CHAPTER XXVII

THE GREAT GULF

The words died away in the still air. They had been but faintly whispered, and now for many moments there was no sound at all in the quiet shelter of the trees. Then for a little the absolute silence was broken by short and laboured breathing through clenched teeth; then it became absolute as before. Denis was mastering himself as best he might; his whole being was as a knotted muscle; but by degrees that also relaxed, and he stood once more like a thing of flesh and blood, only swaying a little on his feet. But Nan had neither stirred nor made a sound. It was as though her dress supported her, as the dresses of those days almost might, yet there was never a rustle from its silken dome. And in the narrow avenue it was almost dark.

"Devenish, of course?" he said at last, but so hoarsely that he had to say it twice.

It was worth the effort. It made Nan look up; it brought her back to life.

"Yes," she whispered in simple horror. "Yes--I am married to that villain!"

Their eyes met through the dusk, as in a lane of light. His face reflected the unmixed horror so remarkable in hers. Yet already some bell was ringing in his heart.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I loathe him!"

"Yet you are married?"

She spread out her hands in a gesture that was no answer to his incredulity. Quick as thought he caught her left.

"Where's the ring?"

"Yours is quite safe."

"But the wedding-ring--your wedding-ring?"

"I took it off the moment we met. It dropped in the porch. I couldn't let you find out that way."

Her hand also dropped out of his. He turned heavily away from her. It was as though for a moment he had cherished some mad hope; now he stood broken and aloof, shaken with sobs that never reached his throat; oblivious alike to the rustle of the silk dress behind him, to the fluttering featherweight of her hand upon his arm.

"Oh, Denis, Denis, if I could die ... if I could die! It is worse for me. You are not married; you are not tied for life. But I deserve it all, all, all.... There's no excuse for me, none. Yet there is some explanation--poor enough, God knows! Won't you listen to that? Won't you listen to me at all?"

He turned slowly round, and looked upon Nan with the unseeing fixity of the blind. "Go on," he said. "I am listening, and will listen."

"He cheated me!" she cried, passionately. "He took your letters, and he told me lies. But I allowed myself to be cheated," she added, miserably, "and I believed the lies; so I deserved not to find him out till it was too late; and I deserve this, Denis, I deserve it all. If only, only I could die!"

He soothed her as best he could, taking her hand in one of his, and stroking it mechanically with the other. The action might have reminded them of something long past; but the present absorbed both their minds. It was all that they would ever have together. It was their life.

"Don't tell me unless it helps you," he said, gently. "I begin to understand. And it was my fault--mine--for leaving you as I did."

"Your fault! Yet if you had written--if you only had written!" she cried, loudly exonerating him in one breath, softly reproaching in the next.

"I know. That was pride," he said bitterly. "I was so desperately unsuccessful up to Christmas! I did write in November, but I was always afraid that letter never went."

"I never got it. Not a word of any sort, dear," she said, simply, "did I have from you till nearly May. And then----"

"And then?" he repeated as she paused.

"Have you no idea what I am going to tell you?" she asked, a new twinge in her tone. She could scarcely have explained her feeling, but the least inkling in him would have implied some slight excuse for her, would in any case have helped her to confess the climax of her late credulity.

"None whatever," said Denis.

"Yet it was your writing. I can show it you, for I have it still."

"What writing do you mean?" he inquired, quite in the dark.

"The address on the parcel."

"What sort of parcel?" he exclaimed, as the truth flashed across him. "Quite small? Brown paper? Quick! Quick! I want to know!"

"Yes--yes--and you don't know what was in it! Oh, Denis!"

"I know what should have been," he said, grimly: "my first nugget--according to promise. But it was stolen, and afterward found."

"And you don't know what was put in instead? Did you lose nothing else?"

Denis stood stock-still in the deepening dusk. No, he had never thought of that; even now his simplicity could not credit it until he had drawn every detail from Nan's lips. The ring had possessed intrinsic value. He had always looked upon that as an ordinary theft. The discovery of the stolen nugget on Jewson's body had puzzled him, but it was partially accounted for by another strange fact which had come to light after the man's death, namely, that the nugget had been purchased by Jewson in the first instance, elsewhere on the diggings, and deliberately planted at the bottom of the shaft where Denis found it. And not till this moment, months afterward, had Denis penetrated the dead man's design.

