Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “The chorus-girl was handsome, I suppose?”

  “Well, Strange to say, she was. She was worth all the money Withernsea spent on her; and I suppose it’s about the only bargain he ever made in which he wasn’t had. She was one of the handsomest women that ever stepped upon the Spectacular stage; and while she was behind the footlights not a man in the stalls had eyes for anybody else.”

  “Was she anything like that?” asked Faunce, handing him Lady Perivale’s photograph.

  “She was. Ten years ago you might have passed that off for her photo. But she ain’t up to that now.”

  “You’ve seen her lately.”

  “She was here the week before last, a wreck, looking ill and poor. I never knew a handsome woman go off so sudden. I saw her in a box Drury Lane last Christmas, in fine form; but that’s all over. She wanted me to get her an engagement — chorus again — she was never up to speaking parts, used to lose her head directly she had to utter. I couldn’t do anything for her. We’ve no use for anything old and faded at the West End theatres. Managers won’t consider it.”

  “Can you give me the lady’s address?”

  “I think I booked it,” said the agent, “just to satisfy her, though I knew it was no use — at any rate not till the pantomime season, when I might get her an engagement for a Flora or a Juno at the back of the stage, or a Queen in a historical procession, perhaps. Yes, here it is: Mrs. Randall, Miss Kate Delmaine, 14, Selburne Street, Chelsea.”

  “Thank you, Mordaunt,” replied Faunce, handing him a sovereign. “I don’t want to waste your time for nothing.”

  “Well, Faunce, time is money, ain’t it?” said Mordaunt, pocketing the coin with a pleasant smile.

  CHAPTER XI.

  “And the Abbé uncrossed his legs,

  Took snuff, a reflective pinch.

  Broke silence: ‘The question begs

  Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch?

  The love which to one and one only has reference

  Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God’s preference.’”

  FAUNCE ate his modest luncheon at the immemorial Cock; and, after a quarter of an hour’s rest and meditation, assisted by tobacco, took a hansom and drove to Selburne Street, which the cabman discovered, after some research, in a labyrinth of shabby streets between the King’s Road and the Thames, to the west of the redbrick mansions of Cheyne Walk, and all the pleasantness of fashionable Chelsea — a wilderness of eight-roomed houses, slate roofs, narrow areas, steep steps, dirty windows, and gutters overcharged with small children: one of those depressing neighbourhoods which fill the stranger’s mind with a despairing pity, but where, nevertheless, there exist worthy, hard-working people who contrive somehow to be happy, and even comfortable — people who have their Christmas puddings and their household affections, like the Cratchets, and who do not desire to curse God and die.

  The houses in Selburne Street were of the same pattern as most of the other streets, and just as shabby, but a little larger. The door at No. 14 was opened by the landlady, who did not know, or apparently care, whether Mrs. Randall was at home or out, but who bade the visitor go up to the first-floor front and inquire.

  “She’s got her key,” said this lady,” and I don’t always hear her come in.”

  Faunce went upstairs and tapped politely at the door of the front room.

  “Come in, whoever you are,” said a voice, with a listless melancholy in its tone.

  An a odour of tobacco greeted Faunce as he opened the door, and a woman sitting by the window threw the end of a cigarette into the street.

  “Is it you, Jim?” she asked drearily, with her face towards the window; then, turning, and seeing a stranger, she gave a cry of surprise that had a touch of fear in it.

  “What do you want?” she cried sharply, and Faunce saw that her hand shook a little as she caught hold of a chair.

  “Nerves gone. The usual thing,” he thought; “drink or drugs; the usual resource when bad luck sets in.”

  “I have ventured to call upon you on a matter of business, Mrs. Randall,” he said,” without writing to ask leave. But as it’s a business that may be profitable — very profitable — to yourself, I hope you will pardon the liberty.”

  “Who are you?” she asked fiercely. “I don’t want any of your gammon. Who are you?”

  She was a wreck. The agent had been right so far. But she was a beautiful wreck The brilliant colouring was faded, the cheeks were hollow, the eyes haggard, but the perfect lines of the face were there; and Faunce saw that she had been beautiful, and also that when she was at her best she must have been curiously like Lady Perivale. In height, in figure, in the poise of the head, the modelling of the throat, she resembled her as a sister might have done.

  She must have fallen upon evil days since her visit to Algiers — very evil days. There was the pinch of poverty in her aspect, in her tawdry morning wrapper, in the shabbily-furnished sitting-room.

  “Pray don’t be alarmed, madam. My business is not of an unpleasant nature.”

  “I want to know who and what you are!” she said in the same tone, half fear, half fury;” and how you had the cheek to march into my room without sending up your name first. Do you think because I’m in cheap lodgings I ain’t a lady?”

  “Your landlady told me to come upstairs, or I should not have taken that liberty. That is my name,” handing her a card, which she snatched impatiently and looked at with a scowling brow. “I am engaged in the interests of a lady whose social position has suffered by her resemblance to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were in Algiers last February with Colonel Rannock.”

  Her face lost colour, and her breathing quickened, as she answered —

  “Well, what then?”

