A Woman Intervenes - Robert Barr (good book recommendations TXT) 📗

she said brightly, advancing towards his table and holding out her hand.

Wentworth caught his breath, and took her extended hand somewhat limply, then he pulled himself together; saying:

'This is an unexpected pleasure, Miss Brewster.'

Jennie blushed very prettily, and laughed a laugh that Wentworth thought was like a little ripple of music from a mellow flute.

'It may be unexpected,' she said, 'but you don't look a bit like a man suffering from an overdose of pure joy. You didn't expect to see me, did you?'

'I did not; but now that you are here, may I ask in what way I can serve you?'

'Well, in the first place, you may ask me to take a chair, and in the second place you may sit down yourself; for I've come to have a long talk with you.'

The prospect did not seem to be so alluring to Wentworth as one might have expected, when the announcement was made by a girl so pretty, and dressed in such exquisite taste; but the young man promptly offered her a chair, and then sat down, with the table between them. She placed her parasol and a few things she had been carrying on the table, arranging them with some care; then, having given him time to recover from his surprise, she flashed a look at him that sent a thrill to the finger-tips of the young man. Yet a danger understood is a danger half overcome; and Wentworth, unconsciously drawing a deep breath, nerved himself against any recurrence of a feeling he had been trying with but indifferent success to forget, saying grimly, but only half convincingly, to himself:

'You are not going to fool me a second time, my girl, lovely as you are.'

A glimmer of a smile hovered about the red lips of the girl, a smile hardly perceptible, but giving an effect to her clear complexion as if a sunbeam had crept into the room, and its reflection had lit up her face.

'I have come to apologize, Mr. Wentworth,' she said at last. 'I find it a very difficult thing to do, and, as I don't quite know how to begin, I plunge right into it.'

'You don't need to apologize to me for anything, Miss Brewster,' replied Wentworth, rather stiffly.

'Oh yes, I do. Don't make it harder than it is by being too frigidly polite about it, but say you accept the apology, and that you're sorry--no, I don't mean that--I should say that you're sure I'm sorry, and that you know I won't do it again.'

Wentworth laughed, and Miss Brewster joined him.

'There,' she said, 'that's ever so much better. I suppose you've been thinking hard things of me ever since we last met.'

'I've tried to,' replied Wentworth.

'Now, that's what I call honest; besides, I like the implied compliment. I think it's very neat indeed. I'm really very, very sorry that I--that things happened as they did. I wouldn't have blamed you if you had used exceedingly strong language about it at the time.'

'I must confess that I did.'

'Ah!' said Jennie, with a sigh, 'you men have so many comforts denied to us women. But I came here for another purpose; if I had merely wanted to apologize, I think I would have written. I want some information which you can give me, if you like.'

The young woman rested her elbows on the table, with her chin in her hands, gazing across at him earnestly and innocently. Poor George felt that it would be almost impossible to refuse anything to those large beseeching eyes.

'I want you to tell me about your mine.'

All the geniality that had gradually come into Wentworth's face and manner vanished instantly.

'So this is the old business over again,' he said.

'How can you say that!' cried Jennie reproachfully. 'I am asking for my own satisfaction entirely, and not for my paper. Besides, I tell you frankly what I want to know, and don't try to get it by indirect means--by false pretences, as you once said.'

'How can you expect me to give you information that does not belong to me alone? I have no right to speak of a business which concerns others without their permission.'

'Ah, then, there are at least two more concerned in the mine,' said Jennie gleefully. 'Kenyon is one, I know; who is the other?'

'Miss Brewster, I will tell you nothing.'

'But you have told me something already. Please go on and talk, Mr. Wentworth--about anything you like--and I shall soon find out all I want to know about the mine.'

She paused, but Wentworth remained silent, which, indeed, the bewildered young man realized was the only safe thing to do.

'They speak of the talkativeness of women,' Miss Brewster went on, as if soliloquizing, 'but it is nothing to that of the men. Once set a man talking, and you learn everything he knows--besides ever so much more that he doesn't.'

Miss Brewster had abandoned her very taking attitude, with its suggestion of confidential relations, and had removed her elbows from the table, sitting now back in her chair, gazing dreamily at the dingy window which let the light in from the dingy court. She seemed to have forgotten that Wentworth was there, and said, more to herself than to him:

'I wonder if Kenyon would tell me about the mine.'

'You might ask him.'

'No; it wouldn't do any good,' she continued, gently shaking her head. 'He's one of your silent men, and there are so few of them in this world. Perhaps I had better go to William Longworth himself; he's not suspicious of me.'