"You have indeed been cheated," he said, bitterly. "Yet to believe me capable of behaving like that without a word! To have known me as little as all that! Why, there was trickery on the face of it. But how can I talk? They took me in, too--decent people don't dream of such villainy--so I was fair game at one end, and you at the other. I begin to see the whole thing. Do you remember when we said good-bye on board your ship?"

"Do I remember!"

"It was then you gave me what I wore night and day until it was stolen and sent back to you."

"Oh, Denis!"

"And it was then you made me promise to send it back to you if ever---- Oh, what a fool I was!"

"It was my doing--all. You didn't want to promise; it vexed you and hurt you, and it was all my fault."

"But I promised, and I was overheard, by the villain who is gone," said Denis. "He was in my cousin's cabin at the time, for I distinctly remember seeing him there as we went on deck. And he repeated every syllable to a ten times greater villain than himself, who is alive to answer for his crime!" and he ground his teeth, little dreaming that he had done the living criminal a double injustice in one breath.

"I am not sure that he is alive," faltered Nan, above her breath, but that was all.

"You are not sure?"

"I have not seen him since our wedding day!"

Denis was dumfoundered, but enlightened.

"So you found out just too late," he groaned.

"Yes; and the hard part was that I might have found out in time," she said sadly but only sadly, as if telling of some other person. "There were such a lot of letters for me that morning," she went on, "and there was so little time. I didn't even look at them; I said I would read them in the train; but after all I looked through the envelopes as they were dressing me to go away."

He heard her shuddering, and his lips moved. It was black night in the avenue now, and deepest twilight through the trees on either hand. So he never knew how meekly she stood before him in this bitter hour; even the striking humility of a voice so memorable for its spirit was lost upon a mind too absorbed in the sense to heed the sound.

"Your letter was among them," she went on. "Which letter I cannot say; it was the first that ever reached me, and I was in two minds whether to read a line of it or to tear it up unopened; but I could not bring myself to do that, nor yet resist just looking to see what you said. And there in the first few lines I saw it was but one of many letters that had gone astray! It was the letter in which you began by saying how often you had written lately, though you had never yet had a single word from me. But how could I write when _I_ never had a line to tell me where you were?"

"I don't blame you for that," said Denis. "I never blamed you in my life before to-day; when I know all I may not blame you yet. I understand nearly everything as it is." There was a slight emphasis on one of the last words, but it was very slight: in their common misery he was now as unemphatic as she.

"It was the letter," continued Nan, "in which you told me how splendidly you were doing, and how soon you hoped to sail; I think it must have come in a much quicker ship than yours; but it was a long time before I read that part. I nearly fainted--not quite--but they sent downstairs for our doctor. It was a very small party--everything was hurried and quite private--but Dr. Stone has known me since I was born, and fortunately he was there. I told him everything, and what I suspected in a moment. He tried to talk me over, but I refused even to see my husband until my suspicions were set at rest, and appealed to him to stop a scandal. He did so--there is no public scandal to this day. He went downstairs and declared that the hurry and excitement had proved too much for me; that it was nothing serious, but I could not possibly go away that day. That emptied the house, and gave me time to think. But they all pressed me to see Captain Devenish, so at last I did see him. And in my misery I came down to his level, and pretended not to care if he would only tell the truth."

"And did he?"

"How can I tell? He told me a tale, and he brazened it out. I believe it was the truth. The fraud was not begun by him, but first he countenanced it and then he had to carry it on. He had taken your letters systematically for weeks; whenever a mail came in, here he was, on the spot, and ready for the worst. He boasted of it, gloried in it, said he would play the same game again for the same stake! That was the end. I never looked at him again, though he stayed in the house a week to save the appearances that were so dear to him and to my father; but it was I who saved them, little as I cared. Next day I was really ill, and before I came down again he was gone."

"Gone where?"

"To the Black Sea. You see, he had to go in a week, in any case."

"I don't understand."

"To the war--with a draft of the Grenadiers."

The war! Denis had never heard of it until the night before, when the pilot came aboard his ship, and since landing his own affairs and his own anxieties had filled his mind down to this cruel culmination. So Ralph Devenish, traitor and thief, had fled to fight his country's battles because he had not the pluck to stand and fight his own! Denis could not be fair for a moment to such an officer and such a gentleman; it was not in his allowance of very human nature.

