(The Story as told by Mrs. Carruth.)
To have fallen out of an express train going at full speed! I have had some strange experiences, for a mere woman. But this, I think, beats all.
And to owe it to Thomas Tennant! I will be even with him yet.
I went down to Brighton to spend the Sunday with Lettice Enderby--she was acting at the theatre there. I found her not feeling very well. We spent the day alone together. After dinner I had to make a rush for the train. Who should I find myself shut in with as soon as the train had started, but Tommy Tennant.
It was years and years since we had seen each other. And all the world had happened since we had. But, so far as personal appearance was concerned, he had not changed a bit. He was still the same jack-pudding sort of little man, with round eyes and rosy cheeks. I knew him at sight. What was queerer, he knew me. I take that as a compliment. I flatter myself that I have not changed, except for the better, since those days of long ago. Tommy's prompt recognition was the best testimony to the truth of this fact I could possibly have had.
Although more than seas divided us, and never was a past more dead than his and mine, at the sight of Tommy all my old grudge against him came back again. Perhaps the glass or two of wine I had had with Lettice might have had something to do with it, but directly I saw him I flew into a rage. Tommy Tennant always has been the ideal man I hate. Give me them good or give me them bad, but do give me them one or the other. The irresolute, backboneless, jelly-like sort of man is beyond endurance.
If Thomas Tennant ever had a backbone he lost it in his cradle!
He always used to be afraid of me. In that respect, as in the others, I found he had not changed. He was frightened half out of his life directly he saw who it was. When I began talking to him he started shivering--literally shivering--in a way which made me wild. I do like a man who can hold his own. Talk about conscience making cowards of us all; I like the man of whom nothing can make a coward. He got into such a state of mortal terror that he actually tried to steal out of the carriage and escape from me while the train was going, for all I know, perhaps fifty miles an hour.
That was how the trouble all began. It would have spoiled the sport to have let him go, so I tried to stop him. He had opened the carriage door, and in endeavouring to prevent his going out, I went out instead.
That is the simple truth.
There never was a more astonished woman. I doubt if there ever was one with so much reason for astonishment. How it happened, or exactly what happened, I do not know. There was not time enough to clearly understand. I discovered that I was standing upon nothing, and then that I was flying backwards through the air. After that I suppose I lost my seven senses.
I could not, however, have lost them for long. Perhaps for not more than a minute or so. When I came to I opened my eyes, and looking up saw that the moon was shining in the sky overhead, and that it was almost as light as day. I wondered where I was, and whether the end of the world had come. I found that I was lying among a group of bushes on what seemed a sloping bank, and that something very like a miracle had taken place. Falling out of the train while it was rushing along the top of an embankment, I must have gone, backwards, into a bush, which while it had let me through, had sufficed to break my fall. I must have rolled down the bank, until I was stopped by the clump of bushes amidst which I found myself.
The miracle was that I was unhurt. I was a trifle shaken and a trifle dazed. But not a bone was broken, and I felt that, so far as material damage was concerned, I could get up when I chose and walk off, practically as if nothing had occurred.
But I was a trifle dazed, and it was some moments before my senses quite returned to me. What hastened their return was the fact of my hearing footsteps. I listened. Somebody was walking, and not very far off either. The person, whoever it was, seemed to be quite close at hand. I did not know whereabouts I might be lying. I was only aware that I was somewhere between Brighton and London. I had no notion how far I might be from a station or a town. It struck me that it would be just as well that I should discover who the pedestrian might chance to be.
As I was about to rise, with the intention of prospecting, something heavy falling among the bushes almost on top of me startled me half out of my wits. I sprang to my feet. At the bottom of the bank on the other side of a fence which formed a boundary between the railway and the country beyond, a man stood, staring at me in the moonlight. He was tall, and he wore a long black overcoat and a billycock hat; even then, and in that light, I could see he was a gentleman. But it was the look which was on his face which took me aback. I never saw such a look on a man's face before. He stared at me as if he was staring at a ghost. And just as I was about to accost him, and to request his assistance, at least to the extent of informing me as to my whereabouts, leaping right round, he began to tear across the moonlit field as if Satan was at his heels.
I was going to call and beg him not to leave me, a stranger in the land, alone in the lurch like that, when I was reminded of the something which had fallen among the bushes, and which had first made me conscious of his presence, by kicking against something which felt soft and yielding, and which was lying on the ground.
I stooped down to see what it was.
"Sakes alive! It's a woman!"
It was; a young woman--and she was dead. No wonder he had stared at me as if he had been staring at a ghost. No wonder, as he saw me looking at him from among the bushes, that he had thought that the victim of his handiwork had risen from the dead to look again upon his face. No wonder he had torn for his life across the grass, feeling that she was at his heels.
