"And the Abbé uncrossed his legs,
Took snuff, a reflective pinch.
Broke silence: 'The question begs
Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch?
The love which to one and one only has reference
Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference.'"
Faunce ate his modest luncheon at the immemorial Cock; and, after a
quarter of an hour's rest and meditation, assisted by tobacco, took
a hansom and drove to Selburne Street, which the cabman discovered,
after some research, in a labyrinth of shabby streets between the
King's Road and the Thames, to the west of the red-brick mansions
of Cheyne Walk, and all the pleasantness of fashionable Chelsea--a
wilderness of eight-roomed houses, slate roofs, narrow areas, steep
steps, dirty windows, and gutters overcharged with small children:
one of those depressing neighbourhoods which fill the stranger's
mind with a despairing pity, but where, nevertheless, there exist
worthy, hard-working people who contrive somehow to be happy, and
even comfortable--people who have their Christmas puddings and their
household affections, like the Cratchets, and who do not desire to
curse God and die.
The houses in Selburne Street were of the same pattern as most of the
other streets, and just as shabby, but a little larger. The door at No.
14 was opened by the landlady, who did not know, or apparently care,
whether Mrs. Randall was at home or out, but who bade the visitor go up
to the first-floor front and inquire.
"She's got her key," said this lady, "and I don't always hear her come
in."
Faunce went upstairs and tapped politely at the door of the front room.
"Come in, whoever you are," said a voice, with a listless melancholy in
its tone.
An odour of tobacco greeted Faunce as he opened the door, and a woman
sitting by the window threw the end of a cigarette into the street.
"Is it you, Jim?" she asked drearily, with her face towards the window;
then, turning, and seeing a stranger, she gave a cry of surprise that
had a touch of fear in it.
"What do you want?" she cried sharply, and Faunce saw that her hand
shook a little as she caught hold of a chair.
"Nerves gone. The usual thing," he thought; "drink or drugs; the usual
resource when bad luck sets in."
"I have ventured to call upon you on a matter of business, Mrs.
Randall," he said, "without writing to ask leave. But as it's a
business that may be profitable--very profitable--to yourself, I hope
you will pardon the liberty."
"Who are you?" she asked fiercely. "I don't want any of your gammon.
Who are you?"
She was a wreck. The agent had been right so far. But she was a
beautiful wreck. The brilliant colouring was faded, the cheeks were
hollow, the eyes haggard, but the perfect lines of the face were there;
and Faunce saw that she had been beautiful, and also that when she was
at her best she must have been curiously like Lady Perivale. In height,
in figure, in the poise of the head, the modelling of the throat, she
resembled her as a sister might have done.
She must have fallen upon evil days since her visit to Algiers--very
evil days. There was the pinch of poverty in her aspect, in her tawdry
morning wrapper, in the shabbily-furnished sitting-room.
"Pray don't be alarmed, madam. My business is not of an unpleasant
nature."
"I want to know who and what you are!" she said in the same tone, half
fear, half fury; "and how you had the cheek to march into my room
without sending up your name first. Do you think because I'm in cheap
lodgings I ain't a lady?"
"Your landlady told me to come upstairs, or I should not have taken
that liberty. That is my name," handing her a card, which she snatched
impatiently and looked at with a scowling brow. "I am engaged in
the interests of a lady whose social position has suffered by her
resemblance to you."
"What do you mean?"
"You were in Algiers last February with Colonel Rannock."
Her face lost colour, and her breathing quickened, as she answered--
"Well, what then?"
"You were seen by friends of my client, and mistaken for her, and the
result was a scandal which has seriously affected that lady. Now, in
the event of a libel suit, which is very likely to arise out of that
scandal, it will be in your power to put matters straight by stepping
into the witness-box, and stating that you were Colonel Rannock's
travelling companion in Algiers, and Corsica, and Sardinia last winter.
The lady will be in court, and the likeness between you and her will
explain the mistake."
"I'll see you and your lady client in---- first!" answered the
termagant. "I wonder at your cheek in coming to ask a lady to give
herself away like that. You just make yourself scarce, Mr. Faunce,"
looking at his card. "I haven't another word to say to you."
"Oh yes, you have, Mrs. Randall. You have got to ask me what recompense
I am prepared to offer you for your assistance in this little matter."
"I don't believe a word of your story; and I want to see you outside
that door."
"Come, come, madam. Is it reasonable to be so touchy with a man who
comes to propose a very profitable transaction?"
"What do you mean by profitable?"
