CHAPTER XXVI
HOMEWARD BOUND
That very month of May saw Denis deep in an orderly determination of his Australian affairs. These were in a state scarcely credible, but for the fact that his case was not unique. Denis was not the only lucky digger of his day, but he was one of the few who made the most of their good fortune. Half the blood in his veins was averse from squandering, but every drop was on fire for his reward. Suffice it that the sweat rolled off him until he had his ten thousand safe, and enough over to carry him home; there followed civil strife between the two distinct natures whose union in one body made Denis what he was. He must sail by the first ship. He must stay to set his house in order. He could not do both. Yet half the house was his, however come by, and it went against his Yorkshire grain to give it up altogether. The claim was still paying handsomely. A second tunnel had been driven north; and it was to be a longer tunnel, since that good neighbour with the black beard had pegged out on the northern boundary of the claim, to obviate a hostile encroachment back and front, on the very natural understanding that he should join Doherty when Dent was gone. And yet Denis was loth to go.
It was not for the financial sacrifice, though he was sufficiently alive to that. What was ten thousand pounds to take to Nan? It seemed almost criminal to go to her with so little when in a few more months he might have doubled it. Yet there was more to urge on the other side, and it was not the gold that he was grieved to leave. It was the work of his hands. The claim was largely that; the two tunnels were that and nothing else. Much had been given him, but it had been given into the right hands. Denis had carried on an excellent and shrewd bit of work with a thoroughness and an intelligence at least worthy of his predecessor; they were alike in this, that both had a soul aside from the mere gold; and Denis took as much pride in every inch of his two drives as the sinker had taken in every slab of his splendid shaft.
The others realized how much was due to the outgoing partner, and it was they who first begged him to retain a share. At first he refused. "Very well, mister. Then I come with you," said Doherty; and that was an argument; for Denis did not want the lad in England, much less at first, strongly attached as they had become. He had to listen after that, and at last consented to reap a small profit till the year's end, "in case,"
he said to Doherty's new mate, "things are not as I expect to find them in the old country, and I should want to come straight out again. Then I should be back for Christmas; and it would be like coming home." He said it with a smile, yet it was significant that he did not say it in Doherty's hearing; and the mere possibility of the thing he voiced, however remote, turned Denis sick at heart at the very time when Ralph Devenish was most confident in London.
His arrangements were concluded with some abruptness, but they showed a sound foresight in every detail. He had a draft on the Rothschilds (from the Montefiore then in Melbourne) for his entire savings of nearly eleven thousand pounds; one duplicate he took with him in the ship, another was to follow in the next vessel carrying mails. And there was now no dearth of ships, for Melbourne in these seven or eight months had evolved from the colossal encampment into the rudimentary city.
Of course Doherty came down to see him off, which he did with the liveliest lamentations; but already Denis had his eyes fixed on the old world, and his chief trouble was the time that it must take to get there.
"I'll follow ye, dear old mister!" whimpered the lad. "I'll be after you before the year's out--unless I hear as you're on your own way back!"
He stood on the quay, but a ragged young boor--unlettered child of felons--unshriven son of the soil--yet worth twice his weight in gold in all senses of the homely phrase. And the troubled face, with the tears rolling grotesquely over the tan, was the last that Denis looked on in a land as rich in such contrasts as in the precious metal itself.
The voyage took a hundred and thirty days, and was the longest Denis had ever made; but it must have seemed so to him in any case, for the gold-fever had passed its crisis, and now there were more sailors than enough to man the many ships, so that he found himself a passenger perforce for the first time in his life. And after a fortnight of heavenly rest, the idleness became more irksome to his temperament every day. Instead of reveling in the luxury of seeing others staggering in dripping oilskins, of hearing the starboard watch piped on deck, and of turning over on the other side, Denis would sooner have paid the second officer to change places with him. He missed the crowded hours, and the sense of responsibility so long associated with the sea; they had made his former ships fly their latitudes like hurdles, where this one crawled and climbed.
