O silent one, I must tell my sweets and bitters to you, since I mayn’t to others. You will treasure each syllable, and speak of me as I am, “nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice.”But please, as you are good, bring not upon me any further declamation of the unhappy Moor! Pray Heaven you may not have to record the “unlucky deeds” of “one that lov’d, not wisely, but toowell,” nor your pallid cheeks reveal your grief because my “subdued eyes,Albeit unused to the melting mood,Drop tears as fast as the Arabian treesTheir med’cinable gum!”I was married last Tuesday. As the carriage rolled back along the sea front, and my darling husband’s arm clasped my waist as tightly as a silver arm clasps you, little book, the old jingle came into my head: “Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all.” The nasty things predicted for the other days of the week do not matter a jot, do they? Well, thank God, I am healthy enough, and Harry says that we shall have plenty of money by and by. Given health and wealth, there remains but happiness, and that is of our own contriving. And I am happy. Of that there can be no manner of doubt. Of course, I should have enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of marriage in the parish church with its joy-bells, its laughing tears, its nice speeches, while the dear old rector beamed on me, and the good folk of R—— set their eyes a-goggle to see how I looked and how Harry carried himself.I flatter myself I should have made a pretty bride, and, as for Harry, even under the chilling influences of a registrar’s office he had the air of a man who knows his own mind. How often, tittering at my thoughts, have I pictured my wedding-day long before Prince Charming hove in sight! And how different it all has been to the conceits of girlhood! When he did come, he hoisted an unknown flag and bore me off like any pirate.
O silent one, I must tell my sweets and bitters to you, since I mayn’t to others. You will treasure each syllable, and speak of me as I am, “nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice.”
But please, as you are good, bring not upon me any further declamation of the unhappy Moor! Pray Heaven you may not have to record the “unlucky deeds” of “one that lov’d, not wisely, but toowell,” nor your pallid cheeks reveal your grief because my “subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,Drop tears as fast as the Arabian treesTheir med’cinable gum!”
Albeit unused to the melting mood,Drop tears as fast as the Arabian treesTheir med’cinable gum!”
I was married last Tuesday. As the carriage rolled back along the sea front, and my darling husband’s arm clasped my waist as tightly as a silver arm clasps you, little book, the old jingle came into my head: “Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all.” The nasty things predicted for the other days of the week do not matter a jot, do they? Well, thank God, I am healthy enough, and Harry says that we shall have plenty of money by and by. Given health and wealth, there remains but happiness, and that is of our own contriving. And I am happy. Of that there can be no manner of doubt. Of course, I should have enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of marriage in the parish church with its joy-bells, its laughing tears, its nice speeches, while the dear old rector beamed on me, and the good folk of R—— set their eyes a-goggle to see how I looked and how Harry carried himself.
I flatter myself I should have made a pretty bride, and, as for Harry, even under the chilling influences of a registrar’s office he had the air of a man who knows his own mind. How often, tittering at my thoughts, have I pictured my wedding-day long before Prince Charming hove in sight! And how different it all has been to the conceits of girlhood! When he did come, he hoisted an unknown flag and bore me off like any pirate.
Then references to life in a hotel, not named, and the good-natured scrutiny of strangers “who knew us at once as a newly-married couple, though we tried to be offhand to each other.”
Later she described the beginning of housekeeping in London, “where all is so strange”; then a few phrases which sighed.
I have come to hate the word “Miss.” It is a constant reminder of the compact. Harry says it will not be long now before our marriage can be proclaimed; but meantime I always catch myself smiling graciously when a shop-walker hails me as “madam.” There is a recognition in the word! “Miss” is only a trifle less endurable than the “my dear” of the theater, which I heard to-day for the first time.
I have come to hate the word “Miss.” It is a constant reminder of the compact. Harry says it will not be long now before our marriage can be proclaimed; but meantime I always catch myself smiling graciously when a shop-walker hails me as “madam.” There is a recognition in the word! “Miss” is only a trifle less endurable than the “my dear” of the theater, which I heard to-day for the first time.
After some days there was a darker mood:
It has given me a shock to find myself described as “domesticated.” I came home to an empty house, after to-day’s rehearsal, tired and a bit peevish, perhaps. It is so slow, this novitiate. Harry says that his influence will quickly bring me to the front, that I must have patience, that the theatrical world is so compact, yet so split up into cliques, that, were our relationship suspected, I should encounter hostility instead of the indifference which I now resent. So, in unamiable mood, I began to rate my charlady about the dust which gives its brown tone to London interiors. Thinking that a display of energy might prove a tonic, I cleared out the dining-room and made things shine. My help raised her eyebrows and a duster in astonishment. “Lor’, miss,” she said, “you are domesticated! You must have had a good mother?” A good mother! She didn’t know how that word felt.How odiously some of the men speak, gaze. If a woman is attractive, they ogle her; if she is passée, she is less than nothing. Men did not talk and leer in that way at R. Did they think so? I cannot say. Even Harry laughed when I lost my temper in describing the impudence of a young fop who had bought his way into the chorus. “You must get used to that sort of thing in town!” he said. Then: “Bear with it a little while, sweetheart. Soon the pretense will be ended, and I shall be only too happy if you have lost the glamour of the footlights by that time. It was no wish of mine that you should become an actress.” That is quite, quite true. But I wish now—no, I don’t. I am silly and miserable. Please, diary, don’t be angry if I weep over you, and if I write foolish things.
It has given me a shock to find myself described as “domesticated.” I came home to an empty house, after to-day’s rehearsal, tired and a bit peevish, perhaps. It is so slow, this novitiate. Harry says that his influence will quickly bring me to the front, that I must have patience, that the theatrical world is so compact, yet so split up into cliques, that, were our relationship suspected, I should encounter hostility instead of the indifference which I now resent. So, in unamiable mood, I began to rate my charlady about the dust which gives its brown tone to London interiors. Thinking that a display of energy might prove a tonic, I cleared out the dining-room and made things shine. My help raised her eyebrows and a duster in astonishment. “Lor’, miss,” she said, “you are domesticated! You must have had a good mother?” A good mother! She didn’t know how that word felt.
How odiously some of the men speak, gaze. If a woman is attractive, they ogle her; if she is passée, she is less than nothing. Men did not talk and leer in that way at R. Did they think so? I cannot say. Even Harry laughed when I lost my temper in describing the impudence of a young fop who had bought his way into the chorus. “You must get used to that sort of thing in town!” he said. Then: “Bear with it a little while, sweetheart. Soon the pretense will be ended, and I shall be only too happy if you have lost the glamour of the footlights by that time. It was no wish of mine that you should become an actress.” That is quite, quite true. But I wish now—no, I don’t. I am silly and miserable. Please, diary, don’t be angry if I weep over you, and if I write foolish things.
Then, some four months after marriage:
Harry away a whole week now. Telegram from Paris: “Cannot leave Mrs. S. for some time yet.” He is glad that I have decided to give up the stage without delay. So soon, so soon! I am glad, too, for some reasons, and sorry for others. Is not that life in a few words?...Créature d’un jour qui t’agites une heure,De quoi viens-tu te plaindre et que te fait gémir?Ton âme t’inquiète et tu crois qu’elle pleure:Ton âme est immortelle, et tes pleurs vont tarur.It is strange that I should regret the passing of the stage, now that it becomes a necessity. There I found companionship, of a sort. I shall be so lonely. But not for long. Harry returns next week, “on the 10th” his second message says, and then I think really that I must begin to insist upon seeing my mother. He can hardly refuse now. To meet her again! though our eyes will be flooded with tears. And Vi! dear, dear Vi! Will she be eager to hear all about it? But the reproach in her eyes! What did she think when she opened that letter of mine? How she would weep over her old flighty Gwen! Oh, darling mother, and sweet, ever-forgiving sister, how I long to hold you in my arms! If Harry only knew you he would surely trust you, and then I would not care if the publication of the marriage was delayed another year.
