Clifford was so entirely taken by surprise that he hardly realized, in
the first moment, that he was hurt. The next, he dashed open the door
at one blow, and finding Jem outside coolly wiping his knife on the ivy
which grew on this side of the house, he seized the fisherman by the
throat with one hand, snatched his knife from him and flung it away
with the other, and then hurled the man from him with such violence
that the latter fell, and, striking his head upon the stone-ledge of a
window, lay motionless on the ground.
Then, suddenly overcome by a feeling of dizziness, the first result of
his wound, Clifford staggered back against the broken door, and into
Nell’s arms.
“Oh, it is my fault--my fault! I ought not to have asked you to come!”
moaned she, not attempting now to hide her affectionate concern from
the people who, startled by the noise of the affray, now pressed into
the room.
George Claris was among the first to enter, and he frowned angrily on
seeing Clifford, of whose arrival he had not yet heard.
“So it’s you, is it, Mr. King!” he exclaimed surlily, on recognizing
the man whom he looked upon as the origin of all his trouble. “And what
have you been up to now, eh?”
“Oh, uncle, uncle, can’t you see that he’s hurt, badly hurt?” implored
Nell. “Send for a doctor--oh, some one pray go for a doctor, or he will
bleed to death!”
But George Claris hardly concealed the fact that that event would give
him satisfaction rather than annoyance; he did not dare to interfere,
however, when Nell gave orders to one of the men who had crowded in, to
go to Stroan for a doctor.
“Who did it?” somebody, not the landlord, presently asked.
Clifford was by this time hardly conscious. He had been laid upon the
sofa, while Nell herself, keeping enough presence of mind to be of use
and to see what the danger was, held her own fingers to the wound to
check the flow of blood.
She heard the question and answered it.
“It was Jem Stickels. He struck him through the glass.”
This reply led to further investigations, and Jem was quickly
discovered and brought into the room where his victim lay. Unconscious
though he was, having been stunned severely, Jem, of course, got no
pity from Nell. And when some of the men suggested carrying him to
the cottage where he lodged, which was within a stone’s throw of the
inn, Nell made no suggestion that he should remain where he was, being
unaffectedly glad to have him taken out of her sight.
Buxom Meg exchanged many a nod and wink and grin with the customers
from the bar, inspired by the utter absorption Nell showed in her lover
and his danger.
“All my fault--my fault!” the girl kept murmuring, as she hung over
Clifford, watching his face, which had grown pale, with straining eyes,
and listening anxiously to the breathing, which told her that he was
alive.
Then Meg became abruptly conscious that there was something in this
simple grief, this maidenly affection, too sacred for the gaze of the
rough, though sympathetic, group. And she bundled them all, with large,
wide-sweeping gestures as of a gigantic hen, back into the bar. And
Nell and her lover and her uncle were left together.
George Claris, though he, too, was somewhat touched, was uneasy and
suspicious.
“What was he doing down here?” he began, inquisitorially, when they
were left alone. “And what was he up to that made Jem Stickels knife
him? No good, I’ll be bound,” grumbled he.
Nell, without raising her eyes from her lover’s face, answered,
mechanically, with white lips:
“He loves me, uncle. He has asked me, weeks ago, to be his wife, but I
hadn’t even promised; no, not a word; but when he came to-day--”
“Ah, what made him come to-day?”
Nell hesitated, and then confessed, in a low voice:
“I sent for him.”
George Claris mumbled his dissatisfaction.
“And what made Jem Stickels knife him? Come, now, I should have thought
you were above having anything to do with a chap like him. But I’ve
seen him loafing about more’n usual lately.”
“It was not my fault, of course,” said Nell, simply. “And of course he
had no right to--to--”
“To be jealous? So I should ha’ thought. Still, he _was_ jealous, eh?”
“I suppose so.”
