“The comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more
tavern bills.”
The _dame du comptoir_ beckoned a waiter, and delegated some portion
of her supreme authority to him for the next quarter of an hour. She
constituted as it were a Regency, and gave her subordinate command
over her wine and liqueur bottles, her _fine champagne_, Bass and
Guinness; and then she ushered Theodore Dalbrook into a very small
sitting-room at the back of the counter, so small indeed that a large
looking-glass, a porcelain stove, two arm-chairs, and one little
table left hardly standing room.
Theodore followed with a sense of bewilderment. He had told himself
that the Island of Jersey was a world so small that he could not
have much difficulty in tracing any man who had lived and died there
within the last ten years; but accident had been kinder to him than
he had hoped.
The lady seated herself in one of the ruby velvet arm-chairs, and
motioned him to the other.
“You have given me a shock, monsieur,” she said. “My friends in the
island know that my marriage was unfortunate, and they never mention
my husband. He is forgotten as if he had never been. I sometimes
fancy that year of my life was only a troubled dream. Even my name is
unchanged. I was called Mdlle. Coralie before I married. I am called
Madame Coralie now.”
“I am sorry to have caused you painful emotion, madame, but it is
most important to me to trace the history of your husband’s later
years, and I deem myself very fortunate in having found you.”
“Is it about a property, a fortune left him, perhaps?” exclaimed
Coralie, with sudden animation, her fine eyes lighting up with hope.
“Alas, no. Fortune had nothing in reserve for your unlucky husband.”
“Unlucky, indeed, but not so unlucky as I was in giving my heart to
him. I knew that he was a drunkard. I knew that he had been turned
out of the navy, and out of the mercantile marine on account of
that dreadful vice,—but he—he was very fond of me, poor fellow, and
he swore that he would never touch a glass of brandy again as long
as he lived, if I would consent to marry him. He did turn over a
new leaf for a time, and kept himself sober and steady, and would
hang over that counter for a whole evening talking to me, and take
nothing but black coffee. I thought I could reform him. I thought it
would be a grand thing to reform a man like that, a gentleman bred
and born, a man whose father had been a great landowner, and whose
family name was one of the oldest in England. He was a gentleman in
all his ways. He never forgot himself even when he had been drinking.
He was a gentleman to the last. Such a fine-looking man too. While
he was courting me and kept himself steady he got back his good
looks. He looked ten years younger, and I was very proud of him the
day we were married. He had taken a house for me, a nice little
house on the hill near the Jesuits’ College, with a pretty little
garden, and I had furnished the house out of my savings. I had saved
a goodish bit since I came to Jersey, for my uncle is a generous
man, and my situation here is a good one. I had over two hundred
pounds in hand after I paid for the furniture—these chairs were in
my drawing-room,—and he hadn’t much more than the clothes he stood
upright in, poor fellow. But I wouldn’t have minded that if he had
only kept himself steady. I was prepared to work for him. I knew I
should have to keep him. He was too much of a gentleman to be able to
work except in his profession, and that was gone from him for ever;
so I knew it was incumbent on me to work for both, and I thought
that by letting our drawing-room floor in the season, and by doing a
little millinery all the year round—I’m a good milliner, monsieur—I
thought I could manage to keep a comfortable home, without touching
my two hundred pounds in the Savings Bank.”
“You were a brave, unselfish girl to think so.”
“Ah, sir, we are not selfish when we love. I was very fond of
him, poor fellow. I had begun with pitying him, and then he was a
thoroughbred gentleman—he was _vielle roche_, monsieur, and I have
always admired the noblesse. I am no Republican, moi. And he had such
winning ways when he was sober—and he was not stupid as other men are
when he was drunk—only more brilliant—_la tête montée—hélas, comme il
pétillait d’esprit_—but it was his brain that he was burning—that was
the fuel that made the light. But how is it you interest yourself in
him, monsieur?” she asked, suddenly, fixing him with her sharp black
eyes. “You say it is not about property. You must have a motive, all
the same.”
“I have a motive, but my interest is not personal. I am acting for
some one who now owns the Strangway estate, and who wishes to know
what has become of the old family.”
“What can it matter to any one?” asked Madame Coralie, suspiciously.
“They had lost all their money—of the land that had been theirs not
an acre was left. What business is it of any one’s what became of
them when they were driven from their birth-place. Oh, how my poor
Frederick hated the race that had possessed itself of his estate!
