The words died away in the still air. They had been but faintly whispered, and now for many moments there was no sound at all in the quiet shelter of the trees. Then for a little the absolute silence was broken by short and laboured breathing through clenched teeth; then it became absolute as before. Denis was mastering himself as best he might; his whole being was as a knotted muscle; but by degrees that also relaxed, and he stood once more like a thing of flesh and blood, only swaying a little on his feet. But Nan had neither stirred nor made a sound. It was as though her dress supported her, as the dresses of those days almost might, yet there was never a rustle from its silken dome. And in the narrow avenue it was almost dark.
"Devenish, of course?" he said at last, but so hoarsely that he had to say it twice.
It was worth the effort. It made Nan look up; it brought her back to life.
"Yes," she whispered in simple horror. "Yes—I am married to that villain!"
Their eyes met through the dusk, as in a lane of light. His face reflected the unmixed horror so remarkable in hers. Yet already some bell was ringing in his heart.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I loathe him!"
"Yet you are married?"
She spread out her hands in a gesture that was no answer to his incredulity. Quick as thought he caught her left.
"Where's the ring?"
"Yours is quite safe."
"But the wedding-ring—your wedding-ring?"
"I took it off the moment we met. It dropped in the porch. I couldn't let you find out that way."
Her hand also dropped out of his. He turned heavily away from her. It was as though for a moment he had cherished some mad hope; now he stood broken and aloof, shaken with sobs that never reached his throat; oblivious alike to the rustle of the silk dress behind him, to the fluttering featherweight of her hand upon his arm.
"Oh, Denis, Denis, if I could die ... if I could die! It is worse for me. You are not married; you are not tied for life. But I deserve it all, all, all.... There's no excuse for me, none. Yet there is some explanation—poor enough, God knows! Won't you listen to that? Won't you listen to me at all?"
He turned slowly round, and looked upon Nan with the unseeing fixity of the blind. "Go on," he said. "I am listening, and will listen."
"He cheated me!" she cried, passionately. "He took your letters, and he told me lies. But I allowed myself to be cheated," she added, miserably, "and I believed the lies; so I deserved not to find him out till it was too late; and I deserve this, Denis, I deserve it all. If only, only I could die!"
He soothed her as best he could, taking her hand in one of his, and stroking it mechanically with the other. The action might have reminded them of something long past; but the present absorbed both their minds. It was all that they would ever have together. It was their life.
"Don't tell me unless it helps you," he said, gently. "I begin to understand. And it was my fault—mine—for leaving you as I did."
"Your fault! Yet if you had written—if you only had written!" she cried, loudly exonerating him in one breath, softly reproaching in the next.
"I know. That was pride," he said bitterly. "I was so desperately unsuccessful up to Christmas! I did write in November, but I was always afraid that letter never went."
"I never got it. Not a word of any sort, dear," she said, simply, "did I have from you till nearly May. And then——"
"And then?" he repeated as she paused.
"Have you no idea what I am going to tell you?" she asked, a new twinge in her tone. She could scarcely have explained her feeling, but the least inkling in him would have implied some slight excuse for her, would in any case have helped her to confess the climax of her late credulity.
"None whatever," said Denis.
"Yet it was your writing. I can show it you, for I have it still."
"What writing do you mean?" he inquired, quite in the dark.
"The address on the parcel."
"What sort of parcel?" he exclaimed, as the truth flashed across him. "Quite small? Brown paper? Quick! Quick! I want to know!"
"Yes—yes—and you don't know what was in it! Oh, Denis!"
"I know what should have been," he said, grimly: "my first nugget—according to promise. But it was stolen, and afterward found."
"And you don't know what was put in instead? Did you lose nothing else?"
Denis stood stock-still in the deepening dusk. No, he had never thought of that; even now his simplicity could not credit it until he had drawn every detail from Nan's lips. The ring had possessed intrinsic value. He had always looked upon that as an ordinary theft. The discovery of the stolen nugget on Jewson's body had puzzled him, but it was partially accounted for by another strange fact which had come to light after the man's death, namely, that the nugget had been purchased by Jewson in the first instance, elsewhere on the diggings, and deliberately planted at the bottom ofthe shaft where Denis found it. And not till this moment, months afterward, had Denis penetrated the dead man's design.
"You have indeed been cheated," he said, bitterly. "Yet to believe me capable of behaving like that without a word! To have known me as little as all that! Why, there was trickery on the face of it. But how can I talk? They took me in, too—decent people don't dream of such villainy—so I was fair game at one end, and you at the other. I begin to see the whole thing. Do you remember when we said good-bye on board your ship?"
"Do I remember!"
"It was then you gave me what I wore night and day until it was stolen and sent back to you."
"Oh, Denis!"
"And it was then you made me promise to send it back to you if ever—— Oh, what a fool I was!"
"It was my doing—all. You didn't want to promise; it vexed you and hurt you, and it was all my fault."
"But I promised, and I was overheard, by the villain who is gone," said Denis. "He was in my cousin's cabin at the time, for I distinctly remember seeing him there as we went on deck. And he repeated every syllable to a ten times greater villain than himself, who is alive to answer for his crime!" and he ground his teeth, little dreaming that he haddone the living criminal a double injustice in one breath.
"I am not sure that he is alive," faltered Nan, above her breath, but that was all.
"You are not sure?"
"I have not seen him since our wedding day!"
Denis was dumfoundered, but enlightened.
"So you found out just too late," he groaned.
"Yes; and the hard part was that I might have found out in time," she said sadly but only sadly, as if telling of some other person. "There were such a lot of letters for me that morning," she went on, "and there was so little time. I didn't even look at them; I said I would read them in the train; but after all I looked through the envelopes as they were dressing me to go away."
He heard her shuddering, and his lips moved. It was black night in the avenue now, and deepest twilight through the trees on either hand. So he never knew how meekly she stood before him in this bitter hour; even the striking humility of a voice so memorable for its spirit was lost upon a mind too absorbed in the sense to heed the sound.
"Your letter was among them," she went on. "Which letter I cannot say; it was the first that ever reached me, and I was in two minds whether to read a line of it or to tear it up unopened; but I could not bring myself to do that, nor yet resist just looking to see what you said. And therein the first few lines I saw it was but one of many letters that had gone astray! It was the letter in which you began by saying how often you had written lately, though you had never yet had a single word from me. But how could I write whenInever had a line to tell me where you were?"
