At that word “sallow,” David started, the description of Johann Strauss had so strangely reminded him of Van Hupfeldt! But the thought that the cause of the one sister’s undoing should be friendly with the other sister, paying his court to her over the grave of the ill-fated dead, was too wild to find for itself a place all at once in the mind.
David frowned down the notion of such a horror. He told himself that it was dark when he had seen Van Hupfeldt, that there were many tall men with white teeth and black mustaches, and sallow, dark skins. If he had felt some sort of antipathy to Van Hupfeldt at first sight, this was no proof of evil in Van Hupfeldt’s nature, but a proof only, perhaps, of David’s capabilities of being jealous of one more favored than himself by nature as he fancied—andby Violet Mordaunt, which was the notion that rankled.
And yet he tingled. Dibbin had said that this Van Hupfeldt might be “a new friend—one who had become a friend since the death of Gwendoline.”
David paced the room with slow steps, and while Dibbin talked on of one or another of the people who had known Gwendoline Mordaunt in the flesh, vowed to himself that he would take this matter on his shoulders and see it through.
“Speaking of the Miss L’Estrange who was in the flat before me,” said he; “how long did she stay in it?”
“Three months, nearly,” answered Dibbin, “and then all of a sudden she wouldn’t stay another day. And I had no means of forcing her to do so either.”
“What? Did the ghost suddenly get worse?”
“I couldn’t quite tell you what happened. Miss Ermyn L’Estrange isn’t a lady altogether easy to understand when in an excited condition. Suffice it to say, she wouldn’t stay another hour, and went off with a noise like a catherine-wheel.”
“Quite so. But I say, Dibbin, can you give me the address of the lady?”
“With pleasure,” said the agent, in whom brandy and soda acted as a solvent. “I am a man, Mr. Harcourt, with three hundred and odd addresses in my head, I do assure you. But, then, Miss L’Estrange is a bird of passage—”
“All right, just write down the address that youknow; and there is one other address that I want, Mr. Dibbin—that of the girl who acted as help to Miss Gwendoline Mordaunt.”
Dibbin had known this address also, and with the promise to see if he could find it among his papers—for it was he who had recommended the girl—went away. He was hardly gone when Harcourt, who did not let the grass grow under his feet, put on hat and coat, and started out to call upon Miss Ermyn L’Estrange.
The address of Miss L’Estrange, given to David by Dibbin, was in King’s Road, Chelsea, and thither David set out, thinking in his cab of that word “papers,” of the oddness of Violet’s question at the grave: “What have you done with my sister’s papers?”
Whatever papers might be meant, it was hardly to be supposed that Miss L’Estrange knew aught of them, yet he hoped for information from her, since a tenant next in order is always likely to have gathered many bits of knowledge about the former tenant.
As for his right to pry and interfere, that, he assured himself, was a settled thing. Going over in his mind Violet’s words and manner in the cemetery, he came to the conclusion that she was half inclined to suspect that he was her sister’s destroyer, who had now taken the flat for some vaguely evil reason, perhaps to seek, or to guard from her, those very papers for which she so craved. Had she never heard, he wondered, that her sister’s evil mate was a man with a black mustache and pale, dark skin? Perhaps, if she ever had, she would suspect—some one else than he! That would be strange enough, her suspicion of the innocent, if atthe same time the guilty was at her side, unsuspected! But David tried to banish from his mind the notion that Van Hupfeldt might possibly be Johann Strauss.
At Chelsea he was admitted to a flat as cozily dim as his own, but much more frivolously crowded with knickknacks; nor had he long to wait until Miss L’Estrange, all hair and paint, dashed in. It was near one in the afternoon, but she had an early-morning look of rawness anddéshabillement, as if she had just risen from bed. Her toilet was incomplete. Her face had the crude look of a water-color daub by a school-girl; her whirl of red hair swept like a turban about her head.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I am sorry—” began David.
“Cut the excuses,” said Miss Ermyn L’Estrange. She had a reputation for bruskness which passed for wit in her set.
“I am the occupant of the flat in Eddystone Mansions which you recently left.”
“I hope you like it.”
“I like it fairly well, as a flat.”
“What? Not seen anything?”
“No. Anything of what nature?”
“Anything ghostified?” she snapped, sitting with her chin on her palm, her face poked forward close to David’s, while the sleeve fell away from her thin forearm. She had decided that he was an interesting young man.
“I have seen no ghost,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever shall see one.”
“There are ghosts,” she said; “so it’s no good saying there are not, for my old Granny Price has been chased by one, and there’s been a ghost in that very flat. My servant Jenny saw it with her own eyes.”
“It is always some one else’s eyes which see the invisible,” said David.
“Jenny’s eyes are not some one else’s, they are her own. She saw it, I tell you, but perhaps you are one of those people who cower under the sheets all night for fright, and in the daytime swear that there are no ghosts.”
“What? You know so much of me already?”
