Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 20

Pa.s.sing her window, he heard her talking rapidly, her words broken by sobs which pained him, and s.n.a.t.c.hes of laughter which hurt him more.

He met Mrs. Brundage at the door.

"She's feared of me--pushes me away," she whispered. "Highsterical, you may call it. If you're d.i.c.k, sir, it's you she wants. I've got her in bed, but I don't promise she'll stay there."

He pushed past her, saw the rum-bottle and the eggs set out on the kitchen table, took a tumbler and spoon from the dresser, and broke the first egg into the gla.s.s.

"Sugar," he said, "and milk."

Mrs. Brundage gave him both, with a quickness which pleased him.

"Tell her d.i.c.k's coming," he said, and the woman went, leaving the door ajar.

As he beat the eggs to a froth, he could hear her awkward attempts to soothe the girl's distress.

When the mixture was ready, "I'm coming," he called. "d.i.c.k's coming to you, sure thing," and took it into the bedroom.

"I think," he said, standing over her, "that you're making _rather_ a fool of yourself."

"I know I am. But I can't stop." Then, sitting up, with tears running down her face, she sobbed out: "Don't _you_ be unkind to me too."

He sat down on the edge of the bed, put an arm round her shaking body, and held the tumbler towards her.

"Drink it up," he said; and the Brundage woman noted how adroitly he avoided the hand that would have pushed away the gla.s.s.

"I don't want it. I want you. I'm safe with you."

"It's both or neither. Drink it slowly. I'll stay to the last drop," he said, smiling down at her as she had never seen him smile before.

She obeyed, looking up at him between the mouthfuls, with something like adoration in her eyes.

When only a quarter of the mixture was left in the gla.s.s, she spoke:

"You're good to me," she said.

"Of course," he answered, and she laid her head on his shoulder and slept at once.

So for a while he held her; and the watcher saw the strength and judgment with which, a little later, he lowered the head to the pillow so that the change of position never brought a quiver to the closed eyelids; and, feeling romance as never before, she let a man play sick-nurse to a maiden in bed without one censorious thought, and became dimly aware for a moment in her drab life that love and modesty, strength and beauty, safety and trust, spring to meet each other out of the hidden root of things.

d.i.c.k laid the coverlet over the girl's shoulders, and walked out of the room with a silence of which the woman achieved only an indifferent imitation.

"And him with that bad limp, too," she said to herself afterwards, "and them thick boots!"

"Breakfast," said d.i.c.k, in that low tone of his which never whispered.

"Leave her door open, and our voices will make her feel safe in her sleep. Give me a towel and soap. I'll wash at the pump while you make tea."

When he had washed, eaten many eggs and drunk much tea, Mrs. Brundage thought her turn had come.

"Lady Adeline----" she began, but d.i.c.k turned on her so sudden a stare that she stopped short. And no less suddenly he remembered.

The woman's softening had made him almost willing to trust her with a condensed version of the facts. But her "Adeline" reminded him that he was already committed to a safer course.

"Adelin_a_," he said, correcting her, "the Lady Adelin_a_, not Adeline.

Her mother, you see, Mrs. Brundage, was an Italian lady of high birth, and her exalted family were very particular about the end of the name."

To gain time he finished his tea, and lighted his pipe--his first smoke since he had left St. Albans.

"The father is an Englishman of t.i.tle, who has long set his heart on a great marriage for his daughter. For months, nay, years, the high-spirited Lady Adelina has resisted the idea of yoking herself with a man she dislikes and for whom she has no respect."

"Poor young lady," sighed Mrs. Brundage. The familiar tale was alive with reality for her. "Now I'll lay the father's a baronet," she said.

"You have great insight, Mrs. Brundage. But it is worse than that: he is a marquis. Well, just before I first met her, Adelina, worn out by her father's alternate cajolery and brutality, had yielded, almost promising to do as he wished. It was during the war----"

"That war!" exclaimed Mrs. Brundage. "It's got a deal to answer for.

Now, there's Tom; it's changed his heart from cows and horses to motor-cars and airyplanes."

"It was in a hospital----" said d.i.c.k.

"Them hospitals!" she interrupted. "I know 'em. And very dangerous inst.i.tootions I consider 'em."

"I see you do--so you will understand that part. When we had made the discovery that each was the only thing in the world to the other, and she had told her father, the Marquis of Ontario, that she would wed none but me, his anger was so terrible that I dared no longer leave her beneath his roof. There was nothing for it but----"

"An elopement!" burst from Mrs. Brundage.

d.i.c.k nodded.

"We did it--last night, in my car. But about four miles from Millsborough, we had an accident. You've seen my face, Mrs. Brundage, but you haven't seen my car. And we knew that the Marquis was not far behind us. So we dragged ourselves along the ditch into which we had fallen, and hid. At dawn we saw him go tearing by in his sumptuous sixteen-cylinder electric landaulette. After that----"

A crunching of gravel outside brought a not inconvenient interruption to this romance.

d.i.c.k was out of the kitchen like a flash, his right hand in the pocket of his jacket.

Mrs. Brundage heard a voice that was not his, and words of a language she had never heard before. Having no reason to fear anything worse than the Marquis of Ontario, she followed her hero with a stride as swift and almost as silent as his own.

Before she reached the corner, she heard his voice in sharp command, answered by a rapid flow of words in a tongue and voice strange to her.

She checked her advance suddenly and noisily, heard a second order jerked out, and showed herself.

"Abajo las manos," d.i.c.k had said--just in time, for Pepe el Lagarto's hands hung by his sides once more when Mrs. Brundage came round the corner and caught her first sight of him.

A small, dingy-faced man, with fear in the lines of his mouth, but a pathetic, dog-like trust in his eyes, stood looking up at the stern master who, it seemed, had caught him unawares.

Mrs. Brundage did not like the new-comer, nor the aspect of this meeting.

"Who is this man, Mr.--Mr. d.i.c.k?" she asked.

He turned upon her with surprise so well-feigned that she fully believed he had not heard her coming.