Chapter Twenty One.Gedge Tells the Truth.“Yesterday six years ago!” he echoed, looking at me in blank bewilderment. “What do you mean?”“I mean that if what you’ve told me is really the truth,” I cried, agape in wonder, “then it is the most astounding thing I’ve ever heard of. Are you absolutely certain of the date?”“Certain? Why, of course.”“Of the year, I mean?”“Positive. It’s eighteen ninety-six.”“For how long, then, have you been my secretary?” I inquired.“Nearly five years.”“And how long have I lived in this place?”“For nearly four.”“And that woman,” I demanded, breathlessly—“is she actually my wife?”“Most certainly,” he answered.I stood stupefied, stunned by this amazing statement.“But,” I protested, lost in wonder, “yesterday was years ago. How do you account for that? Are you certain that you’re not deceiving me?”“I’ve told you the absolute truth,” he responded. “On that I stake my honour.”I stood aghast, glaring at my reflection in the mirror, open-mouthed, as though I gazed upon some object supernatural. My personal appearance had certainly changed, and that in itself convinced me that there must be some truth in this man Gedge’s statement. I was older, a trifle stouter than before, I think, and my red-brown beard seemed to give my face a remarkably grotesque appearance. I had always hated beards, and considered them a relic of prehistoric barbarity. It was surprising that I should now have grown one.“Then according to your account I must have spent yesterday here—actually in this house?”“Why, of course you did,” he responded. “We were engaged the greater part of the day over Laffan’s affair. Walter Halliburton, the mining engineer, came down to see you, and we were together all the afternoon. He left for London at five.”“And where did I dine?”“Here. With Mrs Heaton.”“Don’t speak of her as Mrs Heaton!” I cried in anger. “She’s not my wife, and I will not have her regarded as such.”He gave his shoulders a slight shrug.“Now, look here, Mr Gedge,” I said, speaking for the first time with confidence. “If you were in my place, awakening suddenly to find that six years of your life had vanished in a single night, and that you were an entirely different person to that of twelve hours ago, what would you believe?”He looked at me with a somewhat sympathetic expression upon his thin features.“Well, I don’t know what I should think.” Then he added, “But surely such a thing can’t be possible.”“It is possible,” I cried. “It has happened to me. I tell you that last night was six years ago.”He turned from me, as though he considered further argument unavailing.My head reeled. What he had told me was utterly incredible. It seemed absolutely impossible that six whole years should have passed without my knowledge; that I should have entered upon a business of which I had previously known nothing; that I should have rapidly amassed a fortune; and, most of all, that I should have married that powdered and painted woman who had presented herself as my wife. Yet such were the unaccountable facts which this man Gedge asked me to believe.He saw that I was extremely dubious about the date, therefore he led me back to the library, where there hung upon the wall a large calendar, which quickly convinced me.Six; years had really elapsed since yesterday.In that vexing and perplexing present I reflected upon the puzzling past. That happy dinner with Mabel at the Boltons, the subsequent discoveries in that drawing-room where she had sat at the piano calmly playing; her soft words of tenderness, and the subsequent treachery of that dog-faced man Hickman, all passed before me with extraordinary vividness. Yet, in truth, all had happened long ago.Alas! I was not like other men. To the practical, level-headed man of affairs “To-day” may be sufficient, all-engrossing; but to the very large majority—a majority which, I believe, includes also many of the practical, the business of to-day admits of constant pleasant excursions into the golden mists of “long ago,” and many happy flights to the rosy heights of “some day.” Most of those who read this strange story of my life will remember with a melancholy affection, with a pain that is more soothing than many pleasures, the house wherein they were born, or at any rate the abode in which they passed the earlier years of their lives. The agonising griefs of childhood, the disappointments, the soul-racking terrors, mellowed by the gentle touch of passing years, have no sting for our mature sensibilities, but come back to us now with a pathos that is largely tinctured with amusement.I stood there reviewing the past, puzzled, utterly unable to account for it. Age, the iconoclast, had shattered most of the airy idols which my youth had set up in honour of itself. I had lost six of the most precious years of my life—years that I had not lived.Yet this man before me declared most distinctly that I had lived them; that I had enjoyed a second existence quite apart and distinct from my own self. Incredible though it seemed, yet it became gradually impressed upon me that what this man Gedge had told me was the actual, hideous truth, and that I had really lived and moved and prospered throughout those six unknown years, while my senses had at the same time remained dormant, and I had thus been utterly unconscious of existence.But could such a thing be? As a prosaic man of the world I argued, as any one in his right mind would argue, that such a thing was beyond the bounds of possibility. Nevertheless, be it how it might, the undisputed fact remained that I had lapsed into unconsciousness on that winter’s night six years before, and had known absolutely nothing of my surroundings until I found myself lying upon the floor of the drawing-room of what was alleged to be my country house.Six years out of a man’s life is a large slice. The face of the world changes considerably in that space of time. I found myself living a life which was so artificial and incongruous to my own tastes as to appear utterly unreal. Yet, as I made further inquiry of this man Gedge, every moment that passed showed me plainly that what he had said was the truth.He related to me the routine of my daily life, and I stood listening agape in wonder. He told me things of which I had no knowledge; of my own private affairs, and of my business profits; he took big leather-bound ledgers from the great green-painted safe, and showed me formidable sums entered therein, relating, he explained, to the transactions at the office up in London. Some documents he showed me, large official-looking sheets with stamps and seals and signatures, which he said were concessions obtained from a certain foreign Government, and opened my private letter-book, exhibiting letters I had actually written with my own hand, but without having any knowledge of having done so.These revelations took away my breath.It could not be mere loss of memory from which I was suffering. I had actually lived a second and entirely different life to that I had once led in Essex Street. Apparently I had become a changed man, had entered business, had amassed a fortune—and had married.Assuredly, I reflected, I could never have been in my right senses to have married that angular person with the powdered cheeks. That action, in itself, was sufficient to convince me that my brain had been unbalanced during those six lost years.Alone, I stood, without a single sympathiser—without a friend.How this astounding gap in my life had been produced was absolutely beyond explanation. I tried to account for it, but the reader will readily understand that the problem was, to me, utterly inexplicable. I, the victim of the treachery of that man Hickman, had fallen unconscious one night, and had awakened to discover that six whole years had elapsed, and that I had developed into an entirely different person. It was unaccountable, nay, incredible.I think I should have grown confidential towards Gedge were it not that he apparently treated me as one whose mind was wandering. He believed, and perhaps justly so, that my brain had been injured by the accidental blow. To him, of course, it seemed impossible that I, his master, should know nothing of my own affairs. The ludicrousness of the situation was to me entirely apparent, yet what could I do to avert it?By careful questions I endeavoured to obtain from him some facts regarding my past.“You told me,” I said, “that I have many friends. Among them are there any persons named Anson?”“Anson?” he repeated reflectively. “No, I’ve never heard the name.”“Or Hickman?”He shook his head.“I lived once in Essex Street, Strand,” I said. “Have I been to those chambers during the time—the five years you have been in my service?”Never, to my knowledge.“Have I ever visited a house in The Boltons, at Kensington?”“I think not,” he responded.“Curious! Very curious!” I observed, thinking deeply of the graceful, dark-eyed Mabel whom I had loved six years before, and who was now lost to me for ever.“Among my friends is there a man named Doyle?” I inquired, after a pause.“Doyle? Do you mean Mr Richard Doyle, the war correspondent?”“Certainly,” I cried excitedly. “Is he back?”“He is one of your friends, and has often visited here,” Gedge replied.“What is his address? I’ll wire to him at once.”“He’s in Egypt. He left London last March, and has not yet returned.”I drew a long breath. Dick had evidently recovered from fever in India, and was still my best friend, although I had had no knowledge of it.What, I wondered, had been my actions in those six years of unconsciousness? Mine were indeed strange thoughts at that moment. Of all that had been told me I was unable to account for anything. I stood stunned, confounded, petrified.For knowledge of what had transpired during those intervening years, or of my own career and actions during that period, I had to rely upon the statements of others. My mind during all that time had, it appeared, been a perfect blank, incapable of receiving any impression whatsoever.Nevertheless, when I came to consider how I had in so marvellous a manner established a reputation in the City, and had amassed the sum now lying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished that without the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must, after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently been those of my other self—the self who had lived and moved as husband of that woman who called herself Mrs Heaton.“Tell me,” I said, addressing Gedge again, “has my married life been a happy one?”He looked at me inquiringly.“Tell me the truth,” I urged. “Don’t conceal anything from me, for I intend to get at the bottom of this mystery.”“Well,” he said, with considerable hesitation, “scarcely what one might call happy, I think.”“Ah, I understand,” I said. “I know from your tone that you sympathise with me, Gedge.”He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this man until an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. He seemed to be the only person who could present to me the plain truth.Those six lost years were utterly puzzling. I was as one returned from the grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed.I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness of that lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Those years, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a trace behind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I had dined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I had ceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition, mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become an entirely different man.Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been swept away and effaced for ever.“Have I often visited Heaton—my own place?” I inquired, turning suddenly to Gedge.“Not since your marriage, I believe,” he answered. “You have always entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there once to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice, charming old house.”“Ay, and so it is,” I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spent there long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the most ravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles all through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those occasions—toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own—the world of sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a word, aped the gentleman.There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood, marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgotten years.“It is amazing, incredible!” I cried, heart-sick with desire to penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of unconsciousness. “All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six years can have passed without my knowledge.”“I think,” he said, “that, after all, Britten’s advice should be followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably restore your mental power to its proper calibre.”“Bah!” I shouted angrily. “You still believe I’m mad. I tell you I’m not. I’ll prove to you that I’m not.”“Well,” he remarked, quite calmly, “no sane man could be utterly ignorant of his own life. It doesn’t stand to reason that he could.”“I tell you I’m quite as sane as you are,” I cried. “Yet I’ve been utterly unconscious these six whole years.”“Nobody will believe you.”“But I swear it to be true,” I protested. “Since the moment when consciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead.”He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I had spoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. This aroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I was responsible for my actions.“A man surely can’t be unconscious, while at the same time he transacts business and lives as gaily as you live,” he laughed.“Then you impute that all I’ve said is untrue, and is due merely to the fact that I’m a trifle demented, eh?”“Britten has said that you are suffering from a fit of temporary derangement, and that you will recover after perfect rest.”“Then, by taking me around this house, showing me those books, and explaining all to me, you’ve merely been humouring me as you would a harmless lunatic!” I cried furiously. “You don’t believe what I say, that I’m perfectly in my right mind, therefore leave me. I have no further use for your presence, and prefer to be alone,” I added harshly.“Very well,” he answered, rather piqued; “if you wish I’ll, of course, go.”“Yes, go; and don’t return till I send for you. Understand that! I’m in no humour to be fooled, or told that I’m a lunatic.”He shrugged his shoulders, and muttering some words I did not catch, turned and left the library.
“Yesterday six years ago!” he echoed, looking at me in blank bewilderment. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that if what you’ve told me is really the truth,” I cried, agape in wonder, “then it is the most astounding thing I’ve ever heard of. Are you absolutely certain of the date?”
“Certain? Why, of course.”
“Of the year, I mean?”
“Positive. It’s eighteen ninety-six.”
“For how long, then, have you been my secretary?” I inquired.
“Nearly five years.”
“And how long have I lived in this place?”
“For nearly four.”
“And that woman,” I demanded, breathlessly—“is she actually my wife?”
“Most certainly,” he answered.
