The Threatening Eye Part 7

"No thank you," she replied decidedly.

"I live close here," he went on--"in the Temple. I wish you would allow me to take you to my rooms--you seem faint--a rest for a little while and a cup of tea will do you good. Now do let me persuade you." He paused and their eyes met. "No, you need not be afraid of me," he said, translating her look.

She was looking at him, earnestly into him, and she read his character.

She saw that she need not fear him--that is so long as she took proper care of herself. There was nothing violent or really wicked in the merry, careless, rather weak face. This was not the old man of the Park.

She could distinguish that there were generous feelings in this young man as well as self-indulgence.

She smiled as she thought how shrewd she was getting at character-reading, what a lot she had learned of the world in one day.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked.

"At my thoughts?"

"Well I am glad that they are merrier than they were just now."

"I was thinking how well I can read your character. I saw that I need not fear you much. I can trust you."

This was a very dangerous admission for a young girl to make to a young man; but Mary, clever though she was, could hardly be expected to know exactly how to behave under such novel circ.u.mstances.

"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied Hudson excitedly. "Now take my arm and we will go to my rooms. You want somebody to take care of you, my poor little girl."

There was a tenderness in his last words that cooled Mary's confidential mood; but she took his arm, and she spoke no word while Hudson rang the bell, and they pa.s.sed into the Temple through a gate that was opened by invisible hands, like that of some magic castle in the fairy tales she had read, and then crossed the deserted quadrangle, and ascended two flights of dusty stone stairs, till they came to a solid and ancient oak door with bolts and bars enough to resist the siege of twenty locksmiths for a week, and with Mr. T. Hudson painted over it in white letters.

He opened this with one key, and there was another inner, less formidable door which he opened with another smaller key. It was just like going into a prison, she fancied, and the gloomy deserted pa.s.sages half frightened her. How easily one could be murdered in this lonely place, she thought, and no one hear one's cries.

She followed him into the dark chambers, then the barrister lit a lamp and proceeded to do the honours of his establishment.

"Here we are at last--a curious looking place is it not? Now you must sit down in this armchair and make yourself comfortable, while I go out and get you something to eat. It will do you good--I can see what you want."

"I really want nothing, sir; indeed I--"

"Now, don't contradict your doctor, Miss--Miss--Miss--what is it you said?"

She smiled at his ruse as she remembered that she had not told him her name as yet, but she replied, "Mary Grimm."

"Miss Grimm, you must excuse my leaving you alone here for a few minutes; I won't be long," and he hurried off to order a nice little supper for his guest from a neighbouring tavern.

Then he thought as he went, "There is nothing but whisky in the rooms--she doesn't look the sort of girl to drink whisky--shall I get her some beer? No, that won't do--champagne? Can't run to that to-night, besides, it would look like dissipation and frighten her.

Claret?--that's better; I'll get a bottle of Burgundy--that's the stuff to cheer the girl;" so he ordered a bottle of the generous wine, to be sent over to his chambers with the supper.

The adventure was a curious one and pleased him. This was no ordinary girl, he saw that. He felt that her story was true, or nearly so. She puzzled him somewhat, but this presumptuous young man flattered himself that he could understand any woman after an hour's conversation, and he intended to understand his new acquaintance.

When a woman is left by herself in a bachelor's home for the first time, she loves to prowl about it and look into every corner like a cat in a strange house, endeavouring to satisfy her natural curiosity as to the secret life of the unmarried man. Residential chambers in the Temple have an especial charm for the inquisitive daughter of Eve. There is an odour of mystery, a suspicion of wickedness about these dens of celibacy which she cannot resist.

So when the barrister was away, Mary, after she had first taken off her shawl and hung it on a chair, and then looked at herself in the gla.s.s over the mantelpiece, and arranged her hair a little, began to examine her surroundings with considerable interest. She noticed how different everything in this room was to what she was accustomed to see in other sitting-rooms at home and elsewhere, where a woman's influence--though it were even Mrs. Grimm's--made itself felt.

There was a comfortable sternness about the bachelor's sanctum. There were no frivolous cheap china shepherdesses on the mantelpiece, as in the Brixton parlour, but pipes, tobacco-jars, and two bronze busts of heathen deities.

There hung by the side of the mirror four tin s.h.i.+elds with the arms of Hudson's University, College, School, and Inn of Court painted on them.

The walls were pannelled with dark oak. There were two carved bookshelves of the same wood, and their contents showed that his erratic and rather superficial mind had coquetted with many branches of human thought.

