Chapter 31. Agag

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_ CHAPTER XXXI. AGAG

At a certain point between Basle and Schaffhausen, the Rhine, after winding in wide curves through low green meadows fringed with poplars, suddenly finds itself contracted to a narrow and precipitous channel, down which it foams with a continuous musical roar. On the rocks forming this channel, connected by a quaint old bridge, stand the twin towns, Gross and Klein Laufingen. Of the two there can be no question which has the superior dignity, for, while Klein Laufingen (which belongs to Baden) is all comprised in a single narrow street ending in a massive gatehouse, Gross Laufingen, which stands in Swiss territory, boasts at least two streets and a half, besides the advantages of a public platz that can scarcely be smaller than an average London back garden, a church with a handsome cupola and blue and gold-faced clock, and the ruins of what was once an Austrian stronghold crowning the hill around which the roofs are clustered, with a withered tree on the ragged top of its solitary tall grey tower. Gross Laufingen has seen more stirring times than at present: it was a thriving post town once, a halting-place for all the diligences. Napoleon passed through it, too, on his way to Moscow, and on the roof of an old tower outside the gate is still to be seen a grotesque metal profile, riddled with the bullets of French conscripts, who made a target of it in sport or insult, when a halt was called. Now the place is sleepy and quiet enough: there are no diligences to rattle and lumber over the stones, and the most warlike spectacle there is provided by the Swiss militiamen as they march in periodically from the neighbouring villages to have their arms inspected, singing choruses all the way. There is a railway, it is true, on the Klein Laufingen bank, but a railway where the little station and mouth of the tunnel have been so ornamentally treated that at a slight distance a train coming in irresistibly suggests one of those working models set in motion by either a dropped penny or the fraudulent action of the human breath, as conscience permits. So innocent an affair is powerless to corrupt Laufingen, and has brought as yet but few foreigners to its gates. English, Russian, and American tourists may perhaps exclaim admiringly as the trains stop, affording a momentary view of the little town grouped compactly on the rocks with the blue-green cataract rushing by--but they are bound for Schaffhausen or the Black Forest or Constance, and cannot break the journey--so the hosts of personally conducted ones pass Laufingen by, and Laufingen seems upon the whole resigned to its obscurity. But Mark Ashburn, at least, had felt its gentle attractions, having come upon it almost by accident, as he returned alone from the Black Forest after the tour with Caffyn. His thoughts were constantly of Mabel Langton at that time, and he found a dreamy pleasure in the idea of coming to Laufingen some day when she should be his companion, which made him look upon everything he saw merely as a background for her fair face. It had seemed a very hopeless dream then, and yet a few months more and the dream had come to pass. He was at Laufingen once again, and Mabel was by his side.

The long nightmare of those days before the wedding was over at last. He had not dared to feel secure, even in the church, so strong was his presentiment of evil. But nothing had happened, the words were spoken which made Mabel his own, and neither man nor angel intervened. And now a week had gone by, during which nothing from without had threatened his happiness; and for a time, as he resolutely shut his eyes to all but the present, he had been supremely happy. Then by degrees the fox revived and began to gnaw once more. His soul sickened as he remembered in what a Fool's Paradise he was living. Unless Holroyd decided to leave England at once with this young Gilroy of whom Caffyn had spoken--a stranger--he would certainly learn how he had been tricked with regard to Mabel's marriage, and this would lead him on to the full discovery of his wrongs. In his mad determination to win her at all costs, Mark had disregarded everything but the immediate future. If shame and misery were to come upon him, he had told himself, he would at least have the memory of a period of perfect bliss to console him--he might lose all else, but Mabel could not be taken from him. But now, as she took no pains to hide the content which filled her heart, he would scarcely bear to meet her sweet grey eyes for the thought that soon the love he read in them would change to aversion and cold contempt, and each dainty caress was charged for him with a ferocious irony. He knew at last his miserable selfishness in having linked her lot with his, and there were times when in his torture he longed for courage to tell her all, and put an end with his own hand to a happiness which was to him the bitterest of delusions. But he dared not; he had had such marvellous escapes already that he clung to the hope that some miracle might save him yet.

