CHAPTER XXII.
“And if we do but watch the hour,There never yet was human powerWhich could evade, if unforgiven,The patient search and vigil longOf him who treasures up a wrong.”
“And if we do but watch the hour,There never yet was human powerWhich could evade, if unforgiven,The patient search and vigil longOf him who treasures up a wrong.”
“And if we do but watch the hour,There never yet was human powerWhich could evade, if unforgiven,The patient search and vigil longOf him who treasures up a wrong.”
“And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.”
Theodore made a tour of the little garden in the summer sundown. It was very small, but its age gave it a superiority over most suburban gardens. There were trees, and hardy perennials that had been growing year after year, blooming and fading, with very little care on the part of successive tenants. The chief charm of the garden to some people might have been its seclusion. There was no possibility of being “overlooked” in this narrow pleasaunce, and overlooking is the curse of the average garden attached to the average villa. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, taking their ease, or working in their garden in the cool of the evening, are uncomfortably conscious of Mr. and Mrs. Smith eyeing them from the drawing-room windows of next door.
Here the high wall on one side, and the tall horse-chestnuts on the other, made a perfect solitude; but seclusion on a very small scale is apt to merge into dulness, and it must be owned that the garden of Myrtle Cottage at sundown was about as melancholy a place as the mind of man could imagine. Theodore, contemplating it from the standpoint of Mrs. Danvers’ history, her friendlessness, her sense of degradation, wondered that she could have endured that dismal atmosphere for a single summer. And she had lived there for many years; lived there till weariness must have become loathing.
“God help her, poor soul!” he said to himself. “How she must have abhorred that weeping ash! How it must have tortured her to see the leaves go and come again year after year, and to know that neither spring nor autumn would better her fate!”
He took down the address of the agent who had the letting of the house, and left with the intention of seeing him that evening if possible. The landlord was a personage resembling the Mikado, or the Grand Llama, and was not supposed to be accessible to the human vision, certainly not in relation to his house property. The policeman’s wife averred that “him and the De Crespignys owned half Camberwell.”
The agent was represented to live over his office, which was in no less famous a locality than Camberwell Grove, and was likely, therefore, to oblige Mr. Dalbrook by seeing him upon a business matter after business hours. It was not much past seven when Theodore entered the office, where he found the agent extending his business hours so far as to be still seated at his desk, deep in the revision of a catalogue. He was a very genial agent, and he put aside the catalogue immediately, asked Theodore to be seated, and wheeled round his office chair to talk to him.
“Myrtle Cottage. Yes, a charming little box, convenient and compact, a bijou residence for a bachelor with a small establishment. Such a nice garden, too, retired and rustic. If you were thinking of taking the property on a repairing lease, the rent would be very moderate, really a wonderfully advantageous occasion for any one wanting a pretty secluded place.”
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Adkins, I am not thinking of taking that house or any house. I have come to ask you a few questions about a former tenant, and I shall take it as a favour if you will be so good as to answer them.”
The agent looked disappointed, but he put his pen behind his ear, crossed his legs, and prepared himself for conversation.
“Do you mean a recent tenant?” he asked.
“No; the gentleman I am interested in left Myrtle Cottage twenty years ago—nearer five and twenty years, perhaps. His name was Danvers.”
The agent gave a suppressed whistle, and looked at his interlocutor with increasing interest.
“Oh, you wanted to know something about Mr. Danvers. Was he an acquaintance of yours?”
“He was.”
“Humph! He is more than old enough to be your father. He might almost be your grandfather. Do you know him intimately?”
“As intimately as a man of my age can know a man of his age.”
“And position,” added the agent, looking at his visitor shrewdly.
Theodore returned the look.
“I don’t quite follow your meaning,” he said.
“Come, now, sir, if you know anything at all about the gentleman in question you must know that his name is not Danvers, and never was Danvers; that he took Myrtle Cottage under an assumed name, and lived there for nearly ten years under that assumed name; that he never let any of his friends or acquaintances cross his threshold; and that he thought he had hoodwinked me, me a man of the world, moving about in the world, among other men of the world. Why, sir, Mr. Danvers had not paid me three half-years’ rent in notes or gold, as he always paid, and in this office here—before I had found out that he was the rising barrister, Mr. Dalbrook—andbefore I had guessed the reason of his hole-and-corner style of life.”
