Bertram Mitford (continued 4)

There was no need to ask the Squire. The old man nodded assent; he was incapable of speech just then.

“Are you—trying—to make me believe, then, that you are, my father?” said Wagram in a dry, hardly articulate kind of voice.

“No, no—not for a moment. But, of course, the second marriage was invalid. Now, do you take in the position?”

“Yes.”

Wagram’s face had gone livid and his tall form seemed to sway. No further word would come. But for the set, gleaming stare of the eyes he might have been a corpse trying to stand upright. The sight was awful, indescribably so. Even the hard, unscrupulous adventurer was moved to concern and compunction.

“For God’s sake, don’t take it like this,” he adjured. “Pull yourself together, man. The thing is a secret between us three, and need never be anything else. Send for a big tot of brandy, or something to steady your nerves. It’s a facer, but nothing need come of it.”

For answer Wagram only shook his head, and moved unsteadily to the open window, where he stood, looking out. There was nothing to prevent Develin Hunt walking out of the house with his 25,000 pound cheque in his pocket; and, to do him justice, it was not the thought that this might be stopped by telegram that restrained him. Yet he did not so walk out.

Chapter Twenty Two.

“Nobody of Nowhere.”

Had Wagram been a sufferer from weakness of heart it is highly probable that he would have fallen down dead there and then.

The shock was sudden and complete. As he stood gazing out through the open window its full meaning swept over his mind as in a very flash of blasting flame. He, Wagram of Hilversea, whose intense pride in and love of his noble inheritance and the almost illimitable opportunity for good which the position entailed upon him were as the very breath of life, now learned, all in a moment of time, that he was in reality Nobody of Nowhere—that he had not even a name. It seemed as though the very heavens had fallen upon him, crushing him to the dust.

“Not a soul need ever be one atom the wiser. It’s strictly between ourselves.”

It was the adventurer’s voice that had broken the awful silence. Wagram turned, wearily.

“You have proof of what you advance, I take it—sufficient and convincing proof?” he said.

“Oh yes; abundant. Look at this,” exhibiting a marriage certificate of many years back. “You can go down and compare notes with the original parish register; it isn’t a very long journey from here. Besides, your father will bear out what I say.”

Again the old man nodded feebly. He seemed incapable of speech.

Wagram took the certificate and examined it earnestly. It was from the register of a parish in a small county town. Then he handed it back.

“What have you received as hush-money over this business?” he said.

“Not a farthing until to-day. But the Squire has been very liberal, and has behaved like a thorough gentleman. You may rely upon it that no word will ever pass my lips.”

“May I see the cheque?”

“Certainly.”

Develin Hunt produced the cheque, intending to keep a firm hold of it while the other scanned its contents; but, marvellous to relate, he actually and deliberately placed it in Wagram’s outstretched hand. The latter looked at it.

“Twenty-five thousand pounds!” he said. “I suppose you are greatly in need of money?”

“Greatly isn’t the word for it,” answered the adventurer quickly. “I’m stony broke—and the worst of it is, I’m too old to be able to make any more.”

“Destroy it, Wagram, destroy it!” burst from the old Squire. “He’s broken his side of the contract already.”

The adventurer was conscious of a tense and anxious moment. He was fully aware, as we have said above, that the payment could be stopped by wire; still, while he actually held the document itself, he seemed to be holding something substantial. Wagram handed it back unhesitatingly.

“No, father,” he said; “it has been given, and we can’t take back a gift; and if anyone is the loser it will be me.”

“No, it will not,” declared the adventurer with vehemence. “No, certainly not. And—pardon me, Squire, for reminding you that I have not broken my side of the compact. Your son forced the information from me—very unfortunately, but still he did. But nobody else ever will if only you could bring yourselves to believe it. Come. Remember how, for all these years, I have kept absolute silence, even to Everard—though I have been seeing him day after day—in fact, for a devilish sight more days than I wanted to. Well, then, why should I begin to wag my tongue now?”

“Only to Everard?” repeated Wagram. “Then you’ve seen him?”

“Seen him? Rather! Seen a great deal too much of him. I don’t mind admitting that, if I hadn’t been a sight smarter man for my age than he reckoned, I should have had six inches of his knife between my ribs one time.”

“Where is he?” said Wagram.

“Ah-h! Now you’re asking for some information it wouldn’t be a bit good for you to have, so I think I’ll withhold it in your own interest—purely in your own interest, mind.”

Wagram was about to reply, but did not. The adventurer went on:

“Don’t let this knowledge make any difference to you. I give you my word of honour—though, I daresay, you won’t think much of that—that this secret shall die with me. You have both treated me handsomely and fairly and squarely in this matter, and, so help me God! I’ll do the same by you. Wagram Wagram, you might have torn up that cheque when I put it into your hand, as the Squire there advised you, though I know he was speaking without thought when he did. But it was with the knowledge that no more honourable man treads this green and blue world than yourself that I did put it there. Well, then, I swear to you that what I told the Squire on a former occasion is absolutely true. I have a hankering to end up my days decently and respectably, and, perhaps, in the long run this will turn out not the least amount of good of all the good you have done in your time, and I have some sort of inkling what that is. Now I’ll go, and once more I say you’ll never hear of me again.”

He rose, and, with a bow to both, walked to the door. No attempt was made to detain him this time.

“I’ll just see this gentleman out, father,” said Wagram. “I won’t be a moment.” The Squire nodded.

But Wagram had something further in his mind than merely seeing an exceedingly unwelcome visitor off the premises. He made a commonplace remark or two until they were clear of the house; then, once fairly in the avenue, where the ground was open around, and no chance of being overheard, he said again:

“Where is he? Where is my brother?”

The adventurer’s answer was the same.

“You had better not know,” he said.

“But—I must.”

“But—why? Have you gained anything by being too curious before? Didn’t I warn you to leave it alone—that there might be things it were better that you should not know? This is another of them. Leave it alone, I say. ‘Where ignorance is bliss,’ you know. Well, in this case it is, believe me.”

“That is impossible. What sort of ease of mind, let alone happiness, could ever travel my way again while every moment of my life was spent in the consciousness that I was keeping somebody else out of his rights?”

“His rights! Good Lord! His rights! Now, do you really mean to tell me that you would abdicate, would turn over all this”—with a sweep of the hand around—“to Butcher Ned—er—I mean Everard? Why, to begin with, it would kill your father.”

“No; because he could have no rights here—at least not in the sense we mean—during my father’s lifetime. After that, well—”

“After that—well, you would put him in here—would install him in possession. Good Lord! Wagram Wagram, I can only suppose you don’t know your—er—brother one little bit.”

“Not lately, of course. But that doesn’t touch the principle of the thing anyhow.”

“Not touch the principle of the thing, eh? Have you reflected what would be the result of putting Everard in possession here? No; of course, you haven’t. Well, then, you may take it from me that hell let loose would be a merry little joke compared with Hilversea six months after that sucking lamb had got his finger on it. I tell you it would be a by-word for—well, for everything that you, and all decent people, would rather it were not.”

“Have you some grudge against him?” said Wagram.

“Grudge? No; not an atom of a grudge. But, honestly, I’d be sorry—more than sorry—to see him in your place. I haven’t any grudge against him; but—I know him, and I don’t think you do.”

“Possibly not. But if he is all you imply, all the more reason for finding him out. No one is utterly irreclaimable, you know.”

“Pardon me. I don’t I would say I know the exact contrary; only that is a point on which we should certainly disagree. And the first instance I should cite in proof of that contrary would be your half-brother. Now, this time be advised by me—you would not before—and leave Everard—well, exactly wherever he may happen to be.”

“No; I cannot do that. We had thought him dead, having heard nothing of him for years. Now we know he is alive it is—well, my duty to find him, in view of his future rights and great responsibilities. Now, Mr Hunt you owned just now that you had been well treated by us, so I put it to you to make some little return; therefore tell me where Everard is to be found.”

“The return you mention is to bury what I know as surely as if I were dead, and that you seem determined to prevent me from doing.”

“No. Nothing need be known of—of—the other matter any the more. But Everard must be restored to his rights.”

The adventurer stood stock still and stared at Wagram. His experience had been wide and diverse, yet here was a man who stood clean outside it. Why, he must be mad; yet as his puzzled glance took in the tall, straight form and the strong, thoroughbred face, still showing traces of the recent shock, he shook his head, puzzled, and decided that the man was as sane as himself, only clean outside his own experience.

“Look here,” he said shortly, “supposing in refusing you this information I am trying to protect myself against myself—oh, not from Everard, don’t think that. He couldn’t harm me; the boot, if anything, is rather on the other foot. Now, I’ve made a compact with you and your father, and I mean to keep it, but I’ve made no compact with Everard. Yet, I’m only human, and what if you let him in here and I felt moved to take advantage of it? I have a considerable hold over him, remember, and might easily be tempted to turn it to account.”

“In that case you ‘might easily be tempted’ to turn this other knowledge to further account as regards ourselves,” said Wagram, with a dry, wan smile.