I stood stupefied, stunned by this amazing statement.
“But,” I protested, lost in wonder, “yesterday was years ago. How do you account for that? Are you certain that you’re not deceiving me?”
“I’ve told you the absolute truth,” he responded. “On that I stake my honour.”
I stood aghast, glaring at my reflection in the mirror, open-mouthed, as though I gazed upon some object supernatural. My personal appearance had certainly changed, and that in itself convinced me that there must be some truth in this man Gedge’s statement. I was older, a trifle stouter than before, I think, and my red-brown beard seemed to give my face a remarkably grotesque appearance. I had always hated beards, and considered them a relic of prehistoric barbarity. It was surprising that I should now have grown one.
“Then according to your account I must have spent yesterday here—actually in this house?”
“Why, of course you did,” he responded. “We were engaged the greater part of the day over Laffan’s affair. Walter Halliburton, the mining engineer, came down to see you, and we were together all the afternoon. He left for London at five.”
“And where did I dine?”
“Here. With Mrs Heaton.”
“Don’t speak of her as Mrs Heaton!” I cried in anger. “She’s not my wife, and I will not have her regarded as such.”
He gave his shoulders a slight shrug.
“Now, look here, Mr Gedge,” I said, speaking for the first time with confidence. “If you were in my place, awakening suddenly to find that six years of your life had vanished in a single night, and that you were an entirely different person to that of twelve hours ago, what would you believe?”
He looked at me with a somewhat sympathetic expression upon his thin features.
“Well, I don’t know what I should think.” Then he added, “But surely such a thing can’t be possible.”
“It is possible,” I cried. “It has happened to me. I tell you that last night was six years ago.”
He turned from me, as though he considered further argument unavailing.
My head reeled. What he had told me was utterly incredible. It seemed absolutely impossible that six whole years should have passed without my knowledge; that I should have entered upon a business of which I had previously known nothing; that I should have rapidly amassed a fortune; and, most of all, that I should have married that powdered and painted woman who had presented herself as my wife. Yet such were the unaccountable facts which this man Gedge asked me to believe.
He saw that I was extremely dubious about the date, therefore he led me back to the library, where there hung upon the wall a large calendar, which quickly convinced me.
Six; years had really elapsed since yesterday.
In that vexing and perplexing present I reflected upon the puzzling past. That happy dinner with Mabel at the Boltons, the subsequent discoveries in that drawing-room where she had sat at the piano calmly playing; her soft words of tenderness, and the subsequent treachery of that dog-faced man Hickman, all passed before me with extraordinary vividness. Yet, in truth, all had happened long ago.
Alas! I was not like other men. To the practical, level-headed man of affairs “To-day” may be sufficient, all-engrossing; but to the very large majority—a majority which, I believe, includes also many of the practical, the business of to-day admits of constant pleasant excursions into the golden mists of “long ago,” and many happy flights to the rosy heights of “some day.” Most of those who read this strange story of my life will remember with a melancholy affection, with a pain that is more soothing than many pleasures, the house wherein they were born, or at any rate the abode in which they passed the earlier years of their lives. The agonising griefs of childhood, the disappointments, the soul-racking terrors, mellowed by the gentle touch of passing years, have no sting for our mature sensibilities, but come back to us now with a pathos that is largely tinctured with amusement.
I stood there reviewing the past, puzzled, utterly unable to account for it. Age, the iconoclast, had shattered most of the airy idols which my youth had set up in honour of itself. I had lost six of the most precious years of my life—years that I had not lived.
Yet this man before me declared most distinctly that I had lived them; that I had enjoyed a second existence quite apart and distinct from my own self. Incredible though it seemed, yet it became gradually impressed upon me that what this man Gedge had told me was the actual, hideous truth, and that I had really lived and moved and prospered throughout those six unknown years, while my senses had at the same time remained dormant, and I had thus been utterly unconscious of existence.
But could such a thing be? As a prosaic man of the world I argued, as any one in his right mind would argue, that such a thing was beyond the bounds of possibility. Nevertheless, be it how it might, the undisputed fact remained that I had lapsed into unconsciousness on that winter’s night six years before, and had known absolutely nothing of my surroundings until I found myself lying upon the floor of the drawing-room of what was alleged to be my country house.
Six years out of a man’s life is a large slice. The face of the world changes considerably in that space of time. I found myself living a life which was so artificial and incongruous to my own tastes as to appear utterly unreal. Yet, as I made further inquiry of this man Gedge, every moment that passed showed me plainly that what he had said was the truth.
He related to me the routine of my daily life, and I stood listening agape in wonder. He told me things of which I had no knowledge; of my own private affairs, and of my business profits; he took big leather-bound ledgers from the great green-painted safe, and showed me formidable sums entered therein, relating, he explained, to the transactions at the office up in London. Some documents he showed me, large official-looking sheets with stamps and seals and signatures, which he said were concessions obtained from a certain foreign Government, and opened my private letter-book, exhibiting letters I had actually written with my own hand, but without having any knowledge of having done so.
These revelations took away my breath.
It could not be mere loss of memory from which I was suffering. I had actually lived a second and entirely different life to that I had once led in Essex Street. Apparently I had become a changed man, had entered business, had amassed a fortune—and had married.
Assuredly, I reflected, I could never have been in my right senses to have married that angular person with the powdered cheeks. That action, in itself, was sufficient to convince me that my brain had been unbalanced during those six lost years.
Alone, I stood, without a single sympathiser—without a friend.
How this astounding gap in my life had been produced was absolutely beyond explanation. I tried to account for it, but the reader will readily understand that the problem was, to me, utterly inexplicable. I, the victim of the treachery of that man Hickman, had fallen unconscious one night, and had awakened to discover that six whole years had elapsed, and that I had developed into an entirely different person. It was unaccountable, nay, incredible.
I think I should have grown confidential towards Gedge were it not that he apparently treated me as one whose mind was wandering. He believed, and perhaps justly so, that my brain had been injured by the accidental blow. To him, of course, it seemed impossible that I, his master, should know nothing of my own affairs. The ludicrousness of the situation was to me entirely apparent, yet what could I do to avert it?
By careful questions I endeavoured to obtain from him some facts regarding my past.
“You told me,” I said, “that I have many friends. Among them are there any persons named Anson?”
“Anson?” he repeated reflectively. “No, I’ve never heard the name.”
“Or Hickman?”
He shook his head.
“I lived once in Essex Street, Strand,” I said. “Have I been to those chambers during the time—the five years you have been in my service?”
Never, to my knowledge.
“Have I ever visited a house in The Boltons, at Kensington?”
“I think not,” he responded.
“Curious! Very curious!” I observed, thinking deeply of the graceful, dark-eyed Mabel whom I had loved six years before, and who was now lost to me for ever.
“Among my friends is there a man named Doyle?” I inquired, after a pause.
“Doyle? Do you mean Mr Richard Doyle, the war correspondent?”
“Certainly,” I cried excitedly. “Is he back?”
“He is one of your friends, and has often visited here,” Gedge replied.
“What is his address? I’ll wire to him at once.”
“He’s in Egypt. He left London last March, and has not yet returned.”
I drew a long breath. Dick had evidently recovered from fever in India, and was still my best friend, although I had had no knowledge of it.
What, I wondered, had been my actions in those six years of unconsciousness? Mine were indeed strange thoughts at that moment. Of all that had been told me I was unable to account for anything. I stood stunned, confounded, petrified.
For knowledge of what had transpired during those intervening years, or of my own career and actions during that period, I had to rely upon the statements of others. My mind during all that time had, it appeared, been a perfect blank, incapable of receiving any impression whatsoever.
Nevertheless, when I came to consider how I had in so marvellous a manner established a reputation in the City, and had amassed the sum now lying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished that without the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must, after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently been those of my other self—the self who had lived and moved as husband of that woman who called herself Mrs Heaton.
“Tell me,” I said, addressing Gedge again, “has my married life been a happy one?”
He looked at me inquiringly.
“Tell me the truth,” I urged. “Don’t conceal anything from me, for I intend to get at the bottom of this mystery.”
“Well,” he said, with considerable hesitation, “scarcely what one might call happy, I think.”
“Ah, I understand,” I said. “I know from your tone that you sympathise with me, Gedge.”
He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this man until an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. He seemed to be the only person who could present to me the plain truth.
Those six lost years were utterly puzzling. I was as one returned from the grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed.
I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness of that lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Those years, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a trace behind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I had dined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I had ceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition, mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become an entirely different man.
Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been swept away and effaced for ever.
“Have I often visited Heaton—my own place?” I inquired, turning suddenly to Gedge.
“Not since your marriage, I believe,” he answered. “You have always entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there once to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice, charming old house.”
“Ay, and so it is,” I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spent there long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the most ravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles all through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those occasions—toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.
And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own—the world of sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a word, aped the gentleman.
There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood, marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgotten years.
“It is amazing, incredible!” I cried, heart-sick with desire to penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of unconsciousness. “All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six years can have passed without my knowledge.”
“I think,” he said, “that, after all, Britten’s advice should be followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably restore your mental power to its proper calibre.”
“Bah!” I shouted angrily. “You still believe I’m mad. I tell you I’m not. I’ll prove to you that I’m not.”
“Well,” he remarked, quite calmly, “no sane man could be utterly ignorant of his own life. It doesn’t stand to reason that he could.”
“I tell you I’m quite as sane as you are,” I cried. “Yet I’ve been utterly unconscious these six whole years.”
“Nobody will believe you.”
“But I swear it to be true,” I protested. “Since the moment when consciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead.”
He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I had spoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. This aroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I was responsible for my actions.
“A man surely can’t be unconscious, while at the same time he transacts business and lives as gaily as you live,” he laughed.
“Then you impute that all I’ve said is untrue, and is due merely to the fact that I’m a trifle demented, eh?”
“Britten has said that you are suffering from a fit of temporary derangement, and that you will recover after perfect rest.”
“Then, by taking me around this house, showing me those books, and explaining all to me, you’ve merely been humouring me as you would a harmless lunatic!” I cried furiously. “You don’t believe what I say, that I’m perfectly in my right mind, therefore leave me. I have no further use for your presence, and prefer to be alone,” I added harshly.
“Very well,” he answered, rather piqued; “if you wish I’ll, of course, go.”
“Yes, go; and don’t return till I send for you. Understand that! I’m in no humour to be fooled, or told that I’m a lunatic.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and muttering some words I did not catch, turned and left the library.
