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

won't ask any more questions, if only--if only you'll let me tell you how awfully sorry I am."

He ventured to put his hand upon her shoulder, as he bent down to look into her face.

And, as luck would have it, Mr. Wedmore at that very moment bounced out of one of the rooms which opened on the corridor, and caught sight of this pretty little picture before it broke up.

Of course, Max withdrew his hand and lifted up his head so swiftly that he flattered himself he had been too quick for his father, who walked along the corridor toward the drawing-room as if he had seen nothing.

But Max was mistaken. Mr. Wedmore, already greatly irritated by his son's repeated failures to settle down, found in this little incident a pretext for a fresh outburst of wrath.

Unluckily for poor Carrie, Mrs. Wedmore was in a state of irritation, in which she was even readier than usual to agree with her husband. The arrival of Dudley, with a terrible charge hanging over his head, in such circumstances as to stir up Doreen's feelings for him to the utmost, was bad enough. But for him to descend upon them in the company of a young woman of whom she had never heard, and in whose alleged relationship to Dudley she entirely disbelieved, had reduced the poor lady to a state which Queenie succinctly described as "one of mamma's worst."

As soon as Mr. Wedmore entered the drawing-room, where his wife and daughters were discussing some invitations to dinner which were to have been sent out, but about which there was now a doubt, he abruptly ordered the two girls to leave the room. They obeyed very quietly, but Doreen threw at her mother one imploring glance, and gently pulling her father's hair, told him that he was not to be a hard, heartless man.

When the door was shut, however, Mr. Wedmore addressed his wife in no very gentle tones.

"Ellen," said he, curtly, "you must get rid of that baggage they call the nurse. She's no more a nurse than you are!"

"And she's no more his sister than I am, either!" chimed in Mrs. Wedmore, who had risen from her chair in great excitement.

Mr. Wedmore stared at his wife.

"Sister!" cried he, in a voice of thunder. "Whose sister? Dudley Horne never had a sister!"

"I know that, but that's the story they have made up for us; and the girls--our girls--are ready to believe it, and I don't want them to know it isn't true."

"Well, whatever she is, and whoever she is, I want her to be outside the house before lunch time," said Mr. Wedmore. "I've just caught Max with his arm around her, and I haven't the slightest doubt that it was he who made up the story. Any tale's good enough for the old people! Look at her face--look at her dress! She is some hussy who ought never to have been allowed inside the house!"

"It was Doreen who brought her in. And, to do her justice, George, I believe the girl didn't want to come," said Mrs. Wedmore. "And it's about Doreen I wanted to talk to you, George. This coming of Dudley has upset all the good we did by never mentioning him to her. To-day she's as much excited, as anxious and as miserable as if they were still engaged. And--and--oh! if the police come here to the house and take him awa-a-ay,"--and here the poor lady became almost too hysterical to articulate--"it will break the child's heart, George; it will indeed. And, oh! do you think it possible he really did--really did--"

"Did what?"

"Oh, you know! It's to dreadful to say. Why do you make me say it? They say something about his having gone out of his mind, and--and--killed somebody. It isn't true, George, is it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Who told you?"

"Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls. Oh, it is dreadful--shocking! And to think of his having been planted down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay."

"It's all the doing of that idiot Max!" said Mr. Wedmore, angrily. "I'll send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it. He shall go next month."

"Oh, I didn't want that," pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to tenderness and self-reproach. "Don't do anything in a hurry, George, anything you will be sorry for afterward."

"Sorry for! The only thing I'm sorry for is that I didn't send him before, and saved all this."

"And as for the girl, no doubt it's her fault, and Dudley's, a great deal more than Max's," went on the mother of Max, with the usual feminine excuse for the darling scapegrace. "When she's gone he will forget all about her, as he always does."

This speech was an unlucky one.

"Yes, that's just what I complain of, that he always forgets," said he, turning sharply upon his wife. "If he would stick to anything or to anybody for so much as a week, or a day, or an hour, I shouldn't mind so much. But he isn't man enough for that. As soon as this girl's out of the house, he'll be looking about for another one."

"I'm sure it wasn't his fault that she came here at all," persisted Mrs. Wedmore, who never opposed her husband except in the interest of her son. "And I'm sure you can't blame him for doing what he could for his friend, even if he does put us to a little inconvenience. After all, Dudley's been like a son to you for a great many years--"

"That's just what I complain of--that he's so like a son," interrupted her husband. "That is to say, he has brought upon us no end of worry and bother, and a bill for five guineas for this pleasant little drive down from London."

