They came forward, and suddenly the girl raised her face. She made a little hesitating movement of non-recognition, and then suddenly her face was transformed by a very pleasant smile. There was something peculiar in Hilda Carew's smile, which came from the fact that her eyelashes were golden, while her eyes were dark blue. The effect suggested a fascinating kitten. In repose her face was almost severe in its refined beauty, and the set of her lips indicated a certain self-reliance which with years might become more prominent if trouble should arrive.
“Christian!” she exclaimed, “I am sorry I did not know you.” They shook hands, and Molly hastened to introduce her sister's companion.
“Mr. Farrar,” she said; “Mr. Vellacott.”
The two men shook hands, and Christian was disappointed. The grip of Farrar's fingers was limp and almost nerveless, in striking contradiction to the promise of his honest face and well-set person.
“Tea is ready,” said Molly somewhat hastily; “let us go in.”
Hilda and her companion passed on in front while Molly and Christian followed them. The latter purposely lagged behind, and his companion found herself compelled to wait for him.
“Look at the effect of the sunlight through the trees upon that water,” said he in a conversational way; “it is quite green, and almost transparent.”
“Yes,” replied Molly, moving away tentatively, “we see most peculiar effects over the moat. The water is so very still and deep.”
He raised his quiet eyes to her face, upon which the ready smile still lingered. As she met his gaze she raised her hand and pushed back a few truant wisps of hair which, curling forward like tendrils, tickled her cheek. It was a movement he soon learned to know.
“Yes,” he said absently. He was wondering in an analytical way whether the action was habitual with her, or significant of embarrassment. At length he turned to follow her, but Molly had failed in her object; the others had passed out of earshot.
“Tell me,” said Christian in a lowered voice, “who is he?”
“He is the squire of St. Mary Eastern, six miles from here,” she replied; “very well off; very good to his mother, and in every way nice.”
Christian tore off a small branch which would have touched his forehead had he walked on without stooping. He broke it into small pieces, and continued throwing up at intervals into the air a tiny stick, hitting it with his hand as they walked on.
“And,” he said suggestively, “and—”
“Yes, Christian,” she replied decisively, “they are engaged. Come, let us hurry; I always pour out the tea. I told you before, if you remember, that I was the only person in the house who did any work.”
When Christian opened his eyes the following morning, the soft hum of insects fell on his ear instead of the roar of London traffic. Through the open window the southern air blew upon his face. Above the sound of busy wings the distant sea sang its low dirge. It was a living perspective of sound. The least rustle near at hand overpowered it, and yet it was always there—an unceasing throb to be felt as much as heard. Some acoustic formation of the land carried the noise, for the sea was eight miles away. It was very peaceful; for utter stillness is not peace. A room wherein an old clock ticks is infinitely more soothing than a noiseless chamber.
Nevertheless the feeling that forced itself into Christian Vellacott's waking thoughts was not peaceful. It was a sense of discomfort. Town-people expect too much from the country—that is the truth of it. They quite overlook the fact that where human beings are there can be no peace.
This sudden sense of restlessness annoyed him. He knew it so well. It had hovered over his waking head almost daily during the last two years, and here, in the depths of the country, he had expected to be without it. Moreover, he was conscious that he had not brought the cause with him. He had found it, waiting.
There were many things—indeed there was almost everything—to make his life happy and pleasant at St. Mary Western. But in his mind, as he woke up on this first morning, none of these things found place. He came to his senses thinking of the one little item which could be described as untoward—thinking of Hilda, and Hilda engaged to be married to Fred Farrar. It was not that he was in love with Hilda Carew himself. He had scarcely remembered her existence during the last two years. But this engagement jarred, and Farrar jarred. It was something more than the very natural shock which comes with the news that a companion of our youth is about to be married—shock which seems to shake the memory of that youth; to confuse the background of our life. It is by means of such shocks as these that Fate endeavours vainly to make us realise that the past is irrevocable—that we are passing on, and that that which has been can never be again. And at the same time we learn something else: namely, that the past is not by any means unchangeable. So potential is To-day that it not only holds To-morrow in the hollow of its hand, but it can alter Yesterday.
