The Red Derelict

Mitford Bertram

The Red Derelict

Chapter One.

The Episode of the Brindled Gnu

“Mine!”

The word was breathed rather than uttered, and its intonation conveyed a sense of the most perfect, even ecstatic, contentment. The vivid green of early summer woods piled as it were in great cloud masses to the clear, unbroken blue, rolling up from the sheen and glory of golden seas of buttercups which flooded every rich meadow surface. Hawthorn hedges distilled their sweetness from snowy clusters crowding each other in their profusion, a busy working ground for myriad bees whose murmur made music in low waves of tone upon the sweet evening glow. And yonder, behind him who is contemplating all this, the slant of the westering sun touches the tall chimney stalks of the old house, just visible among masses of feathery elms loud with cawing clamour from black armies of homing rooks. Again the glance swept round upon this wealth of English summer loveliness and again the uttered thought, with all its original exaltation, escaped the lips.

“Mine!”

Wagram Gerard Wagram strolled leisurely on, drinking in the golden glory of the surroundings as though suffering it to saturate his whole being. As for the second time he half-unconsciously enunciated that single possessive it was with almost a misgiving, an uncomfortable stirring as of unreality. Would he awaken directly, as he had more than once awakened before, to find this vision of Paradise, as it were, dispelled in the cold and sunless grey of a mere existence, blank alike of aim or prospect – illusions dead, life all behind, in front – nothing?

With these conditions he was well acquainted – only too well. The seamy side of life had indeed been his – failure, straitened means, disappointment in every form, and worse. Years of bitter and heart-wearing experiences had planted the iron in his soul – but this was all over now, never to return. To him, suddenly, startling in its unexpectedness, had come the change, and with it, peace.

A perfect chorus of bird harmony filled the air. Thrushes innumerable poured forth their song, whose sweet and liquid notes gurgled upon the ear as though through organ pipes. Robins, too, and blackbirds were not slow to join in, and then the soft amorous coo of wood-pigeons, and through all – thrown as it were from copse to copse – the blithe and gladsome shout of answering cuckoos.

Wagram opened a gate noiselessly, and with equally noiseless tread moved along one of the “rides” of a wood. On his shoulder was a rabbit rifle – one of some power and driving capacity – with which he was wont to practise long shots at outlying but uncommonly suspicious and wideawake Bunny. Things rustled in the undergrowth and brambles on either side, as though stealthily creeping away. A slight stirring of the grass caught his eye, and, as he bent over it, an adder contracted itself into a letter S, with its heart-shaped head somewhat lifted, alert, defensive. He raised the rifle so as to bring down the butt upon the snake – then seemed to think better of it.

“Poor little brute. The chances are ten thousand to one against it ever damaging anybody in a place like this, and those chances it can have the benefit of.”

He touched it with the muzzle of the gun, amused by the impotent wrath wherewith the small reptile struck at the cold iron. Then he went on his way.

He reached a gate and peered over. Two or three rabbits were out feeding, but they darted like lightning into cover before he had time so much as to raise the piece. Passing out of the gate he crossed the open meadow.

In front a gleam of water, and beyond it the skipping forms of young lambs, whose shrill bleat harmonised with the multitudinous bird voices, and the green loveliness of the picture. Leaning lazily on the parapet of an old stone bridge which spanned the river, Wagram watched the ripple here and there of a rising trout, or the perky flirtings of a pair of water-ouzels, whose nest clung, excrescence-like, against one of the stone piers. Away down stream the roof of a picturesque old mill, its wheel for the nonce still and silent, and beyond, pointing above more woods, the spire of a distant church.

Again that well-nigh ecstatic sense of possession – of ownership – came over him, and now, giving himself up to it, he fairly revelled in it. The utter solitude of the spot constituted, in his eyes, one of its greatest charms. He could wander at will without meeting a human being, and though here the bridge carried on a public thoroughfare it was a lonely road at any time. But one side of such solitude was that thoughts of the past would arise, would obtrude, and such he steadily put from him. For he hated the past. Not one day of it would he willingly live over again – to no single incident of it would he willingly let his mind revert. It was a very nightmare.

