“The love of these is like the lightning spear,
And shrivels whom it touches. They consume
All things within their reach, and, last of all,
Their lonely selves.”
The cottage was to be let. A board offering it upon a repairing lease
announced the fact.
Lord Cheriton opened the familiar gate. The very sound with which it
swung back as he passed recalled a life that was gone, that had left
nothing but an exceeding bitter sorrow. How weedy and dejected the
narrow garden looked in the sunshine—how moss-grown the gravel path
which he and Evelyn had once taken such pains to weed and roll, in
those early days when that modest suburban retreat seemed a happy
home, and the demon of ennui had not yet darkened their threshold.
He entered the well-remembered porch over which the Virginia creeper
hung in rank luxuriance. The house was not unoccupied, for slipshod
feet came along the passage at the sound of the bell, and he heard
children’s voices in the back premises.
A slatternly woman, with a year-old baby on her left arm, opened the
door.
“Has a lady called here this morning?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, there is a lady here now—in the drawing-room,” the woman
answered eagerly. “I hope you belong to her, for I’ve been feeling a
bit nervous about her, with me and the children alone in the house,
and my husband not coming back till night time. I’m afraid she’s not
quite right in her head.”
“Yes, I belong to her. I have come to fetch her.”
He went into the drawing-room—the room that had looked pretty and
picturesque enough in those unforgotten days—a small room furnished
with quaint old secretaire and bookcase, Chippendale chairs, and a
carved oak table, a pair of old blue-and-white jars on the top of
a dark mahogany bureau, a high, brass fender that used to glitter
in the firelight, sober brown damask curtains, and half-a-dozen
Bartolozzi engravings of rustic subjects, in neat oval frames—a room
that always looked like a Dutch picture.
Now that room was a scene of squalor and desolation. For furniture
there was nothing but a shabby Pembroke table, wanting two castors,
and two old cane-seated chairs, in each of which the cane was broken
and bulging. A dilapidated doll, in a ragged red gauze frock,
sprawled amidst the dirt on the bare floor, and a greasy rug lay in
front of the fireless hearth.
Mrs. Porter was sitting with her elbows on the table, and her head
resting on her clasped hands. She did not notice Lord Cheriton’s
approach till he was standing close beside her, when she looked up at
him.
At first her gaze expressed trouble and bewilderment; then her face
brightened into a quiet smile, a look of long ago.
“You are earlier than usual, James,” she said, holding out her hand.
He took the hand in his; it was hot and dry, as if with a raging
fever. It was the hand of a murderess; but it was also the hand of
his victim, and he could not refuse to take it.
“Was your work over so soon to-day?” she asked. “I’m afraid it will
be ever so long before dinner will be ready, and the house is all
in a muddle—everything wretched”—looking about her with a puzzled
air. “I can’t think what has happened to the rooms,” she muttered.
“Servants are so troublesome.”
She passed her hand across her forehead, as if her head were paining
her, and then looked at him helplessly.
“You are ill, Evelyn,” he said, gently.
It was twenty years since he had called her by the name that had been
so often on his lips in this house. It was almost as if the very
atmosphere of the house, even in its desolation, recalled the old
link between them, and made him forgetful of what had happened in
Dorsetshire.
“No. I have a headache, that is all. I shall set to work presently
and make everything comfortable for you. Only I can’t find Mary—I
can’t get on without Mary. I don’t like the look of that charwoman—a
wretched, untidy creature—and I don’t know what she has done with the
furniture. I suppose she moved it in order to clean the rooms. It is
just like their tricks, clearing out the furniture and then dawdling
ever so long before they begin to scrub the floors.”
He looked at her earnestly, wondering whether she was pretending,
whether she had repented that written acknowledgment of her crime,
and was simulating madness. No, it was real enough. The eyes, with
their dull fixed look and dilated pupils, the troubled movements
of the hands, the tremulous lips, all told of the unsettled brain.
There was but one course before him, to get her madness established
as an accepted fact before there was any chance of her crime being
discovered.
“Do not trouble about anything,” he said, gently. “I will get
some of the furniture brought back presently, and I will get you a
servant. Will you wait quietly here, while I see about two or three
small matters?”