Harry away a whole week now. Telegram from Paris: “Cannot leave Mrs. S. for some time yet.” He is glad that I have decided to give up the stage without delay. So soon, so soon! I am glad, too, for some reasons, and sorry for others. Is not that life in a few words?...
Créature d’un jour qui t’agites une heure,De quoi viens-tu te plaindre et que te fait gémir?Ton âme t’inquiète et tu crois qu’elle pleure:Ton âme est immortelle, et tes pleurs vont tarur.
Créature d’un jour qui t’agites une heure,De quoi viens-tu te plaindre et que te fait gémir?Ton âme t’inquiète et tu crois qu’elle pleure:Ton âme est immortelle, et tes pleurs vont tarur.
It is strange that I should regret the passing of the stage, now that it becomes a necessity. There I found companionship, of a sort. I shall be so lonely. But not for long. Harry returns next week, “on the 10th” his second message says, and then I think really that I must begin to insist upon seeing my mother. He can hardly refuse now. To meet her again! though our eyes will be flooded with tears. And Vi! dear, dear Vi! Will she be eager to hear all about it? But the reproach in her eyes! What did she think when she opened that letter of mine? How she would weep over her old flighty Gwen! Oh, darling mother, and sweet, ever-forgiving sister, how I long to hold you in my arms! If Harry only knew you he would surely trust you, and then I would not care if the publication of the marriage was delayed another year.
Hour after hour David read on, dead to all things in the world but to the soul in pain in that book and to his hope that, if only once, she had written the name of her home. Every time he came upon that letter R (by which she meant Rigsworth) he groaned; and anon he looked with eyes of despair and something of fond reproach at her face over the mantelpiece.
He read of her leaving the stage, because of the necessity that was now upon her, and then of the months of heaviness and tears. The worst trial of all in her lot seemed to be the constant separations, due to the tyranny of one “Mrs. S.,” who ever drew her husband from her. She wrote:
I actually should be jealous, if she wasn’t old! From Paris to Homburg, from Homburg to Siena: and everywhere poor Harry dragged at her chariot-wheels! I should like to have one peep at her in the flesh, just to see what she is really like. Her photographs show a fat, cross-looking old thing, but she can’t be quite like that, with her really good affectionate heart. Has she not been the best of mothers to Harry? From the time she adopted him, he says, when he was a quite poor boy of fifteen, she has never been able to live a month without seeing him, even when he was at HeidelburgUniversity. I must be content only to share him with her, but just now I think I have the stronger claim, unless she is really so very ill. I have heard that tale before of her “dying state,” but that sort of old things don’t die so easily. I believe that I write as if I wished her to! God forbid! I don’t allow all Harry’s dreams of the grandeurs to be enjoyed after her death to excite me much. I hope that I shall take it as coldly as doing up my hair when the letter comes, “Mrs. S. is dead! you are a millionaire.”Mercenariness is not one of my faults, anyway. It is true that since I have ceased to earn anything, I do sometimes feel a wee pinch of scarcity, and wish that he could send me even a few shillings a week more. But if that was only all of my trouble! No, Mrs. S., may you live as long as Heaven wills. If I thought that in any part of me there lurked one little longing to hear of that good woman’s death, I should never forgive myself. Still, I don’t think it right of her to play the despot over Harry to the extent to which she carries it. A man thirty-eight years old has surely the right to marry, if he wishes to. If it hadn’t been for her, my marriage could have been made public from the first, and all that woe at R. would have been spared. Harry says that she hates the very word “marriage,” and that if she was to get the least scent of his marriage, she would cut him off with a shilling.He has run a risk, poor old Hal, for my sake, and if now and again he can’t help longing to be rich and free, it is hard to blame him. The day he is rich and free there will be a spree, Gwen! It is wrong to anticipate it, but see if I don’t make the street of R. glow, if not with the wine of France, at least with beer, and if I don’t teach a certain staid Miss Violet Mordaunt how to do the high-kick, girls! I wonder if all will be over by then, and if I shall go back to dear old R. not only a wife but a mother?
I actually should be jealous, if she wasn’t old! From Paris to Homburg, from Homburg to Siena: and everywhere poor Harry dragged at her chariot-wheels! I should like to have one peep at her in the flesh, just to see what she is really like. Her photographs show a fat, cross-looking old thing, but she can’t be quite like that, with her really good affectionate heart. Has she not been the best of mothers to Harry? From the time she adopted him, he says, when he was a quite poor boy of fifteen, she has never been able to live a month without seeing him, even when he was at HeidelburgUniversity. I must be content only to share him with her, but just now I think I have the stronger claim, unless she is really so very ill. I have heard that tale before of her “dying state,” but that sort of old things don’t die so easily. I believe that I write as if I wished her to! God forbid! I don’t allow all Harry’s dreams of the grandeurs to be enjoyed after her death to excite me much. I hope that I shall take it as coldly as doing up my hair when the letter comes, “Mrs. S. is dead! you are a millionaire.”
Mercenariness is not one of my faults, anyway. It is true that since I have ceased to earn anything, I do sometimes feel a wee pinch of scarcity, and wish that he could send me even a few shillings a week more. But if that was only all of my trouble! No, Mrs. S., may you live as long as Heaven wills. If I thought that in any part of me there lurked one little longing to hear of that good woman’s death, I should never forgive myself. Still, I don’t think it right of her to play the despot over Harry to the extent to which she carries it. A man thirty-eight years old has surely the right to marry, if he wishes to. If it hadn’t been for her, my marriage could have been made public from the first, and all that woe at R. would have been spared. Harry says that she hates the very word “marriage,” and that if she was to get the least scent of his marriage, she would cut him off with a shilling.
He has run a risk, poor old Hal, for my sake, and if now and again he can’t help longing to be rich and free, it is hard to blame him. The day he is rich and free there will be a spree, Gwen! It is wrong to anticipate it, but see if I don’t make the street of R. glow, if not with the wine of France, at least with beer, and if I don’t teach a certain staid Miss Violet Mordaunt how to do the high-kick, girls! I wonder if all will be over by then, and if I shall go back to dear old R. not only a wife but a mother?
Then again, a month later:
What a thing! to be a mother! Sometimes the thought hits me suddenly between the eyes, and I can’t believe it is I myself—that same powerlessness to recognize myself which I had for fully a week after the marriage. But this is greater still, to have something which will be to me what I have been to my own mother. Gwen,Gwen, how exquisitely droll! How one grows into something else quite different, without at all noticing how and when! But will it never be over? It is like heaving a sigh a century long. Won’t it be nice to dance again, and fling one’s limbs? But meantime, such a weight of care, strange fears, gazings into I don’t know what abyss, and never a day without its flood of tears. I want my mother. It is no good; I want to go back to where I was born. I am not strong enough to bear this. But after Tuesday’s promise to him, what can I do? I have said now that I won’t write until after, and I won’t if God gives me strength.
What a thing! to be a mother! Sometimes the thought hits me suddenly between the eyes, and I can’t believe it is I myself—that same powerlessness to recognize myself which I had for fully a week after the marriage. But this is greater still, to have something which will be to me what I have been to my own mother. Gwen,Gwen, how exquisitely droll! How one grows into something else quite different, without at all noticing how and when! But will it never be over? It is like heaving a sigh a century long. Won’t it be nice to dance again, and fling one’s limbs? But meantime, such a weight of care, strange fears, gazings into I don’t know what abyss, and never a day without its flood of tears. I want my mother. It is no good; I want to go back to where I was born. I am not strong enough to bear this. But after Tuesday’s promise to him, what can I do? I have said now that I won’t write until after, and I won’t if God gives me strength.
For two months there was no entry, and then came joy that a son was born; but from the time of that birth, the diary which had before been profuse and daily became short and broken.
