The Wharf by the Docks by Florence Warden (novel24 TXT) 📖

touch of clammy fingers on his face.

Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.

In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.

All he heard was the scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness.

At last he turned and tried to find the door by which he had come in. He found it, and had his hand upon the latch, when his right foot touched something soft, yielding. He opened the door, which was not locked, as he had feared, and was about to make his way as fast as he could into the open air, when another moan, fainter than before, reached his ears.

No light came into the room through the open door; so he struck a wax match. His nerves were not at their best, and it was some time before he could get a light. When he did so, he discovered that the thing his foot had touched was the body of the girl, lying in a heap on the floor close to the wainscot.

Now Max was divided between his doubts and his pity; but it was not possible that doubt should carry the day in the face of this discovery. Whether she had fainted, or whether this was only a ruse on her part to detain him, to interest him, he could not leave her lying there.

The tin candlestick had rolled away on the floor, and the candle had fallen out of it. The first thing Max had to do was to replace the one in the other, and to get a serviceable light. By the time he had done so he saw a movement in the girl's body. She was lying with her head on the floor. He put his arm under her head to raise it, when she started up, so suddenly as to alarm him, leaned back against the wall, still in her cramped, sitting position, and glared into his face.

"Look here," she said faintly, "I couldn't help it. You know--I think--I'm almost--starving."

"Heavens! Why didn't I think of it! Poor child! Get up; let me help you. Come to this chair. Wait here, only a few minutes. I'll get you something to eat and drink."

He was helping her up; had got her on her feet, indeed, when she suddenly swung round in his arms, clinging to his sleeve and staring again with the fixed, almost vacant look which made him begin to doubt whether her reason had not suffered.

"No, no, no," cried she, gasping for breath; "I can't stay here. I know, I know you wouldn't come back. If you once got out, got outside in the air, you would go back to your home, and I should be left here--alone--with the rats--and--_that_!"

And again she pointed to the curtained door.

Max felt his teeth chattering as he tried to reassure her.

"Come, won't you trust me? I'll only be a minute. I want to get you some brandy."

"Brandy? No. I dare not."

And she shook her head. But Max persisted.

"Nonsense--you must have it. There's a public-house at the corner, of course. Come out on to the wharf, if you like and wait for me."

It was pitiful to see the expression of her eyes as she looked in his face without a word. She was leaning back in the wooden arm-chair, one hand lying in her lap, the other hanging limply over the side of the chair. Her hair, which had been fastened in a coil at the back of her head, had been loosened in the fall, and now drooped about her head and face in disorder, which increased her pathetic beauty. And it was at this point that Max noticed, with astonishment, that her hands, though not specially beautiful or small or in any way remarkable, were not those of a woman used to the roughest work.

She made an attempt to rise, apparently doubting his good faith and afraid to lose sight of him, as he retreated toward the door. But she fell back again, and only stared at him dumbly.

The mute appeal touched Max to the quick. He was always rather susceptible, but it seemed to him that he had never felt, at the hands of any girl, such a variety of emotions as this forlorn creature roused in him with every movement, every look, every word.

He hesitated, came back a step and leaned over the table, looking at her.

"I'll come back," said he, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "Of course I'll come back. You don't think I'd leave you like this, do you?"

For a moment she stared at him with doubt in her eyes; then, as if reassured, her lips parted in a very faint smile, and she made a slight motion with her head which he was fain to take as a sign of her trust.

He had reached the door, when by a weak gesture she called him back again.

"If--if you should meet anybody--I'm expecting Granny all the time--I'm sure she wouldn't leave me altogether like this--you will come back all the same, won't you?"

Her earnestness over this matter had given her back a little strength. She leaned forward over one arm of the chair, impressing her words upon him with a bend of the head.

"Oh, no, I shan't mind Granny," replied Max, confidently.

"Well, you wouldn't mind her if she was in a good humor," went on the girl, doubtfully, "but when she's in a bad one, oh, well, then," in a lowered voice of deep confidence, "_I'm afraid of her myself!_"

"That's all right. It would take more than an old woman to frighten me! Tell me what she's like and what her name is, and I can present myself to her as a morning caller."