“No, no; the cases are entirely different,” rejoined the adventurer quickly, and with some vehemence. “Look here. Like yourself, I, too, have a son, of about the same age as yours. Well, it is for him—to keep him as far apart as the poles from becoming what Everard and I, and others, have been—that I am so urgently in need of this money. Now I can do it, and if I could have done it without your forcing this secret from me Heaven knows I would have been far more glad.”

Wagram softened. “It could not be helped,” he said wearily. “And now, in return, tell me where to find my brother. I don’t say I am going to rush up to him with the good news—for him—all at once; but he must be found.”

The adventurer stood for a moment or two in silence.

“Well, then,” he said at last, “since you are so death on finding him, this is the best—or the worst—I can do for you. Go to Lourenço Marques and make a few inquiries there—not from the police, of course. Then, if that’s no good, work over the Lebombo into Swaziland, and get into touch with some of the tougher samples of white traders there—and there are some tough ones. Then go to work delicately and carefully to obtain tidings of Butcher Ned—that’s how he’s known in those parts—never mind why, as I told the Squire just now. Only be very careful how you work your inquiries, for he’ll be engaged on the most ticklish and infernally risky game in the gun-running and general information line for the benefit of the Transvaal Government, unless he’s changed his mind since I saw him last, and I don’t think he has. And, honestly, I hope you won’t succeed in finding him, in which case even your scruples, I should think, would be set at rest. And, perhaps, you won’t, for I certainly can’t give you any information that’s more explicit; and it’s more than a year old, for I took a look in on the West Coast on my way back from that part, and it lasted me a year.”

“Thanks,” said Wagram, again with that dry, wan smile, as he made a note or two in a pocket-book.

“Now I will go,” said Develin Hunt, “and my best wish is that you will be unsuccessful in your search.”

Then he paused, and a strange look—almost a wistful look—came over his hard, bronzed face.

“Look here, Wagram Wagram,” he blurted out, “I’ve done you a devilish ill turn, but I needn’t have done that if you hadn’t been so infernally persistent. I still hope nothing will come of it; but, hang it all, I want to tell you before I go that I’ve never seen a man like you in all my experience, and it isn’t small. I’m going to ask you a great favour—no, not money this time—and I know you’re going to refuse it. I want to ask you to let me shake hands with you.”

Instinctively Wagram started, partly with astonishment. This man, as he had said, had indeed done him an ill turn. He had, by a word, deprived him of his possessions and of his very name. He had come as a blackmailer, and had obtained his blackmail—his price. He had spoiled—nay, ruined—his very life. And yet, and yet, but for the grace of God he himself might have been such as he, was the reflection that ran swiftly through his mind. Who was he to set himself up in judgment?

“No. You will not?” said the other, noting his hesitation. “Of course, I ought to have known.”

“But I will,” said Wagram, putting forth his hand.

The adventurer clasped it in a strong, hard grip. Then without another word he turned and strode away down the avenue at a most astonishing pace for one of his apparent years.

Chapter Twenty Three.

After the Blow.

Facing round to return to the house the sight of the latter met Wagram as with a blow. The last time he had looked upon it from outside, barely half-an-hour ago, it had been with the love of it and everything about it—that pride of possession which had become unconsciously a part of his very life. Now all was swept away. He passed his hand over his eyes as though dazzled; even his walk seemed swaying and unsteady, as that of a man recovering from a stunning shock. But not of himself must he think just then. He must do what he could to mitigate the stroke as regarded his father, he told himself; afterwards he might indulge in the “luxury” of self-pity.

The old Squire was sitting in the library just where he had left him, and as many years seemed to have gone over his head as minutes during the time intervening.

“Well, father, this is rather a facer,” he began. “The next thing is to consider what’s to be done.”

“There’s nothing to be done,” answered the old man wearily. “Do you think that scoundrel means to keep his word?”

“To do him justice, I think he means to at present; but whether his good intentions will evaporate with the lapse of time, and the temptation to try and extract more plunder, is another matter.”

There was silence for a few moments between them. Then Wagram said:

“Father, would you mind telling me all the ins and outs of this while we are on the subject? We shall get it over that way, and then we need never refer to it again.”

“Yes; perhaps it is better,” said the Squire, with a sigh.

And then he set forth the whole story, which, with some additional but immaterial detail, was the same as that which we heard him narrate to Monsignor Culham.

“You know, this man has just been telling me where I can find Everard,” said Wagram when he had done.

The Squire started.

“Where you can find Everard!” he echoed. “But—Wagram, you will never be so mad as to try?”

“How can I do otherwise? Every hour that I am here I am keeping him out of his rights.”

Smiling somewhat feebly the old diplomat asserted himself.

“Hardly, my dear boy. At least not at present—for during my lifetime Everard has no rights. After—”

Wagram looked up quickly, but the old man paused. Then he went on:

“Your first duty is to me; and, that being so, are you contemplating leaving me alone in my old age—my very old age, some might call it—while you scour the world in search of a wastrel who, if you find him, will lay himself out to ruin within six months all that it has taken me—and you—a lifetime to build up? You cannot do it, Wagram. I have not very much longer to live, but as sure as you leave me it will hasten my death. Now, are you anxious to start upon this search?”

“No, father. While you are here—and may that be for many years to come—I will not leave you.”

“Promise me that.”

“Solemnly I promise it.”

The old man’s face brightened as they clasped hands. Then he went on:

“This is no conscious wrong I have done you, Wagram—God knows. We had every reason—legal and otherwise—for supposing this man to be dead. We acted in perfect good faith, but—can one be sure of anything? And now give me your attention. Even if the worst comes to the very worst, and that—that other claim should come to be established, I have already effected my utmost to repair the wrong I have, accidentally, done you. The very day of that blackmailer’s first visit to me I sent instructions for an entirely new will to be drawn up, and under it, after my death, you take the whole of my personalty absolutely. That alone will constitute you what some would call a rich man. But—as for Hilversea, well—”

Earlier in this narrative we heard Haldane remark that its present occupants cherished a conviction that the world revolved round Hilversea, and being, perhaps, the most intimate friend of the said occupants he ought to be in a position to judge. Further, he had observed that, if possible, Wagram held that conviction rather more firmly than his father. It was a figure of speech, of course, but that both were wrapped up in the place and its interests, far beyond the ordinary, we have abundantly shown. And now one of them would be called upon to surrender it.

“I have left nothing to chance, Wagram,” went on the Squire. “The will is signed and sealed and most carefully drawn. And now observe: it seems to me a sort of inspiration that caused me to have you christened Wagram; but, to make everything doubly safe, the terms run: ‘To my son Wagram Gerard, known as Wagram Gerard Wagram.’ But I want you to go up to town in a day or two and tell Simcox and Yaxley to let you see it. You can then satisfy yourself.”

Wagram nodded assent, and the Squire went on:

“This has come upon us—upon you at any rate—in a hurry, and for that very reason we must not allow ourselves to do or say anything in a hurry. Meanwhile we are in possession, which is a strong point. So what we—what you—have got to do is to go on exactly as if this revelation had never been made. There is no telling what Time may work, so give Time his chance. Morally, you are just in the position you would actually have been in—morally, for I repeat again the whole affair was a sheer accident for which nobody is to blame—no, not anybody. And, Wagram, if you distrust my advice as possibly too interested, why not take other advice? There is Monsignor Culham, for instance—no one is more competent to advise you.”

“Monsignor Culham? Does he know about this, father?”

“Yes; I laid it before him when this blackmailer first approached me.”

“And his opinion?”

“Substantially what I have been telling you. He was not in favour of your knowing anything about the matter. Unfortunately, you forced the blackmailer’s hand—as he said himself. Morally, and in the sight of God,” went on the old Squire, lapsing into what was, for him, extraordinary vehemence, “your position is just what it would have been but for this—accident. There is no doubt about it. You are the one selected to hold this place in trust, with its many cares and responsibilities and opportunities, so, for God’s sake, Wagram, bear that in mind, and do nothing sudden or rash, either now or after my time.”

“I will bear it in mind, father; but it is a position which requires a great deal of thinking out, and that can’t be done in a day or a week or a month where such issues are at stake.”

“Quite true; leave it at that, then. And now, Wagram, all this has exhausted me more than I can say. I think I will lie down for a bit and try to get a little sleep. Tell them I am on no account to be disturbed.”

“Mine!”

No longer the ecstatic intonation of the entrancing possessive, as Wagram, strolling forth to wrestle out alone the blank and deadening revelation he had heard that day, gazed upon the surroundings which had called forth that intensity of self-gratulation on the occasion of our first making his acquaintance. He was now but a mere temporary pensioner. He realised that he was here but for his father’s lifetime, for he knew that when left to himself, whatever might be the after consequences, he would leave no stone unturned till he should find his half-brother, and then—

He turned into a seldom-used path in the thick of the shrubbery. The Gothic roof of the chapel rose among the trees at no great distance, and the sight was productive of another heart-tightening. All his pride and joy in the beautiful little sanctuary—and soon it, too, would know him no more. He felt as though about to be cast out of Paradise. But with the thought came another, and it was a wholesome one. What right had he to look upon life as a broken thing simply because one side of its joys had been reft from him? It was not even as though he were about to be thrown forth penniless, or on a meagre, scraping, starvation pittance, which is, perhaps, hardly better, as he had had ample occasion to know during long years of his earlier life. As his father had said, he would be what some would call a rich man in any case; and as an object in life had he not his son’s future to secure and his present to watch over? And then there recurred to his mind a question which Delia Calmour had put to him on a former occasion as to whether he did not find life too good to be real—and his answer to it. There was something prophetic about both. Of late years he had, indeed, found life too good to be real, and was that a state altogether healthy for anybody in this world of probation? He had made an idol of Hilversea.

