In due course the stories of the various expeditions arrived. Each
had done nobly good work, but in the splendour of the achievement
of Amundsen and Scott all else paled to insignificance. National
sorrow for the death of its glorious representative made England
at first almost impatient of listening to the voices of those who
remained alive. Dyke, it seemed, had performed valuable services
to science--he had cleared up a good deal; although behind the
illustrious two, he had crossed their tracks, and he had also
struck into the Japanese and the Germans. But who now could care
about discoveries of mountain ranges, charting of coast-lines, or
correction of surmises as to land and water? The praise he received
in the British press was pitifully small; and one American paper
was cruel enough to say that “Comic relief had been given to the
tragic drama by the antics of elderly Dyke, who had been fooling
around all the time like the clown of the Antarctic Circus.”
He was in England during the summer of 1914; a man forgotten, not
given a single newspaper interview, not once bidden to a public
dinner. The birthday list of honours was announced in advance as
including recognition of all who of late years had served the
state usefully or ornamentally; yet neither in forecasts of those
to be thus honoured nor in the list itself was the name of Dyke
mentioned. He did not say a word to indicate that he even noticed
this neglect. Emmie, however, thinking she understood what he must
necessarily feel, took him away from London into the country, where
he could no longer hear the noise and fuss about recognition and
national gratitude.
They stayed at a farmhouse on Dartmoor, and they were very happy;
but she had wronged him when she supposed that there was now any
bitterness of disappointment in his mind. Alone with him between
the sky and the heather, she became aware of a subtle inward
change. He was never by any chance irritable. He was calmer, more
dignified, whether he spoke of the past or the future.
Yes, as she knew, he had irrevocably lost what had been the
hope of his life. Dimly she began to guess that it was the very
completeness of the loss that, after the first shock, had brought a
new tranquillity of spirit. The game with all its excitements was
over, and he experienced a sensation of enforced rest. But truly
it was something more and better than this. It was perhaps as near
to obliteration of self as the most magnanimous men may reach when
they see good work accomplished and measure the extent of the good
work that still remains to be done.
She did not really understand until she heard him paying tribute
to the memory of Captain Scott; and in her admiration and delight
there went from her then the last twinges of the pain that had been
caused by her own disappointment. This Anthony that she worshipped
and reverenced for every word he said was a nobler and a bigger man
than the Dyke who might have been--the Dyke who might have come
home amid the plaudits of the world, to drop his laurel wreaths at
her feet.
He was lying among the heather, his head resting on his elbow, and
a hand playing with the tiny crimson bells; while Emmie with her
holland parasol made a screen to keep the sun off them both. An
injury to the head inflicted by a tumble on shipboard had left a
slight deafness, and because of it he sometimes unconsciously spoke
louder than was necessary. Now his voice rang out very strong in
the light, pure air; but they were quite alone, and indeed Emmie
would not have minded if all the world had heard what he said.
“You will see it written--it is being written already--that
Scott’s noble gallant heart was broken by his failure to get there
first--that it was the sight of the Norwegian flag flying over the
tent that really killed him, and not the hardship and fatigues.
Emmie, that’s a wicked thing to write. It’s a wicked poor-spirited
thing for anyone to believe. Scott was far, far above all that. You
remember I wrote to him to say I was going?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I never had an answer to my letter. I’m sure he sent me an
answer, only it missed me. I never got it. Amundsen telegraphed to
him too.”
“Did Mr. Amundsen telegraph to him?” said Emmie, flushing. “I was
not aware of it. I fear I--”
“Scott’s answer would have been the same to both of us. I know it
as surely as if I had heard him say it or had read it in his hand.
Scott would have said, ‘You or I or the other fellow, what does
it matter, so that the thing is done?’ I am so sure that, when I
was rather down in the dumps about myself, I took it as a message
from the dead, and it steadied me, Emmie--it steadied me at once.