Christian Vellacott lay upon his bed in unwonted idleness, gazing vaguely at the flying clouds. The window was open, and the song of the distant sea rose and fell with a rhythm full of peace. But in this man's mind there was no peace. In all probability there never would be complete peace there, because Ambition had set its hold upon him. He wanted to do more than there was time for. Like many of us, he began by thinking that Life is longer than it is. Its whole length is in those “long, long thoughts” of Youth. When those are left behind, we settle down to work, and the rest of the story is nothing but labour. Vellacott resented this engagement because he felt that Hilda Carew had stepped out of that picture which formed what was probably destined to be the happiest time of his life—his Youth. For the unhappiness of Youth is preferable to the resignation of Age. He felt that she had willingly resigned something which he would on no account have given up. Above all, he felt that it was a mistake. This was, of course, at the bottom of it. He probably felt that it was a pity. We usually feel so on hearing that a pretty and charming girl is engaged to be married. We think that she might have done so much better for herself, and we grow pensive or possibly sentimental over her lost opportunity when contemplating him in the mirror as he shaves. Like all so-called happy events, an engagement is not usually a matter of universal rejoicing. Some one is, in all probability, left to think twice about it. But Christian Vellacott was not prepared to admit that he was in that position.
He was naturally of an observant habit—his father had been one of the keenest-sighted men of his day—and he had graduated at the subtlest school in the world. He unwittingly fell to studying his fellow-men whenever the opportunity presented itself, and the result of this habit was a certain classification of detail. He picked up little scraps of evidence here and there, and these were methodically pigeon-holed away, as a lawyer stores up the correspondence of his clients.
With regard to Frederick Farrar, Vellacott had only made one note. The squire of St. Mary Eastern was apparently very similar to his fellows. He was an ordinary young British squire with a knowledge of horses and a highly-developed fancy for smart riding-breeches and long boots. He had probably received a fair education, but this had ceased when he closed his last school-book. The seeds of knowledge had been sown, but they lacked moisture and had failed to grow. He was good-natured, plucky in a hard-headed British way, and gentlemanly. In all this there was nothing exceptional—nothing to take note of—and Vellacott only remembered the limpness of Frederick Farrar's grasp. He thought of this too persistently and magnified it. And this being the only mental note made, was rather hard on the young squire of St. Mary Eastern.
Vellacott thought of these things while he dressed, he thought of them intermittently during the unsettled, noisy, country breakfast, and when he found himself walking beside the moat with Hilda later on he was still thinking of them.
They had not yet gathered into their hands the threads which had been broken years before. At times they hit upon a topic of some slight common interest, but something hovered in the air between them. Hilda was gay, as she had always been, in a gentle, almost purring way; but a certain constrained silence made itself felt at times, and they were both intensely conscious of it.
Vellacott was fully aware that there was something to be got over, and so instead of skipping round it, as a woman might have done, he went blundering on to the top of it.
“Hilda,” he said suddenly, “I have never congratulated you.”
She bent her head in a grave little bow which was not quite English; but she said nothing.
“I can only wish you all happiness,” he continued rather vaguely.
Again she made that mystic little motion of the head, but did not look towards him, and never offered the assistance of smile or word.
“A long life, a happy one, and your own will,” he added more lightly, looking down into the green water of the moat.
“Thank you,” she said, standing quite still beside him.
And then there followed an awkward pause. It was Vellacott who finally broke the silence in the only way left to him.
“I like Farrar,” he said. “I am sure he will make you happy. He—is a lucky fellow.”
At the end of the walk that ran the whole length of that part of the moat which had been allowed to remain intact, she made a little movement as if to turn aside beneath the hazel trees and towards the house. But he would not let her go. He turned deliberately upon his heel and waited for her. There was nothing else to do but acquiesce. They retraced their steps with that slow reflectiveness which comes when one walks backwards and forwards over the same ground.
There is something eminently conversational in the practice of walking to and fro. For that purpose it is better than an arm-chair and a pipe, or a piece of knitting.
Occasionally Vellacott dropped a pace behind, apparently with a purpose; for when he did so he raised his eyes instantly. He seemed to be slowly detailing the maiden, and he frowned a little. She was exactly what she had promised to be. The singularly golden hair which he had last seen flowing freely over her slight young shoulders had acquired a decorousness of curve, although the hue was unchanged. The shoulders were exactly the same in contour, on a slightly larger scale; and the manner of carrying her head—a manner peculiarly her own, and suggestive of a certain gentle wilfulness—was unaltered.
And yet there was a change: that subtle change which seems to come to girls suddenly, in the space of a week—of one night. And this man was watching her with his analytical eyes, wondering what the change might be.
He was more or less a bookworm, and he possibly thought that this subject—this pleasant young subject walking beside him in a blue cotton dress—was one which might easily be grasped and understood if only one gave one's mind to it. Hence the little frown. It denoted the gift of his mind. It was the frown that settled over his eyes when he cut the pages of a deep book and glanced at the point of his pencil.
