"That is unlikely."
"If I were you I should prefer to know the worst; and if I trusted any one as you say you trust me----"
"Trust you! Nan, I----"
He had halted abruptly; but it was her face that stopped his tongue.
"Hush!" she commanded. "I have heard enough of all that, enough to last me all my life; but if you trust me as a friend, as you've said you do and promised you will, you might take me into your trouble, open your letter, and let us face whatever it contains together."
His tongue clove in his head; with a ghastly laugh he managed to refuse at last. Her curiosity was now on fire. And to gratify the sudden passion she stooped to a level of which she was very soon and very bitterly ashamed.
"If you ever want me to feel differently toward you--ever, ever, when we are both middle-aged people--you must begin by trusting me now!"
So spoke Nan, as unworthily as she was prompted, on the spur of a moment which marked an epoch in her life; but even the immediate effect was sufficiently sensational; for with a cry that was almost a sob, the conscience-stricken wretch broke away from her, and fled through the checkered sunlight of the narrow avenue, like the madman her words had made him.
Nan was puzzled and displeased, first with him, afterward and more seriously with herself. She remembered and deplored what she had said. If she had given him ground for hope! That would be terrible--unpardonable--an offense against God and man. And yet the evidence of his passion displeased her least; and least of all the indirect evidence contained in a few lines of explanation which a private messenger brought her during the day; for while they accounted for his conduct of the morning, they displayed an intention so in accordance with her wishes as to relieve her mind of many misgivings.
"I made sure it was my orders to sail," wrote Ralph, with a wise brevity. "I was wrong, but I made sure I was right, and yet I could not trust myself to know it for certain without telling you, or to tell you and then say good-bye as you would have me say it! Forgive me if you can. It was a sudden madness, and as it turns out there was little or no justification for it. Still, as a matter of fact, they do talk of sending me out with a draft next month. That will be soon enough. Yet in one way you know it could not come too soon for me. Oh, Nan, I am torn two ways!"
And yet this glib liar had not then summoned up the moral or immoral courage to open her letter; part of the glibness sprang from that last grain of virtue. He might not open it after all, could not all that day, with officers and gentlemen jostling him at every turn. It was only late at night, in the privacy of his own quarters, that the absolute necessity presented itself with fresh force, and with a sudden oath the envelope was ripped open; but even then the letter itself was glanced at rather than read.
Endearment and protestation this reader could indeed afford to skip; but what he could not help seeing in this kind at once hardened and inflamed his heart. He called her his. His, forsooth, his! Ralph ran a blazing eye over all that, tried another page, read a little, caught his breath, read backward and then forward in a skin of ice. Jewson was dead, killed by a snake! That was bad enough, but it was a trifle to what followed; for much had since come out, and more was suspected of the dead man. He had drugged some beer and stolen a nugget which Nan should have received a month ago. That much was proved. The nugget had been found; there could be little doubt that he had stolen the letter which was to have accompanied it. And here Denis reproached himself with having written so seldom, not once a month as yet; but in the first few weeks of abject failure he had never had the heart to write, but once, and for reasons given he could not be sure that even that letter had not fallen into the same dead hands.
Devenish held his breath. Was he suspected also? Yes, he could see that he was; he could read it between the lines; and his heart reviled the writer for suppressing his suspicions. There was no generosity in Ralph, and he wanted none from Denis.
"You will be seeing something of Ralph Devenish," the innocent could write. "You might ask him whether Jewson, to Ralph's knowledge, ever called at our first camp. He never did when I was there, but I remember thinking of him when Moseley told me a strange digger had offered to take our letters. He bore me a grudge as you know. But I can still hardly think he bore me such a grudge as that, or you any grudge at all. I should be glad if you had an opportunity of speaking to Ralph Devenish on the subject. The wretched man was his servant at the time, so perhaps he could enlighten us a little. If he can I am sure he will."
Sure, was he? Sure of Ralph? What was the use of such transparent lies?
Ralph himself was only enraged by them; they accentuated his meanness and the other's magnanimity. He forgot that they could not have borne such significance to Nan, that she would have suspected nothing, and that the letter after all was written to her. He read on as though it had been written to himself; and the end left him icy sick. Not because Denis had already made several thousands out of his fabulous claim, and upward of 2,500 by a single nugget found in the hour that was so nearly his last. He was welcome to his filthy gold. It was neither record nor assurance of monetary success that froze Ralph's blood; it was Denis's promise to make amends in the matter of correspondence, to write in future by every possible ship, and to post his letters with his own hand.
Ralph felt easier when he had destroyed this one; he was only thankful he had read it now; to have destroyed it unread would have been his ruin. But it was only the first. What of all the rest? Could he hope to intercept a series? Was there no postman or postmaster whom he could suborn to intercept them for him?
No--that was far too dangerous. No more assistant rascals for Ralph!
Henceforward he would do his own dirty work; he approached it forthwith without a qualm, but, on the contrary, with the spirited intelligence of a bold nature and an educated brain.