"I don't blame you for that," said Denis. "I never blamed you in my life before to-day; when I know all I may not blame you yet. I understand nearly everything as it is." There was a slight emphasis on one of the last words, but it was very slight: in their common misery he was now as unemphatic as she.
"It was the letter," continued Nan, "in which you told me how splendidly you were doing, and how soon you hoped to sail; I think it must have come in a much quicker ship than yours; but it was a long time before I read that part. I nearly fainted—not quite—but they sent downstairs for our doctor. It was a very small party—everything was hurried and quite private—but Dr. Stone has known me since I was born, and fortunately he was there. I told him everything, and what I suspected in a moment. He tried to talk me over, but I refused even to see my husband until my suspicions were set at rest, and appealed to him to stop a scandal. He did so—there is no public scandal to this day. He went downstairs and declared that the hurry and excitement had proved too much for me; that it was nothing serious, but I could not possibly goaway that day. That emptied the house, and gave me time to think. But they all pressed me to see Captain Devenish, so at last I did see him. And in my misery I came down to his level, and pretended not to care if he would only tell the truth."
"And did he?"
"How can I tell? He told me a tale, and he brazened it out. I believe it was the truth. The fraud was not begun by him, but first he countenanced it and then he had to carry it on. He had taken your letters systematically for weeks; whenever a mail came in, here he was, on the spot, and ready for the worst. He boasted of it, gloried in it, said he would play the same game again for the same stake! That was the end. I never looked at him again, though he stayed in the house a week to save the appearances that were so dear to him and to my father; but it was I who saved them, little as I cared. Next day I was really ill, and before I came down again he was gone."
"Gone where?"
"To the Black Sea. You see, he had to go in a week, in any case."
"I don't understand."
"To the war—with a draft of the Grenadiers."
The war! Denis had never heard of it until the night before, when the pilot came aboard his ship, and since landing his own affairs and his own anxieties had filled his mind down to this cruel culmination. So Ralph Devenish, traitor and thief, had fled to fight his country's battles because he had not the pluck to stand and fight his own! Denis could not be fair for a moment to such an officer and such a gentleman; it was not in his allowance of very human nature.
"Now you have told me everything," he cried, "I can understand all but one thing. I can understand your disbelieving in me, your resentment of my silence, your failure to see that what you received without a line of explanation could never have been sent by me. It was your idea that I should send you back your ring if I changed—ifIchanged! You thought I would take you at your word without a word of my own to ask so much as your forgiveness. Well, you were at liberty to think what you liked of me; you little knew me, and it was a poor compliment to what you did know; but all that I can understand. What I cannot and never will understand is how you flew round the compass and married that fellow within two months!"
What had Nan to say? She had long been utterly unable to understand it herself. Ralph had never seemed so nice; she herself had been wretched, reckless, wounded, numbed; nothing had seemed to matter any more, except to show that she did not care; and that was her wicked way of showing it. Oh! she had been wicked, wicked; but see her punishment! See the shipwreck of her whole life!He who understood so much—Denis—dear Denis—could he not forgive the mad sequel?
"Forgive!" He laughed out harshly. "Oh, yes, I can forgive you; but that's the end. We must never see each other again. This is good-bye; and the sooner it's said the better for one and all."
He was actually holding out his hand. Nan caught it and clung to it with both of hers.
"Good-bye?" she almost screamed. "You are not going away like this? You wouldn't leave me more desolate and desperate than I was before? You'll stay, or at least come back to see my father—to see me?"
Denis did not hesitate for a moment. "No," said he, firmly; "no, it's not a bit of use my staying to see anybody or any more of you; and the sooner you let me go the better and easier for us both."
"But where will you go?" she asked, partly to gain time; yet the desire to detain him was not greater than the dread of sending him she knew not whither.
"God knows!" he answered. "Not to my death, if I can help it, and if that's what you mean, but very likely back to Ballarat. I was making a small fortune there. I might go back and double it, or lose it all. What does it matter now?"
Even while he spoke, the vision of his mates on the claim in Rotten Gully rose warmly to his mind; and yet, even before he ceased speaking, he knew that he could never go back to them now.
"Don't go!" she urged piteously. "Denis, Denis, don't leave me so soon. You are always so ready to leave me, and see what came of it before! I never could forget it—I never could—it made all the difference in the end. But now you are the only one I have to look up to in the world; stay and help me; be my friend. Oh, Denis, you once saved me from the sea. Stay—do stay, for God's sake, Denis—and save me from myself!"
It needed heart of flint and will of adamant to resist so wild and touching an appeal; but Denis had soon formed his own conception of his duty, and every moment since he had been subconsciously hardening himself to its performance. All his character came into his resolve: strength, promptitude, unflinching courage, undeniable obstinacy, and withal a certain narrowness, a matter of upbringing and of inexperience, in questions of right and wrong. She had married another man; there was an end of it, and let the end come quickly. It would be wrong to see more of her, wrong even to remain her friend. So he had argued in his heart; so he answered her now, kindly, tenderly, with much emotion, but with more fixity of purpose and finality of decision.
"But it isn't the end!" cried Nan, wildly. "It's only the beginning—because I was cheated into marrying him, and because ...I love you, Denis, and only you!"
It was long before Denis remembered how hebroke away from her; how and where he left her came back to him slowly after hours. It was in the house. He had carried her there. She loved him. He could not leave her out there to creep in through the dark alone, even if she could have crept half the way unaided. But the struggle came before all that. The rest made no immediate impression on his mind. He was a mile on his road before his brain began to clear, on the crest of a hill, where a sudden night wind searched his skull. Under his eyes, and a rising moon, the road he had to traverse fell almost from his feet, to glimmer away into a flat and open country, and to remind him of the ship's wake on a calm night; only it was no longer the wake; it was his course. On the horizon the faint glow of the metropolis was just discernible, and to ears fresh from the incessant noises of the ocean, the hum of the great human hive seemed not absolutely inaudible in the young night's stillness. Yet every now and then there was a rattle of parched leaves, as if the quiet earth stirred in its sleep; for some minutes Denis also heard his own heart beating from the speed with which he had come so far; and as this abated, somewhere in the nether distance, on the way to London, a clock struck seven.
