THE PREY OF THE RIVER.
"Help! Help!" shouted Dudley. "Do you want to drown me?"
Great as the shock was of finding himself flung suddenly into what he
supposed was a flooded cellar, Dudley did not at first believe that the
old woman had any worse intention than that of playing him an ugly and
malicious trick.
But as he uttered this question he looked up, and saw her face half a
dozen feet above him, wearing an expression of fiendish malignity which
froze his blood.
She was holding the candle so that she might see his face, and as he
kept himself afloat in the small space available--for he had no room to
strike out, and no foothold on the slimy earthen sides--he began to
understand that she was in grim, deadly earnest, and that the place
where the dead body of Edward Jacobs had been concealed was to be his
own grave.
Then he did not cry out. He saw that he would only be wasting his
breath; that there was no mercy in the hard-light eyes, in the lines of
the wicked, wrinkled mouth.
He made a struggle to climb up one side of the pit in which he found
himself; but the soft earth, slimy with damp, slipped and gave way under
him. He tore out a hole with his fingers, then another, and another
above that. And all the while she watched him without a word, apparently
without a movement.
But just as he came to a point in his ascent from which he might hope to
make a spring for the top, she raised her thick stick and dealt him a
blow on the head which sent him, with a splash and a gurgling cry, back
into the water.
He saw strange lights dancing before his eyes. He heard weird noises
thundering in his ears, and above them all a chuckling laugh, like the
merriment of a demon, as the boards of the displaced flooring were drawn
slowly up by a cord from above until they closed over his head, shutting
him down.
* * * * *
When the police made their descent upon Dudley's chambers, Max, after
giving his name and address, was allowed to go away without hindrance.
He wanted Carrie to go with him, but as she persistently held down her
head and refused to look at him, he came to the conclusion that she had
her own reasons for wishing him to go away without her.
So he went slowly down into the Strand, wondering whether he dared to go
to the wharf to try to warn Dudley, or whether he would be drawing down
danger upon his friend's head by doing so. For although he could not
ascertain that he was himself shadowed, he thought that it might very
possibly be the case.
He had reached the corner of Arundel Street, when he found that Carrie
was beside him. She was panting, out of breath.
"Hello!" said he.
"I've been such a round!" said she. "Just to see whether they were
following me. But they weren't. I guessed you'd come this way, and I
went down by the embankment and up to try to meet you. Are they after
you?"
"I don't think so. Dare we--"
"Wharf? Yes, I think we may. By the way, I'll show you."
She took him across Waterloo Bridge, where they took a cab and traversed
southward to a point at which she directed the driver to stop.
On the way, Max, from his corner of the hansom, watched the girl
furtively. For a long time there was absolute silence between them. Then
he came close to her suddenly, and peered into her face.
"Carrie," said he, "I want you to marry me."
Now Max had been some time making up his mind to put this
proposition--some minutes, that is to say. He had been turning the
matter over in his brain, and had imagined the blushing, trembling
astonishment with which the lonely girl would receive his most
unexpected proposal.
But the astonishment was on his side, not on hers; for Carrie only
turned her head a little, scarcely looking at him and staring out again
in front of her immediately, remarked in the coolest manner in the
world:
"Marry you! Oh, yes, certainly. Why not?"
Max was taken aback, and Carrie, at last stealing a glance at him,
perceived this. She gave a pretty little kindly laugh, which made him
expect that she would say something more tender, more encouraging.
But she didn't.
Turning her head away again, she went on quietly laughing to herself,
until Max, not unnaturally irritated by this acceptance of his offer,
threw himself back in his corner and tried to laugh also.
"It's a very good joke, isn't it--an offer of marriage?" said he at
last, in an offended tone.
"Very," assented Carrie at once. "About the best I ever heard."
And she went on laughing.
"And I suppose," went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I
were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright
earnest, you would laugh still more?"
"Well, I think I should."
"Well, laugh away, then. I was in earnest. I meant what I said. I was
idiot enough to suppose you might find marrying me a better alternative
than wandering about without any home. Extraordinary, wasn't it?"
"Well," answered Carrie, subduing her mirth a little and speaking in
that deep-toned voice she unconsciously used when she was moved--the
voice which Max found in itself so moving--"I should say it was
extraordinary, if I didn't know you."
"If you didn't know me for an idiot, I suppose you mean," said Max,
coldly, with much irritation.
"Not quite that," replied she, in the same tone as before. "I meant if I
hadn't known you to be one of those good-natured people who speak before
they think."
Max sat up angrily.
"I have not spoken without thinking," said he, quickly. "I have done
nothing but think of you ever since I first saw you; and my asking you
to marry me is the outcome of my thinking."
"Well, if I were you, I should think to better purpose than that."
