The White Virgin

“Don’t – don’t go, father,” whispered Dinah again, as she clung to him tightly.

“Not go? Why, what has come to you, Dinah? This will not do, little one. I have only to hurry out and scare anybody who is there into fits. Guilty conscience, you know.”

She stared at him wildly.

“Why, my darling, I thought you were getting over this nervousness,” he said tenderly. “You used not to be like this. Well, I will not go; but I must do something to scare him, whoever it is.” She made no answer, but clung to him half fainting, and he helped her to a chair, noticing the while that she was gazing excitedly towards the open window.

The dog was silent now, but as the Major went and shouted a few angry words it responded with a sharp, clear bark or two, and its master returned.

“Scared away without my help,” said the Major, coming back again, and speaking lightly. “Come, come, this will not do! I shall have to tell Reed what a little coward you have grown. Why, you look as if you had seen a ghost. It’s all right now. Whoever it was has gone, or the dog would not have calmed down. Nothing stolen this time, I’ll venture to swear. There,” he cried, as he shut the window and closed the shutters before turning to where Dinah sat fighting hard to be calm, and noticing that she uttered a sigh as if of relief, “if you turn like this, my dear, I shall begin to think that we are living in a lonely spot too secluded for you, and look out for a place in town.”

“No, no, I’m better now,” she said, turning to her father with a smile.

“Of course you are, my dear. There’s a sturdy protector, too, for us now, eh? There, there,” he cried, bending down to kiss her. “Go to bed; you’re a bit overdone, my darling; this has been an exciting evening – enough to upset any one’s nerves. I’m off my balance too. First, I have had to deal with one marauder who comes to steal my little ewe lamb, and I get rid of him to be permitted to keep her a little longer; and then comes another would-be thief. Dinah! my darling child!” he cried, as she rose to fling herself into his arms and cling to him more agitated and overcome than ever. “There, there, I must play doctor. Dose for soothing the nerves; eight hours’ sound sleep. The medicine to be taken instantly. Off with you. Good-night.”

Dinah passionately returned his embrace, and hurried to her room, but not to sleep. The nervous excitement kept her wakeful hour after hour, with the intense longing to shelter herself in her lover’s arms; and all the time a fierce lurid pair of eyes seemed to be watching her, and, as plainly as if the words had been spoken by her ear, she heard a rough, deep voice whispering, “It’s no use, little one. No one is coming betwixt us two.”

As she lay in her bed, too, she fancied she could hear the man’s firm step patrolling the paths about the place.

But Michael Sturgess was a couple of miles away, though he had been down to the cottage, and so close that he could look in and see that his chief was not there still. For there were bounds to the man’s patient doggedness, and he had grown wearied out at last, when Clive Reed had taken a short cut over the mountain, home, and did not return by the spoil bank and the shelf-like path.

Still Dinah Gurdon could not know this as she lay there, torn by the mental fever which made her temples throb.

Loved – loved by one who idolised her, and who had made her heart awaken and unfold to the true meaning of the great passion of human life. He loved her as she loved him, and she had let him press her in his arms; she had thrilled beneath his kisses, and all as in a dream of joy and delight. Safe, too, with him near to cherish and protect. Then he had left her, and the old cloud of horror and dread had come back, and with it the still small voice of conscience out of the darkness of her heart. Ought she not to have spoken? Ought she not to have whispered to her father, or failing him, to have confided in their old servant – the only woman near – the terror of that day, and how she had been haunted since?

Always the same reply as her woman’s heart rebelled and shrank from the confession. How could she? She dared not. She would sooner have died than made the avowal, while there before her, looming up, the precursors of a storm, were the black clouds of the future, and Michael Sturgess’s words vibrating always in her ears.

Chapter Twenty Two.

Bad Omens

“No insolence, sir!”

“What?”

“I say no insolence, sir. I am aware of the fact that you are an excellent workman and valuable to me here, but you are presuming on those facts, and I warn you that if ever you dare to answer me in that way again, we part on the instant.”

“What way?”

“As you addressed me a short time back. Michael Sturgess, I have long noticed your insolent, overbearing ways with the men. They are beginning to resent it. I have had several complaints from them, and all this must end, if you are to stay here.”

“If I’m to stay here, eh? I daresay if the company is tired of the way in which I have made this old mine pay, I can soon get another engagement.”

“My good man,” said Clive Reed coldly and dispassionately, “prosperity is making you lose your head, and it is an act of kindness to disillusionise you before you go too far and lose a valuable appointment.”

