IN THREE CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER III.—TO-MORROW—LIBERTY.

There is no phrase of abuse so apparently innocent and yet so cutting and disturbing as that, ‘I know all about you.’ It asserts nothing of which one can take hold, and yet it implies a great deal that may well be offensive. It is customary to say that the life of the best of men, could it be subjected to the full glare of daylight in all its bearings, would be found more or less spotty and blemished; and perhaps it is this secret consciousness of hidden iniquities that gives such force to the innuendo.

But in the mouth of Houlot, who you will remember made use of the expression, and thus caused his speedy expulsion from my premises, the phrase was one that gave us all considerable uneasiness. Did he really know anything about my connection with the firm of Collingwood Dawson? It seemed hardly likely that he would have come to borrow money of me, had such been the case. But this, after all, might have merely been a device to throw dust in our eyes. His visit might have been a spying one, for the purpose of seeing how the land lay. He might indeed have seen his wife and recognised her.

Mrs Collingwood was full of terror lest such should have been the case. She dreaded that he was coming to claim her. Every passing footstep, every ring at the bell of the outer gate caused her a vivid throb of fear. For my own part I did not think the danger thus great in that direction. It was hardly likely that a man who had taken such pains to escape from a tie that must have been profoundly irksome to him, would wish to renew it now. His habits were fixed and eccentric, and probably he would be as much dismayed at the prospect of being claimed by his wife, as she would at the idea of going back to him. These thoughts I did not divulge to Mrs Collingwood. They suggested to me, however, a plan of action.

I determined to go and see M. Houlot, to beard the lion in his den. Probably I should be ill-treated and abused for my pains; but it was worth the trial. Houlot’s house was, as I have said, on the slope of one of the hills overlooking the town, the top of which was fringed with forest, whilst all down the sides were houses with terraced gardens, full of greenery, and with dividing walls covered thick with vines and pear-trees. It was a tall, timbered house, occupied by many families; and a common staircase, rickety and creaky, but with fine old carved oak balusters, led to the various floors. Houlot lived on the fourth stage, I found; and I made my way up panting, and not without fear lest the boards should give way beneath me. A sempstress who was busily at work in one of the rooms with her door wide open and her children scattered about the landing, indicated the door of Houlot’s room, and told me that she had just seen him go in.

I knocked several times without any one taking notice of me. Finally, after I had made a considerable din, the door was suddenly opened and Houlot stood before me.

‘What do you want?’ he cried, after glaring at me a few moments from under his pent-house brows. ‘Have you come to bring me the money?’

‘Let me come in and explain matters,’ I said.

He looked doubtfully at me for a moment, and then sullenly drew on one side and allowed me to pass in. His room was bare of furniture, except for one square deal table and a chair without a back. In one corner of the room a mattress and blanket were spread on the floor, in another a lot of books and papers were heaped confusedly together, all covered by a thick mantle of dust. A small cooking stove stood in the middle of the room, the black iron pipe from which went through a hole into the huge chimney; and a large open fireplace, which had once warmed the room, was covered with a rough framework of planks and sacking. The aspect of the place was squalid and comfortless, but it had one redeeming feature—there was a splendid view from the open window. A great fold of shining river, inclosing a stretch of marsh-land and wide green prairie, dotted with feathery aspens and monumental poplars, among which shewed here and there a cluster of farm buildings, and an occasional church spire. A black morose-looking windmill, with sails pugnaciously stretched out, as if daring an attack from some nineteenth-century Don Quixote, stood solitary on its grass toft. Range upon range of hills inclosed the landscape, dappled with the shadow of the lazy clouds; with here a dark ravine, and there a white gleaming chalk cliff.

‘You are well placed here,’ I said, making for the window. There was an overpowering smell of brandy in the room, that made one feel quite sick this fine summer morning. ‘You have a splendid view.’

‘Well enough for that,’ growled Houlot. ‘But what is the good of a view to a hungry man?’

I noticed now that he looked haggard and starved, and that there was an unhealthy fiery flush upon his face and a wild look in his eyes, as if he had been drinking without eating for a good while.

‘You need not go hungry unless you like,’ I said. ‘I can’t lend you all the money you ask for; but anything you want for daily needs I will let you have till you get your remittances from England.’

‘I have no remittances coming from England,’ said Houlot. ‘I have given up writing for the rascal who filched my work. But if you will only let me have that five-pound note we will put matters on a different footing. Let me shew up Collingwood Dawson!’

‘Yes, that’s all very well; but what will you gain by it?’

‘I shall vindicate my own name.’

‘What! the name of Houlot?’

He winced, but retorted angrily: ‘What business is it of yours what name?’

