"Mr. Farrell," said I, "you have learnt much and learnt it sorely: but you haven't learnt enough. Pick up your hat, take your dog with you, and walk out."

"That's right enough," said he; "and I'm going. I'm only half a gentleman yet, and my feelings get the better of me in the wrong way.

But you'll never rob me of that fellow, and so I promise you two, and him. . . . Come along, Rover!"

NIGHT THE TWENTY-THIRD.

COUNTERCHASE.

I went to the South Pacific, after all.

Farrell called on me, next day, and before I could countermand my pa.s.sage. He came, as he said, to offer me his deep apologies.

"I grant you, Sir Roderick, that I behaved ill to you and Mr.

Collingwood, and specially to Miss Denistoun. I had no business to drag her into the talk. . . . But I'm only a learner in the ways gentlemen behave. It doesn't come to me by nature, as it comes to luckier ones, whose parents and grandparents have bred it into the bone. You may put it that I've hair on my hoof and have to shave it carefully. What taking trouble can do I can make it do, and don't count the time wasted. But it's the unexpected that catches out a man like me. . . . You see, I came up thinking to find you alone: and I was so keen to see you, I paid no attention to the dog, queerly as he was behaving. I thought, maybe, he'd smelt a cat. There weren't any cats on the island, or aboard the _I'll Away_, or the cars, or the _Oceanic_. . . . And then I burst in after the hound, as soon as I realised that he meant mischief of some sort; and, of a sudden, there was Foe face to face with me, and you others treating him friendly as friendly. Was it any wonder that, coming on him like that and after hunting him more than half the world across, I let myself go?"

"Well, first of all," I answered coldly, "you may disabuse your mind of any notion that Mr. Collingwood and I were chatting with Doctor Foe in the way you suspect. As a matter of fact, after you left, we told him what we were trying to avoid telling him in Miss Denistoun's presence at the moment when you broke in--that, through his treatment of you, he had forfeited our friendship."

"Had he come to hear that?" asked Farrell,--"if it's a fair question."

"It's a perfectly fair question," said I, "and the answer is that he had not. He had come to give me in person some information for which I had written to him. . . . Can you guess? It was the precise lat.i.tude and longitude of your island. . . . And now, question for question. You hadn't tracked him here, for you have just said that your finding him in this room took you fairly by surprise."

"Almost knocked me over," Farrell agreed.

"Then what had been your purpose in calling on me?" I asked, "--if that, too, is a fair question."

"Well, I'll admit I was calling, in part, to get his address or discover his whereabouts. But that wasn't my only reason. My real reason and foremost--But before I tell it, Sir Roderick, will you answer me yet another question? Was it true, what Mr. Collingwood said?--that you were actually packing to search for me?"

"Mr. Collingwood," I answered, somewhat embarra.s.sed, "certainly would not have said it if it hadn't been true."

"Well, it fairly beat me," said Farrell, staring. "And it beats me again, now you confirm it. Searching for _me_?--Why? You couldn't have guessed there was money in it."

"It may sound strange to you, sir," said I pretty icily; "but I took that fancy into my head neither for your _beaux yeux_ nor for profit.

Moreover, if you don't understand without my help, I'll be shot if I can provide you with an explanation that won't strike you as wildly foolish. . . . However, if you must know, the thought of a fellow-creature marooned on that island, and of the bare chance that he might yet be alive to be rescued, had been preying on my mind ever since I heard Foe's tale, and parted with his friendship on account of it. Also it may appear extravagant, but through that old friendship I felt a sort of personal responsibility, as if Jack had left his trespa.s.s in my keeping. . . . But why discuss all this?

You're back, safe and sound, and the trip is off. When Jephson has finished unpacking, he'll step over to c.o.c.kspur Street and pay forfeit for the two berths."

"_Two_ berths?"

"Jephson was going with me. I fancy he looked forward to the adventure, and is a trifle disappointed this morning."

Farrell nodded to show that he understood. Yet he seemed to be considering something else, and kept his eyes fixed on me in a queer way.

"Sir Roderick," he said, after a pause, "your arrangements are all made for this voyage?"

"Oh, yes," said I. "Your turning up like this is quite a small nuisance in its way. I'd arranged with my lawyers, arranged with my bankers, let my flat here furnished from the first of next month (_that's_ the worst), taken out letters and pa.s.sport, made my will, stored my few bits of spare plate. Last week I spent down in Warwickshire, clewing up the loose tackle, holding heart-to-heart conversations with Collingwood and my steward. Collingwood's my neighbour down there, you know, and will help to look after things."

