In spite of his own indignation and remorse on hearing Claris make this
coarse and cruel speech, Clifford watched the girl narrowly, and was
shocked and surprised to observe that while he and her uncle were at a
white heat of excitement, she showed remarkable self-control. After a
moment’s silence on her part, she interrupted Clifford’s protests and
excuses with a little pettish movement of her hand.
“Never mind apologizing,” said she, curtly. “Let us hear what you have
to say. Now I know what you meant by your being ‘disturbed.’”
She cast down her glance upon the shabby carpet of the little
sitting-room, and stood, leaning with one hand upon the table, her head
half turned away, in the attitude of close attention.
It was evident that she did not suffer half so keenly as did Clifford,
whose voice was hoarse and tremulous as he spoke in answer.
“You don’t suppose, you can’t suppose, that I accuse you of anything,”
said he, trying in vain to meet her eyes, and betraying even to the
prejudiced eyes of George Claris the genuineness of his feeling. “I was
disturbed in the night. I found a hand under my pillow. I caught the
hand _with my purse and my watch in it_. The hand was a woman’s, small
and soft and slender. There, that’s all I know.”
“But you think it’s enough to go upon when you accuse my niece of being
a thief!” shouted George Claris, as he brought his heavy fist down with
a sounding thump upon the table.
“Hush, uncle!” said the girl, with perfect calmness. “Mr. King never
meant that. I am sure of it.”
And to the young man’s intense relief and gratitude, she looked
straight in his face with a faint smile.
“Thank you. Thank you with all my heart,” said he, hoarsely.
Nell was still very pale, but she was quite calm and composed; and
after a short pause, during which the two men had watched her,
wondering what she was going to propose, she suddenly sat down upon a
chair and leaned upon the table, in the endeavor to hide the fact that
her limbs were not as much under her control as her mind was.
“Let us think it out,” said she. And then, before either of the others
had spoken, there passed suddenly over her face a sort of spasm of
horror-struck remembrance, as if a half-forgotten incident had suddenly
flashed into her mind with a new significance. Clifford saw that a
light had broken in upon her. But instead of communicating to her
companions the idea, whatever it was, which had flashed through her own
brain, she raised her head very suddenly, and meeting Clifford’s eyes
with a piercing look, asked:
“You have some idea, some suggestion to make. What is it?”
It was strange how the man had blustered, and the woman prepared
herself to reason. Clifford sat down on the other side of the table,
feeling that here was a person with whom he could discuss the matter
with all reasonableness.
“I was wondering,” he said, gently, “whether you ever walked in your
sleep. I know it seems an infamous thing to have dared to connect you
with the matter at all--”
“That will do,” she said, gravely. “I don’t want any apologies about
that. I can see, Mr. King, that the very notion makes you much more
unhappy than it does me.”
The tears sprang to Clifford’s eyes. Every trace of suspicion of her
honesty had melted away long since under the influence of her perfect
straightforwardness.
“It’s awfully good of you,” he said, gratefully. “As I was saying,
somnambulism is the only explanation possible. You must have read of
such things. You must have heard that it is possible for a person
to take things in his sleep and hide them away without ever being
conscious of what he’s done.”
Again there passed over the ingenuous face of the young girl that look
which betrayed some vague but horrible memory. It perplexed Clifford
and worried him. It was the one circumstance which marred his perfect
belief in her, for it showed what all her words denied--that she had a
little more knowledge than she confessed to.
“And what made you think the hand was mine?” asked she, in a troubled
tone. And instinctively, as she spoke, she tried to hide her hands
under the rim of the broad hat which she had taken off.
“Well, the hand was small and soft, like yours,” said Clifford in a low
voice. “So small that it was almost like a child’s hand in mine. It
seemed to me that I had only touched one hand in my life at all like
it.”
Nell shot a frightened glance at him, and in the pause which followed
Clifford saw a tear fall on to the table-cloth. He started up.
“Oh, this is horrible!” he moaned.
But the girl sprang up in her turn, and turning to her uncle, cried, in
a voice full of energy:
“Uncle George, you must give to Mr. King the money he has lost,
whatever it is. Of course,” she went on quickly, turning to Clifford
with eyes now bright with excitement, “we cannot give you back your
watch, but we can give you the value of it, if you will tell us what it
is--the mere money value, I mean. For, of course, that is all we can
do.”
But even before Clifford could protest against this suggestion, which
he had, indeed, never contemplated for a moment, the innkeeper burst
out into a torrent of indignant remonstrance.
“Me give him twenty-five pound! That’s what he said he had on him, an’
who’s to credit it? Who’s to prove it, I say? An’ the vally he likes
to set on his watch besides? No, that I won’t. It’s my belief it’s a
trumped-up story altogether, an’ I dare him to fetch the police in! I
dare him to, I say!”
And he gave another thump on the table.
Avarice as well as anger gleamed in the man’s eyes as he spoke, the
avarice of the man who has had to work hard for small gains.
Clifford looked from the niece to the uncle, and suspicion of the
latter began to grow keen. Nell retained her presence of mind. She went
up to the excited man and put a coaxing hand upon his shoulder.
