“And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.”
Theodore made a tour of the little garden in the summer sundown. It
was very small, but its age gave it a superiority over most suburban
gardens. There were trees, and hardy perennials that had been growing
year after year, blooming and fading, with very little care on the
part of successive tenants. The chief charm of the garden to some
people might have been its seclusion. There was no possibility of
being “overlooked” in this narrow pleasaunce, and overlooking is the
curse of the average garden attached to the average villa. Mr. and
Mrs. Jones, taking their ease, or working in their garden in the cool
of the evening, are uncomfortably conscious of Mr. and Mrs. Smith
eyeing them from the drawing-room windows of next door.
Here the high wall on one side, and the tall horse-chestnuts on the
other, made a perfect solitude; but seclusion on a very small scale
is apt to merge into dulness, and it must be owned that the garden
of Myrtle Cottage at sundown was about as melancholy a place as
the mind of man could imagine. Theodore, contemplating it from the
standpoint of Mrs. Danvers’ history, her friendlessness, her sense
of degradation, wondered that she could have endured that dismal
atmosphere for a single summer. And she had lived there for many
years; lived there till weariness must have become loathing.
“God help her, poor soul!” he said to himself. “How she must have
abhorred that weeping ash! How it must have tortured her to see the
leaves go and come again year after year, and to know that neither
spring nor autumn would better her fate!”
He took down the address of the agent who had the letting of the
house, and left with the intention of seeing him that evening if
possible. The landlord was a personage resembling the Mikado, or
the Grand Llama, and was not supposed to be accessible to the
human vision, certainly not in relation to his house property. The
policeman’s wife averred that “him and the De Crespignys owned half
Camberwell.”
The agent was represented to live over his office, which was in
no less famous a locality than Camberwell Grove, and was likely,
therefore, to oblige Mr. Dalbrook by seeing him upon a business
matter after business hours. It was not much past seven when Theodore
entered the office, where he found the agent extending his business
hours so far as to be still seated at his desk, deep in the revision
of a catalogue. He was a very genial agent, and he put aside the
catalogue immediately, asked Theodore to be seated, and wheeled round
his office chair to talk to him.
“Myrtle Cottage. Yes, a charming little box, convenient and compact,
a bijou residence for a bachelor with a small establishment. Such a
nice garden, too, retired and rustic. If you were thinking of taking
the property on a repairing lease, the rent would be very moderate,
really a wonderfully advantageous occasion for any one wanting a
pretty secluded place.”
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Adkins, I am not thinking of taking that
house or any house. I have come to ask you a few questions about a
former tenant, and I shall take it as a favour if you will be so good
as to answer them.”
The agent looked disappointed, but he put his pen behind his ear,
crossed his legs, and prepared himself for conversation.
“Do you mean a recent tenant?” he asked.
“No; the gentleman I am interested in left Myrtle Cottage twenty
years ago—nearer five and twenty years, perhaps. His name was
Danvers.”
The agent gave a suppressed whistle, and looked at his interlocutor
with increasing interest.
“Oh, you wanted to know something about Mr. Danvers. Was he an
acquaintance of yours?”
“He was.”
“Humph! He is more than old enough to be your father. He might almost
be your grandfather. Do you know him intimately?”
“As intimately as a man of my age can know a man of his age.”
“And position,” added the agent, looking at his visitor shrewdly.
Theodore returned the look.
“I don’t quite follow your meaning,” he said.
“Come, now, sir, if you know anything at all about the gentleman in
question you must know that his name is not Danvers, and never was
Danvers; that he took Myrtle Cottage under an assumed name, and lived
there for nearly ten years under that assumed name; that he never let
any of his friends or acquaintances cross his threshold; and that he
thought he had hoodwinked me, me a man of the world, moving about in
the world, among other men of the world. Why, sir, Mr. Danvers had
not paid me three half-years’ rent in notes or gold, as he always
paid, and in this office here—before I had found out that he was the
rising barrister, Mr. Dalbrook—and before I had guessed the reason
of his hole-and-corner style of life.”
“What became of the lady who was called Mrs. Danvers?”
