Vanderlyn woke with a start. He looked round, bewildered for a moment.
Then his brain cleared, and he felt vexed with himself, a little ashamed
of having slept. It seemed to him that he had been asleep hours. How
odious it would have been if at the first stopping place of the
demi-rapide some stranger had entered the railway carriage! Instead of
sleeping, he ought to have remained watching over that still figure
which lay so quietly resting on the other side of the carriage.
He stood up. How tired he felt, how strangely depressed and uneasy! But
that, after all, was natural, for his last four nights had been wakeful,
his last four days full of anxiety and suspense.
He turned and looked out of the window, wondering where they were, how
far they had gone; the train was travelling very quickly, he could see
white tree-trunks rushing past him in the moonlight.
Then Vanderlyn took out his watch. Surely it must be later than nine
o'clock? He moved from the window and held the dial close under the blue
silk shade of the lamp. Why, it was only three minutes to nine! Then
they hadn't yet passed Dorgival; in fact they wouldn't be there for
another twenty minutes, for this train took two hours to do what the
quick expresses accomplished in an hour and a quarter.
It was good to know that he had only slept for quite a little while. The
desire for sleep had now left him completely, and he began to feel
excited, restless, and intensely, glowingly alive....
The curious depression and unease which had possessed him a few moments
ago lifted from his soul; the future was once more full of infinite
possibilities.
His darling little Peggy! What strange beings women were! With what
self-contempt, with what scorpions would he have lashed himself, had he
been the one to evolve this plan of this furtive flight, to be followed
at the end of a week by a return to the life to which he now looked back
with shame as well as distaste! And yet she, the woman he loved, had
evolved it, and thought out every detail of the scheme--before telling
him of what was in her mind...
As to the future? Vanderlyn threw back his head; nay, nay, there could
be no going back to what had been. Even Peggy would see that. She had
herself broken down the barrier erected with such care; and soon, very
soon she would--she must--see that such breaches can never be repaired
or treated as if they had not been made. What had happened, what was
happening, to-night, was, in very truth the beginning, for them both, of
a new life.
So Laurence Vanderlyn swore to himself, taking many silent vows of
chivalrous devotion to the woman who, for love of him, had broken, not
only with life-long traditions of honour, but also with a conscience he
had known to be so delicately scrupulous.
* * * * *
From where he was standing in the middle of the swaying carriage,
something in the way in which his sleeping companion's head was lying
suddenly aroused Vanderlyn's quick, keen attention. Putting out a hand
to steady himself against the back of the compartment, he bent
down--indifferent to the risk of rousing the still figure.
Then, with a rapid movement, he straightened himself; his face had gone
grey--expressionless. He pushed back the blue shade off the globe of
light, careless of the bright rays which suddenly illumined every corner
of the railway carriage....
With an instinctive gesture, Vanderlyn covered his eyes and shut out the
blinding light. He pressed his fingers on his eyeballs; every fibre of
his body, every quivering nerve was in revolt: for he realised, even
then, that there was no room for hope, for doubt,--he knew that what he
had looked upon in the dim light was death.
With an awful pang he now understood why Peggy had made him that strange
pathetic offer. How blind he had been! The English doctor, the man on
whom he had poured such careless scorn, had been right,--terribly right.
At last he uncovered his eyes, and forced himself to gaze upon what lay
before him----
Margaret Pargeter had died in her sleep. She was lying exactly as
Vanderlyn had left her, still folded closely in the rug he had placed so
tenderly about her. But a terrible change had come over the delicate
features--the sightless eyes were wide open, the lips had fallen apart;
his glance, travelling down, saw that her left hand, the hand where
gleamed his mother's wedding ring, was slightly clenched.
Again Vanderlyn passed his hand over his eyes. He stared about him with
a touch of helpless bewilderment, but he could do nothing, even if there
had been anything to do; it was she who had insisted that they should be
unencumbered by any luggage.
He crouched down, and, with an involuntary inward shrinking, took up the
chilly, heavy hand and tried to warm it against his cheek; then he
shivered, his teeth chattered, with a groan of which the sound echoed
strangely in his ears he hid his face in the folds of her grey cloth
gown----For a few moments the extent of his calamity blotted out
everything.
And then, as Vanderlyn lay there, there suddenly opened before him a way
of escape from his intolerable agony and sense of loss, and he welcomed
it with eager relief. He raised his head, and began to think intently.
How inexplicable that he had not thought of this--the only way--at once!
It was so simple and so easy; he saw himself flinging wide open the
narrow carriage door, and then, with that still figure clasped in his
arms, stepping out into the rushing darkness....
His mind was now working with incredible quickness and clearness. How
good it was to know that here, in France, there need be--there would
be--no public scandal! In England or America the supposed suicide of two
such people as were Margaret Pargeter and himself could not hope to be
concealed; not so in France.
Here, as Vanderlyn knew well, there was every chance that such a love
tragedy as the one of which he and Mrs. Pargeter would be supposed to
have been hero and heroine, would remain hidden--hidden, that is, from
everyone except those closely connected with her and with himself. His
own chief, the American Ambassador, would be informed of what had
happened, but he was a wise old man, there was no fear of indiscretion
in that quarter; but--yes, he, Vanderlyn, must face that fact--Tom
Pargeter would know the truth.
Vanderlyn's hidden abhorrence of _the other man_,--of the man whose
friend he had perforce compelled himself to be for so long, rose in a
great flood.
Tom Pargeter? The selfish, mean-souled, dull-witted human being, whose
huge fortune, coupled with the masculine virtues of physical courage and
straightness in matters of sport, made him not only popular but in a
small way a personage! Pargeter, no doubt, would suffer, especially in
his self-esteem; on the other hand, he, the husband, would feel that so
had his own conduct, his coarse infidelity, his careless neglect of his
wife, been fully condoned.
