A MEDITERRANEAN MYSTERY

A
MEDITERRANEAN
MYSTERY

BY
FRED E. WYNNE

NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1923

Copyright, 1923, by
FRED. E. WYNNE
Printed in U. S. A.

TO
ANNIE E. JOHNSON
A TRIBUTE TO OLD AND LASTING FRIENDSHIP

CONTENTS

A MEDITERRANEAN MYSTERY

CHAPTER I
IN WHICH I ORDER CHAMPAGNE

I  HATE the sight of those terra-cotta envelopes that telegrams come in. They have often announced ill news to me, and even in the absence of ill news they bear with them an atmosphere of emergency, suggestions of sudden action, which is always detestable to me.

Bates stood by while I read the ugly puce form which announced, had I known it, the opening of the curious chapter in my otherwise quiet life which I am now trying to recall and to record in its incredible details.

Incredible I mean from my then point of view, for a life and circumstances more remote from adventure than mine were then, it would be hard to imagine.

“There is no reply,” I said to Bates, who stood awaiting instructions. “It’s Mr. Edmund coming for a few nights. Tell Mrs. Rattray he will be here for dinner, and see that a room is ready.”

“Yes, sir. And if he comes without luggage again?”

A little pang of a kind of jealousy shot through me.

It was two years since I or Bates had seen this ne’er-do-well brother of mine, a year since I had even heard from him, and yet the circumstances of his coming without luggage was fresh in this man’s mind, there was a lightening of his countenance at the mention of his name, and I knew well that my dinner would be one of unwonted luxury.

“He can wear some of my evening things, and give him pyjamas, and—one of your own razors, Bates.”

I will not have other people using my razors or my fountain pen.

Edmund had always been an anxiety and an expense to me. He was now the only incalculable element left in my ordered life. But Bates seemed to be waiting for something, and it was as though a gleam of Edmund’s endearing eyes, the crisp curl above his forehead, the flash of his teeth between merrily curved lips, were faintly reflected from the expectant look in Bates’s face.

“Oh, and, Bates, you can bring up a bottle of the ’47 port, and decant it carefully.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else from the cellar?”

“No,” I said. “I suppose there’s whisky and claret in the dining-room.”

“Very well, sir,” said Bates reproachfully as he closed the door.

“No,” I thought. “I’m hanged if I’m going to have champagne up. He’d only expect it every night, and he hasn’t even written for a year. Now of course he’s only coming for more money.”

Then I rang the bell and Bates returned with suspicious alacrity. “You’d better bring up a bottle of the ’93 Pommery,” I said.

It was one of those delightful days in March when there is real daylight in the late afternoon, with a white gleam in the sky, and a wind keen enough to make possible the indoor joys of winter.

The aspect of my study in my Sussex vicarage was extraordinarily peaceful to me. When I looked over the top of my book, as I often did, I looked into the bright friendly eyes of a fire of mingled coal and drift-wood. When I turned my face half round to the left, as I also often did, I looked across the familiar, discreet harmonies of my room, to a long French window which framed a view of my lawn whose grass was now smoothing and renewing itself after the winter ruffling, of the red footpath and the border already gilt with crocuses; of stately trees beyond my frontier, their bare branches showing the faint pubescence of early spring. Among these trees were the red tiled roofs of the village, and beyond it the Channel, eye-grey to-day under the silver sky, and covered with rushing “white horses” whipped up by the steady East wind.

There was one long banner of smoke on the horizon, and a few miles from shore the brown sails of a couple of trawlers going close-hauled to windward with the flood-tide under them.

All this peacefulness and beauty was, I say, particularly grateful to me. It was like a gentle accompaniment to the book which I was reading with no less attention on account of this consciousness of my surroundings.

I had attended a clerical meeting in the morning and had, I suppose unwisely, said what I really thought about some of the topics under discussion.

Now I was re-reading with especial interest the chapter on “Persecution” in Lecky’s Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe. Only a few hours before I had seen among my colleagues the faces of the persecutor and the heresy-hunter, and I was undoubtedly heretical. It was difficult to reflect that if all this had happened but a short time ago, say in the time of my own great-great-grandfather, these same men would have rejoiced to see my live body roasted; that even now, given the power and the custom, the spirit of Calvin and Torquemada was not dead, that it still lit the eyes of living men who could believe in “Exclusive Salvation.”

After the fret, the prejudice, and the spluttering of modern theological controversy there was healing for my soul in the calm intellectual austerity of Lecky.

Such were my preoccupations then. The academic interests of a scholarly, well-to-do, bachelor parson of forty-five with a hobby for homing pigeons.

I had just looked at the clock and realised with another glow of satisfaction that my afternoon tea was almost due, when my man Bates came in with this disturbing telegram.

This Edmund who was about to burst again into the quiet routine of my life was my only brother, now practically my only relative, and some fifteen years younger than myself. At the time of his first appearance in the world I was old enough to regard the news of his arrival as an indiscretion on the part of my parents. My father was a younger son of our old and once-distinguished Irish family. He was one of those soldiers who are always doing the hard rough work of the Empire and seeing the other men in the comfortable positions getting the “Honours and Rewards.” I was born in India, and thanks to my mother’s moderate fortune had been sent home in childhood to receive an expensive and perfectly respectable education.

At the time of Edmund’s birth my father was at home, railing at the Indian Government and the War Office, earning, I fear, the reputation of a bore with a grievance in the Service Clubs, and certainly blasting any prospects of a further career he might have had, by his frank and perfectly just criticism of important persons.

I was at Wellington, destined for Sandhurst and the Army, for in spite of my father’s atrocious experiences it never occurred to either of us that the world held any other career for me.

Looking back I don’t think I really had any desire to be a soldier or knew at all what was implied in it. It just seemed inevitable, and I suppose I had up to then as much part in shaping my destinies as most people. I suppose that is how the ranks of the pawn-broking, cheese-mongering, grave-digging, and other apparently undesirable callings are kept filled.

But I knew enough to resent quite definitely the halving of my patrimony with this younger brother, concerning whose intrusion I had been in no way consulted.

I bitterly resented also the continued illness of my mother after this event.

During the greater part of my short life, which then seemed so long, she had been but a memory of infancy, repainted during one long summer when she had been home, and then her gracious, lovely presence had utterly outshone even the ideal of memory.