I seemed to be in for a pretty thing. I have looked upon dead folk many a time; yes, and upon not a few who have come to their death by "accident." I have lived in parts of the world in which life is not held so sacred as it is in England; where not such a fuss is made every time the doctor is forestalled--where the doctor is not the only individual who is licensed to kill; where men shoot now and then at sight, and, when they are pushed to it, women too. I know a girl--and liked her--who shot a man who had insulted her in New Orleans, and left him on the sidewalk. Nobody said a word. She is married now to a rich man, and to a good man, as good men go, and she has a family, and she is highly esteemed. In England that seems odd, but I suppose the fact is that when one is in Rome one does as the Romans do, and that is all about it.
And at that moment I happened to be in England, and I made up my mind there and then that, if I could help it, I would have no finger in the pie. I had no desire to go into the witness-box--I would almost as soon have gone into the dock. Cross-examining counsel have a knack of making mincemeat of a witness. Things come out--the things which one would much rather did not come out. I had not returned to England, a widow, with my big pile, with the intention of coming such a cropper at the outset. Rather than be mixed up in such a mess, I would almost sooner take my passage in the first steamer back to the States, and count the ties out West again.
Please the fates, I had done with scandals--fresh ones, anyhow--for the rest of my days. The woman was dead. She was beyond my help. Let whoever found her hang the man who laid her there. The house in which I lived was too transparent for me to indulge in the luxury of throwing stones.
I gathered myself together. The most miraculous part of the business was that my clothing seemed to have escaped uninjured; falling backwards had been my salvation. I peeped at my face in my handglass. I seemed to be all right--right enough, at any rate, to pass muster at night and in a crowd. I went up the bank to the line. From that altitude I had a good view of the surrounding country. Straight along the line to the left, not so very far away, lights were glimmering. I made up my mind to chance it, to keep along the line and to make for them.
They proved to be the lights of a station. The station was Three Bridges Junction. I managed to enter it to the best of my knowledge and belief, entirely unobserved. I thanked my stars when I felt the platform beneath my feet.
From the mirror in the waiting-room I learned that my handglass had not deceived me. I could pass muster. A woman in the room addressed me--she and I had it to ourselves.
"Excuse me, miss, but do you know your back's all covered with weeds?"
As she brushed them off I thanked her, murmuring something about my having been sitting on the grass.
Going out on to the platform I all but came into collision with the man who had stood staring at me from the other side of the railing. The sight of him fairly took my breath away. He was going from me or he could scarcely have failed to notice the singularity of my demeanour. It was he--there could be no mistake about that. But, lest I might be in error, I resolved to have another glimpse at him. Before I could put my resolution into force he had vanished, into what I discovered to be, as I strolled slowly past it, a refreshment-room.
I should not wonder if he did stand in need of refreshment!
There did not appear to be a seat in the place. English people talk about the discomfort of the American depôts but my experience is that, from the discomfort point of view, the average English station runs the American depôt hard. I sat on one of those square trollies which the porters use for baggage. There I watched and waited for my gentleman to emerge, refreshed. The trolley was close to the refreshment-room. I could see him at the bar. He was not content with one drink. He disposed of two.
Probably he needed them!
Presently he came out. He had had his back towards me while he had been drinking. As he came out of the buffet, turning, he walked in the direction of the trolley on which I was sitting. He moved right past, so close to me that by putting out my foot, I could have tripped him up.
It was he. My first impression had not been wrong. That he had got cured of his fright was plain--certainly he showed no signs of it. He seemed quite at his ease. His hands were in the pockets of his overcoat, an umbrella was under his arm, a cigarette was between his teeth. There might not have been such a thing as a ghost--or the shadow of the shade of a ghost--in all the world.
Back he came. He sailed up to a porter. I heard him asking him when there was a train to town. As the man, having given the information, was making off, I cut in. I put to my gentleman the question which he had put to the porter.
"Can you tell me when the next train starts for London?"
He told me what I asked, adding a word or two on his own account, as I had expected and desired. I responded. He seemed disposed for sociability. Why should I object? We began to talk. The end of it was that we travelled in the same compartment up to town.
It was so funny!
He was that most remarkable product--an English gentleman. Given the real article--and there is no mistaking it when once encountered--there is nothing in the world which can be compared to it. I speak who know. He was tall. He was perfectly dressed. He was handsome--I never saw a more handsome man. And he had that air of infinite, yet unconscious, condescension which the English gentleman, alone of all the creatures of the world, is born with, and which, willy-nilly, he carries with him from the cradle to the grave.
They tell you in the different countries of the world that the Englishman is awkward, shy, ungraceful, seldom at his ease. May be; but not the English gentleman. He is the only man I have known who is always at his ease in every possible situation. But he is not to be found on every bush. Even in his own country he is the rarest of rare birds. Being born a peer, even though he can trace his tree to Noah, does not make a man a gentleman--you bet that it does not. I believe that an English gentleman is a caprice, an accident. He is not to be accounted for by natural laws. And though, for all I know, he may be trusted by his fellows, he is not to be trusted by a woman. He has one code of honour for his own sex and another for ours.
That is so, though it may not be according to the copybooks.
