CHAPTER II.
“I’m so much obliged to you, so very much obliged to you.”
Clifford looked round, and saw pretty Nell Claris standing beside the two boats which he had pulled up on the bank by her direction.
“I’m afraid it must have given you a great deal of trouble. One of them was nearly full of water, I know.”
“Why, yes, it wasn’t too easy to get them up, because the bank slopes, and the earth is so slimy just here. But I’m very glad to have been able to do you the little service.”
“It wasn’t a little service; it was a great one,” said Nell, with a look which Clifford felt to be intoxicating.
At that moment he heard a sound like a short, mocking laugh; and turning, with a sudden flush, to look at the river, he saw the fisherman, with a face full of scornful amusement, punting away slowly up stream toward Fleet Castle. Clifford, though he felt a little uneasy, was glad the man had gone.
“Your friends have gone back to Stroan,” said Nell, who had blushed a little, on her side, when she heard the fisherman’s contemptuous laugh.
“Is that a hint for me to follow their example?”
“Oh, no, indeed. My uncle said, when I told him what you were doing for us, that I was to ask you to come in and have a cup of tea with us—if you would condescend to accept an invitation from an innkeeper and his niece?”
Nell smiled a little as she added these words; and the manner in which she uttered them showed so keen a perception of social distinctions that Clifford was confirmed in his belief that the girl was ridiculously out of her proper element in this wayside inn.
He followed her into a tiny sitting-room at the back of the inn, where they were joined by her uncle, a burly, jovial man with a round, red, honest face, who was evidently very fond of his niece, although every word each uttered seemed to emphasize the strange difference in manners and speech which existed between them.
“Proud to know you, sir,” said George Claris, when Clifford held out his hand. “Proud to know anybody my Nell thinks worth knowing. She’s mighty particular, is Nell. Lor’, what wouldn’t your friend, Mr. Jordan there, have given for an invite to tea in here like this! Eh, Nell?”
Nell blushed, and turned her uncle’s attention to his tea, while Clifford, in some surprise, enjoyed the knowledge that he had cut Jordan out without even a struggle.
Nell herself explained this presently, when her uncle had been called away by press of business in the bar, and the two young people were left sitting together, looking through the open glass door into the garden behind the inn.
“I’m afraid you will think I didn’t treat your friend very well, after setting him to work to pitch that shed for us,” she said, with a pretty blush in her cheeks, as she looked down at the table-cloth, and thus enabled Clifford to see that her long, curled, golden-brown eyelashes were the prettiest he had ever seen.
“I’m afraid he will think so,” said Clifford, with affected solemnity. “I think myself that, after such heavy work as that, he did deserve a cup of tea.”
Nell looked up in some distress, her blue eyes brighter with excitement, and her voice quite tremulous in its earnestness.
“Ah, you don’t know!” she said, quickly. “I am not ungrateful, but I am in a very difficult position, and I have to be careful how I treat people. Don’t you know yourself that a great many men, gentlemen too—or they call themselves so—think they have a right to treat a girl who lives at an inn differently from other girls? Surely you must know that?”
Clifford grew red, conscious that the girl had penetrated a weak spot in Willie’s social armor.
“Well, but—”
“Oh, you needn’t say ‘but,’” interrupted Nell. “You know it is true. Now I don’t want to say anything against your friend; he is very nice, and very good-natured; but—”
“You have to keep him in order,” said Clifford.
“Yes. I treat him just as I treat a lot of these young men who come out from Stroan just to idle about the place; as I treated you, to begin with.” And she gave him a pretty little shy glance and smile, which set Clifford’s heart beating faster. “I set them all to work. It does them no harm, and its does my uncle a great deal of good. Since I’ve been here,” and she raised her head triumphantly, “he’s been able to do without a man to look after things.”
Clifford could not help laughing.
“Why, you’re a mascot; you bring luck wherever you go,” said he.
“Indeed, I like to think that I have brought it to Uncle George,” said the girl. “I may tell you—for everybody knows it—that just before I came back to him he was on the verge of bankruptcy, and now,” and she shot at Clifford a glance of triumph, “he has bought another piece of land, and two more cows, and enlarged the stables, and put money in the bank besides. What do you think of that?”
“Why, I think he’s a very lucky man to have such a niece,” said Clifford, more charmed every moment by the girl’s amusing mixture of shrewdness and simplicity.
