Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 28

'If you are not a fool,' she said sharply, 'you will waste no time, but hurry along and pay the carriers. They, for their part, won't waste any time with neat brandy. In ten minutes or so they'll be wanting your blood in a bottle--and, if it's all the same to you, Mr Truman, I'd rather they didn't start hunting you through these premises. What's more,' she added, as he hesitated, 'the riding-officer was close on your track just now. You owe it to Doctor Unonius here, that he has overrun it.'

The butcher clutched at his bag, and made as if to open it.

'You needn't trouble,' Mrs Tresize a.s.sured him sweetly.

'Your money's good--and so will be mine when it comes to settling, for all that I'm reported "near." Good-night!'

'Good-night!' growled Butcher Truman, and lurched forth with his bag.

The widow, staring after him, broke into a laugh.

'Tryphena,' she said, 'fetch the doctor's horse and harness him quick! We must get him out of this, good man. Are the tubs stowed?'

'All of 'em, missus. I counted the four dozen.'

'Four dozen is forty-eight; and that doctor'--she turned to him-- 'is not my age, by a very long way.'

But when Dapple had been harnessed, and the doctor drove off (after looking at his watch and finding that it indicated ten minutes to four), Mrs Tresize lingered at the back door a moment before ordering Tryphena to shut and bolt it.

'There was nothing else to do but lie,' she said to herself, meditatively. 'But, all the same, it's lost him for me.'

CHAPTER VIII.

So indeed it had. Doctor Unonius could not overlook a falsehood, and from that hour his thoughts never rested upon the widow Tresize as a desirable woman to wed.

But he had grave searchings of conscience on the part he had been made to play. Undoubtedly he had misled Mr Rattenbury, and--all question of public honesty apart--had perhaps injured that young officer's chances of promotion.

The thought of it disturbed his sleep for weeks. In the end he decided to make a clean breast to Mr Rattenbury, as between man and man; and encountering him one afternoon on the Lealand road, drew up old Dapple and made sign that he wished to speak.

It's about Mrs Tresize--' he began.

'You've heard, then?' said Mr Rattenbury.

'Heard what?'

'Why, that I'm going to marry her.'

'Oh!' said the doctor; and added after a pause, 'My dear sir, I wish you joy.'

'I don't feel that I deserve her,' said Mr Rattenbury, somewhat fatuously.

'Oh!' said the doctor again. 'As for that--'

He did not conclude the sentence, but drove on in meditation.

It is to be supposed that with marriage the widow mended her ways.

Certainly she can have dabbled no more in smuggling, and as certainly she had told the truth about her age. Thrice in the years that followed Doctor Unonius spent some hours of the night, waiting, in the best kitchen at Landeweddy; and Mrs Rattenbury on neither of these occasions--so critical for herself--forgot to have him provided with a decanter of excellent brandy.

The doctor sipping at it and gazing over the rim of the gla.s.s at Mr Rattenbury--nervous and distraught, as a good husband should be--on each occasion wondered how much he knew.

MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED.

CHAPTER I.

Millionaire though he was, Mr Markham (_nee_ Markheim) never let a small opportunity slip. To be sure the enforced idleness of Atlantic crossing bored him and kept him restless; it affected him with _malaise_ to think that for these five days, while the solitude of ocean swallowed him, men on either sh.o.r.e, with cables at their command, were using them to get rich on their own account--it might even be at his expense. The first day out from New York he had spent in his cabin, immersed in correspondence. Having dealt with this and exhausted it, on the second, third, and fourth days he found nothing to do. He never played cards; he eschewed all acquaintance with his fellow men except in the way of business; he had no vanity, and to be stared at on the promenade deck because of the fame of his wealth merely annoyed him. On the other hand, he had not the smallest excuse to lock himself up in his stuffy state-room. He enjoyed fresh air, and had never been sea-sick in his life.

It was just habit--the habit of never letting a chance go, or the detail of a chance--that on the fourth morning carried him the length of the liner, to engage in talk with the fresh-coloured young third officer busy on the high deck forward.

'A young man, exposed as you are, ought to insure himself,' said Mr Markham.

The third officer--by name d.i.c.k Rendal--knew something of the inquisitiveness and idle ways of pa.s.sengers. This was his fifth trip in the _Carnatic_. He took no truck in pa.s.sengers beyond showing them the patient politeness enjoined by the Company's rules. He knew nothing of Mr Markham, who dispensed with the services of a valet and dressed with a shabbiness only pardonable in the extremely rich.

