'I think I'll go to bed,' said Briscoe. 'I'm very tired; and I'll have an early start to-morrow.'

'Come out and smoke a cigar with me first,' said Lee. And then in a whisper, 'I want you to help me. They may arrive any moment.'

'Of course,' replied Briscoe, in the same tone, clenching his fists. 'I forgot that.'

So Clacher was left with a decanter of whiskey; and as soon as he was alone he pulled from his breast-pocket a dirty letter, which he read and re-read, and thought over and got madder about: and he always took the other gla.s.s of whiskey, muttering to himself, 'I canna' mind, I canna' mind.'

CHAPTER IX

DEMPSTER APOLOGISES

While Briscoe was being sobered in the library a remarkable scene transacted itself in the dining-room between Miss Jane and Dempster. The outraged lady settled herself in an easy chair with a book; but the offender entered before she had time to read six lines. He approached her on tip-toe, and, a spring seeming to give way somewhere within him, he came down plump on one knee, as if he had been a puppet, and burst out woefully 'Eh--ah!' like an escape of saw-dust.

Miss Jane ignored him, and pressed open her book, which was new and stiff.

Dempster cleared his throat of the saw-dust, and with drooping head, his left hand on his left knee and his right arm hanging limp, whispered, just above his breath, 'Miss Chartres, you see before you a miserable being.'

'I don't; I'm not looking,' said the lady sharply, disconcerting Dempster terribly.

'If you would look you would see me,' he said nervously, as several watch-springs seemed to break out of bounds in various parts of his anatomy.

Miss Jane looked over the top of her book. She saw him collapsed before her with abased eyes, and was satisfied. So she hid her face again, smiling, and said coldly, 'I have seen you.'

'Have you?' said Dempster, going off, as it were accidentally, like a gun; 'I'm very glad: for I would have had no rest of mind or body if you hadn't looked at me. I would have gone about like a hen that had lost her--I mean----'

'Well, and say ill, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane, unable to resist the chance which she had long desired to take. 'These kind of people often make more mischief than ill-doers,' she added.

This overwhelmed Dempster. Down he came on the other knee, and, clasping both hands, called out in serpentine anguish, and without a stammer, 'Why are you so hard on me? The moment I made that unfortunate remark about marrying you, the earth, the sun, my wealth, and life and death were to me no more than they are to a poor man. I a.s.sure you, I a.s.sure you--I don't exaggerate; and I beg you, I implore you to forgive me.'

'Rise, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane with a slight return of graciousness. 'There is really nothing to forgive.'

Some automatic winding-up process began within him and would soon have brought him to his feet with a bound, but Miss Jane's reply to his 'And we will be friends as we were before?' made him all run down again; for the lady said, 'That can hardly be. Though mistakes may not require forgiveness, they cannot always be forgotten. But rise, please.'

'I'll not rise till you forget,' said Dempster with pitiful resignation, his various members barely hanging together. The poor fellow was in deader earnest than even Miss Jane supposed, as will shortly appear.

'But I cannot forget,' said the lady. 'Thought is free, and self-willed besides, Mr. Dempster.'

He clasped his hands again, and in a succession of spasms e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, 'You are the only woman whose society I have any comfort in. You understand me; and your advice is always good, and--eh--ah--agreeable. You never snub me--at least not often, and not without good reason--like younger, like thoughtless hoydens.

If you won't forget and be friends with me again, I don't know whatever I'm to do. I have nothing at all to think of now Muriel has rejected me; and I'll have n.o.body I can talk to with any frankness if you go on remembering.'

Miss Jane's blood, which was not by any means a meagre decoction, but on the contrary rich and sweet enough yet, tingled to her finger ends. This man actually needed her! She laid aside her book, leant forward a little, resting her hands neatly in her lap.

There was no smile, but she looked with a gentle earnestness, and the tang was gone from her tongue.

'How am I to forget?' she said. 'Tell me that, and I'll try. I suppose you have not forgotten what you said--very bitter words for any woman to digest. You would as soon think of marrying me as of marrying a young hoyden, who, from what I can make out, had just rejected you with insult; and the tone of voice--the tone of voice! But rise, Mr. Dempster.'

'I won't,' he said, looking her right in the face, and wondering that he had never noticed before how silky her brown hair was, and how kindly her brown eyes. 'I won't. Forget and then I'll rise.'

'How can I forget?' softly.

'Just as easily as I can rise. The mind is like legs; it can be bent and unbent.'

Now Miss Jane was not very much of a prude; but Dempster was becoming too confident. He must be brought low again. So she lifted her book and said 'Shocking!'

'I beg your pardon,' he cried, vexed at finding the stumbling-block, which he had nearly rolled up to the top and kicked over the other side out of sight for ever, down at the bottom of the hill again. 'I didn't mean to say,' trying to twist his fingers into a hay-band, 'that your mind was like my legs--oh dear me! I've put both feet in it now!'

Miss Jane hid her face completely, but it was to conceal a smile.

Dempster smoothed his cheeks with both hands and held his head for a second or two, all of him gathered up in a more powerful effort to think than he had ever made in his life before.

'What can I do to make you forget?' he muttered.

'Ah!' he cried, after a second, pulling the book from Miss Jane's face as a child might have done, 'I think I'm going to have an idea.'

'You don't mean to say so!' said Miss Jane, leaning forward again in the same neat, pleasant way, with a laugh that was almost girlish.

'Yes, I believe I am,' said Dempster, sitting down on the calves of his legs with his hands on his knees, and looking up trustfully, like something in india-rubber.

'If I were to say,' he enunciated slowly, 'something contradicting emphatically what you can't at present forget, you might--eh--ah--forget?'

'Yes.'

He had been about a foot from her, and he now sc.r.a.ped along the ground on his knees until he almost touched hers.

'You might try to say something of that kind,' she said, blushing, and with a little gasp. Now that it seemed to be coming she was put out; but, like a brave woman having her last chance, she kept her position and smiled encouragingly.

'Might I? Oh, thank you!' he cried with effusion.

Then he knitted his brows and rubbed his head. His serpentine faculty was in abeyance--these involuntaries of his had to cease in order that he might once in his life attempt to think.

As for Miss Jane, she was mistaken in imagining that he had the least notion of making love to her. He valued her only as a friend, and had splashed into the quicksand of a proposal of marriage without knowing it. She thought, however, that he only needed a touch to make him bury himself, like a flounder, head over ears in a declaration of love and an offer of his hand and heart; so she gave him that touch softly and sweetly.

'You said,' quoth she, 'with the utmost disdain, that you would as soon think of marrying me as my insolent niece.'

'I did, I did. Can you help me to contradict it emphatically?'

'I'm afraid not--dear Mr. Dempster.'

'Eh?' said he. 'Thank you.'

He felt dimly that there was something in the air--dimly, as protoplasm may feel its existence.

'Ah!' he cried. 'Here's a kind of notion. I wonder if it's an idea. Would it do to say, in order to make you forget, just the opposite of what I said? You see--you understand--something like this, meaning--of course, you know what I mean--nothing more, you know--eh--ah!--suppose I say, "I would far rather marry you than Muriel." Is that--emphatic enough?'

Miss Jane bent forward, and put her head on his left shoulder, and her hand on his right.