Desperate Remedies
this, or inquire for it, or did Mr. Manston?’
‘No--and I rather wondered at it. But she seemed to have forgotten
it--indeed, she didn’t make any inquiry at all, only standing behind
him, listening to his; and he probably had never been told anything
about it.’
‘Whose sale were these articles of hers taken to?’
‘Who was the auctioneer? Mr. Halway. His place is the third turning
from the end of that street you see there. Anybody will tell you the
shop--his name is written up.’
Edward went off to follow up his clue with a promptness which was
dictated more by a dogged will to do his utmost than by a hope of
doing much. When he was out of sight, the tall and cloaked man, who had
watched him, came up to the woman’s door, with an appearance of being in
breathless haste.
‘Has a gentleman been here inquiring about Mrs. Manston?’
‘Yes; he’s just gone.’
‘Dear me! I want him.’
‘He’s gone to Mr. Halway’s.’
‘I think I can give him some information upon the subject. Does he pay
pretty liberally?’
‘He gave me half-a-crown.’
‘That scale will do. I’m a poor man, and will see what my little
contribution to his knowledge will fetch. But, by the way, perhaps you
told him all I know--where she lived before coming to live here?’
‘I didn’t know where she lived before coming here. O no--I only said
what Mr. Brown had told me. He seemed a nice, gentle young man, or I
shouldn’t have been so open as I was.’
‘I shall now about catch him at Mr. Halway’s,’ said the man, and went
away as hastily as he had come.
Edward in the meantime had reached the auction-room. He found some
difficulty, on account of the inertness of those whose only inducement
to an action is a mere wish from another, in getting the information he
stood in need of, but it was at last accorded him. The auctioneer’s book
gave the name of Mrs. Higgins, 3 Canley Passage, as the purchaser of the
lot which had included Mrs. Manston’s workbox.
Thither Edward went, followed by the man. Four bell pulls, one above the
other like waistcoat-buttons, appeared on the door-post. Edward seized
the first he came to.
‘Who did you woant?’ said a thin voice from somewhere.
Edward looked above and around him; nobody was visible.
‘Who did you woant?’ said the thin voice again.
He found now that the sound proceeded from below the grating covering
the basement window. He dropped his glance through the bars, and saw a
child’s white face.
‘Who did you woant?’ said the voice the third time, with precisely the
same languid inflection.
‘Mrs. Higgins,’ said Edward.
‘Third bell up,’ said the face, and disappeared.
He pulled the third bell from the bottom, and was admitted by another
child, the daughter of the woman he was in search of. He gave the little
thing sixpence, and asked for her mamma. The child led him upstairs.
Mrs. Higgins was the wife of a carpenter who from want of employment
one winter had decided to marry. Afterwards they both took to drink,
and sank into desperate circumstances. A few chairs and a table were
the chief articles of furniture in the third-floor back room which they
occupied. A roll of baby-linen lay on the floor; beside it a pap-clogged
spoon and an overturned tin pap-cup. Against the wall a Dutch clock was
fixed out of level, and ticked wildly in longs and shorts, its entrails
hanging down beneath its white face and wiry hands, like the faeces of a
Harpy [‘foedissima ventris proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper
ora’). A baby was crying against every chair-leg, the whole family of
six or seven being small enough to be covered by a washing-tub. Mrs.
Higgins sat helpless, clothed in a dress which had hooks and eyes in
plenty, but never one opposite the other, thereby rendering the
dress almost useless as a screen to the bosom. No workbox was visible
anywhere.
It was a depressing picture of married life among the very poor of a
city. Only for one short hour in the whole twenty-four did husband and
wife taste genuine happiness. It was in the evening, when, after
the sale of some necessary article of furniture, they were under the
influence of a quartern of gin.
Of all the ingenious and cruel satires that from the beginning till now
have been stuck like knives into womankind, surely there is not one so
lacerating to them, and to us who love them, as the trite old fact, that
the most wretched of men can, in the twinkling of an eye, find a wife
ready to be more wretched still for the sake of his company.
Edward hastened to despatch his errand.
Mrs. Higgins had lately pawned the workbox with other useless articles
of lumber, she said. Edward bought the duplicate of her, and went
downstairs to the pawnbroker’s.
In the back division of a musty shop, amid the heterogeneous collection
of articles and odours invariably crowding such places, he produced his
ticket, and with a sense of satisfaction out of all proportion to the
probable worth of his acquisition, took the box and carried it off
under his arm. He attempted to lift the cover as he walked, but found it
locked.
It was dusk when Springrove reached his lodging. Entering his small
sitting-room, the front apartment on the ground floor, he struck a
light, and proceeded to learn if any scrap or mark within or upon his
purchase rendered it of moment to the business in hand. Breaking open
the cover with a small chisel, and lifting the tray, he glanced eagerly
beneath, and found--nothing.
He next discovered that a pocket or portfolio was formed on the
underside of the cover. This he unfastened, and slipping his hand
within, found that it really contained some substance. First he pulled
out about a dozen tangled silk and cotton threads. Under them were
a short household account, a dry moss-rosebud, and an old pair of
carte-de-visite photographs. One of these was a likeness of Mrs.