“Yes, I will wait; but don’t be long. It seems such a long while
since yesterday,” she said, looking round the room in a forlorn way,
“and everything is so strangely altered. Don’t be long, if you _must_
go out.”
He promised to return in half an hour, and then he went out and spoke
to the woman.
“How did she come here, and when?”
“She walked up to the door. It was just dinner-time—half-past twelve
o’clock. I thought it was some one to see the house, so I let her in
without asking any questions, and I showed her all the rooms, and
it was some time before I saw she was wrong in her head. She looked
about her just as people mostly do look, and she was very thoughtful,
as if she was considering whether the place would suit. And then
after she’d been a long time looking at the rooms and the garden, she
went back into the drawing-room, and sat down at the table. I told
her I should be glad if she could make it convenient to leave, as I
had my washing to do. But she said she lived here, this was her home,
and she told me to go away and get on with my work. She gave me such
a scare that I didn’t know how to answer her. She spoke very mild,
and I could see that she was a lady; but I could see that she was
out of her mind, and that frightened me, for fear she should take a
violent turn, and I all alone in the house with those young children.
I was afraid to contradict her, so I just let her please herself and
sit in the drawing-room alone, while I got on with my bit of washing,
and kept the children well out of the way. I never felt more thankful
in my life than when you rang the bell.”
“I am going as far as the post-office to send off some telegrams, and
I want you to take care she doesn’t leave this house while I’m away,”
said Lord Cheriton, emphasizing his request with a sovereign.
“Thank you kindly, sir. I’ll do my best. I’m sure I’m sorry for her
with all my heart, poor dear lady.”
“And I want you to give me the use of this house for to-day—and
possibly for to-night, if by any chance I should not be able to get
her away to-night.”
“Yes, sir, you are free and welcome to the house as far as it’s mine
to give leave—and it’s been empty too long for there to be much
chance of a tenant turning up between now and to-morrow.”
“Very good. Then I shall send in a little furniture—just enough to
make her comfortable for a few hours—and when I come back you can get
her something to eat, and make her some tea.”
“Yes, sir. You won’t be gone long, I hope, for fear she should turn
violent?”
“She will not do that. She has never been violent.”
“I am very glad to hear that. Appearances are so deceitful sometimes
when folks are wrong in their heads.”
Lord Cheriton had told the cabman to wait. He got into the cab
and drove to the nearest upholsterer’s, where he hired a table, a
comfortable sofa, a couple of chairs, a small square carpet, and some
pillows and blankets, in the event of Mrs. Porter having to bivouac
in Myrtle Cottage. He meant her only to leave that shelter for a
place of restraint, under medical care.
This done, he went to the post-office and telegraphed first to Marian
Gray, Hercules Buildings:—
“Your mother is at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove, and very ill.
Go to her without delay.—CHERITON.”
His second telegram was to Dr. Mainwaring, Welbeck Street:—
“Meet me as soon as possible at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove,
and send a trained nurse, experienced in mental cases, to the same
address. I want your advice upon a case in which time is of vital
importance.”
He sent another telegram to another medical man, Dr. Wilmot, also an
old acquaintance, and a fourth to Theodore Dalbrook, at the Priory:—
“Mrs. Porter is in London, and in my care. You need have no further
apprehension.”
He was back at Myrtle Cottage within the half-hour, and was able
to direct the men who had just brought a small van containing the
furniture. He saw the things carried into the room that had been the
dining-room, which was empty—the policeman’s family preferring to
camp in the kitchen—and had them arranged there with some appearance
of comfort. Then he went back to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Porter
was standing at the window, staring at the weeping-ash.
“I didn’t know the tree was so big,” she muttered.
“The dining-room is in better order,” he said, gently, “will you come
and sit there, while they get you some tea?”
“Yes, James,” she answered, meekly, and then she added, with almost
the voice and manner of twenty years ago, “tell me about your day.”
She followed him into the other room, and seated herself opposite
him, looking at him expectantly. “Tell me about your day in the law
courts. Was it dull or interesting? Had you any great case on? I
forget. I forget.”
She had always questioned him on his return from the law courts: she
had read the reports of all his cases, and all his rivals’ cases,
interesting herself in everything that concerned his career. And now
there was so much of the past in her manner that his heart ached as
he listened to her. He could not humour her delusion.
