CHAPTER XXI.
“Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,That time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
“Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,That time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
“Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,That time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
“Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
That ghastly idea mooted by Cuthbert Ramsay—the idea of an unsatisfied hatred still hovering like a bird of prey over the heads of Juanita and her child, ready to make its deadly swoop in the hour that should see her most helpless and unprotected—gave a new impetus to Theodore’s mind, and he applied himself again to the apparently hopeless endeavour to find the motive of the murder and the person of the murderer.
As an initial step he invited Mr. Churton to dine with him at his chambers, entertained that gentleman with a well-chosen little dinner sent in from a famous tavern in the Strand, and a bottle of unexceptionable port after dinner; and by this innocent means got the detective into an expansive frame of mind, and induced him to discuss the Cheriton murder in all its bearings.
The result of the long evening’s talk differed in hardly any point from the opinion which Mr. Churton had formulated at Cheriton. The motive of the murder must be looked for in some past wrong, or fancied wrong, inflicted upon the murderer. And again Mr. Churton returned to his point that there was a woman at the bottom of it.
“Do you mean that a woman fired the shot?”
“Decidedly not. I mean that a woman was the motive power. Women are not given to avenging their wrongs with their own hands. They will instigate the men who love them to desperate crimes—unconsciously perhaps—for they are the first to howl when the crime has been committed, and the lover’s neck is in danger. But jealousy is the most powerful factor of all, and I take it jealousy was at the bottom of the Cheriton crime. I take it that some intrigue of Sir Godfrey’s youth was at the root of the matter.”
“Strange as you may consider such a belief, Mr. Churton, I am inclined to think that Sir Godfrey’s youth was innocent of intrigues—that he never loved any woman except my cousin, whom he adored from the time he was eighteen, when she was a lovely childof eleven. It was a very romantic attachment, and the kind of attachment which keeps a man clear of low associations.”
“You and Lord Cheriton tell me the same story, sir,” said the detective, with a touch of impatience; “but if this immaculate young man never injured anybody, how do you account for that bullet?”
“It is unaccountable, except upon a far-fetched hypothesis.”
“What may that be?”
“That the act of vengeance—though striking Godfrey Carmichael—was aimed at Lord Cheriton; that the blow was meant to ruin his daughter’s life, and by ricochet strike him to the heart. I think we have spoken of this possibility before to-night.”
After that evening with Churton, Theodore made up his mind that there was no assistance to be looked for from this quarter. The detective had exhausted his means of investigation, and had nothing further to suggest. He was too practical a man to waste time or thought upon speculative theories. Theodore saw, therefore, that if he were to pursue the subject further he must think and work for himself.
After considering the question from every possible point of view, he became the more established in the idea that Godfrey Carmichael had been the scapegoat of another man’s sin, the vicarious victim whose death was to strike at a guilty life. Of his youth it was easy to know all that there was to be known. He had lived in the sight of his fellow-men, a young man of too much social importance to be able to hide any youthful indiscretions or wrong-doing. But what of that other and so much longer life? What of the early struggles of the self-made man? What of the history of James Dalbrook in those long years of bachelor life in London, when he was slowly working his way to the front? Might not there have been some hidden sin in that life, some sin dark enough to awaken a sleepless vengeance, a malignity which should descend upon him in the day of peace and prosperity like a thunderbolt from a clear and quiet sky?
A man who marries at forty years of age has generally some kind of history before his marriage; and it was in that history Theodore told himself he must look for the secret of Godfrey Carmichael’s death. He was loyal to his kinsman and his friend; he was inspired by no prurient curiosity, no envious inclination to belittle the great man; he was prompted solely by his desire to unearth the hidden foe, and to provide for the safety of Juanita’s future life.
Meditating upon his past intercourse with Lord Cheriton, and upon every familiar conversation which he was able to recall, he was surprised to find how very little his kinsman had ever related of his London life, before the time when he took silk and married arich wife. His allusions to that earlier period had been of the briefest. He had shown none of that egotistical pleasure which most successful men feel in talking of their struggles, and the rosy dawn of fame, those first triumphs, small perhaps in themselves, but the after-taste of which is sweeter in the mouth than the larger victories of the flood-tide. He had never talked of any affairs of the heart, any of those lighter flirtations and unfinished romances which elderly men love to recall. His history, so far as it could be judged by his conversation, had been a blank.
Either the man must have been a legal machine, a passionless piece of human clay, caring for nothing but professional achievement, in those eighteen years of manhood between his call to the Bar and his marriage, or he had lived a life which he could not afford to talk about. He was either of a duller clay than his fellow-men, or he had a hidden history.