  “You were seen by friends of my client, and mistaken for her, and the result was a scandal which has seriously affected that lady. Now, in the event of a libel suit, which is very likely to arise out of that scandal, it will be in your power to put matters straight by stepping into the witness-box, and stating that you were Colonel Rannock’s travelling companion in Algiers, and Corsica, and Sardinia last winter. The lady will be in court, and the likeness between you and her will explain the mistake.”

  “I’ll see you and your lady client in —— first!” answered the termagant. “I wonder at your check in coming to ask a lady to give herself away like that. You just make yourself scarce, Mr. Faunce,” looking at his card. “I haven’t another word to say to you.”

  “Oh yes, you have, Mrs. Randall. You have got to ask me what recompense I am prepared to offer you for your assistance in this little matter.”

  “I don’t believe a word of your story; and I want to see you outside that door.”

  “Come, come, madam. Is it reasonable to be so touchy with a man who comes to propose a very profitable transaction?”

  “What do you mean by profitable?”

  “I mean that in the event of the libel suit coming off, and your going into the witness-box and swearing that you were with Rannock from the beginning to the end of that little tour, I am prepared to pay you a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds for one morning’s work. Not so bad, eh?”

  Her colour had come back, and, after a long scrutiny of Faunce’s amiable countenance, she seemed reassured.

  “Sit down,” she said, and seated herself opposite him, with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.

  He noted the wedding-ring, and two or three trumpery turquoise and garnet rings on her left hand. Her day of splendour was past, and the spoils of her youth had vanished.

  “A hundred ain’t much, if your client is a rich woman,” she said. “Of course, I can guess who she is — Lady Perivale. I’ve been told I’m like her. If it’s her, she can afford to pay two hundred quid as easy as one. And I ain’t going to stand up in court and tell my life and adventures for a lower figure.”

  “You are a hard one, Mrs. Randall.”


  “I’m a hard-up one, Mr. Faunce. There’s no use denying it when you see me in such a beggarly hole as this. I ain’t used to it. I’ve lived like a lady ever since I was eighteen years old, and this beastly lodging-house gets upon my nerves. That’s why I was so nasty with you when you came in,” she concluded, with a little laugh that didn’t sound quite genuine.

  “Well, Mrs. Randall, if you oblige my client I know she will deal generously with you.”

  “Two hundred quid paid down before I go into the box; not a penny less.”

  “We’ll see about it. In the mean time, to show good faith, there’s a trifle on account,” said Faunce, handing her a ten-pound note.

  He would have offered her more had he found her in better surroundings, but he reckoned the rooms she was in at ten shillings a week, and he thought she had come to her lowest stage.

  “Thanks,” she said, putting the note in a shabby porte-monnaie, whose contents Faunce’s eye discovered in the instant of its opening — sixpence and a few coppers.

  The door opened suddenly at this moment, and Faunce, who sat opposite, caught one brief glimpse of the man who opened it, and who, on seeing him, stepped back, shut it quickly, and ran downstairs. Faunce started up, and was at the window in time to see the visitor leave the house, and walk down the street. He was a big man, with broad shoulders and a bull neck, flashily dressed, and with a fox-terrier at his heels.

  “I’m sorry I frightened your friend away,” said Faunce.

  “Oh, it don’t matter. He can come another time if he wants to see me,” Mrs. Randall answered carelessly.

  That sensitive complexion of hers had paled at the interruption, just as at the mention of Rannock’s name, and a gloomy look had come into her eyes. The visitor could hardly have been the bringer of pleasant things.

  “An old friend of yours?” hazarded Faunce.

  “Oh lord, yes; old enough! I’ve known him since I was a kid.”

  “But apparently not a favourite of yours?”

  “I’ve got no favourites,” she answered curtly. “All I want is to go my own way, and not to be bothered.

  “Nobody can call that an unreasonable desire, madam. And now will you be so very kind as to oblige me with one of your photographs — one that, in your own opinion, does you most justice.”

  “Then it had better be one that wasn’t taken yesterday,” she said. “They wipe the wrinkles out, but they can’t hide the lantern jaws. Oh, you can have a photo if you want one; I’ve got plenty. The photographers were the plague of my life when I was on the boards, and as long as I was about London, driving my carriage. But they’ve left off worrying now. There’s new faces in the market.”

  “None handsomer than yours, madam.”

  She dragged open a reluctant drawer in an ill-made mahogany sideboard, and produced half a dozen cabinet photographs, from which Faunce selected two of the best, with polite acknowledgment of the favour.

  “You have my address, Mrs. Randall,” he said, rising, and taking up his hat; “let me know if you change your quarters.”

  “I shan’t be able to do that — on a tenner,” she said; “but it will keep me out of the workhouse for a week or two.”

  “By-the-by, can you tell me where Colonel Rannock is to be found at this present time?” Faunce asked, as he shook hands with her.

  Her hand was in his when he asked the question, and he felt it grow cold. She was fond of Ran nock, he thought — fond of him, and angry with him for abandoning her.

  “No, I can’t,” she answered, looking at him steadily, but with the same pale change in her face that he had noted before.

  “I’m told he went to San Francisco, viâ New York, on his way to the Alaska goldfields,” he said.

