The Red Derelict

Now a sound of voices struck upon his ear. The path he was following ended in a gate, beyond which was the road – a lonely woodland road, intersecting the coverts. As he laid his hand upon this gate to open it he recognised one of the voices – a sweet, full soprano that by this time he had come to know fairly well. The other was strong, harsh, common, but also feminine. Not feeling at all inclined to talk to anybody just then he would have turned back, but – it was too late.

Delia Calmour gave a little cry of astonishment as he opened the gate.

“Why, Mr Wagram, who’d have thought of meeting you here?”

The little flush of surprise, perhaps of something else, which mantled her cheeks as she put out a hand, half shyly, lent an additional sparkle to her eyes, making a whole that was very alluring. She was in semi-winter garb, with a touch of fur, and her bicycle stood against the hedge. The other was a dark, beady-eyed, gipsy-looking woman.

“Such fun!” rattled the girl. “I’ve been having my fortune told; only I can’t make head or tail of it.”

Here the other, with a half-knowing leer – for, of course, she had at once decided that this meeting was no accidental one – opened on Wagram with the stock professional whine.

“I’ll tell yours too, sir, and it’s sure to be bright – and – ”

Then she stopped. Wagram’s gaze was fixed sternly upon her.

“Go away,” he said. “I’ve seen you before, and I’ve warned you before that we had no use for such as you in this neighbourhood. You had better leave it at once, for I shall send word to the police at Bassingham to pay you some very particular attention.”

The tramp, seeing he was in earnest, and that there was nothing more to be got out of him, waxed bold and defiant.

“You’d do that, would you Squire?” she snarled. “All right. Maybe there’s them as knows more about your little game than you thinks of. Maybe you’ll not be finding everything as easy always; no, and I ’opes yer won’t – tramplin’ upon a pore woman who’s tryin’ to make a honest livin’.” And, cursing and growling, the hag shuffled off down the road.

In his then frame of mind the words were startling to Wagram. What on earth – was his altered position already common property? was his first thought, as he read into the malevolent words the very last meaning that the mind of their utterer could have held.

“I am surprised at you, Miss Calmour,” he said gravely, “listening to the pestiferous humbug of the commonest type of hedge-side charlatan. Really, I had a better opinion of you.”

“And – has it fled?” answered the girl, with a pretty pleading penitence that was not wholly mock. “I only let her tell my fortune for the fun of the thing – and she said some very queer things – not at all after the pattern of stock bosh which I had expected. In fact, they were rather weird – about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship – and terrors – and perhaps death, but if not death, then great happiness. Yes; really it was quite creepy; strange too, for what on earth can I ever have to do with battered ships or green seas – or great happiness either?” she added to herself mournfully. Then again, aloud: “But do you think there may be anything in these people’s powers of prediction?”

“No, I do not,” he answered decisively, and with some sternness. “Certainly not. The knowledge of the future is in other hands than those of a common wayside impostor, whom, if I were doing my duty, I ought to have at once had arrested and locked up on a former occasion when she tried to play that humbugging game in my presence.”

“Oh yes; she got into the wrong corner this time,” laughed Delia. “You are a magistrate, are you not, Mr Wagram?”

“I have seen this particular fraud before, and gave her a trifle, as she seemed really in want,” he answered. “In strict duty I ought to have had her locked up, but strict duty is rather a hard thing to carry out always. But anything that encourages superstition is to me especially abhorrent. The greatest harm these impostors do is not merely in obtaining hard-earned silver from ignorant people but in keeping alive the idea that they can possess any supernatural power – let alone wisdom – at all.”

The girl looked at him with a covert smile.

“Be merciful to one of those ‘ignorant people,’” she said softly. “Though, really, I did not believe in any supernatural power about the affair; I only let her do it for the fun of the thing.”

“I should hope not. With your talents and education I could not have believed it of you. And yet – you hardly know where to draw the line. When you find people, whose upbringing and education, and everything else, ought to put them miles above anything of the kind, steeped over head and ears in such puerile superstitions as throwing spilled salt over the shoulder, scared of having a peacock’s feather brought into their houses, or of getting up first of thirteen from the table, or of walking under a ladder – really it makes one – well, cynical.”

“But – walking under a ladder is unlucky sometimes, Mr Wagram.”

“Very likely to be, if you don’t first ascertain whether there’s a journeyman painter up it with a paint pot – not otherwise.”

Then they both laughed – for Wagram the first laugh he had indulged in since the bolt had fallen. Well, he could still laugh; yet but now it had seemed to him that he never would laugh again.

“But – you’ll admit there are people who can tell you strange – and even startling – things about yourself that they can’t possibly have got at by any ordinary means.”

