CHAPTER XXII.
TWO WOMEN.
Bob grinned with satisfaction when Max, expressing his gratification, dropped into his hand a half-sovereign.
"Thought you"d be pleased, sir," said he, as he helped to get Dudley into the carriage. "I said it was for a toff, a reg"lar tip-topper; and so it was, s" help me!"
Dudley, who was very lame, and who had to be more than half carried, looked out of the window.
Max was still outside, trying to get hold of Carrie, who was on the other side of the carriage.
"You"re coming, Max?"
"Yes, oh, yes, rather."
"And--you?"
Dudley turned to Carrie, who drew back quickly and shook her head.
"I? No."
Max ran round at the back of the carriage and caught her by the arm as she was slinking quietly away.
"Where are you going? Not back in there? You must come with us."
"I!--come with you? To your father"s house? Catch me!"
"Well, part of the way, at any rate," urged Max, astutely. "I dare not go all that way with him alone. See, he wants you to go. You shall get out just when you please."
Carrie hesitated. Although she saw through the kindly ruse which would protect her against her will, she saw, also, that Dudley was indeed in no fit state to take the long journey which was before him, and at length she allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany them on at least the first part of the journey.
And so, in the fog and the gloom of a January night, they began their strange drive.
The road they took was by way of Greenwich and Dartford to Chatham, where there would be no difficulty in getting fresh horses for the rest of the journey.
Dudley, who had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep.
Max was rejoicing in this, but Carrie looked anxious.
"It isn"t natural, healthy sleep, I"m afraid," said she, in a low voice.
"It"s more like stupor. It wasn"t the water that did it, it was a blow on the head. You saw the mark. I"m afraid it"s concussion of the brain."
"Ought he to travel, then?" asked Max, anxiously.
Carrie, who was sitting beside Dudley, and opposite to Max, hesitated a little before answering:
"What else could we do? We couldn"t leave him there at the wharf, could we? And where else could we have taken him? Not back to his chambers, certainly!"
There was silence. The carriage jogged on in the darkness through London"s ugly outskirts, and the two watchers listened solicitously to the heavy breathing of their patient. It was a comfort to Max, a great one indeed, to have Carrie for a companion on this doleful journey. But she was not the same girl, now that she had duties to attend to, that she had been over that _tete-a-tete_ dinner, or even during the journey in the hansom. He himself felt that he now counted for nothing with her, that he was merely the individual who happened to occupy the opposite seat; that her interest, her attentions, were absorbed by the unconscious man by her side.
"Why didn"t you become a hospital nurse?" asked Max, suddenly.
He heard rather than saw that she started.
"That"s just what I thought of doing," she answered, after a little pause. "I"m just old enough to enter one of the Children"s Hospitals as a probationer. They take them at twenty."
"I see. Then you couldn"t have tried before."
"No; they"re very strict about age."
"I should think you were cut out for the work, if only you are strong enough," said Max, with warmth. "You seem to do just the right thing in just the right way."
"I"ve had plenty of experience," said Carrie, shortly, breaking in upon rhapsodies which threatened to become tender. "I did a lot of visiting among poor people who had no one to nurse them when I lived with Miss Aldridge. Down in these parts, the East End, you get practice enough like that, I can tell you!"
"But the treatment of a drowning man--that requires special knowledge, surely!"
"Yes, but down by the river is just the place to get it. He"s the fifth person I"ve seen taken out for dead in the time I"ve lived there. Three out of the five were dead. The other two, a boy and a woman, were brought around."
There was silence again.
Presently Max whispered:
"Do you know--can you guess--how he got into the water?"
Carrie shivered.
"Wait--wait till he can tell us himself," said she, hurriedly. "It"s no use guessing. Perhaps it was an accident, you know."
"You don"t think so?"
"Sh--sh!" said Carrie.
But Max persisted.
"You know as well as I do that that villainous old Mrs. Higgs is at the bottom of the affair."
Carrie bent over Dudley, to a.s.sure herself that, if not asleep, he was at least unconscious of what was pa.s.sing. Then she turned to Max.
"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only, in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will only laugh at me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until--until Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And that, after that awful day when the man was killed--murdered by Mr.
Horne--"
"It"s not true! It can"t be true!" burst out Max.