June 9, 2025 • 18 mins
Delve into an enchanting world of romance and mystery with Late Tenant. This early masterpiece by esteemed British journalist and author Louis Tracy, penning as Gordon Holmes, is sure to captivate you. Known for his thrilling mysteries such as The Albert Gate Mystery and The Postmaster’s Daughter, Tracy dabbles in the romantic genre with a touch of the supernatural. The story weaves together two intense love narratives - one heart-wrenching, the other just beginning - amidst a puzzling mystery. Find a dash of classic British humor and a hint of the supernatural in this engaging tale. - Summary by Kirsten Wever.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter fifteen of The Late Tenant by Gordon Holmes. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. In Pain, hour
after hour, David read on dead to all things in
the world, but to the soul in pain in that book,
and to his hope that if only once she had
(00:24):
written the name of her home. Every time he came
upon that letter R, by which she meant Rigsworth, he groaned.
And Anon. He looked with eyes of despair and something
of fond reproach at her face over the mantelpiece. He
read of her leaving the stage because of the necessity
(00:44):
that was now upon her, and then of the months
of heaviness and tears. The worst trial of all in
her lot seemed to be the constant separations due to
the tyranny of one missus s who ever drew her
husband from her. She wrote, I actually should be jealous
(01:07):
if she wasn't old. From Paris to Homburg, from Hamburg
to Siena, and everywhere poor Harry dragged at her chariot wheels.
I should like to have one peep at her in
the flesh, just to see what she is really like.
Her photographs show a fat, cross looking old thing, but
(01:29):
she can't be quite like that with her really good
affectionate heart. Has she not been the best of mothers
to Harry? From the time she adopted him, she says,
when he was quite a poor boy of fifty. She
has never been able to live a month without seeing him,
(01:50):
even when he was at Heidelberg University. I must be
content only to share him with her. But just now
I think I have the stronger claim unless she is
really so very ill. I have heard that tale before
of her dying state, but that sort of old things
(02:14):
don't die so easily. I believe that I write as
if I wished her to God forbid. I don't allow
all Harry's dreams of the grandeurs to be enjoyed after
her death to excite me much. I hope that I
shall take it as coldly as doing up my hair.
When the letter comes, missus s is dead. You are
(02:37):
a millionaire Mercenariness is not one of my faults anyway.
It is true that, since I have ceased to earn anything,
I do sometimes feel a wee pinch of scarcity and
wish that he could send me even a few shillings
a week more. But if that was only all of
(02:59):
my trouble. No, missus, s may you live as long
as Heaven wills. If I thought that in any part
of me there lurked one little longing to hear of
that good woman's death, I should never forgive myself. Still,
I don't think it right of her to play the
(03:20):
despot over Harry to the extent to which she carries it.
A man thirty eight years old surely has the right
to marry if he wishes to. If it hadn't been
for her, my marriage could have been made public from
the first, and all that woe at art would have
(03:41):
been spared. Harry says that she hates the very word marriage,
and that if she was to get the least sent
of his marriage, she would cut him off with a shilling.
He has run a risk, poor old hal for my sake.
And if and again he can't help longing to be
(04:03):
rich and free, it is hard to blame him. The
day he is rich and free, there will be a spree. Gwen.
It is wrong to anticipate. But see if I don't
make the street of our glow, if not with the
wine of France, at least with beer. And if I
(04:25):
don't teach a certain state, Miss Violet Mordaunt how to
do the high kick girls. I wonder if all will
be over by then, and if I shall go back
to dear old r not only a wife but a mother.
Then again a month later, What a thing to be
(04:47):
a mother? Sometimes the thought hits me suddenly between the eyes,
and I can't believe it is I myself. That same
powerlessness to recognize myself, which I had for fully a
week after the marriage. But this is greater still, to
have something which will be to me what I have
(05:11):
been to my own mother. Gwen, Gwen, how exquisitely droll,
how one grows into something else quite different, without at
all noticing how and when? But will it never be over?
It is like eating a sigh a century long. Won't
(05:31):
it be nice to dance again and fling one's limbs?
But meantime, such a weight of care, strange fears gazings
into I don't know what abyss, and never a day
without its flood of tears. I want my mother. It
is no good. I want to go back to where
(05:53):
I was born. I am not strong enough to bear this.
But after Tuesday's promise to him, what can I do.
