Theday of thetirage au sortwas not one which could be spent like other days, after the supreme excitement of the morning. There was a great deal of wine consumed in Latour, and a perfect babel of talk. It soon became known in the village, after a great many excited communications between the Lion d’Or and M. Goudron’s house, thatl’Anglaishad offered to procure a substitute for Baptiste. At first the little eager world was incredulous of such an extraordinary announcement.L’Anglais!a stranger, one who had nothing to do with the Duprés or the Goudrons, or even with the district, orany interest in the Lion d’Or! but it was very evident that something was going on in which the stranger and Baptiste and Blanchette and all their respective families were involved. Madame Dupré, who had been assisted to her room by a whole assembly of weeping and sympathetic neighbours, had been disinterred from the midst of them and conducted across the street by Baptiste, very solemn and pale, yet with an expression quite different from the despair on his face when he had come home from the Mairie with his fatal number. It was Blanchette who, laughing, crying, with the tears on her cheeks and a voice broken with sobs, yet an extraordinary gleam of happiness about her, had flown across the street, light as a bird, to call them. They had all disappeared into the rooms on the ground-floor, where there had been a tumult of talking and crying, two or three voices audible together, athing never heard before since the English family, who spoke, the Latourois thought, almost in whispers, had taken possession. And then the Curé had been sent for; and M. le Maire himself, coming home after presiding officially over the business of the day, still with his scarf on, and in all the pride of office, had stepped in. This diverted the attention of many from the noisy youths who had escaped, and who were celebrating their freedom—and from those who had been drawn, and who were trying to forget it and drown their despair. And when Madame Dupré came back, a changed woman, her head high, her countenance radiant, the whole community was stirred. It was true then? Many were the wistful women who crossed the road after, and hung about the door, and cast anxious looks at the window. Why should Baptiste Dupré be the only one to be delivered?L’Anglaisprobablydid it out of mere eccentricity, they thought, not out of regard to Baptiste, and no doubt he was enormously rich, and did not know what to do with his money; and if he bought back Baptiste, why not Jean and Pierre? The mothers of Jean and Pierre, who had drawn the numbers 2 and 4, could not see the difference. They hung about the door all the day, thinking if he would but appear they might find courage to speak to him. The lucky Baptiste to have caught his attention! M. Goudron himself was not visible. He did not stand at the door and grin as he was in the habit of doing. The commotion had subdued him at least, and if there had been nothing else for which to thankl’Anglais, this was something, for these poor women, with their hearts full, felt that they could not have borne Père Goudron’s grin. And soon it became whispered in the crowd that it was Antoine who was going to accept Baptiste’s place. He had served already, being so much older, and most people were very glad to hear that he was going out of Latour. It would be so much the better for the other young men. Antoine had announced himself as ready to be any one’sremplaçant; things had been going badly with him all the winter, and the money tempted him. There had been great bargainings in the room where so much unusual talking had been going on and so many people crowded together; and at last, by the help of the Maire and Curé and old Père Goudron himself—who, now that nobody expected him to supply the funds, could not keep himself out of the negotiations—Antoine consented to take fifteen hundred francs as the price of his service. He was giving himself, as he declared, “dirt-cheap”; but as Mr Goulburn, though he was soliberal, had his wits about him, and old Goudron was the keenest at a bargain in all Burgundy, the whole preliminaries were arranged the same morning, and the money was to be paid as soon as possible.
“For we are birds of passage,” the Englishman said, “there is no knowing how long we may stay.” That same night, no later, all guarantees having been given, Antoine was to get his price; and thus, after thanks and blessings innumerable, the scene ended. It was a relief to them all when the outpourings of gratitude were over and all those effusive people gone. “In England they would have felt it just as much, but they would not have made such a fuss,” Mr Goulburn said with a sigh of relief.
“You could not have done it in England,” said Helen. “I think it is very good of you to do it, papa.”
He looked at her with a smile on hisface. “Do you know, I think so too—it was very good of me. But it was all for Janey,” he said; “it will come off her fortune. I have got her fortune laid by all safe. I don’t speak of yours, Helen, for you know you have something from your mother. You have a hundred a-year, and as it has always been left untouched to accumulate, there should be a good deal more than a hundred a-year now. It is as well you should know, in case of——”
“In case of what, papa? You said we were birds of passage. Did you mean anything? Did you—think we might have to go away?”
“Not I! I don’t know why I said it. The fact is wearebirds of passage. What have we to do here? I am very comfortable; I don’t want to change; but as a matter of fact, things might happen——”
“Papa, perhaps I ought to have told you; they are expecting visitors—English visitors—at thechâteau.”
She looked at him after a moment, and gave a sudden cry of alarm. He had become not pale, which is one thing, but white to the very lips. “Do you know who they are?” he said.
“Only their Christian names: one is John and the other Monsieur Charles, who has been in India.”
She said this with an uneasy feeling once more that M. Charles who had been in India could be but one person, and looked up with some anxiety to see if her father would take the same view.
“That does not tell very much,” he said with a laugh; “most men who are not called John are called Charles. Are they brothers? It is annoying. I daresay you wonder why I should care; but the fact is, Helen,” he said, with anuneasy attempt at a careless manner, “I don’t want to come in contact with Englishmen. Take care not to mention my name at all; ignore me, that is the best thing to do. I won’t meet any Englishman. I’d rather, a great deal rather, notwithstanding that things suit me very well here, go away at once than have English visitors prying upon me.”
“I am afraid you are not well, papa.”
“It is that old Comtesse that has put it into my head. There never was anything so absurd. I have been quite breathless and queer ever since she told me I ought to be so. It is the most droll sympathetic sensation—nothing more. I know I am not ill, not a bit ill—but I feel it; in the face of my own reason and all the facts of the case. Never mind, that will all blow over. And Helen, recollect what I say: be on your guard if you see any Englishmen. Stop; if itshould by any chance be some one we know——”
“That is so unlikely, papa,” said Helen, forcing herself to smile. But she did not think it was improbable, in her heart.
“It is very improbable; still we must be prepared for all that can happen. Should it be any one we know, say that we have come here—for a day or two. Say that we are—just leaving—or better, say that you are alone, and that where I am you do not know.”
It was Helen’s turn now to be pale. “Papa, how can I say all these things?” she cried. “If I could, if the truth did not matter, the Vieux-bois would know I was lying. And, papa! oh, if you would but tell me! If it was only that you were ruined, why should you be afraid of English visitors? I think I could bear it better if you would tell me the truth. Is it only—what you call ruin, papa?meaning that you have lost your money?” she said.