He had read many books, and he knew a number of things. But there is one subject of which very little can be learnt in books—precisely the subject that walked in a blue cotton dress by Christian Vellacott's side at the edge of the moat. If any one thinks that book-learning can aid this study, let him read the ignorance of Gibbon, comparing it with the learning of that cheery old ignoramus Montaigne. And Vellacott was nearer to Gibbon in his learning than to Montaigne in his careless ignorance of those things that are written in books.
He glanced at her; he frowned and brought his whole attention to bear upon her, and he could not even find out whether she was pleased to listen to his congratulations, or angry, or merely indifferent. It was rather a humiliating position for a clever man—for a critic who knew himself to be capable of understanding most things, of catching the drift of most thoughts, however imperfectly expressed. He was vaguely conscious of defeat. He felt that he was nonplussed by a pair of soft round eyes like the eyes of a kitten, and the dignified repose of a pair of demure red lips. Both eyes and lips, as well as shoulders and golden hair, were strangely familiar and strangely strange by turns.
With one finger he twisted the left side of his moustache into his mouth, and, dragging at it with his teeth, distorted his face in an unbecoming if reflective manner, which was habitually indicative of the deepest attention.
While reflecting, he forgot to be conversational, and Hilda seemed to be content with silence. So they walked the length of the moat twice without speaking, and might have accomplished it a third time, had little Stanley Carew not appeared upon the scene with the impulsive energy of his thirteen years, begging Christian to bowl him some really swift overhands.
“Ah! It goes. It goes already!”
The speaker—the Citizen Morot—slowly rubbed his white hands one over the other.
He was standing at the window of a small house in an insignificant street on the southern side of the Seine. He was remarkably calm—quite the calmest man within the radius of a mile; for the insignificant little street was in an uproar. There was a barricade at each end of it. Such a barricade as Parisians love. It was composed of a few overturned omnibuses; for the true Parisian is a cynic. He likes overturned things, and he loves to see objects of peace converted to purposes of war. He is not content that ploughshares be beaten into swords. He prefers altar-rails. And so this little street was blocked at either end by a barricade of overturned omnibuses, of old hampers and empty boxes, of a few loads of second-hand bricks and paving-stones brought from the scene of some drainage operations round the corner.
In the street between the barricades, surged, hooted, and yelled that wildest and most dangerous of incomprehensibles—a Paris mob. Half-a-dozen orators were speaking at once, and no one was listening to them. Here and there amidst the rabble a voice was raised at times with suspicious persistence.
“Vive le Roi!” it cried. “Long live the King!”
A few took up the refrain, but the general tone was negative. It was not so much a question of upholding anything as of throwing down that which was already up.
“Down with the Republic!” was the favourite cry. “Down with the President! Down with everything!”
And each man cried down his favourite enemy.
The Citizen Morot listened, and his contemptuous mouth was twisted with a delicate, subtle smile.
“Ah!” he muttered. “The voice of the people. The howling of the wolves. Go on, go on, my braves. Cry 'Long live the King,' and soon you will begin to believe that you mean it. They are barking now. Let them bark. Soon we shall teach them to bite, and then—then, who knows?”
His voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he stood there amidst the din and hubbub—dreaming. At last he raised his hand to his forehead—a prominent, rounded forehead, flat as the palm of one's hand from eyebrow to eyebrow, and curving at either side, sharply, back to deep-sunken temples.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, with a little laugh; and he drew from an inner pocket a delicately scented pocket-handkerchief, with which he wiped his brow. “If I get excited now, what will it be when they begin—to bite?”
All this while the orators were shouting their loudest, and the voices dispersed throughout the crowd raised at intervals their short, sharp cry of—
“Long live the King!”
And the police? There were only two agents attached to the immediate neighbourhood, and they were smoking cigars and drinking absinthe in two separate cellars, with the door locked on the outside. They were prisoners of war of the most resigned type. The room in which stood the Citizen Morot was dark, and wisely so. For the Parisian street politician can make very pretty practice of a lighted petroleum-lamp with an empty bottle or half a brick. The window was wide open, and the wooden shutters were hooked back.
The attitude of the man was interested and slightly self-satisfied. It suggested that of the manager of a theatre looking down from an upper-tier box upon a full house and a faultless stage. At the same time he was keeping what sailors call a very “bright look-out” towards either end of the street. From his elevated position he was able to see over the barricades, and he watched with intense interest the movements of two women (or perhaps men disguised as such) who stood in the centre of the street just beyond each obstruction.
There was something dramatic in the motionless attitude of these two women, standing guard alone in the deserted street, on the wrong side of the barricades.
At times Morot leant well out of the window and listened. Then he stood back again and contemplated the crowd.