"I mean that in the event of the libel suit coming off, and your going
into the witness-box and swearing that you were with Rannock from the
beginning to the end of that little tour, I am prepared to pay you a
hundred pounds. A hundred pounds for one morning's work. Not so bad,
eh?"
Her colour had come back, and, after a long scrutiny of Faunce's
amiable countenance, she seemed reassured.
"Sit down," she said, and seated herself opposite him, with her elbows
on the table and her chin in her hands.
He noted the wedding-ring, and two or three trumpery turquoise and
garnet rings on her left hand. Her day of splendour was past, and the
spoils of her youth had vanished.
"A hundred ain't much, if your client is a rich woman," she said. "Of
course, I can guess who she is--Lady Perivale. I've been told I'm
like her. If it's her, she can afford to pay two hundred quid as easy
as one. And I ain't going to stand up in court and tell my life and
adventures for a lower figure."
"You are a hard one, Mrs. Randall."
"I'm a hard-up one, Mr. Faunce. There's no use denying it when you see
me in such a beggarly hole as this. I ain't used to it. I've lived
like a lady ever since I was eighteen years old, and this beastly
lodging-house gets upon my nerves. That's why I was so nasty with you
when you came in," she concluded, with a little laugh that didn't sound
quite genuine.
"Well, Mrs. Randall, if you oblige my client I know she will deal
generously with you."
"Two hundred quid paid down before I go into the box; not a penny less."
"We'll see about it. In the mean time, to show good faith, there's a
trifle on account," said Faunce, handing her a ten-pound note.
He would have offered her more had he found her in better surroundings,
but he reckoned the rooms she was in at ten shillings a week, and he
thought she had come to her lowest stage.
"Thanks," she said, putting the note in a shabby _porte-monnaie_,
whose contents Faunce's eye discovered in the instant of its
opening--sixpence and a few coppers.
The door opened suddenly at this moment, and Faunce, who sat opposite,
caught one brief glimpse of the man who opened it, and who, on seeing
him, stepped back, shut it quickly, and ran downstairs. Faunce started
up, and was at the window in time to see the visitor leave the house,
and walk down the street. He was a big man, with broad shoulders and a
bull neck, flashily dressed, and with a fox-terrier at his heels.
"I'm sorry I frightened your friend away," said Faunce.
"Oh, it don't matter. He can come another time if he wants to see me,"
Mrs. Randall answered carelessly.
That sensitive complexion of hers had paled at the interruption, just
as at the mention of Rannock's name, and a gloomy look had come into
her eyes. The visitor could hardly have been the bringer of pleasant
things.
"An old friend of yours?" hazarded Faunce.
"Oh lord, yes; old enough! I've known him since I was a kid."
"But apparently not a favourite of yours?"
"I've got no favourites," she answered curtly. "All I want is to go my
own way, and not to be bothered."
"Nobody can call that an unreasonable desire, madam. And now will you
be so very kind as to oblige me with one of your photographs--one that,
in your own opinion, does you most justice."
"Then it had better be one that wasn't taken yesterday," she said.
"They wipe the wrinkles out, but they can't hide the lantern jaws.
Oh, you can have a photo if you want one; I've got plenty. The
photographers were the plague of my life when I was on the boards, and
as long as I was about London, driving my carriage. But they've left
off worrying now. There's new faces in the market."
"None handsomer than yours, madam."
She dragged open a reluctant drawer in an ill-made mahogany sideboard,
and produced half a dozen cabinet photographs, from which Faunce
selected two of the best, with polite acknowledgment of the favour.
"You have my address, Mrs. Randall," he said, rising, and taking up his
hat; "let me know if you change your quarters."
"I shan't be able to do that--on a tenner," she said; "but it will keep
me out of the workhouse for a week or two."
"By-the-by, can you tell me where Colonel Rannock is to be found at
this present time?" Faunce asked, as he shook hands with her.
Her hand was in his when he asked the question, and he felt it grow
cold. She was fond of Rannock, he thought--fond of him, and angry with
him for abandoning her.
"No, I can't," she answered, looking at him steadily, but with the same
pale change in her face that he had noted before.
"I'm told he went to San Francisco, _viâ_ New York, on his way to the
Alaska goldfields," he said.
"Yes, I believe he went to the goldfields."
"Do you know when he started?"
"Some time in March. I don't remember the date."
"Do you remember by what line he went--whether from Liverpool or
Southampton?"
"I know nothing about him--after he left London."