Chapter Twenty Two.Broken Threads.He is a faint-hearted creature indeed who, while struggling along some dark lane of life, cannot, at least intermittently, extract some comfort to himself from the thought that the turn must come at last—the turn which, presumably, will bring him out upon the well-metalled high-road of happy contentment.I do not know that I was exactly faint-hearted. The mystery of it all had so stunned me that I felt myself utterly incapable of believing anything. The whole thing seemed shadowy and unreal.And yet the facts remained that I was alive, standing there in that comfortable room, in possession of all my faculties, both mental and physical, an entirely different person to my old self, with six years of my past lost and unaccountable.Beyond the lawn the shadow of the great trees looked cool and inviting, therefore I went forth, wandering heedlessly across the spacious park, my mind full of thoughts of that fateful night when I had fallen among that strange company, and of Mabel, the woman I had loved so fondly and devotedly.Sweet were the recollections that came back to me. How charming she had seemed to me as we had lingered hand-in-hand on our walks across the Park and Kensington Gardens, how soft and musical her voice! how full of tenderness her bright dark eyes! How idyllic was our love! She had surely read my undeclared passion. She had known the great secret in my heart.Nevertheless, all had changed. In a woman’s life half a dozen years is a long time, for she may develop from girl to matron in that space. The worst aspect of the affair presented itself to me. I had, in all probability, left her without uttering a word of farewell, and she—on her part—had, no doubt, accepted some other suitor. What more natural, indeed, than she should have married?That thought held me rigid.Again, as I strolled on beneath the rustling elms which led straight away in a wide old avenue towards where a distant village church stood, a prominent figure in the landscape, there recurred to me vivid recollections of that last night of my old self—of the astounding discovery I had made in the drawing-room at The Boltons.How was I to account for that?I paused and glanced around upon the view. All was quiet and peaceful there in the mid-day sunlight. Behind me stood the great white façade of Denbury; before, a little to the right, lay a small village with its white cottages—the villages of Littleham, I afterwards discovered—and to the left white cliffs and the blue stretch of the English Channel gleaming through the greenery.From the avenue I turned and wandered down a by-path to a stile, and there I rested, in full uninterrupted view of the open sea. Deep below was a cove—Littleham Cove, it proved to be—and there, under shelter of the cliffs, a couple of yachts were riding gaily at anchor, while far away upon the clear horizon a dark smoke-trail showed the track of a steamer outward bound.The day was brilliant. It was July in Devonshire, that fairest of all counties—and July there is always a superb month. The air, warm and balmy, was laden with the scent of roses and honeysuckle, the only sounds that broke the quiet were the songs of the birds and the soft rustling of the trees.I sat there trying to decide how to act.For the first time it occurred to me that my position was one of a certain peril, for if I did not act with tact and caution, that woman who called herself my wife, aided by that idiot Britten, might declare that I was mad, and cause me to be placed beneath restraint. Therefore, to gain my freedom, it was evidently necessary that I should act with discretion and keep my own counsel.I looked around upon the fair panorama of nature spread before me. The world was six years older than when I had known it. What national events had, I wondered, happened in that time? Place yourself in my position, and picture to yourself the feeling of bewilderment that overcame me when I reflected upon what might or might not have transpired.There crept over me a longing to escape from that place, the habitation of that awful woman with the powdered cheeks, and to return to London. All my life and pleasure had been centred in the giant capital, and to it I intended now to go back and seek, if possible, the broken thread of my history, which might lead me to an elucidation of the marvellous mystery.The world around me, the calm blue sea, the cloudless sky, the green grass-lands, the soft whispering of the foliage seemed so peaceful that I could scarce believe that so much evil, so much of human malice, could exist. The tranquillity of my surroundings induced within me a quieter frame of mind, and I set to planning carefully how I might escape and return to London.To endeavour to do so openly would, I saw, be to draw upon me the spies of my hideous wife. Was I not believed by all to be insane? Then certainly I should not be allowed to go at large without some one at my side.I wanted to be alone. The presence of a second person entertaining suspicions as to my sanity would seriously hamper me, and prevent me prosecuting the inquiries I intended to institute regarding my past. No. To escape successfully I should be compelled to fly to London, and once there alter my appearance and assume another name. Search would undoubtedly be made for me, but once in London I felt confident in being able to foil any efforts of my wife’s agents.Therefore I sat upon the stile and calmly matured my plans.The chiming of a clock, apparently in the turret upon my own stables at Denbury, fell upon my ears. It struck one. Then the sharp ringing of a bell—the luncheon-bell—followed.Gedge had told me that the place was near Budleigh-Salterton. Was it near enough, I wondered, for me to walk there, and was there a station? There might, I reflected, be a map in the library. I would be compelled to trace it out and seek my route, for I was absolutely ignorant of that corner of Devonshire.Yes, my best policy, I decided, was to return to the house, act as indifferently as possible, and meanwhile complete my plans for escape.I retraced my steps to the house by the path I had traversed, and upon the lawn was met by the man Gill, who announced—“The luncheon-bell has rung, sir. I hope you feel a little better, sir.”“Oh, much better,” I answered airily, and with an effort at self-possession followed him into the imitation old-oak dining-room, which Gedge had shown me during our tour of the place.The woman with the powdered cheeks was already seated at the head of the table, erect and stately, with an expression ofhauteurwhich ill became her.“I hope you feel better after your walk,” she said, as I seated myself.“Oh, much better,” I responded in a tone of irony. “The pain has practically passed.”“You should really rest,” she said, in that squeaky, artificial tone which so jarred upon my nerves. “Do take the doctor’s advice.”It was on the tip of my tongue to make a further unwriteable remark regarding the doctor, but I managed to control myself and reply—“Yes, I think after luncheon I shall lie down for a little time. I have, however, some pressing letters to write first.”“Let Gedge attend to your correspondence for to-day,” she urged, with that mock juvenility which rendered her so hideously ridiculous.“No,” I responded. “I have, unfortunately, to attend to several pressing matters personally. Afterwards I will rest.”“Do, there’s a dear,” she said.I bit my lip. She nauseated me when she used that affectionate term. The only woman I loved was Mabel Anson, but whether she were still alive, or whether married, I knew not. The very thought that I was bound in matrimony to this woman sitting in the high-backed chair of carved oak was disgusting. I loathed her.How I continued to eat the dishes Gill handed me I know not, nor do I remember what conversation passed between my pseudo-wife and myself as we sat there. Many were the abrupt and painful silences which fell between us.She struck me as an ascetic, strong-minded woman, who, before others, fawned upon me with an affected devotion which in one of her age was ludicrous; yet when we were alone she was rigid and overbearing, with the positive air of one who believed me far beneath her alike in social station and in intellect. When Gill was absent she spoke in a hard, patronising tone, which so angered me that with great difficulty I retained my temper.Yet it was my policy, I knew, to conceal my thoughts, and to lead her to believe that the words I had uttered, and my failure to recognise her, were owing to the blow I accidentally received, and that I was now, just as I had been before, her husband.What a hollow sham that meal was! Now that I think of it I cannot refrain from smiling at my extraordinary position, and how I showed her delicate attention in order to the more impress her of my solicitude for her welfare.When at last she rose it was with a hope that I would go to my room and rest.I seized that opportunity.“I shall,” I answered. “But don’t let them call me for dinner. I will have something when I awake. Britten has ordered perfect quiet.”“Very well,” she answered. Then, turning to Gill, she said, “You hear. Mr Heaton is not to be aroused at dinner.”“Yes, madam,” answered the man, bowing as we both passed out.At once I walked along to the library, shut the door, and locked it.I had much to do to prepare for my flight.Yes, as I had expected, there was an ordnance map of the Teignmouth district tacked to the wall; and searching, I quickly found Denbury marked upon it, standing on the Exmouth road over the High Land of Orcombe, halfway between that place and Budleigh-Salterton. The South-Western Railway ran; I saw, from Exmouth to London, by way of Exeter, and my first impulse was to walk into Exmouth, and take train thence. The fact that I was probably known at that station occurred to me, therefore I made up my mind to avoid the terminus and join the train at Lympston, a small station further towards Exeter.Taking up my pen I made a rough sketch-plan of my route, which passed Littleham church, then by the left-hand road struck across country, crossing the high-road to Exmouth at right angles, continuing through the village of Withycombe Raleigh, and keeping straight on until it joined the main road to Exeter. At the commencement of the village of Lympston it was necessary, I saw, to turn sharp to the left, and at the end of the road I should find the station, close to the river Exe.In order to avoid mistaking the road and entering the town of Exmouth, I made a full and careful plan, which when completed I placed in my pocket. The distance, I calculated roughly, was between five and six miles over a road rather difficult to find without a map.Among the books on the table I found a Bradshaw, with the page of local trains turned down, and from it learned that a train with connexion from London stopped at Lympston at 7:55 p.m., while the train in connexion with the up-mail from Exeter stopped there at 8:20. The latter I decided upon taking.The fact that I had expressed my desire to sleep would prevent Gill coming to call me at the dinner hour, and by the time I was missed I should be well on my way to London.The question of money occurred to me. I had noticed some loose gold and a couple of five-pound notes in one of the drawers which Gedge had opened, and having a duplicate set of keys in my pocket, I transferred the whole—a little under fourteen pounds—to my pocket.Then I took out my cheque-book. It was too large to be carried in my pocket, therefore I tore out a couple of dozen or so, folded them, and placed them in an envelope.I recognised that I could draw money with them, yet the bank need not know my whereabouts. If these people, who would, I suppose, call themselves “my friends,” made active search to find the fugitive “madman,” they would certainly obtain no clue from my bankers.In the same drawer as the cheque-book I found a black leather portfolio, securely locked.The latter fact impressed me. Everything else was open to my secretary, who possessed keys, both to writing-table and safe. But this was locked, apparently because therein were contained certain private papers that I had wished to keep from his eyes.No man, whoever he may be, reposes absolute confidence in his secretary. Every one has some personal matter, the existence of which he desires to preserve secret to himself alone.I drew forth the locked portfolio, and placed it upon the blotting-pad before me. It was an expansive wallet, of a kind such as I remembered having seen carried by bankers’ clerks in the City from bank to bank, attached by chains to the belts around their waists.Surely upon my ring I must possess a key to it. I looked, and found a small brass key.It fitted, and a moment later I had unlocked the wallet and spread my own private papers before me.What secrets of my lost life, I wondered, might not those carefully preserved letters and documents contain?In eager, anxious wonder I turned them over.Next instant a cry of dismay broke involuntarily from my lips, as within trembling fingers I held one of those papers—a letter addressed to me.I could scarce believe my own eyes as I read it. Yet the truth was plain—hideously plain.
He is a faint-hearted creature indeed who, while struggling along some dark lane of life, cannot, at least intermittently, extract some comfort to himself from the thought that the turn must come at last—the turn which, presumably, will bring him out upon the well-metalled high-road of happy contentment.
I do not know that I was exactly faint-hearted. The mystery of it all had so stunned me that I felt myself utterly incapable of believing anything. The whole thing seemed shadowy and unreal.
And yet the facts remained that I was alive, standing there in that comfortable room, in possession of all my faculties, both mental and physical, an entirely different person to my old self, with six years of my past lost and unaccountable.
Beyond the lawn the shadow of the great trees looked cool and inviting, therefore I went forth, wandering heedlessly across the spacious park, my mind full of thoughts of that fateful night when I had fallen among that strange company, and of Mabel, the woman I had loved so fondly and devotedly.
Sweet were the recollections that came back to me. How charming she had seemed to me as we had lingered hand-in-hand on our walks across the Park and Kensington Gardens, how soft and musical her voice! how full of tenderness her bright dark eyes! How idyllic was our love! She had surely read my undeclared passion. She had known the great secret in my heart.
Nevertheless, all had changed. In a woman’s life half a dozen years is a long time, for she may develop from girl to matron in that space. The worst aspect of the affair presented itself to me. I had, in all probability, left her without uttering a word of farewell, and she—on her part—had, no doubt, accepted some other suitor. What more natural, indeed, than she should have married?
That thought held me rigid.
Again, as I strolled on beneath the rustling elms which led straight away in a wide old avenue towards where a distant village church stood, a prominent figure in the landscape, there recurred to me vivid recollections of that last night of my old self—of the astounding discovery I had made in the drawing-room at The Boltons.
How was I to account for that?
