“Upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously ...
But she in these fond feelings had no share;
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother—but no more.”
After that conversation with the house-agent, the idea that he had
found the clue to the Cheriton Chase mystery took root in Theodore
Dalbrook’s mind. Taking as his starting-point the notion of a deadly
hatred wreaking itself in an indirect revenge, there seemed no more
likely figure for the _rôle_ of avenger than that of the wronged and
deserted husband. The one startling improbability in this view of the
case was the long interval between the husband’s appearance at Myrtle
Cottage and the date of the murder; but even this difficulty Theodore
was able to account for upon the hypothesis of a gradual perversion,
a descent from vice to crime, as the man’s nature hardened under the
corrupting influence of a profligate life, while the old festering
sore grew into a malignant canker, under the lash of misery. He
had seen in that great seething cauldron of London life men whose
countenances bore the stamp of a degradation so profound that the
most ferocious crime might seem the normal outcome of their perverted
natures. He could imagine how the broken-down gentleman, steeped
in drink, and embittered by the idea of wrongs which had been the
natural consequence of his own misconduct, had sunk step by step upon
the ladder of vice, till he had arrived at that lowest deep where the
dreams of men are stained with blood and darkened by the shadow of
the hangman. He could imagine such a man brooding over his wrongs for
long years, nursing his jealous wrath as the one touch of manliness
that survived in him—until some newspaper description of the Dalbrook
and Carmichael wedding reminded him of the bitter contrast between
his own lot and that of his rival, and, lashed into sudden fury, he
set out upon his murderous errand, hardly caring whom he murdered so
long as he could hurt the man he hated.
The very fact that Mrs. Danvers’ husband had been described as a
craven, made the idea of his guilt more likely. Only a coward would
have chosen such a revenge; only a coward could have stretched out
his hand from the darkness to kill a man who had never injured
him. The crime was the crime of a coward or a madman; and this man,
brutalized by drink, may have been both madman and coward.
Here at least was a man closely associated with James Dalbrook’s
life, and having good cause to hate him. In the darkness surrounding
the murder of Godfrey Carmichael this was the first flash of light.
And having arrived at this point Theodore Dalbrook saw himself face
to face with a new and seemingly insurmountable difficulty. To follow
this clue to the end, to bring the crime home to the husband of Lord
Cheriton’s cast-off mistress, was to expose the history of the great
man’s earlier years to the world at large, to offer up a reputation
which had hitherto been stainless as a rich and savoury repast to
that carrion brood—consisting of almost everybody—which loves to
feast upon garbage. How the evening newspapers would revel in the
details of such a story—what denunciations—what gloating over the
weakness of a strong man’s life! How the contents bills would bristle
with appetizing headings, how the shrill-voiced newsboys would
yell their startling particulars, their latest developments of the
Cheriton Chase Scandal!
This must all inevitably follow upon the discovery of the murderer,
if the murderer were indeed the injured husband. There could be no
possible escape from that glare of publicity, that swelling symphony
of slander. From the moment the law laid its hand upon the criminal
the case would pass beyond individual control, and individual
interests and reputations would become as nought. Justice would have
to do its work, and in the doing of it must needs afford the usual
fine opportunity to the newspapers. Theodore thought with horror of
such humiliation coming upon Lord Cheriton, and through him upon
Juanita, who loved her father with a reverential affection, and who
was intensely proud of his character and position. He thought of
gentle Lady Cheriton, who adored her husband, and who doubtless would
be made miserable by the knowledge that his first love had been given
to another woman, whom he had loved well enough to sacrifice honour
for the sake of that illicit love. What agony to that single-minded,
trusting creature to find that dark spot upon her husband’s past, and
to know that the daughter’s happiness had been blighted because of
the father’s sin!
With these considerations in his mind it seemed to Theodore that it
would be better to halt on the very threshold of discovery; and yet
there was the appalling thought of further possibilities in the way
of crime—of a madman’s revenge carried a stage further, a madman’s
pistol aimed at the defenceless mother or the unconscious child. What
was he to do? Was there no alternative between inaction and such
action as must speedily set in motion the machinery of the law, and
thus deprive him of all free will in the future conduct of the case?