And this was Mark's condition on the morning when this chapter finds him. There is a certain retreat which the town would seem to have provided for the express benefit of lovers--a rustic arbour on a little mount near the railway station overlooking the Rhine Fall. The surly, red-bearded signalman who watched over the striped barrier at the level crossing by the tunnel had understood the case from the first, and (not altogether from disinterested motives, perhaps) would hasten to the station as soon as he saw the young couple crossing the bridge and fetch the key of the little wooden gate which kept off all unlicensed intruders.

It was on this mount that Mark stood now with Mabel by his side, looking down on the scene below. Spring had only just set in, and the stunted acacia trees along the road to the bridge were still bare, and had the appearance of distorted candelabra; the poplars showed only the mistiest green as yet, the elms were leafless, and the horse-chestnuts had not unfolded a single one of their crumpled claws. But the day was warm and bright, the sky a faint blue, with a few pinkish-white clouds shaded with dove colour near the horizon, pigeons were fluttering round the lichened piers of the old bridge, which cast a broad band of purple on the bright green water, and the cuckoo was calling incessantly from the distant woods. Opposite were the tall houses, tinted in faint pink and grey and cream colour, with their crazy wooden balconies overhanging the rocks, and above the high-pitched brown roofs rose the church and the square tree-crowned ruin, behind which was a background of pine-covered hills, where the snow still lay amongst the trunks in a silver graining on the dark red soil. Such life as the little place could boast was in full stir; every now and then an ox-cart or a little hooded gig would pass along the bridge, and townsmen in brown straw hats would meet half-way with elaborate salutations and linger long to gossip, and bare-headed girls with long plaited pigtails present their baskets and bundles to be peered into or prodded suspiciously by the customs officer stationed at the Baden frontier-post, striped in brilliant crimson and yellow, like a giant sugarstick. Over on the little Laufenplatz children were playing about amongst the big iron salmon cages, and old people were sitting in the sunshine on the seats by the fountain, where from time to time a woman would fill her shining tin pails, or a man come to rinse out a tall wooden funnel before strapping it on his back. Down on the rocks below, in a little green cradle swinging over the torrent, sat a man busy with his pipe and newspaper, which he occasionally left to haul up and examine the big salmon nets by the aid of the complicated rigging of masts and yards at his side.

'How charming it all is!' said Mabel, turning her bright face to Mark. 'I am so glad we didn't let ourselves be talked into going anywhere else. Mamma thought we were mad to come here so early in the year. I think she fancied it was somewhere in the heart of the Alps, though, and I never expected anything like this myself?'

'How would you like to stay out here more than a month, Mabel--all the summer, perhaps?' he asked.

'It would be delightful, for some things,' she said, 'but I think I shall be willing to go back when the end of the month comes, Mark; we _must_, you know; our house will be ready for us, and then there is your work waiting for you, you know you would never write a line here, you are so disgracefully idle!'

'I--I was only joking,' he said (although his expression was far from jocular); 'we will enjoy all this while we can, and when--when the end comes we can remember how happy we were!'

'When the end of this comes we shall only be beginning to be very happy in another way at home in our own pretty house, Mark. I'm not in the least afraid of the future. Are you?'

He drew her slight form towards him and pressed her to his heart with a fervour in which there was despair as well as love.

'Do you think I could be afraid of any future, so long as you were part of it, my darling?' he said. 'It is only the fear of losing you that comes over me sometimes!'

'You silly boy!' said Mabel, looking up at his overcast face with a little tender laugh. 'I never knew you could be so sentimental. I am quite well, and I don't mean to die as long as you want me to take care of you!'

He dreaded to lose her by a parting far bitterer than death; but he had said too much already, and only smiled sadly to himself at the thought of the ghastly mockery which the memory of her words now might have for him in a day or two. She was daintily rearranging the violets in his buttonhole, and he caught the slender white hands in his, and, lifting them to his lips, kissed them with a passionate humility. A little while, perhaps, and those dear hands would never again thrill warm in his grasp as he felt them now!

