Chapter Fourteen.
The Sea and her Dead.
The old Squire was skimming the morning paper, without much show of interest, however. Of politics he declared himself sick, and there was not much of any interest all round. He felt himself wishing that all newspapers were only issued weekly.
He was about to throw the paper aside when a paragraph caught his eye. It was headed: “A Terrible Tale of the Sea,” and set forth the picking up of an open boat, a small dinghy, in fact, containing three men in the last stage of starvation and exhaustion, survivors—probably the sole survivors—of the passengers and crew of the steamship Carboceer, homeward bound from West Africa. The steamer, according to the narrative of these, had run at full speed ahead on to a huge floating hulk in black midnight, and had gone down in less than five minutes they estimated, and that amid a scene of terrible panic.
“But,” continued the paragraph, “the survivors, consisting of two seamen and a passenger, seem unable to agree as to the cause of the disaster. The sailors pronounce the obstruction to be a derelict, and are emphatic on this point. On the other hand, the passenger, Mr Develin Hunt, is equally positive that he saw at any rate one man on board of it, which points to the possibility of another lamentable catastrophe due to the carelessness of those in charge of a certain type of windjammer in neglecting to show lights.”
The paragraph went on to a little more detail, mainly conjectural, but of this Grantley Wagram took no heed. He had dropped the paper, and sat staring into space, with the look upon his face of a man who has met with a shock, as violent as it is unexpected—as one who had seen an apparition from beyond the grave.
“Develin Hunt!” he repeated. “Good God! it can’t be. Yet—there can’t be two Develin Hunts.”
He snatched up the paper again, with something of a tremble as he grasped it, and once more scanned the paragraph. Then he turned eagerly to several other morning dailies which lay on the table. More detail might be set forth in each—but no. Either too hurriedly did he turn over each close-printed sheet, or the item of news had been overlooked, but nothing further could he find concerning the tragedy. At last, stuck away in a corner of a different sheet, he found another paragraph: “The only surviving passenger of this ghastly marine tragedy,” it concluded, “proves to be a West African trader who has spent many years far up country—an elderly gentleman of some sixty years, named Develin Hunt.”
Grantley Wagram’s face lost none of its set greyness.
“Of some sixty years?” he repeated—“that would be about the age. No; he’d be more than that. There can’t be two Develin Hunts! The sea has given up her dead.”
He looked years older as he sat there, still grasping the paper, and for it he had reason; for should his conjectural identification of this man prove an accurate one, why, then, it meant that the ruin of his house would be fixed, and, humanly speaking, beyond his power to avert.
For long he sat, motionless as a stone figure. Through the open window came in the joyous sounds of the summer morning—the rustle of the great elms in a light breeze, the caw of rooks, and the distant clicking of a mowing-machine, and, with all, the scent of flowers upon a groundwork fragrance of new-mown hay. Every nerve and sense was alive to these. No wonder that he should look grey and stony. What if all should end with him?
What if his son—? And then from without came the voice of his son, together with that of another, and both were inquiring as to his whereabouts. The voices from outside acted as a tonic; and, pulling himself together, the old Squire got up and went to meet their owners—his son and the family chaplain. Wagram had been serving the latter’s Mass, and had brought him in to breakfast.
“Looking fit? Oh, well, I suppose so. I haven’t begun to feel my years as yet,” was the easy answer of the old diplomat to the fresh, cheery greeting of the priest. But the latter was not altogether deceived. His keen observational faculty did not fail to detect a certain drawn and anxious look, differing from the ordinarily suave expression of his host’s face. “Wagram, tell Rundle to get us out a bottle or so of that dry, sparkling hock. You know, the 13 bin. I believe that’s better than anything else on a warm morning like this.”
“Upon my word, Squire, you’ve missed you’re vocation,” laughed Father Gayle. “You ought to have been a crack physician, for certainly no one answering to that qualification could have been guilty of a more salutary prescription.”
