Chapter Thirty Eight.
Time’s Chance.
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.