"Now you have told me everything," he cried, "I can understand all but one thing. I can understand your disbelieving in me, your resentment of my silence, your failure to see that what you received without a line of explanation could never have been sent by me. It was your idea that I should send you back your ring if I changed--if _I_ changed! You thought I would take you at your word without a word of my own to ask so much as your forgiveness. Well, you were at liberty to think what you liked of me; you little knew me, and it was a poor compliment to what you did know; but all that I can understand. What I cannot and never will understand is how you flew round the compass and married that fellow within two months!"

What had Nan to say? She had long been utterly unable to understand it herself. Ralph had never seemed so nice; she herself had been wretched, reckless, wounded, numbed; nothing had seemed to matter any more, except to show that she did not care; and that was her wicked way of showing it. Oh! she had been wicked, wicked; but see her punishment! See the shipwreck of her whole life! He who understood so much--Denis--dear Denis--could he not forgive the mad sequel?

"Forgive!" He laughed out harshly. "Oh, yes, I can forgive you; but that's the end. We must never see each other again. This is good-bye; and the sooner it's said the better for one and all."

He was actually holding out his hand. Nan caught it and clung to it with both of hers.

"Good-bye?" she almost screamed. "You are not going away like this? You wouldn't leave me more desolate and desperate than I was before? You'll stay, or at least come back to see my father--to see me?"

Denis did not hesitate for a moment. "No," said he, firmly; "no, it's not a bit of use my staying to see anybody or any more of you; and the sooner you let me go the better and easier for us both."

"But where will you go?" she asked, partly to gain time; yet the desire to detain him was not greater than the dread of sending him she knew not whither.

"God knows!" he answered. "Not to my death, if I can help it, and if that's what you mean, but very likely back to Ballarat. I was making a small fortune there. I might go back and double it, or lose it all. What does it matter now?"

Even while he spoke, the vision of his mates on the claim in Rotten Gully rose warmly to his mind; and yet, even before he ceased speaking, he knew that he could never go back to them now.

"Don't go!" she urged piteously. "Denis, Denis, don't leave me so soon. You are always so ready to leave me, and see what came of it before! I never could forget it--I never could--it made all the difference in the end. But now you are the only one I have to look up to in the world; stay and help me; be my friend. Oh, Denis, you once saved me from the sea. Stay--do stay, for God's sake, Denis--and save me from myself!"

It needed heart of flint and will of adamant to resist so wild and touching an appeal; but Denis had soon formed his own conception of his duty, and every moment since he had been subconsciously hardening himself to its performance. All his character came into his resolve: strength, promptitude, unflinching courage, undeniable obstinacy, and withal a certain narrowness, a matter of upbringing and of inexperience, in questions of right and wrong. She had married another man; there was an end of it, and let the end come quickly. It would be wrong to see more of her, wrong even to remain her friend. So he had argued in his heart; so he answered her now, kindly, tenderly, with much emotion, but with more fixity of purpose and finality of decision.

"But it isn't the end!" cried Nan, wildly. "It's only the beginning--because I was cheated into marrying him, and because ... _I love you, Denis, and only you!_"

It was long before Denis remembered how he broke away from her; how and where he left her came back to him slowly after hours. It was in the house. He had carried her there. She loved him. He could not leave her out there to creep in through the dark alone, even if she could have crept half the way unaided. But the struggle came before all that. The rest made no immediate impression on his mind. He was a mile on his road before his brain began to clear, on the crest of a hill, where a sudden night wind searched his skull. Under his eyes, and a rising moon, the road he had to traverse fell almost from his feet, to glimmer away into a flat and open country, and to remind him of the ship's wake on a calm night; only it was no longer the wake; it was his course. On the horizon the faint glow of the metropolis was just discernible, and to ears fresh from the incessant noises of the ocean, the hum of the great human hive seemed not absolutely inaudible in the young night's stillness. Yet every now and then there was a rattle of parched leaves, as if the quiet earth stirred in its sleep; for some minutes Denis also heard his own heart beating from the speed with which he had come so far; and as this abated, somewhere in the nether distance, on the way to London, a clock struck seven.