Leaving the bridge he strolled up the tree-shaded road intending to return home. But no chances did he get of practising marksmanship, for the rabbits seemed unaccountably shy. Ah – at last. There was one. Nearly a hundred yards’ range, too. Yes, it would do.

But before he could draw trigger he lowered the piece and threw up his head listening. A sound – a strange sound – had caught his ear. Yet it was not so much the nature of the sound, as the quarter from which it came that had startled him. No further thought of the rabbit now, as he listened for its repetition.

It came – louder, nearer, this time – a strange, harsh, raucous bellow. Again and again he heard it, each time nearer still. And with it now blended another sound – a loud shrill scream for help.

Wagram’s blood thrilled as already he foresaw a tragedy. It happened that a portion of the park was set apart for several varieties of the larger African antelopes, which they were trying to acclimatise, and one of these must, by some means or other, have escaped from its paddock.

It is a fact that the shyest and wariest of wild creatures in their natural state, when captured and placed in confinement, as they become accustomed to the sight of the human form divine, soon develop an aggressive ferocity in exactly opposite proportion to their former shyness. No better instance is furnished of familiarity thus breeding contempt than in the case of the male ostrich. In his wild state the sky-line is hardly a sufficiently respectable distance for him to keep between you and him – incidentally he never does hide his head in the sand, a ridiculous fable probably originating with the old Portuguese explorers, in whom the waggishly disposed natives would find fair game. “Camped off” or enclosed, there is no limit to his absolutely fearless truculence. Even the graceful little springbok, half tamed, and shut up alone in a paddock, we have known to give a full-grown man all the rough and tumble he wants before getting out of that paddock unscathed. And these, we repeat, were of the largest variety of antelope, and now here was one of them at large and pursuing somebody – from the scream, evidently a woman.

Even while thinking, Wagram was at the same time acting, for he had rushed forward and literally torn himself through a high thick hedge which interposed between himself and what was transpiring. And this is what he saw.

A girl on a bicycle was skimming the broad white road which banded the level sward. Close in pursuit coursed a strange looking beast, utterly out of keeping with the peaceful and conventional beauty of an English park – a slate-coloured beast, with the head of an exaggerated he-goat, and bearded withal; the horns of a miniature buffalo, the mane of a horse and almost the tail of one. It was in fact a fair specimen of the brindled gnu, commonly known as the blue wildebeeste.

Fortunately the creature did not seem able to make up its mind to charge; for now it would range up alongside of the bicycle and its rider, prancing and whisking around, and uttering its raucous bellow, then it would drop back, and rush forward again with horns lowered, to pull up and proceed to play the fool as before. All this Wagram took in, as he hurried up, and, taking it in, knew the peril to be great and dual. If the beast were to charge home, why then – those meat-hook like horns would do their deadly work in a moment. If the rider kept up, or increased her pace any further to speak of, why then this road ended in a gate giving admission to the high road, and this gate was shut. There was only one thing to be done, and he did it.

He rushed towards this strange chase, shouting furiously, even grotesquely, anything to draw the attention of the dangerous brute. But at that moment, whether the girl had lost her head, or was as startled at this new diversion as her pursuer ought to have been, the bicycle wheel managed to get into a dry rut, skidded, and shot the rider clean off on to the turf. A half-strangled scream went up, and she lay still.

It is possible that the accident saved the situation so far as she was concerned, for the gnu held straight on and, lowering his head, with a savage drive sent his horns clean through the fabric of the machine lying in the road, then throwing up his head flung the shattered fragments of metal whirling about in every direction, but the remainder, entangled in the horns, still hung about his forehead and eyes.

Wagram summed up the peril in a flash. There lay the girl, helpless if not unconscious, the gate a quarter of a mile away – even the hedge he had come through considerably over a hundred yards. Not so much as a tree was there to dodge behind, and there was the infuriated beast shaking its head and bellowing savagely in frantic attempts to disengage itself of the clinging remains of the bicycle. The rifle, he decided, was of no use; the bullet, too diminutive to kill or disable, would only avail to madden the animal still more. And even then it succeeded in flinging the last remnant of the shattered machine from its horns. It stood for a second, staring, snorting, stamping its hoofs, then charged.