“What became of the lady who was called Mrs. Danvers?”
“And who in all probability was Mrs. Danvers,” said Mr. Adkins. “I have reason to believe that was her name. What became of her? God knows. A servant came to me one August morning with the keys and a half-year’s rent—the tenant had given notice to surrender at the Michaelmas quarter, that being the quarter at which he entered upon possession. Mr. and Mrs. Danvers had gone abroad—to Belgium, the woman thought; and as it was their present intention to live abroad, their furniture had all been removed to the Pantechnicon upon the previous day, and the house was empty, and at my disposal.”
“Did you hear nothing more of them after that?”
“I heard of him, sir, as all the world heard of him—heard of his marriage with a wealthy young Spanish lady, heard of his elevation to the peerage,—but of Mrs. Danvers I never heard a syllable. I take it she was pensioned off, and that she lived—and may have died—on the Continent. Why, there are a lot of sleepy old Flemish towns—I’m a bit of a traveller in my quiet way—which seem to have been created for that purpose!”
“Is that all you can tell me about your tenants, Mr. Adkins? I am not prompted by idle curiosity in my inquiries. I have a very strong motive——”
“Don’t trouble yourself to explain, sir. I know nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Danvers which I have any desire to hold back—or which I am under any obligation to keep back. My business relations with the gentleman never went beyond letting him Myrtle Cottage, which I let to him without a reference, on the strength of a twelvemonth’s rent in advance, and a deuce of a hurry he was in to get into the place. As for Mrs. Danvers, you may be surprised to hear that I never saw her face. I’m not a prying person, and, as the rent was never overdue, I had no occasion to call at the house. But I did see some one who had a strong bearing upon the lady’s life, and a very troublesome customer that person was.”
“Who was he?”
“No less an individual than her husband. A man dashed into this office one winter afternoon, a little after dusk, and asked me if I had let a house to a person called Danvers? I could see that he had been drinking, and that he was in a state of strong excitement; so I answered him shortly enough, and I kept him well between myself and the door, so as to be able to pitch him out if he got troublesome. He told me that he’d just come from Myrtle Cottage, that he had been refused admittance there, although the woman who lived there was his wife. He wanted to know if the house had been taken by her, or by the scoundrel who passed himself off asher husband? If it had been taken in her name it was his house, and he would very soon let them know that he had the right to be there. I told him that I knew nothing about him or his rights; that my client’s tenant was Mr. Danvers, and that there the business ended. He was very violent upon this, abused the tenant, talked about his own wrongs and his wife’s desertion of him, asked me if I knew that this man who called himself Danvers was an impostor, who had taken the house in a false name, and who was really a beggarly barrister called Dalbrook; and then from blasphemy and threatening he fell to crying, and sat in my office shivering and whimpering like a half-demented creature, till I took compassion upon him so far as to give him a glass of brandy, and send my office lad out with him to put him into a cab.”
“Did he tell you his name or profession?”
“No, he was uncommonly close about himself. I asked him if the lady’s name was really Danvers, and if he was Mr. Danvers; but he only stared at me in a vacant way with his drunken eyes. It was hopeless trying to get a straight answer from him about anything. Heaven knows how he got home that night, for he wouldn’t tell the office boy his address, and only told the cabman to drive to Holborn. ‘I’ll pull him up when I get there,’ he said. He may have been driven about half the night, for all I can tell.”
“Was that all you ever saw or heard of him?”
“All I ever saw, but not all I ever heard. Servants and neighbours will talk, you see, sir, and I happened to be told of three or four occasions—at considerable intervals—at which my gentleman made unpleasantness at Myrtle Cottage. He would go there wild with drink—I believe he never went when he was sober—and would kick up a row. If he wanted to get his wife away from the life she was leading he would have gone to work in a different manner; but it’s my opinion he wanted nothing of the kind. He was savage and vindictive in his cups, and he wanted to frighten her and to annoy the man who had tempted her away from him. But he was a poor creature, and after blustering and threatening he would allow himself to be thrust out of doors like a stray cur.”
“What kind of a man did he look? A broken-down gentleman?”