A deadlock seemed to have arisen. “Harry” allowed one letter to be written home to tell of the birth; but would not permit any direct statement as to the marriage, nor any meeting, nor any further letter, until “Mrs. S.,” who was now “near her end,” should be dead. She wrote:
To-day is six weeks since I have seen him, and altogether he has seen baby only twice. Yesterday’s letter was divided into “heads,” like a sermon, giving the reason why I may not go to him in Paris, why I may not write home, even without giving my address, and why he cannot come back yet. But it is a year now, and I have a mother and a sister. There is no certainty that Mrs. S. may not live ten years longer; and in last night’s letter I said that on the 4th of July, one month from now, if nothing has then happened to change the situation, I shall be compelled to risk displeasing him, and I shall go to R. That’s crossing the Rubicon, Gwen, and I’m awfully frightened now. He will call it defiance, and rave, I know. “Be bold, be bold, be not too bold.” But, then, I can always tame the monster with one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man, andcan conquer my conqueror, and it is time now to begin to assert myself a little. . . .Isn’t there something queerish in his relation with “Mrs. S.”? He stands in such mortal fear of her! I don’t think it is quite pretty for a man to have such tremors for any earthly reason. One day I asked him why he could not introduce me to her as—a friend? She might take a fancy to me, I said, since I am generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere suggestion of such a thing. . . .That last night, coming home from the theater, he said something about “Anna.” I asked him who Anna was. He said: “I mean Mrs. S.,” looking, it seemed to me, rather put out. I had never heard him call her Anna before. . . .My voice is certainly not what it was, and not through any want of practise, I’m sure. People so hopelessly worried as I am at present can’t sing really well. For the second time yesterday I wrote that I shall really go to mother after the fourth of next month, and I mean it, I do mean it! I owe something to her, too, and to myself, and I still don’t see what harm it can do to Harry. Poor dear, he is awfully frightened! “If you persist in this wild notion, you will compel me to take a step which will be bitter to you and to myself.” I don’t know what step he can mean. That’s only talk. I’ll do it just to see what happens, for one oughtn’t to threaten a woman with penalties which she can’t conceive, or her curiosity will lead her to do the very thing. It was an ill-understood threat that made Eve eat the apple, my Hal. “Thou shalt surely die”; but, not knowing what “to die” was like, she thought to herself: “Well, just to see.” There’s no particularly “bitter step” that he can take, and the time is really come for me to assert myself a little now. Men love a woman better when she is not all milk and honey. . . .It is near now, Vi! He has her chin, her hands, her dark grave eyes, her very smile. I am on the point at last of seeing him in her arms. How will she look? What will she think of me, the little girl whom she used to guide with her eye, beating her a hundred miles, an old experienced mummie while she is still a maid! I can no more resist it than I could fly! I shall do it! I am going to doit! I told Harry that I should. There’s no danger, and I can’t resist it any longer. I am just back from P. He is looking too sweet now for anything, and can blow the whistle of the rattle. I told Mrs. C. that in three days’ time I shall be taking him from her for at least ten days, perhaps for good. Only three days! Sarah is beginning to get things ready....Yes, it was “a bitter step” enough, poor Hal! God help you and me, and all the helpless!...I told poor Sarah just now: “I am not married. You only think that I am; but I am not. I have a child; but I am not married. Sarah, this is no fit place for a girl like you.” She thinks that I am mad, I know, but I keep quite sane and myself. I am only sorry for poor old Hal. He loves me and I loved him when I had a heart....I thought of seeing the boy once more, but I haven’t the energy. I don’t seem to care. If I should care, or love, or hate, or eat, it wouldn’t be so horrible. But I am only a ghost, a sham. I am really dead. My nature is akin with the grave, and has no appetite but for that with which it is akin. Well, I will soon come. It shall be to-morrow night, just after Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself first to do that which is my duty. I ought, as a friend, to cover up poor Hal’s traces, and yet I must be just to the boy, too. He ought to know when he grows up that, if his mother was unfortunate, she was not abandoned, and it is my duty to leave for him the proofs of it. But how to do that, and at the same time protect Harry, is the question, for I suppose that the police will search the flat. It is very wearisome. I doubt if my poor head is too clear to-day....It shall be like this: I’ll hide the things somewhere where the police won’t readily find them. I’ll invent a place. Then I shall write to Vi, not telling her what is going to happen to me, but telling her that if in a few months’ time she will thoroughly search a certain flat in London, she will find what will be good for her and mother and the boy. And I shall give the address; but I won’t tell her exactly where I hide the things; for fear of the police getting hold of the letter and arresting Harry. And I will post it after Sarah is gone to-morrow night, just before I do it. That’s what I shall do. I’m pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm. Idon’t know yet where I shall hide the things; but I shall find a place, I shall hoodwink them all, and manage everything just nicely. Sarah thinks that I’m mad, but I’m not. It is she who is raving mad, and people who are mad think that every one is, except themselves.I’ll hide the diary in one place, the certificates in another, and the photograph of the boy’s father in another. That’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll tear up all other papers small. No, I’ll hide as well the letter in which he says that he is Mrs. S.’s husband, and that I’m not his legal wife; for some day I should like Vi to know that I did not take my life for nothing, but was murdered before I killed myself. Then I’ll do it. It isn’t bitter; it’s sweet. Death’s a hole to creep in for shelter for one’s poor head. Harry will be in England in five days’ time, so I’ll write him a letter to the Constitutional to say good-by. He loves me. He didn’t mean to kill me. He only told me in order to stop me from going home. It is such a burden to write to him, but it is my duty to give him one last word of comfort, and I will.Then, when all this world of business is over and done, I’ll do it. It isn’t bitter; it’s sweet. God, I couldn’t face them! Forgive me! I know that it is wicked; but it is nice, is death. Things are as they are. One can’t fight against the ocean. It is sweet to close one’s eyes, and drown.
To-day is six weeks since I have seen him, and altogether he has seen baby only twice. Yesterday’s letter was divided into “heads,” like a sermon, giving the reason why I may not go to him in Paris, why I may not write home, even without giving my address, and why he cannot come back yet. But it is a year now, and I have a mother and a sister. There is no certainty that Mrs. S. may not live ten years longer; and in last night’s letter I said that on the 4th of July, one month from now, if nothing has then happened to change the situation, I shall be compelled to risk displeasing him, and I shall go to R. That’s crossing the Rubicon, Gwen, and I’m awfully frightened now. He will call it defiance, and rave, I know. “Be bold, be bold, be not too bold.” But, then, I can always tame the monster with one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man, andcan conquer my conqueror, and it is time now to begin to assert myself a little. . . .
Isn’t there something queerish in his relation with “Mrs. S.”? He stands in such mortal fear of her! I don’t think it is quite pretty for a man to have such tremors for any earthly reason. One day I asked him why he could not introduce me to her as—a friend? She might take a fancy to me, I said, since I am generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere suggestion of such a thing. . . .
That last night, coming home from the theater, he said something about “Anna.” I asked him who Anna was. He said: “I mean Mrs. S.,” looking, it seemed to me, rather put out. I had never heard him call her Anna before. . . .
My voice is certainly not what it was, and not through any want of practise, I’m sure. People so hopelessly worried as I am at present can’t sing really well. For the second time yesterday I wrote that I shall really go to mother after the fourth of next month, and I mean it, I do mean it! I owe something to her, too, and to myself, and I still don’t see what harm it can do to Harry. Poor dear, he is awfully frightened! “If you persist in this wild notion, you will compel me to take a step which will be bitter to you and to myself.” I don’t know what step he can mean. That’s only talk. I’ll do it just to see what happens, for one oughtn’t to threaten a woman with penalties which she can’t conceive, or her curiosity will lead her to do the very thing. It was an ill-understood threat that made Eve eat the apple, my Hal. “Thou shalt surely die”; but, not knowing what “to die” was like, she thought to herself: “Well, just to see.” There’s no particularly “bitter step” that he can take, and the time is really come for me to assert myself a little now. Men love a woman better when she is not all milk and honey. . . .
