CHAPTER XII
In the pale spring sunlight where they sat, there came a wholly incongruous figure. It was clad in black broadcloth, and black kid gloves, and there was a black shining silk hat on the top of it; and in one of the black kid gloved hands was balanced a black silk umbrella. The figure was that of John Jervase, and he was walking amidst the tombs of Scutari with about as much visible emotion as he would have shown if he had been on his daily walk to the Stock Exchange in Stevenson Place, Birmingham.
‘They told me at the hospital as you’d got leave for a bit of a walk, Polly, and one of the chaps said it was likely I should find you here. You’re better, ain’t you? There’s a little bit of colour in your face this morning.’
He was altogether gay and friendly, and his voice and manner alike were cheerful, but he fell into a ludicrous consternation as he turned to find Major de Blacquaire seated between two turbaned tombs at his left hand.
‘I say, Sergeant,’ said the Major, with his University drawl, ‘I wish you’d go away for half a minute, and leave me to talk things over with your Governah?’
‘As you like,’ said Polson, and hobbled away towards the south end of the cemetery, where the bay lay gleaming that mild morning, and French and English troopships were landing men who were as broken as he himself had been a month ago.
‘I suppose,’ said De Blacquaire, scratching lines on the ground before him with one of his crutches, ‘that you’re one of the beastliest old bounders that one could find on the face of the earth, and I have the best sort of a good mind to get you into trouble. I suppose you know that?’
‘Very well,’ said John Jervase. ‘If you won’t get me into any sort of trouble that won’t leave my boy outside, you’re welcome.’
‘Yes,’ said the Major, ‘that’s where you come in. You go and rob your neighbour for a matter of about twenty years, and when I drop into his property you go on robbing me, and then because your son’s a good chap a man is obliged to let you alone. I don’t think that that is fair.’
John Jervase had seated himself at the opposite side of the cemetery path, and was as busy in the making of hieroglyphics with the point of his neatly folded silk umbrella as Major de Blacquaire was with the point of his crutch.
‘Hit me,’ he said, ‘without hitting the boy and you are welcome.’
Major de Blacquaire scored the wet gravel with the crutch, looking frowningly down upon the ground, and Jervase scored the earth on his side with the neat brass ferrule.
‘I don’t quite see what I am to do with you,’ said the Major. ‘It isn’t the boy’s fault that he has a rotter for a father, is it?’
‘Now you look here,’ said John Jervase, heavily and solidly, ‘I’ve had pretty nearly two years to think this thing over in. I’ve done wrong, and I own up to it There’s my boy, Polly, as is recommended for the Victoria Cross by Sir Colin Campbell, and fetched you out of the fire under the Malakoff, so I’m told, as if you’d been his very born brother. I’ve been sitting by his bed for more than a month past, and if I’m not a Dutchman he hates you like poison. He’d only got to leave you there and everything would have been at an end betwixt us; and what on earth he fetched you out for, I don’t know. If you think, Major, that I’m appealing for myself, you’re the most mistaken man in the whole wide world. If you can find a way of hitting old Jack Jervase without hitting the boy, find it and do it. But ever since I’ve heard about you, folks have told me that you pride yourself on being a gentleman; and if a gentleman is going to take it out of a chap who has nearly died for him, when he had every right to leave him alone, and when it was the biggest kind of blunder to rescue him, I’m no judge of what a gentleman ought to be.’ Major de Blacquaire moved the point of the crutch to and fro on the moist gravel, and made his hieroglyphics in the soil without response for a minute or two. But at last he said, in his Cambridge drawl:
‘You’re an illimitable old bounder, but you’re rather a clever old bounder, when all is said and done, and I suppose I shall have to let you go.’
‘Major de Blacquaire,’ said Jervase, ‘if ever there was a man mistaken in this world, you’re a mistaken man. I don’t want your ticket, and I don’t want your pardon. I’ve had two years to think this over in. I’ve been without my lad all the time, and I’ve come out here to find him broke and wandering in his mind. I’ve sat down between your bed and his, and I’ve heard him in his wanderings say how he hated you, and I’ve heard you say how you’ve hated him. And now I tell you, fair and square, find a way of hitting me that won’t hit the lad, and I’ll take anything that you can do to me.’
‘There isn’t any way,’ said De Blacquaire, ‘worse luck! I’m told that there’s a doctrine of heredity, and we’ve got to believe that men are like their fathers. Personally, I’m not going to believe it And I shall be obliged to you if you will go and send back a lad who’s about as much like you as you’re like the Apostle Paul. Now—vanish! and behave like an honest fellow for once in your life for the sake of an honest son.’
John Jervase rose. ‘It’s all very well,’ he said, ‘for you to talk. You’ve never been poor and ambitious and hard run, and you don’t know what temptation can amount to. You’ve got your money back again to the last penny. It’s in Stubbs’ hands, and I’ve stood the racket. And if the father did you a bad turn the son has done you a good one.’