I had for her a boy’s romantic devotion, and her death when the child was a year old and I almost a man, overwhelmed me with the force of a man’s passionate grief abrading the exquisitely tender sensorium of a child.

And then the baby Edmund began to grow like her. From the first his eyes and mouth were hers. As he learned to speak he spoke with her voice, and innumerable little gestures reminded me of her. This was my first solace; and my early, selfish, boyish resentment died down and warmed into something else, transmuted by grief into the second great attachment of my adolescence.

Nothing could quite kill this, and I suppose that is why, at forty-five, I ordered the champagne for him.

Edmund was of course intended for the Navy, and as he grew older it seemed as if this were Nature’s arrangement as well as the family’s. There was no mere acquiescence in this case, as in mine.

But all these family dispositions were shattered just about the time I should have entered Sandhurst.

The whole of my mother’s property consisted of her interest in certain estates in the Straits Settlements, and by some mysterious fluctuation of trade these suddenly became almost valueless. Relying on the stability of this property my father had invested the whole of his patrimony in an annuity, so that the family might live with more dignity during his and her lifetime.

With this we still could make ends meet, and even overlap, while he lived. But at his death there would be only a pittance for Edmund and myself. It would be utterly impossible for either of us to maintain the family tradition in the Services.

For a youth in my position it was considered that there was only one respectable alternative—the Church.

It was agreed by everyone, including myself, that I had not sufficient brains for the Bar. We were that simple kind of folk that really believe that a high order of intellect is necessary for success at the Bar. I am told that this carefully fostered superstition is not yet quite dead. I was accordingly entered at one of the less expensive colleges at Oxford, where I followed all the fashions, social, mental and moral; acquired the usual affectations; had my mind rendered as far as possible inaccessible to ideas; and otherwise enjoyed the advantages of what is called a “University Education.”

It was the fashion then for superior persons to be patronisingly enthusiastic about what they called the “Working Man.” I accordingly obtained a curacy in an extremely unpleasant industrial district, and entered Holy Orders without so much as suspecting that I had a mind or a character of my own.

From the “Working Man” I learned a little about the technique of pigeon flying and breeding. This information has been invaluable to me ever since. It has provided me with one of the principal interests in my life, and even a little very precious distinction, when one of my birds came home fourth in a great cross-channel event. I also learned that the “Working Man” has no use whatever for gentlemanly young curates from Oxford, or their quaint little fistful of prejudices. I had the good sense to get out of his way as soon as I could and begin my education.

In the meantime Edmund had developed on rather startling lines. Two preparatory schools had refused to keep him after a single term. The first on the grounds that he had “corrupted the entire establishment,” the second because he was “destitute of the moral faculty.” My father said the case was much more serious, that “he had not the instincts of a gentleman.”

My father thrashed him well and hard. When this was over Edmund said, “I’m afraid, daddy, this hurts you much more than it does me.”

Then my father consulted a doctor who said that “a certain insensibility to pain was a frequent accompaniment of the criminal diathesis.” He recommended a low diet and bromides. Edmund promptly broke out in spots. Thus he got his way, which was to enter the mercantile marine, as the Navy was debarred by circumstance.

This was grievous to my father’s old-fashioned prejudices, but anything was better than living with an insoluble problem with whom everyone fell in love.

The reports received from the training ship went far to reconcile him. These invariably described Edmund as “obedient and keen.”

I am always glad to reflect that my poor father’s anxiety and perplexity about this well-beloved child were thus allayed before he very unexpectedly died, and Edmund and I were left alone as regards relatives.

For of our cousins of the senior branch in Ireland we knew hardly anything. They wrote kindly and respectfully about my father, but did not offer to come to the funeral.

Shortly after this Edmund went to sea as a gentleman apprentice. He was away some five months and returned “in irons.” I learned that he had broached cargo in order to obtain extra rum for his mess. He explained to me that “everybody was in it, and a fellow couldn’t stand out. I should have been horribly ragged if I had, and it would have been a damned unsporting thing to do. We drew lots for who was to get the stuff, and of course it fell to me. Just the damned family luck. I didn’t want the beastly stuff myself, for the simple reason that I don’t drink rum—anything else you like, but not rum. It makes your breath smell beastly.”

I was convinced that his tale was true and felt that on the whole he had behaved well.

Of course one could not expect the magistrate to take the same view. This old gentleman enjoyed himself tremendously with such an unusual text to preach about. However, when he had worked off the last of his platitudes, he announced that he had decided to give Edmund the benefit of the First Offender’s Act. He said he was influenced largely by the fact of the punishment already undergone by the prisoner through his having come home “in irons.” I believe the poor old thing imagined that this expression involved actual fetters.

As a matter of fact Edmund’s colleagues and the cook had combined to ensure his having a fairly comfortable time. He said himself “they didn’t even get ratty about my having no work.”

So Edmund left the Court not without a stain on his character, and saddled with certain responsibilities as to reporting to the police which he described in terms so blasphemous that even to hear him made me feel unfrocked, like Stevenson’s maiden lady when she overheard the Jongleurs’ repartee.

Of course Edmund’s indentures were cancelled, and the problem of his future became to me a very anxious one.

It did not at all worry Edmund. He regarded the world as his oyster.

Shortly before this catastrophe I had been presented to a small “living” in Warwickshire by one of our distant and grandiose relatives who had the iniquitous right of advowson. I took Edmund down there in order that we might “discuss the situation.”

My parlour-maid at once fell in love with him, and he trod on one of the best pigeons in my modest loft.

I pointed out that our joint income, including my stipend, was likely to be less than £400 a year.

Edmund said that seemed a good lot for two unmarried blokes.

As his own share was less than £50, I thought this was cool.

“But you can’t stop on here indefinitely doing nothing.”

“No,” he agreed, “not indefinitely. I think there’s just time for a cigarette before dinner.”

It was impossible to get him to talk seriously about the future. When I tried I was always whirled away on the wings of his stories of places he had seen and men he had met. He talked so vividly and had so fully the artist trick of setting a character before one, in the round and alive in a sentence, that I once suggested writing as a possible career. His whole being radiated scorn.

“Quill-driving be damned,” he said. “Even if I knew how to do it, I’m not the sort of man. I’m the sort of man, at least I shall lead the sort of life, for other people to write about.”