I paused and glanced around upon the view. All was quiet and peaceful there in the mid-day sunlight. Behind me stood the great white façade of Denbury; before, a little to the right, lay a small village with its white cottages—the villages of Littleham, I afterwards discovered—and to the left white cliffs and the blue stretch of the English Channel gleaming through the greenery.
From the avenue I turned and wandered down a by-path to a stile, and there I rested, in full uninterrupted view of the open sea. Deep below was a cove—Littleham Cove, it proved to be—and there, under shelter of the cliffs, a couple of yachts were riding gaily at anchor, while far away upon the clear horizon a dark smoke-trail showed the track of a steamer outward bound.
The day was brilliant. It was July in Devonshire, that fairest of all counties—and July there is always a superb month. The air, warm and balmy, was laden with the scent of roses and honeysuckle, the only sounds that broke the quiet were the songs of the birds and the soft rustling of the trees.
I sat there trying to decide how to act.
For the first time it occurred to me that my position was one of a certain peril, for if I did not act with tact and caution, that woman who called herself my wife, aided by that idiot Britten, might declare that I was mad, and cause me to be placed beneath restraint. Therefore, to gain my freedom, it was evidently necessary that I should act with discretion and keep my own counsel.
I looked around upon the fair panorama of nature spread before me. The world was six years older than when I had known it. What national events had, I wondered, happened in that time? Place yourself in my position, and picture to yourself the feeling of bewilderment that overcame me when I reflected upon what might or might not have transpired.
There crept over me a longing to escape from that place, the habitation of that awful woman with the powdered cheeks, and to return to London. All my life and pleasure had been centred in the giant capital, and to it I intended now to go back and seek, if possible, the broken thread of my history, which might lead me to an elucidation of the marvellous mystery.
The world around me, the calm blue sea, the cloudless sky, the green grass-lands, the soft whispering of the foliage seemed so peaceful that I could scarce believe that so much evil, so much of human malice, could exist. The tranquillity of my surroundings induced within me a quieter frame of mind, and I set to planning carefully how I might escape and return to London.
To endeavour to do so openly would, I saw, be to draw upon me the spies of my hideous wife. Was I not believed by all to be insane? Then certainly I should not be allowed to go at large without some one at my side.
I wanted to be alone. The presence of a second person entertaining suspicions as to my sanity would seriously hamper me, and prevent me prosecuting the inquiries I intended to institute regarding my past. No. To escape successfully I should be compelled to fly to London, and once there alter my appearance and assume another name. Search would undoubtedly be made for me, but once in London I felt confident in being able to foil any efforts of my wife’s agents.
Therefore I sat upon the stile and calmly matured my plans.
The chiming of a clock, apparently in the turret upon my own stables at Denbury, fell upon my ears. It struck one. Then the sharp ringing of a bell—the luncheon-bell—followed.
Gedge had told me that the place was near Budleigh-Salterton. Was it near enough, I wondered, for me to walk there, and was there a station? There might, I reflected, be a map in the library. I would be compelled to trace it out and seek my route, for I was absolutely ignorant of that corner of Devonshire.
Yes, my best policy, I decided, was to return to the house, act as indifferently as possible, and meanwhile complete my plans for escape.
I retraced my steps to the house by the path I had traversed, and upon the lawn was met by the man Gill, who announced—
“The luncheon-bell has rung, sir. I hope you feel a little better, sir.”
“Oh, much better,” I answered airily, and with an effort at self-possession followed him into the imitation old-oak dining-room, which Gedge had shown me during our tour of the place.
The woman with the powdered cheeks was already seated at the head of the table, erect and stately, with an expression ofhauteurwhich ill became her.
“I hope you feel better after your walk,” she said, as I seated myself.
“Oh, much better,” I responded in a tone of irony. “The pain has practically passed.”
“You should really rest,” she said, in that squeaky, artificial tone which so jarred upon my nerves. “Do take the doctor’s advice.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to make a further unwriteable remark regarding the doctor, but I managed to control myself and reply—
“Yes, I think after luncheon I shall lie down for a little time. I have, however, some pressing letters to write first.”
“Let Gedge attend to your correspondence for to-day,” she urged, with that mock juvenility which rendered her so hideously ridiculous.
“No,” I responded. “I have, unfortunately, to attend to several pressing matters personally. Afterwards I will rest.”
“Do, there’s a dear,” she said.
I bit my lip. She nauseated me when she used that affectionate term. The only woman I loved was Mabel Anson, but whether she were still alive, or whether married, I knew not. The very thought that I was bound in matrimony to this woman sitting in the high-backed chair of carved oak was disgusting. I loathed her.
How I continued to eat the dishes Gill handed me I know not, nor do I remember what conversation passed between my pseudo-wife and myself as we sat there. Many were the abrupt and painful silences which fell between us.
She struck me as an ascetic, strong-minded woman, who, before others, fawned upon me with an affected devotion which in one of her age was ludicrous; yet when we were alone she was rigid and overbearing, with the positive air of one who believed me far beneath her alike in social station and in intellect. When Gill was absent she spoke in a hard, patronising tone, which so angered me that with great difficulty I retained my temper.
Yet it was my policy, I knew, to conceal my thoughts, and to lead her to believe that the words I had uttered, and my failure to recognise her, were owing to the blow I accidentally received, and that I was now, just as I had been before, her husband.
What a hollow sham that meal was! Now that I think of it I cannot refrain from smiling at my extraordinary position, and how I showed her delicate attention in order to the more impress her of my solicitude for her welfare.
When at last she rose it was with a hope that I would go to my room and rest.
I seized that opportunity.
“I shall,” I answered. “But don’t let them call me for dinner. I will have something when I awake. Britten has ordered perfect quiet.”
“Very well,” she answered. Then, turning to Gill, she said, “You hear. Mr Heaton is not to be aroused at dinner.”
“Yes, madam,” answered the man, bowing as we both passed out.
At once I walked along to the library, shut the door, and locked it.
I had much to do to prepare for my flight.
Yes, as I had expected, there was an ordnance map of the Teignmouth district tacked to the wall; and searching, I quickly found Denbury marked upon it, standing on the Exmouth road over the High Land of Orcombe, halfway between that place and Budleigh-Salterton. The South-Western Railway ran; I saw, from Exmouth to London, by way of Exeter, and my first impulse was to walk into Exmouth, and take train thence. The fact that I was probably known at that station occurred to me, therefore I made up my mind to avoid the terminus and join the train at Lympston, a small station further towards Exeter.
Taking up my pen I made a rough sketch-plan of my route, which passed Littleham church, then by the left-hand road struck across country, crossing the high-road to Exmouth at right angles, continuing through the village of Withycombe Raleigh, and keeping straight on until it joined the main road to Exeter. At the commencement of the village of Lympston it was necessary, I saw, to turn sharp to the left, and at the end of the road I should find the station, close to the river Exe.
In order to avoid mistaking the road and entering the town of Exmouth, I made a full and careful plan, which when completed I placed in my pocket. The distance, I calculated roughly, was between five and six miles over a road rather difficult to find without a map.
Among the books on the table I found a Bradshaw, with the page of local trains turned down, and from it learned that a train with connexion from London stopped at Lympston at 7:55 p.m., while the train in connexion with the up-mail from Exeter stopped there at 8:20. The latter I decided upon taking.
The fact that I had expressed my desire to sleep would prevent Gill coming to call me at the dinner hour, and by the time I was missed I should be well on my way to London.
The question of money occurred to me. I had noticed some loose gold and a couple of five-pound notes in one of the drawers which Gedge had opened, and having a duplicate set of keys in my pocket, I transferred the whole—a little under fourteen pounds—to my pocket.
Then I took out my cheque-book. It was too large to be carried in my pocket, therefore I tore out a couple of dozen or so, folded them, and placed them in an envelope.
I recognised that I could draw money with them, yet the bank need not know my whereabouts. If these people, who would, I suppose, call themselves “my friends,” made active search to find the fugitive “madman,” they would certainly obtain no clue from my bankers.
In the same drawer as the cheque-book I found a black leather portfolio, securely locked.
The latter fact impressed me. Everything else was open to my secretary, who possessed keys, both to writing-table and safe. But this was locked, apparently because therein were contained certain private papers that I had wished to keep from his eyes.
No man, whoever he may be, reposes absolute confidence in his secretary. Every one has some personal matter, the existence of which he desires to preserve secret to himself alone.
I drew forth the locked portfolio, and placed it upon the blotting-pad before me. It was an expansive wallet, of a kind such as I remembered having seen carried by bankers’ clerks in the City from bank to bank, attached by chains to the belts around their waists.
Surely upon my ring I must possess a key to it. I looked, and found a small brass key.
It fitted, and a moment later I had unlocked the wallet and spread my own private papers before me.
What secrets of my lost life, I wondered, might not those carefully preserved letters and documents contain?
In eager, anxious wonder I turned them over.
Next instant a cry of dismay broke involuntarily from my lips, as within trembling fingers I held one of those papers—a letter addressed to me.
I could scarce believe my own eyes as I read it. Yet the truth was plain—hideously plain.
