A MEDITERRANEAN MYSTERY
A
MEDITERRANEAN
MYSTERY
BY
FRED E. WYNNE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1923
Copyright, 1923, by
FRED. E. WYNNE
_Printed in U. S. A._
_TO_
ANNIE E. JOHNSON
A TRIBUTE TO OLD AND LASTING FRIENDSHIP
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH I ORDER CHAMPAGNE 9
II. THE BRANDY HOLE 29
III. THE BISHOP PROPOSES A TOAST 47
IV. I SAIL IN THE _ASTARTE_ 67
V. WHAT THE LITTLE STEAMER BROUGHT 89
VI. A PLAN TO SAVE JAKOUB 108
VII. I MOUNT A CAMEL 125
VIII. WE ARE CAUGHT IN A KHAMSIN 146
IX. THE DOPE TRADE 168
X. I HANDLE A REVOLVER 184
XI. CAPTAIN WELFARE EXPLAINS 196
XII. A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 211
XIII. CAPTAIN WELFARE KEEPS HIS PROMISE 228
XIV. BLACKMAIL 246
XV. AWAITING DEVELOPMENTS 260
XVI. IN WHICH CAPTAIN WELFARE MAKES A SIGNAL 270
XVII. HOW CAPTAIN WELFARE RETURNED 288
XVIII. HOW JAKOUB WAS NO MORE SEEN 301
XIX. CONCLUSION 310
A MEDITERRANEAN MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH I ORDER CHAMPAGNE
I hate the sight of those terra-cotta envelopes that telegrams come in.
They have often announced ill news to me, and even in the absence of
ill news they bear with them an atmosphere of emergency, suggestions of
sudden action, which is always detestable to me.
Bates stood by while I read the ugly puce form which announced, had I
known it, the opening of the curious chapter in my otherwise quiet life
which I am now trying to recall and to record in its incredible details.
Incredible I mean from my then point of view, for a life and
circumstances more remote from adventure than mine were then, it would
be hard to imagine.
“There is no reply,” I said to Bates, who stood awaiting instructions.
“It’s Mr. Edmund coming for a few nights. Tell Mrs. Rattray he will be
here for dinner, and see that a room is ready.”
“Yes, sir. And if he comes without luggage again?”
A little pang of a kind of jealousy shot through me.
It was two years since I or Bates had seen this ne’er-do-well
brother of mine, a year since I had even heard from him, and yet the
circumstances of his coming without luggage was fresh in this man’s
mind, there was a lightening of his countenance at the mention of his
name, and I knew well that my dinner would be one of unwonted luxury.
“He can wear some of my evening things, and give him pyjamas, and--one
of your own razors, Bates.”
I will not have other people using my razors or my fountain pen.
Edmund had always been an anxiety and an expense to me. He was now the
only incalculable element left in my ordered life. But Bates seemed
to be waiting for something, and it was as though a gleam of Edmund’s
endearing eyes, the crisp curl above his forehead, the flash of his
teeth between merrily curved lips, were faintly reflected from the
expectant look in Bates’s face.
“Oh, and, Bates, you can bring up a bottle of the ’47 port, and decant
it carefully.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else from the cellar?”
“No,” I said. “I suppose there’s whisky and claret in the dining-room.”
“Very well, sir,” said Bates reproachfully as he closed the door.
“No,” I thought. “I’m hanged if I’m going to have champagne up. He’d
only expect it every night, and he hasn’t even written for a year. Now
of course he’s only coming for more money.”
Then I rang the bell and Bates returned with suspicious alacrity.
“You’d better bring up a bottle of the ’93 Pommery,” I said.
It was one of those delightful days in March when there is real
daylight in the late afternoon, with a white gleam in the sky, and a
wind keen enough to make possible the indoor joys of winter.
