CHAPTER XX.
THE MANNERS OF A MISTRESS.
he little excitement in the street centred round the Marvels’ house. Two policemen were standing at its door, and an inspector with his note-book was just inside talking to somebody out of sight.
“I wonder if it is anything wrong about Jane Smith,” remarked Lucy.
“Perhaps the tipsy young carpenter has turned up there at last,” said Tom. While they watched, Lucy and Miss Latimer told Mr. Somerset the story of their midnight alarm.
“They’re all looking across here! They are coming over,” cried Hugh. He was right. In a moment a heavy official knock sounded on the hall door.
“I shall answer it myself,” said Lucy. “Clementina is busy, and, besides, the sight of all these legal functionaries would terrify her out of her wits.”
The others all followed in her train, Hugh clinging to his mother’s skirts.
“There has been something wrong over at Number 14, ma’am,” the policeman explained. “Their servant has run away with some property. We understand she was in your service before she entered Mrs. Marvel’s, and we want you to kindly answer a few questions about her—if you can.”
“I will tell you all I can,” returned Lucy.
“Thank you, ma’am. Was the girl Jane Smith long in your service?”
Lucy considered. “Only for about five months,” she said, “a little more I think.”
He made a note in his book.
“Where did you get her from, ma’am? Excuse me.”
“I got her through a registry office,” Lucy replied, naming it.
“Took her in a hurry, without any references perhaps, ma’am,” observed the inspector.
“Certainly not,” answered Lucy. “I went to her last employer,” and Lucy furnished her name and address. The man wrote them down.
“Character good then, I suppose?” was the next remark.
“The character was satisfactory, or I should not have taken her,” said Lucy.
“Can you be sure you got the girl whose character you received?” he asked. “You know there is such a thing as personation; and the name is a common one.”
“There is no mistake on that score,” Lucy replied. “Jane Smith herself opened the door to me when I went to inquire for her character.”
The man was writing again. “And may I ask why you parted from her?” he went on.
“She gave me notice herself because she knew she had displeased me. I had allowed her to receive a weekly visit from the young man to whom she was engaged, and then, without the least interval, or any intimation given to me, the man was changed!” Lucy was almost startled by the unshrinking directness of her words.
There was a little movement between the two policemen on the doorstep, and a sort of ejaculation from Tom in the rear. Lucy, looking aside from her questioner, recognised in one of his subordinates the policeman who had found Jane’s discarded lover in her area. He made a smiling salute, and said something in a low tone to his superior.
“I understand one of these men has since been found in your area in the night?” the inspector inquired.
“Yes,” said Lucy, “your man found him and removed him.”
“Have you any reason to think he was there for any nefarious purpose?” asked the inspector.
“No; he was quite tipsy,” said Lucy. “He did not know what he was doing. I thought it was only a mistake.”
“Are you sure he was quite tipsy?” urged the inspector.
“Your man and my friend said so, and I could see he could scarcely walk,” Lucy answered. “It was at my request only that your man did not take him in charge. I thought he was in trouble through being deserted by this girl.”
“There’s often more than meets the eye at the bottom of these here love affairs and troubles,” said the unromantic inspector; “it might have done that youth and other folks too some good to have had it all out in court. But there’s no saying. Even there such things can’t be always looked into as deep as they should be.”
He wrote in his book. His next question was—
“Did you tell Mrs. Marvel why you had been dissatisfied with this girl?”
“She never asked me,” answered Lucy. “She sought no character from me.”
The inspector half smiled and gave his head a knowing little wag. He closed his book. “Thank you, ma’am. That’s all we need ask now. If any other point arises on which we think you may throw light, you’ll excuse our coming to you. We’re sorry to have had to disturb you, especially to-day.”
“You are only doing your duty,” said Lucy. “Good morning.” As she turned back into her little hall—Clementina’s rueful countenance, gleaming pale in the background—Lucy thought that this was for her a very mild disturbance indeed, as compared with the wreckage of last Christmas Day. It might indeed be otherwise with the Marvels? Yet Lucy could not avoid the reflection that they had, in a manner, brought this trouble on themselves.
The little dinner-party passed off very pleasantly. Clementina had done her part admirably, and everybody was resolutely talkative and bright. Even Lucy brought herself to say that perhaps it might be better still if Charlie arrived for New Year’s Day, since that would be an inauguration of a new order of things, while, socially considered, Christmas is rather a festival of the past.
