“I’m so much obliged to you, so very much obliged to you.”
Clifford looked round, and saw pretty Nell Claris standing beside the
two boats which he had pulled up on the bank by her direction.
“I’m afraid it must have given you a great deal of trouble. One of them
was nearly full of water, I know.”
“Why, yes, it wasn’t too easy to get them up, because the bank slopes,
and the earth is so slimy just here. But I’m very glad to have been
able to do you the little service.”
“It wasn’t a little service; it was a great one,” said Nell, with a
look which Clifford felt to be intoxicating.
At that moment he heard a sound like a short, mocking laugh; and
turning, with a sudden flush, to look at the river, he saw the
fisherman, with a face full of scornful amusement, punting away slowly
up stream toward Fleet Castle. Clifford, though he felt a little
uneasy, was glad the man had gone.
“Your friends have gone back to Stroan,” said Nell, who had blushed a
little, on her side, when she heard the fisherman’s contemptuous laugh.
“Is that a hint for me to follow their example?”
“Oh, no, indeed. My uncle said, when I told him what you were doing for
us, that I was to ask you to come in and have a cup of tea with us--if
you would condescend to accept an invitation from an innkeeper and his
niece?”
Nell smiled a little as she added these words; and the manner in which
she uttered them showed so keen a perception of social distinctions
that Clifford was confirmed in his belief that the girl was
ridiculously out of her proper element in this wayside inn.
He followed her into a tiny sitting-room at the back of the inn, where
they were joined by her uncle, a burly, jovial man with a round, red,
honest face, who was evidently very fond of his niece, although every
word each uttered seemed to emphasize the strange difference in manners
and speech which existed between them.
“Proud to know you, sir,” said George Claris, when Clifford held out
his hand. “Proud to know anybody my Nell thinks worth knowing. She’s
mighty particular, is Nell. Lor’, what wouldn’t your friend, Mr.
Jordan there, have given for an invite to tea in here like this! Eh,
Nell?”
Nell blushed, and turned her uncle’s attention to his tea, while
Clifford, in some surprise, enjoyed the knowledge that he had cut
Jordan out without even a struggle.
Nell herself explained this presently, when her uncle had been called
away by press of business in the bar, and the two young people were
left sitting together, looking through the open glass door into the
garden behind the inn.
“I’m afraid you will think I didn’t treat your friend very well, after
setting him to work to pitch that shed for us,” she said, with a pretty
blush in her cheeks, as she looked down at the table-cloth, and thus
enabled Clifford to see that her long, curled, golden-brown eyelashes
were the prettiest he had ever seen.
“I’m afraid he will think so,” said Clifford, with affected solemnity.
“I think myself that, after such heavy work as that, he did deserve a
cup of tea.”
Nell looked up in some distress, her blue eyes brighter with
excitement, and her voice quite tremulous in its earnestness.
“Ah, you don’t know!” she said, quickly. “I am not ungrateful, but
I am in a very difficult position, and I have to be careful how I
treat people. Don’t you know yourself that a great many men, gentlemen
too--or they call themselves so--think they have a right to treat a
girl who lives at an inn differently from other girls? Surely you must
know that?”
Clifford grew red, conscious that the girl had penetrated a weak spot
in Willie’s social armor.
“Well, but--”
“Oh, you needn’t say ‘but,’” interrupted Nell. “You know it is true.
Now I don’t want to say anything against your friend; he is very nice,
and very good-natured; but--”
“You have to keep him in order,” said Clifford.
“Yes. I treat him just as I treat a lot of these young men who come out
from Stroan just to idle about the place; as I treated you, to begin
with.” And she gave him a pretty little shy glance and smile, which
set Clifford’s heart beating faster. “I set them all to work. It does
them no harm, and its does my uncle a great deal of good. Since I’ve
been here,” and she raised her head triumphantly, “he’s been able to do
without a man to look after things.”
Clifford could not help laughing.
“Why, you’re a mascot; you bring luck wherever you go,” said he.
“Indeed, I like to think that I have brought it to Uncle George,” said
the girl. “I may tell you--for everybody knows it--that just before I
came back to him he was on the verge of bankruptcy, and now,” and she
shot at Clifford a glance of triumph, “he has bought another piece of
land, and two more cows, and enlarged the stables, and put money in the
bank besides. What do you think of that?”
“Why, I think he’s a very lucky man to have such a niece,” said
Clifford, more charmed every moment by the girl’s amusing mixture of
shrewdness and simplicity.
