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

glancing back--an inevitable thing--he saw that she looked sorry, dismayed. He took his gloves out of his pocket and began to draw them on, to fill up the time. By the time the second finger of the first glove was in its place, for he was deliberate, the girl had come into the outhouse, passed him, and was drawing water from the tap into her kettle. He watched her. She knew it, but pretended not to notice. The circumstance of the water flowing freely in the house which was supposed to be deserted made an excuse for another remark, and a safe one.

"I thought they cut the water off from empty houses; that is, houses supposed to be empty."

She turned round with so much alacrity as to suggest that she was glad of the pretext for reopening communications. And this time there was a bright look of arch amusement on her face instead of her former expression of outraged dignity.

"So they do. But--the people who know how to live without paying rent know a few other things, too."

Max laughed a little, but he was rather shocked. This pretty and in some respects fastidiously correct young person ought not surely to find amusement in defrauding even a water company.

The fact reminded him of that which the intoxication caused by a pretty face had made him forget--that he was in a house of dubious character, from which he would be wise in escaping without further delay. But then, again, it was the very oddness of the contrast between the character of the house and the behavior of the girl which made the piquancy of the situation.

"Oh, yes; of course; I'd forgotten that," assented Max, limply.

And then he fell into silence, and the girl stood quietly by the tap, which ran slowly, till the kettle was full.

And then it began to run over.

Now this incident was a provocation. Max was artful enough to know that no girl who ever fills a kettle lets it run over unless she is much preoccupied. He chose to think she was preoccupied with him. So he laughed, and she looked quickly round and blushed, and turned her back upon him with ferocity.

He came boldly up to her.

"I'm so sorry," said he, in a coaxing, confidential, persuasive tone, such as she had given him no proper encouragement to use, "that we've had a sort of quarrel just at the last, and spoiled the impression of you I wanted to carry away."

He was evidently in no hurry to carry anything away, though he went on with the glove-buttoning with much energy.

She listened, with her eyes down, making, kettle and all, the prettiest picture possible. There was no light in the outhouse except that which came from a little four-penny brass hand-lamp, which the girl must have lit just before her last entrance into the inner room. It was behind her, on a shelf against the wall; and the light shone through the loose threads of her fair hair, making an aureole round the side view of her little head.

She was bewitching like that, so the susceptible Max thought, while he debated with himself whether he now dared to try again for that small reward. And he reluctantly decided that he did not dare. And again there was something piquant in the fact of his not daring.

The girl, after a short pause, looked up; perhaps, though not so susceptible as he, she was not insensible to the fact that Max was young and handsome, well dressed, a little in love with her, and altogether different from the types of male humanity most common to Limehouse.

"If," she suggested at last, with some hesitation, "you really think it better to see my grandmother, she will be down very soon. I'm going to make some tea; and you could wait, if you liked, in the next room."

"I should be delighted," said Max.

Off came the gloves; and as the girl tripped quickly into the adjoining room, he followed with alacrity.

"Mind," cried she suddenly, as she turned from the fireplace and stood by the table in an attitude of warning, "it is at your own risk, you know, that you stay. You can guess that the people who belong to a hole-and-corner place like this are not the sort you're accustomed to meet at West-End dinner tables, nor yet at an archbishop's garden-party. But as you've stayed so long, it will be better for me if you stay till you have seen Granny, as she must have heard me talking to you by this time."

Now Max, in the interest of his conversation with the girl, had forgotten all about less pleasant subjects. Now that they were suddenly recalled to his mind, he felt uneasy at the idea of the unseen but ever-watchful "Granny," who might be listening to every word he uttered, noting every glance he threw at the girl.

And then the natural suspicion flashed into his mind: Was there a "Granny" after all? or was the invisible one some person more to be dreaded than any old woman?

Another glance at the girl, and the fascinated, bewildered Max resolved to risk everything for a little more of her society.


CHAPTER X.

GRANNY.

There was some constraint upon them both at first; and Max had had time to feel a momentary regret that he had been foolish enough to stay, when he was surprised to find the girl's eyes staring fixedly at a small parcel which he had taken from his coat-tail pocket and placed upon the table.

It was a paper of biscuits which he had brought from the public-house. He had forgotten them till that moment.

"I brought these for you--" he began.

And then, before he could add more, he was shocked by the avidity with which she almost snatched them from his hand.

