BALANCING ACCOUNTS
And yet God has not said a word.
One fine morning in June the _Mahanaddy_ steamed with stately
deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers
love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but
there is also pathos--perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle--in
the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
stood ever smoking--smoking--always at the forward starboard corner of
the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only two men on
board knew it--men with no conversational leaks whatever. He had made no
other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few
divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his
manner.
“That man--Jem Agar--is dangerous,” the Doctor had said to the Captain
more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in
such matters.
“Um!” replied the Captain of the _Mahanaddy_. “There is an uncanny calm.”
They were talking about him now as the Captain--his own pilot for
Plymouth and the Channel--walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless
world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez
Canal.
“He has asked me,” the Doctor was saying, “to go ashore with him at
Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of
wringing Seymour Michael's neck.”
“Just as likely as not,” observed the Captain. “It would be a good thing
done, but don't let Agar do it.”
“May I leave the ship at Plymouth?” asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air
of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it
was offered.
“I don't see why you should not,” was the reply. “Everybody goes ashore
there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your
services.”
“I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the
country, and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much,
but I imagine there will be some sort of a _denouement_.”
The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the
anchorage.
“All right,” he said. “Go.”
And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which
made the _Mahanaddy_ one of the safest boats afloat.
Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As
he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and
touched Jem Agar on the arm.
“It's all right,” he said. “I'll go with you.”
Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint
valley of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
Half an hour later they landed.
“You stick by me,” said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form
of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. “I want you to hear
everything.”
This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was
something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his
eyes and drove the blood from his lips.
Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in
greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
Jem shook hands with him.
“I'm all right, thanks,” he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's
inquiry.
“Good business--good business,” exclaimed the General, who seemed
somewhat unnecessarily excited.
“Old Mark Ruthine too!” he went on. “You look as fit as ever. Still
turning your thousands out of the British public--eh!”
“Yes,” said Ruthine, “thank you.”
“Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?” continued Seymour Michael,
looking hurriedly out towards the _Mahanaddy_.
“No,” replied Ruthine, “I leave the ship here.”
The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something
sly and uneasy in his eyes.
Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on
the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom
in his eyes--that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have
looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted,
with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
“Now,” he said eagerly to Jem, “what I thought we might do was to have a
little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If
Ruthine will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our
talking shop.”
Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a
cab.
“Have you not had breakfast?” asked Agar.
“Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That
waiter chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is
worth getting up the night before to see you back, old chap.”
“Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?” asked Agar,
looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which
Seymour Michael could not understand.
“Yes, there is one at nine forty-five.”
“Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want
it.”
“Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer,
and I am your man,” said Michael heartily.
“Make it anything you like,” answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was
beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice,
and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously
exercise.
He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after
paying the boatmen.
“The nine forty-five is the train,” he said to him. “We may as well walk
up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through.”
So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the
slope that leads up to the Hoe.
There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit
of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now
erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the
ships lay at anchor.
“The good old _Mahanaddy_,” he said, “the finest ship I have ever sailed
in.”
Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one
on each side of him.
Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding
since the _Mahanaddy_ came out of the Canal.
“I want to know,” he said, “exactly how things stand with my people at
home.”
He continued to look out over the bay towards the _Mahanaddy_, but Mark
Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
“Yes,” replied the General, “I wanted to talk to you about that. That was
really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second
train.”
“There cannot be much to say,” said Jem Agar rather coldly.
“Well, I wanted to tell you all about it.”
“About what?”
There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice.
General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
“I presume,” he said, “that I am right in taking it for granted that you
have carried out your share of the contract?”
“My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been
kept perfectly.”
“By all concerned?”
“Eh!--yes.”
Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back
over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
“Did you tell them personally, or did you write?” pursued Jem Agar
relentlessly.
“My dear fellow,” replied Michael, pulling out his watch, “it is a long
story, and we must get to the train.”
“No,” replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of “fearful
joy” in Ruthine's soul, “we need not be getting to the train yet, and
there is no reason for it to be a long story.”
Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response
whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that
moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human
nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
“Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you
would tell, out there, that night?” asked Jem.
“I told your brother,” answered the General with dogged indifference.
“Only?”
There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
“I didn't tell him not to tell the others.”
“But you suggested it to him,” put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of
mankind that was his.
“What has it got to do with you, at any rate?” snapped Seymour Michael.
“Nothing,” replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
“You did not tell Dora Glynde?”
General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
“Why?” asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and
the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
“I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single
soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as
sure as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for
half-a-crown.”
“That was _my_ business,” answered Jem coolly. “You promised, you
_swore_, that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother
Arthur. And you didn't do it. Why?”
“I have given you my reasons--it was too dangerous. Besides, what does it
matter? It is all over now.”
“No,” said Jem, “not yet.”
The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound
of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite
deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of
the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
Then Jem Agar spoke.
“I asked Mark Buthine,” he said, “to come ashore with me, because I had
reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have
done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says
you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with
Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it
happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as
best you can.”
A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew
that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as
much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to
the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a
dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient,
this could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at
that moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond
that--something which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical
terror, one of those emotions which seem to attack the body independently
of the soul, a terror striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His
limbs trembled; it was only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched
to prevent them from chattering.
“And,” said Jem Agar, “if I find that any harm has been done--if any one
has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have
ever had in your life.”
Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He
neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we
have said, _de ceux qui s'expliquent_.
“Come,” he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which
would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men
paralysed him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over
again.
“We will hear all that at Stagholme,” said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine
merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not
reading.