CHAPTER XV
MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK
Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs. Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect that the unexpected meeting had upon her.
For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her—at this helpless, infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes—he shivered.
"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound her to this wicked old woman.
Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural thing in the world:
"Where's your friend, young man?"
"W—what friend?" stammered Max.
"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf for, eh?"
Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's faded eyes.
"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply. "Who sent you? Not he, I know! When he's got anything to do at the wharf he comes himself."
And Mrs. Higgs gave an ugly, mirthless chuckle.
As Max stared at the withered, lined face, which was growing each moment more repulsive in his eyes, a feeling of horror and intense pity for Dudley seized him. To be pursued, as his friend evidently was pursued, by this vicious old hag, was a fate hideous enough to expiate every crime in the Decalogue.
A little rapid reflection made him decide that a bold course of defiance was the best to be taken. Whatever Dudley might have done, and whatever terrors Mrs. Higgs might hold over his head, it was very certain, after all, that the evidence of such a creature, living in such an underground fashion, could never be a serious danger to a man in his position. Dudley himself seemed rather to have lost sight of this fact, certainly; but it could not be less than a fact for all that.
"Mr. Horne is not likely to trouble you or the rest of the thieves at the wharf again," said Max, with decision. "He's gone abroad for a holiday. And if you don't take yourself off at once, or if you turn up here again, or if you attempt to annoy us or Mr. Horne, in any way whatever, you'll find the police at your heels before you know where you are."
Then into her dull eyes there came a look of malignity which made Max doubt whether he had done well to be so bold.
"Thieves, eh? Tell your friend we're thieves, and see what he says to that! Police, eh? Tell your friend that, tell your friend that, and see whether he'll thank you for your interference!"
"Mr. Horne is away, as I told you."
"Away, is he? But he won't be away long. Oh, no; he'll come back—he'll come back. Or if he doesn't," added Mrs. Higgs, with complacency, "I'll fetch him."
"Well, you've got to leave this place at once," said Max, with decision. "We don't allow strangers in the barn, and if you don't go quietly at once, I must send somebody to turn you out."
Mrs. Higgs kept her eyes fixed upon him with her usual blank stare while he said this in a very loud and decided tone. When he had finished she suddenly blew out the light with so much unnecessary force that Max felt something like a gust of wind upon his face.
"Turn me out!" and she laughed harshly. "Turn me out! Send for the police to do it, if you like."
Max went out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and to turn out the strangers they might find there.
But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.
This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish, had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the evening's entertainment.
"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the servants like the idea?"
"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and Mamma has been all day trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the notion was distasteful to everybody had made Papa more obstinate than ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."
Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log, had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or they should not be merry at all.
The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the greater part of his life immersed in day books and ledgers and the details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in common.
Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to give a dance at which masters and servants should join hands and make merry together. He had never assisted at one of these balls, and he refused to listen to his wife's suggestion that it should take place in the servants' hall, that the servants should be allowed to invite their own friends, and that the family should limit itself to one brief dance with their dependants and then leave them to enjoy themselves in their own way.
No, it was his will that the dance should be held in the hall of the house and that the pictures of the Illustrated Christmas Numbers should be realized to the utmost.
Dinner, therefore, was scrambled over in a hurry, and the family with their guests went upstairs to the drawing room or out to the billiard-room, while preparations were made for the great event of the evening, the lighting of the Yule Log and Sir Roger de Coverley.
Then the first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement scarcely to be tolerated and never to be encouraged.
He soon made an opportunity to devote himself to Doreen, who was playing the lightest of light music at the piano in the corner of the room.
It had been a fancy of Mr. Wedmore's, who had his own way in everything with his wife, to have this drawing room, which was large and square and lighted by five windows, three at the front and two at the side, furnished entirely with old things of the style of eighty years back, with Empire chairs, sofas and cabinets, as little renovated as possible. The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but picturesque and graceful.
The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull sage green, and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less massive harpsichord.
