THE GREAT GULF
The words died away in the still air. They had been but faintly
whispered, and now for many moments there was no sound at all in the
quiet shelter of the trees. Then for a little the absolute silence was
broken by short and laboured breathing through clenched teeth; then it
became absolute as before. Denis was mastering himself as best he might;
his whole being was as a knotted muscle; but by degrees that also
relaxed, and he stood once more like a thing of flesh and blood, only
swaying a little on his feet. But Nan had neither stirred nor made a
sound. It was as though her dress supported her, as the dresses of those
days almost might, yet there was never a rustle from its silken dome.
And in the narrow avenue it was almost dark.
"Devenish, of course?" he said at last, but so hoarsely that he had to
say it twice.
It was worth the effort. It made Nan look up; it brought her back to
life.
"Yes," she whispered in simple horror. "Yes--I am married to that
villain!"
Their eyes met through the dusk, as in a lane of light. His face
reflected the unmixed horror so remarkable in hers. Yet already some
bell was ringing in his heart.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I loathe him!"
"Yet you are married?"
She spread out her hands in a gesture that was no answer to his
incredulity. Quick as thought he caught her left.
"Where's the ring?"
"Yours is quite safe."
"But the wedding-ring--your wedding-ring?"
"I took it off the moment we met. It dropped in the porch. I couldn't
let you find out that way."
Her hand also dropped out of his. He turned heavily away from her. It
was as though for a moment he had cherished some mad hope; now he stood
broken and aloof, shaken with sobs that never reached his throat;
oblivious alike to the rustle of the silk dress behind him, to the
fluttering featherweight of her hand upon his arm.
"Oh, Denis, Denis, if I could die ... if I could die! It is worse for
me. You are not married; you are not tied for life. But I deserve it
all, all, all.... There's no excuse for me, none. Yet there is some
explanation--poor enough, God knows! Won't you listen to that? Won't you
listen to me at all?"
He turned slowly round, and looked upon Nan with the unseeing fixity of
the blind. "Go on," he said. "I am listening, and will listen."
"He cheated me!" she cried, passionately. "He took your letters, and he
told me lies. But I allowed myself to be cheated," she added, miserably,
"and I believed the lies; so I deserved not to find him out till it was
too late; and I deserve this, Denis, I deserve it all. If only, only I
could die!"
He soothed her as best he could, taking her hand in one of his, and
stroking it mechanically with the other. The action might have reminded
them of something long past; but the present absorbed both their minds.
It was all that they would ever have together. It was their life.
"Don't tell me unless it helps you," he said, gently. "I begin to
understand. And it was my fault--mine--for leaving you as I did."
"Your fault! Yet if you had written--if you only had written!" she
cried, loudly exonerating him in one breath, softly reproaching in the
next.
"I know. That was pride," he said bitterly. "I was so desperately
unsuccessful up to Christmas! I did write in November, but I was always
afraid that letter never went."
"I never got it. Not a word of any sort, dear," she said, simply, "did I
have from you till nearly May. And then----"
"And then?" he repeated as she paused.
"Have you no idea what I am going to tell you?" she asked, a new twinge
in her tone. She could scarcely have explained her feeling, but the
least inkling in him would have implied some slight excuse for her,
would in any case have helped her to confess the climax of her late
credulity.
"None whatever," said Denis.
"Yet it was your writing. I can show it you, for I have it still."
"What writing do you mean?" he inquired, quite in the dark.
"The address on the parcel."
"What sort of parcel?" he exclaimed, as the truth flashed across him.
"Quite small? Brown paper? Quick! Quick! I want to know!"
"Yes--yes--and you don't know what was in it! Oh, Denis!"
"I know what should have been," he said, grimly: "my first
nugget--according to promise. But it was stolen, and afterward found."
"And you don't know what was put in instead? Did you lose nothing else?"
Denis stood stock-still in the deepening dusk. No, he had never thought
of that; even now his simplicity could not credit it until he had drawn
every detail from Nan's lips. The ring had possessed intrinsic value. He
had always looked upon that as an ordinary theft. The discovery of the
stolen nugget on Jewson's body had puzzled him, but it was partially
accounted for by another strange fact which had come to light after the
man's death, namely, that the nugget had been purchased by Jewson in the
first instance, elsewhere on the diggings, and deliberately planted at
the bottom of the shaft where Denis found it. And not till this moment,
months afterward, had Denis penetrated the dead man's design.
