The Late Tenant

Thereupon she drew from her pocket David Harcourt’s unsigned note. She held it out to Van Hupfeldt, and he, without touching, leaned over and read it; apparently slowly; more than once, so Violet thought. He stood there looking at the letter an unconscionable time, she holding it out for him to read, while the man’s face bled away inwardly, as it were to death, and some power seemed to rivet his eyes, some power stronger than his effort to withdraw them.

The thought passing through Van Hupfeldt’s soul was this: “Some one knows that she was a ‘duly wedded wife.’ But who? And how? To him it is somehow ‘a pretty certain thing’; and the proofs of it ‘may sooner or later be forthcoming’; and then he will give these proofs to Violet.”

“I see, then, that it was not you who sent it to me,” said Violet at last, and, as she said it, a certain gladness, a little thrill of relief, occurred somewhere within her.

Van Hupfeldt straightened himself. His lips were white, but they smiled dreadfully, though for some part of a second he hesitated before he said: “Now, who told you that?”

“I do not, of course, know the facts,” said Violet; “but I should like to.”

“You may as well know,” said Van Hupfeldt, turning away from her. “Yes, I sent it.”

Violet flushed. His manner did not carry conviction even to a mind not used to doubt the spoken word. It was horrid to think he was lying. Yet an odd sheepishness was visible in his face; his voice was not strong and brave.

“Well, I am still in a maze,” she murmured. “Since it was you who sent it, and since you say in it that my sister’s honor is now ‘a pretty certain thing,’ and that ‘the proofs will be forthcoming,’ why did you say a moment ago that it is ‘a mere dream’ to look forward to their forthcoming?”

Van Hupfeldt was looking out of the window. He did not answer at once; only after a minute he replied without looking round: “It was I who sent you the note. Yes, it was I; and what I say in it is true – somehow – true in some way; but I did not wish you to make the realization of those hopes a condition of your giving yourself to me. Hence I said that your stipulation was ‘a mere dream.’ Now, you understand; now, I think, all is clear to your mind.”

Violet sighed, and made no answer. All was not so very clear to her mind. One thing only was clear, that the nobility with which she and her mother had credited Van Hupfeldt in sending the note anonymously, so that he might not claim a reward from her, was not a deep nobility; for he had promptly volunteered the information that it was he who had sent it. She felt some disgust. A woman disillusioned about a man rushes to the opposite pole. Let him but be detected to be not the hero which she had thought him, and steep is his fall. Henceforth he is not only not a hero but less than nothing in her eyes. Violet paced aimlessly through the room, then went to the window farthest from that at which Van Hupfeldt stood, and the unspoken words on her lips were: “The miserable man.”

At last Van Hupfeldt almost rushed at her, with the cry: “The promise on that sheet of paper in your hand shall be fulfilled, and fulfilled by me, I vow, I swear it to you! But the fulfilment of it must not be made a condition of our union. The union must come first, and then the fulfilment; and the quicker the union the sooner the fulfilment.”

“No, I will not have it so.”

“You must!”

“You are to release my wrist, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!”

“You must!”

“But why hold me?”

“Listen – your sister was a wedded wife. I know it, I have reason to know it, and I am certain that, if you marry me, within six months after the marriage I shall be in a position to hand you the proofs of everything – to tell you truly the whole history from beginning to end – ”

“But why six months after? Why not six months before?”

“I have reasons – there are reasons. What I shall have to tell will be a pain to you, I foresee, a pain; but perhaps not a pain which you will be unable to outlive. Nevertheless, from what I already know of your sister’s history, I see that it must be told you after, not before, our union. It is a terrible history, I – gather, a harrowing tale. You don’t even guess, you are far from being able to hear it now, even if I could tell you now. Violet! say ‘Yes’ to me!”

“What? Without understanding anything?”

“Yes, Violet, turn to me! Violet, say ‘Yes’ to me!”

“But what guaranty – ”

“My pledged word, nothing else; that is enough. I say that within six months, not more, from the day of our marriage you shall have all that you desire to know, even the child shall have been found, for already I am on its track. But unless you consent, you will never know, the child will never be found; for I shall be dead, and the knowledge which I am in course of gathering shall die with me. If you will not give yourself, then, agree to that bargain you spoke of.”

