CHAPTER III.
THE BURDEN OF A SECRET.
Presently Mr Steinherz went on with his story, and Usk noticed a subtle change in his manner of speech. Hitherto, he had spoken “fluently and without accent,” as he had said himself, but with a certain precision of phrase that betrayed the man to whom English was not his native tongue; now he became by degrees the American once more.
“I knew Bradcross well enough to feel sure that the old parts of the town, which had been the goal of my former rambles, were not likely to afford any decent lodging for the girls, and as we reached the street, I turned to the right, intending to try our fortune in the newer and more respectable portion. But almost next door to the station there was a lecture-room or mechanics’ institute of some sort, and a placard on the notice-board caught my eye. It was the announcement of a Protestant lecture the following week, the chair to be taken by the Rev. Mr Cotton, Vicar of St Mary Windicotes. I knew the church well and had visited it often—it was the oldest in Bradcross—and this active controversialist promised to be the very man I needed, any way. We retraced our steps, Konstantia and the maid following uncomplainingly where I led, though it was evident they shrank from the narrow squalid streets through which we had to pass to reach the church. I knew where the clerk lived, and requested his wife to show the ladies the building while I called on the Vicar. The good man was at home, but at first I thought I had backed the wrong horse. He grew stiffer and stonier at every word as I explained my position. I learned afterwards that he had been victimised time and time again by persons representing themselves as Catholics desirous of embracing Protestantism, and deprived, naturally, of their former means of livelihood. But I persevered. I was a Catholic, I told him, and had married a Protestant against the wishes of my relations, who were certain to have the marriage declared invalid in order to separate us. Would he recommend us suitable lodgings, and give us his countenance until we could be married afresh according to English law? It makes me laugh yet when I remember how suspicious that good man was, and yet how completely I hoodwinked him. He was clearly relieved when he discovered that I was not in need of money, for I had been careful to furnish myself with several hundred pounds in English gold and notes; but he cross-questioned me most severely in order to ascertain whether there was any other impediment to our marriage than that of religion. Since the real state of affairs never occurred to him, naturally enough, I was able to satisfy him, but he had the prudence to consult his wife before surrendering finally, and she assured him that he was being had once more. However, they concluded to interview Konstantia, and we adjourned to the church, where we found the two poor girls, both of them tired clean out, sitting in one of the pews while the clerk’s wife related in a loud whisper the history of the place—of which, as she told it, they could hardly understand a word. Our story sounded suspicious, no doubt, but the Vicar’s wife forgot all of her suspicions the moment she saw Konstantia. The girl looked so very young and tired that the excellent lady was convinced of her truthfulness on the spot, and she hadn’t talked to her but a few minutes before she astonished us by insisting that she and Julie should take up their quarters at the Vicarage, while a lodging would be found for me elsewhere. Pursuit was to be baffled by the simple device of anglicising our names, so that Konstantia became Miss Constance Lily Garland, and I Mr Joseph Bertram (Mr Cotton advised me unhesitatingly to drop the ‘Maria’ as a badge of Popery, and I did so right away). There was more kindness yet in store for us. Mrs Cotton did not think it well for betrothed people to see too much of one another, and her husband, after inquiring into my tastes, got me a temporary post as foreign correspondence clerk to a great shipbuilding firm in the parish. Here I gave so much satisfaction that the firm were good enough to offer me a permanent appointment, and when I declined that, gave me a letter of recommendation to their correspondents in America, which I never presented. That three weeks at Bradcross was quite idyllic. After my day’s work, I would drop in, evenings, at the Vicarage, which lies back of the church. You approach it by a green gate in a high wall, and inside there is a little patch of grass and two or three lilac-bushes. Konstantia used to be waiting for me on the lawn, and there we would sit, never minding the smuts. If I haven’t said much about Konstantia, don’t think it’s because there’s nothing to say. She adored me in a real whole-hearted way, much more than was good for me, I am sure, and never so much as looked back regretfully at what she had given up for my sake. As for me, I was desperately in love yet with my own magnanimity in giving up so much for her, and her devotion pleased me. We really were perfectly happy those evenings, until Mrs Cotton called Konstantia in, and her husband came out to talk theology with me. I had to be stiffened up in my new Protestant principles, you see, and if I met that good man again, I would make him happy by assuring him that since those days I have never entered a Catholic church, any way. Well, the three weeks came to an end, and we were married in our English names, Julie signing the register as Julia Slazenger, but at the Vicar’s suggestion we all wrote our original names on the inside of the cover at the end of the book, with a reference to the proper page, and he pasted a piece of paper over them, so that it might be removed if there was ever any question as to our identity. I have been sorry all the time since that prudence obliged me to break off all relations with these good people as soon as we left Bradcross. You see, any accident would have enabled my family to trace us that far, so it was necessary to start a fresh trail, and I took our passages for New York in the name of Mr and Mrs Steinherz, without telling the Cottons of the change. Moreover, that we might be thoroughly demokratisch, as suited the country to which we were going, Julie became my wife’s friend, not her maid. We met with no difficulty in our second journey, and I expected none, for at my Bradcross employer’s I had read in a Pannonian paper the interesting news that ‘Prince Joseph of Arragon has sailed in his yacht Claudine on a foreign cruise. A vessel of the Imperial Navy has been detailed to escort his Royal Highness.’ That meant, I knew, that Martin Richter had done his work so well that I was believed to be on board the yacht, and a man-of-war had been sent in chase of her. On our voyage I fell in with a man named Logan, a shipbuilder in a small way in Rhode Island. Community of tastes drew us together, and I agreed to put in a week or two in his neighbourhood before settling down elsewhere. The truth was, I was waiting for Richter, with whom I had arranged a method of communication. As soon as I let him know where I was, he was to dispose of the yacht, either by firing her or running her ashore, and join me, bringing Konstantia’s old nurse with him. But instead of Martin came the news that the yacht was really lost with all hands. He had handled her with the most consummate skill, baffling the pursuing warship half round the world, but through some accident she got him cornered inside a reef in the Australian seas, with a gale coming on. He was staunch to the end, and actually tried to take the ship out by a passage that was practicable only for the native canoes, and that in fine weather. She struck, of course, and was beaten to pieces in the surf, and not a soul escaped. Our safety was secured—at that price. For days I could settle to nothing. In all my dreams Martin and I had worked together, and I could not feel able to do without him. Then my wife suggested that I should pay some attention to the hints Logan was continually throwing out. He wanted to have me join him in the business, for he was smart enough to see that I knew where I was when ships were in question. Besides, he wanted to marry Julie—she was a good-looking woman, and had picked up a lot from Konstantia—and he thought it would be pleasant if I bought the next lot to his, and built a house on it, that our wives might not be separated. The comicality of the idea took my fancy, and I went into business with him. I made things hum in that shipyard, and poor old Logan got frightened. I would go ahead in spite of all his forebodings, and at last, at his desire, I bought him out. We were just as friendly as ever. He was free of the yard yet, and loafed around all day, prophesying that my ships would go to the bottom as soon as they were off the slips; but they didn’t, and when he died he left me his daughter’s guardian. His wife had died before that, and Maimie became our child ’most the same as Félicia. I went on inventing and improving, and making a pile—not because I wanted it, but because the thing just happened. We had a boy, and he died, and when Félicia was six years old my wife died, and I have gone on making money and fighting to keep out of society. And now I guess I’m through,” and Mr Steinherz laughed to see Usk’s start of surprise at this complete and startling return to his ordinary mode of speech.
“Then your family have actually no idea that you are alive?”
“Not the slightest. They advertised their undying grief at my loss, and boomed that shipwreck all it was worth, for it cleared off a scandal in the most satisfactory way. The surprise wedding was buried in oblivion, and when a whisper of the truth got around, it was promptly silenced. Naturally, you couldn’t expect them allude to it on the tablet at Vindobona, though all of the other remarks proper to the occasion are there.”
“And no one in America ever penetrated the secret?”
“Just one man, and I was in deadly fear when I found it out. It was our mutual friend Hicks. He got it in his head that I was a Hamburg shipping clerk that the police were watching out for, who had forged his employer’s name and eloped with his daughter, and he set to work to trace my movements right back to my starting-point. Pretty soon he found he was on the wrong track, and then a chance word from a friend in Vindobona sent him flying along. The scandal, the rumoured marriage, the escaped Prince—there it all was, and if a mysterious hint in his paper hadn’t suddenly shown me what he was aiming at, so that I took Konstantia along, and we just threw ourselves on his mercy, he would have made his own fortune and the ‘Crier’s’ by revealing all of the story. He took pity upon us and kept his mouth shut, and he and I have been friends ever since. I have appointed him Félicia’s trustee in case of my death.”
“And you don’t intend to be reconciled to your family?”
“Why should I? They are all thoroughly happy, believing me dead, and enjoying my property. If my son had lived—well, I don’t know, but I guess I would have laid things before him when he came of age, and given him his choice. Florian left only a daughter behind him, and Ramon has three, and no sons. There seems a fate against us Albrets. If he had concluded to claim such rights as will be mine on Ramon’s death, I daresay we could have fixed it. With the pile I can show, there wouldn’t be much difficulty in having them recognise my marriage. The Emperor could do it, with Ramon’s consent, and if I greased the wheels a bit, Félicia would pretty soon be a Princess of Arragon.”
Maimie drew in her breath sharply. Usk spoke with some hesitation.