There was a short silence; then George Claris spoke again:
“Well, lass, it’s no use talking to women, ’cause they’ve got their
own way o’ doing things, whatever you say to ’em. But you’ve brew’d
yourself a peck o’ trouble between them two chaps, and neither me nor
anybody but yourself can help you out of it. An’ mind, I won’t say I’ll
have this chap turned out of the house, though I’ve a good mind to. But
if the doctor says he’s to be laid up here, I’ll not have you hangin’
’round. You’ll just go away sharp to my sister in London. Do you hear?
I’ll have him properly nursed, that I’ll promise; but it’ll not be by
you. Do you hear?”
Nell assented meekly. As long as Clifford was not made to suffer, she
felt that there was nothing for it but to submit.
Uncle and niece exchanged no more words until the arrival of the
doctor, when George Claris told his niece to put on her hat and to go
to Miss Bostal’s, where she was to remain until he sent her luggage to
her there, when she was to start without delay for London.
Now, there was no place to which Nell would not rather have gone than
to Shingle End. For was not sentimental Miss Theodora the very cause
of the outrage which had put Clifford’s life in danger? If it had not
been for Miss Bostal’s well-meaning but ill-judged encouragement, Jem
Stickels would never have dared to think he could have a chance with a
girl who was so far removed from him in every way as Nell. Now, with
natural feminine obstinacy, Miss Bostal would be sure to take Jem’s
part against Clifford, especially when it reached her ears that the
latter had come down by Nell’s own request. So that it was with slow,
unwilling feet that Nell made her way to the colonel’s house.
Everything turned out as she expected, with this exception, that Miss
Bostal was so much more concerned about Jem than about Clifford that
she insisted on marching off that very moment to inquire as to Jem’s
condition, and insisted on dragging the unwilling girl with her on the
expedition.
At first Nell absolutely refused to go. But she had to give way, being
touched by the self-reproach of the prim little elderly lady, who
blamed herself as much for Jem’s misfortune as Nell blamed herself for
Clifford’s.
“It was all my fault. I feel that I have brought it upon the poor
fellow myself,” was the burden of Miss Bostal’s lament, just as it had
previously been of Nell’s.
She even shed tears at the thought of facing the young man upon
whom she had brought more than one misfortune. For she persisted in
regarding his assault upon Clifford as another grievance of Jem’s
rather than of the hated rival’s.
Nell said little as they went along. She was on the one hand deeply
anxious about her lover; while on the other she hardly knew whether to
laugh at Miss Bostal’s extravagances or to cry sympathetically over
her grief.
The little cottage where Jem lodged was soon reached. Miss Bostal’s
knock was answered, unexpectedly enough, by Jem in person. There seemed
to be little the matter with him, except for a cut on his lower lip,
the result of the blow with which Clifford had felled him. If his
bodily state was sound, however, this was all that could be said for
him. A more forbidding expression of sullen ferocity than that which
his face wore as he recognized his visitors it would be impossible to
imagine.
“Oh, so it’s you, is it?” was his surly greeting, as with a scowl he
made a movement to shut the door in the lady’s face.
But his patroness was ready with the soft answer that turned away
wrath. Pressing forward quickly, and keeping Nell’s hand in hers with
a tight grip, she edged her way into the cottage, and, regardless of
the fact that the man and woman with whom Jem lodged were present,
addressed the young boor in the gentlest of voices:
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! don’t send us away like that! We are so very sorry
for what has happened to you. We want to know if we can do anything--”
Nell was frowning, and trying to get away, indignant at the lowly tone
her companion was taking. And it was upon Nell that Jem’s eyes were
fixed as he interrupted the other lady.
“No!” roared he. “You can’t do nothin’--as yet. But,” and he raised
his voice, and lifted his fist against an imaginery foe, as he stared
harder at Nell than ever, “I’m blest if you won’t find more’n enough
to do to answer the questions as’ll be put to you folks--some of
you--to-morrow morning!”
Nell suddenly ceased struggling, and fixed her eyes upon Jem’s swollen
and excited face, in which the veins were rising like knotted cords.
