'Oh, I will be there,' said Mark recklessly; and they parted.
As Mabel and Mark were walking back, she said suddenly, 'I suppose, when you met Vincent last, you told him that you were going to marry me, Mark?'
'Didn't he say so?' he answered, prevaricating even then.
'I thought you must have done so,' she said, and was silent.
Vincent had known then. He had deliberately kept away from them all. He had pretended to ignore the marriage when they met; that was his way of resenting it. She had not thought of this till then, and it confirmed her in the idea that Ceylon had sadly changed him.
They dined alone together in the large bare Speise-Saal, for the handsome hotel was scarcely ever occupied even in the season. Now they had it all to themselves, and the waiters almost fought with one another for the privilege of attending upon them. The 'Director' himself – a lively, talkative little German, who felt his managerial talents wasted in this wilderness – came in to superintend their meals, partly to refresh himself by the contemplation of two real guests, but chiefly to extend his English vocabulary.
Hitherto Mark had considered him a nuisance, but he was glad that evening when the host followed the fish in with his customary greeting. 'Good-night! You haf made a goot valk? Guten appetit – yes?' and proceeded to invite them to a grand concert, which was to take place in the hotel the following Sunday. 'Zere vill pe ze pandt from Klein-Laufingen; it is all brass, and it is better as you vill not go too near. Zey blow vair strong ven zey go off, but a laty from hier vill gambole peautifully after zem on ze piano. You vill come – yes?'
When he had gone at last little Max came in and stood by Mabel, with his mouth gaping like a young bird's for chance fragments of dessert. Mark was grateful to him, too, for diverting her attention from himself. He grew more and more silent as the long Black Forest clock by the shining porcelain stove ticked slowly on towards the hour. It was time to go, and he rose with a shiver.
'You will not be very long away, will you, dear?' said Mabel, looking up from the orange she was peeling for the child. 'And you will do what you can for the poor woman, I know.'
'Yes, yes,' he said as he reached the door. 'Good-bye, Mabel!'
'Good-bye,' she said, nodding to him brightly. 'Max, say "Good-evening, Herr Mark; a pleasant walk,"' but Max backed away behind the stove, declining to commit himself to an unknown tongue. Mark took a last look at her laughing gaily there in the lamplight. Would he ever hear her laugh like that again? How would he ever find courage to tell her? There was little need just then of Holroyd's prohibition.
He went down to the hotel steps to the little open space where the two streets unite, and where the oil lamp suspended above by cords dropped a shadow like a huge spider on the pale patch of lighted ground below. The night was warm and rather dark; no one was about at that hour; the only sound was the gurgle of the fountain in the corner, where the water-jets gleamed out of the blackness like rods of twisted crystal. He entered the narrow street, or rather alley, leading to the bridge. In the state of blank misery he was in his eye seized upon the smallest objects as if to distract his mind, and he observed – as he might not have done had he been happy – that in the lighted upper room of the corner house they had trained growing ivy along the low raftered ceiling.
So, too, as he went on he noticed details in each dim small-paned shop-front he passed. The tobacconist's big wooden negro, sitting with bundles of Hamburg cigars in his lap and filling up the whole of the window; the two rows of dangling silver watches at the watchmaker's; the butcher's unglazed slab, with its strong iron bars, behind which one small and solitary joint was caged like something dangerous to society; even the grotesque forms in which the jugs and vases at the china shop were shadowed on the opposite wall.
He looked up at a quaint metal inn-sign, an ancient ship, which swung from a wrought-iron bracket overhead. 'When next I pass under that!' he thought.
He came to the end of the street at last, when his way to the place of meeting lay straight on, but he turned to his right instead, past the Zoll-Verein– where the chief was busy writing by the window under his linen-shaded oil-lamp – and on to the bridge as if some irresistible attraction were drawing him.
When he reached the recess opposite to that in which Mabel had met Vincent he stopped mechanically and looked around; the towns were perfectly still, save for the prolonged organ note of the falls, which soon ceases to strike the ear. On either bank the houses gleamed pale under a low sky, where the greenish moonlight struggled through a rack of angry black clouds. While he stood there the clock under the church cupola above struck the quarters and clanged out the hour, followed, after a becoming pause, by the gatehouse clock across the river, and such others as the twin towns possessed.
It was nine o'clock. Vincent Holroyd was waiting there on the terrace, stern and pitiless.
