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

with ways in and ways out. The strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or else Mrs. Higgs let him out."

"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."

"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr. Dudley Horne?"

"Once I saw his face," answered Carrie.

"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"

Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley. Carrie looked at him steadily.

"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."

Max frowned uneasily. But after a few moments a new thought struck him, and he turned to her sharply. The match he had struck had burned itself out, and they were again in darkness.

"If Mrs. Higgs was only a tool in his hands, as you suggest, for some mysterious purposes which nobody can understand or guess at, how do you account for her trying to drown him?"

"They must have quarreled," said Carrie, quickly. Then, instantly perceiving that she had made an admission, she added: "That is, supposing she had anything to do with it."

"Amiable old lady!" exclaimed Max.

The mystery of the whole affair hung over both him and Carrie like a pall; and the long night-drive seemed never-ending in the death-like silence. Max tried from time to time to break it, but Carrie grew more reserved as the hours went by, until her curt answers ceased altogether.

Then, when dawn came, the dull dawn of a foggy morning, and the carriage drew up at the hotel in Chatham where they were to change horses, Max discovered that she was asleep.

Dudley opened his eyes when the carriage stopped, but shut them again without a word to Max, who asked him how he felt.

Max, when the people of the hotel had been roused, succeeded in borrowing a rug, which he wrapped gently round Carrie, without waking her. And presently the carriage jogged on again on its journey, and the morning sun began to pierce the mist as the bare Kentish hop-fields and orchards were reached.

Max leaned forward and looked at Carrie's sweet face with infinite tenderness. Now in her sleep she looked like a child, with her lips slightly parted and her eyelashes sweeping her thin, white cheeks. The alert look of the Londoner, which gave an expression of premature shrewdness to her waking face, had disappeared under the relaxing influence of slumber. She looked pitifully helpless, sad and weak, as her tired, worn-out little body leaned back in the corner of the carriage.

Max looked at her with yearning in his eyes. This young ne'er-do-weel, as his father called him, had enjoyed the privilege of his type in being a great favorite with women. As usual in such cases, he had repaid their kindness with ingratitude, and had had numerous flirtations without ever experiencing a feeling either deep or lasting.

Now, for the first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her sex an attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he wanted her; that he could not go away and forget her in the presence of the next pretty face he happened to see.

This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.

In his way he had been in love many, many times. Now for the first time he worshiped a woman.

When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who had awakened with a start, he ran across the grass and up the slope to the house.

It was nine o'clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the breakfast-room.

"Why, Max, is it you? What a strange time to arrive! And where have you been? You look as if you'd been up all night!" cried she, and she ran forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him, with an expression of amazement and horror.

"I have been up all night," said he, briefly. "I've driven all the way from London--"

"What!"

"And--and I've brought some one with me--some one who is ill, who is in trouble. Some one--"

A cry broke from her lips. She had grown quite white, and her hands had dropped to her sides.

She understood.

"Dudley!" she whispered. "Where is he? Why haven't you brought him in?"

"He is at the gate. Where is my father? I must speak to him first, or to mother."

Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him. In a few words he informed her of the circumstances, adding, as he was bound to do, that there was a possibility that the police might come to make inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley. But Doreen, who insisted on hearing everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything about it.

Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was assisted into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms--Max on one side and Bartram on the other.

By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do so. When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he came down.

"Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?"

Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration:

"Oh, that's the nurse. You see--he was so ill--"

Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.

"Why doesn't she come in, then? Of course she must come in."

And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.

"Aren't you coming in? They've taken your patient upstairs," she said gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.

"Oh, I shan't be wanted now, shall I?" asked Carrie, with a timid voice and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while she was at work.

Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.

As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however, did not see her questioning look. He led Carrie into the house and straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.

"Don't make me stay," pleaded she, in a low voice. "They will know I'm not a regular nurse, and--and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable. You can do without me now."

She was trying to shrink away. Max stopped in the middle of the stairs, and answered her gravely, earnestly:

"I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down. He is too ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that. Will you promise to wait while we send for one?"

Carrie could scarcely refuse.

"Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted," assented she.

"Ask my sister. Here she comes," said Max.

Doreen was on the stairs behind them.

"Is it really necessary--do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent for?" asked Carrie, diffidently.

Doreen looked up straight in her face.

"What more natural than that you should stay with him?" returned she, promptly; "since you are his sister."

Max and Carrie both started. The likeness between Dudley and Carrie, which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once. Carrie would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped her.

"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your brother's room."

Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her brother without asking any questions.

It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and unlike her own:

"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I have just learned--from him--from his ravings, a secret--a terrible secret--one that must not be known!"


CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.

It was at the door of Dudley's sick-room that Carrie informed Max that she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the door gently open.

Dudley's voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max could not catch.

But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the corridor, and shut the door behind her. Her face was full of determination.

"No," said she, "not even you."

Max drew himself up, offended.

"I should think you might trust me," he said, stiffly. "The doctor will have to hear when he comes. And the secret, whatever it is, will be safer with me than with old Haselden."

Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.

"The doctor," said she, "wouldn't be able to make head or tail of what he says. Now, you would."

"And if I did, what of that? Don't I know everything, or almost everything, already? Didn't I bring him down here, to my father's house, after I knew that there was a warrant out against him? What better proof do you want that the secret would be safe with me?"

But Carrie would not give way. Without entering into an argument, she stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes, slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his persuasions.

"Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?" asked Max, impatiently.

"Oh, no."

"Do you think it would turn me against him?"

But at this question she hesitated.

"I don't know," said she, at last.

"It is something that has given you pain?" Max went on, noting the traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.

"Yes, oh, yes."

The answer was given in a very low voice, with such a heart-felt sob that Max was touched to the quick. He came quite close to her, and, bending down, so that his mustache almost brushed the soft fair hair on her forehead, he whispered:

"I'm so sorry. Poor Carrie! I won't worry you, then; I