Wagram was seated in his private study at Hilversea, thinking.
It was a lovely spring morning, and through the open window came a very
gurgle of bird voices from shrubbery and garden. The young green was
rapidly shouldering out the winter brown of the woods, especially where
the sprouting tassels of the larch coverts seem to grow beneath one's
very gaze.
Ah, how good it was to be back home again after his wandering and exile
and anguish of mind--to be back here in his idolised home, in peace till
the end of his days--and surely it would be so. He had done his
uttermost to find his half-brother, and had failed--had failed,
possibly, because Everard was no longer in the land of the living--
murdered by that savage miscreant the renegade, so many of whose
atrocities he himself had witnessed. And yet, if Develin Hunt's account
of Everard were correct, it was possible that he might have been slain
by the other acting in self-defence.
What a unique experience had this last one been. He had no idea as to
the identity of the wild tribes among whom he had moved, and the very
haziest as to the part of the coast on which he had landed. As to the
latter point, the opinions of the captain and officers of the _Runic_
had differed considerably; indeed, he was not quite sure whether they
entirely believed his story in every particular--not implying that he
had deliberately invented it, but that parts of it might be due to
hallucination begotten of anxiety and privation.
"That you should come to board that derelict twice, with an interval of
months between, and each time by a sheer accident, is one of the tallest
sea experiences within my knowledge, Mr Wagram," had said Gibson, the
chief officer of the _Runic_, one day when he was disclosing parts of
his story. And he had laughed good-humouredly, and agreed that it
really must be.
As a matter of fact, he had been very reticent over his experiences;
partly that they would sound rather too wonderful, and partly that the
recollection of them was distressing to himself and he would fain help
them to fade.
Well, if Everard were no longer alive he himself was just where he had
been. But was he? There were others with a claim. No; there were not.
On this point he had seriously made up his mind. The very distant
branch of the family--so distant, indeed, that it was doubtful whether
it could establish a claim at all--he was not even acquainted with, but
it was very wealthy. He remembered his father's solemn declaration:
"Morally, and in the sight of God, your position is just what it would
have been but for this accident." And his father had been right.
Whatever doubt as to this may have crossed his mind at the time the
words were uttered it held none whatever now. He had been brought back
to that position, so to say, in spite of himself, had been restored to
it by a chain of occurrences well-nigh miraculous, so much so, indeed,
that others could scarcely credit them. Surely the finger of Heaven had
been directing them.
There was just one thorn beneath the rose leaves, and it spelt Develin
Hunt. What if that worthy should, on hearing of his return, conclude to
try for a little more blackmail? In that event he had made up his mind
to defy him. He was in possession--and such "possession" as that meant
was practically unassailable legally; and it was only with the legal
side of the situation he felt now concerned. But nothing had been heard
of the adventurer since he had received the last instalment of his
price. He seemed to have disappeared as suddenly as he had arisen.
Decidedly Wagram's train of thought was strange that morning.
Everything had been restored to him--everything as it had been; and
yet--and yet--something was wanting. A feeling as of loneliness was
upon him--upon him, the envied of all his acquaintance. He missed his
father now that he reigned alone--missed him every minute of the day.
The dear old man's chair at table, in which he himself now sat--he
missed him even while he was sitting there; his constant flow of
sparkling reminiscence, his pungent wit, his good-natured cynicism and
his affection for himself; and yet--and yet--he missed something else.
What was it? The musical flow of a sweet young voice, the bright
presence and ready and tactful sympathy of one who had been his
companion for a short--in point of time, but in actual fact
concentrated--fellowship. He went over again his first meeting with
Delia Calmour and his father's unhesitating dictum upon the house of
Calmour in general. "A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho!" And now it seemed
to him that the one thing lacking to render his cup of contentment full
was the presence of one Calmour at Hilversea, and that one Delia.
Incidentally, it struck him that for present purposes it was a good
thing that old Calmour had been removed to another, and, he hoped, a
better world; but only incidentally, for, having come to the conclusion
he had, the mere removal of old Calmour and Siege House to a remoter
part of the realm than Bassingham, and that under far greater conditions
of comfort than that old toper could ever have pictured in his wildest
dreams, would have been the merest matter of detail. However, old
Calmour was no longer there, which simplified matters.
Then the cynical element came uppermost. His experience of the
matrimonial bond had been lamentable; why, then, should he be
ill-advised enough to make a second experiment of it? And yet--and
yet--he had had ample opportunities of watching this girl, and she had
seemed to shine out as pure gold from the alloy of her surroundings and
bringing up. He was no fool, and had a large experience of the seamy
side of life, which was sufficient to safeguard him from illusions. She
was in poor circumstances, and life to her must be one of struggle.
Such a bait as his position and wealth would be under the circumstances
irresistible, but it was not under these circumstances that he wanted
her. He was considerably her senior in years, and it was probable that
in her young mind he ranked as a serious and elderly bore, whom she
might have reason to hold in some regard, perhaps; but still--Against
that, again, he remembered how that bright, beautiful face used to light
up on such occasions as their first meeting of a morning, while on board
ship, and on others. No; there was a spontaneity and genuineness about
that expression that was due to no sordid motive.