“It is only—ruin. That is a tolerably big word. I don’t know what you could wish more.”
“But meaning that you have lost your money? You have not lost all your money,” she said with some vehemence. “You have given—a great deal, to poor Baptiste. We are in no want of anything. You cannot have lost it all—that is not true.”
A dull sort of smile came upon his face. “Such things happen every day,” he said. “A man may lose all his money and may yet have what will do to go on with. Besides, it is Janey’s, not mine.”
Helen looked at him with such wistful wonder, with such a pained entreaty in her face, that he went on with an embarrassed laugh, “The short and the long of it, if you will know, is this—Ruin meansnot starvation, as you may suppose, but owing money which you cannot pay.”
A hopeful gleam flew across her face. “But then, so long as there is any we can always go on paying. Ah, poor Baptiste! it would be hard to take it from him now; but we could save a great deal, papa; and you shall have mine if you like, and welcome. And perhaps they would take it in instalments, as the poor people used to do at the Fareham Club.”
“Hush!” he said; “you don’t understand anything about it. I want no more conversation on this subject.”
“But, papa, I do understand: what can be more simple? Take the money we have, and pay as far as it will go, and then we could go home.”
“You are a little fool,” Mr Goulburn said.
Helen was pained. Did she not understand? and yet it seemed so entirely simple. She did not insist any more,feeling that her father looked ill; that it was unkind to press him for the moment. “If any of the people to whom he owes money should come here,” she said to herself, “I should know what to do.” It was with this feeling that she set out to see his friends. Janey was in the garden with Margot’s children, perfectly happy; her sister was not sorry on this day of emotion to be alone. She walked away quickly to thechâteau, and her story about thetirageand those upon whom the bad numbers had fallen, was full of interest for the ladies; they wanted to hear every name, and how the unfortunates had borne it.
“Pierre Courvoye! Oh, it will not do any harm to Pierre; and I think a few years’ steady service and discipline will be of use to Jean too.”
“But poor old Elisabeth!” cried Cécile.
“She will be better without him; atleast she will not see him going wrong; and perhaps he will do better in the regiment.”
“But Baptiste? it will ruin Baptiste and poor Mère Dupré, and break little Blanchette’s heart,” the girls cried.
When they heard that Mr Goulburn had bought him a substitute there were no bounds to their enthusiasm. “Your papa, then, is a saint, he is a benefactor, he has a heart of gold!” they cried.
“But,mon enfant,” said the Comtesse, “I fear you must have allowed him to be exposed to emotion. Never forget that there must be no emotion; you must avoid it as you would avoid poison.”
This flutter of interest and kind, pleasant talk and praise sent all that was melancholy out of Helen’s head. She was to return home early, but this was the evening of Madame la Comtesse’s dinner, and they were then to meet again. “Shall I tell her?” whispered Cécile.
“Oh no, no; let it be a surprise!” cried the more mischievous Thérèse. They went out with her to show her how all the young larches were pushing out their tassels, and the crocuses coming up by hundreds in the grass. Helen returned to the village by the longer way. There was a grand entrance to thechâteauwhich was scarcely ever used; a short avenue with two curious tall bits of building on either side of the gate, half towers, half houses, three storeys high, giving a half-ludicrous air of defence in the midst of a line of low and innocent hedges. When important visitors came this was how they went in; and, as it happened, she had scarcely emerged from between the two obelisks of houses which blocked the gateway, when she saw the Comtesse’s great lumbering old family coach, theberline, as they called it, swaying along the road, drawn by the two long-tailedhorses from the farm, with old Léon on the box, who was called Monsieur l’Intendant in the village when the people wanted to please him. Helen’s heart began to beat. She felt sure that the occupants of theberlinemust be the English strangers whom she looked for with so much expectation, yet fear. She gave a hurried glance at them as they lumbered past. She saw two heads, but her eyes were hazy with over-anxiety, and her excitement confused her. She could not tell who they were, or if she had seen them before. The carriage passed her. She breathed more freely. How foolish! she said to herself. Was she disappointed that after all it was not Charley Ashton? or was she relieved? or what was it? She could not tell. Her life had been full of a vague expectation, which had gone to her head, which had kept her amused, excited, disturbed, alive to everything. And now ithad failed. Was not she glad? She ought to have been; it would keep safe her father’s secret, and save him from all disturbance. But Helen’s first sensation was as if she had fallen out of the clouds. The earth is a very steady, very satisfactory thing to come down upon, and by far the safest footing; but still, when you drop from a height there is apt to be a momentary jar.
She was so full of this really involuntary, unwilling sensation, and so anxious to feel glad that all cause for apprehension on her father’s part was over, that she did not hear the much louder jarring and grinding of the wheels with which the bigberline, as soon as it had passed her, was stopped. Helen felt slightly unsteady so far as she herself was concerned. Her steps wavered; there was a ringing in her ears. It had been, she said to herself, something to look forward to, and it wasover; and she was very glad it was over, and papa happily escaped from all annoyance. Things were getting steadier before her eyes every moment, her step was getting more assured. Then all at once she heard voices in the air. “I certainly will not wait for you,” in a somewhat severe tone, and in familiar English accents.
“Never mind, you will just have time for your own salutations, and I will follow directly,” some one said.
Helen’s feet, in spite of her, swerved, stumbled, took her half-way across the road, like feet that were drunken and beyond guidance. She had not been mistaken after all. Whatever was to come of it, had she not known it all from the very first? She was not surprised now, though the discovery set her heart beating once more as if it would break out of her breast. Of course it was he. Could anything be more precise than the description, M. Charles who had been in India? She had been quite sure of it all along.
“Once more I have to ask, is it you, Miss Goulburn? I am sure it can be no one but you.”
“Yes, it is me,” said Helen, simply (but nobody pretends that grammar and nature are the same in respect to this pronoun. She was much disturbed, and she could no more have said I than she could have flown); “and I thought it must be you they meant,” she added, with more simplicity still, “though I heard nothing but your Christian name.”
“Who was it that spoke of me? It is only by accident I have come here. I was going to Sainte-Barbe to find out if anything had been heard of you—if I could find any trace of you.”
“Sainte-Barbe! we left that, Mr Ashton, immediately——”
“I know: after you had seen me.”
Helen sighed. It seemed impossible to her to lie as her father had told her—to say anything to him that was not true. It was very hard even to say what she did falteringly, “We did not mean to stay there, anyhow.”
“Miss Goulburn,” he said, “I have heard a great deal since I have been home. When I saw you last I knew nothing. Miss Temple—I mean my stepmother—is very, very anxious about you. She wants you to go and live with her, and my father wishes it too.”