Farrell considered all this, slowly. "Excuse me, Sir Roderick," said he, "but is there no chance of your going back to your intention and re-packing?"

"Why on earth should I?" was my very natural question.

"Why, it's like this, sir," said Farrell, "--and now I'll come to the real reason that brought me yesterday. My real reason was a matter of business. . . . You may remember my telling you that, in New York, I'd consulted Renton, an old friend of mine, about raising the capital to take over and develop Santa Santissima, as we've agreed to call the island; and that Renton had no difficulty to raise the money. What I didn't tell you--not thinking it wise before company-- was that from the first I'd stipulated--with Hales as well as with Renton--that half the shares should be held in Great Britain.

Hales didn't care, as he put it, where in thunder the money came from, so long as it was good. Renton--as being British-born, though naturalised--made no objection and only one condition, that the syndicate should be a small one. If I could get half the capital raised quietly in England by one or two persons, why, so much the better. He could raise the other half without calling on Wall Street or starting so much as an echo. . . . Now, I don't mind telling you, Sir Roderick, that I had you in mind all the while. That island is a gold mine: the copra alone there represents whole fortunes running to waste: and even if old Buck Vliet still sails the waters--which I doubt, for the _Two Brothers_ hasn't been spoken or sighted within these four years, and he wasn't provisioned for whaling--still, the concession papers are made out in Hales's name and mine, and the duplicate doc.u.ments stored. . . . All I can say is, that I'm ready to put my own little pile upon it, to the last guinea. And I thought of you from the first; you having done me a good turn more than once, or tried to. Yes, sir: but the best of all would be your going out and making sure for yourself. You, that was preparing to go that distance to find a lost man--I say, sir, it would be heavenly, if you went and found a fortune instead. I've arranged a cable to Hales, and the _I'll Away_ will be waiting for you at Valparaiso. But in case he should miss--which he won't--here are papers for you: bearings of the island, sketch-map, copy of bond of agreement with him, copy of agreement with Renton. All these I was bringing to put into your hand yesterday. But, my G.o.d! Sir Roderick, now that I've heard what I've heard--that you were preparing to search the South Pacific for me, and for no worse reason than that a poor devil was cast away there, I'd ask you on my knees to sleep in the berth you've booked and travel to better purpose."

It has occurred to me since--and more than once or twice--that although the man and his offer were honest, he had a secondary purpose all this while: to get me out of the way lest I should embarra.s.s his pursuit of Foe and his other scheme of which I am to tell.

But, on the whole reckoning, I incline to think the man was perfectly sincere, and even eager to do me this kindness; which--as things turned out--was really an extravagant one, on the monetary calculation.

At any rate, after studying his face for a while, I called Jephson out from my bedroom and told him that I had changed my mind: we would sail, after all, and he might start re-packing at once. Jephson fairly beamed.

"But there's one thing I'd like to say," put in Farrell, while it was obvious that this order overwhelmed him with joy. "I want to have it clear between us that, joyful as I am at your acceptance, and grateful as I am for your seeing things in this light, it doesn't in any way compromise my dealing with Foe."

"If you take my advice," said I, "you'll drop Foe, and all this silly business of hatred. He has tried it on you, and up to a certain point it answered. You played him--I'll grant you, unknowingly--a perfectly d.a.m.nable trick. Don't smear your soul with any flattering unction, Mr. Farrell. You wrecked his life; and, in return, he set himself to wreck yours. Up to that point I can understand, though it all seems to me infernally silly. But in his monomania he went just that step too far, and has exchanged thereby the upper hand.

You have the cards now: yet I warn you against playing them. For, as sure as I sit here, I warn you that in the act of destroying him you will destroy yourself. I look back on his miserable pursuit, and I prophesy the end of yours."

"Well, it has taken me through fires of h.e.l.l," said he; "but I wouldn't have missed it. I'm the man now, and he's the coward."

"Quite so," said I. "Then be thankful and drop it. Do you want to retrieve his soul as he has found yours?"

Farrell mused over this for a while. "I can't explain it to you," he said. "I can't explain it to myself. But that man and I simply can't give one another up. As I woke it in him, so he wakes in me something that I can't be without, having once known it. It seems to be a necessary part of myself."

"There are a great many 'Can'ts' in that confession--for a strong man," was my comment; "and a trifle too much 'myself' for a man who has found himself. But you remember that meeting at the Baths, when you and Jack Foe first made acquaintance? Of course you do.