There was a fascination in returning stride by stride to the rattle and roar of the metal tyres upon London's stones. Denis felt it through the depths of his blank misery and impotent rage; he only wondered that the noise had never struck him in the morning. Now he picked it up plain at Hendon, and it reminded him of its miniature—the first far sound of Ballarat—as it seemed to rise with each ringing step he took. His body was bathed in perspiration; never had he walked so many miles at such a rate. But a vague object had developed on the way. By half-past nine he was in London's throat; and now he might have been walking on cotton-wool.
Never had he heard such an uproar: it was Saturday night. Edgware Road was a vast trench of stalls and barrows, lurid with naked flames, strident with hoarse voices, only Denis was not Londoner enough to know that it was Edgware Road. He had the vaguest ideas as to where he was, until, on asking his way to the London Tavern, he was invited to take his choice between the glaring illuminations of several London taverns before his eyes. After thathe applied to a constable, and next minute sat cooling in a hansom cab.
The hansom beat up into the east in a series of short tacks, grinding endless curbstones as she went about, but at last emerging into latitudes less unknown to Denis. There was St. Paul's Cathedral, perhaps his westernmost landmark, though he had once or twice threaded Temple Bar: so the London Tavern was somewhere in the city. The sailor began to feel at home. The offices of Merridew and Devenish were in one of these silent streets. How silent and deserted they were! What a change from the Edgware Road! And this was London's hub, that he had imagined deafening and congested at all hours of the twenty-four: that sleeping palace was the Royal Exchange: this black monolith the Bank. At the first oasis of light and life the cab drew up.
"London Tavern, sir," said a voice overhead.
Denis dismissed the cab and found himself confronted by an overpowering Cerberus, who desired to know what he could do for him, but Denis scarcely knew himself. His impressions in the cab had been acute but superficial. The mind's core was still stunned. He had to think hard in order to recall the resolve which had brought him hither; a burst of applause through the tall lighted windows came to his aid in the nick of time.
"I want to see a gentleman who is dining here."
"What, now?" sniffed Cerberus.
"Before he leaves."
"I could take in your card," condescended the other, who had probably heard the thanks which Denis had earned from his cabman, "when the Lord Mayor's said what he 'as to say, if it's anythink very important."
"To me it is," said Denis, "and I pray that it may prove equally so to him; but it will be time enough after the banquet, and I can take care of myself meanwhile."
He crossed the street slowly, pondering his resolve, which was simply to impress his daughter's despair upon John Merridew's mind; to implore him not to leave her too much alone, but to find her some bright companion without a day's delay, to keep watch and ward over her from that day forth.
That was the motive of which Denis found himself aware; if in the bottom of his heart he yearned for a word of unforeseen sympathy, of inconceivable comfort, of wildest hope, the thought never rose to the surface of his mind.
But he was distracted from all his thoughts by cheer upon frantic cheer from the great hall across the road. This was no ordinary after-dinner enthusiasm. The lighted windows rattled in their leads. A crowd was forming in the street. A whisper was running through the crowd.
"The Lord Mayor's there," said a voice near Denis. "He came on foot not five minutes ago.It's something worth hearing, you mark my words!"
Denis marked them with the listless interest of one who had realized neither his country's peril nor his countrymen's excitement. It was impossible that he should. He had forgotten that England was at war.
"Here he comes back again!" exclaimed the same excited voice. "That's his lordship, him in the gold chain. See the papers in his hand; see the face on him! It's a victory, boys, and he's going to give us the news!"
The Lord Mayor wore a frilled shirt-front behind the massive chain of office, and between its tufts of whisker his well-favoured face shone like the sun. But he did not deliver his message from the steps of the London Tavern; attended by one or two members of his household, he led the way on foot toward the Royal Exchange. A handful of diners were at his heels, and the gathering street-crowd at theirs; but Denis did not think of joining them until among the former he recognized John Merridew, himself brandishing some missive and gesticulating to his friends.
It was Merridew alone whom Denis wished to keep in view, yet as he slowly followed in the civic train he experienced a reawakening of that impersonal curiosity which had possessed him in the cab. What had happened? What was going to happen now? The answer came in the blare of a bugle,even as Denis reached the steps of the Royal Exchange.
The bugle sounded again and again, waking the echoes of the silent streets, filling them with answering cries and the shuffle of hastening feet. Meanwhile the Lord Mayor had climbed the few steps, and taken his stand under the grimy portico, behind the footlights improvised by half-a-dozen policemen with their bull's-eyes.
"Fellow-citizens and gentlemen," he cried, "I have to announce to you the intelligence of a splendid victory obtained by the Allied forces over the Russians in the Crimea!"
A wild roar rose into the night, and the speaker himself prolonged it by calling for cheers for the Queen before going any further. Heads were uncovered and hats waved madly. Cheer after cheer rang to its height and dropped like musketry in single shouts. The converging streets were alive with running men. The blood was draining back into the City's heart.
Denis wondered to find a moisture in his eyes; it brought back the heart-break which had occasioned him less outward emotion, and he was carried away no more. The Lord Mayor, indeed, was departing from the point; he had paused to enlarge upon the delightful character of his duty before completing its performance. Some few months since it had fallen to his lot to announce that war had been proclaimed between that country and Russia; he hadnow the great satisfaction of making known to them that the Allied forces had taken the first step toward reducing to reasonable limits the barbaric Power against which they were engaged. He could not help adding that he considered the interests of humanity, and the happiness of the whole human race, were all deeply concerned in the victory.
Denis did not join in the renewed cheering. His brow was contracted, but not from want of sympathy with the excellent sentiments expressed. He was himself engaged against the sudden onslaught of an impossible thought.
"I will now read to you," continued the Lord Mayor, "the letter with which I have been honoured by the Duke of Newcastle. 'My Lord,' he writes, 'I have the honour and high gratification of sending your lordship a proof copy of an extraordinary Gazette containing a telegraphic message from her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople, by which the glorious intelligence of the success of the Allied arms in a great battle in the Crimea has been received this morning.—I am, my lord, your lordship's obedient humble servant, Newcastle.' And this, fellow citizens," the Lord Mayor proceeded in higher key, "and this is the text of that message: 'The intrenched camp of the Russians, containing 50,000 men, with a numerous artillery and cavalry, on the heights of the Alma, was attacked on the 20th inst., at 1P. M., by the Allied troops, and carried by the bayonet at half-past three, with theloss on our side of about 1,400 killed and wounded, and an equal loss on the side of the French. The Russian army was forced to put itself in full retreat.'"
There was perhaps one second of profound silence.
