Having no literary work on hand, she went about among her neighbours much more than in the past. She liked and sympathised with the youthful generation. She listened to music with Mrs. Bell, and was always ready to join a bridge table even at the shortest notice. She played the game accurately and boldly; and one evening, when she dined at the Parkers and the young people prevailed on Mr. Parker to countenance poker, she astonished everybody by her manner of sharing in this more reckless amusement. There was a gentleinscrutability about Miss Verinder at poker that proved deadly to ardent and excited adolescence. One of the young men, cleaned out, stood dolefully behind her chair and afterwards reported that he saw her do a bluff big enough to lift the roof. He said it had given him palpitations of the heart to watch her.
But all these slight interests, the concerts, the cards, the tea-parties, as it were dancing and flickering on the surface of her existence, were as nothing; the true Miss Verinder was far otherwise engaged. The world of Parkers and Bells, and tradesmen and cabdrivers, never once met her. Or if for a moment anyone caught a glimpse of her, she had flown away next moment and was back with her wandering man. So that one may truly say of her that often, as she passed along the broad smooth pavement round the corner into Prince Consort Road, she was in reality breathlessly clambering over hummocks of ice; or that when in the quiet flat she put down a saucer of milk for Bijou the cat, that small useless creature had swelled for her into the largest kind of Weddell seal.
The silence remained unbroken, over Christmas and on into the new year of 1912. One morning in March, Mrs. Bell asked her to come to tea next day, the eighth of the month. It was a date that Emmie never afterwards forgot.
She said she was sorry; she had an engagement.
“Oh, what a pity. I’m expecting the Alderleys and I wanted you to know them. Can’t you come in afterwards?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” said Miss Verinder.“I’m going out of town to-morrow for the whole day.”
“How annoying! Well then, the day after?”
“Yes, I shall be delighted.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Bell. “I shall put off the Alderleys. Hope you’ll have an enjoyable day.”
Miss Verinder’s engagement was to visit a certain town in the Midlands, and truly she looked forward to it with no pleasurable anticipations, but rather with a sinking of the heart. She was going to Upperslade Park only because she felt that it was her duty to go there. The asylum authorities had sent a very troublesome letter to Dyke, and she as his representative must attend to it properly. They asked for a large increase of the annual payment, on the ground of the enhancement of cost of everything since the time long ago when the bargain was made. They said that a bargain was a bargain, and they “would not go back on it”; but they could not possibly continue to maintain Mrs. Dyke as well as in the past, giving her the greatest comfort, the best food, and the closest attendance, at a dead loss. If, then, it was impossible to adopt their suggestion, they would go on taking care of her quite adequately, but much less luxuriously. There was a possibility, of course, that her health would suffer from the deprivation of comforts to which she had grown accustomed. Farther, they pointed out that although the asylum was to some extent a public institution enjoying an endowment, they had no power to devote a penny of these funds to the benefit of the private paying patients.
Emmie travelled by the North-Western Railway, and it was one of those days with which March can surprise and disgust even those who remember the evil notoriety of the month. Dark skies, rain, and wind travelled withher all the way. She drove through the ugly town, seeing nothing but wet pavements and tramcars; through outskirts of factories and smoking chimneys, and on to a broad long road skirted on either side by villas and gardens. Her cabman stopped at an iron gateway in a high brick wall. This was Upperslade Park. A man came out of a lodge and spoke to her at the cab window. Then he unlocked the gate, and the cab drove in.
Beneath leafless dripping trees, across wide lawns, she saw the place itself vaguely, a mass of buildings with wet slate roofs and towers that stretched and sprawled gigantic. It was like a workhouse, a gaol, like anything sinister and dark that depresses the mind, at the mere sight of it, with painful associations and impotent regrets.
She was received by a doctor in an office that opened from a large and totally bare hall, and she said that she wished to have her interview with the patient before entering into any discussion of business matters.
“All right,” said the doctor. “Yes, she’ll have had her dinner”; and he called for an attendant. “I’ll tell Dr. Wenham that you’d like a chat with him afterwards.”
Emmie was ushered then to a waiting-room or parlour, where, they said, Mrs. Dyke would presently be sent to her. It was a lofty room, with high windows through which one had a view of the driving rain, the sodden lawns, and a broad smoke-stained gravel path. Some of those unreadable richly-bound books that used to be displayed years ago in hotel sitting-rooms lay on highly-polished circular tables. Instead of a fireplace there was a large white earthenware stove. Somehorsehair and walnut chairs stood in a row against one wall, and on each side of the stove there was a straight-backed early-Victorian sofa covered with faded green rep.
Emmie waited for what seemed a long time. She was looking out of a window when the patient and a woman nurse entered the room.
“How do you do, Mrs. Dyke?” And they shook hands.
Immediately after this conventional greeting, Mrs. Dyke seated herself on one of the rep-covered sofas and laid upon her knees a largish Bible that she had been carrying under her arm. Emmie went and sat beside her on the sofa. She was a little middle-aged woman, dressed very neatly in a blue serge gown of no particular fashion; her hair, parted in the middle, was drawn to the back of the head and there rolled into a compact ball; her manner was precise and formal, and she spoke in measured tones, as if weighing her words and attaching importance, even finality, to some of them. It seemed to Emmie that only her eyes were insane. Their colour was brown, with little specks of amber, and they had the sort of shining intensity that is to be observed in the eyes of children during high fever. Then Emmie noticed that there was something strange about her hands. The left one, the one with the wedding ring, had marks of severe wounds on the knuckles, and it appeared to be stiffened. Emmie thought at once—with a queer feeling of already having heard of this—that it had been banged through a window pane during a fit of violence.
“Insufficient organisation and want of method is usually to blame,” Mrs. Dyke was saying, in her preciseway. She had begun talking as soon as she sat down, as if resuming a conversation with Emmie that had just been interrupted. “Then praying time is naturally forgotten. Prayers get omitted at the appointed moment, and one rarely if ever squares the account and gets the tally right. But in this book,” and she softly patted the Bible, “all such things are noted. Did I saythisbook? Pardon me—in a very much larger book, kept by the recording angel, who neither sleeps nor accepts drugs to make him sleep.”
The nurse was standing at a little distance, smiling good-naturedly; and she now asked Emmie if she should remain or go outside the door.
Emmie said she would like to be left alone with Mrs. Dyke.
“All right,” said the nurse, and she nodded significantly. “I shall be just outside the door—and I’ll leave it ajar. Call, if you want me, Miss Verinder.”
“Nurse Gale,” said Mrs. Dyke, quietly but authoritatively, “keep an eye on the clock. Don’t let the proper moment slip by.”
“Oh, do drop your rubbish,” said the nurse, laughing good-humouredly, as she went out into the corridor.