“One gives, in a bargain, for something one receives.”

“It is the only condition on which we can come together. I could not bring you to-day the proofs that you long for, even if I had them. It must be six months after – not less than six months after – and for then I promise, calling Heaven to witness. Believe in me! Not all things that a man says are true; but this is true. Violet, for Gwen’s sake, within a week – the sooner it’s done, the sooner you hear – within not more than two weeks – ”

Violet, sore beset, shielded her eyes with a listless hand. Van Hupfeldt was pleading like a man battling for his last earthly good. And yet, and yet, he left her cold.

“I don’t doubt your promise,” she said with a charming shyness; “but it is a great matter, you give me no guaranties, you may fail, and then all will have been in vain.”

“I won’t fail. I shall so manage that there will be no chance of failure. And to prove my faith, if you say ‘Yes,’ I think I can undertake that within only two months after the marriage the child shall be unearthed, and within six the proofs of his legitimacy shall be handed you. That’s fair – that seems fairer – come, now. Only the marriage must be prompt in that case, without a fortnight’s delay. I can’t offer better terms. What do you say to it?”

Violet, without answering, suddenly cast herself upon the sofa-head, burying her face in it. A bitter lamentation came from her, so thin and low that Van Hupfeldt could scarce hear it. He stood over her, looking at her, his heart in his mouth; and presently, bending to her, he whispered: “Tell me!”

“God knows!” came from her brokenly.

He put his lips on her hair, and she shivered. “It is ‘Yes,’ then,” said he; “but pity me still more, and say that it shall be at once.”

“No,” she sobbed, “I must have time to think. It is too much, after all – ”

At that moment Mrs. Mordaunt entered. Violet, aroused by the opening door, stood up with a bent head, an averted face, and Van Hupfeldt said, with a sort of frenzied laugh, to Mrs. Mordaunt: “See how the days are lengthening out already.”

Mrs. Mordaunt looked at Violet with a query in her glance; and Violet’s great eyes dwelt on her mother without answering by any sign that question of lifted eyebrows. The girl was puzzled and overwrought. Was it so that men won women, that some man had won her sister? Surely this was a strange wooing!

CHAPTER VIII

AT DEAD OF NIGHT

David Harcourt, meantime, had long since reached home after his interview with Miss L’Estrange, whereupon Mrs. Grover had presented him with her first specimen of housewifery in the shape of a lunch. But, as if to prove that the fates were against literature that day, she also presented him with a letter from the agent Dibbin, saying: “Herein please find address of Sarah Gissing, servant of the late Miss Gwendoline Barnes, as promised.”

David’s first impulse was to go straightway after the meal to interview this Sarah Gissing. Then he set his lips, saying to himself: “The day’s work,” and, after lighting his pipe, he walked up to his literary tools with the grimness of a man about to throttle an enemy. Whereupon he sat down and wrote something. When he came back to earth with a weary but taut brain, Mrs. Grover was gone for the day. It was near seven in the evening, and the prairie-wolf within was growling “Dinner-time.”

His mental faculties being now on a tension, he thought to himself that there was no reason why he should not be prompt, and call upon Miss Gissing that evening. Though, after dinner, a mortal lethargy and reaction seized upon him with the whisper, “To-morrow is better than to-day,” he proved true to his high-strung self, and went by bus to Baker-St., where he took train for the station nearest the village of Chalfont.

It was a sharp walk from station to village. There was no cab; and when he arrived at the Peacock Inn, where Sarah Gissing was now a barmaid, he learned that she was away on leave at a neighboring village. He strolled about the silent street until Sarah came home at ten o’clock, a thin girl, with projecting top teeth, and a chronic stare of wonderment in her eyes.

“You are not to be alarmed,” David said to her. “I only came to ask you a few questions about your late mistress, Miss Gwendoline Barnes, in whom I have an interest. No one will be harmed, as far as I am aware, by your telling me all that you know, while you and I may profit by it.”

They spoke in the tiny inn drawing-room, and Sarah in her coat, with her hat on, sitting on the piano-stool, stared and answered shortly at first. Little by little she was induced to utter herself.