Some good old engravings hung on the walls, contrasting curiously with coloured photographs by Goupil from well-known pictures of the modern French school, all representing feminine beauty in more or less scanty cla.s.sic attire, these last in broad flat frames of dead gold that much relieved the sombre effect of the furniture.

There were guns, fis.h.i.+ng-rods and riding-whips also hanging on the walls, proving that our barrister was somewhat of a sportsman as well as a student and voluptuary.

In a recess were some silver prize-tankards won by his oar on Cam and Thames. On the round table in the centre of the room were a decanter of whisky, two or three empty gla.s.ses, some cigar ends in a saucer, an alb.u.m chiefly filled with pretty actresses, a French novel, and one brief, the only sign of his profession; for I must explain that Hudson had a room for business purposes on the ground-floor of his staircase.

Mary heard her host coming up the stairs, so had one more look into the gla.s.s to see if all was right. Her eye fell on her hat--it was very shabby indeed; so, though she felt how cool and bold she was, she took it off and laid it on the chair with her shawl. Her shame for its appearance, her woman's vanity, were too much for her instinctive feeling that this was far from the right thing to do.

When Hudson came in he was surprised to see what a beautiful creature this little captive of his was. Now that her shawl was off, her tight-fitting black dress revealed the perfect moulding of her form. Her small cla.s.sical head was set on her shoulders wonderfully as that of the Venus that came from Milo. She was leaning with one arm on the sill of the window, looking across Fountain Court to the gleaming Thames. The lamp s.h.i.+ning through a coloured shade cast a delicate pink light upon her figure, and she appeared even as the young Venus, a being born into a happy world only to be loved and to love.

But then no G.o.ddess of Love would have had that expression about the mouth, so untender, so devoid of soft emotions.

"I am sorry to have kept you so long," Hudson said. "I have ordered a nice little supper, which will be here directly."

"Oh, but it is too kind of you," she exclaimed. "I should not have come up here if I had thought that you were going to take all this trouble."

"Nonsense, Miss Grimm. You don't know how pleased I am to have met you.

What do you mean by trouble? There is nothing unselfish in my behaviour, I a.s.sure you. It is a charitable action of yours to relieve my loneliness in this dismal old place. It is not very cheerful to sup here all alone, as you can well imagine."

"It must be very lonely, living here," she said as she looked around.

"Well, it is," he replied, but not without a smile as he thought how much more jovial revelry than quiet loneliness those chambers had seen since he had occupied them.

"It is a pretty room," Mary said, "I like it very much. I have never seen anything like it before. It is very interesting. There are so many curious things in it."

Suddenly her eyes fell on the dusty brief on the table, and she exclaimed, "Ah! you are a barrister, I see."

"How on earth do you know that?" he asked. "Have you ever seen any of these interesting doc.u.ments before?"

"I should think I have," she replied as she picked it up, and turning over the pages glanced at them with the eye of a connoisseur. "I have drawn up so many of these, so many hundreds of folios of the dreary stuff," and she sighed as she thought over the dismal hours she had spent in that dingy back room off Fleet Street. She continued with vivacity, "Why, after just looking through it for a moment, I could tell you exactly how many _guas_ ought to be scrawled on the outside of a brief like that one. A little a.s.sault case I see it is. Your fee would not be much for that. I hope you get better work than that sometimes--but I beg your pardon," she said in a confused way as she remembered herself; "I did not mean to--"

"The devil!" exclaimed the barrister in surprise, "are you a sister lawyer, then? I didn't know that woman's rights had got as far as that yet. As we are fellow chips we ought to get on very well together. Which branch of the profession do you belong to?"

She laughed merrily and said with a mock bow, "To the lower; I have pa.s.sed the greater portion of my life in a solicitor's office."

"Dear me, how very interesting! I should like to hear about it if I may, if it is not a secret."

"Not at all; I know you are very curious to know who I am, so if you like I'll give you my whole history."

"I shall be very glad to hear it," Hudson said, this time speaking in a serious tone. "I shall be able to know how I can help you when I know more about you. But sit down in that arm-chair; it is more comfortable and you look very tired."

She sat down in the arm-chair by the window, while he took a chair near her.

"Well, to start at the beginning," Mary said; "my father is a solicitor."

"What! not that old rascal, Edmund Grimm!" Hudson exclaimed; "but I beg your pardon, Miss Grimm."