“I have sent for your daughter,” he said gravely, thinking that name
might bring her back to a sense of the present time. “She will be
here before long, I believe. I hope you will receive her kindly.”
“Why have you sent for her?” she cried, vexed and startled. “She
is very well where she is—happy and well. The nurse told me so in
her last letter. I can’t have her here. You know that, James,—you
know how people would talk by-and-by—how they would ferret out the
truth—by-and-by, when we want to stand clear of the past——”
“Evelyn, the past is long past, and our child is a woman—a sorrowful
woman. I want you to take her to your heart again, if you have any
heart left in you.”
“I have not,” she cried, with a sudden change, appalling in its
instantaneousness. “My heart died within me twenty years ago, when
you broke it; in this house, yes, in this house, James Dalbrook, God
help me! I have been dreaming! I thought I was living here again in
the old time, and that you had come home to me, as you used to come,
before you broke your promise and abandoned me to marry a rich young
wife. Heart! No, I have a fiery scorpion here, where my heart used to
be. Do you think if I had had a heart I could have killed _him_—that
young man who never injured me by so much as one scornful word? It
was the thought of your daughter that maddened me—the thought of
her happiness, the sound of the church bells and the cheering, and
the sight of the flags and garlands and laurel arches—while _my_
daughter, your nameless, unacknowledged child, was an outcast, and
I who should have been your wife, and the happy mother of just as
happy a bride, I was living in that silent solitary cottage alone
and unloved—upon the land where my father and his forefathers had
been owners of the soil. I had dreamed the dream and you had realized
it. All through those moonlight nights I was awake and roaming about
in the park, from midnight till dawn, thinking, thinking, thinking,
till I felt as if my brain must burst with the agony of thought.
And then I remembered Tom Darcy’s pistols, and I took one of them
with me of a night. I hardly knew why I carried that pistol about
with me, but I felt a necessity to kill something. Once I was near
shooting one of the red deer, but the creature looked at me with its
plaintive eyes, so bold and so tame in his sense of security, and I
fondled him instead of killing him. And then I took to prowling about
by the house, and I saw those two in the lamp-lit room, in their
wedded happiness—their _wedded_ happiness, James, not such a union
as ours, secret, darkened by a cloud of shame. I saw your daughter
in her bright young beauty, the proud, triumphant wife: and then a
devilish thought took hold of me—the thought of seeing her widowed,
broken-hearted; the thought that I might be her evil Destiny—that
just by stretching out my arm and pulling a trigger I could bring
down all that pride into the dust—could bring youth and beauty down
to my level of dull despair.”
“It was a devilish thought.”
“It was; but it was my thought all the same; for three days and three
nights it was never absent from my mind, God knows how I got through
the common business of the day—how the few people with whom I came
in contact did not see murder in my face! I watched and waited for
my opportunity; and when the moment came I did not waver. There are
old people at Cheriton who could tell you that Evelyn Strangway at
fifteen years old was as good a shot as either of her brothers. My
hand had not forgotten its cunning; and your daughter was a widow
three weeks after she was made a wife. By so much as she was happier
than I, by so much was her joy briefer than mine.”
She sank into a corner of the large arm-chair and covered her face
with her hands, muttering to herself. He heard the words—“I made
myself her Evil Destiny; I was her fate—Nemesis, Nemesis! The sins of
the fathers! It is the Scripture.”
He could not stay in the room with her after that confession. She
had been perfectly coherent in telling the story of her crime; and
it seemed to him that even now she gloated over the evil she had
wrought—that had it been in her power to undo her work by the lifting
of her hand she would hardly have used that power. She seemed a
malignant spirit, rejoicing in evil.
He went out into the passage and told the policeman’s wife to look
after her, and then he went to the desolate drawing-room and walked
up and down the bare boards waiting for the arrival of one or both of
the doctors.
What would _they_ think of her mental condition. She had been
curiously coherent just now. The temporary delusion had passed away
like a cloud. She had spoken as a person fully conscious of her acts,
and accountable for them. Judged by her speech just now she was a
criminal who deserved the sternest measure of the law.
