I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of
my sudden and more strange return.
O limèd soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged.
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.--_Hamlet._
|QUITE three hours had passed before Colonel Gerald was able to return
to the hotel. The stranger was sitting in the coffee-room with a tumbler
and a square bottle of cognac in front of him as the colonel entered.
“Ah, General,” cried the stranger, “you are come. I was sorry I said
two hours, you know, because, firstly, I might have known that at the
admiral's quarters the young lady would get as many doses as would make
her fancy something was the matter with her; and, secondly, because I
didn't think that they would take three hours to dry a suit of tweed
like this. You see it, General; this blooming suit is a proof of the low
state of morality that exists in this colony. The man I bought it from
took an oath that it wouldn't shrink, and yet, just look at it. It's a
wicked world this we live in, General. I went to bed while the suit
was being dried, and I believe they kept the fire low so that they may
charge me with the bed. And how is the young lady?”
“I am happy to say that she has quite recovered from the effects of
her exhaustion and her wetting,” said Colonel Gerald. “Had you not been
near, and had you not had that brave heart you showed, my daughter
would have been lost. But I need not say anything to you--you know how I
feel.”
“We may take it for granted,” said the man.
“Nothing that either of us could say would make it plainer, at any rate.
You don't live in this city, General?”
“No, I live near Cape Town, where I am now returning with my daughter,”
said Colonel Gerald.
“That's queer,” said the man. “Here am I too not living here and just
waiting to get the post-cart to bring me to Cape Town.”
“I need scarcely say that I should be delighted if you would accept a
seat with me,” remarked the colonel.
“Don't say that if there's not a seat to spare, General.”
“But, my dear sir, we have two seats to spare. Can I tell my man to put
your portmanteau in?”
“Yes, if he can find it,” laughed the stranger. “Fact is, General, I
haven't any property here except this tweed suit two sizes too small for
me now. But these trousers have got pockets, and the pockets hold a good
many sovereigns without bursting. I mean to set up a portmanteau in Cape
Town. Yes, I'll take a seat with you so far.”
The stranger was scarcely the sort of man Colonel Gerald would have
chosen to accompany him under ordinary circumstances, but now he felt
towards the rough man who had saved the life of his daughter as he would
towards a brother.
The wagonette drove round to the commodore's house for Daireen, and the
stranger expressed very frankly the happiness he felt at finding her
nothing the worse for her accident.
And indeed she did not seem to have suffered greatly; she was a
little paler, and the commodore's people insisted on wrapping her up
elaborately.
“It was so very foolish of me,” she said to the stranger, when they
had passed out of Simon's Town and were going rapidly along the road to
Wynberg. “It was so very foolish indeed to sit down upon that rock and
forget all about the tide. I must have been there an hour.”
“Ah, miss,” said the man, “I'll take my oath it wasn't of your pa you
were thinking all that time. Ah, these young fellows have a lot to
answer for.”
This was not very subtle humour, Colonel Gerald felt; he found himself
wishing that his daughter had owed her life to a more refined man; but
on the whole he was just as glad that a man of sensitiveness had not
been in the place of this coarse stranger upon that beach a few hours
before.
“I don't think I am wrong in believing that you have travelled a good
deal,” said Colonel Gerald, in some anxiety lest the stranger might
pursue his course of humorous banter.
“Travelled?” said the stranger. “Perhaps I have. Yes, sir, I have
travelled, not excursionised. I've knocked about God's footstool since
I was a boy, and yet it seems to me that I'm only beginning my travels.
I've been----”
And the stranger continued telling of where he had been until the oak
avenue at Mowbray was reached. He talked very freshly and frankly of
every place both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The account
of his travels was very interesting, though perhaps to the colonel's
servant it was the most entertaining.
“I have taken it for granted that you have no engagement in Cape Town,”
said Colonel Gerald as he turned the horses down the avenue. “We shall
be dining in a short time, and I hope you will join us.”
“I don't want to intrude, General,” said the man. “But I allow that
I could dine heartily without going much farther. As for having an
appointment in Cape Town--I don't know a single soul in the colony--not
a soul, sir--unless--why, hang it all, who's that standing on the walk
in front of us?--I'm a liar, General; I do know one man in the colony;
there he stands, for if that isn't Oswin Markham I'll eat him with
relish.”
“It is indeed Markham,” said Colonel Gerald. “And you know him?”
“Know him?” the stranger laughed. “Know him?” Then as the wagonette
pulled up beside where Markham was standing in front of the house, the
stranger leapt down, saying, as he clapped Oswin on the shoulder, “The
General asks me if I know you, old boy; answer for me, will you?”
