Moody, listening attentively, started, and changed color at those last words. Mr. Troy looked thoroughly disappointed and made no attempt to conceal it.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"All?" retorted the cynical vagabond. "You"re a pretty lawyer! What more can I say, when I don"t know for certain whether the witness who has given me my information has misled me or not? Have I spoken to the girl and formed my own opinion? No! Have I been introduced among the servants (as errand-boy, or to clean the boots and shoes, or what not), and have I formed my own judgement of _them?_ No! I take your opinions for granted, and I tell you how I should set to work myself if they were _my_ opinions too--and that"s a guinea"s-worth, a devilish good guinea"s-worth to a rich man like you!"
Old Sharon"s logic produced a certain effect on Mr. Troy, in spite of himself. It was smartly put from his point of view--there was no denying that.
"Even if I consented to your proposal," he said, "I should object to your annoying the young lady with impertinent questions, or to your being introduced as a spy into a respectable house."
Old Sharon doubled his dirty fists and drummed with them on the rickety table in a comical frenzy of impatience while Mr. Troy was speaking.
"What the devil do you know about my way of doing my business?" he burst out when the lawyer had done. "One of us two is talking like a born idiot--and (mind this) it isn"t me. Look here! Your young lady goes out for a walk, and she meets with a dirty, shabby old beggar--I look like a shabby old beggar already, don"t I? Very good. This dirty old wretch whines and whimpers and tells a long story, and gets sixpence out of the girl--and knows her by that time, inside and out, as well as if he had made her--and, mark! hasn"t asked her a single ques tion, and, instead of annoying her, has made her happy in the performance of a charitable action. Stop a bit! I haven"t done with you yet. Who blacks your boots and shoes? Look here!" He pushed his pug-dog off his lap, dived under the table, appeared again with an old boot and a bottle of blackening, and set to work with tigerish activity. "I"m going out for a walk, you know, and I may as well make myself smart." With that announcement, he began to sing over his work--a song of sentiment, popular in England in the early part of the present century--"She"s all my fancy painted her; she"s lovely, she"s divine; but her heart it is another"s; and it never can be mine! Too-ral-loo-ral-loo". I like a love-song. Brush away! brush away! till I see my own pretty face in the blacking. Hey! Here"s a nice, harmless, jolly old man! sings and jokes over his work, and makes the kitchen quite cheerful. What"s that you say? He"s a stranger, and don"t talk to him too freely. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak in that way of a poor old fellow with one foot in the grave. Mrs. Cook will give him a nice bit of dinner in the scullery; and John Footman will look out an old coat for him. And when he"s heard everything he wants to hear, and doesn"t come back again the next day to his work--what do they think of it in the servants" hall? Do they say, "We"ve had a spy among us!" Yah! you know better than that, by this time. The cheerful old man has been run over in the street, or is down with the fever, or has turned up his toes in the parish dead-house--that"s what they say in the servants" hall. Try me in your own kitchen, and see if your servants take me for a spy. Come, come, Mr. Lawyer! out with your ten pounds, and don"t waste any more precious time about it!"
"I will consider and let you know," said Mr. Troy.
Old Sharon laughed more ferociously than ever, and hobbled round the table in a great hurry to the place at which Moody was sitting. He laid one hand on the steward"s shoulder, and pointed derisively with the other to Mr. Troy.
"I say, Mr. Silent-man! Bet you five pounds I never hear of that lawyer again!"
Silently attentive all through the interview (except when he was answering questions), Moody only replied in the fewest words. "I don"t bet," was all he said. He showed no resentment at Sharon"s familiarity, and he appeared to find no amus.e.m.e.nt in Sharon"s extraordinary talk.
The old vagabond seemed actually to produce a serious impression on him!
When Mr. Troy set the example of rising to go, he still kept his seat, and looked at the lawyer as if he regretted leaving the atmosphere of tobacco smoke reeking in the dirty room.
"Have you anything to say before we go?" Mr. Troy asked.
Moody rose slowly and looked at Old Sharon. "Not just now, sir," he replied, looking away again, after a moment"s reflection.
Old Sharon interpreted Moody"s look and Moody"s reply from his own peculiar point of view. He suddenly drew the steward away into a corner of the room.
"I say!" he began, in a whisper. "Upon your solemn word of honor, you know--are you as rich as the lawyer there?"
"Certainly not."
"Look here! It"s half price to a poor man. If you feel like coming back, on your own account--five pounds will do from _you_. There! there! Think of it!--think of it!"
"Now, then!" said Mr. Troy, waiting for his companion, with the door open in his hand. He looked back at Sharon when Moody joined him. The old vagabond was settled again in his armchair, with his dog in his lap, his pipe in his mouth, and his French novel in his hand; exhibiting exactly the picture of frowzy comfort which he had presented when his visitors first entered the room.
"Good-day," said Mr. Troy, with haughty condescension.
"Don"t interrupt me!" rejoined Old Sharon, absorbed in his novel.
"You"ve had your guinea"s worth. Lord! what a lovely book this is! Don"t interrupt me!"
"Impudent scoundrel!" said Mr. Troy, when he and Moody were in the street again. "What could my friend mean by recommending him? Fancy his expecting me to trust him with ten pounds! I consider even the guinea completely thrown away."
"Begging your pardon, sir," said Moody, "I don"t quite agree with you there."
"What! you don"t mean to tell me you understand that oracular sentence of his--"Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly fall." Rubbish!"
"I don"t say I understand it, sir. I only say it has set me thinking."
"Thinking of what? Do your suspicions point to the thief?"
"If you will please to excuse me, Mr. Troy, I should like to wait a while before I answer that."
Mr. Troy suddenly stood still, and eyed his companion a little distrustfully.