After dinner in the little drawing-room, Hugh was the centre of all attention, as children always are at Christmas time. Games of the kind in which he could take largest share were the order of the day. In one of these Tom Black was dismissed from the apartment to wait outside till those within should summon him to rack his brains to discover “what their thought was like.” When they shut him out, they left him planted on a little table, which stood on the only half-lit landing. But when they opened the door to call him, he was not there!
“I believe he is so honest that he feared he might catch what we were saying, and he has gone down to his own room,” said Lucy. “Tom!” she cried. But as she did so she heard a sound of voices in the hall. Tom was there and Clementina was talking to him.
He answered, “Coming, coming!” and came running up. He dashed into the game with great spirit, but nevertheless seemed a little absent-minded, and proved so dense that he had to be told what he ought to have guessed, which was very unusual with Tom. After that, Lucy suggested that they would not begin another game till they had had tea, which was just coming in. The little service stood in readiness. Clementina had only to carry up the kettle and the tea-cakes. In this interval, Tom suddenly proposed to Mr. Somerset that they should take a few minutes’ turn in the street. “For a breath of fresh air,” he said.
The gentlemen did not stay out for quite half an hour. Hugh peeping from the window announced that he saw them walking up and down, talking. They nodded up to him, and they came in a few minutes afterwards. Lucy served them with cups of tea, and then all again went merrily till it was time for Lucy to take Hugh off to bed. She did not require to apologise to these friends for leaving them together while she discharged her happy maternal duty.
Mr. Somerset stood on the middle of the rug with his back to the fire. Miss Latimer settled herself in the easy-chair to resume the knitting which she had thrown down during the games.
“Miss Latimer,” said Mr. Somerset rather abruptly, “I don’t think you are a nervous woman.”
The old lady laughed, deftly shifting her needles.
“I don’t think so,” she answered.
“Because if we are to believe what Clementina says, some evil attention is being directed to this house, which can have no other aim but to annoy and terrify, perhaps with hope of robbery at last,” he explained.
Miss Latimer was all interest.
“The servant says,” pursued Mr. Somerset, “that every morning, early, for more than a week past there have been heavy blows on the area door. They have always been struck while she was out of sight in the back kitchen. She has hastened to respond to them, but by the time she reached the door nobody was there. She says that for the first day or two, she thought that whoever had knocked must have hurried away, though she could not understand how they could get up the area steps so quickly. Afterwards she says she lingered longer in the front kitchen, so as to be there when the knocks came. But they never came while she was there—only at the moment when she turned her back. Next she ran to the window so quickly that she is sure there was no time for anybody to get away. Yet nobody was there.”
“Ran to the window!” echoed Miss Latimer. “Why didn’t she go to the door?”
“She says she was frightened,” answered Mr. Somerset.
“Does the window command every corner of the area?” asked the old lady. “Possibly some mischievous boy gave the knock and then stood back against the wall.”
“That’s what I said,” remarked Tom Black, “but Clementina made me go down into the kitchen and put my head where she said she had put hers, pressed against the window, and certainly nobody—not even a cat—could have been in the area without my seeing them.”
“Why didn’t Clementina tell us about this before?” asked Miss Latimer. “Why did she keep it back to tell us to-day?”
“She says she didn’t want to worry her mistress,” said Tom. “But after hearing what has gone wrong at Mr. Marvel’s house, and seeing the policemen come here making inquiries, she thought it might be best for some of us to know it at once. So when she saw me standing on the staircase, she took the opportunity of calling me downstairs and telling me the whole thing.”
“Very considerate indeed,” observed Miss Latimer. “So many servants take delight in rushing forward with bad news or worries. I was afraid the policemen’s visit alone would prove too much for Clementina. I do hope she won’t get flurried into leaving—for she seems a treasure in so many ways. Was she much disturbed?”
“No,” said Tom reflectively. “No, she took it quite sensibly.”
“Perhaps, as you say she is a superstitious woman, she accepts the mysterious as a natural factor in ordinary existence,” observed Mr. Somerset.
Tom was still meditative.
“Now I come to think of it,” he said, “there was something funny happened two or three weeks ago, though we didn’t think much of it at the time. Do you remember the blank letter, Miss Latimer?”
“Yes, indeed,” cried the old lady. “Mrs. Challoner received a very ill-written envelope, which we thought must contain a bill due to a bricklayer who had been lately employed. But there was nothing in the envelope save a sheet of blank paper. Still we thought the man must have put this in by mistake, till he presented his bill in person a few days afterwards, and then Lucy asked him if he had sent it in before, and he said no, he had made it up only that morning.”
