The Black Bag Part 44

"Oh, nothing wrong," he hastened to rea.s.sure her, with a sorry ghost of his familiar grin; "only I have lost Hobbs and the satchel with your things; and there's no sign yet of Mr. Calendar. We can feel pretty comfortable now, and--and I thought it time we had something like a meal."

The narrative of his adventure which he delivered over their _dejeuner a la fourchette_ contained no mention either of his rebuff at the American Consulate or the scratch he had sustained during Hobbs' murderous a.s.sault; the one could not concern her, the other would seem but a bid for her sympathy. He counted it a fortunate thing that the mate's knife had been keen enough to penetrate the cloth of his sleeve without tearing it; the slit it had left was barely noticeable. And he purposely diverted the girl with flashes of humorous description, so that they discussed both meal and episode in a mood of wholesome merriment.

It was concluded, all too soon for the taste of either, by the waiter's announcement that the steamer was on the point of sailing.

Outwardly composed, inwardly quaking, they boarded the packet, meeting with no misadventure whatever--if we are to except the circ.u.mstance that, when the restaurant bill was settled and the girl had punctiliously surrendered his change with the tickets, Kirkwood found himself in possession of precisely one franc and twenty centimes.

He groaned in spirit to think how differently he might have been fixed, had he not in his infatuated spirit of honesty been so anxious to give Calendar more than ample value for his money!

An inexorable anxiety held them both near the gangway until it was cast off and the boat began to draw away from the pier. Then, and not till then, did an unimpressive, small figure of a man detach itself from the s.h.i.+eld of a pile of luggage and advance to the pier-head. No second glance was needed to identify Mr. Hobbs; and until the perspective dwarfed him indistinguishably, he was to be seen, alternately waving Kirkwood ironic farewell and blowing violent kisses to Miss Calendar from the tips of his soiled fingers.

So he had escaped arrest....

At first by turns indignant and relieved to realize that thereafter they were to move in scenes in which his hateful shadow would not form an essentially component part, subsequently Kirkwood fell a prey to prophetic terrors. It was not alone fear of retribution that had induced Hobbs to relinquish his persecution--or so Kirkwood became convinced; if the mate's calculation had allowed for them the least fraction of a chance to escape apprehension on the farther sh.o.r.es of the Channel, nor fears nor threats would have prevented him from sailing with the fugitives.... Far from having left danger behind them on the Continent, Kirkwood believed in his secret heart that they were but flying to encounter it beneath the smoky pall of London.

XVII

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

A westering sun striking down through the drab exhalations of ten-thousand sooty chimney-pots, tinted the atmosphere with the hue of copper. The glance that wandered purposelessly out through the carriage windows, recoiled, repelled by the endless dreary vista of the Surrey Side's unnumbered roofs; or, probing instantaneously the hopeless depths of some grim narrow thoroughfare fleetingly disclosed, as the evening boat-train from Dover swung on toward Charing Cross, its trucks level with the eaves of Southwark's dwellings, was saddened by the thought that in all the world squalor such as this should obtain and flourish unrelieved.

For perhaps the tenth time in the course of the journey Kirkwood withdrew his gaze from the window and turned to the girl, a question ready framed upon his lips.

"Are you quite sure--" he began; and then, alive to the clear and penetrating perception in the brown eyes that smiled into his from under their level brows, he stammered and left the query uncompleted.

Continuing to regard him steadily and smilingly, Dorothy shook her head in playful denial and protest. "Do you know," she commented, "that this is about the fifth repet.i.tion of that identical question within the last quarter-hour?"

"How do you know what I meant to say?" he demanded, staring.

"I can see it in your eyes. Besides, you've talked and thought of nothing else since we left the boat. Won't you believe me, please, when I say there's absolutely not a soul in London to whom I could go and ask for shelter? I don't think it's very nice of you to be so openly anxious to get rid of me."

This latter was so essentially undeserved and so artlessly insincere, that he must needs, of course, treat it with all seriousness.

"That isn't fair, Miss Calendar. Really it's not."

"What am I to think? I've told you any number of times that it's only an hour's ride on to Chiltern, where the Pyrfords will be glad to take me in.

You may depend upon it,--by eight to-night, at the latest, you'll have me off your hands,--the drag and worry that I've been ever since--"

"Don't!" he pleaded vehemently. "Please!... You _know_ it isn't that. I _don't_ want you off my hands, ever.... That is to say, I--ah--" Here he was smitten with a dumbness, and sat, aghast at the enormity of his blunder, entreating her forgiveness with eyes that, very likely, pleaded his cause more eloquently than he guessed.