“Oh, I know my man the moment I lay eyes on him, as a rule. You’re from Australia—I can tell your twang—and you have come to England to look for a wife. Can’t very well get along without us, after all, can you?”
“There is some truth in that. What a pity you didn’t see the ghost yourself!”
“I heard it; I smelled it.”
“Really? What did it smell of? Brimstone?”
“Violets!”
David started, not wholly because he thought Miss L’Estrange would be flattered by this tribute to her forcible style.
“And I’m not one of your fanciful ones either,” she went on, smirking at the effect she had made.
“How often did this thing happen to you?”
“Twice in three months.”
“Daytime? Night-time?”
“Dead of night. The first time about two in the morning, the second time about three.”
“To me this is naturally fascinating,” said David. “Do tell me—”
“The first time, I was asleep in that front bed-room, when I suddenly found myself awake—couldn’t tell why, for I hadn’t long been in bed, and was tired. I found myself listening, heard some creaks about, nothing more than you can generally hear in a house in the dead of night, and I was thinking of going to sleep again, when all at once I seemed to scent violets somewhere. I wasn’t certain at first, but the notion grew, and if it had been brimstone, as you said, I couldn’t have been so overcome as I was—something so solemn and deathly in that fume of violets visiting anybody in the dark in that fashion. As I knew that Gwen Barnes, who poisoned herself in that very room, was fond of violets—for I had seen her both on and off the stage several times—you can guess whether I felt rummy or not. Pop went my little head under the bed-clothes, for I’ll stand up to any living girl you care to mention, and send her home all the worse for it; but the dead have an unfair advantage, anyhow. The next minute I heard a bang—it sounded to me like the lid of one of my trunks dropping down—and this was followed by a scream. The scream did forme—I was upset for weeks. It was Jenny who had screamed; but, like a fool, I thought it was the ghost—I don’t know what I thought; in fact, I just heard the scream, and lay me down and d’eed. When I came to myself, there was Jenny shivering at my side, with the light turned on, saying that a tall woman had been in the flat—”
“Was Gwendoline Barnes in the flesh a tall girl?” asked David.
“Pretty tall; one would have called her tall.”
“And Jenny was certain? She had really seen a woman?”
“Quite certain.”
“In the light?”
“No, in the dark.”
“Ah, that’s not so good. And as to your trunk, had you left it locked?”
“No, I don’t think. It’s certain anyway that something or somebody was at it that night; for next day I found the things rummaged.”
“Sure now? I don’t imagine that you are very tidy.”
“The cheek! I tell you the things were rummaged.”
“And nothing stolen?”
“Ghosts are not thieves. They only come back to pretend to themselves that they are still living in the old scenes, and that their bit of a fling is not all over forever. I can well imagine how the poor things feel, can’t you? Of course, nothing was stolen, though Idid miss something out of the trunk a day or two afterward—”
“What was that?”
“My agreement with the theater. Couldn’t find it high or low in the place; though I was pretty sure that I had put it into that very trunk. Three weeks after it had disappeared, lo and behold! my agreement comes to me one morning through the post! No letter with it, not a word of explanation, just the blessed agreement of itself staring me in the face, like a miracle. Now, I’m rather off miracles—aren’t you? So I said to myself—”
“But stay, what was the postmark on the envelope which brought you back this agreement?” asked David.
“Just London, and a six-barred gate.”
“You couldn’t perhaps find that envelope now?”
“Now, do I look like anybody who ties up old envelopes in packets? Or do you take me for an old maid? Because, if you do, just let me know.”
“Certainly not an old one,” said David. “But how as to the second visit of the ghost?”
“The second time it was about three in the morning. Jenny did not see her then; but we both woke up at the same moment without any apparent cause—we were sleeping together, you may bet your last dollar on that!—and we both smelled something like violets, and we heard a sound, too, like the top of the piano being shut down. ‘Miss L’Estrange,’ Jenny whispered into my ear, ‘there’s something in the drawing-room.’—‘Go,Jenny,’ I whispered to her, ‘and see what it is.’—‘You go, Miss L’Estrange,’ Jenny whispered to me, ‘you being the mistress; and I’ll come after.’—‘But you are the servant,’ I whispered to her, ‘you go.’—‘No, Miss L’Estrange,’ she whispered back, ‘you are braver than me, you go, and I’ll come after.’—‘No, you know that you are much the bravest, Jenny, so don’t be such a coward,’ I whispered to her, ‘and I’ll come after.’ It was like a farcical comedy. At this we heard something like a chair falling upon the carpet in the drawing-room, and now we were in such a state of fright that we couldn’t move our hands, to say nothing of our feet. Then a long time passed, we didn’t hear anything more; so, after about half an hour of it, Jenny and I together made a rush for the switch, and got out into the drawing-room. Then again we scented a faint something like violets; but nobody was there, and we neither saw nor heard anything more.”
