Nearly a year had elapsed since the sailing of the _Fair Emily_, and
Binchester, which had listened doubtfully to the tale of the treasure as
revealed by Mr. William Russell, was still awaiting news of her fate.
Cablegrams to Sydney only elicited the information that she had not been
heard of, and the opinion became general that she had added but one more
to the many mysteries of the sea.
Captain Bowers, familiar with many cases of ships long overdue which had
reached home in safety, still hoped, but it was clear from the way in
which Mrs. Chalk spoke of her husband and the saint-like qualities she
attributed to him that she never expected to see him again. Mr. Stobell
also appeared to his wife through tear-dimmed eyes as a person of great
gentleness and infinite self-sacrifice.
“All the years we were married,” she said one afternoon to Mrs. Chalk,
who had been listening with growing impatience to an account of Mr.
Stobell which that gentleman would have been the first to disclaim, “I
never gave him a cross word. Nothing was too good for me; I only had to
ask to have.”
Mrs. Chalk couldn’t help herself. “Why didn’t you ask, then?” she
inquired.
Mrs. Stobell started and eyed her indignantly. “So long as I had him I
didn’t want anything else,” she said, stiffly. “_We_ were all in all to
each other; he couldn’t bear me out of his sight. I remember once, when
I had gone to see my poor mother, he sent me three telegrams in
thirty-five minutes telling me to come home.”
“Thomas was so unselfish,” murmured Mrs. Chalk. “I once stayed with my
mother for six weeks and he never said a word.”
An odd expression, transient but unmistakable, flitted across the face
of the listener.
“It nearly broke his heart, though, poor dear,” said Mrs. Chalk, glaring
at her. “He said he had never had such a time in his life.”
“I don’t expect he had,” said Mrs. Stobell, screwing up her small
features.
Mrs. Chalk drew herself up in her chair. “What do you mean by that?” she
demanded.
“I meant what he meant,” replied Mrs. Stobell, with a little air of
surprise.
Mrs. Chalk bit her lip, and her friend, turning her head, gazed long and
mournfully at a large photograph of Mr. Stobell painted in oils, which
stared stiffly down on them from the wall.
“He never caused me a moment’s uneasiness,” she said, tenderly. “I could
trust him anywhere.”
Mrs. Chalk gazed thoughtfully at the portrait. It was not a good
likeness, but it was more like Mr. Stobell than anybody else in
Binchester, a fact which had been of some use in allaying certain
unworthy suspicions of Mr. Stobell the first time he saw it.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Chalk, significantly, “I should think you could.”
Mrs. Stobell, about to reply, caught the staring eye of the photograph,
and, shaking her head sorrowfully, took out her handkerchief and wiped
her eyes. Mrs. Chalk softened.
“They both had their faults,” she said, gently, “but they were great
friends. I dare say that it was a comfort to them to be together to the
last.”
Captain Bowers himself began to lose hope at last, and went about in so
moody a fashion that a shadow seemed to have fallen upon the cottage. By
tacit consent the treasure had long been a forbidden subject, and even
when the news of Selina’s promissory note reached Dialstone Lane he had
refused to discuss it. It had nothing to do with him, he said, and he
washed his hands of it—a conclusion highly satisfactory to Miss Vickers,
who had feared that she would have had to have dropped for a time her
visits to Mr. Tasker.
A slight change in the household occurring at this time helped to divert
the captain’s thoughts. Mr. Tasker while chopping wood happened to chop
his knee by mistake, and, as he did everything with great thoroughness,
injured himself so badly that he had to be removed to his home. He was
taken away at ten in the morning, and at a quarter-past eleven Selina
Vickers, in a large apron and her sleeves rolled up over her elbows, was
blacking the kitchen stove and throwing occasional replies to the
objecting captain over her shoulder.
“I promised Joseph,” she said, sharply, “and I don’t break my promises
for nobody. He was worrying about what you’d do all alone, and I told
him I’d come.”
Captain Bowers looked at her helplessly.
“I can manage very well by myself,” he said, at last.
“Chop _your_ leg off, I s’pose?” retorted Miss Vickers,
good-temperedly. “Oh, you men!”
“And I’m not at home much while Miss Drewitt is away,” added the
captain.
“All the better,” said Miss Vickers, breathing noisily on the stove and
polishing with renewed vigour. “You won’t be in my way.”
The captain pulled himself together.
“You can finish what you’re doing,” he said, mildly, “and then—”
“Yes, I know what to do,” interrupted Miss Vickers. “You leave it to me.
Go in and sit down and make yourself comfortable. You ought not to be in
the kitchen at all by rights. Not that I mind what people say—I should
have enough to do if I did—but still—”
The captain fled in disorder and at first had serious thoughts of wiring
for Miss Drewitt, who was spending a few days with friends in town.
Thinking better of this, he walked down to a servants’ registry office,
and, after being shut up for a quarter of an hour in a small room with a
middle-aged lady of Irish extraction, who was sent in to be catechized,
resolved to let matters remain as they were.