Yes, there was an alternative course. If he were once assured of
the identity of the assassin, it might be in his power to lay hands
upon him, and to place him under such circumstances of control in
the future as would insure Juanita’s safety, and render any further
crime impossible. If the man were mad, as Theodore thought more
than likely, he might be quietly got into an asylum. If he were
still master of his actions he might be got abroad, to the remotest
colony in the Antipodes. The knowledge of his crime would be a hold
over him, a lever which would remove him to the uttermost ends
of the earth, if need were. This would be an illegal compromise,
no doubt—unjustifiable in the eye of the law,—but if it insured
Juanita’s safety, and saved her father’s character, the compromise
was worth making. It was, indeed, the only way by which her security
and her father’s good name could be provided for.
To arrive at this result he had to find the man who appeared in
Mr. Adkins’s office about four and twenty years ago, and of whose
subsequent existence he, Theodore, had no knowledge.
“I must begin at the other end,” he told himself. “If that man was
the murderer, he must have been seen in the neighbourhood. It is not
possible that he could have come to the place, and watched for his
opportunity, and got clear off after the deed was done without being
seen by human eyes.”
And yet there remained the fact that the local policeman and a
London detective had both failed in obtaining the faintest trace of
a suspicious-looking stranger, or indeed of any stranger, male or
female, who had been observed in the neighbourhood of Cheriton before
or after the murder; there remained the fact that a large reward had
been offered without resulting in one scrap of information bearing
upon the subject. How could he hope, in the face of these facts, to
trace the movements of a man whose personal appearance was unknown to
him, and who had come and gone like a shadow?
“I can but try, and I can but fail,” he told himself. “Knowing what I
know now, I cannot remain inactive.”
It may be that he had caught something of the fiery eagerness which
consumed Juanita, that in his ardent desire to be worthy of her
regard, to waste his life in her service, he had become, as it were,
inoculated with the spirit of his mistress, and hoped as she hoped,
and thought as she thought.
With the beginning of the Long Vacation he went to Dorchester, but
this time not alone. He took his friend Cuthbert Ramsay with him, as
a visitor to the grave old house, in the grave old town.
His sisters often made a complaint against him that he never
introduced any of his college friends to them—that whereas the
sisters of other University men were rich in the acquaintance of
Charlies and Algernons, and Freds and Toms, who were produceable at
tennis parties and available for picnics at the shortest notice, they
were restricted to the youths of Dorchester and a horizon bounded by
the country houses of the immediate neighbourhood. Remembering these
reproaches, and seeing that his friend Ramsay was obviously pining
for rest and country air, Theodore suggested that he should occupy
the bachelor’s room in Cornhill as long as he could venture to stop
away from hospitals and lectures and scientific investigations.
“You want a long fallow, Cuthbert,” he said, “and you couldn’t have a
better lotus island than Dorchester. There’s not an excitement or a
feverish sensation to be had within twenty miles, and then I really
want to make you known to my cousin, Lord Cheriton. He is a very
clever man—an all-round man—and he would be interested in you and all
that you are doing.”
“I shall be proud of knowing him. And then there is your cousin, Lady
Carmichael. I am deeply interested in her, without having ever seen
her face, and when I do see her——”
“You will say she is one of the loveliest women you ever saw in your
life, Cuthbert. I have no doubt of that. You will see her beauty
under a cloud, for she is not one of those women who begin to get
over the loss of a husband as soon as their crape gets rusty; but
her beauty is all the more touching on account of the grief that
separates her from all other women—even from her past self. I
sometimes look at her and wonder if this sad and silent woman can
be the Juanita I once knew; the light-hearted, spontaneous girl, a
buoyant creature, all impulse and caprice, fancy and imagination.”
“You may be sure that I shall admire her, and you may be sure I shall
not forget that there is some one whose admiration has a deeper root
than the lust of the eye and the fancy of the moment.”
Theodore would not affect to misunderstand him. It was not possible
that he could have talked of his cousin in the freedom of friendship
without having revealed his secret to his friend.
“My dear fellow,” he said with a sigh, “mine is a hopeless case. You
will know that it is so when you see Juanita and me together. Her
mother said to me on the first day of this year, ‘If ever she comes
to care for anybody it will be some new person;’ and I have not
the least doubt that her mother was right. Her first love was her
playfellow, the companion of her girlhood. A woman cannot have two
such loves. Her second attachment, if she ever make one, will be of a
totally different character.”
