Obeying a glance from Mabel, as the others followed Mrs. Featherstone back to the music-room, Vincent had remained behind.
'When will you allow this to be generally known?' she asked, and her voice had a strange new coldness which struck him with terror. Had she seen through his device? Was it all useless?
'As soon as possible,' he answered gently. 'We shall see the publishers to-morrow, and then all the details will be arranged.'
'And your triumph will come,' she said bitterly. 'I hope you will be able to enjoy it!'
'Mabel,' he said earnestly, 'Harold Caffyn forced me to speak to-night—surely you saw that? I—I did not intend to claim the book yet.'
'Why didn't you claim it long ago?' she demanded. 'Why must you put this burden on Mark at all? Surely your secret could have been kept without that! But you came home and knew what a success Mark's (yourbook, I beg your pardon—it is strange at first, you know)—what a success your book had been, and how hard it was making his life for him—he begged you then, you said, to takeback his promise, and you—you would not. Oh, it was selfish, Vincent, cruelly selfish of you!'
His sole concern in making that hasty explanation had been to give it an air of reasonable probability: he had never given a thought till that moment of the light in which he was presenting his own conduct. Now, in one terrible instant, it rushed upon him with an overwhelming force.
'I—I acted for the best,' he said; and even to himself the words sounded like a sullen apology.
'Foryourbest!' she said. 'The book will be talked of more than ever now. But did you never think of the false position in which you were placing Mark? What will become of him after this? People might have read his books once—they will never read them now—they may even say that—that Harold Caffyn may have been right. And all that is your work, Vincent!'
He groaned within him at his helplessness; he stood before her with bowed head, not daring to raise his eyes, lest he should be tempted to undo all his work.
'I was proud of Mark,' she continued, 'because I thought he had written "Illusion." I am prouder now—it is better to be loyal and true, as Mark has been, than to write the noblest book and sacrifice a friend to it. There are better things than fame, Vincent!'
Even his devotion was not proof against this last injustice; he raised his head, and anger burnt in his eyes.
'You tell me that!' he cried passionately. 'As if I had ever cared for Fame in itself! Mabel, you have no right to say these things to me—do you hear?—no right! Have some charity, try and believe that there may be excuses even for me—that if you could know my motives you might feel you had been unjust!'
'Is there anything I don't know?' she asked, somewhat moved by this outburst, 'anything you have kept from me?'
'No. You have heard all I have to say—all there is to tell,' he admitted.
'Then I am not unjust!' she said; 'but if you feel justified in acting as you have done, so much the better for you, and we shall do no good by talking any more about it.'
'None whatever,' he agreed.
When he was alone that night he laughed fiercely to himself at the manner in which his act of devotion had been accepted. All his sacrifices had ended in making Mabel despise him for calculating selfishness; he had lost her esteem for ever.
If he had foreseen this, he might have hesitated, deep and unselfish as his love was; but it was done, and he had saved her. Better, he tried to think, that she should despise him, than lose her belief in her husband, and, with it, all that made life fair to her.
But altruism of this kind is a cold and barren consolation. Men do good by stealth now and then, men submit to misconstruction, but then it is always permitted to them to dream that, some day, an accident may bring the good or the truth to light. This was a hope which, by the nature of the case, Vincent could never entertain, and life was greyer to him even than before.
MRS. FEATHERSTONE made no attempt to detain Mark and Mabel as they took leave of her shortly after that scene in the Gold Room, though her attitude at parting was conceived in a spirit of frosty forgiveness.
In the carriage Mark sat silent for some time, staring straight before him, moodily waiting for Mabel's first words. He had not to wait long; she had laid her hand softly upon his, and as he turned, he saw that her eyes were wet and shining. 'Mark,' she said, 'it is you I love, not that book; and now, when I know all it has cost you—oh, my dear,my dear—did you think it would make me love you less?'
He could not answer her by words, but he drew her nearer to him till her head rested upon his shoulder, and so they sat, silent, with hands clasped, until they reached home.
Seldom again, and only under strong compulsion, did Mabel make any reference to 'Illusion,' nor was it till long after that he suspected the depth and reason of her resentment against Vincent—he was content to feel that her love for himself was unchanged.
But though she strove, and successfully, to hide it from her husband, this lowering of her ideal caused her a secret anguish; it had always been difficult to reconcile Mark as his nature seemed revealed in private life, with the Mark who had written 'Illusion.' One of her dreams had been that, as their intimacy grew, all reserve would vanish, and he would speak to her of his inmost thoughts and fancies, which it seemed almost as if he thought her unable to appreciate as yet.
Now all this was over, there were no hidden depths to fathom in his mind, no sublime heights to which she could rise; such as she knew him now, he was and must remain—not a strong and solitary genius with lofty thoughts of which he feared to speak freely, not a guide on whom she could lean unquestioning through life, only a man with a bright but shallow nature, impulsive and easily led. Even the Quixotic honour which had led him to entangle himself in complications at another's bidding showed a mind incapable of clear judgment—or he would have renounced the rash promise when it began to involve others. Sadly enough she realised the weakness implied in this, and yet it only infused a new element of pity and protection in the love she felt for him, and she adapted herself bravely to the changed conditions of her life.
After Holroyd had spoken, she had never questioned that his version was the true one, and Caffyn's charge an infamous fabrication—whatever she might have been driven to think in that one instant of sickening doubt.
To a more suspicious nature, perhaps, some of the facts connected with Vincent's visit to Laufingen might even then have presented difficulties, but if Mabel had remembered all that had occurred there more clearly than she did, she would have attached but little importance to it. The loyal faith she had in her husband's honour would have accepted as obvious a far less plausible explanation.
On the day following the rehearsal Messrs. Chilton and Fladgate were made aware of the facts relating to the authorship of 'Illusion,' whereupon they both expressed a not unnatural annoyance at having been, as they considered, made the victims of a deception. Mr. Fladgate, especially, who had always prided himself immensely upon the sagacity which had led him to detect Mark at once, and who had never wearied of telling the story, indulged in some strong observations.
Vincent vindicated as well as he could the scheme in which he was the most guiltless of accessories after the fact, and Mark kept in the background and said as little as possible; he felt distinctly uncomfortable, however, when Mr. Chilton drily inquired whether the same mystification attached to 'Sweet Bells Jangled,' and on being reassured as to this, observed that it was a little unfortunate that the matter had not been explained before the latter book had been brought out. 'If you think you are prejudiced in any way,' Mark said, flushing angrily, 'we can easily come to some other arrangement!' 'Oh,' said Mr. Chilton, 'I was not thinking of it from a pecuniary point of view exactly—we shall not lose much—as far as money is concerned, I dare say!'
'My partner,' explained Mr. Fladgate, 'was thinking of the results this will have upon our reputation in the trade;' on which Vincent tried to appease him by promising to make it abundantly clear that the firm were no parties to the concealment, and as soon as the partners understood that it was not proposed to disturb any existing arrangements respecting 'Illusion,' beyond disclosing the truth, and having some necessary revisions inserted in anyfuture edition, they parted amicably enough, though Mark was made to understand his altered standing in the most unmistakable manner.