“And who in all probability was Mrs. Danvers,” said Mr. Adkins. “I
have reason to believe that was her name. What became of her? God
knows. A servant came to me one August morning with the keys and a
half-year’s rent—the tenant had given notice to surrender at the
Michaelmas quarter, that being the quarter at which he entered upon
possession. Mr. and Mrs. Danvers had gone abroad—to Belgium, the
woman thought; and as it was their present intention to live abroad,
their furniture had all been removed to the Pantechnicon upon the
previous day, and the house was empty, and at my disposal.”
“Did you hear nothing more of them after that?”
“I heard of him, sir, as all the world heard of him—heard of his
marriage with a wealthy young Spanish lady, heard of his elevation to
the peerage,—but of Mrs. Danvers I never heard a syllable. I take it
she was pensioned off, and that she lived—and may have died—on the
Continent. Why, there are a lot of sleepy old Flemish towns—I’m a bit
of a traveller in my quiet way—which seem to have been created for
that purpose!”
“Is that all you can tell me about your tenants, Mr. Adkins? I am
not prompted by idle curiosity in my inquiries. I have a very strong
motive——”
“Don’t trouble yourself to explain, sir. I know nothing about Mr. and
Mrs. Danvers which I have any desire to hold back—or which I am under
any obligation to keep back. My business relations with the gentleman
never went beyond letting him Myrtle Cottage, which I let to him
without a reference, on the strength of a twelvemonth’s rent in
advance, and a deuce of a hurry he was in to get into the place. As
for Mrs. Danvers, you may be surprised to hear that I never saw her
face. I’m not a prying person, and, as the rent was never overdue,
I had no occasion to call at the house. But I did see some one who
had a strong bearing upon the lady’s life, and a very troublesome
customer that person was.”
“Who was he?”
“No less an individual than her husband. A man dashed into this
office one winter afternoon, a little after dusk, and asked me if I
had let a house to a person called Danvers? I could see that he had
been drinking, and that he was in a state of strong excitement; so I
answered him shortly enough, and I kept him well between myself and
the door, so as to be able to pitch him out if he got troublesome.
He told me that he’d just come from Myrtle Cottage, that he had been
refused admittance there, although the woman who lived there was
his wife. He wanted to know if the house had been taken by her, or
by the scoundrel who passed himself off as her husband? If it had
been taken in her name it was his house, and he would very soon let
them know that he had the right to be there. I told him that I knew
nothing about him or his rights; that my client’s tenant was Mr.
Danvers, and that there the business ended. He was very violent upon
this, abused the tenant, talked about his own wrongs and his wife’s
desertion of him, asked me if I knew that this man who called himself
Danvers was an impostor, who had taken the house in a false name, and
who was really a beggarly barrister called Dalbrook; and then from
blasphemy and threatening he fell to crying, and sat in my office
shivering and whimpering like a half-demented creature, till I took
compassion upon him so far as to give him a glass of brandy, and send
my office lad out with him to put him into a cab.”
“Did he tell you his name or profession?”
“No, he was uncommonly close about himself. I asked him if the lady’s
name was really Danvers, and if he was Mr. Danvers; but he only
stared at me in a vacant way with his drunken eyes. It was hopeless
trying to get a straight answer from him about anything. Heaven knows
how he got home that night, for he wouldn’t tell the office boy his
address, and only told the cabman to drive to Holborn. ‘I’ll pull him
up when I get there,’ he said. He may have been driven about half the
night, for all I can tell.”
“Was that all you ever saw or heard of him?”
“All I ever saw, but not all I ever heard. Servants and neighbours
will talk, you see, sir, and I happened to be told of three or four
occasions—at considerable intervals—at which my gentleman made
unpleasantness at Myrtle Cottage. He would go there wild with drink—I
believe he never went when he was sober—and would kick up a row.
If he wanted to get his wife away from the life she was leading he
would have gone to work in a different manner; but it’s my opinion he
wanted nothing of the kind. He was savage and vindictive in his cups,
and he wanted to frighten her and to annoy the man who had tempted
her away from him. But he was a poor creature, and after blustering
and threatening he would allow himself to be thrust out of doors like
a stray cur.”
“What kind of a man did he look? A broken-down gentleman?”
“Yes, I should say he had been a gentleman once, but he had come down
a longish way. He had come down as low as drink and dissipation can
bring a man. Altogether I should consider him a dangerous customer.”
