“Thy love and hate are both unwise ones, lady.”
“Well, Theodore, what is your discovery?” asked Lord Cheriton half
an hour later, the two men standing face to face in Mrs. Porter’s
sitting-room, amidst the silence of the summer morning, a gigantic
bee buzzing in the brown velvet heart of a tall sunflower, painfully
audible to the younger man’s strained ears.
“There is a letter, sir. You had better read that before I say
anything,” answered Theodore.
It was years since he had called his cousin sir, not since he had
been a schoolboy, and had been encouraged to open his mind upon
politics or cricket, over his single glass of claret, after dinner.
On those occasions a boyish respect for greatness had prompted the
ceremonious address; to-day it came to his lips involuntarily—as if a
barrier of ice were suddenly interposed between himself and the man
he had esteemed and admired for so many years of his life.
Lord Cheriton held the letter in his hand unopened, while he stood
looking at the pistol-case, where both pistols occupied their
places—one bright and undamaged, the other rusted and spoilt, as to
outward appearance at least. He was ghastly pale, but not much more
so than he had looked yesterday after he left Mrs. Porter’s cottage.
“That is my discovery,” said Theodore, pointing to the pistols. “I
stopped short in my journey to Scotland Yard when I found that case
upon the table here. I want to secure Juanita and her son from the
possibilities of an insatiable hatred—but I don’t want to bring
trouble—or disgrace—upon you, if I can help it. You have always been
good to me, Lord Cheriton. You have regarded the claims of kindred.
It would be base in me if I were to forget that you are of my own
blood—that you have a right to my allegiance. Tell me, for God’s
sake, what I am to do. Trust me, if you can. I know so much already
that it will be wisest and best for you to let me know all—so that I
may help you to find the murderer, and to avoid any reopening of old
wounds.”
“I doubt if you or any one else can help me, Theodore,” said Lord
Cheriton wearily, looking straight before him through the open
lattice and across the little flower-garden where the roses were
still in their plenitude of colour and perfume. “I doubt if all my
worldly experience will enable me to help myself even. There is
a pass to which a man may come in his life—not wholly by his own
fault—at which his case seems hopeless. He sees himself suddenly
brought to a dead stop, deep in the mire of an impassable road, and
with the words ‘No thoroughfare’ staring him in the face. I have come
to just that point.”
“Oh, but there is always an issue from every difficulty for a man of
courage and resolution,” said Theodore. “I know you are not a man to
be easily broken down by Fate. I am half in the light and half in the
dark. It must have been the owner of that pistol who killed Godfrey
Carmichael—but how came the case and the fellow-pistol into Mrs.
Porter’s possession? Was she that man’s accomplice? And who was he,
and what was he, that she should be associated with him?”
“You believe that it was a man who fired that pistol?”
“Most assuredly. I believe it was the man whose wife lived for many
years at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove; the man who called upon a
house-agent at Camberwell to make inquiries about his wife, and who
called himself by the name she bore in the neighbourhood—the name of
Danvers. Danvers may have been only an alias for Darcy, and in that
case the man who called upon the agent was the husband of Evelyn
Strangway, and the woman who lived for so many years in the seclusion
of Myrtle Cottage was old Squire Strangway’s only daughter, and
Captain Darcy’s runaway wife.”
“And you think Tom Darcy murdered my son-in-law?” asked Lord
Cheriton, with a ghastly smile.
“I do.”
“And what do you suppose to have been the motive of that murder?”
“Revenge—revenge upon the man who tempted his wife away from him.”
“The cur who ill-used and neglected his wife—whose conduct drove her
from her wretched home, and justified her abandonment of him—was
never man enough to conceive such a revenge, or to hate with such a
hatred. However, in this case we need not enter upon the question of
motive. There is one reason why Tom Darcy cannot be suspected of any
part in Sir Godfrey’s murder. He died nine years ago, and was buried
at my expense in Norwood Cemetery.”
“Great God! then who could have fired that pistol?”
“The answer to that question is most likely here,” replied Lord
Cheriton quietly, as he tore open the envelope of Mrs. Porter’s
letter.