“So, after that second experience, I suppose, you would stay no longer in the flat?” said David.
“I did stay a few days. It wasn’t altogether the ghost that drove me away, though that may have had something to do with it, but the cheek and the meanness of the man who put me there.”
“Of the—Ah, I beg pardon,” said David, with lowered lids.
“Oh, this isn’t a Sunday school. If you hem and haw at me I shall show you the short cut to the frontdoor. It was a fair business arrangement; so don’t you think anything else. The man was named Strauss, and whether his motive in putting me there was quite square or not, don’t let him suppose that I am going to screen him, for I’m not. I am straight with those that are straight with me; but those that are up to mean tricks, let them beware of the color of my hair—”
“So you were put into the flat!”
“Didn’t I go into it rent-free? Stop, I will tell you, and you shall judge for yourself whether I have been shabbily used or not. One night last August I was introduced by a friend to a gentleman named Strauss—dark, pale man, pretty fetching, but not my style. However, next day he turned up at my place—I was living then in Great Titchfield-St.; and what do you think my man wanted? To put me into the Eddystone Mansions flat for six months at his expense, on the condition that I or Jenny would devote some time every day to searching for papers among the furniture. He said that a chum of his had once occupied the flat, and had left in it one or more documents, carefully hidden somewhere, which were of the utmost importance; I was to search for these, and give them to him. Well, I didn’t half like it, for I thought he was wicked. So I asked him why he didn’t take the flat, and search for the papers himself at his leisure? Well, he made some excuse or other, and at last, as he talked sanely enough, I struck hands over it—rent free, six months,an hour’s search each day; and Jenny and I moved in.”
“Did you search an hour each day?” asked David with a laugh.
“Hardly likely!” grinned Miss Ermyn L’Estrange. “I can see myself searching a small flat day after day for I didn’t know what, like a goose. There was nowhere to search. I did look about a little the first day; but, not finding any documents, I thought to myself, ‘Here endeth.’ Of course, I had to tell him that I was busy searching, for that man pestered me so, you wouldn’t believe. He never actually came to the flat, for some reason or other; but night after night, when the theaters opened in September, there he was, wanting to know if I had found anything, if I had probed the cushions with hat-pins, if I had looked under the carpets, and the rest of it. At last I began to treat him a bit off-handedly, I admit, and before the third month was up, he says to me one night that if I didn’t find something at once, he would have to cut off the allowance for the rent. I told him that he had put me there for six months, that I had made all arrangements, and that he was an idiot. If he didn’t know his mind, I knew mine. Oh, we had a fine set-to, I can tell you. He said that, since I had proved useless to him, I should have to pay my own rent, so, what with ghosts and all, I wouldn’t stay in the place another two days; and in going I gave it hot to that Mr. Dibbin, too—”
“What had Dibbin done?” asked David.
“He hadn’t done anything; but still I gave him a piece of my mind, for I was wild.”
“Poor Dibbin! he is still shaky from it. He has mentioned to me that you went off with a noise like a catherine-wheel. But you never found any papers at all in the flat?”
“No—except one, or rather two, and those Strauss never got.”
“How was that?”
“Because I didn’t find them till the day after we had had the row, when my trunks were ready packed to go, and I wasn’t going to give them to him then, for his cheek. Besides, they didn’t concern him; they were only a marriage certificate, and the certificate of a birth which fell out of a picture.”
David sat up, saying: “How do you mean, ‘fell out of a picture’?”
“As we were carrying out the trunks, there was a bump, and one of the pictures in the corridor came down. The boards at the back of it must have been loose, for they fell out, and among them was an envelope with the two certificates in it.”
“Now, I bless my stars that ever I came to you,” said David. “This may be the very thing I want.”
“How many of you are after papers in that flat, I should like to know. First there was Strauss, then that young lady, and now you—”
“Which young lady?” asked David.
“Why, I hadn’t been in the flat three days when a young lady, a tall, dark girl came, and practically insulted me. She wanted to know what was my motive for coming into the flat, and if I was the agent of any one, and if I meant to purloin any papers which I might find. Well, I’m not one for taking much sauce from another woman; for I’ve got red hair, as you can see for yourself, but somehow I couldn’t be hard on her, she had had some big trouble, I could tell—a bit touched somewhere, too, I thought, suspicious as a bird, sick at the very name of Strauss! She had dropped to it all right that I was there to serve Strauss’s ends, and she went on her bended knees to me, asking me not to do it. I couldn’t quite make out what it was all about, or what there was between her and Strauss, for she wouldn’t tell me. It was something pretty strong, for when I told Strauss about her visit, I thought the man was going to drop dead. Her name was Violet Mordaunt. I remember it; for Mordaunt was also the family name of the woman in the marriagecertificate—”
“Why did you not send this marriage certificate to Violet Mordaunt?” asked David, “since you did not give it to Strauss?”
