'Herbert! Good God! Is it possible?'
'Yes, my name's Herbert. I think I know your face too, but I don't
remember your name. My memory is very queer.'
'Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?'
'So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was
begging of an old college friend. Good-night.'
'My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but
we won't go there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a
little way? But how in heaven's name have you come to this pass,
Herbert?'
'It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear it
if you like.'
'Come on, then. Take my arm, you don't seem very strong.'
The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty,
evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a
man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had
emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses,
assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame
of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the
door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those
mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem
in every quarter and at every hour. Villiers prided himself as a
practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and
in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy
of more serious employment. Thus he stood beside the lamp-post surveying
the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity only
known to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the
formula: 'London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than
that, it is the city of Resurrections,' when these reflections were
suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable
appeal for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden
shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat
stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and
disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy
ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had
matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and
wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying
interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since
Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man
with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what
dreary chain of circumstance had dragged him down to such a doleful
pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the
amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely
speculations outside the restaurant.
They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by
stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed
man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing
this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he
repeated his question.
'How on earth has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would
succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your father
disinherit you? Surely not?'
'No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death;
he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and
I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a
few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society. Of
course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very
much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never
for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races brought me in
money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and
such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the tide turned.
Of course you have heard of my marriage?'
'No, I never heard anything about it.'
'Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful
and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I
cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I
should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her
acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told
them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian
mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her
was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a friend,
when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice
which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I
was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen.
Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The
night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel,
listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her
as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I
would not dare whisper in blackest night, though I stood in the midst of
a wilderness. You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London,
and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say
you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have
no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams
can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and
seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I
myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street, and ask whether it is
possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers,
I was a ruined man, in body and soul--in body and soul.'
'But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset.'
'I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house--everything.'
'And the money?'
'She took it all from me.'
'And then left you?'
'Yes; she disappeared one night. I don't know where she went, but I am
sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no
interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I
have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I
could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would
never know a happy day again. You would pass the rest of your life, as I
pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell.'
Villiers took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal.
Herbert could eat little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set
before him. He sat moody and silent by the fire, and seemed relieved
when Villiers sent him away with a small present of money.
'By the way, Herbert,' said Villiers, as they parted at the door, 'what
was your wife's name? You said Helen, I think? Helen what?'
'The name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but what
her real name was I can't say. I don't think she had a name. No, no, not
in that sense. Only human beings have names, Villiers; I can't say any
more. Good-bye; yes, I will not fail to call if I see any way in which
you can help me. Good-night.'
The man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his
fireside. There was something about Herbert which shocked him
inexpressibly; not his poor rags nor the marks which poverty had set
upon his face, but rather an indefinite terror which hung about him
like a mist. He had acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of
blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and
Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an actor in
scenes evil beyond the power of words. His story needed no confirmation:
he himself was the embodied proof of it. Villiers mused curiously over
the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had heard both the first
and the last of it. 'No,' he thought, 'certainly not the last, probably
only the beginning. A case like this is like a nest of Chinese boxes;
you open one after another and find a quainter workmanship in every box.
Most likely poor Herbert is merely one of the outside boxes; there are
stranger ones to follow.'
Villiers could not take his mind away from Herbert and his story, which
seemed to grow wilder as the night wore on. The fire began to burn low,
and the chilly air of the morning crept into the room; Villiers got up
with a glance over his shoulder, and shivering slightly, went to bed.
A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance,
named Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London life,
both in its tenebrous and luminous phases. Villiers, still full of his
encounter in Soho and its consequences, thought Austin might possibly be
able to shed some light on Herbert's history, and so after some casual
talk he suddenly put the question:
'Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert--Charles
Herbert?'
Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some
astonishment.
'Charles Herbert? Weren't you in town three years ago? No; then you have
not heard of the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of sensation at
the time.'
'What was the case?'
'Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark
dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court
Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you happen to
be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable
will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's
area, you will be left alone. In this instance as in many others the
alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp,
or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure,
or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in
the morning. This individual was, as he said, "going home," it did not
appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass through Paul Street
between four and five a. m. Something or other caught his eye at Number
20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant
physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced down the
area, and was a good deal astonished to see a man lying on the stones,
his limbs all huddled together, and his face turned up. Our gentleman
thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly, and so set off at a run in
search of the nearest policeman. The constable was at first inclined to
treat the matter lightly, suspecting common drunkenness; however, he
came, and after looking at the man's face, changed his tone, quickly
enough. The early bird, who had picked up this fine worm, was sent off
for a doctor, and the policeman rang and knocked at the door till a
slatternly servant girl came down looking more than half asleep. The
constable pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed
loudly enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the man;
had never seen him at the house, and so forth. Meanwhile the original
discoverer had come back with a medical man, and the next thing was to
get into the area. The gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down
the steps. The doctor hardly needed a moment's examination; he said the
poor fellow had been dead for several hours, and it was then the case
began to get interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one
of his pockets were papers identifying him as--well, as a man of good
family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy, so far as
could be known. I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing
to do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
about the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious
point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his
death. There were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so
slight that it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the
kitchen door, and not thrown over the railings from the street or even
dragged down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of
violence about him, certainly none that would account for his death; and
when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any
kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at Number
20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two
other very curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the
house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed
proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was not
exactly the place to look for county gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody
seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the
divers after her history found themselves in rather strange waters. Of
course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased, and in
default of any evidence against them they were discharged. But some very
odd things came out about them. Though it was between five and six in
the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had collected,
and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on. They were
pretty free with their comments, by all accounts, and from these it
appeared that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street. The
detectives tried to trace down these rumours to some solid foundation of
fact, but could not get hold of anything. People shook their heads and
raised their eyebrows and thought the Herberts rather "queer," "would
rather not be seen going into their house," and so on, but there was
nothing tangible. The authorities were morally certain that the man met
his death in some way or another in the house and was thrown out by the
kitchen door, but they couldn't prove it, and the absence of any
indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless. An odd case,
wasn't it? But curiously enough, there's something more that I haven't
told you. I happened to know one of the doctors who was consulted as to
the cause of death, and some time after the inquest I met him, and asked
him about it. "Do you really mean to tell me," I said, "that you were
baffled by the case, that you actually don't know what the man died of?"
"Pardon me," he replied, "I know perfectly well what caused death. Blank
died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so
hideously contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen
the faces of a whole host of dead." The doctor was usually a cool
customer enough, and a certain vehemence in his manner struck me, but I
couldn't get anything more out of him. I suppose the Treasury didn't see
their way to prosecuting the Herberts for frightening a man to death; at
any rate, nothing was done, and the case dropped out of men's minds. Do
you happen to know anything of Herbert?'
'Well,' replied Villiers, 'he was an old college friend of mine.'
'You don't say so? Have you ever seen his wife?'
'No, I haven't. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years.'
'It's queer, isn't it, parting with a man at the college gate or at
Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop up
his head in such an odd place. But I should like to have seen Mrs.
Herbert; people said extraordinary things about her.'
'What sort of things?'
'Well, I hardly know how to tell you. Every one who saw her at the
police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most
repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her,
and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the
woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of
enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he
would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in
another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer
house as Number 20? It's altogether a very odd case, isn't it?'
'It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case. I didn't think, when I
asked you about my old friend, I should strike on such strange metal.
Well, I must be off; good-day.'
Villiers went away, thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes;
here was quaint workmanship indeed.