Chapter Twenty Three.I Make a Discovery.Reader, I must take you still further into my confidence. What you have already read is strange, but certain things which subsequently happened to me were even still stranger.I held that astounding letter in my hand. My eyes were riveted upon it.The words written there were puzzling indeed. A dozen times I read them through, agape with wonder.The communication, upon the notepaper of theBath Hotelat Bournemouth, was dated June 4, 1891—five years before—and ran as follows:—“Dear Mr Heaton,—“I very much regret that you should have thus misunderstood me. I thought when we met at Windermere you were quite of my opinion. You, however, appear to have grown tired after the five months of our engagement, and your love for me has suddenly cooled; therefore our paths in life must in future lie apart. You have at least told me the truth honestly and straightforwardly. I, of course, believed that your declarations were true, and that you really loved me truly, but alas! it is evidently not so. I can only suffer in silence. Good-bye for ever. We shall never, never meet again. But I tell you, Wilford, that I bear you no malice, and that my prayers will ever be for your welfare and your happiness. Perhaps sometimes you will give a passing thought to the sorrowful, heart-broken woman who still loves you.“Mabel Anson.”What could this mean? It spoke of our engagement for five months! I had no knowledge whatever of ever having declared the secret of my love, much less becoming her affianced husband. Was it possible that in the first few months of my unconscious life I had met her and told her of my affection, of how I worshipped her with all the strength of my being?As I sat there with the carefully preserved letter in my hand there arose before my eyes a vision of her calm, fair face, bending over the piano, her handsome profile illumined by the candles on either side, the single diamond suspended by its invisible chain, gleaming at her throat like a giant’s eye. The impression I had obtained of her on that night at The Boltons still remained indelibly with me. Yes, her beauty was superb, her sweetness unsurpassed by that of any other woman I had ever met.Among the other private papers preserved within the wallet were four scraps of notepaper with typewriting upon them. All bore the same signature—that of the strange name “Avel.” All of them made appointments. One asked me to meet the writer in the writing-room of theHotel Victoriain London, another made an appointment to meet me “on the Promenade at Eastbourne opposite the Wish Tower”; a third suggested my office at Winchester House as a meeting-place, and the fourth gave a rendezvous on the departure platform at King’s Cross Station.I fell to wondering whether I had kept any of these engagements. The most recent of the letters was dated nearly two years ago.But the afternoon was wearing on, therefore I placed the puzzling communications in my pocket and ascended to my room in order to rest, and thus carry out the feint of attending to old Britten’s directions.The dressing-bell awakened me, but, confident in the knowledge that I should remain undisturbed, I removed the bandages from my head, bathed the wound, and applied some plaster in the place of the handkerchief. Then, with my hat on, my injury was concealed.The sun was declining when I managed to slip out of the house unobserved, and set forth down the avenue to Littleham village. The quaint old place was delightful in the evening calm, but, heedless of everything, I hurried forward down the hill to Withycombe Raleigh, and thence straight across the open country to Lympston station, where I took a third-class ticket for Exeter. At a wayside station a passenger for London is always remarked, therefore I only booked as far as the junction with the main-line.At Exeter I found that the up-mail was not due for ten minutes, therefore I telegraphed to London for a room at theGrand Hotel, and afterwards bought some newspapers with which to while away the journey.Sight of newspapers dated six years later than those I had last seen aroused within me a lively curiosity. How incredible it all seemed as in that dimly lit railway-carriage I sat gathering from those printed pages the history of the lost six years of my life!The only other occupant of the compartment besides myself was a woman. I had sought an empty carriage, but failing to find one, was compelled to accept her as travelling companion. She was youngish, perhaps thirty-five, and neatly dressed, but her face, as far as I could distinguish it through her spotted veil, was that of a woman melancholy and bowed down by trouble. In her dark hair were premature threads of silver, and her deep-sunken eyes, peering forth strangely at me, were the eyes of a woman rendered desperate.I did not like the look of her. In travelling one is quick to entertain an instinctive dislike to one’s companion, and it was so in my case. I found myself regretting that I had not entered a smoking-carriage. But I soon became absorbed in my papers, and forgot her presence.It was only her voice, a curiously high-pitched one, that made me start.She inquired if I minded her closing the window because of the draught, and I at once closed it, responding rather frigidly, I believe.But she was in no humour to allow the conversation to drop and commenced to chat with a familiarity that surprised me.She noticed how puzzled I became, and at length remarked with a laugh—“You apparently don’t recognise me, Mr Heaton.”“No, madam,” I answered, taken aback. “You have certainly the advantage of me.”This recognition was startling, for was I not flying to London to escape my friends? This woman, whoever she was, would without doubt recount her meeting with me.“It is really very droll,” she laughed. “I felt sure from the first, when you entered the compartment, that you didn’t know me.”“I certainly don’t know you,” I responded coldly—She smiled. “Ah! I expect it’s my veil,” she said.“But it’s really remarkable that you should not recognise Joliot, your wife’s maid.”“You! My wife’s maid!” I gasped, recognising in an instant how cleverly I had been run to earth.“Yes,” she replied. “Surely you recognise me?” and she raised her veil, displaying a rather unprepossessing face, dark and tragic, as though full of some hidden, sorrow.I had never seen the woman before in my life, but instantly I resolved to display no surprise and act with caution.“Ah, of course!” I said lamely. “The light here is so bad, you know, that I didn’t recognise you. And where are you going?”“To London—to the dressmaker’s.”“Mrs Heaton has sent you on some commission, I suppose?”“Yes, sir.”“You joined this train at Exeter, then?”“I came from Exmouth to Exeter, and changed,” she explained. “I saw you get in at Lympston.” My heart sank within me. It was evident that this woman had been sent by my self-styled wife to keep watch upon my movements. If I intended to escape I should be compelled to make terms with her.Those sharp dark eyes, with a curious light in them—eyes that seemed strangely staring and vacant at times—were fixed upon me, while the smile about her thin lips was clearly one of triumph, as though she had caught me in the act of flying from my home.I reflected, but next moment resolved to take her into my confidence. I disliked her, for her manner was somewhat eccentric, and, furthermore, I had only her own word that she was really maid to that angular woman who called herself my wife. Nevertheless, I could do naught else than make a bargain with her.“Now,” I said at last, after some desultory conversation, “I want to make a suggestion to you. Do you think that if I gave you a ten-pound note you could forget having met me to-night? Do you think that you could forget having seen me at all?”“Forget? I don’t understand.”“Well, to put it plainly, I’m going to London, and I have no desire that anybody should know that I’m there,” I explained. “When I am found to be missing from Denbury, Mrs Heaton will do all in her power to discover me. You are the only person who knows that I’ve gone to London, and I want you to hold your tongue.”She smiled again, showing an even row of white teeth.“I was sent by my mistress to travel by this train and to see where you went,” she said bluntly.“Exactly as I thought,” I answered. “Now, you will accept this as a little present, and return to Denbury to-morrow after a fruitless errand—utterly fruitless, you understand?”She took the ten sovereigns I handed her, and transferred them to her purse, promising to say nothing of having met me.I gathered from her subsequent conversation that she had been maid to Mrs Heaton ever since her marriage, and that she had acted as confidential servant. Many things she mentioned incidentally were of the greatest interest to me, yet they only served to show how utterly ignorant I was of all the past.“But why did you disclose your identity?” I inquired, when the lights showed that we were entering the London suburbs.“Because I felt certain that you didn’t recognise me,” she laughed; “and I had no wish to spy upon you, knowing as I do that your life is the reverse of happy.”“Then you pity me, eh?”“I scarcely think that is the word that one of my position ought to use,” she answered, with some hesitation. “Your life has, since your marriage, not been of the happiest, that’s certain.”“And so you have no intention of telling any one where I’ve gone?” I asked eagerly.“None in the least, sir. Rest assured that I shall say nothing—not a single word.”“I thank you,” I said, and sat back pondering in silence until the train ran into Waterloo, where we parted, she again reassuring me of her intention to keep my secret.I congratulated myself upon a very narrow escape, and, taking a cab, drove straight to Trafalgar Square. As I crossed Waterloo Bridge the long line of lights on the Embankment presented the same picture as they had ever done. Though six years had passed since I had last had knowledge of London, nothing had apparently changed. The red night-glare in the leaden sky was still the same; the same unceasing traffic; the same flashing of bright dresses and glittering jewels as hansoms passed and repassed in the Strand—just as I had known London by night during all my life.The gold-braided porter at theGrandhanded me out of the cab, and I ascended by the lift to the room allotted to me like a man in a dream. It hardly seemed possible that I could have been absent in mind from that whirling, fevered world of London for six whole years. I had given a false name in the reception bureau, fearing that those people who called themselves my friends—Heaven save the mark!—might make inquiries and cause my arrest as a wandering lunatic. I had no baggage, and I saw that the hotel-clerk looked upon me with some suspicion. Indeed, I threw down a couple of sovereigns, well knowing the rules that no person without luggage was taken unless he paid a deposit beforehand.I laughed bitterly within myself. How strange it was!Next morning I went forth and wandered down the Strand—the dear old Strand that I had once loved so well. No; it had in no wise changed, except, perhaps, that two or three monster buildings had sprung up, and that the theatres announced pieces quite unknown to me. A sudden desire seized me to see what kind of place was my own office. If, however, I went near there, I might, I reflected, be recognised by some one who knew me. Therefore I turned into a barber’s and had my beard cut off, then, further on, bought a new dust coat and another hat. In that disguise I took a hansom to Old Broad Street.I was not long in finding the business headquarters of my own self. How curious it all was! My name was marked upon a huge brass plate in the entrance-hall of that colossal block of offices, and I ascended to the first floor to find my name inscribed upon the door of one of the largest of the suites. I stood in the corridor carelessly reading a paper, and while doing so witnessed many persons, several of them smart-looking City men, leave, as though much business was being conducted within.Fortunately, no one recognised me, and descending, I regained the street.When outside I glanced up, and there saw my name, in big gilt letters, upon the wire blinds of six big windows.If I were actually as well known in the City as Gedge had alleged, then it was dangerous for me to remain in that vicinity. Therefore I entered another cab and drove to my old chambers in Essex Street.Up the thin-worn creaking stairs of the dismal, smoke-begrimed old place I climbed, but on arrival at my door a plate confronting me showed that Percival and Smale, solicitors, were now the occupants. From inquiries I made of Mr Smale, it appeared that they had occupied the floor as offices for the past three years, and that the tenants previous to them had been a firm of accountants. He knew nothing of my tenancy, and could tell me no word of either old Mrs Parker or of Dick Doyle, who had, it appeared, also vacated his quarters long ago. That afternoon I wandered in the Park, over that same road where I had lingered with Mabel in those cherished days bygone. Every tree and every object brought back to me sweet memories of her. But I remembered her letters reposing in my pocket, and bit my lip. Truly, in the unconscious life when I had been my other self, my real tastes had been inverted. My love for her had cooled. I had actually, when engaged to her, cast her aside.It was incredible. Surely my experience was unique in all the world.Unable to decide how to act in those puzzling circumstances, I spent fully a couple of hours in the Park. The Row was hot, dusty, and almost deserted, but at last I turned into the shady walks in Kensington Gardens, and wandered until I came out into the High Street by that same gate where she had once discovered the dead man’s pencil-case in my possession.As I stood there in the full light of that glaring afternoon, the whole scene came back vividly to me. She had known that man who had been so foully murdered in her mother’s home. I must, at all costs, find her, clear myself, and elucidate the truth.Hence, with that object, I hailed another cab, and, giving the man directions to drive to The Boltons, sat back, eager and wondering.As the conveyance drew up my heart gave a leap for joy, for I saw by the blinds that the house was still occupied.I sprang out and rang the visitors’ bell.
Reader, I must take you still further into my confidence. What you have already read is strange, but certain things which subsequently happened to me were even still stranger.
I held that astounding letter in my hand. My eyes were riveted upon it.
The words written there were puzzling indeed. A dozen times I read them through, agape with wonder.
The communication, upon the notepaper of theBath Hotelat Bournemouth, was dated June 4, 1891—five years before—and ran as follows:—
“Dear Mr Heaton,—
“I very much regret that you should have thus misunderstood me. I thought when we met at Windermere you were quite of my opinion. You, however, appear to have grown tired after the five months of our engagement, and your love for me has suddenly cooled; therefore our paths in life must in future lie apart. You have at least told me the truth honestly and straightforwardly. I, of course, believed that your declarations were true, and that you really loved me truly, but alas! it is evidently not so. I can only suffer in silence. Good-bye for ever. We shall never, never meet again. But I tell you, Wilford, that I bear you no malice, and that my prayers will ever be for your welfare and your happiness. Perhaps sometimes you will give a passing thought to the sorrowful, heart-broken woman who still loves you.
“Mabel Anson.”
What could this mean? It spoke of our engagement for five months! I had no knowledge whatever of ever having declared the secret of my love, much less becoming her affianced husband. Was it possible that in the first few months of my unconscious life I had met her and told her of my affection, of how I worshipped her with all the strength of my being?
As I sat there with the carefully preserved letter in my hand there arose before my eyes a vision of her calm, fair face, bending over the piano, her handsome profile illumined by the candles on either side, the single diamond suspended by its invisible chain, gleaming at her throat like a giant’s eye. The impression I had obtained of her on that night at The Boltons still remained indelibly with me. Yes, her beauty was superb, her sweetness unsurpassed by that of any other woman I had ever met.
Among the other private papers preserved within the wallet were four scraps of notepaper with typewriting upon them. All bore the same signature—that of the strange name “Avel.” All of them made appointments. One asked me to meet the writer in the writing-room of theHotel Victoriain London, another made an appointment to meet me “on the Promenade at Eastbourne opposite the Wish Tower”; a third suggested my office at Winchester House as a meeting-place, and the fourth gave a rendezvous on the departure platform at King’s Cross Station.
I fell to wondering whether I had kept any of these engagements. The most recent of the letters was dated nearly two years ago.
