THE MASTER OF EDEN VILLA.
There is a quiet little turning out of the Camden Road, where the whim
of an architect has planted some hybrid arrangements in brick and
woodwork which it would puzzle the unskilled in architectural
nomenclature properly to describe.
They might be chalets if they were less like _cottages ornés_; they
might be _cottages ornés_ if they were less like bungalows; and they
might be bungalows if there were not so much of the suburban villa
about them. It is possible that the architect in preparing the plans
saw, like a distinguished statesman, that there were three courses open
to him, and, being a man who had some slight difficulty in making up
his mind, determined to effect a compromise, and erect buildings which
should embrace chalet, bungalow, and _cottage orné_, and also betray a
suggestion of the suburban villa.
The houses are pretty enough in their way, are nicely set back in
picturesque little gardens, and just the kind of places which a house
agent can describe as ‘charming bijou residences.’
It is not often that one of them displays an agent’s board, for they
are quickly snapped up by persons who wish to live in a pretty house
and still have the benefit of a good shopping neighbourhood, and
whatever advantages may accrue from a ‘close proximity to rail, ’bus,
and tram.’
Eden Villa, however, had been to let for at least three weeks, when one
fine day the milkman noticed the board was down and white curtains were
up. The milkman, also observing straw in front of the gate and in the
roadway, concluded at once that a new tenant had been found and had
moved in.
Whereupon the milkman left his card, which set forth that he kept
separate cows for children and invalids, and that families were waited
on daily. The baker and the butcher and the grocer followed on the
heels of the milkman, and very soon the young lady with cherry-coloured
ribbons in her cap, who answered the successive peals at the bell, got
out of temper, and informed all whom it might concern that ‘there
wasn’t no family there, and that what they wanted they’d come and
fetch.’
What else could cherry-ribbons say? How was she to decide, alone and
unaided, between the rival claims of seven milkmen, six butchers, eight
grocers, and ten bakers, whose cards made a nice little pack upon the
kitchen dresser?
Six hours had not elapsed after those white curtains went up before the
rates called with a rate already made, and the water applied for two
quarters unpaid by last tenant, and the representative of the local
directory requested the full christian and surname of the new tenant.
‘Master’s name’s Mr. Edward Marston, and he’s a hactor,’ said
cherry-ribbons, flurried and excited with her continuous journeyings to
the door. ‘That’s all I know, and he ain’t at home now, so you can’t
see him.’
With which exhaustive information cherry-ribbons banged the door to,
and bounced angrily into her easy chair, to enjoy her cup of tea and
once more to take up the thread of that marvellous serial, ‘A Servant
To-day and a Duchess To-morrow,’ which was running with brilliant
success from week to week through the pages of the _Housemaids of Merry
England_, a journal of fiction and fashion.
It was, however, from this scant information that the nobility, gentry,
and tradespeople of Camden Road and its vicinity gradually became aware
that Eden Villa was now the residence of Mr. Edward Marston, an
actor—probably a provincial actor, for his name was unknown to Camden
Town in connexion with the London boards.
Not being a baker or a milkman intent upon securing a new customer, but
simply a veracious chronicler, intent upon making the story of certain
people’s lives as clear as possible to the reader, I am quite
independent of cherry-ribbons; so, without disturbing her, I will open
the front door with my latch-key and usher you straight into the
presence of the new tenant.
The white curtains have been up three days when we pay our visit in the
early morning.
This is the breakfast-room on the ground floor. You will observe that
the French windows open on to the lawn. The gentleman toying with his
toast and sipping his tea leisurely you met one rainy night in the
early part of this story.
He is a very different looking person now. His clothes are faultlessly
cut, his hair is neatly arranged, his moustache is nicely trimmed, and
his beard and whiskers have been shaved off. The strange, wild look is
gone, and you see only a good-looking, well-built gentleman of
five-and-thirty, who has nothing much to trouble him, unless a nice
house be a trouble (it is, sometimes, I’m afraid), and who should
certainly, if appearances go for anything, mix in good society and have
a balance at his banker’s.
That he is an actor we know from cherry-ribbons, and that accounts for
there being in a little room upstairs a complete actor’s
wardrobe—dresses, wigs, beards, and moustaches, and all the materials
for ‘making up.’
But before he blossomed into a member of that profession which to-day
takes high rank among the arts, and passes followers into the saloons
of the wealthy and the great, and gives them an income for which all
but the most favoured in other professions may sigh in vain, but which
once only entitled its disciple to take rank as a rogue and a vagabond,
what was he?
An author must necessarily play the part of chorus while the action of
his drama requires that he and not his characters should speak. It is
not a pretty tune to which the chorus of Edward Marston’s life can be
delivered.
Edward Marston’s father gave his son a good education, and he gave him
little else. He was a gentleman at the outset of his career, was
Marston _père_, and an adventurer at the close. He dissipated a fortune
in reckless extravagance, broke his wife’s heart by careless cruelty
and systematic neglect, and, having brought up his son in an atmosphere
of plenty, ran away from his creditors just as that son was twenty-one,
and left him to shift for himself and make what he could by his brains
and out of the acquaintances which he had made in his butterfly days.
Given a fair start, compelled from the outset to work for his living,
young Marston might have settled down into a respectable citizen. But
the whole surroundings of his life had unfitted him for the steady and
laborious pursuit of wealth. He had expensive habits and tastes, a love
of luxury which he was accustomed to gratify without thought of the
cost, and he had never been brought within the range of those high
moral influences which force the inclinations under some kind of
control.
His home life had been unhappy. With an ailing and broken-spirited
mother—a woman too weak-minded to do anything but what she did, pine
away and die—with a father who openly violated the first principles of
social morality, young Marston early learned to be what the world calls
‘a smart fellow.’