Her tone was rather puzzling to Max. There was mockery in it; but there
was something more. He came to the conclusion, after a moment's
consideration of it, and of the little that he could see of her face,
that she felt more than she chose to show. So he put his arm around her
and caught one of her hands.
"Look here, Carrie," said he in a whisper. "I understand you. I know how
you feel. I know you think it's neither decent nor wise to ask a girl to
be your wife when you've only seen her twice. But just consider the
circumstances. If I don't get you to say what I want you to say now, I
shall lose sight of you to-night and never see you again. Now, I
couldn't bear that--I couldn't, Carrie. I never saw a girl like you; I
never met one who made me feel as you make me feel. And you like me,
too. You wouldn't have troubled yourself about my going to the wharf if
you hadn't cared. It's no use denying that you like me."
Carrie turned upon him with energy.
"Well, I don't deny it, if you care to hear that," said she, quickly. "I
do like you. How could I help it? I liked you the moment I first saw
you; I shouldn't have spoken to you if I hadn't; I should have been
afraid. But what difference does that make? Do you think I'm a fool? Do
you think I don't know that this feeling you have--and I believe in it,
mind--is just because I'm a new sensation to you, who are a spoiled
child--nothing more nor less. Oh, don't let's talk about it; it's
silly."
She had wrenched herself impatiently away from him, and now sat upright,
frowning and looking straight in front of her as before.
Max, not finally rebuffed, but rather puzzled what to make of this form
of repulse, was silent for a few moments.
"Well, if you won't let me talk about that," he said at last, "will you
promise to let me know where you are going to, so that I shan't have to
lose sight of you? Come, you like me well enough to agree to that, don't
you?"
Carrie hesitated.
"I told you," she said at last, in a low voice, "that I didn't know
myself where I was going. Have you forgotten that?"
"But it wasn't true. You said it to put me off. You must know!"
"Well, I shan't tell you. There!"
"Why?"
"Because it would be the beginning of what I don't want and won't have.
Because you'd come and see me, and I shouldn't have the heart to say you
mustn't come; and in the end, if you persisted, I shouldn't have the
heart to stop you from making a fool of yourself."
"How, making a fool of myself?"
"Why, by marrying me. Now don't pretend you don't know it's true.
Marrying me would be just ruin--ruin! Oh, I know! What would your family
say, and be right in saying? That you'd been got hold of by a girl
nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came
from nobody knew where."
"Ah, but when they knew you--"
"They'd think less of me than they did before."
"Nonsense! When they saw how beautiful you are and well educated and
refined, they wouldn't believe you came from such a place as Limehouse."
Carrie smiled.
"I seem refined to you, because you didn't expect much where you found
me. Put me beside your sisters and their friends, and I should be shy
and awkward enough. No, I will not listen, and I want you to tell the
driver to stop here."
Whether this was the point she had proposed to reach or whether she
wanted to cut short the subject, Max could not tell. But as the hansom
stopped she sprang out and led the way hurriedly in the direction of the
river. She knew her way about on this side of the river as well as on
the other, for she went straight to the water's edge, got into a boat
which was moored there with a dozen others, and, with a nod to a man
with a pipe in his mouth who was loafing near the spot, she directed Max
to jump in, and seized one oar while he took the other.
"If we go from this side," she said, "we can make sure we're not
followed, at all events."
In the darkness they began to row across the river, where the traffic
had practically ceased for the night.
Threading their way between the barges, the great steam traders, with
their ugly square hulks standing high out of the water, and the lesser
craft that clustered about the larger like a swarm of bees round the
hive, they came out upon the gray stream, slowly leaving behind one dim
shore, with its gloomy wharves and warehouses, and nearing the other.
The London lights looked dim and blurred through the mist.
As they drew near the wharf, Carrie jerked her head in the direction of
the little ugly cluster of buildings which Max remembered so well.
"There's a passage under there," she said in a whisper, leaning forward
on her oar, "through which they let the dead body of the man--you
know--out into the river. It's just near here."
Max shuddered, and at the same moment there burst from the girl's lips a
hoarse cry.
Max turned sharply, and saw that she was staring down into the water.
"Look! Look there!" whispered she, gasping, trembling.
"What is it?" cried he.
But even as he asked, he knew that the dark object he saw floating in
the water was the body of a man.
By a dexterous movement of her oar, Carrie had brought the boat
alongside the black mass, and then, with the boat-hook, which she used
with an evidently practiced hand, she drew the body close.
Max, sick with horror, leaned over just as Carrie's exertion's brought
the face of the man to view.
"He's dead!" cried he, hoarsely. "It's another murder by those vile
wretches in there!"
An exclamation burst from the girl's lips.
"Look at him! Look at his face! Who is he?" whispered she, with
trembling lips.
Max looked, putting his hand under the head and lifting it out of the
water.
Then, with a great shout, he tore at the body, clutching it, trying to
drag it into the boat.
"Great Heaven! It's Dudley!"