“Is Mrs. Challoner to hear about these knocks?” asked Tom.
“Why not?” said Miss Latimer. “It was good of Clementina to keep silence about what she thought might annoy her mistress. But Lucy would not feel any worry over such a thing as this.”
“You see,” said Tom speaking with bated breath, “Clementina said now this had come out about the Marvels’ servant, it might be to do with them. But at first she had thought that it might be a sign that—that—something had happened to Mr. Challoner, and that was why she wouldn’t speak!”
“Oh, nonsense,” returned Miss Latimer. “We must not let her suggest this idea to Lucy—not till Charlie is here safe and sound. But we won’t have any mysteries or keepings back. A sensitive nature suffers more from those than from the sternest revelation. Even when there’s real trouble in question and somebody thinks to hide it out of kindness, he has to hide his true self at the same time, and that generally gives greater pain than anything else could.”
“We’ll tell Mrs. Challoner all about it the minute she comes back,” decided Mr. Somerset.
“That’s right,” said Miss Latimer. “If one’s bothers reach one through friendly hands two-thirds of their poison is drained off.”
“I say,” remarked Tom, “I don’t believe the dining-room waste-paper basket has been emptied lately. This morning I noticed it was very full. I shouldn’t wonder if the envelope in which that blank sheet came is still there. I’ll go down and look for it.”
Tom was still prosecuting this search when Lucy came back to the drawing-room. She heard the story of the knocks with interest rather than with alarm, and was rather inclined to think they might be due to Clementina’s “nerves.” When Tom appeared with the torn envelope they all discussed it quite cheerily, speculating whether the handwriting was that of a man or a woman. Lucy thought it was that of a man—possibly a man accustomed to use clumsier tools than a pen. She clung to her original suspicion of the tipsy young carpenter. Miss Latimer declared that one or two of the characters looked of feminine construction, while Mr. Somerset remarked that some of them seemed to him to be far too well formed to be in natural keeping with the wild distortion of the rest.
This envelope having been thus accidentally preserved, it was now decided, in view of the later developments, that it should be kept for a while longer. It was given into Tom’s charge, and he locked it away in his desk. Mr. Somerset advised that if the inspector should pay Mrs. Challoner another visit over the Jane-Smith-and-Marvel matter, she might do well to mention to him this strange blank missive and the mysterious knocks.
Also, before he went away, he and Mrs. Challoner together had a little conference with Clementina. They told her that there was nothing to be alarmed about, and while thanking her for her original consideration in the matter of the uncanny knocks, they urged her henceforth to tell promptly of any happening which might strike her as peculiar.
“It’s well I’m not a silly girl,” was Clementina’s remark. “I don’t like to be mixed up in strange ongoings, nor to see policemen coming to the door of the house where one lives. But what one’s born to, that one must go through. We all have our enemies, and if they don’t hurt us in one way, they will in another. I reckon those knocks ain’t meant to call for Clementina Gillespie.” There she paused, but glancing at Mr. Somerset, she read warning in his eye, and said no more.
The next morning brought two events. The first was an intimation by post of Mr. Bray’s death at Bath. The second was a call from Mrs. Marvel, who sent up her card, with an apology for intruding on her neighbour at an unconventionally early hour.
“Those who won’t make inquiries at the right season, naturally make them at last at the wrong time!” observed Tom.
“Yes,” said Miss Latimer, “as Goethe says—
“‘Of little things who trouble makes
For lesser things he trouble takes.’”
Lucy knew Mrs. Marvel by sight, prim and stately. But this morning she was a very perturbed and dishevelled lady. She had called to thank Lucy for having been interviewed on her behalf by the policemen.
“So kind of you, Mrs. Challoner. After I had sent them across, it occurred to me how rude and selfish it was—on Christmas Day too! But really you will pardon me, considering the state I was in. Imagine our coming home from church to find the house not only deserted, but with all the silver I had put out for the Christmas feast carried off, with a salver which Mr. Marvel got as a testimonial, and the very brooches which we had left sticking in our pin-cushions! After that, what did it matter that not only was no dinner prepared, but the turkey itself was taken away. And we had friends coming, among them the gentleman who is engaged to our youngest daughter.”
