NO MORE VIOLET
There was little sleep for David Harcourt that night. After his inrush
into the kitchen, and his long amazement to find it empty, he again
searched the flat throughout; no one but he was in it, and no one had
gone out through the front door, for there stood his barricade of table,
chair, and hat-stand, just as he had left it.
This seemed surely to show that he had to do with that which is beyond
and above natural. Yet there were points against that view, too. There
was, first of all, the spot of blood, for in the passage between the
servant's room and the kitchen he saw what seemed to be a spot of blood.
The carpet was a brown pattern on a pink ground, and in one place the
brown looked redder than elsewhere,--that was all. If it was blood, then
the bullet shot by him, which he now found imbedded in the frame of the
kitchen-door, may have passed through some part of a man; but he could
not assert to himself that it was blood.
There were, however, the pictures. Unless he was dancing mad, the fact
was certain that he had left only three of them with their backs undone,
and now there were five--and he refused to believe that he was indeed
moonstruck.
So, then, a man had been in the flat, since no ghost could materialize
to the extent of picking tacks out of picture-frames. And, if there had
been a man, that man was Van Hupfeldt, and no other. Van Hupfeldt's
motive would be clear enough. Miss L'Estrange had told Van Hupfeldt that
the certificates had fallen out of the back of a picture. David himself
had had the rashness, in his rage at the loss of the certificates, to
say over the door of Van Hupfeldt's landau that there "might be other
things where the certificates came from." Mrs. Grover had been seen
that afternoon talking to Van Hupfeldt's servant. She was evidently in
process of being bribed and won over to the enemy. She may have told how
David had had all the pictures taken down and was at work on them, and
how he was to be out at an annual dinner that night. She may possibly
have handed over to Van Hupfeldt the key of the flat, and Van Hupfeldt,
in a crazy terror lest anything should be found by David in the
pictures, may have come into the flat to search for himself.
All this seemed plausible enough. But, then, how had Van Hupfeldt got
away? Had he a flying-machine? Was he a griffin? Were there holes in the
wall?
But if, as a matter of fact, he or some other had been in the flat,
and had some way got out other than by the front door, here was a new
thought--that Gwendoline Mordaunt may not, after all, have committed
suicide. Suicide had been assumed simply because of the locked and
bolted front door. But how if there existed some other mysterious exit
from the flat? In that case she might have been done to death--by
Strauss, by Van Hupfeldt, if Van Hupfeldt was Strauss.
David, no doubt, was all too ready to think evil of this man.
Nevertheless the question confronted him. Why, he asked himself, should
Gwendoline have committed suicide? She was a married woman--the
certificate, seen by Miss L'Estrange, proved that. True, Gwendoline had
received some terrible letter four days before her death, as her servant
had told David, and she had said to the girl: "I am not married. You
think that I am; but I am not." Still, a doubt arose now as to her
suicide. Her sister Violet did not believe in the suicide. Nothing was
certain.
However, this new theory of the tragedy put David upon writing to Violet
the first thing in the morning. Vague as his doubt, it was a set-off
against his shame of defeat in the matter of the certificates. It was
something with which to face her. He resolved to tell her at once all
that was in his mind, even his shocking suspicion that Van Hupfeldt was
Strauss, and he wrote:
"Mr. David Harcourt has unfortunately not been able to secure the
certificates of which he had the honor of speaking to Miss Mordaunt,
but believes that her fiance, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position
to give her some information on the subject. However, Mr. Harcourt has
other matters of pressing importance to communicate to Miss Mordaunt for
her advantage, and, in case she lacks the leisure to be alone in the
course of the day, he will be pleased to be at her sister's grave this
evening about five, if she will write him a line to that effect."
He posted this before eight in the morning, went off to seek his old
charwoman in Clerkenwell, breakfasted outside, came home, and set to
work afresh upon the pictures.
And that proved a day of days for him. For, before noon, on opening
the back of a mezzotint of the "Fighting Temeraire," he found a book,
large, flat, and ivory-white. Its silver clasp was locked. He could
not see within, yet he understood that it was no printed book, but in
manuscript, and that here was the diary of Gwendoline Mordaunt. He was
still exulting over it, searching now with fresh zeal for more treasure,
when he received a note: "Miss Mordaunt hopes to lay some flowers on her
sister's grave this evening about five."