But he who knew of those long years of brooding, he who knew the
story of her wrongs, and how those wrongs must have acted upon that
proud and stubborn spirit, to him there seemed little doubt that
her mind had long lost its balance, and that her crime had been the
culminating crisis of a long period of melancholia. He waited the
verdict of the doctors with acutest anxiety, for only in an asylum
did he see safety for this unhappy sinner. The finding of the pistol
would inevitably be talked about at Cheriton, and it was possible
that at any moment suspicion might take the right direction. To
get her away, to get her hidden from the world was his most ardent
desire; but this was not inconsistent with his desire to spare her,
to do the best that could be done for her. The thought that he had
ruined her life—that his wrong-doing was at the root of all her
miseries—was never absent from his mind.
Dr. Mainwaring was the first to arrive. He was a man of supreme
refinement, gentle, compassionate, an artist by talent and
temperament, intellectual to the tips of his fingers. He had made
insanity and the care of the insane the work of his life, as his
father and grandfather had done before him, and he enjoyed the
privilege of having been born in an age of enlightenment, which they
had not even foreseen in their happiest anticipations. He had met
Lord Cheriton often in London society, and had visited him in the
country, and they were as close friends as two busy men of the world
can be.
He was mystified by so sudden a summons and to such a locality; but
he had too much tact to betray any surprise. He listened quietly to
Lord Cheriton’s explanation that he was wanted to form an opinion of
a dependent whose state of mind had given cause for uneasiness.
“I will say very little about her till you have seen her,” said
Cheriton. “If it should appear to you and to my friend Wilmot, whom
I have asked to meet you,—if you should decide that she ought to be
placed under restraint, I should wish her to be removed immediately
to your house at Cheshunt. I know that she will be made as happy
there as her state of mind will admit, and I shall rely upon your
kind consideration for making this a special case.”
“You may be assured I shall do my uttermost for any one in whom
you are interested, my dear Cheriton, but indeed I think you must
know that I do my uttermost in every case. It is only in some small
details that I can ever show special attention. Is this poor lady
very violent?”
“No, she is very quiet.”
“And there is no suicidal mania, I hope?”
“I have seen no evidence of it; but she left her home in a strange
and motiveless manner this morning, and that, coupled with other
indications in the past, gave me the alarm.”
“Has she any delusions?”
“Yes, it was under a delusion that she came to this empty house. She
lived here many years ago, and on talking to her just now I found her
unconscious of the lapse of time, and fancying that all things were
still as they were when she was a young woman.”
“Has she had any illness lately?”
“None that I know of.”
“I fear there can be little doubt as to her malady. Will you take me
to her? She will be less alarmed if you are with me. Oh, by the bye,
the nurse you asked for will be here almost immediately.”
“I am glad of that. There is only a wretched slattern in the house,
whom I don’t like to see in attendance upon my poor friend.”
Lord Cheriton and the doctor went into the room, where Mrs. Porter
was sitting facing the window, staring moodily at the trailing
tendrils of Virginia creeper and passion-flower hanging from the
roof of the verandah and shutting out the light. There was something
unspeakably desolate in that glimpse of neglected garden seen athwart
the neglected verdure, with the smoky London sky as a background.
She looked round quickly at the sound of footsteps, and started up
from her chair.
“Who is this man?” she asked, turning to Lord Cheriton. “Are you
going to send me to prison? You have lost no time.”
“This gentleman is my old friend, and he is interested in helping you
if he can.”
“You had better leave us together,” said Dr. Mainwaring, gently.
Lord Cheriton left the room silently, and paced the narrow entrance
hall, listening with intense anxiety to the low murmuring sound of
voices on the other side of the door.
There were no loud tones from either speaker. There could be neither
anger nor profound agitation upon Mrs. Porter’s side, the listener
thought, as he awaited the result of the interview. A knock at the
hall-door startled him from his expectancy, and he hastened to admit
the new arrival.
It was his other medical friend, Dr. Wilmot, stout and jovial,
more adapted to assist at a wedding than a funeral, more fitted to
prescribe for wine-bibbing aldermen or dowagers who needed to be
“kept up” on Rœderer or Mumm, than to stand beside the bed of agony,
or listening to the ravings of a mind distraught. Mainwaring came out
of the dining-room at the sound of voices in the hall.
“Ah, how do you do, Wilmot? You will have very little trouble in
making up your mind about this poor soul. Go in and talk to her while
I take a turn in the garden with his Lordship.”