As soon as I can, I shall go back there to carry on the work. I
consider it a sacred duty that we Englishmen owe to his memory;
and while there’s a kick left in me I’ll be true to it. If I can’t
get anyone to trust me with the command, I’m ready to serve under
anybody else--any Englishman--as second in command, if they think
me good enough;--as third mate, or cook, if that’s the best job
they think I’m worth.”
* * * * *
For some reason or other he was going to North China when the
outbreak of war stopped him. The four-years agony had begun. He
served first as a sailor, then as a soldier; and it may be said at
once that Emmie was never less anxious about him than at this time,
for, although the war of course had its risks, they seemed so much
smaller than those of his ordinary life.
But she had anxieties of another kind--about money. Fortunately,
with exploration at a standstill, she was given a breathing space;
in fact, she was in such a mess financially that she could not
anyhow have assisted the good cause by secret donations. For some
while she had been gambling. There was no other word for it--and
her very respectable stockbrokers used the word freely.
“My dear Miss Verinder,” said Mr. Burnett, the stockbroker. “I must
really warn you against this sort of thing. It is not investment at
all; it is speculation. It is sheer gambling.”
Ignoring his advice, she bought some oil shares and lost her money.
She had been impelled to make this venture by a hint concerning the
future of oil that had fallen casually from the lips of Anthony.
Another philosophic reflection of his led her into copper; and this
commodity also played her false.
“What did I tell you?” said Mr. Burnett. “Why _will_ you jeopardise
your position in this manner. It isn’t as if you were not well-off.”
Miss Verinder demurely replied that, although originally well-off,
her expenses had increased, and for certain reasons she would be
pleased to add to her income.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried Mr. Burnett, almost writhing in his
altruistic despair. “How often have I heard people like you
say exactly what you have just said! In this very room, Miss
Verinder--clients who really ought to know better”; and he gave
her a severe little lecture on her recent speech, which, he said,
was absolutely typical in the foolishness of its underlying ideas.
Widows and spinsters, living out of the world, knowing nothing of
business, with no man to control them, invariably talk in that
silly manner before they fall into the most frightful pitfalls.
But this incorrigible spinster went on with her bad practices,
buying this and that queer thing, and once, to the astonishment
and annoyance of Mr. Burnett, securing a little profit. That made
her worse than ever, and she soon went right down all among the
pitfalls.
“Now what do you intend?” said the stockbroker, speaking very
gravely of the catastrophe. “Are you going on, or are you going to
stop?”
“I scarcely know how to answer,” said Emmie, after a silence. “I
have dropped so much that it almost seems as if I couldn’t _afford_
to stop.”
Mr. Burnett writhed despairingly. Then nodding his head, and
pointed his finger at her, he said, “Miss Verinder, may I tell you
a story?”
“Oh, please do,” said Emmie. “I should be so glad if you would.”
“A client of ours was bitten with this mania--for mania it is;
although, mind you, there was more excuse for her, because it
was in peace-time, and not when the whole world has gone upside
down and from day to day one cannot make the wildest guess as to
what the value of anything will be to-morrow. She was not only a
client but a relative--my own cousin--Adela Burnett--so I knew
all her circumstances. She too was an old--Suffice it to say that
she was the unmarried daughter of my uncle John, who had left
her quite a good little property. Really a jolly little place in
Sussex--perhaps three hundred acres, not more--and I don’t know
how many feet above the sea--_The Mount_, they called it--not that
the name matters. But there she was--don’t you see?--surrounded
with comfort--quite able to play the lady bountiful in a small
way--respected by everybody. The first doubtful order she brought
to me--the very first, Miss Verinder”--and he shook his finger
impressively--“I said, ‘Adela, stop it.’ But did she listen to me?
No. It was nothing to her that my firm is one of the oldest in the
City of London and that her own cousin is its senior partner. She
would sooner act on the advice of the local doctor, or the curate,
or the wife of the master of hounds, than listen to anything our
firm could tell her. Well, I warned her for the second time. And
what do you think she did? What, Miss Verinder, do you think she
did?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Miss Verinder, feebly.
“She removed her business to another firm.”