Mrs. Dyke continued to speak of religious matters, until, in a pause, Emmie tried to change the subject.
“Now shall we talk a little about yourself? I want to know if you are comfortable here.”
Mrs. Dyke, after a meditative silence, said, “No, I’m always hungry.”
Emmie, shocked and pained, asked: “Don’t they give you enough to eat?”
“Too much,” said Mrs. Dyke mysteriously. “But I daren’t eat it. They want to poison me”; and sheadded after another pause that, having defeated this plot for a considerable number of years, she hoped still to get the better of them.
Then it was as if of a sudden she had been moved by some strange glimmer of intelligence or intuition with regard to Emmie. She looked at her searchingly with a changed expression in the eyes, and shrinking from her on the sofa, spoke loudly. “Are you an enemy or a friend?”
“A friend,” said Emmie.
“Of course she is,” said the nurse briskly. At the sound of the raised voice she had immediately come into the room. “And a very kind friend, too—to have come all the way from London to see you.”
“Who is it that has done me a great wrong?” said Mrs. Dyke, still scrutinising Emmie. “Aunt Janet told me. Is it you? Have you wronged me?”
“Oh, what stuff and nonsense,” said the nurse. “Wronged you indeed! That’s the silly way she goes on.”
Emmie,perturbed but brave, got Nurse Gale to leave them alone once more. Then she took the injured hand and very gently held it between both her hands.
“Mrs. Dyke, don’t fear me; don’t suspect me of evil intentions. I mean well.”
“So be it,” said Mrs. Dyke, drawing nearer on the sofa and allowing her stiff cold hand to lie passive and imprisoned. “In the fullest confidence.” That evanescent aspect of normality had gone; she looked at Emmie with mad eyes, and spoke in a tone that was vibratingly intense. “I want my husband—dead or alive. If he is dead, I wish the body embalmed and put in a glass case. If he is alive—send him to the deviland choke him. Look here. A stitch in time saves nine. I put my husband in the bed—a colossal bed that I had built to hold him. Room for five or six other people—of ordinary size. So it’s quite absurd to pretend that there wasn’t room in it for me. Very well. When I woke he wasn’t there. I hunted for him high and low. He was under the bed laughing at me, or up the chimney. ‘Be calm,’ they all said. ‘That is the watchword henceforth—Be calm.’ ‘Well, I am calm, Aunt Janet,’ I said. ‘Could anyone be calmer? I am quite reasonable and obeying orders. But I simply say I want my husband.’
“But not a bit—they dragged me into the carriage. They flogged those poor horses—” And suddenly her manner changed to a sort of exalted fervour. “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. Awake—throw off the chains. For on that day there shall be a great light shining from the high mountains. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoso believeth in Me—If you don’t mind, I’ll say my prayers. I forgot them again”; and she sank to her knees and laid her face upon the seat of the sofa. “Please ask them not to disturb me.” And she began to murmur monotonously.
Miss Verinder waited a little while, and then went to the door and beckoned the nurse. She asked her not to disturb Mrs. Dyke.
“But she’ll go on like that till midnight.”
“As a favour to me. Give her a quarter of an hour.” Emmie tipped the nurse. “You promise, don’t you?”
Emmie, wrung with pity, stood at the door looking back into the room. That was the last sight and sound—the poor creature kneeling in the unchanged attitudeand the toneless murmur of the prayer.
Miss Verinder during her interview with the head of the asylum was very business-like. She arranged to pay what was necessary now and whatever might be necessary in the future, should a further increase be required.
Thus oddly she began to contribute to the comfort and maintenance of the unhappy soul whose place in the outer world she had taken. She had not hesitated to answer the call. Nor did there for a moment pass through her mind even the vaguely formulated thought that she was taking every possible means to keep Mrs. Dyke alive, when the death of Mrs. Dyke might have relieved her of an embarrassment which, although it had grown slight, still existed.
She was very tired when she reached Euston about seven in the evening, and, since she was alone and without luggage, the porters neglected her in the scramble on the arrival platform, and she was unable to get a cab. Advised to try for one on the departure side, she went through a subway, up into the great hall among hurrying people; and suddenly heard two men saying words that made her heart leap and sent the blood rushing to her head. Hastily turning, she moved towards the bookstall; and there in bright strong light, she saw the same words that she had just heard. All round the front of the stall they were repeated in enormous lettering, on the bills of the evening papers; for to-night no other item of news was worth displaying—“South Pole Reached”; “Discovery of South Pole”; “South Pole.”
In those few moments, while she bought a paper and opened it, she believed that it was her man. Her man—theblood beat at her temples, her lungs were full of fire, and a wild passionate joy possessed her. It seemed as if the station walls were falling, the lofty roof bursting open and floating away; vistas showed themselves, filled with vast pressing throngs; triumphant music swelled in her ears, and the voice of whole nations shouting echoed and re-echoed the loved name. Dyke, Dyke, Dyke! He had done it. Nothing could stop him, he had beaten them all—her man. She held the paper high to read the message.
It was Amundsen.
She refolded the paper and looked at the large clock above the door. Ten minutes past seven. When she got safely into her bedroom at the flat the pretty little Sèvres clock on the chimney-piece showed that it was now twenty minutes to eleven; and, except that she had been walking, she never knew why it had taken her so long to get home from Euston.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Louisa, helping to put her to bed. And she spoke again, in the grumblingly affectionate tone that trusted faithful old servants often permit to themselves. “You don’t take proper care. You overdo it—and then you make yourself ill, like this.”
“I am quite all right,” said Emmie. “But I have had a rather agitating day”; and she turned her face to the wall.
IN due course the stories of the various expeditions arrived. Each had done nobly good work, but in the splendour of the achievement of Amundsen and Scott all else paled to insignificance. National sorrow for the death of its glorious representative made England at first almost impatient of listening to the voices of those who remained alive. Dyke, it seemed, had performed valuable services to science—he had cleared up a good deal; although behind the illustrious two, he had crossed their tracks, and he had also struck into the Japanese and the Germans. But who now could care about discoveries of mountain ranges, charting of coast-lines, or correction of surmises as to land and water? The praise he received in the British press was pitifully small; and one American paper was cruel enough to say that “Comic relief had been given to the tragic drama by the antics of elderly Dyke, who had been fooling around all the time like the clown of the Antarctic Circus.”
He was in England during the summer of 1914; a man forgotten, not given a single newspaper interview, not once bidden to a public dinner. The birthday list of honours was announced in advance as including recognition of all who of late years had served the state usefully or ornamentally; yet neither in forecasts of those to be thus honoured nor in the list itself was the name of Dyke mentioned. He did not say a wordto indicate that he even noticed this neglect. Emmie, however, thinking she understood what he must necessarily feel, took him away from London into the country, where he could no longer hear the noise and fuss about recognition and national gratitude.
