For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely, the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning service her fervour was something astonishing—the quaver in her voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once usually sufficed.
It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually acceded to.
“Dear,” said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which was habitual or physical, “I have heard about Arthur.”
They were sitting in the drawing-room, with windows open to the ground, and the fading light was insufficient to read by, although both had books.
“Yes, mother,” answered the girl in rather a tired voice, quite forgetting to be cheerful. “I should like to know exactly what you heard.”
“Well, Anna told me,” and there was a whole world of distrust in the little phrase, “that Arthur had asked you to be his wife, and that you had refused without giving a reason.”
“I gave him a reason,” replied Dora; “the best one. I said that I did not love him.”
There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn. They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
“But that might come, dear; I think it would come.”
“I know it would not,” replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in her voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said before.
Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter, she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was crouching at the feet of the younger.
“My darling,” she whispered, “I know, I know! I have known all along. But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! It can never come to you again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to them twice. To some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never comes to them at all! Surely that is worse?”
Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them still. But she said nothing.
“I have prayed night and morning,” the elder woman went on in the same pleading whisper, “that strength might be given you, and I think my prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I like to think that I had something to do with it, however little.”
Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering of the leaves.
“I know,” Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own experience, “that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know that It can never come to you, but something else may—a sort of alleviation; something that is a little stronger than resignation, and many people think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that! But it is surely sent because so many women have—to go through life—without that—which makes life worth living.”
“Hush, dear!” said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself. Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
“There is,” she went on in a calmer voice, “a sort of satisfaction in the duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's husband and the others—the others, darling—are the best. They are not the same, not the same as if—as they might have been, but sometimes it is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow.”
It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes those who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs. Glynde was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had summed up life in five words—the time passes somehow.”
“And, dear,” she went on, “it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right, to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much.”
“He would have to expect nothing,” said Dora, speaking for the first time, “because I could give him nothing.”
She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.
Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was why her mother did not dare to look.
“There is no hurry,” she pleaded. “You need not decide now.”
“But,” answered Dora, “I have decided now, and he knows my decision.”
“Perhaps after some time—some years?” suggested Mrs. Glynde.
“A great many years,” put in Dora.
“If he asks you again—oh! I know it would be better, dear; better for you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because you would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the position and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much importance to a good woman.”
“After a great many years,” said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice which fell like ice on her mother's heart, “I will see—if he chooses to wait.”
“Yes, but—” began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she was about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew as well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind to manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And they are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a better thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined. They do not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something approaching to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they want, and they do not change.
Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia, walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder of womanhood. Good women—those mistaken females who move in an atmosphere of ostentatious good works—usually walk like this. Like this they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice. Like this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon feelings which they are incapable of understanding.
Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
“Dora! Dora dear!”
“Yes,” replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the window.
“Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a lovely evening.”
“Yes, if you like.”
And Dora passed out of the open window.
“I am sorry,” said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, “that you were not in church. We had such a bright service.”
Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied, especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.
“I stayed at home with mother,” she explained practically. “The servants were all out.” Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.
“One feels,” she murmured with a sigh, “on such an evening as this, that, after all, nothing matters much.”
“About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now.”
“No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be the end of it all.”
“Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians.”
“And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles,” pursued Sister Cecilia. “It is so hard for us older ones, who have passed through it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it all, whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more candour, a little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and consolation.”
“Possibly,” admitted Dora, without any encouragement.
“I am so sorry for poor Arthur!” whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to the evening shades.
Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her that.
“It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite heartbroken.”
Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters to their mothers.
“I know all about it,” Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the truth, as some good people are. “Dora, dear, I know all about it.”
Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
“Have you nothing to tell me, dear?” she inquired. “Nothing to say to me?”
“Nothing,” replied Dora pleasantly. “Especially as you know all about it.”
“Will you never change your mind?” persuasively.
“No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind.”
There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the evening shades.
“I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if there were any one else—?”
Silence again.
“I dare say,” added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer to her implied question, “that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence.”
“I cannot help feeling,” replied Dora quietly, “that we are all best employed when we mind our own business.”
“Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman. It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been happier if they had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One does not understand these things.”
Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if perchance the explanation was written there.
“Of course,” she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings, “there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing good.”