“It was very trying indeed,” said Lucy gently. “I have never suffered quite so bitterly, but I have suffered enough to know how it must have felt.”
“I suppose you can’t give us any other clues about the wretched girl,” panted Mrs. Marvel. “The police have already been to her former mistress’s house, and it is empty. It is said the people are gone abroad. You didn’t know anything of this girl’s family, did you?”
“She said she came from the country. She said her father had been a blacksmith. She named the village to me, but I own it escapes my mind just now,” Lucy admitted.
“Of course, one can’t be expected to burden one’s mind with such things,” said Mrs. Marvel.
“If she had stayed with me, I meant to have given her a summer holiday to visit her friends, and then I should have heard more about them,” Lucy remarked. “It is not easy to press questions without grounds. One has to rest satisfied at first with getting a character.” She paused rather abruptly, seeing that her remarks seemed to reflect on her visitor. But Mrs. Marvel was undisturbed by them.
“You didn’t detect her in any dishonesty while she was with you?” she asked.
“No, not the slightest,” said Lucy.
Mrs. Marvel looked compassionately at her hostess. “Ah, poor dear,” she said, “you are young—and—and busy. I daresay she plucked you a little without your noticing it.”
“She may have done so,” said Lucy quietly; “I do not claim notability as a housewife. But I have my household lists, and when I went over them before she left, everything was right.”
“We hear that it is true she did dismiss herself,” Mrs. Marvel went on. “Did you really feel enough dissatisfaction and distrust to have dismissed her if she had not done so?”
“Certainly,” Lucy answered, “unless she could have given a full and satisfactory explanation—which I cannot imagine—of how, when I had given her permission to receive her sweetheart, I was left to find out that another man had suddenly appeared in his stead.”
“I doubt if it’s wise to let these girls’ sweethearts come near one’s house,” remarked Mrs. Marvel. “I never allow it. I never permit any visits but from relations.”
“I saw Jane Smith’s second lover go down your area steps many times,” said Lucy.
“I know he did. She told us he was her uncle, lately widowed, and that he came every week to bring and take away the mending she did for him.”
Lucy could not wholly restrain a smile as she thought of the shouts of laughter which announced this bereaved “relative’s” earliest appearances in her own kitchen.
“Now, my dear Mrs. Challoner,” said Mrs. Marvel, in her most unctuous manner, “don’t think I want to reproach you in the least; but when you felt this girl to be so untrustworthy, and when you saw her in a neighbour’s service, don’t you think you would have shown a neighbourly and Christian spirit if you had dropped us a word of warning about her?”
This was a little too much! Lucy rose and towered over her seated visitor.
“No, Mrs. Marvel,” she said, “certainly not. Any such interference of mine would have been most gratuitous and uncharitable. I should have deserved the soundest snub you could have given me. I had been the girl’s employer, and you had not chosen to use the proper method of communicating with me about her. That meant either that you did not value my opinion in the least, or that you had some other reason for your action. You might, for all I knew, have received a full confession from Jane Smith, and so have determined to give her another chance. Even then, of course, it would have been right and best for you to communicate with me. If I had retained her in my service after I distrusted her, and had sent her to your house on messages, and then she had robbed you, you might have good reason to complain. But certainty not now. You knew she had left my service and you never cared to inquire why or how!”
“She said she had dismissed herself, and you own that was true,” said Mrs. Marvel, also rising, and allowing the vinegar of her nature to overcome the oil in her tones. “And she said she had done so because she wanted to live where the mistress did not have to go out to work, but was able to pay proper attention to her housekeeping. That seemed reasonable enough. She said she wanted to get on, and girls can’t get on under such circumstances.”
Lucy walked to the door and opened it. Before her eyes, in that brief journey, there floated a phantasmagoria of the Marvel women daily starting for their afternoon calls, of the perpetual evening outings of the whole family, of their bed-chamber curtains often undrawn till near noon! And yet these women had their stone ready to fling at her, because in the power of all the womanliness in her, her duties had swerved aside from the narrower groove. But she commanded herself to perfection!
“I think I have told you all I can,” she said. “If the inspector finds any other questions, I will do my best to answer them. This is my holiday time, and from what you say, Mrs. Marvel, I am sure you realise how much I must appreciate holidays. Good morning.”
She had rebuked the vulgar woman without losing either dignity or temper. Yet she went back pale and trembling to Miss Latimer. Every glimpse of the world’s falseness and cruelty is itself cruel!
(To be continued.)