'I'm afraid,' said Mabel a little later, 'you're letting yourself be worried still by something. Is it the new book? Are you getting impatient to hear about it?'

'I did expect some letters before this,' replied Mark (he was indeed fast growing desperate at Caffyn's silence); 'but I dare say everything is going on well.'

'The train from Basle came in just as we got here,' said Mabel. 'See, there is the postman crossing the bridge now; I'm getting anxious too, Mark, I can't think why I have had no letters from home lately. I hope it is nothing to do with Dolly. She was looking quite ill when we went away, almost as she did--oh, Mark, if I thought Harold had dared to frighten her again!'

Mark remembered that afternoon in South Audley Street. He had never sought to know why Dolly had gone away so obediently, but now he felt a new uneasiness; he had never meant her to be frightened; he would see into it if he ever came home again.

'I don't think he would do such a thing now,' he said, and tried to believe so himself. 'I always thought, you know, Mabel, you were rather hard on him about that affair.'

'I can never change my mind about it,' said Mabel.

'When you are angry, do you never forgive?' asked Mark.

'I could never forgive treachery,' she said. 'Dolly believed every word he said, and he knew it and played on her trust in him for some horrible pleasure I suppose he found in it. No, I can never forgive him for that, Mark, never!'

He turned away with a spasm of conscience. If Caffyn had been a traitor, what was he?

He was roused from a gloomy reverie by Mabel's light touch on his arm. 'Look, Mark,' she cried, 'there is something you wanted to see--there's a timber raft coming down the river.'

For within the last few days the Rhine had risen sufficiently to make it possible to send the timber down the stream, instead of by the long and costly transport overland, and as she spoke the compact mass of pine trunks lashed together came slowly round the bend of the river, gradually increasing in pace until it shot the arch of the bridge and plunged through the boiling white rapids, while the raft broke up with a dull thunder followed by sharp reports as the more slender trunks snapped with the strain.

Mark looked on with a sombre fascination, as if the raft typified his life's happiness, till it was all over, and some of the trunks, carried by a cross current into a little creek, had been pulled in to the shore with long hooks, and the rest had floated on again in placid procession, their scraped wet edges gleaming in the sunlight.

As he turned towards the town again, he saw the porter of their hotel crossing the bridge, with the director's little son, a sturdy flaxen-haired boy of about four, running by his side. They passed through the covered part of the bridge and were hidden for an instant, and then turned up the road towards the station.

'They are coming this way,' said Mabel. 'I do believe little Max is bringing me a letter, the darling! I'll run down to the gate and give him a kiss for it.'

For the child's stolid shyness had soon given way to Mabel's advances, and now he would run along the hotel corridors after her like a little dog, and his greatest delight was to be allowed to take her letters to her. They were close to the mount now, the porter in his green baize apron and official flat cap, and little Max in his speckled blue blouse, trotting along to keep up, and waving the envelope he held in his brown fist. Mark could see from where he stood that it was not a letter that the child was carrying.

'It's a telegram, Mabel,' he said, disturbed, though there was no particular cause as yet for being so.

Mabel instantly concluded the worst. 'I knew it,' she said, and the colour left her cheeks and she caught at the rough wooden rail for support. 'Dolly is ill.... Go down and see what it is.... I'm afraid!'

Mark ran down to the gate, and took the telegram away from little Max, whose mouth trembled piteously at not being allowed to deliver it in person to the pretty English lady, and--scarcely waiting to hear the porter's explanation that as he had to come up to the station he had brought the message with him, knowing that he would probably find the English couple in their favourite retreat--he tore open the envelope as he went up the winding path. The first thing that met him was the heading: _From H. Caffyn, Pillar Hotel, Wastwater_, and he dared not go on. Something very serious must have happened, since Caffyn had sent a telegram! Before he could read further Mabel came down to meet him.

'It _is_ Dolly, then!' she cried as she saw Mark's face. 'Oh, let us go back at once, Mark, let us go back!'

'It's not from home,' said Mark: 'it's private; go up again, Mabel, I will come to you presently.'

Mabel turned without a word, wounded that he should have troubles which she might not share with him.

