The Late Tenant

CHAPTER XV

IN PAIN

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 Heidelburg University. 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.

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, and can 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 do it! 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. I don’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 still hidden 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.”

CHAPTER XVI

HAND TO HAND

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 carriage began 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 ten P.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 cover in 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, a thin 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 not been 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’s hands, 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.”