“Who knows, Theodore? A woman’s heart is to be measured by no
callipers that I know of; it is subject to no scientific test; we
cannot say it shall give this or that result. It may remain cold as
marble to a man through years of faithful devotion, and then, in an
instant, the marble may change to a volcano, and hidden fires may
leap out of that seeming coldness. ‘Nil desperandum’ should be the
motto of all inventors—and of all lovers.”
Dorchester, and especially the old house in Cornhill, received
Mr. Ramsay with open arms. Harrington was in the dejected state
of a young man who has been rudely awakened from youth’s sweetest
delusion. Fooled and forsaken by Juliet Baldwin, he had told himself
that all women are liars, and was doing all in his power to establish
his reputation as a woman-hater. In this temper of mind he was not
averse from his own sex, and he welcomed his brother’s friend with
unaffected cordiality, and was evidently cheered by the new life
which Ramsay’s vivacity brought into the quiet atmosphere of home.
The sisters were delighted to do honour to a scientific man, and
were surprised, on attacking Mr. Ramsay at dinner with the ease and
aplomb of _confrères_ in modern science, to discover one of two
things—either that he knew nothing, or that they knew very little.
They were at first inclined to the former opinion, but it gradually
dawned upon them that their own much-valued learning was of a very
elementary character, and that their facts were for the most part
wrong. Chastened by this discovery, they allowed the conversation
to drift into lighter channels, and never again tackled Mr. Ramsay
either upon the broad and open subject of evolution, or the burning
question of the cholera bacillus. They were even content to leave
him to the enjoyment of his own views upon spontaneous generation
and the movement of glaciers, instead of setting him right upon both
subjects, as they had intended in the beginning of their acquaintance.
“He is remarkably handsome, but horribly dogmatic,” Sophia told her
brother, “and I’m afraid he belongs to the showy, shallow school
which has arisen since the death of Darwin. He would hardly have
dared to talk as he did at dinner during Darwin’s lifetime.”
“Perhaps not, if Darwin had been omnipresent.”
“Oh, there is a restraining influence in the very existence of such a
man. He is a perpetual court of appeal against arrogant smatterers.”
“I don’t think you can call a man who took a first class in science a
smatterer, Sophy. However, I’m sorry you don’t like my friend.”
“I like him well enough, but I am not imposed upon by his dogmatism.”
The two young men drove to Milbrook Priory on the following day,
Theodore feeling painfully eager to discover what change the last
few months had made in Juanita. She had been in Switzerland, with
Lady Jane and the baby, living first at Grindelwald, and later in
one of those little villages on the shores of the lake of the forest
cantons, which combine the picturesque and the dull in a remarkable
degree—a mere cluster of chalets and cottages at the foot of the
Rigi, facing the monotonous beauty of the lake, and the calm grandeur
of snow-capped mountains, which shut in that tranquil corner of the
earth and shut out all the busy world beyond it. Nowhere else had
Juanita felt that deep sense of seclusion, that feeling of being
remote from the din and press of life.
And now she was again at the Priory. She had settled down there in
her new position, as widow and mother, a woman for whom all life’s
passionate story was over, who must live henceforward for that new
life growing day by day towards that distant age of passion and of
sorrow through which she had passed suddenly and briefly, crowding
into a month the emotions of a lifetime. There are women who have
lived to celebrate their golden wedding who in fifty years of wedlock
have not felt half her sum of love, and who in losing the companion
of half a century have not felt half her sum of grief. It is the
capacity for loving and suffering which differs in different people,
and, weighed against that, Time counts but little.
She received her cousin with all her old friendliness. She was a
little more cheerful than when last they met, and he saw that the new
interest of her life had done good. Lady Jane was at Swanage, and
Juanita was alone at the Priory, though not without the expectation
of company a little later in the year, as the sisters and their
husbands were to be with her before the first of October, so that the
expense of pheasant-breeding might not be altogether wasted.
“You must be here as much as you can in October, Theodore,” she said,
“and help me to endure Mr. Grenville and Mr. Morningside. One talks
nothing but sport, and the other insists upon teaching me the science
of politics.”