Each orator was illuminated by a naphtha “flare,” which, being held in unsteady hands, flickered and wavered, casting strange gleams of light over the evil faces upturned towards it. At times one speaker would succeed in raising a laugh or extracting a groan, and when he did so those listening to his rivals turned and surged towards him. There was plenty of movement. It was what the newspapers call an animated scene—or a disgraceful scene—according to their political bias.
The Citizen Morot could not hear the jokes nor distinguish the cause of the groaning. But he did not seem to mind much. The speeches were not of the description to be given in full in the morning papers. There were, fortunately, no reporters present. It was the frank eloquence of the slaughter-house—the unclad humour of the market.
Suddenly one of the women—she who was posted at the southern end of the street—raised both her arms, and the Citizen leant far out of the window. He was very eager, and his hawk-like eyes blinked perpetually. His hand was raised to his mouth, and the lights of the orators gleamed on something that he held in his fingers—something that looked like silver.
The woman held her two arms straight up into the air for some moments, then she suddenly crossed them twice, turning at the same moment and scrambling over the barricade. A long shrill whistle rang out over the heads of the mob, and its effect was almost instantaneous. The “flares” disappeared like magic. Dark figures swarmed up the lamp-posts and extinguished the feeble lights. The voice of the orator was still. Silence and darkness reigned over that insignificant little street on the southern side of the Seine. Then came the clatter of cavalry—the rattle of horses' feet, and the ominous clank of empty scabbards against spur and buckle. A word of command, and a scrambling halt. Then silence again, broken only by the shuffling of feet (not too well clad) in the darkness between the barricades.
The Citizen Morot leant recklessly out of the window, peering into the gloom. He forgot to make use of the delicately scented pocket-handkerchief now, and the drops of perspiration trickled slowly down his face.
The soldiers shuffled in their saddles. Some of the spirited little Arabs pawed the pavement. One of them squealed angrily, and there was a slight commotion somewhere in the rear ranks—an equine difference of opinion. The officers had come forward to the barricade and were consulting together. The question was—what was there behind that barricade? It might be nothing—it might be everything. In Paris one can never tell. At last one of them determined to see for himself. He scrambled up, putting his foot through the window of an omnibus in passing. Against the dim light of the street-lamp beyond, his slight, straight figure stood out in bold relief. It was a splendid mark for a man with chalked sights to his rifle.
“Ah!” muttered the Citizen, “you are all right this time—master, the young officer. They are only barking. Next time perhaps it will be quite another history.”
The officer turned and disappeared. After the lapse of a few moments a dozen words of command were shouted, and upon them followed the sharp click of hilt on scabbard as the sabres fell home.
After a pause it became evident that the barricade was being destroyed. And then lights flashed here and there. In a compact column the cavalry advanced at a trot. The street was empty.
Citizen Morot turned away and sat down on a chair that happened to be placed near the window. His finely-drawn eyebrows were raised with a questioning weariness.
“Pretty work!” he ejaculated. “Pretty work for—my father's son! So grand, so open, so noble!”
He waited there, in the darkness, until the cavalry had been withdrawn and the local firemen were at work upon the barricade. Then, when order was fully restored, he left the house, walking quietly down the length of the insignificant little street.
Ten minutes later he entered the tobacco-shop in the Rue St. Gingolphe. Mr. Jacquetot was at his post, behind the counter near the window, with the little tin box containing postage-stamps in front of him upon his desk. He was always there—like the poor. He laid aside thePetit Journaland wished the new-comer a courteous, though breathless, good evening.
The salutation was returned gravely and pleasantly. The Citizen Morot lingered a moment and remarked that it was a warm evening. He never seemed to be in a hurry. Then he passed on into the little room behind the shop.
There he found Lerac, the foreman of the slaughter-house. The butcher was pale with excitement. His rough clothing was dishevelled; his stringy black hair stood up uncouthly in the centre of his head, while over his temples it was plastered down with perspiration and suet pleasingly mingled.
“Well?” he exclaimed, with triumphant interrogation.
“Good,” said Morot. “Very good. It marches, my friend. It marches already.”
“Ah! But you are right. The People see you—it is a power!”
“It is,” acquiesced Morot fervently.
How he hated this man!
“And you stayed to the last?” inquired Lerac. He was rather white about the lips for a brave man.
“Till the last,” echoed Morot, taking up some letters addressed to him which lay on the table.
“And the street was quite clear before they broke through the barrier?”
“Quite—the People did not wait.” He seemed to resign himself to conversation, for he put the letters into his pocket and sat down. “Had you,” he inquired, “any difficulty in getting them away?”
“Oh no,” somewhat loftily and quite unsuspicious of irony. “The passages were narrow, of course; but we had allowed for that in our organisation. Organisation and the People, see you—”
“Yes,” replied Morot. “Organisation and the People.” Like Lerac, he stopped short, apparently lost in the contemplation of the vast possibilities presented to his mental vision by the mere thought of such a combination.
