Leatherface Part 6

The mother sighed dejectedly, and Mark threw himself into a chair and stretched his long legs out to the blaze: he felt his mother's eyes scanning his face and gradually a faint smile, half ironical, half impatient, played round the corners of his mouth.

To a superficial observer there was a great likeness between the two brothers, although Mark was the taller and more robust of the two. Most close observers would, however, a.s.sert that Laurence was the better-looking; Mark had not the same unruly fair hair, nor look of boyish enthusiasm; his face was more dour and furrowed, despite the merry twinkle which now and then lit up his grey eyes, and there were lines around his brow and mouth which in an older man would have suggested the cares and anxieties of an arduous life, but which to the mother's searching gaze at this moment only seemed to indicate traces of dissipation, of nights spent in taverns, and days frittered away in the pursuit of pleasure.

Clemence van Rycke sighed as she read these signs and a bitter word of reproach hovered on her lips; but this she checked and merely sighed--sighing and weeping were so habitual to her, poor soul!

"Have you seen your father?" she asked after a while.

"Not yet," he replied.

"You will have to tell him, Mark. I couldn't. I haven't the courage.

He has always loved you better than Laurence or me--the blow would come best from you."

"Have you told him nothing, then?"

"Nothing."

"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "and he has to meet senor de Vargas within the next two hours!"

"Oh! I hadn't the courage to tell him, Mark!" she moaned piteously, "I was always hoping that Laurence would think better of it all. I so dread even to think what he will say ... what he will do...."

"Laurence should have thought of that," rejoined Mark dryly, "before he embarked on this mad escapade."

"Escapade!" she exclaimed with sudden vehemence. "You can talk of escapade, when..."

"Easy, easy, mother dear," broke in Mark good-humouredly, "I know I deserve all your reproaches for taking this adventure so lightly. But you must confess, dear, that there is a comic side to the tragedy--there always is. Laurence, the happy bridegroom-elect, takes to his heels without even a glimpse at the bride offered to him, whilst her beauty, according to rumour, sets every masculine heart ablaze."

The mother gave a little sigh of weariness and resignation.

"You never will understand your brother, Mark," she said with deep earnestness, "not as long as you live. You never will understand your mother either. You are your father's son--Laurence is more wholly mine.

You can look on with indifference--G.o.d help you! even with levity--on the awful tyranny which has well-nigh annihilated our beautiful land of Flanders. On you the weight of Spanish oppression sits over lightly....

Sometimes I think I ought to thank G.o.d that He has given you a shallow nature, and that I am not doomed to see both my sons suffer as Laurence--my eldest--does. To him, Mark, his country and her downtrodden liberties are almost a religion: every act of tyranny perpetrated by that odious Alva is a wrong which he swears to avenge.

What he suffers in the innermost fibre of his being every time that your father lends a hand in the abominable work of persecution n.o.body but I--his mother--will ever know. Your father's abject submission to Alva has eaten into his very soul. From a gay, light-hearted lad he has become a stern and silent man. What schemes for the overthrow of tyrants go on within his mind, I dare not even think. That awful bloodhound de Vargas--murderer, desecrator, thief--he loathes with deadly abomination. When the order came forth from your father that he should forthwith prepare for his early marriage to the daughter of that execrable man, he even thought of death as preferable to a union against which his innermost soul rose in revolt."

She had spoken thus lengthily, very slowly but with calm and dignified firmness. Mark was silent. There was a grandeur about the mother's defence of her beloved son which checked the word of levity upon his lips. Now Clemence van Rycke sank back in her chair exhausted by her sustained effort. She closed her eyes for a while, and Mark could not help but note how much his mother had aged in the past two years, how wearied she looked and how pathetic and above all how timid, like one on whom fear is a constant attendant. When he spoke again, it was more seriously and with great gentleness.

"I had no thought, mother dear," he said, "of belittling Laurence's earnestness, nor yet his devotion. I'll even admit, an you wish, that the present situation is tragic. It is now past six o'clock. Father must be at the Town Hall within the next two hours.... He must be told, and at once.... The question is, what can we tell him to ... to..."