It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur around the bottom of the skirt.
"My purpose in coming here tonight, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay, when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to you tomorrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."
"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.
She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner—a nervous excitement that presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The Shop-Girl" with an energy that was meant to have the effect of checking his solemn ardor.
But the curate had the stuff of a man in him and did not mean to be put off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room, which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily. Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who was staying with them for Christmas.
"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is—is—in fact, very near my heart."
This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about anything—anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going downstairs to—to dance—in a few minutes."
It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply ignored it.
"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a—what a deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have flattered myself that—"
"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example. I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal about me—a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that perhaps he will come back someday and tell me I was right."
Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face before was there still.
"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope to—to—in fact, to get over it. But—but these are trials which may be, perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond suffering. And—and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad to—to—to—"
"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"
He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by any available means. He sighed a little and persisted.
"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore, though I should not have put it quite that way. And why should you not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration toward you!"
Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately uttered, with the words well chosen, well-considered? As different as possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old days!
"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that—that you should feel—"
She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with great abruptness:
"Do you feel anything in the matter? Really feel, I mean? I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so nicely if you did."
He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was humanly possible.
Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said softly:
"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to you? To the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"
Doreen looked startled.
"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."
"Why—especially to me?"
"Well, I'm not good enough."
"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean it to be so."
"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to people I hate, and—and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"
This was a question the curate had never asked himself, but it came upon him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness, and originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.
After a short pause, he answered, with his usual deliberation:
"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself an injustice."
"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."
Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making excuses for her and in believing them.
"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."
Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.
"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I were ever foolish enough to marry—and it would be foolishness in a spoiled creature like me—I should want a husband who could accommodate himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves to anything or anybody."
The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted. Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.
"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"
"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that a true woman can bring to the man she loves."
Doreen threw up her head quickly.
"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I ought not to do—one of the unconventional and so unchristian things—to own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore—proud, stuck-up Doreen—is breaking her heart for the sake of a man who—who—" Her voice broke and she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't know—it's so difficult to know."
She sprang up from her seat, and the curate rose too. By her tactful mention of her own unlucky love, she had softened the blow of her rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party down to the hall.
Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart young men from the garden and stable to enter.
But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad temper, smarting with the disapproval of the whole business, had refused to join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.
Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long since gone by. He, at last, succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the prettiest housemaid.
Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the dance in the circumstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why couldn't Papa, dear old, stupid Papa, leave them out of the affair, and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their assistance?
The pause had made the ladies so frigid and the men-servants so shy, the pretty housemaid so merry and the plain ones so solemn, that disaster threatened the gathering, when Mr. Wedmore and the cook made their opportune appearance.
Max, his cousins, and young Hutchinson gave three cheers, in the midst of which demonstration the Rev. Lisle Lindsay endeavored to make his escape by the front door.
Unhappily, Mr. Wedmore, elated by his victory over the cook, espied him, and straightway forbade him to leave the house until after "Sir Roger." In vain the curate protested; and pleaded for the privileges and exemptions of his sacred calling.
Mr. Wedmore was obdurate; and, to the disgust of everybody, including himself, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay found himself told off to dance with the pretty housemaid, being the only man in the room who was not anxious for the honor.
This mishap cast a gloom over the proceedings. The rest of the gentlemen found it hard to extract a word from the other maids, who all considered themselves slighted. And Mr. Wedmore had great difficulty in persuading the men-servants to come forward and take their places by the partners he chose for them. To get them to choose for themselves was out of the question after one young gardener had availed himself of the invitation by darting across the floor and asking Miss Queenie, in a hoarse voice and with many blushes, if she would dance with him.
Of course, this piece of daring made a sensation so great that to get another man to follow the bold example was impossible.
In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that Master was making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company is quite as ill-matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke, sputtered out into the blackness, to everybody's relief.
The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard work.
When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met her on her way to her room and saw that the tears were very near her eyes.
"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well together."
"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself into the room.
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