DENIS AND NAN
Miss Merridew continued prostrate, yet so exempt from bodily mischief
that her case began to baffle all except the other woman, who had charge
of it.
Mr. Merridew allowed himself to be dissuaded from obtaining indifferent
medical advice at exorbitant cost, but his anxiety increased with his
perplexity, and was only allayed by his instinctive confidence in Mrs.
Kitto. That lady proved as practical and understanding as she was good
and kind. Yet even Mrs. Kitto was puzzled just at first. They had to
deal with one singularly reserved--who could lie for hours without
closing an eye or uttering a word--and the father's way was to force her
to say something, at the pain of his own passionate distress. But Mrs.
Kitto would bring in her sewing, of which she seemed to have a great
deal, and sit over it, also by the hour, in a quietude as grateful as
her sparing speech. She was very observant, however, and the one thing
that puzzled her only did so in the beginning. This was the anomaly
presented by a patient whose face was often in a burning fever while her
head and hand kept perfectly cool.
The wreck was never mentioned in the sick-room, nor did Nan guess that
an inquest on the bodies was held within a few yards of where she lay.
Yet it was she who eventually broke the ice.
"Is Mr. Dent still here?" she asked, but in a tone so magnificently
offhand that a less astute person than Mrs. Kitto would have detected
its anxiety as soon.
"He was this morning," replied Mrs. Kitto, smiling.
"Do you mean that he isn't now?" the girl demanded, half-rising on an
elbow.
"No. I think I should have heard of it if he had thought of leaving us
to-day."
Nan Merridew fell back upon her pillow.
"I wish he would go on board," she said petulantly, "if he is going."
"On board?" queried Mrs. Kitto; and she set down her work.
"Isn't he to be one of the officers on the ship we are all going home
by?"
"I didn't know of it," said Mrs. Kitto, with equal embarrassment and
surprise.
"But he is," declared the girl, with all an invalid's impatience. "I
understood that from papa the day he came; he had spoken to the agents,
or he was going to speak to them, and Denis--I mean Mr. Dent--was to
have the best berth they could give him. I do wish he would go on board.
I--I almost wish he hadn't saved my life!"
And she tossed her face to the wall, for it was burning as it had burned
so often since her deliverance.
"It's meeting him again," said Mrs. Kitto to herself; "and she does care
for him, or she would mind less." It made it all the harder to ask
aloud, "Did your father say he had succeeded, dear?"
"We have never mentioned Mr. Dent again," said Nan to that, quite
haughtily.
"Because I don't think he's sailing in the _Memnon_ at all," continued
Mrs. Kitto, gently. "I think he's going to the diggings instead."
"Going where?" the girl asked after a pause. The first sentence was all
that she had heard.
"To Ballarat or Bendigo--to make his fortune."
"I hope he'll succeed," said Nan, after a pause; but her voice was a
sweet bell jangled, and an hour went before she turned her face from the
wall. It was still red, but there was a subtle difference in the shade.
And in the hazel eyes, which were the most obvious of Miss Merridew's
natural attractions, there was a crude, new light.
"I am going to get up," said she.
Mrs. Kitto proved not unprepared for the announcement; it appeared that
all her needlework had been for Nan, and now it was as though the last
stitch had just been put into everything. It was all a surprise to the
girl, who had not given the matter a thought. She was to get a fresh
outfit at Geelong, before the ship sailed, but Mrs. Kitto insisted on
sending her so far equipped by herself. And the dress which the kind
soul had been so busy altering was almost the last remnant of her own
trousseau, and some years behind the fashion.
In point of fact it was what used to be called a "double robe" of
lavender cashmere; and it was trimmed with braid of the same colour, but
the braid was a shade darker than the rest, and its criss-cross pattern
as unlovely in its way as the voluminous skirts it was intended to
adorn. But the fabric was soft and fine, and the delicate tint happened
to suit Nan Merridew, who had a singularly clear and pale skin, and dark
gold ringlets almost the colour of her eyes. For she was of the type
dear to the pre-Raphaelites, with rather more flesh and blood, and a
much more conspicuous spirit of her own, perhaps a little too
conspicuous when Nan reappeared in the sunlight, with quite another
light in her eyes, on the fourth day after the wreck.
It was near the close of a radiant afternoon, and Mr. Merridew was
absent for the day; but Captain Devenish had been seen strolling toward
the cliffs, and Nan thought that she would stroll after him in spite of
the direction. No one must think of accompanying her; she would so enjoy
finding the way for herself. To this Mrs. Kitto pretended to make no
objection, but expressed a belief that Mr. Dent was with Captain
Devenish, thinking she had named the last deterrent. On the contrary, it
only decided Nan to go quickly; and go she did with that peculiar light
stronger than ever in her eyes.