And in a few days, by means which it is not necessary to particularise here, the version of the affair given by Vincent at Grosvenor Gardens was made known to all those who might find it of interest.
The announcement, when it became generally known, caused a certain amount of surprise and remark, but not nearly so much as might have been expected. Hawthorne, in his preface to the 'Scarlet Letter,' has remarked the utter insignificance of literary achievements and aims beyond the narrow circle which recognises them as important and legitimate, and the lesson the discovery of this is to the man who dreams of literary fame. If Vincent needed to learn that lesson, he learnt it then; no fresh laurels were brought out for him—and the old ones had withered already; people were beginning to feel slightly ashamed of their former raptures over 'Illusion,' or had transferred them to a newer object, and they could not be revived in cold blood, even for the person legitimately entitled. Jacob had intercepted the birthright, and for this Esau there was not even theréchaufféof a blessing.
The people who had lionised Mark were enraged now, and chiefly with Holroyd; the more ill-natured hinted that there was something shady on both sides—or why should all that secrecy have been necessary?—but the less censorious were charitably disposed to think that Ashburn's weak good-nature had been unscrupulously abused by his more gifted friend.
Vincent's conduct, if it showed nothing more than a shrinking from notoriety, was sufficiently offensive, such distaste being necessarily either cynical or hypocritical. So upon the whole, the reaction which attends all sudden and violent popularity, and which had already set in here, was, if anything, furthered by the disclosure.
But this did not greatly distress him. Neglect and fame were alike to him, now that his lady had withdrawn her countenance from him. He had resigned himself tothe loss of the fairest dream of his life, but it had been a consolation to him in his loneliness to feel that he might be her friend still, that he might see her sometimes, that though she could never love him, he would always possess her confidence and regard—not much of a consolation, perhaps, to most men, but he had found a sort of comfort in it. Now that was all over, and his solitude was left more desolate still; he knew there was no appeal for him, and that, so long as Mabel believed that he had sacrificed her husband to his deliberate selfishness, she would never relent towards him. There were times when he asked himself if he was bound to suffer all this misconception from the one woman he had ever loved—but he knew always that in clearing himself he would lay her happiness in ruins, and resolved to bear his burden to the end, sustained by the conviction, which every day became clearer, that he would not have to bear it much longer.
As for Mark, the announcement of the true authorship of 'Illusion' brought him nothing short of disaster, social and financial. It produced a temporary demand for 'Sweet Bells Jangled' at the libraries, but now that things had been explained to them, the most unlikely persons were able to distinguish the marked inferiority of the later book.
Those reviews which had waited at first from press of matter or timidity now condemned it unanimously, and several editors of periodicals who had requested works from Mark's pen wrote to say that, as the offer had been made under a misapprehension, he would understand that they felt compelled to retract the commissions.
Mark's career as a novelist was ended, he had less chance than ever of getting a publisher's reader to look at his manuscript, the affair had associated his name with ridicule instead of the scandal which is a marketable commodity, and might have launched him again; his name upon a book now would only predestine it to obscurity.
Mabel was made aware in countless little ways of her husband's descent in popular estimation; he was no longerforced into a central position in any gathering they happened to form part of, but stood forlornly in corners, like the rest of humanity. Perhaps he regretted even the sham celebrity he had enjoyed, for his was a disposition that rose to any opportunity of self-display—but in time the contrast ceased to mortify him, for most of the invitations dropped; he was only asked to places now as the husband of Mabel, and in the height of the season most of their evenings were passed at home, to the perfect contentment of both, however.
Mrs. Featherstone had given up her theatricals, in spite of Vincent's attempt to dissuade her; she had lost some of the principal members of her little company, and it was too late to recruit them; but her chief reason was a feeling that she would only escape ridicule very narrowly as it was, and that the safest course was to allow her own connection with the affair to be forgotten as speedily as possible.
But she could not forgive Mark, and would have dropped the acquaintance altogether, if Gilda had not, in the revival of her affection for Mabel, done all in her power to keep it alive.
Mr. Langton, deeply as he had resented the misrepresentation which had cost him his daughter, was not a man to do anything which might give any opening for gossip; he repressed his wife's tendency to become elegiac on her daughter's account, and treated Mark in public as before. But on occasions when he dined thereen famille, and sat alone with his father-in-law over dessert, there was no attempt to conceal from him that he was only there on sufferance, and those were terrible after-dinner sittings to the unfortunate Mark, who was catechised and lectured on his prospects until he writhed with humiliation and helpless rage.
At Malakoff Terrace the feeling at the discovery of Mark's true position was not one of unmixed sorrow—the knowledge that he was, after all, an ordinary being, one of themselves, had its consolations, particularly as no lustre from his glorification had shone on them. Mr. Ashburnfelt less like an owl who had accidentally hatched a cherub, than he had done lately, and his wife considered that a snare and a pitfall had been removed from her son's path. Cuthbert thought his elder brother a fool, but probably had never felt more amiable towards him, while Martha wondered aloud how her sister-in-law liked it—a speculation which employed her mind not unpleasantly. Only Trixie felt a sincere and unselfish disappointment; she had been so proud of her brother's genius, had sympathised so entirely with his early struggles, had heard of his triumphs with such delight, that it was hard for her to realise that the book which had done so much for him was not his work after all. But the blow was softened even to Trixie, for 'Jack' had been making quite an income lately, and in the autumn they were going to be married and live in Bedford Park. And of course Mark had done nothing wrong, she told herself, and he knew all the time what was coming, so she need not pity him so very much, and she was sure 'Sweet Bells' was nicer than 'Illusion,' whatever people chose to say, and ever so much easier to understand.
Several days had passed since the announcements with regard to 'Illusion' had appeared in the literary and other periodicals, and still Uncle Solomon made no sign—a silence from which Mark augured the worst. One afternoon Mr. Humpage came to see Mabel: he had heard of the whole affair from the Langtons, and reproached himself not a little, now that he knew how utterly without foundation had been his bitterness against Mark. Mr. Humpage did not approach the question from the Langton point of view, and was not concerned that Mabel should have married a man who had turned out to be a nonentity. He had done all he could to prevent the marriage in his resentment at finding the daughter of an old friend engaged to the author who had caricatured him, and his only feeling now was of complete reaction; the young man was perfectly innocent, and his nephew Harold had suspected it all this time and never said a word to enlighten him. So now the old gentlemancame in a spirit of violent repentance which would not allow him to rest until he had re-established his old relations with his favourite Mabel. She was only too glad to find the coolness at an end, and he was just expressing his opinion of the part his nephew had taken, when, to Mabel's dismay, Mr. Lightowler was announced.
She wished with all her heart that Mark had not happened to be out, as she glanced apprehensively at her second visitor's face; and yet, as she saw almost at once, he came in peace—there was none of the displeasure on his big face which she had expected to see there; on the contrary, it was expanded with a sort of satisfaction.
Mr. Humpage rose as soon as the other had seated himself. 'Well, my dear,' he said, lowering his voice as he eyed his enemy with strong disfavour, 'it's time I went, I dare say. As to what I was saying about my scamp of a nephew—I only hopeIdid nothing to encourage him in the disgraceful way he chose to act; I never meant to, I assure you. But he won't trouble you any more for a little time, for I understand he's on his way with one of these theatrical companies to America, and I hope he'll stay there—he'll get nothing out of me, I'm ashamed of the fellow, and heartily glad his poor mother was taken when she was.'