The aspect of my study in my Sussex vicarage was extraordinarily
peaceful to me. When I looked over the top of my book, as I often did,
I looked into the bright friendly eyes of a fire of mingled coal and
drift-wood. When I turned my face half round to the left, as I also
often did, I looked across the familiar, discreet harmonies of my room,
to a long French window which framed a view of my lawn whose grass was
now smoothing and renewing itself after the winter ruffling, of the red
footpath and the border already gilt with crocuses; of stately trees
beyond my frontier, their bare branches showing the faint pubescence
of early spring. Among these trees were the red tiled roofs of the
village, and beyond it the Channel, eye-grey to-day under the silver
sky, and covered with rushing “white horses” whipped up by the steady
East wind.
There was one long banner of smoke on the horizon, and a few miles from
shore the brown sails of a couple of trawlers going close-hauled to
windward with the flood-tide under them.
All this peacefulness and beauty was, I say, particularly grateful
to me. It was like a gentle accompaniment to the book which I was
reading with no less attention on account of this consciousness of my
surroundings.
I had attended a clerical meeting in the morning and had, I suppose
unwisely, said what I really thought about some of the topics under
discussion.
Now I was re-reading with especial interest the chapter on
“Persecution” in Lecky’s _Rise and Influence of Rationalism in
Europe_. Only a few hours before I had seen among my colleagues
the faces of the persecutor and the heresy-hunter, and I was
undoubtedly heretical. It was difficult to reflect that if all
this had happened but a short time ago, say in the time of my own
great-great-grandfather, these same men would have rejoiced to see my
live body roasted; that even now, given the power and the custom, the
spirit of Calvin and Torquemada was not dead, that it still lit the
eyes of living men who could believe in “Exclusive Salvation.”
After the fret, the prejudice, and the spluttering of modern
theological controversy there was healing for my soul in the calm
intellectual austerity of Lecky.
Such were my preoccupations then. The academic interests of a
scholarly, well-to-do, bachelor parson of forty-five with a hobby for
homing pigeons.
I had just looked at the clock and realised with another glow of
satisfaction that my afternoon tea was almost due, when my man Bates
came in with this disturbing telegram.
This Edmund who was about to burst again into the quiet routine of my
life was my only brother, now practically my only relative, and some
fifteen years younger than myself. At the time of his first appearance
in the world I was old enough to regard the news of his arrival as an
indiscretion on the part of my parents. My father was a younger son
of our old and once-distinguished Irish family. He was one of those
soldiers who are always doing the hard rough work of the Empire and
seeing the other men in the comfortable positions getting the “Honours
and Rewards.” I was born in India, and thanks to my mother’s moderate
fortune had been sent home in childhood to receive an expensive and
perfectly respectable education.
At the time of Edmund’s birth my father was at home, railing at the
Indian Government and the War Office, earning, I fear, the reputation
of a bore with a grievance in the Service Clubs, and certainly blasting
any prospects of a further career he might have had, by his frank and
perfectly just criticism of important persons.
I was at Wellington, destined for Sandhurst and the Army, for in spite
of my father’s atrocious experiences it never occurred to either of us
that the world held any other career for me.
Looking back I don’t think I really had any desire to be a soldier
or knew at all what was implied in it. It just seemed inevitable,
and I suppose I had up to then as much part in shaping my destinies
as most people. I suppose that is how the ranks of the pawn-broking,
cheese-mongering, grave-digging, and other apparently undesirable
callings are kept filled.
But I knew enough to resent quite definitely the halving of my
patrimony with this younger brother, concerning whose intrusion I had
been in no way consulted.
I bitterly resented also the continued illness of my mother after this
event.
During the greater part of my short life, which then seemed so long,
she had been but a memory of infancy, repainted during one long summer
when she had been home, and then her gracious, lovely presence had
utterly outshone even the ideal of memory.
I had for her a boy’s romantic devotion, and her death when the child
was a year old and I almost a man, overwhelmed me with the force of a
man’s passionate grief abrading the exquisitely tender sensorium of a
child.
