"I beg your pardon--but _is_ this Miss Heth?"
They turned as upon one string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares pa.s.sed between the dim trio.
"I am Miss Heth."
"Could you possibly let me speak to you--for a moment, Miss Heth? I realize, of course, that it"s a great intrusion but--"
Canning started up, annoyed. Carlisle, without knowing why, was instantly conscious of a subtle sinking of the heart: some deep instinct rang a warning in the recesses of her being, as if crying out: "This man means trouble." She glanced at Mr. Canning with a kind of little shrug, suggesting doubt, and some helplessness; and he, taking this for sufficient authority, a.s.sumed forthwith the male"s protectorship.
"Yes? What is it that you wish?"
The tall stranger was observed to bow slightly.
"As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few moments--privately. Of course I shouldn"t venture to trespa.s.s so, if the matter weren"t vitally important--"
"Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about?
Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!"
The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was indefinably suggestive of a conflict.
"I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie--the boy who got into all the trouble ... Ah...."
The involuntary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, briefly arresting his speech, was his perfect tribute to the girl"s beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart.
"This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarra.s.sed rush.
"I--I appreciate, I needn"t say, that it seems a great liberty, to--"
"Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady"s battle with lordly a.s.surance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...."
But the stranger"s vivid voice bore him down: "_Do you, Miss Heth?_...
The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don"t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but--I--I"m afraid he may take matters into his own hands--"
Canning took an impatient step forward.
"Nevertheless, it"s pure impudence for him to send to this lady, sneaking for favors now. Let"s--"
"Mr. Canning, I--I"m afraid I _ought_ to speak to him!"
"_What?_" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.
"_Oh!... That"s kind of you!_"
Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning"s incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the person of the sudden stranger--and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied mistakenly upon Dalhousie"s gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he then said: "Well, then, I"ll just have to speak before your friend."...
What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of her anyway?
Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector"s gaze with a look of appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice:
"I"m so dreadfully sorry. But I don"t quite see how I could refuse just to--to hear what he has to say. Under the circ.u.mstances, would it--wouldn"t it be simply unkind?"
Canning said, with small lightening of his restrained displeasure: "Ah!
I"m to understand, then, that you wish to give this--gentleman an audience alone?"
It was, of course, the last thing on earth she desired, but G.o.d clearly was out of his heaven to-day, and Mr. Canning would like her better in the long run if he stepped aside for a s.p.a.ce now. She said, with a restraint which did her credit:
"_Could_ you forgive me--for five minutes? You must know how I--dislike this. But _oughtn"t_ I--"
The great parti gave an ironic little laugh.
"As you please, of course. I shall await your pleasure on the piazza."
And he stamped out and away into the moonlight, pa.s.sing the silent intruder with a look which said loudly that he would have kicked him if it had promised to be worth the trouble.
The silver cord was loosed. The village-clock, quarter of a mile away, struck nine, and all"s well. Hugo Canning"s stately back receded.
Coincidently the shabby-looking stranger who had displaced him stepped forward into the summer-house. The first thing Carlisle noticed about him was that he was lame.
V
Dialogue between V. Vivian, of the Slums, and Mr. Heth"s Daughter (or his Niece); what the lovely Hun saw in the Mr.
Vivian"s eyes, just before he asked G.o.d to pity her.
Dalhousie"s tall friend advanced with a limp, in silence. He halted at a courteous distance; it was seen that one hand held a soft hat, crushed against his side. A faint wave of the ethereal light immersed the man now, and Carlisle dimly descried his face. She observed at once that it did not seem to be a menacing face at all; no, rather was it kindly disposed and even somewhat trustful in its look. It was the second thing that she noticed about him.
Perhaps no girl in the world was less like the popular portrait of a fat horse-leech"s daughter than this girl, Carlisle Heth. Surely no advance ever less resembled the charge of a hating prophet upon a Hun than this man"s advance. Carlisle, to be sure, was never one to think in historical or Biblical terminology. But she did note the man"s manner of approach upon her, and his general appearance, with an instant lifting of the heart. The whole matter seemed desperately serious to her, full of alarming possibilities, a matter for a determined fight. And she felt more confidence at once, the moment she had seen how the emissary looked, how he looked at her.
Chiefly for strategic reasons, she had sat down on the bench again, well back in the shadows. She did not speak; had no intention of speaking till speech might gain something. And the stranger, silent also, wore an air of hesitancy or confusion which was puzzling to her and yet quite rea.s.suring, too. If he had come to say that Dalhousie would talk unless she did, would he be this sort of looking person at all?...
The man began abruptly; clearly nothing plotted out in advance.
"He"s quite crushed.... I--I"ve just come from him...."
And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced his steps for a better start.
"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a--a stranger, in this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It"s all so curiously confused. But it doesn"t seem that he can be quite so bad as they"re saying here to-night...."
The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.
"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can"t remember the boat"s upsetting at all."
His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle"s ear caught that note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie"s shabby friend as a determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face, though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it, odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and surer, not dangerous at all.
Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there came a lovely voice from the shadows--lovely, but did it sound just a little hard?...
"Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, and tell me who you are, and what it is you want."
"Yes, yes! Quite so!" agreed the author of the Severe Arraignment, rather hastily....