“Oh, what a shame!” said Emmie, with sympathetic indignation. “Oh,
I think that was mean of her. I promise never to do anything like
that.”
Mr. Burnett writhed again. It seemed that Miss Verinder was missing
the whole point of the story. As he hastened to explain, it was
not the loss of his commission but the ruin of his cousin that he
deplored.
“Yes, she ruined herself. And where is she now? Where, Miss
Verinder, is she now?”
“Where is she, Mr. Burnett?”
“Living in one room--in a wretched road not far from Clapham
Common. Pigging it in one single room--subsisting as best she may
on a voluntary allowance made to her by--her blood relations”; and
for a moment Mr. Burnett looked modest, as though imploring that no
compliments should be paid with regard to the generosity of Adela’s
family. Then he became more impressive than ever. “To this she has
reduced herself by Stock Exchange gambling. Think of it. Here you
have a delicately nurtured lady, no longer young, accustomed to be
waited on by a highly-trained domestic staff, now cooking her own
meals in a bed-sitting-room. One room, Miss Verinder. Just think of
it.”
Miss Verinder thought of it. The accommodation would be hopelessly
inadequate in her case. Three rooms was the very least she could do
with--one for herself, one for Louisa, and a spare one for Tony.
Should she go on or stop? With the cost of life leaping upward,
with a humble invalid pensioner called Aunt Janet still on her
hands, with further obligations to an unhappy prisoner in the
midlands whose expenses had again risen, with an income tax
threatening to absorb half her diminished dividends, she looked
at the future in trepidation and saw it full of difficulties and
dangers. She shook with dread as she thought that the time might
come when she would not be able to maintain this beloved flat just
as it had always been. Oh, for a _coup_, for a stroke of luck that
would bring security! During long hours of feverish wakeful nights
she asked herself that question. Should she go on or stop?
She went on. Perhaps it is impossible to consort for a number
of years with an adventurer and yet not catch the adventurous
spirit; or to force oneself to think boldly in regard to a few
matters without acquiring the habit of bold thinking in regard to
all matters. And her pulses had been stirred by what seemed to
be another hint from her oracle. Although the submarine menace
was as yet nothing more than a menace, Dyke foretold the ultimate
scarcity of shipping; and writing to her from a mine-sweeper in the
Mediterranean, he said he believed that anybody now could make a
certain fortune by getting hold of ships, no matter how old they
were, and selling them again later. “No doubt,” he added, “a lot of
artful dodgers are doing it already.”
A fortnight after receiving this letter, Miss Verinder was
established at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. She had with her as
travelling companion Mr. Cairns, late captain of the _Mercedaria_;
and he and she, passing here and there unnoticed among the war
crowd at the big hotel, were exceedingly busy--so busy, in fact,
that she had no spare moments for reviving sentimental memories of
her only previous visit to this great maritime city.
Cairns, although so much older now than then, still gave one the
same impression of solidity and trustworthiness. He still loved
his joke, but the years had made him a little asthmatic and his
laughter was apt to end in a fit of coughing. Emmie, taking tender
care of him, made him give another turn of the muffler round his
neck as they rowed up the river one morning and met the sharp
winter’s breeze on their faces. In the rowboat with them were two
shabby-looking elderly men that Cairns had produced after searching
among his seafaring and commercial acquaintance. These queer
associates were Mr. Gann, a tall, mournful man, and Mr. Rice, who
was stout and jovial; and by Cairns’s arrangement they and Emmie
had entered into a little partnership for the purpose of buying
an iron steamer named the _Marian II._, this vessel being one of
three that a panic-stricken owner desired to shuffle off his hands.
To-day they were going over her for a last look round, before
taking the plunge.
“I don’t like being mixed up in business with a woman,” Mr. Gann
had said sadly, after his first introduction to Emmie’s pale face,
charming graceful manner, and fashionable London costume. “Always
lands you in more than you bargained for.”
“My experience too,” said Rice.
But Cairns had reassured them, and, as it were, thrown them into
Emmie’s arms.
“My lads,” said Cairns, “don’t you worry about her being a woman.