“Well!” exclaimed the butcher energetically, “I must move on. I have meetings. I merely wished to hear from you that all was right—that no one was caught.”
He was bubbling over with excitement and the sense of his own huge importance.
The Citizen Morot raised his secretive eyes.
“Good-night,” he said, with an insolence far too fine for the butcher's comprehension.
“Well—good-night. We may congratulate ourselves, I think, Citizen!”
“I congratulate you,” said Morot. “Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
It is probable that, had Lerac looked back, there would have been murder done in the small room behind the tobacco-shop. But the contemptuous smile soon vanished from the face of the Citizen Morot. No smile lingered there long. It was not built upon smiling lines at all.
Then he took up his letters. There were only two of them: one bearing the postmark of a small town in Morbihan, the other hailing from England.
He replaced the first in his pocket unread; the second he opened. It was written in French.
“There are difficulties,” it said. “Can you come to me? Cross from Cherbourg to Southampton—train from thence to this place, and ask for Signor Bruno, an Italian refugee, living at the house of Mrs. Potter, aci-devantlaundress.”
The Citizen Morot rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the back of his hand, making a sharp, grating sound.
“That old man,” he said, “is getting past his work. He is losing nerve; and nerve is a thing that we cannot afford to lose.”
Then he turned to the letter again.
“Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly; “St. Mary Western. He is there—how very strange. What a singular coincidence!”
He fell into a reverie with the letter before him.
“Carew is dead—but still I can manage it. Perhaps it is just as well that he is dead. I was always afraid of Carew.”
Then he wrote a letter, which he addressed to “Signor Bruno, care of Mrs. Potter, St. Mary Western, Dorset.”
“I shall come,” he wrote, “but not in the way you suggest. I have a better plan. You must not know me when we meet.”
He purchased a twenty-five centime stamp from Mr. Jacquetot, and posted the letter with his own hand in the little wall-box at the corner of the Rue St. Gingolphe.
There was, however, no cricket for Stanley Carew that morning. When they came within sight of the house Mrs. Carew emerged from an open window carrying several letters in her hand. She was not hurrying, but walking leisurely, reading a letter as she walked.
“Just think, Hilda dear,” she said, with as much surprise as she ever allowed herself. “I have had a letter from the Vicomte d'Audierne. You remember him?”
“Yes,” said the girl; “I remember him, of course. He is not the sort of man one forgets.”
“I always liked the Viscount,” said Mrs. Carew, pensively looking at the letter she held in her hand. “He was a good friend to us at one time. I never understood him, and I like men whom one does not understand.”
Hilda laughed.
“Yes,” she answered vaguely.
“Your father admired him tremendously,” Mrs. Carew went on to say. “He said that he was one of the cleverest men in France, but that he had fallen in a wrong season, and would not adapt himself. Had France been a monarchy, the Vicomte d'Audierne would have been in a very different position.”
Vellacott did not open his own letters. He seemed to be interested in the conversation of these ladies. He was not a reserved man, but a secretive, which is quite a different thing. Reserve is natural—it comes unbidden, and often unwelcome. Secretiveness is born of circumstances. Some men find it imperative to cultivate it, although their soul revolts within them. In professional or social matters it is often merely an expediency—in some cases it almost feels like a crime. There are some secrets which cannot be divulged; there are some deceptions which a certain book-keeper will record upon the credit side of our account.
Like most young men who have got on in their calling, Christian Vellacott held his career in great respect. He felt that any sacrifice made for it carried its own reward. He thought that it levelled scruples and justified deceptions.
He knew this Vicomte d'Audierne by reputation; he wished to hear more of him; and so he feigned ignorance—listening.
“What has he written about?” inquired Hilda.
“To ask if he may come and see us. I suppose he means to come and stay.”
Vellacott looked what the French call “contraried.”
“When?” asked the girl.
“On Monday week.”
And then Mrs. Carew turned to her other letters. Vellacott took the budget addressed to him, and walked away to where an iron table and some chairs stood in the shade of a deodar.
In a few minutes he looked still more put out. He had learnt of the disturbances in Paris, and was reading a rather panic-stricken letter from Mr. Bodery. The truth was that there was no one in the office of theBeaconwho knew anything whatever about French home politics but Christian Vellacott.
A continuance of these disturbances would necessarily assume political importance, and might even lead to a crisis. This meant an instant recall for Vellacott. In a crisis his presence in London or Paris was absolutely necessary to theBeacon.