He opened the dining-room door, and Dr. Wilmot passed in, smiling,
agreeable, and beginning at once in an oily voice, “My dear lady,
my friend Mainwaring suggests that I should have a little chat with
you while—while Lord Cheriton and he are admiring the garden. A very
nice garden, upon my word, for the immediate vicinity of London. One
hardly expects such a nice bit of ground nowadays. May I feel your
pulse? Thanks, a little too rapid for perfect health.”
“What do you and that other man mean by all this pretence?” she
exclaimed, indignantly. “I am not ill. Are you a doctor, or a
policeman in disguise? If you want to take me to prison I am ready to
go with you. I came to London on purpose to give myself up. You need
not beat about the bush. I am ready.”
“Mad, very mad,” thought Dr. Wilmot, detaining the unwilling wrist,
and noting its tumultuous pulsations by the second hand of his
professional watch.
Lord Cheriton and Dr. Mainwaring were pacing slowly up and down the
moss-grown gravel while this was happening.
“How did you find her?”
“Curiously calm and collected for the first part of the interview.
Had it not been for her troubled eye, and the nervous movements of
her hands, I should have supposed her as sane as you or I. I talked
to her of indifferent subjects, and her answers were consecutive and
reasonable, although it was evident she resented my presence. It was
only when I asked her why she had come to London that she became
agitated and incoherent, and began to talk about having committed a
murder, and wishing to give herself up and make a full confession
of her guilt. Instead of waiting for the law to find her out she
was going to find the law. She had no fear of the result. She had
long been tired of her life, and she was not afraid of the disgrace
of a felon’s death. Her whole manner, as she said this, showed a
deep-rooted delusion, and I am of opinion that her mind has been
unhinged for a long time. That notion of an imaginary crime is often
a fixed idea in lunacy. A madman will conceive a murder that never
took place, or he will connect himself with some actual murder, and
insist upon his guilt, often with an extraordinary appearance of
truth and reality, until he is shaken by severe cross-examination.”
“You will receive her in your house at once?”
“I have no objection, if Wilmot’s opinion coincides with mine; but
another medical man must sign the certificate if she is to enter my
house. I have no doubt as to her being in a condition to require
restraint. She is not violent at present, but if she is not taken
care of she will go wandering about in search of a police-magistrate,
and with increasing excitement there will be every likelihood of
acute mania. Ah, here comes Wilmot. Well, what do you think of the
case, Wilmot?”
“Mad, undeniably mad. She took me for a policeman, and raved about a
murder for which she wanted to give herself up to justice.”
“A fixed delusion, you see,” said Mainwaring, with a gentle sigh. “Do
you know how long she has had this idea, Cheriton?”
“Indeed, I do not. Her position on my estate was a peculiar one.
She lived at one of the lodges, but her status was not that of an
ordinary dependent. She was her own mistress, and lived a very
solitary life—after her daughter left her. I have sent for the
daughter, who will be here presently, I hope. My first notice of
anything amiss was a hint dropped by a young medical man who was
visiting at Cheriton. He saw Mrs. Porter, and formed the opinion that
she either had been off her head in the past, or was likely to go off
her head in the future. That startled me, and I had it in my mind
to ask you to come down to see her, Mainwaring, when there came the
sudden departure of this morning—a departure which was so at variance
with her former habits that it made me anxious for her safety. I
followed her to London—first to her daughter’s lodging—and then
here—where by mere guesswork, I found her.”
“Do you think that it may be the sad event of last year—the murder of
your son-in-law—which has put this notion into her head?”
“It is not unlikely. That dreadful event made a profound impression
upon everybody at Cheriton. She, being a reserved and thoughtful
woman, may have brooded over it.”
“Until she grew to associate herself with the crime,” said Wilmot.
“Nothing more likely. Was the murderer never found, by the way?”
“Never.”
“But there can be no suspicion against this lady, I conclude. She can
have been in no way concerned in the crime?”
“I think you have only to look at her in order to be satisfied upon
that point,” said Lord Cheriton; and the two physicians agreed that
the poor lady in question was not of the criminal type, and that
nothing was more common in the history of mental aberration than the
hallucination to which she was a victim.