They stayed at a farmhouse on Dartmoor, and they were very happy; but she had wronged him when she supposed that there was now any bitterness of disappointment in his mind. Alone with him between the sky and the heather, she became aware of a subtle inward change. He was never by any chance irritable. He was calmer, more dignified, whether he spoke of the past or the future.
Yes, as she knew, he had irrevocably lost what had been the hope of his life. Dimly she began to guess that it was the very completeness of the loss that, after the first shock, had brought a new tranquillity of spirit. The game with all its excitements was over, and he experienced a sensation of enforced rest. But truly it was something more and better than this. It was perhaps as near to obliteration of self as the most magnanimous men may reach when they see good work accomplished and measure the extent of the good work that still remains to be done.
She did not really understand until she heard him paying tribute to the memory of Captain Scott; and in her admiration and delight there went from her then the last twinges of the pain that had been caused by her own disappointment. This Anthony that she worshipped and reverenced for every word he said was a nobler and a bigger man than the Dyke who might have been—the Dyke who might have come home amid the plaudits of the world, to drop his laurel wreaths at her feet.
He was lying among the heather, his head resting on his elbow, and a hand playing with the tiny crimson bells; while Emmie with her holland parasol made a screen to keep the sun off them both. An injury to the head inflicted by a tumble on shipboard had left a slight deafness, and because of it he sometimes unconsciously spoke louder than was necessary. Now his voice rang out very strong in the light, pure air; but they were quite alone, and indeed Emmie would not have minded if all the world had heard what he said.
“You will see it written—it is being written already—that Scott’s noble gallant heart was broken by his failure to get there first—that it was the sight of the Norwegian flag flying over the tent that really killed him, and not the hardship and fatigues. Emmie, that’s a wicked thing to write. It’s a wicked poor-spirited thing for anyone to believe. Scott was far, far above all that. You remember I wrote to him to say I was going?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I never had an answer to my letter. I’m sure he sent me an answer, only it missed me. I never got it. Amundsen telegraphed to him too.”
“Did Mr. Amundsen telegraph to him?” said Emmie, flushing. “I was not aware of it. I fear I—”
“Scott’s answer would have been the same to both of us. I know it as surely as if I had heard him say it or had read it in his hand. Scott would have said, ‘You or I or the other fellow, what does it matter, so that the thing is done?’ I am so sure that, when I was rather down in the dumps about myself, I took it as a message from the dead, and it steadied me, Emmie—it steadied me at once. As soon as I can, I shall go back there to carry on the work. I consider it a sacred duty that we Englishmen owe to his memory; and while there’s a kick left in me I’ll be true to it. If I can’t get anyone to trust me with the command, I’m ready to serve under anybody else—any Englishman—as second in command, if they think me good enough;—as third mate, or cook, if that’s the best job they think I’m worth.”
For some reason or other he was going to North China when the outbreak of war stopped him. The four-years agony had begun. He served first as a sailor, then as a soldier; and it may be said at once that Emmie was never less anxious about him than at this time, for, although the war of course had its risks, they seemed so much smaller than those of his ordinary life.
But she had anxieties of another kind—about money. Fortunately, with exploration at a standstill, she was given a breathing space; in fact, she was in such a mess financially that she could not anyhow have assisted the good cause by secret donations. For some while she had been gambling. There was no other word for it—and her very respectable stockbrokers used the word freely.
“My dear Miss Verinder,” said Mr. Burnett, the stockbroker. “I must really warn you against this sort of thing. It is not investment at all; it is speculation. It is sheer gambling.”
Ignoring his advice, she bought some oil shares and lost her money. She had been impelled to make this venture by a hint concerning the future of oil that had fallen casually from the lips of Anthony. Another philosophic reflection of his led her into copper; and this commodity also played her false.
“What did I tell you?” said Mr. Burnett. “Whywillyou jeopardise your position in this manner. It isn’t as if you were not well-off.”
Miss Verinder demurely replied that, although originally well-off, her expenses had increased, and for certain reasons she would be pleased to add to her income.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried Mr. Burnett, almost writhing in his altruistic despair. “How often have I heard people like you say exactly what you have just said! In this very room, Miss Verinder—clients who really ought to know better”; and he gave her a severe little lecture on her recent speech, which, he said, was absolutely typical in the foolishness of its underlying ideas. Widows and spinsters, living out of the world, knowing nothing of business, with no man to control them, invariably talk in that silly manner before they fall into the most frightful pitfalls.
But this incorrigible spinster went on with her bad practices, buying this and that queer thing, and once, to the astonishment and annoyance of Mr. Burnett, securing a little profit. That made her worse than ever, and she soon went right down all among the pitfalls.
“Now what do you intend?” said the stockbroker, speaking very gravely of the catastrophe. “Are you going on, or are you going to stop?”
“I scarcely know how to answer,” said Emmie, after a silence. “I have dropped so much that it almost seems as if I couldn’taffordto stop.”
Mr. Burnett writhed despairingly. Then nodding his head, and pointed his finger at her, he said, “Miss Verinder, may I tell you a story?”
“Oh, please do,” said Emmie.“I should be so glad if you would.”
“A client of ours was bitten with this mania—for mania it is; although, mind you, there was more excuse for her, because it was in peace-time, and not when the whole world has gone upside down and from day to day one cannot make the wildest guess as to what the value of anything will be to-morrow. She was not only a client but a relative—my own cousin—Adela Burnett—so I knew all her circumstances. She too was an old—Suffice it to say that she was the unmarried daughter of my uncle John, who had left her quite a good little property. Really a jolly little place in Sussex—perhaps three hundred acres, not more—and I don’t know how many feet above the sea—The Mount, they called it—not that the name matters. But there she was—don’t you see?—surrounded with comfort—quite able to play the lady bountiful in a small way—respected by everybody. The first doubtful order she brought to me—the very first, Miss Verinder”—and he shook his finger impressively—“I said, ‘Adela, stop it.’ But did she listen to me? No. It was nothing to her that my firm is one of the oldest in the City of London and that her own cousin is its senior partner. She would sooner act on the advice of the local doctor, or the curate, or the wife of the master of hounds, than listen to anything our firm could tell her. Well, I warned her for the second time. And what do you think she did? What, Miss Verinder, do you think she did?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Miss Verinder, feebly.
“She removed her business to another firm.”
“Oh, what a shame!” said Emmie, with sympathetic indignation.“Oh, I think that was mean of her. I promise never to do anything like that.”
Mr. Burnett writhed again. It seemed that Miss Verinder was missing the whole point of the story. As he hastened to explain, it was not the loss of his commission but the ruin of his cousin that he deplored.
“Yes, she ruined herself. And where is she now? Where, Miss Verinder, is she now?”
