Part 17 (2/2)
”When you have run away from him? Not for that, little maid;” and he broke again into a laugh that had mischief in it. ”But because when we last met he was in luck and I out of it, yet we guessed it not at the time.”
”I am glad he is doing well,” I said proudly.
”Then should you be sorry for me that am in trouble,” he answered. ”For I have no home now, nor am like to have, but must go beyond seas and begin a new life as best I may.”
”I am indeed sorry, for it is sad to be alone. If Mrs. Gaunt had not been kind to me----”
[Sidenote: Interrupted]
”And to me,” he interrupted, ”we should never have met. She is a good woman, your mistress Gaunt.”
”Yet, I have heard that beyond seas there are many diversions,” I answered, to turn the talk from myself, seeing that he was minded to be too familiar.
”For those that start with good company and pleasant companions. If I had a pleasant companion, one that would smile upon me with bright eyes when I was sad, and scold me with her pretty lips when I went astray--for there is nothing like a pretty Puritan for keeping a careless man straight.”
”Oh, sir!” I cried, starting to my feet as he put his hand across the deal table to mine; and then the door opened and Elizabeth Gaunt came in.
”Sir,” she said, ”you have committed a breach of hospitality in entering a chamber to which I have never invited you. Will you go back to your own?”
He bowed with a courteous apology and muttered something about the temptation being too great. Then he left us alone.
”Child,” she said to me, ”has that man told you anything of his own affairs?”
”Only that he is in trouble, and must fly beyond seas.”
”Pray G.o.d he may go quickly,” she said devoutly. ”I fear he is no man to be trusted.”
”Yet you help him,” I answered.
”I help many that I could not trust,” she said with quietness; ”they have the more need of help.” And in truth I know that much of her good work was among those evil-doers that others shrank from.
”This man seems strong enough to help himself,” I said.
”Would that he may go quickly,” was all her answer. ”If the means could but be found!”
Then she spoke to me with great urgency, commanding me to hold no discourse with him nor with any concerning him.
I did my best to fulfil her bidding, yet it was difficult; for he was a man who knew the world and how to take his own way in it. He contrived more than once to see me, and to pay a kind of court to me, half in jest and half in earnest; so that I was sometimes flattered and sometimes angered, and sometimes frighted.
Then other circ.u.mstances happened unexpectedly, for I had a visitor that I had never looked to see there.
I kept indoors altogether, fearing to be questioned by the neighbours; but on a certain afternoon there came a knocking, and when I went to open Tom Windham walked in.
I gave a cry of joy, because the sight of an old friend was pleasant in that strange place, and it was not immediately that I could recover myself and ask what his business was.
”I came to seek you,” he said, ”for I had occasion to leave my own part of the country for the present.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”LOOKING AT HIM, I SAW THAT HE WAS HAGGARD AND STRANGE.”]
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