“I would have sent it to her, I’m sure, but I didn’t have her address. She did leave me an address that day she came; but, to tell the truth, I didn’t take the whole to-do about papers, papers, papers, seriously, and Lord knows what became of the address—”
“Oh, good heavens, how selfish and careless!” groaned David.
“Look here, young man, you come from Australia?” cried Miss L’Estrange, bouncing up from her chair. “In London people look after themselves and mind their own business, you see. We are as kind-hearted here as they are anywhere else, but we haven’t the same leisure to be kind. I tell you that if I had had the young lady’s address I should very likely have sent her the papers; but I didn’t, and that’s all; so don’t preach.”
“Well, better late than never,” said David. “Just give me the papers now, if you will, for I know her address—”
“But where are the papers?” said Miss L’Estrange. “You don’t suppose that I keep papers—”
“Don’t say that you have lost them!” pleaded David.
“I haven’t the faintest idea where the papers are! I was in a regular flurry, just moving out of the place; I had no interest in the papers. I glanced at them to see what they were, and, as far as I can remember, I threw them on the floor, or handed them to Jenny. It’s just possible that they are here now; but I shouldn’t fancy so. I’ll ask Jenny when she comes in.”
“Ah, you little know how much misery you might have saved a poor girl, if you had been a little more thoughtful,” growled David, and his wrath seemed to cow the woman somewhat. “This name of Mordaunt was the maiden name of your predecessor in the flat,who took the name of Gwendoline Barnes; Violet Mordaunt is her sister; Gwendoline is believed by all the world, including her own mother, to have been led astray, and the certificates which you handled so lightly would have cleared her name and lifted a world of grief from her poor sister’s heart.”
“Good Lord! How was I to know all that?” shrilled Miss L’Estrange, staring. “So it was Strauss that ruined Gwen Barnes? And this Violet Mordaunt was Gwen Barnes’s sister? Now you say it, they were something alike. I always put down that Strauss for a rotter—”
“But why, since he married her?”
“Married whom? Strauss wasn’t the husband’s name on the marriage-certificate! Gwendoline Mordaunt was one, and the other, as far as I can recollect, was a foreign name, von Somebody or other—”
“Von!” David also sprang to his feet. “Are you sure? or might it have been ‘van’? Oh, try now to remember! One is German, the other Dutch!”
“It might have been ‘van,’ or it might have been ‘von’—you can’t expect one to remember after all these names. But I remember the woman’s name, Gwendoline Mordaunt, quite well, because the Gwendoline reminded me of Gwen Barnes, and the Mordaunt reminded me of Miss Violet Mordaunt; and the husband’s name, I know, was von or van Something, and so was the name of the child—a boy it was—I think its name was Henry—”
“Hupfeldt?” suggested David, suddenly.
“Hupfeldt? It might have been Hupfeldt. I really can’t say now. I’ll ask Jenny.”
“At any rate,” said David, calming himself with a great effort, “we have that certain fact that Gwendoline Mordaunt was a wife. Good, to begin; most excellent, to begin. You can’t say where the marriage took place? No other information at all.”
“I’m sorry, since it is so mighty important, but I’m afraid not. However, I’ll do my best for you. I’ll see if I or Jenny can remember anything. When we left the flat, there was a great overflowing with my torn-up letters, and Jenny may have thrown the certificates on that grate, or the bits of them, or she may have dropped them on the floor, or, just possibly, she put them in her pocket and may have them still. She will be here in less than half an hour, so, if I may offer you a cigar, and a whisky and soda—”
“You are very good. I won’t stay now, as I am in a hurry to do something. But, if I may come back—may I?”
“Modest request! As often as you please, and welcome. This is Liberty Hall, you know.”
“Thank you, I will, then. There is one thing I have to ask you. Could you point out to me Mr. Johann Strauss?”
“Of course, if I saw him. But I never knew where he lived, and have never seen him since the day I left the flat.”
“Well, that may come in time,” said David, putting out his hand; “and meantime you will do your best for me in finding out about the two certificates. Thank you for all your goodness, and I will be here again soon.”
“Good-by,” said Miss L’Estrange, “and I do hope you mean to give that Strauss a sound hiding some day. You look as if you could do it with one hand and pick your teeth with the other. It would be no more than he deserves.”
David ran down the flight after flight of stairs quicker than he had gone up.
“Now,” he thought to himself as he left the building with eager steps, “is my chance to give some joy!” Going into the first paper-shop, he wrote: “A well-wisher of Miss Mordaunt desires to assure her that it is a pretty certain thing that her sister Gwendoline was a duly wedded wife; the proofs of this statement may sooner or later be forthcoming.”
He put no signature to it, made haste to post it, and drove back to Eddystone Mansions. It had been wiser had he flattered Miss Ermyn L’Estrange by returning to her.