“Uncle,” she said, almost in a whisper, “you remember there have been
other robberies here.”
Her voice sank until the last word was almost inaudible.
George Claris started violently, and shook his fist in the air in a
tumult of rage.
“I know there has! I know there has!” said he, between his teeth.
“An’ I’d like to catch the rascal as did ’em. But nobody before ’as
dared to say you or me was at the bottom of it, Nell. Nobody before
has dared to say we wasn’t honest. Why, man, I’ve been settled here
these twenty-five years, and I’m known to every man, woman and child
between Stroan and Courtstairs. Me take a man’s watch or purse--me or
my niece! It’s a plant, my girl, a plant of this fine London gentleman.
Twenty-five pounds! You bet it’s more than he’s worth, every rag and
stick of him. He’s heard of my misfortunes lately, an’ he’s come an’
trumped up this story, thinking it’ll be better worth my while to pay
him the money than have another scandal about the place. But I won’t! I
won’t! I’ll do time rather.”
Clifford was torn with battling emotions as he listened to this speech,
which was indeed like that of a broken-hearted man. He had not been
able to stem the torrent of the poor fellow’s fierce wrath, and it was
only when Claris sank down with his head upon the table that he was
able to say, very quietly:
“I never thought of asking for compensation, Mr. Claris. I should not
think of doing so. All I want is to clear up this detestable puzzle,
much more in your interests than in mine. I am not a rich man, but
neither am I a beggar, as you have rather unkindly suggested. I can
afford the loss of my watch and money, but I cannot afford to leave you
and poor Miss Nell here without doing my best to find out the cause of
these unfortunate occurrences.”
Then Nell looked again in his face with a smile which made him ready to
go on his knees and worship her for her sweet forbearance.
“Thank you,” said she. Then turning to her uncle: “It will all come
right,” she said; “or, at least,” she added, hurriedly, “we will hope
it may. You go back to your work, uncle, and I will see if I can’t set
my wits to work and have something to tell you when I next meet you.”
Claris allowed himself to be coaxed into compliance with her wishes,
and presently disappeared into the bar. Then, when they were alone
together, Clifford noticed a sudden alteration in her manner toward
himself. It was no longer the confiding, childish behavior of a
light-hearted girl; it was the responsible gravity of an older and
thoughtful woman.
“You are not to distress yourself, Mr. King,” she said, quietly.
“Although it is a terrible thing for us, we are, in a way, used to it,
for, as you heard me say, there have been two or three cases of theft
here before. I hope you are not in a hurry to get back to Stroan, for
I should like, before you go, to have a search made of the house and a
few more inquiries.”
She would not listen to his protests, his objections, but left him and
went upstairs. Clifford, miserable and perplexed, went out into the
garden and strolled among the cabbages and carrots, torn by doubts
which he tried in vain to suppress.
In about ten minutes he saw, from the corner of the garden where he was
smoking his pipe under an apple-tree, Nell coming quickly out of the
house by the back way, and flying like an arrow down to the river’s
bank. From the glimpse he caught of her face, he saw that she looked
scared and guilty, and that she cast around her the glance of a person
who does not wish to be observed.
Hastily unmooring one of the boats which lay by the bank, she got in,
sculled across the stream, made the boat fast to the opposite shore,
and began to run across the open fields as fast as her feet could carry
her.
It occurred at once to Clifford that she must be going to take counsel
with her friend, Miss Bostal, and he started in the direction of
Shingle End himself, thinking that it would be a good idea for him to
open his heart to that lady, and re-assure Nell as to his own trust in
her through the unimpeachable lips of her elderly friend.
He went by the road, and sauntering along at a very sedate pace,
reached the little tumbledown residence of Colonel Bostal just as Nell,
emerging from it by a back-gate into the fields, started on her journey
back home. She did not see him, but he, looking through the hedge at
her, was able to discern that her face was, if anything, more sad than
it had been when she left home, and that her eyes were swollen with
recent tears.
The prim old maid had been unsympathetic and harsh to her poor little
_protégée_, that was evident, and Clifford felt that he hated the
starchy spinster for it.
He could not, however, help feeling that he should like to hear the
opinion on the whole matter of people who, like the Bostals, were
acquainted with the family at the Blue Lion, and who were at the same
time on friendly terms with them.
Miss Bostal herself opened the door as before, and from this and other
signs it was easy for Clifford to discover that she and her father kept
no servants. She seemed not to be at all surprised by his visit, and
when he began to apologize for intruding upon her again, and at such an
early hour of the day, she only smiled and asked him to come in.
“I must own that I was engaged in the homely pursuit of peeling
potatoes for our early dinner,” said she, as she showed him the old
worn table-knife which she held in her carefully gloved hands.
Very careful she was, this dried-up little elderly lady, about the care
of her person; she never went into the garden without a sunbonnet to
preserve her complexion, nor did any sort of rough work without an old
pair of gloves on her hands.