But the afternoon was wearing on, therefore I placed the puzzling communications in my pocket and ascended to my room in order to rest, and thus carry out the feint of attending to old Britten’s directions.
The dressing-bell awakened me, but, confident in the knowledge that I should remain undisturbed, I removed the bandages from my head, bathed the wound, and applied some plaster in the place of the handkerchief. Then, with my hat on, my injury was concealed.
The sun was declining when I managed to slip out of the house unobserved, and set forth down the avenue to Littleham village. The quaint old place was delightful in the evening calm, but, heedless of everything, I hurried forward down the hill to Withycombe Raleigh, and thence straight across the open country to Lympston station, where I took a third-class ticket for Exeter. At a wayside station a passenger for London is always remarked, therefore I only booked as far as the junction with the main-line.
At Exeter I found that the up-mail was not due for ten minutes, therefore I telegraphed to London for a room at theGrand Hotel, and afterwards bought some newspapers with which to while away the journey.
Sight of newspapers dated six years later than those I had last seen aroused within me a lively curiosity. How incredible it all seemed as in that dimly lit railway-carriage I sat gathering from those printed pages the history of the lost six years of my life!
The only other occupant of the compartment besides myself was a woman. I had sought an empty carriage, but failing to find one, was compelled to accept her as travelling companion. She was youngish, perhaps thirty-five, and neatly dressed, but her face, as far as I could distinguish it through her spotted veil, was that of a woman melancholy and bowed down by trouble. In her dark hair were premature threads of silver, and her deep-sunken eyes, peering forth strangely at me, were the eyes of a woman rendered desperate.
I did not like the look of her. In travelling one is quick to entertain an instinctive dislike to one’s companion, and it was so in my case. I found myself regretting that I had not entered a smoking-carriage. But I soon became absorbed in my papers, and forgot her presence.
It was only her voice, a curiously high-pitched one, that made me start.
She inquired if I minded her closing the window because of the draught, and I at once closed it, responding rather frigidly, I believe.
But she was in no humour to allow the conversation to drop and commenced to chat with a familiarity that surprised me.
She noticed how puzzled I became, and at length remarked with a laugh—
“You apparently don’t recognise me, Mr Heaton.”
“No, madam,” I answered, taken aback. “You have certainly the advantage of me.”
This recognition was startling, for was I not flying to London to escape my friends? This woman, whoever she was, would without doubt recount her meeting with me.
“It is really very droll,” she laughed. “I felt sure from the first, when you entered the compartment, that you didn’t know me.”
“I certainly don’t know you,” I responded coldly—
She smiled. “Ah! I expect it’s my veil,” she said.
“But it’s really remarkable that you should not recognise Joliot, your wife’s maid.”
“You! My wife’s maid!” I gasped, recognising in an instant how cleverly I had been run to earth.
“Yes,” she replied. “Surely you recognise me?” and she raised her veil, displaying a rather unprepossessing face, dark and tragic, as though full of some hidden, sorrow.
I had never seen the woman before in my life, but instantly I resolved to display no surprise and act with caution.
“Ah, of course!” I said lamely. “The light here is so bad, you know, that I didn’t recognise you. And where are you going?”
“To London—to the dressmaker’s.”
“Mrs Heaton has sent you on some commission, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You joined this train at Exeter, then?”
“I came from Exmouth to Exeter, and changed,” she explained. “I saw you get in at Lympston.” My heart sank within me. It was evident that this woman had been sent by my self-styled wife to keep watch upon my movements. If I intended to escape I should be compelled to make terms with her.
Those sharp dark eyes, with a curious light in them—eyes that seemed strangely staring and vacant at times—were fixed upon me, while the smile about her thin lips was clearly one of triumph, as though she had caught me in the act of flying from my home.
I reflected, but next moment resolved to take her into my confidence. I disliked her, for her manner was somewhat eccentric, and, furthermore, I had only her own word that she was really maid to that angular woman who called herself my wife. Nevertheless, I could do naught else than make a bargain with her.
“Now,” I said at last, after some desultory conversation, “I want to make a suggestion to you. Do you think that if I gave you a ten-pound note you could forget having met me to-night? Do you think that you could forget having seen me at all?”
“Forget? I don’t understand.”
“Well, to put it plainly, I’m going to London, and I have no desire that anybody should know that I’m there,” I explained. “When I am found to be missing from Denbury, Mrs Heaton will do all in her power to discover me. You are the only person who knows that I’ve gone to London, and I want you to hold your tongue.”
She smiled again, showing an even row of white teeth.
“I was sent by my mistress to travel by this train and to see where you went,” she said bluntly.
“Exactly as I thought,” I answered. “Now, you will accept this as a little present, and return to Denbury to-morrow after a fruitless errand—utterly fruitless, you understand?”
She took the ten sovereigns I handed her, and transferred them to her purse, promising to say nothing of having met me.
I gathered from her subsequent conversation that she had been maid to Mrs Heaton ever since her marriage, and that she had acted as confidential servant. Many things she mentioned incidentally were of the greatest interest to me, yet they only served to show how utterly ignorant I was of all the past.
“But why did you disclose your identity?” I inquired, when the lights showed that we were entering the London suburbs.
“Because I felt certain that you didn’t recognise me,” she laughed; “and I had no wish to spy upon you, knowing as I do that your life is the reverse of happy.”
“Then you pity me, eh?”
“I scarcely think that is the word that one of my position ought to use,” she answered, with some hesitation. “Your life has, since your marriage, not been of the happiest, that’s certain.”
“And so you have no intention of telling any one where I’ve gone?” I asked eagerly.
“None in the least, sir. Rest assured that I shall say nothing—not a single word.”
“I thank you,” I said, and sat back pondering in silence until the train ran into Waterloo, where we parted, she again reassuring me of her intention to keep my secret.
I congratulated myself upon a very narrow escape, and, taking a cab, drove straight to Trafalgar Square. As I crossed Waterloo Bridge the long line of lights on the Embankment presented the same picture as they had ever done. Though six years had passed since I had last had knowledge of London, nothing had apparently changed. The red night-glare in the leaden sky was still the same; the same unceasing traffic; the same flashing of bright dresses and glittering jewels as hansoms passed and repassed in the Strand—just as I had known London by night during all my life.
The gold-braided porter at theGrandhanded me out of the cab, and I ascended by the lift to the room allotted to me like a man in a dream. It hardly seemed possible that I could have been absent in mind from that whirling, fevered world of London for six whole years. I had given a false name in the reception bureau, fearing that those people who called themselves my friends—Heaven save the mark!—might make inquiries and cause my arrest as a wandering lunatic. I had no baggage, and I saw that the hotel-clerk looked upon me with some suspicion. Indeed, I threw down a couple of sovereigns, well knowing the rules that no person without luggage was taken unless he paid a deposit beforehand.
I laughed bitterly within myself. How strange it was!
Next morning I went forth and wandered down the Strand—the dear old Strand that I had once loved so well. No; it had in no wise changed, except, perhaps, that two or three monster buildings had sprung up, and that the theatres announced pieces quite unknown to me. A sudden desire seized me to see what kind of place was my own office. If, however, I went near there, I might, I reflected, be recognised by some one who knew me. Therefore I turned into a barber’s and had my beard cut off, then, further on, bought a new dust coat and another hat. In that disguise I took a hansom to Old Broad Street.
I was not long in finding the business headquarters of my own self. How curious it all was! My name was marked upon a huge brass plate in the entrance-hall of that colossal block of offices, and I ascended to the first floor to find my name inscribed upon the door of one of the largest of the suites. I stood in the corridor carelessly reading a paper, and while doing so witnessed many persons, several of them smart-looking City men, leave, as though much business was being conducted within.
Fortunately, no one recognised me, and descending, I regained the street.
When outside I glanced up, and there saw my name, in big gilt letters, upon the wire blinds of six big windows.
If I were actually as well known in the City as Gedge had alleged, then it was dangerous for me to remain in that vicinity. Therefore I entered another cab and drove to my old chambers in Essex Street.
Up the thin-worn creaking stairs of the dismal, smoke-begrimed old place I climbed, but on arrival at my door a plate confronting me showed that Percival and Smale, solicitors, were now the occupants. From inquiries I made of Mr Smale, it appeared that they had occupied the floor as offices for the past three years, and that the tenants previous to them had been a firm of accountants. He knew nothing of my tenancy, and could tell me no word of either old Mrs Parker or of Dick Doyle, who had, it appeared, also vacated his quarters long ago. That afternoon I wandered in the Park, over that same road where I had lingered with Mabel in those cherished days bygone. Every tree and every object brought back to me sweet memories of her. But I remembered her letters reposing in my pocket, and bit my lip. Truly, in the unconscious life when I had been my other self, my real tastes had been inverted. My love for her had cooled. I had actually, when engaged to her, cast her aside.
It was incredible. Surely my experience was unique in all the world.
Unable to decide how to act in those puzzling circumstances, I spent fully a couple of hours in the Park. The Row was hot, dusty, and almost deserted, but at last I turned into the shady walks in Kensington Gardens, and wandered until I came out into the High Street by that same gate where she had once discovered the dead man’s pencil-case in my possession.
As I stood there in the full light of that glaring afternoon, the whole scene came back vividly to me. She had known that man who had been so foully murdered in her mother’s home. I must, at all costs, find her, clear myself, and elucidate the truth.
Hence, with that object, I hailed another cab, and, giving the man directions to drive to The Boltons, sat back, eager and wondering.
As the conveyance drew up my heart gave a leap for joy, for I saw by the blinds that the house was still occupied.
I sprang out and rang the visitors’ bell.