“Mr Charles, that is very, very kind,” said Helen, shaking her head.
“Miss Goulburn, nobody in the world can take more interest in you, can have thought more of you than I, since you were a little girl at the school feasts. And in India I always wondered how you had grown up—if I should still find you whenI got back. I don’t know if you are aware of all that has happened?”
“Papa is ruined,” said Helen in a very low voice.
“Ruined! Ah, yes; and something more.”
Helen trembled, tottering along by his side. “I asked him to tell me, but he wouldn’t. Don’t tell me, I had rather not know. Most likely,” she said, with a thrill of much pain in her voice, “when he knows you are here he will go away.”
“I am almost sure he will. And you have friends here?”
“Oh yes; all the people are our friends, every one. But what does that matter?” cried Helen, with a smile of desperation. “It need not make any difference. We shall go all the same. We shall not mind. But why you or any one should want to harm us, Mr Charles, I cannot tell. We never did harm to any one. Why shouldwe have to fly from one place to another? We have done nobody any harm.”
Young Ashton looked at her with the tenderest pity in his face. “I came,” he said, “to take you home, if you would come, if I could find you, to Mrs Ashton. Every effort has been made to find you. We did not know what to wish—that he might not be found, or that you might. Pardon me, it was for this I came.”
“Oh no; for a very, very different purpose, Mr Ashton! I know that quite well—I know exactly,” said Helen, with a little heat. Then she stopped confused. What had she to do with it? Whatever he came for, what was it to Helen? Angry! was she angry? But for what, in the name of heaven? Then she was angry with herself for her irritation. The tears gathered thick in her eyes. “It will be better, much better, to let us alone,” she said; “what does it matter toany one where we go or where we stay? Never mind us, please. Go thechâteau, where they expect you. You can say I will not come this evening; you need not say why. And let us alone, Mr Ashton. What can it matter to you if we are here or anywhere else? We have done no harm to you.”
“Miss Goulburn, you don’t know John; but he has been a sufferer; he is very bitter, he will not let things alone. If I could have formed the least idea that you were here—but even if I had known, what could I do to keep him from the place where his bride is living? And if he has any suspicion he will not be silenced. When I saw you—you with your open, candid face—walking so quietly along the road, and he by my side with the spirit of a bloodhound in him—— And yet how glad I am that you are here! But your father; good heavens!” criedthe young man; “what a position for you to be in! you, so young, so innocent, knowing nothing!”
Just then they were met by a party of country people going home. “Bon soir, mademoiselle,” they cried with a little acclamation of kindness, the men taking off their hats; and one old woman paused to say, “You should be happy to-night if any one should,ma bonne demoiselle.”
“You have been doing something kind,” said young Ashton, looking at her, his face full of tender admiration and sympathy.
“Not I, not I!” Helen cried. The tears came down her cheeks in a torrent. “It is papa, poor papa, that has been kind. You don’t know how good he is. He has made some of the poor people very happy; and his reward,” she cried, “will be to be driven away. Oh, why should that be? Papa, who used to be so rich, who had everything; and now that he isquiet here, in a little wretched village, you come and drive him away!”
Young Ashton’s countenance changed. It grew grave, almost severe. “I do not drive him away,” he said. “If there was anything I could do to make him safe, I would do it; but he will know better than you do that I cannot. Tell him that Sir John Harvey is here. He will understand that better than anything. Not in search of him—not knowingly, but still he is here. Do they know at thechâteau? Can they give any information? Will they put John on the scent? Pardon me for using such words—he is my cousin, but he is a hard man. Do they know who you are?”
Helen drooped her head with a bitter sense of shame. Even now she did not know what the real stigma was; but the shame of a false name bowed her to the ground. “They do not know us,” she said almost inaudibly, “by our true name.”
And as she stood before him with her head bent down and that flush of humiliation on her face, Ashton’s heart was too full to keep silence. A cry of painful sympathy came from his lips. He took her hand and kissed it with passionate sympathy and anguish. “My poor child, my poor child!” he cried. “You, you! to have this burden to bear. Leave him, for God’s sake, and let me take you home.”
“Leave him! now, when he is badly off and in trouble?” This idea brought a kind of smile to Helen’s lips. “But, Mr Ashton, I think you mean very kindly. I will tell him, and you can say to them at thechâteauthat he was not very well, that the excitement had told upon him, and that I could not leave him to-night. They will understand that. And don’t make them think any harm of us, not more harm than you can help. Theyhave been very sweet to me,” Helen said after a pause, her tears dropping again; “such friends! and Thérèse, Mr Ashton, Thérèse, remember! She is not Cécile, but she is nearly as good as Cécile.”
“I know nothing about Thérèse or Cécile!” he cried. “Helen, oh, forgive me, I am almost mad! Are you to be swept away from me once more? Am I to lose you again?”
She shook her head sadly. “What does it matter? We never did know each much,” she said.
“I will come to the village after it is dark. I will wait about on the chance of seeing you; perhaps even I might be of use. Don’t refuse me this,” he cried; “don’t refuse me so much as this! If it is I that must drive my own happiness away, at least let me see you once again.”
“Yes; it is true, if you are a friend, you might be of use. You might help me,perhaps,” Helen said simply, “if you will be so kind. That is the house, that tall one with the green shutters. It will be very kind if you will come.”
She turned away, making a gesture to him to go back. They were opposite the Lion d’Or, where still theconscritswere hanging about with their coloured ribbons, and Baptiste receiving once again perpetual congratulation. Antoine, with his hands in his pockets, strolled along in the middle of the street, biting a straw which he held in his mouth. He was looking at M. Goudron’s windows with bended brows. Amid all the peaceful surroundings, he alone caught Charley Ashton’s eyes as a sinister figure meaning mischief; but he was far too much occupied with other thoughts to waste any upon the village bully at a moment so full of heavier trouble and pain.
Helenwent home with slow steps and a heavy heart.
