and yet god has not said a word.
one fine morning in june the mahanaddy steamed with stately deliberation into the calm water inside plymouth breakwater. many writers love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but there is also pathos—perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle—in the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
who can tell? there may have been others as anxious to look on the green slopes of mount edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who stood ever smoking—smoking—always at the forward starboard corner of the hurricane deck. his story had not leaked out, because only two men on board knew it—men with no conversational leaks whatever. he had made no other friends. but many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his manner.
“that man—jem agar—is dangerous,” the doctor had said to the captain more than once, and mark ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in such matters.
“um!” replied the captain of the mahanaddy. “there is an uncanny calm.”
they were talking about him now as the captain—his own pilot for plymouth and the channel—walked slowly backwards and forwards on the bridge. it seemed quite natural for the doctor to be sitting on the rail by the engine-room telegraph. the passengers and the men were quite accustomed to it. this friendship was a matter of history to the homeless world of men and women who travelled east and west through the suez canal.
“he has asked me,” the doctor was saying, “to go ashore with him at plymouth; i don't know why. i imagine he is a little bit afraid of wringing seymour michael's neck.”
“just as likely as not,” observed the captain. “it would be a good thing done, but don't let agar do it.”
“may i leave the ship at plymouth?” asked mark ruthine, with a quiet air of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it was offered.
“i don't see why you should not,” was the reply. “everybody goes ashore there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your services.”
“i should rather like to do it. we come from the same part of the country, and agar seems anxious to have me. he is not a chap to say much, but i imagine there will be some sort of a denouement.”
the captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the anchorage.
“all right,” he said. “go.”
and he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which made the mahanaddy one of the safest boats afloat.
presently mark ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. as he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and touched jem agar on the arm.
“it's all right,” he said. “i'll go with you.”
agar nodded. he was gazing at the green english hills and far faint valley of the tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
half an hour later they landed.
“you stick by me,” said jem agar, when they discerned the small wiry form of seymour michael awaiting them on the quay. “i want you to hear everything.”
this man was, as ruthine had said, dangerous. he was too calm. there was something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his eyes and drove the blood from his lips.
seymour michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in greeting to jem and to ruthine, whom he knew.
jem shook hands with him.
“i'm all right, thanks,” he said curtly, in answer to seymour michael's inquiry.
“good business—good business,” exclaimed the general, who seemed somewhat unnecessarily excited.
“old mark ruthine too!” he went on. “you look as fit as ever. still turning your thousands out of the british public—eh!”
“yes,” said ruthine, “thank you.”
“just run ashore for half an hour, i suppose?” continued seymour michael, looking hurriedly out towards the mahanaddy.
“no,” replied ruthine, “i leave the ship here.”
the small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something sly and uneasy in his eyes.
jem agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on the slopes of the pamir. he was older and graver. there was also a wisdom in his eyes—that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have looked too often on death. mark ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted, with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
“now,” he said eagerly to jem, “what i thought we might do was to have a little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. if ruthine will join us, i for one shall be very pleased. he won't mind our talking shop.”
mark ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a cab.
“have you not had breakfast?” asked agar.
“well, i have had a little, but i don't mind a second edition. that waiter chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. however, it is worth getting up the night before to see you back, old chap.”
“is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?” asked agar, looking at his watch. there was a singular constraint in his manner which seymour michael could not understand.
“yes, there is one at nine forty-five.”
“then let us go by that. we can get something at the station, if we want it.”
“make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer, and i am your man,” said michael heartily.
“make it anything you like,” answered agar, in a gentler voice. he was beginning to come under the influence of seymour michael's sweet voice, and of that fascination which nearly all educated jews unconsciously exercise.
he turned and beckoned to mark ruthine, who presently joined them, after paying the boatmen.
“the nine forty-five is the train,” he said to him. “we may as well walk up. the streets of plymouth are not pleasant to drive through.”
so the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the slope that leads up to the hoe.
there was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
when they stood on the hoe, where the old eddystone lighthouse is now erected, seymour michael turned and looked out over the bay where the ships lay at anchor.
“the good old mahanaddy,” he said, “the finest ship i have ever sailed in.”
neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one on each side of him.
then at last jem agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding since the mahanaddy came out of the canal.
“i want to know,” he said, “exactly how things stand with my people at home.”
he continued to look out over the bay towards the mahanaddy, but mark ruthine was looking at seymour michael.
“yes,” replied the general, “i wanted to talk to you about that. that was really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second train.”
“there cannot be much to say,” said jem agar rather coldly.
“well, i wanted to tell you all about it.”
“about what?”
there was what the captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice. general michael did not answer, and jem turned slowly towards him.
“i presume,” he said, “that i am right in taking it for granted that you have carried out your share of the contract?”
“my dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. the secret has been kept perfectly.”
“by all concerned?”
“eh!—yes.”
michael was glancing furtively at mark ruthine, as the fox glances back over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
“did you tell them personally, or did you write?” pursued jem agar relentlessly.
“my dear fellow,” replied michael, pulling out his watch, “it is a long story, and we must get to the train.”
“no,” replied agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of “fearful joy” in ruthine's soul, “we need not be getting to the train yet, and there is no reason for it to be a long story.”
seymour michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response whatever. the two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. up to that moment jem agar had hoped for the best. he had a greater faith in human nature than mark ruthine had managed to retain.
“have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you would tell, out there, that night?” asked jem.
“i told your brother,” answered the general with dogged indifference.
“only?”
there was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
“i didn't tell him not to tell the others.”
“but you suggested it to him,” put in mark ruthine, with the knowledge of mankind that was his.
“what has it got to do with you, at any rate?” snapped seymour michael.
“nothing,” replied ruthine, looking across at agar.
“you did not tell dora glynde?”
general michael shrugged his shoulders.
“why?” asked jem hoarsely. it was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and the doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
“i didn't dare to do it. why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single soul. if it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as sure as hell. there would have been plenty of men ready to do it for half-a-crown.”
“that was my business,” answered jem coolly. “you promised, you swore, that you would tell dora glynde, my step-mother, and my brother arthur. and you didn't do it. why?”
“i have given you my reasons—it was too dangerous. besides, what does it matter? it is all over now.”
“no,” said jem, “not yet.”
the clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. the hoe was quite deserted; these three men were alone. a silence followed the ringing of the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
then jem agar spoke.
“i asked mark buthine,” he said, “to come ashore with me, because i had reason to suspect your good faith. i can't see now why you should have done this, but i suppose that people who are born liars, as ruthine says you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. you are coming down now with ruthine and myself to stagholme. i shall tell the whole story as it happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as best you can.”
a sudden unreasoning terror took possession of seymour michael. he knew that one of the ladies was anna agar, the woman who hated him almost as much as he deserved. he was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. but this was not sufficient, this could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at that moment, and he knew it. he felt that this was something beyond that—something which could not be reasoned away. it was a physical terror, one of those emotions which seem to attack the body independently of the soul, a terror striking the man before it reaches the mind. his limbs trembled; it was only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched to prevent them from chattering.
“and,” said jem agar, “if i find that any harm has been done—if any one has suffered for this, i will give you the soundest thrashing you have ever had in your life.”
both his hearers knew now who dora glynde was, what she was to him. he neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. he was not, as we have said, de ceux qui s'expliquent.
“come,” he added, and turning he led the way across the hoe.
seymour michael followed quietly. he was cowed by the inward fear which would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men paralysed him. once, in the train, he began explaining matters over again.
“we will hear all that at stagholme,” said jem sternly, and mark ruthine merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not reading.