“A man capable of violence—of crime even?”
“Perhaps! A man who wouldn’t have stopped at crime if he hadn’t been
a white-livered hound. I tell you, sir, the fellow was afraid of Mr.
Dalbrook, although Mr. Dalbrook ought to have been afraid of him. He
was a craven to the core of his heart.”
“What age did you give him?”
“At the time he came to me I should put him down at about six and
thirty.”
“And that is how many years ago?”
“Say four and twenty—I can’t be certain to a year or so. It wasn’t a
business transaction, and I haven’t any record of the fact.”
“Was he a powerful-looking man?”
“He was the remains of a powerful man: he must have been a fine
man when he was ten years younger—a handsome man, too—one of those
fair-complexioned, blue-eyed, aquiline-nosed men who set off good
clothes—the kind of man to do justice to a rig out from a fashionable
tailor. He was a wreck when I saw him, but he was the wreck of a
handsome man.”
“And you take it that he was particularly vindictive?”
“He was as vindictive as a cur can be.”
“And was his anger strongest against the lady, do you suppose, or
against the gentleman?”
“Decidedly against the gentleman. He was full of envy and hatred
and all uncharitableness towards Mr. Dalbrook. He affected to think
contemptuously of his talents and to belittle him in every way, while
he was bursting with envy at his growing success. He was jealous
and angry as a husband, no doubt; but he was still more jealous and
still angrier as a disappointed man against a successful man. He was
as venomous as conscious failure can be. And now, sir, that I have
spoken so freely about this little domestic drama, which was all past
and done with twenty years ago, and in which I only felt interested
as a man of the world, now may I ask your name, and how you come to
be so keenly interested in so remote an event?”
“My name is Dalbrook,” replied Theodore, taking out his card and
lying it upon the agent’s desk.
“You don’t mean to say so! A relation of Lord Cheriton’s?”
“His cousin, a distant cousin, but warmly attached to him and—his.
The motive of my inquiry need be no secret. A dastardly murder was
committed last summer in Lord Cheriton’s house——”
“Yes, I remember the circumstances.”
“A seemingly motiveless murder; unless it was the act of some secret
foe—foe either of the man who was killed—or of his wife’s father,
Lord Cheriton. I have reason to know that the young man who was
killed had never made an enemy. His life was short and blameless.
Now, a malignant cur, such as the man you describe—a man possessed by
the devil of drink—would be just the kind of creature to assail the
strong man through his defenceless daughter. To murder her husband
was to break her heart, and to crush her father’s hopes. This man may
have discovered long beforehand how my cousin had built upon that
marriage—how devoted he was to his daughter, and how ambitious for
her. Upon my soul, I believe that you have given me the clue. If we
are to look for a blind unreasoning hatred—malignity strong enough
and irrational enough to strike the innocent in order to get at the
guilty—I do not think we can look for it in a more likely person than
in the husband of Mrs. Danvers.”
“Perhaps not,” said Mr. Adkins, keenly interested, yet dubious. “But,
granted that he is the man, how are you to find him? It is about four
and twenty years since he stood where you are standing now, and I
have never set eyes on him from that day to this—close upon a quarter
of a century. I can’t tell you his calling, or his kindred, the place
where he lived, or even the name he bore, with any certainty. Danvers
may have been only an assumed name—or it may have been his name.
There’s no knowing—or rather there’s only one person likely to be
able to help you in the matter, and that is Lord Cheriton.”
“It would be difficult to question him upon such a subject.”
“Of course it would; and I don’t suppose that even he has taken the
trouble to keep himself posted in the movements of that very ugly
customer. Having shunted the lady he wouldn’t be likely to concern
himself about the gentleman.”
“A quarter of a century,” said Theodore, too thoughtful to give a
direct answer. “Yes, it must be very difficult to trace any man after
such an interval; but if that man went to Cheriton Chase he must have
left some kind of trail behind him, and it will go hard with me if
I don’t get upon that trail. I thank you, Mr. Adkins, for the most
valuable information I have obtained yet, and if any good comes of it
you shall know. Good night.”
“Good night, sir. I shall be very glad to aid in the cause of
justice. Yes, I remember the Cheriton Chase murder, and I should like
to see the mystery cleared up.”