Mark made a movement as if to leave the recess, and then stopped short. It was no use; he could not face Holroyd. He looked over the side, down on the water swirling by, in which the few house lights were reflected in a dull and broken glimmer. Was there any escape for him there?
It would only be a plunge down into that swollen rushing torrent, and he would be past all rescue. An instant of suffocating pain, then singing in his ears, sparks in his eyes, unconsciousness – annihilation perhaps – who knew? Just then any other world, any other penalty, seemed preferable to life and Mabel's contempt!
From the recess he could see an angle of the hotel, and one of the windows of their room. It was lighted; Mabel was sitting there in the arm-chair, perhaps waiting for him. If he went back he must tell her. If he went back!
Whether he lived or died, she was equally lost to him now. His life would bring her only misery and humiliation – at least he could leave her free!
Vincent would speak and think less hardly of him then, and, if not, would it matter?
His mind was made up – he would do it! He looked towards Mabel's window with a wild, despairing gaze. 'Forgive me!' he cried with a hoarse sob, as if she could hear, and then he threw off his hat and sprang upon the broad parapet.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
ON THE LAUFENPLATZ
VINCENT had left the Gasthaus zur Post, the old-fashioned inn outside Klein-Laufingen, at which he had taken up his quarters for the night, a little before nine, and walked down the street, with his mind finally made up as to the course he meant to take, although he shrank from the coming interview almost as intensely as Mark himself. He passed under the covered way of the bridge, and had nearly reached the open part, when he recognised the man he was coming to meet standing in one of the recesses. He noticed him look round in evident fear of observation – he did not seem, however, to have seen or heard Vincent, and presently the latter saw him throw his hat away, as if in preparation for action of some sort. Vincent guessed at once what he was intending to do; it darted across his mind that this might be the best solution of the difficulty – he had only to keep silent for a few seconds. Was it certain even now that he could prevent this self-destruction if he would? But such inhumanity was impossible to him. Instinctively he rushed forward out of the shadow and, seizing Mark by the arm as he sprang upon the parapet, dragged him roughly back. 'You coward!' he cried, 'you fool! This is the way you keep your appointment, is it? You can do that afterwards if you like – just now you will come with me.'
Tragic as a rash act, such as Mark was contemplating, is when successful, an interruption brings with it an inevitable bathos; when he first felt that grasp on his arm, he thought himself in the power of a German policeman, and, prepared as he was a moment before to face a sudden death, he quailed before the prospect of some degrading and complicated official process; it was almost a relief to see instead his bitterest enemy!
He made no attempt at resistance or escape – perhaps life seemed more tolerable after all now he had been brought back to it; he went meekly back with Vincent, who still held his arm firmly, and they reached the Laufenplatz without another word.
The little terrace above the Rhine was almost dark, the only light came in a reflected form from a street lamp round the corner, and they had to pick their way round the octagonal stone fountain and between the big iron salmon cages, to some seats under the five bare elms by the railings. There Vincent sat down to recover breath, for the scene he had just gone through was beginning to tell upon him, and he was overcome by a feeling of faintness which made him unable to speak for some moments. Meanwhile Mark stood opposite by the railings waiting sullenly, until Vincent rose at last and came to his side; he spoke low and with difficulty, but, in spite of the torrent roaring over the rocks below, Mark heard every word.
'I suppose,' Vincent began, 'I need not tell you why I wished to see you?'
'No,' said Mark; 'I know.'
'From your manner on the bridge just now,' continued Holroyd, relentlessly, 'it looked almost as if you wished to avoid a meeting – why should you? I told you I wished my authorship to be kept a secret, and you sheltered it with your own name. Very few friends would have done that!'
'You have the right to indulge in this kind of pleasantry,' said the tortured Mark; 'I know that – only be moderate if you can. Cut the sneers and the reproaches short, and give me the finishing stroke; do you suppose I don't feel what I am?'
'Reproaches are ungenerous, of course,' retorted Holroyd; 'I am coming to the "finishing stroke," as you call it, in my own time; but first, though you may consider it bad taste on my part, I want to know a little more about all this. If it's painful to you, I'm sorry – but you scarcely have the right to be sensitive.'
'Oh, I have no rights!' said Mark, bitterly.
'I'll try not to abuse mine,' said Vincent, more calmly, 'but I can't understand why you did this – you could write books for yourself, what made you covet mine?'
