What seemed certain to him now was that Van Hupfeldt himself or some agent of Van Hupfeldt’s must be in the Mordaunts’ house, and that this letter sent through Dibbin had never reached Violet. So again he was cut off from her. Not one word could he speak to her. He craved only for one small word. When that marriage of hers with Van Hupfeldt was to take place he did not know; but he felt that it might be soon. He had taken upon himself to say to her that it should never be, and not one word could he utter to prevent it. He had forgotten, and his brain would not give up its dead. He beat his brow upon his dining-room table where his head had dropped wearily on his coming home that early morning from the country.
To go to her, to tell her all, to stop the indecent marriage, to cast himself at her feet, and call upon her pity for his passionate youth—this impulse drove him; but he could not stir a step. A great “No” bewitched him. His straining was against ropes of steel. Half-thoughts, half-inventions of every impossible kind passed like smoke through his mind, and went away, and came wearily again. The only one of any likelihood was the thought of kneeling to Dibbin, of telling him that Van Hupfeldt was probably Strauss, and beseeching him for the Mordaunts’ sake to give the address. But he had not the least faith in the success of such a thing. To that dried man, fossilized all through, incrusted in agency, anything that implied a new departure, a new point of view, was a thing impossible. His shake of the head was as stubborn a fact in nature as any Andes. There was only the diary left—the diary might contain the address!
David did not wish to open those locked thoughts. He had hardly the right, but, after a whole day spent in eying the book, he laughed wildly and decided. It was a question of life, of several lives. He put the book to his lips, with a kiss of desperation, inhaling its faded scent of violets.
At once he rushed out with it to a tradesman skilled in locks, and was surprised at the ease with which the man shot back the tiny lever with a bit of twisted wire.
“I can make you a key by the morning,” said the man, squinting into the lock, and listening to its action as he turned the wire in his fingers. “It is a simple mechanism with two wards. Meantime, here it is, opened.”
He refused even to be paid for “so slight a thing.” David handed him a cigar—and ran; and was soon deep in it. The first passage thrilled him as with solemn music:
O silent one, I must tell my sweets and bitters to you, since I mayn’t to others. You will treasure each syllable, and speak of me as I am, “nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice.”
But please, as you are good, bring not upon me any further declamation of the unhappy Moor! Pray Heaven you may not have to record the “unlucky deeds” of “one that lov’d, not wisely, but too well,” nor your pallid cheeks reveal your grief because my “subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their med’cinable gum!”
I was married last Tuesday. As the carriage rolled back along the sea front, and my darling husband’s arm clasped my waist as tightly as a silver arm clasps you, little book, the old jingle came into my head: “Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all.” The nasty things predicted for the other days of the week do not matter a jot, do they? Well, thank God, I am healthy enough, and Harry says that we shall have plenty of money by and by. Given health and wealth, there remains but happiness, and that is of our own contriving. And I am happy. Of that there can be no manner of doubt. Of course, I should have enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of marriage in the parish church with its joy-bells, its laughing tears, its nice speeches, while the dear old rector beamed on me, and the good folk of R—— set their eyes a-goggle to see how I looked and how Harry carried himself.