It was late autumn, and the woodland scents were moist and earthy. Brown leaves, crimped and curled, clustered clingingly upon the oak boughs, and the ground was already carpeted with them. He had followed the most secluded paths, sacred, indeed, to himself and the gamekeepers. The white scut of a rabbit darting across a ride; the rustle of pheasants scuttling away in the undergrowth, or the vast flap-flap of wood-pigeon’s wings—now gathered in flocks—detonating in the deep silence of the covert as they fled disturbed from their intended roost; a couple of squirrels chattering angrily at the intruder from the high security of a fir limb—constituted the only sights and sounds. In a day or two these woods would echo and re-echo the crack of guns, and now he thought how he had been looking forward with keen enjoyment to the best shooting party of the year. His guests would go as they had come, thinking—as they had often thought before—that Wagram was about the luckiest and most-to-be-envied man on earth; and, up till this morning, would he not cordially have agreed with such opinion! Would he not? The “pride of life!”

Now a sound of voices struck upon his ear. The path he was following ended in a gate, beyond which was the road—a lonely woodland road, intersecting the coverts. As he laid his hand upon this gate to open it he recognised one of the voices—a sweet, full soprano that by this time he had come to know fairly well. The other was strong, harsh, common, but also feminine. Not feeling at all inclined to talk to anybody just then he would have turned back, but—it was too late.

Delia Calmour gave a little cry of astonishment as he opened the gate.

“Why, Mr Wagram, who’d have thought of meeting you here?”

The little flush of surprise, perhaps of something else, which mantled her cheeks as she put out a hand, half shyly, lent an additional sparkle to her eyes, making a whole that was very alluring. She was in semi-winter garb, with a touch of fur, and her bicycle stood against the hedge. The other was a dark, beady-eyed, gipsy-looking woman.

“Such fun!” rattled the girl. “I’ve been having my fortune told; only I can’t make head or tail of it.”

Here the other, with a half-knowing leer—for, of course, she had at once decided that this meeting was no accidental one—opened on Wagram with the stock professional whine.

“I’ll tell yours too, sir, and it’s sure to be bright—and—”

Then she stopped. Wagram’s gaze was fixed sternly upon her.

“Go away,” he said. “I’ve seen you before, and I’ve warned you before that we had no use for such as you in this neighbourhood. You had better leave it at once, for I shall send word to the police at Bassingham to pay you some very particular attention.”

The tramp, seeing he was in earnest, and that there was nothing more to be got out of him, waxed bold and defiant.

“You’d do that, would you Squire?” she snarled. “All right. Maybe there’s them as knows more about your little game than you thinks of. Maybe you’ll not be finding everything as easy always; no, and I ’opes yer won’t—tramplin’ upon a pore woman who’s tryin’ to make a honest livin’.” And, cursing and growling, the hag shuffled off down the road.

In his then frame of mind the words were startling to Wagram. What on earth—was his altered position already common property? was his first thought, as he read into the malevolent words the very last meaning that the mind of their utterer could have held.

“I am surprised at you, Miss Calmour,” he said gravely, “listening to the pestiferous humbug of the commonest type of hedge-side charlatan. Really, I had a better opinion of you.”

“And—has it fled?” answered the girl, with a pretty pleading penitence that was not wholly mock. “I only let her tell my fortune for the fun of the thing—and she said some very queer things—not at all after the pattern of stock bosh which I had expected. In fact, they were rather weird—about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship—and terrors—and perhaps death, but if not death, then great happiness. Yes; really it was quite creepy; strange too, for what on earth can I ever have to do with battered ships or green seas—or great happiness either?” she added to herself mournfully. Then again, aloud: “But do you think there may be anything in these people’s powers of prediction?”

“No, I do not,” he answered decisively, and with some sternness. “Certainly not. The knowledge of the future is in other hands than those of a common wayside impostor, whom, if I were doing my duty, I ought to have at once had arrested and locked up on a former occasion when she tried to play that humbugging game in my presence.”

“Oh yes; she got into the wrong corner this time,” laughed Delia. “You are a magistrate, are you not, Mr Wagram?”

“I have seen this particular fraud before, and gave her a trifle, as she seemed really in want,” he answered. “In strict duty I ought to have had her locked up, but strict duty is rather a hard thing to carry out always. But anything that encourages superstition is to me especially abhorrent. The greatest harm these impostors do is not merely in obtaining hard-earned silver from ignorant people but in keeping alive the idea that they can possess any supernatural power—let alone wisdom—at all.”

The girl looked at him with a covert smile.

“Be merciful to one of those ‘ignorant people,’” she said softly. “Though, really, I did not believe in any supernatural power about the affair; I only let her do it for the fun of the thing.”

“I should hope not. With your talents and education I could not have believed it of you. And yet—you hardly know where to draw the line. When you find people, whose upbringing and education, and everything else, ought to put them miles above anything of the kind, steeped over head and ears in such puerile superstitions as throwing spilled salt over the shoulder, scared of having a peacock’s feather brought into their houses, or of getting up first of thirteen from the table, or of walking under a ladder—really it makes one—well, cynical.”

“But—walking under a ladder is unlucky sometimes, Mr Wagram.”

“Very likely to be, if you don’t first ascertain whether there’s a journeyman painter up it with a paint pot—not otherwise.”

Then they both laughed—for Wagram the first laugh he had indulged in since the bolt had fallen. Well, he could still laugh; yet but now it had seemed to him that he never would laugh again.

“But—you’ll admit there are people who can tell you strange—and even startling—things about yourself that they can’t possibly have got at by any ordinary means.”

“I’ll admit nothing of the kind. I know the old stock business—I have had it thrown at me too often. Some fool—usually some feminine fool—goes to one of these impostors—not the hedge-side type of fraud but the fashionable ditto—and pays down her guineas to be told such and such. She is told such and such, and it amazes her. Then, in retailing it, she invariably ends up with: ‘But, how do you account for it?’ I always answer I can’t account for it, any more than I can account for how the clever card conjurer takes ace and king and queen out of the top of the head of the baldest man in the audience; but he does it, and nobody dreams of associating the supernatural with the process. It’s the same thing here. It’s part of the system to find out things; and they do it. If you were let into the secret you’d probably laugh at the simplicity with which it’s done. No; really, I’ve no patience with that sort of absurdity; it’s too childish.”

“Looked at in that light it is. You do put things straight, Mr Wagram.”

“Well, but—isn’t it so? I have even heard people attribute that sort of quackery to satanic influence, which has almost struck me, if one may say so, as insulting to the intelligence of the devil. But it is getting rather dusk. You will want your lamp before you get home. Is it in good lighting order?”

If a momentary temptation beset Delia to pretend it was not, so as to afford a pretext for accompanying him to the house, which was not very far distant, she heroically stifled it; so between them they lighted the lamp.

“Good-bye, Mr Wagram. Thanks so much. I promise you I won’t dabble in the black art again,” she said as they shook hands; and mounting she skimmed away down the now shadowy road, going over in her mind every word, every tone of the, in hard fact, utterly unmomentous interview. And he, striking into a woodland path on the other side, continued his walk in the deepening gloom, to the accompaniment of the ghostly hooting of owls. It was strange that he should have fallen in with this girl just then, and in his then frame of mind it seemed to him that her glance and tone and demeanour were very sweet, very soothing, very sympathetic. And then—he ceased to give her another thought.

Chapter Twenty Four.

“Requiem Aeternam...”

Though beloved by their tenantry and dependents the Wagrams were not exactly popular with the county—as spelt with a capital C. This saw reason, or thought it did, to regard them as exclusive and eccentric. To begin with, they seldom entertained, and then not on anything like the scale it was reckoned they ought. A few shooting parties in the season, and those mostly men, though such of the latter as owned wives and daughters brought them; or an occasional gathering, such as we have seen, mainly of ecclesiastical interest. It was a crying shame, declared the county, that a splendid place like Hilversea Court should be thrown away on two solemn old widowers; and it was the duty of one of them—Wagram at any rate—to marry again. But Wagram showed not the slightest inclination to do anything of the kind.

Not through lack of opportunity—inducement. He was angled for, more or less deftly—not always with a mercenary motive; but, though courteous and considerate to the aspiring fair, by no art or wile could he be drawn any further—no, not even into the faintest shadow of a flirtation. It was exasperating, but there was no help for it, so he had been given up as hopeless. He might have recognised the duty but for the existence of his son. Hilversea would have its heir after him—that was sufficient.

