'Did Mrs. Manston, when she called recently with her husband, allude to 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.