Now, as it was hardly possible that James Dalbrook, judged from either a psychological or a physiological standpoint, could have been dull and cold, and plodding, and passionless, at any period of his career, there remained the inference that he had a secret history.
Living under the very roof that had sheltered his cousin in the greater part of his professional career, Theodore Dalbrook arrived at this conclusion.
What kind of a life had he lived, that young barrister, briefless and friendless at the outset, whose name was eventually to become a power, a weight bringing down the judicial scale on the side of victory, just as Archer’s riding was supposed to secure the winning of a race. How had he lived in those early years, when the fight was all before him? What friends had he made for himself, and what enemies? What love, or what hate, had agitated his existence?
The investigator could only approach the question in the most commonplace manner. It was nearly a quarter of a century since James Dalbrook had been a tenant of that ground-floor set, above which Theodore was pacing up and down in the summer dusk. He had to find some one who remembered him at that time.
It would not be his present laundress, a buxom matron of about five and thirty, who had never been known to any present inhabitant of Ferret Court without the encumbrance of a baby in arms, or a baby at the breast. As fast as one baby was disposed of, there was another coming forward to take its place. She always brought her baby with her, and left it about in obscure corners, like an umbrella. It was always of the order of infant designated good; that is to say, it was not a squalling baby. There were some of Mrs. Armstrong’s clients who suspected her of keeping it in a semi-narcotizedcondition in the interests of her profession; but when this practice was hinted at the matron referred to the necessities of teething, and hoped she did not require to be reminded of her duty as a mother.
This good person brought in the lighted lamp while Theodore was pacing up and down the narrow limits of his sitting-room. She placed the lamp on the table, looked inquiringly at her employer, and then retired, only to return with the tea-tray, which she arranged lingeringly. She was a talkative person, with an active intellect, and it irked her to leave the room without any scrap of conversation, were it only an inquiry about the postman, or a casual remark upon the weather.
Nothing being forthcoming from Mr. Dalbrook, she withdrew to the door, but paused upon the threshold and dropped a curtsey.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have a storm to-night, sir,” she said.
The fear was a thing of the moment, inspired by her desire to talk.
“Do you think so, Mrs. Armstrong?”
“I do, indeed, sir. It couldn’t be that ’eavy if there wasn’t thunder in the air.”
“Perhaps not,” replied Theodore, indifferently. “Ah! by the way, how long have you looked after these chambers?”
“From three years before I was married, sir.”
“Is that long?”
“Lor’, yes, sir; I should think it was! Why, my Joseph was thirteen on his last birthday!”
“Let me see; that would mean about seventeen years, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I suppose you knew nothing about the chambers before that time.”
“I won’t say that, sir. I’ve known them more or less ever since I could run alone. Mother looked after them before me. It was only when the rheumatics took such firm hold of her”—this was said as if Theodore were thoroughly posted in the case—“that mother gave up. She had done for the gentlemen in this house for over twenty years; though when she married father she never thought to have to do such work as this, he being a master carpenter and cabinet-maker with a nice business—and she’d been brought up different, and had more education than any ofusever had.”
“Then your mother must have known this house when Mr. Dalbrook had the ground floor—the Mr. Dalbrook who is now Lord Cheriton,” said Theodore, cutting short this biographical matter.
“I should think she did, sir. Many’s the time I’ve heard her talk of him. He was just like you, sir, in his ways, as far as I can gather—very quiet and very studious. She waited upon him for nearly twelve years, so she ought to be a judge of his character.”
“I should like to have a chat with your mother some of these days, Mrs. Armstrong.”
“Would you, sir? I’m sure she’d be delighted. She loves talking over old times. She’s none of your Radicals, that are all for changing things, like my husband. She looks up to her superiors, and she feels quite proud of having done for Lord Cheriton when he was just like any other young gentleman in Ferret Court. Any time you’d like to step round to our place, sir, mother would be happy to see you. She’d be glad to wait upon you, but she’s crippled with the rheumatics, and it’s as much as she can do to get upstairs of a night and downstairs of a morning.”
“I’ll call upon her to-morrow afternoon, if that will be convenient.”
“No fear of that, sir. Shall I look round at four o’clock and show you where she lives, sir? It’s not above five minutes’ walk.”
“If you please. I shall be very much obliged.”