And then the baby Edmund began to grow like her. From the first his
eyes and mouth were hers. As he learned to speak he spoke with her
voice, and innumerable little gestures reminded me of her. This was my
first solace; and my early, selfish, boyish resentment died down and
warmed into something else, transmuted by grief into the second great
attachment of my adolescence.
Nothing could quite kill this, and I suppose that is why, at
forty-five, I ordered the champagne for him.
Edmund was of course intended for the Navy, and as he grew older it
seemed as if this were Nature’s arrangement as well as the family’s.
There was no mere acquiescence in this case, as in mine.
But all these family dispositions were shattered just about the time I
should have entered Sandhurst.
The whole of my mother’s property consisted of her interest in
certain estates in the Straits Settlements, and by some mysterious
fluctuation of trade these suddenly became almost valueless. Relying
on the stability of this property my father had invested the whole of
his patrimony in an annuity, so that the family might live with more
dignity during his and her lifetime.
With this we still could make ends meet, and even overlap, while he
lived. But at his death there would be only a pittance for Edmund and
myself. It would be utterly impossible for either of us to maintain the
family tradition in the Services.
For a youth in my position it was considered that there was only one
respectable alternative--the Church.
It was agreed by everyone, including myself, that I had not sufficient
brains for the Bar. We were that simple kind of folk that really
believe that a high order of intellect is necessary for success at the
Bar. I am told that this carefully fostered superstition is not yet
quite dead. I was accordingly entered at one of the less expensive
colleges at Oxford, where I followed all the fashions, social, mental
and moral; acquired the usual affectations; had my mind rendered as far
as possible inaccessible to ideas; and otherwise enjoyed the advantages
of what is called a “University Education.”
It was the fashion then for superior persons to be patronisingly
enthusiastic about what they called the “Working Man.” I accordingly
obtained a curacy in an extremely unpleasant industrial district, and
entered Holy Orders without so much as suspecting that I had a mind or
a character of my own.
From the “Working Man” I learned a little about the technique of pigeon
flying and breeding. This information has been invaluable to me ever
since. It has provided me with one of the principal interests in my
life, and even a little very precious distinction, when one of my birds
came home fourth in a great cross-channel event. I also learned that
the “Working Man” has no use whatever for gentlemanly young curates
from Oxford, or their quaint little fistful of prejudices. I had the
good sense to get out of his way as soon as I could and begin my
education.
In the meantime Edmund had developed on rather startling lines. Two
preparatory schools had refused to keep him after a single term. The
first on the grounds that he had “corrupted the entire establishment,”
the second because he was “destitute of the moral faculty.” My father
said the case was much more serious, that “he had not the instincts of
a gentleman.”
My father thrashed him well and hard. When this was over Edmund said,
“I’m afraid, daddy, this hurts you much more than it does me.”
Then my father consulted a doctor who said that “a certain
insensibility to pain was a frequent accompaniment of the criminal
diathesis.” He recommended a low diet and bromides. Edmund promptly
broke out in spots. Thus he got his way, which was to enter the
mercantile marine, as the Navy was debarred by circumstance.
This was grievous to my father’s old-fashioned prejudices, but anything
was better than living with an insoluble problem with whom everyone
fell in love.
The reports received from the training ship went far to reconcile him.
These invariably described Edmund as “obedient and keen.”
I am always glad to reflect that my poor father’s anxiety and
perplexity about this well-beloved child were thus allayed before he
very unexpectedly died, and Edmund and I were left alone as regards
relatives.
For of our cousins of the senior branch in Ireland we knew hardly
anything. They wrote kindly and respectfully about my father, but did
not offer to come to the funeral.
Shortly after this Edmund went to sea as a gentleman apprentice. He
was away some five months and returned “in irons.” I learned that
he had broached cargo in order to obtain extra rum for his mess. He
explained to me that “everybody was in it, and a fellow couldn’t stand
out. I should have been horribly ragged if I had, and it would have
been a damned unsporting thing to do. We drew lots for who was to get
the stuff, and of course it fell to me. Just the damned family luck.