Not many guests were for the moment at No. 60A, Porchester Gardens, so that the Mordaunts, mother and daughter, who always stopped there during their visits to London, could almost persuade themselves that they were in their own home. In the good old days Mr. and Mrs. Harrod, the proprietors, had been accustomed to receive three Mordaunts to their hospitality, when Gwen, the bright and petted, came with Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt. Only two now visited London, a grayer mother, a dumber sister; and though the Harrods asked no questions, made no prying into the heart’s secret, nor uttered any word of sympathy, they well divined that the feet of the angel of sorrow had passed that way, and expressed their pity silently by a hundred little ministries.
Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt were having tea in the drawing-room on the day of David Harcourt’s visit to Miss L’Estrange, when the postman’s knock sounded, and a minute later Mrs. Harrod herself came in, saying:
“A letter for Miss Violet, and it contains good news; for I dreamt of soldiers last night, and so sureas I dream of soldiers, so sure are there letters with good news.”
“The good news will all be in the other people’s letters, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “Good news is like wealth, Mrs. Harrod, unequally divided; to some of us it never comes.”
“Oh, come now!” cried the hearty Mrs. Harrod. “Never say die, say I! There’s good and bad in store for everybody; and care killed a cat, after all. Don’t I tell you I dreamt of soldiers? And so sure—”
“It is that good heart of yours which makes you dream of soldiers. To bring healing to some lots in this world, you would have need to dream of generals and field-marshals—”
“Some more tea, mother?” interposed Violet. She shrank from the threatened talk of human ills. Mrs. Mordaunt, most excellent woman, was not adverse to pouring some of her grief into a sympathetic ear.
“Well, you will tell me at dinner whether I was right,” cried Mrs. Harrod, and was gone.
She had placed the letter on the tray, and there it still lay unopened. Violet handed the tea to her mother. The room was empty, save for them, the few other guests being out, and in the house reigned perfect quietude, a peacefulness accentuated by the wheels and hoofs passing in the dusk outside.
“Vi,” said Mrs. Mordaunt, “those flowers at your waist are almost faded; I think you might give up violets in London. They don’t seem to me the samething as in the country; but at least let them be fresh. Mr. Van Hupfeldt will be here presently—”
“How do you know, mother?”
“He mentioned, dear, that he would be coming.”
“But why, after all, every day?”
“Is that displeasing to you, dear?”
“It seems superfluous.”
“That compels me to suggest to you, Vi, that his coming to-day is of some special importance.”
“And why, pray?”
“Can you not guess?”
The girl stood up; she walked restlessly to the window and back before she cried: “Mother! mother! Have you not had experience enough of the curse of men?” Her great eyes rested gloomily on the older woman’s face. There was a beautiful heredity marked in the pair; but seldom have more diverse souls been pent within similar tabernacles.
“Don’t speak so recklessly, dear,” said the old lady. “You had the best of fathers. There are good men, too, in the world, and when a man is good, he is better than any woman.”
“It may be so. God knows. I hope it is so. But is Mr. Van Hupfeldt one of these fabulous beings? It has not struck me—”
“Please, Violet, don’t imagine that I desire to influence you in the slightest degree,” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “I merely wish to hint to you what, in fact, you can’t be blind to, that Mr. Van Hupfeldt’s inclinationsare fixed on you, and that he will probably give expression to them to-day. On Saturday he approached me on the subject, beseeching me with great warmth to hold out to him hopes which, of course, I could not hold out, yet which I did not feel authorized wholly to destroy. At any rate, I was persuaded upon to promise him a fair field for his enterprise to-day.”
“Oh, mother! Really, this is irritating of you!” cried Violet, letting fall with a clatter a spoon she had lifted off the table.
“But I don’t see it. Why so?”
“It sounds so light-minded, at your years!”
“As if I was one of the two parties concerned!” laughed Mrs. Mordaunt with a certain maternal complacency. She knew, or thought she knew, her wayward daughter. With a little tact this most suitable marriage could be arranged.
“No,” admitted Violet, angry at the weakness of her defense, “but you allow yourself to be drawn into having a hand in what is called a love-affair because it is an event; and it was not fair to Mr. Van Hupfeldt, since you knew quite well beforehand what would be the result.”
“Well, well,” purred Mrs. Mordaunt good-humoredly, looking down to stroke the toy Pom on her lap, a nervous little animal which one might have wrapped in a handkerchief, “I will say no more. If the thought of allowing myself to be bereft of you hasoccurred to me, you understand for whose good I gave it a moment’s entertainment. Marriage, of course, is a change of life, and for girls whose minds have been overshadowed by sorrow, it may not be altogether a bad thing.”
“But there is usually some selection in the matter, I think, some pretense of preference for one above others. Just marriage by itself hardly seems a goal.”
“Yes, love is good, dear—none knows better than I—but better marriage without love, than love without marriage,” muttered Mrs. Mordaunt, suddenly shaken.
“And better still life with neither, it seems to me; and best of all, the end of life, and good-by to it all, mother.”