My friend the gentleman was a real smart man. As he lolled back in his seat, enjoying his tobacco, it did you good to see him smile. His voice was typical of his kind, it fell like music on your ears. As you looked at him and listened, you could have sworn that he had not a care upon his mind. He was at peace with himself, and all the world. And it was all so natural; he was to the manner born.
I found him quite delightful. I could see what he was doing--he was reckoning me up. And he was puzzled where to place me. I took him into my real confidence, for reasons of my own, and that puzzled him still more. I told him nothing but the truth. How I had gone out to America, and met poor dear Daniel, and married him. And how he had died and left me a widow, and his pile to comfort me. And how I had come back to England childless and forlorn and all alone. I laid stress upon my loneliness. I think that touched him. When a woman tells a man that she is lonely he takes it that she means that there is not a man anywhere in sight, and that the coast is clear for him, and that does touch him. His manner became quite sympathetic. He was as nice as could be--allusive, as a real smart man can be, with a delicate, intangible directness almost equal to a woman's.
We were almost like old friends by the time that we reached town. He put me into a hansom at Victoria station. I asked him to come and see me, to have consideration for my loneliness. He promised that he would. All the way home, as the cab bore me through the streets, I kept thinking of Mr. Reginald Townsend--that was the name which he had given me--and of the woman he had left, lying by the line, amidst that clump of bushes.
I believe I have written that I like a man to be thorough. It seemed probable that Mr. Townsend was that.
Next day Jack Haines came to see me. Mr. Haines promised to be a nuisance.
Jack Haines and Daniel J. Carruth had been partners. I might have married either of them, for the matter of that. I might have married any one in Strikehigh City. Of two evils I chose what seemed to me to be the lesser, which was Daniel. For one thing, he was the boss partner and had the larger share, and for another, he was the older man. I could have twisted either of them round my finger, but it occurred to me that I might manage best with Daniel. So I became Mrs. Daniel J. Carruth, and poor dear Daniel lived just long enough to capitalize his share--he made a better thing of it than we had either of us expected--and then he died. Hardly was he buried than the chief mourner at his funeral, Mr. Haines, wanted me to marry him. He hinted that it would be just as well to keep the partnership alive, which struck me as absurd. Anyhow, I did not seem to see it. I came straight away to England, instead of marrying him, with the intention of getting as much fun out of Daniel's dollars as I possibly could.
What I had not bargained for was his coming after me.
The folks in Strikehigh City had all lived queer lives, but I rather guess that, in some ways, Jack Haines had lived one of the queerest. He had told me about it over and over again, and, whatever I might think of him, I knew that he had told me the truth.
He had been married. He and his wife had lived like cat and dog. She had died. She had left a daughter. He had brought the daughter up--trying to rule her with a heavy hand. There came a time when she objected. There was a disturbance--she left him. That was just before he came to Strikehigh City--in fact, her going sent him there, and he had never seen her since. I could see plainly that he had been more in the wrong than she had. In his way, he loved her. His conscience pricked him all the time. When Daniel died, it began to prick him worse than ever. Finding that I would not have him, he set himself to look for her.
This I learned from his own lips when I met him again in London.
It seemed that, when she had left him the girl had gone on to the stage--attaching herself to a variety show. From that she had passed to a burlesque troupe. The burlesque troupe had gone to England--she went with it. The burlesque troupe returned--she had stayed behind. No doubt for reasons of her own. Jack Haines wanted very much to know what those reasons were, because, no sooner had the troupe gone, and left her, than she vanished. No one seemed to have the faintest notion what had become of her. She had simply disappeared--gone clean out of sight.
The old man had come over to see if he could not succeed where others had failed; if he could not light on the clue which others had missed.
The desire to find the girl had become with him a regular mania. It was like a bee in his bonnet. It occupied his thoughts, to the exclusion of all else, both by night and day. As I have said, the man was becoming a nuisance. I did not want to quarrel with him, but I saw that, without a quarrel, I never should be rid of him. He insisted on making me his confidant. And, although I took care never to give him a chance to say a word outright, I knew that, as soon as he had found the girl, he would renew that hint about the desirability of keeping the partnership alive.
On the day after that little trip to Brighton, he turned up in my drawing-room. I had run over to Kensington High Street for something. When I came back, there he was--and I was not by any means best pleased to see him there.
I should have disliked him for one thing if I had disliked him for nothing else--he was so deadly serious. I do not think I ever saw him smile. Indeed, I doubt if he had a smile left in him. He had no sense of humour, and, to him, a joke was as meaningless as double Dutch. He was bald at the top of his head, his face was as long as one's arm, his eyes generally had an expressionless, fishlike sort of stare, and, since he had assumed the garb of respectability, he was always attired in funeral black. He seemed to be under the impression that that was the only hue in which respectability could appear. As for his temper, it varied from doubtful to bad, and from bad to worse, and when he was in a rage, which he quickly was, he was by no means an agreeable person to have to deal with. He and Daniel were always falling out, and, until I came upon the scene, he used to ride over poor dear Daniel roughshod. But, when I did I let him understand that whoever fell out with Daniel fell out with me.