Wagram levelled the piece and pressed the trigger. The hammer fell with a mere click, and as he remembered how he had fired in the air while rushing to the rescue, in the hope that the report might scare the beast, the shock of the onrush sent him to earth, knocking the weapon from his grasp.

For a second he lay, half stunned. Fortunately, he had managed to dodge partially aside so as to escape the full shock, and the impetus had carried his assailant on a little way. Would the brute leave them, he wondered, if they both lay still. But no. It faced round, stamped, shook its head, bellowed, then came on again – this time straight for the prostrate girl.

Wagram rose to his feet with a shout – a loud, pealing, quavering shout. He had no clear idea as to what he was going to do, but the first thing was to get between the maddened beast and its intended victim.

Even at that moment, so strange are the workings of the human mind, there flashed across Wagram’s brain the irony of it all. The ecstasy of possession had culminated thus: that a sudden and violent death should overtake him in the midst of his possessions, and through the agency of one of them. The gnu, diverted from its original purpose, or preferring an erect enemy to a recumbent one, once more charged him. Then he literally “took the bull by the horns” and gripped them as in a vice. Throwing up its head the struggling, pushing beast strove to tear itself free, but those sinewy hands held on. Then it reared on its hind legs, and tall man as he was, Wagram felt himself pulled off the ground. Though considerably past his first youth, he was wiry and hard of condition, and still he held on, but it could not continue. He must relax his grip, then he would be gored, trampled, mangled out of all recognition. Already one of the pointed hoofs, pawing wildly downward, had ripped his waistcoat open, gashing the skin, when – he was somersaulting through the air, to fall heavily half-a-dozen yards away, at the same time that the sharp crack of firearms almost at his very ear seemed to point to a miracle in his swiftly revolving brain.

He raised his head. His late enemy was lying on the turf, a faint quiver shuddering through its frame, and, standing contemplating it, erect, unhurt, the form of her he had nearly lost his life to rescue, and in her hand, the smoke still curling from the muzzle, a rifle – his rifle.

Chapter Two.

Afterwards

“How did you do it?” he asked, panting violently after his recent exertion and shock. “How?”

“I saw the cartridges fall out of your pocket while you fought the brute,” she answered. “That suggested it. I put one in the rifle and aimed just behind the shoulder, as I had read of people doing when shooting things of that sort. Thank Heaven it was the right aim. Do you know, I felt it would be – knew it somehow.”

She spoke quickly, excitedly, her breast heaving, and the colour mantling in her cheeks, as she turned her large eyes upon his face.

“It was splendid – splendid,” he repeated, rising, though somewhat stiffly, for he was very bruised and shaken.

“I don’t know about that,” she answered with a laugh. “I expect the old Squire will be of a different opinion. Why I – I mean you and I between us – have killed one of his African animals. And they say he’s no end proud of them.”

“Yes, and you have saved my life.”

“Have I? I rather think the boot’s on the wrong foot,” she answered. “Where would I have been with that beast chevying me if you hadn’t come on the scene. But – oh, Mr Wagram, are you much hurt? I was forgetting.”

“No, I am not hurt, beyond a bit of a shaking-up. And you?”

“Same here. I suppose the excitement and unexpectedness of the toss saved me. I was in an awful funk, though – er – I mean I was awfully scared. You see it was all so unexpected. I didn’t know these things ever attacked people.”

“They are apt to be dangerous in a half-tame condition, but ours are shut up in a separate part of the park. I have yet to find out how this one got loose.”

“What would I have done if you hadn’t come up?” she repeated. “I should certainly have been killed.”

Wagram thought that such would very likely have been the case, but he answered:

“I think you might have been considerably injured. You see, when you got to the gate over there, you would have had to slow down and jump off.”

“Rather. And – oh, my poor bike! It’s past praying for, utterly.”

“Well, it’s past mending, that’s certain. But – er – of course, you must allow us to make good the loss. As a matter of hard law you need have no scruple about this. It was destroyed on our property by an animal belonging to us, and on a public road.”

“A public road!” she echoed. “Then I was not trespassing?”

“No. This is a right-of-way, though I don’t mind admitting that we have often wished it wasn’t,” he added with a smile.