But Oswin Markham was staring blankly from the man to Daireen and her
father.
“You told me you were going to New York,” he said at last.
“And so I was when you packed me aboard the _Virginia_ brig so neatly
at Natal, but the _Virginia_ brig put into Simon's Bay and cut her cable
one night, leaving me ashore. It's Providence, Oswin--Providence.”
Oswin had allowed his hand to be taken by the man, who was the same that
had spent the night with him in the hotel at Pietermaritzburg. Then he
turned as if from a fit of abstraction, to Daireen and the colonel.
“I beg your pardon a thousand times,” he said. “But this meeting with
Mr. Despard has quite startled me.”
“Mr. Despard,” said the colonel, “I must ever look on as one of my best
friends, though we met to-day for the first time. I owe him a debt that
I can never repay--my daughter's life.”
Oswin turned and grasped the hand of the man whom he had called Mr.
Despard, before they entered the house together.
Daireen went in just before Markham; they had not yet exchanged a
sentence, but when her father and Despard had entered one of the rooms,
she turned, saying:
“A month--a month yesterday.”
“More,” he answered; “it must be more.”
The girl laughed low as she went on to her room. But when she found
herself apart from every one, she did not laugh. She had her own
preservation from death to reflect upon, but it occupied her mind less
than the thought that came to her shaping itself into the words, “He has
returned.”
The man of whom she was thinking was standing pale and silent in a room
where much conversation was floating, for Mr. Harwood had driven out
with Markham from Cape Town, and he had a good deal to say on the Zulu
question, which was beginning to be no question. The Macnamara had also
come to pass the evening with Colonel Gerald, and he was not silent.
Oswin watched Despard and the hereditary monarch speaking together, and
he saw them shake hands. Harwood was in close conversation with Colonel
Gerald, but he was not so utterly absorbed in his subject but that he
could notice how Markham's eyes were fixed upon the stranger. The terms
of a new problem were suggesting themselves to Mr. Harwood.
Then Daireen entered the room, and greeted Mr. Harwood courteously--much
too courteously for his heart's desire. He did not feel so happy as he
should have done, when she laughed pleasantly and reminded him of her
prophecy as to his safe return. He felt as he had done on that morning
when he had said good-bye to her: his time had not yet come. But what
was delaying that hour he yearned for? She was now standing beside
Markham, looking up to his face as she spoke to him. She was not smiling
at him. What could these things mean? Harwood asked himself--Lottie
Vincent's spiteful remark with reference to Daireen at the lunch that
had taken place on the hillside in his absence--Oswin's remark about not
being strong enough to leave the associations of Cape Town--this quiet
meeting without smiles or any of the conventionalities of ordinary
acquaintance--what did all these mean? Mr. Harwood felt that he had at
last got before him the terms of a question the working out of which was
more interesting to him than any other that could be propounded. And
he knew also that this man Despard was an important auxiliary to its
satisfactory solution.
“Dove of Glenmara, let me look upon your sweet face again, and say that
you are not hurt,” cried The Macnamara, taking the girl by both her
hands and looking into her face. “Thank God you are left to be the pride
of the old country. We are not here to weep over this new sorrow. What
would life be worth to us if anything had happened to the pulse of our
hearts? Glenmara would be desolate and Slieve Docas would sit in ashes.”
The Macnamara pressed his lips to the girl's forehead as a condescending
monarch embraces a favoured subject.
“Bravo, King! you'd make a fortune with that sort of sentiment on the
boards; you would, by heavens!” said Mr. Despard with an unmodulated
laugh.
The Macnamara seemed to take this testimony as a compliment, for he
smiled, though the remark did not appear to strike any one else as being
imbued with humour. Harwood looked at the man curiously; but Markham was
gazing in another direction without any expression upon his face.
In the course of the evening the Bishop of the Calapash Islands dropped
in. His lordship had taken a house in the neighbourhood for so long as
he would be remaining in the colony; and since he had had that interview
with Mrs. Crawford, his visits to his old friend Colonel Gerald were
numerous and unconventional. He, too, smiled upon Dairecn in his very
pleasantest manner, and after hearing from the colonel--who felt
perhaps that some little explanation of the stranger's presence might
be necessary--of Daireen's accident, the bishop spoke a few words to Mr.
Despard and shook hands with him--an honour which Mr. Despard sustained
without emotion.
In spite of these civilities, however, this evening was unlike any that
the colonel's friends had spent at the cottage. The bishop only remained
for about an hour, and Harwood and Markham soon afterwards took their
departure.
“I'll take a seat with you, Oswin, my boy,” said Despard. “We'll be at
the same hotel in Cape Town, and we may as well all go together.”
And they did all go together.
“Fine fellow, the colonel, isn't he?” remarked Despard, before they had
got well out of the avenue. “I called him general on chance when I
saw him for the first time to-day--you're never astray in beginning at
general and working your way down, with these military nobs. And the
bishop is a fine old boy too--rather too much palm-oil and glycerine
about him, though--too smooth and shiny for my taste. I expect he does
a handsome trade amongst the Salamanders. A smart bishop could make a
fortune there, I know. And then the king--the Irish king as he calls
himself--well, maybe he's the best of the lot.”
There did not seem to be anything in Mr. Despard's opening speech
that required an answer. There was a considerable pause before Harwood
remarked quietly: “By the way, Mr. Despard, I think I saw you some time
ago. I have a good recollection for faces.”
“Did you?” said Despard. “Where was it? At 'Frisco or Fiji? South
Carolina or South Australia?”
“I am not recalling the possibilities of such faraway memories,” said
Harwood. “But if I don't mistake, you were the person in the audience at
Pietermaritzburg who made some remark complimentary to Markham.”
The man laughed. “You are right, mister. I only wonder I didn't shout
out something before, for I never was so taken aback as when I saw him
come out as that Prince. A shabby trick it was you played on me the next
morning, Oswin--I say it was infernally shabby. You know what he did,
mister: when I had got to the outside of more than one bottle of Moët,
and so wasn't very clear-headed, he packed me into one of the carts,
drove me to Durban before daylight, and sent me aboard the _Virginia_
brig that I had meant to leave. That wasn't like friendship, was it?”
But upon this delicate question Mr. Harwood did not think it prudent to
deliver an opinion. Markham himself was mute, yet this did not seem to
have a depressing effect upon Mr. Despard. He gave a _résumé_ of
the most important events in the voyage of the _Virginia_ brig, and
described very graphically how he had unfortunately become insensible
to the fact that the vessel was leaving Simon's Bay on the previous
morning; so that when he awoke, the _Virginia_ brig was on her way to
New York city, while he was on a sofa in the hotel surrounded by empty
bottles.
When Markham was alone with this man in a room at the hotel at Cape
Town, Despard became even more talkative.
“By heavens, Oswin,” he said, “you have changed your company a bit since
you were amongst us; generals, bishops, and kings--kings, by Jingo--seem
to be your chums here. Well, don't you think that I don't believe you to
be right. You were never of our sort in Australia--we all felt you to be
above us, and treated you so--making a pigeon of you now and again, but
never looking on ourselves as your equal. By heavens, I think now that I
have got in with these people and seem to get on so well with them, I'll
turn over a new leaf.”
“Do you mean to stay here longer than this week?” asked Oswin.
“This week? I'll not leave for another month--another six months, maybe.
I've money, my boy, and--suppose we have something to drink--something
that will sparkle?”
“I don't mean to drink anything,” Oswin replied.
“You must have something,” Despard insisted. “You must admit that though
the colonel is a glorious old boy, he didn't do the hospitable in the
liquid way. But I'll keep in with the lot of them. I'll go out to see
the colonel and his pretty daughter now and again. Ah, by George, that
pretty daughter seems to have played the mischief with some of the young
fellows about here. 'Sir,' says the king of Ireland to me, 'I fale more
than I can till ye: the swate girl ye saved is to be me sonn's broide.'
This looked well enough for the king, and we got very great friends, as
you saw. But then the bishop comes up to me and, says he, 'Sir, allow me
to shake you by the hand. You do not know how I feel towards that young
lady who owes her life to your bravery.' I looked at him seriously:
'Bishop,' said I, 'I can't encourage this sort of thing. You might be
her father.' Well, my boy, you never saw anything so flustered as that
bishop became; it was more than a minute before he could tell me that it
was his son who had the tender heart about the girl. That bishop didn't
ask me to dine with him; though the king did, and I'm going out to him
to-morrow evening.”
“You are going to him?” said Markham.
“To be sure I am. He agreed with me about the colonel's hospitality in
the drink way. 'You'll find it different in my house,' said the king;
and I think you know, Oswin, that the king and me have one point in
common.”
“Good-night,” said Markham, going to the door. “No, I told you I did not
mean to drink anything.”
He left Mr. Despard on the sofa smoking the first of a box of cigars he
had just ordered.
“He's changed--that boy is,” said Despard. “He wouldn't have gone out in
that fashion six months ago. But what the deuce has changed him?
that's what I'd like to know. He wants to get me away from here--that's
plain--plain? by George, it's ugly. But here I am settled for a few
months at least if--hang that waiter, is he never going to bring me that
bottle of old Irish?”