“Vi, Vi! sh-h-h, dear!” Mrs. Mordaunt was so genuinely shocked that her daughter swung the talk back into its personal channel.
“Still, I will not see this man. Tell him when he comes that I will not see him. He has held out to me hopes which he has done nothing to fulfil.”
“What hopes, dear?”
“You may as well know: hopes as to—Gwen, then.”
“Tell me.”
“Twice he has hinted to me that he knows some one who knew the man named Strauss; that he would succeed in finding this Strauss; that all was quite, quite well; and that he did not despair of finding sometrace of the whereabouts of the child. He had no right to say such things, if he had not some real grounds for believing that he would do as he hinted. It is two months ago now since he last spoke in this way down at Rigsworth, and he has not referred to it since, though he has several times been alone with me. I believe that he only said it because he fancied that whatever man held out such hopes to me would be likely to find me pliant to his wishes. I won’t see him to-day.”
“Oh, he said that, did he—that all was quite well, that he might be able to find.... But he must have meant it, since he said it.”
“I doubt now that he meant it. Who knows whether he is not in league with the enemies of her who was cast helpless to the wolves—”
“Violet, for shame to let such words escape your lips! Mr. Van Hupfeldt—a man of standing and position, presented to us by Lord Vanstone, and moving in the highest circles! Oh, beware, dear, lest sorrow warp the gentler instincts of your nature, and by the sadness of the countenance the heart be not made better! Grief is evil, then, indeed when it does not win us into a sweeter mood of charity. I fear, Vi, that you have lost something of your old amiableness since the blow.”
“Forgive me, darling!” sobbed Violet, dropping quickly by the side of her mother’s chair, with her eyes swimming. “It has gone deep, this wildwrong. Forgive, forgive! I wish to feel and do right; but I can’t. It is the fault of the iron world.”
“No, don’t cry, sweet,” murmured Mrs. Mordaunt, kissing her warmly. “It will come right. We must repress all feelings of rebellion and rancor, and pray often, and in the end your good heart will find its way back to its natural sweetness and peace. I myself too frequently give way, I’m afraid; the ways of Providence are so inscrutably hard. We must bear up, and wait, and wait, till ‘harsh grief pass in time into far music.’ As for Mr. Van Hupfeldt, there seems no reason why you should see him, if you do not wish. But you haven’t opened your letter—see if it is from Rigsworth, dear.”
Violet now rose from her mother’s side, and tore open the letter. She did not know the handwriting, and as her eyes fell on the words she started. They were these: “A well-wisher of Miss Mordaunt desires to assure her that it is a pretty certain thing that her sister Gwendoline was a duly wedded wife. The proofs of this statement may sooner or later be forthcoming.”
Mrs. Mordaunt’s observant glance, noting the changes of color and expression going on in her daughter’s face, saw that the news was really as Mrs. Harrod had dreamed. Violet’s eyes were raised in silent thanksgiving, and, without saying anything, she dropped the note on her mother’s lap. Going to one of the windows, she stood there with tremulous lips.She looked into the dim street through a mist of tears. For the moment, speech was impossible.
There was silence in the room for some minutes. Then Mrs. Mordaunt called out: “Vi, dear, come here.”
Violet ran from the window with a buoyancy of dancing in her gait. “Heaven forgive us, mother, for having wronged Gwendoline in our thoughts!” said she, with her cheek against her mother’s.
“Heaven forgive me rather,” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “You, dear, have never for a moment lost faith and hope. But still, Vi—”
“Well?”
“Let me warn you, dear, against too much confidence in this note. The disappointment may be all the more terrible. Why could not the sender sign his name? Of course, we can guess from whom it comes; but does not the fact that he does not sign his name show a lack of confidence in his own statements?”
“Oh, I think not,” cried Violet, flushed with enthusiasm, “if it is from whom you think; but, who, then, do you think sent it?”
“It can only be from Mr. Van Hupfeldt, child, I take it.”
The girl was seemingly taken aback for an instant; but her thoughts bubbled forth again rapidly: “Well, his motive for not signing his name may simply be a very proper reserve, not a lack of confidence in his statements. Remember, dearest, that he is coming here to-day with a certain purpose with regard to me,and if he had signed his name, it would have set up a sort of claim to my favor as a reward for services done. Oh, now I come to think of it, I call this most generous of the man!”
“That’s splendid, that’s right,” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “Your instincts always scent out nobility where any clue to it can be found. I am glad that you take it in that way. But young people are enthusiastic and prone to jump to conclusions. As we grow older we acquire a certain habit of second thoughts. In this instance, no doubt, you are right; he could have had no other motive—unless—I suppose that there is no one else from whom the note may possibly have come?”
At this question Violet stood startled a moment, panting a little, and somehow there passed like a mist through her consciousness a memory, a half-thought, of David Harcourt.
“From whom else could it have come?” she asked her mother breathlessly.
