A Practical Novelist Part 12

'Mr. Dempster!' she said. 'Alec!' she sighed.

'Eh?--eh--ah!'--and he had to hold her--to clutch her, to save himself from falling.

'I'm the happiest woman in the world.'

'I'm--I'm very glad of it.'

'I never loved anybody before,' she said, so sweetly that Dempster wondered.

Then she buried her face in his neck, she did, the stupid, soft-hearted creature, and whispered, 'Oh, the torture of wooing you for Muriel! But now I have my reward!'

And she did think this as she said it, although it had never occurred to her before.

'Yes,' said Dempster, feeling that the pause must be filled up somehow. 'Of course,' he added, making a half-hearted attempt to force her back into her chair, which she mistook for a caress, 'I only suggested the contradiction. I did not----'

But her eyes were shut, and her brain too.

'I adore your modesty,' she whispered. 'Trust me, trust me. I will love you till death.'

'I'm completely stumped,' exclaimed Dempster.

'Poor dear!' said Miss Jane, mistaking. And, indeed it was pardonable, Dempster's metaphors being usually marked by a _curiosa infelicitas_.

Here the door opened briskly and Mrs. Cherry, the housekeeper, burst into the room.

'Losh me! Miss Chartres!' she cried, as the pair scrambled to their feet.

'Mrs. Cherry,' said Miss Jane, with great presence of mind, in spite of a distinct tremor in her voice, 'since you have seen, I may as well tell you. Mr. Dempster is going to marry me. But why did you come in without knocking, and what do you want?'

Mrs. Cherry made a dreadful mess of her story. It will be clearer to the reader in a form different from that which she gave to it.

The housekeeper's room was on the ground floor, and directly under Muriel's sitting-room. About half-past nine Mrs. Cherry's gossip, Mrs. Shaw, dropped in for a chat. These two good women were widows of fifty, and whatever their talk began with, it usually ended in laudation of their sainted husbands. The crack reached that stage about ten o'clock on the night of our story, and Mrs. Shaw's panegyric was soon in full blast.

'Maister Shaw,' she said, twiddling her thumbs, 'wis a fine man.

The cliverest, G.o.dliest, brawest Christian, an' a gentleman though he merrit me. He could write, ay, an' c.o.o.nt, mind ye, for a' the warl' as weel as ony bairn o' fourteen in thae' days when a'body's brats gang to the schule. An' for readin'--losh, wumman!--he would sit glowerin' at a pipper a nicht wi' the interestedest look in his een--sae dwamt-like that ye wad hae' thocht he didna' ken a word.'

'What's that?' said Mrs. Cherry, starting in her chair.

'What's what?' said Mrs. Shaw.

'I thocht I heard a scart at the windy, an' somethin' gie a saft thump on the gravel.'

'Ne'er a bit o't. Some maukin loupin' alang, or mebbe a rotten or a moosie clawin' in the wa' tae let us ken it's time we were beddit, and the hoose quate, for it tae come oot an' pike the crumbs on the flare, an toast its bit broon back in the ase. I mind fine sitting at oor ingle ae Januwar nicht wi' Maister Shaw.

He had a pipper, an' I was knittin'. There was nae soond but the wag-at-the-wa' tick-tickin', like an artifeecial cricket with the busiest, conthiest birr, an' my wairs gaun clickaty-click, when I heard a cheep, cheep. Maister Shaw an' me lookit up thegither, an'

there we saw, sittin' on the bar fornent the emp'y side--for the chimbley was that big we aye keepit a fire in the half o't only--the gauciest, birkiest, sleekest wratch o' a moose, c.o.c.kin'

its roon' pukit lugs, an' keekin' by the corners o' naethin' wi'

its bit pints o' een. By-an'-bye it gied anither chirp, an' syne we heard a kin' o' a smo'ored cheepin' at the back o' the lum; an'

in a gliffin' seeven wee bonny moosikies happit oot a hole that naebody wad hae' thocht o' bein' there, an' crooched in a raw, winkin' on their minnie. I lookit at Maister Shaw, an' he turn't up his een like a deid blaeck in the dumfooderdest way; an' his pipper gied the gentiest sough o' a rooshle; an' whan we lookit at the grate again we just got a glint o' the wairy tail o' the big moose weekin' intae its hole. But lord hae' mercy! What's that?'

'I tell't ye!' quoth Mrs. Cherry.

'Gosh me! There it's again!'

