The Red Derelict Part 46

There were others on board, though, to whom this change was not so welcome, and who--for human nature is human after all--fervently wished this picked-up castaway--well--back again on the hulk from which he had been picked up. For Delia Calmour, with her beauty and tact and sunniness of disposition, had reigned a queen among the male section of the pa.s.sengers, and the long voyage, now nearing its close, had been long enough to render more than one heart rather sore.

"I must not monopolise you all day, and every day, like this, child,"

Wagram had said to her. "You are good-nature itself towards a tiresome old bore with but one idea in his head. You must go and make things lively for the others a bit sometimes or I shall feel like an interloper."

"Am I tiring you, then?" she would answer softly.

"Now, you know that is absurd. Still, I must not be selfish."

"You--selfish? What next?"

"I'm afraid I am--very. Now, they are getting up that last fancy-dress dance before we get into what may possibly be rough water. Go and help them in that as you would have done before. I want to see you enjoying yourself. I am afraid I am too much of a fogey to cut into that sort of thing actively myself."

She did not answer that "that sort of thing" was an inane and vapid method of enjoying herself, compared with half-an-hour of ordinary conversation with him. She complied--and submissively. Incidentally, she found that the "enjoyment" involved a heated pa.s.sage-of-arms with the third officer; item, subsequently with a fine young Australian whom she had refused twice during the voyage; but these were trifles light as air under the circ.u.mstances.

Then the days grew fewer and fewer, and the grey waters of the Bay of Biscay gave way to the greyer waters of the English Channel. The _Runic_ would soon be securely docked in her berth.

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 ta.s.sels 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 ident.i.ty 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 G.o.d, 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 una.s.sailable 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.

Decidedly Wagram's train of thought was strange that morning.

Everything had been restored to him--everything as it had been; and yet--and yet--something was wanting. A feeling as of loneliness was upon him--upon him, the envied of all his acquaintance. He missed his father now that he reigned alone--missed him every minute of the day.

The dear old man's chair at table, in which he himself now sat--he missed him even while he was sitting there; his constant flow of sparkling reminiscence, his pungent wit, his good-natured cynicism and his affection for himself; and yet--and yet--he missed something else.

What was it? The musical flow of a sweet young voice, the bright presence and ready and tactful sympathy of one who had been his companion for a short--in point of time, but in actual fact concentrated--fellows.h.i.+p. He went over again his first meeting with Delia Calmour and his father's unhesitating dictum upon the house of Calmour in general. "A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho!" And now it seemed to him that the one thing lacking to render his cup of contentment full was the presence of one Calmour at Hilversea, and that one Delia.

Incidentally, it struck him that for present purposes it was a good thing that old Calmour had been removed to another, and, he hoped, a better world; but only incidentally, for, having come to the conclusion he had, the mere removal of old Calmour and Siege House to a remoter part of the realm than Ba.s.singham, and that under far greater conditions of comfort than that old toper could ever have pictured in his wildest dreams, would have been the merest matter of detail. However, old Calmour was no longer there, which simplified matters.

Then the cynical element came uppermost. His experience of the matrimonial bond had been lamentable; why, then, should he be ill-advised enough to make a second experiment of it? And yet--and yet--he had had ample opportunities of watching this girl, and she had seemed to s.h.i.+ne out as pure gold from the alloy of her surroundings and bringing up. He was no fool, and had a large experience of the seamy side of life, which was sufficient to safeguard him from illusions. She was in poor circ.u.mstances, and life to her must be one of struggle.

Such a bait as his position and wealth would be under the circ.u.mstances irresistible, but it was not under these circ.u.mstances that he wanted her. He was considerably her senior in years, and it was probable that in her young mind he ranked as a serious and elderly bore, whom she might have reason to hold in some regard, perhaps; but still--Against that, again, he remembered how that bright, beautiful face used to light up on such occasions as their first meeting of a morning, while on board s.h.i.+p, and on others. No; there was a spontaneity and genuineness about that expression that was due to no sordid motive.

Since his return he had been overwhelmed with calls and congratulations; indeed, part of his aim in life seemed to have become the dodging of such whenever practicable. Invitations, too, had not been lacking, with very propitious "beauty's eyes" in the background, but for such he had no inclination. This girl whose acquaintance he had made in so strange and semi-tragical a manner, whose character he had watched develop ever since, seemed to have become bound up with his life, and now the last phase in the acquaintance was that she--and she alone--had been the actual instrument in the saving of his life. For herself, she had come out splendidly through all her disadvantages. Yes; her presence here was the one thing he needed--and he needed it greatly.

He remembered the arrival of the _Runic_. Clytie had been there to meet her sister, and the frank, cheerful greeting which she had extended to him had impressed him very favourably. He had been to see them since, and the favourable impression had deepened. There was no pretence about them in their new home. They had got to work, and work pretty hard too, and they were doing it with a brave hopefulness that was beyond all praise. And he had extracted a promise from them that if ever they found themselves in need of a friend--no matter what manner of difficulty might overtake them--they were to apply to him unhesitatingly, which was all he was able to do for them for the present.