Gadbolt’s Lane was one of the obscurest alleys between the Temple and St. Bride’s Church, but it was as well known in the locality as if it had been Regent Street. Thither Mrs. Armstrong conducted her employer on a sultry June afternoon, and admitted him with her own private key into one of the narrowest houses he had ever seen—a house of three stories, with one window in each story, and with a tiny street door squeezed in between the parlour window and the next house—a house which, if it had stood alone, would have been a tower. Upon the narrow street door appeared a wide brass plate inscribed with the name of “J. W. Armstrong, plumber,” and in the parlour window were exhibited various indications of the plumbing trade. On a smaller brass plate just below the knocker appeared the modest legend, “Miss Mobley, ladies’ own materials made up.”
The little parlour behind the plumber’s emblems was very close and stuffy upon this midsummer afternoon, for Mrs. Dugget’s complaint necessitated a fire in season and out of season; but it was also spotlessly clean, and preparations had evidently been made for an afternoon tea of an especially delicate character. There was a rack of such thin, dry toast as Mrs. Armstrong’s employer affected, and there was a choice pat of Aylesbury butter, set forth upon the whitest of table-cloths, and flanked by a glass jar of jam, the glass receptacle being of that ornate character which dazzles the purchaser into comparative indifference as to the quality of the jam;just as admiring man, caught by outward beauty, is apt to shut his eyes to the lack of more lasting charms in the way of temper and character.
“Mother thought perhaps you’d honour her by taking a cup of tea this warm afternoon, sir,” said Mrs. Armstrong, when Theodore had seated himself opposite the invalid, “and then you can have your little talk over old times while I look after Armstrong’s supper. He’ll eat any bit I choose to give him for his dinner, and there’s days he don’t get no dinner at all, but he always looks for something tasty for supper, don’t he, mother?”
Mrs. Dugget acknowledged this trait in her son-in-law’s character, and Theodore having graciously accepted her hospitality, Mrs. Armstrong poured out the tea, and waited upon the distinguished guest, and, having done this, withdrew to her domestic duties. She was visible in front of the window five minutes afterwards, setting out with a basket over her arm, evidently in quest of the “something tasty” that was needful to her husband’s well-being.
“Your daughter tells me that you remember my cousin, Lord Cheriton, when he was Mr. Dalbrook,” said Theodore, when he and the old woman were alone together, except for the presence of a very familiar black cat, which pushed its chilly nose into Theodore’s hand, and rubbed its sleek fur against Theodore’s legs, with an air of slavish adulation.
“It isn’t everybody that Tom takes to,” said Mrs. Dugget, touched by her favourite’s conduct. “He’s a rare judge of character, is Tom. I’ve had him from a kitten, and his mother before him. Yes, sir, I ought to remember his lordship, seeing that I waited upon him for over eleven years; and a quiet gentleman he was to attend upon, giving next to no trouble, and never using bad language, or coming home the worse for drink, as I’ve known a gentleman behave in that very set.”
“Did he live in his chambers all that time?”
“Well, sir, nominally he did, but actually he didn’t. He had his bedroom and his bath-room, just as you have; and the rooms was furnished pretty comfortable, and everything about them was very neat, for he was uncommonly particular, was Mr. Dalbrook; and he was always there of a day, and all day long, except when he was at the law courts, for there never was a more persevering gentleman. But after the first three years I can’t say that helivedin Ferret Court. He came there by nine or ten o’clock every morning; and sometimes he stayed till ten o’clock at night, and sometimes he left as early as five in the afternoon; but he didn’t live there no more after the third year, when he was beginning to get on a bit. There was his rooms, and there was nothing altered, except that he took away his dressing-case and a good many of his clothes; but there was everything left that he wanted for his toilet,and all in apple-pie order for him to fall back upon his old ways at any time. Only, as I said before, he didn’t live there no longer; and instead of having his dinner in his own room at seven o’clock, he never took anything more than a biscuit and a glass of sherry, or a brandy and soda.”
“Did this change in his habits come about suddenly?”
“Yes, sir, it did; without an hour’s warning. I comes to his rooms one morning and finds that his bed hasn’t been slept in, and I finds a little bit of a pencil note from him to say that he would be stopping out of town for a few days. He was away over a fortnight, and from that time to the end of my service in Ferret Court, he never spent another night there.”
“He had taken lodgings out of town, I conclude? I suppose you knew his other address?”