For my part, I did not wonder so much at his daughter's having run away as at her having lived with him as long as she did.
His hat was on one chair, his umbrella on another, he himself sat, with his hands clasped in front of him, on a little centre table, in an attitude which suggested that he was about to offer prayer. He did not rise as I entered--respectability has not yet worked such havoc with him as that. He stared at me as I went in, solemnly speechless, as if he wondered how I could venture to interrupt the meeting.
"Well, Mr. Haines, any news?"
I did not care if there was any news, but I did object to his sitting and staring at me like that.
"She is dead."
"Dead!--You don't mean it!--How do you know?"
"It was told me last night in a dream."
Among the rest of his little peculiarities, he was one of the most superstitious creatures breathing. In religion, I believe, he called himself a spiritualist. Anyhow, he was always seeing things, and hearing things, and having things revealed to him. Talking to him in some of his moods reminded one of that scene in Richard II. where the poor dear king wants to sit upon a gravestone and talk of epitaphs.
"Is that the only reason why you know that she is dead--because it was told you in a dream?"
"Do not mock at me. The voice which speaks to me in visions does not lie. I saw a coffin lying in an open grave, and 'Louise O'Donnel' was on the coffin-lid."
"You did not happen to see in which particular graveyard that grave might be located."
"I did not. But I know that she is dead. My daughter, oh, my daughter!"
I had to turn aside to smile. I grant that it was not a subject for laughter--but he was so funny!
"And as I looked the coffin-lid was lifted. And, on her breast, there was an open wound."
He rose slowly, painfully, inch by inch. He pointed with his right hand towards the floor.
"Woman, my daughter has been slain."
"Really, Mr. Haines, you are always seeing the most dreadful things in dreams. If I were you I should take less supper."
"It's not the supper. It's the spirit."
"Well, in that case, I should take less of that."
He frowned.
"You know very well what I mean. I am not speaking of the spirit of alcohol, but of the spirit of the soul. Now one task is ended. Another is begun. I will be the avenger of blood. Mine will it be to execute judgment on him who has destroyed my daughter's body, having first of all destroyed her soul."
"Jack Haines, what nonsense you do talk."
"What do you mean, woman?"
"My good man, do you think that you awe me by your persistence in calling me woman? I am a woman; but let me tell you in confidence that you strike me as only being part of a man!"
"You jeer at me. You are always jeering. You know not what you say."
"That is good--from you. Your style of conversation may have been suited to Strikehigh City, where they all were lunatics. But in London it is out of place."
"London!--bah!"
He threw out his arms, as if to put the idea of London clean behind him.
"Precisely. Then if it's London!--bah! Why don't you return to Strikehigh City?"
"I will finish the work which I came to do. Then I will return."
I had sat down on an easy-chair. I had crossed my legs, and was swinging my foot in the air. Old Haines stood glowering down at me, clenching his fists to hold his temper in. I looked him up and down. After all he was, every inch of him, a narrow-minded, cross-grained, hidebound New Englander.
"You are more likely to see the inside of a prison if you don't take care. You know, they manage things differently upon this side. Jack Haines, let me speak to you a word in season--a candid word. It may do you good. You killed your wife; I do not mean legally, but you killed her all the same. A prolonged course of you would be sufficient to kill any wife."
"Woman!"
"You drove your daughter from you. So unwilling was she to have it known that she was connected with you, that she took her mother's name. She called herself Louise O'Donnel. Under that name she came to England. Conscious that, even underneath her mother's name, you might trace her out in England, she has changed her name again. Under that new name she is deliberately hiding herself away from you."
"It is false."
"It may be. It is but a surmise. But, as such, it is at least as much likely to be correct as yours."
"She is dead."
"You have not one jot or tittle of proof that she is anything of the kind."
"I will have proof." He brought down his fist upon my pretty, fragile table with a crash. "I will have proof."
"Don't destroy the furniture."
"Furniture!" He glared at the inoffensive table as if he would have liked to have chopped it into firewood. "You should not anger me. I say that I will have proof. And I will have proof of who it is has murdered her. And I will find him, though he hides himself in the uttermost corners of the earth. And when I have found him I will have a quittance."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Do you not know what I mean? Have you known me so short a time that you should need to ask?"
"Do you mean that, if there is anything in these wild dreams of yours, you will kill the man who has killed your girl?"
He raised his hands above his head in a sort of paroxysm.
"Like a dog."
"Then let me tell you that you are treading the road which leads to the gallows. They manage things in their own way upon this side. Killing's murder here. And the more excuse you think you have the tighter you're likely to fit the rope about your neck."
"The hemp has not been sown which shall hang me on an English gallows. Do you think I am afraid?"
He gave me the creeps. Although it surpassed my powers to adequately explain the thing, I knew that he had a trick of seeing things which had taken place before they became known to other people. I had had unpleasant experience of it more than once. One might begin by laughing at what he called his dreams and his visions, but, in the end, the laugh was apt to be upon the other side.
