"Who has been telling tales out of school?" Vincent asked; but the discussion had to end here, for they were now slowing into the station.
Nor did Mrs. Ellison's plans for throwing those two young people continuously and obviously together work any better in Brighton; for Vincent had no sooner got down than he went away by himself, seeking out the haunts he had known when Maisrie and her grandfather had been there. Wretchedness, loneliness, was destroying the nerve of this young man. He had black moods of despair; and not only of despair, but of remorse; he tortured himself with vain regrets, as one does when thinking of the dead. If only he could have all those opportunities over again, he would not misunderstand or mistrust! If only he could have them both here!—the resolute, brave-hearted old man who disregarded all mean and petty troubles while he could march along, with head erect, repeating to himself a verse of the Psalms of David, or perhaps in his careless gaiety singing a farewell to Bonny Mary and the pier o' Leith. And Maisrie?—but Maisrie had gone away, proud, and wounded, and indignant. She had found him unworthy of the love she had offered him. He had not risen to her height. She would seek some other, no doubt, better fitted to win her maiden trust. He thought of 'Urania'—
'Yet show her once, ye heavenly Powers,
One of some worthier race than ours!
One for whose sake she once might prove
How deeply she who scorns can love.'
And that other one, that worthier one, she would welcome—
'And she to him will reach her hand,
And gazing in his eyes will stand,
And know her friend, and weep for glee,
And cry: Long, long I've looked for thee.'
Then again his mood would change. If Maisrie were only here—if but for a second or so he could look into her clear, pensive, true eyes, surely he could convince her of one thing—that even when his father had offered him chapter and verse to prove that she was nothing but the accomplice of a common swindler, his faith in her had never wavered, never for an instant. And would she not forgive his blindness in not understanding so complex a character as that of her grandfather? He had not told her of his half-suspicions; nay, he had treated those charges with an open contempt. And if her quick eyes had perceived that behind those professions there lingered some unconfessed doubt, would she not be generous and willing to pardon? It was in her nature to be generous. And he had borne some things for her sake that he had never revealed to any mortal.
He ought to have been attending to his groomsman's duties, and acting as escort to the young ladies who had gone down; but instead of that he paid a visit to German-place, to look at the house in which the two Bethunes had lodged; and he slowly passed up and down the Kemp-Town breakwater, striving to picture to himself the look in Maisrie's eyes when her soul made confession; and he went to the end of the Chain Pier, to recall the tempestuous morning on which Maisrie, with her wet hair blown about by the winds, and her lips salt with the sea-spray, had asked him to kiss her, as a last farewell. And his promise?—"Promise me, Vincent, that you will never doubt that you are my dearest in all the world; promise me that you will say to yourself always and always, 'Wherever Maisrie is at this moment, she loves me—she is thinking of me.'" He had made light of her wild words; he could not believe in any farewell; and now—now all the wide, unknown world lay between him and her, and there was nothing for him but the memory of her broken accents, her sobs, her distracted, appealing eyes.
Mrs. Ellison affected not to notice his remissness; nay, she went on the other tack.
"Don't you think it is a pity, Vin," she said on one occasion when she found him alone—and there was a demure little smile on her very pretty and expressive face: "Don't you think it is a pity the two marriages couldn't be on the same day?"
"What two marriages?" he demanded, with a stare.