"Well, how could we refuse to take him in?"

"How did he get into the mess?"

"What mess?"

"That's what I want to know, too--what mess? I am told he fell into the water, striking his head against the side of a bridge, or of a church, or it doesn't matter what, as he fell. They haven't thought it worth while to make up a good story. But whether he was drunk, or whether he was escaping from the police, or what he was doing, nobody seems to know. If I'd been consulted, if I hadn't been treated as a cipher in the matter, he should have driven straight back to London again with the girl, and with Max himself."

Mrs. Wedmore thought it better to say nothing to this, but to let her husband simmer down. These ferocious utterances came from the lips only, as she very well knew, and might safely be disregarded.

Fortunately his attention was diverted at this point by the arrival of the doctor, who had been out on his rounds when they first sent for him.

Rather relieved to have a fresh person to pour out his complaints to, Mr. Wedmore hastened to give his old friend a somewhat confused account of the patient's arrival and condition, in which "cheap, ready-made clothes," "a bill for five guineas," "a baggage of a girl" and "the police" were the prominent items.

But as for any details concerning the patient's state of health and the reasons for his needing medical care, Doctor Haselden could learn nothing at all until he had prevailed upon Mr. Wedmore to let him see Dudley instead of listening to abuse of him.

Doctor Haselden was a long time in the sick-room, and when he came out he looked grave. Mr. Wedmore, who met him outside the door, was annoyed.

"It's nothing, I suppose, that a few days' quiet won't set right?" he asked quickly.

"I don't know, I'm sure," answered the doctor. "It's more serious than I thought by what you said--a great deal more serious. I don't know, I'm sure, whether we shall get him round at all."

A little cry startled both men and made them look round. In a recess of the corridor above they could distinguish the figure of a woman, and Mr. Wedmore's heart smote him, for it was Doreen.

"Go away, child! Go away!" said he, half petulantly, but yet with some remorse in his tone. "The girl's crazy about him," he added, with irritation, when his daughter had silently obeyed.

"Poor child! Poor child!" said Doctor Haselden, sympathetically. "She's the real old-fashioned sort, with a warm heart under all her little airs. I hope he'll get round, if only for her sake. But--"

"She couldn't marry him in any case," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I thought I told you that affair was broken off--definitely broken off--weeks ago. And now--"

He stopped and intimated by a gesture of the hand that the break was more definite than ever.

The doctor was curious, but he tried not to show it.

"I should wire up to town for another nurse, I think," said he. "This little girl can't do it all."

Mr. Wedmore pricked up his ears.

"Then I must wire for two--for two nurses," said he, decidedly. "We're going to send this girl off. She's not a nurse at all."

"Ah, but she does very well," objected the doctor, promptly, "and you will be doing very unwisely if you send her away. It seems she understands all the circumstances of the case, and that counts for something in treating a patient who has evidently something on his mind. She seems to be able to soothe him, and in a case of concussion--"

"But she's trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!" protested Mr. Wedmore.

"But it isn't a question of your son Max, but of young Horne," said Doctor Haselden, with decision. "As for Max, he can take care of himself; and, at any rate, he's got all his family about to take care of him. You keep the girl. She's got a head on her shoulders. Most uncommon thing, that--in a girl with such eyes!"

And the doctor, with a humorous nod to his angry friend, went downstairs.

After this warning of the real danger in which Dudley lay, it was, of course, impossible for Mr. Wedmore to send poor Carrie away, at any rate until the arrival of some one who could take her place. And as there was clearly some sense in the doctor's suggestion that her knowledge of the case was valuable, Mr. Wedmore ended by sending up for one trained nurse to relieve her, instead of for two, as he had proposed.

And, after all, there seemed to be less danger in the direction of Max than he had supposed; for Carrie never once left the sick-room until the professional nurse arrived at ten o'clock that night. And as Mrs. Wedmore was then in waiting to mount guard over Carrie, and to carry her off to her supper and then to her bedroom, the first day's danger to the susceptible son and heir seemed to have been got through rather well.

On the following morning, however, the well-watched Carrie escaped from the supervision of her jailers, and boldly made a direct attack upon Max under the family's nose.

Carrie was looking out of one of the back windows of the house to get a breath of fresh air, before taking her turn of duty in the sick-room, when she