"Are you going to turn detective-policeman on your own account?" he asked.
"There"s nothing I won"t turn to, and try, to help Miss Isabel in this matter," Moody answered, firmly. "I have saved a few hundred pounds in Lady Lydiard"s service, and I am ready to spend every farthing of it, if I can only discover the thief."
Mr. Troy walked on again. "Miss Isabel seems to have a good friend in you," he said. He was (perhaps unconsciously) a little offended by the independent tone in which the steward spoke, after he had himself engaged to take the vindication of the girl"s innocence into his own hands.
"Miss Isabel has a devoted servant and slave in me!" Moody answered, with pa.s.sionate enthusiasm.
"Very creditable; I haven"t a word to say against it," Mr. Troy rejoined. "But don"t forget that the young lady has other devoted friends besides you. I am her devoted friend, for instance--I have promised to serve her, and I mean to keep my word. You will excuse me for adding that my experience and discretion are quite as likely to be useful to her as your enthusiasm. I know the world well enough to be careful in trusting strangers. It will do you no harm, Mr. Moody, to follow my example."
Moody accepted his reproof with becoming patience and resignation.
"If you have anything to propose, sir, that will be of service to Miss Isabel," he said, "I shall be happy if I can a.s.sist you in the humblest capacity."
"And if not?" Mr. Troy inquired, conscious of having nothing to propose as he asked the question.
"In that case, sir, I must take my own course, and blame n.o.body but myself if it leads me astray."
Mr. Troy said no more: he parted from Moody at the next turning.
Pursuing the subject privately in his own mind, he decided on taking the earliest opportunity of visiting Isabel at her aunt"s house, and on warning her, in her future intercourse with Moody, not to trust too much to the steward"s discretion. "I haven"t a doubt," thought the lawyer, "of what he means to do next. The infatuated fool is going back to Old Sharon!"
CHAPTER X.
RETURNING to his office, Mr. Troy discovered, among the correspondence that was waiting for him, a letter from the very person whose welfare was still the uppermost subject in his mind. Isabel Miller wrote in these terms:
"Dear Sir--My aunt, Miss Pink, is very desirous of consulting you professionally at the earliest opportunity. Although South Morden is within little more than half an hour"s railway ride from London, Miss Pink does not presume to ask you to visit her, being well aware of the value of your time. Will you, therefore, be so kind as to let me know when it will be convenient to you to receive my aunt at your office in London? Believe me, dear sir, respectfully yours, ISABEL MILLER.
P.S.--I am further instructed to say that the regrettable event at Lady Lydiard"s house is the proposed subject of the consultation. The Lawn, South Morden. Thursday."
Mr. Troy smiled as he read the letter. "Too formal for a young girl!" he said to himself. "Every word of it has been dictated by Miss Pink."
He was not long in deciding what course he should take. There was a pressing necessity for cautioning Isabel, and here was his opportunity.
He sent for his head clerk, and looked at his list of engagements for the day. There was nothing set down in the book which the clerk was not quite as well able to do as the master. Mr. Troy consulted his railway-guide, ordered his cab, and caught the next train to South Mord en.
South Morden was then (and remains to this day) one of those primitive agricultural villages, pa.s.sed over by the march of modern progress, which are still to be found in the near neighborhood of London. Only the slow trains stopped at the station and there was so little to do that the station-master and his porter grew flowers on the embankment, and trained creepers over the waiting-room window. Turning your back on the railway, and walking along the one street of South Morden, you found yourself in the old England of two centuries since. Gabled cottages, with fast-closed windows; pigs and poultry in quiet possession of the road; the venerable church surrounded by its shady burial-ground; the grocer"s shop which sold everything, and the butcher"s shop which sold nothing; the scarce inhabitants who liked a good look at a stranger, and the unwashed children who were pictures of dirty health; the clash of the iron-chained bucket in the public well, and the thump of the falling nine-pins in the skittle-ground behind the public-house; the horse-pond on the one bit of open ground, and the old elm-tree with the wooden seat round it on the other--these were some of the objects that you saw, and some of the noises that you heard in South Morden, as you pa.s.sed from one end of the village to the other.
About half a mile beyond the last of the old cottages, modern England met you again under the form of a row of little villas, set up by an adventurous London builder who had bought the land a bargain. Each villa stood in its own little garden, and looked across a stony road at the meadow lands and softly-rising wooded hills beyond. Each villa faced you in the sunshine with the horrid glare of new red brick, and forced its nonsensical name on your attention, traced in bright paint on the posts of its entrance gate. Consulting the posts as he advanced, Mr. Troy arrived in due course of time at the villa called The Lawn, which derived its name apparently from a circular patch of gra.s.s in front of the house. The gate resisting his efforts to open it, he rang the bell.
Admitted by a trim, clean, shy little maid-servant, Mr. Troy looked about him in amazement. Turn which way he might, he found himself silently confronted by posted and painted instructions to visitors, which forbade him to do this, and commanded him to do that, at every step of his progress from the gate to the house. On the side of the lawn a label informed him that he was not to walk on the gra.s.s. On the other side a painted hand pointed along a boundary-wall to an inscription which warned him to go that way if he had business in the kitchen. On the gravel walk at the foot of the housesteps words, neatly traced in little white sh.e.l.ls, reminded him not to "forget the sc.r.a.per". On the doorstep he was informed, in letters of lead, that he was "Welcome!"
On the mat in the pa.s.sage bristly black words burst on his attention, commanding him to "wipe his shoes." Even the hat-stand in the hall was not allowed to speak for itself; it had "Hats and Cloaks" inscribed on it, and it issued its directions imperatively in the matter of your wet umbrella--"Put it here!"