Only a clod
small trumps. Play as he will, he can scarcely throw me out. What does
it matter _how_ the game is won, so long as one scores the odd trick?”
The day after this Richmond dinner was Sunday; but even that
circumstance did not prevent Francis Tredethlyn from taking preliminary
steps towards finding the missing girl whom he fancied quite within his
reach now; since it seemed certain that the face he had seen on the
stage of Drury Lane was the face of his uncle Oliver’s daughter, and no
other. It had been his habit until very lately to accompany Maude every
Sunday morning to a certain fashionable place of worship not very far
from Sloane Street, where miserable sinners lamented their iniquities
and their wretchedness amid the subdued rustling of silk at a guinea a
yard, and in an atmosphere that was odorous with Jockey Club and Ess
Bouquet. But Star-and-Garter dinners, and evenings “finished” in
mysterious localities at the West-end, are by no means conducive to
early rising; and now the Sabbath bells that Mr. Tredethlyn had been
wont to hear ringing blithely in the morning air while he breakfasted
with his wife, were apt to mingle with his feverish morning dreams, and
to transform themselves into the shrill peal of an alarm-bell summoning
the fireman’s succour for perishing wretches in some blazing habitation,
or the bell on board a boat leaving a pier--a boat which the dreamer
was--oh, so eagerly--striving to reach, but never, never could; for just
as his foot was going to step upon the deck, the plank on which he trod
would give way and tilt him into the waking world; with a raging
headache, perhaps, and a dull ceaseless pain in his breast, which he
scarcely cared to acknowledge by its ugly name of Remorse.
So now Mr. Tredethlyn was apt to spend the earlier part of his Sunday
morning in fitful slumbers, and the later portion of his day in the
society of his devoted friends. Unhappily Mephistopheles has such a
knack of making himself useful, that after once enjoying his society,
Faust is apt to find life very dreary without that fatal companionship.
Drifted away from the simple life that was natural to him, Francis was
only a helpless creature, with all the dismal blank of existence to be
filled up somehow or other.
But upon this particular Sunday he had a purpose of his own, and the
honest energy with which he set about the achievement of that purpose
transformed him into a new being.
Harcourt Lowther might have felt a little twinge of alarm had he seen
his pupil, as he walked away from the stuccoed district, with the old
light in his eyes, the old lightness in his firm tread. Francis forgot
that he had an empty life to drag out, and an idolized wife who did
_not_ love him. He forgot everything, except that he had to redeem his
half-forgotten vow, to fulfil a long-neglected duty.
“My uncle Oliver’s money brought _her_ peace of mind, and prosperity for
the father she loves so dearly,” thought Mr. Tredethlyn. “Let me
remember that, when I think of his disinherited daughter.”
Crumpled in one of the pockets of his overcoat, Francis had found the
programme of the performances at Drury Lane, and in the long list of
names crowded together at the bottom of the programme, he discovered
half hidden amongst Percies and Vavasours, Vane Tempests and Leveson
Gowers, and such appellations as the _corps de ballet_ modestly chooses
for its own--the vulgar name of Turner. He concluded, therefore, that
his cousin had called herself Turner at the Drury Lane Theatre, as well
as at Coltonslough, and he did not anticipate much difficulty in finding
her. The search after any information upon theatrical matters might have
seemed rather a hopeless thing on a Sunday, but Francis Tredethlyn’s
energy was not to be damped by small difficulties.
“I have wasted too many hours already,” he thought; “where my poor lost
girl is concerned, every moment of delay seems a new wrong.”
He took a hansom and drove straight to the theatre; but Drury Lane on a
Sunday seems an utterly hopeless and impracticable place. The stage-door
was closed. The box-office might have been the tomb of the Pharaohs for
any appearance of life within its portals. Happily Francis was not to be
disheartened. He walked up and down the street until the clocks struck
one, and a dense crowd began to pour out of a chapel in Crown Court, and
disgorge itself into Little Russell Street. Then, when the doors of the
public-houses were opened, he entered a tavern nearly opposite the
stage-door, and made his inquiries.
The barmaid at the tavern was able to tell him where the
stage-doorkeeper lived, but she was not able to give him any information
as to the habitations of the ladies of the _ballet_.
“Most of them live out at Camberwell, or up Islington way; though how
they manage it, poor things, walking backwards and forwards through all
sorts of weather, is more than I can tell. They send over here when
there’s a long rehearsal for their half pint of porter and their
sandwich, and that’s about all the dinner they get on such days, I dare
say.”
Thus, discursively, the barmaid. Francis left her, and made his way to
the adjacent court in which the doorkeeper was to be found in his
private capacity. That gentleman was in the midst of a very greasy
dinner and in the bosom of his family when Mr. Tredethlyn intruded on
him, and was at first inclined to resent the interruption.
“I don’t carry two hundred and forty-nine addresses in my blessed head,”
he remarked, in an injured tone; “which our company at the beginning of
this season was over two hundred and forty-nine; and I don’t care to be
hunted upon Sundays when I’m eating of my dinner, for a pack of
ballet-girls. I don’t get paid for _that_ when I take my salary. If any
young swell wants to find out one of our ladies’ address, to leave ’em a
bokay, or to take a ticket for their benefit or such-like, I should
think they could find it out of a week-day, and not come chivying of a
man over his Sunday wittles.”