"I mean," he floundered on presently, in the fatuous belief that he would this time be able to control both mind and tongue, "_what_ I mean is I'd be glad to go on serving you in any way I might, to the end of time, if you'd give me...."

He left the declaration inconclusive--a stroke of diplomacy that would have graced an infinitely more adept wooer. But he used it all unconsciously. "O Lord!" he groaned in spirit. "Worse and more of it! Why in thunder can't I say the right thing _right_?"

Egotistically absorbed by the problem thus formulated, he was heedless of her failure to respond, and remained pensively preoccupied until roused by the grinding and jolting of the train, as it slowed to a halt preparatory to crossing the bridge.

Then he sought to read his answer in the eyes of Dorothy. But she was looking away, staring thoughtfully out over the billowing sea of roofs that merged illusively into the haze long ere it reached the horizon; and Kirkwood could see the pulsing of the warm blood in her throat and cheeks; and the glamorous light that leaped and waned in her eyes, as the ruddy evening sunlight warmed them, was something any man might be glad to live for and die for.... And he saw that she had understood, had grasped the thread of meaning that ran through the clumsy fabric of his halting speech and his sudden silences.

She had understood without resentment!

While, incredulous, he wrestled with the wonder of this fond discovery, she grew conscious of his gaze, and turned her head to meet it with one fearless and sweet, if troubled.

"Dear Mr. Kirkwood," she said gently, bending forward as if to read between the lines anxiety had graven on his countenance, "won't you tell me, please, what it can be that so worries you? Is it possible that you still have a fear of my father? But don't you know that he can do nothing now--now that we're safe? We have only to take a cab to Paddington Station, and then--"

"You mustn't underestimate the resource and ability of Mr. Calendar," he told her gloomily; "we've got a chance--no more. It wasn't...." He shut his teeth on his unruly tongue--too late.

Woman-quick she caught him up. "It wasn't that? Then what was it that worried you? If it's something that affects me, is it kind and right of you not to tell me?"

"It--it affects us both," he conceded drearily. "I--I don't--"

The wretched embarra.s.sment of the confession befogged his wits; he felt unable to frame the words. He appealed speechlessly for tolerance, with a face utterly woebegone and eyes piteous.

The train began to move slowly across the Thames to Charing Cross.

Mercilessly the girl persisted. "We've only a minute more. Surely you can trust me...."

In exasperation he interrupted almost rudely. "It's only this: I--I'm strapped."

"Strapped?" She knitted her brows over this fresh specimen of American slang.

"Flat strapped--busted--broke--on my uppers--down and out," he reeled off synonyms without a smile. "I haven't enough money to pay cab-fare across the town--"

"Oh!" she interpolated, enlightened.

"--to say nothing of taking us to Chiltern. I couldn't buy you a gla.s.s of water if you were thirsty. There isn't a soul on earth, within hail, who would trust me with a quarter--I mean a s.h.i.+lling--across London Bridge. I'm the original Luckless Wonder and the only genuine Jonah extant."

With a face the hue of fire, he c.o.c.ked his eyebrows askew and attempted to laugh unconcernedly to hide his bitter shame. "I've led you out of the fryingpan into the fire, and I don't know what to do! Please call me names."

And in a single instant all that he had consistently tried to avoid doing, had been irretrievably done; if, with dawning comprehension, dismay flickered in her eyes--such dismay as such a confession can rouse only in one who, like Dorothy Calendar, has never known the want of a penny--it was swiftly driven out to make place for the truest and most gracious and unselfish solicitude.

"Oh, poor Mr. Kirkwood! And it's all because of me! You've beggared yourself--"

"Not precisely; I was beggared to begin with." He hastened to disclaim the extravagant generosity of which she accused him. "I had only three or four pounds to my name that night we met.... I haven't told you--I--"

"You've told me nothing, nothing whatever about yourself," she said reproachfully.

"I didn't want to bother you with my troubles; I tried not to talk about myself.... You knew I was an American, but I'm worse than that; I'm a Californian--from San Francisco." He tried unsuccessfully to make light of it. "I told you I was the Luckless Wonder; if I'd ever had any luck I would have stored a little money away. As it was, I lived on my income, left my princ.i.p.al in 'Frisco; and when the earthquake came, it wiped me out completely."

"And you were going home that night we made you miss your steamer!"

"It was my own fault, and I'm glad this blessed minute that I did miss it.

Nice sort I'd have been, to go off and leave you at the mercy--"

"Please! I want to think, I'm trying to remember how much you've gone through--"