She considered awhile, and hit on the explanation. Parson Chichester last evening, calling on the coast-guard in his search, must have used their telephone and got the message through by some office open on Sundays.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE RESCUE
"_O, who lives on the Island, Betwix" the sea an" the sky?
--I think it must be a lady, a lady, I think it must be a genuwine lady, She carries her head so high._"--OLD BALLAD.
In the moonlit garden of the Casino at Monte Carlo Miles Chandon smoked a cigar pensively, leaning against the low wall that overlooks the pigeon-shooters" enclosure, the railway station and the foresh.o.r.e.
He was alone, as always. That a man who, since the great folly of his life, had obstinately cultivated solitude should make holiday in Monte Carlo, of all places, is paradoxical enough; but in truth the crowd around the tables, the diners at the hotel, the pigeon-shooters, the whole cosmopolitan gathering of idle rich and predatory poor, were a Spectacle to him and no more. If once or twice a day he staked a few napoleons on black or red in the inner room of the Casino, it was as a man, finding himself at Homburg or Marienbad, might take a drink of the waters from curiosity and to fill up the time. He made no friends in the throng. He found no pleasure in it. But when he grew weary at home in his laboratory, or when his doctor advised that confinement and too much poring over chemicals were telling on his health, he packed up and made for Monte Carlo, or some other expensive place popularly supposed to be a "pleasure-resort." As a matter of fact, he did not understand pleasure, or what it means.
Finding him in this pensive att.i.tude in the moonlit garden by the sea, you might guess that he was sentimentalising over his past. He was doing nothing of the sort. He was watching a small greyish-white object the moon revealed on the roof of the railway station below, just within the parapet. He knew it to be a pigeon that had escaped, wounded, from the sportsmen in the enclosure. Late that afternoon he had seen the poor creature fluttering. He wondered that the officials (at Monte Carlo they clean up everything) had not seen it before and removed it.
He watched it, curious to know if it were still alive. He had a fancy at the back of his head--that if the small body fluttered again he would go back to his rooms, fetch a revolver, and give the _coup de grace_.
And he smiled as he played with the fancy, foreseeing the rush of agitated officials that a revolver-shot in the gardens would instantly bring upon him. It would be great fun, explaining; but the offence no doubt would be punishable. By what? Banishment, probably.
He turned for a moment at the sound of a footstep, and was aware of his man Louis.
"A telegram, sir."
"Eh? Now who in the world--Matters hasn"t burnt down Meriton, I hope?"
He opened the telegram and walked with it to the nearest of the electric lamps; read it, and stood pondering.
"Louis, when does the new night-express leave for Paris?"
"In twenty-five minutes, sir."
"Then I"ve a mind to catch it. Put up a travelling-suit in my bag.
I can get out of these clothes in the train. You had better pack the rest, pay the bill, and follow to-morrow."
"If you wish it, sir. But if I may suggest--"
"Yes?"
"In twenty minutes I can do all that easily, and book the sleeping-berths too. I suggest, sir, you will find it more comfortable, having me on the train."
"Admirable man--hurry up, then!"
The admirable man saluted respectfully and retired "hurt," as they say in the cricket reports. He never hurried; it was part of the secret by which he was always punctual. At the station he even found time to suggest that his master might wish to send a telegram, and to dispatch it.
This was on Sunday. They reached London late on Monday evening, and there--Louis having telegraphed from Paris--Sir Miles found his favourite room ready for him at Claridge"s. Next morning, as his hansom drew up a few minutes after eleven o"clock by the entrance to Paddington Station, he observed that the porter who stepped forward from the rank to attend on him, did so with a preoccupied air. The man was grinning, and kept glancing along the pavement to his right.
"Luggage on the cab just behind," said Sir Miles, alighting.
"Never mind me; my man will take the tickets and get me a seat.
But what"s the excitement here?"
"Lady along there, sir--offering to fight her cabby. Says he can"t drive for nuts--"
"Hullo!"
Sir Miles looked, recognised Miss Sally, and walked briskly towards her.
She caught sight of him and nodded.
"Thought you would come. Excuse me a moment."
She lifted her voice and addressed the cabby again--
"Oh, you can talk. They taught you that at the Board School, no doubt.
But drive you cannot; and talk you would not, if you knew the respect due to a mouth--your own or your horse"s."
With this parting shot she turned to Sir Miles again, and held out her hand.
"Tell your man he needn"t trouble about a seat for you. I"ve engaged a compartment where we can talk."
"Well?" he asked, ten minutes later, lowering his newspaper as the train drew out of the station.
"Well, in the first place, it"s very good of you to come."
"Oh, as for that . . . You know that if I can ever do you any service--"
"But you can"t. It was for your own sake I telegraphed."
"Mine? Is Meriton really burnt to the ground, then? But even that news wouldn"t gravely afflict me."
"It isn"t--and it would. At any rate, it might now, I hope," said Miss Sally enigmatically.
He waited for her to continue.
"Your wife"s dead!" she said.
She heard him draw a quick breath.
"Indeed?" he asked indifferently.
"But your son isn"t--at least, I hope not."
He looked up and met her eyes.
"But I had word," he said slowly, "word from her, and in her own handwriting. A boy was born, and died six or seven weeks later--as I remember, the letter said within a week after his christening."
Miss Sally nodded.
"That settles it," she said; "being untrue, as I happen to know.
The child was alive and hearty a year after the christening, when they left Cawsand and moved to the East coast. The fact is, my friend, you had run up--if not in your wife, then in the coastguardsman Ned Commins--against a pride as stubborn as your own. They wrote you a lie--that"s certain; and I"m as hard as most upon liars; but, considering all, I don"t blame "em. They weren"t mercenary, anyway.