“It’s very nice for your uncle,” he added, after a little pause, “but is it—” he hesitated, afraid of seeming impertinent, “is it quite as pleasant for you, to live out here, I mean, so far from—from—”
“Civilization?” asked Nell, smiling. “There are some disadvantages, certainly. Of course I know what you really mean, and what you don’t like to say. But when the choice lies between living with my old uncle and helping him, and going away to please myself, is there any doubt what I ought to do? Miss Theodora, who is the best woman in the world, says I ought to stay—I am right to stay.”
Clifford reluctantly agreed with her, and allowed her to prattle on about her uncle and his goodness, and Miss Theodora and her goodness, until the light of the sunset began to fade in the sky.
When he reluctantly rose to take leave, he found that some heavy drops of rain had begun to fall, and he allowed himself to be persuaded by the landlord and his niece to wait until the rain had cleared off. As, however, instead of clearing, the weather gradually became worse, until the day ended in a steady downpour which threatened to last all night, Clifford asked whether they could put him up for the night; and being answered in the affirmative, decided to spend the night at the inn.
The room they gave him was small, but beautifully clean, and was at the front of the house, with an outlook over the marshes to the sea. Clifford, when he retired to it late that night, raised the blind and tried to peer through the mist of rain which blurred the view. He began to feel that he wanted to spend his life in this spot, digging Nell’s cabbages for her, trimming the hedges of her garden, watering her roses, doing anything, in fact, so that he might be near her.
He was in love, more seriously, too, than Willie had ever been, or than he himself had ever been before. He asked himself what sort of a spell it was that this young girl had been able so quickly to cast upon him, and he told himself that it was the sweetness of her nature, the purity which shone from her young soul through her blue eyes, which had enabled her to bewitch him as no mere beauty of face and person could ever have done. He looked at his hand, and saw again in imagination the little soft, white hand, smoother and fairer than any girl’s hand he had ever touched, which had lain for a moment in his as she bade him good night. He felt again the satiny touch which had thrilled him when the little fingers met his. He sat caressing his own hand which had been so honored, intoxicated with his own thoughts.
It was late before the dying candle warned him to make haste to bed. As he turned to the door to lock it, as his custom was in a strange place, he found that it had neither lock nor bolt. And the words of the young fisherman, his warning about the character of the house, flashed with an unpleasant chill through his mind.
The next moment he was ashamed of having remembered them. Of course, there was a possibility, then whispered his common sense, that even the house which sheltered a goddess might also contain a man or a maid-servant who was a common thief. So, as he had a very handsome watch with him, and nearly twenty-five pounds in his purse, he tucked these possessions well under the pillow, and went to sleep, thinking of Nell.
He was awakened out of a sound slumber by the feeling that there was some one in his room.
He felt sure of this, although for a few minutes, as he lay with his eyes closed, he heard nothing but the ticking of the watch under his pillow. After that he became conscious that in the darkness there was a shadowy something passing and repassing between his bed and the heavily-curtained window. His first impulse was to shout aloud and alarm the would-be thief, as he could not but suppose the intruder to be. The next moment, however, he decided that he would wait until the theft had been actually committed, and take the perpetrator red-handed.
He waited, holding his breath.
Sometimes the shadowy something disappeared altogether for a few seconds, to re-appear stealthily creeping round the walls of the little room. Only one thing he could make out from the vague outline which was all he saw of the figure—the intruder was a woman. He heard a sound which he took to be the dropping of his clothes when they had been ransacked. Then, though he hardly saw it, he felt that the figure was approaching the bed.
He remained motionless, imitating the breathing of sleep.
He felt that a hand was upon the bolster, creeping softly toward his head. Then it was under the bolster, and, finally, it was under his pillow. He held himself in readiness to seize the hand at the moment when it should find his watch and his purse.
When once the stealthy fingers had touched these articles, however, they were snatched away with so much rapidity that Clifford had to spring up and fling out his arm to catch the thievish hand.
As his fingers closed upon those of the thief, however, he was struck with a sudden and awful chill on finding that the skin was smooth as satin, that the trembling fingers were slender and soft, the hand small and delicate—a hand that he knew!
“Who are you? Who are you?” he cried, hoarsely.
But he got no answer but the answer of his own heart. His agitation was so great that the little hand wriggled out of his, still bearing his watch and his purse; and in another moment the door had opened and closed, and he was alone.