'I'll tell you all there is to tell,' said Mark: 'I didn't covet your book – it was like this; my own novels had both been rejected. I knew I had no chance, as things were, of ever getting a publisher to look at them. I felt I only wanted a fair start. Then Fladgate got it into his head that I was the author of that manuscript of yours. I did tell him how it really was, but he wouldn't believe me, and then – upon my soul, Holroyd, I thought you were dead!'
'And had no rights!' concluded the other drily; 'I see – go on.'
'I was mad, I suppose,' continued Mark; 'I let him think he was right. And then I met Mabel … by that time everybody knew me as the author of "Illusion." I – I could not tell her I was not… Then we were engaged, and, four days before the wedding, you came back – you know all the rest.'
'Yes, I know the rest,' cried Vincent, passionately; 'you came to meet me – how overcome you were! I thought it was joy, and thanked Heaven, like the fool I was, that I had anyone in the world to care so much about me! And you let me tell you about – about her; and you and Caffyn between you kept me in the dark till you could get me safely out of the way. It was a clever scheme – you managed it admirably. You need not have stolen from anyone with such powers of constructing a plot of your own! There is just one thing, though, I should like to have explained. I wrote Mabel a letter – I know now that she never received it – why?'
'How can I tell?' said Mark. 'Good God! Holroyd, you don't suspect me of that!'
'Are you so far above suspicion?' asked Vincent; 'it would only be a very few more pages!'
'Well, I deserve it,' said Mark, 'but whether you believe me or not, I never saw a letter of yours until the other day. I never imagined you were alive even till I read your letter to me.'
'That must have been a delightful surprise for you,' said Vincent; 'you kept your head though – you did not let it interfere with your arrangements. You have married her —you– of all the men in the world! Nothing can ever undo that now – nothing!'
'I have married her,' said Mark; 'God forgive me for it! But at least she cares for no one else, Holroyd. She loves me – whatever I am!'
'You need not tell me that,' interrupted Vincent; 'I know it. I have seen it for myself – you have been clever even in that!'
'What do you mean?' asked Mark.
'Do you know what that book of mine was to me?' continued Vincent, without troubling to answer; 'I put all that was best of myself into it, I thought it might plead for me some day, perhaps, to a heart I hoped to touch; and I come back to find that you have won the heart, and not even left me my book!'
'As for the book,' said Mark, 'that will be yours again now.'
'I meant to make it so when I came here,' Vincent answered. 'I meant to force you to own my rights, whatever the acknowledgment cost you… But I know now that I must give that up. I abandon all claim to the book; you have chosen to take it – you can keep it!'
The revulsion of feeling caused by so unexpected an announcement almost turned Mark's head for the moment; he caught Vincent by the arm in his excitement. 'What,' he cried, 'is this a trick – are you in earnest – you will spare me after all? You must not, Vincent, I can't have it – I don't deserve it!'
Vincent drew back coldly: 'Did I say you deserved it?' he asked, with a contempt that stung Mark.
'Then I won't accept it, do you hear?' he persisted; 'you shall not make this sacrifice for me!'
Holroyd laughed grimly enough: 'For you!' he repeated; 'you don't suppose I should tamely give up everything for you, do you?'
'Then,' faltered Mark, 'why – why – ?'
'Why am I going to let you alone? Do you remember what I told you on that platform at Plymouth? —that is why. If I had only known then, I would have fought my hardest to expose you, if it was necessary to save her in that way – for her sake, not mine. I don't suppose there ever was much hope for me. As it is, you have been clever enough to choose the one shield through which I can't strike you – if I ever thought more of that wretched book than of her happiness, it was only for a moment – she knows nothing as yet, and she must never know!'
'She will know it some day,' said Mark, heavily.
'Why should she know?' demanded Vincent, impatiently; 'you don't mean that that infernal Caffyn knows?'
'No, no,' replied Mark, in all sincerity; 'Caffyn doesn't know – how could he? But you can't hide these things: you – you may have talked about it yourself already!'
'I have not talked about it!' said Vincent, sharply; 'perhaps I was not too proud of having been gulled so easily. Can't you understand? This secret rests between you and me at present, and I shall never breathe a word of it – you can feel perfectly safe – you are Mabel's husband!'
It is to be feared that Vincent's manner was far enough from the sublime and heroic; he gave up his book and his fame from the conviction that he could not do otherwise; but it was not easy for all that, and he did not try to disguise the bitter contempt he felt for the cause.
