The day will come

by M. E. Braddon

Even as a brother—but no more.”

After that conversation with the house-agent, the idea that he had found the clue to the Cheriton Chase mystery took root in Theodore Dalbrook’s mind. Taking as his starting-point the notion of a deadly hatred wreaking itself in an indirect revenge, there seemed no more likely figure for the rôle of avenger than that of the wronged and deserted husband. The one startling improbability in this view of the case was the long interval between the husband’s appearance at Myrtle Cottage and the date of the murder; but even this difficulty Theodore was able to account for upon the hypothesis of a gradual perversion, a descent from vice to crime, as the man’s nature hardened under the corrupting influence of a profligate life, while the old festering sore grew into a malignant canker, under the lash of misery. He had seen in that great seething cauldron of London life men whose countenances bore the stamp of a degradation so profound that the most ferocious crime might seem the normal outcome of their perverted natures. He could imagine how the broken-down gentleman, steeped in drink, and embittered by the idea of wrongs which had been the natural consequence of his own misconduct, had sunk step by step upon the ladder of vice, till he had arrived at that lowest deep where the dreams of men are stained with blood and darkened by the shadow of the hangman. He could imagine such a man brooding over his wrongs for long years, nursing his jealous wrath as the one touch of manliness that survived in him—until some newspaper description of the Dalbrook and Carmichael wedding reminded him of the bitter contrast between his own lot and that of his rival, and, lashed into sudden fury, he set out upon his murderous errand, hardly caring whom he murdered so long as he could hurt the man he hated.

The very fact that Mrs. Danvers’ husband had been described as a craven, made the idea of his guilt more likely. Only a coward would have chosen such a revenge; only a coward could have stretched out his hand from the darkness to kill a man who had never injured him. The crime was the crime of a coward or a madman; and this man, brutalized by drink, may have been both madman and coward.

Here at least was a man closely associated with James Dalbrook’s life, and having good cause to hate him. In the darkness surrounding the murder of Godfrey Carmichael this was the first flash of light.

And having arrived at this point Theodore Dalbrook saw himself face to face with a new and seemingly insurmountable difficulty. To follow this clue to the end, to bring the crime home to the husband of Lord Cheriton’s cast-off mistress, was to expose the history of the great man’s earlier years to the world at large, to offer up a reputation which had hitherto been stainless as a rich and savoury repast to that carrion brood—consisting of almost everybody—which loves to feast upon garbage. How the evening newspapers would revel in the details of such a story—what denunciations—what gloating over the weakness of a strong man’s life! How the contents bills would bristle with appetizing headings, how the shrill-voiced newsboys would yell their startling particulars, their latest developments of the Cheriton Chase Scandal!

This must all inevitably follow upon the discovery of the murderer, if the murderer were indeed the injured husband. There could be no possible escape from that glare of publicity, that swelling symphony of slander. From the moment the law laid its hand upon the criminal the case would pass beyond individual control, and individual interests and reputations would become as nought. Justice would have to do its work, and in the doing of it must needs afford the usual fine opportunity to the newspapers. Theodore thought with horror of such humiliation coming upon Lord Cheriton, and through him upon Juanita, who loved her father with a reverential affection, and who was intensely proud of his character and position. He thought of gentle Lady Cheriton, who adored her husband, and who doubtless would be made miserable by the knowledge that his first love had been given to another woman, whom he had loved well enough to sacrifice honour for the sake of that illicit love. What agony to that single-minded, trusting creature to find that dark spot upon her husband’s past, and to know that the daughter’s happiness had been blighted because of the father’s sin!

With these considerations in his mind it seemed to Theodore that it would be better to halt on the very threshold of discovery; and yet there was the appalling thought of further possibilities in the way of crime—of a madman’s revenge carried a stage further, a madman’s pistol aimed at the defenceless mother or the unconscious child. What was he to do? Was there no alternative between inaction and such action as must speedily set in motion the machinery of the law, and thus deprive him of all free will in the future conduct of the case?

Yes, there was an alternative course. If he were once assured of the identity of the assassin, it might be in his power to lay hands upon him, and to place him under such circumstances of control in the future as would insure Juanita’s safety, and render any further crime impossible. If the man were mad, as Theodore thought more than likely, he might be quietly got into an asylum. If he were still master of his actions he might be got abroad, to the remotest colony in the Antipodes. The knowledge of his crime would be a hold over him, a lever which would remove him to the uttermost ends of the earth, if need were. This would be an illegal compromise, no doubt—unjustifiable in the eye of the law,—but if it insured Juanita’s safety, and saved her father’s character, the compromise was worth making. It was, indeed, the only way by which her security and her father’s good name could be provided for.

To arrive at this result he had to find the man who appeared in Mr. Adkins’s office about four and twenty years ago, and of whose subsequent existence he, Theodore, had no knowledge.

“I must begin at the other end,” he told himself. “If that man was the murderer, he must have been seen in the neighbourhood. It is not possible that he could have come to the place, and watched for his opportunity, and got clear off after the deed was done without being seen by human eyes.”