He had spoken rather louder in his excitement, and Uncle Solomon overheard it, and struck in immediately. 'What, has that nephew of yours been turning out bad, hey?' he cried; he was quite a child of nature in his utter freedom from all conventional restraints, as may have been perceived before this. 'You don't say so, Humpage? Now I'm sorry to year it; I really am sorry to year that! Not but what, if you look into it, you'll find there's been a backwardness in doing one's duty somewhere about, yer know. P'raps, if you'd been more of an uncle to him, now, if you don't mind my saying so, he'd have turned out different. You should have kept a tighter hand on him, and as likely as not he wouldn't have felt the temptation to go wrong.'
'I was speaking to Mrs. Ashburn, Mr. Lightowler,' said the other, turning round with a rather ugly snarl.
'I 'eard you,' replied Uncle Solomon, calmly, 'that was why I spoke. Come, come, 'Umpage, don't be nasty—we've been neighbours long enough to drop nagging. It's no reason because I've got a nephew myself, who knows his duty and tries to be a pride to an uncle who's behaved handsomely towards him, it's no reason, I say, why I can't feel for them that mayn't be able to say as much for themselves.'
'I'm much obliged,' said Mr. Humpage, 'but I don't ask you or anybody else to feel for me. I am perfectly well able to do everything that's necessary in that way for myself.'
'Oh, certainly,' was the retort, 'no one can say I ever intruded on any one. I shan't take the liberty of feeling for you any more after that, not if you had twenty nephews and all of 'em in the "Police News," I promise you. And, talking of nephews, Mabel, I wonder if you came across a letter I wrote to the "Chigbourne and Lamford Gazette," a week or so back—I meant to send you a copy, but I forgot—I forgot.'
'No,' said Mabel, unable to make anything of this extraordinary mildness, 'I didn't see it.'
'Didn't you now?' he rejoined complacently, 'and yet it got copied into some of the London papers, too, I was told. Well, I brought a cutting with me, in case—would you like to hear it?'
Mabel made some assent—she always felt more or less paralysed in the presence of this terrible relative—and he drew out a folded slip, put on his spectacles, and proceeded to read:—
'"To the Editor.—Sir—I write you for the purpose of putting you right with respect to a point on which you seem to have got hold of an unaccurate version of a matter which I may say I have some slight connection with. In your issue of the ——th inst., I note that your London letter prints the following paragraph:'"Society here is eagerly anticipating the comingperformance, at one of the most recherché mansions in Belgravia, of a dramatic version of Mrs. Ashburn (née Ernstone's) celebrated romance of 'Illusion.' I have been favoured with an opportunity of assisting at some of the rehearsals, and am in a position to state that the representation cannot fail to satisfy even the most ardent of the many admirers of the book. The guests will include all the leaders of every phase of the beau monde, and a repetition of the play will probably be found necessary. By the way, it is a somewhat romantic circumstance, that the talent displayed by the young authoress has already been the means of procuring her a brilliant parti, which will remove all necessity for any reliance upon her pen for a subsistence in the future.'"Now, sir, allow me to correct two glaring errors in the above. To start with, the author of "Illusion" is not an authoress at all—his real name being Mark Ashburn, as I ought to know, considering I happen to occupy the position of being his uncle. Next, it is quite true that my nephew has contracted a matrimonial alliance, which some might call brilliant; but I was not aware till the present that the party brought him enough to allow him to live independent for the rest of his life, being under the impression that there would have been no match of any sort if it had not been for a near relative (who shall be nameless here) on the author's side coming forward and offering to make things comfortable for the young couple. But he will have to rely on his pen for all that, as he is quite aware that he is not expected to lay on his oars, without doing anything more to repay the sacrifices that have been wasted on him. Kindly correct, and oblige yours,'"Solomon Lightowler(the author's uncle)."'
'"To the Editor.—Sir—I write you for the purpose of putting you right with respect to a point on which you seem to have got hold of an unaccurate version of a matter which I may say I have some slight connection with. In your issue of the ——th inst., I note that your London letter prints the following paragraph:
'"Society here is eagerly anticipating the comingperformance, at one of the most recherché mansions in Belgravia, of a dramatic version of Mrs. Ashburn (née Ernstone's) celebrated romance of 'Illusion.' I have been favoured with an opportunity of assisting at some of the rehearsals, and am in a position to state that the representation cannot fail to satisfy even the most ardent of the many admirers of the book. The guests will include all the leaders of every phase of the beau monde, and a repetition of the play will probably be found necessary. By the way, it is a somewhat romantic circumstance, that the talent displayed by the young authoress has already been the means of procuring her a brilliant parti, which will remove all necessity for any reliance upon her pen for a subsistence in the future.
'"Now, sir, allow me to correct two glaring errors in the above. To start with, the author of "Illusion" is not an authoress at all—his real name being Mark Ashburn, as I ought to know, considering I happen to occupy the position of being his uncle. Next, it is quite true that my nephew has contracted a matrimonial alliance, which some might call brilliant; but I was not aware till the present that the party brought him enough to allow him to live independent for the rest of his life, being under the impression that there would have been no match of any sort if it had not been for a near relative (who shall be nameless here) on the author's side coming forward and offering to make things comfortable for the young couple. But he will have to rely on his pen for all that, as he is quite aware that he is not expected to lay on his oars, without doing anything more to repay the sacrifices that have been wasted on him. Kindly correct, and oblige yours,
'"Solomon Lightowler(the author's uncle)."'
'You know,' he observed when he came to the end, 'it doesn't do to let these sort o' stories go flying about without contradicting them—but I put it very quietly and delicately, you see.'
Mabel bit her lip. Was it possible that this dreadful old man knewnothing—how was she ever to break it to him?
Mr. Humpage had listened to the letter with a grim appreciation. 'You don't write a bad letter, Lightowler, I must say,' he remarked, with an irrepressible chuckle, 'but you are a little behind the day with your facts, ain't you?'
'What d'ye mean by behind the day?' demanded Uncle Solomon.
'Oh, Uncle Antony,' cried Mabel, 'youtell him—I can't!'
It is much to be feared that Mr. Humpage was by no means sorry to be entrusted with such a charge. But if he was not naturally kinder hearted, he was more acquainted with the amenities of ordinary society than Mr. Lightowler, and some consideration for Mabel restrained him then from using his triumph as he might have done. He explained briefly the arrangement between Vincent and Mark as he understood it, and the manner in which it had lately been made known. When he had finished, Uncle Solomon stared stupidly from one to the other, and then, with a voice that had grown strangely thick, he said, 'I'll trouble you to say that all over again slowly, if you've no objection. My head began buzzing, and I couldn't follow it all.'
Mr. Humpage complied, and when he finished for the second time, his hearer's face was purple and distorted, and Mabel pitied him from her own experience.
'Dear Mr. Lightowler,' she said, 'you mustn't blame Mark; he had no choice, he hadpromised.'
