“I shall have to go through with this,” he decided abruptly. “I’ve no right to force this kind of hell on any man. Eustace may deserve practically everything that could happen to him, but I’m not his judge. In a sense, I’m responsible for what he’s enduring now.”
3
The document, signed by Brand, had been examined. It held a variety of finger-prints. Brand’s, Richard’s, Amy’s—but not Gray’s. No trace of Gray’s anywhere, and his were decisive hands, with square, forceful tips—no, he hadn’t touched that sheet of paper. And to Miles that spelt Brand’s death-warrant.
There was not very much time. Somehow Brand must be warned; Miles couldn’t stand the notion of his being taken like some beast in a trap, stepping carelessly over the scattered brush and undergrowth and stumbling suddenly into the spiked pit prepared for him. One fact above all others was clear. Brand couldn’t escape the consequences of his deed. If necessary, he must be forced to exonerate Eustace. But at least give him the opportunity to take his own way out.
Tracking him down was not an easy task. Miles enquired of Isobel, of Sophy, and of Richard, but none of them knew where he was. Sophy, indeed, made it abundantly clear that she had no desire to know. His successor, though irregular, was, in her opinion, a great improvement; he was less critical, less fastidious, less caustic, made fewer demands, and satisfied her with a simple savagery that was the utmost she could appreciate. She had never understood that the root of Brand’s brutality towards her lay in her own crudity, her inability to experience the finer shades of feeling, of any response, indeed, that was not instinctive or sensual. The children also preferred the newcomer; he was more generous, more friendly, did not abash them by mature comments they could not understand, and prevented Sophy from beating them. On the other hand, he gave them sweets and pence and absolved them from the tedium of homework.
As Miles was leaving the house, a pale, fierce little girl caught at his hand with sticky fingers and said in a hoarse whisper. “He did it. I heard him tell mother so. He said she wouldn’t care, and she didn’t. And he laughed. I heard him.”
Having delivered herself breathlessly of this information, she folded her lips in a hard line and stared at her unknown uncle. Miles thought, “My God, the tragedy of it! What Brand’s pitched away in that child. She’s making a frantic bid for revenge, for the wrongs he’s done her, for her instinctive realisation that she’s been cheated, in telling me that.” And his heart ached, and he felt fierce and bitter himself, as he remembered his own pretty children, in their innocence, their gaiety, and their faith.
When all his efforts at tracing his brother-in-law had ended in failure, Miles determined to employ a private detective. It was not a method he much cared about, nor was he anxious to help the other side, who must be almost as keen to find Brand as he was himself. But time pressed, and he dared not run further risks. In the present circumstances, pure chance might reveal Brand’s whereabouts, and he had no reason to suppose that he would be more fortunate than the defence.
Ruth frowned when she heard of his decision. “Must you, Miles?” she asked distastefully.
“You may be sure I shouldn’t, if any other alternative remained to me. It’s the most expensive luxury I know. I once had a client, a lady, who had to employ an agent to track down an unfaithful husband. Her account was enormous, the gentleman being fond of foreign travel. When she saw it, she said ruefully, ‘I doubt if Henry has spent as much as this on his mistress, and he’s had a lot of fun for his money, and I’ve had none.’ It’s the last refuge of the desperate.”
Carr, the man whom Miles eventually employed, also visited Fulham, and wrung from an unwilling Sophy the admission that Brand had gone abroad—to Paris, she said, but she didn’t know his address.
So Carr went to Paris, that part of Paris where the artists forgather, where money is scarce, hopes high, and a thousand tragi-comedies are enacted in a month. He went in and out of the tall, grey houses with his persistent question, without result; he saw numberless landladies, students, and maids-of-all-work. He traversed first those streets where Brand had been known in the days before his marriage, but here all recollection of him had departed. It was so long ago, and the population of these houses changes and shifts perpetually. No man stays here long; some sink to the discomfort of the garret, with its nightly candle, its few sous’ worth of vegetables, its rags and destitution; others forsake the world of art and enter business; or they marry and become successful husbands and fathers and only remember their past when they buy brushes and tubes of paint for their young sons and daughters; and of the various men whom Carr traced, some had no recollection at all of the one insignificant unit in that moving heterogeneous crowd; some remembered him merely as a name; and even those who had known him best had heard nothing of him for years. He had completely dropped out of the circle where he had once
