He could not understand the effect the sight of this girl had upon him. If he had felt irritated before at his uncle’s refusal to allow him to enter his house, that feeling was as nothing to the burning indignation he experienced at the thought that this bit of a girl, this restless, hysterical, fidgety girl, as he had, in his utter ignorance, called her, should have been a witness of the gross outrage which had just been put upon him.
It was in vain he told himself that he did not care what she saw or what she thought, that she was a capricious, malicious creature who had herself urged his uncle not to have anything to do with him.
He could not forget her face; he could not get over his annoyance. As he walked out from under the avenue trees into the winter sunshine he felt as if unseen eyes were upon him, as if undiscoverable throats were muttering hoarse laughter from the shelter of the brambles and the dead ferns that he passed.
But these fancies presently grew into the knowledge that he was indeed being watched, not by an unseen elfish being, but by the morose-looking man in blouse and peaked cap whom they had passed at the farmhouse. And, discovering suddenly a likeness between this individual and the girl who had opened the door of the mansion, Bayre had no difficulty in deciding that they were father and daughter, and guessed that these were the two people of whom he had heard—the rulers of the island under his uncle, the spies, Vazon and his daughter Marie.
Bayre had an uncomfortable feeling that this man knew of the slight which had been put upon him, and that he had been told off to watch him until he should have left the island. Full of fury as this suspicion crossed his mind, the young man resolved not to linger about for his friends but to return at once to the boat and to wait for them there.
He was, however, drawn aside by the beauty of a singular natural curiosity which came in his way when he drew near the coast, one of those strange, funnel-like openings down through the cliffs to the sea which are such a feature of these islands. Peering down the wide opening through the green growth and dead bracken which formed a graceful fringe around the opening, Bayre was fascinated by the long dark vista, and by the sight and the sound of the incoming tide dashing little waves of feathery foam against the funnel’s sides.
As he looked, holding his pipe in one hand and his pouch in the other, more with a wish to seem to be light-hearted than because he felt a longing to smoke, he was startled by a girl’s voice behind him.
It was a soft voice, a sweet voice; there was no getting away from that fact. Nevertheless it was the voice of the “hysterical, restless, fidgety” girl.
“Oh, Mr Bayre, I’m so very,verysorry!”
And turning round so quickly that he narrowly missed precipitating himself through the funnel into the water below, Bayre saw Miss Eden, her fisher cap on her head, her jacket, hastily put on, open, and her eyes brighter, more beautiful than ever.
He tried to feel that he loathed her, but it was a hard task.
Bayretried to look as if he did not understand what it was that the pretty girl was sorry for. But Miss Eden made short work of his pretended ignorance by saying gently,—
“I have an idea about your uncle; it is an idea formed upon his treatment of me and it seems to be consistent with his treatment of you. Although he sent for me himself from the school where I was, and wrote me a nice letter implying that he and his cousin were lonely and that they would be glad to have me, yet now I’m here he seems to avoid me as much as he can. And now, you see, when he knows that his nephew is here—for that he recognised you as his nephew I am pretty sure from something he said—why, he avoids you too.”
Bayre made an attempt at a haughty smile.
“Oh, if he thinks I mind that he won’t let me see over his collection he’s mistaken. And if he thinks I feel a greater interest in it than any outsider would do he is mistaken again. I’ve never wished to obtrude upon my uncle’s seclusion; I never have obtruded upon it. And if my curiosity as a visiting tourist is at all disappointed, I am more than compensated by the satisfaction I feel that I have always been independent of relations who seem to be devoid of the ordinary instincts of humanity.”
Over Miss Eden’s pretty face there came a slightly puzzled look.
“I don’t say it’s unnatural in the circumstances, but I think you’re too hard,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve always said to myself about Mr Bayre, when he has been more than usually brusque in his manner to me. It is this: Is it fair to judge a man directly after he has experienced two great shocks? I dare say you know all about them, what happened in the case of his wife, and then in that of his cousin. Just think of it,” went on the girl, warmly, her face lighting up with generous emotion, her voice deep, and low, and thrilling; “to lose them both, one after the other, within a few weeks!”
“Was he quite without blame?” asked Bayre, quickly. “To judge by what I have seen of him it’s not likely.”
“What have you seen?” retorted Miss Eden. “Nothing. Less than nothing. He hasn’t even spoken to you!”
Bayre laughed rather grimly.
“Exactly. A gentleman who shows such marked amiability to a kinsman would be the sort of person to treat others in the same way.”
She shook her head slowly.