The girl seemed to have recovered altogether from her attack of faintness, since she was able to detain him thus from his proposed errand on her behalf. She smiled again, less faintly than before, and shook her head.

"I don't think there's much to describe about Granny. She was a housekeeper at old Mr. Horne's house in the city, you know, and she looks just as old housekeepers always look. Her name's Mrs. Higgs. But," and the girl looked frightened again, "don't tell her you've come to see _me_. She's very particular. At least--I mean--"

A pretty confusion, a touch of hesitancy, the first sign of anything girlish which Max had seen in this strange creature, made her stop and turn her head away. And, the effort of speaking over, she drooped again.

"I won't be long."

And Max, puzzled himself by the feelings he had toward this strange little white-bodied being, went through the outhouse into the open air.

Outside, he found himself staggering, he didn't know why--whether from the emotions he had experienced or from the clammy, close hair of the shut-up room; all he knew was that by the time he reached the public-house, which he had correctly foreseen was to be found at the corner, he felt quite as much in want of the brandy as his patient herself.

It occurred to him, as he stood in the bar, swallowing some fiery liquid of dubious origin which the landlord had sold to him as brandy, to make a casual inquiry about Mrs. Higgs.

"Yes," said the landlord, "I do know a Mrs. Higgs. She comes in here sometimes; she likes her glass. But they know more about her at The Admiral's Arms, Commercial Road way," and he gave a nod of the head to indicate the direction of that neighborhood.

"Do you know her address?" asked Max.

The landlord smiled.

"It 'ud take a clever head to keep the addresses of all the chance customers as comes in here. For the matter of that, very few of 'em have any addresses in particular; it's one court one week, and t'other the next."

"But she's a very respectable woman, the Mrs. Higgs I mean," said Max, tentatively.

"Oh, yes, sir; I've nothin' to say ag'inst her," and the landlord, with a look which showed that he objected to be "pumped," turned to another customer.

Max took the brandy he had bought for the girl and hurried back to the place where he had left her. As he went, an instinct of curiosity, natural enough, considering his recently acquired knowledge, made him go down the passage and try to look in through the grim, dusty window of the shop. But this also was boarded up on the inner side, so that no view could be obtained of what was within.

It seemed to Max, however, as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the boards there glimmered a faint light. It seemed to flicker, then it died out.

Surely, he thought, the girl has not summoned enough courage to go into the room by herself?

He hurried back down the passage, and made his way as before to the wharf. Stumbling round the piles of timber, he found the lane by which he had entered and left the house. It seemed to him, though he told himself it must be only fancy, that some of the loose planks had been disturbed since his last journey over them. Reaching the door of outhouse, which he had left ajar, he found it shut.

He was now sure that some one had gone in, or come out, since he left; and for a moment the circumstance seemed to him sufficiently suspicious to make him pause. The next moment, however, the remembrance of the girl's white face, of the pleading blue eyes, returned to him vividly, calling to him, drawing him back by an irresistible spell. He pushed open the door boldly, crossed the brick floor and reentered the inner room. The candle was still burning on the table, but the girl was not there.

Max looked round the room. He was puzzled, suspicious. As he stood by the table staring at the wall opposite the fireplace, wondering whether to go out or to explore further, he found his eyes attracted to a spot in the wall-paper where, in the feeble light, something like two glittering beads shone out uncannily in the middle of the pattern. With a curious sensation down his spine, Max took a hasty step back to the door, and the beads moved slowly.

It was a pair of eyes watching him as he moved.


CHAPTER IX.

THE MAN WHO HESITATES.

Max had become accustomed, in the course of this adventurous visit, to surprises and alarms. Every step in the enterprise he had undertaken had brought a fresh excitement, a fresh horror. But nothing that he had so far heard or seen had given him such a sick feeling of indefinable terror as the sight of these two eyes, turning to watch his every movement. For a moment he watched them, then he made a bold dash for the place where he had seen them, and aimed a blow with his fist at the wall.

He heard the loose plaster rattle down; but when he looked for the result of