“Oh!” replied Justine, this time in a perfectly audible voice. “And what may you please to want to know, Mr. Softly, about my lady?”
“I want to know everything about her,” said I; slipping, at the same time, a little profile of her Majesty, raised in gold, into Justine’s hand, which delicate compliment was acknowledged by the least perceptible squeeze. “When did she arrive? When is she going away again? Where did she come from? Where does she live when she is at home? Is she young or middle-aged? Of course she’s very beautiful, or she couldn’t afford to take about with her such a pretty maid as you!”
The latter clause of my sentence I considered, not without reason, a master-stroke of diplomacy, and I strove to enhance its effect by again possessing myself of Justine’s hand; a manœuvre she neutralised by placing both her own in her apron-pockets, leaving the basket to take care of itself.
“Why, ain’t you a hunting gentleman?” asked she, in her turn, somewhat inconsequently, as I thought. “I made sure you was a hunting gentleman, by your broken bones; and I thought every hunting gentleman knew my lady. She’s just come from the Castle—my lady. She’ll stay here exactly as long as suits her fancy, and not a moment longer. Bless you, Mr. Softly, we might never stir a foot from here this side of Easter; and we might be off, bag and baggage, first thing to-morrow morning. She’s a quiet lady, mine: a quieter lady than Miss Merlin I never wish to dress and do for; but when she says a thing, she means it, Mr. Softly, and horses couldn’t draw her the way she hasn’t a mind to go.”
“And is she so very beautiful?” I inquired, determined to know the worst of this Amazon at once. Justine looked up from under her long eyelashes (she was a very pretty girl—this Justine), and shook her head, and smiled.
“That depends upon taste, Mr. Softly,” replied she, shooting such a glance at me the while, as I have no doubt had often done irreparable injury amongst her adorers.
“Some gentlemen doesn’t admire such a pale grave lady with dark eyes and hair. She’s a slight figure, too, has Miss Merlin; and, for as tall as she is, her waist is as small as mine. For goodness’ sake, Mr. Softly, here’s the waiter coming along the passage!” and without giving me any more information as to the size of Miss Merlin’s waist, or further opportunity of measuring her own, Justine darted up the staircase, and was soon lost in the sacred retreat of her mistress’s apartment.
I am no busy-body, I humbly trust and believe. It is not my way ever to inquire into the affairs of other people; and when any obliging friend wishes to make me the depository of some secret which is growing too heavy for his own shoulders, I invariably beg that he will keep it to himself. There is no such false position, as to be told an awful mystery under oath of inviolable silence, which you feel sure has been administered with the same injunctions to some half-dozen others besides yourself. One of these lets it out; perhaps all six of them make it their everyday conversation; and you, the only trustworthy person of the lot, sustain all the blame of having divulged a circumstance which you have kept silent as the grave, or even forgotten altogether. I need not, therefore, say that it is not my custom to waylay waiting-maids, nor to set every engine in my power in motion to discover the antecedents of such ladies as may happen to occupy the same hostelry with myself. But there was something about this new arrival that interested and excited me in spite of my better judgment. It was like being in the same house with a ghost. A man may not like ghosts, or he may disbelieve in them, or, worse still, he may have an invincible terror of these apparitions; and although he laughs and jeers at such matters by a crowded fireside on a Christmas eve, he may quail and shudder in his cold sheets at the dead of night, when he lies awake, thinking of all the horrors he has ever heard and read; fancying, as people will fancy in the dark, that he hears sighs at the door, footsteps in the passage, and something moving softly and stealthily about the room. But whether he be a courageous infidel, or a superstitious believer in the possibility of apparitions, only tell him there is a phantom belonging to the establishment, and the man becomes restless and uncomfortable forthwith. You will find him poking about the attics and offices by day and night. When you are snoring healthily in your first sleep, he will be shivering in his dressing-gown, to discover the spirit or the impostor; and it is probable that in his character of detective he will alarm more of the inhabitants of the mansion in a week than the old established and considerate ghost itself has done in a century.
Well, Miss Merlin was rapidly becoming my ghost. I felt a morbid desire to find out all about her. I could not rest in ignorance of the appearance, the character, and the antecedents of a lady who in her own person involved such interesting contradictions as this mysterious dame—tall, pale, and slight; with a waist as small as Justine’s, and that was certainly an extremely taper one; with a will of iron (not that there was anything unusual in THAT), and four such horses as I never saw together in one stable before. Then she was a devoted student; for had not Miss Lushington taxed her with read, read, reading all day long? Probably she was blue; possibly she might be an authoress, and I adore intellectual women! I can never see why ignorance is supposed by some men to be such an attraction in the other sex. The Tree of Knowledge is not necessarily the Tree of Evil; and, for my part, I think the more they know the better. What can be more graceful than a woman’s way of imparting her information?—the deprecating air with which she produces it, as it were, under protest, and the charming humility with which she accepts her victory when she has beaten you in argument, and swamped you with rhetoric? Oh! if Miss Merlin should turn out literary, it would be all over with me! In the meantime, how was I to find out something definite about her, before I committed myself in a personal interview?
As I revolved this question in my mind, I bethought me of a club acquaintance of mine—indeed I think I may almost call him a friend—whose speciality it is to know all about everybody who floats on the surface of society, not only in London, where he resides, but also in the different counties of England, and most of the fashionable watering-places abroad. Where and how he acquires his information is to me a matter of the darkest mystery, inasmuch as I never entered “The Hat and Umbrella” in my life, without finding him making use of that commodious club; and I have been informed by other members, that with the exception of Christmas-Day—a festival which, in his dislike of congratulations, I am giving to understand he always spends in bed—he may be seen seven times a week in his accustomed arm-chair during the afternoon, and at his accustomed table when the dining-hour arrives. However, he is a man of universal information, a walking edition of “Who’s Who?” in any year of the century. And to Quizby accordingly I resolved to write, begging him at his earliest convenience to give me all the particulars he could about Miss Merlin, stating also that we were occupying the same hotel, but wording by communication with the delicacy imperatively demanded by such topics. I hope none of my friends may ever have cause to say, but that “Softly is a confoundedly guarded fellow about women, you know!”