I have said now that I won't write until after,
and I won't if God gives me strength. For two
months there was no entry, and then came joy that
(06:16):
a son was born. But from the time of that birth,
the diary, which had before been profuse and daily, became
short and broken. A deadlock seemed to have arisen. Harry
allowed one letter to be written home to tell of
the birth, but would not permit any direct statement as
(06:39):
to the marriage, nor any meeting, nor any further letter
until Missus S, who was now quote near her end,
should be dead. She wrote to day is six weeks
since I have seen him, and altogether he has seen
baby only. Yesterday's letter was divided into heads like a sermon,
(07:06):
giving the reason why I may not go to him
in Paris, why I may not write home even without
giving my address, and why he cannot come back yet.
But it is a year now, and I have a
mother and a sister. There is no certainty that missus
S may not live ten years longer. And in last
(07:29):
night's letter I said that on the fourth of July,
one month from now, if nothing has then happened to
change the situation, I shall be compelled to risk displeasing him,
and I shall go to r that's crossing the rubicon, Gwen,
and I'm awfully frightened. Now he will call it defiance
(07:52):
and rave. I know, be bold, be bold, be not
too bold, But then I can always tame the monster
with one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man
and can conquer my conqueror. And it is time now
to begin to assert myself a little. Isn't there something
(08:15):
queerish in his relation with missus S. He stands in
such mortal fear of her. I don't think it is
quite pretty for a man to have such tremors for
any earthly reason. One day I asked him why he
could not introduce me to her as a friend. She
(08:37):
might take a fancy to me, I said, since I
am generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere
suggestion of such a thing. That's last night, coming home
from the theater, he said something about Anna. I asked
him who Anna was? He said, I mean missus S.
(09:00):
Looking it seemed to me rather put out. I had
never heard him call her Anna before. My voice is
certainly not what it was, and not through any want
of practice. I'm sure people so hopelessly worried as I
am at present can't sing really well. For the second
(09:22):
time yesterday I wrote that I shall really go to
mother after the fourth of next month. And I mean it.
I do mean it. I owe something to her too,
and to myself, and I still don't see what harm
it can do. Harry, poor dear, he is awfully frightened.
(09:44):
If you persist in this wild notion, you will compel
me to take a step which will be bitter to
you and to myself. I don't know what step he
can mean, that's only talk. I'll do it. Just do
you see what happens? For one oughtn't to threaten a
woman with penalties which she cannot conceive, or her curiosity
(10:08):
will lead her to do the very thing. It was
an ill understood threatch that made Eve eat e apple.
My hell, thou shalt surely die, but not knowing what
to die was like, she thought to herself, well, just
to see. And there's no particular bitter step that he
(10:30):
can take. And the time is really come for me
to assert myself a little now. Men love a woman
better when she is not all milk and honey. It
is near now, VI, he hands, her chin, her hands,
her dark grave eyes, her very smile. I am on
(10:52):
the point at last of seeing him in her arms.
How will she look? What will she think of me,
the little girl whom she used to guide with her eye,
beating her a hundred miles, an old, experienced mummy, while
she is still made. I can no more resist it
(11:13):
than I could fly. I shall do it. I am
going to do it. I told Harry that I should.
There's no danger, and I can't resist it any longer.
I am just back from p He is looking too
sweet now for anything, and can blow the whistle of
(11:35):
the rattle. I told missus c that in three days
time I shall be taking him from her for at
least ten days, perhaps for good, only three days. Sarah
is beginning to get things ready. Yes, it was a
bitter step enough. Poor hell, God help you and me
(12:00):
and all the helpless. I told poor Sarah just now,
I am not married. You only think that I am,
But I am not. I have a child, but I
am not married. Sarah. This is no fit place for
a girl like you. She thinks that I am mad,
I know, but I keep quite saye and myself. I
(12:23):
am only sorry for poor old help. He loves me,
and I loved him when I had a heart. I
thought of seeing the boy once more. But I haven't
the energy. I don't seem to care. If I should care,
or love, or hate or eat, it wouldn't be so horrible.
(12:45):
But I am only a ghost, a sham. I am
really dead. My nature is akin with the grave and
has no appetite. But for that with which it is akin, well,
I will soon come. It shall be to morrow night,
(13:06):
just after Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself
first to do that which is my duty. I ought
as a friend to cover up poor Hell's traces. And
yet I must be just to the boy too. He
ought to know when he grows up that if his
(13:27):
mother was unfortunate, she was not abandoned. And it is
my duty to leave for him the proofs of it.