She led Clifford into the drawing-room, a long, pleasant apartment with
a low ceiling, with an old-fashioned bow-window that looked to the
west and another that looked to the south. The sunshine showed up the
shabbiness of which Clifford had noted some traces the day before. The
faded cushions, the rickety chairs, the bare fireplace, with nothing
but a small sheet of brown paper in the grate to replace the winter’s
fire, all spoke of desperate shifts, of the meanest straits of genteel
poverty. But Miss Bostal gave him very little time to look about him.
“I can guess what you have come about,” she began, as she put down her
old knife upon the side-table in the passage before entering the room.
“It is about this dreadful thing that has happened at the Claris’s. But
I must tell you frankly that if you have any suspicions of old Claris
or his niece, it is of no use your talking to me, for you will get no
sympathy. I have known old George Claris for nearly twelve years; and
as for Nell, I don’t think I could care more for the girl if she were
my own sister. She is as incapable of theft as an angel.”
The lady’s thin, pale face grew quite pink under the energy of this
protest, which Clifford hastened to assure her was not needed.
“I believe that just as heartily as you do,” he said, earnestly. “I
only want the mystery cleared up for their own sake; and I thought that
you, who live so near, might, perhaps, have a notion which would help
us to arrive at the truth.”
Miss Bostal smiled triumphantly.
“I have,” she said, emphatically. “I have a very strong notion,
indeed. I will tell you in confidence whom I suspect, and I shall try
my hardest to find out the truth.”
Clifford’s face glowed with excitement and expectancy.
“Who--who is it?” he asked, breathlessly.
“Jem Stickels,” she answered with decision.
“And who is that? You know I am a stranger here.”
“A young fisherman who owes Nell a grudge because she would not listen
to the fellow’s impudent advances. He is always hanging about the
place, though, and he doesn’t scruple to threaten the girl to do her
some harm, and he is always prattling to people who come this way about
the robberies which have been committed at the Blue Lion.”
Clifford listened doubtfully. He remembered the young fisherman in the
punt, with his unprepossessing manner and low type of face; and if
it had been possible to connect him with the robbery, he would have
jumped at the idea as a plausible one. But then the hand he had touched
was certainly not that of Jem Stickels, and, moreover, he could not
conceive how the young fisherman could have got into the house and out
of it unless by collusion with some one within. Rather disappointed,
therefore, with the lady’s fantastic idea, as it seemed to be,
Clifford, upon finding that she had no better suggestion to make, soon
took leave of her, begging her to impress upon Nell his own unwavering
belief in her innocence.
In the hope that he might overtake Nell on her way home, or perhaps
only with the lover’s wish to tread in the loved one’s footsteps,
Clifford obtained Miss Bostal’s permission to go through the little
gate at the bottom of her garden, so that he could return to the Blue
Lion by the fields. Nell was out of sight, however, by the time he
started, and whatever pleasure he extracted from the walk was due only
to the knowledge that she had passed this way.
There was a faint track over the fields, not defined enough to be
called a footpath, but just clear enough for him to discern by the
trodden look of the short grass.
He was within a couple of hundred yards of the little river, and was
looking out for any sign of Nell’s presence in the little kitchen
garden on the other side, when he became aware that the questionable
Jem Stickels was in sight, punting slowly down the stream, as he had
done the day before. Catching sight of the gentleman, Jem drew his punt
to the shore, and with his black felt hat on the back of his head, his
short clay pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, he landed, and
slouched along toward Clifford.
“Well, sir, I warned you as how it were not a wise thing to put up
at the Blue Lion,” said Jem, with a swaggering insolence which made
Clifford want to kick him. “I ’eard of it up at Fleet yonder,” and he
jerked his head back in the direction of the old ruined castle up the
river. “I s’pose there’s been a grand pretense o’ huntin’ about the
place, and how they’ve found nothin’. They’re gettin’ used to these
little scenes by this time.”
After one glance at Clifford’s face, the man let his eyes wander
elsewhere. Looking shiftily and idly about as he spoke, his attention
was suddenly arrested, just as he finished his speech, by something on
the ground, apparently a few feet from where Clifford was standing.
The latter noticed the rapid change which came over the man’s face,
the eager look of interest and astonishment with which he stood gazing
open-mouthed at the one particular spot on the ground.
In spite of himself, Clifford turned his head and looked, too.
There, on the grass behind him, not three feet from the track he had
followed, was his own watch, with the chain still attached to it, lying
half-hidden in the stubbly growth of the field.
For the first moment Clifford stared without speaking or moving, dumb
with confusion, with astonishment.
“My watch! How did it get there?” he stammered at last.
The man laughed scornfully.
“Aye, how did it? I think I could give a good guess, if I dared.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, that this is the way Miss Nell Claris goes to see Miss Bostal
at Shingle End, and that nobody but her ever uses it. That is what I
should make so bold as to mean, if I could speak my mind. And I’ll
wager Miss has been along here this morning. Oh, she don’t get round
the swells for nothing, she don’t.”
Clifford sprang at the man and pinioned him by the throat.
“You lying cur!” he hissed out, savagely. “You deserve a thrashing for
this!”
But even as he flung the fellow sprawling in the mud of the river-bank,
Clifford felt a chill at his heart when he saw the evidence closing
round pretty Nell.