The Threatening Eye Part 8

"Not at all, don't apologize; he is an old rascal, and that's putting it very mildly. Do you know him then?"

"I should think so," the barrister answered. "I have done lots of work for him for which he has never paid me. I have long ago given up all hopes of getting my fees out of him."

"I don't think you ever will get them," Mary said quietly.

"And how curious it is that you should be his daughter! It seems almost impossible," and he gazed with admiration at her beautiful figure, contrasting it mentally with the shrivelled anatomy of the ugly little lawyer.

"And how curious to think that the briefs and other papers he sent you were most probably drawn up by my hand!" Mary remarked.

"Is that indeed the case? I should have looked at them with much greater interest had I known that; but there's a knock at the door, it's the supper that's arrived. Excuse me a moment while I go and take it in. You must give me your history afterwards. The first thing is to get everything ready for you; I am sure you must be very hungry."

Though Mary had spoken so frankly, there was still something in her manner that made the young man feel that she was really keeping a sharp watch over herself, and that she was bent on carefully preserving the respectful distance that still lay between them.

Whenever he tried to approach the sentimental and lead the conversation beyond the line she had mentally fixed, she would turn her eyes on him with a calm look that quite disconcerted him. His usual readiness of tongue was strangely absent when talking with this quiet cold beauty. He was ashamed of himself for his stupidity. He had lost all his impudence and pertinacity. He could make no ground here.

The barrister brought the dishes into the rooms, and sported his oak.

Mary insisted on being shown where the laundress kept the cloth, knives, plates and so on, and she laid the table for supper with an accustomed hand.

The girl was amused at the queer careless arrangements of the establishment.

"How funnily you bachelors keep house! Why, you don't seem to know where anything is, what you have got, or what you haven't. Now do you think there is any good in my hunting any more for the salt spoon, Mr. Hudson?

Can you tell me if you ever had one?"

"I really can't say."

She laughed merrily. "Oh dear, how you must get robbed by your servants!

Have you got servants, by the way?"

Hudson, who had been watching with admiration the unconscious supple grace of the girl as she bustled about the room replied, "Yes, a dirty old woman, a laundress as we call them in the Temple, who comes for an hour every morning and pretends to clean up the place."

"How curious! but you should get her to clean your plates better; just look at the dust on this one. Now I wonder where I'm going to find a tea-cloth."

At last Mary had arranged the table to her satisfaction, and they sat down to a comfortable little supper.

Mary had but very rarely drunk anything stronger than tea, and the Burgundy was a new and, it must be confessed, not unpleasant sensation to her after the wear of the first day of liberty. But she soon perceived that it was a perilous pleasure and was cautious.

The conversation was still rather constrained. Each was sounding the other. He was trying to find out what was the real disposition of this very incomprehensible girl. She, amazed at this unwonted kindness from a stranger, was reserved, suspicious of his motives; for Mary was a London girl, and was not gifted with that absolute innocence which is sometimes attributed to such heroines--heroines who, living in pitch, are in some miraculous way all undefiled, are even ignorant that the pitch is there.

At eleven o'clock Hudson knew Mary's history, but he was as far as ever from her. He was accustomed to shy, to bold, to coquettish, to silly, to mercenary, women, to almost every sort of girl, and knew how to manage them: but before this girl he was lost.

This was not merely because she was cold--had she been _stupidly_ so, he would have known how to act; but she inspired a real respect that kept him at a distance.

There was no enlargement of the intimacy, and after supper matters were worse again: the awkward feeling on either side chilled the conversation.

Mary began to think that it was time for her to be going--to resume her wanderings, to find some shelter for the night, and at the thought a gloom fell on her face.

Hudson read the look and said, "Miss Grimm" (he had got back to this though he had called her Mary earlier in the evening), "if you go out now you will find it very difficult to get a lodging. It is too late.

You had better stay here. I will camp out in this room on the sofa, you can have my bed-room. To-morrow we will think together over what you had better do."

