Ralph Devenish was the eldest son of doting parents who had done their duty by him according to their lights. They were well-to-do folk, though the homely epithet would have insulted the blood which was their boast; they were not, however, really wealthy, and they had the vast family of their generation. It was therefore something of a sacrifice to send Ralph to his public school, and a distinct one to support his subsequent commission in the Guards. It is true that the sacrifice fell principally upon a long line of younger brethren, who could scarcely have filled the parental eye less if they had stood all their lives in Indian file behind the first-born. But many was the time the father paid some debt with hardly a murmur, or the mother pinched herself to make surreptitious additions to the gay lad's allowance; for man and boy he was the first consideration in their minds, and consequently the sole consideration in his own.
In return this criminal couple had a brilliant and successful son, who was a favourite wherever he went, especially among strangers, and who fraternized to their satisfaction with the more direct issue of families almost as old as their own; the only disappointment was that Ralph was nearing his thirties without having married into one or other of them. It was time, for many reasons, that he made the marriage that was only to be expected of him, and settled down. The marriage that was only to be expected of Ralph Devenish declined in brilliance as the years went on; but the prospect finally resolved itself into no regrettable alliance with a beautiful and charming girl, who was also quite a little heiress in her way. Then Ralph and Nan had known each other all their lives. The families were allied in business. There was nothing in the world against the inferior family, except that invidious juxtaposition. It was therefore a sound choice, if it was nothing more.
Yet Ralph became a company officer without getting engaged even to Nan Merridew. Some said she had refused him. Mr. and Mrs. Devenish could afford to smile. Nevertheless, the attachment became obvious on his side and not on hers. Then Ralph had an illness at Portman Street; it developed into a malignant typhus which nearly killed him; and the shattered officer was given a year's leave in which to recruit from the day he got about again. It seemed certain that this episode would bring matters to a crisis; and when the convalescent was ordered a health voyage in one of the firm's vessels, and Mr. and Miss Merridew accompanied him, it was quite understood that the engagement would be announced on their return.
Nan alone did not so understand it; and in exceptional circumstances already set forth, her father was the next to relinquish an idea which he had cherished as much as anybody. Devenish, however, was naturally no prey to the sentiment to which he attributed his reverse in one quarter and its acceptance in the other. He had never regarded it as a defeat, and he was certainly not the man to do so as he saw the last of Denis against an Australian sky from the _Memnon's_ poop. On the contrary, the gallant Ralph had never been nearly so much in love as with the ardent and disheveled girl, nobly careless of appearances, who wept and waved within a few feet of him until the last.
His tact, however, was not equal to his passion, and it was a breach of tact that sent Ralph Devenish ashore with the pilot.
"Ah, well!" he had said at last. "He has the best of it, after all!"
"What do you mean?" cried Nan, as she turned on him with fiery tears, but not one in her voice.
"He has all the fun of the fair," replied Devenish, lightly. "They say it's the biggest fair ever held on earth."
"You mean the gold-fields, I suppose?"
"Yes. I shouldn't blame him for wanting to have his fling on them."
"I don't understand you," said the girl, very coldly. "Pray who is blaming him?"
"Well, Dent is rather in Mr. Merridew's bad books for insisting on staying out, you know; and I thought he might be in yours, too."
"Did you, indeed! Then let me tell you I am proud of him--for what he has done, and for what he's going to do. But if he were here now, standing in your shoes, though I would give anything to have him here, I should still be ashamed of him in my heart!"
Devenish winced, and his dark, clear skin was stained a deeper shade; as for Nan, she was so heated that every tear had dried upon her angry blushes.
"If you are thinking of me," he said, "you certainly aren't thinking of what you are saying, or you would remember that a year's leave is a year's leave."
"And that yours isn't up till May," she added with ironic levity. "It's no business of mine, of course; only you shouldn't start comparisons between the man who stays and the man who turns back."
"I am also in less need of money," he told her through his teeth.
"Money!" she cried in unrestrained contempt. "I wasn't thinking of the money--I was thinking of the fun and adventure and romance that would have enticed every man worth calling a man, once he had got so far--except you!"
"From their sweethearts even!" he hissed out, with a devilish nod--"from the girls they pretend they want to marry!"
Nan was stung in her turn; and hers was a poisonous sting. The blood drained from her face. It was some moments before she could speak.
"That is their business," she whispered at last. "At all events you know what I should have thought of Denis if he hadn't stayed; but if you want to know what I think of him now, you shall." And with trembling lips, before Ralph, before the man at the wheel, before the officer and the midshipman of the watch, Miss Merridew kissed the bloodstone signet ring upon the third finger of her left hand. That was what happened on the _Memnon_ while Denis watched her dipping out of sight.
What happened next was that Devenish nearly knocked his servant, Jewson, from top to bottom of the companion hatch; the man just managed to clutch the rail, and was called roughly into his master's cabin forthwith.
"Sorry I upset you, Jewson, but you should have got out of my way. You were listening, of course?"
"I couldn't help hearing that last, sir."
"No, I suppose the whole ship heard that. Nice, isn't it?"
"I know what I'd do in your place, sir."
Devenish looked fiercely into the cunning, elderly face, with the dyed beard and the foxy eyes.
"You do, do you?"
"I do, sir; but don't look at me like that, Captain Devenish, sir, or I shall never dare to tell you. There's something else I'd as lief tell you first; but how can I when you look like giving me a horse-whipping if I so much as open my mouth?"
"Go on, you old humbug," said Ralph, relaxing a little; "give me some brandy and water, and let's have it."
Jewson gave him the brandy and water first. Ralph took a gulp, and nodded for the news.
"Well, sir, you see what he give her; but do you know what she give him?" asked Jewson, in a vile undertone, half-gloating, half-afraid.
"No. What?"
"Another ring."
"He's not wearing it."
"That's just it; he is, round his neck. And what do you suppose he's wearing it on?"
"Out with it."
"It's one of her own rings," said Jewson, bringing his small eyes so close together that they seemed to touch. "And he's wearing it round his neck on a lanyard she made him out of her own hair!"
Ralph's comment did him some credit.
"You brute!" he said at last.
"Captain Devenish, sir, it's the four gospels."
"But you've been listening to them too."
"I couldn't help it, sir; really I couldn't. She only give it 'im to-day when he come aboard to bid good-bye. They went into the after saloon, and I was only in here with the door open. I couldn't help hearing every word."
And the wretch displayed his obvious longing, with the cunning light in the little eyes and the grin amid the dyed hair on the wizened face; but with all his faults Ralph Devenish was still something of a gentleman, and, Nan notwithstanding, even more of a man.
"You will never dare to repeat one of them," said he. "If you ever do, and I hear of it, you will get what you yourself suggested just now.
That'll do, Jewson; not another word about that."
The old steward accepted his rebuff with aplomb.
"Very well, sir. Of course my feelings ain't like a gentleman's; a gentleman wouldn't expect it. But this I do promise, never to tell anybody if I don't tell you. And now, sir, I should like to tell you, if I may make so bold, what I'd do in your place."
"If it amuses you, by all means."
"It does, sir; but it'd amuse me more if you'd do it, and there's time enough still. I'd take Miss Merridew at her word, and ashore I'd go with the pilot, and to Ballarat by the first coach!"