"Fourteen hundred!" said an awed voice.
And then arose such a storm of shouting and of cheering as Denis had never heard in all his life; and he was roaring with the lustiest, roaring as if to expel his thoughts in sound. But in the first pause another voice said, "Fourteen hundred!" and the figure passed below the breath from lip to lip till one exclaimed, "The poor Guards!" Thereat the creases cut deep across Denis's forehead—so deep you might have looked for them to fill with blood—and he asked the man next to him if the Guards were in it.
"In it?" cried the man next Denis. "In the thick and the front of it, you may depend!"
The Lord Mayor had not finished. He was thanking one and all for their attendance. He was expressing a pious belief that this victory of the Alma would promote the civilization and happiness of the world more than anything that had happened for the last fifty years. He was bowing to the cheers that echoed his remarks. He was proposing the cheers for our soldiers. He was leading the cheers for the French. He was descending with dignity from the portico, with the policemen's lanterns still playing upon his great gold chain and rubicund face, a hearty figure in spirited contrast to the dark colonnade at his back.
But Denis bent glowering at the flag on which he stood. His neighbour's answer to his query about the Guards was still rattling in his head; he had heard nothing since with that part of the ear which communicates with the brain.
The group of gentlemen from the London Tavern followed the Lord Mayor down the steps; one of them passed close to Denis, waving a telegram as if it were a flag.
"He must have got it off with the dispatches," said he. "It has been delivered at my office this evening, but fortunately the housekeeper knew where I was."
"And your son-in-law has come through safe and sound?"
"Safe and sound, thank God!"
It was Mr. Merridew, still flushed and flustered with sentiment and satisfaction; as he passed, Denis scanned the smug, well-meaning face; but he had withdrawn deliberately from the path of the man whom he had driven across London to see. Talk to him about Nan!
"Now, sir, move on, please!"
The swollen crowd was streaming down Cheapside, shouting, cheering, and singing "Partant pour la Syrie," as it bore the great news westward. Already the sounds came faintly to the steps of theRoyal Exchange, where Denis was the last man left to blink in the rays of the last policeman's lantern.
"All right, constable; but I only landed from Australia this morning, and I wish you'd tell me a thing or two first."
"Indeed, sir?" said the policeman. Denis felt in the pocket that was full of notes and gold.
"About this war," he pursued: "you see I never heard of it before to-day. Can you tell me which of the Guards have gone?"
"Coldstream and Grenadiers, sir."
"But not all of them?"
"The first battalion of the Coldstream and the third of the Grenadiers."
The man's prompt answer drew Denis's attention to the man himself. He was over six feet in height, and not an inch of it thrown away. But still more noticeable was a peculiar pride of countenance—some secret enthusiasm which added a freshness to the patriotic emotion to be found in any other face.
"An old Guardsman?" inquired Denis.
"An old Grenadier, sir!" cried the policeman. "And I would give ten years of my life to be with them now!"
"Do you suppose they have lost very heavily?" Denis was searching the old soldier's face.
"If the losses altogether are fourteen hundred I'll back ours to run well into three figures!"
"But they'll keep the regiment up to strength, I take it?"
"No doubt they'll send out a draft as soon as possible."
"Of course there'd be no chance for a recruit in such a draft?"
Denis had hesitated, and then forced a grin. The old Grenadier shook his head.
"I doubt it, sir; but a very good man, who knew his drill, they might take him over the heads of others. They want all the good men they can get in time of war. Why, sir, that's a sovereign!"
"It was meant to be; it's not a night for less. And now can you tell me where the rest of the Grenadiers are?"
"Wellington Barracks, sir."
Denis fell into his natural smile.
"I don't know London very well. Will you do one more thing for me before I move on?"
"That I will, sir."
"Will you tell me how to find my way to Wellington Barracks?"
A company officer was making his round of an outlying picket of Grenadiers; the black hour before a drizzling dawn effectually shrouded moist features and sodden whiskers, as bearskin and greatcoat served to modify an erect yet incorrigibly casual carriage. It was Ralph Devenish, however, and he was performing his duties with some punctilio. The sentries stood their twenty paces apart, all but invisible to each other, sundered links waiting for the dawn to complete the chain. And at each link the officer halted and beat his foot.
"All's well."
"Except your rifle, eh?" muttered Devenish to one or two; from a third he took the man's dripping piece, and from the nipple poured a tiny jet of water into the palm of his left hand. "Keep it covered if you can, or it will never go off," was his audible injunction to that sentry and the next. One who knew him would have marveled at such zeal and such initiative in Ralph Devenish.
One who knew him did.
"All's well."
"Except your musket, I expect. Let's see it. You know my voice?" It had dropped with the question.
"I do."
"I suppose you thought I didn't recognize you?"
"I didn't know."
"Well, I did, and had you put on this picket on purpose to get a word with you; but don't you raise your voice any more than I'm raising mine," whispered Devenish in one breath, with a louder comment on the condition of the rifle in his next. "What are you doing here?" he added in his strenuous undertone. "When did you land in England?"
"The last morning of September."
"So it made you enlist."
"The same night."
"Yet you got out in the draft."
"I knew my drill. It's a long story."
"It must be! You've been bribing the sergeants, or somebody; but I don't blame you for that. Try to keep the nipple covered," said the zealous officer, returning the piece. "Why the devil did you choose my regiment?" whispered Ralph.
"It was the night the news came of the Alma—and—I hoped you were killed!"
"No wonder." Ralph chuckled harshly.
"It was one to me; but I couldn't help it, and Ifelt in every other battle it would be the same. So I enlisted that night."
"To make sure, eh?" sneered Ralph.
"To run your risks!" said Denis through his teeth. "The chances are that one of us will go back. The chances are less that we both will!"
The rain took up the whispering for the next few seconds.
"I see!" said Ralph at length. "The latest thing in duels! Well, my congratulations must keep till next round." And he marched on nonchalantly enough, with a final chuckle for Denis's salute; but the note was neither so harsh nor so spontaneous as before; and Denis was left to glory in his last words, to regret them, and yet to glory in them again.