'Promised!' Uncle Solomon almost howled; 'what business had he got to make a promise like that? See what a fool he's made o'me—with that letter of mine in all the London papers! I heard those Manor House girls gigglin' and laughin' when they drove by the other day, and thought it was just because they were idjits.... I wish to God I'd let him starve as a City clerk all his days before I let him bring me to this. I've lived all this time and never been ridiclous till now, and he's done it. Ah!and that's not the only thing he's done either—he's swindled me, done me out o' my money as I've earned. I could 'ave him up at the Old Bailey for it—and I've a good mind to say I will, too. I'll——'
'Stop,' said Mabel, 'you have gone quite far enough. I know this is a great disappointment to you, but I am his wife—you have no right to say such things to me.'
'No right!' he stormed, 'that's all you know about it. No right, haven't I? Let me tell you that ever since I was made to think that feller was a credit to me at last, I've bin allowing him at the rate of four hundred a year; d'ye think I'd 'a done that for kindly lending his name to another feller's book? D'ye think he didn't know that well enough when he took the money? Trust him for takin' all he could get hold of! But I'll 'ave it back; I'll post him as a swindler, I'll shame him! Look 'ere; d'ye see this?' and he took out some folded sheets of blue foolscap from his inner pocket. 'I was goin' to take this to Ferret on my way home—and it's the codicil to my will, this is. I was goin' to take it to get it altered, for I've not been feelin' very well lately, I've not been feelin' very well. This was made when I thought Mark was a nephew to be proud of—d——n him—and I can tell yer I left him a pretty tidy plum under it. Now see what I do with it. No fire, isn't there? Well, it doesn't make any odds. There ... and there ... and there;' and he tore the papers passionately across and across several times. 'There's an end ofyourhusband's chances with me. And that don't make me intestit neither; there's the will left, and Mark and none of his will ever get a penny piece under it; he can make his mind easy over that, tell him.'
His coarse violence had something almost appalling in it, and at first Mabel had blanched under its force, but her own anger rose now.
'I am glad to think we shall owe nothing to you in future,' she said. 'If Mark has really taken your money, it was because—because he had this secret to keep; but he will give it all back. Now leave the house, please. Uncle Antony, will you get him to go away.'
Uncle Solomon, white and shaking, almost shrunken after his outburst of passion, was standing in the midst of a thick litter of torn paper, looking like a tree which has shed its last leaves in a sudden gust.
'Don't you touch me, 'Umpage, now,' he said hoarsely; 'I'm quite capable of going by myself. I—I dessay I let my temper get the better o' me just now,' he said to Mabel, rather feebly. 'I don't blame you for taking your husband's part, though he is a—ah, I shall go off my 'ead if I speak any more about it. I'll go—where's your door got to? Let me alone; I'll find my way. I shall get rid of this dizziness out in the air;' and he stumbled out of the room, a truly pitiable sight, with the fondest ambition of his later life mortally wounded.
'Dear Uncle Antony,' cried Mabel, who felt almost sorry for him, 'go after him, do. Oh, I know you're not friends, but never mind that now—he ought not to go home alone.'
'Hot-headed old ass!' growled Mr. Humpage; 'but there, there, my dear, I'll go. I'll keep him in sight at the stations, and see he comes to no harm.'
Mark had to hear of this when he came home that evening.
'And you really did take his money?' cried Mabel, after hearing his account. 'Oh, Mark, what made you do that?'
Mark hardly knew himself; he certainly would not have done it if he had ever imagined the truth would be known; perhaps his ideas of right and wrong had become rather mixed, or perhaps he persuaded himself that if he did not exactly deserve the money yet, he would not be long in doing so.
'Well, darling,' he replied, 'he would have been bitterly offended if I hadn't, you know, and I didn't know then that it was all done on account of "Illusion." But, after all, I've only had one year's allowance, and I'll give him back that to-morrow. He shan't say I swindled him.'
'I think you ought to do that, dear,' said Mabel. But in her heartshe felt a heavy wonder that he should ever have consented to take the money at all.
Mark had received a fairly large sum for his second book, out of which he was well able to refund the allowance, and the next day he went down to Woodbine Villa, where, instead of the violent scene of recrimination he had prepared himself to go through, a very different, if not less painful, experience awaited him. Uncle Solomon had reached his house safely the day before, but, in relating what he had heard to his sister, had given way to a second burst of passion, which had ended in a seizure of some kind.
Mark was allowed to see him, on his own earnest entreaty, and was struck with remorse when he saw the lamentable state to which his own conduct had had no small share in reducing the old man. Were the consequences of that one act of folly and meannessneverto cease? he wondered, wretchedly, as he stood there. His uncle allowed his hand to be shaken; he even took Mark's cheque with his stiff hand, and made a sign that his sister was to take charge of it. He could speak, but his brain had lost all command over his tongue, and what he said had a ghastly inappropriateness to the occasion. He saw this dully himself, and gave up the attempt at last, and began to cry piteously at his inability to convey his meaning; whether he wished for a reconciliation then or nursed his rage to the last, Mark never knew. He went down on several other occasions during his uncle's lingering illness, but always with the same result. Mr. Lightowler suffered all the tortures of perfect consciousness, combined with the powerlessness to express any but the most simple wish: if he desired to undo the past in any way, no one divined his intention or helped him to carry it out; and when the end came suddenly, it was found that he had not died intestate, and the will, after giving a certain annuity to the sister who had lived with him, left the bulk of his estate to go in founding Lightowler scholarships in the School for Commercial Travellers' Orphans. The Ashburn family were given trifling legacies; Mark, however, 'having seenfit to go his own way in life, and render useless all the expense to which I have been put for his advancement,' was expressly excepted from taking any benefit under the will.
But Mark had expected nothing else, and long before his anticipations were verified he had found it necessary to consider seriously how he was to support himself for the future. Literature, as has been said, was now out of the question; in fact, its fascination for him had faded. Mabel had a fair income settled upon her, but in ordinary self-respect he could not live upon that, and so he sought about for some opening. At first he had firmly resolved never to go back to his old school life, after having done so much to escape from it; but as he began to see that any profession that required capital was closed to him, and business being equally impossible, he was forced to think of again becoming a schoolmaster. And then he heard by accident that old Mr. Shelford was about to resign his post at St. Peter's, and it occurred to him that it might be worth his while to go and see him, and find out if the vacancy was unfilled, and if there was any chance for himself. It was not a pleasant thing to do, for he had not seen the old gentleman lately, and dreaded equally innocent congratulations and brusque irony, according to the state of his information. He went up to St. Peter's, timing his arrival after school, when the boys would all have left, except the classes which remained an hour longer for extra subjects. Mr. Shelford always lingered for some time, and he would be very certain to find him. Mark went along the dark corridors, rather shrinking as he did so from the idea of being recognised by a passing member of the staff, till he came to the door he knew.
Mr. Shelford was still in cap and gown, dictating the week's marks to his monitor, who was entering them, with a long-suffering expression on his face, into a sort of ledger. 'Now we come to Robinson,' the old gentleman was saying; 'you're sure you've got the right place, eh? Go on, then.Latin repetition, thirty-eight; Latin prose, thirty-six—if you don't take care, Master Maxwell, Robinson'll becarrying off the prize this term, he's creeping up to you, sir, creeping up; Roman History'—and here he saw Mark, and dismissed the monitor unceremoniously enough.