I was actually, without consulting him, humbling myself to try a jerk at the strings of the “Family Influence” on his behalf, when he disappeared.

After three days he wrote:

“Dear Old Man,—I’m back to the sea, so no need to worry. I’ve got just the chance I wanted, a first-rate sailing-ship wanting another deck-hand. I made a lucky purchase of a very drunken old sailor-man’s papers. No questions were asked as they were short of hands, and I soon convinced them I knew my job. Naturally I have dropped the family name pro tem. and won’t be sporting our coat-of-arms at present. I’ve sent a line to Scotland Yard to tell them I’ve got a nice opening in the haberdashery line in the Midlands, and so won’t be looking them up for a bit. I’ll send you a name and address to write to as soon as there is any chance of knowing a port of call in advance. Tell Louisa not to fret too much, and I’ll try to bring you home a nice parrot instead of the pigeon I damaged. This time I’m going to be a real good, sensible boy, and get on and all the rest of it. Honestly, dry land seems to burn the soles of my feet after a few days.

“Very many thanks to you for all you’ve done. This is bound to be a long trip, and though I mayn’t see you again for a year or two, you may be sure of my real honest love. I shall make a bee line for your place whenever I do come home.”

This parting was a wrench to me, and my home seemed very dull and miserable for a time. I had had my second sentimental tragedy, for I had loved, and for a short time had been happy in my love. It had all ended in disillusion and suffering for me, and again Edmund had been my solace. Until he had gone I did not know how much I was dependent on him.

Nevertheless I had again the feeling that he had behaved well. The incident of the papers purchased from the drunken sailor troubled my conscience a little, but I really scarcely knew what was involved in this, or to what extent it might have been a fair bargain. I trusted Edmund not to have done anything mean, and his sailing under a false name was to me nothing but the breach of a social convention. I had come to look upon most conventions as things made for the guidance of fools, to be disregarded by sensible men as soon as they became inconvenient.

I know it may be argued that this theory of mine is exactly that of the criminal. It is; but the criminal is only a fool with some independence of judgment—an exception.

The majority of fools walk between the clipped hedges. The wise minority wanders in safety and at large, being careful that the fools do not witness their excursions. We have our own boundaries which we do not transgress.

In the meantime the deaths of two of our Irish cousins from diphtheria had placed me quite near succession to the entailed portion of the family estate, but the present incumbent being a young vigorous man about to marry an heiress, I had never regarded the possibility of my inheriting.

It was only a few months after Edmund’s departure that this youth went fishing in waders when he should have been in bed, and died very suddenly of appendicitis. I was amazed and rather horrified to find myself an Irish landlord.

I resigned my living and went over to Ireland, but neither the place nor the prospect of that life attracted me. I did not understand it, and felt a stranger and usurper. Everything was in the hands of a most capable firm of land-agents in Dublin.

There was a revenue that to me represented great wealth.

The place, though very large, could easily be let for the fishing and shooting. I deliberately ran away, and became that accursed thing—an absentee landlord. I salved my conscience by insisting on a policy of foolish generosity to my tenants and found myself equally abused by the Press of all parties in Ireland.

After some rather distracted wanderings I settled down in the Sussex vicarage in which this chapter opens. My researches in Byzantine history which shared my energies with pigeon flying had attracted a little attention from some of the learned, and thus I had met the Bishop at the Athenæum. He was patron of my present living, and as no clergyman in his diocese could afford the upkeep of the large and beautiful vicarage to which a stipend of £200 a year was attached, he gladly offered it to me and I as gladly accepted it.

I had no qualms of conscience, since I was going to give the Church more than I received from her in the way of money; I liked the work of a country parson, and believed I could be helpful to a few fellow human beings. As to doctrine, that came within my category of conventions. I had acted in good faith at the time I took my ordination vows, and if I thought I had grown wiser since, there was no need to make a fuss about it. I wanted no one to believe or disbelieve as I did, but I did want to encourage people to behave well. I had many of my father’s old-fashioned prejudices, and honestly believed it to be a good thing that the Church as well as the Army should be officered as far as possible by gentlemen.

Thus the years passed very placidly for me. I and my house were in the capable charge of Bates and Mrs. Rattray, my housekeeper and cook, one of the best and wisest women I have ever met. Other servants came and went at her discretion, but my household affairs seemed always to run on ball-bearings, and Bates tempered for me the tyranny of the gardener and the coachman.

I acquired four different reputations.

As the breeder of “Amaryllis” who came home fourth in the great cross-channel race already mentioned, my name was familiar in every colliery and public-house in the north of England.

Among a select circle of the learned I was known as a conscientious and critical student of an obscure period of history.

In my parish I was generally esteemed as a kindly and generous priest and friend.

But by my clerical colleagues I was distrusted. If I was only suspected of heresy, I was positively known to be a trimmer in the vital matter of Eastward Position! When I officiated in other people’s churches I always adopted the position and methods to which the congregation were accustomed. Thus both parties united in calling me “Mr. Facing-both-ways,” and a certain very earnest Evangelical once said quite rude things about “Laodiceans.”

This buzzing in my ears was almost my only worry, as Edmund was my only anxiety.

His first ship was burned in the Canton River, and he was landed penniless. He got a cable sent to me by the British Consul. Instead of sending what he asked for I cabled £250 and an urgent message to return.

I waited in vain for his arrival, eager to share with him all the comfort that had come into my life. Instead I got a letter in reply to one I had written on chance of his start being delayed. He congratulated me on my good fortune: had gone up country and invested two hundred of my good pounds in some wild-goose land speculation. All that was wanted to make the money bring forth an hundredfold was another thousand.

It was curious to me that I resented the loss of this £250 much more than I should have done when I was a poor man. I knew that this was the effect of possessing money on ordinary men, but I suppose no man expects to find himself reacting after the manner of his kind.

I was angry and sent another £50 and a peremptory message. Then I was sorry. I could see Edmund cashing the draft and shying from the insult like a young horse from the unexpected. I would have given the thousand to have him back.

But would not the thousand have kept him there until he lost it in its turn?

I heard no more and settled back as comfortably as possible into my groove. But for the first time I felt Edmund had not behaved well, a film formed on the surface of my warm love for him, and I knew there was anger towards myself in his heart.

Nearly two years passed during which he wrote three times when he wanted money—paltry sums which I loathed sending, but I could not trust him with a larger amount, though God knows I was willing to share my all with him, if he would only spend it and live on it.

