The Red Derelict

They laughed at this – none more heartily than that finished old diplomat Grantley Wagram. Laughed – in his bright, genial, humorous way, and yet all the time he was thinking how Wagram was, figuratively speaking, cracking jokes over his own open grave. Laughed – even as he might have laughed a few minutes earlier, before this dreadful bolt out of the blue had fallen. Laughed – as Wagram, sitting there in his blissful ignorance, was laughing. Why, the thing was so sudden, so unlooked-for, and withal so disastrous, that it seemed like a dream. Yet Grantley Wagram could laugh. But within his mind still hummed in mocking refrain his first ejaculation: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”

They talked on of various matters – the prospects of grouse on the Twelfth, and when Wagram’s boy would be home for the holidays, and so forth. Then the priest said:

“By the way, Squire, that’s a most astonishing thing Wagram has been telling me about that Miss Calmour and the claim made against you.”

“Yes; I told Father Gayle because he seemed to have rather a – well, unexalted opinion of the poor girl when we first talked about her,” explained Wagram.

“Oh, come; I didn’t say so.”

“No. Still, I thought it only fair to show the other side of her.”

“No one could have been more astonished than I was myself,” said the Squire. “She certainly behaved most honourably.”

“I should think so,” declared Wagram. “Her people are chronically hard up, and, that being so, to tear up a cheque for a thousand pounds deliberately was in her case rather heroic.”

“Probably the rest of them will lead her a terrible life on the strength of it,” said the Squire. “Poor child! she seemed a good deal better than her belongings. We must see if we can’t do something for her.”

“Yes, we must,” agreed Wagram. “This is a morning to tempt one out. I think I shall jump on the bicycle and rip over to Haldane’s – unless you want me for anything, father.”

“No, no. I’ve a thing or two to think over, but nothing that you need bother about,” answered the Squire, adding to himself – “as yet.”

Soon after breakfast Father Gayle took his leave, and the Squire his usual morning stroll round the gardens and shrubbery. But he did wrong to be alone, for, try as he would, the one idea clung to his mind in a veritable obsession: “There can’t be two Develin Hunts.”

The while Wagram, skimming along the smooth, well-kept roads, was again thrilled with the intense joy of possession as he revelled in the cool shade of over-arching trees; in the moist depths of a bosky wood, echoing forth its bird-song, with now and again the joyous crow of a cock pheasant; in the green and gold of the spangled meadows and the purl of the stream beneath the old bridge. Surely life was too good – surely such an idyllic state could not be meant to last, was the misgiving that sometimes beset him; for he had known the reverse side of all this – had known it bitterly, and for long years.

Haldane and Yvonne were pacing up and down one of the garden walks, the former smoking a pipe and dividing his attention between the morning paper and the lovely child beside him. Just behind the latter, stepping daintily, and turning when they turned, was the beautiful little Angora cat.

“Did you see this, Wagram?” said Haldane, the first greeting over, holding out the newspaper. “Well, you remember that confounded stray hulk we were reading about over at your place? It’s my belief that it’s the very one that’s sent this boat to the bottom. Did you read about it?”

“Yes.”

Yvonne’s face was now the picture of blue-eyed mischief.

“Well, this chump that was picked up, did you notice what a devilish odd name they’ve given him?”

“Develin Hunt, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Well, now, think of his life spent in being told he had the Develin him.”

A peal of laughter went up from Yvonne – and it was good to hear that child laugh – such a clear, merry, hearty trill.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” she cried. “Mr Wagram, you’re a perfect godsend. Father has inflicted it upon every available being up till now. Briggs, the gardener, was gurgling to such an extent that he had to stop digging. He even stopped old Finlay, driving by to Swanton, and fired it off on him.”

“Sunbeam, you are getting insufferably impudent,” said her father. “I shall really have to cane you.”

With mock gravity she held out a hand that was a very model, with its long, tapering fingers, which closed upon those which descended upon it in a playful little slap.

“He isn’t the only sinner in that respect, Sunbeam,” said Wagram. “I myself was inflicting it upon our crowd at just about the same time.”

“And are not ashamed of yourself? I’ve a great mind not to show you where I took out a two-pounder the other evening.”

“Did you get it out yourself?”

“That’s stale. I sha’n’t even answer it. Come.”

She had taken an arm of each, in the way of one who ruled both of them. But Haldane hung back.

“Take him alone, dear. I must get two confounded letters behind my back, or they’ll never get done. I’ll come on after you if I’m done in time.”

“All safe. Poogie, I think I won’t take you,” picking up the beautiful little animal. “Some obnoxious cur might skoff you.”

“Why not chuck her in the river for a swim?” said Wagram mischievously. The look Yvonne gave him was beautiful to behold.

“Now, I’ve a great mind not to take you,” she said severely. “Well, come along, then.”