“No, sir, he never told me where his home was, for of course he must have had a home somewhere. No man would be a waif and stray for all those years—above all, such a steady-going gentleman as Mr. Dalbrook. I’ve heard other gentlemen accuse him of being a hermit. ‘One never sees you nowhere,’ they says. ‘You’re as steady as Old Time,’ they says. And so he was; but he was very secret with his steadiness.”
“Had you any idea where that second home of his was—in what part of the suburbs? It could not have been very far from London, since you say he came to his chambers before ten o’clock every morning.”
“It was oftener nine than ten, sir,” said Mrs. Dugget.
She paused a little before replying to his question, watching him with a sly smile as he caressed the obtrusive cat. She had her own notions as to the motive of his curiosity. He had expectations from Lord Cheriton, perhaps, and he wanted to discover if there were anything in the background of his kinsman’s history which was likely to interfere with the fruition of his mercenary hopes.
“It was a good many years after Mr. Dalbrook left off sleeping at his chambers that I made a sort of discovery,” she said; “and I knew my place too well to take any advantage of that discovery. But still I had my suspicions, and I believe they were not far off the truth.”
“What was the nature of your discovery?”
“Oh, well, you see, sir, it wasn’t much to talk about, only it set me thinking. It was two or three years before Mr. Dalbrook left Ferret Court and went to that first floor set in King’s Bench Walk, but he was beginning to be a great man, and he had more work than he could do, slave as hard as he might; and he did slave, I can tell you, sir. His rooms in Ferret Court were very shabby—they hadn’t had a bit of paint or a pail of whitewash for I don’t know how long;so, just before the Long Vacation, he says to me, ‘I’m going to get these rooms done up, Mrs. Dugget, while I’m out of town. I’ve got a estimate from a party in Holborn, and he’s to paint the wainscot and clear coal the ceiling, and do the whole thing for nine pounds seven and eightpence, in a workmanlike manner. You’ll please to clean up after him, and do away with all the waste paper and rubbish, and get everything tidy before November.”
Mrs. Dugget paused, and refreshed herself with half a cup of tea, and apologized for the obtrusiveness of the cat.
“I hope you don’t object to cats, sir.”
Theodore smiled, reflecting that any man who objected to cats would have fled from that stuffy parlour before now.
“No, I am rather fond of them, as an inferior order of dog. Well, now, as to this discovery of yours, Mrs. Dugget?”
“I’m coming to it as fast as I can, sir. You must know that there was a lot of waste paper in one of the closets beside the fireplace, and you are aware how roomy those closets in Ferret Court are. I never held with burning waste paper, first because it’s dangerous with regard to fire, and next because they’ll give you three shillings a sack for it at some of the paper mills; so I had always emptied the waste-paper baskets into this closet, which was made no other use of, and the bottom of the closet was chock-full of old letters, envelopes, pamphlets, and such like. So I took my sack, and I sat down on the floor and filled it. Now, as I was putting in the papers by handfuls—taking my time over it, for the painters wasn’t coming till the following Monday, and all my gentlemen was away on their holidays—I was struck by seeing such a number of envelopes addressed to the same name—
‘J. Danvers, Esq.,‘Myrtle Cottage,‘Camberwell Grove.’
How did Mr. Dalbrook come to have all those envelopes belonging to Mr. Danvers? There must have been letters inside the envelopes, and what business had he with Mr. Danvers’s letters?”
“They may have been letters bearing upon some case on which he was engaged,” said Theodore.
“So they might, sir; but wouldhehave the letters?” asked the laundress shrewdly. “Wouldn’t that be the solicitor’s business?”
“You are right, Mrs. Dugget. I see you have profited by your experience in the Temple.”
“I had the curiosity to look at the post-marks on those envelopes, sir. There was over a hundred of ’em, I should think, some whole, and some torn across, and the post-marks told me that they spread over years. They most of ’em looked like tradesmen’s envelopes,and the Camberwell post-mark was on a good many of ’em. That closet hadn’t been cleared out for eight or nine years, to my knowledge, and those envelopes went back for the best part of that time, and the longer I looked at them the more I wondered who Mr. Danvers was.”
“And did you come to any conclusion at last?”
“Well, sir, I had my own idea about it, but it isn’t my place to say what that idea was.”
“Come, come, Mrs. Dugget, you have no employer now, and you are beholden to no one. You are a free agent, and have a perfect right to give expression to your opinion.”
“If I thought it would go no further, sir.”
“It shall go no further.”
“Very well then, sir, to be candid, I thought that James Dalbrook and J. Danvers, Esq., were the same person, and that Mr. Dalbrook had been living in Camberwell Grove under an assumed name.”
