“And he has written it often. Would it have made you happier to know it during all these months? Or could I have looked you in the face as an honourable man and told you that I loved you when I alone knew that your husband was alive?” He had drawn back from her now and stood leaning against the mantelpiece with folded arms.
“Oh, I see it all! I see it all now!” she said. “How brave you have been! How good! And now he is coming back to find some new way of hurting us! Oh it is too much! I thought I had borne all. But you were right. There was more to bear.”
“Do you know?” Brett began after a moment’s pause. “In spite of this story that was in the papers to-day I find it hard to believe that he has really come back. He was quite capable of starting the story himself from a distance for the sake of giving you pain, but he knows as well as we do that if he comes here he comes to serve his time in prison.”
Marion seemed to be trying to think over the situation.
“Stop!” she said at last. “You know that there was a woman, too, though we never spoke of her, you and I. But every one knew it. People used to pity me for that before they knew the rest. Do you not think it possible that she may have written those letters to you?”
“Oh, no! I know John Darche’s handwriting. I have good cause to know it.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right,” answered Marion thoughtfully. “Did any one man ever accumulate so much wickedness in a lifetime? He was not satisfied with one crime. And yet he was not the only bad man in the world. What does a girl know of the man she is to marry? She sees him day after day, of course, but she only sees the best side of him. She knows nothing of what he does, nor of what he thinks when he is not with her, but she imagines it all, in her own way, with no facts to guide her. Then comes marriage. How could I know?”
“Indeed, it would have been hard for any girl to guess what sort of man John Darche was.”
“Please do not talk about that.”
“And how do you know that I am any better man than John Darche?” asked Brett, suddenly. “What do you know of my comings and goings when I am not here, or how I spend my time? How do you know that I am not bound by some disgraceful tie, as he was? I have been in all sorts of places since we said good-bye on that winter’s evening. Do you remember? I have wandered and worked, and done ever so many things since then. How do you know that there is not some woman in my life whom I cannot get rid of?”
He had not changed his position while speaking. When he paused for her answer she went up to him, laying her hands upon his shoulders and looking into his face.
“Harry! is there any other?”
“No, dear.” But his eyes answered before he spoke.
“I knew it. You have answered your own question. That is all.”
“Thank you.” As she drew back he caught her hand and held it, and his words came fast and passionately. “No. That is not all. That is not half. That is not one-thousandth part of what I ought to say. I know it. Thank you? My whole life is not enough to thank you with. All the words I ever heard or know are not enough — the best of words mean so little. And they never do come to me when I want them. But those little words of yours are more to me than all the world beside. I do thank you with all my strength, with all my heart, with all my soul, and I will live for you with all three. Why should I say it? You know it all, dear, much better than it can be said, for you believe in me. But it is good to say — I wish it could have been half as good to hear.”
She had listened to each word and looked for each passing expression while he spoke. She looked one moment longer after he had finished, and then turned quietly away.
“It is good to hear — if you only knew how good!” she said softly. “And words are not always empty. When they come from the heart, as ours do, they bring up gold with them — and things better than gold.”
CHAPTER XII.
A LONG SILENCE followed. Neither of them, perhaps, realised exactly what had passed, or if they did, actual facts seemed very far away from their dreamland. Marion was the first to feel again the horror of the situation, tenfold worse than before he had last spoken.
“Oh, I cannot bear it!” she said suddenly. “I cannot bear it now — as I could. Really alive, after all — and this story to-day? Have you found out nothing? Have you nothing more to tell me?”
“Yes, there is something to tell you.”
“What?”
“Bad news.”
“Bad? Worse than—”
“I am afraid so,” answered Brett.
“You have told me that he is alive.” She laid her hand upon his arm. “Do not tell me that he is here! You said you could not believe it!”
“If I do not, it is only because I have not seen him with my own eyes. I did not mean to tell you — until—” he stopped.
“Tell me!” cried Marion. “Tell me everything quickly! If you tell me — I can bear it, if you tell me — but not from any one else. Where is he? When did he come? Is he arrested again? Is he in prison?”
“No, not yet. He is in a sailors’ lodging-house — if it is he.”
“How do you know it? Oh, how can you be so sure, if you have not seen him?”
“None of us have seen him,” answered Brett, barely able to speak at all. “Vanbrugh and Brown — they went to find him — I found Brown in Mulberry Street, waiting for news — you know the Police Headquarters are there. Vanbrugh had left him — then I came up town again — to you.”
“Russell Vanbrugh has been here,” said Marion, trying to collect her thoughts. “He told Cousin Annie to give strict orders about reporters.”
“He was afraid that Darche might come to try and get money from you—”
“Money! I would give — God knows what I would give.”
“I do not believe he will come,” said Brett, assuming a confidence he did not feel. “He must know that the house is watched already.”
Marion’s expression changed. Her face turned paler. The lines deepened and her eyes grew dark. She had made a desperate resolution. She took Brett’s hand and looked at him in silence for a moment.