It was quite possible that his girl was dead. Young, pretty, simple, innocent, alone in a foreign land--what more possible? It was even possible that she had been done to death. Some one might think that no one would miss her. In that case, that some one might as well at once place himself in the hangman's hands as wait to interview Jack Haines.
I was glad to be rid of him. He was not a cheerful companion at the best of times. But since he had got this bee in his bonnet he was more than I could stand.
In the afternoon I went to see Kate Levett. Kate and I had been together in Pfeinmann's "King of the Castle Operatic Combination." We were friends all through. I fancy it was a case of "a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind"--after a fashion we were girls of a feather. When the Combination came to eternal grief at Strikehigh City, we went different ways. I stayed where I was, Kate went East. It was at Boston she married Ferdinand Levett. He was touring at that time through the States as acting manager for a famous English comedy company. It was a case of marriage at first sight as it were. It proved to be the best thing Kate had ever done in her life. Levett turned out a regular trump, and they hit it off together to a T. Now they were settled in England, and, although Kate had kept off the boards, they were doing uncommonly well in a modest sort of a way.
When I turned up at their flat on the Thames Embankment, at the back of the Strand, Kate wanted me to stay and dine. So I stayed. After dinner we went to a theatre. Levett was at business--managing the Colosseum, so we went there. To finish up, we went back to supper at the flat.
I had gone originally to Kate with the idea of gleaning a little information. Before I left I had got all that I wanted, and, perhaps, a little more. What I wished to find out was whether Kate knew anything about a Mr. Reginald Townsend. She and her husband knew something about all sorts and conditions of men, and it struck me that my friend, the gentleman, was just the sort of man of whom one or the other of them might have heard.
I did not want to seem too anxious. So I just slipped my question in casually, as if I was indifferent whether I received an answer to it or not. I kept it till after supper. Kate was at the piano strumming through all the latest things in comic songs. I was lolling in a rocker, joining in the chorus whenever there was a chorus. Ferdinand was taking his ease upon a couch. We were all as snug as we could be. Kate had been saying she knew somebody or other, I don't know who, when I struck in.
"Between you, you two seem to know pretty nearly every one."
"Those whom we don't know are not worth knowing."
"Quite right, my dear!"--this from Ferdinand, on the couch.
"Have you ever heard of a Mr. Townsend?"
"What!--Reggie Townsend?"
She spun round on the piano-stool like a catherine-wheel.
"Reginald Townsend--that's it."
She and her husband looked at each other--in that meaning sort of way.
"Fred, have we ever heard of Reginald Townsend?"
Ferdinand laughed. She held out her hands in front of her.
"Why, my dear, there have been times and seasons when we've heard of little else but Reginald Townsend."
"Perhaps your man is not my man. My man's tall."
"So's our man!"
"And dark."
"You couldn't paint our man blacker than he is."
"And very--very swagger, don't you know."
"Our man's the swaggerest man in town. It's impossible that there could be two Reginald Townsends. What do you know of him?"
"Oh, I only met him once. But he rather struck me."
"Take care that he doesn't strike you too much. He's not only the swaggerest, he's also the wickedest man in town. I could tell you tales of him which would shock your innocent ears. He's a terror, isn't he, Fred?"
"He has rather liberal ideas on the subject of the whole duty of man."
"I should rather think he has."
And Kate went off at score. I could see from what she said that my friend the gentleman was all my fancy painted him. When she gave me an opening, I slipped another word in edgeways.
"Is he received in respectable society?"
"That depends, my dearest child, upon what you call respectable society. He's the boon companion of dukes, marquises, and earls, and that kind of thing. He visits the best houses and the best people. But I was raised at Salem, Mass., and our ideas of respectable society were perhaps our own. I haven't found that they obtain to any considerable extent round here."
It was scandalously late when I left for home.
The same thing occupied my thoughts in the cab as on the night before--my friend the gentleman. Whatever could have made him do the thing which he had done? That is, if Kate's Reginald Townsend was mine--of which, by the way, I had no doubt. A man may be all that's bad; he may be worse than a murderer, but he takes particularly good care not, if he can help it, to be the thing itself. What could it be which, in the judgment of a man in his position, had compelled him to place himself within the shadow of the gallows?
The problem occupied my mind. The man had been placed by nature in such a fortunate position. It appeared that he had so much to lose--and he had lost it all! What for? I wondered. What was it which had constrained him to choose between the devil and the deep sea--and then to choose the devil?
As I thought of it, and how handsome he was, and how well bred, and how there was everything to please a woman's taste, and to gratify her eye, a wild notion germinated in my brain--which was watered by circumstances, and grew.
I dismissed the cab at the end of my road. The night, though dark, was fine. The horse was tired. I had no objection to saving the creature's legs by walking the rest of the way. I did not suppose that, at that hour of the night, or, rather, of the morning, there would be any one about.
In supposing that, however, I was wrong.