“Would not that seem a very curious thing for a professional man in Mr. Dalbrook’s position to do?” inquired Theodore, gravely.
“It might seem curious to you, sir, but I’ve seen a good deal of professional gentlemen in my time, and it didn’t strike me as very uncommon. Gentlemen have their own reasons for what they do, and the more particular they are from a professional point of view the more convenient they may find it to make a little alteration in their names now and again.”
Mrs. Dugget looked at him with a significant shrewdness, which gave her the air of a female Mephistopheles, a creature deeply versed in all things evil.
“Did your curiosity prompt you to try and verify your suspicions?” he asked.
The old woman looked at him searchingly before she answered, as if trying to discover what value there might be for him in any information she had it in her power to give or to withhold. So far she had been carried along by her inherent love of gossip, stimulated by the wish to stand well with her daughter’s employer, and perhaps with a view to such small amenities as a pound of tea or a bottle of whisky. But at this point something in Theodore’s earnest manner suggested to her that her knowledge of his kinsman’s life might have a marketable value, and she therefore became newly reticent.
“It doesn’t become me to talk about a gentleman like Mr. Dalbrook, your namesake and blood relation, too, sir,” she said, folding her rheumatic hands meekly. “I’m afraid I’ve made too free with my tongue already.”
Theodore did not answer her immediately. He took a letter-case from his breast-pocket, and slowly and deliberately extracted twocrisp bank-notes from one of the divisions. These he opened and spread calmly and carefully on the table, smoothing out their crisp freshness, which crackled under his hand.
There is something very pleasant in the aspect of a new bank-note; money created expressly, as it were, for the first owner; virgin wealth, pure and uncontaminated by the dealings of the multitude. These were only five-pound notes, it is true, the lowest in the scale of English paper-money—in the eye of a millionaire infinitesimal as the grains of sand on the sea-shore—yet to Mrs. Dugget those two notes lying on the table in front of her suggested vast wealth. It is doubtful if she had ever seen two notes together in the whole of her previous experience. Her largest payment was a quarter’s rent, her largest receipt had been a quarter’s wages. She had managed to save a little money in the course of her laborious days, but her savings had been accumulated in sovereigns and half-sovereigns, which had been promptly transferred to the savings bank. Bank-notes to her mind were the symbols of surplus wealth.
“Now, I am not going to beat about the bush, Mrs. Dugget,” said Theodore, with a matter-of-fact air. “I have a great respect for my kinsman, Lord Cheriton, who has been a kind friend to me. You may be assured, therefore, that if I am curious about his past life, I mean him no harm. I have reasons of my own, which it is not convenient for me to explain, for wanting to know all about his early struggles, his friends, and his enemies. I feel perfectly sure that you followed up your discovery of those envelopes—that you took the trouble to find Myrtle Cottage, and to ascertain the kind of people who lived there.” Her face told him that he was right. “If you choose to be frank with me, and tell me all you can, those two five-pound notes are very much at your service. If you prefer to hold your tongue, I can only wish you good afternoon, and try to make my discoveries unaided, which will not be very easy after a lapse of over twenty years.”
“I don’t want to keep any useful information from you, sir, provided you’ll promise not to let anything I may tell you get to Lady Cheriton’s ears. I shouldn’t like to make unhappiness between man and wife.”
“I promise that Lady Cheriton shall not be made unhappy by any indiscretion of mine.”
“That’s all I care about, sir,” said Mrs. Dugget, piously, with her keen old eye upon the notes, “and being sure of that, I don’t mind owning that I did take the trouble to follow up the address upon the envelope. Now, when a gentleman like Mr. Dalbrook—a gentleman as always pays his way regular, and stands high in his profession—when such a gentleman as that changes his name, you may be sure there’s a lady in the case. If you take up a paper,sir, and happen to glance at a divorce case, promiscuous, as I do sometimes when my son-in-law leaves hisTelegraphor hisEcholying about—you’ll find that the gentleman who runs away with the lady always changes his name first thing—whether he and the lady go to an hotel, or takes lodgings, or go on the Continent—he always takes another name. I don’t think the change does him much good, for wherever he goes people seem to know all about him, and come out with their knowledge in court directly it’s wanted—but it seems as if he must always act so, and act so he does.”
Theodore submitted to this disquisition in silence, but he touched the notes lightly with his fingers and made them crackle, by way of stimulus to Mrs. Dugget’s intellect.
