Chapter 5 of The Wharf by the Docks: A Novel by Florence Warden

CHAPTER V

ONE MAN'S LOSS IS ANOTHER MAN'S GAIN

"Confound the Christmas tree!" grumbled Mr. Wedmore, as he stumbled over a parcel of fluffy rabbits, whose heads screwed off to permit the insertion of sweets.

"Oh, Papa, you'll be saying 'Confound Christmas' next!"

And Doreen, with one watchful eye on Dudley all the time, made a lane through her boxes and her hampers to admit the passage of her father to a chair.

By this time Dudley had recovered himself a little and was able to answer the question Mr. Wedmore now put to him.

"What do you think of that, Horne?"

"I think, sir, that it must be more than a coincidence; that Mrs. Jacobs must be the wife of the man who was my father's manager."

"Well, I think so, too. I know Jacobs's wife had an impediment in her speech. The odd part of the business is that he should have disappeared at Limehouse, the very place where one would have thought he would have an objection to turning up at all, connected as it was with his old peculations. I suppose he thought they were forgotten by this time."

"I suppose so."

Dudley still looked very white. He took up the paper again as if to re-read the paragraph. But Doreen, from her post of vantage on the floor, saw that he held it before him with eyes fixed. Mr. Wedmore, after a little hesitation, and after vainly trying to get another look at the face of the younger man, went on again:

"I thought you would be struck by this; the subject turning up again in this odd way, just when you've been interesting yourself so much in the old story!"

Down went the paper, and Dudley looked into the face of Mr. Wedmore.

"Interesting myself in it! Have I? How do you mean?"

"Well, you've asked a good many questions about this Jacobs and wondered what had become of him. I fancy you have the answer in that paragraph."

There was a pause, and Dudley seemed to recollect something. Then he said:

"Oh, yes, I think I have. The man has fallen upon bad times, evidently. I—I—I'm sorry for his wife."

"And the man himself—haven't you forgiven him yet?"

Dudley started and glanced quickly around as if the simple words had been an accusation.

"Forgiven him? Oh, yes, long ago. At least—" He paused a moment, and then added, inquiringly: "What had I to forgive?"

"Well, to tell the truth, Horne, that's just what I have often asked myself when you have insisted upon raking up all the details of poor Jacobs's misdeeds! Why, your poor father, who was ruined by his dishonesty, never showed half the animosity you do. I could have understood it if you had suffered by his frauds. But have you? You have been well educated; you have started well in life. And on the whole, no man who has arrived at your age can honestly say that it would have been better for him to start life with a fortune at his back, eh?"

"No."

Dudley got up from his chair. He seemed agitated and uneasy, and soon took advantage of Mr. Wedmore's suggestion, somewhat dryly made, that he was tired after his journey and would like to go to bed.

When he had left the room, Mr. Wedmore turned angrily to his daughter.

"Now, Doreen, I will have no more of this nonsense. Dudley is beginning all the old tricks over again—absence of mind, indifference to you—did he even look at you as he said good night?—and morbid interest in this old, forgotten business of Jacobs and his misdoings. I won't have any more of it, and I shall tell him plainly that we don't care to have him down here until he can bring a livelier face and manner with him!"

Doreen had risen from her humble seat on the floor and had crawled on her knees to the side of his chair, where she slid a coaxing, caressing hand under his arm and put her pretty head gently down on his shoulder.

"No, you won't, Papa dear. You won't do anything of the kind," she whispered in his ear very softly, very humbly. "You would not do anything to give pain to your old friend's son if you could help it, and you would not do anything to hurt your own child, your little Doreen, for a hundred thousand pounds, now would you?"

"Yes, I would, if it was for her good," replied Mr. Wedmore, in a very loud and determined voice, which was supposed to have the effect of frightening her into submission. "And it's all rubbish to think to get around me by calling yourself 'little Doreen,' when you're a great, big, overgrown lamp-post of a girl, who can take her own part against the whole county."

Doreen laughed, but still clung persistently to the arm which he pretended to try to release from her clutches.

"Well, I don't know about the county, but I think I can persuade my old father into doing what I want," she purred into his ear with gentle conviction. "You see, Papa, it isn't as if Dudley and I were engaged. We—"

"Why, what else have you been but engaged ever since last Christmas?" said her father, irritably. "Everybody has looked upon it as an engagement, and Dudley was devoted enough until a couple of months ago; but now something has gone wrong with the lad, I'm certain, and it would be much better for you both to make an end of this."

"Why, there's nothing to make an end of," pleaded Doreen. "Just 'let things slide,' as Max says, and let Dudley come down or stay away as he likes, and the matter will come quite right one way or the other, and you will find there was really nothing for you to trouble your dear old head about, after all."

