Only a clod
should turn over the pages,--not in the hope of finding any new meaning
in them, however, for I had studied them too carefully for that. I
turned them over, and while debating the question of a mock marriage,
the thought suddenly flashed upon me that it would be at least very easy
to ascertain if any genuine ceremonial had taken place in London.
Remember, Mr. Tredethlyn, I did not for one moment imagine that there
_had_ been a real marriage, and I fully believed that the trouble I was
about to take would be wasted trouble. If I had not from the first been
firmly convinced that the writer of the diary contemplated a sham
marriage, and nothing but a sham marriage, I should, at the outset, have
done that which I only did the other day.”
Francis Tredethlyn’s impatience was so very evident, that the lawyer,
slow as he generally was, quickened his pace a little as he went on.
“I was determined to institute an investigation of the books of every
registrar’s office in the metropolis during the months of January,
February, and March, 1849. I entrusted a confidential clerk with this
task, and three days afterwards he brought me the result of his
investigation. On the 27th February, 1849, Robert Lesley was married to
Susan Turner, in the office of the district registrar for Marylebone.
The registrar’s name was Joseph Pepper; the names of the witnesses were
Mary Banks and Jemima Banks, of No. 7, Woolcote Villas, St. John’s
Wood.”
“Thank God!” ejaculated Francis Tredethlyn, reverently. “Thank God, for
my little Susan’s sake, that this man was not the scoundrel we took him
for.”
“Whether such a marriage, contracted under a false name on your cousin’s
part, and it is very possible, also under a false name on the part of
the writer of the diary,--whether such a marriage might not be open to
dispute, is another question. However, the ceremonial, so far as it
went, was genuine, and in any case there would be some little difficulty
in setting it aside.”
“It shall not be set aside!” cried Francis, “if I have the power to
enforce it. Thank God for this, Mr. Kursdale, and thank you for the
thought, late as it came, that led to the discovery of the truth.”
“You must remember, though, my dear Mr. Tredethlyn,” remonstrated the
solicitor, who was almost alarmed by the young man’s eagerness, “you
must bear in mind that it is just possible there may have been some
other Susan Turner and some other Robert Lesley married in the month of
February, 1849, and that this registration may refer to them.”
“I am not afraid of that,” Francis answered, decisively. “No, the man
meant to be a scoundrel, I dare say; but my little Susy’s artless
confidence touched his heart at the very last, perhaps, and he _could_
not be such a villain as to deceive her. Rely upon it, Mr. Kursdale, the
marriage was a genuine marriage, and I shall live to see my cousin
righted, and to divide my uncle Oliver’s money with her.”
Mr. Kursdale stared at his client in blank amazement.
“You would--do that?” he asked, after a pause.
“Of course I would. Poor little ill-used darling! The money was hers,
every penny of it, by right. I--I meant at first to have restored it all
to her; but new claims have arisen for me, and I can only give her half
the fortune that should have been her own.”
The solicitor stifled a groan.
“And now how am I to find Susy?” asked Francis. “This registration
business gives us a new clue, doesn’t it?”
“Unquestionably. We can, at any rate, hope to find the two witnesses,
Mary and Jemima Banks, and from them we may discover your cousin’s
present whereabouts. I’ll send a clerk to these Banks people to-morrow.”
“Do you know I think I’d rather go and look for them myself, and at
once,” said Francis. “I’ve been very neglectful of Susy’s interests
lately, and I feel as if I ought to do something to make up for my
neglect. I’ll go myself, Mr. Kursdale, and try to find out these people.
If I fail, you must help me to find them. If I succeed, I’ll come here
to-morrow morning and tell you the result.”
The young man wrote the address of the people in St. John’s Wood in his
pocket-book, shook hands with his legal adviser, and hurried away; he
was so eager to atone for the neglect of the past by the activity of the
present. He hailed a hansom in Holborn, and was on his way to St. John’s
Wood five minutes after he had left the lawyer’s office. He sat with his
watch open in his hand, while he made abstruse calculations as to the
time it would take him to find the females, Mary and Jemima Banks,
extort from them all the information they had to give, drive back to his
hotel, reorganize his toilet, and then make his way to Twickenham. Mr.
Tredethlyn had grown something of a dandy of late; he employed a
West-end tailor, belaboured his honest head with big ivory-backed
brushes, and bedewed his cambric handkerchief with the odorous invention
of that necromancer of the flower-garden, Monsieur Eugene Rimmel. The
big Cornishman smiled at his reflection in the glass sometimes,
wondering at his own frivolity. But it was for Maude Hillary’s sake that
he brushed his hair laboriously every day, and grew critical in the
choice of a waistcoat. He had even hired a man to wait upon him, and had
a little regiment of boot-trees in his dressing-room.
St. John’s Wood proper is perhaps one of the most delightful suburban
retreats in which the man can make a pleasant temple for his _lares_ and
_penates_, who, yearning for the waving of green trees about his abode,
is yet obliged to live within an easy cab-drive from the City. Dear
little villas, embosomed in foliage; stately mansions, towering proudly
out of half an acre of trimly-kept garden, invite the wealthy citizen to
retirement and repose. The young lilacs and laburnums of to-day may
represent but poorly the bosky verdures of the past, but still the Wood
of St. John is a cool and pleasant oasis in the great arid desert of
London.