Take it from me, she has more grit than half a dozen ordinary men.”
Now they were beginning to think that Cairns was right.
Truly she was wonderful, ducking under a wet hawser that caught
one of her partners as the boat approached the wharf alongside
which lay _Marian II._, climbing slippery steps, and crossing a
rickety gangway to get on board. Yet it would have been impossible
to imagine anybody who appeared more incongruous to the business
and the scene. In the bright cold sunshine the ship seemed a
melancholy ruin, full of rust and grime, with the air of forlorn
abandonment proper to a thing created for men’s use but deserted
by all mankind; and Emmie, dressed in her fur coat, with her veil
neatly tied under her narrow chin and her chamois leather gloves
being blackened by each bit of wood or metal that they touched, was
like a lady going over a house that she thinks of taking for a term
of years. As she walked about with Cairns and the caretaker, now on
the rusting decks, now in the gloomy depths, she asked a multitude
of questions, all charmingly unprofessional and yet all full of
common-sense.
“Can the machinery be put in working order? Are there no leaks? Is
she _sound_, Captain Cairns? I think nothing of appearances--no one
cares now;--but is she really watertight and seaworthy?”
“Yes, miss,” said Captain Cairns. “The three ships are all right.
You may take my word for it.”
“But this _is_ the best of the three, isn’t she?”
“Yes, I think she is. She’s the best-looking, anyhow.”
Nothing tired Miss Verinder, and she took nothing for granted.
Although they were only concerned with the _Marian II._, she
insisted on being rowed up the river a little further, to see the
other two steamers that belonged to the same owner. One of these,
the _Osprey_, was out in the stream, black and forbidding, with the
water racing past the faded paint beneath her load-line. The third
one, the _Anemone_, was literally on the mud.
“Is her back broken?” asked Emmie.
“Good Lord, no,” said Cairns. “She’s right enough. Get her
reconditioned, and no one would recognize her.”
Mr. Gann and Mr. Rice were both suffering from the cold, and both
weary of the excursion. At their request the boat was turned and
the party made its way back to Liverpool.
Miss Verinder was more wonderful still at the final meeting with
the timorous owner and his agent. They all sat round a carved oak
table in a luxurious private sitting-room at the hotel; but, as
the manager had not been able to allow them a fire, Miss Verinder
retained her fur wraps and the gentlemen their overcoats. She took
no part in a lengthy struggle with regard to the price they were to
pay. Cairns and the agent grew heated in a contest of praise and
disparagement. Mr. Gann became sadder and more sad. Mr. Rice at
last told Mr. Jones, the owner, that to ask twelve thousand pounds
for a rotten old tub like the _Marian II._ was high-seas piracy;
and Mr. Jones said that unless this word was immediately withdrawn
he would break off the negotiation. To show that he was in earnest,
he pushed back his chair and put on his hat.
“Ladies present, kindly remember,” said Cairns.
“Oh, please don’t mind me,” said Miss Verinder, sweetly. Then
she went and rang an electric bell while the others continued to
wrangle.
A waiter brought, not inopportunely, a tray with sandwiches,
biscuits, whisky, soda water; and, at Miss Verinder’s request, the
gentlemen consented to take light refreshment.
Then she sat at the table again, and smiled deprecatingly at Mr.
Jones.
“Will you allow me to speak quite frankly, Mr. Jones?”
Mr. Jones, with his mouth full of biscuit, signified assent; and
Emmie startled him and her allies by a quiet but entirely damaging
attack upon the _Marian II._ She said that if Mr. Jones was fond of
_Marian II._ and wanted to keep her, there was no more to be said.
But if he really wished to sell the ship, she must confess that the
price he was asking struck her as quite ridiculous. She admitted
that _Marian II._ was the best of the bunch. “Oh, yes, certainly.
As to the other two--” and she gave a little shiver, as if upset
by the mere recollection of their state. One of them, she went on
demurely, was to her mind little better than a derelict, and the
other one gave her an impression of being about to sink at its
moorings.
“Nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Jones.