There was nothing too bad for them. When he was excited he would rave
about them awfully—a beggarly lawyer, a black-hearted scoundrel,
that is what he would call Lord—Lord Sherrington, when he had been
drinking.”
Theodore’s brow grew thoughtful. How strange this seemed, almost
like a confirmation of Juanita’s superstitious horror of the
banished race. Perhaps it was not unnatural that an unlucky
spendthrift—ruined, disgraced—should hate the favourite of fortune
who had ousted him; but not with a hate capable of murder, murder
in cold blood, the murder of a man who had never injured him even
indirectly.
“Your husband has been dead some years, I conclude?” he said,
presently.
“Three years and a half on the tenth of last month.”
“And you had a troublesome time with him, I fear?”
“Trouble seems a light word for what I went through. It was like
living in hell—there is no other word—the hell which a madman can
make of all around him. For a few weeks we went on quietly—he
seemed contented, and I was very happy, thinking I had cured him. I
watched him as a cat watches a mouse, for fear he should go wrong
again. He never went out without me; and at home I did all that a
woman can do to make much of the man she loves, studying him in
everything, surrounding him with every little luxury I could afford,
cooking dainty little meals for him, petting him as if he had been
an idolized child. He seemed grateful, for the first few weeks, and
almost happy. Then I saw he was beginning to mope a little. He got
low-spirited, and would sit over the fire and brood—it was cutting
March weather—and would moan over his blighted life, and his own
folly. ‘If I had to begin over again,’ he would say, ‘ah, it would be
different, Cora, it would be all different.’”
“He was not unkind to you?”
“No, he was never unkind, never. To the last, when he died raving
mad with delirium tremens, he was always kind. It was seeing his
madness and his ruin that made my trouble. He was violent sometimes,
and threatened to kill me, but that was only when he didn’t know me.
I watched him moping for a week or so, and then one day, I was so
unhappy at seeing him fret, that I thought I would do anything to
cheer him. I fancied he missed the company in this house, and the
cards and dominoes, and billiards—for before we were married he used
to dine at the _table d’hôte_ two or three times a week, and used to
be in the _café_ or in the billiard-room every night.”
“How did he manage to live without a profession, and without
ostensible means?”
Madame shrugged her shoulders.
“God knows. I think he used to write to his old friends—his brother
officers in the navy or the merchant service—and he got a little
from one and a little from another. He would borrow of any one. And
there was a small legacy from his mother’s sister which fell in to
him soon after he came to Jersey. That was all gone before I married
him. He hadn’t a penny after he’d paid the marriage fees. Well,
monsieur, seeing him so downhearted I proposed that he should go down
to the ‘Belle Alliance’ and have a game at billiards and see his old
friends. ‘You needn’t take any money,’ I said, ‘my uncle will treat
you hospitably.’ He seemed pleased at the idea, and he promised to
be home early; but just as he was leaving the house he turned back
and said there was a little bill of thirty shillings he owed to a
bootmaker in the street round the corner, and he didn’t like to pass
the man’s shop without paying. Would I let him have the money? It
was the first money he’d asked me for since we were married, and I
hadn’t the heart to say no, so I went to my little cash-box and took
out three half sovereigns. I told him that the money meant a week’s
housekeeping. ‘I give you nice little dinners, don’t I, Fred?’ I
said, ‘but you’ve no idea how economical I am.’ He laughed and kissed
me, and said he hated economy, and wished he had a fortune for my
sake, and he went down the street whistling. Well, sir, perhaps you
can guess what happened. He came home at three o’clock next morning
mad with drink, and then I knew he was not to be cured. I went on
trying all the same, though, till the last; and I lived the life of a
soul in torment. I was fond of him to the last, and saw him killing
himself inch by inch, and saw him die a dreadful death, one year and
three days after our wedding day. He spent every penny I had in the
world, and my uncle helped us when that was gone, and I came back to
this house after his funeral a broken-hearted woman. All my furniture
which I’d worked for was sold to pay the rent, and the doctors, and
the undertaker. I just saved the furniture in this room, and that is
all that is left of four hundred and seventy pounds and of my married
life.”
“You were indeed the victim of a generous and confiding heart.”
“I was fond of him to the last, monsieur, and I forgave him all my
sufferings; but let no woman ever marry a drunkard with the hope of
reforming him.”
