Half-an-hour. It was enough—if there could be no more. It was worth all the trouble. She came back to England at once, by a steamer of the P. & O. Line—sitting on deck, knitting, the old maid to whom people spoke because of her loneliness and her gentle smile.
CHAPTER XIII
THE two books New Guinea Revisited and A Further Investigation give the three years narrative of Dyke’s exploratory work in the mountains, with his study of the various native races, and his adventures among the lesser islands. These matters, as his father said, belong to history; and there is also historical record of his having been at home, or very near home, in the year 1908. It was in this year that the lingering quarrel between him and Saint-Bertin, the French explorer, found its culmination in a duel “à outrance,” which took place somewhere on the outskirts of Paris. Saint-Bertin was the challenger and in regard to the combat itself there were many stories afloat in both countries; the accepted English version being that four shots were exchanged and that Dyke fired his two straight into the air, although he had received a scrape on the thigh from the enemy’s first round. The Frenchmen were undecided whether to take this as a further insult or a beau geste, until, as it was alleged, Dyke said the whole thing was damned nonsense and he would continue to shoot at the sky all the afternoon, since, however much he disliked Monsieur de Saint-Bertin personally, he refused to risk injuring France by incapacitating one of her bravest sons. If indeed he said anything of the sort, one may suppose that he did so in his grandest manner, with a Spanish bow or two and with all sincerity of spirit. For, whatever accusations might be justly levelled against Anthony Dyke for arrogance or overbearingness, no one could charge him with a lack of magnanimity. At any rate his late foe was satisfied by his demeanour—a satisfaction proved by Saint-Bertin’s dedicating his next book to Dyke.
Emmie was satisfied too, when the packet arrived at the flat, forwarded by Dyke’s publishers, and she read the dedication: “I offer myself the signal honour”—all in the most beautiful French—“of inscribing on this page the name of a good comrade, a courteous gentleman, a knight who has wandered from the age of chivalry to teach in this epoch of low ambitions and sordid concurrences the lesson that men may be rivals, and yet friends, of different fatherland but one brotherhood, united to death and beyond it by mutual admiration, esteem, respect, homage”; and so on and so forth. Miss Verinder, thrilling to the lavish praise of her knight errant, liked the beginning of the inscription better than the end. It seemed to her that the Frenchman, winding up, put himself too much on a level with Dyke.
She was doing more and more for him. All his correspondence was sent to her by the bank or the publishers and she dealt with it as best she could. Among these business people she was known as his authorised representative, his “attorney.” She had long ago bought a tin deed box for the safe keeping of his papers, and in course of time she bought another of the same shape and size. These boxes stood in her bedroom, disguised by brocade covers that she had made and embroidered with her own patient hands; and she was never happier than when they were pulled forward from the wall, uncovered, showing the white letters of the name on the shining black enamel—“Anthony Dyke, Esq., C.M.G., etc., etc.” On her knees before them, tidying their always tidy contents, docketing and stringing the various packets, she had wonderful sensations of power and importance—as if she had been rearranging Dyke’s life itself instead of its scribbled records, setting it in order for him, making it easier and more comfortable.
Amongst the neatly folded packets there was one with the label, “Mrs. Anthony Dyke”; and to this Emmie added every six months a receipted account from the asylum in the midlands—Upperslade Park, as they called it. The sight of that address on the stamped piece of paper always gave her a little shock of pain or discomfort; she hated that particular bundle in the box, and used to shrink involuntarily from the task of opening it and retying it. Her hands grew slow as she touched it, and she lapsed into a waking dream while she thought of the great irrevocable fact, and of what his life, their life, might have been if the fact had not been there.
Since his banking account came entirely into her charge and duty compelled her to examine the passbook with close attention, she had made the discovery that another person beyond herself was taking liberties. As well as subscribing rather large sums anonymously to the funds of those various expeditions and thereby to a certain extent “dipping her capital,” as her old friend and adviser, the late Mr. Williams, would have described it, she had also paid smaller sums directly to Anthony’s account at the bank. She began this practise in fear and trembling. But Anthony never detected that he was being thus mysteriously aided. He never counted his money, knowing always that he had not enough, and devoting always every penny he possessed to the needs of a work insufficiently supported by the State and the people. Now she discovered that old Mr. Dyke also fed balances or reduced overdrafts from time to time by unacknowledged contributions.
Her own father was now dead, but in old Dyke she had found another father—a father who understood her. There was nothing that she need keep back from him, nothing that she might not discuss with him. She knew the house called Endells better than she had known her home in Prince’s Gate, and felt more truly at home there. Everything about it was old, settled, full of time-honoured repose; when she and Louisa arrived upon a visit, the old servants, the old walls, the dear quaint old furniture itself welcomed them. Neighbours thought she was a relative of the house; the people of the village smiled at her, and remembered her as somehow belonging to Endells although not regularly living there. She might have lived there, had she wished, in all the time of Anthony’s absences, but she continued to be merely a frequent visitor. And not once did she go there with the son and future owner of the house. A delicacy that all three felt but never spoke of debarred her from that joy. The precious days that Anthony gave to Endells were lost to her entirely.