Inwardly he was puzzling as to who this girl could be. She was aware of his own identity, for she had addressed him by name; but he was absolutely convinced he had never seen her before. She was a handsome girl, too, very handsome. She had a clear, brunette skin, through which the colour would mantle as she grew animated, fine eyes of a light hazel, and an exceedingly attractive smile. In build she was square shouldered and of full outline, and though not exactly tall was of a good height for a woman. She was plainly dressed, but well, in a light blouse and grey bicycle skirt, and her manner was natural and unaffected. Yet with all these attractions Wagram decided that she was just not quite in the same social scale. Who could she be?

“Oh, but, Mr Wagram, I’m sure you must be hurt,” she broke in, as he rose from dusting down her bicycle skirt – she had sustained wonderfully little damage, even outwardly, from her fall. “Why, what is this?” catching sight of his ripped waistcoat. “Blood, too! Good heavens! Did it strike you with its horns? Oh, you must get it seen to at once. I have read somewhere that the wound from an animal’s horn is frightfully dangerous.”

“Well, it wasn’t the horn this time, it was the hoof. But I assure you the thing is a mere scratch; I daresay it might have been worse but for the waistcoat. As it is, it’s nothing.”

“Really? Seriously, mind?”

“Seriously. But if you always turn your reading to such practical account as you did just now, it’ll be good for other people all along the line. It was even better than plucky, for it showed a quickness and readiness of resource rare among women, and by no means so widely distributed among men as we like to imagine.”

“How good of you to say so,” she answered, colouring up with pleasure. “But – oh, what a pity to have had to kill such a curious animal. Will the old Squire be very angry, do you think, Mr Wagram?”

“He will be sorry; but you must credit him with a higher estimate of the sanctity of human life for anger to enter his mind in this connection. I am sure he will feel only too thankful that a most disastrous accident has been averted.”

“Oh, I am relieved. Poor thing,” she broke off, standing over the dead gnu with a little shudder at the pool of blood which had trickled from the small hole made by the bullet. “It is very ugly, though.”

“Yes; it’s a sort of combination of goat and buffalo, and horse and donkey, to all outward appearance. Ah, here’s someone at last,” as two men approached. “Here, Perrin,” to the foremost, “how on earth did this fellow break out of the west park? Are the palings broken down anywhere?”

“Not as I knows on, sir,” replied the man, who was an under keeper. “I was round there myself this morning, and ’twas all right then. Reckon he must ha’ jumped. Them things do jump terrible high at times. Be you hurt, sir?” with a look at the other’s torn clothing.

“No; only a scratch. But this young lady might have been killed. You’d better go to the village at once and let Bowles know there’s a butchering job here for him, and the sooner he sets about it the better, or the light won’t last. Oh, and on the way tell Hood to go over now and make sure there are no gaps or weak places in the palings, or we shall have more of the things getting out I should never have believed one would have taken that leap.”

“Very good, sir,” replied the keeper, turning away to carry out his orders.

The girl, meanwhile, was watching Wagram with a whole-souled but half-furtive admiration, not undashed with a little awe. The fact of her rescue by this man in a moment of ghastly peril, and at considerable risk to himself, appealed to her less than did the cool, matter-of-fact way in which he stood there issuing his orders, as though no life-and-death struggle between himself and a powerful and infuriated animal had just taken place. Moreover, there was something in the way in which he gave his orders – as it were, the way of one to whom such direction was bound as by right to belong – that impressed her, and that vividly. Perhaps, too, the unconscious refinement of the man – a natural refinement characterising not only his appearance, but his manner, the tone of his voice, his every word – came especially home to her, possibly by virtue of contrast. Anyhow, it was there, and she hardly had time to disguise the growing admiration in her eyes as he turned to her again.

“Will you walk on with me to the Court and have a rest and some tea? We can send you home in the brougham.”

For a moment she hesitated. The invitation was wholly alluring, but to herself a perfectly unaccountable resolve came over her to decline it. It is just possible that the one word “send” had turned the scale. Had he offered to accompany her home she would probably have accepted with an alacrity needing some disguise.

“Oh no, thanks; I could not think of intruding upon you like that,” she answered. “I live just outside Bassingham, and a mere three-mile walk is nothing on a lovely evening like this.”

