It is to be feared that he had
harsh thoughts of all the Medcrofts, as far down as Raggles. His dream
of love and happiness had turned into a nightmare; the comedy had become
a tragic snarl of all the effects known to melodrama. Bitterly he
lamented the fact that now he could not go before the assembled critics
in the morning and proclaim to them that Constance was his wife. From
this, it readily may be judged that Brock was not familiar with all the
details of the vigorous Miss Fowler's plan. As a matter of fact, he did
not know that he was expected to fly the country like a fugitive. She
had known in her heart that he would never agree to a plan of that sort;
it was, therefore, necessary for her to deceive him in more ways than
one. Plainly speaking, Brock had laboured under the delusion that she
merely proposed to bribe the gaoler into letting him off for the night,
in order that by some hook or crook they could be married early in the
morning--provided her conception of the State marriage laws as they
applied to aliens was absolutely correct. (It was not correct, it may be
well to state, although that has nothing to do with the case at this
moment.) If he had but known that she contemplated paying ten thousand
crowns for his surreptitious release, making herself criminally liable,
and that he was expected to catch a night train across the border, it is
only just to his manhood to say that he should have balked, even though
the act were to cost him years of prison servitude--which, of course,
was unlikely in the face of the explanation that would be made in proper
time by the real Medcroft.
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