“He was a tall man,” she said, “rather thin, dark and pale – ”

“Straight nose?” asked David.

“Yes, sir, straight nose; a handsome man.”

“Black mustache, nicely turned out?”

“Yes, sir; he had a mustache.”

“Well, but all that says nothing. Many people answer such a description. Was there no photograph of him in the flat? Did you never see a photograph?”

“Yes, there was a photograph on the mantelpiece of Miss Barnes’s bed-room. In a silver frame it was; but the day after her death the silver frame was still there, and the photograph was gone, for I noticed it myself.”

“Do you realize that you are telling me a mighty odd thing,” said David with sudden interest. “How soon after the door was forced did you go into the flat?”

“Wasn’t I there when the door was forced? Didn’t I go in at once?”

“And how soon afterward did you notice that the photograph was gone from the silver frame?”

“How soon? Soon afterward.”

“It was not one of the men who forced the door who removed the photograph from the frame?”

“I don’t think that, sir. I would have noticed it if that had been the case.”

“When you went in you found the body of your mistress lying dead; the front door had been bolted inside; so there was no way for any one to have come out of the flat. And when you left your mistress the previous night the photograph was in its frame, but gone when the door was forced the next day. Those are the facts, aren’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that seems to say that it was Miss Barnes herself who removed the photograph, doesn’t it? And it follows that the photograph is still in the flat?”

“P’raps she did it to screen him,” suggested Sarah, indulging in the vanity of thought. “I shouldn’t wonder if that was it. No doubt she tore up the photograph, or burnt it.”

“But you didn’t see any shreds or ashes of it anywhere?”

“Not of a photograph, although I did sweep out the place the same day, too. Still, that’s not to say she didn’t tear it up because there was no shreds of it, for there are ways and means.”

“Were there shreds of any kind about?”

“Yes; she must have torn up a good few letters overnight before doing what she did. There was no end of litter, for that matter.”

“But suppose she did not burn or tear up the photograph,” said David, “where would she have hidden it? Can you suggest a place? Did you ever know her to hide anything? For, if she hid one thing, she may have hidden others, mayn’t she?”

“I believe there’s one letter she must have hidden,” answered Sarah, “unless she destroyed it – a letter that came from Paris four days before she made away with herself. I saw the postmark and the handwriting, so I know. It was from him, for he was in Paris at the time, and it was that letter that was the death of her, I feel certain. It came about eleven o’clock, soon after breakfast. She was at the piano in her dressing-gown, singing, not ordinary singing, but a kind of moaning of different notes, practising her voice like – it used to give me the blues to hear her every morning, it was so doleful like, moan, moan, moan! So I says, ‘A letter for you, mum,’ and she first stared at it in my hand, then she jumped up sudden like, and kind of snatched it out of my hand. But she didn’t read it. She went with it to the front window, looking out, holding the letter behind her back with her two hands, trembling from head to foot. So, not having any excuse to stay, I went out, but didn’t quite close the door. I loitered for a little while; but, not hearing anything, I went about my work, till half an hour later something seemed to say to me: ‘Better have a look,’ and when I peeped into the drawing-room, there she was sitting on the floor with her face on the sofa, and the letter in her hand. I thought she had the neuralgia; she looked that much in pain, you never saw. I spoke to her, but she looked at me, sick like, and didn’t say nothing. I don’t believe she could have stood up, if she had tried, and it did go to my heart to see her struck down and helpless like that.”

David’s close interest in her story pleased the girl. Such a nice young man he was! Perhaps he might call again some evening.

“My missus wasn’t quite right the rest of her time, I don’t think,” she went on. “She wandered about the flat, restless as a strange kitten, singing bits of songs, and she had a sweet soprano voice, I’m sure, that pierced you through when she screamed out the high notes. She didn’t go to the theater any more, after the letter. The next day she comes to me in the kitchen, singing and chuckling to herself, and she says to me: ‘What are you doing here?’ says she. ‘How do you mean, mum?’ says I. ‘Listen, Sarah,’ says she, putting her face quite close to mine, ‘you shouldn’t be here, this is not a place for a decent girl like you. You are to understand that I am not married. I told you that I was; but it was a lie. I have a child; but I am not married,’ and she ran off, laughing again to herself, as wild as a bird.”