“Where is she, Mr. Burnett?”
“Living in one room—in a wretched road not far from Clapham Common. Pigging it in one single room—subsisting as best she may on a voluntary allowance made to her by—her blood relations”; and for a moment Mr. Burnett looked modest, as though imploring that no compliments should be paid with regard to the generosity of Adela’s family.Then he became more impressive than ever. “To this she has reduced herself by Stock Exchange gambling. Think of it. Here you have a delicately nurtured lady, no longer young, accustomed to be waited on by a highly-trained domestic staff, now cooking her own meals in a bed-sitting-room. One room, Miss Verinder. Just think of it.”
Miss Verinder thought of it. The accommodation would be hopelessly inadequate in her case. Three rooms was the very least she could do with—one for herself, one for Louisa, and a spare one for Tony.
Should she go on or stop? With the cost of life leaping upward, with a humble invalid pensioner called Aunt Janet still on her hands, with further obligations to an unhappy prisoner in the midlands whose expenses had again risen, with an income tax threatening to absorb half her diminished dividends, she looked at the future in trepidation and saw it full of difficulties and dangers. She shook with dread as she thought that the time might come when she would not be able to maintainthis beloved flat just as it had always been. Oh, for acoup, for a stroke of luck that would bring security! During long hours of feverish wakeful nights she asked herself that question. Should she go on or stop?
She went on. Perhaps it is impossible to consort for a number of years with an adventurer and yet not catch the adventurous spirit; or to force oneself to think boldly in regard to a few matters without acquiring the habit of bold thinking in regard to all matters. And her pulses had been stirred by what seemed to be another hint from her oracle. Although the submarine menace was as yet nothing more than a menace, Dyke foretold the ultimate scarcity of shipping; and writing to her from a mine-sweeper in the Mediterranean, he said he believed that anybody now could make a certain fortune by getting hold of ships, no matter how old they were, and selling them again later. “No doubt,” he added, “a lot of artful dodgers are doing it already.”
A fortnight after receiving this letter, Miss Verinder was established at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. She had with her as travelling companion Mr. Cairns, late captain of theMercedaria; and he and she, passing here and there unnoticed among the war crowd at the big hotel, were exceedingly busy—so busy, in fact, that she had no spare moments for reviving sentimental memories of her only previous visit to this great maritime city.
Cairns, although so much older now than then, still gave one the same impression of solidity and trustworthiness. He still loved his joke, but the years had made him a little asthmatic and his laughter was apt to end in a fit of coughing. Emmie, taking tender care ofhim, made him give another turn of the muffler round his neck as they rowed up the river one morning and met the sharp winter’s breeze on their faces. In the rowboat with them were two shabby-looking elderly men that Cairns had produced after searching among his seafaring and commercial acquaintance. These queer associates were Mr. Gann, a tall, mournful man, and Mr. Rice, who was stout and jovial; and by Cairns’s arrangement they and Emmie had entered into a little partnership for the purpose of buying an iron steamer named theMarian II., this vessel being one of three that a panic-stricken owner desired to shuffle off his hands. To-day they were going over her for a last look round, before taking the plunge.
“I don’t like being mixed up in business with a woman,” Mr. Gann had said sadly, after his first introduction to Emmie’s pale face, charming graceful manner, and fashionable London costume. “Always lands you in more than you bargained for.”
“My experience too,” said Rice.
But Cairns had reassured them, and, as it were, thrown them into Emmie’s arms.
“My lads,” said Cairns, “don’t you worry about her being a woman. Take it from me, she has more grit than half a dozen ordinary men.”
Now they were beginning to think that Cairns was right.
Truly she was wonderful, ducking under a wet hawser that caught one of her partners as the boat approached the wharf alongside which layMarian II., climbing slippery steps, and crossing a rickety gangway to get on board. Yet it would have been impossible to imagine anybody who appeared more incongruous to the businessand the scene. In the bright cold sunshine the ship seemed a melancholy ruin, full of rust and grime, with the air of forlorn abandonment proper to a thing created for men’s use but deserted by all mankind; and Emmie, dressed in her fur coat, with her veil neatly tied under her narrow chin and her chamois leather gloves being blackened by each bit of wood or metal that they touched, was like a lady going over a house that she thinks of taking for a term of years. As she walked about with Cairns and the caretaker, now on the rusting decks, now in the gloomy depths, she asked a multitude of questions, all charmingly unprofessional and yet all full of common-sense.
“Can the machinery be put in working order? Are there no leaks? Is shesound, Captain Cairns? I think nothing of appearances—no one cares now;—but is she really watertight and seaworthy?”
“Yes, miss,” said Captain Cairns. “The three ships are all right. You may take my word for it.”
“But thisisthe best of the three, isn’t she?”
“Yes, I think she is. She’s the best-looking, anyhow.”
Nothing tired Miss Verinder, and she took nothing for granted. Although they were only concerned with theMarian II., she insisted on being rowed up the river a little further, to see the other two steamers that belonged to the same owner. One of these, theOsprey, was out in the stream, black and forbidding, with the water racing past the faded paint beneath her load-line. The third one, theAnemone, was literally on the mud.
“Is her back broken?” asked Emmie.
“Good Lord, no,” said Cairns.“She’s right enough. Get her reconditioned, and no one would recognize her.”
Mr. Gann and Mr. Rice were both suffering from the cold, and both weary of the excursion. At their request the boat was turned and the party made its way back to Liverpool.
Miss Verinder was more wonderful still at the final meeting with the timorous owner and his agent. They all sat round a carved oak table in a luxurious private sitting-room at the hotel; but, as the manager had not been able to allow them a fire, Miss Verinder retained her fur wraps and the gentlemen their overcoats. She took no part in a lengthy struggle with regard to the price they were to pay. Cairns and the agent grew heated in a contest of praise and disparagement. Mr. Gann became sadder and more sad. Mr. Rice at last told Mr. Jones, the owner, that to ask twelve thousand pounds for a rotten old tub like theMarian II.was high-seas piracy; and Mr. Jones said that unless this word was immediately withdrawn he would break off the negotiation. To show that he was in earnest, he pushed back his chair and put on his hat.
“Ladies present, kindly remember,” said Cairns.
“Oh, please don’t mind me,” said Miss Verinder, sweetly. Then she went and rang an electric bell while the others continued to wrangle.
A waiter brought, not inopportunely, a tray with sandwiches, biscuits, whisky, soda water; and, at Miss Verinder’s request, the gentlemen consented to take light refreshment.
Then she sat at the table again, and smiled deprecatingly at Mr. Jones.
“Will you allow me to speak quite frankly, Mr. Jones?”