When Mark read the telegram he could scarcely believe his eyes at first. Could it really be that the miracle had happened? For the words ran, '_H. of his own accord decided to leave England without further delay. Started yesterday._' That could only mean one thing after what Caffyn had said when they met last. Vincent had gone with Gilroy. In India he would be comparatively harmless; it would be even possible now to carry out some scheme by which the book could be restored without scandal. At last the danger was past! He crumpled up the telegram and threw it away, and then sprang up to rejoin Mabel, whose fears vanished as she met his radiant look. 'I hope I didn't frighten you, darling,' he said. 'It was a business telegram, about which I was getting anxious. I was really afraid to read it for a time; but it's all right, it's good news, Mabel. You don't know what a relief it is to me! And now what shall we do? I feel as if I couldn't stay up here any longer. Shall we go and explore the surrounding country? It won't tire you?'

Mabel was ready to agree to anything in her delight at seeing Mark his old self again, and they went up the narrow street of Klein Laufingen, and through the gatehouse out upon the long white tree-bordered main road, from which they struck into a narrow path which led through the woods to the villages scattered here and there on the distant green slopes.

Mark felt an exquisite happiness as they walked on; the black veil which clouded the landscape was rent. Nature had abandoned her irony. As he walked through the pine-woods and saw the solemn cathedral dimness suddenly chased away as the sunbeams stole down the stately aisles, dappling the red trunks with golden patches and lighting the brilliant emeralds of the moss below, he almost felt it as intended in delicate allusion to the dissipation of his own gloom. Mabel was by his side, and he need tremble no longer at the thought of resigning the sweet companionship, he could listen while she confided her plans and hopes for the future, with no inward foreboding that a day would scatter them to the winds! His old careless gaiety came back as they sat at lunch together in the long low room of an old village inn, while Mabel herself forgot her anxiety about Dolly and caught the infection of his high spirits. They walked back through little groups of low white houses, where the air was sweet with the smell of pine and cattle, and the men were splitting firewood and women gossiping at the doors, and then across the fields, where the peasants looked up to mutter a gruffly civil '_G'n Abend_' as they turned the ox-plough at the end of the furrow. Now and then they came upon one of the large crucifixes common in the district, and stopped to examine the curious collection of painted wooden emblems grouped around the central figure, or passed a wayside shrine like a large alcove, with a woman or child kneeling before the gaudily coloured images, but not too absorbed in prayer to cast a glance in the direction of the footsteps.

The sun had set when they reached the old gatehouse again, and saw through its archway the narrow little street with its irregular outlines in bold relief against a pale-green evening sky.

'I haven't tired you, have I?' said Mark, as they drew near the striped frontier post at the entrance to the bridge.

'No, indeed,' she said; 'it has been only too delightful. Why,' she exclaimed suddenly, 'I thought we were the only English people in Laufingen. Mark, surely that's a fellow-countryman?'

'Where?' said Mark. The light was beginning to fade a little, and at first he only saw a stout little man with important pursed lips trimming the oil-lamp which lit up the covered way over the bridge.

'Straight in front; in the angle there,' said Mabel; and even at that distance he recognised the man whose face he had hoped to see no more. His back was turned to them just then, but Mark could not mistake the figure and dress. They were Vincent Holroyd's!

In one horrible moment the joyous security he had felt only the moment before became a distant memory. He stopped short in an agony of irresolution. What could he do? If he went on and Holroyd saw them, as he must, his first words would tell Mabel everything. Yet he must face him soon; there was no escape, no other way but across that bridge. At least, he thought, the words which ruined him should not be spoken in his hearing; he could not stand by and see Mabel's face change as the shameful truth first burst upon her mind.

His nerves were just sufficiently under his control to allow him to invent a hurried pretext for leaving her. He had forgotten to buy some tobacco in a shop they had just passed, he said; he would go back for it now, she must walk on slowly and he would overtake her directly; and so he turned and left her to meet Vincent Holroyd alone. _

Read next: Chapter 32. At Wastwater

Read previous: Chapter 30. The Way Of Transgressors

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