But how to do that and at the same time
protect Harry is the question. For I suppose that the
police will search the flat. It is very wearisome. I
(13:47):
doubt if my poor head is too clear to day
it shall be like this. I'll hide the things somewhere
where the police won't readily find them. I'll invent a
place then I shall write to Vy, not telling her
what is going to happen to me, but telling her
(14:08):
that if in a few months time she will thoroughly
search a certain flat in London, she will find what
will be good for aunt, mother and the boy. And
I shall give the address, but I won't tell her
exactly where I hide the things, for fear of the
police getting hold of the letter and arresting Harry. And
(14:32):
I will post it after Sarah is gone to morrow night,
just before I do it. That's what I shall do.
I'm pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm.
I don't know yet where I shall hide the things,
but I shall find a place. I shall hoodwike them
(14:53):
all and manage everything just nicely. Sarah thinks that I'm mad,
but I'm not. It is she who is reigning mad,
and people who are mad think that everyone else is
except themselves. I'll hide the diary in one place, the
(15:13):
certificates in another, and the photograph of the boy's father
in another. That's what I'll do. Then I'll tear up
all other papers small. No, I'll hide as well, the
letter in which she says that he is missus S's
husband and that I'm not his legal wife. For some
(15:35):
day I should like VI to know that I did
not take my life for nothing, but was murdered before
I killed myself. Then I'll do it. It isn't bitter,
it's sweet. Death is a hole to creep in for
shelter for one's poor head. Harry will be in England
(15:56):
in five days time, so I'll write him a letter
to the constitutional to say goodbye. He loves me. He
didn't mean to kill me. He only told me in
order to stop me from going home. It is such
a burden to write to him, but it is my
duty to give him one last word of comfort, and
(16:17):
I will. Then, when all this world of business is
over and done, I'll do it. It isn't bitter, it's sweet. God,
I couldn't face them, forgive me. I know that it
is wicked, but it is nice. It's death. Things are
(16:39):
as they are. One can't fight against the ocean. It
is sweet to close one's eyes and drown. That word
drown was the last. David closed the book with a
blackness in his heart and brain. The reading of it
had brought him only greeted and little light for practical purposes.
(17:04):
That Missus s meant Missus Strauss. He had no doubt
nor any doubt that Harry meant Henry van Uepfeldt. Still
there was no formal proof of it. The name of
her home to learn, which he had dared to open
the diary, appeared only as r The only pieces of
(17:26):
knowledge which the reading brought him were firstly that there
were a photograph and a letter still hidden in the flat,
certainly not in any of the pictures, for he had
searched them all. And secondly that Harry was a member
of the Constitutional Club. As for the child, it was
(17:50):
or had been, at p in the care of one
Missus c end of Chapter fifteen.
Chapter fifteen of The Late Tenant by Gordon Holmes. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. In Pain, hour
after hour, David read on dead to all things in
the world, but to the soul in pain in that book,
and to his hope that if only once she had
(00:24):
written the name of her home. Every time he came
upon that letter R, by which she meant Rigsworth, he groaned.
And Anon. He looked with eyes of despair and something
of fond reproach at her face over the mantelpiece. He
read of her leaving the stage because of the necessity
(00:44):
that was now upon her, and then of the months
of heaviness and tears. The worst trial of all in
her lot seemed to be the constant separations due to
the tyranny of one missus s who ever drew her
husband from her. She wrote, I actually should be jealous
(01:07):
if she wasn't old. From Paris to Homburg, from Hamburg
to Siena, and everywhere poor Harry dragged at her chariot wheels.
I should like to have one peep at her in
the flesh, just to see what she is really like.
Her photographs show a fat, cross looking old thing, but
(01:29):
she can't be quite like that with her really good
affectionate heart. Has she not been the best of mothers
to Harry? From the time she adopted him, she says,
when he was quite a poor boy of fifty. She
has never been able to live a month without seeing him,
(01:50):
even when he was at Heidelberg University. I must be
content only to share him with her. But just now
I think I have the stronger claim unless she is
really so very ill. I have heard that tale before
of her dying state, but that sort of old things
(02:14):
don't die so easily. I believe that I write as
if I wished her to God forbid. I don't allow
all Harry's dreams of the grandeurs to be enjoyed after
her death to excite me much. I hope that I
shall take it as coldly as doing up my hair.
When the letter comes, missus s is dead. You are
(02:37):
a millionaire Mercenariness is not one of my faults anyway.
It is true that, since I have ceased to earn anything,
I do sometimes feel a wee pinch of scarcity and
wish that he could send me even a few shillings
a week more. But if that was only all of
(02:59):
my trouble. No, missus, s may you live as long
as Heaven wills. If I thought that in any part
of me there lurked one little longing to hear of
that good woman's death, I should never forgive myself. Still,
I don't think it right of her to play the
(03:20):
despot over Harry to the extent to which she carries it.