Her paper had a scent of violets, and David, in putting it to his
nostrils, allowed his lips, too, to steal a kiss;--for happy men do
sometimes kiss scented paper. And he was happy, thinking how, when he
presented the diary to her, he would see her glad and thankful.
At the very hour, however, when he was thus rejoicing, Van Hupfeldt
was going up the stairs at 60A, Porchester Gardens. He was limping and
leaning on his valet, and his dark skin was now so much paler than usual
that on his entrance into the drawing-room Mrs. Mordaunt cried out:
"Why, what is the matter?"
"Do not distress yourself at all," said Van Hupfeldt, limping on his
stick toward her. "Only a slight accident--a fall off a stumbling horse
in the park this morning--my knee--it is better now--"
"Oh, I am so sorry! But you should not have come; you are evidently
still in pain. So distressing! Sit here; let me--"
"No, really," said he, "it is nearly all right now, dear Mrs. Mordaunt.
I have so much to say, and so little time to say it in. Where is
Violet?"
"She is in her bed-room; will soon be down. Let me place this cushion--"
"She is well, I hope?"
"Yes; a little strange and restless to-day, perhaps."
"What is it now?"
"Oh, some little fall of the spiritual barometer, I suppose. She has not
mentioned anything specific to me."
"You received my telegram of this morning?"
"Saying that you would come at half-past one? Yes."
"Well, I am lucky to have found you alone, for in what I have now to
suggest to you, I do not wish my influence to appear--let it seem to be
done entirely on your own impulse--but I have to beseech you, Mrs.
Mordaunt, to return to Rigsworth this very day."
"To-day? Rigsworth? But there are still a host of things to be seen to
before the wedding--"
"I know, I know. Even at the cost of putting off the wedding for a week,
if you will do all that is to be done from Rigsworth instead of in
London, you will profoundly oblige me. I had hoped that you would this
do for me without requiring my reason, but I see that I must give
it, and without any beating about the bush. Only give me first your
assurance that you will breathe not one word to Violet of what I am
forced to tell you."
"Good gracious! What has happened?"
"Promise me this."
"Well, I shall be discreet."
"Then, I have to tell you that Violet has made an undesirable
acquaintance in London, one whom it is of supreme importance, if our
married life is to be a success, that she should see not once again. It
is a man--No, don't be unduly alarmed--I don't for a moment suspect that
their intimacy has proceeded far, but it has proceeded too far, and must
go no farther. I may tell you that it is my belief that letters, or
notes, have passed between them, and, to my knowledge, they have met at
least once by appointment in Kensal Green cemetery, for I have actually
surprised them there. Now, pray, don't be distressed. Don't, now, or I
shall regret having told you. Certainly, it is a serious matter, but
don't think it more serious than it is--"
"Violet?" breathed Mrs. Mordaunt, with a long face.
"The facts are as I have stated them," proceeded Van Hupfeldt, "and when
the knowledge of them came to me, I was at some pains to make inquiries
into the personality of the man in question. He turns out to be a man
named Harcourt."
"Oh, you mean Mr. Harcourt, the occupier of the flat in Eddystone
Mansions? Why, he was here yesterday. Violet herself told me--"
"Here? Yesterday?" Van Hupfeldt turned suddenly greenish. "But why so?
What did the man say?"
"Violet did not seem to wish to be explicit," answered Mrs. Mordaunt;
"but I understood from her that he is interested in Gwendoline's fate."
"He? By what right does he dare? He is interested in Violet! That is
whom the man is interested in, Mrs. Mordaunt, I tell you! And do you
know what this man is? I have been at the pains to discover--a scribbler
of books, a man of notoriously bad character who has had to fly from
America--"
"How awful! But Mr. Dibbin, the agent, had references--"
"References are quite useless. It is as I say, and I am not guessing
when I assert to you that Violet has a penchant for this man--a most
dangerous penchant, which can lead to nothing but disaster, if it be
not now scotched in the bud. I demand it as my right, and I beseech
it as a friend, that she never see him again."
"Yet it is all most strange. I think you exaggerate. Violet's fancies
are not errant."
"Well, say that I exaggerate. But you will at least sympathize, Mrs.
