The Wharf By The Docks Part 38

But Carrie went on, as if he had not spoken:

"After that day she changed; she was irritable, unkind, neglectful--not like the same woman. She left me alone sometimes; she gave me no food at others; she hid herself away from me; she was angry at the least thing.

And then--then," went on the girl, in a frightful whisper, "I found out something."

"What was it?"

"That some one used to get into the place at night--I don't know how; some one she was afraid of--a man."

"Well?" said Max, excited by her tone.

"I have heard him--seen him twice," went on Carrie, in the lowest of whispers. "And I believe--"

"Yes, yes; go on!"

"That it was Mr. Dudley Horne."

"Oh, rubbish!"

Carrie was silent. Max went on, indignantly:

"How could you take such a silly idea into your head? What reason should Mr. Horne have for creeping about a hole like that at night?"

"Well, what reason should he have for coming to it at any time? Yet you know he came in the daytime."

It was the turn of Max to remain silent. There was a long pause, and then Carrie went on:

"I used to sleep in a little attic over the outhouse, just a corner of the roof it was. And twice at night I have heard a noise underneath, and looked through the cracks in the boards and seen a man down there, with a light. And each time, when the light was put out and the noise had stopped, I have gone downstairs and found the doors bolted still on the inside."

"Well, the place seems to be honeycombed with ways in and ways out. The strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or else Mrs. Higgs let him out."

"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."

"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr.

Dudley Horne?"

"Once I saw his face," answered Carrie.

"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"

Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley.

Carrie looked at him steadily.

"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."

Max frowned uneasily. But after a few moments a new thought struck him, and he turned to her sharply. The match he had struck had burned itself out, and they were again in darkness.

"If Mrs. Higgs was only a tool in his hands, as you suggest, for some mysterious purposes which n.o.body can understand or guess at, how do you account for her trying to drown him?"

"They must have quarreled," said Carrie, quickly. Then, instantly perceiving that she had made an admission, she added: "That is, supposing she had anything to do with it."

"Amiable old lady!" exclaimed Max.

The mystery of the whole affair hung over both him and Carrie like a pall; and the long night-drive seemed never-ending in the death-like silence. Max tried from time to time to break it, but Carrie grew more reserved as the hours went by, until her curt answers ceased altogether.

Then, when dawn came, the dull dawn of a foggy morning, and the carriage drew up at the hotel in Chatham where they were to change horses, Max discovered that she was asleep.

Dudley opened his eyes when the carriage stopped, but shut them again without a word to Max, who asked him how he felt.

Max, when the people of the hotel had been roused, succeeded in borrowing a rug, which he wrapped gently round Carrie, without waking her. And presently the carriage jogged on again on its journey, and the morning sun began to pierce the mist as the bare Kentish hop-fields and orchards were reached.

Max leaned forward and looked at Carrie's sweet face with infinite tenderness. Now in her sleep she looked like a child, with her lips slightly parted and her eyelashes sweeping her thin, white cheeks. The alert look of the Londoner, which gave an expression of premature shrewdness to her waking face, had disappeared under the relaxing influence of slumber. She looked pitifully helpless, sad and weak, as her tired, worn-out little body leaned back in the corner of the carriage.

Max looked at her with yearning in his eyes. This young ne'er-do-weel, as his father called him, had enjoyed the privilege of his type in being a great favorite with women. As usual in such cases, he had repaid their kindness with ingrat.i.tude, and had had numerous flirtations without ever experiencing a feeling either deep or lasting.

Now, for the first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her s.e.x an attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he wanted her; that he could not go away and forget her in the presence of the next pretty face he happened to see.

This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.

In his way he had been in love many, many times. Now for the first time he worshiped a woman.

When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who had awakened with a start, he ran across the gra.s.s and up the slope to the house.

It was nine o'clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the breakfast-room.

"Why, Max, is it you? What a strange time to arrive! And where have you been? You look as if you'd been up all night!" cried she, and she ran forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him, with an expression of amazement and horror.

"I have been up all night," said he, briefly. "I've driven all the way from London--"

"What!"

"And--and I've brought some one with me--some one who is ill, who is in trouble. Some one--"

A cry broke from her lips. She had grown quite white, and her hands had dropped to her sides.

She understood.

"Dudley!" she whispered. "Where is he? Why haven't you brought him in?"

"He is at the gate. Where is my father? I must speak to him first, or to mother."

Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him. In a few words he informed her of the circ.u.mstances, adding, as he was bound to do, that there was a possibility that the police might come to make inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley. But Doreen, who insisted on hearing everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything about it.

Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was a.s.sisted into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms--Max on one side and Bartram on the other.

By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do so. When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he came down.

"Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?"

Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration: