Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him aloneThen with one imploring backward look she went away and left him alone
Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him aloneThen with one imploring backward look she went away and left him alone
Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him alone
Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him alone
A fierce denial rose to the girl’s lips, but she choked it down and suffered his words in silence. Then meekly, and with one imploring backward look at his tall figure as he stood, his head well up in spite of his defeat, looking into the fire, she went away and left him alone.
Soit was all over. This was the end of all his hopes and dreams and wishes! This was the end! None of his bright hopes would ever be—none of his golden dreams would come to pass. His wishes had no weight with the woman he loved. He had looked forward—like a fool, he thought, bitterly—and had pictured her in a dozen different ways: at the head of his table, in the hunting-field, in the middle age, and in the decline of life, as Mignon’s mother, as his wife. But it was all over now. When Madame’s visit was over, she would go from under his roof, never to come back to it any more, forever.
He was still standing there when the door opened with some difficulty, and Miss Mignon appeared on the threshold.
“Bootles?” she said, inquiringly.
Bootles turned round to her. “Well?” he answered.
Miss Mignon heard the misery in his voice and ran to him. “Bootles got a headache?” she asked.
He dropped into a chair and took her in his armsHe dropped into a chair and took her in his arms
He dropped into a chair and took her in his armsHe dropped into a chair and took her in his arms
He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms
He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms
He dropped into a chair and took her in his arms. “Such a headache, Mignon.”
Miss Mignon knew what Bootles’s headaches were, and drew his head down upon her small shoulder with an air of protecting and comforting dignity, equally pretty and absurd in one so young.
“MignonlovesBootles,” she whispered.
“Will Mignon always love Bootles?” he asked.
“Always,” was the confident reply. “Mignon willalwayslove Bootles.”
And so in and because of his trouble the little child crept closer and closer into his heart, and drove out the greatest bitterness of his disappointment, and the clasp of her soft arms about his neck seemed to take away the sharpest sting of defeat. The touch of her baby lips upon his aching forehead—and itdidache—brought him a larger measure of comfort than any living thing had power to do at that moment.
If only he had known that Mignon washerchild!
But Bootles was not the man to sulk with fate; if Miss Grace would not have him, no more was to be said, and no one but Mrs. Smith saw anything unusual between them. But trust Mrs.Smith. She walked into Miss Grace’s room and taxed her with it—taxed her in so friendly a way that the girl began to cry miserably. Mrs. Smith fumed.
“It is absurd,” she cried, “to refuse such a man—such a position—such—such— Oh! it’s absurd. I have no patience with you. You will never have such a chance again—never.”
“Oh, never,” she sobbed.
“Why, then, throw it away? Let me go and tell—”
“No; tell him nothing. I have already told him it is impossible. Oh, Mrs. Smith!” she cried, passionately, “do you think any woman in her senses would refuse him if she could help it? Not I, I assure you.”
“It is inexplicable,” said Mrs. Smith, but she protested no further.
So the next day they left Ferrers Court, Bootles driving them to the station. But it was all very different now—very different, too, from the last time he had driven them anywhere. There was no laughter, no joking, no promise to come again. He was not outwardly angry, not harsh nor hard in any way, but he was very polite; and politeness from him was heart-breaking.
It was soon over when they reached the station—a few minutes of that kind of conversation which people make when they are waiting for a carriage or a train, as they said the passengers of theLondonmade while walking up and down quietly waiting for the end. There was a handshaking all round, the lifting of Bootles’s and Lacy’s hats, a fuss over Miss Mignon, and that was all. Miss Grace, on looking out of the carriage window with tear-dimmed eyes, saw that they were together, the child’s hand in his. Miss Mignon’s last words were yet ringing in her ears: “Bootles has gotted such a headache.”
“Then Mignon must be very kind to him,” Miss Grace whispered.
Ay, Miss Mignon had need to be kind, for Bootles had “gotted” such a heartache too!
Acrowdof roughs, a lesser crowd of third-rate spectators, and a lesser gathering of fashionable ones were assembled on the Blankhampton racecourse, for it was the day of the Scarlet Lancer Steeple-chases.
On the Grand Stand were to be seen most of the rank and fashion of the neighborhood, and a goodly show of that class of people who are always to be found about towns which are also military stations—the class of people who have daughters to marry, and not much money to marry them with.
There were all the Scarlet Lancer ladies in full force, from the colonel’s wife in blue velvet and sables, to the quartermaster’s lady in a hard felt hat, with long diamond and pearl ear-rings. There were officers in cords and boots, their silken finery hidden by Newmarket coats. And there was the bride, Mrs. Allardyce, in pink and gray, the major’s racing colors—oh lor! as the fellows said whenthey saw her. And there was Miss Mignon, a little three-year-old belle, got up in Bootles’s colors—scarlet, purple, and gold—adapted in her small case to a warm frock of purple velvet, braided with scarlet and gold, and on her golden curls a jockey-cap to match it. Utterly absurd, most people said, but Bootles didn’t seem to see it. Nor, for the matter of that, did Miss Mignon herself. Held by Bootles, or, when Bootles was riding, by Lacy, she sat on the broad ledge of the balcony and surveyed the world, like a queen in miniature.
