The Camera Fiend Part 15

"I'm so sorry for starting you," he apologised. "I just came in to say goodbye."

And he held out a hand which she never seemed to see.

"To say goodbye!" she gasped.

"Yes, I've got to go. I'm afraid the doctor's out?"

"Yes, he is. Won't you wait?"

"I'm afraid I can't."

She was shrinking from him, shrinking round towards the door. He stood aside, to let her bolt if that was her desire. And then she in turn took her stand, back to the door.

"He'll be very sorry to miss you," she said more firmly, and with a smile.

"And I'm very sorry to miss him," said Pocket, unconscientiously enough for anybody. "He's been most awfully good to me, and I wish you'd tell him how grateful I am."

"I'm afraid he won't believe me," the girl said dryly, "if he finds you gone."

"I must go-really I must. I shall get into an awful row as it is. Do you mind giving him one other message?"

"As many as you like."

"Well, you might tell him from me that I'll give myself away, but I'll never give him! He'll know what I mean."

"Is that all?"

She was keeping him very cleverly, putting in her word always at the last moment, and again refusing to see his hand; but again it was the boy who helped to waste his own golden opportunity, this time through an indefensible bit of boyish braggadocio.

"No; you may tell the doctor that if he wanted to detain me he went the worst way about it by locking me into my room!"

She looked mystified at first, and then astounded.

"How did you get out?"

"How do you suppose?"

"I never heard anything!"

"I took care you shouldn't."

And he described the successful adventure with pardonable unction in the end. After that he insisted on saying goodbye. And the young girl stood up to him like a little heroine.

"I'm very sorry, but I can't let you go, Mr. Upton."

"Can't let me?"

"I really am sorry-but you must wait to see my uncle."

He stood aghast before the determined girl. She was obviously older than himself, yet she was only a slip of a girl, and if he forced his way past-but he was not the fellow to do it-and that maddened him, because he felt she knew it.

"Oh, very well!" he cried, sarcastically. "If you won't let me out that way, I'll go this!"

And he turned towards the tiny conservatory, which led down into the garden; but she was on him, and there was no hesitation about her; she held him firmly by the hand.

"If you do I'll blow a police-whistle!" she said. "We have one-it won't take an instant. You shan't come out the front way, and you'll be stopped if you climb the wall!"

"But why? Do you take me for a lunatic, or what?" he gasped out bitterly.

"Never mind what I take you for!"

"You're treating me as though I were one!"

"You've got to stay and see my uncle."

"I shan't! Let me go, I tell you! You shall you shall! I hate your uncle, and you too!" But that was only half true, even then while he was struggling almost as pa.s.sionately as though the girl had been another boy.

He could not strike her; but that was the only line he drew, for she would grapple with him, and release himself he must. Over went walnut whatnots, and out came mutterings that made him hotter than ever for very shame.

But he did not hate her even for what she made him say; all his hatred and all his fear were of the dreadful doctor whose will she was obeying; and both were at their highest pitch when the door burst open, and in he sprang to part them with a look. But it was a look that hurt more than word or blow; never had poor Pocket endured or imagined such a steady, silent downpour of indignation and contempt. It turned his hatred almost in a moment to hatred of himself; his fear it only increased.

"Leave us, Phillida," said Baumgartner at last. Phillida was in tears, and Pocket had been hanging his head; but now he sprang towards her.

"Forgive me!" he choked, and held the door open for her, and shut it after her with all the gallantry the poor lad had left.

ON PAROLE

"So," said Dr. Baumgartner, "you not only try to play me false, but you seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!"

Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his honour as best he could, which was chiefly by claiming the right to change his mind about what was after all his own affair. But that was precisely what Baumgartner would not allow for a moment; it was just as much his affair as accessory after the fact, and in accordance with their mutual and final agreement overnight. Pocket could only rejoin that he had never meant to give the doctor away at all.

"I daresay not!" said Baumgartner sardonically. "It would have been dragged out of you all the same. I told you so yesterday, and you agreed with me. I put it most plainly to you as a case of then or never so far as owning up was concerned. You made your own bed with your eyes open, and I left you last night under the impression that you were going to lie on it like a man."

"Then why did you lock me in?" cried Pocket, pouncing on the one point on which he did not already feel grievously in the wrong. The doctor flattered him with a slight delay before replying.

"There were so many reasons," he said, with a sigh; "you mustn't forget that you walk in your sleep, for one of them. We might have had you falling downstairs in the middle of the night; but I own that I was more prepared for the kind of relapse which appears to have overtaken you. I was afraid you had more on your soul than you could keep to yourself without my a.s.sistance, and that you would get brooding over what has happened until it drove you to make a clean breast of the whole thing. I tell you it's no good brooding or looking back; take one more look ahead, and what do you see if you have your way? Humiliating notoriety for yourself, calamitous consequences in your own family, certain punishment for me!"

"The consequences at home," groaned Pocket, "will be bad enough whatever we do. I can't bear to think of them! If only they had taken Bompas's advice, and sent me round the world in the _Seringapatam_! I should have been at sea by this time, and out of harm's way for the next three months."

"The _Seringapatam?_" repeated the doctor. "I never heard of her."

"You wouldn't; she's only a sailing vessel, but she carries pa.s.sengers and a doctor, a friend of Dr. Bompas's, who wanted to send me with him for a voyage round the world. But my people wouldn't let me go. She sails this very day, and touches nowhere till she gets to Melbourne. If I could only raise the pa.s.sage-money, or even stow away on board, I could go out in her still, and that would be the last of me for years and years!"

It was not the last of him in his own mind; suddenly as the thought had come, and mad as it was, it flashed into the far future in the boy's brain; and he saw himself making his fortune in a far land, turning it up in a single nugget, and coming home to tell of his adventures, bearded like the pard, another "dead man come to life," after about as many years as the dream took seconds to fas.h.i.+on. And Baumgartner looked on as though following the same wild train of thought, as though it did not seem so wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was quite disappointed when he shook his head.

"A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young fellow!