The Wharf By The Docks Part 29

It was indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip potatoes, followed by _meringues a la creme_, and finis.h.i.+ng up with bread and b.u.t.ter and cheese and celery.

There was enough for two, the only drawback being a deficiency of plates, which Max put right, in homely fas.h.i.+on, by eating his share from the dish. Such a tragedy it was to him to find a beautiful girl who was hungry, actually hungry from want of food, that the appet.i.te he had talked so much about failed him, and he found it difficult to eat his share and to keep up the light tone of talk which he judged to be necessary to the situation.

He wanted to ask her a hundred questions about the people at the wharf and the awful thing which had happened there; but none of these subjects seemed appropriate to the dinner-table, and Max decided to leave them to another and a better opportunity.

In the meanwhile he was getting more forgetful of Dudley's warning every moment. Carrie seemed to guess his feelings, and to be grateful for them. She said very little, but she listened and she laughed, and gave him such pretty, touching glances, such half-mournful, half-merry looks when she thought he was not looking, that by the time they came to the cheese he was in a state of infatuation, in which he forgot to notice what a very long ten minutes Dudley was giving them.

He thought, as he watched Carrie in the lamplight, that he had greatly underrated her attractions on the occasion of their first meeting. She had been so deadly white, so pinched about the cheeks; while now there was a little trace of pink color under the skin; and her blue eyes were bright and sparkling with enjoyment.

And it struck him with a pang that she looked so lovely, so bewitching, because of the change from cold and hunger which, as he knew, and as she had acknowledged, were her usual portion.

"Shall we sit by the fire?" asked he suddenly.

And he jumped up from the table, and turned Dudley's biggest and coziest arm-chair round toward the warmth and the glow.

Carrie hesitated. She rose slowly from her chair, and took up from the side-table, on which Max had placed it, the shabby black cape.

"Oh, you needn't be in such a hurry," said Max. "I dare say he'll be a great deal more than the ten minutes he said he should take."

It was her action which had recalled Dudley to his mind. And, for the first time, as he uttered these words, a doubt sprang up as to his friend's good faith. What if Dudley meant to give them both the slip, and to go off to the wharf by himself, after all?

Carrie's eyes met his; perhaps she guessed what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

"Oh, yes, he is sure to be longer than that," said she at once; and, putting her cape down again, she took the chair Max had placed for her, while he sat in the opposite one.

"It's beautiful to be warm!" cried she, softly, as she held out her hands to the blaze which Max had made.

Then there was a long pause. Max had so much to say to her that he didn't know where to begin. And in the meantime to sit near her and to watch the play of the firelight on her happy face was pleasant enough.

But presently perceiving that she threw another uneasy glance in the direction of her cape, he broke the silence hastily.

"You said," began he, abruptly, "that you were not going back to the wharf. Where were you going, then?"

"I don't know," said Carrie, after a pause.

Her face had clouded again. Her manner had changed a little also; it had become colder, more reserved.

"Do you mean that--really? Or do you only mean that you don't mean to tell me, that I have no business to ask?"

"I mean just what I said--that I didn't know."

"You are going to leave Mrs. Higgs and her friends, then?" asked Max, in a tone between doubt and hope.

"Yes."

She made this answer rather by a motion of the head than by her voice.

"Well, I am very glad to hear it--very glad."

"Are you? I'm not. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful to lose one's home, any sort of home."

"But could you call that a home? A hole like that? Among people like this Mrs. Higgs and this d.i.c.k!"

"Oh, poor d.i.c.k! If they had all been like him it would not have mattered."

"What! A pickpocket!" cried Max in disgust.

"What difference did that make? Do you suppose the wives and daughters of the men in the city, financiers and the rest, love them the less because they pa.s.s their lives trying to get the better of other people?

Isn't it just as dishonest to issue a false prospectus to get people to put their money into worthless companies as to steal a watch? It's nonsense to pretend it isn't."

Carrie spoke sharply. She had grown warm in defense of her felonious friend.

Max thought a little before he answered.

"But you're not this man's wife or his daughter."

"Well, no. But he wanted to marry me; and if he hadn't been caught yesterday, perhaps I should have let him."

"What?"

"Don't look so disgusted. He would have been kind to me."

"And _do_ you think you couldn't find a better husband than a--than a pickpocket?"

"He would have been honest if I'd married him," said Carrie, quietly.

"He _says_ so, of course; but he wouldn't. A man says anything to get the girl he's fond of to promise to marry him. Do you think it's possible to change the habits of years, of all a man's life, perhaps, like that?"

"I know it would have been possible," persisted she, obstinately. "I know I could have worried him, and nagged at him, and worked for him, till I made him do what I wanted."

And Max saw in her face, as she looked solemnly at the fire, that dogged, steady resolution of the blue-eyed races.

"Well," said he crossly, "then I'm very glad he's been caught."

"Ah!" cried she, quickly, "you don't know what it will lead to, though.

He knows something, and if your friend, Mr. Horne, won't try to get him off, why, he'll be sorry."

Max looked worried and thoughtful at this threat.

"I won't believe," said he, stoutly, "that my friend had anything to do with--with what happened at the place. It's monstrous!--impossible!"

Carrie said nothing.

"Who would believe this pack of thieves against a man like Dudley Horne?"

Carrie laughed cynically.

"Then why is he afraid?"

This indeed was the question which made the mystery inexplicable. What reason could Dudley have for wis.h.i.+ng to hush up the matter unless he himself had brought about Edward Jacobs's violent death This was the old, old difficulty in which any discussion of the subject or any meditation on it always landed him.