An old man came out to see to the horses, a somewhat younger woman stood in the mellow light upon a wide verandah. Daintree greeted them with an air — almost the first he had permitted himself in Tom’s company. With another, however, he took Tom’s hand and expressed characteristically the hope that the threshold of his house would prove to be also that of a new life for Tom.
“You have left the past behind you, Thomas,” said he, “and all your enemies with it. Rest assured of that. If they follow you here they’ll have me to deal with — I can promise them they have laid their last finger on you. No, there’s a brighter future ahead of you, I trust; and always recollect — I am your friend.”
“I suppose you are,” said poor Tom in reply; he could believe and feel but little even yet.
“You suppose I am?” cried Daintree, looking rather queerly at Tom. “You shall dine at my table,” he then exclaimed. “You shall have all your meals with me! Mrs. Fawcett, lay a place for Thomas — and show him his room.”
It was a little room, certainly, but an incredibly pleasant one; the window almost overhung the bay; and the bed was a white feast for bloodshot eyes.
“Dinner’s ready; don’t you spoil it, young man, by keeping master waiting,” said Mrs. Fawcett; and then over her shoulder as she went, “My word, but you’re a lucky one!”
Perhaps he required telling so; it was all so difficult to believe, so impossible to understand. But bewilderment had not yet given place to curiosity.
He was, however, beginning to realise that he had fallen from the cruellest into the kindest hands on earth, when, returning to the verandah, he encountered the kind man, with a gleaming eye and a set face quite inconsistent with that impression. A fox-terrier, indifferently bred, with one ear up and one down, but the most eager eyes, had wildly welcomed Daintree while Daintree was welcoming Tom; this little dog he was now dragging savagely along by its collar.
“Won’t come into my study!” explained Daintree, in a voice of amazing fury. “Once I thrashed him in there, so now he thinks he won’t come in; but he shall — he shall — he shall!” Dr. Sullivan himself, in dealing with a recalcitrant convict, could have employed no more ferocious tone.
The dog was dragged within a yard of the door it would not enter, then released, and it did not run away. Daintree now went within, and called and whistled to the dog; but there it stood, bristling all over, and yet wagging its tail with immense energy, as if to proclaim its anxiety to please in any other way, but enter that room it could not. Nor was it until Daintree rushed out in his rage that the little dog turned tail and ran away. And again he caught it, and again and again the same thing happened, the man vowing the dog should give in, the dog still wagging his tail and still disobeying; the dinner growing cold on the table; and Tom viewing the whole petty, pitiable exhibition with the most irritating pain and disenchantment. It made his heart sick to see this man of all men in such a passion about so small a thing; in a little he was all but foaming at the mouth; and at last, when he caught up a heavy ivory paper-knife and belaboured his dog with that, the spectacle hurt Tom more than any flogging he had witnessed in the iron-gang. It was not only that his feeling for men was numbed while his feeling for animals remained quick: here was the one man living whom he wished to honour and to admire, and the honour and the admiration were sickening at their birth. —
The beating did no good whatever; then Daintree turned on his heel with such a face that Tom took the dog in his arms. He heard a drawer unlocked in the room. When his master reappeared the paper-knife was no longer in his hand; a pistol was there instead.
“Where’s the dog?” he cried.
“Here,” said Tom, showing him.
“Put it down. I’m going to shoot him. I’ll have no stubborn beasts here!”
“Have you had this one long, sir?”
“From a puppy,” said Daintree, cocking his pistol. “Come, put him down, or we’ll never get any dinner to-night.”
“No,” said Tom firmly. “You’ll be sorry for it afterwards; you will be vexed with me for standing by and letting you do such a thing in your heat.”
The other gasped, but never said a word.
“If the dog is no good to you, give him to me,” continued Tom. “Don’t shoot him, sir. Not that I believe you meant it!” And to show his belief he dropped the terrier; whereupon Daintree hesitated, but presently retreated to his room without a word.
