CHAPTER XXIX

ALONE

To say that the news stunned me would merely be to use an empty conventional phrase. Not even the shock of my father's death had so dislocated my whole power of thought and association. My father, I had always known, lived continually under the shadow of danger. For a hand to reach for him out of the dark was a chance I had long reckoned into the scheme of things. The sudden blow had struck merely at my heart of love. It had been desolating, but not bewildering. And that was last year. But now I waded in a mist of baffling and unreasonable extravagances. I was like a thing blind-folded, and set to find my way through a tangled maze, with voices crying to me conflicting directions, walls suddenly confronting me where there had seemed to be an open space, hands pushing me away when I thought I had stumbled on to a path at last. There seemed no motive, no coherence, no unity, in the chaos about me. Nothing tangible offered itself to my distracted clutching. All was fluid, impalpable, as though the world had shifted its centre, throwing everything into a false relation and perspective.

Where I fed and slept during the days that followed I don't remember. I suppose I must have wandered mechanically to my lodging every night, and found my way to some tavern when my appetite prompted me to do so, without any governance or bidding of my brain. All that is clear to me is that I haunted the office, gleaning detail upon detail of the tragedy, hoping with a waning but desperate hope that somewhere there was an error, that all would come right at last. But from the first word I knew full well that all would not come right. Worthing was dead. He had been murdered. It was I myself who had murdered him. Still I refused to listen to the steady voice within me which day by day repeated so dully and so obstinately, "You have killed him, you have killed him." I fought against it, and sometimes shouted wildly to drown its insistent burden, or rushed away into the streets with my hands at my ears, till I wonder I wasn't arrested and locked up as a madman. But the truth had to be faced at last. With every fresh detail, as the news came slowly through, I felt the fearful reality of the thing closing about me like the grip of some slow, cruel animal gloating at my pain.

At last I ceased to haunt the office. I knew all I was likely to know, and I would have given my life to have known nothing. Some papers were stuffed into my hands, I remember; for Worthing had been managing my affairs, and now I must find another to steer me through the legal maze. But just then my helplessness didn't trouble me. It was the dreadful knowledge that I had killed my friend which stung me like a stabbing dagger, goading me out of the heavy lethargy that might mercifully have numbed my feelings, and teasing me to a constant realization of the maddening truth.

I didn't dare visit Jenny. Indeed I felt a horror at the thought of ever seeing her again. It was for her I had murdered Worthing. I didn't blame her; but somehow there seemed to me an unholy fate binding us together, and unless I could tear myself free even darker consequences would ensue. There was a bond of blood between us. To think of her even was to awaken a bitter cry in my heart, an echo as it were from another world of a reproach I couldn't bear. For Jenny was like a living monument of the evil I had done. With her image in my mind I was for ever whipped back to that night at Naples, forced to deal again that dreadful blow through knowing now whose life it was I was stabbing out of the world.

I think Dirk must have been away for some days, for I don't remember his questioning me on the strange shadow that had so suddenly darkened my life. If he had been at my lodging he couldn't but have seen that something desperately wrong had taken place. It wasn't till I had regained something of my self-control that I remember seeing him again. Then he eyed me wonderingly as though enquiring the cause of my strangeness. I think he must have told himself some early love affair had upset me, for he smiled knowingly, and talked about girls being the devil, declaring they weren't worth a broken heart, nor yet a sleepless night even. I let him think what he would, and kept my own counsel. I didn't dare tell him the truth, for he would say the blame was his, as indeed to some extent it was; for if he hadn't rescued me, as he imagined, I should soon have been freed of the gag about my face, and then Worthing would have recognized me, and all would have been well.

So I kept away from Dirk as much as I could. It was easy enough, for he seemed to be hot on the trail again. I wandered off by myself, though where I used to get to I don't know. Then I began to try to piece the mystery together, but little enough could I fit consistently. I knew now that my first surmise had been correct: I had been mistaken for my father's murderer, for it was obvious that Worthing wouldn't knowingly have treated me as he had done. There would have been no sense in it. I couldn't help complaining bitterly at the amazing ill luck, as it seemed, which had taken me to Naples just when Worthing happened to have traced his quarry there. Of course he couldn't have dreamt of my presence; and I had grown, and my face was tanned brown; his uncle had never seen me before, and in the boat when Worthing had first looked upon me my face was half covered with the gag. All this seemed like a deliberate trick of some malignant devil of fate, and I felt the weight of the old curse bear heavily upon me like a burden.

Beyond this I could establish little to my satisfaction. How Worthing had obtained the manuscript I couldn't think. I supposed he had stolen it from the murderer, and was using it to show he knew what he was about. But what puzzled me was that he had seemed to suggest that there was some piece of information he wanted for which he was willing to allow my father's murderer to escape. He had wanted, in fact, to learn the mystery of the treasure cave. Why? I asked myself. I couldn't believe he had been led away from his quest by the lure of gold. There must be something deeper underlying it all, something which lay concealed in the earth which to Worthing was of greater importance even than the dragging to justice of a murderer. It must be something of rare importance, I argued, if it were worth such a prize, for I knew his enthusiasm for justice--which to him was like a physical passion.

