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

saw Max talking to one of the grooms outside the stables. He saw her, and his face flushed. Mrs. Wedmore, who was standing on guard a few paces from Carrie, noted the fact with maternal anxiety. She rather liked the girl, whose modest manners were as attractive as her pretty face; but with the fear of "entanglements" before her eyes, she tried to check her own inclination. Carrie turned to her abruptly.

"The nurse won't mind waiting a few minutes for me," said she, quickly. "I must speak a few words to Mr. Max."

And before Mrs. Wedmore could get breath after this audacious statement, Carrie was down the stairs and half away across the yard, where Max hastened to meet her.

"I have something to say to you," she began at once with a grave face. "Do you know that--_they've come_?"

"Who? Who have come?"

"The police."

Max started.

"Nonsense! What makes you think so? I've seen no one."

"I have, though. I've been expecting them, for one thing, and it's made me sharp, I suppose. But I've seen in the park, among the trees, this morning before anybody was up almost, a man walking about, taking his bearings and looking about him."

"One of the gardeners," said Max. "There are several."

"Oh, no, it wasn't a gardener. Can't you trust my London eyes? And listen: Presently another one came up, and they talked together. Then one went one way and the other another, not like gardeners or workingmen, but like men on the lookout."

"What should they be on the lookout for?" asked Max. "If they want Dudley, why don't they come up to the house? I don't doubt that by this time they know where he is."

Carrie said nothing; but there was in her eyes, as she glanced searchingly round her, a peculiar look of wistful dread which puzzled Max and made him wonder what fear it was that was in her mind.


CHAPTER XXIV.

MAX MAKES A STAND AND A DISCOVERY.

There was a pause, and then Carrie, without answering him, turned to go back into the house. But Max followed and caught her by the arm.

"Carrie," said he, "they're making a slave of you, without a word of thanks. You look worn out."

"No, I'm not," said she, briskly. "I've only taken my turns; I should look all right if it hadn't been for that long, tiring journey yesterday. I haven't quite got over that yet."

She was trying to free her hand, which Max was holding in his.

"You'll never be strong enough for a hospital nurse, Carrie!"

"Oh, yes, but I shall!" retorted she. And as she spoke, the pink color, the absence of which made her usually look so delicate, came into her cheeks. "And you must remember that I shall be better fed, better clothed then. I am not really weak at all."

"I repeat--you will never be strong enough for a nurse. Better take my advice and marry me, Carrie!"

But at that, a sudden impulse of hot anger gave the girl the necessary strength to snatch her hand away from him. She faced him fiercely.

"What! To be looked at always as your father, your mother, look at me now? As if I were a thief who must be watched, lest she should steal something? They needn't be afraid either, if only they knew! And before I go I'll tell them. Yes, I'll tell them what a mistake they make in thinking I want to take their son, their precious son, away from them! That for their son!"

And Carrie, very ungratefully, to be sure, held her right hand close to the face of Max and snapped her fingers scornfully. She had seen Mrs. Wedmore's eyes over the half blind of one of the windows, and the minx thought this little scene would be a wholesome lesson.

But Max, following the direction of Carrie's eyes, had also seen the watching face, and a manful spirit of defiance on the one hand, of passion on the other, moved him to show both Carrie and his mother how things were going with him.

Seizing the girl round the waist when her little spurt of defiance was scarcely over, he held her head with his disengaged hand and pressed upon her eyes, her cheeks and her lips a dozen hot kisses.

"There!" said he, when at last he let her go, and she, staggering, blushing, ran toward the shelter of the house. "That's what you get for being ungrateful, you little cat. And it's nothing to what you'll get from my mother, who's sure to say it's all your fault. And so--" roared he up the stairs after her, as she reached the top, "so it is, of course!"

But Carrie found a refuge inside the sick-room, where Dudley, who had passed a better night than they had even hoped, was now lying with closed eyes, quiet and apparently calm.

It was upon Max himself, for a wonder, that the vials of the family wrath were poured. Mrs. Wedmore, happening to meet her husband while the last grievance against the girl was fresh, and before she had had the time to meditate on the result of a premature disclosure, made known to him the outrage of which she had been a witness, taking care to dwell upon the audacity of the girl in pursuing and provoking Max.

Mr. Wedmore listened in silence, and then said, curtly:

"Where is he now? Send him to me."

