In the course of the summer my wife and I paid our annual visit
together to London, and I had a few days in Oxford before the end of
the summer term.
I heard a good deal about Vane-Cartwright in London, for he had become
a man of some mark in society, and moved in a little set, which was
known among its members by a rather precious name, now forgotten
though celebrated in the gossip of that time, and which included a
statesman or two of either party and several men of eminence in
letters, law or learning. By a strange coincidence of the sort which
is always happening, I met at an evening party a friend who mentioned
Longhurst, and I had just heard from him something of no moment about
this man whose fate so deeply exercised me, when I saw Vane-Cartwright
himself standing in another part of the throng. I took the opportunity
of watching him, unobserved myself, as I supposed. I have hitherto
forborne to describe his appearance, because such descriptions in
books seldom convey a picture to me. But I must say that seen now in a
room where there were several distinguished people, he made no less
impression on me than before. He was, I should say, five foot eleven
in height, thin and with a slight stoop, but with the wiry look which
sometimes belongs to men who were unathletic and perhaps delicate when
young, but whose physical strength has developed in after years. Hair
which had turned rather grey, while the soft texture and uniformly
dark hue of his skin still retained a certain beauty of youth,
probably accounted for a good deal of his distinction of appearance,
for he was not handsome, though his forehead, if narrow, was high, and
his eyes which were small were striking—of a dark greenish-grey
colour, I think. The expression of the mouth and of the clear-cut and
firm-set jaw was a good deal hidden by a long though rather thin
moustache, still black. I had time while he stood there to notice
again one trick, which I already knew; he was, I supposed, bent upon
being agreeable, so he was talking with animation, and when, in so
talking, he smiled and showed his white teeth, his eyelashes almost
completely veiled his eyes. To me, naturally, it gave him a hateful
expression, yet I could see a certain fascination about it. Then he
moved farther off—very quietly, but I could see as he made his way
through the crowd that in reality every motion was extraordinarily
quick.
Some ten minutes after, I was about to go, when he suddenly came from
behind and addressed me, asking me to choose a day for dinner or
luncheon at his club. I declined, and freed myself as courteously and
as quickly as I could, and thought, for the moment, that there had
been nothing marked in the way in which, obeying irresistible impulse,
I had shaken off the man whom I suspected on such slight grounds but
so rootedly.
A few days afterwards a great robbery was attempted at
Vane-Cartwright’s house. The robbers were after a well-chosen and
valuable collection of gold ornaments of early periods or from strange
countries, which he had begun to make. It was reported in the papers
that the theft had been with great presence of mind interrupted and
prevented by the owner of the ill-guarded treasures. But the robbers
themselves got away. The matter was much talked of, and conflicting
tales were told about it, but it seems that Vane-Cartwright, hearing
some unusual noise, had come downstairs and surprised the two men who
had entered the house before they had succeeded in removing any of
their spoil. As he came down he had rung up the police by the District
Messenger Company’s apparatus which was in the house. Coming quietly
upon them, and standing in the dark while they were in full light, he
had first ordered them to hold up their hands, and had then made each
of them singly turn out his pockets and restore the smaller stolen
articles which they had already secreted in them. He then, it was
said, kept them standing there to await the police. But, by some ruse,
they distracted his attention for a moment, and then, suddenly putting
out their light, made a rush past him and escaped. Such at any rate
appears to have been the information which he gave to the police who
arrived soon after. The police actually arrested two men, already
known to them as suspicious characters, who had been observed lurking
near the house together and afterwards slinking away separately, and
they were at first confident that they had secured the authors of the
attempted robbery. But Vane-Cartwright not only could not identify the
arrested men as the two housebreakers, whom he had of course seen
well; he insisted firmly that they were not the men whom he had seen;
nor were the right men ever caught. The matter caused some surprise,
and the police were freely blamed for their bungling. I have my own
reason for doubting whether they were justly blamed.
It is a mere fancy on my part that this incident and my meeting with
Vane-Cartwright a few days before may have had a connexion with each
other and with certain subsequent events in this history. I fear that
my experience in that year and the next has made me ready to see
fanciful connexions; and the reader, when he knows of those subsequent
events, will see what I suspect took place upon the discovery of the
theft, but will very likely think my suspicion extravagant. However
that may be, Vane-Cartwright’s plucky adventure and the celebrity
which it helped to give to his artistic collections, caused me to hear
all the more of him during my stay in London.