“Well, that was my impression,” said Emmie. “I don’t profess to
be an expert. But I can assure you, Mr. Jones, we are here to do
business. We _want_ to do business. Can’t we make a deal of it,
anyhow?”
“Not on your terms. I’d sooner go to government. You forget there’s
government always ready to buy.”
“Oh, Mr. Jones!” said Emmie, as if shocked by this pretence. “I
understand that the government officials have inspected your ships
at least a dozen times.”
“They may change their minds.”
“Never. If the government had wanted them they would have taken
them long ago.”
“That’s so,” said Cairns, firmly.
“Nevertheless, Mr. Jones,” said Emmie, resuming a gentle
argumentative tone, “suppose we were to make you a sporting bid for
the three vessels?”
“No, no,” said her partners, astounded; and Mr. Cairns touched her
arm and began to cough. But Miss Verinder quietly went on with it.
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Every day your ships
are deteriorating in value. Now a _firm_ offer, Mr. Jones. _Cash!_
Twenty-seven thousand for the three!”
“No, no.”
Mr. Gann and Mr. Rice both turned upon her; Captain Cairns,
choking, took her by the arm and led her to the recess of the
furthest window. There her partners expostulated with her,
declaring that they could not plunge in this manner. One ship was
all they were good for.
“Very well,” she immediately replied; “then I’ll do the other two
ships on my own.”
“And let us stand or fall on number one?”
“Yes, unless you think better of it. Don’t, please, suppose I’m
trying to squeeze you out. At equal stakes we were to have a third
share, weren’t we? Now divide it into twenty-sevenths. You see how
simple it is, don’t you, Captain Cairns? Instead of one-third each
of these gentlemen will have four and a half twenty-sevenths--or
whatever the correct fraction is. That can easily be settled at
leisure. But, please, let me get back to Mr. Jones now. I want to
strike while the iron’s hot.”
Then she returned to the table, and with a slightly ostentatious
flourish produced a cheque book.
“Now, Mr. Jones, I’m ready to write you a cheque for a ten per
cent. deposit. Is the deal going through?”
The deal went through. Perhaps because of his naturally timid
nature, perhaps because of the obvious reluctance shown by the
lady’s partners, Mr. Jones said “Done.”
“And done,” Emmie echoed brightly.
She seemed mildly excited and no more. As she bowed to the
company and withdrew, she still had that air of a well-preserved
middle-aged lady conducting some little affair of ordinary
well-to-do life--such as taking a furnished house or buying a
motor-car.
“Well, I’m blowed,” said Mr. Rice, when the vendor and his agent
had in turn gone away. “She _is_ a card, and no mistake. But
confound her arithmetic. Here, give me a drop more whisky. I don’t
know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”
“That’s always the outcome, with a woman,” said Mr. Gann sadly.
“Look here,” said old Cairns enthusiastically. “You stick it
through with her. For, take it from me--although I was staggered a
moment--she’s done a big thing, and she’s _right_. It’ll turn up
trumps.” And Mr. Cairns began to laugh and cough at the same time.
“What gets me,” he spluttered, “is the comic side of it. All our
faces, when she said--firm offer! Didn’t I tell you she had grit?
Listen half a minute. As an example--in strict confidence--a thing
she did when she was quite a girl!” And, splutteringly, he narrated
how once when Miss Verinder was travelling with a friend in foreign
parts, they were captured and set upon by bravos; “and just as it
seemed they were going to be down and out, she whips in with a
revolver and--”
At this moment Miss Verinder herself interrupted the narration by
reappearing at the door.
“Captain Cairns, can I have one word with you?”
Outside in the corridor she spoke to him tremulously. She was very
pale, and she betrayed a nervousness and agitation strangely
out of character with the melodramatic heroine of the Captain’s
interrupted tale.
“Oh, Captain Cairns, do you think”--and after hesitating she used a
phrase that on several occasions he had used himself--“do you think
I have bitten off more than I can chew?”
“No,” said Mr. Cairns stoutly. “You’ve done a good morning’s work,
and I, well, I’m proud of you.”
