"What, Daphne?"
I smiled. "No, not Daphne," I answered. "Our friend, Miss Wade. She has extraordinary insight."
"I could trust anything to Miss Wade. She is true as steel."
"You are right," I answered. "That shows that you, too, are a judge of character."
He hesitated. "I feel a brute," he cried, "to go on writing every day to Sissie Montague--and yet calling every day to see Miss Tepping. But still--I do it."
I grasped his hand. "My dear fellow," I said, "nearly ninety per cent.
of men, after all--are human!"
I took both letter and photograph back with me to Nathaniel"s. When I had gone my rounds that night, I carried them into Hilda Wade"s room and told her the story. Her face grew grave. "We must be just," she said at last. "Daphne is deeply in love with him; but even for Daphne"s sake, we must not take anything for granted against the other lady."
I produced the photograph. "What do you make of that?" I asked. "_I_ think it an honest face, myself, I may tell you."
She scrutinised it long and closely with a magnifier. Then she put her head on one side and mused very deliberately. "Madeline Shaw gave me her photograph the other day, and said to me, as she gave it, "I do so like these modern portraits; they show one WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.""
"You mean they are so much touched up!"
"Exactly. That, as it stands, is a sweet, innocent face--an honest girl"s face--almost babyish in its transparency but... the innocence has all been put into it by the photographer."
"You think so?"
"I know it. Look here at those lines just visible on the cheek. They disappear, nowhere, at impossible angles. AND the corners of that mouth.
They couldn"t go so, with that nose and those puckers. The thing is not real. It has been atrociously edited. Part is nature"s; part, the photographer"s; part, even possibly paint and powder."
"But the underlying face?"
"Is a minx"s."
I handed her the letter. "This next?" I asked, fixing my eyes on her as she looked.
She read it through. For a minute or two she examined it. "The letter is right enough," she answered, after a second reading, "though its guileless simplicity is, perhaps, under the circ.u.mstances, just a leetle overdone; but the handwriting--the handwriting is duplicity itself: a cunning, serpentine hand, no openness or honesty in it. Depend upon it, that girl is playing a double game."
"You believe, then, there is character in handwriting?"
"Undoubtedly; when we know the character, we can see it in the writing.
The difficulty is, to see it and read it BEFORE we know it; and I have practised a little at that. There is character in all we do, of course--our walk, our cough, the very wave of our hands; the only secret is, not all of us have always skill to see it. Here, however, I feel pretty sure. The curls of the g"s and the tails of the y"s--how full they are of wile, of low, underhand trickery!"
I looked at them as she pointed. "That is true!" I exclaimed. "I see it when you show it. Lines meant for effect. No straightness or directness in them!"
Hilda reflected a moment. "Poor Daphne!" she murmured. "I would do anything to help her.... I"ll tell what might be a good plan." Her face brightened. "My holiday comes next week. I"ll run down to Scarborough--it"s as nice a place for a holiday as any--and I"ll observe this young lady. It can do no harm--and good may come of it."
"How kind of you!" I cried. "But you are always all kindness."
Hilda went to Scarborough, and came back again for a week before going on to Bruges, where she proposed to spend the greater part of her holidays. She stopped a night or two in town to report progress, and, finding another nurse ill, promised to fill her place till a subst.i.tute was forthcoming.
"Well, Dr. c.u.mberledge," she said, when she saw me alone, "I was right!
I have found out a fact or two about Daphne"s rival!"
"You have seen her?" I asked.
"Seen her? I have stopped for a week in the same house. A very nice lodging-house on the Spa front, too. The girl"s well enough off. The poverty plea fails. She goes about in good rooms and carries a mother with her."
"That"s well," I answered. "That looks all right."
"Oh, yes, she"s quite presentable: has the manners of a lady whenever she chooses. But the chief point is this: she laid her letters every day on the table in the pa.s.sage outside her door for post--laid them all in a row, so that when one claimed one"s own one couldn"t help seeing them."
"Well, that was open and aboveboard," I continued, beginning to fear we had hastily misjudged Miss Sissie Montague.
"Very open--too much so, in fact; for I was obliged to note the fact that she wrote two letters regularly every day of her life--"to my two mashes," she explained one afternoon to a young man who was with her as she laid them on the table. One of them was always addressed to Cecil Holsworthy, Esq."
"And the other?"
"Wasn"t."
"Did you note the name?" I asked, interested.
"Yes; here it is." She handed me a slip of paper.
I read it: "Reginald Nettlecraft, Esq., 427, Staples Inn, London."
"What, Reggie Nettlecraft!" I cried, amused. "Why, he was a very little boy at Charterhouse when I was a big one; he afterwards went to Oxford, and got sent down from Christ Church for the part he took in burning a Greek bust in Tom Quad--an antique Greek bust--after a b.u.mp supper."
"Just the sort of man I should have expected," Hilda answered, with a suppressed smile. "I have a sort of inkling that Miss Montague likes HIM best; he is nearer her type; but she thinks Cecil Holsworthy the better match. Has Mr. Nettlecraft money?"
"Not a penny, I should say. An allowance from his father, perhaps, who is a Lincolnshire parson; but otherwise, nothing."
"Then, in my opinion, the young lady is playing for Mr. Holsworthy"s money; failing which, she will decline upon Mr. Nettlecraft"s heart."
We talked it all over. In the end I said abruptly: "Nurse Wade, you have seen Miss Montague, or whatever she calls herself. I have not. I won"t condemn her unheard. I have half a mind to run down one day next week to Scarborough and have a look at her."
"Do. That will suffice. You can judge then for yourself whether or not I am mistaken."
I went; and what is more, I heard Miss Sissie sing at her hall--a pretty domestic song, most childish and charming. She impressed me not unfavourably, in spite of what Hilda said. Her peach-blossom cheek might have been art, but looked like nature. She had an open face, a baby smile and there was a frank girlishness about her dress and manner that took my fancy. "After all," I thought to myself, "even Hilda Wade is fallible."
So that evening, when her "turn" was over, I made up my mind to go round and call upon her. I had told Cecil Holsworthy my intentions beforehand, and it rather shocked him. He was too much of a gentleman to wish to spy upon the girl he had promised to marry. However, in my case, there need be no such scruples. I found the house and asked for Miss Montague. As I mounted the stairs to the drawing-room floor, I heard a sound of voices--the murmur of laughter; idiotic guffaws, suppressed giggles, the masculine and feminine varieties of tomfoolery.
"YOU"D make a splendid woman of business, YOU would!" a young man was saying. I gathered from his drawl that he belonged to that sub-species of the human race which is known as the Chappie.
"Wouldn"t I just?" a girl"s voice answered, t.i.ttering. I recognised it as Sissie"s. "You ought to see me at it! Why, my brother set up a place once for mending bicycles; and I used to stand about at the door, as if I had just returned from a ride; and when fellows came in, with a nut loose or something, I"d begin talking with them while Bertie tightened it. Then, when THEY weren"t looking, I"d dab the business end of a darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture mended! I call THAT business."
A roar of laughter greeted the recital of this brilliant incident in a commercial career. As it subsided, I entered. There were two men in the room, besides Miss Montague and her mother, and a second young lady.
"Excuse this late call," I said, quietly, bowing. "But I have only one night in Scarborough, Miss Montague, and I wanted to see you. I"m a friend of Mr. Holsworthy"s. I told him I"d look you up, and this is my sole opportunity."
I FELT rather than saw that Miss Montague darted a quick glance of hidden meaning at her friends the chappies; their faces, in response, ceased to sn.i.g.g.e.r and grew instantly sober.