Mr. Jones, with his mouth full of biscuit, signified assent; and Emmie startled him and her allies by a quiet but entirely damaging attack upon theMarian II.She said that if Mr. Jones was fond ofMarian II.and wanted to keep her, there was no more to be said. But if he really wished to sell the ship, she must confess that the price he was asking struck her as quite ridiculous. She admitted thatMarian II.was the best of the bunch. “Oh, yes, certainly. As to the other two—” and she gave a little shiver, as if upset by the mere recollection of their state. One of them, she went on demurely, was to her mind little better than a derelict, and the other one gave her an impression of being about to sink at its moorings.
“Nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Jones.
“Well, that was my impression,” said Emmie. “I don’t profess to be an expert. But I can assure you, Mr. Jones, we are here to do business. Wewantto do business. Can’t we make a deal of it, anyhow?”
“Not on your terms. I’d sooner go to government. You forget there’s government always ready to buy.”
“Oh, Mr. Jones!” said Emmie, as if shocked by this pretence. “I understand that the government officials have inspected your ships at least a dozen times.”
“They may change their minds.”
“Never. If the government had wanted them they would have taken them long ago.”
“That’s so,” said Cairns, firmly.
“Nevertheless, Mr. Jones,” said Emmie, resuming a gentle argumentative tone, “suppose we were to make you a sporting bid for the three vessels?”
“No, no,” said her partners, astounded; and Mr. Cairns touched her arm and began to cough. But MissVerinder quietly went on with it.
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Every day your ships are deteriorating in value. Now afirmoffer, Mr. Jones.Cash!Twenty-seven thousand for the three!”
“No, no.”
Mr. Gann and Mr. Rice both turned upon her; Captain Cairns, choking, took her by the arm and led her to the recess of the furthest window. There her partners expostulated with her, declaring that they could not plunge in this manner. One ship was all they were good for.
“Very well,” she immediately replied; “then I’ll do the other two ships on my own.”
“And let us stand or fall on number one?”
“Yes, unless you think better of it. Don’t, please, suppose I’m trying to squeeze you out. At equal stakes we were to have a third share, weren’t we? Now divide it into twenty-sevenths. You see how simple it is, don’t you, Captain Cairns? Instead of one-third each of these gentlemen will have four and a half twenty-sevenths—or whatever the correct fraction is. That can easily be settled at leisure. But, please, let me get back to Mr. Jones now. I want to strike while the iron’s hot.”
Then she returned to the table, and with a slightly ostentatious flourish produced a cheque book.
“Now, Mr. Jones, I’m ready to write you a cheque for a ten per cent. deposit. Is the deal going through?”
The deal went through. Perhaps because of his naturally timid nature, perhaps because of the obvious reluctance shown by the lady’s partners, Mr. Jones said“Done.”
“And done,” Emmie echoed brightly.
She seemed mildly excited and no more. As she bowed to the company and withdrew, she still had that air of a well-preserved middle-aged lady conducting some little affair of ordinary well-to-do life—such as taking a furnished house or buying a motor-car.
“Well, I’m blowed,” said Mr. Rice, when the vendor and his agent had in turn gone away. “Sheisa card, and no mistake. But confound her arithmetic. Here, give me a drop more whisky. I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”
“That’s always the outcome, with a woman,” said Mr. Gann sadly.
“Look here,” said old Cairns enthusiastically. “You stick it through with her. For, take it from me—although I was staggered a moment—she’s done a big thing, and she’sright. It’ll turn up trumps.” And Mr. Cairns began to laugh and cough at the same time. “What gets me,” he spluttered, “is the comic side of it. All our faces, when she said—firm offer! Didn’t I tell you she had grit? Listen half a minute. As an example—in strict confidence—a thing she did when she was quite a girl!” And, splutteringly, he narrated how once when Miss Verinder was travelling with a friend in foreign parts, they were captured and set upon by bravos; “and just as it seemed they were going to be down and out, she whips in with a revolver and—”
At this moment Miss Verinder herself interrupted the narration by reappearing at the door.
“Captain Cairns, can I have one word with you?”
Outside in the corridor she spoke to him tremulously. She was very pale, and she betrayed a nervousness andagitation strangely out of character with the melodramatic heroine of the Captain’s interrupted tale.
“Oh, Captain Cairns, do you think”—and after hesitating she used a phrase that on several occasions he had used himself—“do you think I have bitten off more than I can chew?”
“No,” said Mr. Cairns stoutly. “You’ve done a good morning’s work, and I, well, I’m proud of you.”
The venture turned up trumps. After three months of painful hope and fear they soldMarian II.and got back all their money. Then four months later they sold the last ship and wound up the modest syndicate with a profit of fifty thousand pounds. Meanwhile, operating alone, Miss Verinder had bought and sold two larger vessels and thereby gained nearly seventy thousand pounds. Then she bought ordinary shares in shipping companies, received fabulous dividends, and got out again. Then, as a last flutter, returning to an old fancy, she did something really big in oil. And then, literally and metaphorically, she folded her hands.
Long before this time Mr. Burnett, the stockbroker, had ceased to talk to her about his cousin Adela, or to lecture her in general terms on the foolishness of lonely widows and spinsters. He understood now that in a world which has gone upside down wise saws and ancient instances are out of place. He hung upon her words, he treated her with the deference due to an important client; as his clerks would have said, “he wished he had half her complaint.”
She herself was frightened by her success. In the inevitable reaction after so much nervous strain and excitement, she felt an almost superstitious fear of theflood of new capital that was rolling in upon her. She had dreaded poverty, and now it was as if some instinct warned her that she might have a greater cause to dread the consequences of wealth. She told no one anything about it—no, not even Tony. She guarded all knowledge of it as though it had been a guilty secret. She flushed and felt ashamed when affluent Mrs. Bell emitted groans under the war taxation, or when people spoke with scathing contempt of war profiteers. She longed for peace.
But the war went on. “Will it ever stop?” wrote Mr. Dyke from Endells. “It is very cruel to us old people.”
Yes, it was cruel to old people. It shook them, it weakened them, it killed them. Emmie thought of this—when old Mr. Dyke fell ill again; and when her mother died. Mrs. Verinder, shrunk to half her past size, for many years had been an old lady in a Bath chair gliding slowly along the sea-shore at Brighton with her head a little on one side; sometimes speaking of Mr. Verinder as though he was still alive; rather doubtful about the identity of Emmeline when she visited her, and always prone to confound Margaret Pratt with Margaret’s eldest daughter. Now she subsided in the chair, and vanished. Then one day Emmie’s clever solicitor wrote to inform her that her pensioner, old Mrs. Kent, was no more.
Still the war went on. It had reached that point when one felt and said that civilization was doomed, that this planet was lapsing into irremediable chaos, and that the whole universe might crash to fire and dust. When Emmie read the obituary advertisements inThe Times, she felt now that, young or middle-agedor old, the war spared none. As many people were dying of it here in England as out there at the front. Only that unfortunate life-sentence prisoner in the prison called Upperslade Park remained quite undisturbed by the war, and, as her guardians told Emmie, enjoyed excellent health.