Then he had come, announced by wire from Southampton.

He came in his fo’c’sle kit, with three sovereigns and some shillings which he called his “savings.” But he brought the promised parrot in a gilded cage, and a costly offering of Chinese silk for Louisa, who had long ago vanished into the limbo which awaits parlour vestals disapproved of by Mrs. Rattray.

I admit I was a little nervous about the effect of his arrival and appearance on the arbiters of my household, but in twenty-four hours they were all his slaves. He talked to Bates as to a fellow man without any spurious bridging of the fixed gulf, and presented him with a strange exotic pipe. The Chinese silks destined for Louisa he gave to Mrs. Rattray, and I overheard him telling the entranced lady that he had brought them home for her in gratitude for her care of myself, about which he said I wrote so constantly. Thus I was made as it were accessory to his falsehoods and a partaker in the benefit of them.

Most amazing of all I found him plucking fruit I would not have dared to touch while he told sea-tales to the completely subjugated gardener.

To me he was delightful as ever. There was all his boyish affection, but that film was there, and I was aware of the spell he exercised as something to be resisted in his own interest. We never spoke of my refusal to send the thousand, but the memory of it was there between us.

He was then only twenty-three, but his aspect and manner of a fully equipped man of the world, of vigour and competence to subdue circumstances to his will, made him seem older. It justified a certain humorous treatment of myself as a kind of “dear old thing.” I had to brace myself to keep my head.

It was not until the third evening that I fairly got the talk on to his own affairs and prospects.

I unfolded a scheme I had for settling him in the family estate as my representative. I explained my own coward flight and my desire, that notwithstanding that, the name should not lapse.

“In any case,” I argued, “your son, if you ever have one, will inherit. I shall not marry.”

“Everybody thinks that,” he objected.

“We won’t discuss it,” I said, “but in my case there are reasons why you may take it as definite.”

He looked up and saw at once that this was final.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “very sorry, old man. But even for the sake of a possible Davoren of the next generation, I can’t accept your offer.”

“Why?”

“To begin with it’s too generous.”

“It’s my desire—for my own sake.”

“In any case I’m not the man for the job. I couldn’t do it any more than you could yourself. Fancy me a country gentleman! M.F.H. I suppose, and I can’t even ride! I should start comic and become pathetic. I’m only a sort of ticket o’ leave man still, and they’d want to make me a magistrate!”

I disagreed with him, but saw that argument was useless and abandoned this favourite project with regret.

“Have you any plan yourself?” I asked.

“Well, you see, it’s the old story. Dry land burns my feet.”

“But you can’t go on always—before the mast.”

“No. I can take my master’s certificate.”

This sounded pleasantly practical to me, and I was surprised and gratified to learn that he had mastered the theoretical side of navigation and could, as he said, “pass the old Board of Trade exams, with one hand tied behind him.”

I encouraged the notion and told him I had no doubt of getting the old trouble with the police cancelled by some of my influential friends on the grounds of lapse of time, youthful indiscretion and subsequent good behaviour.

He laughed at the last clause in a way that made me anxious.

“Well,” he said, “they know nothing about me over here.”

“Then you can go to sea in your own name and in a decent capacity.”

“Yes,” he drawled satirically, “as Third Officer on a P. & O. I suppose, showing ladies round the ship, putting on a boiled shirt and company manners for dinner. No. I’m afraid I should be no better at that than the squire business.”

“But there must be a start of some sort.”

“Not that sort. You people who stop at home see life as if it was half a dozen sets of railway lines, and a man must run on one or the other. It isn’t like that at all. If a man just dives in as he would into the sea, he can swim, he can live. There’s always something to eat. Making money is only the stake on the game, but the game is played for its own sake. All the duffers are losers, and if you’re not a duffer you win. Then you can come out of it and be as respectable as you like. You will at least have your own memories to live on.”

“It’s a bit vague,” I said, deliberately unmoved by his eloquence.

“To be precise, then, my game is going to be trade. When I’ve got my master’s certificate I mean to be master and part owner of a little trading brigantine out East. I’ve studied the thing and I know the business. It’s the life I like and understand, and there’s pots of money in it when you know the ropes, and the right people. I’m not talking any story-book rot. There are commodities out there that you can trade best in in small boats. Little cargoes of high value. Things people know nothing about at home.”

“It all means capital, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, of course one must have some capital, very little to start. To people in the know it’s a first-rate investment.”

I said no more, and Edmund knew I meant to refuse to find the money for him. I can understand better now how exasperating I must have seemed. A country parson wrapping himself in a cloak of ignorance and taking it for superior wisdom!

However, he kept his temper perfectly, but this little root of bitterness between us grew and swelled.

He stopped with me during the weeks it took to obtain his certificate and satisfy the legal authorities of his having purged his early offence. Then he signed on as second officer on board an East-bound tramp. Beyond his necessary expenses and £50, for which he insisted on giving me an IOU, he would take nothing from me.

I know nothing of his Odyssey during the next two years, except that he told me that through friends in Hong-Kong he had secured a small interest in a trading venture and had both made and lost money. But he came home as poor as he went, though fuller than ever of confidence. As gay hearted at twenty-five as he had been at eighteen and delightful as ever to look upon.

I had good news for him. During his absence there had been an opportunity of realising the remnant of my mother’s estate, and acting under a Power of Attorney I had from him I had sold out on his behalf as well as my own.

There was thus a sum of nearly £2,000 awaiting Edmund. Had I known why the property came to have a value at all, and held on until the “Rubber Boom” developed, it would have been nearer £10,000. As it was, others made this money. But to do Edmund justice, he never reproached me with this.

He went back to the East with his fortune, his high spirits, and his confidence.

He wrote twice at long intervals, each time wanting money. He explained that this was for necessary current expenses, not for speculation; that his capital was practically intact but locked up in trade. Freights and markets had gone against him every time, but it was only a matter of holding on. He was bound to win out all right.

I seemed to see a wistful eye and a trembling lip in the letters, and I hated the thought of Edmund beaten. I think I wanted him to prove me wrong to myself. And yet the sending of the money was oddly annoying, though I neither missed it nor grudged it. It somehow thickened that film on our affections.

Thus as I have said for over a year I had heard nothing until this telegram arrived.