‘If I lend you the money to carry out your plans, it seems that I am entitled to ask what chance I have to be repaid. But apart from that, having vindicated your name, how many five-pound notes will it be worth?’

‘Why, look here,’ he said; ‘if that rascal can make a reputation and money by his stuff, which is only mine diluted and spoilt, surely for the genuine work of the real man’——

‘If you are trusting to that, I must decline to advance any money for the speculation. Why on earth, man, when you had a sufficient income paid you regularly, and lived as you liked, did you give it up and embark on a sea of trouble?’

‘Because I have a mission in this world, which I dream sometimes I shall accomplish.’

‘And the mission is?’

‘To open the eyes of fools.’

‘My dear fellow, they object to the operation, and have punished a good many people for trying it.’

‘Then I will be punished,’ he said. ‘But anyhow, I’ll expose these wretched smatterers, who serve up my things with all their wit and wisdom taken out of them, who travesty my best thoughts. Why, they have even made vulgar my very name!’

‘Houlot?’ I said, ‘Houlot? Is that the French for Dawson or Collingwood?’

‘That is not my real name,’ he said. ‘I abandoned that years ago. Every one turned his back upon the name. I did so myself at last.’

‘One of the results of the eye-opening process, I suppose?’

He nodded sullenly. ‘My name used to be Dawson,’ he said.

‘You don’t mean to say,’ I cried, ‘that you are the Dawson who was supposed to have been drowned years and years ago?’

‘I was that man—that unhappy man! But why,’ he cried, turning round fiercely upon me, ‘why do you make me go back to all these hateful things?’

‘Then is the memory of your former life hateful to you?’

‘I escaped from the most wretched condition that a man was ever in: tied to a woman who made my life an intolerable burden. She was not a bad woman, not an unworthy woman. She was—— Well, she had a mother who was fat and well to do, and lived in St John’s Wood.’

Houlot laughed hoarsely, knocked out his pipe on the empty stove, looked mechanically for some tobacco in a jar on the chimney-piece. It was empty. I offered him my pouch, which he took with an indignant scowl.

‘Well, I was meant for great things,’ he went on between the whiffs of his pipe—‘meant for great things; and here I am. Life fribbled and frittered away, and that woman the main cause of it! There was no escape from her any other way. I believe in my heart that the woman loved me in her fashion; all the greater was my unutterable woe.’

‘And you ran away from her?’

‘I disappeared from existence. I would not harm the woman. I would not spoil her life any longer. No; I adopted another plan. At the risk of my own life, I contrived that my death should be apparent. The means were simple enough, although they caused me some anxious thought and preparation. I went down to a little visited part of the coast with which I was well acquainted, and put up at an inn where I was known. Taking my cue partly from the well-known farce of Box and Cox, I went out one morning early and deposited a suit of clothes in a little niche in the cliffs: a wild and solitary spot, rarely visited by any living creature. Later in the day, I went out again, telling the people of the inn that I was going to bathe. I left my clothes on the beach and took to the water. I had chosen my time so that the set of the tide would carry me to the place where I had deposited my clothes, and I drifted along with little exertion. Arrived at the spot, I landed, found my clothes all right, and put them on. Then I started on foot along the coast till I reached a road-side station, made my way to London, and then crossed the Channel, intending to go to Paris. I thought that I should be able to get literary employment there; for French is as a second native tongue to me. My mother was a Frenchwoman; her name was Houlot; hence the name I adopted. But I took this place on my way; and on the journey I fell from the roof of the diligence, and the wheel went over my hand. Amputation was necessary; and by the time that I was cured, I had spent all my little store of money and owed something beside. But the people here were very humane and kind. I set to work to write with my left hand, and earned a little money meanwhile by teaching English; and by degrees I got into the knack of writing again, and contributed some articles to the English press, by which I got a little money. It was all a flash in the pan; my pupils fell away, my articles were no longer acceptable. My friend here’—pointing to the bottle—‘was always at my elbow. But I shall shake myself free one of these days.’

‘And if it happened,’ I said, as he finished and was silent, sitting puffing at the pipe that had long since gone out—‘if it happened that the wife was still waiting for you—that she had heard a rumour of your existence, and had come to seek you’——

‘No; don’t talk of that, for any sake!’ he cried, springing to his feet. ‘Wretched and miserable as I have been, I have never wished myself again tied in that hateful knot. There! you would never betray me?’

‘But if she were rich, and able to give you a good home?’

‘Never, never!’ he said. ‘What degradation, what abasement!’

‘To take you out of this den of yours, to clothe you in well-made garments, to bring you again into society?’

‘Never, never! I would hide myself in the remotest corner of the world. Tell me, man, what do you mean? You know something; you are a spy, a traitor!’