It was unending. Dyke had served in the Mediterranean, in East Africa, in Mesopotamia; and all the while he had been getting more and more angry, first because the Germans took such a lot of beating, and, secondly, because, although they knew themselves beaten, they wouldn’t own it. “Do you realize,” he wrote now, “that I am fifty-eight? If it goes on much longer I shall be fit for nothing but to settle down with my old governor in Devonshire, and hoe potatoes and carry the muck pail to the pigs. Well, perhaps it might be the best thing that could happen to me. I should be happy there if my Emmie was with me.”
Oh, if only that could come true! His Emmie sat dreaming with the letter in her hand, giving herself to the mental vision that his words had evoked—the tranquil perfect life down there in the house that she loved, the unbroken companionship; Anthony satisfied, with his roving spirit finally at rest; he and she as the squire and the squire’s lady, being kind to everybody, doing a little good with her money.
Then she remembered the real Mrs. Anthony Dyke. Even if he consented to remain in England, that peaceful dual life would be as impossible as it had always been. And thinking again of all this money of hers and of the power that money brings, she grew cold and sad. It was as if already she knew that the money would draw her irresistibly to a supreme sacrifice.
IT had come to an end; andthat first Christmas after the Armistice was spent by Emmie at Endells.
On Christmas eve they had an afternoon party for the children of the village; with the curate, a schoolmistress, Mr. Sturgess the doctor, and a few friendly neighbours to assist Miss Verinder in entertaining the guests. She acted as hostess for old Mr. Dyke, and was indeed treated by all as though she had been a daughter of the house. Everybody there knew her and liked her.
After a plenteous tea she led the company to a hall or annexe that had been used as parish-room and general meeting-place in the days when the house was the rectory as well as the residence of the squire.
“Keep down here, please,” said Emmie. “I have something to say to you all.”
The children, surging into the big room, had made at once towards a screen of curtains at the far end; from behind which came the sound of whispers and busy movements, suggesting that some mystery was in preparation there. Now they obediently flocked back towards the wide hearth, andformed a dense half circle of eager shining faces.
“That’s right. Thank you,” said Emmie.
It was a pretty old-fashioned little scene; very pleasant, in its homelike character, to eyes that for so long had been gazing towards the smoke-clouds offoreign lands. The electric light burning gaily brought out the cheerful colours of flags, paper festoons, and holly berries, with which Miss Verinder had decorated the walls and ceiling beams. The boys, smooth and oily of pate, were still rather shy; the bigger girls, in their very best frocks, looked dignified but self-conscious; and some tiny little girls, large-eyed and fluffy-haired, like dolls, hopped excitedly and clapped their small hands. One of these animated dolls had attached herself to Miss Verinder, and moved with her while a chair was fetched from the wall and placed in the middle of the room.
Miss Verinder made Mr. Dyke sit on the chair. He had carried plates of cake, waiting on the children at their tea; he was so happy, and so much pleased with the party, that he would not spare his old legs or think for a moment of the danger of overtiring himself.
“Now,” said Emmie, with her hand on the back of his chair, beginning the expected oration. At the same moment the curate went to the door, and stationed himself by the switches that controlled the electric light. In the background there was a delighted whispering and giggling of the servants. “Now, first I think you ought all to thank Mr. Dyke for giving us this treat.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.” Prompted by the schoolmistress, a noisy chorus of thanks burst from the attentive audience.
“Don’t thank me. Thank Miss Verinder,” said old Dyke, beaming. “It’s she who has taken the trouble.”
“Thank you, miss. Thank you, miss.”
Miss Verinder smiled, blushed, and then continued her speech.“I want to speak about Father Christmas. It is Father Christmas, is it not? who comes down the chimney at night and puts things in your stockings. It is he who goes into the dark woods and grubs up the lovely Christmas trees and drags them over the fields to the village. You like those trees of his, don’t you? Yes, and Father Christmas carries a great sack over his shoulder full of toys to hang on the tree—or perhaps the sack is a branpie! And he has a staff in his hand. You’ve seen heaps of pictures of him, haven’t you? But you’ve never seen him himself. Oh, how nice it would be to see him! Perhaps”—and Miss Verinder smiled archly—“I say perhaps, he is really close by—only afraid to show himself. I believe he is afraid of the lights. He always moves about in the dark. Shall we turn down the lights?”
“No,” cried the little child at Emmie’s skirts, “don’t turn down the lights. I’m more afraid of the dark zan Fazer Kissmuss is of anysing”; and she clung to Emmie.
“Only for a moment, dear. And you’ve got my hand. There, I’ll keep my arm round you. Now you don’t mind. Mr. Vincent!” And the curate by the switches received his signal.
The room was in darkness, except for the glow of the fire and certain gleams that came through those curtains. One could hear everybody breathing hard. Then out burst the lamp-light again, dazzling one.
“Oh, oh, oh!” The children, recoiling, stared in awe and ecstasy. Father Christmas was in their midst.
He was enormous, overwhelming; a magnificent apparition, all in red, with immense white beard, cotton-wool eyebrows, high reddened cheek-bones, and a great beak of a nose. He stalked towards the curtains, the enraptured children following him.
He drew the curtains wide open; and exhibited a most splendid Christmas tree as high as the ceiling covered with fairy lamps and glittering ornaments, its branches hanging low under the rich burden of toys. He began at once, under the direction of Miss Verinder, and aided by Hannah the housekeeper, to pluck the fruit of the tree and to distribute it.
And very soon the children lost their awe of Father Christmas, hustling him, pulling his skirts; thinking only of the toys, and saying, “Gi’ me that gun—oh, please. Hi, mister, let me have this box o’ dom’nos. I’m older than what she is.... Sir, play fair, sir. My turn, sir.”
The little girl alone still believed in his supernatural attributes, still clung to Emmie and shrank from him.
“Send him away,” she implored. “I don’t like him.”
“He’s only a man, really,” said Emmie.
“No, he isn’t. He’s Fazer Kissmus.”
Then Emmie issued a command.
“Tony, pull off your beard.”
Father Christmas, willingly obeying, divested himself of beard and cotton wool, and thus brought into view the rumpled grey hair and reddened cheeks of that well-known and respected local personage, Mr. Anthony Dyke.
He went away to get the paint off his face, and was soon back again, capering gaily about in an ordinary blue serge suit that could frighten nobody. He played with the boys, he danced with the girls, and he kissed Hannah under the mistletoe. Hannah, resisting, called him “Master Anthony,” and told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself.
Shyness and constraint had long since left the young guests; after an orgy of cracker pulling and the loot of the tree, the party became a romp.