"You have indeed been cheated," he said, bitterly. "Yet to believe me
capable of behaving like that without a word! To have known me as little
as all that! Why, there was trickery on the face of it. But how can I
talk? They took me in, too--decent people don't dream of such
villainy--so I was fair game at one end, and you at the other. I begin
to see the whole thing. Do you remember when we said good-bye on board
your ship?"
"Do I remember!"
"It was then you gave me what I wore night and day until it was stolen
and sent back to you."
"Oh, Denis!"
"And it was then you made me promise to send it back to you if ever----
Oh, what a fool I was!"
"It was my doing--all. You didn't want to promise; it vexed you and hurt
you, and it was all my fault."
"But I promised, and I was overheard, by the villain who is gone," said
Denis. "He was in my cousin's cabin at the time, for I distinctly
remember seeing him there as we went on deck. And he repeated every
syllable to a ten times greater villain than himself, who is alive to
answer for his crime!" and he ground his teeth, little dreaming that he
had done the living criminal a double injustice in one breath.
"I am not sure that he is alive," faltered Nan, above her breath, but
that was all.
"You are not sure?"
"I have not seen him since our wedding day!"
Denis was dumfoundered, but enlightened.
"So you found out just too late," he groaned.
"Yes; and the hard part was that I might have found out in time," she
said sadly but only sadly, as if telling of some other person. "There
were such a lot of letters for me that morning," she went on, "and there
was so little time. I didn't even look at them; I said I would read them
in the train; but after all I looked through the envelopes as they were
dressing me to go away."
He heard her shuddering, and his lips moved. It was black night in the
avenue now, and deepest twilight through the trees on either hand. So he
never knew how meekly she stood before him in this bitter hour; even the
striking humility of a voice so memorable for its spirit was lost upon a
mind too absorbed in the sense to heed the sound.
"Your letter was among them," she went on. "Which letter I cannot say;
it was the first that ever reached me, and I was in two minds whether to
read a line of it or to tear it up unopened; but I could not bring
myself to do that, nor yet resist just looking to see what you said. And
there in the first few lines I saw it was but one of many letters that
had gone astray! It was the letter in which you began by saying how
often you had written lately, though you had never yet had a single word
from me. But how could I write when _I_ never had a line to tell me
where you were?"
"I don't blame you for that," said Denis. "I never blamed you in my life
before to-day; when I know all I may not blame you yet. I understand
nearly everything as it is." There was a slight emphasis on one of the
last words, but it was very slight: in their common misery he was now as
unemphatic as she.
"It was the letter," continued Nan, "in which you told me how splendidly
you were doing, and how soon you hoped to sail; I think it must have
come in a much quicker ship than yours; but it was a long time before I
read that part. I nearly fainted--not quite--but they sent downstairs
for our doctor. It was a very small party--everything was hurried and
quite private--but Dr. Stone has known me since I was born, and
fortunately he was there. I told him everything, and what I suspected in
a moment. He tried to talk me over, but I refused even to see my husband
until my suspicions were set at rest, and appealed to him to stop a
scandal. He did so--there is no public scandal to this day. He went
downstairs and declared that the hurry and excitement had proved too
much for me; that it was nothing serious, but I could not possibly go
away that day. That emptied the house, and gave me time to think. But
they all pressed me to see Captain Devenish, so at last I did see him.
And in my misery I came down to his level, and pretended not to care if
he would only tell the truth."
"And did he?"
"How can I tell? He told me a tale, and he brazened it out. I believe it
was the truth. The fraud was not begun by him, but first he countenanced
it and then he had to carry it on. He had taken your letters
systematically for weeks; whenever a mail came in, here he was, on the
spot, and ready for the worst. He boasted of it, gloried in it, said he
would play the same game again for the same stake! That was the end. I
never looked at him again, though he stayed in the house a week to save
the appearances that were so dear to him and to my father; but it was I
who saved them, little as I cared. Next day I was really ill, and before
I came down again he was gone."
"Gone where?"
"To the Black Sea. You see, he had to go in a week, in any case."
"I don't understand."
"To the war--with a draft of the Grenadiers."
The war! Denis had never heard of it until the night before, when the
pilot came aboard his ship, and since landing his own affairs and his
own anxieties had filled his mind down to this cruel culmination. So
Ralph Devenish, traitor and thief, had fled to fight his country's
battles because he had not the pluck to stand and fight his own! Denis
could not be fair for a moment to such an officer and such a gentleman;
it was not in his allowance of very human nature.