He was eccentric, estimated his acquaintances, in that he worked hard at matters that most people leave to an agent; but this was a duty, he held—a sacred trust—to look into things personally; the result we have referred to elsewhere. As for entertaining, well, neither he nor the old Squire cared much about it. On the other hand, they were careful that many a day’s sport, with gun or rod—but mostly the latter—should come in the way of not a few who seldom had an opportunity of enjoying such.

But now of late there had befallen that which caused the county aforesaid to rub its eyes, and this was the manner in which the Wagrams seemed to have “taken up” Delia Calmour. It was not surprised that a brazen, impudent baggage like that should have pushed herself upon them on the strength of the gnu incident, the marvel was that she should have succeeded—have succeeded in getting round not only Wagram but the old Squire as well, and the county resented it. Once when she was at Hilversea some callers, of course, of her own sex, took an opportunity of testifying their disapproval by being markedly rude to the girl. This Wagram had noticed, and had there and then paid her extra attention by way of protest. And Haldane too—he who thought the whole world was hardly good enough to have the honour of containing that girl of his, and yet he allowed her to associate with a daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour! What next, and what next!

But if the Wagrams were eccentric they could afford to be, and that for a dual reason: in the first place, they were “big” enough; in the next, they cared literally and absolutely not one straw for the opinion of the county. If a given line commended itself to their approbation they took it, completely regardless of what the county or anybody else might choose to say or think—and this held equally good of father and son—which was as well, for, as time went by, on this matter it “said” plenty.

A wafting of it reached Wagram one day, at the mouth of Clytie’s quondam victim—“Vance’s eldest fool,” as the old Squire had, with cynical aptitude, defined that much plucked youth.

“Take a tip from me, Wagram,” remarked the latter one day. “You’re making a mistake having too much to do with that lot. They’re dangerous, and you’ll have to pay up smartly for your fun one of these days.”

The other did not retort that the speaker had reason to be an authority on the point, nor did he get angry; he only answered:

“I don’t like that kind of remark, Vance. I suppose because I’m not in the habit of taking anybody’s ‘tips’ I always take my own line. Sounds conceited, perhaps, but it’s true.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything, Wagram,” was the reply, given rather shamefacedly.

But the time had now come when this reputation for reticence, for eccentricity, stood Wagram in good stead. If he had become graver, more aloof than ever under the influence of this new and overwhelming blow, his surroundings hardly noticed it. In anybody else it would have been at once remarked on; in him it was a mere development of his former and normal demeanour. One or two opined that he contemplated entering a monastery, but the general run gave the matter no further thought; and, the very vaguest, faintest inkling of the real state of things struck nobody at all.

There was one, however, whose quick woman’s wit had not been slow to arrive at the fact that something had gone wrong—in some absolutely not-to-be-guessed-at and unaccountable way, but still gone wrong—and that was Delia herself. The county need not bother its opaque head any further as to how and why the Wagrams had “taken her up,” for the said Wagrams seemed to have dropped her with equal capriciousness. And the girl herself?

No more of these pleasant informal invites to Hilversea when she cycled over to the chapel services on Sundays or other days. Wagram and the old Squire were as courteous and kindly in their bearing as ever, but—there it ended; and, strange to say, remembering her upbringing, or want of it rather, this daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour did not, even in her heart of hearts, feel hurt or resentful. For, as we have said, by some quick-witted instinct of her own she realised that some great trouble, secret and, therefore, infinitely the greater, was sapping the peace of this house, to the members of which she looked up with a feeling little short of adoration. She saw this, but nobody else did as yet.

Delia had carried out the intention we heard her express to Wagram on the occasion of one of those visits which had constituted the bright days of her life. She had placed herself under the instruction of the old priest in Bassingham whose German nationality had first aroused her insular disapproval, and had been received into the Catholic Church; but in the result she had learned that a love of beautiful music and imposing and picturesque ceremonies was not the be-all and end-all of the matter by a long way; wherefore the change had put the coping-stone to the refining process which had been going on unconsciously within her, and the former undisciplined and inconsequent daughter of rackety, happy-go-lucky Siege House had become a self-contained and self-disciplined woman. As to this something of a test was put upon her when one day, on one of the rare occasions now when she had an opportunity of talking confidentially with Wagram, the latter remarked:

“Talking of ‘duties,’ Miss Calmour, I wonder if you will resent what I am going to say? It seems ungracious after the great help you have given us here from time to time—musically, I mean. Well, then, you have a beautiful voice and great musical talent. Now, don’t you think you ought to turn that to account nearer home? The mission at Bassingham is a poor one. With your talents, if you threw yourself into helping to improve its choir, and musical arrangements generally, what a difference that might work in rendering it more attractive to outside people as well as to those within. Of course, music like many other accessories, is a mere spiritual luxury, not an essential, but it is often a powerful factor in the first instance, in attracting those without, and therefore, like any lawful agency in that direction, by no means to be despised. How if this is a talent entrusted to you to be turned to account? But there—I have no constituted right to set myself up as your adviser, and I suppose you are only setting me down as a solemn old bore intent on preaching you a sermon,” he concluded, with a smile—a sad one, she decided to herself, as his somewhat rare smiles were in these days.

The natural human in Delia was represented by a feeling of blank dismay. Those rides over to Hilversea, and her part in the musical arrangements of its exquisite chapel, had been to her as something to live for. And now even this was to be denied her. But the self-discipline had become an accomplished fact.

“I am setting you down as nothing of the sort, Mr Wagram,” she answered steadily, “nor do I know anybody in this world more competent to advise me or anyone else. Yes; you are right; I will follow your advice. But I may come up to Hilversea, and help occasionally when I am not wanted in Bassingham, mayn’t I?”

“My dear child, of course; we are only too glad. You know, I was not putting it to you in your own personal interest. In such a matter nothing personal comes in, or ought to. But there—I seem to be preaching again.”

The step Delia had taken involved upon her far less of a trial from those among whom she moved than she had expected. Old Calmour had been nasty and jeering on the subject, and in his cups had been wont to make exceedingly objectionable remarks and vulgar insinuations; but such to the girl were as mere pin-pricks now. Moreover, Clytie had on every occasion quelled, not to say flattened, him with all her serene but effective decisiveness; and the egregious Bob was in a state of complete subjection, as we have shown. To Clytie herself the whole thing was a matter of entire satisfaction, for she regarded it as a step, and a very important one, in the direction of furthering her own darling scheme; which scheme, by the way, did not seem to progress with the rapidity she would have wished.

“You must force the pace Delia,” she said. “The thing’s hanging a little more than I like. You’ve got a first-rate cut in, and you ought to be able to capture the trick. Force the pace a little more; you’re not making the most of your opportunities.”

“You’re wasting a deal of capacity for intrigue, Clytie,” was the answer. “There’s nothing ‘hanging,’ no pace to force, and no trick to capture, as I’ve told you before.”

The other looked at her, shook her pretty head, and—being at times inclined towards vulgarity—winked.

And then upon Hilversea and its surroundings and dependents fell another bolt—swift, sudden, consternating. The old Squire was dead.

He had passed away in his sleep, peacefully and painlessly, for the expression of his fine old face was absolutely placid and almost smiling; and from Wagram downwards the bolt shot hard and grievous through many a heart. Not only of those belonging to the immediate neighbourhood did this hold, for in the crowd which thronged the approaches to the chapel what time the solemn High Mass of Requiem—sung by the dead man’s lifelong friend, Monsignor Culham—was proceeding, not a few strange faces might have been discerned; faces of those whom Grantley Wagram and his son had benefited—in some instances even to the saving of life, where, but for such benefit, the means of preserving life by affording the requisite conditions would have been lacking.

Very different, too, to the cortège which we saw issue from these doors a few months back is this which now comes forth to lay the dead man in his last resting-place in the little consecrated graveyard beneath the east window of the chapel, but no less solemn. The glow and splendour of light and colour, the mellow flooding of the summer sunshine are no longer here, and the gurgling song of full-throated thrushes is hushed. Instead, the frost and stillness of a winter noon, and an occasional sob as the coffin is lowered into the grave, while the chant of the Benedictus rolls forth mournful and grand upon the crisp air, so still that the lights borne on each side of the great crucifix burn with scarce a flicker, and the celebrant, vested in a black and silver cope of some richness, sprinkles—for the last time with holy water the remains of Grantley Wagram, now laid to his final rest.

“Requiem aeternam dona, ei Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat ei. “Anima ejus, et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.”

The words find echo in many a heart as the sad solemnity ends. The crowd melts away, the mourners withdraw—all save one, who stands motionless, with bowed head, looking down into the closing grave—and that one the dead man’s son.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The Red Derelict.

“What would happen if we went ashore here? Why, we’d very likely be eaten.”

“Eaten! Oh, captain, you can’t really mean that. In these days too!”

“But I do mean it. Yonder’s a pretty bad coast. As for ‘in these days,’ we haven’t yet captured quite all the earth, only the greater part of it. There are still some rum places left.”

“Oh!” And the inquiring lady passenger stared, round-eyed, to eastward, where, however, no sign of any coast was visible, nor yet in any other quarter.

