Dead Man's Love. Gallon Tom

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СКАЧАТЬ do not know what words I said; I only know that there, in the dark garden, as I bent over her little hands and put them to my lips, I vowed myself in my heart to her service.

      CHAPTER III.

      THE MISSING MAN

      I find it difficult to write, in my halting fashion, of what my sensations were at that time. God knows what good was in me, and only God and time could bring that good out of me; for I had had no childhood, and my manhood had been a thing thwarted and blighted.

      You have to understand that in a matter of a few days I had lived years of an ordinary life; had been in prison, and had escaped; had come near to death; had found myself buried and done with, and yet enlisted on life under a new name; and, to crown it all, now come face to face with someone who believed in me and trusted me – broken reed though I was to lean upon.

      I stood in the dark grounds, holding the girl's hands and looking into her eyes: and that was a new experience for me. I remembered how someone else – dead, and shamefully buried in the precincts of a prison – had held her hands but a little time before, and had begged that he might help her. Well, he was past all that now; and I, with my poor record behind me, stood, miraculously enough, in his place. Yet there were things I must understand, if I would help her at all: I wanted to know why she had fled from her guardian, and why, in his turn, he had chased her through the grounds.

      "What were you afraid of?" I asked her gently; and it was pleasant to me that she should forget to take her hands out of mine.

      "Of him," she said, with a glance towards the house; and I thought she shivered. "I wonder if you can understand what I feel, and of what I am afraid?" she went on, looking at me curiously. "I do not even know your name."

      I laughed a little bitterly. "You must indeed be in need of friends if you come to me," I answered.

      "But my name is John New, and I am a – a friend of Dr. Just."

      "Oh!" She shrank away from me with a startled look. "I did not understand that."

      "I am a friend of Dr. Just," I repeated, "because it happens that I am very much in his power, and I must be his friend if I would live at all. If that is your case, too, surely we might form some small conspiracy together against him. You're not fond of the man?" I hazarded.

      She shook her head. "I hate him – and I'm afraid of him," she said vehemently. "And yet I have to look to him for everything in the world."

      "Sit down, and tell me about it," I said; and I drew her into the summer-house, and sat by her side while she talked to me. She was like a child in the ease with which she gave me her confidence; and as I listened to her, years seemed to separate me from my prison and from the life I had led. For this was the first gentle soul with whom I had yet come in contact.

      "You must first tell me," she urged, "why you are in the doctor's power. Who are you? and what have you done, that he should be able to hold you in his hands? You are a man; you're not a weak girl."

      It was difficult to answer her. "Well," I began, after a pause, "I did something, a long time ago, of which the doctor knows; and he holds that knowledge over me. That's all I can tell you."

      She looked straight into my eyes, and I found, to my relief, that I was able to look at her with some frankness in return. "I don't believe it was anything very wrong," she said at last.

      "Thank you," I answered, and I prayed that she might never know what my sin had been.

      "You see," she went on confidentially, while the shadows grew about us; "I am really all alone in the world, except for Dr. Just, who is my guardian. He was made my guardian by my poor, dear father, who died some two years ago; my father believed in the doctor very much. They had written a scientific treatise together – because the doctor is very clever, and father quite looked up to him. So when he died he left directions that I was to be taken care of by the doctor. That was two years ago, and I have lived in this house ever since, with one short interval."

      "And the interval?" I asked.

      "We went down to a country house belonging to the doctor – a place in Essex, called Green Barn. It's a gloomy old house – worse than this one; the doctor goes there to shoot."

      "But you haven't told me yet why you were running away from him," I reminded her.

      She bent her head, so that I could not see her face. "Lately," she said in a low voice, "his manner to me has changed. At first he was courteous and kind – he treated me as though I had been his daughter. But now it's all different; he looks at me in a fashion I understand – and yet don't understand. To-day he tried to put his arm round me, and to kiss me; then when I ran away he ran after me."

      I felt that I hated the doctor very cordially; I had an insane desire to be present if by any chance he should repeat his conduct. I felt my muscles stiffen as I looked at the girl; in my thoughts I was like some knight of old, ready to do doughty deeds for this fair, pretty girl, who was so ready to confide in me. I forgot all about who I was, or what had happened to me; I had only strangely come out into the world again – into a world of love.

      But the fact that it was a world of love reminded me that I had had a rival – another man who had held her hands and looked into her eyes, and pleaded that he might help her. I could not, of course, ask about him, because I held the key to his fate, and that fate intimately concerned my own safety; but I was consumed with curiosity, nevertheless. Strangely enough, she voiced my thoughts by beginning to speak of him.

      "There is something else that troubles me," she said earnestly. "I have one friend – a dear, good, loyal fellow; but he has unaccountably gone away, and I can hear nothing of him."

      I felt myself turning hot and cold; I blessed the darkness of the summer-house. "What was his name?" I asked.

      "Gregory Pennington," she answered softly.

      "He was my friend before my father died; he followed me here when the doctor took charge of me. He was afraid of the doctor – not for himself, but on my account; he had a strange idea, and one that I have tried to laugh at, that the doctor wanted to kill me."

      She looked at me with smiling eyes, laughing at such a suggestion; but I, remembering the earnestness of Gregory Pennington's words to the girl on that first occasion of my coming to the house, seemed now to hear that warning as though it came indeed from the dead. And I could not answer her.

      "That was foolish, wasn't it?" she said, with a little laugh. "But then, I think poor Gregory loves me, and that made him afraid for me. You have been in the house here for some days; have you seen nothing of him?"

      I was obliged to lie; there was nothing else for it. I shook my head, and lied stoutly. "No," I replied, "I have never seen him."

      "It's all so strange," she said, as she got to her feet. "The doctor did not like him, and had forbidden him the house, in spite of my remonstrances. As he was my friend, Gregory and I used to meet secretly in these grounds in the evening."

      I remembered how I had seen them together; I remembered, with a shudder, all that had happened afterwards. But still I said nothing; for what could I say?

      "It was all so strange," she went on; and her voice sounded ghostly in the darkness. I had risen, and was standing opposite to her; I seemed to feel that the air had grown suddenly very chill. "The last time I saw him he told me that he would go to the house, and would see my guardian. I did all I could," she proceeded helplessly, "to dissuade him, but he would not listen. He said he must СКАЧАТЬ