Mordaunt, with my sense of the acute danger of your further stay in
London at present--"
"I think you make a mountain of a molehill, Mr. Van Hupfeldt," said Mrs.
Mordaunt with some dryness, "and I am sorry now that I have promised not
to speak with Violet on the subject. Of course, I recognize your right
to have your say and your way, but as for leaving London to-day at a
moment's notice, really that can't be done."
"Not to oblige me? not to please me?" said he, grasping the old lady's
hand with a nervous intensity of gesture that almost startled her.
"We might go to-morrow," she admitted.
"But if they correspond or meet to-night?"
"Well, you are a lover, of course; but you shouldn't start at shadows.
Here is Violet herself."
"Leave us a little, will you?" whispered Van Hupfeldt, rising to meet
the girl in his impulsive foreigner's way, but, forgetting his wounded
leg, he had to stop short with a face of pain.
"Are you ill?" asked Violet, and a certain aloofness of manner did not
escape him.
"A small accident--" he told over again the history of his fall from a
horse which had never borne him. Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet stood at
a table, turning over the leaves of a book, while Van Hupfeldt searched
her face under his anxious eyes, and there was a silence between them,
until Violet, taking from her pocket David's first unsigned note to her,
held it out, saying: "It was you who sent me this?"
"I have told you so," answered Van Hupfeldt, gray to the lips. "Why do
you ask again?"
"Because I am puzzled," she answered. "I have this morning received a
note in this same handwriting, unless I am very much mistaken, a note
from a certain Mr.--"
"Yes. Harcourt--Christian name David."
"Quite so. David Harcourt--I can say it," she answered quietly. "But
how, then, comes it that your note and his are in the same handwriting?"
Van Hupfeldt's lips opened and shut, his eyes shifted, and yet he
chuckled with the uneasy mirth of a ghoul: "The solution of that puzzle
doesn't seem difficult to me."
"You mean that you got Mr. Harcourt to write your note for you?" asked
Violet.
"You are shrewdness itself," answered Van Hupfeldt.
"I did not know that you even knew him."
"Ah, I know him well."
"Well, then, have you brought the certificates?" she asked keenly.
"Which certificates?"
"Which? You ask that? Surely, surely, you know that a certificate of
marriage and one of birth were found in the flat by a Miss L'Estrange?"
"No, I didn't know. How could I know?"
"But am I in a dream? I have made sure that it was upon some knowledge
of them that you relied when you wrote in the unsigned note, 'It is now
a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife.'" And
she looked at David's letter again.
"No, I had other grounds. I needn't tell you what, since they are not
yet certain--other grounds. I have not heard yet of any certificates--"
"Well, God help me, then!" she murmured, half-crying. "What, then, does
Mr. Harcourt mean? He says in the note of this morning: 'Mr. Harcourt
has not been able to secure the certificates, but believes that Miss
Mordaunt's fiance, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, may be in a position to give her
some information on the subject.' What does that mean when you never
even heard of the certificates?"
Van Hupfeldt, looking squarely now at her, said: "It means nothing at
all. You may take it from me that no certificates have been found."
Violet flushed angrily. "Some one is untrue!" she cried out.
"I fear that that is so," murmured Van Hupfeldt, dropping his eyes from
her crimsoned face.
There was silence then for a while.
"With what object did this Harcourt come to you yesterday, Violet?"
asked Van Hupfeldt.
"He wished to obtain my mother's authorization for him to spend one
hundred pounds in buying the certificates from Miss L'Estrange's
servant."
"Ah, that was what he said was his object. But his real object was
slightly different, I'm afraid. I know this man, you see. He is poor,
and not honest."
"Not honest?"
"No, not honest."
"You say such a thing?"
"But what is it to you? Why do you care? Why are you pale? Yes, I say it
again, not honest! the miserable ruffian."
"If he heard you, I think he might resent it with some vigor," she said
quietly.
"Why do you speak so strangely? What is it? Do you doubt what I tell
you?" asked Van Hupfeldt.
"I neither doubt nor believe. What is it to me? I only feel ashamed to
live in the same world with such people. If it was not to obtain my
authorization to spend the one hundred pounds for the certificates, why
did he come?"