There was really some excellence in the girl's suggestion; and her father, after much grumbling, gave a half consent to it. He was forced to admit to himself that there were some grounds for Dudley's agitation on reading the paragraph concerning the disappearance of Edward Jacobs since he had been interesting himself of late in that person's history. But it was the degree of the young man's agitation which had seemed morbid. Mr. Wedmore found it difficult to understand why a mere suggestion of the man's disappearance—if it were indeed the man—should affect Dudley so deeply. And the idea of incipient insanity in young Horne grew stronger than ever in Mr. Wedmore's mind.

Now, Doreen was by no means so sanguine as she pretended to be. She was one of those high-spirited, lively girls who find it easy to hide from others any troubles that may be gnawing at their heart. Such a nature has an elasticity that enables it to throw off its cares for a time, when in the society of others, only to brood over them in hours of loneliness.

Nobody in the house knew—what, however, shrewd Queenie half guessed that Doreen had many an anxious hour, many a secret fit of crying, on account of the change in Dudley's manner toward her. The brilliant, proud-hearted girl was more deeply attached to him than anybody suspected. If any remark was made by outsiders as to the comparative rarity of the young barrister's visits during the past two months, it was always accompanied by the comment that Miss Wedmore would not be long in consoling herself.

And everybody knew that the curate, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, was hungering to step into Dudley's shoes.

He was not quite to be despised as a rival, this "snowy-banded, dilettant, delicate-handed priest." In the first place, he was a really nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a pedantically correct pronunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from his mother, and "expectations" on a very grand scale indeed. Miss Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the wife of a bishop someday. And what could a woman wish for more?

He was no laggard in love either. On the very morning after the arrival of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens that would be available for the decoration of the church and was shown into the morning room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas was taking place.

Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.

Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant. He was always possessed with a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.

"It's always the way with a man!" was Queenie's scornful comment on her brother's failing.

Queenie herself looked upon the whole business of the tree as a piece of useless frivolity unworthy of the time and attention of grown-up people. And she went about the share in it which she had been persuaded to undertake with a stolid and supercilious manner which went far to spoil the enjoyment of the rest.

Dudley entered, into the affair with some zest, but it was noticeable that he devoted himself to Queenie, and exchanged very few remarks with Doreen. There was a certain barrier of constraint springing up between him and Doreen which had risen to an uncomfortable height by the time the curate entered.

Doreen, whose cheeks were much flushed and whose eyes were unusually bright, was extremely gracious. She offered to take Mr. Lindsay into the grounds to interview the gardener so that they might come to an understanding about the evergreens to be used. She glanced at Dudley as she made this proposal. He glanced back at her; and in his black eyes, she fancied for a moment that she saw a mute protest, a plea.

For a moment she hesitated. Standing still in the middle of the room, not far from where he was busy helping Queenie to tie up a particularly limp and fragile box of chocolates, she seemed to wait for a single word, or even for another look, to turn her from her purpose.

But Dudley turned away, and either did not see or did not choose to notice the pause. Then the tears sprang to the girl's eyes, and she ran quickly to the door.

"Come, Mr. Lindsay," said she, "we must make haste. At this stage of things, every minute has to be weighed out like gold, I assure you."

She went quickly out into the large hall, and the curate followed with alacrity. Max and his mother were engaged in a wrangle over some soup and coal tickets which somebody had mislaid, and in the search for which the whole room, with its parcels and bundles, had to be overturned.

Queenie, who was at work at the end of the room, near the window, uttered a short laugh. Dudley, who was standing a little way off, drew nearer and asked what she was laughing at.

"Oh, that misguided youth who has just gone out!"

"Misguided?"

"Yes," said Queenie, shortly. "If he hadn't been misguided, he would have devoted his attention to me, not to Doreen. By all the laws of society, curates' wives should be plain. They should also be simple in their dress, and devoted to good works. Doreen says so herself. Why, then, didn't he see that I was the wife for him and not the beauty?"

"Don't you think she will have him, then?" asked Dudley, very stiffly, after a short pause. "She seems to like him. There was no need, surely, for her to have been in such a hurry to take him into the grounds if she had felt no particular pleasure in his society."

Queenie looked up rather slyly out of her little light eyes. She was distressed on account of her sister's trouble about this apparently vacillating lover and irritated herself by his strange conduct. But at the bottom of her heart, she believed in him and in his affection for Doreen, just as her sister herself did, and she would have given the world to make things right between two people whom she chose to believe intended by nature for each other.

"I think there are other people in the world whose society Doreen likes better," she said at last, below her breath.

The wrangle at the other end of the room was still going on, and nobody heard her but Dudley. He flushed slightly and looked as if he understood. But he instantly turned the talk to another subject.

"Would you have liked that sleek curate yourself, really?"

"Sleek? What do you mean by sleek? You wouldn't have a minister of the church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his mouth, would you?"