“I’ll admit nothing of the kind. I know the old stock business – I have had it thrown at me too often. Some fool – usually some feminine fool – goes to one of these impostors – not the hedge-side type of fraud but the fashionable ditto – and pays down her guineas to be told such and such. She is told such and such, and it amazes her. Then, in retailing it, she invariably ends up with: ‘But, how do you account for it?’ I always answer I can’t account for it, any more than I can account for how the clever card conjurer takes ace and king and queen out of the top of the head of the baldest man in the audience; but he does it, and nobody dreams of associating the supernatural with the process. It’s the same thing here. It’s part of the system to find out things; and they do it. If you were let into the secret you’d probably laugh at the simplicity with which it’s done. No; really, I’ve no patience with that sort of absurdity; it’s too childish.”

“Looked at in that light it is. You do put things straight, Mr Wagram.”

“Well, but – isn’t it so? I have even heard people attribute that sort of quackery to satanic influence, which has almost struck me, if one may say so, as insulting to the intelligence of the devil. But it is getting rather dusk. You will want your lamp before you get home. Is it in good lighting order?”

If a momentary temptation beset Delia to pretend it was not, so as to afford a pretext for accompanying him to the house, which was not very far distant, she heroically stifled it; so between them they lighted the lamp.

“Good-bye, Mr Wagram. Thanks so much. I promise you I won’t dabble in the black art again,” she said as they shook hands; and mounting she skimmed away down the now shadowy road, going over in her mind every word, every tone of the, in hard fact, utterly unmomentous interview. And he, striking into a woodland path on the other side, continued his walk in the deepening gloom, to the accompaniment of the ghostly hooting of owls. It was strange that he should have fallen in with this girl just then, and in his then frame of mind it seemed to him that her glance and tone and demeanour were very sweet, very soothing, very sympathetic. And then – he ceased to give her another thought.

Chapter Twenty Four.

“Requiem Aeternam…”

Though beloved by their tenantry and dependents the Wagrams were not exactly popular with the county – as spelt with a capital C. This saw reason, or thought it did, to regard them as exclusive and eccentric. To begin with, they seldom entertained, and then not on anything like the scale it was reckoned they ought. A few shooting parties in the season, and those mostly men, though such of the latter as owned wives and daughters brought them; or an occasional gathering, such as we have seen, mainly of ecclesiastical interest. It was a crying shame, declared the county, that a splendid place like Hilversea Court should be thrown away on two solemn old widowers; and it was the duty of one of them – Wagram at any rate – to marry again. But Wagram showed not the slightest inclination to do anything of the kind.

Not through lack of opportunity – inducement. He was angled for, more or less deftly – not always with a mercenary motive; but, though courteous and considerate to the aspiring fair, by no art or wile could he be drawn any further – no, not even into the faintest shadow of a flirtation. It was exasperating, but there was no help for it, so he had been given up as hopeless. He might have recognised the duty but for the existence of his son. Hilversea would have its heir after him – that was sufficient.

He was eccentric, estimated his acquaintances, in that he worked hard at matters that most people leave to an agent; but this was a duty, he held – a sacred trust – to look into things personally; the result we have referred to elsewhere. As for entertaining, well, neither he nor the old Squire cared much about it. On the other hand, they were careful that many a day’s sport, with gun or rod – but mostly the latter – should come in the way of not a few who seldom had an opportunity of enjoying such.

But now of late there had befallen that which caused the county aforesaid to rub its eyes, and this was the manner in which the Wagrams seemed to have “taken up” Delia Calmour. It was not surprised that a brazen, impudent baggage like that should have pushed herself upon them on the strength of the gnu incident, the marvel was that she should have succeeded – have succeeded in getting round not only Wagram but the old Squire as well, and the county resented it. Once when she was at Hilversea some callers, of course, of her own sex, took an opportunity of testifying their disapproval by being markedly rude to the girl. This Wagram had noticed, and had there and then paid her extra attention by way of protest. And Haldane too – he who thought the whole world was hardly good enough to have the honour of containing that girl of his, and yet he allowed her to associate with a daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour! What next, and what next!

But if the Wagrams were eccentric they could afford to be, and that for a dual reason: in the first place, they were “big” enough; in the next, they cared literally and absolutely not one straw for the opinion of the county. If a given line commended itself to their approbation they took it, completely regardless of what the county or anybody else might choose to say or think – and this held equally good of father and son – which was as well, for, as time went by, on this matter it “said” plenty.

A wafting of it reached Wagram one day, at the mouth of Clytie’s quondam victim – “Vance’s eldest fool,” as the old Squire had, with cynical aptitude, defined that much plucked youth.

“Take a tip from me, Wagram,” remarked the latter one day. “You’re making a mistake having too much to do with that lot. They’re dangerous, and you’ll have to pay up smartly for your fun one of these days.”