A man thirty eight years old surely has the right
to marry if he wishes to. If it hadn't been
for her, my marriage could have been made public from
the first, and all that woe at art would have
(03:41):
been spared. Harry says that she hates the very word marriage,
and that if she was to get the least sent
of his marriage, she would cut him off with a shilling.
He has run a risk, poor old hal for my sake.
And if and again he can't help longing to be
(04:03):
rich and free, it is hard to blame him. The
day he is rich and free, there will be a spree. Gwen.
It is wrong to anticipate. But see if I don't
make the street of our glow, if not with the
wine of France, at least with beer. And if I
(04:25):
don't teach a certain state, Miss Violet Mordaunt how to
do the high kick girls. I wonder if all will
be over by then, and if I shall go back
to dear old r not only a wife but a mother.
Then again a month later, What a thing to be
(04:47):
a mother? Sometimes the thought hits me suddenly between the eyes,
and I can't believe it is I myself. That same
powerlessness to recognize myself, which I had for fully a
week after the marriage. But this is greater still, to
have something which will be to me what I have
(05:11):
been to my own mother. Gwen, Gwen, how exquisitely droll,
how one grows into something else quite different, without at
all noticing how and when? But will it never be over?
It is like eating a sigh a century long. Won't
(05:31):
it be nice to dance again and fling one's limbs?
But meantime, such a weight of care, strange fears gazings
into I don't know what abyss, and never a day
without its flood of tears. I want my mother. It
is no good. I want to go back to where
(05:53):
I was born. I am not strong enough to bear this.
But after Tuesday's promise to him, what can I do.
I have said now that I won't write until after,
and I won't if God gives me strength. For two
months there was no entry, and then came joy that
(06:16):
a son was born. But from the time of that birth,
the diary, which had before been profuse and daily, became
short and broken. A deadlock seemed to have arisen. Harry
allowed one letter to be written home to tell of
the birth, but would not permit any direct statement as
(06:39):
to the marriage, nor any meeting, nor any further letter
until Missus S, who was now quote near her end,
should be dead. She wrote to day is six weeks
since I have seen him, and altogether he has seen
baby only. Yesterday's letter was divided into heads like a sermon,
(07:06):
giving the reason why I may not go to him
in Paris, why I may not write home even without
giving my address, and why he cannot come back yet.
But it is a year now, and I have a
mother and a sister. There is no certainty that missus
S may not live ten years longer. And in last
(07:29):
night's letter I said that on the fourth of July,
one month from now, if nothing has then happened to
change the situation, I shall be compelled to risk displeasing him,
and I shall go to r that's crossing the rubicon, Gwen,
and I'm awfully frightened. Now he will call it defiance
(07:52):
and rave. I know, be bold, be bold, be not
too bold, But then I can always tame the monster
with one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man
and can conquer my conqueror. And it is time now
to begin to assert myself a little. Isn't there something
(08:15):
queerish in his relation with missus S. He stands in
such mortal fear of her. I don't think it is
quite pretty for a man to have such tremors for
any earthly reason. One day I asked him why he
could not introduce me to her as a friend. She
(08:37):
might take a fancy to me, I said, since I
am generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere
suggestion of such a thing. That's last night, coming home
from the theater, he said something about Anna. I asked
him who Anna was? He said, I mean missus S.
(09:00):
Looking it seemed to me rather put out. I had
never heard him call her Anna before. My voice is
certainly not what it was, and not through any want
of practice. I'm sure people so hopelessly worried as I
am at present can't sing really well. For the second
(09:22):
time yesterday I wrote that I shall really go to
mother after the fourth of next month. And I mean it.
I do mean it. I owe something to her too,
and to myself, and I still don't see what harm
it can do. Harry, poor dear, he is awfully frightened.
(09:44):
If you persist in this wild notion, you will compel
me to take a step which will be bitter to
you and to myself. I don't know what step he
can mean, that's only talk. I'll do it. Just do
you see what happens? For one oughtn't to threaten a
woman with penalties which she cannot conceive, or her curiosity
(10:08):
will lead her to do the very thing. It was
an ill understood threatch that made Eve eat e apple.