I didn’t want the beastly stuff myself, for the simple reason that I
don’t drink rum--anything else you like, but not rum. It makes your
breath smell beastly.”
I was convinced that his tale was true and felt that on the whole he
had behaved well.
Of course one could not expect the magistrate to take the same view.
This old gentleman enjoyed himself tremendously with such an unusual
text to preach about. However, when he had worked off the last of his
platitudes, he announced that he had decided to give Edmund the benefit
of the First Offender’s Act. He said he was influenced largely by the
fact of the punishment already undergone by the prisoner through his
having come home “in irons.” I believe the poor old thing imagined that
this expression involved actual fetters.
As a matter of fact Edmund’s colleagues and the cook had combined to
ensure his having a fairly comfortable time. He said himself “they
didn’t even get ratty about my having no work.”
So Edmund left the Court not without a stain on his character, and
saddled with certain responsibilities as to reporting to the police
which he described in terms so blasphemous that even to hear him made
me feel unfrocked, like Stevenson’s maiden lady when she overheard the
Jongleurs’ repartee.
Of course Edmund’s indentures were cancelled, and the problem of his
future became to me a very anxious one.
It did not at all worry Edmund. He regarded the world as his oyster.
Shortly before this catastrophe I had been presented to a small
“living” in Warwickshire by one of our distant and grandiose relatives
who had the iniquitous right of advowson. I took Edmund down there in
order that we might “discuss the situation.”
My parlour-maid at once fell in love with him, and he trod on one of
the best pigeons in my modest loft.
I pointed out that our joint income, including my stipend, was likely
to be less than £400 a year.
Edmund said that seemed a good lot for two unmarried blokes.
As his own share was less than £50, I thought this was cool.
“But you can’t stop on here indefinitely doing nothing.”
“No,” he agreed, “not indefinitely. I think there’s just time for a
cigarette before dinner.”
It was impossible to get him to talk seriously about the future. When
I tried I was always whirled away on the wings of his stories of
places he had seen and men he had met. He talked so vividly and had so
fully the artist trick of setting a character before one, in the round
and alive in a sentence, that I once suggested writing as a possible
career. His whole being radiated scorn.
“Quill-driving be damned,” he said. “Even if I knew how to do it, I’m
not the sort of man. I’m the sort of man, at least I shall lead the
sort of life, for other people to write about.”
I was actually, without consulting him, humbling myself to try a
jerk at the strings of the “Family Influence” on his behalf, when he
disappeared.
After three days he wrote:
“DEAR OLD MAN,--I’m back to the sea, so no need to worry. I’ve got
just the chance I wanted, a first-rate sailing-ship wanting another
deck-hand. I made a lucky purchase of a very drunken old sailor-man’s
papers. No questions were asked as they were short of hands, and
I soon convinced them I knew my job. Naturally I have dropped the
family name _pro tem._ and won’t be sporting our coat-of-arms at
present. I’ve sent a line to Scotland Yard to tell them I’ve got a
nice opening in the haberdashery line in the Midlands, and so won’t
be looking them up for a bit. I’ll send you a name and address to
write to as soon as there is any chance of knowing a port of call in
advance. Tell Louisa not to fret too much, and I’ll try to bring you
home a nice parrot instead of the pigeon I damaged. This time I’m
going to be a real good, sensible boy, and get on and all the rest of
it. Honestly, dry land seems to burn the soles of my feet after a few
days.
“Very many thanks to you for all you’ve done. This is bound to be a
long trip, and though I mayn’t see you again for a year or two, you
may be sure of my real honest love. I shall make a bee line for your
place whenever I do come home.”
This parting was a wrench to me, and my home seemed very dull and
miserable for a time. I had had my second sentimental tragedy, for I
had loved, and for a short time had been happy in my love. It had all
ended in disillusion and suffering for me, and again Edmund had been my
solace. Until he had gone I did not know how much I was dependent on
him.