“That must be a satisfaction,” murmured Dora fervently.
“It is, dear; it is. But—you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say this?—I do not think you are that sort of woman.”
“No,” answered Dora, “I don't think I am.”
“And that is why I have said this to you. Now, don't answer me, dear. Just think about it quietly. I think I have done my duty in telling you what, was on my mind. It is always best, although it is sometimes difficult, or even painful; but then, it is one's duty. Kiss me, dear! Good-night!—good-night!”
And so Sister Cecilia left Dora—mincing away into the gloom of the overhanging trees. And so she leaves these pages. Verily the good have their reward here below in a coat of self-complacency which is as impervious to the buffets of life as to the sarcasm of the worldly.
Slander, meanest spawn of Hell; And women's slander is the worst.
Mrs. Agar was a person incapable of awaiting that vague result called the development of things.
Arthur had never been forced to wait for anything in his life. No longer at least than tradespeople required, and in many cases not so long, for Mrs. Agar had an annoying way of refusing to listen to reason. She never allowed that laws applying to ordinary people, served more or less faithfully by tailor or dressmaker, applied to herself or to Arthur. And tradespeople, one finds are not always of the same mind as the Medes and Persians—they square matters quietly in the bill. They had to do it very quietly indeed with Mrs. Agar, who endeavoured strenuously to get the best value for her money all through life; a remnant of Jaggery House, Clapham Common, which the placid wealth of Stagholme never obliterated.
After the luncheon, specially prepared and laid before the Rector, this second Rebecca awaited the result impatiently. But nothing came of it. Although Mrs. Agar now looked upon Dora as the latest whim of the not-to-be-denied Arthur, she could hardly consider Mr. Glynde in the light of a tradesman retailing the said commodity, and, therefore, to be bullied and harassed into making haste. She reflected with misgiving that Mr. Glynde was an exponent of the tiresome art of talking over and thinking out matters which required neither words nor thought, and saw no prospect of an immediate furtherance of her design.
With a mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if scurrilous scheme which will show itself hereafter. Her opportunity presented itself a few days later.
A neighbouring family counting itself county, presumably on the strength of never being able to absent themselves from the favoured neighbourhood on account of monetary incapacity, gave its annual garden-party at this time. To this entertainment the whole countryside was in the habit of repairing—not with an idea of enjoying itself, but because everybody did it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a cachet of respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of tumblers, “cups” wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and in mugs. Upon cucumber-cup, taken in county society, as on a dinner of herbs, one hardly expects the guest to grow convivial. Therefore at this garden-party those bidden to the feast were in the habit of wandering sadly through the shrubbery seeking whom they might avoid, and in the course of such a perambulation, with a young man conversant of himself, Dora met Mrs. Agar. Even the mistress of Stagholme was preferable to the young man from London, and besides—there were associations. So Dora drew Mrs. Agar into her promenade, and presently the young man got his congé.
At first they talked of local topics, and Mrs. Agar, who had a fine sense of hospitality, said her say about the cider-cup. Then she gave an awkward little laugh, and with an assumption of lightness which did not succeed she said:
“I hope, dear, you do not intend to keep my poor boy in suspense much longer?”
“Do you mean Arthur?” asked Dora.
“Yes, dear. I really don't see why there should be this absurd reserve between us.”
“I am quite willing,” replied the girl, “to hear what you have to say about it.”
“Yes, but not to talk of it.”
“Well, I suppose Arthur has told you all there is to tell. If there is anything more that you want to know I shall be very glad to tell you.”
“Well, of course, I don't understand it at all,” burst out Mrs. Agar eagerly. This was quite true; neither she nor Arthur could understand how any one could refuse such a glorious offer as he had made.
“Perhaps I can explain. Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated the honour, but I declined it.”
“Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?”
“I did mean it.”
“Well,” explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, “I am sure I cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to be mistress of Stagholme.”
And it must be remembered that she said this knowing quite well that Jem was probably alive. There are some crimes which women commit daily in the family circle which deserve a greater punishment than that meted out to a legal criminal.
“That is precisely what I ventured to point out to Arthur,” said Dora, unconsciously borrowing her father's ironical neatness of enunciation.
“But why shouldn't you take the opportunity? There are not many estates like it in England. Your position would be as good as that of a titled lady, and I am sure you could not want a better husband.”