He evidently knew the whole story of 'Illusion,' for his first words after they were alone together were, 'And so you've been a sort of warming-pan all this time, eh?'
'That's all,' said Mark, gloomily.
'Well, well,' the old gentleman continued, not unkindly, 'you made a rash promise and kept it like a man, even when it must have been uncommonly disagreeable. I like you for that, Ashburn. And what are you thinking of turning to now?'
Mark explained his errand not very fluently, and Mr. Shelford heard him out with his mouth working impatiently, and his eyes wrinkled till Mark thought how much he had aged lately.
'Well,' he said, pushing back his cap and leaning back in his chair, 'have you thought this out, Ashburn? You were rid of this life a short time back, and I was glad of it, for you never were fit for it. And now you're coming back again! I make no doubt they'll be very willing to have you here, and if a word from me to the Council—but is there really nothing else but this? Why, I'm counting the days to my own deliverance now, and it's odd to find some one asking me to recommend him for my oar and chain! No, no, a dashing young fellow like you, sir, can do better for himself than a junior mastership for his final goal. Take warning by me, as I used to tell you—do you want to come to this sort of thing? sitting from morning to noon in this stifling den, filled with a rabble of impident boys—d'ye think they'll have any respect for your old age and infirmities? not they—they'll call you "Old Ashes"—for they're a yumorous race, boys are, they'll call you "Old Ashes," or "Cinders" to your nose, as soon as they think you're old enough to stand it. Why, they don't put any more kittens in my desk now—they've found out I like cats. So they put blackbeetles—do you like blackbeetles, eh? Well, you'll come to beetles in time. It's a mistake, Ashburn, it's a mistake forimpulsive, hot-tempered men like you to turn schoolmaster—leave it to cold, impassive fellows who don't care enough about the boys to be sensitive or partial—they're the men to stand the life!'
Here a demon voice shrilled, ''Ullo, Shellfish, Old Shells, yah!' through the keyhole, and his footsteps were heard down the flags outside running for dear life. The old gentleman, crimson with rage, bounded to the door: 'Stop that scoundrel, that impident boy, bring him back!' But the boy had gone, and he came back panting and coughing: 'That's a commentary on what I've been saying,' he said; 'I'm an old fool to show I care—but I can't help it, and they know it, confound 'em! Well, to come back to you, Ashburn, you're married now, I hear; you won't find a mastership much support as time goes on, unless you started a boarding-house—the idea of never escaping from these young ruffians, ugh! No, no, didn't you tell me once you were called to the Bar?'
'Not called,' corrected Mark, 'I have passed the examination, though; there is only the ceremony to be gone through.'
'Why not go through it, and try your fortune as a barrister, then, you're just the man for a jury? We shall have you taking silk in ten years.'
Mark laughed bitterly. 'How am I to live till I get a practice?' he said; 'I've only a couple of hundred or so left in the world, and that would scarcely pay for my fees and chambers for more than a year.'
'Ah, is that so? I see,' said the old gentleman, 'yes, yes—but, see here, Ashburn, start all the same with what you've got, who knows how soon you may get work—can't your father-in-law do anything for you? and while you're waiting, why not take some pupils under the rose, eh? I was asked the other day to recommend a coach to two young rascals who want to be forked into the Civil Service. You could do that for them if you liked, and they'd bring you others. And—and I'm going to take a liberty very likely, but I've put by a little money in the course of my life, and I've no one to leave it to. I don't know how it is, but Ifeel an interest in you, Ashburn; perhaps I want somebody to be sorry for me when I'm gone, anyway, I—I wish you'd let me see you through any money difficulties till you're fairly started—it won't be long now, I'll wager, you can treat it as a loan if you prefer it. I want you to give yourself a chance at the Bar. Don't refuse me now, or I shall take it unkindly.'
Mark was deeply touched, he had not suspected Mr. Shelford of really caring about him, and the kindness and sympathy of this offer made him feel how little he deserved such friendship; and then the familiar class-rooms, dusty and stuffy at the close of a summer day, had brought back all his old weariness of school routine. He had outlived his yearning for literary fame, but he still wished to make a figure somewhere, somehow—why might not he do so at the Bar, in that line where solid learning is less necessary than the fluent tongue and unfailing resource, which he felt he could reckon upon.
He shook the other's hand gratefully. 'I don't know how to thank you,' he said, 'you've put some heart in me again. I will try my luck as you advise; perhaps with coaching and the money I have by me I need not take advantage of all your kindness, but there is no one I would come to for help like you when I can keep up no longer. I'll take my call at Michaelmas!'
And they walked out together, Mr. Shelford taking his arm affectionately through the streets. Mark, as has been said already, had a certain knack of attracting interest and liking without doing anything either to excite or deserve them in the slightest, and the old gentleman felt now almost as if he had gained a son.
He was anxious to prevent Mark from returning to the old life, because he had observed his unfitness for it; he himself, however, in spite of his diatribes against boys and scholastic life, was far fonder of both than he would have confessed, and would miss them as a few who knew him best would miss him when the time came for parting.
From that day he became a frequent visitor at Campden Hill, where he found with Mabel the appreciation andtender regard which he had never expected to meet again on this side of the grave.
Mark carried out his resolve, of which his father-in-law approved, allowing him to use his chambers during the Long Vacation. The pupils came there, and the coach's manner captivated them from the first, and made the work easy for both; they came out high on the list, and were succeeded by others, whose fees paid the rent of the chambers he took in the Temple shortly after. Call-night came, and as he stood with the others at the Benchers' table and listened to the Treasurer's address, he felt an exultant confidence in himself once more; he had been promised a brief from Mr. Ferret, who took this form of disapproving of Uncle Solomon's testamentary caprices, and this time Mark did not shrink from it—he had read hard lately, and with better results. He knew that he should be at no loss for words or self-possession; he had been a brilliant and effective speaker, as the Union debates had frequently proved, and he looked forward now to entering the legal arena as the field for retrieving his lost name. Mabel should be proud of him yet!
He was deceiving no one now, Vincent was not injured by the fraud—for he had his book back; it was true that Mabel did not suspect the real history of the transaction, but it would do her no good to know that he had once made a false step. Caffyn was over in America, and harmless wherever he might see fit to go—his sting was drawn for ever.
No wonder, then, that he seemed to look round upon a cloudless horizon—but that had been the case with him so many times since he had first complicated his life by that unhappy act of his, and each time the small cloud, the single spy of serried battalions, had been slowly creeping up all the while.
He forgot that—he generally did forget unpleasant reminiscences—it never occurred to him that the cloud might be rising yet again above the level haze on the sky line, and the hurricane burst upon him once more.
