CHAPTER XV.
MY FRIEND THE DUMPLING.
Romantic, Miss Clara may or may not have been; superstitious she certainly was not. For some reason of her own she had formed a not unflattering opinion of my intelligence—an opinion which, I fear, my reference to these dream-tableaux did not a little to shake. And when Miss Clara thought poorly of a person or of a thing, she said so with a directness which was somewhat disconcerting. Her comment on the words with which I closed my last chapter was:
"Mr. Rissler, don't be a fool!"
"I try not," I said lamely. "What's the particular folly of mine you have in mind at the present moment?"
"Why, this dream-tableau business, of course," she answered. "You're no fool—quite the contrary—in most respects; but I've no patience with this nonsense about dream men kneeling on your chest in a dream garden. If you've got anything on your chest, you should look after yourdigestion—not talk about your dreams. And that reminds me. I generally take a glass of hot milk and a biscuit before going to bed. If you are going to sit up out of doors all night in the garden, as you propose, you'll want something more substantial. Oblige me by ringing that bell. I suppose you smoke," she said, when I had made a substantial supper. "If so, you may. My brother's a great smoker, so you need have no scruples.
"What I like about you," she continued, when I had lit up in accordance with her permission, "is that you're a young man who can make up his mind. To tell me, within the first half-hour you'd ever seen me, that you wanted to marry my niece when you'd only seen her once before, was about as brazen a piece of impudence as I've ever heard of. But I'd rather a man should be that sort than one of your 'Oh, I'm sure I don't mind which' and 'I haven't any choice in the matter' kind of person."
"I count myself fortunate in the possession of your good opinion, Miss Carleton," I said with a bow.
"None of your blarney!" she answered gruffly. "Not that I mind a person beingpleasant-spoken and pleasant-mannered," she added, "although Heaven knows I'm rough enough in ways and in speech myself. There's something waiting on the tip of your tongue to say. What is it?"
"There is, but your penetration alarms me," I said. "It was merely to wonder whether I might venture to inquire where your niece has been all this while, and during all these disturbing events?"
"You may. She's in her own room. I told her to stay there till I called her down. I sent up word to her not to be alarmed, before I rang the burglar bell. That's why it didn't go off before you got to the conservatory door. If I'd rung when you left the room as I should have done except for alarming Clara, you would not have got further than the corridor door."
"That was very dear and considerate and thoughtful of you," I replied. "I'm going to be very fond of you, if you'll let me, before I've done, Miss Carleton."
"Done what?" she asked grimly, but not ill-pleased.
"This cigar," I replied promptly. "I suppose you thought I was going to say before I'm your nephew-in-law; but, hastenthat happy day as I would—and it cannot come too soon for me—it would seem an interminable long time to wait, if I had to put off being fond of you till then. I suppose I shan't be seeing Miss Kate again to-night."
"You'll not!" she answered bluntly. "And if you call her Kate instead of Clara, you'll not be seeing her at all, if I have anything to do with it, for call people out of their right names, no one shall, while I can help it."
The logic of a lady who, in spite of the fact that she persistently called her own niece out of the name which had been given the girl at her christening, the name by which everyone else, from her own father downwards, habitually called her, yet could thus lay down the law, was too fearful a thing for a mere male to contemplate, so I smiled weakly, and said, "I beg your pardon! 'Miss Clara,' I meant, of course. How silly of me!"
Incidentally I made a note in my memory to the effect that the best way out of the dilemma would be, when speaking of my Lady of the Lake, to refer to her as "your niece," or as "Miss Carleton."
"No," said Miss Clara, philosophically, and with the air of one who, not expecting too much from fallen human nature, is always ready to be tolerant, and to make allowance; "no, I don't say, and I don't see, that it is silly of you. That is too severe a word, and the mistake is not unnatural on your part, when you remember that her own father made it twenty years ago, and has gone on doing it ever since."
As she spoke the clock struck eleven.
"Is it so late?" I said. "I had no idea. Now, with your permission, Miss Carleton, I'll be off to the garden. I shall never forget your goodness to me to-night—taking me on trust, as you have, when everything was against me, and making me feel, now that I am about to say good-night, as if I were saying it, not to one who an hour or so ago was a complete stranger to me, but to a dear and kind and generous friend. How shall I ever thank you?"
"Don't try," she said laconically, rising. "Good-night."
I sprang to open the door for her, stooping low to raise to my lips the surprisingly small and white and well-formed hand which she extended to me.
"And now," I said to myself, when she had gone, "now for my vigil in the garden. In my dream picture only a night ago, I saw myself lying on my back, the man I am seeking kneeling over me, knife in hand. The place where this happened I could not see. But to-night, in another dream picture, I saw the same man crouched low to steal by dead of night through a garden. I wonder whether that garden and the place of my first dream are one and the same? I wonder whether it was good fortune or an evil fate which guided my feet to the opium den yesterday, and brought me and that same man to this house to-night? I wonder whether he or I have met and striven in this or in some pre-existent world? I wonder why it is that only when looking in his eyes do I see these pictures which come and go so strangely in my brain? But most of all, I wonder whether I might venture to ring the bell, and ask the gentle Metcalfe to bring me a drink. All this 'wondering' and this 'whethering' makes me feel not only uncommonly dry, but also more like the hero who never was on sea or land except in the pages of a shilling shocker, or in a melodramatic play, thanlike an ordinary, everyday young man who fancies that a pipeful of tobacco taken in conjunction with liquid refreshment in the shape of a stiff 'whisky,' would suit his complaint down to the ground. Anyhow, I'll try. Then for the garden, for my dream picture, and possibly for our friend and enemy, the Dumpling!"