Curiously, however, it was at Oxford, where he had not distinguished
himself, that the fame of Vane-Cartwright was most dinned into my
ears. The University is apt to be much interested in the comparatively
few of her sons whose road to distinction is through commerce; and,
moreover, he had lately given to the University Museum a valuable
collection of East Indian weapons, fabrics, musical instruments and
what not, which he had got together with much judgment. Thus it
happened that I heard there one or two things about him which were of
interest to me. A friend of mine, an old tutor, the Bursar of the
college at which Vane-Cartwright had been, described him as he was in
his undergraduate days. He had, in his opinion, been badly brought up,
had never gone to school, but been trained at home by parents who were
good people with peculiar views, highly scientific and possibly highly
moral views. He had not fallen into either of the two common classes
of undergraduates which my old friend understood and approved—the
sportsmanlike and boyishly fashionable class, or the studious class
who studied on the ordinary lines; still less into the smaller, but
still not small, class which combines the merits of the two. He had
attainments of his own, which the old tutor did not value
sufficiently, for he was proficient in several modern languages and
modern literatures; moreover, the necessary mathematics, Greek and
Latin grammar, formal logic, etc., which he had to get up, gave him
not the slightest trouble. Altogether he had plenty of cleverness of
his own sort, but it was a sort which the Bursar thought unwholesome.
He was quite well conducted, and ought to have been a gentleman,
coming of the family of which he came, but somehow he was not quite a
gentleman. Thus it was a great surprise to the possibly conventional
instructor of his youth that he had done so well in the world.
Then I heard of him from another man, justly esteemed in financial
circles, who was on a visit to his son at Oxford, and whom I met in a
common-room after dinner. Somebody had hazarded the remark that
Vane-Cartwright must have been either a very hard worker or a very
lucky speculator. “No,” said this gentleman, who was a colleague of
his on the Board of one of the only two companies of which he was a
director, “I should not say that a man like that worked hard as you
would understand work at Oxford, or at least as a few of you would.
His hard work was done when he was young. Most of his business is what
one of his clerks could run, and probably does run, for many weeks
together, on lines which he has planned very carefully and revises
whenever occasion requires. Nor is he what most people would call a
speculator. I fancy he very seldom takes any uncommon sort of risk,
but he always does it at the right moment. He has succeeded because he
is very quick in making his calculations and very bold in taking
action on them. He does not seem to be constantly watching things, but
when a special emergency or a special opportunity occurs he seems to
grasp it instantly, and I believe he troubles himself very little, too
little perhaps, about any affair of his when it is once well in
train.”
Lastly, I heard a story, the narrator of which could give me few
precise details, of the pains which Vane-Cartwright had taken to
search out the few relations of an old partner of his in the East who
had died before their affairs turned out so successfully, and of the
generosity with which he had set up these people in life though they
had very little claim on him. Here at least was something which took
its place in the story which I was weaving; the rest of what I had
heard was little to the purpose, though it served to give life and
colour to my idea of the man’s character.
Now, however, I was really to discover something definite. When we
returned to our home at Long Wilton, only a little before we finally
left it, I completed my examination of Peters’ papers. His various
diaries and notebooks, notes of travel and notes of study, jottings
and completed passages for his psychological book, I found to be of
fascinating interest, and I lingered over them long, but there was not
a hint among them all of Longhurst, the _Eleanor_ or any kindred
topic. One of the journals, I noticed, had had some leaves cut out.
The last place of my search was a small wooden trunk which I had
brought home from his house (now sold). On the top of it lay a sheet
of paper with, written in his mother’s hand, “Some little things which
I have put aside for Eustace. His wife or his children may care to see
them hereafter.” It may have been from a false sense of pathos, but my
eyes filled with tears, and I was indisposed to rifle callously these
relics so lovingly put aside with natural hopes which now could never
be fulfilled. I was about to make a bonfire of the box and all its
contents, reverently but with speed, when my wife arrested me in
amazement at my folly. “Why,” she said, “cannot you see? His letters
to his mother will be in it.” “His letters from the East,” she added,
as I still did not comprehend. And they were in it.