The voyage was quite uneventful, but of petty incident there was the usual supply. Denis himself incurred the displeasure of the captain by his professional interest in every move, but in a rough-and-tumble round the Horn he made certain amends, and won further favour in the tropics.
There they were becalmed three weeks. The ship was full of returning diggers, mostly unsuccessful, and discontent in the steerage was fermented by the harsh treatment of offenders upon whom the thwarted skipper wreaked insensate vengeance with the irons which are a snare to so many of his kind. It was Denis who remonstrated in the captain's cabin and reasoned between decks, and it was Denis who forthwith initiated the various interests which redeemed the remainder of the voyage. Here, however, he received valuable aid from a hard-bitten old sergeant of the Black Watch, named Thrush, who had thus far been an unpopular advocate of steerage discipline. From organized games these two worked up to a daily drill, owing a plausible existence to the pirates with which the seas were still infested in those days, and a corporeal to the valuable money-prizes which Denis put up. This passed a lot of time. The captain looked on approvingly from the poop. Sergeant Thrush bellowed and swore in his old element. Denis drilled humbly with the rest. In the channel he was thanked by the captain in a public speech, and so cheered by every throat on board that he must have stepped ashore in a glow, even with no Nan Merridew in the world.
As it was he was naturally anxious, more nervous than he could have believed, yet full of simple-hearted faith and trust. God had been very good to him: disloyal and impious to anticipate aught but goodness at His hands. And yet--it was eleven long months and more! And yet--not a letter from his love in all that time!
This, however, was his own fault rather than hers; there had been no time for answers to the few letters he was justified in hoping she had received. No one therefore was to blame, except himself. But yet much, only too much, might happen in eleven months.
Denis went straight to Rothschilds' (for it was a Saturday morning), presented his draft, and was still wise enough in his excitement to open an account then and there. Fifty pounds he drew in cash, and the business was concluded in ten minutes. But it took Denis some hours, driving about in a cab, to render himself temporarily and approximately as presentable as he burned to be; and the afternoon was advancing when he stopped the cab on a country road, to jump out a new man, whose beard was trimmed beneath his changeless tan, but all else about him only too fresh from the shop.
In his heart he regretted his comfortable rags, his old hat, his easy boots, even his flowing beard; but he felt it would have been the greater affectation to go out to Hertfordshire just as he had left the diggings; and so you see him well upon the road, yet with a three-mile tramp still before him, deliberately chosen to calm his soul.
It happened to be the last day of September. The countryside lay porous but peaceful under a delicate film of mist and chastened sunlight.
Trees showed to less advantage in limp leaves of a lacklustre shade between living green and dying glory; but to Denis the hour was still worthy of his dreams; it was for him to prove worthy of the hour. The rich scent of decay was not only perfume in his nostrils; it braced the brain like strong salts; and the sharp touch of autumn in the air had the like effect upon his blood. He strode out with the greater gusto for his long confinement aboard ship; the day could not well have been more restful, more reassuring, more inspiriting withal.
Presently a village--a village so utterly English in its great length, its red roofs, and the signs and archways of its many inns, that Denis could have tarried there merely to gloat over his native land. But he only inquired the name of the place, and was off with a nod on hearing it was Edgware. It could only have been Edgware; he knew where he was to a mile and less, though he had never before been there in the flesh. The spirit had atoned. Was it not Nan herself who had taught him the road she knew so well? Had she not told him exactly how to come, the very next time he was in docks? Ah, that was in the early days, in tropic nights on the _North Foreland_, yet how well he remembered one and all!
How he could see the fresh young girl, so far from her home, but so full of it! Not Nan to him then--only Miss Merridew! It seemed a great many years ago.
But she had told him how to know the house, by its plate-glass porch and its dear red bricks; she had prepared him for the first sight of the sacred spot, the line of trees to be seen against the sky from a certain dip and sudden bend in the road. Great heaven! Could those be they?
Denis was standing in such a hollow at such a bend. A file of trees ran into the sky like a giant hedge: even so had Nan described the first prospect of that narrow avenue in which Denis had done everything but walk.