“It’s very nice for your uncle,” he added, after a little pause, “but
is it--” he hesitated, afraid of seeming impertinent, “is it quite as
pleasant for you, to live out here, I mean, so far from--from--”
“Civilization?” asked Nell, smiling. “There are some disadvantages,
certainly. Of course I know what you really mean, and what you don’t
like to say. But when the choice lies between living with my old uncle
and helping him, and going away to please myself, is there any doubt
what I ought to do? Miss Theodora, who is the best woman in the world,
says I ought to stay--I am right to stay.”
Clifford reluctantly agreed with her, and allowed her to prattle on
about her uncle and his goodness, and Miss Theodora and her goodness,
until the light of the sunset began to fade in the sky.
When he reluctantly rose to take leave, he found that some heavy drops
of rain had begun to fall, and he allowed himself to be persuaded by
the landlord and his niece to wait until the rain had cleared off. As,
however, instead of clearing, the weather gradually became worse, until
the day ended in a steady downpour which threatened to last all night,
Clifford asked whether they could put him up for the night; and being
answered in the affirmative, decided to spend the night at the inn.
The room they gave him was small, but beautifully clean, and was at
the front of the house, with an outlook over the marshes to the sea.
Clifford, when he retired to it late that night, raised the blind and
tried to peer through the mist of rain which blurred the view. He began
to feel that he wanted to spend his life in this spot, digging Nell’s
cabbages for her, trimming the hedges of her garden, watering her
roses, doing anything, in fact, so that he might be near her.
He was in love, more seriously, too, than Willie had ever been, or than
he himself had ever been before. He asked himself what sort of a spell
it was that this young girl had been able so quickly to cast upon
him, and he told himself that it was the sweetness of her nature, the
purity which shone from her young soul through her blue eyes, which had
enabled her to bewitch him as no mere beauty of face and person could
ever have done. He looked at his hand, and saw again in imagination the
little soft, white hand, smoother and fairer than any girl’s hand he
had ever touched, which had lain for a moment in his as she bade him
good night. He felt again the satiny touch which had thrilled him when
the little fingers met his. He sat caressing his own hand which had
been so honored, intoxicated with his own thoughts.
It was late before the dying candle warned him to make haste to bed. As
he turned to the door to lock it, as his custom was in a strange place,
he found that it had neither lock nor bolt. And the words of the young
fisherman, his warning about the character of the house, flashed with
an unpleasant chill through his mind.
The next moment he was ashamed of having remembered them. Of course,
there was a possibility, then whispered his common sense, that even
the house which sheltered a goddess might also contain a man or a
maid-servant who was a common thief. So, as he had a very handsome
watch with him, and nearly twenty-five pounds in his purse, he tucked
these possessions well under the pillow, and went to sleep, thinking of
Nell.
He was awakened out of a sound slumber by the feeling that there was
some one in his room.
He felt sure of this, although for a few minutes, as he lay with his
eyes closed, he heard nothing but the ticking of the watch under his
pillow. After that he became conscious that in the darkness there was
a shadowy something passing and repassing between his bed and the
heavily-curtained window. His first impulse was to shout aloud and
alarm the would-be thief, as he could not but suppose the intruder to
be. The next moment, however, he decided that he would wait until the
theft had been actually committed, and take the perpetrator red-handed.
He waited, holding his breath.
Sometimes the shadowy something disappeared altogether for a few
seconds, to re-appear stealthily creeping round the walls of the little
room. Only one thing he could make out from the vague outline which was
all he saw of the figure--the intruder was a woman. He heard a sound
which he took to be the dropping of his clothes when they had been
ransacked. Then, though he hardly saw it, he felt that the figure was
approaching the bed.
He remained motionless, imitating the breathing of sleep.
He felt that a hand was upon the bolster, creeping softly toward his
head. Then it was under the bolster, and, finally, it was under his
pillow. He held himself in readiness to seize the hand at the moment
when it should find his watch and his purse.
When once the stealthy fingers had touched these articles, however,
they were snatched away with so much rapidity that Clifford had to
spring up and fling out his arm to catch the thievish hand.
As his fingers closed upon those of the thief, however, he was struck
with a sudden and awful chill on finding that the skin was smooth as
satin, that the trembling fingers were slender and soft, the hand small
and delicate--a hand that he knew!
“Who are you? Who are you?” he cried, hoarsely.
But he got no answer but the answer of his own heart. His agitation
was so great that the little hand wriggled out of his, still bearing
his watch and his purse; and in another moment the door had opened and
closed, and he was alone.