I trust I have explained my reluctance to order the champagne, and my final capitulation to Bates’s reproachful eye.

CHAPTER II
THE BRANDY HOLE

EDMUND’S appearance on arrival was a surprise.

Instead of the fo’c’sle kit, or the uniform of a needy officer of the mercantile marine, which had disfigured his previous appearances, he came arrayed in blue serge. He wore a suit designed by a tailor with a soul for his art, somehow suggesting an association with the sea in lines that everywhere emphasised the grace and strength of his figure, while conforming to the strictest tradition of Savile Row. Everything about him was in keeping. His luggage, that great index of a man’s prosperity, was of the solidest and richest leather, not too new, and with the exquisite surface and the rich tone that leather acquires under the hands of a first-rate servant.

I had never seen Edmund like this. His air of distinction disconcerted me. It made me proud of him, but shy also. This was such a new, strange Edmund. And yet just the same in his warm affection.

His presence blew away all the mists of distrust and resentment as though they were a miasma of my own creation, the remembrance of which shamed me to a feeling of meanness. I felt paltry in my own eyes.

I remembered what he had said of life, and felt myself an empty wagon on a side-track.

A queer shudder of apprehension went down my spine at the thought that he had but to couple me to his motive force and I would be a helpless thing to be dragged behind him.

Then I bethought me I had got the metaphor wrong. I would be on a track no longer, but in tow to him on the high seas of life—a thing terrifying to a middle-aged parson who had long ago found a backwater and bobbed at anchor in it. All these ideas, unformulated, passed through my mind in the fuss of his arrival and our greetings.

At dinner he made merry over the pretentiousness of the wine.

“Confess, now, you would not have had champagne up for a poor devil of a deck-hand!”

“I wouldn’t have had it in any case. It was Bates insisted.”

“Pardon me, sir,” said Bates.

Bates had so got into the habit of talking to me during my usual solitary meals, that he committed the unpardonable indiscretion in a servant of having ears and a voice. It was plain he did not regard Edmund as “company.”

“Well you didn’t actually say anything,” I admitted in justice to him.

Edmund laughed, evidently a little triumphant at the devotion of Bates. He insisted on his bringing another glass and pledging him.

Informal as the occasion was, Bates was a little self-conscious at this.

“My best respects, sir,” he said as he lifted the glass.

I watched Edmund, wondering what was the new expression in his face that somehow dissatisfied me.

His experiences, whatever they were, had made little change in him. His charm was undiminished, perhaps increased. But there was some change that would have eluded anyone less intimate than myself.

“A portrait painter would catch it,” I thought, seeking for the word to clarify my impression.

As he nodded over his glass to Bates, it came to me.

“Surrender!” I almost spoke it.

What could he have surrendered? Something that had been precious I was certain.

All our talk was of trivial things at home as though by mutual avoidance of any discussion of his adventures; we were dominated by the fencing shyness that comes over men, however intimate, when a discussion of importance is inevitable between them.

There was a silence as we tasted the first glass of the precious port, I wondering if he would say that it had passed its prime.

Then, as though from beneath the table, came a sound, to me familiar and somehow pleasant in its way, but puzzling, even disconcerting to strangers: the distant, muffled ring of iron upon iron. It was the unmistakable thud of a blacksmith’s hammer on soft red iron followed by the clear taps on the cold resonant anvil, repeated in regular rhythm.

“What the deuce is that?” asked Edmund, listening.

“They’re working late at the smithy.”

“Is there a new smithy?”

“As a matter of fact it’s a very old one. But, of course, it was closed when you were here before. It’s been going about a year now. I’ve got quite accustomed to the sound. In fact it’s company sometimes.”

“But the old smithy was right down near the beach?”

“It’s there still, but it’s not 400 yards in a straight line from here. Our hearing the sound is because it is built over an old passage or tunnel which used to open into the cellar under this room. It is said to connect with an opening in the cliff over the beach. It’s a relic of the old smuggling days. We are rather proud of it.”

“I should say it looks a bit fishy for some of your reverend predecessors.”

“Fortunately for the credit of the Church this was not always the vicarage. I believe it was the Dower-house of the Manor, and very likely some dear old dowagers eked out their jointures by a little ‘free-trading.’ Shall we have coffee in the study?”

“Wait a bit,” said Edmund, “I’m rather fascinated by this noise. I suppose you have explored the passage?”

“No. I’ve opened the old door in the cellar and gone down the steps leading into it. But I hate underground places. I fear I suffer from what the doctors call claustro-phobia.”

“Is that cob-webs?”

“Well, mental cob-webs I suppose! Anyhow, smugglers’ passages are a bit out of my line. But I have found the opening in the cliff, at least I think so. It’s cunningly hidden from the front by a mass of chalk. I was led to it by what I suppose was the smugglers’ old track. One of my birds landed exhausted on the cliff after a cross-channel flight, and I had to rescue him.”

“Well, I should have been right down that passage and out at the other end if I’d been you. Any objection to my exploring it to-morrow with Bates?”

“None whatever, so long as you bring Bates back undamaged.”

“Oh, Bates!” he said laughing, “It doesn’t matter about me.”

“Not so much, old man. You’ve made me get used to doing without you. But without Bates I should be as a pelican in the wilderness. Come on, if you’ve finished your wine, for I must hear your story, and what you have been doing.”

My diary contains a very complete record of my talk with Edmund on this occasion, and looking back it seems to me that he paid me a great compliment. I see now how perfectly sincere he was. Then I was too absorbed in trifles and pettifogging distrusts to rejoice in what he said at all. I had to precipitate the conversation, and I did it bluntly by asking him why he had left me so long without a letter.

“Don’t you understand,” he asked me, “that I have come to look on you as the ‘friend born for adversity’?”

I told him I didn’t quite follow.

He said, “It’s hard to explain. Potty little things like money come into it so much. But every time I’ve written to you I’ve been in trouble of some sort. You’ve never given me advice. If it’s only been money, you’ve always forked out. But the point is, you’ve always been there—just yourself—someone to be responsible to. Damn it, I can’t explain. But it’s kept me—well—no—I can’t say straight, exactly, but reasonably decent. So that I could come back and shake your hand, anyhow.”

“And you have prospered, after all?”