  “Yes, I believe he went to the goldfields.”

  “Do you know when he started?”

  “Some time in March. I don’t remember the date.”

  “Do you remember by what line he went — whether from Liverpool or Southampton?”

  “I know nothing about him — after he left London.”

  “Well, Mrs. Randall, expect to hear from me soon. Good-bye.”

  Faunce left her, pleased with his success. Everything was now easy. There was nothing wanted but the audacious libel, which should afford ground for an action; and that, as Mr. Faunce told Lady Perivale, would be forthcoming.

  He was satisfied, but he was also thoughtful. There had been something unaccountable in the woman’s manner: that strange mixture of anger and apprehension, the sick, white look that came over her face when she spoke of Rannock. Something evil there was assuredly — some hidden thing in her mind which made that name a sound of fear.

  He had studied the woman intently during the quarter of an hour’s tête-à-tête, and he did not think that she was a bad woman, from the criminal point of view. He did not think she was treacherous or cruel. If any evil thing had befallen Rannock, the evil was not her doing. And, after all, her agitation might be only that of a woman of shattered nerves and quick feelings, who had loved intensely and been badly treated — cast off and left in poverty — by the man she loved. It might be that the perturbed look which he had taken for fear was not fear, but resentment.

  He telegraphed to Lady Perivale, asking for an appointment, and presented himself at Runnymede Grange on the following afternoon. He had not seen his client since their first interview, and he was astonished at the change in her countenance and manner. On the former occasion she had been all gloom: to-day she was all brightness. The nervous irritability, the fiery indignation were gone. She treated the subject of her wrongs in a business-like tone, almost as a bagatelle.

  “Something has happened since I saw her. Something that has changed the whole tenor of her life,” thought Faunce.

  He had a shrewd idea of what that “something” was a few minutes later, when Lady Perivale told him that she would like a friend, in whose judgment she had confidence, to hear his report; and when Arthur Haldane came into the room —

  “This is Mr. Faunce,” said Grace, in a tone that showed her friend had been told all about him; and the two men saluted each other politely, without any hint of their former meeting.

  Faunce told Lady Perivale that he had found the woman who resembled her, and that her evidence would be ready when it was required.

  “She will not shrink from standing up in court and acknowledging that she was with Colonel Rannock in Algiers?” asked Lady Perivale, wonderingly.

  “No, she won’t shrink — provided the reward is good enough. She is prepared to tell the truth — and — shame the devil — for two hundred pounds.”

  “Give her ten times as much if she wants it!” cried Lady Perivale. “But what are we to do if nobody libels me? Messrs Rosset have sent me two or three newspaper paragraphs. They are very insolent, but I’m afraid one could hardly go to law about them.”

  At Faunce’s request she produced the impertinent snippets, pasted on flimsy green paper.

  From the Morning Intelligencer: “Lady Perivale, whose small dinners and suppers after the opera were so popular last season, has not done any entertaining this year. She is living in her house in Grosvenor Square, but is spending the summer in strict retirement. She may be seen in the morning riding with the ‘liver brigade,’ and she occasionally takes an afternoon drive in the Park; but she has joined in none of the season’s festivities — a fact that has caused some gossip in the inner circles of the smart world.”

  From Miranda’s “Crême de la Crême,” in the Hesperus: “Among the beauties at Lady Morningside’s ball, Lady Perivale was conspicuous by her absence, although last season she was so prominent a personage in the Morningside set. What can be the cause of this self-effacement on the part of a young and wealthy widow who had the ball of fashion at her feet last year?”

  There were other paragraphs of the same calibre.

  “You are right, Lady Perivale,” Faunce said, after having gravely read them. “These are not good enough. We must
wait for something better.”

  “And you think that somebody will libel me?”

  “I am — almost — sure that you will be called upon to punish some very gross libel within the next few weeks.”

  “Then I hope I shall have the pleasure of horsewhipping the writer, and the editor who publishes it!” said Haldane, hotly.

  “If you please, Mr. Haldane,” cried Faunce, earnestly, “nothing of that kind! It is necessary that Lady Perivale should be publicly insulted, in order that she may be publicly justified. Nothing short of the appearance of the woman who was mistaken for her ladyship can give the lie direct to the scandal. I must beg, therefore, that the writer of the libel may be held secure from personal violence.”

  Haldane was silent. His fingers were itching for a stout malacca and for a scoundrel’s back upon which to exercise it. He would have given so much to focus the malignant slander that had followed the woman he loved, and had made even him, her adoring lover, begin to doubt her, with a wavering faith of which he was now so deeply ashamed.

  Oh, to have some one to punish with sharp physical pain, some craven hound to offer up as a sacrifice to his own remorse!

  CHAPTER XII.

  “In the mute August afternoon,

  They trembled to some undertune

  Of music in the silver air;

  Great pleasure was it to be there

  Till green turned duskier and the moon

  Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.”

  THE atmosphere of Grace Perivale’s life was changed. John Faunce’s keen eye for character had not erred in this particular case. Lady Perivale at Runnymede Grange was not the same woman the detective had conversed with in Grosvenor Square.