A heavy heart, indeed; it had beaten wildly enough within the last hour—now it lay in her breast like a lump of lead. This morning, though there was nothing happy in her position—though she knew that some great cloud of misery and doubt hung between them and everything they had hitherto known, and that even the tranquillity of the moment, such as it was, might be interrupted in a second, in the twinkling of an eye,—yet the triumphant light-heartedness of youth had been able to triumph over all thesethings. And there had been so warm an atmosphere of life about them, so much interchange of feeling, keen sympathy, and the profound happiness of making others happy, that very little sense of being there as a stranger had remained in Helen’s mind. They were not strangers—they were more at home in Latour than they had ever been in Fareham. Here everybody knew them, everybody had a friendly word for them; more than that, the English family, with its careless, liberal ways, had now secured the affection of the village. She herself had never known before what it was to have friends like Cécile and Thérèse, or to be interested with such familiar kindness in any poor girl as she had been in the fortunes of little Blanchette. At Fareham the love of the village publican’s son with the retired tradesman’s daughter would have been nothing to the greatyoung lady, secluded among her woods and parks. But here they were more interesting, and concerned her more than any romance. She had a share in the lives of so many people, and her own life was full of tranquil occupations, of sympathies, of friendships; every cottage round about contained something or somebody that interested her. But what of that? They must all be left behind, as all her other habits of living, all her previous existence had been. She would have to give up those first personal friends, not knowing if she should ever see them more, not hoping to do so—and go away from the homely little life which had given her her first lively sense of individual existence—for what? to go where? Helen could not tell. The world was all dark beyond this one clear spot in which the afternoon sun had just sunk behind the cottage roofs, and thewhole sky overhead was red with gorgeous reflection. To-morrow, the fine spring morning which these ruddy lights prophesied, would rise serenely over the same roofs, and Margot would light her fire, and little Blanchette, out of her dreams, would awake joyfully to recollect that her troubles were all over. But where would Helen be? She did not know, but surely away from Latour, away from everything she knew, out into the world, which always figured itself before her as darkness—the gloom of night, the clanging of a great train, pursuing its noisy precipitate way through an unseen country, to the unknown out of the known. She stood for a moment at the door, looking wistfully round her at the familiar scene. The houses with their thatched roofs rose dark against the great glow of redness in the west. In the distance the homely spire of thechurch rose up protecting over them; voices were in the air, all cheerful, confused, half heard, with now and then one distincter note striking in, as by turns one figure would start up and separate itself from the little company still lingering in front of the Lion d’Or.
Somewhere near a woman was singing a baby to sleep, in a sweet drowsy voice, broken by the rock of her chair upon the wooden floor. On the other hand a group of little truants, pattering in theirsabots, were being pursued homewards to bed by the half-laughing, half-angry mother. Helen looked round her with wistful eyes, casting a last glance along the road which led to thechâteau, the most dear of all. Along this road Antoine was sauntering slowly, his hands in his pockets, looking back as he went, with his eyes always fixed on M. Goudron’s house. His was the onlynon-sympathetic figure in all the scene. It broke the spell. Helen turned from him and breathed her farewell to the village in one long sigh.
The prattle of Janey was the first thing she heard when she went in. The child was seated on her father’s knee. She had been telling him a story about Margot’s children, with whom she had been playing.
“Petit-Jean does not know what a big city is, papa; he thinks Paris is like Laroche” (Laroche was the next village, and had a street twice as long as that of Latour, and was looked upon as almost achef-lieu). “He said, was England like the little island in the pond at thechâteau? Margot’s little children they are very ignorant, they don’t know anything, papa.”
“And my little Janey knows a great deal?” he said laughing, yet with a thrill of another sentiment in his voice; “buteverybody, my pet, has not travelled like you.”
“No,” said Janey, complacently. “Only think, I came from India when I was a little tiny baby—if I could only recollect I should know India too, and then London, and then that place on the sea where we bought our things, and then Sainte-Barbe, and then—— Papa, after all this, when are we doing home?”
“Should you like to do home, Janey?” This time the laugh was so broken that it was more like a sob.
“Oh yes, papa. I should like to have my big doll Marianna, that I put in my bed when we came away. Will she always be in my little bed all this time, staring with her big eyes? I forgot to shut her eyes when I put her in. Fancy a little girl lying for years and years with open eyes!”
“It is not years and years, Janey.”
“Yes, papa, it is longer, longer than any one can remember—far longer thanthat,” cried the child, stretching her arms to the widest. “I want to do home.”
“Here is Helen coming to put you to bed,” he said. She was in his arms as she sat there, but he strained her closer, kissing her little upturned face again and again. “My little Janey, my little darling,” he said, “wherever you are you will not forget your poor father, who was so fond of you?”
She did not take much notice of this address, being used, more or less, to speeches of the sort, but slid down from his knee. Helen had to postpone her explanation till the ceremony of putting the child to bed was over. Should she be obliged to wake her up again in the dark as had been done before? And how would it be possible here, thirty miles from the railway, to fly as they had done fromFareham? Janey chattered while Helen went over all those miserable calculations. It was almost dark when she went back to the room in which her father sat alone.
“Have you not gone, Helen? I thought I heard the Précepteur asking for you at the door.”
“I am not going, papa.” She came and sat down by him in the dark, which hid her countenance from him. She laid her hand softly upon his. “Papa, they have come.”
“How you startle me, Helen!” he cried querulously. “Oh, I remember: the English visitors. Well! I hope you were discreet and did as I said?”
“You were right,” she said, “and I was wrong. I thought it so unlikely; but don’t they say here that it is the unlikely things that happen? Papa, one of them is Charley Ashton, whom we met at Sainte-Barbe.”
“Good Lord!” he cried, starting from his chair; then after a pause reseated himself. “I will keep out of the way,” he said. “I regretted afterwards that I left Sainte-Barbe when I did. Charley Ashton is not the sort of fellow to betray any one: and I think,” he said with a half laugh, “that he was very, very much struck with you. I should not wonder if that was why he has come back to this neighbourhood—although Sainte-Barbe is a good way from here.”
These words scarcely conveyed any meaning to Helen’s ear. All she made out was that her father was not so much alarmed, not so thoroughly roused to think of his own welfare as he ought to be.
“Papa, he got out of the carriage to talk to me. He spoke of you; he said I was to warn you, and that this would be enough: I was to tell you his cousin is with him, Sir John Harvey——”
“My God!” cried Mr Goulburn. This time he got up, pale as ashes, but soon fell back, not out of carelessness but weakness. His hands resting upon the table shook it with their trembling. He dropped back again into his chair, his under lip falling, his face like that of a dead man.
“He has been a sufferer, and he is very bitter. If he gets any suspicion he will not be silenced. This is what Mr Ashton said. I don’t know what it means, papa,” said Helen, with a quiver of her lip, “nor why any man who comes here, any man! should make you run away as if you were a criminal——”
“It is because I am a criminal, Helen.”
“Papa!”