Mark could not endure the humiliation of such a pardon – his spirit rose in revolt against it.
'Do you think I will be forgiven like this?' he cried, recklessly. 'I don't want your mercy! I won't take it! If you won't speak, I shall!'
Vincent had not expected any resistance from Mark, and this outburst, which was genuine enough, showed that he was not utterly beneath contempt, even then.
Holroyd's manner was less harsh and contemptuous when he next spoke:
'It's no use, Ashburn,' he said firmly; 'it's too late for all that now – you must accept it!'
'I shall not,' said Mark again. 'I've been a scoundrel, I know, but I'll be one no longer; I'll tell the truth and give you back your own. I will do what's right at last!'
'Not in that way,' said Vincent; 'I forbid it. I have the right to be obeyed in this, and you shall obey me. Listen to me, Ashburn; you can't do this – you forget Mabel. You have made her love you and trust her happiness to your keeping; your honour is hers now. Can't you see what shame and misery you will plunge her in by such a confession? It may clear your conscience, but it must darken her life – and that's too heavy a price to pay for such a mere luxury as peace of mind.'
'How can I go on deceiving her?' groaned Mark; 'it will drive me mad!'
'It will do nothing of the sort!' retorted Holroyd, his anger returning; 'I know you better – in a couple of days it won't even affect your appetite! Why, if I had not come over here, if I had gone out again to India as you hoped I should, you were prepared to go on deceiving her – your mind kept its balance well enough then!'
Mark knew this was true, and held his tongue.
'Think of me as safe in India, then,' Vincent continued more quietly. 'I shall trouble you quite as little. But this secret is mine as well as yours – and I will not have it told. If you denounce yourself now, who will be the better for it? Think what it will cost Mabel… You do love her, don't you?' he asked, with a fierce anxiety; 'you – you have not married her for other reasons?'
'You think I am too bad even to love honestly,' said Mark, bitterly; 'but I do.'
'Prove it then,' said Vincent. 'You heard her pleading on the bridge for the woman who would suffer by her husband's shame; she was pleading for herself then – and not to me only, to you! Have pity on her; she is so young to lose all her faith and love and hope at once. You can never let her know what you have been; you can only try to become all she believes you to be.'
In his heart, perhaps, Mark was not sorry to be convinced that what he had resolved to do was impossible. The high-strung mood in which he had been ready to proclaim his wrong-doing was already passing away. Vincent had gained his point.
'You are right,' Mark said slowly; 'I will keep it from her if I can.'
'Very well,' Vincent answered, 'that is settled then. If she asks you what has passed between us, you can say that I have told you my story, but that you are not at liberty to speak of it. Mabel will not try to know more. Stay, I will write a line' (and he went to the corner of the street and wrote a few words on a leaf from his notebook). 'Give that to her,' he said as he returned. 'And now I think we've nothing more to say.'
'Only one other thing,' stammered Mark; 'I must do this… When they – they published your book they paid me… I never touched the money. I have brought it with me to-night; you must take it!' and he held out a small packet of notes.
Vincent turned haughtily away. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'it is not mine; I will have nothing to do with it. Under the circumstances, you can't expect me to touch that money. Keep it; do what you choose with it.'
'I choose this, then!' said Mark, violently, and tearing the notes up, he flung them over the railings to drift down on the rocks or into the tossing grey foam beyond.
'You need not have done that,' said Holroyd, coldly; 'there were the poor. But just as you please!' and he made a movement as if to go.
Mark stopped him with a gesture.
'Are you going like this?' he said, and his voice trembled. 'If you knew all I felt, even you might pity me a little! Can't you forgive?'
Vincent turned. 'No,' he said, shortly, 'I can't. I put temptation in your way, and though I never dreamed then that it could be a temptation to you, I could have forgiven you for giving way to it when you believed me dead. But I came back, and you went on with it; you lied to me – more, you dared to marry her, without a care for the shame and sorrow, which was all you had to bring her. If I said I forgave you for that, it would be a mockery. I don't, and I can't!'
'I see,' said Mark. 'When we meet again we are to be strangers, then?'
'No,' said Vincent; 'if we meet we must do so as ordinary acquaintances – for Mabel's sake. But there are no appearances to keep up here. Can't you see I want to be left to myself?' he asked, with a sudden burst of nervous irritation.
