"There," she said, "that is what I have been wanting to say for him all these weeks. There speaks Denis himself. He has called to me from the other end of the world. I was thinking of him when I went for a book, and I put my hand on this one, and I opened it at this place!"
Mr. Merridew was full of sympathy--a quality in which he was rarely deficient when there was trouble in the air; besides, he cherished the most genuine desire for his daughter's happiness. If she could be happy believing in Dent, well and good, and it might all come right yet. The great thing was that despite her energies she had been pensive and wan for many a day, but that now she was flushed and bright.
"Believe in him, dear!" she whispered in her father's ear, her arm round his neck.
"I always did, Nan," he answered, stroking her hair.
"No, not always; but you did once, and you will again."
"Very well, Nan."
"From this moment!"
"No; not from this moment," said Mr. Merridew, characteristically seeking to justify his former asseveration, "when not for a single moment have I ceased to bless him for preserving my darling's life. How could I disbelieve in him in my heart after that? If I have ever done so it has been when I have seen you sad and sorry. But when I think of all he did for you----"
"Don't; please don't!"
Her face was hidden against him. He might have felt its heat. But it was in the plain troubles only that he was a sympathetic man.
"But I must," he rejoined cheerily. "We must not forget all he did, and I am afraid we have. Why, Nan, what is it?"
"I am going."
"But why? What have I said?"
"Nothing--nothing--only I wish he had let me drown--I wish that!"
And with this hard saying the girl was gone, with tears that puzzled John Merridew to his dying day, and flaming cheeks that dried them as they ran.
CHAPTER XXIII
BROKEN OFF
One afternoon Mr. Merridew came home in a state of suppressed excitement which was none the less manifest to Nan's first glance. It was late in April, and he found her on the lawn behind the house. Cuckoos were calling in the narrow avenue, now faintly dusted with palest gold; lesser trees had reached the stage of emeralds, and a horse-chestnut on the lawn was parading a thousand pairs of light-green gloves. The radiant afternoon sky changed into that of a serene evening as father and daughter stood face to face.
"Who do you think arrived in London this morning? Ralph Devenish!" he said, speaking the name in haste as her colour went.
"Indeed!" she remarked, and bit her lip to hide the hope that she had cherished for one instant.
"Poor fellow," continued Mr. Merridew, with his facile sympathy for the luckless, "he is terribly upset! The last English news he had on sailing was not later than last October; of course they touched nowhere, so he had no idea there was war with Russia until this morning. It is his battalion of the Grenadiers that went to the Black Sea with the rest of the Guards two months ago; and here he has been cooling his heels in perfect innocence at sea! Of course he reported himself without a minute's delay to the authorities, and now awaits their pleasure in a perfect fever of disappointment and professional ardour. He says he has been in the service all these years without hearing an angry shot, and now after all he may miss the fun! A gallant soldier, Nan, whatever else he may be!"
"I should hope so," the girl said, simply and without scorn. Her mind had not crossed the seas with Ralph. "Did he really go to the diggings?"
she asked in a constrained voice.
"Yes, and did very fairly there; what is more, my dear, he saw something of Denis Dent."
The girl was galvanized. "Was he well?" she whispered in a breath.
"Perfectly, when Ralph left, which was only in January."
Nan filled her lungs, and for the moment her soul sang praises; but for a moment only. If he was well, why had he never written? Her indignation had free play for the first time in all these months; she could better have borne to hear he had been ill, if only he were well again; for then she could have understood, then there would have been nothing to forgive.
"He was not only well," continued Mr. Merridew, with outward reluctance, not altogether an affectation, "but he was doing uncommonly well--far better than poor Ralph!"
Doing uncommonly well! And yet he could not write.
"And where is Ralph?" asked Nan, in a hard voice, and with that old hard light in her hazel eyes.
Mr. Merridew stood covered with a guilty confusion.
"Nan, would you see him if he came to see you?"
"Of course I would. Why not? I should like to see Ralph particularly."
"My dear, he didn't know; he was greatly afraid it would be just the other way. But since you say that, I must tell you he is within a hundred yards of where you stand, waiting in the road to know whether you would see him or not."
Nan was annoyed at this; it was giving romantic colour to a meeting which should have been perfectly natural and dispassionate on both sides; and on hers it was too dispassionate, and not natural enough, in consequence. Yet she wore a flush which might have flattered a less vain man than Ralph Devenish; and as for him he looked nicer than she had ever known him, in the shabby suit which was the best that remained of his Australian outfit, with the deep bronze upon his sallow face, and with inches added to his splendid whiskers. There was also, in him, a strange absence of arriere-pensee, psychologically more interesting than she dreamed; it was he who told her of Denis, unasked, in perhaps his second breath.
"Oh, I did decently," said Ralph, "and might have done really well had I stuck to it. But that cousin of mine--that's the man! He had some luck, though no more than he deserved; but when I came away he was the talk of his gully, to say the least. If he has realized half the prophecies I heard before I left he must be a wealthy man by this time."
"Do you mean to say he has been lucky from the beginning?" asked Nan, her incredulity strangely tinctured with disgust; and she brightened as perversely when she heard the truth. For it was the truth about Denis, so far as he knew it, that Ralph told Nan this April evening. He was cast for he knew not what part of bold duplicity; all he saw clearly was the end, and to that he was prepared to plough his way through all dishonour, as a traveler steels himself against every obstacle between him and the one light twinkling through the trees. The light was very brilliant in this sweet spring dusk, before his eyes yet not within his reach. It dazzled him, the light of the face he loved; and love he did, the more passionately, not the less, for the sacrifice of his honour that he had made already in his heart. To look through the sweet English dusk into her eyes, to hear her voice through the evensong of the dear old English birds, was to feel a final hardening of every unscrupulous resolve. And yet honour dies hard in the type to which Ralph Devenish belonged; it was dying so hard in Ralph that he was glad to tell the truth while he might, glad to speak well and kindly of the man he was to thwart in life by fair means or by foul.
So Nan heard of Denis's early unsuccess, and was thankful; a proud silence she could understand and might learn to forgive. And she was only less grateful for the way Ralph spoke of him; yet be it remembered to Ralph's credit, or what was left of it, that his tone, if assumed, was no device to win Nan's gratitude as it actually did.
Her satisfaction diminished as she heard of the wonderful doings on the new claim. Yet, after all, he had only been there a fortnight when Ralph left, and so immediate a success would in itself account for much. It must absorb every energy and every hour.
"Hand over fist!" said Ralph, laughing genially. "That's how the fellow was taking out the gold when I came away; at least, so I heard."
"Then you didn't see much of him yourself?"
"No, not much."
He might have added "naturally"; but the word was implied in his tone, which itself was as natural as could be. Nan noted and admired it. She was becoming more and more impressed with the general improvement in her companion. But it was another thought that kept her silent as they strolled to and fro upon the twilit sward.
"I suppose it is all in gold-dust," she speculated. "I know it is not in nuggets."
"Oh, isn't it?" he said quickly. "Then you have heard?"
Nan bit her lip.
"No, I have not heard, and you know I haven't!" she exclaimed with more tartness than discretion.
"My dear Nan, how could I know?" he asked, and with the utmost readiness, though her father had lost no time in informing him of the fact.
"I thought you must know," she said with a sigh that touched him and yet rankled. "I beg your pardon, Ralph. As for the nuggets, he promised to send me the first one he found, for luck; and he never broke a promise in his life."