"What do you mean, Aunt Anna?" she asked with determination.
"Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don"t get flurried about it."
"I am not at all flurried," replied Dora quietly. "You said that you would be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at the time of Jem"s death--"
"Dora," interrupted Mrs. Agar, "I never said anything against you in any way; how can you say such a thing?"
"And," continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, "I must ask you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to have to believe it?"
Mrs. Agar"s reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough simulated to deceive Dora.
"Well, dear," she said, "if you insist, they said that there had been something between you and Jem--long, long ago, of course, before he went out to India."
Dora shrugged her shoulders.
"They are welcome to say what they like."
Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
"And why should you be sorry to believe that?" inquired the girl.
"I--I hardly like to tell you," said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar"s reluctance.
"I am afraid, dear," went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was no chance of a.s.sistance, "that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He was not--all that we thought him."
"In what way?" asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She had had practice in that.
"In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?" she repeated evenly, like a lesson learnt by heart.
Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
"I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar ideas, I mean, of morals--different from ours. And perhaps he saw no harm in it."
"In what?" inquired Dora gravely.
"Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that."
"Who told you this?" asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
"A man told Arthur at Cambridge--one of poor Jem"s fellow-officers. The man who brought home the diary and things."
Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the possibility of Jem"s death subsequent to the disaster in which he was supposed to have perished.
Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite without proof to the contrary. Jem"s letters had not been frequent, nor had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own life. Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora"s letters, and from some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her point-blank if it were true.
"And why," said Dora, "do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said might be true?"
"Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that."
"So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?"
"Yes, it may have been that."
And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
CHAPTER XXV
FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion.
The _Mahanaddy_ had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle rising movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The lights of the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist of the desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea merged into a grey sky.
The dinner-hour had pa.s.sed, and the pa.s.sengers were lolling about on the long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago, and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other"s dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four of them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial details.
Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice industry was sc.r.a.ping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to extract, and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had conversation left spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry ceased for a time to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
On a small clear s.p.a.ce of deck between the door of the doctor"s cabin and the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards.
They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now, and still seemed to have plenty to say.
One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an ancestral type. This was the ship"s doctor, a man who probed men"s hearts as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion was an ant.i.type--a representative of the fair race found in England by the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a beard, and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a strange effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
The Doctor was talking.
"Then," he was saying, "who the devil are you?"
The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who, humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
"You finish your pipe," he said, and he walked away with long firm strides towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where, resting his arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out over the sea, which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters, and loved them with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late companion--the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone, and there only remained the long fair moustache.
"Yes," said Dr. Mark Ruthine, "Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at first."
A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
"I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like some one else that I hardly feel like myself," he said.
"Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on board. I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By G.o.d, Agar, I _am_ glad!"
"Thanks," replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously.