The Diamond Coterie Part 30

"I want to tell you," here he arose, and dropping his careless manner, laid a threatening hand upon her arm. "I want to tell you, Nance Burrill, that you have got to bridle that tongue of yours; d'ye understand?"

She shook off his hand, and retired a few paces eyeing him closely as she said:

"Oh! I thought so. Something has scared ye already."

"No, I'm not scared; that thing can't be done by you, Nance; but you have been blowing too much among the factory people, and I won't have it."

"Won't have what?"

"Won't have any more of this talk about going to my wife with stories about me."

"Who said I threatened?"

"No matter, you don't do much that I don't hear of, so mind your eye, Nance. As for the women at the bend, you let them alone, and keep your tongue between your teeth."

"Oh! I will; one can't blame you for seeking the society of your equals, after the snubbing you must get from your betters up there. But that don't satisfy you; you must drag that poor fellow, Evan Lamotte, into their den; as if he were not wild enough, before you came where you could reach him."

John Burrill took another pull at the black bottle.

"Evan's a good fellow," he said somewhat thickly. "He knows enough to appreciate a man like me, and we both have larks, now let me tell you."

"Well, have your larks; but don't sit and drink yourself blind before my very eyes. Why don't you go?"

"Cause I don't want'er--," growing more and more mellow, as the liquor went fuming to his head, already pretty heavily loaded with brandy and wine. "Where's the little rooster, I tell yer."

"In the streets, and he's too much like his father to ever come home, 'till he's gone after, and dragged in."

"Well, go and drag him in then, I'm goin' ter see 'im."

"I won't!" shrieked the woman, now fairly beside herself with rage; "go home to your lady wife, and take her my compliments; tell her that I turned you out."

John Burrill staggered to his feet, uttering a brutal oath.

"You'll turn me out, will you? You say _won't_ to me; you are forgetting my training, Mrs. Nance; I'll teach you that John Burrill's yer master yet; go for the boy."

But the woman did not stir.

"You won't, eh!" clutching her fiercely, and shaking her violently, "now will you?"

"No, you brute."

"Then, take that, and that, and that!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Then take that, and that."]

A rain of swift blows; a shriek ringing out on the stillness of the night; then a swift step, the door dashed in, and John Burrill is measuring his length upon the bare floor.

The woman reels, as the clutch of the miscreant loosens from her arm, but recovers herself and turns a bruised face toward the timely intruder. It is Clifford Heath.

"Are you badly hurt?" he asks, anxiously.

She lifts a hand to her poor bruised face, and aching head, and then sinking into a chair says, wearily:

"It's nothing--for me. Look out, sir!"

This last was an exclamation of warning, John Burrill had staggered to his feet, and was aiming an unsteady blow at the averted head of Doctor Heath.

The latter turned swiftly, comprehending the situation at a glance, and once more felled the brute to the floor.

By this time others had appeared upon the scene,--neighbors, roused by the cry of the woman.

Doctor Heath bent again to examine her face. He had scarcely observed the features of the man he had just knocked down; and he now asked:

"Is--this man you husband, madam?"

The woman reddened under her bruises.

"He _was_ my husband," she said, bitterly. "He is--John Burrill."

Clifford Heath started back, thinking, first of all, of Sybil, and realizing that there must be no scandal, that could be avoided, for her sake. He had never seen Burrill, save at a distance, but had heard, as had every one in W----, of his divorced wife.

Turning to one of the neighbors, he said: "I was pa.s.sing on my way home from Mrs. Brown's, when I heard this alarm. I think, good people, that we had better let this fellow go away quietly, and attend to this woman.

Her face will be badly swollen by and by." Then he turned once more toward Burrill.

Once more the miscreant was struggling to his feet, and at a command from Doctor Heath, he hastened his efforts. Hitherto, he had had only a vision of a pair of flashing dark eyes, and an arm that shot out swiftly, and straight home.

Now, however, as he gained an erect posture, and turned a threatening look upon his a.s.sailant, the onlookers, who all knew him, and all hated and feared him, saw a sudden and surprising transformation. The red all died out of his face, the eyes seemed starting from their sockets, the lower jaw dropped abjectly and suddenly, and, with a yell of terror, John Burrill lowered his head and dashed from the house, as if pursued by a legion of spectres.

CHAPTER XIX.

NANCE BURRILL'S WARNING.

The sudden and surprising exit of Burrill caused, for a moment, a stay of proceedings, and left the group, so rapidly gathered in Nance Burrill's kitchen, standing _en tableaux_, for a full minute.

Dr. Heath was the first to recover from his surprise, and as he took in the absurdity of the scene, he uttered a low laugh, and turned once more toward the woman, Nance, who seemed to have lost herself in a prolonged stare.

"Your persecutor does not like my looks, apparently," he said, at the same time taking from his pocket a small medicine case. "Or was it some of these good friends that put him to flight?" And he glanced at the group gathered near the door.

A woman with a child in her arms, and her husband with two more in charge, at her heels; a family group to the rescue; two or three old women, of course; and a man with a slouching gait, a shock of unruly red hair, and a face very much freckled across the cheek bones, and very red about the nose; the eyes, too, had an uncanny squint, as if nature had given up her task too soon and left him to survey the world through the narrow slits. This man had always an air of being profoundly interested in the smallest affairs of life, perhaps because the slits through which he gazed magnified the objects gazed upon, and he peered about him now with profoundest solicitude. This was Watt Brooks, a mechanic, and hanger-on about the mills, where he did an occasional bit of odd work, and employed the balance of his time in gossiping among the women, or lounging at the drinking saloons, talking a great deal about the wrongs of the working cla.s.ses, and winning to himself some friends from a certain turbulent cla.s.s who listened admiringly to his loud, communistic oratory.

Brooks had not been long in W----, but he had made rapid headway among that cla.s.s who, having little or nothing to love or to fear, are not slow to relieve the monotony of very bare existence by appropriating to themselves the friendship of every hail fellow whom chance throws in their way.

Accordingly Brooks had become a sort of oracle among the dwellers in "Mill avenue," as the street was facetiously called, and he was ready for any dish of gossip, not infrequently making himself conspicuous as a teller of news; he was faithful in gathering up and retailing small items among such ladies of the "avenue" as, being exempted from mill work because of family cares, had time and inclination, and this latter was seldom lacking, to chatter with him about the latest mishap, or the one that was bound to occur soon.

Prominent among the gossips of Mill avenue was that much abused matron Mrs. John Burrill number one, and she had not been slow to discover the advantages of possessing such an acquaintance as Mr. Brooks; accordingly they gravitated toward each other by mutual attraction, and it was quite a common thing for Brooks to drop in and pa.s.s an evening hour in the society of Mrs. Burrill, sometimes even taking a cup of tea at the table of the lone woman on a Sunday afternoon.