Mattie:-A Stray Volume I Part 15

"I am glad to hear that," Miss Wesden ventured to remark.

"He is in India still--I believe will remain there, marry and settle down there for good."

"Have you been watching my house to tell me this?"

"Partly, and partly for other reasons, for which I have a better excuse.

I have been a wanderer--in search of happiness many years, and for the first time in a life not unadventurous there crosses my----"

"Good evening, sir--I have been entrapped into a conversation--I must beg you to leave me."

Harriet set off at the double again--in double quick time went the prowler after her.

People abroad that night began to notice the agitated girl, and the tall man marching on at her side, who, in his eagerness to keep step, trod on people's feet, and sent one doctor's boy, basket and bottles, crunching against a lamp-post; one or two stopped and looked after them and then continued their way--it was a race between the prowler and his victim, the prowler making a dead heat of it.

Harriet gave in at last--her spirit was not a very strong one, and she stopped and burst into tears.

"Sir, will you leave me?--will you believe that I don't want to hear a single word of your reasons for thus persecuting me?"

"Miss Wesden, only allow me to explain, and I will go my way and never see you more. I will vanish away in the darkness, and let all the bright hopes I have fostered float away on the current which bears you away from me."

"Go, pray do go, if you are a gentleman. I must appeal to some one for protection, if you----"

"Miss Wesden, you must hear me--you shall hear me. I am not a child; I am----"

"A scoundrel, evidently," said a harsh voice in his ears, and the instant afterwards Sidney Hinchford, with two fiery eyes behind his spectacles, stood between him and the girl he was persecuting. Harriet, with a little cry of joy, clung to the arm of her deliverer; the prowler looked perplexed, then put the best face upon the matter that he could extemporize for the occasion.

"Who are you, sir?" was the truly English expletive.

"My name is Hinchford--my address is at your service, if you wish it.

Now, sir, your name--and _business_?"

"I decline to give it."

"You have insulted this lady, a friend of mine. Apologize," cried young Hinchford, in much such a tone as an irritable officer summons his company to shoulder arms.

"Sir, your tone is not calculated to induce me to oblige _you_. If Miss Wesden thinks that I----"

"APOLOGIZE!" shouted Hinchford, a second time. He had forgotten the respect due to his charge, and shaken her hand from his arm; he was making a little scene in the street, and convulsing Harriet with fright; he was face to face with the prowler, his tall, well-knit form, evidently a match for his antagonist; he was chivalrous, and scarcely twenty years of age; above all, he was in a towering pa.s.sion, and verged a little on the burlesque, as pa.s.sionate people generally do.

As if by the touch of a magic wand, a crowd sprang up around them; respectable pa.s.sers-by, the pickets of the Kent Street gang on duty in the Borough, unwashed men and women who had been seeking shelter under shop-blinds, the doctor's boy, who had been maltreated and had a claim to urge for damages, a fish-woman, two tradesmen with their ap.r.o.ns on fresh from business, and shoals of boys who might have dropped from heaven, so suddenly did they take up the best places, and a.s.sume an interest in the adventure.

The prowler turned pale, and flinched a little as Sidney approached, flinched more as the audience seized the thread of discussion and expressed its comments more vociferously.

"Punch his head if he don't 'pologize, sir--throw him into the mud, sir--I'd cure him of coming after _my_ gal--knock the bloke's hat off, and jump on it--lock him up!"

The prowler saw his danger; he had heard a great deal of the mercies of a London mob, and it was hemming him in now--and, like most men of the prowling cla.s.s, he was at heart a coward. He succ.u.mbed.

"I never intended to insult the lady--if I have uttered a word to offend her, I am very sorry. It is all a misconception. But if the lady considers that I have taken a liberty in offering--in offering," he repeated, rather disturbed in his harangue by a violent shove from behind on to the unhappy doctor's boy, upon whose feet he alighted, "a common courtesy, I apologise with all my heart. I----"

"That will do, sir," was the curt response; "you have had a narrow escape. Take it as a lesson."

Sidney was glad to back out of the absurd position into which he had thrust Harriet, to draw her hand through his arm and hasten away, offering a a hundred excuses to her for his imprudence and impulsiveness.

He had not moved twenty yards with her when the yell of the mob--and the mob in that end of London possesses the finest blood-curdling yell in the world--startled him and all within half a mile of him. It was a dull night, and the wild elements of street life were fond of novelty; a swell had been caught insulting a British female in distress, and the unwashed hates swells like poison. An apology was not sufficient for the lookers-on; prostration on bended knees and hands outstretched would not have done; sackcloth and ashes vowed for the remainder of the delinquent's existence, would have been treated with contumely--all that was wanted was an uproar. The boys wanted an uproar because it was natural to them; the representatives of Kent Street, because it was in the way of trade, and one or two respectable gents had become interested in the dispute, and wore watch-chains; the women, because "_he_ had not been sarved out as he desarved, the wretch!"

So the prowler, backing out of the crowd, met with a sledge-hammer hand upon his hat, and found his hat off, and mud in his face, and then fists, and finally an upheaving of the whole ma.s.s towards him, sending him into the roadway like a sh.e.l.l from an Armstrong gun. There was no help for it, the prowler must run, and run he did, pursued by the terrible mob and that more terrible yell which woke up every recess in the Borough; and in this fas.h.i.+on the pursuer and the pursued sped down the muddy road towards the Elephant and Castle.

An empty Hansom cab offered itself to the runaway; he leaped in whilst it was being slowly driven down the Borough, and dashed his fist through the trap.

"Drive fast--double fare--REFORM!"

The Hansom rattled off, the mob uttered one more despairing yell, and, after a slight abortive effort, gave up the chase, and left the prowler to his repentance.

And he did repent of mixing with life "over the water,"--for Great Suffolk Street never saw him again.

CHAPTER VI.

"IN THE FULNESS OF THE HEART," ETC.

"Oh! Harriet, I am very sorry," burst forth Sidney, when the noise had died away, and Harriet Wesden, pale and silent, walked on by his side with her trembling hand upon his arm.

Harriet did not reply--her dignity had been outraged, and his defence had not greatly a.s.sisted her composure, though it had answered the purpose for which it was intended.

Sidney gulped down a lump in his throat, and glanced at the pretty, agitated face.

"You are offended with me--well, I deserve it. I'm a beast."

This self-depreciatory verdict having consoled him, and elicited no response from Harriet, he continued, "I acted like a fool; I should have taken it coolly; why, he was more the gentleman of the two, scamp as he was. By George, I was near smas.h.i.+ng him, though! Harriet," with eagerness, "you will look over my outburst. You're not so very much offended, are you?"

"No, I'm not offended, only the mob frightened me, and you were very violent. I don't know what else you could have done."

"Knocked him down and walked on, or given him in charge; knocked him down quietly would have been the most satisfactory method. How did it begin?"

"He followed and spoke to me. He has been hanging about the house for weeks."

"The dev--I beg pardon--has he though?"

Sidney Hinchford walked on; he had become suddenly thoughtful. More strongly than ever it recurred to him what a mistake he had made in not knocking down the prowler in a quiet and graceful manner.

"Mattie has noticed it, and spoken to him about it, but he would not go away."

"Did he ever speak to you before to-night."

"Never."