The other did not retort that the speaker had reason to be an authority on the point, nor did he get angry; he only answered:

“I don’t like that kind of remark, Vance. I suppose because I’m not in the habit of taking anybody’s ‘tips’ I always take my own line. Sounds conceited, perhaps, but it’s true.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything, Wagram,” was the reply, given rather shamefacedly.

But the time had now come when this reputation for reticence, for eccentricity, stood Wagram in good stead. If he had become graver, more aloof than ever under the influence of this new and overwhelming blow, his surroundings hardly noticed it. In anybody else it would have been at once remarked on; in him it was a mere development of his former and normal demeanour. One or two opined that he contemplated entering a monastery, but the general run gave the matter no further thought; and, the very vaguest, faintest inkling of the real state of things struck nobody at all.

There was one, however, whose quick woman’s wit had not been slow to arrive at the fact that something had gone wrong – in some absolutely not-to-be-guessed-at and unaccountable way, but still gone wrong – and that was Delia herself. The county need not bother its opaque head any further as to how and why the Wagrams had “taken her up,” for the said Wagrams seemed to have dropped her with equal capriciousness. And the girl herself?

No more of these pleasant informal invites to Hilversea when she cycled over to the chapel services on Sundays or other days. Wagram and the old Squire were as courteous and kindly in their bearing as ever, but – there it ended; and, strange to say, remembering her upbringing, or want of it rather, this daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour did not, even in her heart of hearts, feel hurt or resentful. For, as we have said, by some quick-witted instinct of her own she realised that some great trouble, secret and, therefore, infinitely the greater, was sapping the peace of this house, to the members of which she looked up with a feeling little short of adoration. She saw this, but nobody else did as yet.

Delia had carried out the intention we heard her express to Wagram on the occasion of one of those visits which had constituted the bright days of her life. She had placed herself under the instruction of the old priest in Bassingham whose German nationality had first aroused her insular disapproval, and had been received into the Catholic Church; but in the result she had learned that a love of beautiful music and imposing and picturesque ceremonies was not the be-all and end-all of the matter by a long way; wherefore the change had put the coping-stone to the refining process which had been going on unconsciously within her, and the former undisciplined and inconsequent daughter of rackety, happy-go-lucky Siege House had become a self-contained and self-disciplined woman. As to this something of a test was put upon her when one day, on one of the rare occasions now when she had an opportunity of talking confidentially with Wagram, the latter remarked:

“Talking of ‘duties,’ Miss Calmour, I wonder if you will resent what I am going to say? It seems ungracious after the great help you have given us here from time to time – musically, I mean. Well, then, you have a beautiful voice and great musical talent. Now, don’t you think you ought to turn that to account nearer home? The mission at Bassingham is a poor one. With your talents, if you threw yourself into helping to improve its choir, and musical arrangements generally, what a difference that might work in rendering it more attractive to outside people as well as to those within. Of course, music like many other accessories, is a mere spiritual luxury, not an essential, but it is often a powerful factor in the first instance, in attracting those without, and therefore, like any lawful agency in that direction, by no means to be despised. How if this is a talent entrusted to you to be turned to account? But there – I have no constituted right to set myself up as your adviser, and I suppose you are only setting me down as a solemn old bore intent on preaching you a sermon,” he concluded, with a smile – a sad one, she decided to herself, as his somewhat rare smiles were in these days.

The natural human in Delia was represented by a feeling of blank dismay. Those rides over to Hilversea, and her part in the musical arrangements of its exquisite chapel, had been to her as something to live for. And now even this was to be denied her. But the self-discipline had become an accomplished fact.

“I am setting you down as nothing of the sort, Mr Wagram,” she answered steadily, “nor do I know anybody in this world more competent to advise me or anyone else. Yes; you are right; I will follow your advice. But I may come up to Hilversea, and help occasionally when I am not wanted in Bassingham, mayn’t I?”

“My dear child, of course; we are only too glad. You know, I was not putting it to you in your own personal interest. In such a matter nothing personal comes in, or ought to. But there – I seem to be preaching again.”

The step Delia had taken involved upon her far less of a trial from those among whom she moved than she had expected. Old Calmour had been nasty and jeering on the subject, and in his cups had been wont to make exceedingly objectionable remarks and vulgar insinuations; but such to the girl were as mere pin-pricks now. Moreover, Clytie had on every occasion quelled, not to say flattened, him with all her serene but effective decisiveness; and the egregious Bob was in a state of complete subjection, as we have shown. To Clytie herself the whole thing was a matter of entire satisfaction, for she regarded it as a step, and a very important one, in the direction of furthering her own darling scheme; which scheme, by the way, did not seem to progress with the rapidity she would have wished.