‘Will you kindly go away, Mr. Jervase?’ said the Major.
‘Yes,’ said Jervase, ‘I’ll go away. But since I’m here, I’m going to ask you one question. Are you going to hit the boy through me?’
‘Will you oblige me,’ said Major de Blacquaire, ‘by going to the devil?’
‘Are you a-going,’ said John Jervase, ‘to make a scandal of this business when you get home again? I’ve paid your lawyer to the last farthing. My cousin’s hooked it with pretty near a quarter of a million sterling, and gone out to Venezuela. And if I hadn’t struck on a pretty fat thing in the way of a contract for forage and horseflesh for these French chaps here, I should have been pretty well a bankrupt. But I found the money, and you’re as well off as you would have been if old General Airey had never heard my name.’
‘That is good news to a poor man,’ said De Blacquaire. ‘And now, my dear sir, will you oblige me by going to the devil?’
‘Are you a-going to make a scandal about this business when we get home again?’ Jervase asked.
‘No, you purblind clown,’ said Major de Blacquaire, rising, and fitting his crutches to his armpits. ‘I am not. You have about as much notion of what a man is bound to do under these conditions as an ox would have. Please do as I have asked you, and leave me, and send the boy along. I don’t think that he will leave the same flavour on the palate as the father does.’
‘I suppose,’ said Jervase, ‘that from your point of view I’ve been a badish sort of a lot?’
‘I suppose you have,’ said Major de Blacquaire.
‘But Polly never knew about it, and you’ve never had any sort of a right to look down on him. Old Sir Ferdinand was the first of your crowd as ever climbed to the top of the tree, and I can remember him when he was no better off than I am.’
‘I do not think,’ said Major de Blacquaire, ‘that I have ever encountered quite so pestiferous a stupidity. Will you go?’
The tension of the curious interview was relieved, for Polson, who had slowly paced the circular path which ran round the cemetery, came limping back again, dinting the wet gravel with the crutch-headed stick and leaning on it like a man who had achieved a forced march of many miles.
‘That’s the chap,’ said John Jervase, ‘as fetched you out from under fire.’
‘I have a right,’ said Major de Blac-quaire, ‘to be as well aware of that fact as you are, Mr. Jervase. Sergeant, I’ve been mistaken about you all along. Do you mind——’ he paused, and there was a break in the aristocratic drawl he had so long affected that it had grown to be a trick of second nature with him, ‘d’you mind shaking hands, Sergeant?’
Polson Jervase reached out the hand which was not engaged with the stick, and it happened to be the left.
‘I don’t want that, Sergeant,’ said the Major.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Polson, ‘it’s the nearest to the heart.’
And De Blacquaire took it with a glint of moisture in his eyes.
‘You ain’t done that to me, Polly,’ said Jervase. ‘It’s pretty near two years since you’ve done that to me. Are you ever going to shake hands with me again?’
Major de Blacquaire fitted his crutches to his shoulders, and stumped away, leaving father and son together.
‘There’s nobody seems to understand me, Polly,’ said the elder. ‘I ran my risk of getting into quod along with your Uncle James, and for a man who’s been brought up respectable, that ought to count for something. I’ve owned up to everything, and I’ve paid for everything, and I’m a solid man this minute. Ain’t you going to shake hands with your old father, Polly? I followed you out to the Crimea, and I learned where you was a-lyin’, wounded, and I’ve nursed you from the minute I found you up till now. Shake hands, Polly.’
Father and son shook hands, with no very great good will, if the truth must be told, on the side of the younger; for Polson had yet to learn a lesson or two and had not caught the art of forgiveness for the repentant sinner who was still prosperous. It is a great deal easier for almost anybody to forgive the criminal who has fallen to hunger and tatters than it is to find an excuse for him when he goes in shining broadcloth and lustrous silk and patent leather.
De Blacquaire went stumping along on his crutches in the weak spring sunshine, and Polson and his father, by mere chance, were looking after him when he paused at the corner of the one important monument in the grounds, and raised his forage cap to some person as yet unseen.
There is a sort of legend often taught in verse and fiction to the effect that no one true lover can be near another without the presence being felt. But Polson had turned away when his father laid a hand upon his sleeve, and asked him, ‘Don’t you see who that is, Polly?’ And the lad, turning, saw the goddess of his dreams. It was Irene, and he recognised her face almost without surprise, for it flashed upon him instantly that her voice had sounded through all his fevered dreams since he had first laid his head upon the clean, sweet-smelling hospital pillow. The girl was dressed in black, and her slight figure looked the slighter for its garb. She came forward with a smile in her eyes, and with a quickened step.
