I found a temporary home for Lucy, and promised to put an end to her troubles in some way or other. Nor did I doubt my ability to do this. Lucy believed an appeal or a threat of exposure to be equally vain weapons to use against Mr Collinson, but I was more worldly wise, and more sure of success. I saw that as yet the girl was not fit to cope with the world, and I determined to make the “Pattern of Virtue” provide for her comfort. In this determination Lucy’s own guileless and simple nature aided me. Though tenacious of her honour, she did not recoil from the idea of compelling Mr Collinson to pay for his deception, as many a girl of more vigorous mind whose feelings had been outraged would have done.
I confess to feeling more slightly malicious when I went to interview the great draper and clothier, who soon found that he had a much more experienced woman than simple little Lucy to deal with. His dismay, when I quietly laid the whole array of facts before him and proved the strength of my position, was comical to witness. At first he tried to frighten me with his bogie reputation as a pattern of virtue. But I had several cards up my sleeve, and as I played them, one by one, he realised that if I were to make public exposure of only one-half the seedy facts I had been able, with the aid of my colleagues, to rake up against him, the world would know him in all his carnal hideousness, and a vast number of people would take their custom elsewhere.
Before I had done with him I convinced him of the expediency of providing liberally for Lucy for at least five years to come, and I declined to be satisfied with less than three hundred per annum for that period. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, but he saw no other way out of the embroglio
into which his scoundrelly nature had brought him, and I carried my point.
Lucy has a rare taste for music, and her special gifts lie in the direction of operatic composition. She is talented, industrious, and ambitious, and she is having the best tuition obtainable. Her whole soul is in her art, and there is little fear that she will hearken to the flattery which her sweet looks, gentle nature, and future prospects evoke. When her five years of study are ended there will be another star added to our galaxy of genius, and I shall be more thankful than ever that the opportunity was given me to rescue a despairing soul from a watery grave, and that I had the ability to make a Pattern of Virtue pay liberally for his vices.
IX. Miss Rankin’s Rival
“If it is as I suspect, I will not marry him. You must use your utmost endeavours to find out the real state of the case, for it would drive me mad to discover that after all my care, I had become the dupe of a mercenary hypocrite.”
Such was the concluding portion of a communication made to me by Miss Iris Rankin, only child and sole heiress of the late John Graham Rankin, shipowner and millionaire.
The visit she paid me had its origin in a conversation which had taken place in her own drawing-room on the previous afternoon. A friend had paid her a call, and had regaled her with some gossip which had upset her considerably. This friend, Miss Cloudy, to wit, related how she, in the capacity of district visitor in connection with a very fashionable church, had met with a surprising experience.
“I was never so astonished in my life,” said Miss Cloudy, “as when I saw Mr Harold Gilbertson pass the open door of the room in which I was sitting talking to old Mrs Tweedy, one of the vicar’s parishioners. The old lady saw how surprised I was, and asked who had passed the door. In order that no mistake might be made I merely remarked that a young gentleman had gone upstairs, and that I thought it was somebody I knew.