“I felt sure if Mr. Dalbrook had been living at Myrtle Cottage under the name of Danvers there was a lady mixed up in it, and, being in the Long Vacation, when I knew he generally went abroad, I thought I would try and satisfy myself about him. I thought I should feel more comfortable in waiting upon him when I knew the worst. And then Camberwell Grove was such a little way off. It would be just a nice outing for me of a summer evening; so what did I do one lovely warm afternoon but take my tea a little earlier than usual, and trot off to the corner of Lancaster Place, where I wait for a Waterloo ’bus coming sauntering along the Strand as if time was made for slaves, and there was no such things as loop-lines or trains to be caught. I hadn’t no train to catch, so I didn’t mind the sauntering and the dawdling and the taking up and setting down. I had all the summer evening before me when I got out at the Green and made my way to the Grove. It’s a beautiful romantic place, Camberwell Grove, sir. I don’t know whether you know it, but if you do I’m sure you’ll own that there ain’t a prettier neighbourhood near London. Twenty years ago they used still to show you the garden where George Barnwell murdered his uncle, but I dare say that’s been done away with by now. It took me a good time to find Myrtle Cottage, for it was one of the smallest houses in the Grove, and it stood back in a pretty little garden, and there was nothing on the gate to tell if it was Myrtle or otherwise. But I did find it at last, thanks to a young housemaid who was standing at the gate, talking to a grocer’s lad. The grocer’s lad made off when he saw me, and for the first few minutes the girl was inclined to be disagreeable; but she came round very quickly, and I dare say she was glad to have some one to talk to on that solitary summer evening. ‘Cook’s out for her holiday,’ she says, ‘and I can’t stop in the house alone.’ And then we got talking, and after we’d talked a bit standing at the gate, she asked me into the garden, where there was a long narrow grass plot, screened off from the high road by two horse-chestnut trees and some laburnums, and there wassome garden chairs and a table on the grass, and the young woman asked me to sit down. She’d got her work-basket out there, and she’d been making herself an apron. ‘I can’t bear the house of a summer evening,’ she says, ‘it gives me the horrors.’ Well, we talked of her master and mistress, as was natural. She’d lived with them over a twelvemonth, and it was a pretty good place, but very dull, and the missus had a temper, and was dreadfully particular, and expected things as nice as if she had ten servants instead of two, and was very mean into the bargain, and seemed afraid of spending money. ‘I shouldn’t be so particular, if I was her,’ the girl said, and then she told me that she knew things wasn’t all right, though they seemed a very respectable couple, and the lady went to church regularly.”
“What made her suspect that things were wrong?” asked Theodore, Mrs. Dugget having paused at this point of her narrative.
“Oh, sir, servants always know! They can’t live six months in a house without finding out how the land lies. They’ve got so little to think of, you see, except their masters and mistresses. You can’t wonder if they’re always on the watch and the listen, meaning no harm, poor things. If you was shut up in a stuffy little kitchen all day, never seeing no one but the lads from the tradespeople for two or three minutes at a time, you’d watch and you’d listen. It’s human nature. People don’t like reading servants, and they don’t like gadding servants; so they must put up with servants that think a good deal of what’s going on round them. The housemaid told me she was sure from the solitary way Mr. and Mrs. Danvers lived that there was a screw loose somewhere. ‘No one never comes near them,’ she said, ‘and she never goes nowhere except for a walk with him. No visitors, no friends. I can’t think how she bears her life. She hasn’t a party-gown, even. If anybody asked her to a party she couldn’t go. When he took her abroad last month she was all in a fluster and excitement, just like a child, or like a prisoner that’s going to be let out of prison. She shook hands with cook and me when she said good-bye, and that isn’t like her. “I feel so happy, Jane,” she says, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” No more I think she did. She looked quite wild with pleasure, and quite young too in her new bonnet, although in a general way she looks older than him.’ And then the girl told me how fond she was of him, although she showed her temper now and then, even to him. Not often, the girl said, and any quarrel with him threw her into a dreadful way afterwards, and she would lie awake and sob all night long. The girl had heard her, for it was a trumpery little house, though it was pretty to look at, and the walls were very thin. I could see with my own eyes that it wasn’t much of a house, a sort of dressed-up cottage, smothered with creepers up to the roof. It looked pretty and countrified after the Temple, andI could understand that Mr. Dalbrook liked living in such a lovely place as Camberwell Grove.”
“Did you find out what the lady was like?” asked Theodore.