His holiday had barely lasted twenty-four hours, and there was already a question of recall. It happened also that within that short space a considerable change had come over Vellacott. The subtle influence of a country life, and possibly the low, peaceful song of the distant sea, were already beginning to make themselves felt. He actually detected a desire to sit still and do nothing—a feeling of which he had not hitherto been conscious. He was distinctly averse to leaving St. Mary Western just yet. But there is one task-master who knows no mercy and makes no allowances. Some of us who serve him know it to our cost, and yet we would be content to serve no other. That task-master is the Public.
Vellacott was a public servant, and he knew his position.
Somewhat later in the morning Molly and Hilda found him still seated at the table, writing with that concentrated rapidity which only comes with practice.
“I am sorry,” he said, looking up, “but I must send off a telegram. I shall walk in to the station.”
“I was just coming,” said Hilda, “to ask if you would drive me in. I want to get some things.”
“And,” added Molly, “there are some domestic commissions—butcher, baker, &c.”
Vellacott expressed his entire satisfaction with the arrangement, and by the time he had finished his letter the dog-cart was waiting at the door.
Several of the family were standing round the vehicle talking in a desultory manner, and Vellacott learnt then for the first time that Frederick Farrar had left home that same morning to attend a midland race-meeting.
It was one of those brilliant summer days when it is quite impossible to be pessimistic and exceedingly difficult to compass preoccupation. The light breeze bowling over the upland from the sea had just sufficient strength to blow away all mental cobwebs. Also, Christian Vellacott had suddenly given way to one of those feelings which sometimes come to us without apparent reason. The present was joyous enough without the aid of the ever-to-be-bright future, and Vellacott felt that, after all, French politics and Frederick Farrar did not quite monopolise the world.
Hilda was on this occasion more talkative than usual. There was in her manner a new sense of ease, almost of familiarity, which Vellacott could not understand. He noticed that she spoke invariably in generalities, avoiding all personal matters. Of herself she said no word, though she appeared willing enough to answer any question he might ask. She led him on to talk of himself and his work, listening gravely to his account of the little household at Chelsea. He made the best of this topic, and even treated it in a merry vein; but her smile, though sincere enough, was of short duration and not in itself encouraging. She appeared to see the pathos of it instead of the humour. Suddenly, in the middle of a particularly funny story about Aunt Judith, she interrupted him and changed the conversation entirely. She did not again refer to his home life.
As they were returning in the full glare of the midday sun, they descried in front of them the figure of an old man; he was walking painfully and making poor progress. Carefully dressed in black broadcloth, he wore a soft felt hat of a shape seldom seen in England.
“I believe,” said Hilda, as they approached him, “that is Signor Bruno. Yes, it is. Please pull up, Christian. We must give him a lift!”
Christian obeyed her. He thought he detected a shade of annoyance in Hilda's voice, with which he fully sympathised.
On hearing the sound of the wheels, the old man looked up in surprise, as a deaf person might have been expected to do. This movement showed a most charming old face, surrounded by a halo of white hair and beard. The features were almost perfect, and might in former days have been a trifle cold, by reason of their perfection. Now, however, they were softened by the touch of years, and Signor Bruno was the living semblance of guilelessness and benevolence.
“How do you do, Signor Bruno?” said Hilda, speaking rather loudly and very distinctly. “You are back from London sooner than you expected, are you not?”
“Ah! my dear young lady,” he replied, courteously removing his hat and standing bareheaded.
“Ah! now indeed the sun shines upon me. Yes, I am back from London—a most terrible place—terrible—terrible—terrible! As I walked along just now I said to myself: 'The sun is warm, the skies are blue; yonder is the laughing sea, and yet, Bruno, you sigh for Italy.' This is Italy, Miss Hilda—Italy with a northern fairy walking in it!”
Hilda smiled her quick, surprising smile, and hastened to speak before the old gentleman recovered his breath.
“Allow me to introduce to you Sidney's friend, Mr. Vellacott, Signor Bruno!”
Sidney's friend, Mr. Vellacott, was by this time behind her. He had alighted, and was employed in arranging the back seat of the dog-cart. When Signor Bruno looked towards him, he found Christian's eyes fixed upon his face with a quiet persistence which might have been embarrassing to a younger man. He raised his hat and murmured something unintelligible in reply to the Italian's extensive salutation.
“Sidney Carew's friends are, I trust, mine also!” said Signor Bruno, as he replaced his picturesque hat.
Christian smiled spasmodically and continued arranging the seat. He then came round to the front of the cart and made a sign to Hilda that she should move into the right-hand seat and drive. Signor Bruno saw the sign, and said urbanely:
“You will, if you please, resume your seat. I will place myself behind!”
“Oh, no! You must allow me to sit behind!” said Christian.