The man glared at him as they stood together in one of the dark passages of the mine, close to an old shaft which descended to a lower line of workings.

“Let me tell you, once for all, that, though you have worked well, you are in no wise answerable for the success of the mine, and that it would have been quite as prosperous if Michael Sturgess had not been here.”

“Oh, indeed!” said the man insolently; and Reed flushed angrily, but controlled his rising temper, and went on calmly enough.

“Secondly, let me disabuse your mind of the idea that it is open to you to appeal to the company against any decision of mine. Understand this, sir: my power here is supreme, and, though I should be reluctant to exercise that power against a good workman, the trouble of obtaining a successor in your post would not be great, and I should exercise that power sharply and firmly, if I had just cause.”

“Oh, I don’t know so much about that, Mr Reed. You are chief here at the mines.”

“And at the board in town, my man. You are insolent and angry still. Go about your work, and when you are calm and have had an opportunity for thinking all this over, come to me and apologise as a straightforward man should.”

“Oh, there’s no time like the present,” said the man roughly.

“Yes, there is, and I decline to quarrel with you, sir. That will do now. I leave you to think over what has passed, as I don’t wish to be angry and do anything to injure an honest man’s prospects.”

“But – ”

“I said that will do,” said Reed firmly; and turning his back, he began to walk away without seeing the ominous shadow cast by the lanthorn he carried, as Michael Sturgess took a step forward with his hands cramped like a bird’s claws.

It would have been so easy, too; a sharp side-wise thrust and nothing could have saved the man who was touched. There was a slight rail by the side of that old shaft, but a man who slipped must have been precipitated headlong down the stony pit seventy or eighty feet, to the rocky floor below, and mutilation was certain – death more than a probable event.

But the man did not stir, and the shadow grew more and more faint, as Clive Reed strode along the gallery till he passed round a corner and disappeared.

Michael Sturgess stood listening to his chief’s steps till they died out, and then taking out a box of matches, he struck one and lit a lanthorn which he took from a niche in the wall, the glow lighting up his savage features.

He muttered an oath as he stood closing the lanthorn door. Then he burst out into a strange laugh. “Make much of it, my lad, while it lasts. It’s hard to bear, but I don’t want to be hung for the sake of a lass, specially when there’s another way.”

He went off in the other direction, and Clive Reed made his way to the cage and ascended to daylight and his books in the office, where he busied himself till evening, fully expecting a visit from his foreman; but the day passed, and at last he left the place, and made his way to the cottage over the mountain side where Dinah stood waiting, flushed and hopeful; and as his eyes met hers, the mine with its petty troubles and anxieties passed away, and he was in the land of love and hope and joy.

There was the usual walk among the flowers; and how bright those blossoms were! then the pleasant evening meal, and the adjournment to the tiny drawing-room, where, after a little music, to Clive’s disgust, the Major turned the conversation to the very subject the visitor wished to avoid. He asked him questions about the output, and the likeliness of increased yield, all of which questions Reed good-humouredly answered, feeling vexed, but at the same time amused by the love of money the Major had of late developed; while Dinah sat and listened, meeting her betrothed’s eyes from time to time.

“Capital – capital!” said the Major, rubbing his hands. “I feel as if I am quite a mine proprietor. Dinah, my dear, this does me good, and makes me feel as if I had been a slug all these years. I wish I had begun sooner.”

“Congratulate yourself, my dear sir, that you did not. You are gaining here, but this mine is one in ten thousand. You might have ruined yourself.”

“True; so I might, my boy, without your clear head to put me right. But the shares, how do they stand?”

“They are up ten since last week, sir, and steadily rising.”

“Then I ought to sell now and realise a big profit, oughtn’t I?”

Clive was silent, for he was hearing the Major’s words, and listening still to the echoes of Dinah’s sweet voice, and repeating to himself the lines of the songs she sang, as she now sat in the shadow, silent and waiting till her lover spoke again.

And how jarring the Major’s words were. Clive had come over that evening weary with the noise and worry of the mine, and annoyed by Sturgess’s insolent manner. All he wanted was peace and rest, not the talk about money and shares.

The Major spoke again.

“Eh! oughtn’t I to realise?”

“What, sell for the sake of a little present profit that which will go on, in all probability, yielding you an increasing income, sir. Surely that would be short-sighted.”

“Of course. But all this is so new to me, my dear boy. There! I shall leave myself in your hands; and trust to you to know what is best. You see what a child I am over money matters. Really there are times when I almost wish that I had not begun to dabble in these shares.”