The street was a pretty long one. When I got about half way along it I perceived that a cab was stopping at a house in front of me. As I reached the cab a man got out of it in a fashion which, to say the least of it, was rather sudden. He plunged on to the pavement, rather than stepped on to it. As his feet touched solid ground, he turned towards me.
It was Tommy Tennant!
For a moment I was frightened half out of my wits. It was such an hour, he was without a hat, he looked wild and dishevelled, his appearance at such a place--within a stone's throw of my own house--at such a moment was so wholly unexpected, that it fairly took my breath away.
But if his appearance startled me, my appearance seemed to have an even more startling effect upon him. He gave one glance at me and tumbled in a heap on to the pavement.
The driver of the hansom leaned down towards me from his perch.
"It's all right, miss; he's only been enjoying of hisself. The cold stones will cool 'is head."
I said nothing; I hurried on.
I have not lived in the world so long as I have done, and seen so much of it, without realising how small a world, after all, it really is, and how full it is of coincidence; but I do think that this beats all the coincidences of which I ever heard.
To think that I should have pitched on the one street in London which Mr. Thomas Tennant has chosen for a residence! It seems that I have. I lay awake for an hour trying to account for his sudden appearance from that cab. At last I hit on something. I sat up in bed with quite a jump.
"Can it be possible that he lives in this street?"
Rest was out of the question till I had made sure. I got out of bed--it was nearer five than four--and I tiptoed my way downstairs. I routed out a directory, and I hunted up the street. Sure enough he did. There was his name, as large as life--"Thomas Tennant." He lived at No. 29. My house was blank--it had been empty at the time the directory had gone to press--but I had taken No. 39.
"Well, this beats everything! To think that I have spent all this money, and come all this way, to plant myself five doors from Mr. Tennant!"
He might be unwilling to have me for a neighbour, but I could assure him that I was equally unwilling to have him. I did not wish the first entry on the fresh leaf which I had turned to be a reminiscence, and especially a reminiscence of that particular friend.
I thought that was strange enough, but stranger things were yet to follow. What a queer little world this is!
Recognising that it was no use addling my brains by puzzling out conundrums at that time of the morning, so soon as, by reading it over and over again in the directory, I had made quite sure that my eyes had not misled me, and that Tommy did reside five doors away, I toddled up to bed again. "There is nothing like leather," says the proverb. I say there is nothing like sleep. Give me plenty of sleep and I am good for anything. As I have always been blessed with a clear conscience--if there is a vacuum where the conscience ought to be it must be clear--and, what is equally to be desired, a good digestion, I have ever found sleep come at my bidding. Once I have my toes well down between the sheets, my head on the pillow, and the blankets well up to my ears, I snooze. I know I did just then. And I never dreamed; none of Jack Haines's lively visions came my way.
I looked at my watch when I awoke. It was past eleven. I just turned over. I had a stretch. I believe that, when you wake in the morning, it does you good to have a stretch; it seems to help you to realise that there is a piece of you between your head and your heels. "What should I do?"
"I'll have some tea."
I had some tea. The girl brought me the letters and the papers. There was nothing in the letters, but in the papers there were ructions!
At first I could not make out what it was all about. Directly I opened theTelegraphthese were the words, in big, black letters, staring me in the face: "Murder on the Brighton Line." That was my friend, the gentleman! But at first, as I have said, the more I looked at it the more I couldn't make it out.
A platelayer--whatever that might be in connection with a railway line--going to his work in the morning had seen the body lying among the bushes--in that clump of bushes, I took it, where it had almost fallen on top of me. That was all right. Where I found the puzzle was in what directly followed. The girl had, of course, been murdered in the field, probably within a foot or two of where I had seen Townsend standing. The papers, or the people who inspired the papers, seemed to think that the murder had taken place in a train, and that then the body had been thrown on to the line. What could have made them think such a thing as that?
As I read on the whole thing flashed upon me; it was another coincidence!
It seemed that when the 8.40 train from Brighton had arrived at Victoria--the 8.40? Why, that was the train in which I had travelled with Tommy! My stars and bars!--it was discovered that the window in one of the carriages was shivered to atoms, that the carriage was marked with blood, and that it bore signs of having been the scene of a recent struggle.
Jerusalem! what was coming next? I had to put down the paper and take another drink of tea.
Nothing came next except what they called a "presumption," and if ever there was a piece of real presumption it was that same.
The presumption, according to the papers, was that the railway carriage had been the scene of a hideous tragedy--of a frightful murder, of one of those recurrent crimes, which force us, from time to time, to recognise the dangers which, in England, at any rate, are associated with railway travelling. The identity of one of thedramatis personæ--as poor, dear Daniel used to say, "I'm a-quoting"--was unfortunately, but too evident. There was the woman who had been found lying among the laurels--I wonder if they were laurels?--with her face turned towards the skies. As a matter of fact, she had lain face downwards. It was owing to that I had not seen her face. She was a silent but an eloquent witness--that was touching. The public demanded the prompt production of at least another of thedramatis personæ--"still a-quoting"--of the man--it would not, perhaps, display too much rashness to hazard the prediction that it would prove to be a man--who had hurled her there.