My hell, thou shalt surely die, but not knowing what
to die was like, she thought to herself, well, just
to see. And there's no particular bitter step that he
(10:30):
can take. And the time is really come for me
to assert myself a little now. Men love a woman
better when she is not all milk and honey. It
is near now, VI, he hands, her chin, her hands,
her dark grave eyes, her very smile. I am on
(10:52):
the point at last of seeing him in her arms.
How will she look? What will she think of me,
the little girl whom she used to guide with her eye,
beating her a hundred miles, an old, experienced mummy, while
she is still made. I can no more resist it
(11:13):
than I could fly. I shall do it. I am
going to do it. I told Harry that I should.
There's no danger, and I can't resist it any longer.
I am just back from p He is looking too
sweet now for anything, and can blow the whistle of
(11:35):
the rattle. I told missus c that in three days
time I shall be taking him from her for at
least ten days, perhaps for good, only three days. Sarah
is beginning to get things ready. Yes, it was a
bitter step enough. Poor hell, God help you and me
(12:00):
and all the helpless. I told poor Sarah just now,
I am not married. You only think that I am,
But I am not. I have a child, but I
am not married. Sarah. This is no fit place for
a girl like you. She thinks that I am mad,
I know, but I keep quite saye and myself. I
(12:23):
am only sorry for poor old help. He loves me,
and I loved him when I had a heart. I
thought of seeing the boy once more. But I haven't
the energy. I don't seem to care. If I should care,
or love, or hate or eat, it wouldn't be so horrible.
(12:45):
But I am only a ghost, a sham. I am
really dead. My nature is akin with the grave and
has no appetite. But for that with which it is akin, well,
I will soon come. It shall be to morrow night,
(13:06):
just after Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself
first to do that which is my duty. I ought
as a friend to cover up poor Hell's traces. And
yet I must be just to the boy too. He
ought to know when he grows up that if his
(13:27):
mother was unfortunate, she was not abandoned. And it is
my duty to leave for him the proofs of it.
But how to do that and at the same time
protect Harry is the question. For I suppose that the
police will search the flat. It is very wearisome. I
(13:47):
doubt if my poor head is too clear to day
it shall be like this. I'll hide the things somewhere
where the police won't readily find them. I'll invent a
place then I shall write to Vy, not telling her
what is going to happen to me, but telling her
(14:08):
that if in a few months time she will thoroughly
search a certain flat in London, she will find what
will be good for aunt, mother and the boy. And
I shall give the address, but I won't tell her
exactly where I hide the things, for fear of the
police getting hold of the letter and arresting Harry. And
(14:32):
I will post it after Sarah is gone to morrow night,
just before I do it. That's what I shall do.
I'm pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm.
I don't know yet where I shall hide the things,
but I shall find a place. I shall hoodwike them
(14:53):
all and manage everything just nicely. Sarah thinks that I'm mad,
but I'm not. It is she who is reigning mad,
and people who are mad think that everyone else is
except themselves. I'll hide the diary in one place, the
(15:13):
certificates in another, and the photograph of the boy's father
in another. That's what I'll do. Then I'll tear up
all other papers small. No, I'll hide as well, the
letter in which she says that he is missus S's
husband and that I'm not his legal wife. For some
(15:35):
day I should like VI to know that I did
not take my life for nothing, but was murdered before
I killed myself. Then I'll do it. It isn't bitter,
it's sweet. Death is a hole to creep in for
shelter for one's poor head. Harry will be in England
(15:56):
in five days time, so I'll write him a letter
to the constitutional to say goodbye. He loves me. He
didn't mean to kill me. He only told me in
order to stop me from going home. It is such
a burden to write to him, but it is my
duty to give him one last word of comfort, and
(16:17):
I will. Then, when all this world of business is
over and done, I'll do it. It isn't bitter, it's sweet. God,
I couldn't face them, forgive me. I know that it
is wicked, but it is nice. It's death. Things are
(16:39):
as they are. One can't fight against the ocean. It
is sweet to close one's eyes and drown. That word
drown was the last. David closed the book with a
blackness in his heart and brain. The reading of it
had brought him only greeted and little light for practical purposes.
(17:04):
That Missus s meant Missus Strauss. He had no doubt
nor any doubt that Harry meant Henry van Uepfeldt. Still
there was no formal proof of it. The name of
her home to learn, which he had dared to open
the diary, appeared only as r The only pieces of
(17:26):
knowledge which the reading brought him were firstly that there
were a photograph and a letter still hidden in the flat,
certainly not in any of the pictures, for he had
searched them all. And secondly that Harry was a member
of the Constitutional Club. As for the child, it was
(17:50):
or had been, at p in the care of one
Missus c end of Chapter fifteen.
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