The Late Tenant. Tracy Louis

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СКАЧАТЬ strolled out into the crowded solitude of the streets, with a vague mind of Gwendoline Barnes and Johann Strauss, two misty personalities veiled under false names. But they so dwelt in his mind that he asked himself if he had fled from the pursuit of a living woman in far Wyoming to be haunted by a dead one in England? Like most strangers in London, he turned to the police for counsel, and told to an inspector on duty at a police-station his tale of the whiff of violets, of the extinguished light in his corridor, and of the real or fancied brush of a woman’s skirt somewhere against wall or carpet. He was listened to with kindliness, though, of course, without much faith. However, he learned from the inspector the address of the coroner’s court where the inquest had probably been held; it was near by, and David’s steps led him thither. There he asked some questions at haphazard, without picking up anything of fresh interest; unless it was that “Gwendoline Barnes” lay buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

      It was now late in the afternoon. He strolled down Tottenham Court Road into Holborn, ate a deferred luncheon in Oxford-St., and started to saunter back home, shirking a theater matinée, which was irksome since it was the fixed thing on his program. But it struck him half-way home that his charwoman was gone, that the flat was lonely; he got into a cab, saying to the driver: “Kensal Green cemetery!”

      Some electric lamps were a-flicker already in the streets. It was nearly the hour at which London roars loudest, when the city begins to pour out its hordes, and vans hurry to their bourne, with blocks in the traffic, and more haste, less speed. When he reached the cemetery the closing time was imminent.

      A little snow lay among the graves, through which the grass-tufts showed, making a ground of black-and-white. Some few stars had ventured to peep from the wintry sky. A custodian supplied David with the formal information which he sought. The plot of ground had been bought in perpetuity; it was in a shaded place a good distance from the entrance; an Iona cross, erected by friends, marked the spot, bearing the one word, “Gwendoline.”

      “It is late, sir,” said the man. But mighty is the power of the tip, even in cemeteries.

      David walked down an avenue of the dead toward the little mound that covered the young actress. He was perhaps twenty yards from it when he heard and almost stopped at the sound of a sob not far away. He looked on this hand and on that, but could see no one. The place, with its silent populace, was more lonesome than the prairie; and a new sense had been steadily growing up in him since half-past eleven of the previous night – the sense of the “other world,” of its possible reality and nearness. There was an odor here, strong enough to his keen nostrils, of flowers, especially of violets, and of the last end of mortal man, a blend of sweet and abhorrent which was to infect his mind for many a day. However, he did not hesitate, but, with slower steps, that made hardly a sound, turned a corner of the path, cleared a clump of trees which had blocked his view, and now saw the grave of Gwendoline, the cross, the chaplet of fresh violets at the foot of the cross, and over the cross a woman weeping.

      Weeping bitterly, her face in her hands, she was standing, but her body was bent in grief, and she was all shaken with it, though little sound escaped that lonely passion of pity and heartbreak. Harcourt at once felt that he had invaded holy ground. He gave himself time to notice only that she was tall, cloaked wholly in black – and he turned, or half-turned, to retire.

      But in his haste and embarrassment he let his stick fall from his hand; whereat the young woman started, and they looked at each other.

      In an instant Harcourt understood that she was the sister of her whose portrait stood on his mantelpiece; and he felt that he had never seen woman so lovely and gentle.

      CHAPTER III

      VIOLET

      She looked at Harcourt with wide eyes, seeming frightened, in suspense, and ready to fly, because he did not know how his eyes devoured her.

      “I am sorry – ” he began, retiring a step.

      “What do you want of me?” she asked, staring fixedly at him.

      “Nothing,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed; I am merely here by chance.”

      “But why have you followed me?”

      “No, I have not followed you, I assure you of that. I did not know that you were here, even. I beg you not to be alarmed – ”

      “Why, then, are you here?” she persisted.

      “This is a public cemetery, you know. I came to see a grave, just as you have – ”

      “This grave?”

      “How can you possibly guess that,” he asked, “since you have never before seen me, and do not know who I am?”

      “You stopped here, did you not?” she asked. “You stopped, and looked strangely at me.”

      “Certainly I looked at you,” admitted Harcourt. “I did not realize that I looked ‘strangely.’ However, let me be frank. I did come to see your sister’s grave.”

      “My sister!” said she, shrinking, as from the touch of a wound, “how do you know? what interest can you have strong enough to bring you?”

      “Not such a very strong interest,” he answered. “I am here merely to fill an idle hour, and because I happen to be occupying the flat in which your sister died. There is that link between her and me; she has moved in the same little home, looked from the same windows, slept in the same room, as I, poor girl.”

      She suddenly looked up from the ground, saying: “May I ask how long you have been there?”

      “This is only the second day,” he answered with a reassuring smile.

      “Your interest in her has been sudden.”

      “But her crayon portrait is there over my dining-room mantelpiece, and it is an interesting one. The moment I saw you I understood that you are her sister.”

      “You must have known that she had a sister.”

      “Why, yes, I knew.”

      “Who told you that, pray?”

      Her manner had now changed from one of alarm to one of resentment, of mistrust. Her questions leaped from her as from a judge eager to condemn.

      “Surely it was no secret that she had a sister,” he said. “The agent happened to mention it in speaking to me of the late tenant, as agents do.”

      “Ah, no doubt,” she said half to herself. “You all are ready enough with explanations. Wise as serpents, if not harmless as doves.”

      The last words were spoken with a break in her voice and a look that went to Harcourt’s heart. He understood that he was in the presence here of the strange, of a mind touched to wildness by a monstrous grief, and needing delicate handling.

      “What I have told you is only the truth,” he said gently.

      “Ah, no doubt,” she said again. “But did you know the history of the flat before you went into it?”

      “Why, yes.”

      “Yet you went. What, then, was your motive?”

      “Ah, now, come,” said he. “I can see that you are on a wrong track, and I must try to set things right. Your sister has perhaps been badly treated by some one or more persons, and the notion has СКАЧАТЬ