The letter was brief but comprehensive, and all-sufficing.
“You know now who killed your cherished daughter’s husband. If she
is like me she will carry her sorrow to the grave. If she is like
me all her days will be darkened by cruel memories. Your broken
promise blighted my life. I have blighted her life—an eye for an
eye. I told you three and twenty years ago that a day would come
when you would be sorry for having abandoned me. I think that day
_has_ come.
“EVELYN DARCY.”
Lord Cheriton handed the letter to his kinsman without a word.
“Since you know so much of my history you may as well know all,” he
said; “so know the thorny pillow which a man makes for himself when
he sacrifices the best years of his life to an illicit love.”
Theodore read those ghastly lines in silence. The signature told all.
“What in Heaven’s name brought Evelyn Strangway to be a lodge-keeper
at the entrance of the house where she was born?” he asked, at last.
“How could you permit such a life-long humiliation?”
“It was her own desire—it was at her insistence I allowed her to come
here. I opposed her fancy with all my power of argument, with all
the strength of opposition. I offered to provide her with a home in
town or country—at home or abroad—near at hand or at the Antipodes.
I offered to settle four hundred a year upon her—to sink capital to
that amount—to make her future and that of—our child—secure against
the chances of fate.”
“Your child—Mercy!” exclaimed Theodore.
“Yes, Mercy. My daughter and hers. You understand now why she refused
my help. She would take nothing from her father. There was a like
perversity in mother and daughter, a determination to make me drink
the cup of remorse to the dregs. Oh, Theodore, it is a long and
shameful story. To you—for the first time in my life—to you only
among mankind these lips have spoken of it. I have kept my secret.
I have brooded upon it in the slow hours of many and many a wakeful
night. I have never forgotten—I have not been allowed to forget. If
time could have erased or softened that bitter memory under other
conditions I know not; but for me the case was hopeless. My victim
was there, at my gates, a perpetual memento of my folly and my
wrong-doing.”
“Strange that a woman of refinement and education should elect to
fill so degrading a position!”
“Perhaps only a refined and highly educated woman could have devised
so refined a punishment. ‘Let me live near you,’ she pleaded; ‘let me
live at the gate of the park I loved so well when I was a child—let
me see you pass sometimes—open the gate for you and just see you go
by—without a word, without a look even upon your part. It will be
some consolation for me in my lonely, loveless life. I shall know
that at least I am not forgotten.’ Forgotten? as if it had been
possible for me to forget, in the happiest circumstances, even if she
had made for herself a home at the farthest extremity of Europe, or
in the remotest of our colonies. As it was, her presence embittered
the place I loved—the great reward and aim of my life. Her shadow
fell across my young wife’s pathway—her influence darkened all my
days.”
He began to pace up and down the little room with a feverish air.
He seemed to find a sort of relief in talking of this burden which
he had borne so long in secret—borne with a smile upon his lips,
suffering that silent agony which strong men have borne again and
again in the history of mankind, carrying their silent punishment
upon them till the grave revealed the hidden canker, and laid bare
the festering wound which had rankled unsuspected by the world.
“She was cruelly treated by her husband, Theodore. A young and
beautiful woman, married to a profligate and a sot. It had been a
love-match, as the world calls it—that is to say, a marriage brought
about by a schoolgirl’s impatience to break her bonds, and a woman’s
first delight in hearing herself called beautiful. She had flung
herself away upon a handsome reprobate; and three or four years after
marriage she found herself alone and neglected in a shabby lodging in
one of the squalidest streets off the Strand. I can see the wretched
rooms she lived in, to-day, as I stand here—the lodging-house
furniture, the dingy curtains darkening the dirty windows looking
into the dirty street. What a home for youth and beauty!”
