“It’s only just across the street, my dear.”
III
As soon as Eliza, hatted and cloaked, had gone to see Mrs. Norris’s latest, a change came over Constable Maclean. He was a young man of big ideas. But all that they had done for him so far was to turn life into a tragedy. By nature fiercely sensitive, the shyness which made his life a burden had a trick of crystallizing at the most inconvenient moments into a kind of dumb madness. A crisis of this kind was upon him now. Yet he had a will of iron. And in order to keep faith with the highest law of his being that will was always forcing him to do things, and say things, which people who did not happen to be Dugald Maclean could only regard as perfectly amazing.
His acquaintance with Miss Sanderson was very slight. They came from neighboring villages in their native Scotland; many times he had gazed from afar on his beautiful compatriot, but only once before could he really be said to have met her. That was months ago, in that very room, when he had been but a few days in London. Since then a very ambitious young man had thought about her a great deal. The force and charm of her personality had cast a spell upon him; this was a demonic woman if ever there was one; he had hardly guessed that such creatures existed. It would be wrong to say that he was in love with her; his passion was centered upon ideas and not upon people; yet Harriet Sanderson was already marked in the catalogue as the property of Dugald Maclean.
“Do you like vairse?” inquired the young man, with an abruptness which startled her.
The unexpected question was far from the present plane of her thoughts, but it was answered to the best of her ability.
“Yes, I like it very much,” she said, tactfully.
“I’m gled.” Constable Maclean unbuttoned his great coat.
Somewhere in the mind of Harriet lurked the romantic hope that this remarkable young man was about to produce a hare or a rabbit after the manner of a wonder-worker at the Egyptian Hall. But in this she was disappointed. He simply took forth from an inner pocket of his tunic several sheets of neatly-folded white foolscap, and handed them to Miss Sanderson without a word. He then folded his arms Napoleonically and watched the force of their impact upon her.
“You wish me to read this?” she asked, after a brief but sharp mingling of confusion and surprise.