The steamship Baleka was shearing her way through the smooth satiny folds of the tropical swell, and the light breeze which stirred the surface combined with the air the ship was making to render life quite tolerable beneath the grateful shade of the awnings. Otherwise it was hot—unequivocably hot; and where the glisten of brasswork was exposed to the overhead noonday sun the inadvertent contact of the bare hand with the said brasswork was sufficient to make the owner jump. So completely alone on this shoreless sea was the steamer that the plumes of smoke from her great white funnels seemed as though they had no business to taint this free, pure air with their black abominations—seemed, in fact, an outrage on the blue and golden solitude. Yet the said solitude was by no means devoid of life. Flying-fish skimming above the liquid plain singly or in flights like silvery birds, or a school of porpoises keeping pace with the ship for miles in graceful leaps, as their sportive way is, constituted only hints as to the teeming life of the waters in common with the earth and air; or here and there a triangular fin moving dark and oily above the surface in scarcely perceptible glide. The sight started the inquiring lady passenger off afresh.

“Look, there’s another shark; what a number we’ve seen within the last day or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a shark following a ship means that there’s going to be a death on board?”

“But this one isn’t following the ship; he’s going very nearly clean in the contrary direction.”

“Yes, I know. But do you think there’s anything in the idea?”

“Why, I think that if somebody died every time a shark followed a ship there’d soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker’s really smelling after is the stuff that’s thrown overboard from the cook’s galley from time to time.”

“Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea—weird but romantic.”

“It’d be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard,” laughed the matter-of-fact captain. “They soon will, too—a good many have already. In the old ‘windjammer,’ days when you had nothing to do half the voyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack’s head and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattling spell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn’t got time to bother about that sort of thing.”

“Then sailors aren’t superstitious any more?”

“No more than shore folk. I’ve seen landsmen both on board ship and ashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”

“Then you’ve no superstitions of your own, captain—you, a sailor?”

“Not one; I don’t believe any such nonsense.”

A solitary passenger, passing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.

The Baleka was steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England. She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimited ditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.

The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male passengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal—a form of amusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.

“I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable,” said one. “It’s all very well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation and numbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s a hard and fast rule.”

“There’s no such thing as a hard and fast rule, or oughtn’t to be,” retorted with some heat he who had borne the main part of the argument; “but if there is, why, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ is a fairly safe one. What do you think sir?” turning to a man who was seated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to the discussion at all.

“Think? Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t been in that part long enough to have formed an opinion,” was the answer.

“But you don’t agree with our friend there that there should be a hard and fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that every question should be decided on its own merits?”

“Certainly,” replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at being dragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in which he felt no interest whatever. “That’s a sound principle all the world over, and a safe one.”

“There you are,” cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon his antagonist. “What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with me entirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that.”

“We can’t do evil that good may come of it,” reiterated the said antagonist. “That’s a hard and fast rule.”

“Hard and fast rule be blowed! You might as well apply that to the Valpy case,” naming a somewhat prominent lawsuit then going forward, and relating to a disputed succession. “If the Valpy in possession weren’t justified in sticking to possession when he knew the real heir was a congenital idiot, and a homicidal one at that—why, there’s no such thing as any law of common sense.”

“What were the facts?” asked the man who had been appealed to from outside. “I have not been much in the way of reading the papers of late.”

They told him—several of them at once, as the way of a smoking-room gathering is. By judicious winnowing down he managed to elicit that a vast deal of property had been in dispute, that the holder had been an exemplary landlord, and, in short, a sort of Providence to all dependent on him; whereas the man who had successfully established his own claim, and thereby had ousted him, was one of those subjects for whom a few minutes in a lethal chamber would have constituted the only appropriate and adequate treatment. Indeed, the only matter of debate was as to whether the former holder, knowing that he was not legally entitled to remain in possession, was justified in retaining the same. Those here present were of opinion that he was.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” said the uncompromising man. “We can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s the divine law, and—”

“Hallo! What’s the excitement?” interrupted somebody, as several persons hurried by the open door, some with binoculars in their hands.

“Oh, we’ve only sighted some ship, I suppose,” said the leader on the other side. “What I was going to say is—”

But ever so little to break the sea and sky monotony of a voyage will avail to raise a modicum of excitement; wherefore, what the speaker “was going to say” remained perforce unknown, for the group incontinently melted away in order to see what little there was to be seen.

That little was little enough. A solitary speck away towards the sky-line; to those who had binoculars, and soon to those who had not, taking shape—that shape the hull of a ship. Little enough in all conscience.

But—was it? The submerged hull of a ship and no more, save for two stumps of mast of uneven length sticking out of her. The poop and forecastle were above water, and in the wash of the increasing evening swell part of the bulwarks heaved up as the hulk rolled lazily, her rusty red sides, glistening and wet, showing a line of encrusting barnacles. This was what met the eager gaze of the passengers of the Baleka in the lurid, smoky glare of the tropical sunset as the steamer swept up to, and slowed down to pass, the sad relic; and there may have been some among them who noticed that the long, straight path of her foamy wake has undergone an abrupt deviation behind her—for the derelict had been lying right in her course.

Right in her course! An hour later and it would have been dark—very dark—and then!

There was quite a buzz of interest among the passengers; the man who had been to sea a great deal advancing, of course, all sorts of wild and impossible theories with regard to the wreck. But though glasses were strained upon her no trace was visible as to her name or nationality.

“By George! I’m blest if it isn’t the Red Derelict herself!” exclaimed the fourth officer, lowering his binoculars. Instantly he became the centre of an inquiring group, chiefly ladies.

“The Red Derelict? What’s that, Mr Ransome?” came the eager query.

“Haven’t you heard of her?” said the other, who was little more than a merry-faced boy. “Why, she’s a sort of Flying Dutchman. She’s been cruising around in these waters some time now, and they say it isn’t lucky to sight her.”

“Luckier than not to sight her—and an hour later we shouldn’t have sighted her—in the dark.”

The rejoinder was significant, and it came from the quiet passenger who had been appealed to for his opinion during the smoke-room discussion. The fourth officer looked not at all pleased at this encroachment on his own privileges as oracle. But he was destined to look less pleased still.

“Mr Ransome,” interrupted the captain’s voice from the bridge overhead, “just send me the second quartermaster here. After that I want you here yourself.” And the captain’s tone was crisp, and his face was grim—and the merry-faced boy looked no longer merry, for he knew a wigging was in store.

“Right, sir,” he answered, starting off with alacrity.

“Powis, d’you hear that blighted young fool blithering away about Red Derelicts and Flying Dutchmen?” said the captain in an undertone to the chief officer. “As if passengers ain’t a skeery enough crowd without filling ’em up with all sorts of sick old sea lies into the bargain. He ought to be sent back to school again and well swished. Well, log the derelict.”

The bugle rang out its second dinner summons to the strains of “The Roast Beef of Old England,” and there was something of a scurry among the passengers, who had ignored the first in their eagerness to watch the derelict. A few, however, remained, gazing after the ghastly eloquence of the deserted hulk, now black and indistinct in the dusk, for in the tropical seas darkness comes down with a rush.

“Wonder if there’s anything in Ransome’s yarn about that beauty,” said one man, shutting his binoculars. “Hang it! I’m not superstitious, but, all the same, I wish we’d never sighted her.”

Chapter Twenty Six.

An Omen.

There was the usual clatter of knives and forks, and chinking of glasses, and scurrying of stewards in the well-lighted saloon, and during dinner the derelict they had just passed took up a large proportion of the conversation. As to this the captain’s table constituted no exception.

“What sort of ship would she have been, Captain Lawes—English?” The speaker was the lady passenger we heard making inquiries as to sea superstitions. She was a bright, rather taking woman of about thirty, making the homeward voyage with one child, a sweetly-pretty little girl, who was made a great pet of among the passengers—indeed, a great deal more than was good for her.

“Can’t say for certain, but am inclined to think so. She must have been a timber ship or she’d hardly have kept afloat for so long.”

“How long do you think she’s been like that?”

“Can’t say either for certain. She may have been months, and, from the look of her, a good few of them. Or she may have been years.”

“And do you think there’s anyone on board?” The captain stared.

“Anyone on board?” he echoed. “Well, not anyone living, of course. But it’s hardly likely anyone would have remained on board. The fact of her being still afloat shows that they had plenty of time when they abandoned her.”

“But if there is? What a ghastly idea it seems, that old ship floating about for ever in those oily seas, a floating coffin for some poor wretches imprisoned within her! Ugh! it’s horrible!”

“You’ve got a lively imagination, Mrs Colville,” said the captain drily. “You’re not a novelist, are you?”

“Oh no; I wish I were. But isn’t a half-sunk ship like that, right in our way, rather dangerous to navigation?”

“That’s exactly the wording of our log-book when we report the occurrence: ‘Dangerous to navigation.’”

“But why don’t you sink her, then, and get her out of the way?”

The captain stole a quick, comical glance at the passenger on his other side.

