Then, without another word, he hurried away, leaving her amazed, breathless, not knowing what to think of him, and all he had been saying, and not able to think of anything else.
CHAPTER XXIII.
["MAN OVERBOARD!"]
When Hetty recovered from the astonishment into which Mr. William Crawford's words and manner had cast her, the first fact which struck her memory was that he had called her Hetty. That might, no doubt, be excused in a man of his time of life to a girl of hers (she considered his thirty-six years entitled him to be considered quite middle-aged). But she would have felt more comfortable if the question had not been raised at all. It was, she urged in mitigation, to be taken into account that he spoke under great excitement and in haste. But, after all, the thing was not worth a moment's thought.
There was, however, a fact worth considering. This man, sleeping or waking, did seem to have a special care of the lives of others. Had he not rescued his wife from fire?--and here now was this dream, this dreadful dream about the odious old ice-house. No doubt some men were born with a natural taste for encountering risks, but her inclination did not lead her to plunge into burning houses or flooded ice-houses. For her part she would rather run away twenty miles.
And then what were these words he had said about herself? Now that they came back to her they seemed foolish, impertinent, and she ought to have been angry with him for laughing at her. But no; he had not been laughing at her. He could not laugh at anything on earth after having such an awful dream, and no doubt what he had said of herself was only his exaggerated way of describing how terribly hard he had wanted to save the drowning woman. But there was no person really drowning, and it would be nonsense not to forget the whole interview with him.
Yet it could hardly be got rid of in that way, for how would Alfred take it? The whole affair was very provoking and horrible, and she felt disposed to cry. Perhaps Alfred was right in his first estimate of Crawford, and he was a little mad.
Yes, clearly the man ought to be in a lunatic asylum, and not allowed to go about the country dreaming and terrifying people.
She had no doubt that in a few minutes a procession of men, carrying planks on their shoulders and bags of tools in their hands, would arrive and make the place unbearable with noise and chips.
Hetty would have made her mind quite easy on the last score if she could have seen into the mind of William Crawford as he left the door. For he had no more notion of going to any carpenter that day about the job than he had of flinging himself off Welford Bridge into the South London Canal. What he did intend doing was, to come back in a week and say he found the wretched carpenters to whom he had given the order had wholly misunderstood him and botched the job. This would be economical as far as the doors were concerned, and would give him another interview with Hetty.