“I like Arthur as a friend, but I could never marry him, so it is useless to discuss the question.”
“But why?” persisted Mrs. Agar.
“Because I do not care for him in the right way.”
“But that would come,” said Mrs. Agar. It was only natural that she should use an argument which is accountable for more misery on earth than mothers dream of.
“No, it would never come.”
Mrs. Agar gave a cunning little laugh, and paused so as to lend additional weight to her next remark.
“That is a dangerous thing for a girl to say.”
“Is it?” inquired Dora indifferently.
“Yes, because they can never be sure, unless—”
“Unless what? I am quite sure.”
“Unless there is some one else,” said Mrs. Agar, with an exaggerated significance suggestive of the servants' hall.
Dora did not answer at once. They walked on for a few moments in silence, passing other guests walking in couples. Then Dora replied with a succinctness acquired from her father:
“Generalities about women,” she said, “are always a mistake. Indeed, all generalities are dangerous. But if you and Arthur care to apply this to me, you are at liberty to do so. Whatever generalities you apply and whatever you say will make no difference to the main question. Moreover, you will, perhaps, be acting a kinder part if you give Arthur to understand once for all that my decision is final.”
“As you like, dear, as you like,” muttered Mrs. Agar, apparently abandoning the argument, whereas in reality she had not yet begun it.
“How do you do, dear Mrs. Martin?” she went on in the same breath, bowing and smiling to a lady who passed them at that moment.
“Of course,” she said, returning in a final way to the question after a few moments' silence, “of course I do not believe all I hear; in fact, I contradict a good deal. But I have been told that gossips talked about you a good deal last year, at the time of Jem's death. I think it only fair that you should know.”
“Thank you,” said Dora curtly.
“Of course, dear, I didn't believe anything about it.”
“Thank you,” said Dora again.
“I should have been sorry to do so.”
Then Dora turned upon her suddenly.
“What do you mean, Aunt Anna?” she asked with determination.
“Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don't get flurried about it.”
“I am not at all flurried,” replied Dora quietly. “You said that you would be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at the time of Jem's death—”
“Dora,” interrupted Mrs. Agar, “I never said anything against you in any way; how can you say such a thing?”
“And,” continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, “I must ask you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to have to believe it?”
Mrs. Agar's reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough simulated to deceive Dora.
“Well, dear,” she said, “if you insist, they said that there had been something between you and Jem—long, long ago, of course, before he went out to India.”
Dora shrugged her shoulders.
“They are welcome to say what they like.”
Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
“And why should you be sorry to believe that?” inquired the girl.
“I—I hardly like to tell you,” said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar's reluctance.
“I am afraid, dear,” went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was no chance of assistance, “that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He was not—all that we thought him.”
“In what way?” asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She had had practice in that.
“In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?” she repeated evenly, like a lesson learnt by heart.
Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
“I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar ideas, I mean, of morals—different from ours. And perhaps he saw no harm in it.”
“In what?” inquired Dora gravely.
“Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that.”
“Who told you this?” asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
“A man told Arthur at Cambridge—one of poor Jem's fellow-officers. The man who brought home the diary and things.”
Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the possibility of Jem's death subsequent to the disaster in which he was supposed to have perished.
Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own life. Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora's letters, and from some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her point-blank if it were true.
“And why,” said Dora, “do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said might be true?”
“Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that.”
“So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?”
“Yes, it may have been that.”
And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
The Mahanaddy had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle rising movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The lights of the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist of the desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea merged into a grey sky.
The dinner-hour had passed, and the passengers were lolling about on the long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago, and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other's dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four of them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial details.
Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice industry was scraping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to extract, and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had conversation left spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry ceased for a time to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
On a small clear space of deck between the door of the doctor's cabin and the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards. They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now, and still seemed to have plenty to say.
One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an ancestral type. This was the ship's doctor, a man who probed men's hearts as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion was an antitype—a representative of the fair race found in England by the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a beard, and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a strange effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
The Doctor was talking.
“Then,” he was saying, “who the devil are you?”
The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who, humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
“You finish your pipe,” he said, and he walked away with long firm strides towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where, resting his arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out over the sea, which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters, and loved them with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late companion—the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone, and there only remained the long fair moustache.