Then his train of thought took another turn. The tin case he had found in the cuddy of the derelict he had never yet investigated--had not even opened it. He had been very busy since his return, and had put it aside till arrears of business should have been disposed of. He had resisted an inclination to open it on board the _Runic_, moved by the consciousness that there is no real privacy on board s.h.i.+p, and this, he felt instinctively, was a matter needing undisturbed and uninterrupted attention. Now he thought the time had come when he might very well do so.

He unlocked a safe and got out the tin case. It was all corroded with its long submersion in salt water but quite intact. It brought back to him that gruesome dive into the heart of the spectral derelict; and for a few minutes he sat there, going over in his mind that time alone on the oily waters of the glistening deep, and that awful moment in the darkness when the receding lights had betokened that he was left to his fate--the hand of rescue stretched forth only to be withdrawn. He shook the recollection off, as that of a nightmare from which one awakes, then, procuring the requisite tools, set to work to open the case.

It was full of papers--close packed, full to bursting. Some two or three were of parchment-looking substance, others of thin rice paper.

The latter were st.i.tched together with a kind of thin thread of animal fibre. This detail he took in at once, the result of his recent and complete savage training. He spread them out upon the capacious writing-table in front of him, and then--

Great Heaven! what was this? "Develin Hunt!" There was the name, not at the end of a doc.u.ment, but in the middle of it. He stared again, and could hardly believe his eyes. Develin Hunt! He had expected to find some clue as to his lost brother's fate, which was his reason for not having handed over the box to the captain of the _Runic_ as containing a possible clue to the ident.i.ty of the Red Derelict, but instead the first name to meet his eye was that of Develin Hunt!

He pulled himself together, and, with mind cool and business-like, set himself to examine the doc.u.ments, beginning with this one. And it was the most important of all, for it was nothing more nor less than a marriage certificate.

He gazed at it for a moment, then got up again and went to the safe.

From this he extracted a doc.u.ment, and spread it side by side with the first one. It was a copy of another marriage certificate, that which Develin Hunt had produced for the enlightenment of his father and himself, but--the one he had just extracted from the tin box bore date four years earlier.

What then? The man might have been a widower at the time. So far he himself was--well, just where he was--where he had been.

He had forgotten for the moment all about Everard and his fate. Eagerly he turned over the other papers. They seemed to have no bearing on the subject until he got to the thin ones, which, in effect, were a sort of diary, st.i.tched together, as we have said. And before he had gone far through this he realised that the discovery of this other marriage certificate was of very first-rate importance indeed, for it set forth unmistakably that the other party referred to was alive at the time of his mother's marriage with his father--alive, in fact, long subsequently thereto, if not alive at the present day. It was further obvious that any information to be sought for on the subject must be sought in South Africa. Could this be established it followed that Develin Hunt's marriage with his mother was invalid and that of his father was valid.

South Africa! Haldane might help him here; he had spent years of his life in those parts. And yet, he remembered, to Haldane's mind Develin Hunt's name had conveyed no idea other than as subject-matter for a joke, even as it had done to his own. Well, this need mean nothing, unless it were that, like many adventurers, this man had not always gone under his own name.

Again and again he read through the paper, and with each perusal the piecing together of the puzzle became easier. And as it did so came another thought. Would it not be far easier and quicker to get into communication with the adventurer himself, and, at the possible price of some further blackmail, obtain from him at first hand the solution of the whole difficulty? It was wrong and immoral, no doubt, to compound so grave and dangerous an offence as blackmailing, but the awful anguish of mind he had gone through seemed to justify anything--anything in the abstract, such as this was, and not hurtful to any individual--to ensure relief. Even so, a weight seemed to have been lifted from him--the whole weight, in fact--and, with the consciousness, other words spoken by the old Squire came back to him: "There is no telling what Time may work, so give Time his chance." Prophetic they sounded now, words of gold-mouthed wisdom. He had given Time his chance, and Time had worked accordingly; and lo, from the bowels of this spectral relic of a s.h.i.+p floating for years on the slimy surface of the tropical seas, Time had yielded up this its secret.

And then he was brought back to everyday realities by two sounds--the ringing of the luncheon bell and the voice of his son outside.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.

TIME'S CONSUMMATION.

"Well, Gerard, old chap? Been keeping your nose hard to the grindstone?" said Wagram as they sat down at table.

"Rather. Old Churton takes care of that," laughed the tall, handsome lad. "He must have been a terror at Rugby."

Wagram had taken his son from school for a quarter on his return. He yearned to have the boy with him after his long separation, and his restoration to life, as it were; but he sent him to read every morning with a neighbouring Anglican rector, an ex-public school master.

"Glad to hear it. Churton's a conscientious man and an energetic one.

It must be almost the renewal of his youth to start as bear leader again."

"Don't know about 'leader'--'driver' would be nearer the right word, pater. I say, what are you doing this afternoon?"

"Going over to Haldane's. Want to come?"

"Rather. Bike, I suppose?"

Wagram nodded. "In an hour after lunch, then," he said.