“In the first place, as the American lady said when she was asked why she didn’t get married: ‘I guess I haven’t time.’ You see, I don’t own this boat, Mrs Colville, nor yet her cargo. What would my owners say if I spent half the night hanging around trying to sink every derelict one passes at sea? We’re behind time as it is, thanks to the barnacles we’ve accumulated. Again, she may be worth salvaging, though I don’t think so.”

“Mr Ransome was saying she had been around here quite a long while. He called her the Red Derelict; said she was a sort of Flying Dutchman, and it was unlucky to sight her.”

“I know he did,” answered the captain grimly, with a complacent recollection of the savage wigging that rash youth had received at his hands. The other passenger struck in:

“I told him it would have been still more unlucky if we hadn’t sighted her till—say, an hour later. She was right bang in our course.”

The captain looked not altogether pleased at this remark, but the speaker was a personage of some consideration on board.

“We keep a look out, you know, Mr Wagram,” he said.

“Of course. But I always notice that the first hour of these tropical nights is the darkest, perhaps because of the suddenness with which it rushes down. Now, a hulk like that, flush with the surface and showing no lights, would it be discernible until too late?”

The captain knew that the chances were twenty to one it wouldn’t, but for expediency’s sake he was not going to own as much. As he had said before, passengers were a skeery crowd, and didn’t want any extra frightening.

“Chances are it would,” he answered, “especially in a smooth sea like this. There’s always a disturbance on the surface as the thing rises and falls, an extra gleam of phosphorus, or something that the lookout man on the forecastle can’t miss.”

“That’s satisfactory,” rejoined the lady. “Do you believe in luck, Mr Wagram?”

“In the sense in which we are going to be unlucky because we’ve seen a dismantled hulk—decidedly not. The idea is too puerile even for discussion.”

“Oh, I wish I were as strong-minded! Do you know, I’m terribly superstitious.”

“Really? Well, I believe many people are,” he answered politely, with a faint dash of banter.

“Mrs Colville was trying to get at me on that very subject this afternoon,” laughed the captain. “She thought all sailor-men were born fetish-men.”

“It’s all very well, no doubt,” she answered. “You may laugh, and all that, but, all the same, I wish we hadn’t seen that Flying Dutchman of yours. I’m sure it’ll bring us ill luck.”

Hardly were the words uttered than a hush fell upon the saloon. To the clatter of knives and forks, the chink of glasses, and the loud hum of voices—at this stage of the dinner at its highest—had succeeded a dead silence. It had seemed compulsory, for it had begun without. The regular, monotonous thrashing of the propeller—which had become almost a necessity, so habitual was it by now—had ceased. The ship lay still upon the smooth, oily waters. The engines had stopped.

Those who have experience of sea voyages will be familiar with the effect produced by such an occurrence. So thoroughly has the churning beat of the propeller become a part of one’s existence that the sudden cessation thereof is enough to awaken the soundest sleeper, and when it befalls during waking hours, and in mid-ocean, why, then, it is not the constitutionally timid alone who can plead guilty to a misgiving, and the conjuring up of a disabled ship rolling helplessly on the swell, and waiting for assistance that may be long enough in coming.

Such was the prevailing state of mind among the passengers of the Baleka at that moment. The timid decided that it was a case of breakdown; those not timid hoped it was not. Tongues began to wag again, but not so briskly, and immediately a steward came in and reported something to the chief engineer, who presided at another table in the saloon. The latter went out.

“What has gone wrong, captain?” said Mrs Colville, not without a dash of anxiety. “Have the engines broken down?”

“I haven’t been down to the engine-room to see yet,” was the bland reply. “McAndrew has just gone out, so we shall know directly.”

“Ah! There now, Mr Wagram, look at that!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t I say that wretched derelict would bring us ill luck? And just as I was saying so we stop.”

“Is that ill luck?” said Wagram, with a smile. He himself had made no comment whatever on the occurrence, but was going on with his dinner as if nothing had happened. “It is no uncommon event at sea for the engines to stop for a few minutes for various intelligible and harmless reasons. Am I right, Captain Lawes?”

“Perfectly.”

“But why don’t they send up to let you know what’s gone wrong, captain?” persisted the lady. “I should have thought that’s the first thing they’d do.”

“The fact that they don’t shows that there’s nothing the matter. McAndrew knows better than to set up a scare among the passengers by sending despatches into the saloon in the middle of dinner.”

And the speaker, like Wagram, continued tranquilly to ply his knife and fork. At heart he felt annoyed at the turn events had taken. He knew—while despising it—the depths of asininity to which the average human understanding will plunge in the matter of “luck” and “ill luck,” and such a coincidence as that which had befallen was sufficient to start some idiot among the passengers getting it into the newspapers on arrival in England. Moreover, he knew, of course, that a merchant captain is by no means the almighty little tin god that most landsmen think him, even while at sea, and that in the eyes of owners he is of fairly small account. And, strange as it may seem to the enlightened mind, the reputation of an “unlucky ship” is easier gained than lost. So when, a minute or two later, a note was brought to him from the engine-room he at once stood up and addressed the saloon.

There was no cause whatever for alarm, he explained. The stoppage was due to something wrong with the machinery, but of a trifling nature, and which was even then nearly repaired. Any minute they might be under way again.

There was clapping of hands at this, and cries of “Hear, hear!” Reassured tongues began to wag again, and the lowered voices and murmurs of misgiving were heard no more. And lo! even before dinner was done, there came a pulsation through the fabric of the ship, gentle at first, then increasing. The beat of the propeller was heard as well as felt. They were on the move again, and now a marked increase of hilarity was significant of reaction after the recent depression of alarm.

“The world is very full of prize idiots, Mr Wagram,” observed the captain when the bulk of the passengers had gone out, including the lady at his right. He had purposely sat on longer than usual.

“Yes. You could scrape together a considerable fool show out of it,” laughed the other, filling his glass. “But between ourselves, now that we are alone, why don’t the naval people send out a gunboat to look for this confounded hulk and sink her? They can’t have so much to do on this West Coast Station, and she must be infernally dangerous to shipping.”

“So she is really. But at sea we have to take a lot of chances—a sight more than you landsmen would dream of, I don’t mind telling you.”

“So I should imagine. Look at this.” From a notecase he extracted a newspaper cutting and handed it to the captain. It was the identical account of the appearance of the derelict which Haldane had read out that happy summer morning at dear old Hilversea, and something of a sigh escaped him at the recollection. “Think it’s the same?”

“‘The Rhodesian... Latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes North, longitude 16 degrees 38 minutes West... about 900 or 1000 tons’” ... went on the captain, skimming the report. “H’m, h’m—it’s rum, certainly, but it might easily be. The description seems to tally exactly. Why, it’s quite a long while ago too. And the latitude isn’t far out with our present position. Yes; it’s rum.”

“But how the deuce can the thing stick about in one place? Seems as if it were bound to drift away, Heaven knows where—perhaps on shore and get broken up.”

“Ever heard of circular currents, Mr Wagram? It’s that that forms the Maelstrom. There are some queer currents hereabouts too, which may account for the thing hanging around here till the crack of doom. I knew she’d been a long time in the water by the look of her. But may I ask, without being curious, what made you keep that cutting—let alone carry it about with you?”

“That’s more than I can tell you, for I hardly know myself. I suppose the circumstance struck me as an out-of-the-way strange one, so when all at once I made up my mind for a voyage or two it came back to my mind, and so I hunted up the number it was in and cut it out.”

“Yes; it’s a rum thing, very,” repeated the captain, glancing again through the newspaper cutting. “‘About eight feet of iron foremast standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it.’ That’s exactly the description of the hooker we’ve just passed, except that there was no rigging trailing from it. But that may have carried away or been knocked off.”

“Well, it’s behind us, at any rate,” said Wagram, rising. “Let’s hope it’ll soon go to the bottom of its own accord. I suppose the thing can hardly keep afloat for ever.”

To his fellow-passengers Wagram was a sealed book, in that all conjectures as to his identity and his circumstance failed. He was very reticent, and this they were at first inclined to resent; but a certain charm of manner and a never-failing courtesy to all quickly dispelled any idea that “side” might be the underlying motive of such reticence. The fact that he had paid extra for the privilege of having a cabin to himself, and that nearly the best on the ship, seemed to throw some light upon his circumstances. Though reticent, however, about himself he could not exactly be called unsociable, for he would spend his evenings in the smoke-room, entering into the current chat over a pipe or so. But who he was, and where from—that nobody knew.

Not much inclined for sociability was he to-night. The incident of the derelict had brought back the past—the old happy past—and again he seemed to live through those bright sunny days at Hilversea, surrounded by all that made life joyous, and, underlying all, the ecstatic sense of possession. But now—! Well, his quest was ended. He had carried it out conscientiously, energetically, and—nothing had come of it.

No; nothing whatever. He had followed out Develin Hunt’s directions to the letter—sparing not himself. He had betaken himself, always with care and absence of ostentation, to the locality in which that worthy had pronounced his half-brother to be, but of the latter he could learn nothing. Once he had lighted on what seemed a clue, but it had ended in smoke. Then, acting upon another, he had taken ship for Australia, and had followed it up, with like result. Once more he had returned to South Africa, to meet again with no reward to his efforts. At last, baffled at every turn, he had concluded he might legitimately abandon the search, and so here we find him again on his way homeward.