Chapter Twenty Four.The Master Hand.A man-servant answered my summons.“Mrs Anson?” I inquired.“Mrs Anson is out of town, sir,” answered the man. “The house is let.”“Furnished?”“Yes, sir.”“Is your mistress at home?” I inquired.“I don’t know, sir,” answered the man, diplomatically.“Oh, of course!” I exclaimed, taking out a card. It was the first I found within my cigarette-case, and was intentionally not my own. “Will you take this to your mistress, and ask her if she will kindly spare me a few moments. I am a friend of Mrs Anson’s.”“I’ll see if she’s at home, sir,” said the man, dubiously; and then, asking me into the entrance-hall, he left me standing while he went in search of his mistress.That hall was the same down which I had groped my way when blind. I saw the closed door of the drawing-room, and knew that within that room the young man whose name I knew not had been foully done to death. There was the very umbrella stand from which I had taken the walking-stick, and the door of the little-used library, which I had examined on that night when I had dined there at Mrs Anson’s invitation—the last night of my existence as my real self.The man returned in a few moments and invited me into a room on the left—the morning-room, I supposed it to be—saying:“My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you.”I had not remained there more than a couple of minutes before a youngish woman of perhaps thirty or so entered, with a rather distant bow. She was severely dressed in black; dark-haired, and not very prepossessing. Her lips were too thick to be beautiful, and her top row of teeth seemed too much in evidence. Her face was not exactly ugly, but she was by no means good-looking.“I have to apologise,” I said, rising and bowing. “I understand that Mrs Anson has let her house, and I thought you would kindly give me her address. I wish to see her on a most pressing personal matter.”She regarded me with some suspicion, I thought.“If you are a friend of Mrs Anson’s, would it not be better if you wrote to her and addressed the letter here? Her letters are always forwarded,” she answered.She was evidently a rather shrewd and superior person.“Well, to tell the truth,” I said, “I have reasons for not writing.”“Then I must regret, sir, that I am unable to furnish you with her address,” she responded, somewhat stiffly.“I have been absent from London for six years,” I exclaimed. “It is because of that long absence that I prefer not to write.”“I fear that I cannot assist you,” she replied briefly.There was a strange, determined look in her dark-grey eyes. She did not seem a person amenable to argument.“But it is regarding an urgent and purely private affair that I wish to see Mrs Anson,” I said.“I have nothing whatever to do with the private affairs of Mrs Anson,” she replied. “I merely rent this house from her, and, in justice to her, it is not likely that I give the address to every chance caller.”“I am no chance caller,” I responded. “During her residence here six years ago I was a welcome guest at her table.”“Six years ago is a long time. You may, for aught I know, not be so welcome now.”Did she, I wondered, speak the truth?“You certainly speak very plainly, madam,” I answered, rising stiffly. “If I have put you to any inconvenience I regret it. I can, no doubt, obtain from some other person the information I require.”“Most probably you can, sir,” she answered, in a manner quite unruffled. “I tell you that if you write I shall at once forward your letter to her. More than that I cannot do.”“I presume you are acquainted with Miss Mabel Anson?” I inquired.She smiled with some sarcasm.“The Anson family do not concern me in the least, sir,” she replied, also rising as sign that my unfruitful interview was at an end. Mention of Mabel seemed to have irritated her, and although I plied her with further questions, she would tell me absolutely nothing.When I bowed and took my leave I fear that I did not show her very much politeness.In my eagerness for information, her hesitation to give me Mrs Anson’s address never struck me as perfectly natural. She, of course, did not know me, and her offer to forward a letter was all that she could do in such circumstances. Yet at the time I did not view it in that light, but regarded the tenant of that house of mystery as an ill-mannered and extremely disagreeable person.In despair I returned to St. James’s Street and entered my club, the Devonshire. Several men whom I did not know greeted me warmly in the smoking-room, and, from their manner, I saw that in my lost years I had evidently not abandoned that institution. They chatted to me about politics and stocks, two subjects upon which I was perfectly ignorant, and I was compelled to exercise considerable tact and ingenuity in order to avoid betraying the astounding blank in my mind.After a restless hour I drove back westward and called at old Channing’s in Cornwall Gardens in an endeavour to learn Mabel’s address. The colonel was out, but I saw Mrs Channing, and she could, alas! tell me nothing beyond the fact that Mrs Anson and her daughter had been abroad for three years past—where, she knew not. They had drifted apart, she said, and never now exchanged letters.“Is Mabel married?” I inquired as carelessly as I could, although in breathless eagerness.“I really don’t know,” she responded. “I have heard some talk of the likelihood of her marrying, but whether she has done so I am unaware.”“And the man whom rumour designated as her husband? Who was he?” I inquired quickly.“A young nobleman, I believe.”“You don’t know his name?”“No. It was mentioned at the time, but it has slipped my memory. One takes no particular notice of teacup gossip.”“Well, Mrs Channing,” I said confidently, “I am extremely desirous of discovering the whereabouts of Mabel Anson. I want to see her upon a rather curious matter which closely concerns herself. Can you tell me of any one who is intimate with them?”“Unfortunately, I know of no one,” she answered. “The truth is, that they left London quite suddenly; and, indeed, it was a matter for surprise that they neither paid farewell visits nor told any of their friends where they were going.”“Curious,” I remarked—“very curious!”Then there was, I reflected, apparently some reason for the present tenant at The Boltons refusing the address.“Yes,” Mrs Channing went on, “it was all very mysterious. Nobody knows the real truth why they went abroad so suddenly and secretly. It was between three and four years ago now, and nothing, to my knowledge, has since been heard of them.”“Very mysterious,” I responded. “It would seem almost as though they had some reason for concealing their whereabouts.”“That’s just what lots of people have said. You may depend upon it that there is something very mysterious in it all. We were such very close friends for years, and it is certainly strange that Mrs Anson has never confided in me the secret of her whereabouts.”I remembered the old colonel’s strange warning on that evening long ago, when I had first met Mabel at his table. What, I wondered, could he know of them to their detriment?I remained for a quarter of an hour longer. The colonel’s wife was full of the latest tittle-tattle, as the wife of anex-attachéalways is. It is part of the diplomatic training to be always well-informed in the sayings and doings of our neighbours; and as I allowed her to gossip on she revealed to me many things of which I was in ignorance. Nellie, her daughter, had, it appeared, married the son of a Newcastle shipowner a couple of years before, and now lived near Berwick-on-Tweed.Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I asked whether she knew Miss Wells or the man Hickman, who had been my fellow-guests on that night when I had dined at The Boltons.“I knew a Miss Wells—a very pronounced old maid, who was a friend of hers,” answered Mrs Channing. “But she caught influenza about a year ago, and died of it. She lived in Edith Villas, Kensington.”“And Hickman, a fair man, of middle age, with a very ugly face?”She reflected.“I have no recollection of ever having met him, or of hearing of him,” she answered. “Was he an intimate friend?”“I believe so,” I said. Then, finding that she could explain nothing more, I took my leave.Next day and the next I wandered about London aimlessly and without hope. Mabel and her mother had, for some unaccountable reason, gone abroad and carefully concealed their whereabouts. Had this fact any connexion with the mysterious tragedy that had been enacted at The Boltons? That one thought was ever uppermost in my mind.A week passed, and I still remained at theGrand, going forth each day, wandering hither and thither, but never entering the club or going to places where I thought it likely that I might be recognised. I could not return to the life at Denbury with that angular woman at the head of my table—the woman who called herself my wife. If I returned I felt that the mystery of it all must drive me to despair, and I should, in a fit of desperation, commit suicide.I ask any of those who read this strange history of my life, whether they consider themselves capable of remaining calm and tranquil in such circumstances, or of carefully going over all the events in their sequence and considering them with logical reasoning. I tried to do so, but in vain. For hours I sat within the hotel smoking and thinking. I was living an entirely false life, existing in the fear of recognition by unknown friends, and the constant dread that sooner or later I must return to that hated life in Devonshire.That a hue-and-cry had been raised regarding my disappearance was plain from a paragraph which I read in one of the morning papers about ten days after my departure from Denbury. In the paragraph I was designated as “a financier well known in the City,” and it was there stated that I had left my home suddenly “after betraying signs of insanity,” and had not since been heard of.“Insanity!” I laughed bitterly as I read those lines supplied by the Exeter correspondent of the Central News. The police had, no doubt, received my description, and were actively on the watch to trace me and restore me to my “friends.”For nearly a fortnight I had been in hiding, and was now on the verge of desperation. By means of one of the cheques I had taken from Denbury I succeeded in drawing a good round sum without my bankers being aware of my address, and was contemplating going abroad in order to avoid the possibility of being put under restraint as a lunatic, when one evening, in the dusky, sunset, I went forth and wandered down Northumberland Avenue to the Victoria Embankment. In comparison with the life and bustle of the Strand and Trafalgar Square, the wide roadway beside the Thames is always quiet and reposeful. Upon that same pavement over which I now strolled in the direction of the Temple I had, in the days of my blindness, taken my lessons in walking alone. That pavement had been my practice-ground on summer evenings under the tender guidance of poor old Parker, the faithful servant now lost to me. My eyesight had now grown as strong as that of other men. The great blank in my mind was all that distinguished me from my fellows. During those past fourteen days I had been probing a period which I had not lived, and ascertaining by slow degrees the events of my unknown past.And as I strolled along beneath the plane trees over that broad pavement I recollected that the last occasion I had been there was on that memorable evening when I had lost myself, and was subsequently present at the midnight tragedy in that house of mystery. I gazed around.In the ornamental gardens, bright with geraniums, some tired Londoners were taking their ease upon the seats provided by that most paternal of all metropolitan institutions, the London County Council; children were shouting as they played at ball and hopscotch, that narrow strip of green being, alas! all they knew of Nature’s beauty outside their world of bricks and mortar. The slight wind stirred the dusty foliage of the trees beneath which I walked, while to the left river-steamers belched forth volumes of black smoke, and barges slowly floated down with the tide. On either side were great buildings, and straight before the dome of St. Paul’s. Over all was that golden, uncertain haze which in central London is called sunset, the light which so quickly turns to cold grey, without any of those glories of crimson and gold which those in the country associate with the summer sun’s decline.That walk induced within me melancholy thoughts of a wasted life. I loved Mabel Anson—I loved her with all my soul. Now that marriage with her was no longer within the range of possibility I was inert and despairing, utterly heedless of everything. I had, if truth be told, no further desire for life. All joy within me was now blotted out.At length, at Blackfriars Bridge, I retraced my steps, and some twenty minutes later, as I took my key from the hotel bureau, the clerk handed me a note, addressed to “Burton Lawrence, Esquire,” the fictitious name I had given. It had been delivered by boy-messenger.Then I was discovered! My heart leapt into my mouth.I tore open the envelope, and read its contents. They were brief and to the point.“The undersigned will be obliged,” it ran, “if Mr Burton Lawrence will be present this evening at eight o’clock, in the main-line booking-office of the Brighton Railway, at Victoria Station. An interview is of very pressing importance.”The note was signed, by that single word which had always possessed such mysterious signification, the word “Avel.”Hitherto, in my old life long ago, receipt of communications from that mysterious correspondent had caused me much anxiety of mind. I had always feared their advent; now, however, I actually welcomed it, even though it were strange and unaccountable that the unknown writer should know my whereabouts and the name beneath which I had sought to conceal my identity.I made a hasty dinner in the coffee-room, and went forthwith to Victoria, wondering whom I should meet. The last time I had kept one of those strange appointments on that summer evening long ago in Hyde Park, I had come face to face with the woman I loved. Would that I could meet her now!I entered the booking-office, searching it with eager eyes. Two lines of persons were taking tickets at the pigeon-holes, while a number of loungers were, like myself, awaiting friends. Beyond, upon the platform, all was bustle as is usual at that hour, when the belated portion of business London is bound for the southern suburbs. From that busy terminus of the West End trains were arriving and departing each minute.The big illumined clock showed that it was yet five minutes to the hour. Therefore I strolled out upon the platform, lounged around the bookstalls, and presently returned to the spot indicated in the letter.As I re-entered the booking-office my eager eyes fell upon a figure standing before me—a well-dressed figure, with a face that smiled upon me.An involuntary cry of surprise escaped my lips. The encounter was sudden and astounding; but in that instant, as I rushed forward to greet the new-comer, I knew myself to be on the verge of a startling and remarkable discovery.
A man-servant answered my summons.
“Mrs Anson?” I inquired.
“Mrs Anson is out of town, sir,” answered the man. “The house is let.”
“Furnished?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is your mistress at home?” I inquired.
“I don’t know, sir,” answered the man, diplomatically.
“Oh, of course!” I exclaimed, taking out a card. It was the first I found within my cigarette-case, and was intentionally not my own. “Will you take this to your mistress, and ask her if she will kindly spare me a few moments. I am a friend of Mrs Anson’s.”
“I’ll see if she’s at home, sir,” said the man, dubiously; and then, asking me into the entrance-hall, he left me standing while he went in search of his mistress.
That hall was the same down which I had groped my way when blind. I saw the closed door of the drawing-room, and knew that within that room the young man whose name I knew not had been foully done to death. There was the very umbrella stand from which I had taken the walking-stick, and the door of the little-used library, which I had examined on that night when I had dined there at Mrs Anson’s invitation—the last night of my existence as my real self.
The man returned in a few moments and invited me into a room on the left—the morning-room, I supposed it to be—saying:
“My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you.”