Well, there was a little man seated in the hall, fronting you, and he read the explanation and gave it to me later, as he helped me on with my coat. I made no account of it at the time: but he said that he'd seen another man looking out of your eyes, for a moment, and it gave him a scunner."

Again Farrell pondered. "I dare say he was right, too," he said thoughtfully. "When two men are made for one another, I guess their souls--if that's not too good a word--must exchange flesh and clothing now and then, so that for the moment there's a puzzle to separate t'other from which. . . . Has Foe told you about _her_-- about Santa?"

"He has," said I.

"Yet he can't have told you all: for he doesn't know it all--about Renton, for instance, and how I did that bolt from him to Costa Rica, and from Costa Rica to San Ramon. You must hear all about that, if you will: because, when you've inspected the island for yourself, your next business will be with Renton, and I want you to understand the man you will be dealing with."

Thereupon he told me: and that is how I was able, the other night, to relate what happened in Costa Rica and at San Ramon.

One of these days, when you're fairly rested, you shall have a full, dull, true, and particular account of the voyage upon which I started, next day, with Jephson, as per schedule: with a detailed description of Santa Island, or Santa Santissima (to give it its full name). But this story isn't about me: it concerns Foe and Farrell: and therefore it's enough to say here, that I reached Valparaiso and found Captain Jeff Hales waiting for me with his schooner fresh from dock, and fleet: that he and I took to one another in the inside of ten minutes; that our voyage, first and last, went like a yachting cruise; that we made the island and spent something more than two months on it, prospecting, mapping, choosing the sites for our factories that were to be, even planning a light tramway to cart their produce down to the grand north-eastern bay which (as Foe had warned me) proved to be the only anchorage. But Santa's cross was there, standing yet on the small beach where the castaways had landed, and no doubt it stands yet. No storm ever seriously troubles the water within that lovely protected hollow.

Returning to Valparaiso, I travelled north by steamer, by rail, by steamer and rail again, to New York, hunted up Renton, and found that my luck held; that I was dealing with a man as honest as Hales and keen as either of us. With half a dozen cable messages, to and from Farrell in London, we had everything fixed, and our company as good as a going concern, when the Chilian Government interposed a long, vexatious delay which, at one point, appeared to hint at an intention to repudiate the bargain.

Back I travelled; this time with Renton in company, and Renton mad as fire. It all turned out to be a bungle by some clerk that had taken to drink and forgetfulness; but it cost us a month or two before the Government of Senor Orrego, having no case, decided to do us justice without troubling the Courts. Renton and I returned in triumph through the grilling heats of July, and reached New York to find the papers announcing this war for a certainty: whereupon, without unpacking, I pelted for home.

From Southampton I made for London, and had two short interviews with Farrell amid the rush of rejoining the H.A.C., collecting kit, and the rest of it. Our talk was entirely about business, and was conducted at the National Liberal Club--the hostelry to which I had addressed all my letters and cables. I gathered that he used it almost as a permanent residence, having sold or given up his house at Wimbledon. He said nothing of Foe, and I forbore to ask questions.

From the H.A.C., in the general catch-as-catch-can of those early weeks of the war, I found myself on one and the same day pushed into a temporary Commission in the R.F.A., commanded down to Warwickshire to recruit for it; and met at my lodge-gate with a telegram ordering me off to Preston to collect a draft there and report its delivery at Aldershot. Funny sort of home-coming for a man returning after two years' absence! But there it was. I had just time by smart driving to catch the next down train at our local station: so, without even a glimpse of the ancestral roof, I put the dog-cart about and posted back.

For the next week or so, as Jimmy put it of his own very similar experience (he had joined up in the Special Reserve as a gunner three years before the war), I didn't spend a night out of my train.

Then came a morning--I had rolled up with my latest draft, from Berwick at 4.30 a.m.--when the Colonel sent for me to come to the orderly-room some ten minutes before he opened business, and then and there asked me if it was to my liking to come out to France with the division then moving, on the ammunition column of his brigade.

I walked back to the R.F.A. mess, picked up a newspaper in the ante-room, and dropped into a chair. My heart was beating like a girl's at her first ball. "France"--"France"--the very "r" in that glorious word kept beating in my ears with the roll of a side-drum.

I gripped the _Times_, steadied myself down to master the short little paragraph on which my eyes had been fixed, unseeing, for a couple of minutes, and found myself staring at this announcement:

"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Peter Farrell, Esq., of 15a The Albany, and Constantia, only daughter of the late George Wellesley Denistoun, Esq., J.P., D.L., of Framnel in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and of Mrs. Denistoun of 105 Upper Brook Street, W."