Nevertheless I had again the feeling that he had behaved well. The
incident of the papers purchased from the drunken sailor troubled my
conscience a little, but I really scarcely knew what was involved in
this, or to what extent it might have been a fair bargain. I trusted
Edmund not to have done anything mean, and his sailing under a false
name was to me nothing but the breach of a social convention. I had
come to look upon most conventions as things made for the guidance
of fools, to be disregarded by sensible men as soon as they became
inconvenient.
I know it may be argued that this theory of mine is exactly that of the
criminal. It is; but the criminal is only a fool with some independence
of judgment--an exception.
The majority of fools walk between the clipped hedges. The wise
minority wanders in safety and at large, being careful that the fools
do not witness their excursions. We have our own boundaries which we do
not transgress.
In the meantime the deaths of two of our Irish cousins from diphtheria
had placed me quite near succession to the entailed portion of the
family estate, but the present incumbent being a young vigorous man
about to marry an heiress, I had never regarded the possibility of my
inheriting.
It was only a few months after Edmund’s departure that this youth
went fishing in waders when he should have been in bed, and died very
suddenly of appendicitis. I was amazed and rather horrified to find
myself an Irish landlord.
I resigned my living and went over to Ireland, but neither the place
nor the prospect of that life attracted me. I did not understand it,
and felt a stranger and usurper. Everything was in the hands of a most
capable firm of land-agents in Dublin.
There was a revenue that to me represented great wealth.
The place, though very large, could easily be let for the fishing and
shooting. I deliberately ran away, and became that accursed thing--an
absentee landlord. I salved my conscience by insisting on a policy of
foolish generosity to my tenants and found myself equally abused by the
Press of all parties in Ireland.
After some rather distracted wanderings I settled down in the Sussex
vicarage in which this chapter opens. My researches in Byzantine
history which shared my energies with pigeon flying had attracted a
little attention from some of the learned, and thus I had met the
Bishop at the Athenæum. He was patron of my present living, and as
no clergyman in his diocese could afford the upkeep of the large and
beautiful vicarage to which a stipend of £200 a year was attached, he
gladly offered it to me and I as gladly accepted it.
I had no qualms of conscience, since I was going to give the Church
more than I received from her in the way of money; I liked the work of
a country parson, and believed I could be helpful to a few fellow human
beings. As to doctrine, that came within my category of conventions.
I had acted in good faith at the time I took my ordination vows, and
if I thought I had grown wiser since, there was no need to make a fuss
about it. I wanted no one to believe or disbelieve as I did, but I did
want to encourage people to behave well. I had many of my father’s
old-fashioned prejudices, and honestly believed it to be a good thing
that the Church as well as the Army should be officered as far as
possible by gentlemen.
Thus the years passed very placidly for me. I and my house were in the
capable charge of Bates and Mrs. Rattray, my housekeeper and cook, one
of the best and wisest women I have ever met. Other servants came and
went at her discretion, but my household affairs seemed always to run
on ball-bearings, and Bates tempered for me the tyranny of the gardener
and the coachman.
I acquired four different reputations.
As the breeder of “Amaryllis” who came home fourth in the great
cross-channel race already mentioned, my name was familiar in every
colliery and public-house in the north of England.
Among a select circle of the learned I was known as a conscientious and
critical student of an obscure period of history.
In my parish I was generally esteemed as a kindly and generous priest
and friend.
But by my clerical colleagues I was distrusted. If I was only suspected
of heresy, I was positively known to be a trimmer in the vital matter
of Eastward Position! When I officiated in other people’s churches
I always adopted the position and methods to which the congregation
were accustomed. Thus both parties united in calling me “Mr.
Facing-both-ways,” and a certain very earnest Evangelical once said
quite rude things about “Laodiceans.”
This buzzing in my ears was almost my only worry, as Edmund was my only
anxiety.
His first ship was burned in the Canton River, and he was landed
penniless. He got a cable sent to me by the British Consul. Instead
of sending what he asked for I cabled £250 and an urgent message to
return.