IT was an afternoon in January, soon after the courts had begun to sit again, and Mark was mounting the staircase to his new chambers with a light heart—he had made hisdébutthat day; the burden of the work had fallen on him in the absence of his leader, and he felt that he had acquitted himself with fair success. His father-in-law, too, had happened to be at Westminster, and in a Common Law court that day; and the altered tone of his greeting afterwards showed Mark that he had been favourably impressed by what he had heard while standing for a few minutes in the gangway. And now, Mark thought, he would go back to Mabel at once and tell her how Fortune had begun to smile once more upon him. But when he entered his chambers he found a visitor waiting for him with impatience—it was Colin. Mark was not exactly surprised to find the boy there, for Mr. Langton, judging it well to pad the family skeleton as much as possible, had lately sent him to his son-in-law to be coached for a school scholarship; and, as he was probably aware, he might have chosen a worse tutor.
'What a time you have been!' said Colin.
'It's not your day,' said Mark, 'I can't take you now, old fellow.'
'I know,' said the boy, fidgetting restlessly; 'I didn't come about that—it was something else.'
Mark laughed. 'You've been getting into another row, you young rascal,' he said, 'and you want me to get you out of it—isn't that it?'
'No, it isn't,' said Colin. 'I say,' he went on, blurting out the question after the undiplomatic manner of boyhood, 'why have you got Mabel to cut poor old Vincent? I call it a shame!'
Mark stopped half-way in taking off his coat. 'It would be no business of yours if I had, you know,' he replied, 'but who told you I had done anything of the sort?'
'Nobody, I can see for myself. Mabel told mother she would rather not come to dinners and things when Vincent was coming, and once she did meet him, and she only just spoke to him. And now, when he's so ill, she won't go near him—he told me himself that it was no use asking her, she would never come! She used to like him before, so it must be all your fault, and I call it a beastly shame, and I don't care what you say!'
All of this was quite new to Mark; Mabel had studiously avoided all allusion to Vincent, and it had never occurred to Mark to speculate on the light in which she chose to regard his explanation—that was all over, and he was little enough inclined to revive the subject. He began to be strangely troubled now. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' he said; 'is Holroyd ill? it—it is nothing serious, is it?' For he had seen very little of him lately, his obligation being too deep and too humiliating to make repeated visits at all desirable.
'He looks all right,' said Colin, 'but I heard mother say that he's very ill really, and she should have to put a stop to Dolly going to sit with him every day as she does, because—because he might die quite suddenly at any time—it's something wrong with his heart, she said, I believe. And yet he seems well enough. But oh, Mark, if—if it's that, you ought to let Mabel make it up with him, whatever he's done. You might let her go and see him—he would like it so, I know he would, though he wouldn't own it when I asked him. Only suppose hedied! I know Mabel would be sorry then!'
Every word the boy said cut Mark to the heart—he had never suggested to Mabel that she should avoid Vincent, and he could not be satisfied now until he had found out why she had done so; his insight not being nearly keen enough to discover the reason for himself.
'Give me his address,' he said, for he did not even know whereHolroyd was living, and as soon as the boy had gone Mark drove to the place he had mentioned, a house in Cambridge Terrace, instead of returning home at once as he had previously intended.
He did not believe that the illness was as serious as Colin had implied; of course that was exaggerated—but he could not be quite easy until he had reassured himself by a visit, and some lingering feeling of self-reproach drove him to make this atonement for his long neglect.
The Langtons' carriage was at the door when he arrived; and, as he came into the sitting-room on the second floor, he heard Dolly's clear little voice and paused, hidden by the screen at the door. She was reading to Vincent, who was lying back in an arm-chair; it was Hans Andersen's 'Story of the Shadow,' a choice to which she had been guided by pure accident.
Mark heard her read the half-sad, half-cynical conclusion as he stood there unseen:
'"The Princess and the Shadow stepped out on the balcony to show themselves, and to receive one cheer more. But the learned man heard nothing of all these festivities—for he had already been executed."
'How horrid of that wicked Shadow!' was Dolly's indignant comment as she finished; 'oh, Vincent, aren't you very, very sorry for the poor learned man?'
'Much sorrier for the Shadow, Dolly,' he replied, a reply of which Dolly would have insisted upon an explanation had not Mark then come forward.
He murmured some confused sentence accounting for his visit.
'I have been wondering whether I should see you again,' said Vincent. 'Dolly, you had better go now, dear, it is getting late—you will come and read me another story to-morrow?'
'If mother will let me,' said Dolly; 'and I tell you what, next time I come I'll bring Frisk; you want amusing, I know, and he's a nice, cheerful dog to have in a room with you.'
When Mark returned from putting her into the carriage, Vincent said,'Is there anything you want to say to me, Ashburn?'
'Yes,' said Mark; 'I know I have no right to trouble you. I know you can never really forgive me.'
'I thought so once,' said Vincent, 'but I have done with all that. I forgave you long ago. Tell me if I can help you?'
'I have just heard for the first time,' said Mark, 'that—that my wife has not—has not treated you very kindly lately. And I came here to ask you if I am the cause.'
Vincent flushed suddenly, and his breath was laboured and painful for a moment. 'What is the use of bringing that up now?' he asked; 'is it a pleasant subject for either of us? Let it rest.'
'I had no intention of paining you,' said Mark, 'I ought not to have asked you. I—I will ask Mabel herself.'
'You must not do that!' said Vincent, with energy; 'you might have spared me this—you might have guessed. Still I will tell you—it may do good. Yes, youarethe cause, Ashburn; the lie I told on that evening of the rehearsal has borne its penalty, as lies will, and the penalty has fallen upon me heavily. Ask yourself what your wife must think of the man I made myself appear!'
'Good God!' groaned Mark, who saw this now for the first time.
'You see,' Vincent pursued, 'I am dying now, with the knowledge that I shall never see her face again; that when I am gone she will not spare me a single regret, that she will make haste to lose my very memory. I don't complain, it is for her good, and I am content. Don't imagine I tell you this as a reproach. Only if you are ever tempted again to do anything which may put her happiness in danger, or weaken the confidence she has in you, remember what it has cost another man to secure them, and I think you will resist then.'
'Vincent!' cried Mark brokenly, 'it can't be; you are not—not dying!'
'My doctor tells me so,' said Vincent. 'I have been prepared for it a long time, and it must be coming near now—but there, we have talked enough about that. Don't fancy from anything I have said that I have lost all faith in you—you will find, very soon, perhaps, how little that is so.... Are you going already?' he added, as Mark rose hastily; 'good-bye, then; come and see me when you can, and—if we are not to meet again—you will not forget, I know.'
'No, I shall not forget,' was all Mark could say just then, and left the house. He could not trust himself to bear any longer the unhoped-for expression of confidence and regard which he saw once more upon his friend's face.
As he walked home his mind was haunted by what he had just heard. Vincent dying, his last hours embittered by Mabel's coldness. Mark could not suffer that—she must see him once more, she must repair the horrible injustice she had shown—he would urge her to relent!
And yet, how could she repair it, unless her eyes were opened? Gradually he became aware that a final crisis had come in his life, just as he thought all was well with him. He had said to himself, 'Peace, peace!' and it had only been an armistice. Would the results of that shameful act always rise up against him in this way? What was he to do?
He had felt as deep a shame and remorse for his past conduct as he was capable of, but hitherto he had supposed that the wrong had been comfortably righted, that he himself was after all the chief, if not the sole sufferer.