"There were no certificates!" cried Van Hupfeldt, vehemently. "The
certificates were an invention. What he really wanted was, not your
authorization, but the one hundred itself. He hoped that when he asked
for your authorization, you, in your eagerness to have the certificates,
would produce the one hundred pounds, which to a man in his position is
quite a large sum, whereupon he would have decamped, and you would have
heard no more either of him or of your one hundred pounds. But, as you
did not hand him the money, he now very naturally writes to say that he
can't get the certificates. I know the fellow very well. I have long
known him. He comes from America, where he has played such ingenious
pranks once too often."
Violet sighed with misery, like one who hears the unfavorable verdict of
a doctor. "Oh, don't!" she murmured.
"I am sorry to offend your ears," said Van Hupfeldt, looking with
interest at his nails, for they had nearly dug into the palms of his
hands a few minutes earlier, "but it was necessary to tell you this.
This is not the sort of man who ought ever to have entered your
presence. How, by the way, did you come to know him?"
"I met him by chance at my sister's grave. He told me that he is the
tenant of the flat. He seemed good. I don't know what to do!" She let
herself fall into a chair, leaned her head on her hand, and stared
miserably into vacancy, while Van Hupfeldt, limping nearer, said over
her:
"You ought to promise me, Violet, never again to allow yourself to hold
any sort of communication with this person. You will hardly, indeed, be
able to see him again, for Mrs. Mordaunt has just been telling me of her
sudden resolve to go down to Rigsworth to-morrow morning."
"To-morrow?"
"So she says; and perhaps on the whole it is best, don't you think?"
Violet shrugged hopeless shoulders. "I don't care one bit either way,"
she said.
"So, then, that is agreed between us. You won't ever write to him
again."
"I don't undertake anything of that kind," she retorted. "I must have
time to think. Are you quite sure that all this infamy is the God's
truth? It is as if you said that mountain streams ran ink. The man told
me that there were certificates. They fell out of a picture-frame, he
said. He looked true, he seemed good and honest; he is a young man with
dark-blue eyes--"
"He is a beast!"
"I don't know that yet, I have no certain proof. I was to see him this
evening."
"To see him? Ah, but never again, never again! And would you now, after
hearing--"
"I am not sure. I must have time to think, I must have proof. I have no
proof. It is hard on me, after all."
"What is hard on you?" demanded Van Hupfeldt; and, had not the girl
been so distraught, she would have seen that he had the semblance more
of a murderer than of a lover. "What proofs do you want beyond my word?
The man said that there were certificates, did he not? Well, let him
produce them. The fact that he can't is a proof that there were none."
"Not quite. No--there is a doubt. He should have the benefit of the
doubt. A man should not be condemned before he is tried, after all. If
Miss L'Estrange was to say that there were no certificates, that would
be proof. You must know her address--give it to me, and let me go
straight to her--"
"Certainly, I have her address," said Van Hupfeldt, his eyes winking a
little with crafty thought, "but not, of course, in my head. You shall
have it in a day or two. You can then write and question her from
Rigsworth, and she will tell you that no certificate ever fell out of
any picture." He thought to himself: "for I shall see that she tells
you what I wish, if she has any love of money."
"But couldn't you give me the address to-day?" asked Violet. "That would
settle everything at once."
"To-day I'm afraid it is out of the question," answered Van Hupfeldt. "I
have it put away in some drawer of some bureau. It may take a day or
two; but find it I will, and, meantime, is it much to expect that my
angel will believe in her one best and eternal friend? Assure me now
that you will not see this undesirable person this evening."
"I do not mean to at this moment, but I do not decide. I said that I
would. He pretends he has something to say to me--"
"He has nothing! He is merely impudent. Where were you to see him? At
the grave, I think? At the grave?"
Violet blushed and made no answer. Mrs. Mordaunt came in. "So, mother,"
said Violet to her, "we go home to-morrow?"
"I have thought that it might be well, dear," answered her mother, "in
which case we shall have enough to do between now and then."
"But why the sudden decision?"
"We are not at all moments our own masters and mistresses, dear. This at
present seems the indicated course, and we must follow it."
"May I have the pleasure to come with you, if only for a day or two?"
asked Van Hupfeldt.
"Of course, we are always glad of your company, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,"
answered Mrs. Mordaunt; "but it is such a trying journey, and it may
affect your injury."
"Not trying to me where Violet is," said Van Hupfeldt.