“Are you sure you are doing what you would prefer?” he urged.

“Quite. Oh, Mr Wagram, how can I thank you enough? Why, but for you I should be in as many pieces as my poor bicycle.”

“And but for you, possibly, so should I,” he laughed.

“Yes; only you would not have been there at all but for me, so that I am still all on the debtor’s side,” she rejoined, flashing up at him a very winning smile.

“Will you favour me with your address – here,” holding out a pocket-book open at a blank leaf. “And – er – you seem to have the advantage of me as to name.”

“Have I? Why, so I have,” (writing). Then handing it back he read:

“Delia Calmour, Siege House, Bassingham.”

“Oh, you live in Bassingham, then?” he said, in a tone which seemed to her to express surprise at never having seen her before.

“Yes; but I have been away for two years,” she answered in implied explanation which was certainly not accidental. “I have only just come home.”

She hoped he would question her further; but he did not.

“Good-bye, Mr Wagram,” putting forth her hand with a bright smile. “I shall return by the main road. It’s much shorter – besides, I’ve had enough adventure for one afternoon.”

“Well, if you won’t reconsider my suggestion.”

“Thanks, no; I had really better get back.”

“And,” he supplemented, “again let me remind you that the utter wreck of your bicycle is our affair. Oh, and by the way – er – in case you are put out by the want of it even for a day or two in this splendid weather, Warren, in Bassingham, keeps very good machines on hire – you understand, our affair of course. I will send him in word the first thing in the morning.”

“Now, Mr Wagram, you are really too good,” she protested with real warmth. “I don’t know whether I ought even to think of taking you at your word.”

“Ought? But of course you must. It’s a matter, as I said before, of hard, dry law, and damage. Good-bye.”

They had reached the gate by this time, and closing it behind her, Wagram raised his hat and turned back to where lay the dead gnu. Then, as the men he had sent for had arrived, and he had given directions as to the careful preserving of the head, he moved homeward.

The air seemed positively to thrill with the gush of bird-song as the last rays of dazzling gold swept over the vivid greenery, ere the final set of sun. Passing the chapel, a Gothic gem, set in an embowering of foliage, Wagram espied the family chaplain seated in front of his rose-grown cottage, reading.

“Evening, Father,” he called out.

The priest jumped up and came to the gate. He was a man about Wagram’s own age, or a shade older, a cultured man, and possessed of a fund of strong practical common sense, together with a keen sense of humour. The two were great friends.

“Come in, come in, and help a lonely man through a lonely half hour, or as many half-hours as you can spare; though I suppose it’s getting too near your dinner time for that.”

“Why don’t you stroll up with me and join us?” said Wagram, subsiding into a cane chair.

“Thanks, but I can’t to-night, and that for more reasons than one. Now, what’ll you be taking?”

“Nothing, thanks, just now,” answered Wagram, filling his pipe. “I’ve got a mighty unpleasant job sticking out if ever there was one. Went out to knock over a rabbit or two, and knocked over one of the blue wildebeeste instead. How’s that?”

The priest gave a whistle.

“I wouldn’t like to be the man to break the news to the old Squire,” he said, “unless the man happened to be yourself. Did you kill it?”

“Dead as a herring, or rather, the girl did.”

“The girl did! What girl?”

“Why, the one the brute was chevying. Of course I had to get between, don’t you see?”

“I don’t. You omitted the trifling detail that the said brute was chevying anybody. Now, begin at the beginning.”

Wagram laughed. This sort of banter was frequent between the two. The priest reached down for the half-smoked pipe he had let fall, relit it, and listened as Wagram gave him the narrative, concise to baldness.

“Who was the girl?” he said, when Wagram had done.

“That’s just the point. First of all, do you know any people in Bassingham named Calmour?”

“M’yes. That is to say, I know of them.”

“What do they consist of?”

“One parent – male. I believe three daughters. Sons unlimited.”

“What sort of people are they?”

“Ask the old Squire.”

“That’s good enough answer,” laughed Wagram. “You’re not going to give them a bad character, so you won’t give them any. All right. I’ll go and ask him now, and, by Jove,” looking at his watch, “it’s time I did. Good-night.”