“Were you quite alone in your martyrdom; had your husband no
relatives left to help him on his dying bed?”
“Not one. He told me he was the last of his race. He must have had
distant relations, I suppose; but his elder brother was dead, and his
sister.”
“You are sure his brother was dead?”
“Yes; he fell into the water at Nice on a dark evening, when he was
going on board the steamer for Corsica. I have got the paper with the
account of his death.”
“Will you show me that paper, and any other documents relating to
your husband’s family? I know I have no right to ask such a favour;
but all I can say is that I shall be very grateful if you will so far
oblige me.”
The _table d’hôte_ was in full swing in the adjoining room, as
testified by the clattering of plates and the jingle of knives
and forks, and a subdued murmur as of a good many confidential
conversations carried on simultaneously.
“You want to see my poor Fred’s private papers,” said the widow,
meditatively. “That’s a good deal to ask; not that there are any
secrets in them that can hurt anybody above ground. The Colonel is
dead, and his sister. My husband was the last. But I can’t understand
why anybody should want to pry into a dead man’s papers, unless
there’s property hanging to them.”
She looked at Theodore suspiciously, as if she could not divest
herself of the idea of a fortune having turned up somehow,
unexpectedly; a fortune to which her dead husband was entitled.
“There is no property, I assure you. It is a question of sentiment,
not of money.”
“You’re a lawyer, I suppose?” said Coralie, still suspiciously.
She supposed that it was only lawyers who went about prying into the
affairs of the dead.
“I am a lawyer; but the business which brings me to Jersey is not law
business.”
“Well, I don’t see how any harm can come to me through your seeing
my husband’s papers. There’s not many to see—a few letters from the
Colonel, and two or three from a lawyer about the legacy, and a dozen
or so from old friends, refusing or sending him money. You’ve spoken
kindly to me, and I’ve felt that you could sympathize with me, though
you’re a stranger—so—well—you may see his letters, though it hurts me
to touch anything that belonged to him, _le pauvre homme_.”
She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, unlocked the little
secretaire, and from one of the drawers produced a bundle of old
letters and cuttings from newspapers, which she handed to Theodore
Dalbrook, and then seated herself opposite to him, planted her
elbows on the table, and watched him while he read, keenly on the
alert for any revelation of his purpose which might escape him in
the course of his reading. She had not altogether relinquished that
idea of an inheritance, or legacy—property of some kind—involved in
this endeavour to trace a dead man’s history. The explanation which
Theodore had given had not convinced her. He had confessed himself a
lawyer, and that was in itself enough to make her doubt him.
The cuttings from old newspapers belonged to the days when Frederick
Strangway had commanded a war-ship, to the days when he fought in
the Chinese war. Some of them recorded the honour he had won for
himself at different stages of his career, and it was only natural
that these should have been carefully preserved by him in all his
wanderings. But there were other cuttings—the report of the court
martial that broke him—the trial in which he stood accused of having
risked the loss of his ship with all hands aboard by his dissolute
habits—a shameful and a painful story. This record of his folly had
been kept by that strange perversity of the human mind which makes
a man secrete and treasure documents which must wring his heart and
bow his head with shame every time he looks at them. There were other
extracts of a like shameful kind—reports of street rows, two cases of
drunken assault in San Francisco, one of a fight in Sydney harbour.
He had kept them all as if they had been words of praise and honour.
The letters were most of them trivial—letters from brother officers
of the past—“very sorry to hear of your embarrassments,” “regret
inability to do more than the enclosed small cheque,” “the numerous
claims upon my purse render it impossible for me to grant the
loan requested,” the usual variations upon the old tune in which
a heavily-taxed _pater familias_ fences with the appeal of an
unlucky acquaintance. They were such letters as are left by the
portmanteauful among the effects of the man for whom the world has
been too hard.
Theodore put aside all this correspondence after a brief glance,
and there remained only four letters in the same strong, resolute
hand—the hand of Reginald Strangway.
The first in date was written on Army and Navy Club paper, and was
addressed to Captain Strangway, R.N., H.M.S. _Cobra_, Hong Kong.
“MY DEAR FRED,
“I have been sorry to leave your letter so long unanswered, but
I am bothered about a great many things. My wife has been out of
health for nearly a year. The doctors fear her chest is affected,
and tell me I ought to get her away from England before the winter.