Mr Markham, 'the Insurance King,' had arrayed himself this morning in gray flannel, with a reach-me-down overcoat, cloth cap, and carpet slippers that betrayed his flat, Jewish instep. d.i.c.k Rendal sized him up for an insurance tout; but behaved precisely as he would have behaved on better information. He refrained from ordering the intruder aft; but eyed him less than amiably--being young, keen on his s.h.i.+p, and just now keen on his job.

'I saw you yesterday,' said Mr Markham. (It had blown more than half a gale, and late in the afternoon three heavy seas had come aboard.

The third officer at this moment was employed with half a dozen seamen in repairing damages.) 'I was watching. As I judged, it was the nicest miss you weren't overboard. Over and above employers'

liability you should insure. The Hands Across Mutual Exchange-- that's your office.'

Mr Markham leaned back, and put a hand up to his inner breast-pocket--it is uncertain whether for his cigar-case, or for some leaflet relating to the Hands Across.

'Take care, sir!' said the third officer sharply. 'That stanchion--'

He called too late. The hand as it touched the breast-pocket, shot up and clawed at the air. With a voice that was less a cry than a startled grunt, Mr Markham pitched backwards off the fore-deck into the sea.

The third officer stared for just a fraction of a second; ran, seized a life-belt as the liner's length went shooting past; and hurled it-- with pretty good aim, too--almost before a man of his working party had time to raise the cry of 'Man overboard!' Before the alarm reached the bridge, he had kicked off his shoes; and the last sound in his ears as he dived was the ping of the bell ringing down to the engine-room--a thin note, infinitely distant, speaking out of an immense silence.

CHAPTER II.

It was a beautifully clean dive; but in the flurry of the plunge the third officer forgot for an instant the right upward slant of the palms, and went a great way deeper than he had intended. By the time he rose to the surface the liner had slid by, and for a moment or two he saw nothing; for instinctively he came up facing aft, towards the spot where Mr Markham had fallen, and the long sea running after yesterday's gale threw up a ridge that seemed to take minutes--though in fact it took but a few seconds--to sink and heave up the trough beyond. By-and-by a life-belt swam up into sight; then another--at least a dozen had been flung; and beyond these at length, on the climbing crest of the swell two hundred yards away, the head and shoulders of Mr Markham. By great good luck the first life-belt had fallen within a few feet of him, and Mr Markham had somehow managed to get within reach and clutch it--a highly creditable feat when it is considered that he was at best a poor swimmer, that the fall had knocked more than half the breath out of his body, that he had swallowed close on a pint of salt water, and that a heavy overcoat impeded his movements. But after this fair first effort Mr Markham, as his clothes weighed him down, began--as the phrase is--to make very bad weather of it. He made worse and worse weather of it as d.i.c.k Rendal covered the distance between them with a superlatively fine side-stroke, once or twice singing out to him to hold on, and keep a good heart. Mr Markham, whether he heard or no, held on with great courage, and even coolness--up to a point. Then of a sudden his nerve deserted him. He loosed his hold of the life-belt, and struck out for his Rescuer. Worse, as he sank in the effort and d.i.c.k gripped him, he closed and struggled. For half a minute d.i.c.k, shaking free of the embrace--and this only by striking him on the jaw and half stunning him as they rose on the crest of a swell--was able to grip him by the collar and drag him within reach of the life-belt.

But here the demented man managed to wreathe his legs and arms in another and more terrible hold. The pair of them were now cursing horribly, cursing whenever a wave left choking them, and allowed them to cough and sputter for breath. They fought as two men whose lives had pent up an unmitigable hate for this moment. They fought, neither losing his hold, as their strength ebbed, and the weight of their clothes dragged them lower. d.i.c.k Rendal's hand still clutched the cord of the life-belt, but both bodies were under water, fast locked, when the liner's boat at length reached the spot. They were hauled on board, as on a long line you haul a fish with a crab fastened upon him; and were laid in the stern-sheets, where their grip was with some difficulty loosened.

It may have happened in the struggle. Or again it may have happened when they were hoisted aboard and lay, for a minute or so, side by side on the deck. Both men were insensible; so far gone indeed that the doctor looked serious as he and his helpers began to induce artificial respiration.

The young third officer 'came round' after five minutes of this; but, strangely enough, in the end he was found to be suffering from a severer shock than Mr Markham, on whom the doctor operated for a full twenty minutes before a flutter of the eyelids rewarded him.

They were carried away--the third officer, in a state of collapse, to his modest berth; Mr Markham to his white-and-gold deck-cabin.

On his way thither Mr Markham protested cheerily that he saw no reason for all this fuss; he was as right now, or nearly as right, as the Bank.