“The handwriting is not Mr. Van Hupfeldt’s,” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “This is a less ornate hand, you notice.”
Violet took the note again, and knit her pretty brows over it. “No,” she said, “this is a much stronger, cleaner hand—I don’t know who else—”
“Yet, if Mr. Van Hupfeldt wished to be generous in the sense of which you spoke,” said her mother, “if it was his purpose to conceal his part in the matter, hewould naturally ask some one else to write for him. And, since we can imagine no one but him—There! that, I think, is his rap at the door. Tell me now, Vi, if you will see him alone?”
“Yes, mother, I will see him.”
“Bless you for your good and grateful heart! Well, then, after a little I will go out. But, oh, pray, do nothing precipitate in an impulse of joy and mere gratitude, child! If I am bereft of my two children, I am bereft indeed. Do find happiness, my darling. That first and above all.”
At that moment Mrs. Harrod looked in, with her pleasant smile, saying: “Mr. Van Hupfeldt is here. Well, did the letter contain good news?”
“You dear!” murmured Violet, running to kiss her, “I must wear red before you, so that you may dream of soldiers every, every night!”
The steps of Van Hupfeldt were heard coming up the stairs.
Van Hupfeldt bowed himself into the drawing-room. His eyes wandering weighingly with a quick underlook which they had from the face of Violet to that of Mrs. Mordaunt, and back again to Violet. He saw what pleased him, smiles on both faces, and his brow lightened. He was a man of about forty, with a little gray in his straight hair, which, parted in the middle, inclosed the forehead in a perfect arch. He stood upon thin legs as straight as poles. His hands and feet were small. His features as regular and chiseled as a statue’s; he looked more Spanish than Dutch.
Mrs. Mordaunt received him with a pressure of the hand in which was conveyed a message of sympathy and encouragement, and Van Hupfeldt bent toward Violet with a murmur:
“I am glad to see you looking so bright to-day.”
“You observe quickly,” said Violet.
“Some things,” answered Van Hupfeldt.
“Our good hostess has been dreaming of soldiers, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” put in Mrs. Mordaunt, lightly, “and it seems that such a dream always brings goodnews to her guests; so my daughter is feeling the effects of it.”
Van Hupfeldt looked puzzled, and asked: “Has Miss Violet heard that her orchids are flourishing in her absence, or that those two swans I promised have arrived?”
Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt exchanged glances of approval of this speech, the latter saying: “There are brighter things in the world than orchids, thank Heaven! and a kind deed may be more white and graceful than all the swans of Dale Manor.”
Van Hupfeldt looked still more puzzled—a look which was noted by the women, but was attributed by them to a wish not to seem to know anything of the joyful note, and was put down to his credit. After some minutes’ talk of a general nature, Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet sat in an easy-chair at one of the balcony windows. Van Hupfeldt leaned against the embrasure of the window. He seemed to brace himself for an effort before he said to her:
“This is Monday evening, and since Saturday, when I brought you from the cemetery, I have not once closed my eyes. If you continue to manifest this inconsolable grief for your sister’s fate, I must break down in some way. Something will happen. I shall go crazy, I think.”
“You mean very kindly, I suppose,” answered Violet, with lowered lids; “though I do not see—”
“No, you cannot see, you do not know,” said he,with a certain redness and strain in the eyes which made it a credible thing that he had not slept in some time. “But it is so. It has been the craving of my life to save you from this grief. Let me do it; you have to let me do it!”
“How save me?” she asked, with an upward glance under her long lashes, while she wondered at the blaze in the man’s eyes. “I am not to be saved from it by any means, though it will be lessened by the proofs of my sister’s honor and of her child’s fair name, and by the discovery of the whereabouts of the child. There are no other means.”
“Yes, there are! There is the leaving of your present life, the companionship of one who will have no care but to make you happy, to redress a little in you the wrong done to your sister. That is my motive—God knows!—that is my main motive—”
“Surely I do not understand you aright!” cried Violet, somewhat dismayed by his outburst. “Your motive is to redress a wrong done by some one to my sister by devoting yourself to make me happy? Certainly, that seems a most nobly disinterested motive; but is philanthropy of this sort the best basis for the kind of proposition which you are making me? Philanthropy most certainly would wear thin in time, if it did not rest on affection—”
“Do you doubt that I have affection?” he demanded, his voice vibrating with ill-repressed passion.
“As an afterthought?”
“How as an afterthought, when my life itself depends upon continually seeing you, and seeing you happy? I tell you that if you were to refuse my prayer this evening, if anything was to happen now or in the future to thwart my cravings with respect to you, my mind is made up, I would not continue to face the harrowing cark of life. Say ‘No’ to me, and from to-morrow evening you will be tortured by the same worm of remorse by which the man who caused the death of your sister must be gnawed and gnawed. You talk of affection? I have that. I do, yes, I do love you; but that would be the flimsiest motive compared with this passion which casts me at your feet.”