But a judiciously-administered half-sovereign had a very soothing effect
upon the mind and manners of the doorkeeper. There are so few things in
a small way which cannot be done with half-a-sovereign. The man laid
down his knife and fork, and applied himself to serious reflection,
while his wife and family suspended their operations to stare admiringly
at the fashionably-dressed intruder.
“Let me see,” said the doorkeeper, scraping his stubbly chin as he
mused, “there’s such a many of ’em, that I may sit here trying to
remember where this here Miss Turner lives till doomsday, and not be no
wiser. I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, sir; I’ve got the addresses
of every member of the company in my book over the way. I’ll slip over
and get Miss Turner’s direction, while you wait here if you like.”
“Over the way” was Drury Lane Theatre. The doorkeeper took some
ponderous keys from a nail over the mantel-piece, and put on his hat.
Francis Tredethlyn went with him.
“Turner,” said the man; “Turner? A pale-faced young woman, ain’t she?
looks as if she’d gone through no end of trouble. She’s only an extra,
took on for this here great piece that’s just done with.”
“An extra?” inquired Francis.
“Yes; a sort of supernume’ry; not a reg’lar ballet-girl,--can’t dance,
or anything of that sort, only fit to go on in crowds, and so on. I
remember her, a very quiet, civil-spoken young person.”
The address was soon found; it was at a house in Brydges Street. Francis
left the doorkeeper with his heart beating tumultuously; his face pale
with emotion that was half joy, half pain--joy at finding her at last,
when hope had almost died out into forgetfulness--pain at finding her
thus. Ah, yes! it was very painful to remember the innocent rosy face
peeping out of a dimity bonnet, and to know that sorrow had set its
undefaceable hand upon that rustic beauty, and that the face he
remembered had no more a place upon this earth.
“Miss Turner and Miss Willoughby live together over an eating-house in
Brydges Street,” the doorkeeper had told Francis, with the further
information that he was to pull the top bell twice. Mr. Tredethlyn found
the eating-house, which was ostensibly closed; but the door of the shop
was ajar, and the atmosphere about and around it seemed greasy with the
steam of suet-pudding and boiled meat. The bell which Francis rang was
answered by a careworn-looking woman of doubtful age, who had an air of
faded gentility, a flimsy smartness of apparel, which was more plainly
demonstrative of poverty than the shabbiest garments that ever hung
together loosely upon the figure of a slattern.
“Miss Turner lives here, I believe?” Francis said eagerly; “I wish to
see her, if you please.”
“Miss Turner _did_ live here,” the woman answered, “but she has left.”
“Left? Why I saw her at the theatre only the night before last, and the
doorkeeper has just directed me here.”
“Miss Turner’s engagement expired last night, sir, and she left London
this morning.”
“This morning, only this morning! But of course you can tell me where
she has gone? I am her first-cousin, her only surviving relative. If I
had known that there was the least chance of her leaving London, I
should have tried to find her last night. Will you be good enough to
direct me to her?”
The woman shook her head.
“I don’t know where Miss Turner has gone,” she said.
Francis Tredethlyn’s face whitened to the very lips.
“My God!” he exclaimed, “is there a fatality in this business? am I
never to find her?”
Then addressing himself to the woman with sudden earnestness, he said,--
“For pity’s sake, if you can help me in my difficulty, do so with all
your might. You do not know how much depends on my finding her. I
scarcely think I should say too much, if I were to tell you that it is a
matter of life and death; for I saw my cousin’s face the night before
last, and it looked to me like a face that is fading away from this
earth. You have been told, perhaps, to give no one her address; but she
did not think her cousin Francis would come to ask for it. Pray trust me
and believe in me; I am the only friend that poor girl has in all this
world.”
“I have told you the truth, sir,” answered the woman, quietly; “I do not
know where Miss Turner has gone. Anything I can tell you about her, I
shall be happy to tell,” she added, as if answering the look of blank
despair in Francis Tredethlyn’s face; “but it is very little. Will you
step upstairs to my room? It is only a humble place, but it will be
quieter there than here.”
This could scarcely fail to be true; for during the very brief interview
which had just taken place, Francis had been brushed against and flouted
some half-dozen times by young persons with jugs and door-keys, going to
and from a neighbouring public-house. It was the popular dinner-hour in
Drury Lane, and four separate floors, with their minor divisions of
backs and fronts, were more or less engaged in the business of dining.
Francis followed his cousin’s late associate, Miss Willoughby, up three
steps of rather dingy stairs, upon which little colonies of children had
established themselves here and there with their toys. One young
gentleman of tender years was trying to fly a kite in the well of the
staircase, with a persevering disregard of atmospheric difficulties and
the heads of the passers below; while a young lady, belonging to an
adjacent tribe of settlers, took her doll for an airing in a
lobster-shell, drawn by a string which wound itself about Mr.
Tredethlyn’s legs, and had to be unwound like a bandage. Occasional
skirmishers from distant settlements came sliding down the
banisters--which, compared to the stairs, were as the modern railroad to