She received Cuthbert Ramsay with a serious sweetness which charmed
him. Yes, she was verily beautiful among women, exceptionally
beautiful. Those southern eyes shone star-like in the settled pallor
of her face, and her whole countenance was etherealized by thought
and grief. It touched the stranger to see how she struggled to
put away the memory of her sorrow and to receive him with all due
hospitality—how she restrained herself as she showed him the things
that had been a part of her dead husband’s existence, and told him
the story of the old house which had sheltered so many generations of
Carmichaels.
Lady Cheriton had been lunching at the Priory, where she came at
least twice a week to watch her grandson’s development in all those
graces of mind and person which marked his superiority to the average
baby. She came all the oftener because of the difficulty in getting
Juanita to Cheriton.
“My poor child will hardly ever visit us,” she told Theodore, as
they sauntered on the lawn while Juanita was showing Mr. Ramsay the
pictures in the dining-room. “She has an insurmountable horror of
the house she was once so fond of; and I can’t wonder at it, and
I can’t be angry with her. I have seen how painfully her old home
affects her, so I don’t worry her to come to us often. I make a
point of getting her there once in a way in the hope of overcoming
her horror of the place as time goes by; and I have even gone out
of my way to make changes in the furniture and decorations, so that
the rooms should not look exactly the same as they looked in her
fatal honeymoon; but I can see in her face that every corner of the
house is haunted for her. Once when she had been calm and cheerful
with me for a whole afternoon, walking about the garden and going
from room to room, she flung herself into my arms suddenly, sobbing
passionately. ‘We were so happy, mother,’ she said, ‘so happy in this
fatal house!’ We must bear with her, poor girl. God has given her a
dark lot.”
Theodore had seen an anxious, questioning look in Juanita’s eyes
from the beginning of his visit, and he took the first opportunity
of being alone with her, while Lady Cheriton entertained Mr. Ramsay
with an exposition of the merits of her grandson, who was calmly
slumbering in a hammock on the lawn, unconscious of her praises, and
half smothered in embroidered coverlets.
“Have you found out anything?” she asked, eagerly, as soon as they
were out of earshot.
“Yes, I believe I have really come upon a clue, and that I may
ultimately discover the murderer; but I can give you no details as
yet—the whole thing is too vague.”
“How clever of you to succeed where the police have utterly failed!
Oh, Theodore, you cannot imagine how I shall value you—how deeply
grateful——”
“Stop, Juanita, for Heaven’s sake don’t praise me. I may be chasing
a Will-o’-the-Wisp. I don’t suppose that any experienced detective
would take up such a clue as I am going to follow—only you have set
me to do this thing, and it has become the business of my life to
obey you.”
“You are all that is good. Pray tell me everything you have
discovered—however vague your ideas may be.”
“No, Juanita, I can tell you nothing yet. You must trust me, dear.
I am at best only on the threshold of a discovery. It may be long
before I advance another step. Be content to know that I am not
idle.”
She gave an impatient sigh.
“It is so hard to be kept in the dark,” she said. “I dream night
after night that I myself am on the track of his murderer—sometimes
that I meet him face to face—oh, the hideous pallid face—the face of
a man who has been hanged and brought to life again. It is always the
same kind of face—the same dull livid hue—though it differs as to
features, though the man is never the same. You cannot imagine the
agony of those dreams, Theodore. Lay that ghost for me, if you can.
Make my life peaceful, though it can never be happy.”
“Never is a long word, Nita. As the years go by, your child’s love
will give life a new colour.”
“Yes, he is very dear. He has crept into my heart, little nestling
unconscious thing—knowing nothing of my love or my sorrow, and yet
seeming to comfort me. I sometimes think my darling’s spirit looks
out of those clear eyes. They seem so full of thought—of thought far
beyond human wisdom.”
Theodore could see that the work of healing was being done, slowly
but surely. The gracious influence of a new love was being exercised,
and the frozen heart was reviving to life and warmth under the soft
touch of those baby fingers. He saw his cousin smile with something
of the old brightness as she stood by while Cuthbert Ramsay dandled
the little lord of Carmichael Priory in his great strong arms,
smiling down at the tiny pink face peeping out of a cloud of lace and
muslin.