Miss Vickers swept and dusted, cooked and scrubbed, undisturbed, and so
peaceable was his demeanour when he returned from a walk one morning,
and found the front room being “turned out,” that she departed from her
usual custom and explained the necessities of the case at some length.
“I dare say it’ll be the better for it,” said the captain.
“O’ course it will,” retorted Selina. “You don’t think I’d do it for
pleasure, do you? I thought you’d sit out in the garden, and of course
it must come on to rain.”
The captain said it didn’t matter.
“Joseph,” said Miss Vickers, as she squeezed a wet cloth into her
pail—“Joseph’s got a nice leg. It’s healing very slow.”
The captain, halting by the kitchen door, said he was sorry to hear it.
“Though there’s worse things than bad legs,” continued Miss Vickers,
soaping her scrubbing-brush mechanically; “being lost at sea, for
instance.”
Captain Bowers made no reply. Adopting the idea that all roads lead to
Rome, Miss Vickers had, during her stay at Dialstone Lane, made many
indirect attempts to introduce the subject of the treasure-seekers.
“I suppose those gentlemen _are_ drowned?” she said, bending down and
scrubbing noisily.
The captain, taking advantage of her back being turned towards him, eyed
her severely. The hardihood of the girl was appalling. His gaze wandered
from her to the bureau, and, as his eye fell on the key sticking up in
the lid, the idea of reading her a much-needed lesson presented itself.
He stepped over the pail towards the bureau and, catching the girl’s eye
as she looked up, turned the key noisily in the lock and placed it
ostentatiously in his pocket. A sudden vivid change in Selina’s
complexion satisfied him that his manœuvre had been appreciated.
“Are you afraid I shall steal anything?” she demanded, hotly, as he
regained the kitchen.
The captain quailed. “No,” he said, hastily. “Somebody once took a paper
of mine out of there, though,” he added. “So I keep it locked up now.”
Miss Vickers dropped the brush in the pail, and, rising slowly to her
feet, stood wiping her hands on her coarse apron. Her face was red and
white in patches, and the captain, regarding her with growing
uneasiness, began to take in sail.
“At least, I thought they did,” he muttered.
Selina paid no heed. “Get out o’ my kitchen,” she said, in a husky
voice, as she brushed past him.
The captain obeyed hastily, and, stepping inside the dismantled room,
stood for some time gazing out of window at the rain. Then he filled his
pipe and, removing a small chair which was sitting upside down in a
large one, took its place and stared disconsolately at the patch of wet
floor and the general disorder.
At the end of an hour he took a furtive peep into the kitchen. Selina
Vickers was sitting with her back towards him, brooding over the stove.
It seemed clear to him that she was ashamed to meet his eye, and, glad
to see such signs of grace in her, he resolved to spare her further
confusion by going upstairs. He went up noisily and closed his door with
a bang, but although he opened it afterwards and stood listening acutely
he heard no sound from below.
By the end of the second hour his uneasiness had increased to
consternation. The house was as silent as a tomb, the sitting-room was
still in a state of chaos, and a healthy appetite would persist in
putting ominous and inconvenient questions as to dinner. Whistling a
cheerful air he went downstairs again and put his head in at the
kitchen. Selina sat in the same attitude, and when he coughed made no
response.
“What about dinner?” he said, at last, in a voice which strove to be
unconcerned.
“Go away,” said Selina, thickly. “I don’t want no dinner.”
The captain started. “But I do,” he said, feelingly.
“You’d better get it yourself, then,” replied Miss Vickers, without
turning her head. “I might steal a potato or something.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the other, nervously.
“I’m not a thief,” continued Miss Vickers. “I work as hard as anybody in
Binchester, and nobody can ever say that I took the value of a farthing
from them. If I’m poor I’m honest.”
“Everybody knows that,” said the captain, with fervour.
“You said you didn’t want the paper,” said Selina, turning at last and
regarding him fiercely. “I heard you with my own ears, else I wouldn’t
have taken it. And if they had come back you’d have had your share. You
didn’t want the treasure yourself and you didn’t want other people to
have it. And it wasn’t yours, because I heard you say so.”
“Very well, say no more about it,” said the captain. “If anybody asks
you can say that I knew you had it. Now go and put that back in the
bureau.”
He tossed the key on to the table, and Miss Vickers, after a moment’s
hesitation, turned with a gratified smile and took it up. The next hour
he spent in his bedroom, the rapid evolutions of Miss Vickers as she
passed from the saucepans to the sitting-room and from the sitting-room
back to the saucepans requiring plenty of sea room.
A week later she was one of the happiest people in Binchester. Edward
Tredgold had received a cable from Auckland: “_All safe; coming
home,_” and she shared with Mrs. Chalk and Mrs. Stobell in the hearty
congratulations of a large circle of friends. Her satisfaction was only
marred by the feverish condition of Mr. Tasker immediately on receipt
of the news.