“You may be sure I tried to do that, sir. How could I help being interested in a lady that had such an influence over one of my gentlemen? The girl told me that Mrs. Danvers was one of the ‘has beens.’ She had been handsome, perhaps, once upon a time; and she might have had a fine figure once upon a time; but she had neither face nor figure now. She was pale and careworn, and she was very thin. She didn’t do anything to set herself off either, like other ladies of five and thirty. She wore the same merino gown month after month, and she had only one silk gown in her wardrobe. She was always neat and nice, like a lady; but she didn’t seem to care much how she looked. She told the girl once that she and Mr. Danvers would be better off by and by, and then all things would be different with them. ‘I am only waiting for those happier days,’ she says; but the girl fancied she would be an old woman before those days came.”
“Were there any children?”
“I could not find out for certain. The girl fancied from chance words she had overheard that there had been a baby, but that it had been sent away, and that this was a grievance between them, and came up when they quarrelled, which was not often, as I said before. Altogether I left Camberwell Grove feeling very sorry for the lady who was called Mrs. Danvers, and I thought it was a great pity if Mr. Dalbrook wanted to make a home for himself he couldn’t have managed it better. I made great friends with Jane, the housemaid, before I left that garden, and I asked her when she had an evening out to come and take a cup of tea with me; and if she could get leave to go to the theatre, my youngest son, who was living at home then, could take her, along with my daughter, who was then unmarried and in service in New Bridge Street. The young woman came once, about Christmas time, and she told me things were just the same as they had been at Myrtle Cottage. She talked very freely about Mr. and Mrs. Danvers over her tea, but she had no idea that he was beknown to me, or that he was a barrister with chambers in the Temple. She thought he was something in the City. I asked her if it was Mr. Danvers who was mean and kept his lady short of money; but she thought not. She thought it was Mrs. Danvers that had a kind of mania for saving, for she was quite put out if Mr. Danvers brought her home a present that cost a few pounds. It seemed as if they were saving up for some purpose—for they used to talk to each other of the money he was putting by, and it was plain they were looking forward to a better house and a happier kind of life. Jane thought that either she had a husband hidden away somewhere—in a lunatic asylum, perhaps—or he had another wife.”
Mrs. Dugget stopped to replenish the thrifty little fire with a very small scoopful of coals, during which operation the sleek black cat leaped upon her back and balanced himself upon her shoulders while she bent over the grate.
“Well, sir, that was Jane’s first and last visit. She got married all of a sudden before Lady-day, and she went to live in the country, where her husband was postman in her native village, and I never see no more of her. I went to Camberwell Grove again in the Long Vacation, when I knew Mr. Dalbrook was away, but I found only an old woman in the house as caretaker, stone deaf, and disagreeable into the bargain. Mr. Dalbrook moved into King’s Bench Walk the following year, and less than six months after that I saw his marriage in the papers; and his clerk told me he had married a very rich young lady, and was going to buy an estate in the country. I went to have another look at the cottage soon after Mr. Dalbrook’s marriage, and I found the garden-gate locked, and a board up to say that the house was to be let unfurnished; and that, sir, is all I could ever find out about the lady called Mrs. Danvers.”
“And this history of the home in Camberwell Grove is all you ever knew about Mr. James Dalbrook’s life outside the chambers in Ferret Court.”
“Yes, sir, that is all I ever heard, promiscuously or otherwise.”
“Well, Mrs. Dugget, you have been frank with me, and you have earned my little present,” said Theodore, handing her the two notes, which her old fingers touched tremulously in a rapture that was too much for words. It was with an effort that she faltered out her thanks for his generosity, which, she protested, she had never “looked for.”