It is near now, Vi! He has her chin, her hands, her dark grave eyes, her very smile. I am on the point at last of seeing him in her arms. How will she look? What will she think of me, the little girl whom she used to guide with her eye, beating her a hundred miles, an old experienced mummie while she is still a maid! I can no more resist it than I could fly! I shall do it! I am going to doit! I told Harry that I should. There’s no danger, and I can’t resist it any longer. I am just back from P. He is looking too sweet now for anything, and can blow the whistle of the rattle. I told Mrs. C. that in three days’ time I shall be taking him from her for at least ten days, perhaps for good. Only three days! Sarah is beginning to get things ready....
Yes, it was “a bitter step” enough, poor Hal! God help you and me, and all the helpless!...
I told poor Sarah just now: “I am not married. You only think that I am; but I am not. I have a child; but I am not married. Sarah, this is no fit place for a girl like you.” She thinks that I am mad, I know, but I keep quite sane and myself. I am only sorry for poor old Hal. He loves me and I loved him when I had a heart....
I thought of seeing the boy once more, but I haven’t the energy. I don’t seem to care. If I should care, or love, or hate, or eat, it wouldn’t be so horrible. But I am only a ghost, a sham. I am really dead. My nature is akin with the grave, and has no appetite but for that with which it is akin. Well, I will soon come. It shall be to-morrow night, just after Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself first to do that which is my duty. I ought, as a friend, to cover up poor Hal’s traces, and yet I must be just to the boy, too. He ought to know when he grows up that, if his mother was unfortunate, she was not abandoned, and it is my duty to leave for him the proofs of it. But how to do that, and at the same time protect Harry, is the question, for I suppose that the police will search the flat. It is very wearisome. I doubt if my poor head is too clear to-day....
It shall be like this: I’ll hide the things somewhere where the police won’t readily find them. I’ll invent a place. Then I shall write to Vi, not telling her what is going to happen to me, but telling her that if in a few months’ time she will thoroughly search a certain flat in London, she will find what will be good for her and mother and the boy. And I shall give the address; but I won’t tell her exactly where I hide the things; for fear of the police getting hold of the letter and arresting Harry. And I will post it after Sarah is gone to-morrow night, just before I do it. That’s what I shall do. I’m pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm. Idon’t know yet where I shall hide the things; but I shall find a place, I shall hoodwink them all, and manage everything just nicely. Sarah thinks that I’m mad, but I’m not. It is she who is raving mad, and people who are mad think that every one is, except themselves.
I’ll hide the diary in one place, the certificates in another, and the photograph of the boy’s father in another. That’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll tear up all other papers small. No, I’ll hide as well the letter in which he says that he is Mrs. S.’s husband, and that I’m not his legal wife; for some day I should like Vi to know that I did not take my life for nothing, but was murdered before I killed myself. Then I’ll do it. It isn’t bitter; it’s sweet. Death’s a hole to creep in for shelter for one’s poor head. Harry will be in England in five days’ time, so I’ll write him a letter to the Constitutional to say good-by. He loves me. He didn’t mean to kill me. He only told me in order to stop me from going home. It is such a burden to write to him, but it is my duty to give him one last word of comfort, and I will.
Then, when all this world of business is over and done, I’ll do it. It isn’t bitter; it’s sweet. God, I couldn’t face them! Forgive me! I know that it is wicked; but it is nice, is death. Things are as they are. One can’t fight against the ocean. It is sweet to close one’s eyes, and drown.
That word “drown” was the last. David closed the book with a blackness in his heart and brain.
The reading of it had brought him only grief and little light for practical purposes. That “Mrs. S.” meant “Mrs. Strauss” he had no doubt, nor any doubt that “Harry” meant Henry Van Hupfeldt. Still, there was no formal proof of it. The name of her home, to learn which he had dared to open the diary, appeared only as “R.” The only pieces of knowledge which the reading brought him were, firstly, that there were a photograph and a letter stillhidden in the flat—certainly, not in any of the pictures, for he had searched them all; and secondly that “Harry” was a member of the Constitutional Club. As for the child, it was, or had been, at “P.,” in the care of one “Mrs. C.”
The necessity that was now strong upon David was to act, to fight for it. To hunt for the still hidden photograph and letter was far too slow a task in his present mood of turbulence and desperation. The photograph, indeed, would furnish certain proof as to whether Strauss and Van Hupfeldt were one. So might the letter. But of what use would proof of anything whatever be, when he was all shut out from access to the Mordaunts? He thought, however, that if he could come within earshot and striking distance of Van Hupfeldt, then something might result, he was not clear what. He put on his hat and went out, as grim a man as any on the streets of London that afternoon. He did not know where Van Hupfeldt lived, but he turned his steps toward the Constitutional Club.
He meant at least to discover if Van Hupfeldt was a member there, and he might discover more. But he was spared the pains of inquiry, for he was still at a distance of thirty yards from the club when he saw Van Hupfeldt come out and step into a carriage.
David cringed half under a dray, till the carriagebegan to move, then followed some way behind at his long trot. He thought now that perhaps he was about to track Van Hupfeldt to his house.
The carriage drove straight to Baker-St. Station, into which Van Hupfeldt went, and took a ticket. David, listening outside the outer entrance to the small booking-office, could not catch the name of his destination, but when Van Hupfeldt had gone down into the gloom and fume, David, half-way down the flight of stairs, stood watching. He had no little finesse in tracking, and ferreting, and remaining invisible, and when Van Hupfeldt had taken his seat, David was in another compartment of the same train.
The dusk of evening was thickening when their train stopped at the townlet of Pangley, twenty-five miles from London, where Van Hupfeldt alighted.
David saw him well out of the little station before he himself leaped, as the train began to move. He then took the precaution to ascertain the times of the next up-trains. There would be one at quarter past eight and another at tenP.M.While he asked as to the trains, and paid the fare of some excess charge, he kept his eye on the back of Van Hupfeldt, walking down the rather steep street. And, when it was safe, he followed.
At the bottom of the street they crossed a bridge, and thenceforward walked up a road with heath on both sides. David was angry with his luck, for the road was straight and long, and there was little coverin the heath, where he walked some distance from the road. Once Van Hupfeldt turned, and seemed to admire the last traces of color in the western sky, whereat David, as if shot, dropped into gorse and bracken. He hoped that Van Hupfeldt, being a man of cities and civilization, was unconscious of him; but he felt that he in Van Hupfeldt’s place would have known all, and he had a fear. The light was fast failing, but he could clearly see Van Hupfeldt, who swung a parcel in his hand; and he thought that if he could see Van Hupfeldt well, then Van Hupfeldt might have seen him dimly. Van Hupfeldt, however, gave no sign of it.
David saw him go into the gateway of a pretty dwelling, and a big hearty countrywoman ran out to meet him, her face beaming with good cheer. Carrying a child in her arms, she escorted Van Hupfeldt into the house with, it was clear, no lack of welcome, and, when they had disappeared, David, vaulting over a hedge into the orchard, crept nearer the house and hid behind a shed in which he saw a white calf. He waited there for a long time, how long he did not know, for once, when he peered at his watch, he could see nothing. The night had come moonless and black. The place where he lurked was in the shadow of trees.
Meantime, within the house, Van Hupfeldt sat with the child on his knee. He was so pale that Mrs. Carter, the child’s foster-mother, asked if he was well. Some purpose, some fear or hope, agitated him. Once,when the countrywoman left the room to fetch a glass of milk, the moment he was alone he put down the child, sped like a thief to the grandfather’s clock ticking in its old nook by the settee, opened it, put the minute-hand back twenty minutes, and was seated again when the milk came in.
These visits of his to the child, of which he paid one every week, always lasted half an hour. This time he stayed so much longer that Mrs. Carter glanced at the clock, only to be taken aback by the earliness of the hour.
“Bless us!” she cried. “I thought it was later ’n that. You still have plenty of time to catch the quarter past eight, sir.”