"Well, Mrs. Randall, expect to hear from me soon. Good-bye."
Faunce left her, pleased with his success. Everything was now easy.
There was nothing wanted but the audacious libel, which should afford
ground for an action; and that, as Mr. Faunce told Lady Perivale, would
be forthcoming.
He was satisfied, but he was also thoughtful. There had been something
unaccountable in the woman's manner: that strange mixture of anger and
apprehension, the sick, white look that came over her face when she
spoke of Rannock. Something evil there was assuredly--some hidden thing
in her mind which made that name a sound of fear.
He had studied the woman intently during the quarter of an hour's
_tête-à-tête_, and he did not think that she was a bad woman, from
the criminal point of view. He did not think she was treacherous or
cruel. If any evil thing had befallen Rannock, the evil was not her
doing. And, after all, her agitation might be only that of a woman of
shattered nerves and quick feelings, who had loved intensely and been
badly treated--cast off and left in poverty--by the man she loved. It
might be that the perturbed look which he had taken for fear was not
fear, but resentment.
He telegraphed to Lady Perivale, asking for an appointment, and
presented himself at Runnymede Grange on the following afternoon.
He had not seen his client since their first interview, and he was
astonished at the change in her countenance and manner. On the former
occasion she had been all gloom: to-day she was all brightness. The
nervous irritability, the fiery indignation were gone. She treated the
subject of her wrongs in a business-like tone, almost as a bagatelle.
"Something has happened since I saw her. Something that has changed the
whole tenor of her life," thought Faunce.
He had a shrewd idea of what that "something" was a few minutes later,
when Lady Perivale told him that she would like a friend, in whose
judgment she had confidence, to hear his report; and when Arthur
Haldane came into the room--
"This is Mr. Faunce," said Grace, in a tone that showed her friend had
been told all about him; and the two men saluted each other politely,
without any hint of their former meeting.
Faunce told Lady Perivale that he had found the woman who resembled
her, and that her evidence would be ready when it was required.
"She will not shrink from standing up in court and acknowledging
that she was with Colonel Rannock in Algiers?" asked Lady Perivale,
wonderingly.
"No, she won't shrink--provided the reward is good enough. She is
prepared to tell the truth--and--shame the devil--for two hundred
pounds."
"Give her ten times as much if she wants it!" cried Lady Perivale. "But
what are we to do if nobody libels me? Messrs. Rosset have sent me two
or three newspaper paragraphs. They are very insolent, but I'm afraid
one could hardly go to law about them."
At Faunce's request she produced the impertinent snippets, pasted on
flimsy green paper.
From the _Morning Intelligencer_: "Lady Perivale, whose small dinners
and suppers after the opera were so popular last season, has not done
any entertaining this year. She is living in her house in Grosvenor
Square, but is spending the summer in strict retirement. She may
be seen in the morning riding with the 'liver brigade,' and she
occasionally takes an afternoon drive in the Park; but she has joined
in none of the season's festivities--a fact that has caused some gossip
in the inner circles of the smart world."
From Miranda's "Crême de la Crême," in the _Hesperus_: "Among the
beauties at Lady Morningside's ball, Lady Perivale was conspicuous by
her absence, although last season she was so prominent a personage in
the Morningside set. What can be the cause of this self-effacement on
the part of a young and wealthy widow who had the ball of fashion at
her feet last year?"
There were other paragraphs of the same calibre.
"You are right, Lady Perivale," Faunce said, after having gravely read
them. "These are not good enough. We must wait for something better."
"And you think that somebody will libel me?"
"I am--almost--sure that you will be called upon to punish some very
gross libel within the next few weeks."
"Then I hope I shall have the pleasure of horsewhipping the writer, and
the editor who publishes it!" said Haldane, hotly.
"If you please, Mr. Haldane," cried Faunce, earnestly, "nothing of that
kind! It is necessary that Lady Perivale should be publicly insulted,
in order that she may be publicly justified. Nothing short of the
appearance of the woman who was mistaken for her ladyship can give the
lie direct to the scandal. I must beg, therefore, that the writer of
the libel may be held secure from personal violence."
Haldane was silent. His fingers were itching for a stout malacca and
for a scoundrel's back upon which to exercise it. He would have given
so much to focus the malignant slander that had followed the woman he
loved, and had made even him, her adoring lover, begin to doubt her,
with a wavering faith of which he was now so deeply ashamed.
Oh, to have some one to punish with sharp physical pain, some craven
hound to offer up as a sacrifice to his own remorse!