The woman hesitated a little, looking rather suspiciously at Robert.
"You"re not connected with--with the tally business, are you, sir?" she asked, after considering Mr. Audley"s personal appearance for a few moments.
"The _what_, ma"am?" asked the young barrister, staring aghast at his questioner.
"I"m sure I beg your pardon, sir," exclaimed the little woman, seeing that she had made some awful mistake. "I thought you might have been, you know. Some of the gentlemen who collect for the tally shops do dress so very handsome; and I know Mrs. Vincent owes a good deal of money."
Robert Audley laid his hand upon the speaker"s arm.
"My dear madam," he said, "I want to know nothing of Mrs. Vincent"s affairs. So far from being concerned in what you call _the tally business_, I have not the remotest idea what you mean by that expression. You may mean a political conspiracy; you may mean some new species of taxes. Mrs. Vincent does not owe _me_ any money, however badly she may stand with that awful-looking baker. I never saw her in my life; but I wish to see her to-day for the simple purpose of asking her a few very plain questions about a young lady who once resided in her house. If you know where Mrs. Vincent lives and will give me her address, you will be doing me a great favor."
He took out his card-case and handed a card to the woman, who examined the slip of pasteboard anxiously before she spoke again.
"I"m sure you look and speak like a gentleman, sir," she said, after a brief pause, "and I hope you will excuse me if I"ve seemed mistrustful like; but poor Mrs. Vincent has had dreadful difficulties, and I"m the only person hereabouts that she"s trusted with her addresses. I"m a dressmaker, sir, and I"ve worked for her for upward of six years, and though she doesn"t pay me regular, you know, sir, she gives me a little money on account now and then, and I get on as well as I can. I may tell you where she lives, then, sir? You haven"t deceived me, have you?"
"On my honor, no."
"Well, then sir," said the dressmaker, dropping her voice as if she thought the pavement beneath her feet, or the iron railings before the houses by her side, might have ears to hear her, "it"s Acacia Cottage, Peckham Grove. I took a dress there yesterday for Mrs. Vincent."
"Thank you," said Robert, writing the address in his pocketbook. "I am very much obliged to you, and you may rely upon it, Mrs. Vincent shall not suffer any inconvenience through me."
He lifted his hat, bowed to the little dressmaker, and turned back to the cab.
"I have beaten the baker, at any rate," he thought. "Now for the second stage, traveling backward, in my lady"s life."
The drive from Brompton to the Peckham Road was a very long one, and between Crescent Villas and Acacia Cottage, Robert Audley had ample leisure for reflection. He thought of his uncle lying weak and ill in the oak-room at Audley Court. He thought of the beautiful blue eyes watching Sir Michael"s slumbers; the soft, white hands tending on his waking moments; the low musical voice soothing his loneliness, cheering and consoling his declining years. What a pleasant picture it might have been, had he been able to look upon it ignorantly, seeing no more than others saw, looking no further than a stranger could look. But with the black cloud which he saw brooding over it, what an arch mockery, what a diabolical delusion it seemed.
Peckham Grove--pleasant enough in the summer-time--has rather a dismal aspect upon a dull February day, when the trees are bare and leafless, and the little gardens desolate. Acacia Cottage bore small token of the fitness of its nomenclature, and faced the road with its stuccoed walls sheltered only by a couple of attenuated poplars. But it announced that it was Acacia Cottage by means of a small bra.s.s plate upon one of the gate-posts, which was sufficient indication for the sharp-sighted cabman, who dropped Mr. Audley upon the pavement before the little gate.
Acacia Cottage was much lower in the social scale than Crescent Villas, and the small maid-servant who came to the low wooden gate and parleyed with Mr. Audley, was evidently well used to the encounter of relentless creditors across the same feeble barricade.
She murmured the familiar domestic fiction of the uncertainty regarding her mistress"s whereabouts; and told Robert that if he would please to state his name and business, she would go and see if Mrs. Vincent was at home.
Mr. Audley produced a card, and wrote in pencil under his own name: "a connection of the late Miss Graham."
He directed the small servant to carry his card to her mistress, and quietly awaited the result.
The servant returned in about five minutes with the key of the gate. Her mistress was at home, she told Robert as she admitted him, and would be happy to see the gentleman.
The square parlor into which Robert was ushered bore in every sc.r.a.p of ornament, in every article of furniture, the unmistakable stamp of that species of poverty which is most comfortless because it is never stationary. The mechanic who furnishes his tiny sitting-room with half-a-dozen cane chairs, a Pembroke table, a Dutch clock, a tiny looking-gla.s.s, a crockery shepherd and shepherdess, and a set of gaudily-j.a.panned iron tea-trays, makes the most of his limited possessions, and generally contrives to get some degree of comfort out of them; but the lady who loses the handsome furniture of the house she is compelled to abandon and encamps in some smaller habitation with the shabby remainder--bought in by some merciful friend at the sale of her effects--carries with her an aspect of genteel desolation and tawdry misery not easily to be paralleled in wretchedness by any other phase which poverty can a.s.sume.