He paused, with an impatient sigh, took another turn across the
narrow space, and then resumed:
“Our acquaintance began by accident—under an umbrella. I met them
together one night, husband and wife, leaving the little Strand
Theatre in the rain. I heard him tell her that it was not worth while
to take a cab, they were so near home; and something in her proud,
handsome face and her contemptuous way of replying to him caught my
attention and interested me in her. I offered my umbrella, and we all
three walked to Essex Street together. Just in that fortuitous way
began the alliance which was to give its colour to all my life. The
husband cultivated my acquaintance—was glad to meet me at my club—and
dined with me as often as I cared to asked him. We used to go to
Essex Street after dining together, and finish the evening with her,
and so by degrees I came to know all about her—that she was the only
daughter of the owner of Cheriton Chase; that she was very handsome,
and very clever, though only half-educated; that she had offended
her father by her marriage, and that she had not brought her husband
a penny; that he neglected her, and that he drank; and that she was
miserable. I came to know this very soon; I came very soon to love
her. She was the first woman I had ever cared for, and I loved her
passionately.”
He took another turn, and sighed again, regretfully, despairingly, as
one who looks back upon the pallid ghost of a love that has long been
dead.
“It began with pity. I was so sorry for her, poor soul, her wasted
life, her slighted beauty. God knows that for a long time I had no
thought of sin. Gradually the yearning to see more of her, to bring
some brightness and pleasure into her life, became too strong for
prudence, and I persuaded her to meet me unknown to her husband. We
planned little excursions, innocent enough in themselves, a morning
drive and a modest luncheon at Richmond, or Greenwich, or Jack
Straw’s Castle, a trip to Hampton Court or Windsor by boat or rail.
She had hardly any acquaintances in London, and there was little fear
of her being recognized. We went to a theatre together now and then,
and sat in a dark stage box, happy, talking of an impossible future
in the intervals of the performance. We never said as much, but I
think we had both a vague idea that Providence would help us—that her
husband would die young, and leave us free to be happy together. Yes,
we were very fond of each other, very single-hearted in those days.
She was only two and twenty, remember, and I was still a young man.”
Another pause, another sigh, and a look across the roses, as if
across the long lapse of years to an unforgotten past.
“Heaven knows how long we might have gone on in this way, without
sin, if not without treachery to the husband, who cared so little for
his wife that it seemed scarcely dishonourable to deceive him. Our
fate was precipitated by circumstances. Darcy surprised a little note
of mine, asking Evelyn to meet me at a theatre. He attacked his wife
brutally, refused to believe anything except the worst. He called
her by names that were new and hideous to her ear, and her soul rose
up in arms against him. She defied him, ran out of the house, took
a cab, and came to my chambers in the foggy November evening. She
came to me helpless, friendless, with no one in this wide world to
love her or to protect her, except me. This was the turning-point.
Of course she could not stay there to be seen by my clerk and my
laundress. I took her to Salisbury that night, and we spent a
fortnight moving from village to village along the south coast of
Devonshire. My hope was that Darcy would apply for a divorce, and
that in less than a year I might make the woman I loved my wife. I
rejoiced in the thought of his obscurity and hers. The record of
the case would pass unnoticed in the papers, and years hence, when
I should have made a position at the Bar, nobody need know that the
wife I loved and honoured was once the runaway wife of another man. I
had argued without allowing for the malignity of a cur. Darcy wrote
his wife one of the most diabolical letters that ever was penned by
man; he wreaked his venom upon her—upon her, the weaker sinner; he
called her by all the vile epithets in his copious vocabulary, and
he told her that she should never have the right to the name of an
honest woman, for that he would sooner hang himself than divorce her.
And so she was to drag her chain for the rest of his days; and so she
was to pay the bitter price of having trusted her young life to a
low-bred scoundrel.”
“Hard luck for both of you,” said Theodore.
“Yes, it was indeed hard luck. If you could know how truly and
entirely I loved her in those days—how completely happy we should
have been in each other’s society, but for the embittering
consciousness of our false position. Cut off by his malevolence from
escape by divorce, we naturally hoped for a day when we should be
released by his death. His habits were not those which conduce to
length of years.