Somehow his legs carried him up the last hill, and so to the low wall which made no pretense of shielding the front of the house from the road. Of course it was the house; the old red brick glowed as softly as in his dreams; the distinctive porch reflected a gentle sunset with all the sharp fidelity of plate-glass. Denis was glad to lean on the low wall, to peer through the shallow shrubbery on its inner side; he felt as though the muscles had been drawn out of him.
But as he leaned the reflected sunset was momentarily disturbed, and the next moment a figure stood in the doorway, gazing toward the west itself. It was Nan. The sunset lit her ringlets to warmest gold. It gave her some colour, too, yet still her face was paler than of old, as it was certainly far thinner and older. Its appeal to Denis was all the more potent and instantaneous. His muscles tightened almost with a twang. No running round by the gate for him! He vaulted the wall, burst through the bushes, stood panting at her feet.
Nan's hands clutched post and door; the sunlight turned ghastly on her face; but she could look steadily down on him from the step, she was so much the calmer of the two.
"I have been expecting you so long!" she could say with but a break in her voice. "Oh, Denis ... Denis!"
And her right hand lay cold in his.
"Come in!" she cried, wrenching it from his lips. Something rang on the flags of the porch as she pushed him before her. "No, no, through into the garden," she went on. "It's stifling in the house."
Yet firelight flickered in the rooms they passed, and it was really chilly on the lawn where Nan had walked with Ralph, also toward dusk, at the break of the leaf now floating back to earth.
"I found the house in a minute," he went on as they trod the soft turf together. "We only got ashore this morning, and I drove out nearly all the way; but I felt I must walk the part I seemed to know so well. This time yesterday we were off the Isle of Wight: such a voyage, a hundred and twenty-nine days from pilot to pilot! I'd have given a thousand pounds to knock off the twenty-nine!"
That was his only allusion to his success, and it was unintentional. She was sadly embarrassed; he saw it with some pain, but supposed it natural after so long a separation. After all, they scarcely knew each other; they only loved; but Denis was not going to force the love upon her all in a moment. His instincts did not fail him in his great hour. Yet the hour was not quite as he had foreseen it. He had foreseen two extremes: to be chatting in this fashion and ignoring all that mattered to him in life struck Denis at the time as scarcely credible in himself. Yet he kept it up for several minutes, in a tone light beyond his nature, with a heart cooling into solid lead. He would not even ask if she had got his letters; it was not for him to remind her of anything that had ever been, to take the continuance of anything for granted. He might have to begin all over again. That was nothing. In less than a minute he was resigned to that.
"And I seem to have found you alone," he remarked at last. It was his first wistful word.
"Papa is remaining in the city," replied the girl. "He has been asked to the Sheriffs' Dinner at the London Tavern. So I suppose I am alone."
She glanced over her shoulder at the firelit windows overlooking the lawn.
"That avenue!" exclaimed Denis standing still. "It was my first landmark, as you said it would be. You might let me see it before it's dark!"
Nan pointed to the screen of trees beyond the kitchen-garden.
"There it is. You do see it."
"But properly!"
"Very well."
She led the way. His voice had trembled; a deep compassion softened hers. In a minute they were in the avenue. It was narrower even than he had thought. The trees in their autumn tatters still met above their heads. But it was a place of premature twilight, where faces were already hard to see. Figures are often more eloquent. He stood in front of her with his arms unconsciously flung wide, and she stood drooping just beyond his reach.
"Nan!"
His voice choked with doubt and apprehension.
"Yes! I suppose you may call me that," she said, sadly.
"Call you that? Call you Nan?" His arm flew round her at last, but the bright bowed head forbade a kiss. "My darling, what in the world has happened?"
An alien voice came from the hidden lips.
"I am not your darling, Denis."
"No; that I have seen!" he cried bitterly, releasing her. "You don't love me any more. I saw it in a moment ... is there anybody else?"
No answer.
"Are you engaged to some one else?"
"No--no."
"I must have the truth."