The rain sank into his bearskin, pattered on his shoulders, and made quite a report when it beat upon a boot; the next sentry was to be heard answering questions about his rifle, and Denis wondered if he himself could be the sole cause of the unusual inquisition. The officer passed on out of earshot; other noises of the waning night returned to recapture the attention. The dismal watches had long been redeemed by a series of exciting sounds from within the enemy's lines. The belfries of Sebastopol had first united in discordant peals; and from that hour the outposts had heard low rumblings, distant, intermittent, but now more distinct than ever, and something nearer to the ear. A dull gray light was beginning to weld the links in the chainof bearskins and greatcoats that stretched across the soaking upland. And by degrees the dark night lifted on a raw and dripping fog, almost as impenetrable as itself.
A patter of invisible musketry sounded in the direction of Inkerman heights, increased to a fusillade, but came no nearer; the Grenadier outposts were withdrawn, and in the misty dawn the company fell in with other two of the Guards Brigade. As they did so a level rainbow curved through the fog, and some one shouted "Shell!" Every man stood his ground upright, but as the shell skimmed over their heads, and sank spinning into the soft ground beyond, a number flung themselves upon their faces, and lay like ninepins until it burst without hitting one.
"Stand up, stand up!" cried a sergeant with a cheese-cutter on the back of his red head. "You're not in the trenches now, and that's sugar-plums to what you're goin' to get. Look over there!"
On the plain beneath the high plateau occupied by the three companies, the Russian cavalry could be seen below the rising fog, advancing obliquely on the northern heights, preceded by a cloud of skirmishers. Nothing threatened the outpost of Guards; no more shot or shell fell among them; and word came for them to march back to camp in order to draw cartridges and exchange their dripping muskets for dry.
It was no welcome order to the picket, already further from the action than their gallantry could bear. Heavy firing on the northern heights convinced them that the bulk of the Brigade were already hotly engaged. Yet a whole company of Grenadiers and two of the Coldstream had to start the day by turning their backs upon friend and foe and din of battle.
"Never mind, boys," cried the sergeant in the cheese-cutter. "It'll be your turn directly, and meanwhile you can say your prayers, for you'll be smelling hell before you're an hour older!"
Denis, for one, would have given a good deal to have been spared this delay before battle of which he had heard so much. He found it as trying as report maintained. He could not but think of his last words to Ralph Devenish, and as Ralph marched aloof he looked as though he might be thinking of them too. Denis began to suffer from a sort of superstitious shame: he deserved to be the one to remain upon the field. He was grateful to his rear-rank man, a Cockney, and a consistent grumbler, for a running commentary of frivolous complaint.
"I 'ope they'll give us time for a cup o' cawfee—if yer call it cawfee," said he. "Green cawfee-beans ground between stones—I call it muck. But 'ot muck's better 'n nothink w'en you've 'ad no warm grub in yer innards for twenty-four hours. But wot do you 'ave in this God-forsaken 'ole?Not a wash, not a shave, no pipe-clayin', no button-cleanin', no takin' belts or boots off by the day an' night together!"
The deserted encampment was far from an inspiriting spectacle. Denis kept outside his tent; the idea of a farewell visit was not to be resisted; but a tough biscuit munched in the open air, and a dry rifle handled as the rain ceased falling, were solid comforters. At last the companies fell in, and swung out of camp with a cheer, greatcoats and bearskins, red plumes and white, as briskly and symmetrically as through the streets of London.
"'Remember, remember, the fifth o' November!'" said the red-haired sergeant. "So you never knew Guy Fawkes was a Rooshian? You hark at 'em keepin' the day!"
Indeed, the firing was growing louder every minute. It was still nearly all in one direction, on the heights where the fog clung thickest, and whither the three companies were now tramping through the fog.
"I wish they'd remember the seventh day, an' keepit'oly," grumbled Denis's rear-rank man. "I s'pose you godless chaps 've forgot it's yer Sunday out? I don't forget it's mine, darn their dirty skins!"
A horse's hoofs came thudding through the fog, a scarlet coat burst through it like the sun.
"The Duke says you're to join your battalion,"cried the staff-officer to Devenish. "They're hard pressed at the two-gun battery up above."
Devenish wheeled round, and his handsome face was transfigured as he waved his sword.
"They want us with the colours!" he shouted. "They can't do without us after all!"
And with a laugh and a yell the men sprang forward, the sergeant's face as red as his hair, even the grumbler pressing on Denis's heels, and perhaps only Denis himself with a single thought beyond coming at once to the rescue of the regiment and to grips with the shrouded foe. But Denis had been near Ralph when he turned, near enough to note the radiant look, to catch the smiling eye, and his country's enemy was blotted out of mind by his own. Had he done Devenish justice after all? Was his behaviour as base as it had seemed? Was that shining and fearless face the face of a bad man and a coward? Handsome, joyous, and brave, as strangely ennobled as some faces after death, could any woman have seen this one now, she might rather have forgiven it any crime!
So thought Denis to himself as he marched in chill silence among his yelling comrades. He had not been with them at the Alma. It was his first battle, and as yet it had only begun to the ear; not a man had been hit before his eyes, not a flash had penetrated the pale mist ahead upon the heights. Yet the mist was paler than it had ever been; and to the right, over the green valley of the Tchernaya,whence it had risen in patches, there was a faint round radiance in the pall. None noticed it; all eyes were straining through the haze in front of them; but of a sudden, as the bearskins breasted a ridge, the sun broke forth upon an astounding tableau.
Under a canopy of mist and smoke, belt-deep in sparkling bushes raked by the risen sun, a thin line of Guardsmen were holding their own against dense masses of the enemy. Between the Russians and the lip of the plateau in their rear, over which they were still swarming by the battalion, rose the dismantled redoubt whose empty embrasures were open doors to the attacking horde. Weight of numbers had wrested the work from the British—but that was all. Instead of pressing this advantage, the enemy had set his back to the parapet of sandbags, overlapping it in dense wings, and so standing at bay in his thousands against a few hundred Grenadiers. The lingering mist and the smoke of battle were doubtless in favour of the few; only the remnant of their own brigade, approaching obliquely from their rear, could see how few they were; and for an instant the sight appalled them. It was a hedge of bearskins and cheese-cutters against a forest of muffin-caps and cross-belts, and between them a road narrowing to a few yards at the end nearer the relieving handful. Rifles flashed and smoke floated along either line; uncouth yells were answered by hoarse curses and by savagecheers; and Guardsmen who had fired away their sixty rounds were hurling rocks and stones across a lane so narrow that there was scarcely a yard between the sprawling dead of either side.
Such was the grim gray scene upon which the three companies appeared. The rank and file were in their greatcoats almost to a man; but here and there were a scarlet tunic and a flashing sword; and in the centre of the line, in the swirl of smoke and mist, staggered a crimson standard and a Union Jack.