“We talked of the future—we had our plans and dreams about that life
which was to be ours in after-days, when I should be making a large
income, and when she would be really my wife. With that hope before
her she was content to live in the strictest seclusion, to economize
in every detail of our existence, to know no pleasure except that of
my society. Never did a handsome woman resign herself to a duller or
more unselfish existence—and yet I believe for the first few years
she was happy. We were both happy—and we were full of hope.
“I remember the day she first suggested to me that I should buy
Cheriton Chase when it came into the market. I was beginning to be
employed in important cases, and to get big fees marked upon my
briefs, and I had taken silk. I had made my name, and I was saving
money. Yet the suggestion that I should buy a large estate was too
wild for any one but a woman to have made. From that hour, however,
it was Evelyn’s _idée fixe_. She had a passionate love for her
birth-place, an overweening pride in her race and name. She urged me
to accumulate money—the estate would be sacrificed at half its value,
perhaps,—would go for an old song. She became rigidly economical,
would hardly allow herself a new gown, and her keenest delight was
in the deposit notes I brought her, as my money accumulated at the
Union Bank. She had no idea of investments, or interest for my
accumulations. Her notions about money were a child’s notions—the
idea of saving a large sum to buy the desire of her heart; and the
desire of her heart was Cheriton Chase.
“God knows I was honest and earnest enough in those days. I meant to
buy that estate, for her sake, if it was possible to be done. I meant
to marry her directly she was free to become my wife. My fidelity had
not wavered after a union of ten years and more—but Darcy was very
far from dying. He had hunted out his wife in her quiet retreat, had
threatened and annoyed her, and I had been obliged to buy him off by
paying his passage to Canada—where he had been quartered with his
regiment years before, and which he pretended would open a new field
for him. Our case, so far as he was concerned, seemed hopeless, and I
was beginning to feel the darkness of the outlook, when I made Maria
Morales’ acquaintance.
“It was the old, old story, Theodore. God forbid you should ever
go through that hackneyed experience. Just as the old chain was
beginning to drag heavily, a new face appeared upon my pathway—a
girlish face, bright with promise and hope. I saw the opportunity
of a union which would smooth my way to a great position—crown the
edifice of my fortune, give me a wife of whom I might be proud. Could
I ever have been proud of the woman who had sacrificed her good name
for my sake? I was bound to her by every consideration of honour and
duty. But there was the fatal stain across both our lives. I could
not take her into society without the fear of hearing malignant
whispers as we passed. However well these social secrets may be kept,
there is always some enemy to hunt them out, and the antecedents of
James Dalbrook’s wife would have been public property.
“And here was a beautiful and innocent girl who loved me well
enough to accept me as her husband although I was twenty years her
senior, loved me with that youthful upward-looking love which is of
all sentiments the most attractive to a man who has lived a hard
work-a-day life in a hard work-a-day world. To spend an hour with
Maria was to feel a Sabbath peacefulness which solaced and refreshed
my soul. I felt ten years younger when I was with her than I felt in
my own—home.”
He stopped, with a heart-broken sigh.
“Oh, Theodore, beware of such burdens as that which I laid upon my
shoulders; beware of such a chain as I wound about my steps. What
a dastard a man feels himself when his love begins to cool for
the woman who cast her life upon one chance—who leans upon him as
the beginning and end of her existence. I have walked up and down
the quiet pathway before Myrtle Cottage for an hour at a stretch,
dreading to go in, lest she should read my treason in my face. The
break came at last—suddenly. I paltered with my fate for a long
time. I carried on a kind of Platonic flirtation with Maria Morales,
taking monstrous pains to let her know that I never meant to go
beyond Platonics—reminding her of the difference of our ages, and
of my almost paternal regard—the vain subterfuge of a self-deluded
man. One moment of impulse swept away all barriers, and I left Onslow
Square Maria’s engaged husband. Her father’s generosity precipitated
matters. Squire Strangway had been dead nearly a year, and the
estate was in the hands of the mortgagee, who had been trying to sell
it for some time. My future father-in-law was eager for the purchase
directly I suggested it to him, and my wife’s dowry afforded me the
means of realizing Evelyn’s long-cherished dream.”