With a choking feeling of sharp pain, Vanderlyn suddenly remembered that
what Tom Pargeter knew now, poor Peggy's son would some day have to
know. For awhile, no doubt, the boy would be kept in merciful ignorance
of the tragedy, but then, when the lad was growing into manhood, some
blundering fool, or more likely some well-intentioned woman, probably
his aunt, Sophy Pargeter, would feel it her duty to smirch for him his
mother's memory....
Nay, that could not, that must never, be! Vanderlyn's head fell forward
on his breast; there came back, wrapping him as in a shroud, the awful
feeling of desolation, of life-long loss,--for he now knew, with
inexorable knowledge, what the future held for him.
It must be his fate to live, not die; he must live in order to safeguard
the honour of Margaret Pargeter, the beloved woman who had trusted him
wholly, not only in this, which was to have been their supreme
adventure, but during the whole of their long, almost wordless love. It
was for her sake that, she dead, he must go on living; for her sake he
must make what now, at this moment, seemed to be a sacrifice almost
beyond his power, for reason told him that he must leave her, and as
soon as possible, lying there dead--alone.
With tender, absent fingers he smoothed out the woollen folds to which
his face had been pressed; he slipped from her finger the thin gold
ring, and placed it once more where he had always worn it from the day
of his mother's death till an hour ago.
Then he stood up, and turned deliberately away.
There came the loud wailing whistle which told that the train was
nearing a station. He leaned out of the window; the lights of a town
were flashing past, and he grimly told himself that there was no time to
lose.
Vanderlyn again bent down; the instinctive repugnance of the living for
the dead suddenly left him. His darling little Peggy! How could he bear
to leave her there--alone? If he and she had been what they ought to
have been--husband and wife--even then, he felt that never would he have
left her to the neglect, to the forgetfulness to which other men leave
their beloved dead. There rose before him the memory of one of the most
moving of the world's great pictures, Goya's painting of mad Queen Joan
bearing about with her the unburied body of Philip.
He turned that which had been Margaret Pargeter so that her face would
be completely hidden from anyone opening the door and looking into the
carriage.
Yet, even as he was doing this, Vanderlyn kept a sharp watch and ward
over his own nerves. His had now become the mental attitude of a man who
desires to save the living woman whom he loves from some great physical
danger. Blessing his own foresight in providing the large rug which he
had folded about her so tenderly an hour ago, he pulled up a fold of it
till it covered, and completely concealed, her head. Should a traveller
now enter the carriage he would see nothing but a woman apparently
plunged in deep slumber.
Again Vanderlyn glanced, with far more scrutinising eyes than he had
done when first entering the train, through the two glazed apertures
which commanded a view of the next carriage; it was, as he knew well,
empty.
He turned once more the silk shade over the lamp, jammed his hat down
over his eyes, set his lips together, and, averting his eyes from what
he was leaving, opened the railway carriage door....
The train was slowing down; a few hundred yards ahead lay the station.
Vanderlyn stepped to one side of the footboard, and waited till the door
through which he had just passed swung to; then he turned the handle,
securing it firmly.
With soft, swift steps, he walked past the window of the now darkened
carriage and slipped into the next empty, brightly-lighted compartment.
There came over him a strong temptation to look through the little
apertures giving into the darkened carriage he had just left, but it was
a temptation which he resisted. Instead, he leant out of the window, as
does a traveller who is nearing his destination.
Soon there floated up to him the shouting of "Dorgival! Cinq minutes
d'arrêt!" and when the train at last stopped, there arose the joyous
chatter which attends every arrival in a French station.
Vanderlyn waited for a few moments; then he stepped down from the
carriage, and began walking quietly down the platform. With intense
relief he remembered that the guard of the train whom he had feed so
well, and who must have noticed him with Peggy, had been left behind in
Paris.
Having passed the end compartment and guard's van he stood for awhile
staring down at the permanent way, counting the rails which gleamed in
the half darkness. He measured with his eyes the distance which
separated the platform on which he was standing from that whence the
next train back to Paris must start.
There was very little risk either of accident or detection, but it was
his duty to minimise whatever risk there was. He dropped down gently
onto the permanent way, and stood for a moment in the deep shadow cast
by the rear of the train he had just left; then, cautiously advancing,
he looked both up and down the line, and made his way to the other side.
The platform on which he now found himself was deserted, for the whole
life of the station was still centred round the train which had just
arrived; but as he started across the rails Vanderlyn became possessed
with a feeling of acute, almost intolerable, suspense. He longed with a
feverish longing to see the demi-rapide glide out into the darkness. He
told himself he had been a fool to suppose that anyone could enter the
darkened carriage where the dead woman lay without at once discovering
the truth,--and he began asking himself what he would do were the awful
discovery made, and were the fact that he had been her travelling
companion suddenly revealed or suspected.
But Laurence Vanderlyn was not subjected to so dread an ordeal; at last
there floated to where he was standing the welcome cry of "En voiture!
En voiture, s'il vous plaît!" The dark serpentine mass on which the
lonely man's eyes were fixed shivered as though it were a sentient being
waking to life, and slowly the train began to move.
Vanderlyn started walking up the platform, and for awhile he kept in
step with the slowly gliding carriages; then they swept by more quickly,
a swift procession of gleaming lights....
As at last the red disc melted into the night, he gave a muffled groan
of anguish, for mingling with his sense of intense relief, came that of
eternal, irreparable loss.
Ironic fortune was kind to Vanderlyn that night; his return ticket from
far-away Orange, though only issued in Paris some two hours before, was
allowed to pass unchallenged; and a couple of francs bestowed on a
communicative employé drew the welcome news that a southern express
bound for Paris was about to stop at Dorgival.