“No, no,” he said, trying to smile, “not that. God knows I never meant any harm; but I was led on from one thing to another, and nobody can understand another man’s temptations. I went fartherthan I should have done. Some people—that could not afford it—were brought into trouble through me; that is all, Helen. I owe a great deal of money, as I told you. This Sir John is one of the people. It is nothing but money, money. If I had killed their fathers and mothers, they would not have felt it half so much. It is money, as I tell you—nothing but money. And now I must get up and go away from here. Ill, and getting old, and tired, tired to death——”
He put down his head into his hands, which trembled; his whole stooping figure shook. He was certainly thinner, weaker, and far older in appearance than when they came to Latour. Helen sat beside him, looking at him with a wretched half-sympathy. Perhaps, up to this moment, it had been herself she had been thinking of most, herself who had done no harm, who did not even know why it was thatshe was to be driven from the new roof where she had found refuge. Now her mind turned, but with a languid misery, to realise what her father was feeling. He was himself the cause of his own sufferings. But did that make them easier to bear?
“Poor papa!” she said, involuntarily touching with her hand his trembling arm. Yes, he was ill, and getting old, and how natural if he were tired, tired to death! All Helen’s present trouble fell into a sort of dull and aching pity for him, who was the cause of it. She sat for a little while in dead silence; and then she said, “What are we to do?”
It was some time before he made her any reply; he was panting for breath; there was a hectic colour on his cheeks like fever. “If you had but stayed in the house!” he said. “What did you want with these people at thechâteau? They were strangers—and you shouldavoid strangers. It will always be like this wherever we go. You will make friends, and then you will wonder that it is so much harder to go away. What right have we to make friends? we cannot get any good out of them. We who must be like this, without any place to rest the sole of our feet, till we”—he paused a moment—“till I die.”
A faint dolorous wonder had crossed the mind of Helen. She would not leave him, nothing would make her leave him, lonely as he was. But that momentary pause, and the substitution of I for we, touched his daughter’s heart. She put her hand again softly on his arm.
“Papa, we could not go away by night, all this long, dreadful way—and Janey. If we were to go early, early in the morning, would that not do? It is not so cold now, and the diligencegoes so early. That would be best, not to attract any attention; or if we could leave her with Margot till we got settled——”
“Leave—my child!—do you want me to leave my child?” he cried, as if she had suggested something cruel—“till we get settled?” and he laughed. “The only use of that would be to give them a clue to trace us by. We could not live without news of her, and letters are destruction. Do you think we could have been quiet here so long, so quiet, if there had been letters coming after us? No; we must go altogether when we go. But suppose that I were to keep out of the way,” he said in a half entreating tone; “suppose that I kept my room; suppose—I don’t know what is the matter with me—I have lost my courage. This man cannot stay very long with the Vieux-bois, Helen. Don’t you think ifI were to shut myself up, to see no one? You could say I was ill——”
“He is going to marry Cécile; they will talk of us, they will describe you, and there will be Mr Ashton, who knows us. It might be right—I mean not very wrong, for me; but he, why should he tell lies for us?” said Helen, mournfully.
Her father recovered himself as by a miracle. He sat up in his chair, and his nervous trembling ceased. He even laughed. “I will manage Charley Ashton,” he said.
Shortly after he was summoned to see Antoine, who had come with the notary to receive the money which had been agreed upon as the price of his services as Baptiste’sremplaçant. Mr Goulburn got up quite revived and restored, and went to his own room, where the two men awaited him. It was his bedroom,but also his sitting-room; the small business he had occupied himself with, since his arrival in Latour, having been all performed there. In a large old bureau, which stood between the window and the fireplace, were all his papers, his writing materials, the few books he had picked up. In a drawer of this bureau he kept his money. Probably there were none of the secondary vexations of his ruined life which affected him so much as the necessity of keeping his money in a drawer, and counting it out to every claimant; but the sums that were necessary for their living were so small that as yet he had not been much disturbed by it. This was the first occasion on which he had taken any serious sum from the stores with which he had provided himself. The notary sat at the table. Antoine, striding across a chair, placed himself in front of the window, betweenhis companion and Mr Goulburn. He watched every movement of the Englishman, who took no heed of his dark looks. “This is one of the worst of your French customs,” he said pettishly. “In England I should have given him a cheque on my bankers without any trouble.” It was not in English flesh and blood not to say this, though, even as he said it, Mr Goulburn remembered, with a bitter pang, what so often he managed to forget, that no English banker would honour a cheque of his, or pay any regard save that of hostile curiosity to his dishonoured name.
“Monsieur, it will be long before a peasant will trust to your cheques; it is not always even that they care for bank-notes. Gold, hard gold, that is what they like best; but Antoine has education, and is very well content with the bank-notes.”
“Perfectly content,” said Antoine. He had his eyes fixed upon the movements ofl’Anglais. Mr Goulburn took out one thing after another from the drawer. First, the morocco letter-case which he had sent Helen to fetch on the night of the flight from Fareham, then a pocketbook bursting with papers; then, finally, the thing he was looking for, his chequebook, which he took out with a sigh.
“In England I should fill up one of these forms, and all would be done,” he said, showing it.
Antoine bent curiously forward to look. “Is it money?” he said, with some eagerness, yet suspicion; a book of bank-notes! It seemed not at all unnatural to Antoine that an Englishman should travel with such an article at hand.
“Not till monsieur puts his signature,” said the smiling notary. “Look! it is alivre à souches. Here is the counterfoilon which monsieur marks the cipher. It is very ingenious; but in the country in France there is nothing we trust in likedes bons gros sous. We like to hear the money tinkle,n’est-ce pas, Antoine? Not that I say anything against a bank-note, and an English bank-note, monsieur; that is well known to be unimpeachable all over the world.”
“Do not be afraid,” said Mr Goulburn, putting back the cheque-book and the morocco case, and opening the pocket-book—“these are notes of the Bank of France.” Antoine looked at it, devouring it from under his heavy eyebrows. What countless sums might there not be in that drawer! First, the leather case, no doubt full ofvaleursof one kind or another; then the book of English money, half as thick as aparoissien; then the bursting pocket-book full of French notes. There is no end to thewealth of those other English; and to think that all should lie almost within reach of a man’s hand, in a drawer against Père Goudron’s outer wall!
Mr Goulburn took out the notes one by one, three notes for five hundred francs each—a fortune! but nothing to the riches that remained. He took them out from a sheaf of others carelessly, closing the pocket-book again and laying it down quite at his ease, not at all excited by the possession of so much money, almost within reach of the dangerous eyes that were watching him.
“Here is your money, mybrave homme,” he said. “M. le Notaire tells me all the formalities have been gone through. Do not put it away in a drawer, as I have to do, but invest it, Antoine, invest it; put it somewhere where it will bring you in good interest. That is what we call a very pretty little nest-egg in England. If you manage it well, if you take care of it, there is no telling to what it may grow.”