But Van Hupfeldt stood up, saying that he would go. Putting on his coat, he added: “Mrs. Carter, I have been followed from London by a man who, I fancy, will present himself here presently when I am gone. He wishes to know more about my affairs than he has a right to know. If he comes, I have a reason for wishing you to receive him politely, and to keep him in talk as long as he will stay. But, of course, you won’t satisfy his curiosity in anything that concerns me. In particular, be very careful not to give him any hint that my name was Strauss during my wife’s lifetime.”
“You may rely on me,” said Mrs. Carter, in the secret voice of an accomplice.
“Now, little one, to bed,” said Van Hupfeldt, athin and lanky figure in his long overcoat, as he bent with kisses over the boy in Mrs. Carter’s arms.
Five minutes after he was gone David was at the farmhouse door. He, too, would like a glass of milk.
“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Carter. “Step inside.”
His first glance was at the clock, for he did not wish to lose the quarter past eight train, since that would mean the losing of his present chance of tracking Van Hupfeldt to his address. But the clock reassured him. He indolently took it for granted that it was more or less near the mark, and it pointed to twenty minutes to eight. He would thus have time to strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Carter, as a preliminary to closer relations in the future.
“And where is baby?” he asked.
“Oh, you know about him?” said Mrs. Carter. “He’s in bed, to be sure.”
“I saw him in your arms as I was passing up the road half an hour ago.”
“What, you passed along here? I didn’t notice you.”
“I came up from the station. Now, this is something like good milk. You have a nice little farm here, too. Do you manage it yourself?”
“Yes; my husband died a twelvemonth come May.”
“It must be hard work with baby, too, as well, especially if you’ve got any youngsters of your own.”
“How can you know that this baby isn’t my own?”
“Oh, as to that, I’m not quite so much in the dark about things. Why, I’m living in the very flat which its poor mother occupied. I know its aunt, I know its father—”
“Oh, well, you seem to know a lot. What more do you want?”
“I only know the father by sight—that is, if he was the father who was in here just now. I take it he was.”
“Ah, there, now, you’re asking.”
“Oh, there’s no secret, Mrs. Carter. Mr. Johann Strauss is a well-known man.”
“Is that his name—Strauss? Well, well, live and learn.”
“That’s his name, and that’s his writing, Mrs. Carter!”—words which David uttered almost with a shout, as he caught an envelope out of the coal scuttle, and laid it on the table, pointing fixedly at it.
Mrs. Carter was startled by his sudden vehemence. The envelope was one directed to her in the same flourishing writing which Dibbin had long since shown David as that of Strauss.
“You are bound to admit,” said David, imperatively, “that this envelope was directed to you by the gentleman who was just here.”
“Well, so it was; what of that?” asked Mrs. Carter, in a maze as to what the row was about.
“That’s all right, then,” said David, quieting down. “I only wanted to be sure.”
This, then, settled it. Van Hupfeldt was Strauss. David kept the envelope, sipped his milk, and for some time talked with Mrs. Carter about her cows, her fruit, and whether the white calf was to be sold or kept. When it was ten minutes to eight by the big parlor clock he rose to go, said that he hoped to see baby next time, if he might call again, and shook hands. But in going out, from force of habit, he glanced at his watch, and now saw that it was really ten minutes past eight.
“Great goodness!” he exclaimed, “your clock is all wrong!”
“No, sir—” began Mrs. Carter.
David was gone. He had five minutes in which to run a good deal over a mile, and he ran with all his speed; but some distance from the station he saw the train steaming out, and pulled up short.
At that moment Van Hupfeldt in the train was thinking: “It has worked well. He is late, and there is no other train till ten—an hour and three quarters. He has only a charwoman. She will not be in the flat at this hour. No one will be there. Will it be my luck that the diary is not under lock and key?”
As a matter of fact, the diary was lying openly on the dining-room table in the flat, caution of that sort being hardly the uppermost quality in David’s character.
David strolled about Pangley, looked into the tiny shop-windows, dined on fruit, wished that he had notbeen born some new variety of a fool, and found that hour and three quarters as long as a week. Not much given to suspicions of meanness and cunning, it did not even now come into his head that he was where he was by a trick. He blamed only destiny for imposing upon him such penal inactivity in the little town that night when a thousand spurs were urging him to action. But at last ten o’clock came, and when he stepped into the train he asked himself why he had been so impatient, since probably nothing could be done that evening. He reached London before eleven, and drove home weary of himself and of his cares.
It was too late then, he thought, to go hunting after Van Hupfeldt. On the morrow morning he would again try at the Constitutional. Meantime, he lit himself a fire, and sat over it brooding, cudgeling his brains for some plan of action. Then the diary drew him. He would re-read that tragedy throughout. He put out his arm, half-turning from over the fire to get the book.
It was no longer on the table.
He stood up and stared at the table. No diary was there. Yet he seemed to remember—He set to work to search the flat.
Suddenly, in the midst of his work, a flood of light broke in upon him. He thought that, if the letter which he had written to Violet, telling her that he had the diary, had already fallen into Van Hupfeldt’shands, then Van Hupfeldt knew that he had the diary; in which case, it was Van Hupfeldt who had put back the clock’s hand in the farmhouse at Pangley! Van Hupfeldt knew all the time that David was shadowing him, had put back the clock, and now held the diary, for which both he and David would have given all that they were worth, and all is everything, whether ten pounds or a million.
“Is that it?” thought David to himself. “Oh, is that it? All right, let it be like that.”
He lost not two minutes in thought, but with a lowering brow went out into the streets, high-strung, his fingers cramped together.
An hour before this he had said to himself that the hour was too late for action. Now, an hour later, such a thought did not occur to him in the high pitch of his soul. That night, and not any other night or day, he would have it out with Van Hupfeldt.
He jumped into a cab, and drove to the flat in King-St., Chelsea.
“But what on earth can the man mean,” said Miss L’Estrange, peeping through the slit of her slightly-opened door, “coming to a lady’s flat at this hour of the morning?”
In reality it was about half-past twelve.
“No, it’s no use talking,” said David, “you must let me in. I know you have a right good heart, and I rely upon its action when I tell you that it is a matter of life and death this time.”
“But I’m alone.”
“So much the better.”
“Well, I like your cheek!”
“You like the whole of me; so you may as well own up to it, and be done.”
“Rats! You only come here when you want something done. It isn’t me you come to see.”
“I’ll come to see you some other time. Just throw something on, and let me in.”
“‘Throw something on,’ indeed! I’ll throw something on you, and that’ll be hot water, the next time you come bothering about at this hour. Oh, well, never mind; you’re not a bad sort. Come in.”
The door opened, Miss L’Estrange fled, and David went into the drawing-room, where he waited some minutes till she reappeared, looking fresh and washed from the night’s stage-paint, with something voluminous wrapped about her.
“Now, what is it?” said she. “Straight to the point—that’s me.”
“You must give me Strauss’s address,” said David.
“That I sha’n’t,” said she. “What do you take me for? I promised the man that I wouldn’t. I have told you once that he isn’t a thousand miles from Piccadilly, and that’s about all you’ll get from me.”
“Good! I understand your position,” said David. “But before you refuse out and out, hear what I have to say. This man Strauss is a man who induced Gwendoline Barnes, whom you know, to leave herhome, married her while his first wife was alive, and so caused her to make away with herself. And now this same man, under the name of Van Hupfeldt, is about to marry her sister, without telling her that he even knew the girl whom he has murdered. I don’t know what the sister’s motive for marrying him is—quite possibly there’s some trick about it—but I know that the motive is not love. Now, just think a moment, and tell me if this is fair to your woman’s mind.”
“Oh, that’s how it is!” exclaimed Ermyn L’Estrange.
“All the facts which I have mentioned I know for certain,” said David.
“Then, that explains—”
“Explains what?”
“I’ll tell you; but this is between us, mind. Some time ago Strauss comes to me, and he says: ‘I have given your address to a young lady—a Miss Violet Mordaunt—who is about to write you a letter asking whether you did or did not find any certificates in a picture in the Eddystone Mansions flat; and I want you in answer to deny to her for my sake that any certificates were ever found.’”