Since his return he had been overwhelmed with calls and congratulations;
indeed, part of his aim in life seemed to have become the dodging of
such whenever practicable. Invitations, too, had not been lacking, with
very propitious "beauty's eyes" in the background, but for such he had
no inclination. This girl whose acquaintance he had made in so strange
and semi-tragical a manner, whose character he had watched develop ever
since, seemed to have become bound up with his life, and now the last
phase in the acquaintance was that she--and she alone--had been the
actual instrument in the saving of his life. For herself, she had come
out splendidly through all her disadvantages. Yes; her presence here
was the one thing he needed--and he needed it greatly.
He remembered the arrival of the _Runic_. Clytie had been there to meet
her sister, and the frank, cheerful greeting which she had extended to
him had impressed him very favourably. He had been to see them since,
and the favourable impression had deepened. There was no pretence about
them in their new home. They had got to work, and work pretty hard too,
and they were doing it with a brave hopefulness that was beyond all
praise. And he had extracted a promise from them that if ever they
found themselves in need of a friend--no matter what manner of
difficulty might overtake them--they were to apply to him
unhesitatingly, which was all he was able to do for them for the
present.
Then his train of thought took another turn. The tin case he had found
in the cuddy of the derelict he had never yet investigated--had not even
opened it. He had been very busy since his return, and had put it aside
till arrears of business should have been disposed of. He had resisted
an inclination to open it on board the _Runic_, moved by the
consciousness that there is no real privacy on board ship, and this, he
felt instinctively, was a matter needing undisturbed and uninterrupted
attention. Now he thought the time had come when he might very well do
so.
He unlocked a safe and got out the tin case. It was all corroded with
its long submersion in salt water but quite intact. It brought back to
him that gruesome dive into the heart of the spectral derelict; and for
a few minutes he sat there, going over in his mind that time alone on
the oily waters of the glistening deep, and that awful moment in the
darkness when the receding lights had betokened that he was left to his
fate--the hand of rescue stretched forth only to be withdrawn. He shook
the recollection off, as that of a nightmare from which one awakes,
then, procuring the requisite tools, set to work to open the case.
It was full of papers--close packed, full to bursting. Some two or
three were of parchment-looking substance, others of thin rice paper.
The latter were stitched together with a kind of thin thread of animal
fibre. This detail he took in at once, the result of his recent and
complete savage training. He spread them out upon the capacious
writing-table in front of him, and then--
Great Heaven! what was this? "Develin Hunt!" There was the name, not
at the end of a document, but in the middle of it. He stared again, and
could hardly believe his eyes. Develin Hunt! He had expected to find
some clue as to his lost brother's fate, which was his reason for not
having handed over the box to the captain of the _Runic_ as containing a
possible clue to the identity of the Red Derelict, but instead the first
name to meet his eye was that of Develin Hunt!
He pulled himself together, and, with mind cool and business-like, set
himself to examine the documents, beginning with this one. And it was
the most important of all, for it was nothing more nor less than a
marriage certificate.
He gazed at it for a moment, then got up again and went to the safe.
From this he extracted a document, and spread it side by side with the
first one. It was a copy of another marriage certificate, that which
Develin Hunt had produced for the enlightenment of his father and
himself, but--the one he had just extracted from the tin box bore date
four years earlier.
What then? The man might have been a widower at the time. So far he
himself was--well, just where he was--where he had been.
He had forgotten for the moment all about Everard and his fate. Eagerly
he turned over the other papers. They seemed to have no bearing on the
subject until he got to the thin ones, which, in effect, were a sort of
diary, stitched together, as we have said. And before he had gone far
through this he realised that the discovery of this other marriage
certificate was of very first-rate importance indeed, for it set forth
unmistakably that the other party referred to was alive at the time of
his mother's marriage with his father--alive, in fact, long subsequently
thereto, if not alive at the present day. It was further obvious that
any information to be sought for on the subject must be sought in South
Africa. Could this be established it followed that Develin Hunt's
marriage with his mother was invalid and that of his father was valid.
South Africa! Haldane might help him here; he had spent years of his
life in those parts. And yet, he remembered, to Haldane's mind Develin
Hunt's name had conveyed no idea other than as subject-matter for a
joke, even as it had done to his own. Well, this need mean nothing,
unless it were that, like many adventurers, this man had not always gone
under his own name.
Again and again he read through the paper, and with each perusal the
piecing together of the puzzle became easier. And as it did so came
another thought. Would it not be far easier and quicker to get into
communication with the adventurer himself, and, at the possible price of
some further blackmail, obtain from him at first hand the solution of
the whole difficulty? It was wrong and immoral, no doubt, to compound
so grave and dangerous an offence as blackmailing, but the awful anguish
of mind he had gone through seemed to justify anything--anything in the
abstract, such as this was, and not hurtful to any individual--to ensure
relief. Even so, a weight seemed to have been lifted from him--the
whole weight, in fact--and, with the consciousness, other words spoken
by the old Squire came back to him: "There is no telling what Time may
work, so give Time his chance." Prophetic they sounded now, words of
gold-mouthed wisdom. He had given Time his chance, and Time had worked
accordingly; and lo, from the bowels of this spectral relic of a ship
floating for years on the slimy surface of the tropical seas, Time had
yielded up this its secret.
And then he was brought back to everyday realities by two sounds--the
ringing of the luncheon bell and the voice of his son outside.