That consolation was gone now; he knew what Mabel had been to Vincent, and what it must be to him now to feel that he must bear this misconception to the end. Could Mark accept this last sacrifice? More and more he felt that he stood where two paths met: that he might hold his peace now, and let his friend go down misunderstood to the grave, but that all his past baseness would be nothing to that final meanness; that if he faltered this time, if he chose the easy path, he might indeed be safe for ever from discovery, but his soul would bestained with a dishonour that nothing would ever cleanse; that he would have done with self-respect and peace of mind for ever. And yet if he took the other path, the right one, where would it lead him?
And so he reached his house in miserable indecision, driven this way and that by contending impulses, loathing the prospect of this crowning infamy, yet shrinking from the sole alternative. He found Mabel sitting alone in the firelight.
'How did you get on?' she asked eagerly; 'you won your case?'
'My case?' he repeated blankly, so far away did all that seem now. 'Oh, yes, my case—the Lord Chief sums up to-morrow. I think we shall get a verdict.'
'Sit down and tell me all about it,' she said. 'I will ring for the lamp. I can't see your face.'
'No,' said Mark, 'don't ring; it is better as it is.'
She was struck by something in his voice.
'You are tired, dear,' she said.
'Very tired,' he confessed, with a heavy sigh; and then, with one of his sudden promptings, he said, 'Mabel, I have just seen Vincent—he is very ill.'
'I know,' she said. 'Is he—worse?'
'Dying,' he answered gloomily. 'I want to ask you a question—is it true that you have been thinking very harshly of him lately?'
'I cannot think well of him,' she replied.
'Will you tell me why?' he demanded. Even then he tried to cherish the faint hope that her resentment might have another cause.
'Cannot you guess?' she asked. 'Ah, no, you are too generous to feel it yourself. How can I feel kindly towards the man who could let you sacrifice your name and your prospects for a caprice of his own, who persuaded you to entangle yourself in a manner that might, for all he knew or cared, ruin you for life?'
'Even if that were so,' said Mark, 'he is dying, remember. Think what it would be to him to see you once more—Mabel, will you refuse to go to him?'
'He should not have asked this of me,' cried Mabel. 'Oh, Mark, you will think me hard, unchristian, I know, but I can't do this—not even now, when he is dying ... he ought not to have asked it.'
'Mabel,' he cried, 'he did not ask it—you do not know him if you think that. Do you still refuse?'
'I must, I must,' repeated Mabel. 'Oh, if it had been I who was the injured one, I do not think I should feel like this; it is for you I cannot forgive. If I went now, what good would it do? Mark; it is wicked of me, but I could not say what he would expect—not yet, not yet—you must not ask me.'
Mark knew now that the decisive moment had come: there was only one way left of moving her; there was no time to lose if he meant to take it.
Must he speak the words which would banish him from his wife's heart for ever, just when hope had returned to his life, just when he had begun to feel himself worthier of her love? It was so easy to say no more, to leave her in her error, and the shadow would pass away, and his happiness be secure. But could he be sure of that? The spectre had risen so many times to mock him, would it ever be finally laid? And if Mabel learnt the truth when it was too late?—no, he could not bear to think of what would happen then?
And yet how was he to begin—in what words could he break it to her? His heart died within him at the duty before him, and he sat in the firelit room, tortured with indecision, and his good and bad angel fought for him. And then, all at once, almost in spite of himself, the words came:
'Mabel,' he cried, 'Holroyd has done nothing—do you hear?—nothing to call for forgiveness ... oh, if you could understand without my saying more!'
She started, and her voice had an accent, first of a new hope, then of a great fear.
'Is Vincent better than he seemed? But how can that be if—tell me, Mark, tell me everything.'
Mark shrank back; he dared not tell her.
'Not now,' he groaned. 'My God! what am I doing? Mabel, I can't tell you; have pity on yourself—on me!'
She rose and came to him. 'If you have anything to tell me, tell me now,' she said. 'I am quite strong; it will not hurt me. You must not leave me in this uncertainty—thatwill kill me! Mark, if you love me, I entreat you to save me from being unjust to Vincent. Remember, he is dying—you have told me so!'
He rose and went to the sideboard; there was water there, and he poured some out and drank it before he could speak. Then he came back to the fireplace, and leaned against the mantelboard.
'You will hate me before I have finished,' he said at last, 'but I will tell you.'
And then he began, and painfully, with frequent breaks and nervous hurrying at certain passages, he told her everything—the whole story of his own shame and of Holroyd's devotion. He did not spare himself; he did not even care to give such excuses as might have been made for him in the earlier stages of his fraud. If his atonement was late, it was at least a full one.
She listened without a word, without even a sob, and when he had come to the end she sat there silent still, as if turned to stone. The stillness grew so terrible that Mark could bear no more.
'Speak to me, Mabel,' he cried in his agony, 'for God's sake, speak to me!'
She rose, supporting herself with one trembling hand; even in the firelight her face was deathly pale. 'Take me to him first,' she said, and the voice was that of a different woman, 'after that I will speak to you.'
'To Vincent?' he asked, half stupefied by what he was suffering. 'Not to-night, Mabel, you must not!'
'I must,' she replied; 'if you will not take me I shall go alone—quick, let us lose no time!'
He went out into the main road and hailed a cab, as he had done often enough before for one of their journeys to dinner or the theatre; when he returned Mabel was already standing cloaked and hooded at the open door.
'Tell him to drive fast—fast,' she said feverishly, as he helped her into the hansom, and she did not open her lips again till it stopped.
He glanced at her face now and then, when the shop-lights revealed her profile as she lay back in her corner; it was pale and set, her eyes were strained, but she had shed no tears; he sat there and recalled the merry journeys they had had together, side by side, on evenings like this, when he had been sorry the drive should ever end—how long this one was!
The cab reached Cambridge Terrace at last. Mark instinctively looked at the upper windows of the house—they were all dark. 'Stay here, till I have asked,' he said to Mabel before he got out, 'we may—we may be too late.'
Vincent had been moved to his sleeping-room, where he was sitting in his arm-chair; the trained nurse who had been engaged to wait upon him had left him for a while, the light was lowered, and he was lying still in the dreamy exhaustion which was becoming more and more his normal state.
He had received his death-warrant some months before; the harassing struggles against blight and climate in Ceylon, the succession of illnesses which had followed them, and the excitement and anxiety that he underwent on his return, had ended in an affection of the heart, which, by the time he thought it sufficiently serious to need advice, was past all cure.
He had heard the verdict calmly, for he had little to make him in love with life, but while the book in which he had already begun to find distraction was unfinished, there was still work for him to do, and he was anxious to leave it completed. If the efforts he made to effect this shortened his life, they at least prevented him from dwelling upon its approaching end, and his wish was gratified. He fixed his mind steadily on his task, and though each day saw less accomplished and with morepainful labour, the time came when he reached the last page and threw down his pen for ever.
Now he was on the brink of the stream, and the plash of the ferryman's oar could be heard plainly; the world behind him had already grown distant and dim; even of the book which had been in his mind so long, he thought but little—he had done with it all; whether it brought him praise or blame from man, he would never learn now, and was content to be in ignorance.
