The day will come

by M. E. Braddon

“It was ever so many years after that meeting in Richmond Park—I think it must have been nearly ten years—when I ran against that very man upon a windy March day in Folkestone. I had thought much and often of my poor girl in all those years, wondering how the world had used her, and whether the lover whom she trusted so implicitly had been true to her. I shuddered at the thought of what her fate might have been if he were false. I had never heard a word about her in all that time. I had seen no report of a Divorce suit in the papers. I knew absolutely nothing of her history from the hour I parted with her by Thomson’s Seat till I ran against that man in Folkestone. I am rather shy about speaking to strangers in a general way; but I was so anxious to know her fate that I stopped this man, whose very name was unknown to me, and asked him to tell me about my poor friend. He looked bewildered, as well he might, at being pounced upon in that manner. I explained that I was Evelyn Strangway’s old governess, and that I was uneasy at having lost sight of her for so many years, and was very anxious to see her again. He looked troubled at my question, and he answered me gravely—‘I am sorry to say you will never do that. Your friend is dead.’ I asked when she died, and where? He told me within the last month, and at Boulogne. I asked if he was with her at the last, and he said no; and then he lifted his hat and muttered something about having very little time to get to the station. He was going to London by the next train, it seemed, and he was evidently anxious to shake me off; but I was determined he should answer at least one more question. ‘Was her husband with her when she died?’ I asked. His face darkened at the question, which I suppose was a foolish one. ‘Do you think it likely?’ he said, trying to move past me; but I had laid my hand upon his sleeve in my eagerness. ‘Pray tell me that her end was not unhappy—and that she was penitent for her sins.’ He looked very angry at this. ‘If I stand here talking to you another minute I shall lose my train, madam,’ he said, ‘and I have important business in London this afternoon.’ A fly came strolling by at this moment. He hailed it and jumped in, and he drove off into what Thomas Carlyle would call the Immensities. I never saw him again; I never knew his name, or calling, or place of abode, or anything about him. I can no more localize him than I can Goethe’s Mephistopheles. God knows how he treated my poor girl—whether he was kind or cruel; whether he was faithful to a dishonourable tie, or whether he held it as lightly as such ties have been held by the majority of men from Abraham downwards.”

The little woman’s face flushed and her eyes filled as she gave vent to her feelings.

“And this is all you know of Evelyn Strangway?” said Theodore, when she had finished.

“This is all I know of her. And now tell me why you are so anxious to learn her history—you who can never have seen her face, except in the picture at Cheriton. I dressed her for that picture and sat by while it was painted.”

“I will tell you the motive of my curiosity,” answered Theodore. “You have treated me so frankly that I feel I must not withhold my confidence from you. I know that I can rely upon your discretion.”

“I can talk, as you have just heard,” said Miss Newton; “but I can be silent as the grave, when I like.”

“You must have read something about the murder at Cheriton last July.”

“I read a great deal about it. I took a morbid interest in the case, knowing the house so well in every cranny and corner. I could picture the scene as vividly as if I had seen the murdered man lying there. A most inexplicable murder, apparently motiveless.”

“Apparently motiveless. That fact has so preyed upon the widow’s mind that she has imagined a motive. She has a strange fancy that one of the Strangways must have been the author of the crime. She has brooded over their images till her whole mind has become possessed with the idea of one of that banished race, garnering his wrath for long years, until at last the hour came for a bloody revenge, and then striking a death-blow out of the dark—striking his fatal blow and vanishing from the sight of men, as if a phantom arm had been stretched out of the night to deal that blow. She has asked me to help her in discovering the murderer, and I am pledged to do my utmost towards that end. I am the more anxious to do so as I tremble for the consequences if she should be allowed to brood long upon this morbid fancy about the Strangways. I think, however, that with your help I have now laid that ghost. I have traced the two brothers to their graves; and I suppose we may accept the statement of the man you met at Folkestone as sufficient evidence of Mrs. Darcy’s death; especially as it seems to fit in with the account of the then Vicar of Cheriton, who met her in Boulogne in the summer of ’64 looking very ill and much aged.”

“It was in the spring of ’65 I met that man at Folkestone. I could find the exact date in my diary if you wished to be very precise about it, for it is one of my old-maidish ways to be very regular in keeping my diary. Poor Evelyn! To think that any one should be mad enough to suspect her of being capable of murder—or Fred or Reginald. They had the Strangway temper, all three of them; and a fiery temper it was when it was roused, a temper that led to family quarrels and all sorts of unhappiness; but murder is a different kind of thing.”