"To soften the blow and to appease his fury," broke in Clemence van Rycke, and once more the look of terror crept into her eyes--a look which made her stooping figure look still more wizened and forlorn.

"Mark," she added under her breath, "your father is frightened to death of the Duke of Alva. I believe that he would sacrifice Laurence and even me to save himself from the vengeance of those people."

"Hush, mother dear! now you are talking wildly. Father is perhaps a little weak. Most of us, I fear me, now are weak. We have been cowed and brow-beaten and threatened till we have lost all sense of our own manhood and our own dignity."

"You perhaps," protested the mother almost roughly, "but not Laurence.

You and your father are ready to lick the dust before all these Spaniards--but I tell you that what you choose to call loyalty they call servility; they despise you for your fawning--men like Orange and Laurence they hate, but they give them grudging respect..."

"And hang them to the nearest gibbet when they get a chance," broke in Mark with a dry laugh.

V

Before Clemence van Rycke could say another word, the heavy footstep of the High-Bailiff was heard in the hall below. The poor woman felt as if her heart stood still with apprehension.

"Your father has finished dressing: go down to him, Mark," she implored.

"I cannot bear to meet him with the news."

And Mark without another word went down to meet his father.

Charles van Rycke--a fine man of dignified presence and somewhat pompous of manner--was standing in the hall, arrayed ready for the reception, in the magnificent robes of his office. His first word on seeing Mark was to ask for Laurence, the bridegroom-elect and hero of the coming feast.

"He is a fine-looking lad," said the father complacently, "he cannot fail to find favour in donna Lenora's sight."

The news had to be told: Mark drew his father into the dining-hall and served him with wine.

"This marriage will mean a splendid future for us all, Mark," continued the High-Bailiff, as he pledged his son in a tankard of wine: "here's to the happy young people and to the coming prosperity of our house. No more humiliations, Mark; no more fears of that awful Inquisition. We shall belong to the ruling cla.s.s now, tyranny can touch us no longer."

And the news had to be told. Clemence van Rycke had said nothing to her husband about Laurence's letter--so it all had to be told, quietly and without preambles.

"Laurence has gone out of the house, father, vowing that he would never marry donna Lenora de Vargas."

It took some time before the High-Bailiff realised that Mark was not jesting; the fact had to be dwelt upon, repeated over and over again, explained and insisted on before the father was made to understand that his son had played him false and had placed the family fortunes and the lives of its members in deadly jeopardy thereby.

"He has gone!" reiterated Mark for the tenth time, "gone with the intention not to return. At the reception to-night the bride will be waiting, and the bridegroom will not be there. The Duke of Alva will ask where is the bride-groom whom he hath chosen for the great honour, and echo will only answer 'Where?'"

Charles van Rycke was silent. He pushed away from him the tankard and bottle of wine. His face was the colour of lead.

"This means ruin for us all, Mark," he murmured, "black, hideous ruin; Alva will never forgive; de Vargas will hate us with the hatred born of humiliation.... A public affront to his daughter! ... O Holy Virgin protect us!" he continued half-incoherently, "it will mean the scaffold for me, the stake for your mother..."

He rose and said curtly, "I must speak with your mother."

He went to the door but his step was unsteady. Mark forestalled him and placed himself against the door with his hand on the latch.

"It means black ruin for us all, Mark," reiterated the High-Bailiff with sombre despair, "I must go and speak of it with your mother."

"My mother is sick and anxious," said Mark quietly, "she cannot help what Laurence has done--you and I, father, can talk things over quietly without her."

"There is nothing that you can say, Mark ... there is nothing we can do ... save, perhaps, pack up a few belongings and clear out of the country as quickly as we can ... that is, if there is time!"

"Your imagination does not carry you very far, meseems," quoth Mark dryly. "Laurence's default is not irreparable."

"What do you mean?"

"Am I not here to put it right?"

"What?--you?"

"By your leave."