At dinner, when they talked it over, all agreed that it had been a great success. They had with them for dinner the curate and his wife and Mr. Sturgess, the doctor, kindly simple people of whom Emmie was fond. Comfort and peace presided over the friendly meal, and in this old room, sitting beside the old, old man, Emmie looked quite young. She could see Anthony casting glances of admiration at her throughout some very long anecdotes with which Mr. Sturgess always loved to refresh himself when he dined at Endells.
It was the first time that she and the younger Mr. Dyke had ever been here together. The war, destroying so much else, had blown away that delicacy which used to separate them during Anthony’s visits to his home. All over the world—as Emmie thought, sending back glance for glance—this first Christmas of peace had reunited those who loved one another. Oh, what a peace it would have been if it could have brought with it a law that there were never again to be any more good-byes and partings! In the midst of the warmth, the joy, and the contentment, sadness coldly touched her heart.
They spent the evening in an oaken parlour, where the polished floor reflected things as in black water, and round mirrors gave one small framed pictures of the whole room and its occupants. Emmie, seated at the immensely ancient cottage piano, played pretty old-fashioned melodies that she used to play in Prince’s Gate as a girl; the curate sang; and the doctor, regardless of the music, told more anecdotes. Old Mr. Dyke,although obviously tired, would not allow the guests to leave early. Then when they had at last said Good-night and he himself had gone upstairs to bed, Emmie and his son lingered, sitting together before the fire.
Hannah came in to tell them that it was nearly twelve o’clock and she, too, was retiring.
“I’ve seen to the shutters,” she said severely. “But now can I trust you, Mr. Anthony, to turn out all the lights, and make sure the fires are safe in here and the dining-room?”
Mr. Anthony promised to do his duty.
Then Hannah turned to Emmie. “Your hot-water bottle, miss! Louisa took them up an hour ago or more.”
“Thank you, Hannah.”
Just before midnight Dyke went and undid some of Hannah’s shutters in order to open the front door. He wrapped Emmie in one of his overcoats, and they stood side by side on the gravel outside the house. The night was fine and still with the stars very bright in a dark but cloudless sky. Above the black mass of the ilex trees they could see vaguely the church tower.
“Will the bells be rung?” asked Dyke.
“Oh, no,” said Emmie. “That’s the new year, you’re thinking of. They don’t ring in Christmas.”
Presently the church clock began to strike the midnight hour. Dyke counted the strokes, and when the twelfth came he stooped and kissed her forehead.
“A happy Christmas, Emmie.”
“And to you, Tony dear. Butareyou happy, I wonder?”
“As happy as several birds”; and he put his arm round her waist.“How could I be otherwise?”
They came in again, and barred the door. As she went upstairs she looked down at him and saw him looking up at her, his face all gay and bright.
“Good-night. Good-night.”
From the landing at the top of the stairs she looked down again, and saw his whole attitude relax. His head drooped, his shoulders hunched themselves; and with his hands in his pockets he went slowly back to the room they had left.
In spite of his eighty-five years and bodily weakness, the old man got up long before daylight and attended the early celebration. They went with him to the ordinary service at eleven o’clock; he leaning on Emmie’s arm as they walked through the garden, and Anthony solemnly following. Anthony looked fantastic as well as solemn in an astounding top-hat and a skimpy black coat, at least thirty years old, that he had unearthed from a wardrobe of his dressing-room. At certain of the sacred words that they presently heard Emmie turned her eyes towards him with unutterable love in them, and she felt a great tenderness and compassion as she held the hymn-book for his father and listened to his thin quavering voice as he piped the sweet Christmas songs; but during most of the service there was rather a far-away look on her face. She was in truth thinking very deeply.
The sun shone on them as they came out of the church, and after all the greetings and interchange of good wishes with neighbours on the church path, Emmie and the old man went to sit in that small walled garden that they both loved. It was really warm here. The sunshine made strong dark shadows as well asbright patches among the stalks and branches of the flowerless borders. Mr. Dyke said he could feel it on his hands. She had wrapped a rug about his knees and under his feet; and she turned up his coat collar and muffled his neck with a big scarf. Here, sitting comfortably in the sun and out of the wind, they had a long serious talk.
Anthony, having cast his ancient finery and clothed himself in a loose Norfolk jacket, was on the little terrace and busily engaged with the man who worked the electric light engine. They were mending a kitchen box for the cook. Anthony, thoroughly enjoying this carpenter’s job, only ceased his chat with the electrician to fling a cheery word from time to time towards the sunlit pair on the bench down below.
“Mr. Dyke, we must face the fact,” Emmie was saying. “He isnothappy. It is all pretence. Ever since he came home he has been trying hard not to let me see what he feels. But I can see always—knowing him as I do. He wants to go back there once more.”
“Go back there!” And she saw the sun-warmed hands begin to shake upon the shrunken knees. “Not—not to the Antarctic?”
Emmie nodded her head. “Yes, he can’t deceive me. It is more than a wish—he feels that it is a duty.”
“Oh, no, he has other duties.”
“But he feels that this duty is sacred—a sort of charge upon him. Unless he fulfils it—or at least tries to fulfil it—I know that he will never be really happy or at peace.”
“Oh, no”; and the poor weak hands were shaking very visibly. “He mustn’t do it. He is too old.”
“Well, that is what I want us to consider carefully,” Emmie said in a quiet business-like tone. “Ishe too old? He is fifty-nine. That of course would be too old for any one else; but then he is not like other men.”
Instinctively they both looked upward to the terrace. Anthony, after stooping over the box, was standing at his fullest height and stretching his arms. He stooped a little even now, as if the weight of his big shoulders was not quite so easy to carry as it had once been; but his head and neck were magnificent, with the sunlight on the thick grey hair, the strong bold features, and the close-cropped beard. If you judged him merely by the indefinable impression that age itself produces, and at this slight distance, you would have said that he was a man of forty-five whose hair had become prematurely grey.
“He says himself that he feels all right—ready for anything. He is not conscious of the smallest diminution of his strength. Mr. Dyke, his healthiswonderful”; and as Emmie said this, she was like a sensible unemotional mother speaking about a grown-up son. “Have you noticed, too, that he is less deaf—scarcely deaf at all?” And Emmie’s tone changed, and her face grew sad. “No, I’m afraid we can’t in justice rule him out on the score of health and age. Three or four years hence perhaps. But not now.”
She looked up to the terrace again, and then spoke with great firmness. “Of course, if he does go, it must be his very last voyage. There must be no nonsense about that. He must solemnly promise us both.”
“Emmie, he musn’t go”; and the old fellow put a trembling hand on her arm. “Don’t encourage him.”
“You shall advise me, dear Mr. Dyke. But let me tell you everything first.”