But there are outskirts and dependencies of St. John that are not quite
so pleasant,--ragged wastes and shabby little terraces, that hang like
tattered edges disgracing a costly garment. These dismal streets and
dreary terraces may not belong of right to St. John, but they hang about
him, and cling to him, and shelter themselves under the grandeur of his
name, nevertheless.
Woolcote Villas, St. John’s Wood, were very pretentious little
dwelling-places, fronted with damp stucco, and with a tendency to a
mossy greenness of aspect that was eminently dispiriting. Woolcote
Villas were of the Elizabethan order of architecture, and went off
abruptly into peaks and angles wherever a peak or an angle was possible.
How such small houses could require the massive stacks of Elizabethan
chimneys which made Woolcote Villas appear top-heavy and incongruous to
the eye of the stranger, was an enigma only to be solved by the
architect who designed those habitations; and why Woolcote Villas should
each be finished off with a stuccoed mustard-pot, popularly known as a
campanello tower, which was not Elizabethan, and not practicable for
habitation, being open to the four winds of heaven, was another problem
perpetually awaiting the same individual’s solution.
The hansom cabman, after driving through all the intricacies of St.
John’s Wood on different false scents, came at last upon Woolcote
Villas, through the friendly offices of a milkman, and pulled up his
horse before the door of No. 7.
Francis alighted and rang a bell,--a bell with a slack wire, which
required to be pulled a great many times before any effect was produced.
At last, however, the bell rang; and then, after a pause and another
peal, the door was opened, and a slipshod servant-maid, with a flapping
circle of dirty net hanging from the back of her disorderly head,
emerged from No. 7, Woolcote Villas, and presented herself at the little
gate before which Francis Tredethlyn was waiting.
The young man asked if Mrs. Banks was at home. Yes, she was at home, and
Miss Banks also. Did he please to want the apartments?
Mr. Tredethlyn told her that he had particular business with Mrs. Banks,
and that it was that lady whom he wished to see. The girl looked
disappointed. There were a good many bills in the Elizabethan windows of
Woolcote Villas, and the demands of lodgers were not equal to the supply
of furnished apartments.
The sound of a tinkling piano, played very badly, greeted Mr. Tredethlyn
as he entered the narrow passage. The dirty maidservant opened the door
of the apartment whence the sound came, and Francis found himself in a
shabby parlour, tenanted by a young lady, who rose from the piano as he
entered, and who was very fine and yet very shabby, and a trifle dirty,
like the parlour, and like Woolcote Villas generally. The young lady
wore a greasy-looking black silk, relieved by a coquettish little apron
of Stuart plaid, and adorned by all manner of ribands and narrow
velvets, with a good deal of Mosaic jewelry in the way of hearts and
crosses, and anchors and lockets; and her hair was turned back from her
forehead, and flowed in graceful ringlets of the corkscrew order upon
her stately shoulders. She was altogether a very extensively adorned
young lady; and she gave a little start expressive of surprise and
timidity, with just a slight admixture of pleasure, as Mr. Tredethlyn
presented himself before her. Many single gentlemen had inspected the
long-vacant lodgings; but there had been no one among them so
good-looking, or so splendid of aspect, as this tall, broad-shouldered
Cornishman, revised and corrected by his West-end tailor.
“The apartments, I suppose,” the young lady said, curtseying and
simpering. “My ma being busy, perhaps you will allow me to show them to
you? _This_ is the parlour. If the use of a sitting-room only is
required, _with_ partial board, including dinner on Sundays, the terms
would be seventeen and sixpence. Private apartments, without board,
fifteen shillings, or with full board----”
The young lady would have proceeded further, but Francis Tredethlyn
interrupted her.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I don’t require apartments; my business
is quite of a different nature. Your name is Banks, I believe?”
The lady inclined her head graciously. Life was very dreary in Woolcote
Villas, and the advent of a good-looking stranger could scarcely be
otherwise than agreeable, even if he was not a prospective tenant.
“Mary--or Jemima--Banks?” asked Francis.
“I am Miss Jemima Banks,” the young lady replied, with considerable
dignity. She began to think the good-looking stranger inclined to be
presumptuous; but Francis was too preoccupied to be aware of the
intended reproof.
“I am very glad that I have been so fortunate as to find you,” he said,
“for I believe you can give me the information I want. You were present
at a marriage before the registrar, at an office in Folthorpe Street,
Marylebone, on the 27th of February, 1849. Can you tell me where the
young lady who was married went after the ceremony? I have some right to
ask this question, for Susan Tre--Susan Turner is my first-cousin.”
“Well, I never did!” exclaimed Miss Banks, surprised out of her
stateliness. “Poor Susan was your cousin, was she? Why, she came home
here a fortnight after her marriage.”
“She came here?”
“Yes, she was lodging here before that; and she and her husband went off
to Paris after the ceremony; and there was no breakfast and no nothing;
and Mr. Lesley, he was always very high and mighty-like in his ways--he
flung down a twenty-pound note upon the desk before the registrar, and
when the man said something about change, he threw up his head
scornful-like--it was a way he had if anything vexed him,--‘There’s your
money,’ he said, ‘and don’t let’s have any humbug;’ and then he dragged