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

old subject, which he might well let rest. And, in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, has noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of seeing him."

The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.

"It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only," said he. "Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man which could not be explained in other and likelier ways. He may have got entangled, for instance, with some woman in London."

Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.

"In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better."

"Mind, I'm only suggesting!" put in the doctor, hastily. "There may be a dozen more reasons--"

"I shall not wait to find them out," said Mr. Wedmore, decisively. "He and Max are coming down together this evening. My wife would have them to help in organizing some affair they're getting up for Christmas. I'll send him to the right-about without any more nonsense."

"But surely that is hardly--"

"Hardly what?" snapped out Mr. Wedmore, as he poked the fire viciously.

"Well, hardly fair to either of the young people. Put a few questions to him yourself, or better still, let your wife do it. It may be only a storm in a teacup, after all. Remember, he is the son of your old friend. And you wouldn't like to have it on your conscience that you had treated him harshly."

The doctor's advice was sane and sound enough, but Mr. Wedmore was not in the mood to listen to it. That notion of an entanglement with another woman rankled in his proud mind, and made him still less inclined to be patient and forbearing.

"I shall give Doreen warning of what I am going to do at once," said he, "before Horne turns up."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He was obstinate himself.

Mr. Wedmore crossed the long room to the door, and opened it sharply.

The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.

"Doreen!" he called, sharply.

Out of the crowd there rushed a girl--such a girl! One of those radiant creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness and brightness and sweetness and laughter.

No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore.

She was a tall girl, brown-haired, brown-eyed, made to laugh and to live in the sunshine. Nobody could resist her, and nobody ever tried to.

She sprang across the hall to her father and whirled him back into the dining-room, and put her back against it.

"Dudley's come!" said she. "He's in the hall--among the blankets!"

"Blankets!"

"Yes." She was crossing the room by this time to the doctor, whom she had quickly perceived, and was holding out her hand to him. "You must know, doctor, that we are up to our eyes in blankets just now, and in bundles of red flannel, and in soup and coals. Papa has been reading up Christmas in the country in the olden time, and he finds that to be correct you must deluge the neighborhood with those articles. They are not at all what the people want, as far as I can make out. But that doesn't matter. It pleases papa to demoralize the neighborhood; so we're doing it. And mamma helps him. She dates from the prehistoric period when a wife _really_ swore to obey her husband; so she does it through thick and thin. Of course, she knows better all the time. She could always set papa right if she chose. Whatever happens, papa must be obeyed. So when he wants to run his dear old head into a noose, she dutifully holds it open for him, when all the time she knows how uncomfortable he'll be till he gets out."

"You're a saucy puss, Miss!" cried her father, trying to frown, but betraying his delight in his daughter's merry tongue by the twinkle in his eyes.

"And that's the right sort of woman for a wife," said the old doctor, enthusiastically. "I must say I think it's a bad sign when young girls think they can improve upon their own mothers."

"She doesn't mean half she says," said her father, indulgently.

"Oh, yes, she does," retorted Doreen. "And she wants to know, please, what it is you have to say to Dudley."

The doctor rose from his chair, and Mr. Wedmore frowned.

"And it's no use putting me off by telling me not to ask questions. I'm not mamma, you know."

"I intend to ask him--something about you."

It was the girl's turn to frown now.

"Please don't, papa," said she, in a lower voice. "I know you're going to worry him, and to put your hands behind your back and ask him conundrums, and to make all sorts of mischief, under the impression that you are putting things right. And if you only just wouldn't, everything would soon be as right as possible. While if you persist--"

But Mr. Wedmore interrupted her, not harshly, as he would have done anybody else, but with decision.

"You must trust me to know best, my dear. It is better for you both that we should come to some understanding. Haselden, you'll excuse me for half an hour, won't you? And you, Doreen," and he turned again to his daughter, "stay with the doctor here, and try to talk sense till I come back again."

And Mr. Wedmore went quickly out of the room, without giving the girl a chance of saying anything more.


CHAPTER II.

MAX MAKES A DISCOVERY.

