"How will you take it?" he asked, depositing this upon the counter.
"I beg your pardon?" the Commandant stammered, his eyes riveted on the stone.
"Notes or gold?" Mr. Fossel picked the specimen up, and rubbed it gently with his sleeve. "Now, that"s a queer thing, eh? My brother-in-law sent it to me last week, and I"ve been using it for a paper-weight, not being a scientific man. But just you look into it. He tells me there are hundreds lying about where he lives--Ogwell, the place is, in Devonshire, just behind Newton Abbot--and that they"re called madrepores. He"s a humorous fellow, too, is my brother-in-law.
You see the joke, of course?"
"I can"t say that I do, exactly," the Commandant confessed.
"Good gracious! Fossil--Fossell: this is a fossil, you see, and I"m called Fossell: and so he sends it to me. He has made a good deal of fun out of my name before now, in his humorous way. Not that I mind, of course."
"I dare say not. Did you say that the papers were all right?"
"The papers?... Yes, of course, the papers are all right. Will you take it in notes or gold?" "In gold, if you please." The Commandant caught at the edge of the counter, while his heart leapt, and the bank premises seemed to whirl around him.
"Fifteen-eighteen-six ... be so good as to verify it, if you please,"
said Mr. Fossell, counting out the coins--the blessed coins! "But I want you just to take a look into the thing. Looks like a piece of coral, eh? See the delicate lines of it? And my brother-in-law tells me it was once alive--a kind of fish--and got itself embedded in this piece of limestone because it was too lazy to move. A lesson in that"--Mr. Fossell wagged his head sagely--"if we choose to take it! To be sure, it happened thousands of years ago; but there it is--and here are we. For my part, I don"t look at things humorously like my brother-in-law. I like to find a serious moral where I can."
The Commandant counted the coins and dropped them into his pocket.
Their weight seemed to make a man of him again. He bent and affected to examine the madrepore.
Mr. Fossell bent also. He was on the point of asking--in a low voice, that the clerk might not overhear--for an explanation of Miss Gabriel"s gossip. But at this juncture a client entered, and the Commandant escaped. He went up the hill with a new centre of gravity: so different is a load in the pocket from a load on the heart.
CHAPTER XX
THE GUITAR AND THE CAs.e.m.e.nT
"A parcel for you, sir!"
Sergeant Archelaus had spied the Commandant coming up the hill, and met him on the barrack doorstep with the news.
"A parcel?" The Commandant had walked straight from the bank to Mr.
Tregaskis" shop, and there paid his account; but he had made no purchases. "There must be some mistake, Archelaus; I have ordered nothing in the town."
"From the mainland, sir."
"G.o.d bless my soul!"
"Yes, sir, and marked "Fragile"; a good-sized box, but uncommon light to handle. The steamer brought it across this morning, and I"ve carried it into the office and placed hammer and chisel handy."
"Now what in the world can this mean?" asked the Commandant, a minute later, after studying the box and its label. He turned to Archelaus, who had followed him into the office in a state of suppressed excitement. "It is certainly addressed to me; and yet--It must be half-a-dozen years, Archelaus, since anyone sent me a parcel from the mainland."
"There"s but one way to discover," said Archelaus, picking up the chisel. "Shall I open it, sir?"
"No; give it to me." The Commandant took the tools from him and easily pried open the lid, for the scantling was light, almost flimsy. Within lay an object in an oilskin case, by the shape of it, apparently a violin; and yet somewhat larger than a violin.
Yes, certainly it was a musical instrument; and the Commandant had no sooner made sure of this than with his hand on the string that tied the wrapper, he paused.
"It is evident, Archelaus"--his tone betrayed some disappointment--"that this parcel belongs to Miss Cara. Having no address of her own that could be given with safety, she has ordered it to be sent to me."
"Ben"t you even going to open and take a look at it?" asked Archelaus, as his master slowly replaced it in the box.
"I think not.... Miss Cara will call for it, no doubt, since no doubt she has been watching for the steamer"s arrival."
Archelaus withdrew, reluctantly, not without a sense of expectation cheated. Nor, as it proved, was his grievance altogether groundless.
The Commandant stood for a minute or so in a brown study, eyeing the box. Then, his curiosity overmastering him, he reached out and drew the parcel forth again; turned it over in his hands, and very slowly undid the strings, which were of green ribbon.
The wrapper fell apart, disclosing a guitar.
The instrument was clearly an old one, and, as clearly of considerable value, being inlaid with tortoise-sh.e.l.l and mother-of-pearl in delicate arabesques that must have cost its unknown maker many months, if not whole years, of patient labour. Its varnish, smooth and transparent as finest gla.s.s, belonged to the same date, and had been laid on, if not by the same hand, by one no less careful. Something more than a craftsman"s pride had surely inspired the exquisite workmanship, the deft and joyous pattern that chased itself in and out as though smiling at its own intricacy. A gift for the artist"s mistress, perhaps? Or a toy for some dead and gone princess?... Yet it had been played upon, and recently. One or two of its relaxed strings showed evidences of fraying; and the sender had tied a small packet of new strings around the neck.