* * * * *
The venture turned up trumps. After three months of painful hope
and fear they sold _Marian II._ and got back all their money.
Then four months later they sold the last ship and wound up the
modest syndicate with a profit of fifty thousand pounds. Meanwhile,
operating alone, Miss Verinder had bought and sold two larger
vessels and thereby gained nearly seventy thousand pounds. Then she
bought ordinary shares in shipping companies, received fabulous
dividends, and got out again. Then, as a last flutter, returning
to an old fancy, she did something really big in oil. And then,
literally and metaphorically, she folded her hands.
Long before this time Mr. Burnett, the stockbroker, had ceased to
talk to her about his cousin Adela, or to lecture her in general
terms on the foolishness of lonely widows and spinsters. He
understood now that in a world which has gone upside down wise saws
and ancient instances are out of place. He hung upon her words, he
treated her with the deference due to an important client; as his
clerks would have said, “he wished he had half her complaint.”
She herself was frightened by her success. In the inevitable
reaction after so much nervous strain and excitement, she felt an
almost superstitious fear of the flood of new capital that was
rolling in upon her. She had dreaded poverty, and now it was as if
some instinct warned her that she might have a greater cause to
dread the consequences of wealth. She told no one anything about
it--no, not even Tony. She guarded all knowledge of it as though
it had been a guilty secret. She flushed and felt ashamed when
affluent Mrs. Bell emitted groans under the war taxation, or when
people spoke with scathing contempt of war profiteers. She longed
for peace.
But the war went on. “Will it ever stop?” wrote Mr. Dyke from
Endells. “It is very cruel to us old people.”
Yes, it was cruel to old people. It shook them, it weakened them,
it killed them. Emmie thought of this--when old Mr. Dyke fell ill
again; and when her mother died. Mrs. Verinder, shrunk to half her
past size, for many years had been an old lady in a Bath chair
gliding slowly along the sea-shore at Brighton with her head a
little on one side; sometimes speaking of Mr. Verinder as though
he was still alive; rather doubtful about the identity of Emmeline
when she visited her, and always prone to confound Margaret Pratt
with Margaret’s eldest daughter. Now she subsided in the chair, and
vanished. Then one day Emmie’s clever solicitor wrote to inform her
that her pensioner, old Mrs. Kent, was no more.
Still the war went on. It had reached that point when one felt and
said that civilization was doomed, that this planet was lapsing
into irremediable chaos, and that the whole universe might crash to
fire and dust. When Emmie read the obituary advertisements in _The
Times_, she felt now that, young or middle-aged or old, the war
spared none. As many people were dying of it here in England as out
there at the front. Only that unfortunate life-sentence prisoner in
the prison called Upperslade Park remained quite undisturbed by the
war, and, as her guardians told Emmie, enjoyed excellent health.
It was unending. Dyke had served in the Mediterranean, in East
Africa, in Mesopotamia; and all the while he had been getting
more and more angry, first because the Germans took such a lot of
beating, and, secondly, because, although they knew themselves
beaten, they wouldn’t own it. “Do you realize,” he wrote now, “that
I am fifty-eight? If it goes on much longer I shall be fit for
nothing but to settle down with my old governor in Devonshire, and
hoe potatoes and carry the muck pail to the pigs. Well, perhaps it
might be the best thing that could happen to me. I should be happy
there if my Emmie was with me.”
Oh, if only that could come true! His Emmie sat dreaming with the
letter in her hand, giving herself to the mental vision that his
words had evoked--the tranquil perfect life down there in the house
that she loved, the unbroken companionship; Anthony satisfied, with
his roving spirit finally at rest; he and she as the squire and the
squire’s lady, being kind to everybody, doing a little good with
her money.
Then she remembered the real Mrs. Anthony Dyke. Even if he
consented to remain in England, that peaceful dual life would be as
impossible as it had always been. And thinking again of all this
money of hers and of the power that money brings, she grew cold and
sad. It was as if already she knew that the money would draw her
irresistibly to a supreme sacrifice.