“Yes,” said Dr. Mark Ruthine, “Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at first.”
A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
“I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like some one else that I hardly feel like myself,” he said.
“Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on board. I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By God, Agar, I am glad!”
“Thanks,” replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously. “You don't think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?”
“No one, barring the Captain.”
“Oh,” said Agar calmly, “he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut.”
“There is no doubt about that,” replied the Doctor.
A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to the ice-cream merchant's musical voice, which was now floating over the silent decks, raised in song.
“I should like to hear all about it some day,” said the ship's surgeon at last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that passed the horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found that those who had the most to tell required a little assistance in their narration.
“It is rather a rum business,” answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
At this moment the ship's bell rang four clear notes into the night.
“Ten o'clock,” said the Doctor. “Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too.”
So they passed into the cabin, and before they had been there many minutes the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway, then he came forward with outstretched hand.
“Well,” he said, “all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But it's not my business.”
He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
“I thought,” he continued, “that there was something familiar about the back of your head. Back of a man's head never changes. It's a funny thing.”
He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him who had risen from the death column of the Times. Then he turned to his pipe.
“You know, Agar,” he said, “I was beastly sorry about that—death of yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in these days.”
Agar laughed.
“It is very kind of you to say so,” he said rather awkwardly.
“And I,” added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, “felt that it was a pity. That is how it struck me—a pity.”
Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are—thank heaven!—many such stories still untold; there are, one would be inclined to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on the decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and opened some bottles.
“Whisky?” he inquired, with curt hospitality, “or anything else your fancy may paint, down to tea.”
Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
“They don't make men like you and me on tea,” he said, reaching out his hand towards a tumbler.
Then the story went on. At first the ship's doctor listened to it with interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward, pointing an emphasising finger.
“When you spoke just now of the chief,” he said, “did you mean Michael?”
“Yes.”
“What! Seymour Michael?”
“Yes.”
The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the shrug of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
“And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of Seymour Michael?” pursued the Doctor.
“Yes, why not?”
Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. “I always thought, Agar, that you were a bit of a fool!”
“I have sometimes suspected it myself,” admitted the soldier meekly.
“Why, man,” said Ruthine, “Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner.”
“Nor would I,” put in the Captain, “and the sum is not excessive.”
Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
“I don't see,” he muttered, “what harm he can do me.”
“No more do I, at the moment,” replied the Doctor; “but the man is a liar and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend to his own ambition ever since the beginning.”
Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor's vehemence, although he was aware that such a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
“Of course,” he admitted, “in the matter of honour and glory I expect to be swindled. But I don't care. I know the chap's reputation, and all that, but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing and he has not.”
“I was not thinking so much of that,” replied the other. “Men sell their souls for honour and glory and never get paid.”
He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
“I was thinking more,” he said, “of what you had trusted him to do—telling certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just as likely as not to have suppressed the information.”
Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
“Why should he do that?” he asked sharply.
“He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into consideration such things as feelings—especially the feelings of others.”
“You're a bit hard on him, Ruthine,” said Jem doubtfully. “Why should it suit his convenience?”
“Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted. Besides, the man's nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don't part with it unless they get their price.”
There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael, and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
“But,” said the Captain, who was an optimist—he even applied that theory to human nature—“I suppose it is all right now. Everybody knows now that you are among the quick—eh?”
“No,” replied Jem, “only Michael; it was arranged that I should telegraph to him.”
“Of course,” the Doctor hastened to say, for he had perceived a change in Agar's demeanour, “all this is the purest supposition. It is only a theory built upon a man's character. It is wonderful how consistent people are. Judge how a man would act and you will find that he has acted like it afterwards.”
As if in illustration of the theory Jem Agar looked gravely determined, but uttered no threat directed towards Seymour Michael. His quiet face was a threat in itself.
“Well,” he said, rising, “I am keeping you fellows from your slumbers. I am still sleeping on deck; can't get accustomed to the atmosphere below decks after six months' sleeping in the open.”
He nodded and left them.
“Rum chap!” muttered the Captain, looking at his watch when the footsteps had died away over the silent decks.
“One of the queerest specimens I know,” retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who was fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The Captain—a man of renowned discretion—quietly departed.
There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all, a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the Mahanaddy at that port.