“Any news?” said Wagram, picking up the paper. Then, as they sat down: “Why, this is a queer yarn, these three chaps being picked up in a boat.” Then, after briefly skimming it: “Why, by George! I wonder if that’s the hulk we were reading about the other day when Haldane was here? I shouldn’t be surprised. It must be very much in the same part of the world.”
“You forget, Wagram,” said the chaplain quizzically, “that so far we none of us know what the mischief it is you are talking about, save that it concerns three men in a boat, a yarn, and Haldane. Now, even in my childhood, I was never good at piecing together puzzles. I can’t answer for the Squire.”
“Here you are; read it for yourself,” said Wagram, pushing the paper across the table. “It’s a ghastly thing to figure out, though, if these are the sole survivors. Develin Hunt! That’s a rum name! How perfectly sick that fellow must have got all through boyhood, youth, and middle age of being—banteringly or the reverse—told he had the Develin him.”
They laughed at this—none more heartily than that finished old diplomat Grantley Wagram. Laughed—in his bright, genial, humorous way, and yet all the time he was thinking how Wagram was, figuratively speaking, cracking jokes over his own open grave. Laughed—even as he might have laughed a few minutes earlier, before this dreadful bolt out of the blue had fallen. Laughed—as Wagram, sitting there in his blissful ignorance, was laughing. Why, the thing was so sudden, so unlooked-for, and withal so disastrous, that it seemed like a dream. Yet Grantley Wagram could laugh. But within his mind still hummed in mocking refrain his first ejaculation: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”
They talked on of various matters—the prospects of grouse on the Twelfth, and when Wagram’s boy would be home for the holidays, and so forth. Then the priest said:
“By the way, Squire, that’s a most astonishing thing Wagram has been telling me about that Miss Calmour and the claim made against you.”
“Yes; I told Father Gayle because he seemed to have rather a—well, unexalted opinion of the poor girl when we first talked about her,” explained Wagram.
“Oh, come; I didn’t say so.”
“No. Still, I thought it only fair to show the other side of her.”
“No one could have been more astonished than I was myself,” said the Squire. “She certainly behaved most honourably.”
“I should think so,” declared Wagram. “Her people are chronically hard up, and, that being so, to tear up a cheque for a thousand pounds deliberately was in her case rather heroic.”
“Probably the rest of them will lead her a terrible life on the strength of it,” said the Squire. “Poor child! she seemed a good deal better than her belongings. We must see if we can’t do something for her.”
“Yes, we must,” agreed Wagram. “This is a morning to tempt one out. I think I shall jump on the bicycle and rip over to Haldane’s—unless you want me for anything, father.”
“No, no. I’ve a thing or two to think over, but nothing that you need bother about,” answered the Squire, adding to himself—“as yet.”
Soon after breakfast Father Gayle took his leave, and the Squire his usual morning stroll round the gardens and shrubbery. But he did wrong to be alone, for, try as he would, the one idea clung to his mind in a veritable obsession: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”
The while Wagram, skimming along the smooth, well-kept roads, was again thrilled with the intense joy of possession as he revelled in the cool shade of over-arching trees; in the moist depths of a bosky wood, echoing forth its bird-song, with now and again the joyous crow of a cock pheasant; in the green and gold of the spangled meadows and the purl of the stream beneath the old bridge. Surely life was too good—surely such an idyllic state could not be meant to last, was the misgiving that sometimes beset him; for he had known the reverse side of all this—had known it bitterly, and for long years.
Haldane and Yvonne were pacing up and down one of the garden walks, the former smoking a pipe and dividing his attention between the morning paper and the lovely child beside him. Just behind the latter, stepping daintily, and turning when they turned, was the beautiful little Angora cat.
“Did you see this, Wagram?” said Haldane, the first greeting over, holding out the newspaper. “Well, you remember that confounded stray hulk we were reading about over at your place? It’s my belief that it’s the very one that’s sent this boat to the bottom. Did you read about it?”
“Yes.”
Yvonne’s face was now the picture of blue-eyed mischief.
“Well, this chump that was picked up, did you notice what a devilish odd name they’ve given him?”
“Develin Hunt, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Well, now, think of his life spent in being told he had the Develin him.”