“Good-bye — dear,” she said.
She would have withdrawn her hand, but Brett grasped it and pressed it almost roughly to his lips.
“Good-bye,” she said again.
It was almost too much to ask of any man. Brett held her hand fast.
“No — not good-bye,” he answered with rising passion. “It is not possible. It cannot be, Marion — do not say it.”
“I must — you must.”
“No — no — no!” he repeated. “It cannot be good-bye. Remember what you said. Is this man who was dead to you and to all the world, if not to me, to ruin both our lives? Are we to bow our heads and submit patiently to such a fate as that? If I had told you long ago that he was alive, as I alone knew he was, would you not have done your best to free yourself from such a tie, from a man — you said it yourself — whose very name is a stain, and whose mere memory is a disgrace?”
“No,” answered Marion resolutely, and withdrawing her hands. “I mean it. This is our good-bye, and this must be all, quite all. Do you think I would ever accept such a position as that? That I could ever feel as though the stain were wiped out and the disgrace forgotten by such a poor formality as a divorce? No! Let me speak! Do not interrupt me yet. If I had known six months ago that John was still alive, I would have done it, and I should have felt perhaps, that it meant something, that I was really free, that the world would forget the worst part of my story, and that I could come to you as myself, not as the wife of John Darche, forger and escaped convict. But I cannot do it now. It is too late, now that he has come back. No power on earth can detach his past from my present, nor clear me of his name. And do you think that I would hang such a weight as that about your neck?”
“But you are wrong,” answered Brett, earnestly. “Altogether wrong. The life you have lived during these last months has proved that. Have you ever heard that any one in all
the world you know has — I will not say dared — has even thought of visiting on you the smallest particle of your husband’s guilt? Oh, no! They say the world is unkind, but it is just in the long run.”
“No. People have been kind to me—”
“No. Just, not kind.”
“Well, call it what you will,” Marion answered, speaking in a dull tone which had no resonance. “People have overlooked my name and liked me for myself. But it is different now. A few good friends may still come, the nearest and dearest may stand by me, but the world will not accept without a murmur the man who has married the divorced wife of a convict. The world will do much, but it will not do that. And so I say good-bye again,” she continued after a little pause, “once more this last time, for I will not hamper you, I will not be a load upon you. I will not live to give you children who may reproach you for their mother’s sake. We shall be what we were — friends. But, for the rest — good-bye!”
“Marion! Do not say such things!”
“I will, and I must say them now, for I will not give myself another chance,” she answered with unmoved determination. “What has been, has been, and cannot be undone. I did wrong months ago on that dreadful morning, when I let you guess that I might love you. I did wrong on that same day, when I prayed you for my sake to help John to escape, when I made use of your love for me, to make you do the one dishonourable action of your life. I have suffered for it. Better, far better, that my husband should have gone then and submitted to his sentence, than that I should have helped him — made you help me—”
“At the risk of your own life,” said Brett, interrupting her.
“There was no risk at all, with you all there to help me, and I knew it.”
“There was,” said Brett, insisting. “You might have burned to death. And as for what I did, I hardly knew that I was doing it. I saw that you were really on fire and I ran to help you. No one ever thought of holding me responsible for what happened when my back was turned. But I would have done more, and you know I would. And now you talk of injuring me, if you divorce that man and let me take your life into mine! This is folly, Marion, this is downright madness!”
Marion looked at him in silence for a moment.
“Harry, would you do it in my place?” she asked suddenly.
“What?”
“If your wife had forged, had been convicted, and sentenced, and you had the public disgrace of it to bear, would you wish to give me your name?”
Brett opened his lips to speak, and then checked himself and turned away.
“You see!” she exclaimed, still watching him.
“No, that would be different,” he said at last in a low voice.
“Why different? I see no difference at all. Of course you must say so, any man would in your place. But that does not make it a fact. You would rather cut off your right hand than ask me to marry you with such a stain on your good name. You can have nothing to answer to that, for it is hard logic and you know it.”
“Call it logic, if you will,” he answered coming up to her. “It does not convince me. And I will tell you more. I will not yield. I would not be persuaded if I knew that I could be, for I will convince you, I will persuade you that the real wrong and the only wrong is whatever parts a man and a woman who love as we love; who are ready, as you know we are ready, to give all that man and woman can, each for the other, and who will give it, each to the other, in spite of everything, as I will give you my life and my name and everything I have before I die, whether you will have it or not!”
“If I say that I will not accept such a sacrifice, what then?”
“You will accept it,” said Brett in a tone of authority.
“Ah, but I will not! Harry!” cried Marion, with a sudden change of voice, “I know that all you say is true. I know how generous you are, that you would really do all you say you would. I need not say that I thank you. That would mean too little. But I will not take from you one-thousandth part of what you offer. I will not taint your life with mine. You could not answer my question. You could not deny what I said — that if you were in my place, you would suffer anything rather than ask me to marry you. I know — you say it is different — but it is not. Disgrace is just as real from woman to man as from man to woman, and you shall not have it from me nor through me. That is why I say good-bye. That is why you must say it too — for my sake.”