It was a fine place for seeing; yes, and a fine place for hearing too, as Lacy testified afterwards in his own peculiar style of delivery.
“Er—I and Miss Mignon were waiting for Bootles to come down the lawn, when—er—a laday next to us—er—a little unpwrepossessing person—I found out afterwards that her name is Berwry—with a nose like a teapot-spout, and a mouth of the bull-dog ordah—little daughter, by-the-bye, pretty much of the same type, but just a shade less hideous—suddenly electwrified us by pulling out a huge pair of gold eye-glasses, and holding the wrace-card at arm’s-length.
“‘Ow!’ said she, in a mincing voice, when Milescame down the lane looking like a sack of flour in a purple satin jacket—‘Ow,Cap-tain Ferwrahs! Ow, Dorothy, my deah,Cap-tain Ferwrahs!Vewryhandsome—and howbeau-tifully he wrides! Ow, I’m shaw he’ll win, and what alovelyhorse!Cap-tain Ferwrahs! He’s vewry handsome.’
“Well—er—I gave Miss Mignon a gwreat squeeze to hold her tongue—and she did. This Mrs.—er—Berwry went on expatiating on Miles’s great beauty of person, and on the absolute certainty of his winning. ‘And his pet name is Bootles,’ she informed us. Hispetname! Well, pwresently Bootles came sailing down the lawn in all his glowry, and Miss Mignon quite forgot the old girl, and shouted out to him. ‘Bootles,’ she called—‘Bootles.’
“Bootles glanced up, and waved his hand, and—er—the old party called Berwry turned wound and eyed her sharply, saw the scarlet, purple, and gold of her dwress, looked at her card, and said, witheringly, ‘Ow, I don’t knowhim,’ as if there were a dozen Captain Ferwers knocking about, and this was one of the eleven she didn’t know.
“Well, when the wrace was over—er—who should come up but Miles.
“‘Ah, Miles,’ said I, ‘I—er—heard a ladayexpatiating just now on your extrwreme beauty and gwrace and elegance of person—was shaw you’d win. What a pity you didn’t!’
“‘Bless my soul!’ said Miles; ‘was she pretty?”
“‘Oh, don’t be flattered; she took you for Bootles,’ said I, ignoring the question.
“‘Bootles’s money again!’ cwried Miles, with a gwreat wroar of laughter.
“Well, in two twos up comes Bootles. ‘See me win, Mignon?’” said he.
“So I—er—told him the stowry too, and Bootles laughed that absurd ‘Ha! ha!’ of his. ‘Come along and have some lunch, Mignon, my sweetheart,’ said he, ‘and let’s be out of this.’”
But it was after this incident that the most important event of that bright May day occurred—one of those fearful struggles to win, when half a dozen horses show well for the post, and all the field finds tongue and shouts its hardest.
“Ferrers wins! Blue and fawn—yellow and black! Miles wins—Miles wins! No, no; Ferrers in front—fawn and blue! Hartog—Hartog—Hartog wins! Miles in front! Ah, he’s down! Ferrers—Miles—blue and fawn—Gilchrist gains—Miles—Gilchrist—Ferrers wins—Ferrers wins! All up with the others! FerrersWINS!”
And then the company, good, bad, and indifferent, had time to remember that a man was down—no, not one man, but two. To find out that Hartog was bruised and stunned, but able with help to get to the dressing-room and recover himself, to learn that the swarming crowd around the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessed with shouts and applause, that they were watching with awe and in silence a race between life and death—for Gilchrist, the “odd” man of the regiment, the man who had been nobody’s friend, nobody’s chum, was lying in the midst of them with his back broken, waiting for a hurdle.
They were all as sorry as men could be who had never been moved by feelings of friendship. The proceedings were stopped at once, and they went gravely back to barracks, those who had ridden, to get into morning-clothes, and all of them to hang about waiting for news.
But there was no hope, absolutely no hope whatever. With all his faults, failings, and peculiarities, Gavor Gilchrist was passing away from their midst by exchange, as Hartog had once wished—the exchange, not of one regiment for another, but of this world for the next.
The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessedThe swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessed
The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessedThe swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessed
The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessed
The swarming crowd round the other was watching a more exciting race than that which they had just witnessed
It was about six o’clock that the senior of the two surgeons in attendance on Gilchrist entered the anteroom, and, looking around, beckoned for Bootles.
“What news?” asked several voices.
“He won’t last the night. Bootles, he wants you.”