For nearly an hour they wandered by the stream that ran below the garden, talking trout generally, and peering cautiously over into this or that deep hole where big trout were wont to lie. Then, recrossing the plank bridge, with its rather insecure handrail, they started to return.

The field footpath was a right-of-way, and now along it came a somewhat ragged figure, dusty and tired-looking. It was that of a swarthy, middle-aged woman, with beady, black eyes. Instantly Yvonne’s interest awoke.

“She can’t be English,” she declared. “Wait, I’ll try her.”

She opened in fluent Italian, but met with no response. A change to Spanish and French was equally without result.

“It ain’t no good, young lady,” said the tramp; “I don’t understand none of them languages. And yet I ain’t exactly English, neither, as you was saying just now.”

“What! You heard that?” cried Yvonne, astonished. “You are able to hear far.”

“Ay; and able to see far too. Would you like to know what I can see for you, my sweet young lady?” she went on, dropping into the wheedling whine of the professional fortune-teller.

“It would be fun to have my fortune told,” said the girl rather wistfully.

“Yvonne, I’m surprised at you,” said Wagram, with somewhat of an approach to sternness. “Don’t you know that all that sort of thing is forbidden, child, and very wisely so, too?”

“I know; but I don’t mean seriously – only just for the fun of the thing.”

“No – no. Not ‘only just for’ anything; it’s not to be thought of.”

“It’s ’ard to live,” whined the woman, “and me that’s tramped without bite or sup since yesterday. And I’m that ’ungry!”

She certainly looked her words. Wagram softened in a moment.

“Here,” he said; “and now take my advice and get on your way. We don’t want any fortune-tellers round here.”

The tramp spat gleefully – for luck – on the half-crown which lay in her surprised palm.

“Thankee, sir, and good luck to you, sir, and to the sweet young lady. I’ll move on, never fear. You’re a genelman, you are.”

“What are you up to, Wagram?” said Haldane, joining them. “Encouraging vagrancy – as usual? Good line that for a county magistrate.”

“Oh, I can’t see those poor devils looking so woebegone and turn them away. The principle’s quite wrong, I know, but – there it is.”

“Quite wrong. They’re generally lying.”

“More than likely. Still, there it is.”

He was thinking of his meditations as he had ridden over – of the contrast between his life now and formerly, of the intense joy of possession, which he hoped did not come within the definition of “the pride of life.” Of the ragged tramp he had just relieved he had no further thought. Yet it might be that even she would cross his path again. It might be, too, when that befell, little enough of “the pride of life” would then be his.

Chapter Fifteen.

More Siege House Amenities

In conjecturing that Delia Calmour’s honourable renunciation was probably made at the cost of her peace at home the Squire proved himself a true prophet, for the poor girl’s life became anything but a bed of roses. When he heard that she had irrevocably carried out her intention old Calmour grew savage, first abusing her in the most scandalous manner, and, being half drunk, fell to whining about the ingratitude of children, deliberately allowing their parents to starve in their old age for the sake of gratifying a selfish whim. Then he got wholly drunk, so violently, indeed, that even Clytie, the resolute, the level-headed, found it all that she could do to keep her nerve, while the intrepid Bob promptly skulked off out of harm’s way.

The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance. He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace, and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous. Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.

Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way were the occasion to come over again – were it to come over again a hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father’s alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for Clytie and – one other consideration.

Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round, declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then Delia had rounded on her.

“Don’t talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I’m not going to play any cards at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us —us, mind,” she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly wrangling and swearing – the former, as usual, half drunk.

“Pooh! that wouldn’t count,” was the equable reply. “You don’t suppose you’d have that hamper lumbering around once you’d won the game, do you? I’d take care of that.”

“Well, I shall go; he’s always telling me to.”

“No, you won’t. Let him tell – and go on telling. I can do some telling too, if it comes to that – telling him that if you go I go too, and we know well enough how he’d take that. No; you stop and face it out. You’ll be jolly glad you did one of these days.”

Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Bassingham and its neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.

“I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to pieces,” she sobbed. “I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that day.”

“But you should not wish that, my dear child,” mocked Bob, who, passing the door, had overheard. “You should not wish that. It’s very wicked, as your Papist friends would say.” Then he took himself off with a yahooing laugh.

Now, it befell that on the following morning, while moving her post-card albums, Delia dropped several loose cards. Upon these pounced Bob, with no intention of picking them up for her, we may be sure, possibly in the hope of causing her some passing annoyance by scattering them still more; but hardly had he bent down with that amiable object than he started back, as though he had been about to pick up a snake unawares. “What – why? Who the deuce is that?” he cried. One of the cards was lying with the picture face upwards. This he now picked up. “Who is it?” he stammered, staring wildly at it. “Don’t you recognise it, or does it bring back painful recollections?” retorted Delia as she watched him blankly gaping at the portrait card which Yvonne had given her. For upon her a new light had dawned. “Don’t you? You should have good reason to,” she went on mercilessly, her eyes full upon his face. “Isn’t it Miss Haldane? You know – and I know – who it was that insulted her on the Swanton road one day, but Mr Haldane doesn’t know —as yet.” Bob’s face had gone white.