"Our colours!" screamed Devenish, racing ahead of his men. There was no need for him to tell them. The gray pack were yelling at his heels, and Denis saw but dimly as he ran roaring with the rest.
The thin line heard them; a couple of officers glanced over their epaulettes, saw the red plumes of the Coldstream outnumbering the white plumes of the Grenadiers, and tossed their swords in a sudden passion of jealousy. "Charge again, Grenadiers!" they roared, and leaped into the lane with the whole gray wave rolling after them. And with bayonets down and wild hurrahs the battalion drove straight into the redoubt, trampling the dead, and driving the living through the two embrasures as a green sea is emptied through lee scuppers.
Simultaneously the mass of Russians to the north of the battery were routed by a charge of the Scots Fusiliers at the far end of the line of Guards; andnow the Coldstreamers blooded themselves upon the companion wing extending from the southern shoulder of the redoubt; but Devenish and his Grenadiers had followed their own into the redoubt itself, and Denis was leaning with his back against the parapet, brushing the sweat from his forehead and cleaning his bayonet in the earth.
There was no more moisture in his eyes. The emotional effect of the spectacle had yielded in an instant to the ferocious frenzy of the deed. Yet, as he leaned panting in the momentary pause, there was enough still to be seen, and more than enough to do. A quartermaster-sergeant arrived with a tray of refreshments on his shoulders, and a Grenadier in the act of helping himself was shot down as though by one of his own comrades. An officer wheeled round and fired his revolver in the air, whereupon a dead Russian came toppling from the parapet with a fearful thud almost at Denis's feet. But the fierce fellows struggling for the biscuits took no notice of either incident. Stained with powder, caked with blood, bearded, tattered, torn, they fought with their rough good-humour, for their first food since the night before, and with their mouths full rallied each other on their appearance.
"You ain't fit for Birdcage Walk," panted one. "I'd like to let them nursemaids see you now!"
"It's about time I fired a round," said another, snapping caps to dry his nipple. His bayonet wasbloody to the muzzle. A third was replenishing his pouch from that of a dead comrade, with grim apologies to the corpse. There was less levity among the officers. It was at this period that Lord Henry Percy twice scaled the parapet,—a simple slope to the enemy—in order to clear it with his sword. Each time a well-aimed fragment of rock threw him backward over; the second misadventure left him senseless where he fell; and Denis, who was now reloading, sprang with others to his assistance.
"Get yourself something to eat," said a brother officer of the fallen Colonel, brushing the private aside.
"Thank you, sir, I had plenty in camp. I'm waiting for the next charge!" said Denis, with his cartridge between his teeth; and he bit off the end, dropped the powder into the muzzle of his piece, reversed and rammed home with no other thought in his heated head. He had been speaking to the gallant officer who had led him into his first action. He did not realize that it was Ralph Devenish. He had forgotten that there was such a being in the world.
Denis had not long to wait. There was a sudden agitation at the northern shoulder of the redoubt. Shouts and shots rose in an instant to the continuous din of desperate combat, as the strokes on a gong ring into one. A sulphurous cloud brooded over the struggling throng, worked its way down the inner wall of the battery, and clung to the angle of the first embrasure; inch by inch the bearskins were overborne, and between them pressed the cross-belts and the infuriate sallow faces in the peaked caps. Just then Denis saw a handful of his comrades, not actually in the path of the Russian avalanche, forming for a flank attack upon the intruders; in an instant he was one of them, and in another they had leaped upon the enemy with ball, butt, and bayonet. The Russians were pinned against the wall of the work. Those whom they had been driving rallied and drove them. Murderously assaulted in front and flank, the invading battalion turned and fled as they had come, leaving the ground thick with their dead.
Again Denis stopped to breathe. His bayonet was bent nearly double; he put his foot in thecrook, detached it with a twist, and was about to replace it with the bayonet of a ghastly Grenadier when he found the butt of his own piece plastered with blood and hair. So he exchanged muskets with the dead man, but wiped his hand without a qualm. He remembered whirling his Minié by the barrel when the bayonet bent; he could remember little else. Of his life before the fight, of his own identity, he had lost all sense; his ordinary being was in abeyance; he was a fearless and ruthless madman, smothered in blood and gasping for more.
Comparatively calm intervals he had throughout the fight, intervals in which for one reason or another, he was a momentary spectator of the scenes in progress all around him. It was these scenes that lived in his memory; even at the time they moved him more than those in which he had a hand. Once the Guards were fighting on the other side of the Sandbag Battery, between it and the long lip of the ravine; he had to wait for accounts of the battle long afterward to learn how they had got there, or what relation this phase of the action bore to the whole. At the time he was one of a handful of furious Grenadiers, fighting for their lives in the fresh fog which their powder had brought down upon them, and a moment came which Denis felt must be his last. He had tripped headlong over a dead Russian, and a quick Russian stood over him, aiming his bayonet with one hand while the other grasped the stock high above hishead. But a British officer flung out his revolver within a few feet of the deliberate gray-coat, and it was the sensation of being shot from behind at such a moment that Denis anticipated more poignantly than that of being transfixed where he lay. The man fell dead on top of him. Anon he saw his friend the red-headed sergeant, being led captive down the hill by two of the enemy, suddenly wrest the carbine from one of them, club them both with it, and bayonet one after the other before they could rise. That also made Denis shudder. And yet he was biting a cartridge at the moment, having killed with his last, at arm's length, a splendid fellow who had grasped his bayonet while he poised his own.
Now the Sandbag Battery seemed out of sight, because it was quite another thing from this side, and now they were back in it, sweeping the Russians out once more. Denis did not know that the work had changed hands, half-a-dozen times before his company came into action, but even he saw the uselessness of a redoubt from which our soldiers could only see one way, and that in the direction of their own lines. The dead, indeed, now lay piled to the height of any banquette. No wilful foot was set on them. It was only the living for whom there was neither shrift nor pity on that bloody field.
This was the last that Denis saw of the Sandbag Battery; he was one of those who, led by a bevy of hot-headed officers, incontinently scaled it as oneman, flung themselves upon the ousted enemy, and hunted him down-hill in crazy ecstasies. A hoarse voice in high authority screamed command and entreaty from the crest where the Grenadier colours drooped in the haze, deserted by all but a couple of hundred bearskins. It was as though the curse of the Gadarene swine had descended on this herd of inflamed Guardsmen. Down they went, if not to their own destruction, to the grave peril of the remnant up above. An officer in front of Denis was the first to recognize the error; he checked both himself and a rough score of the rank and file; and together these few came clambering back to the colours on the heights.
