I discreetly asked if they had seen any new faces in church. But no; neither of them had, it was evident, seen my ladies in half-mourning, about whom I was diffident of inquiring directly.
Were any fresh people coming to reside in the neighbourhood that they had heard of?
“No,” said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head. “No; how should they? It is not very likely that any new residents would come here! The place may suit poor people like me, but would not take the fancy of persons having plenty of money to spend, who can select a house where they like. Ah! the miseries of poverty, Mr Lorton, and to be poor but proud! I hope you will never have my bitter experience, I’m sure!”—with another sad shake of her head, and an expression on her face that she was pretty certain that I would one day arrive at the same hollow estimate of life as herself. “No,” she continued, “no new people are at all likely to come here. I saw Mr Shuffler yesterday, and asked if that house which he has to let in The Terrace were yet taken, but he said, ‘not that he knew of;’ he had ‘heard of nobody coming’—had I? I assure you he was quite impertinent about it. He would not have spoken to me so uncivilly had poor dear papa been alive, I know! But it is always the way with that class of people:—they only look upon you in the light of how much you are worth!”
“Oh, ma!” said Bessie Dasher, “I think Mr Shuffler very civil and polite. He always makes me quite a low bow whenever he sees me.”
“Ah! my dear,” said her mother, “that’s because you are young and pretty, as I was once. He never bows to me as he used to do when your grandpapa lived.”
After a little more harping on the same string, the conversation drooped; and, as none of them could give me any further information towards assisting my quest, I took my leave of Lady Dasher and her daughters, in a much less buoyant frame of mind than when I had first thought of my visit an hour or so previously.
I had made certain that they would know something of the mysterious ladies in half-mourning; consequently, I was all the more disappointed. However, they had given me one hint; I would ask Shuffler himself, on the morrow, whether any new residents were expected in the suburb.
Shuffler was a house-agent who had to do with all the letting and taking, overhauling and repairing, of most of the habitations in our neighbourhood. He was a portly, oily personage; one who clipped his English royally, and walked, through the effects of bunions, I believe—although some mistook it for gout, and gave him the credit of being afflicted with that painful but aristocratic malady—as if he were continuously on pattens, or wore those clumsy wooden sabots which the Normandy peasantry use. He was also one-eyed, like Cyclops, the place of the missing organ being temporarily filled with a round glass orb, whose nature could be detected at a glance; this seemed to stare at you with a dull, searching look and take mental and disparaging stock of your person, while the sound eye was winking and blinking at you as jovially as you please.
Shuffler was affable enough to me, as usual, in despite of Lady Dasher having such a bad opinion of his manners; but, he could give me no information such as I wanted to hear. Everybody, really, appeared to be as cautious as “Non mi recordo” was on Queen Caroline’s trial. Nobody had heard of anybody coming to our neighbourhood. Nobody had seen any strange faces about. Nobody knew anything!
It was quite vexatious.