If that did not point to Tommy, I should like to know to whom it pointed.
I began to wonder. What had Tommy done when I had made my exit? Had he done nothing but twiddle his thumbs and stare? It would be characteristic of him if he had. He never did do the right thing at the right time if there was a wrong thing which could be done. The window might have been smashed by the banging of the door. I dare say that there had been signs of a struggle. I could not make out about the blood, but, perhaps, in the midst of his muddle, Tommy's nose had started bleeding. That was just the sort of thing his nose would do. It was quite conceivable, to one who knew him, that Tommy had toddled home without saying a word to any one about the lady who had tumbled out upon the line. If so----
If so, and I kept in the background, it was equally conceivable that, as a glorious climax to the muddle, because of that woman who had been found upon the line, Tommy might find himself in a very awkward fix.
I had to take another drink of tea.
I found what might turn out to be the top brick of the building while I was in the very act of drinking. Tommy himself might think that I was dead. I might have died. From a mere consideration of the odds point of view, I ought to have died. The miracle was that I wasn't dead. Tommy knew nothing about the woman who had been thrown on the top of me. He might think--he was capable of thinking anything, but in the present instance it was natural that he should think--that the body which had been found was mine.
If he did think so?
But he had seen me the night before. The fact rather supported my theories than otherwise. He had glared at me as if I had been a ghost. The sight of me had struck him senseless. According to the cabman, he was drunk. Knowing what he knew, or what he thought he knew, he might very well suppose that I was a creature born of his delirium.
It appeared to me that my cue, for the present, at any rate, was to keep sitting on the fence. I might still be even with Tommy, and that without having to move a finger of either hand. As for my friend, the gentleman--we should see.
Oddly enough, I came across Mr. Reginald Townsend that very afternoon. I had been shopping--shopping was about all there was for me to do; after Strikehigh City I found life pretty dull West Kensington way, but then I had expected it to be dull. As I was strolling homewards, who should I see but Mr. Reginald Townsend. He was a sight for sore eyes--at least, he was a sight for mine. I like to see a man that is a man--handsome, well set up, and dressed as only the thoroughbred man knows how to dress. I am not so particular about a man's morals as about his manners, and his manners were all they ought to be. From his bearing, as he stood there, in front of me, you would have thought I was the very person he had wanted to see and had expected to see. I don't believe that he had supposed that I was within a hundred miles of him. I should not have been surprised to learn that, until my actual presence recalled it to him, he had entirely forgotten my existence.
He was the sort of creature one finds amusing.
After poor, dear Daniel one liked to feel that one was connected with such a picture of a man. One liked to feel that he was doing credit to one's good taste as he was walking by one's side.
I asked him to come and have a cup of tea. He was delighted, or he professed to be. When I remembered the occasion on which I had first encountered him it seemed to me that, in his heart of hearts--or whatever it was that passed for his heart of hearts--he must wish that I was at the bottom of the sea. He could not like being reminded of Three Bridges Junction. But one can never tell. From his manner he might have met me first of all in Queen Victoria's drawing-room, and none but pleasant memories might have been connected with the meeting.
When we got indoors, who should I find in the drawing-room, sitting in solitary state, but Mr. Haines. The look he gave me! And the look he gave my friend, the gentleman! The old nuisance might have been my husband.
Mr. Townsend appeared oblivious of there being anything peculiar in the old worry's demeanour, and, fortunately, the old worry did not stay long, considerably to my surprise. I was afraid that he would make a point of outstaying Mr. Townsend. But it was all the other way. After he had tried to freeze us for about five minutes he disappeared.
"It's very odd," said Mr. Townsend, as soon as he was gone, "but I've either seen that gentleman before or somebody very like him. There's something in his face which positively haunts me."
I shook my head.
"Your imagination plays you a trick; it sometimes is like that. Mr. Haines has only been in England, for the first time in his life, for about a month. He was my late husband's partner. I fancy he is under the impression that I'm a little lonely."
"That is a complaint which may easily be cured."
"The complaint of loneliness?"
"You will be able to make as many friends as you desire."
"It is not so easy for a woman to make friends as you may, perhaps, suppose--that is, of course, friends who are worth the making. You see, I have ambitions."
"Ambitions?"
"Yes, ambitions." He looked as if he would have liked to have asked me what I meant, only he was too civil. "In my position I think I am entitled to have ambitions."
He still seemed puzzled. It did me good to look at him, to know that he was sitting there, to breathe in, as it were, the aroma of his refinement and his high breeding. I have always hungered for those two things in a man, and I have never had them. I could understand a woman's falling in love with my friend, the gentleman. For the first time in my life the idea of a woman being in love with a man became conceivable.
All too soon--for me--he rose to go.
"You will come again?"
"I shall only be too happy."
"Seriously, I mean it, Mr. Townsend."