Breathless they gained the edge of the plateau, to swarm over as the Russians had so often done before them, and to find matters as grave as they well could be. The crimson standard and the Union Jack swayed in the centre of a mere knot of Guardsmen, already sorely beset by broken masses of the enemy. And even now a whole battalion was bearing down upon the devoted band, marching to certain conquest with a resolute swing and swagger, and yet with the deep strains of some warlike hymn rising incongruously from its ranks. In a few minutes at most the little knot of Grenadiers must be overtaken, overwhelmed, and those staggering and riddled colours wrested from them for the first time in the history of the regiment. But the officer whom Denis was now following wasone of the bravest who ever wore white plume in black bearskin; and he had the handling of a team of heroes, some of whom had fought at his side against outrageous odds at an earlier stage of the battle.
"We must have a go at them, lads," said he; "we can keep them off the colours if we can't do more. Are you ready? Now for it, then!"
Denis had come to himself; here at length was certain death; and for the last moments of conscious life he had turned his back upon the battle's smoke and roar, while his eyes rested upon a clear and tranquil patch in the green valley of the Tchernaya, with tiny trees and a white farmhouse set out like toys. His thoughts were not very clear, but they were flying overseas, and as they still flew the officer's voice rang in his ears. So this was the end. A few Russians in loose order led the column; they were soon swept aside; and into the real head of the advancing multitude the twenty hurled themselves like men who could not die.
Denis never knew what happened to himself. He remembered his captain being bayoneted through the folds of his cloak, and cutting down two Russians at almost one stroke of his sword; he remembered longing for a sword of his own, as his piece was wrenched from his grasp by a dead weight on the bayonet. Yellow faces hemmed him in, their little eyes dilating with rage and malice; he remembered striking one of them with all hismight, seeing the man drop, being in the act of striking another.... His fists were still doubled when he opened his eyes hours later on the moonlit battle-field.
A great weight lay across his legs, so stiffly that Denis thought the dead man a log until his hand came in contact with damp clothing. His own throat and mouth were full of something hard and horrible. His moustache and beard were clotted with the same substance. One side of his face felt numb and swollen; but his sight was uninjured, and the pain not worse than bad neuralgia. He got upon his hands and knees and looked about him.
The day's haze had vanished with the smoke of battle; it was a still and clear night, brilliantly lighted by the moon. The Tchernaya lay like a tube of quicksilver along the peaceful plain whereon Denis had gazed before the end; he could see a light in the white farmhouse. The heights of Inkerman twinkled all over with scattered weapons, and all over were mounds more like graves than bodies waiting for the grave. The Sandbag Battery rose sharply against the moonlit sky. Denis was not near enough to see the fearful carnage there, but he remembered what it had been quite early in the day, and he had only to listen to hear the groaning of the wounded who had yet to be disentangled from the dead in the shadow of those ill-starred parapets. The night was so still that a groan, nay, a dying gasp, could be heard evenfurther than sight could penetrate through the rays of that glorious moon; and yet it was so light that the glimmer of lanterns round about the fatal battery was not at first apparent to the eye.
When Denis saw the lanterns, he got up and tried to stagger toward them, but collapsed at once, and had to lie where he fell until they came to him.
"Come on, boys, I see a Rooshian!" called Linesman, holding his lantern level with his shako.
"Wait a bit, here's one of our chaps," replied a voice that Denis knew. "S' help me if it ain't our old sergeant. I'd know him by his ginger nob a mile off! And him in such a stew to get at 'em this morning! It's more'n ever I was, though I'd as lief be on that job as this ... ugh!"
Denis soon attracted their attention, and in a few more moments his original rear-rank man was stooping over him.
"Why, you're stuck through the face!" he cried, screwing up his own behind the lantern. "But the glue seems set, and don't you go for to move and melt it. There's a wounded officer wants to see you."
Denis whispered something inarticulate. It was his first attempt to speak.
"What's that? Yes, it's our captain," said the other, "and he's waitin' to hear if you're alive. If you're sound below the teeth we can give you an arm apiece and take you to him in ten minutes. He's on'y in one o' the Second Division tents."
Denis could ask no questions, but he had strength enough to act upon this suggestion, and in a few minutes he was among the lighted tents. They put him vividly in mind of his first night at Ballarat. That was the last time he had spoken to Ralph Devenish until the morning of this dreadful day.
Now Ralph was lying in a military tent, a candle and a tumbler of champagne on the service trunk at his elbow, and an army surgeon on a camp-stool beside the bed.
"Is that the man you want to see?" asked the surgeon, but bundled Denis from the tent next instant, and made his conductors hold both lanterns to his face. "Don't you try to speak!" he went on to Denis. "Your wound has practically frozen; and we must keep it so as long as we can. Hold this wad to it till you come out. I oughtn't to let you go in—but he's worse than you."
The caution was repeated to Ralph; then Denis took the camp-stool, and the two were left alone.
"I am glad to have seen you again," murmured Ralph in hollow tones. "Do you know when I saw you last? I never thought of it till this moment. It was on the far side of the battery. Some fellow was going to bayonet you where you lay, and I—I was just in time."
Denis was nodding violently. He also had remembered. He stretched out a trembling hand. But Ralph drew his beneath the blanket.
"Wait a bit," he whispered. "You see, I neverthought of its being you; but I'm rather glad it was. Badly hurt, I'm afraid?"
Denis shook his head.
"I am. Lungs. I'm afraid it's a case. Do you remember this early morning?"
The disfigured face made a ghastly protest. Devenish only smiled.
"It was a good sort of duel," he whispered. "And you see, you've won!"
He stretched out a deathly hand for the champagne. Denis reached it for him.
The surgeon stood in the opening of the tent, advanced a step, shrugged, and retired unseen. Ralph had not hidden his hand again. Denis held it in both of his.
"Ask her to forgive me," gasped the shallow whisper. "No.... I can't ask you.... I don't. But you might tell her—when it came to this sort of thing——"
And the deathly face lit up with such a smile as it had worn that morning, when Ralph Devenish waved his sword, and led his company to the succour of their comrades before the Sandbag Battery.