He had no sisters. Had even this influence been brought to bear upon
him he might have grown up differently. The men who have had sisters
are generally the best. The constant presence of womanhood in a house
acts as a charm. Boys who grow up among boys are always inferior to
their fellows in manners, in tact, and, as far as the world knows, in
their standard of morality. It is difficult to overrate the beneficial
influence which sisters exercise over their brothers in an English
household.
Edward Marston, deprived of everything which could appeal to his better
self, drifted into a swift current of evil. His associates were young
men of wealth and position, and he imitated their tastes at any cost.
When his father went away to America he found himself utterly stranded,
with nothing but his vices. He lived on them. He got mixed up with a
fast set of young men, and in pursuit of pleasure made doubtful
friendships. It was easy to foretell the end.
He had no money; he had therefore to get it from those who had. Such
men are met in the largest quantities on racecourses in billiard-rooms,
and gambling-saloons. These places were the haunts of young Marston,
and fate flung him into close companionship with well-dressed rogues
and well-dressed fools.
Among his ‘set’ were Oliver Birnie, a good-natured devil-may-care
medical student, clever enough, but fond of more dissipation than he
could get out of the two hundred a year his father, a small country
practitioner, allowed him, and Gurth Egerton, a young man much after
his own heart, whose only living relative was a wealthy cousin, a man
of five-and-thirty.
This latter was Ralph Egerton, a man who might have been anything he
chose, but who, inheriting a large fortune, plunged into dissipation
and drank to the verge of madness. In his sober moments he was a good
fellow; drunk he was a quarrelsome rowdy, and an easy prey to the young
sharks who swarmed about him. Gurth and he were pretty constant
companions, but they quarrelled fearfully. Gurth resented Ralph’s
wealth, yet he lived on him. Gurth brought him to the dens, and Marston
helped to pluck him.
They let Ralph fancy himself a little king of Bohemia; they ate his
dinners and drank his wine, and when he was drunk enough they took him
to gambling hells and cheated him.
A favourite haunt with them all was Josh Heckett’s. Heckett did many
queer things for a living. Among others he kept a betting office in
Soho, and had a little room where a select few of his customers played
roulette or any game they chose.
It was in this room that the event happened with which the reader is
already well acquainted. It was just after that that young Marston
disappeared from the scene and went to America—to his father, he
said—but whatever was his real motive, it was known only to himself.
Leading the life he did, he had yet found time to fall in love with a
beautiful girl who had returned his affection.
The Adrians had been neighbours in his father’s best days, and Edward
and Ruth had been boy and girl sweethearts. No harm was known of the
Marstons then. They lived in a good house, kept servants, and
ostensibly were gentle people. Edward visited at the house, Mr. and
Mrs. Adrian liked him, and it was tacitly understood that the young
people were in love.
The one pure passion of Edward Marston’s life was his love for Ruth
Adrian. If anything could have sobered and steadied him it would have
been her influence. Unhappily, at the very time that influence was most
needed, an event happened which severed their lives for ever.
The elder Marston ran away from his creditors, some very ‘peculiar
financial transactions came to light, and when Mr. Adrian, awakened to
the danger of the situation, made inquiries, he found that the son was
leading an evil life, and was the constant companion of gentlemanly
blacklegs.
The next time Edward called at the Adrians’ he was forbidden the house,
Ruth wrote him a noble, womanly letter, returned his presents, and
declared that it broke her heart to give him up, but that her duty to
herself and to those dearest to her demanded it. She should never love
anyone else and never forget him. She would pray God that he might yet
lead a better life, and some day call a pure and honest woman wife. The
girl’s tears fell fast and thick as she wrote. She thought she was
doing her duty. Reared in a school of morality deeply tinged with
religious fervour, Ruth saw no other way out of the difficulty. It
seemed to her almost a sin to have loved a bad man. The love she could
not crush, but the man she would look upon no more.
This breaking down of the last barrier between himself and utter
recklessness happened immediately after Ralph Egerton’s murder—for
murder all concerned firmly believed it to be. Ruth Adrian was the last
link that bound him to respectability. That link snapped and he was
free—free to float out into the ocean of wickedness, and sink or swim
as luck determined.
He went to America and led a life of adventure. He utilized his talents
in a big field, but an overrun one. The ‘smart man’ is a type of
American society, and a redundant type. Marston may have prospered at
one period, but he must have come to an evil time at last, for certain
it is that he returned to England almost penniless, and on the night he
met Birnie outside the Blue Pigeons he was actually without a copper.
That meeting was the turning point in his career. It placed a little
capital at his disposal, and capital is the one thing needed to make a
fair start in anything in this country.
Marston had learned much in America, and he saw a way to utilize his
experience.
High-art crime has been developed rapidly in these latter days. Edward
Marston was one of its pioneers. He brought to the ‘business’ in which
he embarked education, skill, ingenuity, and a knowledge of the world.
As he sits this morning in his newly furnished villa in the Camden Road
his plans are formed, his capital is invested, he is at the head of an
obedient and well-organized staff, and he is about to embark on the
perilous and daring enterprise. His capital is the £500 Birnie had
repaid him. He is under an obligation to no one for that. To his staff
we shall in due time be introduced, and through the varying stages of
his brilliant enterprise we shall accompany him.
He has finished his breakfast. He rings the bell, and cherry-ribbons
enters and clears away. He has so much to see to and so much to think
of this morning, that he will not want to be interrupted, and it is
perfectly certain that he will have a strong objection to being
overlooked.
Under these circumstances, having satisfied our curiosity as to his
antecedents and present position, it will perhaps be as well if we take
our departure and creep out of Eden Villa as quietly as we entered it.