“Well, I didn’t lose everything, but darned nearly. You were right not to trust me about that Far Eastern Trade. I was very young and very cock-sure, and it was some time before I discovered there were too many sharks in those waters. Lord, what a young ass I was! Those Hong-Kong fellows had me weighed up to an ounce. I had a bad time kicking myself, but I managed to pull out my last £200. That annoyed them desperately. I got a little of my own back in some other ways too. But I don’t think you’d like that story. It was then I met Welfare.”

“Welfare? Who’s he? It’s rather a jolly name.”

“Yes. The name influenced me. He’s my partner. Captain Welfare he calls himself. You must meet him.”

I saw the look I didn’t quite understand become accentuated in Edmund’s face.

“I didn’t know you had a partner. Partner in what? What is your business? Let’s have the tale from the beginning.”

“It’s too long. We’re in the Levant fruit trade. Welfare’s a rum old chap. The sort one simply can’t explain to people at home. He’s always knocked about, mostly at sea. Calls himself Captain, but I don’t believe he’s ever commanded anything. He knows damn-all about navigation; but he can handle a ship all right.

“He’s admitted having been a steward on a liner. He got his start by collecting paper money from passengers—changing it, you know. Always getting hold of paper at a discount and unloading it at some port where it was up a few points. It’s extraordinary how paper money values fluctuate with latitude. Welfare had the whole thing worked out so that he was on velvet every time. As he says, it’s a nice safe line, but dull. And he didn’t like being a steward. The old boy has got his pride, and the tips went against the grain, I fancy. He was in the Pacific for a time and did pretty well with copra.

“Then he thought he was man enough for the Eastern coasting business. When I met him he had just been stung by some merchants in Shanghai. He was taking it badly—oh, rottenly! I found him in an opium shebeen and broke his collar bone getting him on a rickshaw. I got hold of a decent European doctor man. Old Welfare carried on frightfully about his collar bone while he was crazy, but the little doctor got him round all right. He used to come and stick a needle into him and squirt stuff into him—atropine and all sorts of poisons. Old Crippen’s stuff he told me he used when Welfare was rowdy. Anyhow, Welfare got all right, only beastly sentimental.”

Edmund paused to light another cigar, and I did not interrupt him. I find it is impossible in writing to convey any idea of the casual way in which his narrative dribbled out.

Only that morning one of my old ladies in the parish had been much more impressive about the quality of some dried peas she had bought from our local grocer—a relentless monopolist, but a sidesman and communicant.

To her I knew exactly what to say, how to sympathise. But Edmund made me feel as if I had swallowed a bound volume of The Boy’s Own Paper.

I waited until his cigar was fairly under way.

“You have not yet told me what you are doing now,” I said.

“No. I must come to that. We’re all right now. Certainly I did old Welfare a good turn, but he has more than repaid it. We had both been stung, but we found we could put up about £500 between us. He said he had always kept this Levant business up his sleeve, and it was absolutely ‘It’ for people with a small capital, like us. He had a pal, a Dutchman, who kept a hotel in Alexandria. Well, we went down there. The Dutchman was all right but very cautious. Things hung fire a bit. I had to keep myself and I didn’t want to touch my capital. There wasn’t much left to touch. Well, the fact is I ‘managed’ a steam laundry there for three months. Made it pay, too.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Yes—you should have seen the steam! and the natives blowing water from their mouths on the stuff while it was ironed! Nice clean women’s frocks! I couldn’t stick it.”

“It sounds very unpleasant.”

“Oh, it was rotten! Summer weather too. However, the luck turned then and we bought the Astarte with the help of the Dutchman. We’ve paid him off now and she’s all our own.”

“And what on earth is the Astarte?” I asked.

“I thought I had told you. She’s our boat of course. A rum-looking thing in these waters. But just what I’ve always dreamed of. I am master and part owner, and I told you years ago that was what I was setting out to be; only I didn’t think it would be in the Mediterranean.”

There was a long pause in our talk, I looking at Edmund, thinking of him as he should have been, rising from step to step in the Navy, carrying on the old family tradition of service and duty.

I could not help noticing a restraint in his manner, as though he were making careful selection of the parts of his story he chose to tell me. And there was that look on his face, the look of surrender, a subtle weakening about the mouth and chin; and in his eyes, I fancied, the mere shrewdness of the merchant elbowing out the look of command that had been natural to him.

“Tell me about the Astarte and the trade,” I said.

“Ah, the little Astarte is the best part of the story,” said Edmund with a return of enthusiasm. “We got her for an old song and we’ve made a dandy ship of her. She’s a Levantine schooner, Greek really, about 150 tons. Wood, of course, but we have a good new copper bottom on her. She’s a bit slow, but stiff as a poker in a breeze, and comfortable as a country pub! And she’ll point as near the wind as anything I ever sailed. Rum-looking though, when you’re not used to the type. Any amount of free-board sloping up to long high bows and an enormous jib-boom. She carries a flight of head-sails like a skein of geese. She has two big leg-o’-mutton sails, and we can shove a couple of square sails on the foremast when we want to. Oh, she’s pretty, I can tell you, and head-room enough for a giraffe in the saloon. You must come for a cruise in her.”

“I’d love to. Where is she now?”

“She’s in Tilbury at present. Old Welfare’s there with her on some business. He looks after the trade mostly. I do the yachting. I tell you, it’s just owning a yacht that keeps herself and her owners too!”

“And how do you make all the money?”

“Well—mostly fruit. Welfare’s great idea was trading direct with the Arabs on the Egypt and Palestine coast. In the season we load up their dates and figs and melons, and take them and sell almost direct to the consumers. So we are our own middle-men and collar all the profits. Then there are lots of odds and ends in the East. Curios and cheap fabrics, brass ware, Gaza pottery, jewellery. No end of things that would sell like hot cakes in this country. We have collected stacks of things. In fact that’s partly what brought us home. And what I’m afraid you won’t like is that, following up our direct trading principles, we’re going to run a shop of our own. Like those places in Port Said, you know. If you saw the prices those fellows get!”

“But why on earth shouldn’t I like it? Especially if it brings you home oftener. Why, my dear fellow, shop-keeping is rapidly passing into the hands of the aristocracy while the bourgeoisie buy up the old estates!”

I was greatly relieved, thinking this was the secret of his slight embarrassment and the look that had puzzled me.

All his story was perfectly plausible to me. Looking back now I do not really see that any country parson, ignorant alike of commerce and of the near East, could be blamed for finding nothing suspicious in it.