John Dent was a Yorkshire yeoman, born in the last years of the eighteenth century, of that hardy northern stock which is England's biceps to this day. As a very little boy he was sent to Richmond Grammar School, and there eventually educated beyond the needs of his vocation, which was to live all his days upon the land of his fathers. John Dent was quite prepared to do so when he had seen something of the world; and by thirty he had not only seen more of it than was usual in those times, but had fallen in love on his travels with a young Irish girl of a social station indubitably above his own. What was more important, the young Irish girl had fallen in love with John Dent, who was handsome, huge, and gentle, with no great sense of humour, but of tenderness and strength compact.
Being what he was, John Dent came to his point with startling directness, was accepted, left the party which he proposed to deplete, and traveled like the crow to Dublin, where a perfect old gentleman sent him about his business in the sweetest imaginable brogue. John Dent returned to Yorkshire with hardly a word, set his affairs in order, ascertainedhis income to a nicety, chartered a little ship at Whitehaven, and landed in Dublin with his business books under his arm and certain family documents in his wallet. This time he sent a note to Merrion Square, and was content to beard the perfect old gentleman in his official quarters. But to no purpose; he was not even suffered to produce his books or his papers; neither deed, document, nor yet banker's reference, he was smilingly informed, would recommend the match to which he aspired. John Dent replied that he was sorry, as he certainly meant to realize his aspiration, and since his beloved was of age, at the earliest possible moment. Dogged as could be seen, but more enterprising than was supposed, he went straight aboard his vessel, where Nora Devenish actually awaited him; and in two or three days they were leaving Gretna Hall as man and wife when a Carlisle coach rattled over the bridge and up the hill with the perfect old gentleman screaming curses from the box.
Such was the story of the marriage of Denis's parents in the last days of George IV. Right or wrong, justified or unjustifiable, it led neither to long life nor to prosperity. Nora Devenish had the spirit to cut herself off from her own flesh and blood, but Nora Dent had neither the heart nor the health to bear a permanent severance. They never forgave her, and it broke her heart. Meanwhile the perpetual care of an ailing wife combined with the new Corn Laws to impoverish John Dent's estate. Hedid not live to see the repeal of the measures which had helped to ruin him; and he too died unforgiven, not only by his wife's family, but by himself for her early death. And the last thing that John Dent foresaw from his deathbed was the reunion of his name with that of Devenish in the very next generation.
Nevertheless, just as John Merridew had himself foreshadowed in a moment of emotion on the Australian coast, the place that was made for Denis in his firm led almost at once to a junior partnership. But the new partner was now enabled to bring in a little capital, and that at a time when the growing need of steamers was involving every line in large expense; his few thousands, however, were as nothing compared with his practical knowledge of the sea; and so, still in the 'fifties, a Devenish and a Dent were hand-in-glove.
Denis and Nan were not married until the winter before the Indian Mutiny, because Denis made a quick enough recovery to abide by an impulse, as he had always done, and to fight through the rest of the Crimean War. He was a sergeant of that ragged remnant of the Guards Brigade which marched through London on a midsummer's day and which the Queen welcomed from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Thereafter Denis had quickly and quietly bought himself out, and it was as a civilian, once more shorn of his picturesque tatters, that he drove down to Hertfordshire for thesecond time in his life. He looked several years older. His habitual expression was a little grim and wary, the movement of head and eyes something staccato. But that wore off. And many people never noticed that the curve of one nostril was much deeper than the other, though it was there a Russian bayonet had been driven through his face.
They lived in London, if the part that was still Old Kensington could be so reckoned at that time. But in summer they took a cottage near Mr. Merridew, partly because it was called The Fortune, and was yet one of the smallest fortunes in the world, and partly because Nan loved roses, which grew on that rich soil as on no other. Shortly after Mr. Merridew's death his house, being sold, was turned into a school; after some years it became a great school; and their boys, the grandsons of the old red place, went back there on the way to Harrow.
Denis kept in touch with his first partners on the gold-fields, though it was some years before he saw either of them again. Doherty did almost as well as ever for some time after his departure, but the life was no longer what it had been, and the lad gave it up on hearing from Denis that there was no chance of his return. He went back to the station on the craggy coast where theNorth Forelandhad met her doom. Denis next heard of him as a pioneer squatter in the Riverina country, and a partner of his former master, the kindly Kitto; and when they did meet in after life the younger man happened to be the richer of the two. His career was checkered but honourable, and his memory is one of the few green things in the district of his adoption. Denis saw more, however, of a bland clergyman who called on him in the City one fine May morning: he had come in for a family living in East Anglia, where the Dents found Parson Moseley as great a success with his crass parishioners as he had proved a failure among the quick and energetic diggers of the early days.
There was one other figure of those days whom Denis encountered twice in the 'fifties, once for a minute in Pall Mall, when an ill-advised expression of gratitude on the part of Denis curtailed an interchange of much interest, and a few years later at a social function of some magnitude to which Nan enticed her husband. She recognized the tall and lazy-looking gentleman who recognized Denis; in point of fact he was a public man, and far less lazy than he looked; but as Nan did not know him she withdrew to the nearest ottoman, where she looked very beautiful under the glass chandelier of the period (in spite of its unregenerate skirts) during the little conversation which Denis was careful not to cut short again.
"I hope you saw the news?" said the tall man, as though he and Denis had been meeting every day.
"The news from where, sir?"
"Black Hill Flat, if you happen to recollect such a place."
"I should think I did!" cried Denis. "But I haven't seen anything about it in the paper."
"I knew you had a good memory," said the tall man, smiling a little over his beard. "I suppose it doesn't by any chance hark back to what I told you would some day happen on Black Hill Flat?"
"Rather!" cried Denis again. "You used to say that gold would be found there sooner or later."
"It was found the other day, within a few feet of the top."
"You said it would be!"
"On the Native Youth side, and plenty of it, including a solid lump nearly as big as the one you got out of my old shaft. They call it the Nil Desperandum Nugget, which amuses me, because I never met another man who didn't despair of the place. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it," said the old deep-sinker, and with his old nod passed on.
Nan was immensely excited under the glass chandelier; and excitement and bright lights still became her; but Denis had never known his wife so bad a listener.
"But you know who it is?" she asked him both at beginning and end.
"Indeed I don't."
"You know that man to speak to, and you don't know him by name?"
"No; who is he?"
And she told him with bated breath.
THE END