“No, not that!” interrupted David, for the outspoken revelation hurt him. “It was not so much that which I wished to hear. Let us talk of the letter and the man. You never saw the letter again? You can’t think what your mistress may have done with it?”

“No, I never saw it again,” said Sarah, “nor I can’t think where she may have put it, unless she tore it up. There’s only one queer thing which I can call to mind, and that is, that during the afternoon of the day before she died, I went out to buy some soda, and when I came back I found her standing on a chair, hanging up one of the pictures in the long corridor. I wondered at the time whether it had fallen down or what, though I didn’t say anything. But now I come to think of it – ”

David thought to himself: “She was then hiding the marriage and birth certificates which Miss L’Estrange afterward saw when the picture fell. She was reluctant to destroy them, and yet wished to screen the man, having in her mind the purpose to take her own life. The man’s photograph and the fatal letter from him were not hidden in the picture, but somewhere else, perhaps. I must search every cranny.”

“Of course,” he said aloud, “you could easily identify her husband if he was shown to you again?”

“Oh, rather, sir,” Sarah answered, “I’ve seen him dozens of times. He used to come to the flat anyway twice a week, though sometimes he would be away for a goodish stretch, mostly in Paris.”

“They were an affectionate pair – fond of each other?”

“They were that, indeed,” said Sarah with a smile, as one who understood that sort of thing. “He, I’m sure, worshiped the ground she walked on, and she was just as bad. It came as a surprise to me that anything was wrong, though latterly she did use to have red eyes sometimes after he had been with her.”

“What name did she call him by?” asked David. “His name was Johann Strauss, wasn’t it?”

“He was a Mr. Strauss, sir, yes, but not the other name you say. At least, she always called him Harry.”

“Henry is sometimes the English for Johann, you see,” muttered David, with a random guess that Sarah was none the wiser. “Henry, too, was the name of the child, wasn’t it? How about the child? Don’t you know where it is?”

“I only know that she used to go every Tuesday and Thursday by the seventeen minutes past two train from Baker-St., and be back by six o’clock, so it couldn’t have been very far. ’Pon my word, sometimes she’d go half crazy over that child. There was a little box of clothes that she’s many a time made me waste half a day over, showing me the things, as if I’d never seen them afore, everything that was possible embroidered with violets, and she’d always be making – ”

“Fond of violets, was she?” broke in David, ready enough to catch at the phrase.

“Oh, it was all violets with her, – violets in her hair, at her neck, at her waist, and all about the place. She had a sister called Violet, and I came to know the sister as well as I knew herself in a manner of speaking, she was always telling me about her. For often she had nobody to talk to, and then she’d make me sit down to hear about her mother and this Miss Vi and the child, and what she meant to do when her marriage could be made public, and that. She was a good, affectionate lady, was Miss Gwen, sir. You couldn’t help loving her, and it was a mortal hard thing what happened.”

It was just then that the mistress of the tavern looked in with an unsympathetic face; so David rose and slipped a gold coin into the hand of the staring Sarah. The talk had already lasted a long while, and the inn-door had to be opened to let him out.

He walked the two miles back to the station, and there learned that the last up-train for the night had just left. Even on the suburban lines there is a limit to late hours.

This carelessness on his own part caused him to growl. It was now a question either of knocking up some tavern, or of tramping to London – about twenty-one miles. However, twenty-one miles made no continent to him, and, after posting himself by questions as to the route, he set out.

Throwing his overcoat over his left arm, he put his elbows to his ribs, lifted his face skyward, and went away at a long, slow, swinging trot. One mile winded him. He stopped and walked for five minutes, then away he went again at a steady jog-trot; and now, with this second wind, he could have run in one heat to Bow Bells without any feeling but one of joy and power. He had seen Indians run all day long with pauses. He had learned the art from them, and London had scarce had time as yet to enervate him. Up hill and down dale he went steadily away, like a machine. It was dark at first, dismal in some places, the sky black, crowded with stars, like diamond-seed far sown; but suddenly, while he was trotting through the main street of Uxbridge, all this was changed, the whole look and mood of things underwent transformation, as the full moon floated like a balloon of light into the sky. It was then about one-thirty in the morning. Thenceforth his way was almost as clearly lit as by day.

