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 made 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 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 at 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 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 settled 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 girl were a thing to be ashamed of. I'm going to stay in England. I shan't come near you. You needn't be afraid of that. I shall be too proud of my wife to bring her among people who would look down upon her. And perhaps you'd better not inquire where I live or what I'm doing, for we shan't be able to live in a fashionable neighborhood, nor to be too particular about what we turn our hands to."
While Max made this speech very slowly, very deliberately, his father listened to him with ever-increasing anger and disgust, and his mother, not daring to come too close while he was right under the paternal eye, hung over the table in the background, with yearning, tremulous love in her eyes, and with her lips parted, ready to utter the tender words of a pleading peacemaker.
But the tone Mr. Wedmore chose to take was that of utter contempt, complete irresponsibility. When his son had finished speaking he waited as if to hear whether there was any more to come, and then abruptly turned his back upon him and began to poke the fire.
"Very well," said he, with an affectation of extreme calmness. "Since you have made up your mind, the sooner you begin to carry out your plans the better. I'm very glad to see that you have a mind to make up."
"Thank you, sir," said Max.
And he was turning to leave the room when his mother sprang forward and stopped him.
"No, no! Don't go like that! My boy! George! Don't say goodbye yet. Take a little time. Let him try a little trouble of his own for a change. He has made up his mind, he says. I'm sure he's old enough. Leave him alone."
Max put his arm around his mother, gave her a warm kiss, disengaged himself, and left the room.
The poor woman was almost hysterical.
"He means it, George! He means it this time!" she moaned.
And her husband, though he laughed at her, and though he said to himself that he did not care, was inclined to agree with her.
Max went straight up to his own room and began to do his packing with much outward cheerfulness. Indeed he felt no depression over the dashing step he was taking, although he felt sore over the parting with home and his mother and sisters.
He was debating within himself whether he should try to see Carrie before he went, or whether he should only leave a note to be given to her after he was gone when he heard the voice of his sister Doreen calling him. He threw open the door and shouted back.
She was in the hall.
"Max," cried she, in a hissing whisper, "I want to speak to you. Make haste!"
He ran downstairs and found her standing with two of the maids, both of whom looked rather frightened.
"Max," said Doreen, "there's an old woman hanging about the place—" Max started. He guessed what was coming. "The same old woman that came at Christmas time. She jumped up in the well-house at Anne and sent her into hysterics. And now they've lost sight of her, just as they did last time, and we want you to help to ferret her out and send her away."
"All right," said Max. "We'll pack her off."
He was at the bottom of the staircase by this time and was starting on his way to the yard, when a little scream from one of the two maids, as she glanced up the stairs, made him look around. Carrie had come down so lightly and so swiftly that she was upon the group before they had heard a sound. She beckoned to Max, who came back at once.
Carrie was shaking like a leaf; her eyes were wide with alarm, with terror. Max went up a few stairs, to be out of hearing of the others, as she seemed to wish. Then she whispered:
"You know who it is. I saw her. Leave her alone. I implore you to leave her alone! She'll do no harm. Let her rest. Let the poor creature rest. If—if the police—"
At that moment there was a shout from the yard outside. Carrie sprang like a hare up the stairs to the window and looked out with straining eyes.
The afternoon was one of those dull misty winter days, with a leaden sky and an east wind.
"I'll see that she isn't hurt!" called out Max, as he bounded down the stairs and ran into the yard behind the house.
Here he found a motley group—the stablemen, the laundry maids, and the gardeners—all hunting in the many corners and crannies of the outbuildings for the old woman who had alarmed Anne.
Max spoke sharply to the men.
"Here, what are you about?" said he. "Hunting a poor old woman as if she were a wild animal? Go back to your work. She'll never dare to show her face while you are all about!"
"She's left the well-house, sir, and, we think, she's got into the big barn," explained one of the lads, with the feeling that Mr. Max himself would want to join in the chase when he knew that the game was to hand.
"Well, leave her there," answered Max, promptly. "She'll come out when you've all gone, and I'll send her about her business."
Max saw, as he spoke, that there was a man standing at a little distance just outside the stable gate, whom he did not recognize. Before he could ask who he was, however, the man had disappeared from view. He remembered what Carrie had said about the presence of a policeman, and he thought the time had come to take the bull by the horns.
So he walked rapidly in the direction of the gate and addressed the man whom he found there.
"Are you a policeman?" he asked, abruptly.
"Yes, sir," answered the man, touching his hat.
"What is your business here?"
"I'm on the lookout for someone I have a warrant for. Charge of murder, sir."
"Man or woman?"
"Man, sir."
"Will you tell me his name?"
"Horne, sir."
Max thought a moment.
"Why are you pottering about here, instead of going straight up to the house?"
"Well, sir, I'm obeying orders."
"Come with me," said Max suddenly. "There's an old hag hiding in the barn now, who knows more about this business than Mr. Horne."
Behind the young gentleman's back, the detective smiled, but he professed to be ready to follow him.
"There's only one way out of this barn," explained Max, as he approached the door, beside which a groom was standing. "By this door, which is never locked. There is a window, but it's too high up for anybody to get out by."
Telling the groom to guard the door, Max went into the barn, followed by the detective. There was still light enough for them to find their way about among the lumber.
"Where's the window, sir?" asked the detective.
Max pointed to a speck of light high in the south wall of the barn.
"She couldn't get out there," said he, "even if she could climb up to it. Unless she could swarm a rope."
And he touched one of the ropes which dangled from a huge beam.
The detective, however, walked rapidly past him, and stopped short, pointing to something which was lying on the floor under the window.
It was the body of a man, lying in a heap.
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