Now the way led through a belt of young pines, by which the station was
almost surrounded, and in the middle of them Nan met a man in moleskins
and a red shirt. Him she was approaching with downcast eyes, as one who
must regard her curiously, when his voice thrilled her at close
quarters.
"Nan! And you'd have passed me without a word!"
Denis was standing in her path, a common wide-awake drooping from one
hand, the other reaching out for hers.
"I didn't recognize you," she said, scarcely touching his hand. "And I
was looking for Captain Devenish--can you tell me where he is?"
"He has gone down to bathe," replied Denis with some reluctance. To
bathe where a ship's company had been drowned that week! No wonder Nan
winced. "Can't you spare me a few minutes instead?" he added as she was
about to turn.
"Oh, yes, if you wish it."
"Of course I wish it!" exclaimed Denis. His shoulders looked very square
under the coarse red flannel; but they were heaving, too.
Nan was her own mistress on the spot. "I couldn't know," said she. "You
see, you never sent me any message--not one word."
"I shall tell you why."
"And then I understood you were going to the diggings."
"So I am," said Denis. His voice was preternaturally deep and vibrant.
She looked up at him with the odd light in her eyes.
"And why haven't you gone yet?"
"I wanted to see you first."
"That was very kind."
"To tell you why I was going at all--to tell you everything, Nan, if you
will let me--if you aren't determined to misunderstand me before I open
my mouth!"
Their eyes were together now, his dark with passion, in hers a certain
softening of the unlovely light that hurt him more than her tone: and
her eyes were the first to fall, to wander, to espy a stump among the
pines.
"I must sit down," she faltered. "It's my first appearance, and I tire
directly. But I'm not too tired to listen to you--I want to."
Yet already a change had come over her, and either she was physically
weaker or else softer at heart than she had been but a minute before. At
all events she took his arm to the stump, which was one of several in a
little clearing lit and checkered by the slanting sun. And she sat there
almost meekly in his sight, while Denis planted a foot upon one of the
other stumps and said what he had to say with bare arms folded across a
moleskinned knee.
"In the first place," he began, "I saved your life."
Nan's smouldering spirit was in flames upon the word, and her face
caught its fire.
"And you remind me of it!" she cried in red scorn. "Is it the sort of
thing one forgets? Is it a thing to thank you for like any common
service, and are you the one to put the words in my mouth?"
Denis did not wince.
"I am wrong," he said, quietly. "In the first place, I asked you to
marry me; it was only in the second place, and before you had time to
give me an answer, that I was so unfortunate as to save your life."
"Unfortunate!"
"Most unfortunate to be the one to save you, Nan, because if it had been
any one else it would have made no difference between us; as it is it
makes all the difference in the world."
"I don't understand," she said, trembling because she was beginning to
understand so well. "I only know how brave you were--how brave!"
And she raised her sweet face without restraint, for now she was
thinking of nothing but his bravery.
"Most men are that at a pinch," said Denis, with a twitch of his red
shirt: "but I was luckier than most. I won't make too light of it. I can
swim. But you don't suppose I was the only strong swimmer on board. And
which of the rest, I should like to know, wouldn't have made as good use
of my chance?"
"But it wasn't only the swimming!" the girl cried without thinking, to
break off with her bent face in its besetting fever.
"If you mean the climbing," he continued equably, "there was still less
merit in that, for it was absurdly unnecessary, as you probably know,
besides which I was full of Spanish brandy at the time. Not that I'm
ashamed of that," added Denis with the absolute candour of the dales. "I
believe that brandy was the saving of us both; but it was another piece
of pure luck."
Nan said nothing for a minute. She was trying to see his hands, and he
showed her with a shrug the only finger that was still in rags. His
wounds had not been serious; he was scarcely walking lame; the scratches
had skinned over on his face. She could look in it again, steadfastly,
simply; she was even beginning to like it better between a wide-awake
and an open throat than in the spruce cap and collar of the voyage. Her
own scarlet she had conquered in a tithe of the time it had often taken
her in secret: it was not so dreadful to be with him after all. And if
he loved her nothing mattered: not even her long agony in the ti-tree
thicket. Yet he had hurt her by belittling himself, and by something
else of which his last words reminded Nan.
"But you don't look on it as luck. You aren't a bit glad you saved my
life!" And her eyes fell once more, if this time not involuntarily.