Max, bent upon making himself as conspicuous and, therefore, as offensive as possible, was whistling in the hall at the moment. And there was a defiant note in his very whistling which worked his father up to boiling point. Mr. Wedmore sprang off his chair and dashed open the door.

"Max, you fool, come here!" was his unpromising summons.

Max came at once, rather red in the face and bright of eyes. Mrs. Wedmore, standing, frightened and anxious, in the background, thought she had never seen her darling boy look so handsome, so manly. He came in very quietly, without swaggering, without defiance, as if he had not noticed the offensive epithet.

His father, who was by this time on the post of vantage, the hearth-rug, with his hands behind him and his back to the fire, pointed imperiously to a chair.

"Sit down, sir."

Max sat down very deliberately on a chair other than the one his father had chosen for him, and looked down on the floor.

"So you are at your old tricks, your old habits!" began Mr. Wedmore.

Max looked up. Then he sat up.

"What old tricks and habits do you mean, sir?"

"Running after every girl you see, and in defiance of all decency, under your mother's very nose."

Mrs. Wedmore would have interposed here, but her husband waved his hand imperially, and she remained silent. Max leaned back in his chair and met his father's eyes steadily.

"You have made a mistake, sir, and my mother has made a mistake, too. It is quite true she may have seen me kissing Miss--Miss--Carrie, in fact. But I hope to have the right to kiss her. I want to marry her."

"To marry this--this--"

"This beautiful young girl, whom nobody has a word to say against," interrupted Max, in a louder voice. "Come, sir, you can't say I'm at my old tricks _now_. I've never wanted to marry any girl before."

For the moment Mr. Wedmore was stupefied. This was worse, far worse than he had expected. Mrs. Wedmore, also, was rather shocked. But the sensation, was tempered, in her case, with admiration of her boy's spirit in daring to make this avowal.

"Mind, I only say I _want_ to marry her. Because, so far, she has refused to have anything to say to me."

"Not refused to marry you!" broke in Mrs. Wedmore, unable to remain quiet under such provocation as this.

"Yes, refused to marry me, mother. I have asked her--begged her."

"Oh, it's only artfulness, to make you more persistent," cried Mrs. Wedmore, indignantly.

"Or perhaps," suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such a piece of idiocy and leave him to his own resources."

Max said nothing for a moment; then he remarked, quietly:

"You have been threatening to do that already, sir, before there was any question of my marrying."

Mrs. Wedmore was frightened by the tone Max was using. He was so much quieter than usual, so much more decided in his tone, that she began to think there was less chance than usual of his coming to an agreement with his father.

"You know, Max," she said, coming over to his chair and putting an affectionate hand on his head, "that your father has only spoken to you as he has done because he wanted to rouse up your spirit and make you ashamed of being lazy."

Max rose from his chair and turned to her with flashing eyes.

"And now, when there is a chance of my rousing myself at last, when I am ready and anxious to prove it, and to set to work, and to settle down, he is angrier with me than ever. Mother, you know I'm right, and you know it isn't fair."

Mrs. Wedmore looked with something like terror into her son's handsome, excited face.

"But, my dear boy, don't you see that this would be ruin, to tie yourself to a girl like that? Why, she told me herself that she didn't belong to anywhere or anybody."

"And is that any reason why she should never belong to anywhere or to anybody? If there was anything wrong about the girl herself, I would listen to you--"

"Listen to us! You'll have to listen!" interrupted his father.

Max glanced at him, and went on:

"But there is not."

"And how do you know that? How long have you known her?"

Max was taken aback. It had not occurred to him to think how short his acquaintance with Carrie had been.

"Long enough to find out all about her," he answered, soberly; "and to make up my mind that I'll have her for my wife."

"Then that settles it," broke in Mr. Wedmore, whose ill-humor had not been decreased by the fact that Max evidently considered it more important to conciliate his mother than to try to convince him. "You will go to the Cape next month; and if you choose to take this baggage with you, you can do so. It won't much matter to us what sort of a wife you introduce to your neighbors out there."

But Max strode across the room and stood face to face with his father, eye to eye.

"No, sir," he said, in a dogged tone of voice, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets and looking at him steadily. "I shall not go to the Cape. You have a right to turn me out of your house if you please. In fact, it's quite time I went, I know. It's time I did settle down. It's time I did try to do something for myself. And I'm going to. I'm going to try to earn my own living and to make enough to keep a wife--the wife I want. And I shall do it somehow. But I'm not going to be packed off to Africa, as if my marrying this