The dog was spared. They sat down at last to cool dishes that should have been hot, and their mutual ardour had suffered with the viands. Daintree was very solemn and very stiff, his hapless companion quite certain that he had given mortal and everlasting offence. But the incident was never referred to again. And Tom soon forgot the solitary occasion upon which his champion displayed himself in so sinister a light.
Not that the other lights were all rose-coloured. The man had foibles innumerable, and in their way as extraordinary as his inexplicable kindness to Tom. This continued and increased, and yet there was a something ostentatious, vainglorious, egotistical, even in his kindest acts. Tom hated himself for seeing it, but there it was. It became the more noticeable as Tom himself grew more regenerate, and so made fewer demands upon the other’s consideration. And then the gloomy vanity of the man! His literary pretensions! His solemn belief in himself and all he did!
“Heaven knows he has done enough for me!” sighed Tom, quite ashamed. “I must try to see nothing else; but what I can’t help seeing shall never, never, never make any difference to my regard for him.”
Tom wanted to get to work at once, in the house, in the garden, anywhere and at anything, but the other would not hear of it for days. He was to rest and forget, and to enjoy his life. They made excursions together in the curricle or in Daintree’s boat. Tom would have been almost happy if he only could have given his kind companion the heart-whole admiration which the latter took for granted. And his inability in that respect was so real a grief to him, he could have wept at it and at the other’s kindness put together; but there was still not a tear in his heart; he often wondered, was there any heart left in his body? What he deemed his ingratitude seemed sometimes to prove that there was not.
There were qualities he could honestly admire in Daintree, but they were not those qualities upon whose possession Daintree most prided himself. He was a man of iron nerve and will. That was undoubted. One day, in a squall near the Heads, he handled the boat with magnificent coolness and skill, when Tom thought they must both have gone to the sharks: when they landed safe and sound, he inflicted so many of his poems upon Tom, whom the salt breezes had overcome with drowsiness, that the pantry and the knives to clean seemed preferable to such nightly ordeals. Tom asked to be put into livery and to work at once. He insisted upon it; and gained his point through the accidental touch of “livery.”
They drove into Sydney next day with specimens of the family crest, which Tom was to bear on every button. Daintree being a magistrate, a cockade was duly included in the order; and for a time the master was in high feather at the prospective display. But it recalled family troubles ere long; and all the way home he talked dismally of himself as an “exile like Byron — my literary second-self.” Somebody had once called him “own brother to Byron”; he never tired of quoting the phrase; he was destitute of humour, and made Tom blush for him, where he would have shaken with laughter at another.
His contrariety was unique. Not only was he a good magistrate spoilt, through neglecting the Bench for his desk, but an old athlete who bragged about the poetry he could not write instead of about the races he had really won. On the top of his bookshelf stood the row of tarnished silver cups, and his proud eye climbed no higher than the volume or two of mediocre verse underneath. He made little enough of his genuine triumphs, his real abilities; but he would talk with bated breath of a few stanzas which often rhymed as false as they rang. Once Tom cleaned the cups when Daintree was out, and he flew into something very like a rage when he came in and saw them
; he was the most unaccountable of men.
“Still he is the kindest,” was Tom’s reflection on the top of that conclusion; and the same night he not only made another of his poor attempts at thanking Daintree for all that he was doing and had done; he at last put the question which seemed to mark a stride in his slow and up-hill return from brute to man. And yet, even now, it was no very sincere curiosity, but rather an uncomfortable feeling that he ought to seem curious, which prompted him to say: —
“I can’t understand your kindness to me! Why did you begin it; why do you go on? I wonder what made you take an interest in me at the start!”
Wonder was the word, for wonder he did, but keenly inquisitive he was not; and the stride was shorter than it had looked.
“I believed in your innocence,” replied Daintree with deliberation. “That was all.”
“I can’t think why! You were the only one. Yet you knew nothing about me, it seems?” And still his tone was that of purely impersonal speculation.