“But why, my dear sir? That would not be correct. You are Mr. Carew's guest, and I—I am only a poor old Italian runaway, who is accustomed to back seats; all my life I have occupied back seats, I think, Mr. Vell'cott. There is no reason why I should aspire to better things now!”
The old fellow's voice was strangely balanced between pathos and a peculiar self-abnegating humour.
“If we were both to take our hats off again, I think it would be easy to see why you should sit in front!” said Christian with a laugh, which although quite genial, somehow closed the discussion.
“Ah!” replied the old gentleman with outspread hands. “There you have worsted me. After that I am silent, and—I obey!”
He climbed into the cart with a little senile joke about the stiffness of his aged limbs. He chattered on in his innocent, childish way until the village was reached. Here he was deposited on the dusty road at the gate of a small yellow cottage where he had two rooms. The seat was re-arranged, and amidst a volley of thanks and salutations, Hilda and Christian drove away. Presently Hilda looked up and said:
“Is he not a dear old thing? I believe, Christian, in all the various local information I have given you, I have never told you about Signor Bruno. I shall reserve him for the next awkward pause that occurs.”
“Yes,” replied Christian quietly. “He seems very nice.”
Something in his tone seemed to catch her attention. She half turned as if to hear more, but he said nothing. Then she raised her eyes to his face, which was not expressive of anything in particular.
“Christian,” she said gravely, “you do not like him?”
Looked upon as a mere divination of thought, this was very quick; but he seemed in no way perturbed. He turned and looked down with a smile at her grave face.
“No,” he replied. “Not very much.”
“Why?”
“I do not know. There is something wrong about him, I think!”
She laughed and shook her head.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “How can there be anything wrong with him—anything that would affect us, at all events?”
He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling.
“He says he is an Italian?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“I say he is a Frenchman,” said Christian, suddenly turning towards her. “Italians do not talk English as he talks it.”
She looked puzzled.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“No; not yet. I know his face. I have seen it or a photograph of it somewhere, and at some time. I cannot tell when or where yet, but it will come to me.”
“When it does come,” said Hilda, with a smile, “you will find that it is some one else. I can assure you Signor Bruno is an Italian, and beyond that he is the nicest old gentleman imaginable.”
“Well,” replied Christian. “In the meantime I vote that we do not trouble ourselves about him.”
The subject was dropped, and not again referred to until after they had reached home, when Hilda informed her mother that Signor Bruno had returned.
“Oh, indeed,” was the reply. “I am very glad. You must ask him to dinner to-morrow evening. Is he not a nice old man, Christian?”
“Very,” replied Christian, almost before the words were out of her lips. “Yes, very nice.” He looked across the table towards Hilda with an absolutely expressionless composure.
During the following day, which he passed with Sidney and Stanley at sea in a little cutter belonging to the Carews, Christian learnt, without asking many questions, all that Signor Bruno had vouchsafed in the way of information respecting himself. It was a short story and an old one, such as many a white-haired Italian could tell to-day. A life, income, and energy devoted to a cause which never had much promise of reward. Failure, exile, and a life closing in a land where the blue skies of Italy are known only by name, where Maraschino is at a premium, and long black cigars almost unobtainable.
Hilda was engaged on this day to lunch and spend the afternoon with Mrs. Farrar, at Farrar Court. Molly and Christian were to drive over for her in the evening. This programme was carried out, but the young people lingered rather longer at Farrar Court listening to the quaint, old-world recollections of its white-haired hostess than was allowed for. Consequently they were late, and heard the first dinner-bell ringing as they drove up the lane that led in a casual way to their home. (This lane was characteristic of the house. It turned off unobtrusively from the high road at right angles with the evident intention of leading nowhere.) A race upstairs ensued and a hurried toilet. Molly and Christian met on the stairs a few minutes later. Christian had won the race, for he was ready, while Molly struggled with a silver necklace that fitted closely round her throat. Of course he had to help her. While waiting patiently for him to master the intricacies of the old silver clasp, Molly said:
“Oh, Christian, there is one place you have not seen yet. Quite close at hand too.”
“Ye—es,” he replied absently, as he at length fixed the clasp. “There, it is done!”
As he held open the drawing-room door, he said: “What is the place I have to see?”
Signor Bruno, who was seated at the far end of the room with Mrs. Carew, rose as he heard the door opened, and advanced to meet Molly.
“Porton Abbey,” she said over her shoulder as she advanced into the room. “You must see Porton Abbey.”
The Italian shook hands with the new-comers and made a clever, laughing reference to Christian's politeness of the previous day. At this moment Hilda entered, and as soon as she had returned Signor Bruno's courteous salutation Molly turned towards her.