“Monsieur gives you very excellent advice,” said the notary. “I hope you will take it, Antoine. There are a few little things against you, as indeed there are against most young men, but I hope you will clear them all off, and come back to the village when your service is done with yourlivretin the best possible order. You have helped to give peace and comfort to one house, and that should be a pleasant thing to think of.”
Antoine received all these good wishes and good counsels with an air of preoccupation. Fifteen hundred francs! it was a fortune. Still, what it was was nothing to what was in the pocket-book which lay so carelessly on the bureau. A thirst, a hunger got into his mind. Was it his fault? was it not rather thatof the Englishman with his careless ways? Never, never, in all his life, had he seen what he believed to be so much money before. Instinctively his eyes glanced round under cover of his dark brows. There was the window on one side, a window which gave upon the street, within reach of a man of Antoine’s height; and on the other the door. The bed was at the other side of the room. A clever person might get through a great deal of work without even awaking the sleeper, without doing any more harm.
Helen went out to the door an hour or two later, when her father—who complained of fatigue and agitation, and was querulous and peevish with her, as if the visit of the English strangers was her fault—had gone to bed. It was still not very late. Everything was in full activity at the Lion d’Or, and the sound of thevoices, and now and then a scrap of song, still sounded into the quiet air of the night, softened by the distance and by the milder atmosphere, humid and soft, which had succeeded the long frosts. It made the girl’s heart beat to see some one standing waiting for her in the shadow of the house. The moon was shining behind, and all in front of Père Goudron’s was in the blackest shadow. Helen had never had a lover. It was not of that she thought now, as she opened the door cautiously; but yet there was something in this meeting which made her heart beat strangely. Young Ashton came close to the door.
“I have told them I always walk at night; they think everything possible to the eccentricity of an Englishman,” he said with a half smile, “so that I am at your disposal whatever you may be going to do.”
“We are to do nothing,” she said. “He will keep his room; he will say he is ill. Indeed he is not well, Mr Ashton; something is the matter with him, I cannot tell what. He is nervous, he is not himself; he says he has no courage to go away. Perhaps you will not stay long at thechâteau?”
“You wish us to be gone?” he said, with a tone of vexation.
“Can I help it?” said Helen. “Do you think I shall have a moment’s rest till you are gone?—or after?” she added mournfully; “for how can I tell who may come next?—some one not so kind as you.”
“That is what I think,” he said anxiously; “you will never feel safe. If it were I that was the danger, whatever it might cost me, I would go; but it is not I. It is John, and he has come to see his future wife. One cannot expect himto go, do you think? I am not in his case.”
He said this with much marked meaning, and looked at Helen so closely, that she could not but remark it, and wonder, with a nervous tremour, what did he mean?
“Miss Goulburn,” he said, “this is not the time to talk of such things, is it? I am going back to India soon; and I want to marry. I know it sounds brutal what I am saying. If you will marry me, it would be one way of settling all this. We could see him placed comfortably somewhere out of the way, in Spain perhaps, and you would not need to go home to be troubled by what is said. It is wicked that you should be dragged about, you so innocent as you are, flying from one place to another. I cannot bear to think of it. Even your name—— Will you take mine, Helen? If you would do it, I cannot tell you how happy it wouldmake me. I never had any hope; but this has always been in my mind since that school-feast when you were only a little girl.”
Helen did not remember anything about the school-feast. She was perplexed by this reference to it which clouded over the sharp distinctness of the proposal which preceded it. And when he paused she could not speak, she was struck dumb, half by the sudden business-like character of the proposal, and half by the wonder of it. She had never thought (had she? she was not so sure after the first moment) of anything of the sort. She stood bewildered, and gazed blankly at him in the blackness of the night.
“I have been too hasty, and frightened you. I knew I should; but how can I help it? There is no time to lose. Tell me only one thing: you are not going to marry any one else?”
“Oh no, no,” said Helen; then she added simply, “No one has ever asked me before.”
He came a little closer and took her hand. “I thought you must have seen at Sainte-Barbe,” he said. “I was half out of my mind with joy to see you, and next day miserable when I found you had gone. Helen, if you think you could like me, there will be plenty, plenty of love on my side. And think what a motive I should have to take care of your father. We could settle him somewhere—you and I together—where he would be safe, quite safe. And after a while they will give up thinking about him. It would be for his advantage,” said the young man earnestly. “Give me a little hope, and I will keep John off—he shall never suspect. No,” cried Charley, vehemently, “I will not make any condition. I will keep John off, anyhow; you may calculate upon me. I will be your watchman to keep danger away, whether you give me hope or not.”
“Mr Ashton,” said Helen, “you are very, very kind. How can I give you what I have not got? Hope! I have not any. Before you came I felt as if I must give up, and let things happen as they would.”
“But you don’t feel that now?” he said eagerly; “you think it is worth while to try again, to fight your best, however hard it may be, not to give in? That is what you feel now?”
“Yes; it is you that have given me hope; not that I can give it you.”
“Don’t you see it is the same thing?” he cried. “It is because we are two of us—not one poor individual standing alone, but two to do everything together: that makes all the difference in the world.”
Helen did not speak, but she felt it, she could not tell why. Yes, there was a difference. The burden was lighter; there was a change in the air; the road did not seem to lead away entirely into the darkness as it had done an hour before. Two of them!—was that the reason of the change?
“Helen! that would be all, almost all, I wanted—if you feel so too.”
She did not make any direct reply; but she said, “I could not go to India, and leave him. It would not be possible to leave him. If he were well, if he were safe—but how could I leave him now?”
“He would wish it,” said young Ashton very decidedly, “if he knew. He is not a bad man, Helen.” (He paused here, and made a little mental reservation with natural severity.) “He does not want to make you wretched, dragging you after him. He would wish it if he knew.”
There was another pause, and then Helen abandoned this subject altogether, and said, with a little quiver in her voice which—was it possible?—sounded half like laughter, “You were—perhaps: they thought it possible—to have been thefuturof Thérèse?”
“Folly!” he cried. “John thought it would answer; as if any Englishman would make such a bargain: the woods to look after, and a very pretty young lady! What would he have said, I wonder, if he had been brought in cold blood to Cécile? But he did not know my heart was full of some one else; that is his only excuse.”
At this moment a bell tinkled inside, and Helen started; he was standing very near to her now, close up in the shadow of the doorway, two that looked like one. And she did not make any objection. But now she disengaged herself softly.
“It is papa who wants me,” she said.