Daintree took the cheroot from between his teeth.
“I knew something about Blaydes,” said he.
“Ah!”
“Not much; very little, in fact; but that little was pretty bad. I knew what an infernal blackguard he was, and I felt sure there must be more ruined men than one upon his track. You remember that point in the defence?”
Tom jumped up. “Don’t remind me of it,” he cried. “The very barrister disbelieved in me! And it doesn’t interest me now, it only hurts; don’t speak of it, if you please.”
“Oh, very well,” said Daintree; “only that point was suggested by me.”
“You?” exclaimed Tom in an altered voice. “Ah, but what don’t I owe to you? More than I can ever realise or believe; everything — everything — and yet I refuse to speak of it to you of all men! You see how ungrateful I am; you see what they’ve made of me among them! Oh, sir, forgive me; have patience with me, and I may be grateful yet. Give me time, and I shall thank you as I cannot now!”
“You shall not,” rejoined Daintree firmly; “you were quite right, and we’ll speak of all this no more. Good heavens!” he cried out, “how do you know my motives were so pure? What if it was a mere whim — and not altogether my own? At all events, I take no credit for it; and never you thank me again, do you hear? You’ll offend me if you do. You will indeed!” —
He spoke earnestly, nervously, and without a trace of affectation or egotism. Nor did Tom remember a single foible, as he looked in the handsome, dark, inscrutable face, and took his benefactor by both hands.
“God bless you!” he whispered. “Do you know what I used to call you in my heart when I had one? My Noble Unknown! Well, you are nobler even than I thought; do you know what you are doing? You’re giving me my heart back, little by little! I shall be grateful yet!”
He went to the door, but would stand there gazing at his friend. So long he stood, with burning eyes that seemed to ache for tears; but at length he was gone, and Daintree sat alone with a cold cheroot between his fingers.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE COURSE OF THE “ ROSAMUND”
ONCE in livery, Tom sat no more at his master’s table; he had, however, to insist on waiting at it, instead, and to make himself the servant he had been hitherto in name only. Daintree would have let the old arrangement continue, but the new one was a boon to Tom. It gave him freedom and independence and occupation, and so helped him wonderfully upon the upward road.
One evening, when a ship had come in and Daintree had driven into Sydney for his letters, he returned in such extraordinary spirits that he could hardly touch his dinner; he must gloat over a crinkling sheet of paper, while the soup grew cold in the very spoon, and Tom could only suppose that his master’s family had come round at last. As a rule he talked incessantly to Tom while the latter waited, but this evening his letter absorbed his whole attention. At last, however, he looked up, and his saturnine countenance was redeemed and transfigured by a perfectly startling radiance and joy.
“Thomas,” he said, “you must marry a wife!”
The cheery tone was as new in him as the delighted look. Tom was so astonished, he had to think what the words meant before shaking his head.
“Why not, my good fellow?” cried Daintree.
“Why should you want me to?” retorted Tom.
“Because I am about to marry one myself!”
Had he said he was about to bury one, Tom could not have been more startled and amazed. Somehow he had never conceived of Daintree as a married man. That solitary spirit, centred and immersed in self, and consciously wallowing in its own solitude and gloom, had forbidden such a thought the more easily since Tom had himself abandoned every aspiration of the kind. A twinge of jealousy succeeded his first surprise; but in another moment his heart dilated with unselfish pleasure, and his congratulations were no less sincere than vociferous.
“If you knew her,” said Daintree, “you would congratulate me even more.” And he proceeded to praise his choice as he could have praised nothing that was not in some sense his; and yet his passion was convincing; his voice shook with it, as his face shone.
“A Sydney lady?” Tom ventured to inquire.
“Good heavens, no! If she only were as near as that! She is on her way out to marry me; this letter was written a month before she sailed.”
“From England?”
“Yes.”
“You will see her in another month!”