And there my reason stayed. But I knew enough to realize I hadn't yet fulfilled the quest Jenny had set me on. At first it had seemed like an exquisite piece of irony that I had been searching for her father's enemy only to learn that all the while I had been tracking down my own friend. But now I knew I had killed my friend for nothing. My father's murderer and the Captain's persecutor were still at large. I thought by Worthing's story they were probably the same man, but I had paid a terrible price for that little piece of information. So with the wretched thought at my heart that I had killed my friend, severed myself from my sweetheart, and had all my work still before me, I felt utterly weary and deserted, an outcast of fortune, alone in an evil world.

Little by little, of course I came to face up to the thing. I was no longer the boy I had been even a year ago when my father had been killed. I had seen the world since then; I had developed in mind and body. I think my love for Jenny had helped to give me something of a man's outlook and self-reliance, though I was still far enough from the years of manhood. I knew I must take my life into my hands, not mope stupidly and aimlessly, hoping for something to come to my aid from Heaven knew where. With the growth of this resolution to see the thing through I began to turn over the papers I had been given, and to dip here and there into my father's writings, thinking I might come upon some clue which would lead me to the heart of the mystery. For I knew now there would be no peace for me till the evil ghost was laid.

So I turned over the pages, but my mind was still too distracted for clear thinking, and I learnt little. Then I began to long for Jenny again, though I knew I mustn't see her. For I had told her that her father's enemy was dead, that I had killed him, and now I knew he was still alive, and possibly was already casting his evil snares once again about the Captain's life. I couldn't face Jenny till I had really freed her father from his foe. I remembered my father's words, "Always make sure, Tommy." If he had made sure that night in the hut, if I hadn't fired into the mirror at Sunset Towers, if I had but torn aside the mask before I had dealt the fatal blow at Naples!... But such considerations were clean from the purpose and only left me limp and dejected, speculating on what might so easily have been, and crying against the strangling fatality which seemed to have my whole life in its evil grip. All I knew for certain was that my father's murderer, the Captain's enemy, was still alive, and I mustn't see Jenny again until I had killed him beyond all shadow of doubt.

Yet I couldn't keep quite away. I began to wander at night in front of the tall dark house, and then took to going round to the garden at the back, where I soon found I could climb the wall and watch the light in a window up above which somehow I knew must be Jenny's. I used to hide in a great rhododendron bush and fix my eyes on that light, telling myself that to-morrow I would pack up my dunnage and make tracks for the _Dolphin_, and search the coast as I had never searched it before till I had unravelled the whole tangled mystery. I thought I might even lie in wait for my enemy there, for Worthing had said the fellow would be sure to turn up sooner or later as evidently he was in search of the treasure. But though I kept telling myself I would go the next day, I was always back at my post watching the light in Jenny's window. And the summer was half spent.

But one night I was rewarded for my vigil. For Jenny pulled aside her blind, and I heard her brokenly sighing my name. It wasn't till then that I realized that she must be in a torment of distress at my sudden desertion of her. I had been so engrossed with my own troubles that I hadn't thought of hers. I would have broken cover and called up to her, but at that moment I heard a door open, and a dark figure slipped noiselessly out of the house. A voice was saying in the suave kind tones I knew so well, "Courage, my master. Did I not hear you call me, and I at the end of the world? Yes, and I will come to you again, be assured."

The Captain replied brokenly out of the shadows, "Oh, Abou, Abou!"

So Abou was back again. His wonderful instinct had told him his master was in trouble and needed him. I wondered if he had been back long. Perhaps it was his coming that had set the Captain's mind at rest, whereas I had thought it was the news of the Naples murder which I had assumed he must have heard in some way. The thought was but a flash in my mind, for the Captain went on, "You will find him, Abou, and bring him back. Tell him, tell him I will be his father. Tell him.... But what can I say? Boys don't care for that sort of thing. But I love the bairn, Abou, and I want him back."

"You shall have him, my master," said Abou, and glided away, while I crouched motionless not daring to breathe.

Then the Captain came out into the garden and strolled up and down a turn or two muttering my name. I knew I had but to come from my hiding to be welcomed back into that house with open arms. Yet I knew I mustn't go. It would be under false pretences. First I must accomplish my task.

I waited till the Captain had retired, shooting the bolts behind the closed door before I crept from cover and cautiously made my escape. My heart was bitterly sore at the thought of all the love I was leaving: the Captain wanting me back as though I were his son, yet unable to frame a message for me, thinking I might make fun of his affection, and doubtless wondering why I had changed my lodging without sending him word; and my little Jenny perhaps crying herself to sleep with my name on her lips, her pride broken by longing and anxiety and doubt. My own eyes were none too dry, nor was my breathing very certain, as I slipped back to my lodging and hastily packed my knapsack. Then heedless of Dirk's injunctions I stepped out into the night before my resolution should waver, and set forth once more for the _Dolphin_ and the mystery that lay like a shadow of blood over the wonderful coast about Ebb-Tide Pool.