The Red Derelict

by Bertram Mitford

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

  TIME'S CHANCE.

  Wagram was seated in his private study at Hilversea, thinking.

  It was a lovely spring morning, and through the open window came a verygurgle of bird voices from shrubbery and garden. The young green wasrapidly shouldering out the winter brown of the woods, especially wherethe sprouting tassels of the larch coverts seem to grow beneath one'svery gaze.

  Ah, how good it was to be back home again after his wandering and exileand anguish of mind--to be back here in his idolised home, in peace tillthe end of his days--and surely it would be so. He had done hisuttermost to find his half-brother, and had failed--had failed,possibly, because Everard was no longer in the land of the living--murdered by that savage miscreant the renegade, so many of whoseatrocities he himself had witnessed. And yet, if Develin Hunt's accountof Everard were correct, it was possible that he might have been slainby the other acting in self-defence.

  What a unique experience had this last one been. He had no idea as tothe identity of the wild tribes among whom he had moved, and the veryhaziest as to the part of the coast on which he had landed. As to thelatter point, the opinions of the captain and officers of the _Runic_had differed considerably; indeed, he was not quite sure whether theyentirely believed his story in every particular--not implying that hehad deliberately invented it, but that parts of it might be due tohallucination begotten of anxiety and privation.

  "That you should come to board that derelict twice, with an interval ofmonths between, and each time by a sheer accident, is one of the tallestsea experiences within my knowledge, Mr Wagram," had said Gibson, thechief officer of the _Runic_, one day when he was disclosing parts ofhis story. And he had laughed good-humouredly, and agreed that itreally must be.

  As a matter of fact, he had been very reticent over his experiences;partly that they would sound rather too wonderful, and partly that therecollection of them was distressing to himself and he would fain helpthem to fade.

  Well, if Everard were no longer alive he himself was just where he hadbeen. But was he? There were others with a claim. No; there were not.On this point he had seriously made up his mind. The very distantbranch of the family--so distant, indeed, that it was doubtful whetherit could establish a claim at all--he was not even acquainted with, butit was very wealthy. He remembered his father's solemn declaration:"Morally, and in the sight of God, your position is just what it wouldhave been but for this accident." And his father had been right.Whatever doubt as to this may have crossed his mind at the time thewords were uttered it held none whatever now. He had been brought backto that position, so to say, in spite of himself, had been restored toit by a chain of occurrences well-nigh miraculous, so much so, indeed,that others could scarcely credit them. Surely the finger of Heaven hadbeen directing them.

  There was just one thorn beneath the rose leaves, and it spelt DevelinHunt. What if that worthy should, on hearing of his return, conclude totry for a little more blackmail? In that event he had made up his mindto defy him. He was in possession--and such "possession" as that meantwas practically unassailable legally; and it was only with the legalside of the situation he felt now concerned. But nothing had been heardof the adventurer since he had received the last instalment of hisprice. He seemed to have disappeared as suddenly as he had arisen.

  Decidedly Wagram's train of thought was strange that morning.Everything had been restored to him--everything as it had been; andyet--and yet--something was wanting. A feeling as of loneliness wasupon him--upon him, the envied of all his acquaintance. He missed hisfather now that he reigned alone--missed him every minute of the day.The dear old man's chair at table, in which he himself now sat--hemissed him even while he was sitting there; his constant flow ofsparkling reminiscence, his pungent wit, his good-natured cynicism andhis affection for himself; and yet--and yet--he missed something else.What was it? The musical flow of a sweet young voice, the brightpresence and ready and tactful sympathy of one who had been hiscompanion for a short--in point of time, but in actual factconcentrated--fellowship. He went over again his first meeting withDelia Calmour and his father's unhesitating dictum upon the house ofCalmour in general. "A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho!" And now it seemedto him that the one thing lacking to render his cup of contentment fullwas the presence of one Calmour at Hilversea, and that one Delia.Incidentally, it struck him that for present purposes it was a goodthing that old Calmour had been removed to another, and, he hoped, abetter world; but only incidentally, for, having come to the conclusionhe had, the mere removal of old Calmour and Siege House to a remoterpart of the realm than Bassingham, and that under far greater conditionsof comfort than that old toper could ever have pictured in his wildestdreams, would have been the merest matter of detail. However, oldCalmour was no longer there, which simplified matters.

  Then the cynical element came uppermost. His experience of thematrimonial bond had been lamentable; why, then, should he beill-advised enough to make a second experiment of it? And yet--andyet--he had had ample opportunities of watching this girl, and she hadseemed to shine out as pure gold from the alloy of her surroundings andbringing up. He was no fool, and had a large experience of the seamyside of life, which was sufficient to safeguard him from illusions. Shewas in poor circumstances, and life to her must be one of struggle.Such a bait as his position and wealth would be under the circumstancesirresistible, but it was not under these circumstances that he wantedher. He was considerably her senior in years, and it was probable thatin her young mind he ranked as a serious and elderly bore, whom shemight have reason to hold in some regard, perhaps; but still--Againstthat, again, he remembered how that bright, beautiful face used to lightup on such occasions as their first meeting of a morning, while on boardship, and on others. No; there was a spontaneity and genuineness aboutthat expression that was due to no sordid motive.