“Perhaps before. You never know how long or how short the voyage will be. Mine was a hundred and thirty-six days, and that was long. I kept a chart of it — stop, I’m going to fetch it! Clear away, I’ve had dinner enough.”
He rushed from the table to return presently with a mariner’s chart of the world, upon which he had neatly marked out the daily courses of his recent voyage. It was a chain of many links from England to the Cape, and a chain of longer links from the Cape to Australia.
“Now then!” cried Daintree, arranging the chart under the lamp, and seating himself delightedly at the table. “Now we’ll see where they’ve got to. Halloa! Where’s my letter?”
It was on the floor, and Tom picked it up, averting his eyes so that he should see nothing while Daintree referred to the contents.
“Ha! Here we have it,” and the letter was thrust into his pocket. “They were to sail on the twenty-third of June. How many days ago is that? This is September the twelfth. Seven — thirty-one — thirty-one and twelve. How much is that?”
“Eighty-one,” said Tom.
“Only eighty-one! Then you’re right,” sighed Daintree, “and they won’t be here for another month. I was fifty-five days more.”
“They may make a quicker voyage.”
“They may, but I never have. The one before was a hundred and forty days. They were both above the average, but not so very much.”
“Then all the more time to prepare in,” said Tom, entering thoroughly into the situation. “We must get the place to rights, you know, sir!”
“That’s true. It will help to pass the time.”
“Then we might pin up this chart.”
“What, and follow the course?”
“Suppose they came no quicker than you did, and put a drawing-pin in the place every day!”
Daintree was delighted; he shook Tom’s hand, and up went the chart, and in went the drawing-pin.
“You see,” he said, “they’ve not got to the Cape yet; they’re only just beginning to turn the corner and run their easting down.”
“That’s assuming they came no quicker than you,” said his consoler.
“Well, we will assume it. Still, when they’re a hundred days out we’ll have a flag ready, and you shall begin going every morning to the point to see whether there’s a ball at the south yard-arm. And after that will be the longest time of all!”
Meanwhile there was much to do, and Tom did most of it with enormous zest; he had never thought to be so happy again. His enthusiasm was the one re
turn that he could make to Daintree, and he permitted it no bounds. It was Tom who stuck the drawing-pin through a cork ship of cunning build, full-rigged with needles for masts and paper sails. When Daintree saw it they christened her the Rosamund, after her real namesake, with a fitting libation; and from that day forth the cork vessel ploughed the white ocean of the chart, and was a good half-inch nearer Sydney every morning when the master of the house entered the breakfast-room.
“You sympathetic fellow!” he would say to Tom, and sympathy bred sympathy as it always will. “You must marry yourself, Thomas,” he would add. “And you and your wife must live with me and mine; and we’ll go into partnership together, up the country somewhere, and all four live happy ever after!”
To all of which the servant would shake his head, but continue to enter into the master’s happiness with unabated sympathy and enthusiasm. Nor was this a conscious merit in Tom; it made him think no better of himself. He knew how much was inspired by gratitude, and how much more by the selfish relief of sinking his own woes in the hopes and fears and raptures of his friend. He was not even aware of the essential fineness of a nature capable of this kind of comfort. Eternal dissatisfaction with his own feelings kept his opinion of himself at zero still. And if the new bond between Tom and his benefactor had done no more than provide them with common ground, on which they might meet and be at one in all sincerity, even so it would have done much for Tom’s peace of mind.
When Daintree spoke of his beloved, his dark face shone, the darker eyes softened, and the rich voice quivered with no common passion. It was possible to agree and to applaud without hypocrisy, which was not possible when the puny poet stood in the strong man’s shoes. Of his poetry enough has been said, but about his passion there was no mistake. The one was genuine; the other was not. It was a man’s passion, a selfish passion, but the sheer masterful strength of it was patent to Tom from the first. Sometimes it made him fear for the girl — and despair of himself. Gratitude apart, it was as though his spoilt and petty spirit was incapable of an honest, whole-hearted, ungrudging admiration and regard.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 102