“And you did?” cried David with deep reproach.
“Now, no preaching, or I never tell you anything again,” shrilled Miss L’Estrange. “Here’s gratitude in man! Of course I did! He said it was only an innocent fib which could do no harm to anybody, and if you saw the bracelet I got for it, my boy—”
“You wrote to say that no certificates were ever found!”
“I did.”
“Then what can she think of me?” he cried with a face of pain. “I told her—”
“Ah, you are after her, too? I see now how it is,” said Miss L’Estrange.
“But she might at least have given me a chance of clearing myself!” groaned David. “She might have written to me to say that she had found me out in a lie.”
Violet had, indeed, promised herself the luxury of writing one “stinging, crushing, killing” note to David in the event of Miss L’Estrange proving him false. And, in fact, not one but many such notes had been written down at Dale Manor. But none of them had ever been sent—her deep disdain had kept her silent.
“But,” cried David, at the spur of a sudden glad thought, “since Miss Mordaunt wrote to you, and you to her, you know her address, and can give it me!”
“No, I don’t know her address,” answered Miss L’Estrange. “I believe now that Strauss may have been afraid that if I knew it I might give it to you, so he must have prevented her from putting it on her letter. There was no address on it, I don’t think, for when I wrote back to her I gave my letter to Strauss to send.”
“Ah, he’s a cautious beast!” said David, bitterly. “Still—I’ll have him—not to-morrow, but to-night. Quick, now—his address.”
“Well, I promised not to tell it to any one,” vowed Miss L’Estrange in her best soubrette manner, “and I’ll be as good as my word, since I never break a promise when my word is once passed. I’ll just write it down on a piece of paper, and drop it on the floor by accident, and then if anybody should happen to notice it and pick it up without my seeing, that will be no business of mine.”
She rose, walked to a desk, and went through this pantomime in all seriousness. The address was dropped on the carpet, and David “happening” to notice it, picked it up behind Miss Ermyn L’Estrange’s unconscious back. It had on it the number of a house near Hanover Square; and in another moment David had pressed the lady’s hand, and was gone, crying: “I’ll come again!”
“Not even a word of thanks,” said Miss L’Estrange to herself, as she looked after his flying back: “‘Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind.’”
David leaped into his waiting cab, and was off across London.
Light was still in Van Hupfeldt’s quarters, and Van Hupfeldt himself, at the moment when David rang, was poring over the last words of the diary of her who had been part of his life. He was livid with fear at the knowledge just learned for certain from the written words, that there were still hidden in the flat a photograph of him, and his last letter to Gwendoline, when he heard an altercation between his man Neil andanother voice outside. A moment later he heard Neil cry out sharply, and then he was aware of a hurried step coming in upon him. The first thought of his secretive nature was the diary, and, with the trepidations of a miser surprised in counting his gold, he hustled it into a secret recess of the bureau near which he had been reading. He had hardly done this when he stood face to face with David.
At that moment Van Hupfeldt’s face seemed lit with a lunacy of affright, surprise, and rage. David, with his hat rather drawn over his eyes, and with a frowning severity, said: “I want four things of you—the diary, the key of my flat which you have in your possession, those certificates, and Mrs. Mordaunt’s address.”
A scream went out from Van Hupfeldt: “Neil! the police!”
“Quite so,” said David; “but before the police come, do as I say, or I shall kill you.”
Van Hupfeldt could hardly catch his breath sufficiently to speak. A man so wholly in the grip of terror it was painful to see. David understood him to say: “Man, I warn you, my heart is weak.”
“Heart weak?” growled David. “That’s what you say? Well, then, keep cool, and let me have my way. We must wrangle it out now somehow. You have the police on your side for the moment, and I stand alone—”
Now the outer door was heard to slam; for Neil had run out to summon help.
“I’m not acting on my own behalf,” said David, “but for the sake of a girl whose life, I feel sure, you are going to make bitter. She cares nothing for you—”
“How dare you!” came in a hoarseness of concentrated passion from Van Hupfeldt’s bosom.
“No, she cares nothing for you—”
“You interloper!”
“And even if she did, she is sure to find out sooner or later that you are Strauss—”
“Oh! had I but guessed!”
“Which would be the death of her—”
“I never dreamed of this.”
“So, on her behalf, I’ll just make a hurried search before the police comes. The things are not yours. If your heart wasn’t weak, I’d maul you till you were willing to hand them over of your own accord.”
With that David made a move toward the bureau, whereupon Van Hupfeldt uttered a scream and flew upon him like a cat-o’-mountain, but David flung him away to the other end of the room.
Scattered over the bureau were a number of letters in their envelopes ready for the post, and the first of these upon which David’s eye fell was directed to “Miss Violet Mordaunt.”
Here was luck! Even as his heart bounded, before even he had seen a word of the address, he was in darkness—Van Hupfeldt had switched off the light.
And now once again David felt himself outdone by the cunning of this man. The room was large, crowdedwith objects of luxury, and the switch a needle in a bundle of hay. In which direction to grope for it David did not know. He ran to where he had flung Van Hupfeldt, to compel him by main force to turn on the light. But Van Hupfeldt was no longer there. The suddenness of the darkness made it black to the eyes. David could not find the switch, and fearing lest Van Hupfeldt might snatch away the letter to Violet in the dark, he flew back to the bureau, over-setting first a chair, and then colliding upon Van Hupfeldt a little distance from the bureau. Again he flung Van Hupfeldt far, and, keeping near the bureau, groped along the beading of the wall, to see if he could encounter another switch.
In the midst of this search, his ears detected the sound of a key in the outer door, and understanding that help had arrived for the enemy, instantly he took his decision, felt for the eight or ten envelopes on the bureau, slipped them all into his pocket, and was gone. In the hall, coming inward he met Neil and an officer, but, as if making a deep bow to the majesty of the law, he slipped as easily as a wave under the officer’s hand, and disappeared through the wide-open door. The officer ran after him. This was simple. From the moment when David pitched through the house-door below the stairs, he was never more seen by that particular officer to the day of his death.
Under a lamp in Oxford-St., when he stopped running, he took out Strauss’s letters from his pocket witha hand that shook, for in his heart was the thought: “Suppose I have left hers behind!”
But no; that fifth one was hers: “Miss Violet Mordaunt, Dale Manor, Rigsworth, near Kenilworth.” Remembrance came to him with an ache of rapture. Within twenty-four hours he would see her. He was so pleased that he was at the pains to throw Strauss’s other letters into the first pillar-box. What did it matter now that the diary, certificates, anything or everything, had been filched from him? To-morrow, no, that day, he would see Violet.
Harcourt was now in the position of a man who thinks he has invented a flying-machine—enthusiasm became stronger than knowledge, belief was made to do service as evidence. To meet Violet, to look again into those sweet eyes of hers, that was the great thing he promised himself next morning. Indeed, it is to be feared he deliberately surrendered himself to dreams of such a meeting, while he smoked pipe after pipe in his lonesome flat, rather than set himself to an orderly review of his forces for the approaching trial of strength with Van Hupfeldt.
No sooner was he well clear of Van Hupfeldt’s house than he knew that he was safe from active interference by the law. The man whom he now looked on as his rival, the subtle adversary whom he had scorned to crush when appealed to for mercy on the score of physical inferiority, would never dare to seek the aid of authority. Nursing that fact, ready enough to welcome the prospect of an unaided combat, David did not stop to consider that an older head in counsel would not be a bad thing. There was Dibbin, for instance. Dibbin, whose ideas were cramped withinledgers and schedules, had, nevertheless, as he said himself, “been young once.” Surely David could have sufficiently oxygenized the agent’s thin blood with the story told by the hapless Gwendoline that the man should hie with him to Rigsworth and there be confronted with the veritable Strauss. Dibbin was a precise man. It would have been hard for Van Hupfeldt to flout Dibbin.