As things have been going very badly with me for a long time I
shall not be sorry to cut this beastly town, where the men who have
made their money, God knows how, are now upon the crest of the
wave, and by their reckless expenditure have made it impossible
for a man of small means to live in London—if he wants to live
like a gentleman. Everything is twice as dear as it used to be
when I was a subaltern. My wife and I are pigging in two rooms on
a second floor in Jermyn Street. I live at my club, and she lives
on her relatives, so that we don’t often have to sit down to a
lodging-house dinner of burnt soles and greasy chops, but the whole
business is wretched. She has to go to parties in a four-wheel
cab, and I can hardly afford the risk of a rubber. So I shall be
uncommonly glad to cut it all, and settle in some out-of-the-way
place where we can live cheap, and where the climate will suit
Millicent.
“My first idea was Algiers, but things are still rather unsettled
there, as you know. Lambton, of the Guards, has been shooting
in Corsica lately, and came home with a glowing account of the
climate and the cheapness of the inns, which are roughish, but
clean and fairly comfortable; so I have determined on Corsica.
We shall be within a day’s sail of Nice, so not utterly out of
reach of civilization, and we can live there how we like, without
entertaining a mortal, or having to buy new clothes. Millicent, who
is fond of novelty, is in love with the notion, and Dangerfield has
behaved very well to her, promising her an extra hundred a year if
we will live quietly and keep out of debt, which, considering he is
as poor as Job, is not so bad. As for my creditors, they are pretty
quiet since I got Aunt Belle’s legacy, part of which I divided
among ’em as a sop to Cerberus. They’ll have to be still quieter
when I’m settled in Corsica.
“Of course, you heard of that wretched woman’s kicking over the
traces altogether at last. God knows what will become of her. I
believe she had been carrying on rather badly for some time before
Tom found out anything. You know what an ass he is. However, he
got hold of a letter one evening—met the postman at the door and
took her letters along with his own, and didn’t like the look of
one and opened it; and then there was an infernal row, and she
just put on her bonnet and shawl, walked out of the house and
called a cab and drove off. He followed in another cab, but it
was a foggy night, and he lost her before she’d gone far. They
were in lodgings in Essex Street, and it isn’t easy for one cab to
chase another on a foggy evening. She never went back to him, and
he went all over London denouncing her, naming first one man and
then another, but without any definite idea as to who the real man
was. The letter was only a couple of sentences in Italian, which
Tom only knew by sight—but he could see it was an appointment at
a theatre, for the theatre and hour were named. She snatched the
letter out of his hand while they were quarrelling, he told me, and
chucked it into the fire, so he hasn’t even the man’s handwriting
as evidence against him. It was a hand he had never seen before,
he says. However, if he wants to find her no doubt he can do
so, if he takes the trouble. I am sorry she should disgrace her
family, and of course my wife feels the scandal uncommonly hard
upon _her_. I can’t say that I feel any pity for Tom Darcy. She had
led a wretched life with him ever since he sold out, and I don’t
much wonder at her being deuced glad to leave him. As it’s Tom’s
business to shoot her lover, and not mine, I shan’t mix myself up
in the affair—and as for her, well, she has made her bed——!”
There was more in the letter, but the rest was of no interest to
Theodore.
The letter was dated January 3rd, 1851.
Three of the remaining letters were from Corsica, and contained
nothing of any significance. A fourth was written at Monte Carlo, in
answer to an appeal for money, and the date was twelve years later
than the first. It was a gloomy letter, the letter of a ruined man,
who had drunk the cup of disappointment to the dregs.
“To ask me for help seems like a ghastly joke on your part. Whatever
your troubles may be, I fancy my lookout is darker than yours. My
wife and I have vegetated on that accursed island for just a dozen
years—it seems like a lifetime to look back upon. We just had enough
to live upon while my father was alive, for, bad as things were at
Cheriton, he contrived to send me something. Now that he is gone, and
the estate has been sold by the mortgagees, there is nothing left for
me—and we have been living for the last two years upon the pittance
my poor Milly gets from her father. Whatever your cares may be, you
don’t know what it is to have a sick wife whose condition requires
every luxury and indulgence, and to have barely enough for bread and
cheese. If you were to see the house we live in—the tiled floors
and the dilapidated furniture—and the windows that won’t shut—and
the shutters that won’t keep to, and our two Corsican servants who
look like a brace of savages, though they are good creatures in the
main—you would be the last man to howl about your own troubles to me.
