In one matter, the sorely tried mother and daughter were fortunate; there was no inquest. The doctor who was present at Van Hupfeldt’s death, after consulting the coroner and a West End specialist who had warned the sufferer of his dangerous state, was able to give a burial certificate in due form. Thus all scandal and sensation-mongering were avoided. The interment took place in Kensal Green cemetery. Van Hupfeldt’s mortal remains were laid to rest near to those of the woman he loved.
Violet was his sole heiress under the will he had executed. A sealed letter, attached by him to that document, explained his motive. In case of accident prior to the contemplated marriage, he thereby surmounted the legal difficulty and inevitable exposure of providing for the child. He asked Violet to take the requisite steps to administer the estate, bidding her reserve a capital sum sufficient to provide the ten thousand pounds per annum given her by the marriage settlement, and set apart the residue, under trustees, for the benefit of the boy.
At first she refused to touch a penny of the money; but wiser counsels prevailed. There would not only be a serious tangle in the business if she declined the bequest, but Van Hupfeldt was so rich that nearly five times the amount was left for the child, the value of the estate being considerably over a million sterling.
The requisite investigation of the sources of his wealth cleared up a good deal that was previously obscure. Undoubtedly he had been helped in his early career, that of a musician, by a Mrs. Strauss, widow of a California merchant. She educated him, and, yielding to a foolish passion, offered to make him her heir if he married her and assumed the name of Strauss, she having already attained some notoriety in Continental circles under that designation. She was a malade imaginaire, in the sense that she would seldom reside more than a few weeks in any one place, while she positively detested both England and America.
He was kind to her, and she was devoted to him; but unlimited wealth cloyed when it involved constant obedience to her whims. Yet, rather than lose him altogether, she agreed to his occasional visits to England during the season, and when hunting was toward. Eager to shake off the thraldom of the Strauss régime, he then invariably passed under his real name of Van Hupfeldt.
Hence, when he fell in love with Gwendoline, and resolved to make her his in defiance of all social law, he was obliged to tell her that he was also Johann Strauss, and under an obligation to the Mrs. Strauss who had adopted him. Gwendoline’s diary, which, with the certificates, was found in a bureau, became clear enough when annotated with these facts. Van Hupfeldt himself left the fewest possible papers, the letter accompanying the will merely setting forth his wishes, and announcing that he desired to marry Violet as an act of reparation to the memory of her sister. This had become a mania with him. The unhappy man thought that, this way, he could win forgiveness.
And then the bright world became a Valley of Despair for David Harcourt. During many a bitter hour he lamented Van Hupfeldt’s death. Alive, he was a rival to be fought and conquered; dead, he had interposed that insurmountable barrier of great wealth between Violet and one who was sick for love of her. Poor David! He sought refuge in work, and found his way up some rungs of the literary ladder; but he could neither forget his Violet nor follow her to Dale Manor, the inaccessible, fenced in now by a wall of gold.
Once, he was in a hansom on the way to Euston, telling himself he was going to Rigsworth to give the gamekeeper that promised licking; but he stopped the cab and returned, saying bitterly: “Why am I trying to fool myself? That is not the David of my acquaintance.”
So he went back, calling in at a florist’s and buying a huge bowlful of violets, thinking to reach Nirvana by their scent, and thereby humbugging himself so egregiously that he was in despondent mood when he sat down to a lonely tea in his flat. He had not seen or heard of Violet in three long months, not since he took Mrs. Mordaunt and her to the train for Warwickshire, and, walking afterward with Dibbin from the station, learned the fateful news of her intolerable inheritance.
He had promised to write, but he had not written. What was he to say? That he still loved her, although she was rich? Perhaps he dreamed that she would write to him. But no; silence was the steady scheme of things – and work, fourteen hours a day work as the solatium, until his bronzed face began to take on the student’s cast, and he wondered, at times, if he had ever caught and saddled a bronco, or slept under the stars. Or was it all a dream?
Wanting some bread, and being alone, the charwoman having believed his statement that he would be away until next midday, he went into the kitchen. It was now high summer; hot, with the stable-like heat of London, and the kitchen window was wide open. Some impulse prompted him to look out and examine the service-lift by way of which Van Hupfeldt had twice quitted the flat, once when driven by mad fear of being held guilty of Gwendoline’s death, and again to save his life from David’s revolver.
Given a steady brain and some little athletic skill, the feat was easy enough. All that was needed was to cling to two greasy iron uprights and slide from one floor to the next, where cross-bars marked the different stories and provided halting-places for the lift. It was typical of Van Hupfeldt that he had the nerve to essay this means of escape and the cunning to think of it.
David was looking into the well of the building a hundred feet below, when an electric bell jarred over his head. Some one was at the front door. It was a porter.
“You are wanted down-stairs, sir,” said he, his honest face all of a grin.
“Down-stairs?” repeated David, puzzled.
“Yes, sir. There’s a hansom waitin’, sir.”
“Oh,” said David, wondering what he had left in his cab.
He went down, hatless, and not a word said Jim, though he watched David out of the corner of his eye, and smiled broadly when he saw David’s sudden recognition of Violet through the side-window of the hansom.
She, too, smiled delightedly when David appeared. “I want you to come with me for a little drive,” she said; “but not without a hat. That would be odd.”
David, casting off three months’ cobwebs in a second, was equal to the emergency. Somehow, the damask of Violet’s flushed cheeks banished the dull tints in his.
“Jim,” he said, “here’s my key. Bring me a hat – any old hat – first you can grab.”
Then he climbed into the vacant seat by her side. “Do you know,” he said, “I was nearly going to Rigsworth to-day?”
“I only know,” she replied, “that you were to write to me, and I have had no letter.”
“Don’t put me on my self-defense, or I shan’t care tuppence if you are worth ten thousand or ten millions a year,” he said.
Violet leaned over the door. “That man is a long time going for your hat,” she said. “By the way, can you spare the time to drive with me to Kensal Green? And then I am to take you to Porchester Gardens, where mother expects you to dine with us, en famille, so you need not return here.” She was a little breathless, and spoke in a fluster.
Jim arrived, with the missing head-gear. The driver whipped up his horse, and David’s left arm went round Violet’s waist. She bent forward, astonished, with a sidelong glance of questioning.
“It is a reasonable precaution,” said David. “If the horse goes down, you don’t fall out.”
Violet laughed and blushed prettily.
A bus-driver, eying them, jerked his head at the cabman. “All right, the lydy,” he said, and the cabman winked. But the two inside knew nothing of this ribaldry.
So, you see, David simply couldn’t help himself, or rather, from another point of view, he did help himself to a remarkably charming wife and a considerable fortune.
Miss Ermyn L’Estrange insisted on an invitation to the wedding, which took place at Rigsworth as quietly as the inhabitants of the village would allow. The volatile actress won such favor from a local land agent in a fair way of business that he goes to town far too frequently, people say, and it is highly probable that her name will be changed soon to a less euphonious one, which will be good for her and excellent for the land agent’s business.
Sarah Gissing found a new post as Master Henry’s nurse, and Mrs. Carter was well rewarded for the care she had taken of the boy. The postmistress’s sister received a fine diamond ring when David, by dint of judicious questioning, found out the identity of the “friend” who sent that most timely telegram, and, strangely enough, the surly gamekeeper never received either the fifty pounds, or the thrashing, or the sack; but was minus the silver paid to his poacher assistants for their night watch.
So, even this little side issue, out of the many grave ones raised by David’s tenancy of an ordinary flat in an ordinary London mansion, shows how often the unexpected happens, even in ordinary life.