Mr. Bashwood’s head sank on his breast. He clasped his trembling hands fast in each other, and waited in silence to hear the rest.
“Cheer up!” pursued his son. “She was no more the captain’s wife than you are; and what is more, the captain himself is out of your way now. One foggy day in December last he gave us the slip; and was off to the continent, nobody knew where. He had spent the whole of the second Mrs. Manuel’s five thousand pounds, in the time that had elapsed (between two and three years) since she had come out of prison; and the wonder was, where he had got the money to pay his traveling expenses. It turned out that he had got it from the second Mrs. Manuel herself. She had filled his empty pockets; and there she was, waiting confidently in a miserable London lodging, to hear from him and join him as soon as he was safely settled in foreign parts! Where had she got the money, you may ask naturally enough? Nobody could tell at the time. My own notion is, now, that her former mistress must have been still living, and that she must have turned her knowledge of the Blanchards’ family secret to profitable account at last. This is mere guess-work, of course; but there’s a circumstance that makes it likely guess-work to my mind. She had an elderly female friend to apply to at the time, who was just the woman to help her in ferreting out her mistress’s address. Can you guess the name of the elderly female friend? Not you! Mrs. Oldershaw, of course!”
Mr. Bashwood suddenly looked up. “Why should she go back,” he asked, “to the woman who had deserted her when she was a child?”
“I can’t say,” rejoined his son, “unless she went back in the interests of her own magnificent head of hair. The prison-scissors, I needn’t tell you, had made short work of it with Miss Gwilt’s love-locks, in every sense of the word and Mrs. Oldershaw, I beg to add, is the most eminent woman in England, as restorer-general of the dilapidated heads and faces of the female sex. Put two and two together; and perhaps you’ll agree with me, in this case, that they make four.”
“Yes, yes; two and two make four,” repeated his father, impatiently. “But I want to know something else. Did she hear from him again? Did he send for her after he had gone away to foreign parts?”
“The captain? Why, what on earth can you be thinking of? Hadn’t he spent every farthing of her money? and wasn’t he loose on the Continent out of her reach? She waited to hear from him. I dare say, for she persisted in believing in him. But I’ll lay you any wager you like, she never saw the sight of his handwriting again. We did our best at the office to open her eyes; we told her plainly that he had a first wife living, and that she hadn’t the shadow of a claim on him. She wouldn’t believe us, though we met her with the evidence. Obstinate, devilish obstinate. I dare say she waited for months together before she gave up the last hope of ever seeing him again.”
Mr. Bashwood looked aside quickly out of the cab window. “Where could she turn for refuge next?” he said, not to his son, but to himself. “What, in Heaven’s name, could she do?”
“Judging by my experience of women,” remarked Bashwood the younger, overhearing him, “I should say she probably tried to drown herself. But that’s only guess-work again: it’s all guess-work at this part of her story. You catch me at the end of my evidence, dad, when you come to Miss Gwilt’s proceedings in the spring and summer of the present year. She might, or she might not, have been desperate enough to attempt suicide; and she might, or she might not, have been at the bottom of those inquiries that I made for Mrs. Oldershaw. I dare say you’ll see her this morning; and perhaps, if you use your influence, you may be able to make her finish her own story herself.”
Mr. Bashwood, still looking out of the cab window, suddenly laid his hand on his son’s arm.
“Hush! hush!” he exclaimed, in violent agitation. “We have got there at last. Oh, Jemmy, feel how my heart beats! Here is the hotel.”