"I--I'd forgotten!" stammered he.

It was an awful sight. The girl was hungry, ravenously hungry, and he had been chatting to her and talking about kisses when she was starving!

There was again a faint spot of color in her cheeks, as she turned her back to him and crouched on the hearth with the food.

"Don't look at me," she said, half laughing, half ashamed. "I suppose you've never been without food for two days!"

Max could not at first answer. He sat in one of the wooden chairs, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, calling himself, mentally, all sorts of things for his idiotic forgetfulness.

"And to think," said he, at last, in a hoarse and not over-steady-voice, "that I dared to compare myself to a knight-errant!"

The biscuits were disappearing rapidly. Presently she turned and let him see her face again.

"Perhaps," suggested she, still with her mouth full, "as you say, one didn't hear quite all about those gentlemen. Perhaps they forgot things sometimes. And perhaps," she added, with a most gracious change to gratitude and kindness, "they weren't half so sorry when they forgot as you are."

Max listened in fresh amazement. Where on earth had this child of the slums, in the cheap-stuff frock and clumsy shoes, got her education, her refinement? Her talk was not so very different from that of the West-End dinner-tables she had laughed at. What did it mean?

"Do you really feel so grateful for the little I have done?" he asked suddenly.

The girl drew a long breath.

"I don't dare to tell you _how_ grateful."

"Well, then, will you tell me all about yourself? I'm getting more puzzled every moment. I hope it isn't rude to say so, but--you and this place don't _fit_."

For a moment the girl did not answer. Then she put the paper which had held the biscuits carefully into the cupboard by the fireplace, and as she did so he saw her raise her shoulders with an involuntary and expressive shrug.

"I suppose it is rather surprising," she said at last, as she folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes fixed upon the red heart of the fire. "It surprises me sometimes."

There was a pause, but Max would not interrupt her, for he thought from her manner that an explanation of some sort was coming. At last she went on, raising her head a little, but without looking at him:

"And very likely it will astonish you still more to hear that in coming to this place I made a change for the better."

Max was too much surprised to make any comment.

"If you want to know my name, date of birth, parentage and the rest of it," went on the girl, in a tone of half-playful recklessness, "why, I have no details to give you. I don't know anything about myself, and nobody I know seems to know any more. Granny says she does, but I don't believe her."

She paused.

"Why, surely," began Max, "your own grandmother--"

"But I don't even know that she is my own grandmother," interrupted the girl, sharply. "If she were, wouldn't she know my name?"

"That seems probable, certainly."

"Well, she doesn't, or she says she doesn't. She pretends she has forgotten, or puts me off when I ask questions, though any one can understand my asking them."

This was puzzling, certainly. Max had no satisfactory explanation to offer, so he shook his head and tried to look wise. As long as she would go on talking, and about herself, too, he didn't care what she said.

"What does she call you?" asked he, after a silence.

"Carrie--Carrie Rivers. But the 'Rivers' is not my name, I know. It was given me by Miss Aldridge, who brought me up, and she told me it wasn't my real name, but that she gave it to me because it was 'proper to have one.' So how can I believe Granny when she says that it is not my name? Or at least that she has forgotten whether I had any other? If she had really forgotten all that, wouldn't she have forgotten my existence altogether, and not have taken the trouble to hunt me out, and to take me away from the place where she found me?"

"Where was that?" asked Max.

The girl hung her head, and answered in a lower voice, as if her reply were a distasteful, discreditable admission:

"I was bookkeeper at a hotel--a wretched place, where I was miserable, very miserable."

Max was more puzzled than ever.

Every fresh detail about herself and her life made him wonder the more why she was refined, educated. Presently she looked up, and caught the expression on his face.

"That was after Miss Aldridge died," she said, with a sigh. "I had lived with her ever since I was a little girl. I can hardly remember anything before that--except--some things, little things, which I would rather forget." And her face clouded again. "She was a very old lady, who had been rich once, and poor after that. She had kept a school before she had me; and after that, I was the school. I had to do all the learning of a schoolful. Do you see?"

"Ah," said Max, "_now_ I understand! And didn't she ever let you know who placed you with her?"

"She said it was my grandmother," answered Carrie, doubtfully.

"This grandmother? The one you call Granny?"

"I don't know. You see, Mrs. Higgs never turned up till about ten months ago,