“Then you wouldn’t mind our business being in Brighton?” he asked. “It’s a bit near you. But of course our name won’t be over the window. No need for anyone to know you’ve any association with it at all. Welfare wants to call it ‘Oriental Bazaar’ or some old stale thing like that. He was wild with me for suggesting ‘Fakes Limited.’ One reason he wants Brighton is because the Astarte could stand in near enough to be seen from the front and send in boat-loads of stuff under the eyes of the populace. Then it’s handy for London, and of course the real trade must go through London. But of course the main reason for striking Brighton is that its season is all the year round. It’s always full of people with more money than brains.”

“I think it’s a splendid idea,” I said, and I really meant it. “Everything you sell, whatever its price, will be the genuine thing—straight from the East. We associate shop-keeping with the huckstering ideas of a servile class. I’ve often wanted to prove that shop-keeping, all trade, can be ennobled. But what can a mere shareholder do? What does he know even of the things that are done in his name?”

“Wait a minute, old man. I don’t want to give you any impression that we’re out for the purification of trade, or anything of the sort. We’re out for money—and fun. At least I am. Welfare’s out for money.”

“Quite,” said I, in my new-born enthusiasm. “And it’s all the better. I don’t want any amateur things. They’re all quack things. Edmund, I’d like to be a partner in this. If you want capital, you know I can find it.”

To my surprise Edmund looked rather distressed.

“It might seem cheap,” I continued, “to offer you money now when you are prospering and probably can get it without difficulty. I mean after I refused to finance you before. But I’m sure you know me better than to think it’s only security I have in mind.”

“I do, old man,” said Edmund, “I know you too well. I know you would give me all the money we want and more. And as a financial proposition I could honestly advise you to do it. But somehow I don’t want you to. Money after all is a very secondary thing—when you have got it. Welfare can raise all we want, he says, in the city. You keep out of it.”

“But I want to be in it! Can’t you imagine a little craving for romance, even at my advanced age? And the Levant! Do you know I correspond in Latin with monasteries there? That I have always promised myself a trip there and have been too lazy to go? Couldn’t I go to Scutari in the Astarte if I were a partner? And I have a dear friend in Aleppo whom I have never seen. I wonder what a monk’s Latin would sound like, spoken? This man I believe started life as an Albanian.”

“I don’t know,” said Edmund. “I never tried talking Latin to an Albanian monk. As a matter of fact I never got beyond ‘mensa’ myself. I started ‘dominus’ and switched on to the modern side, just when I arrived at the genitive plural. Of course we could go up the Dardanelles and you could get ashore and explore about. But if it’s business, you must talk it over with Welfare. He’s coming to Brighton.”

“Well, let’s have him here.”

“You could have him here if you like, of course,” said Edmund merrily. “He won’t actually deafen you with the crash of falling H’s, and he won’t get puzzled among the forks on the dinner table. But I’ve told you—he’s not what you and I call a gentleman. And unfortunately he’s what they call, I believe, a convinced Nonconformist.”

I looked at Edmund, but he was perfectly serious.

To me it was as though I had been told that Odysseus had been a homœopath.

“If he doesn’t mind being the guest of the Established Church I expect we’ll get on very well. I’m not exactly bigoted on doctrinal points.”

“No. But I’m wondering how Bates would stick him?”

“Really, Edmund, I know I spoil Bates, and so do you when you’re here, but I have not got the length of allowing him to choose my guests.”

“Well, old Welfare will enjoy it. As a matter of fact he’ll be enormously flattered. He’ll take you for a sort of ‘swell,’ to use his own language. And he’ll be tremendously interested in that underground passage.”

“Why?” I queried, in surprise.

If this were a play or a novel I suppose the stage direction would be that “Edmund bit his lip.” Of course he didn’t do anything of the sort. I don’t suppose any sane human being ever did, though I have myself bitten my tongue accidentally. I did however get an impression that Edmund somehow felt he had committed an indiscretion, which I suppose is what the novelists and playwrights mean. He went on a little embarrassed.

“I suppose it’s a desire for romance on his part too. He likes poking his nose into anything of that sort. No cob-webs about him! Anyhow, I’ll spend a good deal of to-morrow working through that passage and find out if there’s anything to show him. We might find hidden treasure in it—The smugglers’ hoard! If they left any brandy there it would be worth drinking by now.”

I was at a loss to understand his eagerness about this passage, and some instinct made me resent it a little. I put it to myself that I did not want the peace of my home disturbed. I did not want foul air and dust coming up into the house. I preferred to go elsewhere for the details of romance. I knew that these were not my real reasons. But I had always avoided the tunnel without knowing why, and I did not want it disturbed now.

“You will probably find there is no tunnel at all,” I said. “It may be just a village tradition.”

“But you have seen both ends of it. And how else could the noise come from the forge? Anyhow, I’ll know all about it to-morrow.”

I brought the conversation back to the more congenial topic of the Astarte and my projected cruise.

I had always been a keen yachtsman, and the novelty and the unconventional nature of the trip appealed to me.

There was nothing to prevent my finding a suitable man to take charge of the parish for a few weeks or more. Edmund’s attitude was a little discouraging. He was certainly not enthusiastic.

“We must see how you and Welfare get on,” he said. “It’s close quarters with a man if you don’t just hit it with him. It’s a queer ship’s company, anyhow. All the crew are Arabs. You see their food costs next to nothing; flour and lentils and the milk of a couple of goats, mostly. And they work like niggers for a couple of piastres a day. We have a sort of skipper over them called Jakoub, I don’t know any other name for him. He’s a magnificent sailor-man, knows all our boat and everybody in it. He rules his men with—well, the Arab equivalent of a rod of iron, acts as interpreter and saves us all bother with natives. In fact he’s practically invaluable, and I firmly believe, an ineffable blackguard.”

“He doesn’t live with you, I presume?”

“Good God, no! He’s a native.”

“It will be an education to me to meet him.”

“Then the Eastern end of the Mediterranean would be too hot for you in summer, and in winter one is liable to get a dusting in the Bay that I’m afraid you wouldn’t enjoy; not in a little tub like the Astarte.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’d mind that. Anyhow, I could go overland and pick you up at Marseilles or wherever you are calling.”