The Commandant, after peering into its pattern for a while, held the guitar out at arm"s length; and, holding it so, broke into a short laugh--at the thought that this thing had been sent to him.
Yet, here it was. Undoubtedly it belonged to Vashti, and his heart leapt at the thought that she would be coming to fetch it. For three days he had been missing her. It seemed that she had chosen to pa.s.s out of his life as suddenly, as waywardly, as she had invaded it; that, crossing the threshold of Saaron Farm, she had closed its door upon him and upon a brief episode to be remembered by him henceforth as a dream only--a too happy dream.
"Ah, had we never met--or, having met, Had I been wiser or thy heart less wild!"
He had pulled home that Sunday night, to brood alone over a half-dead fire; and, brooding there, had surmised what the morrow made certain--that she had taken with her yet more than she had even brought; that even what colour, what small interest, had formerly cheered the daily round on Garrison Hill and made it tolerable, was now gone out of it forever.
Well, for good or ill, this, at all events, would need to be endured but a little while longer. His discharge was in sight. He had posted his letter.
He did not tell himself that but for Vashti it had never been written.
Or, if this crossed his mind, it suggested no more than grat.i.tude.
Quite unwittingly she had helped him play the man. He had done the right thing, let follow what might.
He could not force his mind upon possible consequences, to face them or to fret over them. Between this present hour and then, one thought, like a bright angel, stood in the way. Vashti was coming!
Ah, but when? Would she come openly, by day, as she had invaded Inniscaw?... He spent the afternoon in his office, sorting out useless correspondence, clearing desks, drawers, pigeon-holes of the acc.u.mulations of years, unconsciously preparing for the day of his discharge. It kept his thoughts employed, and he worked hard--reading through the dusty papers, tearing them up, consigning some to the waste-paper basket others to the fire, which by-and-by grew sullen under its task. Twilight fell.... She would come, then, after dusk, and secretly--mooring her boat in the hiding-place under the Keg of b.u.t.ter Battery, away from inquisitive eyes. At half-past five Archelaus brought him his tea. At six, having washed and refreshed himself, the Commandant fell to work again more doggedly. Only now and again he broke off for a few moments to listen. But Vashti did not come.
He worked until half-past nine. He heard the clock strike the half-hour from the chimney-piece, and looked up almost in dismay. It was certain now that she would not come. Of a sudden, as though to hide from him the full measure of his disappointment, as he had been hiding from himself the full eagerness of his hopes, a loathing took him--a savage scorn of his useless labour. He stared at his grimed hands with a shiver of disgust, and, rising impatiently, swept together the fragments of paper strewn about the floor, tossed them upon the dying fire, and went off to his room for another wash.
She would not come; and there remained yet an hour between him and his usual bed-time. Returning to his office, he met Archelaus on the stairs.
"Going to bed, eh?" asked the Commandant.
"Ay, sir," Archelaus answered, and paused for that remark on the weather which, in the Islands, always goes with "Good morning" or "Good night." "Gla.s.s don"t vary very much, and wind don"t vary, though seemin" to me it"s risin" a little. Still in the nor"west it is; and here ends another day."
The Commandant looked at him sharply, but pa.s.sed downstairs with no more than a "Good night." So Archelaus, too, was feeling life to be empty?... Archelaus had bewailed the past before now, and the vanished glories of the garrison, but never the tedium of his present lot.
The Commandant, on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and memoranda that had escaped the afternoon"s holocaust. He took it up wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a few crumbs of tobacco. Sc.r.a.ped together with care, they all but filled the bowl. He lit the dry stuff from a spill--the last sc.r.a.p of paper to be sacrificed--and sank, puffing, into his worn arm-chair.
It was in his mind to map out his domestic expenditure for the coming month; for the settlement with Mr. Tregaskis had made a desperate inroad upon his funds in hand, and he gravely doubted that even with the severest pinching he would be able to remit the usual allowance to his sister-in-law. The question had to be faced ... he was not afraid of it ... and yet his thoughts shirked it and wandered away, despite all effort to rally them. "Old enough to be her father...." He had foreseen that these words would awake to torment him; but he was not prepared for the insistency with which the pain stirred, now when long toil should have deadened it--now when, as the clock told him that his hopes for to-day were vain, he realised how fondly all the while he had been building on them.
"Old enough to be her father."--For distraction from the maddening refrain he rose up, drew the guitar again from its box, unwrapped it, and took it back to his chair for another examination. He noticed the wrapper as he laid it aside. It was new; the material new, the st.i.tching new. She had sent for the instrument with a purpose, and the oilskin case had been made with a purpose.... How went the old song?--