“Any one can see that Mr. Ramsay is fond of children,” said Lady
Cheriton, approvingly, as if a liking for infants just short-coated
were the noblest virtue of manhood.
“Oh, I am fond enough of the little beggars,” answered Cuthbert,
lightly. “All the gutter brats about St. Thomas’s know me, and
hang on to my coat-tails as I go by. I like to look at a child’s
face—those old shrewd London faces especially—and speculate upon the
life that lies before those younglings, the things those eyes are to
see, the words those lips are to speak. Life is such a tremendous
mystery, don’t you know—one can never be tired of wondering about it.
But this fellow is going to be very happy, and a great man in the
land. He is going to belong to the new order, the order of rich who
go through life shoulder to shoulder with the poor; the redressers of
wrongs, the adjusters of social levels.”
“I hope you are not a Socialist, Mr. Ramsay?” said Lady Cheriton,
with an alarmed air.
“Not much; but I acknowledge that there are points where my ideas
touch the boundary line of Socialism. I don’t want impossibilities. I
have no dream of a day when there shall be no more millionaires, no
great patrons of art or great employers of labour, but only a dead
level of small means and shabby dwellings, and sordid colourless
lives. No, there must be butterflies as well as ants—if it were only
that the ants may have something pretty to look at. What I should
like to see is a stronger bond of friendship and sympathy between the
two classes—a real knowledge and understanding of each other between
rich and poor, and the twin demons Patronage and Sycophancy exorcised
for ever and ever.”
The tea-tables were brought out upon the lawn by this time; Sir
Godfrey Carmichael was carried off by his nurse; and the two young
men sat down with Lady Cheriton and her daughter under the tree
beneath which Juanita and her husband had sat on that one blissful
day which they had spent together at the Priory as man and wife.
They seemed a very cheery and pleasant quartette as they sat in the
sultry afternoon atmosphere, with the level lawn and flower-beds
stretching before them, and the wide belt of old timber shutting out
all the world beyond. Cuthbert Ramsay was the chief talker, full of
animal spirits, launching the wildest paradoxes, the most unorthodox
opinions. The very sound of his strong full voice, the very ring of
his buoyant laugh, were enough to banish gloomy thoughts and sad
memories.
Lady Cheriton was delighted with this new acquaintance; first,
because he was dexterous in handling a baby; next on the score of
general merits. She was not a deeply read person, but she had a
profound respect for culture in other people; and she had an idea
that a scientific man was a creature apart, belonging to a loftier
world than that which she and her intellectual equals inhabited.
Theodore had told her of his friend’s claims to distinction, his hard
work in several cities, and seeing this earnest worker boyish and
light-hearted, interested in the most frivolous subjects, she was
lost in wonder at his condescension.
She begged him to go to Cheriton with Theodore at the earliest
opportunity—an invitation which he accepted gladly.
“I have long wished to know Lord Cheriton,” he said.
The two young men left soon after tea. Cuthbert’s high spirits
deserted him at the Priory gates, and both men were thoughtful during
the homeward drive.
“Well, Cuthbert, what do you think of my cousin, now that you have
seen her?” Theodore asked, when he had driven the first mile.
“I can only agree with you, my dear fellow. She is a very lovely
woman. I think there could hardly be two opinions upon that point.”
“And do you think—as I do—that it is hopeless for any man to spend
his life in worshipping her? Do you think her heart is buried with
her dead husband?”
“Only as Proserpine was buried with Pluto. It is not in human
nature for so young a woman to wear her weeds for a lifetime. The
hour of revival must come sooner or later. She has too bright and
quick an intellect to submit to the monotony of an inconsolable
sorrow. Her energy expends itself now in the desire to avenge her
husband’s death. Failing in that, her restless spirit will seek some
new outlet. She is beginning to be interested in her child. As that
interest grows with the child’s growth, her horizon will widen.
And then, and then, when she has discovered that life can still be
beautiful, her heart will become accessible to a new love. The cure
and the change, the awakening from death to life, may be slower
than it is in most such cases, because this woman is the essence of
sincerity, and all her feelings lie deep. But the awakening will
come—you may be sure of that. Wait for it, Theodore; possess your
soul in patience.”
“You can afford to be philosophical,” said the other, with a sigh.
“You are not in love!”
“True, my friend. No doubt that makes a difference.”