“You must force the pace Delia,” she said. “The thing’s hanging a little more than I like. You’ve got a first-rate cut in, and you ought to be able to capture the trick. Force the pace a little more; you’re not making the most of your opportunities.”

“You’re wasting a deal of capacity for intrigue, Clytie,” was the answer. “There’s nothing ‘hanging,’ no pace to force, and no trick to capture, as I’ve told you before.”

The other looked at her, shook her pretty head, and – being at times inclined towards vulgarity – winked.

And then upon Hilversea and its surroundings and dependents fell another bolt – swift, sudden, consternating. The old Squire was dead.

He had passed away in his sleep, peacefully and painlessly, for the expression of his fine old face was absolutely placid and almost smiling; and from Wagram downwards the bolt shot hard and grievous through many a heart. Not only of those belonging to the immediate neighbourhood did this hold, for in the crowd which thronged the approaches to the chapel what time the solemn High Mass of Requiem– sung by the dead man’s lifelong friend, Monsignor Culham – was proceeding, not a few strange faces might have been discerned; faces of those whom Grantley Wagram and his son had benefited – in some instances even to the saving of life, where, but for such benefit, the means of preserving life by affording the requisite conditions would have been lacking.

Very different, too, to the cortège which we saw issue from these doors a few months back is this which now comes forth to lay the dead man in his last resting-place in the little consecrated graveyard beneath the east window of the chapel, but no less solemn. The glow and splendour of light and colour, the mellow flooding of the summer sunshine are no longer here, and the gurgling song of full-throated thrushes is hushed. Instead, the frost and stillness of a winter noon, and an occasional sob as the coffin is lowered into the grave, while the chant of the Benedictus rolls forth mournful and grand upon the crisp air, so still that the lights borne on each side of the great crucifix burn with scarce a flicker, and the celebrant, vested in a black and silver cope of some richness, sprinkles – for the last time with holy water the remains of Grantley Wagram, now laid to his final rest.

“Requiem aeternam dona, ei Domine,

Et lux perpetua luceat ei.

“Anima ejus, et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per misericordiam

Dei requiescant in pace.”

The words find echo in many a heart as the sad solemnity ends. The crowd melts away, the mourners withdraw – all save one, who stands motionless, with bowed head, looking down into the closing grave – and that one the dead man’s son.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The Red Derelict

“What would happen if we went ashore here? Why, we’d very likely be eaten.”

“Eaten! Oh, captain, you can’t really mean that. In these days too!”

“But I do mean it. Yonder’s a pretty bad coast. As for ‘in these days,’ we haven’t yet captured quite all the earth, only the greater part of it. There are still some rum places left.”

“Oh!” And the inquiring lady passenger stared, round-eyed, to eastward, where, however, no sign of any coast was visible, nor yet in any other quarter.

The steamship Baleka was shearing her way through the smooth satiny folds of the tropical swell, and the light breeze which stirred the surface combined with the air the ship was making to render life quite tolerable beneath the grateful shade of the awnings. Otherwise it was hot – unequivocably hot; and where the glisten of brasswork was exposed to the overhead noonday sun the inadvertent contact of the bare hand with the said brasswork was sufficient to make the owner jump. So completely alone on this shoreless sea was the steamer that the plumes of smoke from her great white funnels seemed as though they had no business to taint this free, pure air with their black abominations – seemed, in fact, an outrage on the blue and golden solitude. Yet the said solitude was by no means devoid of life. Flying-fish skimming above the liquid plain singly or in flights like silvery birds, or a school of porpoises keeping pace with the ship for miles in graceful leaps, as their sportive way is, constituted only hints as to the teeming life of the waters in common with the earth and air; or here and there a triangular fin moving dark and oily above the surface in scarcely perceptible glide. The sight started the inquiring lady passenger off afresh.

“Look, there’s another shark; what a number we’ve seen within the last day or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a shark following a ship means that there’s going to be a death on board?”

“But this one isn’t following the ship; he’s going very nearly clean in the contrary direction.”

“Yes, I know. But do you think there’s anything in the idea?”

“Why, I think that if somebody died every time a shark followed a ship there’d soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker’s really smelling after is the stuff that’s thrown overboard from the cook’s galley from time to time.”

“Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea – weird but romantic.”

“It’d be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard,” laughed the matter-of-fact captain. “They soon will, too – a good many have already. In the old ‘windjammer,’ days when you had nothing to do half the voyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack’s head and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattling spell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn’t got time to bother about that sort of thing.”

“Then sailors aren’t superstitious any more?”

“No more than shore folk. I’ve seen landsmen both on board ship and ashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”

“Then you’ve no superstitions of your own, captain – you, a sailor?”

“Not one; I don’t believe any such nonsense.”

A solitary passenger, passing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.

The Baleka was steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England. She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimited ditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.

The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male passengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal – a form of amusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.