“Yes; but he mustn’t go,” he said eagerly. “Hecan’tgo—if you consider it. We needn’t frighten ourselves. You and I may think he is still young—not yet too old for it. But he’ll never persuade other people to think that. He’ll never get anyone to give him another chance.”
“Ah!” Emmie winced, and moved her hands swiftly. “When I remember what has always happened, I believe that he will go anyhow—somehow. The real question is thehow.”
Then she told Mr. Dyke all about her money.
“My dear Emmie, what an astounding affair! It sounds like a fairy tale.”
“I wish it was a fairy tale,” she said; “but unfortunately it is sober truth. No, I ought not to say that. It’s very wrong of me. Only, now you see the position in which I am placed—with all this money—so much more than I want or could possibly use—with thispowerin my hands. Oh, Mr. Dyke, what am I to do? You see what I mean? He need not persuade other people to give him a last chance. I myself can give it to him.”
“Oh, no, he would never take money from you.”
“I think he would. I’msurehe would. To begin with, I could show him that I should still have enough, even after he’d taken all that he needed—all that he needed to do things in such a style as has never been possible to him till now. So there would be no question of leaving me impoverished.”
“That would make no difference. He’d never consent.”
“Dear Mr. Dyke, you may trust my instinct. He would refuse at first; then, after a little while, he would consent. He is eating his heart out—so that the mere personal temptation would be more than he could resist. But, beyond that, there is this idea of his that has grown so very strong. He feels that it is not only his own duty, but the duty of all English people to complete the work of that brave Englishman who gave his life down there to bring honour to England. He would feel that I could not spend my money in a better way—We’ll say no more for a moment.”
Anthony was coming down the brick steps from the terrace.
“I am having a confidential talk with your father,” said Miss Verinder, in the primly crushing manner of a grown-up person interrupted by a troublesome child.
“Secrets, what?” He laughed, and went away again.
“That is the position,” she said quietly, when he was back on the terrace and busy with his carpentering. “I feel that Ioughtto help him to his heart’s desire—I feel now that I have no choice really. But I want you to advise me—to tell me what you think.”
“He oughtn’t to go,” said Mr. Dyke, once more touching, her arm. “It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Oh,me!” Her lips twitched, and for a moment her whole face seemed to be distorted, as if with a spasm of violent pain. “I mustn’t be allowed to count for a moment. No, leave me out of it altogether.”
“Emmie, dear. Emmie”; and Mr. Dyke kept his hand on her arm.
Quite quietly, without any convulsive movements of her throat or bosom, she had begun to cry. The tears flooded her eyes, rolled down her pale cheeks, and she looked through them towards the terrace while remainingabsolutely still; so that no one up there who saw her rigid attitude could possibly guess what was happening. Presently, with furtive caution, she got out a handkerchief and dried her eyes.
“I have tried not to be selfish, dear Mr. Dyke—all along, you know. I claim no merit. For how could I be selfish, in such a case? Indeed his work and what the world says of him make up my life really. Theyaremy life—that is, my pride and my joy. But one is weak. He himself is so much to me—so dreadfully much—so incredibly more, it always seems, than at the very beginning, when I was young—when we were both young. This time, it seems as if his going will be almost more than I can bear. It will seem like suicide if I bring it about, myself. In these last weeks I have been struggling with myself. Oh, dear Mr. Dyke, I have struggled in such terrible agony. I want him with me so dreadfully, and yet he wants to go away from me. And if he could do something big and splendid to wind up his career—well, I could never, never forgive myself if it was I who prevented him.”
Mr. Dyke was greatly perturbed.
“I said I wasn’t selfish,” she went on. “It is selfish, what I am doing now, pushing my burden on to you. But you are always so brave and so wise—and there is no one else that I can ask for counsel. Besides, you are his father. You have the right to be consulted—to decide. A much greater right than I—everybody would say.”
“If he goes,” said the old man, in a low voice, “I shall never see him again.”
“Oh, no, don’t say that—don’t think it.”
“I know it. I shan’t be here to welcome him home.”
Then Emmie shed tears again, and again succeeded in wiping them away without being observed by either of the box-menders on the terrace.
“We have to bear in mind, dear Mr. Dyke, that it is very doubtful if either of us could prevent him from going sooner or later. And certainly, if he is to go, it should be as soon as possible. But my most dreadful thought is this. If I don’t give him the money he will start as usual, poorly equipped—he will be defeated by difficulties and turn back. Yet that perhaps may mean his eventual safety. Whereas, if he is really well fitted out for once, if he has every possible chance in his favour, then he will be able to push right on—and that may mean his doom. It’s a horrible responsibility. Think of it. It would beIwho had sent him to his death.”
“No.” Old Mr. Dyke raised himself on the bench and looked at her. “No, Emmie, no,” he said; and in his dim eyes she saw a faint flash that made him seem like a thin small ghost of Anthony. “No. If he is to do it, let him go for the big prize. Give him his full chance and don’t count the risks. Let it be all or nothing.”
She jumped up from the bench and stood looking down at him.
“I can’t decide,” he said. “You only can do that. The sacrifice will be yours, not mine. Only, as I venture to say, don’t spoil it by half measures.”
Then she called to Anthony. She had decided.
Anthony Dyke refused her offer, and stood firm to his refusal for two days. Then on the morning of the third day he accepted. He was of course enraptured.He echoed Mr. Dyke’s words in saying that her acquisition of comparative wealth was like a fairy tale.
“All this time I never knew I had a fairy godmother—I who have groused about my bad luck. At the fateful moment you suddenly showthe shining crown on your dear head, you wave your magic wand, you give me the enchanted key. Oh, Emmie, what can I say? What can I ever do?”
“You can come back safe and sound,” said Emmie. “And you can give me your sacred word that you’ll never leave me again.”
Kissing her with frenzied warmth, he made his vow. But this first ecstasy being over, he began at once to treat her with a new and strange deference. He said that she had become the patron and chieftain of the glorious project.
“Oh, yes, it’s your show entirely. You trust me, you honour me with your instructions.”
Before that evening everything was settled between them. She made a proviso that he should arrange for a relief expedition to follow after him at a certain date. This must be an integral part of the plan. And the whole thing must be organised in its smallest details before he himself started southward. She was very firm as to all this.
He agreed, saying she was quite right and he knew the very man to put in command of the relief ship—“Twining, who was my navigating officer in 1910.”
He bowed deferentially to her decision with regard to other matters; saying, “Oh, your word would be law. You would be the real head, and I shouldn’t forget it.” Then he smiled.“You pay the piper, Emmie, and you call the tune.”
She said that there must be no departure from plans.
“No, no. But you’d give me a free hand when I get down there?”
“Yes, but only within specified limits.”
“Very good,” he said humbly.