"Now you have told me everything," he cried, "I can understand all but
one thing. I can understand your disbelieving in me, your resentment of
my silence, your failure to see that what you received without a line of
explanation could never have been sent by me. It was your idea that I
should send you back your ring if I changed--if _I_ changed! You thought
I would take you at your word without a word of my own to ask so much as
your forgiveness. Well, you were at liberty to think what you liked of
me; you little knew me, and it was a poor compliment to what you did
know; but all that I can understand. What I cannot and never will
understand is how you flew round the compass and married that fellow
within two months!"
What had Nan to say? She had long been utterly unable to understand it
herself. Ralph had never seemed so nice; she herself had been wretched,
reckless, wounded, numbed; nothing had seemed to matter any more, except
to show that she did not care; and that was her wicked way of showing
it. Oh! she had been wicked, wicked; but see her punishment! See the
shipwreck of her whole life! He who understood so much--Denis--dear
Denis--could he not forgive the mad sequel?
"Forgive!" He laughed out harshly. "Oh, yes, I can forgive you; but
that's the end. We must never see each other again. This is good-bye;
and the sooner it's said the better for one and all."
He was actually holding out his hand. Nan caught it and clung to it with
both of hers.
"Good-bye?" she almost screamed. "You are not going away like this? You
wouldn't leave me more desolate and desperate than I was before? You'll
stay, or at least come back to see my father--to see me?"
Denis did not hesitate for a moment. "No," said he, firmly; "no, it's
not a bit of use my staying to see anybody or any more of you; and the
sooner you let me go the better and easier for us both."
"But where will you go?" she asked, partly to gain time; yet the desire
to detain him was not greater than the dread of sending him she knew not
whither.
"God knows!" he answered. "Not to my death, if I can help it, and if
that's what you mean, but very likely back to Ballarat. I was making a
small fortune there. I might go back and double it, or lose it all. What
does it matter now?"
Even while he spoke, the vision of his mates on the claim in Rotten
Gully rose warmly to his mind; and yet, even before he ceased speaking,
he knew that he could never go back to them now.
"Don't go!" she urged piteously. "Denis, Denis, don't leave me so soon.
You are always so ready to leave me, and see what came of it before! I
never could forget it--I never could--it made all the difference in the
end. But now you are the only one I have to look up to in the world;
stay and help me; be my friend. Oh, Denis, you once saved me from the
sea. Stay--do stay, for God's sake, Denis--and save me from myself!"
It needed heart of flint and will of adamant to resist so wild and
touching an appeal; but Denis had soon formed his own conception of his
duty, and every moment since he had been subconsciously hardening
himself to its performance. All his character came into his resolve:
strength, promptitude, unflinching courage, undeniable obstinacy, and
withal a certain narrowness, a matter of upbringing and of inexperience,
in questions of right and wrong. She had married another man; there was
an end of it, and let the end come quickly. It would be wrong to see
more of her, wrong even to remain her friend. So he had argued in his
heart; so he answered her now, kindly, tenderly, with much emotion, but
with more fixity of purpose and finality of decision.
"But it isn't the end!" cried Nan, wildly. "It's only the
beginning--because I was cheated into marrying him, and because ... _I
love you, Denis, and only you!_"
It was long before Denis remembered how he broke away from her; how and
where he left her came back to him slowly after hours. It was in the
house. He had carried her there. She loved him. He could not leave her
out there to creep in through the dark alone, even if she could have
crept half the way unaided. But the struggle came before all that. The
rest made no immediate impression on his mind. He was a mile on his road
before his brain began to clear, on the crest of a hill, where a sudden
night wind searched his skull. Under his eyes, and a rising moon, the
road he had to traverse fell almost from his feet, to glimmer away into
a flat and open country, and to remind him of the ship's wake on a calm
night; only it was no longer the wake; it was his course. On the horizon
the faint glow of the metropolis was just discernible, and to ears fresh
from the incessant noises of the ocean, the hum of the great human hive
seemed not absolutely inaudible in the young night's stillness. Yet
every now and then there was a rattle of parched leaves, as if the quiet
earth stirred in its sleep; for some minutes Denis also heard his own
heart beating from the speed with which he had come so far; and as this
abated, somewhere in the nether distance, on the way to London, a clock
struck seven.