Some of my readers may not need to be told that I, Horace Byrd, was not always on the detective force; that I had had my bringing up in different circles, and that I was by birth and education what is called a gentleman. I speak of this here to account for the affability with which Mr. Randall greeted me, and his readiness to satisfy what, under ordinary circumstances, might have been considered a most impertinent and inexcusable curiosity. He was my father’s friend, and he listened with respect while I made my excuses, and opened at once upon the subject that occupied my thoughts.
“Mr. Randall,” said I, “the errand with which I approach you is of a most singular nature. The couple you have just married—pardon me, my ears are good and my presence here is in connection with that same couple—lie under a suspicion of wrong-doing that may or may not lead to consequences of the most serious nature. What that wrong-doing is I had rather not state, since it is as yet merely a suspicion from which they may be able to clear themselves. But what I will say is, that you will be furthering their welfare and assisting at the unravelment of a most mysterious occurrence if you will tell me what you know about them, and the causes which led to this evidently hasty and clandestine marriage.”
“I am greatly astonished,” were his first words; “and feel strongly inclined to ask you what these poor young folks could have done beyond loving each other and marrying in despite of the pride and ambitious projects of Mr. and Mrs. Winchester. But curiosity pure and simple is unworthy of a clergyman, so I will merely say if they are doing or have done anything that could be called really wrong I was in complete ignorance of it, and that their marriage is but the culmination of an intention long known to me if not to the world and that society to which the groom if not the bride belongs.”
“Now,” returned I, “you astonish me. They were engaged, then, and you knew it; something which I can scarcely believe his own mother did.”
“Very likely,” was the quiet retort. “Mrs. Winchester is not one whom a proud man would take into his confidence if he meant to make what is called a poor and unequal match.”
“Still,” I began—
“Still,” he interrupted, “a son should show a certain consideration and respect to the mother who bore him and who always has displayed, as he himself declares, forbearance to his faults and sympathy for the weakness that caused them. I know all this,” Mr. Randall continued, “and I agree with you in your opinion; but there were certain peculiarities in this special case which offer at least some excuse for his action and my sympathy with it. Lawrence Sutton was not always a respectable member of society. He was a wild boy, an extravagant youth, and a more than dissipated man. His mother loved him but could not control him, powerful and determined spirit though she is. Nor had his step-father’s position and enormous wealth any influence in controlling passions that partook almost of the recklessness of the foreign fast society amongst which he was more or less unfortunately cast. He seemed to be without aspiration, and yet he was not shallow, nor ungenerous, nor mean. His mother, whose thoughts few can penetrate, looked on and was silent; his step-father, who had not nature to help him to a consideration for his faults, showed his anger and threatened to show him his door but never did. He lived an outcast from the best and showed no prospect of amendment till suddenly—it was a year ago—the greatest and most startling change took place in his habits and general style of living; and from being a careless man about town, he became the courteous, careful gentleman, alive to the place of honor he had lost in society and active in his endeavor to regain it. His mother, always hopeful for her boy, naturally attributed to her own quiet influence and unbroken faith this wonderful restoration to manhood and honor: but I knew better; I to whom human nature has been an open book for twenty-five years, knew that something fresher and more ideal than any influence Mrs. Winchester was capable of exerting had led this young man to reject a course which had become almost a second nature to him.
“Frequent and prolonged visits at Mr. Winchester’s house did not serve to explain the mystery to me. I found Mr. Sutton sitting with the family,—something which I had not seen him do for years,—but how was I to connect this fact with the presence now and then of the quiet young woman, without any special attraction, whom Mrs. Winchester once rather carelessly introduced to me as Miss Irwin; and yet this girl with the subdued look and meek, almost humble aspect, was the force which had acted on this man’s nature and turned its impulses, as it were, completely about. To him she was the manifestation of all that was ideal and desirable in womanhood; and from the first moment he saw her, as he afterwards told me, he made up his mind to win her for his wife if it cost him all and every indulgence of his hitherto much to be reprobated life. That he cherished this hope in his heart and did not make a confidant of either of his parents is not to be wondered at. Mrs. Winchester looks upon Philippa as a dependent; a being too insignificant to be regarded, much less admired or feared. Nothing, not even the change in her son’s moral life, would ever have convinced her that this girl possessed influence; or if by any means that belief was forced upon her, that it arose from any merit or powers she was bound to acknowledge or respect. A handsome, elegant, worldly-wise woman herself, she sees no excellence that is not linked to those qualities, and would rather, I verily believe, have seen her son thrown back into his old course than owe his redemption to a source so insignificant in appearance and out of all accord with her own views of what was in keeping with her son’s prospects and her own social position.
“At least, this is the judgment I have formed of her, and this the explanation which young Sutton gave me of his conduct, in an interview he held with me some six months ago. ‘She’—that is, his mother—‘shall know nothing of what Philippa is to me till she sees her at my side as my wife,’ was his remark to me at that time. ‘And that I look to you to make her,’ he continued, ‘when by perseverance and a proper probation I have induced this pure and uncontaminated being to trust me with her fate and make me what I now believe I am capable of becoming, a man of purpose, ambition, and social standing.’