Theodore walked back towards the Temple deep in thought; indeed so troubled and perplexed were his thoughts that upon approaching Ferret Court he stopped short, and instead of going straight to his chambers, turned aside and went to the Gardens, where he walked up and down the same gravel path for an hour, pondering upon that picture of the hidden home in Camberwell Grove, conjured up before him by the loquacious laundress. Yes, he could imagine that obscure existence almost as if he had seen it with his bodily eyes. He could fancy the solitary home where never kinsman or familiar friend crossed the threshold; a home destitute of all home ties and homely associations; a home never smiled upon by the parson of the parish; cut off from all local interests, identified with nothing, a mystery among the commonplace dwellings around and about it; a subject for furtive observation from the neighbours. He could fancy those two lonely lives preying upon each other, too closely united for peaceful union; the womantoo utterly dependent upon the man; she feeling her dependence a degradation; he feeling her helplessness a burden. He could picture them, loving each other, perhaps, passionately, jealously to the last, and yet weary of each other, worn out and weighed down by the narrowness of a life walled off from the rest of the world and all its changeful interests and widening sympathies. And then he saw the picture in still darker colours, as it might have been ere that unknown figure faded from the canvas. He thought of the ambitious, successful barrister, heart-sick at the fetters which he had fastened upon his life, tired of his faded mistress, seeing all gates open to him were he but free to pass them; still living apart from the world, at a time of life when all the social instincts are at their highest development, when a man loves the society of his fellow-men, the friction of crowds, the sound of his own voice, and every social tribute that the world can offer to his talents and his success. He saw his kinsman galled by the chain which love and honour had hung about him, loathing his bondage, longing for liberty—saw him with the possibility of a brilliant marriage suddenly offering itself to him, a lovely girl ready to throw herself into his arms, a fortune at his feet, and the keen ambition of a self-made man goading him like a spur. How did it end? Did death set him free—death, the loosener of all bonds? Or did his mistress sacrifice herself and her broken heart to his welfare, and of her own accord release him? There are women capable of such sacrifices. It would seem that his disentanglement, however it came about, had been perfect of its kind; for no rumour of a youthful intrigue, no scandal about a cast-off mistress had ever clouded the married life of James Dalbrook. Even in Cheriton village, where the very smallest nucleus in the way of fact was apt to swell into a gigantic scandal, even at Cheriton nobody had ever hinted at indiscretions in the earlier years of the local magnate.
And then Theodore Dalbrook asked himself the essential question: What bearing, if any, had this episode of his kinsman’s life upon the murder of Juanita’s husband? What dark and vengeful figure lurked in the background of that common story of dishonourable love? An outraged husband, a brother, a father? That obscure life apart from friends and acquaintances would show that some great wrong had been done, some sacred tie had been broken. Only a sinful union so hides its furtive happiness—only a deep sense of degradation will reconcile a woman to banishment from the society of her own sex.
Whether that forsaken mistress were dead or living there might lurk in her sad history the elements of tragedy, the motive for a ghastly revenge; and on this account the story possessed a grim fascination for Theodore Dalbrook. He lay awake the greater part of the night thinking in a fitful way of that illicit ménage in theunfashionable suburb—the suburb whose very existence is unknown to society. He fell asleep long after the sun was up, only to dream confusedly of a strange woman who was now James Dalbrook’s lawful wife—and now his victim—and whose face had vague resemblances to other faces, and who was and was not half a dozen other women in succession.
He walked to Camberwell on the following afternoon, surprised at the strange world through which he passed on his way there, the teeming, busy, noisy world—the world which makes such a hard fight for life. The Grove itself, after that bustling, seething road, seemed a place in which nightingales might have warbled, and laughing girls hidden from their lovers in the summer dusk. The very atmosphere of decay from a better state was soothing. There were trees still, and gardens, and here and there pretty, old-fashioned houses; and in a long narrow garden between two larger houses he found Myrtle Cottage. There was a board up, and the neglected garden indicated that the cottage had been a long time without a tenant.
There was a policeman’s wife living in it, with a colony of small children, in the cotton-pinafore stage of existence, and with noses dependent upon maternal supervision, so much so that scarcely had the matron attended to one small snub than her attention was called off to another, which gave a distracted air to all her conversation.
She took Mr. Dalbrook over the house, and expatiated upon the damp walls, and the utter incompetence of the cistern and pipes to meet the exigencies of a family, which was the more to be regretted on the ground that the landlord declined to do anything in the way of repairs, as he intended to pull the house down in a few years with a view to making better use of the ground.
“And indeed that’s about all it’s fit for,” said the policeman’s wife. “It ain’t fit for anybody tolivein.”
The rooms had even a more desolate look than rooms in empty houses usually have, in consequence of this long neglect. The cottage had been empty for two years and a half, long enough for the damp to make hideous blotches upon all the walls, and trace discoloured maps of imaginary continents upon all the ceilings; long enough for the spiders to weave their webs in all the corners, for rust to eat deep into the iron grates, and for dust and dirt to obscure every window.
Theodore stood in the room which had once been a drawing-room, and which boasted of a wide French window looking out upon a lawn, with a large weeping-ash directly in front of the window, and much too near for airiness or health, a melancholy-looking tree in which Theodore thought Mrs. Danvers might have found a symbol of her own life, as she stood at the window and looked at those dull drooping branches against a background of ivy-covered wall.