“Hilda,” she said, “we have never shown Christian Porton Abbey.”
“No,” was the reply. “I have been reserving it for some afternoon when we do not feel very energetic. Unfortunately, we cannot get inside the Abbey now, though.”
“Why?” asked Christian, without looking towards Hilda. He had discovered that Signor Bruno was attempting to keep up a conversation with his hostess, while he took in that which was passing at the other end of the room. The old man was seated, and his face was within the radius of light cast by a shaded lamp. Christian, who stood, was in the shade.
“Because it is a French monastery,” replied Molly. “Here,” she added, “is a flower for your coat, as you say the button-hole is warped by constant pinning in of stalks.”
“Thanks,” he replied, stooping a little in order that she could reach the button-hole of his coat. She was in front of him, directly between him and Signor Bruno; but he could see over her head. “What sort of monastery is it?” he continued conversationally. “I did not know that there were any establishments of that sort in England.”
Hilda looked up rather sharply from an illustrated newspaper she happened to be studying. She knew that he was not adhering strictly to the truth. From her point of vantage behind the newspaper she continued to watch Christian, and she realised during the minutes that followed, that this was indeed the brilliant young journalist of whose fame Farrar had spoken as already known in London.
Signor Bruno's conversation with Mrs. Carew became at this moment somewhat muddled.
“There, you see,” said Molly vivaciously, “we endeavour to interest him by retailing the simple annals of our neighbourhood, and his highness simply disbelieves us!”
“Not at all,” Christian hastened to add, with a laugh. “It simply happened that I was surprised. It shall not occur again. But tell me, what sort of monastery is it? Dominican? Franciscan? Carmelite?—”
“Oh, goodness! I do not know.”
“Perhaps,” said Christian, advancing towards the Italian—“perhaps Signor Bruno can tell us.”
“What is that, Mr. Vell'cott?” asked the old gentleman, making a movement as if about to raise his curved hand to his ear, but restraining himself upon second thoughts.
Hilda noticed that, instead of raising his voice, Christian spoke in the same tone, or even lower, as he said:
“We want some details of the establishment at Porton Abbey, Signor Bruno.”
The old gentleman made a little grimace expressive of disgust, at the same time spreading out his hands as if to ward off something hurtful.
“Ach!” he said, “do not ask me. I know nothing of such people, and wish to learn no more. It is to them that my poor country owes her downfall. No, no; leave them alone. I always take care of myself against—against—what you say—ces gens-là!”
Christian awaited the answer in polite silence, and, when Signor Bruno had again turned to Mrs. Carew, he looked across the room towards Hilda with the same expression of vacant composure that she had noticed on a previous occasion. The accent with which Signor Bruno had spoken the few words of French was of the purest Parisian, entirely free from the harshness which an Italian rarely conquers.
After dinner Hilda went out of the open window into the garden alone. Christian, who had seated himself at a small table in the drawing-room, did not move. Sidney and his mother were talking with the Italian.
The young journalist was stooping over a book, a vase of flowers stood in front of him, but by the movement of his arm it appeared as if he were drawing instead of reading. Presently a faint, low whistle came from the garden. Though soft, the sound was very clear, and each note distinctly given. It was like the beginning of a refrain which broke off suddenly and was repeated. Signor Bruno gave a little start and a quick upward glance.
“What is that?” he asked, with a little laugh, as if at the delicacy of his own nerves.
“Oh,” replied Mrs. Carew, “the whistle, you mean. That is our family signal. The children were in the habit of calling each other by that means in bygone years. I expect they are in the garden now, and wish us to join them.”
Mrs. Carew knew that Molly was not in the garden, but in making this intentional mistake she showed the wisdom of her kind.
“It seems to me,” said Signor Bruno, “that the air—the refrain, one might call it—is familiar.”
Christian Vellacott smiled suddenly behind his screen of flowers, but did not move or look up.
“I expect,” explained Sidney, “that you have heard the air played upon the bugle. It is the French 'retraite,' played by the patrol in garrison towns at night.”
In the meantime Christian had cut the fly-leaf from the book before him, and, after carefully folding it, he placed the paper in his breast-pocket. Then he rose and passed out of the open window into the garden.
Immediately Signor Bruno asked his hostess a few polite questions regarding her guest—what was his occupation, how long he was going to stay, and whether she did not agree with him in considering that their young friend had a remarkably interesting face. In the course of his remarks the old gentleman rose and crossed to the table where Christian had been sitting. There was a flower there which he had not seen in England before. Absently he took up the book which Christian had just been studying, and very naturally turned to the title-page. The fly-leaf was gone! When he laid the volume down again he replaced it in the identical position in which he had found it.