The next morning but one was appointed for the interviews, which were to
be at the lawyer’s offices. Mr. Nyttleton and Mr. Tayling were both in
town for the day, and the candidates were admitted one by one into a
private room. In the window recess was seated Miss Aldclyffe, wearing
her veil down.
The lawyer had, in his letters to the selected number, timed each
candidate at an interval of ten or fifteen minutes from those preceding
and following. They were shown in as they arrived, and had short
conversations with Mr. Nyttleton--terse, and to the point. Miss
Aldclyffe neither moved nor spoke during this proceeding; it might have
been supposed that she was quite unmindful of it, had it not been
for what was revealed by a keen penetration of the veil covering her
countenance--the rays from two bright black eyes, directed towards the
lawyer and his interlocutor.
Springrove came fifth; Manston seventh. When the examination of all was
ended, and the last man had retired, Nyttleton, again as at the former
time, blandly asked his client which of the eight she personally
preferred. ‘I still think the fifth we spoke to, Springrove, the man
whose letter I pounced upon at first, to be by far the best qualified,
in short, most suitable generally.’
‘I am sorry to say that I differ from you; I lean to my first notion
still--that Mr.--Mr. Manston is most desirable in tone and bearing, and
even specifically; I think he would suit me best in the long-run.’
Mr. Nyttleton looked out of the window at the whitened wall of the
court.
‘Of course, madam, your opinion may be perfectly sound and reliable;
a sort of instinct, I know, often leads ladies by a short cut to
conclusions truer than those come to by men after laborious round-about
calculations, based on long experience. I must say I shouldn’t recommend
him.’
‘Why, pray?’
‘Well, let us look first at his letter of answer to the advertisement.
He didn’t reply till the last insertion; that’s one thing. His letter is
bold and frank in tone, so bold and frank that the second thought after
reading it is that not honesty, but unscrupulousness of conscience
dictated it. It is written in an indifferent mood, as if he felt that he
was humbugging us in his statement that he was the right man for such
an office, that he tried hard to get it only as a matter of form which
required that he should neglect no opportunity that came in his way.’
‘You may be right, Mr. Nyttleton, but I don’t quite see the grounds of
your reasoning.’
‘He has been, as you perceive, almost entirely used to the office duties
of a city architect, the experience we don’t want. You want a man
whose acquaintance with rural landed properties is more practical
and closer--somebody who, if he has not filled exactly such an office
before, has lived a country life, knows the ins and outs of country
tenancies, building, farming, and so on.’
‘He’s by far the most intellectual looking of them all.’
‘Yes; he may be--your opinion, Miss Aldclyffe, is worth more than mine
in that matter. And more than you say, he is a man of parts--his brain
power would soon enable him to master details and fit him for the post,
I don’t much doubt that. But to speak clearly’ (here his words started
off at a jog-trot) ‘I wouldn’t run the risk of placing the management
of an estate of mine in his hands on any account whatever. There, that’s
flat and plain, madam.’
‘But, definitely,’ she said, with a show of impatience, ‘what is your
reason?’
‘He is a voluptuary with activity; which is a very bad form of man--as
bad as it is rare.’
‘Oh. Thank you for your explicit statement, Mr. Nyttleton,’ said Miss
Aldclyffe, starting a little and flushing with displeasure.
Mr. Nyttleton nodded slightly, as a sort of neutral motion, simply
signifying a receipt of the information, good or bad.
‘And I really think it is hardly worth while to trouble you further
in this,’ continued the lady. ‘He’s quite good enough for a little
insignificant place like mine at Knapwater; and I know that I could not
get on with one of the others for a single month. We’ll try him.’
‘Certainly, Miss Aldclyffe,’ said the lawyer. And Mr. Manston was
written to, to the effect that he was the successful competitor.
‘Did you see how unmistakably her temper was getting the better of her,
that minute you were in the room?’ said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their
client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody’s
character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable
slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, the
Improver, into honourable circumspection.
We frequently find that the quality which, conjoined with the simplicity
of the child, is vice, is virtue when it pervades the knowledge of the
man.
‘She was as near as damn-it to boiling over when I added up her man,’
continued Nyttleton. ‘His handsome face is his qualification in her
eyes. They have met before; I saw that.’
‘He didn’t seem conscious of it,’ said the junior.
‘He didn’t. That was rather puzzling to me. But still, if ever a woman’s
face spoke out plainly that she was in love with a man, hers did that
she was with him. Poor old maid, she’s almost old enough to be his
mother. If that Manston’s a schemer he’ll marry her, as sure as I am
Nyttleton. Let’s hope he’s honest, however.’
‘I don’t think she’s in love with him,’ said Tayling. He had seen but
little of the pair, and yet he could not reconcile what he had noticed
in Miss Aldclyffe’s behaviour with the idea that it was the bearing of a
woman towards her lover.
‘Well, your experience of the fiery phenomenon is more recent than
mine,’ rejoined Nyttleton carelessly. ‘And you may remember the nature
of it best.’