The Marriage of Esther

In five minutes they were passing close under the nearest point of their own island. High cliffs rose above them, crowned with a wealth of vegetation. She looked up at them, and then turned to her companion.

"Mr. Ellison, do you know the story of that bluff?"

"No. I must plead guilty to not being aware that it possessed one. May I hear it?"

"It has a strange fascination for me – that place. I never pass it without thinking of the romance connected with it. Do you see that tall palm to the right there?"

"Yes."

"Well, under that palm is a grave; the resting-place of a man whom I can remember seeing very often when I was only a little child."

"What sort of a man?"

"Ah, that's a question a good many would have liked to have answered. Though it's years ago, I can see him now as plainly as if it were but yesterday. He was very tall and very handsome. Possibly forty years old, though at first sight he looked more than that, for the reason that his hair and moustache were as white as snow. He lived in a hut on that bluff far away from everybody. In all the years he was there he was never known to cross the straits to the settlement, but once every three months he used to come down to our store for rations and two English letters. I believe we were the only souls he ever spoke to, and then he never said any more than was absolutely necessary. The pearlers used to call him the Hermit of the Bluff."

"Do you think he was quite sane?"

"I'm sure of it. I think now he must have been the victim of some great sorrow, or, perhaps, some man of family exiled from his country for no fault of his own."

"What makes you imagine that?"

"Why, because it was my father who found him lying lifeless on the floor of his hut. He had been dead some days and nobody any the wiser. Hoping to find something to tell him who he was, my father searched the hut, but without success. But when, however, he lifted the poor body, he caught a glimpse of something fastened round his neck. It was a large gold locket, with a crown or coronet upon the cover. Inside it was a photograph of some great lady – but though he recognised her, my father would never tell me her name – and a little slip of paper, on which was written these words: 'Semper fidelis: Thank God, I can forgive. It is our fate. Good-bye.' They buried him under the palm yonder and the locket with him."

"Poor wretch! Another victim of fate! I wonder who he could have been."

"That is more than anyone will ever know, until the last great Judgment Day. But, believe me, he is not the only one of that class out here. I could tell you of half a dozen others that I remember. There was Bombay Pete; it was said he was a fashionable preacher in London, and was nearly made a bishop. He died – bewitched, he said – in a Kanaka's hut over yonder behind the settlement. Then there was the Gray Apollo – but who he was nobody ever knew; at any rate he was the handsomest and most reckless man on the island until he was knifed in the Phillipines; and the man from New Guinea; and Sacramento Dick; and the Scholar; and John Garfitt, who turned out to be a lord. Oh, I could tell you of dozens of others. Poor miserable, miserable men."

"You have a sympathy for them, then?"

"Who could help it? I pity them from the bottom of my heart. Fancy their degradation. Fancy having been brought up in the enjoyment of every luxury, started with every advantage in life, and then to come out here to consort with all the riff-raff of the world and to die, cut off from kith and kin, in some hovel over yonder. It is too awful."

Ellison sighed. She looked at him, and then said very softly:

"Mr. Ellison, I do not want to pry into your secret, but is there no hope for you?"

He appeared not to have heard her. A great temptation was upon him. He was going away to-morrow: she would never see him again. She had evidently a romantic interest in these shattered lives – could he not allow himself the enjoyment of that sympathy just for a few brief hours? Why not? Ah, yes, why not?

"Miss McCartney," he said, after a long pause, "do you know, while you were away to-night, and I was sitting waiting for you, I subjected myself to a severe cross-examination?"

"On what subject?"

"Partly yourself, partly myself."

"What sort of cross-examination do you mean, Mr. Ellison?"

"Well, that is rather a difficult question to answer, and for the following reason: In the first place, to tell you would necessitate my doing a thing I had made up my mind never to do again."

"What is that?"

"To unlock the coffers of my memory and to take out the history of my past. Eight years ago I swore that I would forget certain things – the first was my real name, the second was the life I had once led, and the third was the reason that induced me to give up both."