Doreen's bright face lost a little of its color and much of its gayety as her father disappeared. The doctor felt sorry for her.

"Come, come; cheer up, my dear," he said. "If he loves you honestly, and I don't know how he can fail to do so, a few words with your father will put matters all right. There is nothing to look so sad about, I think."

But Doreen gave him one earnest, questioning look, and then her eyelids fell again.

"You don't know," she said, in a low voice. "Papa doesn't understand Dudley; but I think I do. He is very sensitive and rather reserved about himself. If papa interferes now, he will offend him, and Dudley may very likely go off at once, and perhaps never come near me again. He is proud--very proud."

"But if he could behave like that," replied the doctor, quickly, "if he could throw over such a nice girl as you for no reason worth speaking of, I should call him a nasty-tempered fellow, whom you ought to be glad to be rid of."

"Ah, but you would be wrong," retorted Doreen, with a little flush in her face. "It is quite true that he has neglected me a little lately, written short letters, and not been down to see me so often. But I am sure there was some better reason for his conduct than papa thinks. And if I feel so sure, and if I am ready to trust him, why shouldn't papa be?"

The doctor smiled at her ingenuousness.

"Your father is right in claiming that he ought to be made acquainted with the young man's reason for conduct which looks quite unwarrantable on the face of it," said he.

But Doreen gave a little sigh.

"I don't think that a man has a right to turn inquisitor over another man, just because the second man is ready to marry the first man's daughter," said she. "And I'm sure papa wouldn't have stood it when _he_ was young."

The doctor laughed.

"He ought to put up with any amount of questioning rather than lose the girl of his choice," said he decisively. "And if he has the stuff of a man in him he will do so."

"But he is unhappy. I know it," said Doreen.

"Unhappy!" cried the doctor, indignantly. "And what's he got to be unhappy about, I should like to know? He ought to be thanking Heaven on his knees all day long for getting such a nice girl to promise to marry him. That's the attitude a young man used to take when I was young."

"Did you go down on your knees all day long when Mrs. Haselden promised to marry you?" asked Doreen, recovering her sauciness at the notion. "And why should he do it till he knows what sort of a wife I am going to make? And why should he go down on his knees more than I on mine? When there are more women in the world than men, too!"

The doctor shook his head.

"Ah, there is no arguing with you saucy girls," said he. "But I know that I, for my part, don't know of a man in the whole world who is worthy to marry one of my daughters."

As the doctor finished speaking, the door was opened quickly, and Mr. Wedmore came in, looking white and worried.

Doreen ran to him with an anxious face.

"What have you done, papa, what have you done? Did you see him? What did you say? What did you say?"

Mr. Wedmore put his arm around his daughter, and kissed her tenderly.

"Don't trouble your head about him any more, my dear child," said he in a husky voice. "He isn't worth it. He isn't worthy of you."

Doreen drew away from her father, looking into his face with searching eyes and with an expression full of fear.

"Papa, what do you mean? You have sent him away?"

Mr. Wedmore answered in a loud and angry voice; but it was clear enough that the anger was not directed against his daughter.

"I did not send him away. He took himself off. I had hardly begun to speak to him--and I began quite quietly, mind--when he made the excuse of a letter which he found waiting for him, to go back to town. Without any ceremony, he rushed out of the study into the hall, and snatched up his hat and coat to go."

"And is he gone?" asked Doreen, in a low voice, as she staggered back a step.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so. And a good riddance, too. There was no letter at all for him, I suppose."

"Yes, there was a letter!" faltered Doreen.

She gave a glance round her; seemed to remember suddenly the presence of a third person, for she blushed deeply on meeting the doctor's eyes; then, without another word, she sprang across the room to the door.

"Where are you going?" cried her father, as he followed her into the hall.

But she did not answer. The hall-door was closing with a loud clang.

Doreen was not the girl to lose her lover for want of a little energy. She was fonder of Dudley than people imagined. There is always an inclination in the general mind to consider that a person of lively temperament is incapable of a deep feeling. And Mr. Wedmore had only shown a common tendency in believing that