But no; David smoked and dreamed, and saw a living Violet in the chalk portrait of the dead Gwendoline, and said so many nice words to the presentment thus created that he came to believe them; and so he consigned Dibbin to his own musty office, nor even gave heed to the existence of such a credible witness as Sarah Gissing, poor Gwendoline’s maid.
He left a penciled note on his table that the charwoman was to call him when she came at eight—for in such wise does London conquer Wyoming—and with the rattle of her knuckles on the door he was out of bed, blithe as a lark, with his heart singing greetings to a sunny morning.
The manner of dress, the shade of a tie, the exact degree of whiteness of linen, were affairs of moment just then. Alack! here was our erstwhile rounder-up of steers stopping his hansom on the way to the station in order to buy a smart pair of doeskin gloves, while he gazed lovingly at a boutonnière of violets, but forbore.
It was noon ere he reached Rigsworth, and inquiry showed that the Mordaunts’ house was situated at thefarther end of the small village. He walked through the street of scattered houses, and attracted some attention by the sure fact that he was a stranger. At any rate, that was how he regarded the discreet scrutiny to which he was subjected.
“A big house with a lodge-gate, just past the church on the left,” were the station-master’s directions, and David had no difficulty in finding his way. His heart fell a little when he saw the style of the place. The lodge was a pretty villa in itself. Its garden would be of great worth within the London suburban area. Behind it stretched the park of Dale Manor, and the turrets of a mansion among many lordly elms seemed to put Violet on a somewhat inaccessible pinnacle. David did not know that people of moderate means can maintain a good sporting estate by letting the shooting, but he had learned in the free air of the States to rate a man on a different level to parks; if a half-bred rascal like Van Hupfeldt was able to enter this citadel like a thief for one daughter of the house, why should not an honest man storm it for the sake of another?
At the lodge, however, he met with a decided rebuff. “No visitors admitted,” was the curt response of a gamekeeper sort of person who was lurking in a doorway when David tried to open the locked gate.
“My business is important,” urged David, quietly, though his face flushed a little at the man’s impudent manner.
“So’s my orders,” said velveteens.
“But I must see either Mrs. Mordaunt or Miss Violet.”
“You can’t see either. Absolute orders. Your name’s Harcourt isn’t it?”
Then David knew that Van Hupfeldt had over-reached him by the telegraph, and the shattering of his dream-castle caused such lightnings to gleam from within that the surly gamekeeper whistled to a retriever dog, and ostensibly revealed a double-barreled gun which lay in the corner of the porch.
David was likely to have his own way with clodhoppers, even in the hour of tribulation.
“Yes,” he said, “my name is Harcourt. And yours?”
“Mine is no matter.”
“Very well, ‘No Matter.’ You are obeying orders, I have no doubt; but you must be taught civility. I give you notice, ‘No Matter,’ that a little later I shall lick you good and plenty, and if you don’t take it like a man you will probably be fired into the bargain.”
The keeper was for abusing him, but David turned away. And now he was not the well-dressed, gloved, spick-and-span Londoner, but the Indian of the prairie, with a heart from which the glow had gone, with eyes that saw and ears that heard and a brain that recorded everything.
He was instantly aware that the country policeman who had lolled through the village behind him was aforewarned spy. He knew that this functionary watched his return to the railway station, from which, as David happened to remember, the time-table had shown a train London-wards at one o’clock.
The station-master was affable enough, gave him some bread and meat and a glass of milk, and refused any payment. When the train came in, David, sourly smiling, saw the constable loll onto the platform. He could not resist the temptation to lean out of the carriage window.
“Good-by, P. C. 198,” he said.
Now, he was traveling first-class, and, in England, even a villain demands respect under that circumstance.
“Good-by, sir,” said the man, surprised.
“You will know me again, eh?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“I am glad of that. Tell that chap at the gate of Dale Manor that I shall keep my fixture with him soon.”
P. C. 198 scratched his head. “Funny affair,” he muttered as the train moved off. “Looks an’ talks more of a gentleman than van Wot’s-his-name, any day.”
At the next station, four miles away, David slipped out of his carriage quickly and waited in a shed until the train had gone again. Then he interviewed the station-master, and somewhat astonished the official by tendering a return ticket from Rigsworth to London.
“Can’t break your journey,” said the regulations.
“But I’ve done it,” said David.
“It’s irregular,” complained the other.
“And the train is half a mile distant.”
“Well, if you pay the fare—”
David meant to forfeit his ticket. This was a new light. He paid a few pence, took a receipt, and promised himself some fun at Rigsworth.
He asked for no information. From the train he had noted a line of telegraph posts in the distance, and he stepped out smartly along a by-road until he gained the main thoroughfare. Then, being alone, he ran, and the newly bought gloves burst their seams, so he flung them off.
When less than a mile from Rigsworth he heard the whistle of a train. Springing to a high bank, he made out the sinuous, snake-like curling of an engine and coaches beyond the hedge-rows—a train coming from London. “Van Hupfeldt is in it, of course,” he decided. “I must make sure.”
It needed a fine sprint, aided by the exercise of quick judgment when he neared Dale Manor; but he was hidden in a brake of brambles in the park as Van Hupfeldt, exceedingly pallid this glorious day of spring, walked up the drive, accompanied by the gamekeeper, dog and gun. The dog came near to undoing David; but a rabbit, already disturbed, ran out of the thicket, and a sharp command from the keeper brought the retriever to heel.
Van Hupfeldt entered the gardens; the keeper made off across the park. Green and brown buds, almost bursting into leaf, were already enriching the shrubs and trees of Dale Manor, especially in a sheltered hollow on the left front of the house where nestled a pretty lake. There the cover was good. The hunter instinct sent him that way.
“That Dutchman will make Violet bolt just as the dog started the rabbit,” thought David, and he took a circuitous route to reach a summer-house on the most distant side of the ornamental water, whence, he fancied, he could command a fair view of the house and grounds. He waited with stubborn patience two long hours. At last he saw a man arrive in a dog-cart, and it was the coming of this person which apparently drove Violet forth, as, five minutes after the newcomer was admitted, a tall graceful figure in black, a girl wearing a large black hat and draping a white shawl elegantly round her shoulders, stepped out of a French window to the smooth lawn, and looked straight at the sheet of water beyond which David lay ensconced.
No need to tell him who this was. His heart did not beat now. He was glad, and something warmed his whole body, for it was chill waiting there in the shade after his run, but neither man nor water could interpose further barrier between him and his Violet, so he was calm and confident.
The girl glanced back once toward the room she had quitted, and then strolled on, ever coming nearerthe glistening lake and the summer-house. She crossed the fine stretch of turf and stood for an instant near a marble statue which guarded a fountain. The distance was not great, and David thought his eyes were deceiving him when he saw that the white marble and the black-garbed girl were singularly alike in feature. It was not surprising, since the sculptor had taken Violet’s great-grandmother, a noted beauty of early Georgian days, as his model for the face of the dryad, and it was one of the honored traditions of Dale Manor that this figure should be promptly shielded from inclement weather, even from the dew. Just then David was not inclined to cavil at any discovery of fresh charms in Violet, but he set aside this fanciful idea, as he deemed it, and bent his mind on attracting her attention without causing a flutter either to her or to the other occupants of the house.
But she came on again, reached the lake-side path, and made him hope for a moment that she would pass by the door of his retreat. If that was so, he would reveal himself to her soon enough to save her from being unduly alarmed by the unexpected apparition of a man in that secluded place.
Now she actually passed abreast of him, with the lake between, and soon she would round the curve of the water and face him again. Her figure was mirrored in the silver and blue of the reflected sky. So light was her step that the living,moving body seemed to be as impalpable as its spirit image.
Then David’s heart did jump of a sudden, for a faint hail of “Vi!” twice repeated, caught his ears, and he saw Mrs. Mordaunt, outside the French window, calling to her daughter.