“Those monotonous lives of annuitants and genteel dependents—exempt
from labour, and to the outward eye full of placid contentment, do
not infrequently tend towards madness,” said Dr. Wilmot. “I have
seen more than one such case as this. There are some minds that
have no need of action or variety, some natures which can vegetate
in a harmless nullity. There are other tempers which prey upon
themselves in solitude, and brood upon fancies till they lose touch
of realities. This lady is of the latter type, highly organized,
sensitive to a marked degree, of the _genus-irritabile_.”
“You will take all necessary steps at once?” said Lord Cheriton,
looking from one doctor to the other.
Both were consentient. Dr. Wilmot drove off at once to find the
nearest medical man, and brought him back in his carriage. A very
brief interview with the patient convinced this gentleman of the
necessity for gentle restraint, and the certificate was signed by him
and Dr. Wilmot.
It was six o’clock, and the shadows were deepening in the room where
Mrs. Porter was sitting, quiescent, silent, in a kind of apathy
from which she was scarcely roused by the entrance of the nurse
from Cheshunt, a tall comely-looking woman of about thirty, neatly
dressed, and with pleasant manners.
Mrs. Porter sat there in her dull lethargy, the food that had been
prepared for her untasted at her side. The nurse looked at the
patient with a keen professional eye, and from the patient to the
tray where an ill-cooked chop stagnated in a pool of grease; and
where the unused teacup showed that even the feminine refreshment of
tea had failed to tempt her.
“She hasn’t eaten anything,” said the nurse, “and she looks weak and
wasted, as if she had been for a long time without food. You’d better
send for some beef essence and a little brandy. She ought to be kept
up somehow, if she is to be taken to Cheshunt to-night. It will be a
long drive.”
Lord Cheriton despatched the policeman’s wife to the nearest
chemist’s and the nearest wine merchant’s, while he went himself
to a livery stable and ordered a brougham and pair to be at Myrtle
Cottage at seven o’clock. The certificate had been signed, and there
was nothing to hinder the removal of the patient. He found Mercy
with her mother upon his return, but the mother had given no sign of
recognition, and the daughter sorrowfully acknowledged the necessity
of the case after Dr. Mainwaring had gently explained her mother’s
condition to her.
“I am not surprised,” she said, with sad submission, “I saw it coming
years ago. I have lain awake many a night when I was a girl listening
to her footsteps as she walked up and down her bedroom, and to the
heart-broken sigh that she gave every now and then, in the dead of
the night, when she thought there was no one to hear her.”
An hour later the woman who for twenty years had been known as Mrs.
Porter, and who was to carry that name to her dying day, was on her
way to The Grange, Cheshunt, with her daughter and the nurse in the
carriage with her. She had made no resistance, had gone where she was
asked to go, with an apathetic indifference, had given no trouble;
but although her daughter had been with her for an hour, doing all
that tender attention could do to awaken her memory, there had been
not a word or a look from the mother to betoken consciousness of her
existence.
Yet it was clear that the mental powers were only clouded, not
extinguished; for, as Lord Cheriton stood a little way outside the
porch watching her as she passed out to the carriage, she stopped
suddenly and looked at him.
“Will you and I ever meet again, James Dalbrook?” she asked solemnly.
He paled at the address in those clear, incisive tones, dreading what
she might say next.
“I think it may be better we should not meet,” he said gloomily. “I
have placed you in the care of those who will do the best that can be
done for you.”
“You are sending me to a madhouse, in the care of a mad doctor. That
is your substitute for Cheriton Chase; the home I used to dream about
ages ago, in this house; the home you and I were to have shared as
man and wife. It was my birth-place, James, and I would to God it had
been my grave before I ever looked upon your face!”
The nurse hustled her charge into the carriage, muttering something
about “delusions;” but Dr. Mainwaring was too shrewd a student
of humanity not to perceive some meaning in these consecutive
utterances. He had no doubt that Mrs. Porter was deranged, and a
person who would be the better for the moderate restraint of a
well-ordered asylum: but he had also no doubt that she had her lucid
intervals, and that in this farewell speech she had let in the light
upon her past relations with James Dalbrook, first Baron Cheriton.
That revelation accounted for some points in the law-lord’s conduct
which had hitherto been incomprehensible to his friend the doctor.