"Violet should be a happy girl to have so much devotion lavished upon
her, I am sure," said Mrs. Mordaunt, with a fond smile at her daughter.
"I do hope that she is duly grateful to you, and to the Giver of all our
good."
Violet said nothing. In her gloomy eyes, if one had looked, dwelt a
rather hunted look. She presently left Van Hupfeldt and her mother, and
in her own room lay on a couch thinking out her problem. "To go to the
grave, or not to go?"
She had promised: but how if David Harcourt was truly the thing which he
was said to be? Her maiden mind shrank and shuddered. It was possibly
false, but, then, it was possibly true--all men seemed to be liars. She
had better wait and first hear the truth from Miss L'Estrange. If Miss
L'Estrange proved him false, she, Violet, would give herself one luxury,
the writing to him of one note--such a note! stinging, crushing,
killing! After which she would forget once and forever that such a being
had ever lived, and seemed nice, and been detestable. Meantime, it would
be too unmaidenly rash to see him. It could not be done; however much he
drew her with his strong magnetism, she should not, and would not. Why
could he not have been good, and grand, and high, and everything that is
noble and wonderful, as a man should be? In that case, ah, then! As it
was, how could she? It was his own fault, and she hated him. Still, she
had promised, and one should keep one's word unless the keeping becomes
impossible. Moreover, since she was to leave London on the morrow, she
should dearly like to see the grave once more. The new wreath must be
already on its way from the florist's. She would like to go, dearly,
dearly, if only it were not for the lack of dignity and reserve.
Thinking such thoughts, she lay so long that Van Hupfeldt went away
without seeing her again; but he had no intention of leaving it to
chance whether she saw David that evening or not. Certain that the
rendezvous was at the grave, his cautious mind proceeded to take due
precautions, and by three o'clock the eyes of his spy, a young woman
rather overdressed, were upon the grave in the Kensal Green cemetery,
while Van Hupfeldt himself was sitting patient in the smoking-room of a
near hotel, ready to be called the moment a sign of Violet should be
seen.
Violet, however, did not go to the grave. About four o'clock one of the
servants of 60A, Porchester Gardens, arrived at the cemetery in a cab,
went to the grave, put the new wreath on it, and on the wreath put an
envelope directed to "David Harcourt, Esq," and went away. The moment
she was gone, Van Hupfeldt's spy had the envelope, and with it hurried
to him in the hotel. Breaking it open without hesitation, he read the
words: "Miss Mordaunt regrets that she is unable to visit her sister's
grave to-day, as she hoped, and from to-morrow morning she will be in
the country; but if Mr. Harcourt really has anything of importance to
communicate to her, he may write, and she will reply. Her address is
Dale Manor, Rigsworth, near Kenilworth, Warwickshire."
"What do you think of this handwriting?" Van Hupfeldt asked of his
she-attendant, showing her the note. "Do you think you could imitate
it?"
"It is big and bold enough; it doesn't look difficult to imitate," was
the critical estimate.
"Just have a try, and let me see your skill. Write--"
He dictated to her the words: "Miss Mordaunt has duly received from her
fiance, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, the certificates of which Mr. Harcourt spoke
to her, so that all necessity for any communication between Mr. Harcourt
and Miss Mordaunt is now at an end. Miss Mordaunt leaves London to-day."
The scribe, after several rewritings, at last shaped the note into
something really like Violet's writing. It was then directed to "David
Harcourt." The young woman took it to the grave, and it was placed on
the wreath of violets where the purloined note had lain.
Twenty minutes later, David, full of anticipation and hope, the diary in
his hand, drew near to Kensal Green. For some time he did not go quite
to the grave, but stood at the bend of the path, whence he should be
able to see her feet coming, and the blooming beneath them of the March
daisies in the turf. But she did not come. The minutes went draggingly
by. Strolling presently nearer the grave, he noticed the fresh wreath,
and the letter laid on it.
He stood a long while by the Iona cross over the violets, while the
dusk deepened to a gloom like that of his mind. How empty seemed London
now! And all life, how scantless and stale now, without the purple
and perfume of her! For she was gone, and "all necessity for any
communication between her and him was now at an end." He went away from
the cemetery whistling a tune, with a jaunty step, in order to persuade
himself that his heart was not hollow, nor his mind black with care.