“Hang it all, Delia,” he gasped, “you wouldn’t give your own brother away, surely?”

“My own brother has just given himself away,” was the sneering reply. “Brother! Yes. You have been very brotherly to me of late, haven’t you – trying to drive me from the house, and making all sorts of perfectly scandalous insinuations! Very brotherly? Eh?”

“Oh, well, perhaps I said a good deal more than I meant,” grumbled Bob shamefacedly.

“And you’d have gone on doing the same if it hadn’t been for finding that card,” she pursued, not in the least deceived by an apology extorted through sheer scare. “Well, please yourself as to whether you do so or not, now.”

Thus the abominable Bob’s turn had come, and so far as he was concerned Delia was henceforward left in peace. Bob, then, being reduced Clytie judged the time ripe for reducing her father also.

“See here, dad,” she began one day when the old man was grumbling at his eldest daughter, and suggesting for the twentieth time that she had better clear out and do something for herself, “don’t you think we have had about enough nagging over that cheque business? – because if you don’t, I do.”

“Oh, you do, do you, Miss Hoity Toity?”

“Rather. And I move that we have no more of it – that the matter be allowed to drop, as they say in the House.”

“What the devil d’you mean, you impudent baggage?” snarled her father.

“What the devil I say – no more – no less,” was the imperturbable reply. “Two or three times a day you tell Delia to clear, and we’re tired of it.”

“Are you?” he returned, coldly sarcastic. “Well, I wonder she requires so much telling.”

“Well, you needn’t tell her any more – it’s waste of trouble. She isn’t going to clear, not until she wants to, anyway; except on these terms – if she clears I clear too. How’s that?”

Thereupon old Calmour went into a petulant kind of rage, and choked and spluttered, and swore that he’d be master in his own house, that they were a pair of impudent, ungrateful baggages, that they might both go to the devil for all he cared, and the sooner they got there the better. Unfortunately, however, he rather neutralised the effect of his peroration by tailing off into the maudlin, and allusions to the wickedness and ingratitude of children who thought nothing of deserting their only parent in his old age, and so forth – to all of which Clytie listened with unruffled composure.

“All right, dad,” she rejoined cheerfully. “Now you’ve blown off steam and are more comfortable again let’s say no more about it. What has been done can’t be undone, that’s certain; in fact, I’ve an instinct that it may have been all for the best after all, so let’s all be jolly together again as before. I’ve got a lot more orders for typing – in fact, almost more than I can do – and if they go on at this rate I shall have to get another machine, and take Delia into partnership – she has an idea of working it already.”

“Well, well, there’s something in that,” said the old man, mollified by this brightening of prospects. “I must have a glass of grog on the strength of it.”

Clytie looked at him for a moment, shook her pretty head, and then got out a bottle. He was quite sober, and it was the first that day.

“Only one,” she said. “No more, mind.”

She did not think it necessary to tell him that this increase of material prosperity was due to the good offices of Wagram. The latter was not the one to do things by halves, and had never forgotten the promise he had made on the occasion of his call at Siege House.

“There you are, Delia!” she triumphantly declared as the orders came pouring in. “You never know what you lose through want of asking. If I hadn’t put it point-blank to him I shouldn’t have got all these – and it makes a difference, I can tell you. What a devil of a good chap he must be!”

A few days later a surprise came for Delia in the shape of a letter from the editor of a particularly smart and up-to-date pictorial, requesting her to contribute to its illustrated series of articles on old country seats, so many words of letterpress and so many photographs of Hilversea Court, and quoting a very liberal rate of remuneration if the contribution proved to be to the editor’s satisfaction. The girl was radiant.

“It’s too good to be true, Clytie. How can they have heard of me?” she exclaimed. “Surely no one has been playing a practical joke on me. I can hardly believe it.”

Clytie scanned the letter “It’s genuine right enough,” she pronounced. “Wagram again.”

“What? But – no – it can’t be this time. Why, don’t you see what it says: ‘Provided you can obtain the permission of Mr Grantley Wagram’? So, you see, it’s apart from them entirely.”

“That’s only a red herring. I’ll bet you five bob he’s at the back of it. Are you on?”

“N-no,” answered Delia, upon whom a recollection was dawning of things she had let fall on that memorable occasion of her last visit to Hilversea. She had prattled on about herself, and her experiences, among which had been a little journalism of a very poorly-paid order.

“I believe you are right, Clytie,” she went on slowly. “I remember letting go that I had done that sort of thing in a small way, and even that I would be glad to do it again in a large one if only I got the chance, but I never dreamt of anything coming of it – never for a moment.”