“Cruel for her, poor creature.”
“Cruel—brutal—diabolical! I felt the blackness of my treason, and
yet it had been brought about by circumstances rather than by any
deliberate act of mine. I had to go to the woman who still loved me,
and still trusted me, and tell her what I was going to do. I had to
do this, and I did it—by word of mouth—face to face—not resorting to
the coward’s expedient of pen and ink. God help me, the memory of
that scene is with me now. It was too terrible for words; but after
the storm came a calm, and a week later I went across to Boulogne
with her, and saw her comfortably established there at a private
hotel, where she was to remain as long as she liked, while she made
up her mind as to her future residence. The furniture was sent to the
Pantechnicon. The _home_ was broken up for ever.”
“And the daughter, where was she?”
Lord Cheriton answered with a smile of infinite bitterness.
“The daughter had troubled us very little. Evelyn was not an exacting
mother. The child’s existence was a burden to her—rendered hateful by
the stigma upon her birth, which the mother could not forget. Mercy’s
infancy was spent in a Buckinghamshire village, in the cottage of her
foster-mother. Mother and daughter never lived under the same roof
till they came here together, when Mercy was seven years old.”
“Yet, according to village tradition, Mrs. Porter was passionately
fond of her daughter, and broken-hearted at her loss.”
“Village tradition often lies. I do not believe that Evelyn ever
loved her child. She bitterly felt the circumstances of her birth—she
bitterly resented her unhappy fate; but I believe it was her pride,
her deep sense of wrong done to herself, which tortured her rather
than her love for her only child. She is a strange woman, Theodore—a
woman who could do that deed—a woman who could write that letter.
Your friend has fathomed her unhappy secret. She was a mad woman
when she fired that shot. She was mad when she penned that letter.
And now, Theodore, I have trusted you as I have never before trusted
mortal man. I have ripped open an old wound. You know all, and you
see what lies before me. I have to find that woman and to save her
from the consequences of her crime, and to save my daughter and my
grandson from the hazards of a mad woman’s malignity. You can help
me, Theodore, if you can keep a cool, clear brain, and do just what I
ask you to do, and no more.”
He put aside his emotion with one stupendous effort, and became a man
of iron, cool, resolute, unflinching.
“I will obey you implicitly,” said Theodore.
He had been completely won by his kinsman’s candour. Had James
Dalbrook told him anything less than the truth he would have despised
him. As it was, he felt that he could still respect him, in spite of
that fatal error, which had brought such deadly retribution.
“It is early yet,” said Lord Cheriton, looking at his watch, and
from that to the neat little clock on the mantelpiece, where the
hands pointed to twenty minutes past nine. “The dog-cart is waiting
outside. Do you drive to the Priory and put yourself on guard there
till—till that unhappy woman has been traced. You can tell Juanita
that I have sent you there—that I have heard of dangerous characters
being about, and that I am afraid of her being in the house with only
servants. My wife shall follow you later, and can stay at the Priory
while I am away from home, which I must be, perhaps, for some time. I
have to find her, Theodore.”
“Have you any idea where she may be gone?”
“For the moment, none. She may have made her way to the nearest river
and thrown herself in. Living or dead, I have to find her. That is my
business. And when I have found her I have to get her put away out of
the reach of the law. _That_ is my business.”
“God help you to carry it through,” said Theodore. “I shall stay at
the Priory till I hear from you. Be so kind as to ask Lady Cheriton
to bring my portmanteau and dressing-bag in her carriage this
afternoon. I may tell Juanita that her mother is coming to-day, may I
not?”
“Decidedly! Good-bye. God bless you, Theodore. I know that I may rely
upon your holding your tongue. I know I can rely upon your active
help if I should need you.”
And so with a cordial grasp of hands they parted, Theodore to take
his seat in the dog-cart, and drive towards the Priory to offer
himself to his cousin as her guest for an indefinite period. It was
a curious position in which he found himself; but the delight of
being in Juanita’s society, of being in somewise her protector, was a
counterbalance to the embarrassing conditions under which he was to
approach her.