Twice a sound similar to that which had first startled Mrs. Cherry was repeated--a slight swish past the window, and a flop on the gravel.

The two old ladies sat with their hands clasped and their mouths open. Neither of them had the courage to pull up the blind, and watch if on a third repet.i.tion the sound should be accompanied by any sight. In a few seconds a louder, harder thud, preceded by no rubbing on the window, and followed by a noise as of some one running on the gravel, appalled the two old dames. Screaming, they flew to the kitchen, where Mrs. Cherry left her friend, and hurrying to the dining-room, in her fright threw open the door without announcing herself, and interrupted so interesting a _tete-a-tete_.

Miss Jane, by dint of interrogation and remorseless interruption, which sometimes failed in its object--that of restoring to Mrs.

Cherry the thread of her story--at length understood, discarding a vast quant.i.ty of irrelevant information, that the two women had been frightened by strange noises at the window of the housekeeper's room. Shrewdly guessing as to its cause, she was proceeding with Dempster to inst.i.tute a formal investigation into the mystery, when a much more incomprehensible affair met her in the hall.

This is what she saw: Lee and Briscoe carrying the body of a man--who might be dead or unconscious, and whose face was covered with a handkerchief--and followed by a tall comely woman, sobbing bitterly. They pa.s.sed upstairs. Miss Jane, Dempster, and the housekeeper were still standing at the door of the dining-room, amazed and silent, when Lee came down.

'You must allow this to pa.s.s unquestioned at present,' he said loftily. 'It is a very serious and sorrowful matter, and I would prefer to explain it to-morrow.'

'Very well, Henry,' said Miss Jane, even more loftily, 'you know your own affairs best. By-the-bye,' she added, as if it were a matter of course, 'from what Mrs. Cherry tells me, I think Muriel has jumped out of the window.'

'By Jove! Where should she go?'

'To the north wall, of course.'

'To be sure.'

s.n.a.t.c.hing a riding-whip from a rack, he strode to the door, but turned and said, 'This must be left entirely to me--entirely,' he repeated as Miss Jane began to remonstrate.

She was much huffed, but withdrew into the dining-room with Dempster, and the housekeeper returned to her room.

Lee had received his first check. Hitherto everybody and everything had obeyed him; but now Briscoe had spoiled part of his plan. Briscoe's courage had soon ebbed in the coolness of the night-air, and, instead of allowing the scene to take place which Lee wished in order to justify him in having Chartres bound and gagged as a madman, he had made the latter insensible the moment ho stepped out of the cab which had driven him and Caroline from Greenock. This was done with chloroform, a bottle of which he had found while rummaging through the bedroom a.s.signed to him.

Caroline he had quieted by a.s.suring her that if she said one word of betrayal he would at once put an end to Chartres' life--a threat, which, having regard to what had already taken place, she did not care to brave.

In this way Briscoe had taken the lead, reducing Lee to the necessity of acting along with him for the nonce.

CHAPTER X

THE NIGHT BREEZE

Frank sat on the north wall watching the moon through the leaves.

Her light was faint, for the skirts of the day still swept the west. He had watched her for half an hour--the pale crescent, which even in that short time had seemed to wane, as her light waxed and her horns grew keener on the night's front--the high forlorn hope of heaven's host that could not all that month drive out the day. He sat under the close silence of the elm, among whose leaves there crept the faint, veiled murmur of the seaboard, fingered by the brooding surges as they beat out their slow, uncertain, soft-swelling music. Now and again there came, twining among the mellow notes of the water, from some far field the corncrake's brazen call, and made the gold ring stronger. These sounds, the pale moonlight, the night, and the idea of Muriel, possessed him to the exclusion of thought. Pa.s.sion rendered him impa.s.sive, and he waited without impatience. Slowly pealing from the tower in Gourock, ten strokes told the hour. A crackling twig, a footstep, a rustle, and Muriel was beside him.

Nothing was said till she had recovered her breath; then her voice, timed unconsciously to the rippling accompaniment of the waves, whispered clear, 'When you had gone, my father locked me in my room. The thought of waiting-and-waiting here all night would soon have made me mad, so I got out by the window. I threw out a cushion, and then I was frightened. But after a little my courage came back again, and then I threw over two more, and dropped down quite soft. I don't know whether any one saw or heard me; but you wanted me, and I'm here. See, I tore my dress.'

He kissed her dress.

'You must not enter your father's house again,' he said.