The girl turned, facing David, almost. He made up his mind without a moment’s hesitation.
“Violet,” he said, softly but clearly, “Violet, don’t go! Come here. It is I, David.” The cheek of him! as Miss Ermyn L’Estrange would have put it. Violet! David! What next?
Violet was bewitched for a second or two. She looked wildly toward the house, and at him; for he stood so that she might see him plainly, though to her mother he was invisible.
“Please come!” he pleaded. “I am here for your sake, for Gwen’s sake, too, and they have kept us apart so long by lies!”
That the girl was greatly excited was obvious. She pressed her hands together on her bosom, though the action might pass as a simple adjustment of her shawl.
“I must go,” she murmured brokenly. “They want me there to—to sign some documents. And I cannot meet you.”
“Violet, sign nothing until you have heard my story. I appeal to you for a hearing. If you refuse I shall come with you to the house. But hear me first. Make some excuse.”
There was ever that in David’s voice which won belief. Some men ring true, some false. David had in him the clear sound of metal without flaw.
And no woman is worth her salt who cannot act more than a little. “Give me ten minutes, mother,” shrilled Violet, excitedly. “Only ten minutes; then I shall be with you.”
David, peeping through the rustic timber-work, noted with satisfaction that Mrs. Mordaunt waved a hand of agreement and reëntered the house. What then, of devil’s work was Van Hupfeldt plotting in that drawing-room that Violet should be wanted to sign documents, and that the girl’s mother should recognize the need of her daughter being allowed some few minutes of grace if she so desired?
But here came Violet, all rosy now with wonder, for her blood was racing, though in her eyes, which reflected her thoughts, was an anger which David missed in his joy. She stood framed in the narrow doorway of the summer-house, and half turned as though to leave it quickly. “Now, what have you to say to me?” she breathed hurriedly.
David, who thought he was shy with women, soon found winged words to pierce the armor of a disdain he did not yet understand. “If I obeyed my heart, Violet,” he said, and she thrilled a little under the shock of hearing her Christian name so glib on his lips, “I would begin by telling you that I love you, and so throw to the winds all other considerations.”
She turned and faced him, palpitating, with a certain deer-like readiness to fly. “How dare you?”
“I am not daring. Daring springs from the heart, you know. Moreover, though the knowledge of my love is old to me, old as weary days and sleepless nights can make it, it may be new to you, unless, somehow, my love has bridged the void, and made you responsive to my passion. Ah, don’t be afraid, now,” for David thought she shrank from him—though in very truth this maiden’s soul was all a-quiver with the conviction that not so had Van Hupfeldt spoken, not so had his ardor shaken her. “I am not here to-day as your lover, as your avowed lover I would rather say, but only as your self-appointed guardian, as one who would save you from a fate worse than death. Listen now, and believe me, for I can prove the truth. Van Hupfeldt, who would marry you, is none other than Strauss, the man who married your sister.”
Violet’s eyes dilated. Her lips parted as if to utter a shriek. David caught her by the wrist and drew her gently toward him. Before either of them knew what was happening, his arms were about her.
“Be brave, there’s a dear girl!” he whispered. “Be brave and silent! Can you listen? Tell me you are not afraid to listen.”
Again Violet was conscious that the touch of David Harcourt’s arms was a different thing to the impetuous embrace of Van Hupfeldt. A sob came from her. She seemed to lose a little of her fine stature. Shewas becoming smaller, more timidly womanlike, so near this masterful man.
“He married your sister,” went on David. “He married Gwen in his own name of Van Hupfeldt, and the birth of their child is registered in that name. I wrote and told you of the certificates being in existence. He obtained them by bribery and a trick. That is nothing. Even if they are destroyed, they can be replaced by the proper authorities. I know where the child is living. I can take you to it. I can bring Dibbin, the agent, here, to face Van Hupfeldt and prove that he is none other than Strauss, your sister’s husband and slayer. I can bring Sarah Gissing, your sister’s servant, to identify him as the man whom poor Gwen loved as her husband and the father of her child. Were it not for my own folly, I could have brought you her diary—”
“Her diary! Has it been found?” gasped Violet, lifting up her eyes to his in sheer amazement.
“Yes. I found it.”
“But where, and how?”
“It was fastened into the back of a picture, a mezzotint of Turner’s.”
“In the back of a picture!” she murmured, with a certain strange dejection which David found adorable; nor should it be forgotten that the only time David possessed absolute and undeniable evidence of the presence of some unseen person in his flat, he had shot at and wounded a man.
“Yes, dear—may I call you dear?”
“And you have it?”
“No.”
“No!” He felt a spasm of doubt in her very shoulders, a slight withdrawing from him, for Violet was ever being denied proof, the actual, tangible proof which alone can banish suspicion from a sorely-tried nature.
“Van Hupfeldt stole it from the flat during my absence.”
“How could that be?”
“He has duplicate keys, I suppose. Once before I have reason to believe he was there. We struggled together, one on each side of a door. It was in the dark, and he managed to dodge past me, but I fired at him and drew blood, I think.”
“When was that?” she demanded with a quickness which did not escape him.
“On the morning of the day you were to have met me at the cemetery, but sent such a bitter little note instead.”
“A bitter little note!”
And thus were the words said which, pursued for another sentence, must have unmasked Van Hupfeldt wholly; but they were both so excited, so carried out of all bounds of reasoned thought, that Violet flew off at a tangent, and David doubled after her, so delightful was it to hear the words coming from her lips, to watch her eyes telegraph their secret meanings.
“He was lame that day,” she whispered. “He is not quite free from stiffness in his walk yet.”
“Ah! I hit him then?” And David smiled a different kind of smile to that which Violet was learning to like.
“But if all that you say is true, the man is a monster,” she cried in a sudden rage.
“I am coming to think that he is not in his right mind,” said David, a surprising charity springing up in him.
“And do you know what they are waiting for now?” she asked vehemently.
“I cannot tell, save that it is for you.”
“They want me to sign a marriage settlement. Oh, what a vile world!”
“Not a vile world, dear; nor are its humans altogether bad. Even this Van Hupfeldt, or Strauss, seems to have loved your sister. And she did love him. Poor girl! She meant to kill herself on his account, owing to some secret he revealed to her, something about another woman who had adopted him as her son. That was not clear in her story. She purposely kept the definite things out of her diary.”
The girl’s mind was driven back, with quick rebound, to the memory of her sister’s fate. The mere mention of the name of Strauss touched a poignant chord. Strauss was a blacker, more Satanic creature in her imagination than Van Hupfeldt. She wrenched herself free and sprang toward the door.
“Do you swear that you are telling me the truth?” she cried.
“I swear it.”
“Then I go now to meet him, and his lawyer, and my mother. Poor mother! How she will suffer!”
“Shall I come with you?”
She blushed. She began to remember, more vividly each instant, how long she had been there in his arms, almost clinging to him.
“Better not,” she said. “I shall drive him away, and when mother and I have cried together we shall see you. Are you staying in the village?”
“Yes. At the inn, the Feathers I think it is called.”
“Then I shall send for you to-night, or perhaps to-morrow morning.”
“Make it to-night, if possible. Tell your mother I will not add to her sorrows, and it is best she should know all.
“Good-by, then, Violet.”
“Good-by, David.”
He held out his hand, so frankly that she placed her white fingers within the grasp of his strong ones. He was tempted to draw her nearer, but her color rose again, her eyes dropped, and she tore herself away, breaking almost into a run.
David, careless whether he was seen or not, walked off towards the lodge, glancing every now and then over his shoulder to watch Violet hastening to the house. Once, when crossing the lawn, she looked around andwaved a hand to him. He replied. Then she vanished, and David walked on, the happiest man in England.
What a pity it is that ignorance should so often be an essential part of bliss. David should either have gone with Violet, or, failing that, he should have let Van Hupfeldt believe that he was well on his way to London. As it was, Van Hupfeldt saw him crossing the park, and such a man forewarned is forearmed.