“Yes. You could do that. I’ll tell you what, you’d better try a short cruise first to see how you like it. We could have a look round the Channel Isles. In fact we want to go to Guernsey. We’ll talk it over with Welfare.”

I went to bed cherishing a hope that Edmund might forget or abandon his proposed exploration of the tunnel. But an inveterate ringing of the anvil during our breakfast, and Edmund’s evident attention to it, warned me that such hopes were vain.

He instructed Bates to procure a pick and shovel and a lantern, and demanded what time he would be at liberty to assist him in exploring.

“I could be finished for an hour perhaps about ten o’clock,” said Bates, “unless Mr. Davoren wants me for anything special.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I shall be busy all morning.”

I could see the fellow was as keen as a schoolboy on this nonsensical burrowing, and that the quick instinct of a servant had somehow detected that I did not care about it. But I felt it was better to surrender with a good grace.

Presently I watched the two of them disappear down into the cellars with pick and shovel, some gardener’s baskets, a stable lamp and an electric torch.

I found a sympathiser in Mrs. Rattray.

“It’s likely the two of them will be suffocated with foul air,” she said, “and Bates wanting to take the bird-cage with the canary in it, because he read in the papers they took them down after explosions in the mines, when all the poor women would be waiting on the top. ‘You’d be the easier spared of the two,’ I told him, and the dirt they’ll be bringing up on their feet—they’re like a pair of children, sir.”

“No better indeed, Mrs. Rattray. Perhaps the door mat from the hall?”

I escaped into the study, only to be driven out by the muffled sound of blows and horrid scrapings of the shovel. I retreated to the pigeon-loft.

This kind of thing went on all that day and the next.

Edmund was late for all meals and brought to them an earthy smell. Bates was never available when I wanted him.

Edmund reported the passage as being evidently of great antiquity, and quite roomy. It was only blocked in places, he said, and they had had no difficulty in clearing these so far.

“We are propping the roof where it has fallen in or looks dicky,” he said, “otherwise we should have been through by now. I’m sure we’ll find the other opening all right because the air’s pretty fresh and we’ve found a lot of bats hanging up. You must come down to-morrow.”

“No thanks, the bats have decided me. There is between them and me what Lamb calls an ‘imperfect sympathy.’”

“Oh, rot! We’ll get rid of them for you.”

On the second afternoon they had triumphantly emerged on the cliff over the beach. I met them there and found the opening was the place I had suspected. It was about four feet high and the same width, but a great detached mass of chalk completely hid it from below, or from the sea. The rough path that led up to it seemed to have been hewn out of the face of the cliff, but had been much worn and weathered away so that it was quite an awkward scramble to reach it now, and impossible for children. This may account for the curious fact that none of the present villagers seemed to know its whereabouts, though there was a strong tradition of a “brandy hole” somewhere on the beach.

I was tempted to penetrate a little distance into this end of the tunnel and was surprised at its spaciousness. A few yards from the opening one could stand upright, and it was quite five feet in width. Edmund said it was the same size all the way. In places the chalk face had been plastered, and I strongly suspected that this might be the remains of Saxon work. It was certainly of immemorial age, though it very probably had been adopted and used by the smugglers. There were remains of Saxon masonry in my church of which, as a parish, we were very proud. And I was the more inclined to date the digging of the passage to this remote period because I knew of nothing in the history of the parish in later times to account for it. Altogether the discovery was much more interesting than I had expected; but I refused to face the bats, so we walked home by the village.

“We must report this to the Archæological Society,” I said. “If, as I think, it proves to be Saxon there will be great excitement over it.”

“Oh, hang the Archæological Society,” said Edmund. “Let’s keep it to ourselves for a bit, till I have finished my investigations anyhow.”

A sudden vision of streams of hungry and extremely boring archæologists claiming the hospitality of the vicarage quenched my new-born ardour.

“Yes, it’s really your show,” I agreed. “You can write a paper on it yourself in your own time.”

“Thanks. I think I see myself.”

At home Edmund found a letter from Captain Welfare dating from the Ship Hotel at Brighton. He had found what he thought suitable premises for the new shop, and wanted Edmund to go over and see them.

“Then you can bring him back here for as long as he likes, and we can talk everything over,” I said.

So it was settled.

CHAPTER III
THE BISHOP PROPOSES A TOAST

EDMUND had gone to Brighton to meet his partner and inspect the “desirable premises” for their proposed curiosity shop.

Captain Welfare was to return with him some time before dinner. I had the day before me and I awaited their coming with a great curiosity as to the personality of this stranger. I was uneasy too, for Edmund was so much committed to him, and seemed to leave his destiny so much in his hands. From all he had told me about him, Captain Welfare did not seem to me the most desirable kind of person to have such a responsibility. He was certainly an adventurer, and hitherto not even a very successful one. And he was admittedly a man of low origin.

However, it was clear that Edmund was born a bohemian and would always be one. There had always been some such in our family, and as I thought of what I knew of their careers I could not deny that they seemed on the whole to have been much more charming people and to have got much more really out of life, than the sober average of the rest of us.

I was certain that Welfare would prove to be vulgar and could only hope he had a sense of honour.

Although I had carefully refrained from any criticism, which I knew would only irritate Edmund, I did in fact rather dislike the idea of the shop, and though my ignorance of commercial matters was fairly complete, it seemed to me unnecessary and unbusinesslike to have brought the Astarte all the way from the Eastern Mediterranean for the purpose of establishing and stocking it. I could only suppose it was a case of combining business with pleasure.

I determined to put aside all these worrying preoccupations and return to some literary work that had been interrupted since Edmund’s return.

Again I was interrupted, and somewhat fluttered, by the receipt of a telegram.

This was from the bishop to say he was coming over about lunch time and would stay the night if convenient.

Whatever Captain Welfare proved to be I felt he would harmonise ill with the bishop, and my first impulse was to reply with some honourable fiction that would postpone the visit. But even as I cast about in my mind for the suitable subterfuge to commit to the pre-paid form, I bethought me of how seldom my dear bishop got a chance of taking refuge with me for one quiet bachelor evening, of the disappointment it would be to both of us to lose this one. Besides, I reflected, Parminter is a man of the world, much more so than I am, and he has a catholic taste in mankind. Captain Welfare will interest him, whatever he is, and he has always wanted to meet Edmund. Anyhow there would be time enough to explain everything to him.