Houlot looked here and there as if for a weapon, and I thought it prudent to make quickly for the door.

I went home and told Mrs Collingwood all that had occurred, excepting the horror that M. Houlot had shewn at the idea of returning to her. That I thought it most prudent to suppress. She seemed a little softened, I thought, when I told her his account of his disappearance in the sea, and that his motive was a good one as far as she was concerned.

We sat till late that night talking in the little pavilion, the light from the windows of which was reflected in the dark river. I fancied every now and then I heard a footstep softly pacing up and down the embankment between us and the water’s edge. I certainly thought I had securely locked the garden gate, and never dreamt of our being disturbed. Just as my guest had risen to take her leave, the door suddenly opened, and M. Houlot stood upon the threshold. Mrs Collingwood screamed, and ran to the furthest corner of the room, crouching behind the window curtains. Houlot glared at her for a moment, then slammed to the door and strode away. I ran after him.

‘You have deceived me!’ he said savagely, as, breathless, I overtook him upon the embankment; ‘and I, like a fool, believed you, and pictured her to myself—still loving, still faithful to the memory of a wretched being; and I came to seek you, to know more about this wonderful phenomenon. And now I see it all; she dreads me as if I were a leper! Well, it matters not now; I am away to-morrow. Some kind friends have raised a little money for me; I don’t need your help now. To-morrow before daylight I start on my way to make my claim for that which is mine own. Tell her—tell her that she need not fear me, that I shall never trouble her, nor she me! I have been a slave long enough; but to-morrow, light; to-morrow, freedom!’

‘Take care what you do,’ I said, ‘for the person whom you seek to ruin, whom you would expose and bring to confusion, is the woman whom you abandoned and left to the mercy of a pitiless world! Every step you take to that end is over her, poor creature! The harm you did before came right, after much misery; the harm you will do now can never be cured!’

He uttered an exclamation of rage and despair, and disappeared in the darkness.

‘Is he gone?’ cried Mrs Collingwood, as I returned once more to the pavilion.

‘Yes, he is gone; he is away to London to-morrow to claim his rights, as he calls them—to ruin us if he can. We must go also, and fight him.’

‘Do you know,’ faltered Mrs Collingwood, ‘that there has come a great change over me these last few minutes? The thought that he really loved me and sacrificed himself for my sake; and then he living here so lonely and wretched, and I luxuriating on the fruits of his genius! Oh, my heart has smitten me sorely, and I think if he came again I should not be frightened!’

‘In that case,’ I said bitterly, ‘your course is easy enough; you have only to make him understand he is forgiven. I will go with you to-night.’

‘O no, not to-night!’ she said. ‘No; it is too sudden. But don’t let him go away; tell him to stay, and that perhaps things may yet be well.’

‘He can’t leave before the first diligence,’ I said, ‘and I will meet him there and tell him to stop.’

‘Do, do!’ she cried. ‘Keep him here for to-morrow; then I may have made up my mind what will be for the best.’

I went to see the diligence start next morning; but no M. Houlot was there. He had overslept himself probably. Well, I would go and see him at his apartment, and tell him how matters stood. I knocked at his door; but could not make him hear. Then I scribbled some words upon a visiting card I happened to have in my pocket, and thrust it under the door.

The next time I saw that card it was in the hands of the commissaire of police, who came, accompanied by the juge d’instruction, to make some perquisitions as to what I might know of the last hours of M. Houlot; for he had been found that morning lying dead on his mattress.

The sad end of Houlot—well, of Dawson, if you like, but I have grown to think of him and talk of him as Houlot—quite unmanned me for a while. I could not help blaming myself as being in some way the cause of it. From the moment of its discovery, I took a violent antipathy to the work I had in hand. Houlot seemed to be always standing at my elbow, reproaching me with killing him over again. I don’t know whether the widow—really now a widow—had any such visions; I fancy not. After the first shock of the news, she found that Houlot’s death was really a great relief to her. It put an end to her troubles once for all. We found at his lodgings a great heap of manuscript, which she purchased from the agent acting for the landlord of the premises—who had taken possession of everything in satisfaction of rent—for a few francs. Whether she found the material among it for a series of novels, I don’t know, for as soon as I had finished the work in hand, I gave up my connection with Collingwood Dawson. I have since taken to writing improving books for the young, and find that it pays much better. Still I hear of him occasionally, and find that he continues to be a tolerably successful author; and the other day I met my late employer, who told me that she was married for a third time, and to a gentleman of great literary ability, who had undertaken the management of Collingwood Dawson. For my own part, I advised her to form him into a Limited company, with a preference in the allotment of shares for gentlemen of the press.