'Have your way then?' said Mark, and left him there by the railings.
Mark's first feelings as he walked slowly back up the little street where the little shops were all shuttered and dark now, were by no means enviable; he felt infinitely mean and small in his own eyes, and shrank from entering Mabel's presence while his nerves were still crawling under the scorching contempt of Vincent's dismissal. If, during the interview, there had been moments when he was deeply contrite and touched at the clemency so unexpectedly shown him, the manner of his pardon seemed to release him from all obligations to gratitude – he had only been forgiven for another's sake; and for a time he almost loathed so disgraceful an immunity, and felt the deep humiliation of a sentence that condemned him 'to pay the price of lies by being constrained to lie on still.' But by degrees, even in that short walk, his elastic temperament began to assert itself; after all, it might have been worse. He might by now have been drifting, dead and disfigured, down the river to Basle; he might have been going back to Mabel with the fearful necessity upon him of telling her all that night. One person knew him, and despised him for what he was; but that person would never tell his secret. That painful scene which had just passed would never have to be gone through again; he could think of it as a horrible dream. Yes, he was safe now, really safe this time. His position was far more secure than when he had read that telegram of Caffyn's; and here he wondered, for the first time, whether Caffyn had been deliberately misled or only mistaken in sending such a delusive message. But that did not very much matter now, and he soon abandoned speculation on the subject. He had much to be thankful for; his future was free from all danger. He had had a severe lesson, and he would profit by it; henceforth (with the one necessary reservation) he would be honest and true – Mabel should never repent her trust in him. 'Sweet Bells Jangled' would be before the world by the time they returned, and after that he feared nothing. And so, though he was subdued and silent on his return, there was no other trace in his manner of what he had suffered during the last hour. He found Mabel by the window of their sitting-room, looking out at the houses across the river, which were now palely clear in the cold moonlight, their lights extinguished, and only a pane glittering here and there in some high dormer window, while the irregular wooden, galleries and hanging outhouses were all thrown up vividly by the intense shadows.
'What a very long time you have been away!' she said; 'but I know Vincent can be very pleasant and interesting if he likes.'
'Very,' said Mark, and gave her Holroyd's note.
'I leave here early to-morrow for Italy,' she read, 'and may not see you again for some little time. I have told your husband my story, but, on consideration, have thought it best to pledge him to tell no one – not even you. But the man who injured me shall be safe for your sake.'
'You did persuade him, then!' she said, looking up gratefully to Mark. 'Oh, I am glad! How good you are, and how well you must have spoken, dear, to make him give up his idea of punishing the man! So Vincent is going away at once. Do you know I am afraid I am rather glad?'
And Mark made no answer; what was there to say?
Vincent stood there by the railings on the Laufenplatz for some time after Mark had left him; he was feeling the reaction both in mind and body from his recent conflict. 'How will it all end?' he asked himself wearily. 'Can any good come from letting this deceit go on? Is he strong enough to carry out his part? If not, the truth will only come at last, and be even more cruel when it does come.' Yet he had done what still seemed the obvious and only thing to do, if Mabel's happiness was considered. He was ashamed even that he had not seen it earlier, and trembled as he remembered that only a providential chance had restrained him from some fatal disclosure to Mabel that afternoon on the bridge. But at least he had acted for the best, and he would hope for it.
Thinking thus, he recrossed the river to Klein-Laufingen, where a mounted German officer, many sizes too big for the little street, was rousing it from its first slumber as he clattered along, with his horse's hoofs striking sparks from the rough cobbles, and passed under the old gateway, where his accoutrements gleamed for an instant in the lamplight before horse and rider vanished in the darkness beyond. Vincent passed out, too, out on the broad white road, and down the hill to his homely Gasthaus. He felt weak and very lonely – lonelier even than when he had parted from Mabel long ago on the eve of his Ceylon voyage. He could hope then; now he had lost her for ever! Still, one of his wishes had been granted – he had been able to be of service to her, to make some sacrifice for her dear sake. She would never know either of his love or his sacrifice, and though he could not pretend that there was no bitterness in that, he felt that it was better thus. 'After all,' he thought, 'she loves that fellow. She would never have cared for me.' And there was truth in this last conclusion. Even if Mabel and Mark had never met, and she could have known Vincent as he was, the knowledge might not have taught her to love. A woman cannot give her heart as a prix Montyon, or there might be more bachelors than there are.