“Yes, I should say he had been a gentleman once, but he had come down a longish way. He had come down as low as drink and dissipation can bring a man. Altogether I should consider him a dangerous customer.”
“A man capable of violence—of crime even?”
“Perhaps! A man who wouldn’t have stopped at crime if he hadn’t been a white-livered hound. I tell you, sir, the fellow was afraid of Mr. Dalbrook, although Mr. Dalbrook ought to have been afraid of him. He was a craven to the core of his heart.”
“What age did you give him?”
“At the time he came to me I should put him down at about six and thirty.”
“And that is how many years ago?”
“Say four and twenty—I can’t be certain to a year or so. It wasn’t a business transaction, and I haven’t any record of the fact.”
“Was he a powerful-looking man?”
“He was the remains of a powerful man: he must have been a fine man when he was ten years younger—a handsome man, too—one of those fair-complexioned, blue-eyed, aquiline-nosed men who set off good clothes—the kind of man to do justice to a rig out from a fashionable tailor. He was a wreck when I saw him, but he was the wreck of a handsome man.”
“And you take it that he was particularly vindictive?”
“He was as vindictive as a cur can be.”
“And was his anger strongest against the lady, do you suppose, or against the gentleman?”
“Decidedly against the gentleman. He was full of envy and hatred and all uncharitableness towards Mr. Dalbrook. He affected to think contemptuously of his talents and to belittle him in every way, while he was bursting with envy at his growing success. He was jealous and angry as a husband, no doubt; but he was still more jealous and still angrier as a disappointed man against a successful man. He was as venomous as conscious failure can be. And now, sir, that I have spoken so freely about this little domestic drama, which was all past and done with twenty years ago, and in which I only felt interested as a man of the world, now may I ask your name, and how you come to be so keenly interested in so remote an event?”
“My name is Dalbrook,” replied Theodore, taking out his card and lying it upon the agent’s desk.
“You don’t mean to say so! A relation of Lord Cheriton’s?”
“His cousin, a distant cousin, but warmly attached to him and—his. The motive of my inquiry need be no secret. A dastardly murder was committed last summer in Lord Cheriton’s house——”
“Yes, I remember the circumstances.”
“A seemingly motiveless murder; unless it was the act of some secret foe—foe either of the man who was killed—or of his wife’s father, Lord Cheriton. I have reason to know that the young man who was killed had never made an enemy. His life was short and blameless. Now, a malignant cur, such as the man you describe—a man possessed by the devil of drink—would be just the kind of creature to assail the strong man through his defenceless daughter. To murder her husband was to break her heart, and to crush her father’s hopes. This man may have discovered long beforehand how my cousin had built upon that marriage—how devoted he was to his daughter, and how ambitious for her. Upon my soul, I believethat you have given me the clue. If we are to look for a blind unreasoning hatred—malignity strong enough and irrational enough to strike the innocent in order to get at the guilty—I do not think we can look for it in a more likely person than in the husband of Mrs. Danvers.”
“Perhaps not,” said Mr. Adkins, keenly interested, yet dubious. “But, granted that he is the man, how are you to find him? It is about four and twenty years since he stood where you are standing now, and I have never set eyes on him from that day to this—close upon a quarter of a century. I can’t tell you his calling, or his kindred, the place where he lived, or even the name he bore, with any certainty. Danvers may have been only an assumed name—or it may have been his name. There’s no knowing—or rather there’s only one person likely to be able to help you in the matter, and that is Lord Cheriton.”
“It would be difficult to question him upon such a subject.”
“Of course it would; and I don’t suppose that even he has taken the trouble to keep himself posted in the movements of that very ugly customer. Having shunted the lady he wouldn’t be likely to concern himself about the gentleman.”
“A quarter of a century,” said Theodore, too thoughtful to give a direct answer. “Yes, it must be very difficult to trace any man after such an interval; but if that man went to Cheriton Chase he must have left some kind of trail behind him, and it will go hard with me if I don’t get upon that trail. I thank you, Mr. Adkins, for the most valuable information I have obtained yet, and if any good comes of it you shall know. Good night.”
“Good night, sir. I shall be very glad to aid in the cause of justice. Yes, I remember the Cheriton Chase murder, and I should like to see the mystery cleared up.”