DEMPSTER APOLOGISES
While Briscoe was being sobered in the library a remarkable scene
transacted itself in the dining-room between Miss Jane and
Dempster. The outraged lady settled herself in an easy chair with
a book; but the offender entered before she had time to read six
lines. He approached her on tip-toe, and, a spring seeming to give
way somewhere within him, he came down plump on one knee, as if he
had been a puppet, and burst out woefully 'Eh--ah!' like an escape
of saw-dust.
Miss Jane ignored him, and pressed open her book, which was new
and stiff.
Dempster cleared his throat of the saw-dust, and with drooping
head, his left hand on his left knee and his right arm hanging
limp, whispered, just above his breath, 'Miss Chartres, you see
before you a miserable being.'
'I don't; I'm not looking,' said the lady sharply, disconcerting
Dempster terribly.
'If you would look you would see me,' he said nervously, as
several watch-springs seemed to break out of bounds in various
parts of his anatomy.
Miss Jane looked over the top of her book. She saw him collapsed
before her with abased eyes, and was satisfied. So she hid her
face again, smiling, and said coldly, 'I have seen you.'
'Have you?' said Dempster, going off, as it were accidentally,
like a gun; 'I'm very glad: for I would have had no rest of mind
or body if you hadn't looked at me. I would have gone about like a
hen that had lost her--I mean----'
'Well, and say ill, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane, unable to
resist the chance which she had long desired to take. 'These kind
of people often make more mischief than ill-doers,' she added.
This overwhelmed Dempster. Down he came on the other knee, and,
clasping both hands, called out in serpentine anguish, and without
a stammer, 'Why are you so hard on me? The moment I made that
unfortunate remark about marrying you, the earth, the sun, my
wealth, and life and death were to me no more than they are to a
poor man. I assure you, I assure you--I don't exaggerate; and I
beg you, I implore you to forgive me.'
'Rise, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane with a slight return of
graciousness. 'There is really nothing to forgive.'
Some automatic winding-up process began within him and would soon
have brought him to his feet with a bound, but Miss Jane's reply
to his 'And we will be friends as we were before?' made him all
run down again; for the lady said, 'That can hardly be. Though
mistakes may not require forgiveness, they cannot always be
forgotten. But rise, please.'
'I'll not rise till you forget,' said Dempster with pitiful
resignation, his various members barely hanging together. The poor
fellow was in deader earnest than even Miss Jane supposed, as will
shortly appear.
'But I cannot forget,' said the lady. 'Thought is free, and
self-willed besides, Mr. Dempster.'
He clasped his hands again, and in a succession of spasms
ejaculated, 'You are the only woman whose society I have any
comfort in. You understand me; and your advice is always good,
and--eh--ah--agreeable. You never snub me--at least not often, and
not without good reason--like younger, like thoughtless hoydens.
If you won't forget and be friends with me again, I don't know
whatever I'm to do. I have nothing at all to think of now Muriel
has rejected me; and I'll have nobody I can talk to with any
frankness if you go on remembering.'
Miss Jane's blood, which was not by any means a meagre decoction,
but on the contrary rich and sweet enough yet, tingled to her
finger ends. This man actually needed her! She laid aside her
book, leant forward a little, resting her hands neatly in her lap.
There was no smile, but she looked with a gentle earnestness, and
the tang was gone from her tongue.
'How am I to forget?' she said. 'Tell me that, and I'll try. I
suppose you have not forgotten what you said--very bitter words
for any woman to digest. You would as soon think of marrying me as
of marrying a young hoyden, who, from what I can make out, had
just rejected you with insult; and the tone of voice--the tone of
voice! But rise, Mr. Dempster.'
'I won't,' he said, looking her right in the face, and wondering
that he had never noticed before how silky her brown hair was, and
how kindly her brown eyes. 'I won't. Forget and then I'll rise.'
'How can I forget?' softly.
'Just as easily as I can rise. The mind is like legs; it can be
bent and unbent.'
Now Miss Jane was not very much of a prude; but Dempster was
becoming too confident. He must be brought low again. So she
lifted her book and said 'Shocking!'
'I beg your pardon,' he cried, vexed at finding the
stumbling-block, which he had nearly rolled up to the top and
kicked over the other side out of sight for ever, down at the
bottom of the hill again. 'I didn't mean to say,' trying to twist
his fingers into a hay-band, 'that your mind was like my legs--oh
dear me! I've put both feet in it now!'
Miss Jane hid her face completely, but it was to conceal a smile.
Dempster smoothed his cheeks with both hands and held his head for
a second or two, all of him gathered up in a more powerful effort
to think than he had ever made in his life before.
'What can I do to make you forget?' he muttered.
'Ah!' he cried, after a second, pulling the book from Miss Jane's
face as a child might have done, 'I think I'm going to have an
idea.'
'You don't mean to say so!' said Miss Jane, leaning forward again
in the same neat, pleasant way, with a laugh that was almost
girlish.
'Yes, I believe I am,' said Dempster, sitting down on the calves
of his legs with his hands on his knees, and looking up
trustfully, like something in india-rubber.
'If I were to say,' he enunciated slowly, 'something contradicting
emphatically what you can't at present forget, you
might--eh--ah--forget?'
'Yes.'
He had been about a foot from her, and he now scraped along the
ground on his knees until he almost touched hers.
'You might try to say something of that kind,' she said, blushing,
and with a little gasp. Now that it seemed to be coming she was
put out; but, like a brave woman having her last chance, she kept
her position and smiled encouragingly.
'Might I? Oh, thank you!' he cried with effusion.
Then he knitted his brows and rubbed his head. His serpentine
faculty was in abeyance--these involuntaries of his had to cease
in order that he might once in his life attempt to think.
As for Miss Jane, she was mistaken in imagining that he had the
least notion of making love to her. He valued her only as a
friend, and had splashed into the quicksand of a proposal of
marriage without knowing it. She thought, however, that he only
needed a touch to make him bury himself, like a flounder, head
over ears in a declaration of love and an offer of his hand and
heart; so she gave him that touch softly and sweetly.
'You said,' quoth she, 'with the utmost disdain, that you would as
soon think of marrying me as my insolent niece.'
'I did, I did. Can you help me to contradict it emphatically?'
'I'm afraid not--dear Mr. Dempster.'
'Eh?' said he. 'Thank you.'
He felt dimly that there was something in the air--dimly, as
protoplasm may feel its existence.
'Ah!' he cried. 'Here's a kind of notion. I wonder if it's an
idea. Would it do to say, in order to make you forget, just the
opposite of what I said? You see--you understand--something like
this, meaning--of course, you know what I mean--nothing more, you
know--eh--ah!--suppose I say, "I would far rather marry you than
Muriel." Is that--emphatic enough?'
Miss Jane bent forward, and put her head on his left shoulder, and
her hand on his right.
'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, godliest, brawest Christian, an' a gentleman though
he merrit me. He could write, ay, an' coont, 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, cockin'
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 repetition 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 quantity 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 institute 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 passed 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 pass 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.'
Snatching 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
he 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 assigned to him.
Caroline he had quieted by assuring 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.