“No? Well, you’re in luck’s way this time, dear. Probably this editor is a friend of his; and then, apart from that, a man in the position of Wagram of Hilversea can exercise almost unlimited influence in pretty near any direction he chooses – by Jove, he can.”

Delia did not at once reply, and, noting a certain look upon her meditative face, Clytie smiled to herself, and forebore to make any allusion to her cherished scheme, which, in her own mind, she decided was growing more promising than ever.

Chapter Sixteen.

“A Calmour at Hilversea.”

Wagram’s private study, or “den,” where he was wont to do all his business thinking and writing, and which was absolutely sacred to himself and his papers and general litter, was a snug room overlooking the drive; and thence, as he sat with his after-breakfast pipe in his mouth and some business papers relating to the estate before him on the morning following the incidents just recorded, he was – well, not altogether surprised at seeing a girl on a bicycle skimming up to the front door.

“Poor child!” he said to himself. “She looks positively radiant. I used to think, in those awful days, if I were in the position I am in now – by the grace of God – what a great deal I could do for others, and yet, and yet, it’s little enough one seems to be able to do.”

He need not have disparaged himself. There were not a few, among them some who had shown him kindness in “those awful days,” who now had reason to bless his name as long as they lived, and their children’s children after them.

“Come in. Yes; I’ll be down in a minute or two,” he said in response to the announcement that Miss Calmour had called on a matter of business, and very much wished to see him. He smiled to himself as he remembered the occasion of her last call – also “on a matter of business.” Then he made a note as to where to resume the work in which he had been interrupted, laid down his pipe, and went downstairs.

“And now,” he said merrily when they had shaken hands, “what is this ‘matter of business’?”

Delia was looking radiant, and, consequently, very pretty. She had that dark warmth of complexion which suffuses, and her hazel eyes were soft and velvety.

“This will explain,” she said, holding out the editor’s letter; “and, Mr Wagram, it would be affectation for me to pretend that I did not know whom I had to thank for it.”

“Of course. As far as I can see it is the editor of The Old Country Side. But editors don’t want thanking; they are hard, cold-blooded men of business, as I have had ample reason to discover in my old struggling days.”

She made no comment on this last remark. She had heard that this man’s life had not been always a bed of roses.

“Yet, how could this one have heard of me?” she said. “No; I don’t know how to thank you enough for this – and Clytie too. She has almost more work than she can do, all thanks to your introductions. You are too good to us.”

“My dear child, haven’t you learnt yet that we must all help each other in this world as far as lies in our power? The difficulty sometimes lies in how to do it in the right way. By-the-by, this letter, I observe, makes it a condition that you should obtain my father’s permission. How, then, could we possibly have had anything to do with instigating the offer?”

Delia smiled, remembering her sister’s dictum: “That’s only a red herring.” However, she had sufficient tact not to press the point.

“I see they want six photographic views,” he went on. “Now, if I might suggest, do two of the house, from different points of view – outside; one of the hall and staircase; two of the chapel, outside and in; and one of the lake. That makes it.”

“But, Mr Wagram, you are forgetting the African animals. I must have those; they are such a feature.”

“Why, of course. Well, then, now I think of it, we will delete the interior of the chapel. To the crowd it would only look like any other interior. What is your camera, by the way?”

“Only a Kodak. Bull’s-eye Number 2. But I understand time exposures, and it takes very sharp and clear.”

“And shorthand writing too. You are a clever girl, and should be able to turn your accomplishments to useful account.”

Again Delia smiled, for she remembered having let out that she was a ready shorthand writer during that former conversation.

“Well, now, what I suggest is this: I have rather a pressing matter of business to finish off this morning, so, if you will excuse me, I propose to turn you over to Rundle. He will show you every hole and corner of the house; he knows it like a book. We only looked at it cursorily last time you were here. That will take you all the morning. After lunch – we lunch at one – I can take you over the outside part of the job myself. The Old Country Side is a first-rate pictorial, and we must do justice to Hilversea in it, mustn’t we?”

Delia professed herself delighted, as indeed she was. Then Rundle, having appeared in response to a ring, Wagram proceeded to direct him accordingly.

“Show Miss Calmour all there is to see, Rundle,” he said, “and work the light for her so as to get everything from the best point of view for photography. I showed her the priest’s hiding-place the other day, so you needn’t; besides, you don’t know the secret of it.”

“No, sir; and it’d have been a good job if some others hadn’t known there was such a thing,” said the old butler in historic allusion. “This way, miss.”

Delia appeared at lunch radiant and sparkling. Rundle had proved a most efficient cicerone, she declared; indeed, so much had there been to see and hear that she wondered how on earth she was going to compress her notes into the required limit. Wagram was in a state of covert amusement, for he knew that his father was not forgetting his former dictum.