“I don’t understand him,” sighed Violet to herself—and no wonder, for Van Hupfeldt’s words came from him in a sort of hiss; his eyes were bloodshot; he stooped close over her, with veins standing out on his forehead. It was clear enough that the man’s soul was in this wooing, yet he made so little pretense of the ordinary lover’s love. He left her cold, this woman made for love, and she wondered.
“Tell me quickly,” he said, “I think that your mother is not unwilling. Only let me hear the word ‘Yes,’ and the ‘when’ shall be left to you.”
“Pray listen, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” said Violet, bending over her knee, which she slung between her clasped fingers. “Let us reason together; let us understand each other better. I am not disposed to be unfriendly toward you—do not think that—nor even to rejectyour suit unconditionally. I owe you much, and I see that you are greatly in earnest; but I am not clear. Your motive seems to be philanthropic. You have said as much yourself, you know. Still, philanthropy is only warm; it is never hot to desperation; it never commits suicide in despair of doing good. That, then, is the first thing which I fail to understand in you. And, secondly, I do not grasp why you desire any closer relation to be set up between us for my happiness, when I assure you that nothing but the rehabilitation of my sister’s name could lighten my unhappiness, and that, this once done, nothing further could possibly be done by any one to attach me more to life.”
“But I am older than you, and know better,” answered Van Hupfeldt, seating himself beside her, speaking now more calmly. “You know nothing of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Travel alone would give you a new outlook. I should ever be inventing new pleasures and excitements for you. Sometimes, already, I lie awake at night, thinking them out. I am very rich, and all my wealth should be turned into one channel, to delight you. You know nothing of society in the States, of the brilliance and abandon of life across the Atlantic. And the Parisbeau monde, with its charm and wit and easy joyousness, you know nothing yet of that. I should find the means to keep you constantly gay, to watch you in ever new phases, costumes, jewels—”
The thought passed through Violet’s mind: “He has distinguished manners, but a vulgar mind,” and she said aloud: “So that is how you would wean me from sorrow, Mr. Van Hupfeldt? I should prefer a week of Dale Manor with my birds and flowers to a cycle of all that.”
“Then it shall be Dale Manor rather than ‘all that,’” he agreed. “It shall be just as you would have it, if only you will be happy, and will give me a glance one day which means ‘My happiness is due to you.’ May I have another peep at the locket?”
Violet took a locket from her neck, pressed a spring, and showed within a miniature in water-colors of the dead Gwen. She shivered a little. Though she was speaking of her sister, the man’s sudden request jarred on her.
“I like to look at it,” said Van Hupfeldt, bending closer. “It reminds me of you—chiefly about the mouth and chin, about the dear little chin. She suffered, yes, she tasted sorrow, and since she suffered, you must not suffer, too. I kiss her instead of you, because she was like you.”
This, certainly, was an odd reason for Van Hupfeldt’s tenderness to the miniature, but Violet’s heart instantly warmed toward him for his pity of her beloved; and when he replaced the locket round her neck, saying: “So, then, do we understand each other now?” she found it hard to answer: “I’m afraid that I am as far from understanding as ever.”
“That will come in time, trust me,” said he; “but as to that little word ‘Yes,’ is it to be taken as uttered now?”
“No, not now,” she said gently, “though do not go away thinking it may never be. Let me be frank, Mr. Van Hupfeldt. You know quite well that I am not at present disposed to worship your sex, and that is really so. Honestly, I don’t think that the human species adorns the earth on which it lives, least of all the male part of it. If I wished to marry, I believe I should choose some poor tiller of the fields, who had never seen a city, or heard of the arts of vice. You see, then, that the whole notion of marriage must be sufficiently distasteful to me. I wouldn’t and couldn’t give myself; but I am quite willing to—to make a bargain.”
“A bargain?” He started, and his dark eyes stared at her blankly.
“Yes, it is better to be candid. When you have cleared my sister’s name, or found the child, as you hope to be able to do, then, if you desire me still the same, you will again speak to me. I cannot definitely part from my freedom without a certainty that you will be able to do what you hope; and it is only fair to you to let you know that I should probably consent to give the same promise to any other man who would and could do this much for me.”
Upon this Van Hupfeldt’s brow flushed angrily, and he leaped to his feet, crying: “But that will neverbe! Clear your sister’s name? You still talk like a child—”
Now it was Violet’s turn to stand up in astonishment, as she saw her castle in the clouds diminishing. She stared in her turn, with open lips, crying: “Do you say this? that it will never be?”
“How can you set a man’s life on the chance of the realization of such a mere dream?” asked Van Hupfeldt, irritated, saying more than was wise.
“A dream?” murmured Violet, as if in a dream herself. “Then, who is it that has sent me this?”
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 notso 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 cometogether. 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!
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 Gissingthat 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 Barnesherself 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 fromhim, 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 pianoin 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 ofsongs, 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 hidingthe 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?”