"Glad!" he cried out. "Gladness is no word for my feeling about
that--for what I feel every moment of every hour."
"Yet you wish it had been some one else."
"I don't!"
"But you said you did, Denis."
"Well, and I have felt it, too, when I couldn't send you a single
message--couldn't make a single sign--for fear you should think--for
fear you should misunderstand!"
Nan had not raised her eyes again; his tone made it difficult now. He
was leaning toward her, almost bending over her, and yet his foot clung
to the pine-stump as though by conscious effort of the will, and his
face was a fight between set jaw and yearning eyes. But Nan could not
see his face; she could only see the sunlight and the shadows in the
lavender skirts that spread about her as she sat, and a few inches of
hard yellow ground beyond. She was beginning to believe in his love, to
understand his position before he explained it to her, to see the end of
her own doubts. His halting voice was more eloquent than many words.
And yet for words she was constrained to probe.
"So you determined to go up to the diggings?"
"I did."
"And to leave me?"
"Nan, I must."
His voice reconciled her more and more.
"Must you, Denis?"
"To make some money, Nan dear! And I will make it--I will--I will!"
She felt that he would. His voice only stirred her now.
"And then?" she asked.
"And then," he cried, "and then I sha'n't mind pressing you for an
answer to what I dared to ask you on the _North Foreland_."
There was a silence in the little clearing among the young pines. Only
near at hand the hum of insects, and in the distance a cloud of
cockatoos shrieking the sun into the sea, and the sea itself faintly
booming upon the base of the sandstone cliffs. Before either spoke there
was indeed one other sound, but it fell on ears doubly deaf; for Nan had
flung back her dark-gold ringlets in a way of hers, and from the bold
pose of her head none could have imagined the warm bloom upon her
cheeks, or the tender film that dimmed the hazel eyes.
"Suppose I prefer to give you your answer first?"
"Nan! Nan! I would have you think it over, and over, and over again!"
"But suppose I refused you after all?"
"I would sooner that than be accepted in haste and--and repented of--you
know!"
It was as though he was maintaining his balance for a bet, and near the
end of his endurance even so. Nan watched him with a smile touched by
the last beams of the setting sun, but as she rose the red glory beat
full upon her.
"Very well!" said she. "Then if you won't come to me for your answer, I
must bring it to you."
Night falls like an assassin in that country, but the purple tints were
only beginning when in his very ear she implored him not to leave her
any more, and he held her closer, but said he must. It would not be for
long. Others were growing rich in a day; he would make one more. He knew
it; something told him; and again, something else told her.
Yet she was vexed with herself for her impulsive appeal against a
decision to which she had felt reconciled but the moment before; and
vexed with him for scarcely listening to her appeal, unpremeditated as
it was, unreasonable as it might be. He might have wavered; she would
not have had him yield. His resolution was fine, heroic; she only
wondered whether it was quite human, and wondering, lost the thread of
his defense.
"Think, think!" he urged. "Think what it would be for me to go home in
this ship and marry you as I am, on my poor captain's certificate and
nothing else; and then, only think, if I followed in a few months with a
few thousand of my own behind me! You may say I ought to have thought
of this before. But I did. I told your father so a few minutes before
the wreck. I wanted you to wait for me--I was selfish enough for that
from the beginning!"
The disparaging epithet pricked Nan to interrupt him and take it on
herself. But Denis persisted without a smile.
"Darling, I am selfish about it still; for if I am not worth waiting
for, I am not worth having; but if you can wait only a few months--not a
day more than a year--I will come to you as I should come if it is to
be--but come I will, rich or poor, if I am alive! Nan, darling, I have
everything to gain, only these few months to lose; but I will gain all
the world in them. I will, I will, I will!"
She could not but be infected with his confidence, his enthusiasm, and
his ideal. There in the dusk were the eager Irish eyes glistening and
burning into hers, but there also was the strong north-country jaw set
for success as the needle to the pole. And yet--and yet--she was weeping
on his shoulder as the purple turned to deepest blue.
"I could have helped you, dearest," came her broken whispers. "But no,
not here. It's an awful country. It will break my heart to think of you
in it. I thought, if you loved me ... after all we have been through ...
you would never, never leave me again! But, dearest, I do believe in
you, and I will wait, for you know best."
So after all it was a brave face, bright as her will could make it,
though still wet with tears, that she held away from him, for Denis to
look upon it for the first time as his own. But it was a very terrible
face that hovered over the same spot but a minute later, when Ralph
Devenish came crashing through the young pines to curse the very ground
where they had stood, and the sea that had not swallowed one or both.