CHAPTER XVII
DAVID MORE THAN REGAINS LOST GROUND
Harcourt was now in the position of a man who thinks he has invented a flying-machine—enthusiasm became stronger than knowledge, belief was made to do service as evidence. To meet Violet, to look again into those sweet eyes of hers, that was the great thing he promised himself next morning. Indeed, it is to be feared he deliberately surrendered himself to dreams of such a meeting, while he smoked pipe after pipe in his lonesome flat, rather than set himself to an orderly review of his forces for the approaching trial of strength with Van Hupfeldt.
No sooner was he well clear of Van Hupfeldt’s house than he knew that he was safe from active interference by the law. The man whom he now looked on as his rival, the subtle adversary whom he had scorned to crush when appealed to for mercy on the score of physical inferiority, would never dare to seek the aid of authority. Nursing that fact, ready enough to welcome the prospect of an unaided combat, David did not stop to consider that an older head in counsel would not be a bad thing. There was Dibbin, for instance. Dibbin, whose ideas were cramped within ledgers and schedules, had, nevertheless, as he said himself, “been young once.” Surely David could have sufficiently oxygenized the agent’s thin blood with the story told by the hapless Gwendoline that the man should hie with him to Rigsworth and there be confronted with the veritable Strauss. Dibbin was a precise man. It would have been hard for Van Hupfeldt to flout Dibbin.
But no; David smoked and dreamed, and saw a living Violet in the chalk portrait of the dead Gwendoline, and said so many nice words to the presentment thus created that he came to believe them; and so he consigned Dibbin to his own musty office, nor even gave heed to the existence of such a credible witness as Sarah Gissing, poor Gwendoline’s maid.
He left a penciled note on his table that the charwoman was to call him when she came at eight—for in such wise does London conquer Wyoming—and with the rattle of her knuckles on the door he was out of bed, blithe as a lark, with his heart singing greetings to a sunny morning.
The manner of dress, the shade of a tie, the exact degree of whiteness of linen, were affairs of moment just then. Alack! here was our erstwhile rounder-up of steers stopping his hansom on the way to the station in order to buy a smart pair of doeskin gloves, while he gazed lovingly at a boutonnière of violets, but forbore.
It was noon ere he reached Rigsworth, and inquiry showed that the Mordaunts’ house was situated at the farther end of the small village. He walked through the street of scattered houses, and attracted some attention by the sure fact that he was a stranger. At any rate, that was how he regarded the discreet scrutiny to which he was subjected.
“A big house with a lodge-gate, just past the church on the left,” were the station-master’s directions, and David had no difficulty in finding his way. His heart fell a little when he saw the style of the place. The lodge was a pretty villa in itself. Its garden would be of great worth within the London suburban area. Behind it stretched the park of Dale Manor, and the turrets of a mansion among many lordly elms seemed to put Violet on a somewhat inaccessible pinnacle. David did not know that people of moderate means can maintain a good sporting estate by letting the shooting, but he had learned in the free air of the States to rate a man on a different level to parks; if a half-bred rascal like Van Hupfeldt was able to enter this citadel like a thief for one daughter of the house, why should not an honest man storm it for the sake of another?
At the lodge, however, he met with a decided rebuff. “No visitors admitted,” was the curt response of a gamekeeper sort of person who was lurking in a doorway when David tried to open the locked gate.