"Not for worlds, I assure you. He is a most beautiful creature, and I admire him very much, though he is perhaps hardly the sort of man I should have expected both you girls to rave about. And as for you, I thought you were too good to rave about anybody! You are unlike yourself this morning, and more like Doreen."

Queenie laughed again that satirical little laugh which made a man wonder what her thoughts exactly were.

"You say that because you don't know anything about me. I don't talk when Doreen is talking, because then nobody would listen to me. I could talk, too, if anybody ever talked to me."

"But one sees so little of you," pleaded Dudley. "You are generally out district visiting, or busy for Mrs. Wedmore, so that one hasn't a chance of knowing you well. And one has got an idea that you are too good to waste your time in idle conversation with a mere man!"

"Good!" cried Queenie contemptuously. "There's nothing good about my district visiting. I like it, Doreen goes about telling people it is good of me. But that's only because she wouldn't care about it herself. I like fussing about and thinking I am making myself useful. It's like Mamma's knitting, which gets her the reputation of being very industrious, while all the time she enjoys it very much."

"But you yourself said you were 'devoted to good works,' I quote your very words."

"That was only in fun. It's what Doreen says of me. You must have heard her. She is much better than I am—really much, more unselfish—much more amiable. Only because she's always bright and full of fun, she doesn't get the credit for any of her good qualities. People think she's only indulging her own inclination when she keeps us all amused and happy all day long. But they don't know that she can suffer just as much as anybody else and that it costs her an effort to be lively for our sakes when she feels miserable."

Queenie spoke with a little feeling in her usually hard, dry voice. Dudley was silent for a long time when she had finished speaking. At last, they looked up at the same moment and met each other's eyes. And the reserved, harassed man felt his heart go out to the girl, with her quiet shrewdness and undemonstrative affection for her brilliant sister.

"Your quiet eyes see a great deal more than one would think, Queenie," he said at last. "I suppose they have seen that there is something—something wrong—with—"

He spoke very slowly, and finally, he stopped without finishing the sentence.

Queenie gravely took it up for him.

"Something wrong with you? Of course, I have. Well?"

"I don't know why I am telling you this. I didn't mean to tell anyone. But—but—well, I've begun; I may as well finish. You're not a person who would talk about anybody else's secrets more than about your own."

"A secret? Are you going to tell me a secret?"

Dudley smiled very faintly, and then his expression suddenly changed. Something like a spasm of fear and pain shot quickly across his face, frightening her a little. Then he shook his head.

"No," said he. "I hardly think you will consider it a secret, after what you have just told me. I am only going to tell you this: I have had a great trouble, a great affliction, hanging over me for some time now. Sometimes I have thought it was going to clear away and leave me as I was before. Sometimes I have felt myself quite free from it, and able to go on in the old way. But with this consciousness, this knowledge hanging over me always, I have behaved in all sorts of strange ways, have hurt the feelings of my friends, and have not been myself at all. You know that, Queenie."

Queenie slowly bowed her head. Mrs. Wedmore and Max, still occupied in their search for the missing soup tickets, had now extended their operations to the hall and left the room in possession of the other two. Dudley went on with his confession.

"And now something has happened which has cut me off from my old self, as it were. I don't know how else to express what I mean. I came down last night with the intention of speaking to—to Doreen for the last time, of trying to explain myself, if not to—to justify myself to her. You know what I mean, don't you?"

Again Queenie bowed her head. Her father's suspicions as to Dudley's perfect sanity had, of course, reached her ears, and she felt so much pity for the poor fellow whose confession she was then hearing that she dared not even raise her eyes to his face again. He went on, hurrying his words, as if anxious to get his confession over:

"But I thought it all over last night, and I decided to say nothing to her, after all. I don't think I could, without making a fool of myself. For you know—you know my feelings about her; everybody knows. I had hoped—Oh, well, you know what I hoped—"

There was a pause. Dudley was afraid of breaking down.

"Oh, Dudley, is it really all over, then, between you? Oh, it is dreadful! For, you know, she cares, too!"

"Not as I do. I hope and think that is impossible," said Dudley, hoarsely.

There was another pause, a longer one. Then Queenie gave utterance to a little sob. Dudley, who was sitting on the table at which she was at work, got upon his feet with an impatient movement. His dark face looked hard and angry. As he paced once or twice up and down the small space available in the disordered room, the inward fight that was going on between his passion and his sense of right convulsed his face, and Queenie shuddered as, glancing at him, she fancied she could see in the glare of his black eyes the haunting madness at which he seemed so plainly to have hinted.

She rose in her turn.

"But, Dudley—" she began.

And then, unable to express what she felt, what she thought, any better than he had done, she turned abruptly away and sat down again.

There was silence for a few moments, and then she heard the door close. Looking around, she saw that he had left the room.

To Be Continued...