The room which Robert Audley surveyed was furnished with the shabbier sc.r.a.ps s.n.a.t.c.hed from the ruin which had overtaken the imprudent schoolmistress in Crescent Villas. A cottage piano, a chiffonier, six sizes too large for the room, and dismally gorgeous in gilded moldings that were chipped and broken; a slim-legged card-table, placed in the post of honor, formed the princ.i.p.al pieces of furniture. A threadbare patch of Brussels carpet covered the center of the room, and formed an oasis of roses and lilies upon a desert of shabby green drugget. Knitted curtains shaded the windows, in which hung wire baskets of horrible-looking plants of the cactus species, that grew downward, like some demented cla.s.s of vegetation, whose p.r.i.c.kly and spider-like members had a fancy for standing on their heads.
The green-baize covered card-table was adorned with gaudily-bound annuals or books of beauty, placed at right angles; but Robert Audley did not avail himself of these literary distractions. He seated himself upon one of the rickety chairs, and waited patiently for the advent of the schoolmistress. He could hear the hum of half-a-dozen voices in a room near him, and the jingling harmonies of a set of variations in _Deh Conte_, upon a piano, whose every wire was evidently in the last stage of attenuation.
He had waited for about a quarter of an hour, when the door was opened, and a lady, very much dressed, and with the setting sunlight of faded beauty upon her face, entered the room.
"Mr. Audley, I presume," she said, motioning to Robert to reseat himself, and placing herself in an easy-chair opposite to him. "You will pardon me, I hope, for detaining you so long; my duties--"
"It is I who should apologize for intruding upon you," Robert answered, politely; "but my motive for calling upon you is a very serious one, and must plead my excuse. You remember the lady whose name I wrote upon my card?"
"Perfectly."
"May I ask how much you know of that lady"s history since her departure from your house?"
"Very little. In point of fact, scarcely anything at all. Miss Graham, I believe, obtained a situation in the family of a surgeon resident in Ess.e.x. Indeed, it was I who recommended her to that gentleman. I have never heard from her since she left me."
"But you have communicated with her?" Robert asked, eagerly.
"No, indeed."
Mr. Audley was silent for a few moments, the shadow of gloomy thoughts gathering darkly on his face.
"May I ask if you sent a telegraphic dispatch to Miss Graham early in last September, stating that you were dangerously ill, and that you wished to see her?"
Mrs. Vincent smiled at her visitor"s question.
"I had no occasion to send such a message," she said; "I have never been seriously ill in my life."
Robert Audley paused before he asked any further questions, and scrawled a few penciled words in his note-book.
"If I ask you a few straightforward questions about Miss Lucy Graham, madam," he said. "Will you do me the favor to answer them without asking my motive in making such inquiries?"
"Most certainly," replied Mrs. Vincent. "I know nothing to Miss Graham"s disadvantage, and have no justification for making a mystery of the little I do know."
"Then will you tell me at what date the young lady first came to you?"
Mrs. Vincent smiled and shook her head. She had a pretty smile--the frank smile of a woman who had been admired, and who has too long felt the certainty of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by any worldly misfortune.
"It"s not the least use to ask me, Mr. Audley," she said. "I"m the most careless creature in the world; I never did, and never could remember dates, though I do all in my power to impress upon my girls how important it is for their future welfare that they should know when William the Conqueror began to reign, and all that kind of thing. But I haven"t the remotest idea when Miss Graham came to me, although I know it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my peach-colored silk.
But we must consult Tonks--Tonks is sure to be right."
Robert Audley wondered who or what Tonks could be; a diary, perhaps, or a memorandum-book--some obscure rival of Letsome.
Mrs. Vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maid-servant who had admitted Robert.
"Ask Miss Tonks to come to me," she said. "I want to see her particularly."
In less than five minutes Miss Tonks made her appearance. She was wintry and rather frost-bitten in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty folds of her somber merino dress. She was no age in particular, and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older, but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young ladies.
"Tonks, my dear," said Mrs. Vincent, without ceremony, "this gentleman is a relative of Miss Graham"s. Do you remember how long it is since she came to us at Crescent Villas?"
"She came in August, 1854," answered Miss Tonks; "I think it was the eighteenth of August, but I"m not quite sure that it wasn"t the seventeenth. I know it was on a Tuesday."
"Thank you, Tonks; you are a most invaluable darling," exclaimed Mrs.
Vincent, with her sweetest smile. It was, perhaps, because of the invaluable nature of Miss Tonks" services that she had received no remuneration whatever from her employer for the last three or four years. Mrs. Vincent might have hesitated to pay from very contempt for the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the teacher.
"Is there anything else that Tonks or I can tell you, Mr. Audley?" asked the schoolmistress. "Tonks has a far better memory than I have."