The Late Tenant. Tracy Louis

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 occurred to you that I may be one of them, or may have some knowledge even of one of them. But I have been in England only a month; I come from Wyoming, a place at the other end of creation. See if you can’t catch a hint of an accent in my speech. I never saw your sister alive; I am quite a stranger in London. It is not nice to be mistrusted.”

      She thought this over gravely, then said with a moment’s openness of heart: “Forgive me, if I give you pain unjustly”; but at once again she changed, muttering stubbornly to herself with a certain vindictiveness: “If I mistrust you, it is not for nothing. I suppose you are all about equally pitiless and deadly. There she lies, low enough, dead, undone – so young – Gwen! was there no pity, no help, not even God to direct, not even God?”

      Again she covered her face, and was shaken with grief, while Harcourt, yearning, but not daring to stir a step toward her, stood in pain; till presently she looked up at him sharply with all the former suspiciousness, saying with here a sob and there a sob: “But, after all, words are only words. You can all talk, I dare say; yet you have not been able to give me any valid explanation.”

      “Of what?” he asked.

      “Of your strange interest in this lady; of your presence here over her grave; of the fact that you chose to occupy the flat, knowing what you know of it. In my mind these are points against you.”

      He could not help smiling. “Let me reason with you,” said he earnestly. “Remember that I am not the first person who has occupied the flat since the death of your sister. Did not a Miss L’Estrange have it before me? Well, my motive is precisely the same as hers – I wanted somewhere to live. You did not attribute to Miss L’Estrange any ulterior motive, I think? Then why attribute one to me?”

      “I attribute nothing to any one,” she sighed. “I merely ask for an explanation which you seem unable to give.”

      “Think, now! Have I not given it? I say that I wanted a flat and took this one. Don’t mistrust me for nothing!”

      “Oh, I keep a perfectly open mind. Till things are proved to me, I mistrust no one. But you make your excuses with rather too much earnestness to be convincing; for you would not care what I thought, if you had no motive.”

      “My motive is simply a desire to stand well with you,” said David. “You won’t punish me for that?”

      Now for the first time she looked squarely at him, her eyes meditating gravely upon his face, as she said: “If you never knew my sister before, it was good of you to come to her grave. You do not look like one of the ruthless ones.”

      “No, I hope not. Thank you for saying that,” said David, with his eyes on the ground. He was shy with women. Such a girl as this filled a shrine in his presence.

      “And yet, who can ever tell?” she sighed, half to herself, with a weary drop of the hand. “The world seems so hopelessly given over to I don’t know what. One would say that men were compounded of fraud and ill-will, so that one does not know whom to trust, nor even if there is any one to be trusted. You go into the flat without any motive apparently that you can give. You would never have managed it, if I had had my way!”

      “Is it against your will that the flat has been let?” asked David.

      “That is not your business, you know!” she said, quickly resentful of probing questions.

      “I only asked,” said he, “in order to tell you that if it was against your will, you have only to breathe a wish, and I shall find the means to leave it.”

      “Well, surely that is kindly said,” she answered. “Forgive me, will you, if I seem unreasonable? Perhaps you do not know what grief is. I will tell you that it is against my will that the flat has been