Mary looked at his kind face, and was touched; her coldness broke down.

"You are very good," she said gratefully, and she rose and took his hand. "You are the only one who has ever been kind to me. I will never forget you."

When she had retired, the barrister rigged himself up a berth on the sofa, and lay smoking his pipe awhile, as he thought of this strange girl who had awakened his emotions and chilled them again a dozen times in the hour with her inconsistencies, her sympathy one moment, her coldness the next.

He had noticed the different expressions of her features and murmured to himself as he blew out the light: "She has an angel looking out of her eyes and a devil sitting on her mouth, but I believe I should fall really in love this time if I saw much of her."

CHAPTER VI.

FROM SCYLLA TO CHARYBDIS.

Mary slept well after her long day of adventure and did not wake until the sun was high.

The laundresses had poured into the Temple, and were pretending to dust their master's chambers and performing the rest of their desultory duties, prior to the bustle of business commencing in those "dusty purlieus of the law."

It was indeed nearly nine o'clock when Mary woke. She heard the plas.h.i.+ng of the fountain outside, saw she was in a strange room, and gradually recalled all that had occurred on the previous day.

Like most people, she did not feel quite so brave in the morning as in the evening, and her heart sank as her position, her hopeless future, flashed across her mind. She could distinguish by the noises that her host was up and about in the adjacent room, and she heard him instructing his laundress to lay breakfast for two, an order which that worthy received without exhibiting the slightest surprise.

"If the lady puts her boots outside the door I will clean them before I go," she merely said as she carried out his commands.

Mary overheard this. "Good heavens!" she said to herself, "the servant has divined that there is a woman in her master's bed-room, on being merely told to lay breakfast for two instead of one. Such an event then is not extraordinary in Mr. Hudson's home--what has the horrid old woman mistaken me for, then?" and the blood rushed to her cheeks as she thought of it.

"Out of here I must go at once," she muttered to herself--"at once;" and after dressing rapidly she opened the door of the sitting-room, and not without exhibiting some signs of discomposure, found herself face-to-face with the young barrister.

He came up beaming and asked her politely how she had slept.

"Very well, thanks," she replied, taking his proffered hand, rather mollified by his kind manner, and by the knowledge that the laundress had gone. She had looked quickly round the room and grasped this fact; a great relief to her, as she considerably dreaded the gaze of a woman under the present, to be confessed rather compromising, circ.u.mstances.

She had intended to bid the barrister farewell, and hurry off at once; but his honest manner, and the comfortable appearance of the breakfast-table with its eggs, its rolls, its rashers of bacon, and its coffee, prevailed on her. She came to the conclusion that to stay a little longer could do no harm, and it would be well to start this day of unknown work with a good breakfast. So it will be seen that this young lady was practical, one result of her rough education; and her anxiety had not diminished her usually healthy appet.i.te.

So the two sat down and breakfasted merrily enough, their conversation being far more unrestrained than it had been on the previous evening.

"Now, Mary," he no longer called her Miss Grimm, "we won't talk any business till breakfast is over; then we will discuss your plans."

Mary a.s.sented to this, and really began to feel so comfortable in her new quarters, that she was getting quite loth to leave them; and who can tell what decision the two counsellors might have come to--a dangerous game, two young people, both free, discussing such a matter--had not Mary's good genius, in the shape of the dirty and hideous old charwoman, come in just as the breakfast was over?

The hag performed a sort of awkward curtesy, while she gave Mary a look, half of curiosity, half leer of evident speculation as to whether the girl was likely to be a constant visitor, and so to be won over by politeness to a liberality in the way of tips.

Mary read all this, she realised how near she was to the edge of the precipice, the fear returned to her, she started up and said with fierce decision:

"Mr. Hudson, I must go--at once."

He stared at her, and the laundress raised her eyebrows and smiled as she cleared away the breakfast things.