“What do you mean, my dear young man?” piped Miss Bostal, in the
gentlest accents, her mild efforts to calm the excited monster
appearing every moment more futile and inadequate.
“Oh, you know very well what I mean, or, leastways, Miss Claris does!”
pursued Jem, in the same key, and with a swaggering confidence, which
caused little Miss Bostal to recoil a few steps, as if before a
physical attack. “And if you don’t, why you’ll know soon enough. I’m
just a-goin’,” proceeded Jem, with sullen emphasis, “to have my pipe
and my ’alf pint,” and he took his beloved clay out of his pocket as he
spoke, “and then I’m just a-goin’ to walk over to The Bell, at Stroan,
to ask if a certain gen’leman from Lon’on is in.”
And, without more ceremony, Jem turned his back on the ladies, and
marching out of the room by the opposite end, through the back door,
left them no alternative but to retire.
Nell was utterly disgusted, not only by the part she had been made to
play in this unpleasant scene, but by her companion’s humble demeanor
and Jem’s own rudeness. As for his threat of speaking to the detective,
she seemed to be past caring whether he carried it into effect or not.
She said nothing as they walked back to Shingle End; and Miss Bostal,
perhaps conscious that she had humbled herself before this young
ruffian a little more than was meet, was silent also.
When they reached the house, the elder lady gave a little sigh, and
fell back upon her usual solace in times of anxiety.
“I think we shall both feel better,” she chirped, as she carefully
opened the front door with her latch-key, “when we’ve had a cup of tea.”
It was about a couple of hours after the termination of the scene
between Jem Stickels and the two ladies, and the clock of the tower of
St. Martin’s at Stroan had just chimed a quarter past eight, when a
small boy burst into the bar-parlor of the Bell Inn, and startled the
company by the scared expression of his face. He had been running fast,
and it was some moments before he could articulate. In the meantime the
questions put to him were so many that the confusion of tongues delayed
the lad’s announcement still further.
It was Hemming, the London detective, who finally drew the boy out of
the curious group, and made them wait for him to speak.
With another scared look, the lad at last panted out:
“There’s a man lyin’ out there on the road--the Courtstairs road, a
little way past the big house. An’ I see him layin’--an’ I speaks to
’im--an’ he didn’t answer, an’ he didn’t move. An’--an’--an’ so I run
right away, an’ come here to tell you.”
It seemed pretty evident that the boy had not said all he knew,
or guessed. There was a rush for the door by the occupants of the
bar-parlor, and in a few moments there was a stream of people trickling
out in the darkness along the little quay by the little river, past
the barges waiting to be unloaded, past the ancient stone gateway of
Stroan’s prosperous days. Over the brand-new bridge they went, in twos
and threes, and out upon the flat road over the marshes, taking as
their rightful leader the detective Hemming, who, being afraid that the
frightened boy might give him the slip, held his arm as if in kindly
comradeship. The night was dark, and one of Hemming’s nearest followers
held a lantern, which threw a ray of dancing light to right and left
upon the white road, the ditch on either side, the wide stretch of
marsh to the left, and the dull line of the sea far away on the right.
Just past the “big house,” a lonely mansion standing in flat,
wind-swept grounds between Stroan and the sea, they came upon the man,
lying, as the boy had described, by the side of the road, with his head
hanging over on the grassy bank that sloped into the ditch.
“There--there he is!” whispered the boy, hoarsely.
Hemming beckoned to the man behind to bring up the lantern. Kneeling
down beside the man on the ground, he lifted his head and threw the
light upon his face.
“It’s Stickels! It’s Jem Stickels!” exclaimed more than one voice,
recognizing the heavy, sullen face of the fisherman, who was well known
in the neighborhood.
“Here! Give him some of this; it’s brandy,” said one man, handing a
flask to Hemming.
But the detective shook his head.
“He’s had his last drink, poor chap!” said he. “He’s dead!”