“I’ll come,” said Bootles, rising.
“Sure to want Bootles,” observed Preston.
“Oh yes; I should myself,” returned another.
“Won’t last the night,” remarked a third. “Well, I never did like Gilchrist—never; but, all the same, I’m deuced sorry for him now, poor chap. For oh, by Jove! it’s a fearful thing when you come to that.”
And then they fell into silence again, waiting for Bootles to come back. Half an hour passed—three-quarters; then Bootles did not come. An hour; then Bootles appeared—came with a white face and a scared look in his blue eyes, followed by the doctor who had fetched him. Every man in the room was roused from a lounging attitude to one of expectation and surprise.
“Bootles,” said Lacy, moving towards him.
But Bootles did not even look at him. He turned to the doctor and uttered words the like of whichnone of his hearers had ever heard from him before.
“I kept my temper, doctor—you think I did? I know the man’s dying. Yes, I know, and I shouldn’t like to think I lost my temper with a poor chap who was dying, but—but—No; I won’t say a word. I’ll go away and keep to myself until I’ve got over it a little. If I stop here I shall say something I shall be sorry for all the rest of my life.”
“What is it, Bootles?” broke in Lacy, in his soft voice.
But Bootles did not reply for a moment. He stood still, trying hard to control himself; but Lacy, who had laid his hand upon his sleeve, felt that he was shaking from head to foot, and his very lips were trembling.
“Tell us,” said Lacy, persuasively. “What is it?”
“He is Mignon’s father!” Bootles answered. And then he broke from Lacy’s grasp and fled.
“Impossible!” Lacy cried.
“Not at all; it is true,” the doctor answered. “He is making his will now, leaving Bootles sole guardian and trustee to the child.”
“The brute,” burst out Preston, indignantly, remembering Gilchrist’s words—not so long ago.
A race between life and deathA race between life and death
A race between life and deathA race between life and death
A race between life and death
A race between life and death
“Hush, hush! The man is dying, and death alters everything,” the doctor cried.
“And Bootles kept his temper? Said nothing?”
“Not one word—of reproach.”
“Has he seen her?”
“No. He would not, though Bootles asked him.”
“His own child—and she Miss Mignon!”
“All the better. She cannot endure him.”
“By Jove! But what a blow for Bootles!”
“How will he take it? Will it make any difference?”
“As wregards Miss Mignon? What wrot you talk. As if Bootles—” But there Lacy broke off in disgust, and the babel of surmises, questions, and answers went on.
And that night Gavor Gilchrist died.
Oh, but it was a blow for Bootles! To find he had been duped, tricked, made a fool of all this time; to remember the anxiety, the trouble, the expense to which he had been put; nay, to recall the chaff he had endured, and then to discover that Miss Mignon was Gilchrist’s child—the child of the man he went perhaps nearer to hating than any one he had ever known in all his life! Everything came back to him then—the dead man’s jibes and sneers and taunts, his unwearied efforts to tax him with an offence which he knew he had not committed. And though he had failed in that, oh, what a fool Gilchrist had made of him! That was the sting Bootles felt most of anything.
For hours after he left the anteroom Bootles kept out of every one’s way—indeed until Lacy came to tell him that Gilchrist was dead. Then, it being close upon the hour of eleven, he went and knocked at the door of Mignon’s nursery. The nurse opened it a few inches, and seeing who it was, set it open wide.
“Is Miss Mignon asleep?” he asked.
“Yes, sir; hours ago,” the woman answered.
He passed into the inner room, where the child was lying. A candle burned on a table beside the cot, casting its light on the fair baby face, now flushed in sleep, and on the tangled golden curls. Both her arms lay outside the eider coverlet, one hand grasping the whip with which he had ridden and won that day, the other holding the card of the races. Bootles bent and scanned her face closely, but not one trace could he discern of likeness to the father—not one—and he drew a deep breath of relief that it was so.
Well he remembered Lacy’s puzzled scrutiny of the year-old baby. “There’s a likeness, but I don’t know where to plant it.” If there had been a likeness to Gilchrist then, it had now passed away; and as Bootles satisfied himself that it was so, his love for her, which during the last few hours had hung trembling in the balance, though he would hardly have acknowledged it, even to himself, re-asserted itself, and rose up in his heart stronger than ever. Just then she moved uneasily in her sleep.
“Lal, whereisBootles?” she asked. Then, after a pause, “Gottedanotherheadache?” Andan instant later, “Miss Grace said Mignon was to be very kind to Bootles.”
Bootles bent down and kissed her, and she awoke.
“Bootles,” she said, in sleepy surprise; then, imperatively, “Take me up.”
So Bootles carried her to the fire in the adjoining room, where the nurse was sewing a fresh frill of lace on the pretty velvet frock, with its braidings of scarlet and gold, which she had worn that day.
