TWO WOMEN.
Bob grinned with satisfaction when Max, expressing his gratification,
dropped into his hand a half-sovereign.
"Thought you'd be pleased, sir," said he, as he helped to get Dudley
into the carriage. "I said it was for a toff, a reg'lar tip-topper; and
so it was, s' help me!"
Dudley, who was very lame, and who had to be more than half carried,
looked out of the window.
Max was still outside, trying to get hold of Carrie, who was on the
other side of the carriage.
"You're coming, Max?"
"Yes, oh, yes, rather."
"And--you?"
Dudley turned to Carrie, who drew back quickly and shook her head.
"I? No."
Max ran round at the back of the carriage and caught her by the arm as
she was slinking quietly away.
"Where are you going? Not back in there? You must come with us."
"I!--come with you? To your father's house? Catch me!"
"Well, part of the way, at any rate," urged Max, astutely. "I dare not
go all that way with him alone. See, he wants you to go. You shall get
out just when you please."
Carrie hesitated. Although she saw through the kindly ruse which would
protect her against her will, she saw, also, that Dudley was indeed in
no fit state to take the long journey which was before him, and at
length she allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany them on at least
the first part of the journey.
And so, in the fog and the gloom of a January night, they began their
strange drive.
The road they took was by way of Greenwich and Dartford to Chatham,
where there would be no difficulty in getting fresh horses for the rest
of the journey.
Dudley, who had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed
which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short
period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep.
Max was rejoicing in this, but Carrie looked anxious.
"It isn't natural, healthy sleep, I'm afraid," said she, in a low voice.
"It's more like stupor. It wasn't the water that did it, it was a blow
on the head. You saw the mark. I'm afraid it's concussion of the brain."
"Ought he to travel, then?" asked Max, anxiously.
Carrie, who was sitting beside Dudley, and opposite to Max, hesitated a
little before answering:
"What else could we do? We couldn't leave him there at the wharf, could
we? And where else could we have taken him? Not back to his chambers,
certainly!"
There was silence. The carriage jogged on in the darkness through
London's ugly outskirts, and the two watchers listened solicitously to
the heavy breathing of their patient. It was a comfort to Max, a great
one indeed, to have Carrie for a companion on this doleful journey. But
she was not the same girl, now that she had duties to attend to, that
she had been over that _tête-à-tête_ dinner, or even during the
journey in the hansom. He himself felt that he now counted for nothing
with her, that he was merely the individual who happened to occupy the
opposite seat; that her interest, her attentions, were absorbed by the
unconscious man by her side.
"Why didn't you become a hospital nurse?" asked Max, suddenly.
He heard rather than saw that she started.
"That's just what I thought of doing," she answered, after a little
pause. "I'm just old enough to enter one of the Children's Hospitals as
a probationer. They take them at twenty."
"I see. Then you couldn't have tried before."
"No; they're very strict about age."
"I should think you were cut out for the work, if only you are strong
enough," said Max, with warmth. "You seem to do just the right thing in
just the right way."
"I've had plenty of experience," said Carrie, shortly, breaking in upon
rhapsodies which threatened to become tender. "I did a lot of visiting
among poor people who had no one to nurse them when I lived with Miss
Aldridge. Down in these parts, the East End, you get practice enough
like that, I can tell you!"
"But the treatment of a drowning man--that requires special knowledge,
surely!"
"Yes, but down by the river is just the place to get it. He's the fifth
person I've seen taken out for dead in the time I've lived there. Three
out of the five were dead. The other two, a boy and a woman, were
brought around."
There was silence again.
Presently Max whispered:
"Do you know--can you guess--how he got into the water?"
Carrie shivered.
"Wait--wait till he can tell us himself," said she, hurriedly. "It's no
use guessing. Perhaps it was an accident, you know."
"You don't think so?"
"Sh--sh!" said Carrie.
But Max persisted.
"You know as well as I do that that villainous old Mrs. Higgs is at the
bottom of the affair."
Carrie bent over Dudley, to assure herself that, if not asleep, he was
at least unconscious of what was passing. Then she turned to Max.
"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only,
in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will
only laugh at me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until--until
Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And
that, after that awful day when the man was killed--murdered by Mr.
Horne--"
"It's not true! It can't be true!" burst out Max.
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 nobody 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 ingratitude, 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 sex 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 grass 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 circumstances, 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 assisted
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:
"Oh, that's the nurse. You see--he was so ill--"
Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.
"Why doesn't she come in, then? Of course she must come in."
And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.
"Aren't you coming in? They've taken your patient upstairs," she said
gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the
carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.
"Oh, I shan't be wanted now, shall I?" asked Carrie, with a timid voice
and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while
she was at work.
Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the
door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.
As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at
her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however,
did not see her questioning look. He led Carrie into the house and
straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.
"Don't make me stay," pleaded she, in a low voice. "They will know I'm
not a regular nurse, and--and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable. You
can do without me now."
She was trying to shrink away. Max stopped in the middle of the stairs,
and answered her gravely, earnestly:
"I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down. He is too
ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that. Will you promise
to wait while we send for one?"
Carrie could scarcely refuse.
"Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted," assented she.
"Ask my sister. Here she comes," said Max.
Doreen was on the stairs behind them.
"Is it really necessary--do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent
for?" asked Carrie, diffidently.
Doreen looked up straight in her face.
"What more natural than that you should stay with him?" returned she,
promptly; "since you are his sister."
Max and Carrie both started. The likeness between Dudley and Carrie,
which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once. Carrie
would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped
her.
"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your
brother's room."
Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about
the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her
brother without asking any questions.
It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed
in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid
with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which
were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and
unlike her own:
"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I
have just learned--from him--from his ravings, a secret--a terrible
secret--one that must not be known!"