I had not remained there more than a couple of minutes before a youngish woman of perhaps thirty or so entered, with a rather distant bow. She was severely dressed in black; dark-haired, and not very prepossessing. Her lips were too thick to be beautiful, and her top row of teeth seemed too much in evidence. Her face was not exactly ugly, but she was by no means good-looking.
“I have to apologise,” I said, rising and bowing. “I understand that Mrs Anson has let her house, and I thought you would kindly give me her address. I wish to see her on a most pressing personal matter.”
She regarded me with some suspicion, I thought.
“If you are a friend of Mrs Anson’s, would it not be better if you wrote to her and addressed the letter here? Her letters are always forwarded,” she answered.
She was evidently a rather shrewd and superior person.
“Well, to tell the truth,” I said, “I have reasons for not writing.”
“Then I must regret, sir, that I am unable to furnish you with her address,” she responded, somewhat stiffly.
“I have been absent from London for six years,” I exclaimed. “It is because of that long absence that I prefer not to write.”
“I fear that I cannot assist you,” she replied briefly.
There was a strange, determined look in her dark-grey eyes. She did not seem a person amenable to argument.
“But it is regarding an urgent and purely private affair that I wish to see Mrs Anson,” I said.
“I have nothing whatever to do with the private affairs of Mrs Anson,” she replied. “I merely rent this house from her, and, in justice to her, it is not likely that I give the address to every chance caller.”
“I am no chance caller,” I responded. “During her residence here six years ago I was a welcome guest at her table.”
“Six years ago is a long time. You may, for aught I know, not be so welcome now.”
Did she, I wondered, speak the truth?
“You certainly speak very plainly, madam,” I answered, rising stiffly. “If I have put you to any inconvenience I regret it. I can, no doubt, obtain from some other person the information I require.”
“Most probably you can, sir,” she answered, in a manner quite unruffled. “I tell you that if you write I shall at once forward your letter to her. More than that I cannot do.”
“I presume you are acquainted with Miss Mabel Anson?” I inquired.
She smiled with some sarcasm.
“The Anson family do not concern me in the least, sir,” she replied, also rising as sign that my unfruitful interview was at an end. Mention of Mabel seemed to have irritated her, and although I plied her with further questions, she would tell me absolutely nothing.
When I bowed and took my leave I fear that I did not show her very much politeness.
In my eagerness for information, her hesitation to give me Mrs Anson’s address never struck me as perfectly natural. She, of course, did not know me, and her offer to forward a letter was all that she could do in such circumstances. Yet at the time I did not view it in that light, but regarded the tenant of that house of mystery as an ill-mannered and extremely disagreeable person.
In despair I returned to St. James’s Street and entered my club, the Devonshire. Several men whom I did not know greeted me warmly in the smoking-room, and, from their manner, I saw that in my lost years I had evidently not abandoned that institution. They chatted to me about politics and stocks, two subjects upon which I was perfectly ignorant, and I was compelled to exercise considerable tact and ingenuity in order to avoid betraying the astounding blank in my mind.
After a restless hour I drove back westward and called at old Channing’s in Cornwall Gardens in an endeavour to learn Mabel’s address. The colonel was out, but I saw Mrs Channing, and she could, alas! tell me nothing beyond the fact that Mrs Anson and her daughter had been abroad for three years past—where, she knew not. They had drifted apart, she said, and never now exchanged letters.
“Is Mabel married?” I inquired as carelessly as I could, although in breathless eagerness.
“I really don’t know,” she responded. “I have heard some talk of the likelihood of her marrying, but whether she has done so I am unaware.”
“And the man whom rumour designated as her husband? Who was he?” I inquired quickly.
“A young nobleman, I believe.”
“You don’t know his name?”
“No. It was mentioned at the time, but it has slipped my memory. One takes no particular notice of teacup gossip.”
“Well, Mrs Channing,” I said confidently, “I am extremely desirous of discovering the whereabouts of Mabel Anson. I want to see her upon a rather curious matter which closely concerns herself. Can you tell me of any one who is intimate with them?”
“Unfortunately, I know of no one,” she answered. “The truth is, that they left London quite suddenly; and, indeed, it was a matter for surprise that they neither paid farewell visits nor told any of their friends where they were going.”
“Curious,” I remarked—“very curious!”
Then there was, I reflected, apparently some reason for the present tenant at The Boltons refusing the address.
“Yes,” Mrs Channing went on, “it was all very mysterious. Nobody knows the real truth why they went abroad so suddenly and secretly. It was between three and four years ago now, and nothing, to my knowledge, has since been heard of them.”
“Very mysterious,” I responded. “It would seem almost as though they had some reason for concealing their whereabouts.”
“That’s just what lots of people have said. You may depend upon it that there is something very mysterious in it all. We were such very close friends for years, and it is certainly strange that Mrs Anson has never confided in me the secret of her whereabouts.”
I remembered the old colonel’s strange warning on that evening long ago, when I had first met Mabel at his table. What, I wondered, could he know of them to their detriment?
I remained for a quarter of an hour longer. The colonel’s wife was full of the latest tittle-tattle, as the wife of anex-attachéalways is. It is part of the diplomatic training to be always well-informed in the sayings and doings of our neighbours; and as I allowed her to gossip on she revealed to me many things of which I was in ignorance. Nellie, her daughter, had, it appeared, married the son of a Newcastle shipowner a couple of years before, and now lived near Berwick-on-Tweed.
Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I asked whether she knew Miss Wells or the man Hickman, who had been my fellow-guests on that night when I had dined at The Boltons.
“I knew a Miss Wells—a very pronounced old maid, who was a friend of hers,” answered Mrs Channing. “But she caught influenza about a year ago, and died of it. She lived in Edith Villas, Kensington.”
“And Hickman, a fair man, of middle age, with a very ugly face?”
She reflected.
“I have no recollection of ever having met him, or of hearing of him,” she answered. “Was he an intimate friend?”
“I believe so,” I said. Then, finding that she could explain nothing more, I took my leave.
Next day and the next I wandered about London aimlessly and without hope. Mabel and her mother had, for some unaccountable reason, gone abroad and carefully concealed their whereabouts. Had this fact any connexion with the mysterious tragedy that had been enacted at The Boltons? That one thought was ever uppermost in my mind.
A week passed, and I still remained at theGrand, going forth each day, wandering hither and thither, but never entering the club or going to places where I thought it likely that I might be recognised. I could not return to the life at Denbury with that angular woman at the head of my table—the woman who called herself my wife. If I returned I felt that the mystery of it all must drive me to despair, and I should, in a fit of desperation, commit suicide.
I ask any of those who read this strange history of my life, whether they consider themselves capable of remaining calm and tranquil in such circumstances, or of carefully going over all the events in their sequence and considering them with logical reasoning. I tried to do so, but in vain. For hours I sat within the hotel smoking and thinking. I was living an entirely false life, existing in the fear of recognition by unknown friends, and the constant dread that sooner or later I must return to that hated life in Devonshire.
That a hue-and-cry had been raised regarding my disappearance was plain from a paragraph which I read in one of the morning papers about ten days after my departure from Denbury. In the paragraph I was designated as “a financier well known in the City,” and it was there stated that I had left my home suddenly “after betraying signs of insanity,” and had not since been heard of.
“Insanity!” I laughed bitterly as I read those lines supplied by the Exeter correspondent of the Central News. The police had, no doubt, received my description, and were actively on the watch to trace me and restore me to my “friends.”
For nearly a fortnight I had been in hiding, and was now on the verge of desperation. By means of one of the cheques I had taken from Denbury I succeeded in drawing a good round sum without my bankers being aware of my address, and was contemplating going abroad in order to avoid the possibility of being put under restraint as a lunatic, when one evening, in the dusky, sunset, I went forth and wandered down Northumberland Avenue to the Victoria Embankment. In comparison with the life and bustle of the Strand and Trafalgar Square, the wide roadway beside the Thames is always quiet and reposeful. Upon that same pavement over which I now strolled in the direction of the Temple I had, in the days of my blindness, taken my lessons in walking alone. That pavement had been my practice-ground on summer evenings under the tender guidance of poor old Parker, the faithful servant now lost to me. My eyesight had now grown as strong as that of other men. The great blank in my mind was all that distinguished me from my fellows. During those past fourteen days I had been probing a period which I had not lived, and ascertaining by slow degrees the events of my unknown past.
And as I strolled along beneath the plane trees over that broad pavement I recollected that the last occasion I had been there was on that memorable evening when I had lost myself, and was subsequently present at the midnight tragedy in that house of mystery. I gazed around.
In the ornamental gardens, bright with geraniums, some tired Londoners were taking their ease upon the seats provided by that most paternal of all metropolitan institutions, the London County Council; children were shouting as they played at ball and hopscotch, that narrow strip of green being, alas! all they knew of Nature’s beauty outside their world of bricks and mortar. The slight wind stirred the dusty foliage of the trees beneath which I walked, while to the left river-steamers belched forth volumes of black smoke, and barges slowly floated down with the tide. On either side were great buildings, and straight before the dome of St. Paul’s. Over all was that golden, uncertain haze which in central London is called sunset, the light which so quickly turns to cold grey, without any of those glories of crimson and gold which those in the country associate with the summer sun’s decline.
That walk induced within me melancholy thoughts of a wasted life. I loved Mabel Anson—I loved her with all my soul. Now that marriage with her was no longer within the range of possibility I was inert and despairing, utterly heedless of everything. I had, if truth be told, no further desire for life. All joy within me was now blotted out.
At length, at Blackfriars Bridge, I retraced my steps, and some twenty minutes later, as I took my key from the hotel bureau, the clerk handed me a note, addressed to “Burton Lawrence, Esquire,” the fictitious name I had given. It had been delivered by boy-messenger.
Then I was discovered! My heart leapt into my mouth.
I tore open the envelope, and read its contents. They were brief and to the point.
“The undersigned will be obliged,” it ran, “if Mr Burton Lawrence will be present this evening at eight o’clock, in the main-line booking-office of the Brighton Railway, at Victoria Station. An interview is of very pressing importance.”
The note was signed, by that single word which had always possessed such mysterious signification, the word “Avel.”
Hitherto, in my old life long ago, receipt of communications from that mysterious correspondent had caused me much anxiety of mind. I had always feared their advent; now, however, I actually welcomed it, even though it were strange and unaccountable that the unknown writer should know my whereabouts and the name beneath which I had sought to conceal my identity.
I made a hasty dinner in the coffee-room, and went forthwith to Victoria, wondering whom I should meet. The last time I had kept one of those strange appointments on that summer evening long ago in Hyde Park, I had come face to face with the woman I loved. Would that I could meet her now!
I entered the booking-office, searching it with eager eyes. Two lines of persons were taking tickets at the pigeon-holes, while a number of loungers were, like myself, awaiting friends. Beyond, upon the platform, all was bustle as is usual at that hour, when the belated portion of business London is bound for the southern suburbs. From that busy terminus of the West End trains were arriving and departing each minute.
The big illumined clock showed that it was yet five minutes to the hour. Therefore I strolled out upon the platform, lounged around the bookstalls, and presently returned to the spot indicated in the letter.
As I re-entered the booking-office my eager eyes fell upon a figure standing before me—a well-dressed figure, with a face that smiled upon me.
An involuntary cry of surprise escaped my lips. The encounter was sudden and astounding; but in that instant, as I rushed forward to greet the new-comer, I knew myself to be on the verge of a startling and remarkable discovery.