“Then it is a bargain, dear. I will be on the watch; I will keep off John. I will come and see what you think to-morrow night.”
“Good night,” she whispered. It sounded like an echo of the last word he had said.
Mr Goulburn had raised himself half out of his bed, his eyes were feverish and shining. “Who was that?” he said. “You were talking to some one at the door.”
Helen stood with a candle in her hand, which threw a vivid light upon her face, bringing out its soft brilliancy of tint, the blush that hung over it like a faint rose-shadow, the dewy dazzlement of agitation in the eyes amid the surrounding darkness. She said very softly, with a little catch of her breath, “It was Mr Ashton, papa.”
Mr Goulburn lay back upon his pillows with a relieved face; he laughed. “That is all right,” he said—“now I shall sleep in peace. I have two guardians instead of one.”
“Papa thinks sotoo,” Helen said to herself, as she went into the room where Janey was sleeping. It had all been very sudden, and she did not understand it; but there was a wonderful difference. “It is because there are two of us—not one standing alone.” Were there ever words that meant so much? And papa thought sotoo.
“Harford? No, I don’t know anybody of the name,” Sir John had said; but while Charley was out after dinner, exercising that inalienable privilege of an Englishman to do absurd things, which everybody recognises in France, he heard a great deal about the English family in the village, which made him think. Helen was said to have spoken of Fareham, which Sir John knew very well; and Ashton had recognised this mysterious English girl, whose presence here was so unaccountable. And there was a father in bad health—and a child. What could such people want at Latour? “You shallsee her at dinner,” Cécile said; but she did not come to dinner, and Sir John, who had frowned at the prospect of a dinner-party, as he chose to call it, on the first night of his arrival, frowned still more when Helen’s apologies were made, with great earnestness and regrets far more eloquent than anything Helen would have thought of expressing, by the wife of the Précepteur. If she was to come, why didn’t she come? What was the meaning of it? Could it be some entanglement of Charley’s? his cousin thought.
“Had they anything to do with Fareham?” he asked late that night, when Charley had come in, glowing and radiant, from his night walk. “I don’t understand about these English people in the village. Where did you meet them? who are they? I don’t want any equivocal people here, in Cécile’s very village. Whatcould they have to do with Fareham? I never heard the name there.”
“I met them somewhere in the parish,” said Charley, evasively. “I forget exactly in which house. You don’t know all the people in Fareham parish. I believe it was at a school-feast——”
Of how much service that school-feast had been! Sir John was more satisfied, but uncertain still.
“The father is ill,” he said.
“So the Comtesse said,” said Charley, with caution. He was too much on his guard to commit himself.
“A strange place for a sick man—not a doctor, except the parish doctor, within thirty miles. What, in the name of wonder, could have brought them to Latour?”
“I suppose,” said Charley, “it is a very cheap place.”
“Cheap? There is something in that,” said Sir John. Then he paused, and fixing his eyes upon his cousin, “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I shouldn’t wonder a bit if it was another victim of that scoundrel Goulburn,—some poor wretch who has lost every penny, who has dragged himself here, to die perhaps. Don’t you think it would be civil to go and see him, as he is ill? They take no end of interest in him here.”
“There is no hurry about it,” said Charley in dismay; but Sir John was very persistent. He spoke of it again next morning, and the proposal was received with enthusiasm by the ladies.
“We will go together,” Cécile said, who indeed could not contain her impatience till her friend had seen and given an opinion upon her lover. Sir John was a fine, big, imposing Englishman, a pattern of all that a Sir John ought to be—somewhat easily put outin temper, and therefore affording all the excitement of dramatic uncertainty to the vivacious Frenchwoman, who had never as yet found the uncertainty more than piquant. She liked him the better that he was not always on the watch to pay her little attentions like the men she was accustomed to, and prized his approbation all the more that it was so doubtful, and that it took so much trouble to secure it. Cécile was very anxious to exhibit her large, important lover to Helen; and she was also eager to secure Helen’s admiration and approval, of which she felt no doubt. That he was not as the other frivolous youngfiancés, or even as this cousin, Cécile felt proudly confident. Sir John, it may be added, was a man of thirty-five,rangé, serious, a public man, a personage. In all these points of view Cécile’s young bosom swelled with pride in him. As has been already insistedupon, virtue, seriousness, and duty are, amongst at least one important portion of the upper classes, of the very highest fashion in France.
Charley did all he could to change their purpose. He said, with a little hesitation, that he had seen Miss Harford, that he had stopped to ask for her father during his walk, and that the invalid meant to keep his bed for a day or two. This, however, had no effect upon the party, which set out very cheerfully in the noonday sunshine, after the second breakfast, to show the village, and to see the English friends who had become so important in the life of Cécile and Thérèse. It would be vain to attempt to tell, since the arrangement, as the reader is aware, never came to anything, with what swift and silent observation the Comtesse and her daughters had scrutinised and decided upon Charley. At the first glancehe had succeeded in “pleasing” Thérèse, who knew very well that it was her mother’s purpose to marry her, according to the simple formula of her nation, and who at first believed M. Charles to have come to thechâteauwith the same ideas. In this point of view all the ladies found him quiteconvenable, but—The Comtesse herself questioned Sir John very closely when his cousin went out after dinner for that walk which quite chimed in with her ideas of the English character.
“M. Charles is aware of the situation, of course?” Madame la Comtesse said. “It is well that there should not be any mistake on this point. He knows my intention in respect to Thérèse, and the dispositions of the will, &c.? So far as appearances go, I find him very suitable, and that he will be pleasing to Thérèse is probable. There is nothing againstthe arrangement. But we must know how it appears to him on his side. There must be no step taken by us which does not meet a response. M. Charles on his part, has he expressed his sentiments? Does he find my daughter pleasing to him on his side? It is necessary to be more explicit on the part of the gentleman: has he given you to understand——”
“Oh dear no!” cried Sir John, alarmed. He had sounded Charley, but had not got a promising response, and now thought it wisest to ignore the plan altogether. “Oh, certainly not. I have not said a word to him, my dear Comtesse. Fancy bringing an Englishman here with the idea that he was on sight! Oh dear no! I brought him on the chance that they might fancy each other, the most likely thing in the world—a pretty girl like Thérèse, and a nice young fellow. Itwas the most natural thing that they should fall in love with each other.”
“Ah, fall in lofe! that was not my idea,” said Madame de Vieux-bois—Sir John spoke his native language, in which she was not an expert. And after this conversation the Comtesse put her daughters on their guard. “Mes enfans,” she said privately, “we will postpone the question. Ce Monsieur Charles ne me plaît pas. There is something about him—— And I find, besides, that it is too soon to think of marrying Thérèse: she is but seventeen. It will be enough to lose thee,maCécile—enough for one year.”