  Since his return he had been overwhelmed with calls and congratulations;indeed, part of his aim in life seemed to have become the dodging ofsuch whenever practicable. Invitations, too, had not been lacking, withvery propitious "beauty's eyes" in the background, but for such he hadno inclination. This girl whose acquaintance he had made in so strangeand semi-tragical a manner, whose character he had watched develop eversince, seemed to have become bound up with his life, and now the lastphase in the acquaintance was that she--and she alone--had been theactual instrument in the saving of his life. For herself, she had comeout splendidly through all her disadvantages. Yes; her presence herewas the one thing he needed--and he needed it greatly.

  He remembered the arrival of the _Runic_. Clytie had been there to meether sister, and the frank, cheerful greeting which she had extended tohim had impressed him very favourably. He had been to see them since,and the favourable impression had deepened. There was no pretence aboutthem in their new home. They had got to work, and work pretty hard too,and they were doing it with a brave hopefulness that was beyond allpraise. And he had extracted a promise from them that if ever theyfound themselves in need of a friend--no matter what manner ofdifficulty might overtake them--they were to apply to himunhesitatingly, which was all he was able to do for them for thepresent.

  Then his train of thought took another turn. The tin case he had foundin the cuddy of the derelict he had never yet investigated--had not evenopened it. He had been very busy since his return, and had put it asidetill arrears of business should have been disposed of. He had resistedan inclination to open it on board the _Runic_, moved by theconsciousness that there is no real privacy on board ship, and this, hefelt instinctively, was a matter needing undisturbed and uninterruptedattention. Now he thought the time had come when he might very well doso.

  He unlocked a safe and got out the tin case. It was all corroded withits long submersion in salt water but quite intact. It brought back tohim that gruesome dive into the heart of the spectral derelict; and fora few minutes he sat there, going over in his mind that time alone onthe oily waters of the
glistening deep, and that awful moment in thedarkness when the receding lights had betokened that he was left to hisfate--the hand of rescue stretched forth only to be withdrawn. He shookthe recollection off, as that of a nightmare from which one awakes,then, procuring the requisite tools, set to work to open the case.

  It was full of papers--close packed, full to bursting. Some two orthree were of parchment-looking substance, others of thin rice paper.The latter were stitched together with a kind of thin thread of animalfibre. This detail he took in at once, the result of his recent andcomplete savage training. He spread them out upon the capaciouswriting-table in front of him, and then--

  Great Heaven! what was this? "Develin Hunt!" There was the name, notat the end of a document, but in the middle of it. He stared again, andcould hardly believe his eyes. Develin Hunt! He had expected to findsome clue as to his lost brother's fate, which was his reason for nothaving handed over the box to the captain of the _Runic_ as containing apossible clue to the identity of the Red Derelict, but instead the firstname to meet his eye was that of Develin Hunt!

  He pulled himself together, and, with mind cool and business-like, sethimself to examine the documents, beginning with this one. And it wasthe most important of all, for it was nothing more nor less than amarriage certificate.

  He gazed at it for a moment, then got up again and went to the safe.From this he extracted a document, and spread it side by side with thefirst one. It was a copy of another marriage certificate, that whichDevelin Hunt had produced for the enlightenment of his father andhimself, but--the one he had just extracted from the tin box bore datefour years earlier.

  What then? The man might have been a widower at the time. So far hehimself was--well, just where he was--where he had been.

  He had forgotten for the moment all about Everard and his fate. Eagerlyhe turned over the other papers. They seemed to have no bearing on thesubject until he got to the thin ones, which, in effect, were a sort ofdiary, stitched together, as we have said. And before he had gone farthrough this he realised that the discovery of this other marriagecertificate was of very first-rate importance indeed, for it set forthunmistakably that the other party referred to was alive at the time ofhis mother's marriage with his father--alive, in fact, long subsequentlythereto, if not alive at the present day. It was further obvious thatany information to be sought for on the subject must be sought in SouthAfrica. Could this be established it followed that Develin Hunt'smarriage with his mother was invalid and that of his father was valid.

  South Africa! Haldane might help him here; he had spent years of hislife in those parts. And yet, he remembered, to Haldane's mind DevelinHunt's name had conveyed no idea other than as subject-matter for ajoke, even as it had done to his own. Well, this need mean nothing,unless it were that, like many adventurers, this man had not always goneunder his own name.

  Again and again he read through the paper, and with each perusal thepiecing together of the puzzle became easier. And as it did so cameanother thought. Would it not be far easier and quicker to get intocommunication with the adventurer himself, and, at the possible price ofsome further blackmail, obtain from him at first hand the solution ofthe whole difficulty? It was wrong and immoral, no doubt, to compoundso grave and dangerous an offence as blackmailing, but the awful anguishof mind he had gone through seemed to justify anything--anything in theabstract, such as this was, and not hurtful to any individual--to ensurerelief. Even so, a weight seemed to have been lifted from him--thewhole weight, in fact--and, with the consciousness, other words spokenby the old Squire came back to him: "There is no telling what Time maywork, so give Time his chance." Prophetic they sounded now, words ofgold-mouthed wisdom. He had given Time his chance, and Time had workedaccordingly; and lo, from the bowels of this spectral relic of a shipfloating for years on the slimy surface of the tropical seas, Time hadyielded up this its secret.

  And then he was brought back to everyday realities by two sounds--theringing of the luncheon bell and the voice of his son outside.