over--exactly
as they came,’ she said suasively.
He looked as if he thought this a waste of his time, but dismissing his
sentiment unfolded each singly and laid it before her. As he laid them
out, it struck him that she studied them quite as rapidly as he could
spread them. He slyly glanced up from the outer corner of his eye to
hers, and noticed that all she did was look at the name at the bottom of
the letter, and then put the enclosure aside without further ceremony.
He thought this an odd way of inquiring into the merits of forty-five
men who at considerable trouble gave in detail reasons why they believed
themselves well qualified for a certain post. She came to the final one,
and put it down with the rest.
Then the lady said that in her opinion it would be best to get as many
replies as they possibly could before selecting--‘to give us a wider
choice. What do you think, Mr. Nyttleton?’
It seemed to him, he said, that a greater number than those they already
had would scarcely be necessary, and if they waited for more, there
would be this disadvantage attending it, that some of those they now
could command would possibly not be available.
‘Never mind, we will run that risk,’ said Miss Aldclyffe. ‘Let the
advertisement be inserted once more, and then we will certainly settle
the matter.’
Mr. Nyttleton bowed, and seemed to think Miss Aldclyffe, for a single
woman, and one who till so very recently had never concerned herself
with business of any kind, a very meddlesome client. But she was rich,
and handsome still. ‘She’s a new broom in estate-management as yet,’
he thought. ‘She will soon get tired of this,’ and he parted from her
without a sentiment which could mar his habitual blandness.
The two ladies then proceeded westward. Dismissing the cab in Waterloo
Place, they went along Pall Mall on foot, where in place of the usual
well-dressed clubbists--rubicund with alcohol--were to be seen, in linen
pinafores, flocks of house-painters pallid from white lead. When they
had reached the Green Park, Cytherea proposed that they should sit down
awhile under the young elms at the brow of the hill. This they did--the
growl of Piccadilly on their left hand--the monastic seclusion of the
Palace on their right: before them, the clock tower of the Houses
of Parliament, standing forth with a metallic lustre against a livid
Lambeth sky.
Miss Aldclyffe still carried in her hand a copy of the newspaper, and
while Cytherea had been interesting herself in the picture around,
glanced again at the advertisement.
She heaved a slight sigh, and began to fold it up again. In the action
her eye caught sight of two consecutive advertisements on the cover,
one relating to some lecture on Art, and addressed to members of the
Institute of Architects. The other emanated from the same source, but
was addressed to the public, and stated that the exhibition of drawings
at the Institute’s rooms would close at the end of that week.
Her eye lighted up. She sent Cytherea back to the hotel in a cab, then
turned round by Piccadilly into Bond Street, and proceeded to the rooms
of the Institute. The secretary was sitting in the lobby. After making
her payment, and looking at a few of the drawings on the walls, in the
company of three gentlemen, the only other visitors to the exhibition,
she turned back and asked if she might be allowed to see a list of the
members. She was a little connected with the architectural world, she
said, with a smile, and was interested in some of the names.
‘Here it is, madam,’ he replied, politely handing her a pamphlet
containing the names.
Miss Aldclyffe turned the leaves till she came to the letter M. The name
she hoped to find there was there, with the address appended, as was the
case with all the rest.
The address was at some chambers in a street not far from Charing Cross.
‘Chambers,’ as a residence, had always been assumed by the lady to imply
the condition of a bachelor. She murmured two words, ‘There still.’
Another request had yet to be made, but it was of a more noticeable kind
than the first, and might compromise the secrecy with which she wished
to act throughout this episode. Her object was to get one of the
envelopes lying on the secretary’s table, stamped with the die of the
Institute; and in order to get it she was about to ask if she might
write a note.
But the secretary’s back chanced to be turned, and he now went towards
one of the men at the other end of the room, who had called him to ask
some question relating to an etching on the wall. Quick as thought, Miss
Aldclyffe stood before the table, slipped her hand behind her, took one
of the envelopes and put it in her pocket.
She sauntered round the rooms for two or three minutes longer, then
withdrew and returned to her hotel.
Here she cut the Knapwater advertisement from the paper, put it into the
envelope she had stolen, embossed with the society’s stamp, and directed
it in a round clerkly hand to the address she had seen in the list of
members’ names submitted to her:--
AENEAS MANSTON, ESQ.,
WYKEHAM CHAMBERS,
SPRING GARDENS.
This ended her first day’s work in London.