"And equally seriously I mean it too. Our acquaintance was made in an informal fashion, but I trust that, in course of time, I may be able to induce you to allow the informality to stand excused."
"It will be your fault if you do not."
When he went an appreciable something seemed to have departed with him, and that although his voice, his presence, seemed still to linger in the air. I found myself touching the cup from which he had been drinking, even the chair on which he had been sitting, with quite a curious sensation.
It was very odd.
I believe that if I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and the right sort of man to whom to attach myself, and to become attached to him, I should have been one of the best women in the world. I agree with Becky Sharp, that for a woman five thousand a year is something; but it is nothing, after all, without a man. Love in a cottage is a lunatic absurdity. Love itself may be all stuff. But there is something which, for all I can tell, may be akin to love. If one never knows it, life can never have its fullest savour. Perhaps, after all, for every square peg there may be a square hole somewhere in the world. If, when it meets it--it might; one can conceive that such meetings are--it cannot claim, and obtain possession, it will be hard upon the peg.
I had half a mind to tell the girl to put the cup which he had used aside and keep it free from the contamination of anybody else's lips until he came again. It would seem so silly. And yet----
Somebody came striding into the room. I turned. It was Jack Haines come back again. I almost dropped the cup, which I was holding, from my hand in my surprise. He was looking as black as black could be and his manners proved to be in full accord with his looks.
"Who is that man?"
"What man? What is the matter with you, Mr. Haines? I thought that you had gone."
"You know what man I mean--he who has just left your house."
"I am at a loss to know how it concerns you. That gentleman is a friend of mine."
"He is a thing of evil."
"Mr. Haines!"
"He is a shedder of innocent blood!"
Jack Haines was becoming really charming. I had always known he could be pleasant. I was only just beginning to realise how pleasant he could be when he tried.
"Mr. Haines, are you stark mad?"
"Woman!"
"Sit down."
He was raging like a wild bull about the room.
"Why should I sit down?" He threw up his hands. "I warn you against that man!"
"Sit down!"
I pointed to a chair. He sat down--I knew he would--and he looked as if he would like to eat me for forcing him to do it.
"Now, Mr. Haines, if you feel that you have, to a certain extent, mastered your excitement, perhaps you will be so good as to tell me what is the meaning of your behaviour."
"Nelly----"
"To you, Mr. Haines, I am Mrs. Carruth."
"Nelly, I say!"
In proof of his saying it, he stretched out towards me his clenched fist.
"Even at Strikehigh City, I did not think you capable of insulting an unprotected woman."
"I'm not insulting you."
"If you think not, then your ideas of what an insult is must be your own."
He rubbed his hands slowly up and down his knees. He stared at me hard. He shook his head.
"It's very hard; it's very hard. Between you and the girl, I'm suffering. The lines have fallen on me, and they're cutting right into my vital places." He brought his hands down upon his knees with a sudden thwack. "I asked you first, before even Daniel said a word to you; I laid myself at your feet."
"Was that my fault?"
He looked at me in silence. Then he drew the back of his hand across his brow.
"No; it was not your fault. I'm not blaming you. It was to be. Some men are made for women's feet to spurn." He paused. "Mrs. Carruth--since it is to be--I mean you well."
"Some people's meaning is very badly expressed."
"That's me. That's me all through--yes, right along. I ask you again, Who is that man?"
"Are you referring to the gentleman who has just been kind enough to come and see me? That is Mr. Townsend."
"Then Mr. Townsend is a thing of evil--he is!" He held up his forefinger to me with a warning gesture. I did not interrupt. "When I came near him I knew him for what he was. I saw right through. He is a whited sepulchre. I saw the blood gleaming on his hand. I could not stay where he was. I went outside, and stood on the corner of the street until I saw him go. And when I came back, I found that his presence was still with the house."
For my part I was glad that it was--if it was.
"This sort of talk, coming from you, is very ridiculous. Has your own life been so pure that you should attempt to blacken another man's character merely because he is my friend?"
"Pure? No; no man's life is pure. We are born to evil like the sparks fly upwards. But there's a difference."
"Pray, in what does the difference consist? I presume you have not forgotten that at least a portion of your record is known to me?"
He shook his head with dogged insistence.
"There is a difference. You know there is a difference. There's bad ones and there's bad ones; and Mr. Townsend's the sort of creature that no woman ought to have any truck with. He'll bite you if you do."
I got up from my chair.
"I am sorry this should have happened, Mr. Haines. I fear I shall have to ask you to come and see me more seldom than you have been in the habit of doing. I hope Mr. Townsend will be a frequent visitor. It would be pleasant neither for you nor for me for you to have to meet him, in my house, when you hold the opinions of him which you say you do."
He pressed his lips. He looked, if anything, sourer than ever.
"So Mr. Townsend is going to be a frequent visitor, is he? And how about Daniel?--and about me?"
I laughed.
"About you, Mr. Haines? I hope, Mr. Haines, that you will have a cup of tea."
He had one. And did penance in having it. For he hated tea.
And it was cold.