I waited in vain for his arrival, eager to share with him all the
comfort that had come into my life. Instead I got a letter in reply
to one I had written on chance of his start being delayed. He
congratulated me on my good fortune: had gone up country and invested
two hundred of my good pounds in some wild-goose land speculation.
All that was wanted to make the money bring forth an hundredfold was
another thousand.
It was curious to me that I resented the loss of this £250 much more
than I should have done when I was a poor man. I knew that this was
the effect of possessing money on ordinary men, but I suppose no man
expects to find himself reacting after the manner of his kind.
I was angry and sent another £50 and a peremptory message. Then I was
sorry. I could see Edmund cashing the draft and shying from the insult
like a young horse from the unexpected. I would have given the thousand
to have him back.
But would not the thousand have kept him there until he lost it in its
turn?
I heard no more and settled back as comfortably as possible into my
groove. But for the first time I felt Edmund had not behaved well, a
film formed on the surface of my warm love for him, and I knew there
was anger towards myself in his heart.
Nearly two years passed during which he wrote three times when he
wanted money--paltry sums which I loathed sending, but I could not
trust him with a larger amount, though God knows I was willing to share
my all with him, if he would only spend it and live on it.
Then he had come, announced by wire from Southampton.
He came in his fo’c’sle kit, with three sovereigns and some shillings
which he called his “savings.” But he brought the promised parrot in
a gilded cage, and a costly offering of Chinese silk for Louisa, who
had long ago vanished into the limbo which awaits parlour vestals
disapproved of by Mrs. Rattray.
I admit I was a little nervous about the effect of his arrival and
appearance on the arbiters of my household, but in twenty-four hours
they were all his slaves. He talked to Bates as to a fellow man without
any spurious bridging of the fixed gulf, and presented him with a
strange exotic pipe. The Chinese silks destined for Louisa he gave to
Mrs. Rattray, and I overheard him telling the entranced lady that he
had brought them home for her in gratitude for her care of myself,
about which he said I wrote so constantly. Thus I was made as it were
accessory to his falsehoods and a partaker in the benefit of them.
Most amazing of all I found him plucking fruit I would not have dared
to touch while he told sea-tales to the completely subjugated gardener.
To me he was delightful as ever. There was all his boyish affection,
but that film was there, and I was aware of the spell he exercised as
something to be resisted in his own interest. We never spoke of my
refusal to send the thousand, but the memory of it was there between us.
He was then only twenty-three, but his aspect and manner of a fully
equipped man of the world, of vigour and competence to subdue
circumstances to his will, made him seem older. It justified a certain
humorous treatment of myself as a kind of “dear old thing.” I had to
brace myself to keep my head.
It was not until the third evening that I fairly got the talk on to his
own affairs and prospects.
I unfolded a scheme I had for settling him in the family estate as my
representative. I explained my own coward flight and my desire, that
notwithstanding that, the name should not lapse.
“In any case,” I argued, “your son, if you ever have one, will inherit.
I shall not marry.”
“Everybody thinks that,” he objected.
“We won’t discuss it,” I said, “but in my case there are reasons why
you may take it as definite.”
He looked up and saw at once that this was final.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “very sorry, old man. But even for the sake of a
possible Davoren of the next generation, I can’t accept your offer.”
“Why?”
“To begin with it’s too generous.”
“It’s my desire--for my own sake.”
“In any case I’m not the man for the job. I couldn’t do it any
more than you could yourself. Fancy me a country gentleman! M.F.H.
I suppose, and I can’t even ride! I should start comic and become
pathetic. I’m only a sort of ticket o’ leave man still, and they’d want
to make me a magistrate!”
I disagreed with him, but saw that argument was useless and abandoned
this favourite project with regret.
“Have you any plan yourself?” I asked.
“Well, you see, it’s the old story. Dry land burns my feet.”
“But you can’t go on always--before the mast.”