A peal of laughter went up from Yvonne—and it was good to hear that child laugh—such a clear, merry, hearty trill.
“I’ve been waiting for that,” she cried. “Mr Wagram, you’re a perfect godsend. Father has inflicted it upon every available being up till now. Briggs, the gardener, was gurgling to such an extent that he had to stop digging. He even stopped old Finlay, driving by to Swanton, and fired it off on him.”
“Sunbeam, you are getting insufferably impudent,” said her father. “I shall really have to cane you.”
With mock gravity she held out a hand that was a very model, with its long, tapering fingers, which closed upon those which descended upon it in a playful little slap.
“He isn’t the only sinner in that respect, Sunbeam,” said Wagram. “I myself was inflicting it upon our crowd at just about the same time.”
“And are not ashamed of yourself? I’ve a great mind not to show you where I took out a two-pounder the other evening.”
“Did you get it out yourself?”
“That’s stale. I sha’n’t even answer it. Come.”
She had taken an arm of each, in the way of one who ruled both of them. But Haldane hung back.
“Take him alone, dear. I must get two confounded letters behind my back, or they’ll never get done. I’ll come on after you if I’m done in time.”
“All safe. Poogie, I think I won’t take you,” picking up the beautiful little animal. “Some obnoxious cur might skoff you.”
“Why not chuck her in the river for a swim?” said Wagram mischievously. The look Yvonne gave him was beautiful to behold.
“Now, I’ve a great mind not to take you,” she said severely. “Well, come along, then.”
For nearly an hour they wandered by the stream that ran below the garden, talking trout generally, and peering cautiously over into this or that deep hole where big trout were wont to lie. Then, recrossing the plank bridge, with its rather insecure handrail, they started to return.
The field footpath was a right-of-way, and now along it came a somewhat ragged figure, dusty and tired-looking. It was that of a swarthy, middle-aged woman, with beady, black eyes. Instantly Yvonne’s interest awoke.
“She can’t be English,” she declared. “Wait, I’ll try her.”
She opened in fluent Italian, but met with no response. A change to Spanish and French was equally without result.
“It ain’t no good, young lady,” said the tramp; “I don’t understand none of them languages. And yet I ain’t exactly English, neither, as you was saying just now.”
“What! You heard that?” cried Yvonne, astonished. “You are able to hear far.”
“Ay; and able to see far too. Would you like to know what I can see for you, my sweet young lady?” she went on, dropping into the wheedling whine of the professional fortune-teller.
“It would be fun to have my fortune told,” said the girl rather wistfully.
“Yvonne, I’m surprised at you,” said Wagram, with somewhat of an approach to sternness. “Don’t you know that all that sort of thing is forbidden, child, and very wisely so, too?”
“I know; but I don’t mean seriously—only just for the fun of the thing.”
“No—no. Not ‘only just for’ anything; it’s not to be thought of.”
“It’s ’ard to live,” whined the woman, “and me that’s tramped without bite or sup since yesterday. And I’m that ’ungry!”
She certainly looked her words. Wagram softened in a moment.
“Here,” he said; “and now take my advice and get on your way. We don’t want any fortune-tellers round here.”
The tramp spat gleefully—for luck—on the half-crown which lay in her surprised palm.
“Thankee, sir, and good luck to you, sir, and to the sweet young lady. I’ll move on, never fear. You’re a genelman, you are.”
“What are you up to, Wagram?” said Haldane, joining them. “Encouraging vagrancy—as usual? Good line that for a county magistrate.”
“Oh, I can’t see those poor devils looking so woebegone and turn them away. The principle’s quite wrong, I know, but—there it is.”
“Quite wrong. They’re generally lying.”
“More than likely. Still, there it is.”
He was thinking of his meditations as he had ridden over—of the contrast between his life now and formerly, of the intense joy of possession, which he hoped did not come within the definition of “the pride of life.” Of the ragged tramp he had just relieved he had no further thought. Yet it might be that even she would cross his path again. It might be, too, when that befell, little enough of “the pride of life” would then be his.