“I have been here a month, and with my usual diabolical luck. I am
going home to-morrow—though perhaps I should be wiser if I went up
into the hills behind Monaco and put a bullet through my brains.
Millicent would be no worse off, God help her; for she is entirely
dependent on her father, and I am only an incubus,—but she might
think herself worse off, poor soul, so I suppose I had better go home.
“What am I thinking about? I can’t afford to take refuge in the
suicide’s haven. My life is insured in the Imperial for £3,000, and
poor old Dangerfield has been paying the premium ever since I began
to go to the bad financially. It would be too hard upon him if I shot
myself.”
This was the last letter, and it was endorsed by the brother’s hand.
“Reginald’s last letter. I read in the _Times_ newspaper of his being
drowned at Nice ten days afterwards.”
* * * * *
Theodore made a note of the dates of these letters, and the name of
the insurance office. Provided with these data it would be easy for
him to verify the fact of Colonel Strangway’s death, and thus bring
the history of the two sons of old Squire Strangway to its dismal
close in dust and darkness.
And thus would be answered Juanita’s strange suspicion of the house
of Strangway, answered with an unanswerable answer. Who can argue
with Death? Is not that at least the end of all things—the road that
leads no whither?
There remained for him only the task of tracing the erring daughter
to her last resting-place. This would doubtless be more difficult,
as a runaway wife living under a false name, and in all probability
going from place to place, was likely to have left but faint and
uncertain indications of her existence. But the first part of his
task had been almost too easy. He felt that he could take no credit
for what he had done, could expect no gratitude from Juanita.
He thanked Mrs. Strangway—_alias_ Madame Coralie—for her politeness,
and asked to be allowed to offer her a ten-pound note as a trifling
acknowledgment of the favour she had done him. She promptly accepted
this offering, and was only the more convinced that there was
“property” involved in the lawyer’s researches.
“If there is anything to come to _me_ from any of his relations, I
hope nobody will try to keep me out of it,” she said. “I hope his
friends will remember that I gave him my last shilling, and nursed
him when there wasn’t many would have stayed in the room with him?”
Theodore reiterated his assurance that no question of money or
inheritance was involved in his mission to the Island, and then bade
the Captain’s widow a respectful adieu, and threaded his way through
the avenue of tables to the door, and out of the garlic-charged
atmosphere into the fresh autumnal air.
He stayed one night in Jersey, and left at eleven o’clock the next
morning on board the _Fanny_, and slept in his chambers in Ferret
Court, after having written a long letter to Juanita with a full
account of all that he had learnt from the lips of the widow, and
from the letters of the dead.
“I do not surrender my hope of finding the murderer,” he wrote
finally, “but you must now agree with me that I must look elsewhere
than among the remnants of the Strangway race. They can prove an
unanswerable _alibi_—the grave.”
He went to the office of the Imperial next morning, saw the
secretary, and ascertained that the amount of the policy upon Colonel
Strangway’s life had been paid to Lady Millicent Strangway, his
widow, in April, 1863, after the directors had received indisputable
evidence of his death.
“I remember the case perfectly,” said the secretary. “The
circumstances were peculiar, and there was a suspicion of suicide,
as the man had just left Monte Carlo, and was known to have lost
his last napoleon, after a most extraordinary run of luck. There
was some idea of disputing the claim; but if he did make away with
himself he had contrived to do it so cleverly that it would have been
uncommonly difficult to prove that his death was not an accident—more
particularly as Lord Dangerfield brought an action against the
steamboat company for wilful negligence in regard to their gangway
and deficient lighting. The policy was an old one, too, and so it was
decided not to litigate.”
“There could be no doubt as to the identity of the man who was
drowned at Nice, I conclude?”
“No, the question of identity was carefully gone into. Lord
Dangerfield happened to be wintering at Cannes that year, and he
heard of his son-in-law’s death in time to go over and identify
the body before it was coffined. You know how quickly burial
follows death in that part of the world, and there would have been
no possibility of the widow getting over from Ajaccio before the
funeral. We had Lord Dangerfield’s declaration that the body he saw
at Nice was the body of Colonel Strangway, and we paid the £3,000 on
that evidence. We have never had any reason to suspect error or foul
play.”