His wanderings, although he had spared no expense towards the attainment of his object, had been undertaken on no luxurious lines. He had roughed it in strange wild places, had undergone real hardships, and on occasions real peril, and the experience had hardened him. He was in splendid condition, dark, sunburnt, and as hard as nails. But now had come upon him a great home-sickness, and he was regretting the easy-going lack of foresight which had moved him to take passage on board the Baleka instead of upon one of the more crowded but swifter steamships of the regular mail line.

Pacing the deck in the tropical starlight he recapitulated to himself the whole situation. All had gone below now, but he remained, as his custom was; the swirl of the phosphorescent lines from the stem of the ship; the muffled clank of the engines; the weird, long-drawn cry of the lookout on the forecastle as the bells were struck every half hour—the sole accompaniment to his meditations. It all came back—the weeks of blank desolation following upon his father’s death, and how the voice of conscience, proving stronger than that of his advisers, had spurred him forth upon his fruitless quest. Well, it had proved fruitless, which seemed to point to the certainty that his advisers had been right.

It all came back. The wrench of that uprooting—of tearing himself away from Hilversea, and all it involved; the farewells, too, though he had avoided these as much as possible—in cowardly fashion he now told himself. Haldane’s hearty regrets and expectation to see him soon again; Yvonne’s blue eyes brimming with tears, which the affectionate child was at no pains to conceal; the genuine grief of his humbler friends; the last Mass in the chapel; and the final shutting out of everything behind him as the carriage whirled him off to Bassingham station in the murk of the winter day. Delia Calmour, too, whom he could not but think that he and his father and the indirect influences of their surroundings had been incidental, under Heaven, in guiding into the way of light. Poor child! He knew she would miss him, as he recalled the brave effort she had made to subdue all manifestation of the extent of her regret when he had bidden her good-bye; and he smiled to himself as he remembered certain arrangements which he had made with his solicitors providing that, in the event of anything happening to him, this girl whom he and his father had befriended should never be thrown upon the world to combat that uncompromising enemy with her own unaided resources.

Yes; Hilversea rose up before him now, fair, pleasant, restful in its sunshine as the very plains of heaven. Soon he would be within it again. He had trampled all considerations of self under foot and had followed the voice of conscience—and the result had been “As you were!” Surely he had done enough. Clearly his stewardship was his still, and, Heaven help him, he would endeavour to fulfil it to the utmost of his power, and would teach his son to do the same after him. Gerard? He must have grown quite tall, he reflected. What a splendid-looking fellow he would be.

Pacing up and down, hour after hour, Wagram’s thoughts ran too fast for his mind—and ever the silence, the swirl of the sea, and the streaking fall of a star in the murky tropical zenith. Then came a sudden jar, and a crash that shivered the ship from stem to stern. For a few moments this horrible jarring vibration continued, then the whole fabric gave a convulsive kind of heave, and the tremor ceased. All was still—but the thrash of the propeller was no longer felt, no longer heard. The throbbing of the engines had ceased—again.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

A Sacrifice in Vain.

The solitary watcher realised instinctively that this time something was wrong. So, too, did the residue of his fellow-passengers, for in an incredibly short space of time they came swarming up from below in various stages of dress and undress—mostly the latter—and many and eager were the inquiries heard on every side, and anxiety was depicted on every face; while on others there was a look which spelt downright scare—these, too, by no means exclusively the property of the ornamental sex.

There was some excuse for it; for to find oneself started out of one’s sleep by a jarring shock, to realise that the vessel is no longer moving, to rush up on deck only to find her lying helpless on the black midnight sea, the hurried gait and speech of officers and crew, to the accompaniment of the hoarse roaring of the steam pipes—all this is well calculated to try the nerves of the ordinary passenger; to conjure up visions of collision, or running on a rock, and the swift and sudden foundering with all hands.

“What is it? Are we ashore? Have we collided?” were some of the questions uttered on every side, and from the more fearful: “Are we going to the bottom?”

“Going to the bottom? Of course not,” snapped the chief officer, who had come up in time to catch this last query. “There’s no cause for alarm. The propeller shaft has snapped, and we shall have to lie to and signal for assistance. Soon get it too; we’re in the line of steamers. Look! here goes the first.”

The sharp hiss of a rocket rent the air as the fiery streak shot up high into the heavens, exploding with a reverberating boom. It was followed immediately by another.

“I came to tell you,” he went on, “that the captain’s orders are that all the passengers go below. Wine and refreshments will be served in the saloon immediately.”

“Then we are going to the bottom,” pronounced one fool. Upon him the “chief” turned.

“Grub would be a rum sort of preparation for that, wouldn’t it?” he said scathingly. And there was a laugh, though, truth to tell, somewhat of a hollow one.

In the saloon the grateful popping of corks was already audible, and on the tables the stewards were setting out bottles of champagne and glasses, while others were bringing in the materials for a cold supper. When well through this the ship’s surgeon announced that those who were not dressed had better get into all their clothing, and also collect any valuables they might possess, but that absolutely no luggage of any kind would be allowed. At the sound of the bugle all were to repair on deck. No; there was no occasion for panic of any kind. Ample time would be afforded—“only, of course, they mustn’t make it till next week,” appended the doctor, by way of raising a laugh.

“That means the boats,” pronounced one man decidedly.

“Well, I’m for another go of ‘the boy,’” reaching over for the nearest champagne bottle. “It may be long enough before we get another look in.”

“It’s all that damned derelict,” said another. “I’m not superstitious, but I wish to the Lord we’d never sighted her. I said so this afternoon.”

“This afternoon? Why, it hasn’t come yet,” retorted the first. “Man, you might as well have said to-morrow.”

Again there was a laugh—not much of a one—but the more they could laugh the better.

“Mr Wagram, I am dreadfully frightened,” said Mrs Colville, to whose wants he had been attending. “Is there really much danger, do you think?”

“No. There’s plenty of boat room—that’s where we score off the overcrowded mail steamer. Why, it’ll be quite an adventure to look back upon after we are picked up. Now, I think you had better collect whatever you may want to take—valuables, papers, anything of that kind. And, it’s time to dress the child.”

“Oh, that won’t take a minute. I’ve let her sleep as long as possible. For the rest, I’ve hardly anything worth collecting. But you? You haven’t been to bed, have you?”

“No; I was doing my usual midnight tramp on deck when the smash came. Like yourself, I’ve nothing much to collect either.”

She stole a look at him, and it was one of admiration—evoked not only by the tall, straight form and dark, refined, pensive face. His consummate coolness under the stress was what appealed to her now. Not one among the others but had shown some slight sign of flurry, or at any rate excitement beyond the ordinary. This one had not. Had they been planning a trip on shore at some port of call his tone and demeanour could hardly have been more even, more thoroughly composed.

“Are you a fatalist, Mr Wagram?” she said. “You treat all this as a matter of course.”

“I am no sort of ‘ist,’” he answered, with a smile. “Well—what?”

“Great heavens! I was forgetting,” she said. “We won’t be able to land anywhere. The captain told me if we were to go ashore anywhere off here we’d very likely be eaten—by savages. He was telling me only this afternoon. Good heavens! what is to become of us?”

“The quarter you have just invoked twice will take care of that—never fear. Now go and waken Lily. I’ll wait for you here.”

Hardly had she left him than the bugle rang out. Its notes, almost like the trump of doom to some of the more frightened, came pealing down the companion-way, and immediately the saloon was filled with a scuffling crowd making for the upper air. Now more distant, in different quarters of the ship, its blast sounded again and again. Still Wagram sat motionless in his chair.

“Hallo! ain’t you going up?” cried one of the last, thus seeing him. “Man, but the bugle’s gone again and again.”

“I know it has,” said Wagram calmly, finishing off his glass; “I’m waiting for Mrs Colville.”

The other went his way without another word. Wagram, thinking it about time to hurry up his protégé, started in the direction of her cabin, and as he did so a pealing shriek of utter and complete despair brought his pulses to a momentary standstill.

The while, on deck, the more or less scared passengers were quickly lined up in rows—the women and children apart. They, for their part, noticed two things: that the surface of the sea was much nearer than it had been the last time they had stood here—in fact, appallingly near; and that beside each boat stood its crew, just as they had seen them at ordinary Saturday afternoon fire drill. A thick, sickly murk had settled overhead, shutting out the stars—and by the glare of the lanterns it might be seen that the ship was very low down in the stern indeed. The roaring of the steam had now ceased, and the great funnels towered above, white and ghostly. And now what had actually happened began to be whispered around. The propeller rod had snapped, and in snapping had fallen through the keel, ripping away plates, and tearing open a tremendous leak, through which the water had rushed with alarming rapidity. Then it was found that the watertight bulkheads were of no use. The doors had somehow got jammed, and would not close. During all the time that the coolness and forethought of the captain and officers had utilised by sending the passengers below for some final refreshment the ship had been slowly settling.