Madame la Comtesse was far too careful a mother to permit her child’s thoughts to dwell upon any one who might be found unresponsive. The girls understood more or less, and they declared their mamma to have reason, as indeed she had in the fullest sense of the word. This,however, subdued Thérèse a little; not that she felt disappointed in respect to Charley Ashton, but that she no longer felt herself in the important position of being about to make the great decision of her life. She could not take Helen aside, as she had intended to do, with pretty airs of gravity, and ask her advice with solemn meaning. “Est-ce qu’il te plaît?” she had intended to say, curving her young brows with all the seriousness that became so momentous a question. She felt that she was coming down from an anticipated elevation, when she had no such important decision to make. And Cécile, too, was disappointed. The crisis wasmanqué. It failed in the double seriousness, the weighty character she had intended it to have. If they were but a little more reasonable, these Englishmen—a little more amenable to rule! All the time, however, Cécile piqued herself verymuch upon the delightful fact that her John and she had come together by no arrangement, but had for their part proceeded on strictly English principles, and fallen in love.
It would be difficult to describe the embarrassment of Helen, receiving this party of visitors, meeting the friendly enthusiasm of her companions with the knowledge of her own secret, which she could not disclose to them, in her heart, and with the very much more dreadful secret of which she was the guardian, pressing itself upon her, confusing her mind and weighing heavily upon all her thoughts. She dared not look at Charley at all. To have met him even alone after the revelations of last night, after the strange incomprehensible change in their position towards each other which it had brought about, would have been confusing beyond measure. But when,added to all this, there was the terrible figure of Sir John inspecting her with British suspicion, asking her in every look, Who are you? what business have you here? and the consciousness of her father lurking in his room, whom the mistaking of a door, a wrong turning, might betray,—it may be supposed that no inexperienced girl, standing upon the threshold of her life among things unrealised, could have had a more terrible half-hour than had Helen, alone with this group, having to parry all their questions and meet all their looks without breaking down utterly or running away. She had thought it best to send Janey out to the garden, lest the child, who would have been of so much assistance to her, might make some unwitting disclosure. And there she stood alone, clasping her little delicate hands together, to meet them all, to conceal what wasin her—alas! to deceive them. The tears were trembling very near poor Helen’s eyes, her voice wavered now and then as if it would break altogether, her little figure swayed; but yet she stood firm, though she could not tell how she did it. The girls put down her trouble naturally to her father’s illness. They kissed her and whispered sympathy into her ears. “Du courage!” they said, with tears of tender pity and fellow-feeling. “If mamma could but come herself!” But they had no doubt that mamma could send something that would be of use. “It is the emotion of yesterday,” they concluded, with all the ease of spectators. And then Sir John had to be told the incident of yesterday and the goodness of monsieur. This was a blessed relief to Helen, whom he had begun to interrogate about Fareham and all she knew about it.
“I suppose you did not know the lastpeople that lived there? One of those greatnouveaux riches, those men that live like princes on other people’s money. He turned out to be a swindl——”
“Helen,” whispered Cécile, drawing her apart before the sentence was completed, “Est-ce qu’il te plaît? I want you to give me your most honest opinion. Je veux qu’il te plaît! Tell me exactly, exactly what you think—for you must like him,” said Sir John’s bride, with a pretty flush of impetuous eagerness. Thérèse, who had believed that she too would have had the same question to put, had surprised certain turns of the head—certain looks which Charley addressed to her friend—and she was curious beyond measure, and bursting with a thousand questions. When the visit was over poor Helen watched them go away, waving her hand to them from the door, keeping up her smile to the last moment.She did not lose the last suspicious glance of Sir John, who looked (accidentally) at her father’s window with all the force of an inquiry, but she scarcely got the comfort of Ashton’s anxious, tender look of sympathy which told all his story to Thérèse. She was at the end of her strength, but nevertheless, she had to rouse herself to go to her father, who wanted to know every particular of the interview.
“I heard Harvey’s voice,” Mr Goulburn said. “There was always something objectionable in his voice. Big Philistine! Cécile de Vieux-bois is a great deal too good for him. He has dined with me dozens of times, but I think it was always in town, and at my club. He could not have any suspicion. Did he seem to you to have any suspicion, Helen?”
“He had a great deal of suspicion,papa, but I don’t think he knew what he suspected. He can’t understand what we are doing here. Provided,” said Helen, with a little French idiom of which she was unconscious, “provided he does not come another time and take us unawares.”
“He shall not take me unawares, you may trust to me, Helen; I shall not budge till the big brute is gone.”
Her father spoke in a reassuring tone, as if promising for her sake to abjure all imprudence. Their positions seemed to have changed, she could not tell how. She was no longer the wistful follower in a flight, the motive of which she was ignorant of. One would have thought rather that it was some indiscretion of hers that had brought this danger upon him, some rashness which he was too generous to reproach her with. “I will do my best for you, you may trust tome,” was what he seemed to be saying; and this brought the confusion in her mind to a climax. She went about all the long day after like one in a dream.
“It cannot be for cheapness these people have come here,” said Sir John to Charley. “You heard that story about the substitute? That does not look like poverty. Besides, I don’t believe the man is ill. The girl didn’t look as if it were true. He is keeping out of our way. Depend upon it there is something shady about him. I think I’ve seen the girl before.”
“Very likely; she is very young, but she has been out a little,” said Charley hurriedly, anxious to avoid any following out of the subject. “One meets everybody one time or another. Even I, who have spent my time in anything but balls——”
“Yes; by the way, how is it you seem to know the girl so well?” said Sir John.
“I wish, if it’s all the same to you,” cried Charley, out of patience, “that you’d speak a little more civilly. I don’t see why you should call a young lady whom you know nothing of, ‘the girl,’ in that contemptuous way. Yes; it does matter to me. I don’t know that I ever met any one in my life that I admired so much.”
“Whew!” Sir John gave a prolonged whistle of amazement; “why, she’s not fit to hold the candle to Thérèse,” he said; then added drily, “the more reason why I should find out all about them. I am a great deal older than you are, and I don’t mean you to make a fool of yourself if I can help it, Charley.”
“I think you had better mind your own business,” the other said, in high revolt.
And thus Sir John acquired a double motive. He questioned Cécile at great length, and even took her to task for giving her confidence so easily. “If it shouldturn out, as is most likely to be the case, a person entirely unworthy of your friendship!” he said.