Through dead villages he passed, through dead Ealing to Shepherd’s Bush; there were cats, and there were policemen, and one running man, little else. Here or there a constable was half-drawn into giving chase, but wisely forbore – he never would have caught David Harcourt. But at Shepherd’s Bush David came to the foot of a long hill, which he shirked, and drew up. From that point he walked to Notting Hill, past Kensington Gardens, toward Oxford Circus. It was near three A.M.

Walking on the south side of Oxford-St. eastward, he stopped to look at some books behind a grille. The moonshine was so luminous, the sky so clear, that he could see well enough to read their titles. This was the only quiet hour of London. There was not a sound, save the echo of a policeman’s tread some way off down Regent-St. Not even a night cab rattled in the distance. And then, on the other side of the street, his quick ears caught the passing of swift-gliding feet – a woman’s.

When David glanced round, already she was gone well past him, making westward, most silently, with a steady haste. She gave him the impression of having been overtaken by, of being shy at, the moonlight. His heart leaped in a spasm of recognition, almost of fear. And he followed, he could not help it; as water flows downward, as the needle follows the magnet, he followed, with the stealthy pace of the stalker, as silently as if he was tracking a deer, and as keenly.

His breathing, meantime, was as if suspended, his heart seemed to stand still. That form and motion, his instincts would have recognized them in midnight glimmer of dull lamps, and now they were before him in light. Still he could not believe his wits. He doubted whether he was not moonstruck, chasing a phantom made of the clair-obscure stuff of those dead hours of the night when dreams are rife in the world, and ghosts leer through the haunted chambers of the brain. That she should be walking the streets of London at three in the morning, alone, hastening secretly homeward like some poor outcast foreconscious of the light of dawn! – this savored somewhat of limbo and lunacy. For what good reason could she be thus abroad? A swarm of doubts, half-doubts, queer bodings, jostled in David’s heart. She might, indeed, have come out to summon a doctor, to obtain a drug in an emergency. But something in her air and pace, something clandestine, desperate, illicit, seemed to belie this hope. She turned north when she had gone so far west as Orchard-St., little thinking, apparently, that she was being shadowed, and thence sped on west and north alternately through smaller streets, a region in which the desolation of the sleeping city seemed even more confirmed. And David followed, with this thought in his mind, that, though he had not seen her face, he had a certain means of determining her identity – for, if the flying figure before him went to 60A, Porchester Gardens, the address which he had of Violet Mordaunt, then this must be Violet.

Not that in the later part of his chase he had the slightest doubt. The long black cloak, like those that nurses wear, inflated behind her, the kind of toque above it, the carriage of her head, the slope of her shoulders, all these were hers: and she sped direct, notwithstanding turns and twists, to Porchester Gardens. David, from behind the corner of a street, could see her go up the house-steps, bend over something in her hand, open the door, and slip on what must have been rubber overshoes. This secrecy revolted him, and again he almost doubted that it was she. But when she had gone in, he hastened from his street-corner to the door to read the house-number, and it was 60A.

She was gone now. It was too late to challenge and upbraid her. He already regretted that he had not dared. He was bitter at it. Something said within him: “Both sisters!” Some envenomed fang of anger, spite, and jealousy plagued him, a feeling that he was wholly out of it, and had no part nor lot in her life and acts; and then, also, like oil on the waters, came pity. He must home to his haunted flat, where the scent of the violets which he had bought greeted him on his entrance. It was near four o’clock. After looking gloomily for some time at the head in chalks, he read three letters which he had found in the letter-box. One of them was from Miss L’Estrange, and in it she said:

“I have asked my girl, Jenny, about the marriage and birth certificates which fell out of the picture, and there’s something funny about her.” (A woman never means humor when she uses that word funny.) “She wants to make out that she knows nothing about what became of them, but I believe she does. Perhaps she has found out Strauss and sold them to him, or perhaps she only means to do so, and you may get them from her if you be quick and bid high. Anyway, I have done my best for you, and now it is in your own hands. You can come here whenever you like.”