His first care was to arrange with Lloyd's for immediate advice upon the signaling of any homeward-bound Australian packet at the Lizard or other Channel station; in each case, separate post-office inquiries were the next step; and it was from this point that Ralph's appearances in Hertfordshire became as delightfully erratic as the Merridews found them. So far everything was plain sailing. It was the actual interception of the letters which was fraught with inconceivable difficulty and incessant danger.
Its unforeseen variety was its greatest curse. If the letter came in the morning, well and good; but once it was only due by the evening delivery, and then Devenish fetched all the letters from the village post-office on some impudent pretext. He always met the early postman at the gate.
"You see they know where to put their finger on me now," he said to Nan, in presumed reference to the War Office. "Since that one fright I got down here I want to know the worst at the earliest possible moment. Yet but for you it would be the best, and even in spite of you I can't tell you how I burn to go. If only you would let me leave you on the one footing which would make me a happy man!"
For it had come to this: he had proposed repeatedly and gained the stage of receiving a fair hearing and some faint encouragement. "Some day--perhaps!" she said, with a stress which indicated a very distant day indeed; and that, of course, was no promise; nor was the pale prospect accompanied by any hope on Nan's part that she could ever love him as she should. Her heart was dead or numb; he heard it again and again, without loss of confidence in his power to quicken it in the end.
And this self-confidence stood Ralph in equal stead with Nan and with his own soul: not from the first, yet in a very few weeks, he was playing a winning if a waiting game. He learned from her lips how he had improved in her sight; and though unable to believe there had been so much room for improvement, he was careful to keep the ground thus won in her regard. It was so at every point of his advance. Here and there the gain was trifling, but he never lost an inch.
Ralph had an open and yet silent ally in Mr. Merridew; of old he had always wanted this marriage, and now he wanted it more than ever. Nan was not happy; it was the one thing to make her happy. He would have told her so every day but for a plain word in the beginning from Ralph himself. "Din me in her ears," said he, "and I am done; leave it to her, and there is a chance for me. But never another word against Denis Dent; if his name comes up, make excuses for him. You don't know women as I know them, sir, or I wouldn't presume to offer you such advice."
It was followed, however, with all loyalty and devotion to their common cause. Not for weeks did the father venture to express any further opinion in the matter; and when he did break silence the occasion justified him. Captain Devenish was ordered out at last. Typhus, dysentery and ague had descended upon the Guards' camp at Aladyn close to Varna; thither Devenish was to sail before the end of June, in charge of a draft to replace those fallen in this unfair fight.
It was Mr. Merridew who brought the news home from the City, and capped it with the conviction, now indeed general, that there would be hard fighting somewhere before the end. The resolution to attack Sebastopol was not yet taken, but the probability had long been in the air, and Mr.
Merridew spoke of it as an absolute certainty. It might be a short campaign; but from the character of a map which he spread out Mr.
Merridew was not of that opinion. Nan took but a perfunctory interest in the map; she knew very well what had been in her father's mind for weeks, and she was entirely prepared for what was coming now.
"Whatever may be before them, you may depend the Guards will be in the van," said Mr. Merridew, grandly. "The chances are that many of them will never come back; but we won't think of that. Suppose they are away a year. Think of Ralph and of yourself. Imagine his torments all that time, fighting for his country, and yet uncertain of you! How can you expect him--not to do his duty, for that we know he will--but to be as efficient as a soldier with a single and a settled mind?"
"He is certain enough," said Nan, sulking sweetly, "if he can wait."
"But nothing is so uncertain as such a future!"
"Well, I can't marry him before he goes, can I?"
It was said flippantly, yet with a certain feeling far back in the mind.
"I don't know about that. Would you if you could, Nan?"
"It might save complications, if he is to be away a year! Suppose some one else were to come home during the year, you know!" added Nan, with undiminished flippancy; yet this was the thought at the back of her brain, and she was entertaining it in bitter earnest.
"Ah, poor Dent!" said Merridew, advisedly, as he grasped her meaning.
"You needn't pity him; he will come back rich, if not with a wife," said the girl whom Devenish knew so well.
Mr. Merridew came back to his point, after a pause intended to break the thread of painful association, as it did.
"But would you marry Ralph if there was time?"
"There isn't time."
"I don't know. I wish I knew the date he sails. It may be later than we think."
And the budding strategist dropped the subject with a tact which was growing on him with the conduct of this affair. But first thing next morning Ralph and he were closeted in his private office.
"Splendid! splendid!" cried the younger man. "Another word from you might have spoiled everything. I will run down this minute and say the rest for myself."
"But is it possible, Ralph?"
"With a special license it would be possible to-morrow."
"And how long have you?"
"I hope a month. Time enough for banns, if you like. We can get them put up this Sunday."
John Merridew looked at the young man sitting before him, his dark face flushed, his dark eyes sparkling--handsome, eager, and exultant--without a misgiving or a qualm for mortal eye to see.
"You are very confident, Ralph!"
"I am."