The Adventures of Miss Gregory. Gibbon Perceval

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СКАЧАТЬ he comes and knocks at my door," said Margaret, with a shudder.

      Miss Gregory nodded. "Well, eat your dinner," she said. "No sense in starving yourself, particularly as you'll be going aboard the boat in another hour."

      "The boat!" Miss Fraser let her knife and fork fall into her plate. "The boat!"

      "Sit still," said Miss Gregory. "Don't jump like that; you'll upset your glass. Yes; the boat's the only thing for you. You see, I have a berth to Lourenço Marquez; you can take that and meet the homeward-bound boat there. There'll be no trouble about the extra fare; I 'll attend to that. Now, if you 're going to cry, for goodness' sake go and cry in your room."

      "I—I'm not going to c-c-cry," said Margaret. "But what will you do?"

      "I shall make a few notes on Beira for a book which I am writing," replied Miss Gregory.

      It was nearly midnight when Miss Gregory, tasting the night breeze from the road above the sea-wall, saw the steamer's departure—lights upon lights in beady rows, floating over the level waters to the rhythm of moving engines. With them, installed in an upper-deck cabin, fevered with gratitude and happiness, went little Margaret Fraser, whom Mrs. Colby had found to be nothing more than a child. Miss Gregory eyed the distant lights thoughtfully, and emitted that token of mental exercise which, in men, is called a grunt.

      "She was a moist little thing," she said, in recollection of the girl's parting tears; "but, since she could n't save her own soul, somebody had to save it for her."

      She walked back to the hotel at a leisurely pace, remarking, for purposes of literature, that Beira was at its liveliest at midnight. The manager greeted her with much deference as she entered the courtyard again; he had the born innkeeper's affection for people who could both bully him and pay him. At her order, he had given her the room left vacant by Miss Fraser's departure, though it warred with his sense of fitness that she should not inhabit a more stately (and a costlier) apartment. She went now to her room, and in its privacy relieved herself of her more constrained garments. A dressing-gown and slippers helped her to the frame of mind in which she wrote most easily, and she set herself to her big note-book and the chronicle of her days. There was a deck-chair there; she adjusted it to the scanty light of her lamp and went to work.

      "The pistol-pocket in my tweed skirt is very well concealed, but the weight of the revolver drags it to one side too much."

       She had just written these words in her diary, at the end of a couple of hours of note-making, when the boards of the balcony outside her door creaked loudly; there was an unmistakable footstep. She laid her diary down, with the pencil between its leaves, and rose from her chair, listening acutely. Some one was approaching on tiptoe. A hand touched the door.

      A hoarse whisper carried through it.

      "Little one," it said. "Little one."

      Miss Gregory did not move; she stood motionless, waiting.

      "Come," sounded the whisper, again. "I don't want to hurt you. Unlock the door just for a minute." It was as though some hangman had tried to speak persuasively; there was a horrible tone of cajolery in the voice.

      Miss Gregory looked at the door; it was not locked nor bolted. A cautious hand sounded on the handle, and it opened three inches. There was a pause, as though this midnight visitor were alarmed to find the door would open.

      "Hey, little one," he said again, in the same urgent whisper, and pushed the door open.

      "Ah,' said Miss Gregory. "Stand there, please. You did n't expect to see me?"

      He had started back and made as if to flee when his eyes fell upon her, but her command held him. He gaped at her impotently.

      "Don't move," said Miss Gregory. She sat down again. "I want to look at you, first; I won't keep you long."

      He was desperately afraid of what was to come. This was not a woman in any sense that he understood. This was one of those creatures of which such men as he go in fear; they have neither sex nor nationality, but only strength. He stood, breathing irregularly, and Miss Gregory leaned her head back against the chair and surveyed him.

      There was fear in his face, abject and overmastering fear, and the features on which it dwelt seemed shaped for its habitation. Once, perhaps, that face had expressed possibilities; one could trace it in the empty form of that conventional amiability which is the very seed-ground of weakness. But it was swamped, merged, drowned in the wrecking influences of all vileness. It was hungry and lewd and foolish, false and empty and sorrowful—the face of an imbecile Judas. Miss Gregory pursed her lips as she scanned it, and saw the features writhe and twitch as the broken man groped for his bearings.

      She took up her note-book, and sat considering.

      "How old are you?" she said suddenly.

      The man started; he had no time to lie. "Thirty," he answered, with a gasp. He looked fifty.

      Miss Gregory made a note. "Public school?" she shot at him again.

      He gulped, and Miss Gregory nodded and wrote in her book. He was shaking now like a man in an ague. He put out a hand and steadied himself by the door-post.

      "Stay where you are," said Miss Gregory curtly. "Changed your name, of course? Parents living?"

      He found his voice. "Let me go," he said. He quavered as he spoke among shrill notes.

      "Presently," said Miss Gregory. "The girl who used to have this room said that sometimes, did n't she? Answer me."

      "Yes," he said sullenly. "I did n't hurt her," he added. "What are you going to do?"

      "Hurt you," was the answer. "Were you in prison in England?"

      She looked up as she put each question, and he could not summon force to defy her.

      "Yes," he said.

      "Stealing?"

      "Yes," he answered again.

      Miss Gregory wrote, and sucked her pencil thoughtfully.

      "And now you persecute young women," she said at length. "I wonder what you meant to do—in the end. I suppose——" She paused, and scanned him again. He shuffled in wretched distress.

      "Are you married?" demanded Miss Gregory.

      He started and took his hand from the doorpost. A flush mounted into his face.

      "To hell with you!" he cried hysterically. "Why do you——"

      "Are you married?" repeated Miss Gregory.

      She rose suddenly to her feet, and took a step toward him, pointing at him with the hand that held the pencil. "Say—are you married?"

      There was a moment's war of eyes; so long his sudden anger sustained him. But it was no more than a moment; he was flimsy, shoddy, rotten to the core. He groaned and put his hands before his face with a child's movement.

      "Are you married?" came the chill question again.

      "Yes," he said, behind his hands.

      Miss Gregory wrote, and put СКАЧАТЬ