‘I’ve kept my promise,’ said Jervase the elder, ‘and I haven’t spoke a word.’ And with that he exhibited a tact he had not shown before, and walked smartly away, leaving the boy and girl together.
‘I have wanted to see you,’ she said amply, ‘but I have kept away until I could be sure of bringing you good news. You know that my father is here?’
‘I saw him on Lord Raglan’s Staff at the Alma,’ said Polson, ‘and I have heard about him since from time to time.’
De Blacquaire was hobbling away on his crutches towards the hospital, and by this time was barely visible. Jervase in his black broadcloth and shining silk hat brandished his umbrella in the rear, and there was not another soul in sight.
‘I knew you, dear,’ said Polson. ‘I have had your voice and hand about me for a month past.’
‘I came out with my father,’ said Irene, ‘more than a year ago. Lord Raglan gave him some sort of work to do at the Embassy at Constantinople to begin with, and when the fighting began he was attached to the Staff and I was left behind. So I turned to the hospital and I have been at work here for a year and more.’
He forgot his wound, and stood upright with the crutch stick in one hand and held out both arms to her.
‘I haven’t the least little bit of a right, my dear,’ he said, but she laughed tenderly, and ran to the offered shelter. All around were the unlettered, turbaned memorials of the dead, and there was just this one bit of youth and love in the middle of that record of a thousand tragedies.
‘Have you heard the news?’ she asked, looking up at the worn young face with its late sprung growth of silky beard.
‘What news?’ he asked.
‘The news about yourself,’ she answered.
‘News about myself?’ said Polson. ‘What news is there about me?’
‘You don’t know?’ cried Irene, recoiling from him a little with clasped hands and sparkling eyes. ‘Is it going to be my good luck to tell you? You don’t know any news about yourself?’
‘I don’t know any news about myself,’ he answered; ‘since I was bowled over on Christmas morning at Sevastopol, I haven’t had a chance of hearing any, I’ve had your voice and this dear little hand about me all the time—I’ve known that.’
‘And you don’t know?’ she asked him, ‘you don’t know what’s waiting for you when you get back to England?’
A cloud fell upon him at the question. ‘I don’t know, dear,’ he answered. ‘I don’t know what’s waiting for me when I get back to England. But I do know that I’m a bit of a fool and a bit of a scoundrel to forget the reason why we said good-bye. I was so glad to see you again that it came natural to forget. And you’ll forgive me sooner than I shall forgive myself.’
‘Wait one minute, Polson,’ said Irene. ‘Here is a letter from papa. So soon as you can recover you are to be invalided home, and the gem of the letter is—do you guess? Do you guess? You are recommended by the Commander-in-Chief for the Victoria Cross. Here it is.’ And she read, dancing on tiptoe. ‘“Our young friend, Polson, has magnificently distinguished himself, having rescued under heavy fire a wounded officer, whose name I have not yet been able to discover. But the gallant action was seen by the Chief, who was there in person, and who has told me that he has seen nothing more splendid in the whole course of his career.”’
With that, she hid her face upon his breast again, and he folded his arms about her in a sort of stupor.
‘I said good-bye, dear, long ago,’ he stammered haltingly. ‘I’ve no right to behave like this.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What can make any difference between us?’
He took her to his heart again at those fond words, and laid his lips upon her forehead. De Blacquaire’s crutches had long since ceased to crunch along the road towards the hospital, and Jervase’s broad shoulders had gone out of sight. There was no human creature near, but far and far away overhead a lark was soaring and singing. Many and many a pair of English lovers had heard the same song as the bird had hailed the rising or the setting sun, and both the young hearts beat to that native sounding music which rang so far away from home. Their lips came together, and there was music in their hearts.
‘Take me back to the hospital, Polson,’ she said, disengaging herself from his arms. ‘I am on duty within a quarter of an hour.’
She took a little watch from her girdle, and looked at it with a cry.
‘I have barely five minutes, and I have never failed to relieve guard since I came. Is that the word, dear?’ She took his arm sedately, and walked along with him, he prodding at the wet gravel with his stick, and she half supporting him.
‘Was that true?’ she asked. ‘Did you know that I was near you?’
‘Did I know!’ said Polson in a voice that was worth a thousand protestations to her ears.
‘I always thought,’ said Irene, ‘that I disliked Major de Blacquaire until a week or two ago; but whilst you were lying there ill and delirious, he behaved so kindly that I shall never forget him. And he told me—you won’t mind, Polson, dear, you won’t let anything I say wound you? He told me that the past was buried. That awful, awful night will never be quite forgotten, but it has left nothing behind it. Your father has paid everything, and there is not a word to be spoken by anybody, ever any more.’
The lark sang in the thin sunlight as if he would break his very heart for joy, and the lovers walked homewards slowly, arm in arm.