The expedient had been a good one. To that degree invigorated, the passengers, lined up there, were less susceptible to panic, and the work of loading the boats and lowering went on with clockwork regularity and order.

That shriek had the effect upon Wagram of the lash on a racehorse. He sprang in the direction whence it proceeded. Mrs Colville’s cabin was at the end of a long passage out of which other cabins opened, and now he found her standing in the doorway of hers with an awful look upon her ashy face.

“Lily. My little one. She’s gone!” she screamed at sight of him.

“Gone?”

“Yes. She isn’t here. Oh, God! Oh, God! Where is she?”

“Keep cool. We’ll find her,” urged Wagram. “She may be on deck. Go up there and see. I’ll search here meanwhile.”

But the frantic woman refused. She dashed into each cabin along the passage, searching everywhere, screaming aloud the little one’s name.

“Go up—go up,” repeated Wagram. “I’ll bring her to you if she’s below, but she can’t be.”

The noise above—the trampling and the hauling—increased. The lowering of the boats had already begun.

“I won’t,” she screamed. “Oh, my Lily—my little one! Where are you? Oh, God—where are you?”

She turned to dash along the passage. As she did so the ship gave a sudden lurch, flinging open a cabin door with some violence. It came in full contact with the forehead of the frenzied woman, and sent her stunned into Wagram’s arms.

“Better so,” he said to himself as he lifted her.

The last boat was lowered and ready—in the settling state of the ship, not far below her taffrail. As she lay alongside a man rushed up from the companion-way bearing a limp, unconscious figure.

“It’s Mrs Colville,” said Wagram quickly as he handed over his burden. “Her child’s lost below; I’m going to look for it.”

“Into the boat with you, sir,” ordered the captain decisively. “Not a moment to lose.”

But Wagram’s answer was to make a dart for the companion-way. He disappeared within it.

“Shove off!” cried the captain. “I’m not going to sacrifice a lot of lives for that of one splendid fool. Shove off!”

“Ay, ay, sir.” And at the words, with sudden and cat-like rapidity, two of the boat’s crew sprang upon the captain, who was standing at the rail, and in a trice he was tumbled into the boat, and still securely held while quick, long pulling strokes increased her distance from the sinking ship.

“No, you don’t, sir,” said the men, restraining with difficulty their commander’s furious struggles. “The old hooker can go down without you for once. Get back to her? No, you don’t. For shame, sir. You’ve got a missis and kiddies waiting at Southampton, remember.”

The captain fumed and swore, and called them every kind of damned mutineer, and worse—in fact, a great deal worse—so much worse that they had to remind him respectfully that the boats containing the women and children must be within easy earshot. Why should he go down with his ship, they pointed out to him, instead of remaining above water to command another? Not the last man to leave her did he say? Well, that couldn’t be helped—if a passenger were such a lunatic as to go below just as she was taking her last plunge.

There was no bombast about Captain Lawes’ intention. While there was a man on board he would not have left her, and in this case he would not have, even though that man, being a passenger, had ignored his authority. But his crew had taken the matter into their own hands.

The steamy sea murk was thickening, and came rolling in from seaward in damp, hot miasmatic puffs. But the settling hull of the Baleka was still discernible with tolerable plainness. To her many a hail was sent but—front her, to their straining ears, none was returned.

“I think, sir,” said young Ransome, the fourth officer, slyly, “that I didn’t quite deserve all you—well, all I got for saying that infernal Red Derelict was unlucky to sight.”

“You damned, impudent, mutinous young dog!” growled the exasperated and captive skipper. “Shut your blasted head. As it is, I’ll log you for mutiny and insubordination and general incompetence. I’ll bust you, out of this service at any rate. See if I don’t, my man.”

The fourth grinned to himself, and said nothing. He was not greatly concerned. He knew his skipper well enough, you see.

“She’s goin’! There she goes!” sang out one of the men.

All eyes were bent on the ship. Her row of lights gave a great heave up, then rapidly disappeared. A heavy, booming cavernous plunge, and then a great volume of white water shot upward in the dimness.

The Baleka had disappeared; but the lives of those on board her were saved so far—all but one.

All but one, we repeat, for the other life which that one had been sacrificed to save was safe too, for at that moment the missing child was being transferred from the boat into which it had been handed in the scurry to the one which contained its still unconscious mother.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

The Rusted Pistol.

Down—down into the far depths, the weight of a world of water pressing ever down; suffocation, the bursting of myriad stars in a black, roaring sky; then upward, as though hurled by some giant catapult—and—air once more!

Wagram found himself instinctively battling for life amid the tumultuous eddyings that met and swirled above the spot where the hapless Baleka had taken her last plunge.

It was dark—darker than it had been, for the sea mist had deepened, shutting out the stars, shutting out everything around, shutting out in turn the sight of an exhausted man battling for life with the whole immensity of a vast ocean, keeping afloat by mere mechanical instinctive effort.

It seemed ages since he was sucked down by the sinking ship; in reality, it was hardly a minute. Providentially he had returned on deck before the last plunge, and, seeing that it was now or never, had leaped into the water, and struck out for all he knew how. Thus he had not come within the inner vortex, and so had risen to the surface in due course. He had refrained from shouting when he took his leap, lest one of the boats should return to his rescue and be sucked under herself.

Now he lifted up his voice, but the result was a hoarse whisper. Semi-suffocation, sea water, and exhaustion had done their work, and he was speechless. The boats would certainly lie around in the faint, forlorn hope that he might have got clear of the wreck. One hail might reach them, yet he was speechless. Aid was at hand—yet, O God! he must drown like a dog in the midst of the black, oily, midnight sea.

Then he felt contact with something, and instinctively he grasped it. It was a deck-chair, a large, closely-woven wicker chair; and, though it would not support his weight, at any rate it would serve to lighten it, to ease the strain upon his sole unaided efforts. He looked around for more substantial wreckage, but the mist and the darkness combined rendered it impossible to have descried even a boat, had such been within a few yards of him. But even for this miserable support he felt thankful.

Yet who may imagine the horror of those awful hours to the waif floating there in the silent, midnight sea—the solitude, the hopelessness, the consciousness that every hour was but prolonging his agony? The tropical water was warm, or numbness would have supervened, and claimed its victim long before the day should dawn upon the face of the deep; and, realising this too, again he felt thankful.

But now came the terror of another thought. The tropical waters, if warm, abounded in sharks. The unutterable horror of it! Here he was as completely at the mercy of the ravenous monsters as a worm thrown into a stream is at the mercy of the first fish that comes along. Death was one thing—such a loathsome and agonising form of it as this was another. Against it—in spite of his faith, which was great—all that was human in the man cried out in dread and recoil.

So the dark hours wore on, and as they did so a merciful lethargy came upon his mind and imaginings; and, with his frail support, but the smallest and most mechanical of efforts sufficed to keep him afloat on the salt, buoyant surface of the tropical sea.

Day dawned—yet what hope did it bring? Soon the fire rays of a furious tropical sun would beat down upon his unprotected head, burning his brain into molten pitch. With the dawning the mist had thinned, and though it still lay in hot, steamy folds yet a greater area of the surface was visible. And now to the waif was vouchsafed the first gleam of a great hope. Athwart the shadowy dimness an object was visible—an object long, low, and substantial. A ship!

Again he essayed his voice. This time his efforts were able to compass a feeble raucous shout. Help at last! Rescue! Oh, he would make them hear this time.

The sight sent new life through him. Mustering all his strength he struck out, yet not abandoning his frail support, ever with hopeful gaze strained upon that blessed ark of refuge—and then—and then—

The mist curtain rolled back farther, and it was as though some demon had been mocking him. There lay the ship, but she was nigh flush with the surface as she lay log-like upon the water, still and lifeless. Two jagged stumps of masts arose from her, and tattered fragments of rusty ratlines scraped her rusty sides. The unutterable stillness of her was the unearthly eloquent silence of a dead ship upon a dead sea. It was the Red Derelict again.

How had they come together once more? But a few hours ago he and others had gazed with curiosity upon this dead hulk from the deck of the bounding powerful steamship pulsating with life as she swept past. Now the live steamship was gone for ever to the utmost extremity of the far depths; but the dead hulk rode on, riding, as it were, throughout eternity upon a dead sea.

For the first few moments of this revelation the revulsion of feeling was so great, so overwhelming to the despairing waif, that he was tempted to cast away his frail support, and, abandoning all further effort, let himself sink for ever. One brief struggle, then rest—at least, so he trusted, so he ventured to hope. But to that some mysteriously conscious voice of good counsel seemed to reply that the gift of life was not to be voluntarily relinquished even then, that he had been brought back from the very depths of the sea, that a means of support, frail though it was, had been literally thrust into his hand, and now here was an even more substantial form of temporary safety. He remembered, too, how this wreck had been drifting for years, and was occasionally sighted by passing vessels; who could tell but what it might be the means of safety for himself, desperate and, humanly speaking, hopeless, as his plight now was? He decided that he would get on board the derelict; and no sooner had he come to this decision than he saw that the sooner he should carry it into effect the better, and that for reasons very weighty, very imminent indeed.