“It must have been hereabouts we lived,” said Laura.
It was a very dreary lane. There were half-a-dozen scattered houses, some of which had a blind look, presenting a blank wall, pierced by an odd window and a door, to the passerby. These were the more aristocratic habitations, and had garden fronts looking the other way. A little further on the explorers came to a square, uncompromising looking cottage, with a green door, a bright brass knocker, and five prim windows looking into the lane. It was a cottage that must have looked exactly the same a hundred and twenty years ago, when Hogarth was living and working hard by.
“That is the house we lived in!” cried Laura. “Yes, I am sure of it. I remember those hard looking windows, staring straight into the lane. I used to envy the children in the house further on, because they had a garden—only a little bit of garden—but just enough for flowers to grow in. There was only a stone yard, with a pump in it, at the back of our house, and not a single flower.”
“Had you the whole house, do you think?” asked Sampson.
“I am sure we had not, because we were so afraid to take liberties in it. I remember my poor mother often telling me to be very quiet, because Miss Somebody—I haven’t the faintest recollection of her name—was very particular. I was dreadfully afraid of Miss Somebody. She was tall, and straight, and old, and she always wore a black gown and a black cap. I would not for the world have done anything to offend her. She kept the house very clean—too clean, I’ve heard my father say—for she was always about the stairs and passages, on her knees, with a pail beside her. I have often narrowly escaped tumbling into that pail.”
“I wonder if she’s alive still,” said Sampson; “the house looks as if it was in the occupation of a maiden lady. I dare say my sister’s house will look like that, when she has set up housekeeping on her own account.”
He lifted the brass knocker and gave a loudish knock. The door was opened almost immediately by a puffy widow, who had a chubby boy of three or four years old clinging to her skirts. The widow was very civil, and willing to answer any questions that might be asked her, but she could not give them the information they wanted. She begged them to come into her parlour, and she was profuse in her offer of chairs; but she was not the Miss Somebody whom Laura remembered.
That stern damsel, whose name was Fry, after occupying Ivy Cottage with honour to herself and credit to the parish for eight and thirty years, had been called to her forefathers just one little year ago, and was taking her rest, after an industrious career, in the quiet old churchyard where the great English painter and satirist lies. She had left no record of a long line of lodgers, and the amiable widow who had taken Ivy Cottage immediately after Miss Fry’s death was not even furnished with any traditions about the people who had lived and died in the rooms now hers. She could only reiterate that Miss Fry had been a most respectable lady, that she had paid her way, and left the cottage in good repair, and she hoped that she, Mrs. Pew, would continue to deserve those favours which the public had lavishly bestowed upon her predecessor. If the lady and gentleman should hear of any party wanting quiet lodgings in a rural neighbourhood, within a quarter of an hour’s walk of the station, Mrs. Pew would consider it a great kindness if they would name her to the party in question. She would have a parlour, with bedroom over, vacant on the following Saturday.
Sampson promised to carry the fact in his mind. Laura thanked the widow for her civility, and gave the chubby boy half-a-crown, a gift which was much appreciated by the mother, who impounded it directly the door was shut.
“Johnny shall have twopence to go and buy brandy snaps, he shall,” cried the matron, when her boy set up a howl at this blatant theft; and the prospect of that immediate and sensual gratification pacified the child.
“Failure number one,” said Sampson, when they were out in the lane. “What are we to do next?”
Laura had not the least idea. She felt how helpless she would have been without the kindly little solicitor; and how wise it had been of her husband to insist upon Mr. Sampson’s companionship.
“We are not going to be flummoxed—excuse the vulgarity of the expression—quite so easily,” said Sampson. “Everybody can’t be dead within the last seventeen years. Why, seventeen years is nothing to a middle-aged man. He scarcely feels himself any older for the lapse of seventeen years; there are a few grey hairs in his whiskers, perhaps, and his waistcoats are a trifle bigger round the waist, and that’s all. There must be somebody in this place who can remember your father. Let me think it out a bit. We want to know if a certain gentleman who was supposed by old Mr. Treverton to have died here, did really die, or whether he recovered and left the place, as a certain party asserts. All the probabilities are in favour of the one fact; and we have only the word of a very doubtful character for the other. Let me see, now, Mrs. Treverton, where shall we make our next inquiry? At the doctor’s? Well, you see, there are a dozen doctors in such a place as this, I dare say. At the undertaker’s? Yes, that’s it. Undertakers are long-lived men.