Manston--‘Eunice’ being written under it in ink--the other of Manston
himself.
He sat down dispirited. This was all the fruit of his task--not a single
letter, date, or address of any kind to help him--and was it likely
there would be?
However, thinking he would send the fragments, such as they were, to
Graye, in order to satisfy him that he had done his best so far,
he scribbled a line, and put all except the silk and cotton into an
envelope. Looking at his watch, he found it was then twenty minutes to
seven; by affixing an extra stamp he would be enabled to despatch them
by that evening’s post. He hastily directed the packet, and ran with it
at once to the post-office at Charing Cross.
On his return he took up the workbox again to examine it more leisurely.
He then found there was also a small cavity in the tray under the
pincushion, which was movable by a bit of ribbon. Lifting this he
uncovered a flattened sprig of myrtle, and a small scrap of crumpled
paper. The paper contained a verse or two in a man’s handwriting. He
recognized it as Manston’s, having seen notes and bills from him at his
father’s house. The stanza was of a complimentary character, descriptive
of the lady who was now Manston’s wife.
‘EUNICE.
‘Whoso for hours or lengthy days
Shall catch her aspect’s changeful rays,
Then turn away, can none recall
Beyond a galaxy of all
In hazy portraiture;
Lit by the light of azure eyes
Like summer days by summer skies:
Her sweet transitions seem to be
A kind of pictured melody,
And not a set contour.
‘AE. M.’
To shake, pull, and ransack the box till he had almost destroyed it was
now his natural action. But it contained absolutely nothing more.
‘Disappointed again,’ he said, flinging down the box, the bit of paper,
and the withered twig that had lain with it.
Yet valueless as the new acquisition was, on second thoughts he
considered that it would be worth while to make good the statement in
his late note to Graye--that he had sent everything the box contained
except the sewing-thread. Thereupon he enclosed the verse and
myrtle-twig in another envelope, with a remark that he had overlooked
them in his first search, and put it on the table for the next day’s
post.
In his hurry and concentration upon the matter that occupied him,
Springrove, on entering his lodging and obtaining a light, had not
waited to pull down the blind or close the shutters. Consequently all
that he had done had been visible from the street. But as on an average
not one person a minute passed along the quiet pavement at this time
of the evening, the discovery of the omission did not much concern his
mind.
But the real state of the case was that a tall man had stood against the
opposite wall and watched the whole of his proceeding. When Edward came
out and went to the Charing Cross post-office, the man followed him
and saw him drop the letter into the box. The stranger did not further
trouble himself to follow Springrove back to his lodging again.
Manston now knew that there had been photographs of some kind in his
wife’s workbox, and though he had not been near enough to see them, he
guessed whose they were. The least reflection told him to whom they had
been sent.
He paused a minute under the portico of the post-office, looking at the
two or three omnibuses stopping and starting in front of him. Then he
rushed along the Strand, through Holywell Street, and on to Old Boswell
Court. Kicking aside the shoeblacks who began to importune him as he
passed under the colonnade, he turned up the narrow passage to the
publishing-office of the Post-Office Directory. He begged to be allowed
to see the Directory of the south-west counties of England for a moment.
The shopman immediately handed down the volume from a shelf, and Manston
retired with it to the window-bench. He turned to the county, and
then to the parish of Tolchurch. At the end of the historical and
topographical description of the village he read:--
‘Postmistress--Mrs. Hurston. Letters received at 6.30 A.M. by foot-post
from Anglebury.’
Returning his thanks, he handed back the book and quitted the office,
thence pursuing his way to an obscure coffee-house by the Strand, where
he now partook of a light dinner. But rest seemed impossible with him.
Some absorbing intention kept his body continually on the move. He
paid his bill, took his bag in his hand, and went out to idle about the
streets and over the river till the time should have arrived at which
the night-mail left the Waterloo Station, by which train he intended to
return homeward.
There exists, as it were, an outer chamber to the mind, in which, when a
man is occupied centrally with the most momentous question of his life,
casual and trifling thoughts are just allowed to wander softly for an
interval, before being banished altogether. Thus, amid his concentration
did Manston receive perceptions of the individuals about him in the
lively thoroughfare of the Strand; tall men looking insignificant;
little men looking great and profound; lost women of miserable repute
looking as happy as the days are long; wives, happy by assumption,
looking careworn and miserable. Each and all were alike in this one
respect, that they followed a solitary trail like the inwoven threads
which form a banner, and all were equally unconscious of the significant
whole they collectively showed forth.
At ten o’clock he turned into Lancaster Place, crossed the river,
and entered the railway-station, where he took his seat in the down
mail-train, which bore him, and Edward Springrove’s letter to Graye, far
away from London.
XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
1. MARCH THE THIRTEENTH. THREE TO SIX O’CLOCK A.M.
They entered Anglebury Station in the dead, still time of early morning,