"Well?"

"I have tried to remember that you have only known me a month, that you really know nothing of myself, my disposition, or my history."

"But I think I do know."

"I fear that is impossible. But, Miss McCartney, since I see your sympathy for others, I have a good mind to tell you everything, and let you judge for yourself. You are a woman whose word I would take against all the world. You will swear that whatever I reveal to you shall never pass your lips."

"I swear!"

She was trembling in real earnest now. To prolong their interview he put the boat over on another tack, one that would bring her close under the headland by the station. Esther raised no objection, but sat looking before her with parted lips and rather startled eyes. She noticed that his voice, when he spoke, took another tone. She attributed it to nervousness, when in reality it was only unconscious acting.

"Miss McCartney, living here in this out-of-the-way part of the world, you can have no idea what my life has been. Thrown into temptation as a child, is it to be wondered at that I fell? Brought up to consider myself heir to untold wealth, is it to be wondered that I became extravagant? Courted by everybody, can you be surprised that I thought my own attractions irresistible? My father was a proud and headstrong man, who allowed me to gang my own gait without let or hindrance. When I left Eton, I left it a prig; when I left Oxford, I left it a man of pleasure, useless to the world and hurtful to myself and everybody with whom I fell in contact. But not absolutely and wholly bad with it all, you must understand. Mind you, Miss McCartney, I do not attempt to spare myself in the telling; I want you to judge fairly of my character."

"I promise you I will. Go on."

"With a supreme disregard for consequences, I plunged into absurd speculations, incurred enormous liabilities, and when my creditors came down upon me for them I went to my father for relief. He laughed in my face and told me he was ruined; that I was a pauper and must help myself; sneered in my face, in fact, and told me to go to the devil my own way as fast as I was able. I went to my brothers, who jeered at me. I went to all my great friends, who politely but firmly showed me their doors. I went to men who at other times had lent me money, but they had heard of my father's embarrassments, and refused to throw good money after bad. Checkmated at every turn, I became desperate. Then to crown it all a woman came to me, a titled lady, in the dead of night; she told me a story, so base, so shameful, that I almost blush now to think of it. She said she had heard I was going to fly the country. My name was talked of with her – I alone could save her. In a moment of recklessness I agreed to take her shame upon myself. What was my good name to me? At least I could help her. It was the one and only good action of my life. The next day I left England a pauper, and what is worse, a defaulter, doomed never to return to it, and never to bear my own name again. That is how I came to be a loafer, the dead-beat, the beach-comber I was when you took compassion upon me."

"And – and your name?"

"I – I am the Marquis of St. Burden; my father is the Duke of Avonturn."

"You – you – Mr. Ellison, a – marquis!"

"Heaven help me – yes! But why do you look at me like that? You surely do not hate me now that you have heard my wretched story?"

"Hate you! Oh, no, no! I only pity you from the bottom of my heart."

Her voice was very low and infinitely, hopelessly sad. He was looking out to sea. Suddenly he bowed his head and seemed to gasp for breath. Then, turning to her again, he seized her hand with a gesture that was almost one of despair.

"Esther, Esther! My God, what have I done? Forget what I have said. Blot it out from your memory forever. I was mad to have told you. Oh, Heavens, how can I make you forget the mischief my treacherous tongue has dragged me into!"

"Your secret is safe with me, never fear. No mortal shall ever dream that I know your history. But, my lord, you will go back some day?"

Instantly his voice came back to him clear and strong:

"Never! never! Living or dead, I will never go back to England again. That is my irrevocable determination."

"Then may God help you!"

"Esther, can't you guess now why I must go away from here, why I must leave to-morrow?"

He could hardly recognise the voice that answered.

"Yes, yes, I see. It is impossible for you to be my father's servant any longer."

"That was not what I meant. I meant because I am afraid to stay with you, lest my evil life should contaminate yours."