The same lethargy had mercifully deadened to some extent the pain of Mabel's injustice, until Mark's visit had revived it that afternoon. He had come to think of it all now without bitterness; it might be that in some future state she would 'wake, and remember, and understand,' and the wrong be righted—but it had always seemed to him that in another existence all earthly misunderstandings must seem too infinitely pitiful and remote to be worth unravelling, or even recalling, and so he could not find much comfort there.
But at least he had not been worsted in the conflict with his lower nature. Mabel's happiness was now secure from the worst danger, the struggle was over, and he was glad, for there had been times when he had almost sunk under it.
So he was thinking dreamily as he sat there while now and then a cloud would drift across his thoughts as he lost himself in a kind of half slumber.
He was roused by sounds on the stairs outside, and presently he heard a light step in the farther room. 'I am not asleep,' he said, believing the nurse had returned.
'Vincent,' said a low tremulous voice, 'it is I—Mabel.' Then he looked up, and even in that half light he saw that the figure standing there in the open doorway was the one which had been chief in his thoughts.
Unprepared as he was for such a visitor, he felt no surprise—only a deep and solemn happiness as he saw her standing before him.
'You have come then,' he said; 'I am very glad.You must think less hardly of me—or you would not be here.'
She had only obtained leave to see him on her earnest entreaties and promises of self-restraint, but his first words sorely tried her fortitude; she came to his chair and sank down beside it, taking his hands in both hers. 'Vincent,' she cried, with a sob that would not be repressed, 'I cannot bear it if you talk so.... I know all, all that you have suffered and given up ... he has told me—at last!'
Vincent looked down with an infinite pity upon the sweet contrite face raised to his. 'You poor child,' he said, 'you know then? How could he tell you! Mabel, I tried so hard to spare you this—and now it has come! What can I say to you?'
'Say that you forgive me—if you ever can!' she said, 'when I remember all the hard things I said and thought of you, when all the time—oh, I was blind, or I must have seen the truth! And I can never, never make it up to you now!'
'Do you think,' he asked, 'that to see you here, and know that you understand me at last, would not make up for much harder treatment than I ever had from you, Mabel? If that were all—but he has told you, you said, told you the whole sad story. Mabel—what are you going to do?'
She put the question aside with a gesture of heart-sick pride: 'What does it matter about me? I can only think of you just now—let me forget all the rest while I may!'
'Dying men have their privileges,' he said, 'and I have not much more time. Mabel, I must ask you: What have you said to Mark?'
'Nothing,' she said, with a low moan, 'what was there to say? He must know that he has no wife now.'
'Mabel, you have not left him!' he cried.
'Not yet,' she said, turning away wearily; 'he brought me to this house—he is here now, I believe.... You are torturing me with these questions, Vincent.'
'Answer me this once,' he persisted, 'do you mean to leave him?'
She rose to her feet. 'What else can I do,' she demanded, 'now that I know? The Mark I loved has gone for ever—he never even existed! I have no husband beyond the name. I have been in a dream all this time, and I wake to find myself alone! Only an hour ago and Mark was all the world to me—think what he must be to me from this time! No, I cannot live with him. I could not breathe the same air with him. I am ashamed that I could ever have loved him. He is all unworthy, and mean, and false, and I thought him noble and generous!'
'You are too hard,' said Vincent, 'he is not all bad, he was weak—not wicked; if I had not felt that, I should never have tried to keep his secret, and forced him, against his will, to keep it himself. And now he has confessed it all to you, when there was no fear of discovery to urge him, only because he could not endure the thought of my bearing your displeasure to the end. He did not know that that was so till this afternoon, and I told him without thinking it would have that effect on him—I did him an injustice there. He must have gone back and accused himself at once. Think, Mabel, was there nothing unselfish and brave in that? He knew what you would think of him, he knew that he was safe if he kept silence—and yet he spoke, because he preferred the worst for himself to allowing me to bear the penalty for his sins. Is a man who could act thus utterly lost?'
'Lost to me!' she said passionately, 'the confession came too late; and how could any confession atone for such a sin! No, he is too unworthy, I can never trust him, never forgive him!'
'I do not ask you to forgive him now,' he urged; 'he has done you a great wrong, your love and faith have received a cruel shock; and you cannot act and feel as if this had never been. I understand all that. Only do not close the door on forgiveness for ever, do not cut him off from all chance of winning back something of the confidence he haslost. The hope of that will give him strength and courage; without that hope to keep him up, without your influence he will surely lose heart and be lost for ever. His fate rests with you, have you thought of that?'
She was silent, but her face was still unconvinced.
'You think your love is dead,' he went on, 'and yet, Mabel, something tells me that love will not die easily with you. What if you find this is so at some future time, when the step you are bent upon has been taken, and you cannot retreat from it? What if, when you call him back, it is too late; and he will not, or cannot, return to you?'
'I shall never call him back,' she said.
'You will have no pity on him for his sake or your own,' Vincent pleaded, 'will you not for mine? Mabel, let me say something to you about myself. I have loved you for years—you are not angry with me for telling you so now, are you? I loved you well enough to put your happiness before all other things; it was for that I made any sacrifices I have made; it was for that I was willing even that you should think hardly of me.'
'For me!' she cried, 'was it for me you have done all this? How I have repaid you!'
'I was repaid by the belief that it secured your happiness,' he answered. 'I thought, rightly or wrongly, that I was justified in deceiving you for your own good. But now you are taking away all this from me, Mabel! I must die with the sense of having failed miserably, when I thought I was most successful, with the knowledge that by what I have done I have only increased the evil! Must I leave you with your happy home blighted past recovery, with nothing before you but a lonely, barren existence? Must I think of you living out your life, proud and unforgiving, and wretched to the end? I entreat you to give me some better comfort, some brighter prospect than that—you will punish me for my share in it all by refusing what I ask, but will you refuse?'
She came back to him. 'No,' she said brokenly, 'I have given you pain enough, I will refuse you nothing now, only it is so hard—tell me what I am to do!'
'Do not desert him, do not shame him before the world!' he said; 'bear with him still, give him the chance of winning back what he has lost. Peace may be long in coming to you—but it will come some day, and even if it never comes at all, Mabel, you will have done your duty, there will be a comfort in that. Will you promise this, for my sake?'
She raised her face, which she had hidden in her hands. 'I promise—for your sake,' she said, and at her words he sank back with a sigh of relief—his work was over, and the energy he had summoned up to accomplish it left him suddenly.
'Thank you!' he said faintly; 'you have made me happier, Mabel. I should like to see Mark, but I am tired. I shall sleep now.'
'I will come to-morrow,' she said, and bending over him, she kissed his forehead. She had not kissed him since the time when she was a child and he an undergraduate, devoted to her even then; and now that kiss and the touch of her hand lingered with him till he slept, and perhaps followed him some little way into the land of dreams.
Mark had been waiting in a little dark sitting-room on a lower floor; he had not dared to follow Mabel. At last, after long hours, as it seemed, of slow torment, he heard her descending slowly, and came to meet her; she was very pale and had been weeping, but her manner was composed now.
'Let us go home,' was all she said to him, and they drove back in silence as they had come. But when they had reached their home Mark could bear his uncertainty no longer.