“For your sake?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Do you think that I could ever be happy again? Do you not see that if I married you now, I should be haunted through every minute of my life by the bitter presence of the wrong done you? Do you not know what I should feel if people looked askance at you, and grew cold in their acquaintance, and smiled to each other when you went by? Do you think that would be easy to bear? Yes, it is good-bye for my sake, as well as yours. Not lightly — you know it. It means good-bye to love, and hope, and if I live, it means the loss of freedom, too, when John Darche is released from prison.”
“What!” cried Brett. “Do you mean to say that you would ever let him come back to you?”
“I mean that I will not be divorced. And he would come back to me — he will come back for help, and I must give it to him when he does.”
“Receive that man under your roof!” He could not believe that she was in earnest.
“Yes. Since he is alive he is still my husband. When he comes back after undergoing his sentence I shall have to receive him.”
“When you know that you could have a divorce for the asking?”
“Which I would refuse if it were thrust upon me,” she answered firmly.
“That would be mad indeed. What can that possibly have to do with me?”
“This,” she said. “We are speaking this last time. I will not be divorced from him; do you know why? Because if I were — if I were free — I should be weak, and marry you. Do you understand now? Try and understand me, for I shall not say it again — it is too hard to say.”
“Not so hard as it is to believe.”
“But you will try, will you not?”
“No.”
The monosyllable had scarcely escaped from his lips, short, energetic and determined, when he was interrupted by Stubbs, who seemed destined to appear at inopportune moments on that day. He was evidently much excited, and he stood stock still by the door. At the same time there was a noise outside, of many feet and of subdued voices. Stubbs made desperate gestures.
“Mr. Brett, sir! Will you please come outside, sir!” He was hardly able to make himself understood.
“What is the matter?” asked Marion, severely.
“I cannot help it, sir! Indeed I cannot, Madam!” protested the distressed butler.
Brett understood.
“There is trouble,” he said quickly to Marion, holding out his hands as though he wished to protect her, and touching her gently. “Please go away. Leave me here.”
“Trouble?” She was not inclined to yield.
“Yes. It must be he — if you have to see him, this is not the place.”
“But—”
With his hands, very tenderly, he pushed her toward the door at the other end of the room, the same through which John Darche had once escaped. She resisted for a moment — then without a word she obeyed his word and touch and went out, covering her eyes with her hand.
“Now then, what is it?” asked Brett, turning sharply around as he closed the door.
“I could not help it, sir!” Stubbs repeated. “There is a man in the hall as says he is Mr. John — leastwise he says his name is John Darche, though he has got a beard, sir, which Mr. John never had, as you may remember, sir, and there is a lot of policemen in plain clothes and otherwise, and Mr. Brown says they are pressmen, and the driver of the cab, and Michael Curly, and the expressman—”
“What do all these people want?” inquired Brett, sternly. “Turn them out.”
“It is a fact, sir, just as I tell you — and so help me the powers, sir, here they ar
e coming in and I cannot keep them out — I cannot, not if I was a dozen Stubbses!”
Before he had finished speaking, a number of men had pushed past him into the room, led by Mr. Brown, very much out of breath and trying his best to control the storm he had raised.
“What is this disturbance, Brown?” asked Brett angrily. “Who are these people?”
“It is the man, Brett!” cried Mr. Brown triumphantly, and pushing forward a burly and bearded individual in a shabby “guernsey” with a black rag tied in a knot round his neck. “Now just look at him, and tell me whether he has the slightest resemblance to John Darche.”
“He is no more John Darche than I am! Take him away!”
“Out with you!” cried Stubbs, only too anxious to enforce the order.
“He said he was John Darche,” said one of the men from Mulberry Street.
The man refused to be turned out by Stubbs and stood his ground, evidently anxious to clear himself. He was an honest-looking fellow enough, and there was a twinkle in his bright blue eyes as though he were by no means scared, but rather enjoyed the hubbub his presence created.
“No, sir,” he said in a healthy voice that dominated the rest. “I am no more John Darche than you are, sir, unless that happens to be your name, which I ask your pardon if it is. But I said I was, and so the bobbies brought me along. But this gentleman here, he showed me the papers, that there was trouble about John Darche, so I just let them bring me, which I had no call to do, barring I liked, being a sailor man and quick on my feet.”
“Well then, who are you?” asked Brett. “And where is John Darche?”
“John Darche is dead, sir, and I buried him on the Patagonian shore.”
“Dead?” cried Brett. The colour rushed to his face, and for a moment the room swam with him. “Can you prove that, my man?”
“Well, sir, I say he is dead, because I saw him die and buried him — just so, as I was telling you.”
This was more than Stubbs could bear in his present humour.
“Dead, is he? Mr. John’s dead, is he? This man says he is dead, and he comes here saying as he is him.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 654