“No. I can take my master’s certificate.”
This sounded pleasantly practical to me, and I was surprised and
gratified to learn that he had mastered the theoretical side of
navigation and could, as he said, “pass the old Board of Trade exams,
with one hand tied behind him.”
I encouraged the notion and told him I had no doubt of getting the old
trouble with the police cancelled by some of my influential friends on
the grounds of lapse of time, youthful indiscretion and subsequent good
behaviour.
He laughed at the last clause in a way that made me anxious.
“Well,” he said, “they know nothing about me over here.”
“Then you can go to sea in your own name and in a decent capacity.”
“Yes,” he drawled satirically, “as Third Officer on a P. & O. I
suppose, showing ladies round the ship, putting on a boiled shirt and
company manners for dinner. No. I’m afraid I should be no better at
that than the squire business.”
“But there must be a start of some sort.”
“Not that sort. You people who stop at home see life as if it was half
a dozen sets of railway lines, and a man must run on one or the other.
It isn’t like that at all. If a man just dives in as he would into the
sea, he can swim, he can live. There’s always something to eat. Making
money is only the stake on the game, but the game is played for its own
sake. All the duffers are losers, and if you’re not a duffer you win.
Then you can come out of it and be as respectable as you like. You will
at least have your own memories to live on.”
“It’s a bit vague,” I said, deliberately unmoved by his eloquence.
“To be precise, then, my game is going to be trade. When I’ve got my
master’s certificate I mean to be master and part owner of a little
trading brigantine out East. I’ve studied the thing and I know the
business. It’s the life I like and understand, and there’s pots of
money in it when you know the ropes, and the right people. I’m not
talking any story-book rot. There are commodities out there that you
can trade best in in small boats. Little cargoes of high value. Things
people know nothing about at home.”
“It all means capital, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, of course one must have some capital, very little to start. To
people in the know it’s a first-rate investment.”
I said no more, and Edmund knew I meant to refuse to find the money for
him. I can understand better now how exasperating I must have seemed. A
country parson wrapping himself in a cloak of ignorance and taking it
for superior wisdom!
However, he kept his temper perfectly, but this little root of
bitterness between us grew and swelled.
He stopped with me during the weeks it took to obtain his certificate
and satisfy the legal authorities of his having purged his early
offence. Then he signed on as second officer on board an East-bound
tramp. Beyond his necessary expenses and £50, for which he insisted on
giving me an IOU, he would take nothing from me.
I know nothing of his Odyssey during the next two years, except that
he told me that through friends in Hong-Kong he had secured a small
interest in a trading venture and had both made and lost money. But he
came home as poor as he went, though fuller than ever of confidence. As
gay hearted at twenty-five as he had been at eighteen and delightful as
ever to look upon.
I had good news for him. During his absence there had been an
opportunity of realising the remnant of my mother’s estate, and acting
under a Power of Attorney I had from him I had sold out on his behalf
as well as my own.
There was thus a sum of nearly £2,000 awaiting Edmund. Had I known why
the property came to have a value at all, and held on until the “Rubber
Boom” developed, it would have been nearer £10,000. As it was, others
made this money. But to do Edmund justice, he never reproached me with
this.
He went back to the East with his fortune, his high spirits, and his
confidence.
He wrote twice at long intervals, each time wanting money. He explained
that this was for necessary current expenses, not for speculation; that
his capital was practically intact but locked up in trade. Freights and
markets had gone against him every time, but it was only a matter of
holding on. He was bound to win out all right.
I seemed to see a wistful eye and a trembling lip in the letters, and
I hated the thought of Edmund beaten. I think I wanted him to prove me
wrong to myself. And yet the sending of the money was oddly annoying,
though I neither missed it nor grudged it. It somehow thickened that
film on our affections.
Thus as I have said for over a year I had heard nothing until this
telegram arrived.
I trust I have explained my reluctance to order the champagne, and my
final capitulation to Bates’s reproachful eye.