"As who do here? Who are the people who live in that shut-up house, besides you and your Granny, as you call her?"
"I--mustn"t tell you. They don"t belong to any county families. Is that enough?"
"Why are you so different now from what you were when we were sitting by the fire in there? You are not like the same girl! Are you the same girl?"
And Max affected to feel, or, perhaps, really felt, a doubt which necessitated his coming a little closer to Carrie, without, however, being able to see much more of her face than before.
"I"m the same girl," replied Carrie, shortly, "whom you threatened with the police."
"Come, is that fair? Did I threaten _you_ with the police?"
"You threatened _us_. It"s the same thing. Well, it doesn"t matter.
They won"t find out anything more than we choose!"
She said this defiantly, ostentatiously throwing in her lot with the dubious characters from whom Max would fain have dissociated her.
"Do you forget," he asked, suddenly, "that these precious friends of yours left you, forgot you, for two whole days--left you to the company of a dead man, to a chance stranger? Is that what you call kindness--friendship--affection?"
She made no answer.
A moment later a voice was heard calling softly: "Carrie?"
The girl came out of the shelter of the eaves, and Max at last caught sight of her face. It was sad, pale, altogether different from what the reckless, defiant, rather hard tones of her latest words would have led him to expect. A haunting face, Max thought.
"I must go," said she. "Good-bye."
"Carrie!" repeated the voice, calling again, impatiently.
Max knew, although he could not see the owner of the voice, that it was "d.i.c.k." It was, he thought, a coa.r.s.e voice, full of intimations of the swaggering self-a.s.sertion of the low-cla.s.s Londoner, who thinks himself the whole world"s superior.
Carrie called out:
"All right; I"m coming!" And then she turned to Max. "You are to forget this place, and me," said she, in a whisper.
The next moment Max found himself alone.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.
It was on the evening after that of his expedition to Limehouse that Max Wedmore found himself back again at the modest iron gate of the park at The Beeches. He had not sent word what time he should arrive, preferring not to have to meet Doreen by herself, with her inevitable questions, sooner than he could help.
As he shut the gate behind him, and hurried up the drive toward the house, he felt a new significance in the words "Home, Sweet Home," and shuddered at the recollection that he had, in the thirty odd hours since he left it, given up the hope of ever seeing it again.
It was a little difficult, though, on this prosaic home-coming, to realize all he had pa.s.sed through since he last saw the red house, with its long, dignified front, its triangular pediment rising up against the dark-blue night sky, and the group of rambling outbuildings, stables, laundries, barns, all built with a magnificent disregard of the value of s.p.a.ce, which straggled away indefinitely to the right, in a grove of big trees and a tangle of brush-wood.
Lines of bright light streaming between drawn window curtains showed bright patches on the lawn and the shrubs near the house. As Max pa.s.sed through the iron gate which shut in the garden from the park, a group of men and boys, shouting, encouraging one another with uncouth cries, rushed out from the stable yard toward the front of the house.
"What"s the matter?" asked Max of a stable boy, whom he seized by the shoulders and stopped in the act of uttering a wild whoop.
"It"s the log, sir," replied the lad, sobered by the sudden appearance of the young master, who seemed in no hilarious mood.
"The log! What log?"
"Master has ordered one for Christmas, sir, the biggest as could be got," answered the boy, who then escaped, to rush back and join the shouting throng.
And Max remembered that his father, in his pa.s.sionate determination to have a real old English Christmas, with everything done in the proper manner, had given this order to the head gardener a few days before.
By this time the group had become a crowd. A swarm of men and boys, conspicuous among whom were all the idlers and vagabonds of the neighborhood, came along through the yard in one great, overwhelming wave, hooting, yelling, trampling down the flower-beds with, their winter covering of cocoanut fiber, breaking down the shrubs, tearing away the ivy, and spreading devastation as they went.
Poor Mr. Wedmore had instructed his servants not to prevent the villagers from joining in the procession. There was something reminiscent of feudal times, a pleasant suggestion of the cordial relation between the lord of the manor of the Middle Ages and his tenants and dependents, in this procession of the Yule log up to the great house. And Mr. Wedmore, full of his fancy for the grand old medieval Christmas festivities, hugged to his heart the thought of holding such revels as should make Christmas at The Beeches an inst.i.tution in the countryside.
But, alas! the London merchant had become a country gentleman too late in life to appreciate the great gulf which lies between the sixteenth-century peasant (of the modern imagination) and the nineteenth-century villager of actual fact. His own small army from the stable and the garden were powerless to cope with the disorderly mob they had been encouraged to invite in this interesting celebration. And those most mischievous and conspicuous roughs whom the coachman had driven off with the whip on the way up, revenged themselves for this drastic treatment by coming in through the front gate of the park, breaking down the fence between park and garden, and every obstacle to their barbaric progress.
It was "Poaching Wilson" who pulled the bell, after some difficulty in finding the handle, owing to the liberality with which he had "treated himself" as a preparation for the journey.
Max, alarmed at the invasion, had made his way round to the billiard-room door at the back, bolted it on the inside, and hastened to give directions to the servants to lock all the other doors, and to secure the ground-floor windows.
Then he rushed into the hall, just as his father had come out from the dining-room, serviette in hand, to learn the cause of the noise outside.
"h.e.l.lo, Max! Is it you back again? And have you brought down half the population of London with you?"
"No, sir, they didn"t come with me. They are guests of yours, I understand. And they expect to be treated to unlimited beer, so I gather from their remarks. They"ve brought some firewood, I believe."
At this moment the clanging of the front-door bell resounded through the house for the second time. The frightened butler, who was a young man and rather nervous, stood by the door, not daring to open it. The ladies of the household had by this time come out of the dining-room; Mrs.
Wedmore looked flush and frightened; the girls were t.i.ttering. Smothered explosions of laughter came from time to time to the ears of the master of the house, from the closed door which led to the servants" hall.
"Shall--shall I see who it is, sir?" asked the butler, who could hear the epithets applied to him on the other side of the door.
"No, no!" cried Doreen. "Not on any account! Tell them to put the thing down and go away."
There was a pause, during which the bell rang again, and there was a violent lunge at the door.
"They won"t--they won"t go away, Miss, without they get something first," said the butler, who was as white as a sheet.
"Tell them," began Mr. Wedmore, in a loud tone of easy confidence, "to take it round to the back door, and--and to send a--deputation to me in the morning; when--er--they shall be properly rewarded for their trouble."
"They ought to reward us for _our_ trouble, papa, don"t you think?"
suggested Doreen.
"There! They"ve begun to reward themselves," said Queenie, as a stone came through one of the windows.
Mr. Wedmore was furious. He saw the mistake he had made, but he would not own it. Putting strong constraint upon himself, he a.s.sumed a gay geniality of manner which his looks belied, and boldly advanced to the door. But Mrs. Wedmore flung her arms round her husband in a capacious embrace, dragging him backward with an energy there was no use resisting.
"No, no, no, George! I won"t have you expose yourself to those horrid roughs! Don"t open the door, Bartram! Put up the bolt!"