“Lal said Mignon wasn’t to go to Bootles,” she said, reproachfully.
“Bootles has been bothered, Mignon,” he answered.
“Poor Bootles!” stroking his cheek with her soft hand. “Bootles was vexed; Lal said so. But not with Mignon. Mignon told Lal so,” confidently.
“Never with Mignon,” answered Bootles, resting his cheek against the tossed golden curls, and feeling as if he had done this faithful baby heart a moral injustice by his hours of anger and doubt.
There was a moment of silence, broken by the nurse. “Have you heard, sir, how Mr. Gilchrist is?” she asked.
Bootles roused himself. “He is dead, nurse. Died half an hour ago.”
“Then, if you please, sir,” she asked, hesitatingly, “might I ask if it is true about Miss Mignon?”
“Yes, it is true,” his face darkening.
“Because, sir, Miss Mignon should have mourning,” she began, when Bootles cut her short.
“I shall not allow her to wear mourning for Mr. Gilchrist,” he said, curtly; so the nurse dared say no more.
Three days later the funeral took place; and if the facts of the dead man’s having acknowledged Miss Mignon as his child, and having admitted to Bootles that he had transferred her that night from his own quarters to Bootles’s rooms, created a sensation, it was as nothing to the intense surprise caused by the will, which was read, by the dead man’s desire, before all the officers of the regiment.
In it he left his entire property to his daughter, Mary Gilchrist, now in the care of Captain Ferrers, and commonly known as Mignon, on condition that Captain Ferrers consented to be her sole guardian and trustee until she had attained the age of twenty-one, or until her marriage, providedit should be with her guardian’s sanction, and on the express understanding that Captain Ferrers should not give up the care of the child to her mother, even temporarily. To his wife, Helen Gilchrist, a copy of this testament was to be sent forthwith. Should any of the conditions be violated, the whole property of which he died possessed should go to his cousin, Lucian Gavor Gilchrist; but if the conditions be faithfully observed Captain Ferrers should have the power of applying any, or all, of the income arising from the estate for the use and maintenance of the said Mary Gilchrist.
“Cwrazy!” murmured Lacy to Bootles, who listened in contemptuous silence, and wondered in no small dismay what kind of a life he should have if Mignon’s mother chose to make herself objectionable.
But the will was not crazy at all; far from it. It was only a very cleverly thought-out plan for keeping mother and child apart. Bootles would take care not to endanger Mignon’s inheritance, and Gilchrist had taken advantage of it to carry out his animosity towards his wife to the bitter end.
But of course there was one contingency he had never thought of or provided for—marriage.
It was less than a week after Gilchrist’s death that Bootles received a note by hand, signed Helen Gilchrist.
“Already!” he groaned, impatiently.
“May I trouble you to send the child to see me for half an hour during this afternoon?” she said, and that was all.
But Bootles did not see sending the child to be quietly stolen away. He forgot quite that since Gilchrist had not left his widow a farthing she would probably be now no better able to provide for the child than she had been when compelled to cast her baby upon the father’s mercy. Therefore, immediately after lunch, he drove down to the hotel from which the note had been written. Yes; Mrs. Gilchrist was within—this way. And then—then—Bootles, with the child fast holding his hand, was shown into a room, and there they found—Miss Grace!
The truth flashed into his mind instantly. She rose hurriedly, and he saw that she was clad in black, but was not in widow’s dress. She fell upon her knees and almost smothered Mignon with kisses.
“Mignon! Mignon!” she cried.
“Mignon has been very kind to Bootles,”Mignon explained, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
“My Mignon! my baby!” the mother sobbed. Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth.
“Have you nothing to say to me?” he asked at last.
“What shall I say?” She had risen from her knees, and now moved shyly away.
“You might say,” said Bootles, severely, “that you are very sorry that you, a married woman, deceived me and stole my heart away. You might say that, for one thing.”
“But I am not sorry,” cried Mignon’s mother, audaciously.
“Then you might take a leaf out of Mignon’s book, and say, as she says when I have a headache, ‘MignonlovesBootles.’”
Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earthBootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth
Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earthBootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth
Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth
Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth
“I wreally do think,” remarked Lacy to the fellows, when the astounding news had been told and freely discussed, “that now we must let that poor, malicious, cwrooked-minded chap wrest in his gwrave in peace. Seems to me,” he continued, with his most reflective air, “that—er—Solomon was wright, and said a vewry wise thing, when he said, ‘Love laughs at locksmiths.’”
“Solomon!” cried a voice, amid a shout of laughter.
“Oh, wasn’t it Solomon?” questioned Lacy, mildly. “It’s of no consequence; some one said it. But only think of that poor devil spending his last moments wraising a barwrier to keep mother and child apart, and old Bootles fulfils all the conditions to the letter, and bwreaks them all in the spirit by—marwriage!”
THE END.