As she said this, she threw a quick glance at Wentworth, and the unfortunate young man's face at once told her that she had hit the mark. She bent her head over the table, and laughed with such evident enjoyment that Wentworth, in spite of his helpless anger, smiled grimly.

Jennie raised her head, but the sight of his perplexed countenance was too much for her, and it was some time before her merriment allowed her to speak. At last she said:

'Wouldn't you like to take me by the shoulders and put me out of the room, Mr. Wentworth?'

'I'd like to take you by the shoulders and shake you.'

'Ah! that would be taking a liberty, and could not be permitted. We must leave punishment to the law, you know, although I do think a man should be allowed to turn an objectionable visitor into the street.'

'Miss Brewster,' cried the young man earnestly, leaning over the table towards her, 'why don't you abandon your horrible inquisitorial profession, and put your undoubted talents to some other use?'

'What, for instance?'

'Oh, anything.'

Jennie rested her fair cheek against her open palm again, and looked at the dingy window. There was a long silence between them--Wentworth absorbed in watching her clear-cut profile and her white throat, his breath quickening as he feasted his eyes on her beauty.

'I have always got angry,' she said at last, in a low voice with the quiver of a suppressed sigh in it, 'when other people have said that to me--I wonder why it is I merely feel hurt and sad when you say it? It is so easy to say, "Oh, anything"--so easy, so easy. You are a man, with the strength and determination of a man, yet you have met with disappointments and obstacles that have required all your courage to overcome. Every man has, and with most men it is a fight until the head is gray, and the brain weary with the ceaseless struggle. The world is utterly merciless; it will trample you down relentlessly if it can, and if your vigilance relaxes for a moment, it will steal your crust and leave you to starve. Every time I think of this incessant sullen contest, with no quarter given or taken, I shudder, and pray that I may die before I am at the mercy of the pitiless world. When I came to London, I saw, for the first time in my life, that hopeless, melancholy promenade of the sandwich-men; human wreckage drifting along the edge of the street, as if cast there by the rushing tide sweeping past them. They--they seemed to me like a tottering procession of the dead; and on their backs was the announcement of a play that was making all London roar with laughter. The awful comedy and tragedy of it! Well, I simply couldn't stand it. I had to run up a side-street and cry like the little fool I was, right in broad daylight.'

Jennie paused and tried to laugh, but the effort ended in a sound suspiciously like a sob. She dashed her hand with quick impatience across her eyes, from which Wentworth had never taken his own, seeing them become dim, as if the light from the window proved too strong for them, and finally fill as she ceased to speak. Searching ineffectually about her dress for a handkerchief, which lay on the table beside her parasol unnoticed by either, Jennie went on with some difficulty:

'Well, these poor forlorn creatures were once men--men who have gone down--and if the world is so hard on a man with all his strength and resourcefulness, think--think what it is for a woman thrown into this inhuman turmoil--a woman without friends--without money--flung among these relentless wolves--to live if she can--or--to die--if she can.'

The girl's voice broke, and she buried her face in her arms, which rested on the table.

Wentworth sprang to his feet and came round to where she sat.

'Jennie,' he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. The girl, without looking up, shook off the hand that touched her.

'Go back to your place,' she cried, in a smothered voice. 'Leave me alone.'

'Jennie,' persisted Wentworth.

The young woman rose from her chair and faced him, stepping back a pace.

'Don't you hear what I say? Go back and sit down. I came here to talk business, not to make a fool of myself. It's all your fault, and I hate you for it--you and your silly questions.'

But the young man stood where he was, in spite of the dangerous sparkle that shone in his visitor's wet eyes. A frown gathered on his brow.

'Jennie,' he said slowly, 'are you playing with me again?'

The swift anger that blazed up in her face, reddening her cheeks, dried the tears.

'How _dare_ you say such a thing to me!' she cried hotly. 'Do you flatter yourself that, because I came here to talk business, I have also some personal interest in you? Surely even _your_ self-conceit doesn't run so far as that!'

Wentworth stood silent, and Miss Brewster picked up her parasol, scattering, in her haste, the other articles on the floor. If she expected Wentworth to put them on the table again, she was disappointed, for, although his eyes were upon her, his thoughts were far away upon the Atlantic Ocean.

'I shall not stay here to be insulted,' she cried resentfully, bringing Wentworth's thoughts back with a rush to London again. 'It is intolerable that you should use such an expression to me. Playing with you indeed!'

'I had no intention of insulting you, Miss Brewster.'

'What is it but an insult to use such a phrase? It implies that I either care for you, or----'

'And do you?'

'Do I what?'

'Do you care for me?'