“From what I’ve heard,” she said with conviction, “he must have been very different before those two things happened. To begin with, he was very generous. If the poor in the islands wanted help he was always the first to give it. Now he is soured, changed, I admit; he seems stunned by his misfortunes, and he shuts himself up to brood upon them. But I believe that this mood will pass; give him another six months and I believe he will be his old self again. At least, I hope so. At present he is suffering from two blows to his affections, and he seemsafraid, positively afraid to trust himself to love anybody else.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t want him to love me,” said Bayre in an off-hand tone.
“No, it doesn’t matter to you, of course, because your life is spent away from him,” said the girl, rather ruefully. “But it does to others, to me, and to—to others besides me.”
And a still graver look passed over her face.
Bayre looked at her and softened in spite of himself.
“Of course it does,” said he, almost humbly. “It must make a very great difference to you. In fact, I can’t understand how you manage to exist in such utter loneliness as you describe.”
The girl gave a sort of sigh, which she immediately turned into a laugh.
“Well, I don’t suppose I shall have to endure it for long. In the meantime it’s such a pleasant change, after the strict school-hours I’ve been accustomed to, to get up when I like, to read as much as I like, to walk, row, sail, bathe just when I like, that I haven’t found life pall upon me one bit. Whether I should get tired of it if I had nothing else to look forward to I don’t know; I suppose I should grow restless and discontented. But at present I can’t say that I’m suffering tortures on account of the touch of Robinson Crusoeism that there is in my existence.”
Of course she was not. Bayre glanced at her and understood perfectly the feeling of freedom after restraint which this live, this brilliant creature, quivering with vitality, must enjoy in the easy, open-air life she described: even her reading, he thought to himself, would be done for the most part out of doors, with the fresh breeze from the sea blowing upon her young face, the salt spray helping to curl into graceful little tendrils the loose strands of brown hair which escaped from the confinement of the black ribbon at the nape of her neck.
“What do you read? Novels, I suppose?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.
And the moment he had uttered the words he felt that they were an impertinence. What right had he to question her upon her habits and tastes? She blushed a little, and he had begun to stammer a kind of apology when she waved away his words and said frankly,—
“Novels! Yes. I’m afraid it is chiefly novels. But I’ve read Carlyle’sFrench Revolution, and liked it too!” she added, with a certain rather comical pride.
“That was indeed most meritorious on your part,” said Bayre, with mock gravity, feeling the oddest conflict within him between his avowed tastes and the strong and strange attraction this girl had for him.
Strange, because it was more than the ordinary admiration which a young man feels for a beautiful girl. Now that he saw more of her he felt drawn by a sort of magnetic attraction in her sparkling eyes, something which made him inquisitive to read into the depths of that bright young soul, something that told him, much more plainly than did her words, that she was no ordinary pretty girl, but that she had a nature which could feel and a head which could think.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” she replied, laughing again. “But when a man talks of novels there is always a suggestion in his words that they are beneathhim, at all events.”
“Iam not in a position to say that they’re beneath me,” said Bayre. “I want to write them. Indeed, if the truth were told—”
“You’ve written one already? Well, so have I!”
“Ah!”
There was a certain inevitable tone of indulgence in this exclamation which made the girl redden.
“Why do you say ‘Ah!’ like that?”
“Did I say it offensively?” said Bayre, smiling at last.
“I won’t go so far as to say that; but you said it in a tone which implied—well, I think it implied that you could not expect much from my performance.”
“If my tone said all that I apologise humbly. And yet, no, on second thoughts I don’t apologise. For after all, what could there be in a novel by a young girl just out of school, who knows nothing whatever of life beyond the four walls of her schoolroom?”
“But one can imagine, even if one doesn’t know.”
There was an indescribable spirit and impulse under these words which made the young man look at her curiously.
“Yes, yes, but imagination is not of much value unless it has something to go upon. It is of no more value than a painting done by a man who had never seen anything but his paint-box. You must study Nature, copy Nature, before your imagination is of any use to you!”
“Ah! Now you go too far,” cried she, warmly, “for it is of use, even if it only serves to make the world look more pleasant than it really is.”
“I don’t call that a use, I call it a danger,” said Bayre, now quite as warm as she in his argument. “Supposing, for instance, you start by endowing with all the gifts of your imagination some commonplace person whom, upon that and that alone, you resolve to marry, would your imagination be strong enough, do you think, to enable you to gild your bargain to the end?”
She blushed a rosy red and looked at him half angrily, half mischievously, with a quick glance.
“Is a man the worse for being commonplace?” she asked. “And is it likely that I, who, as you say, know nothing of the world and the people in it, should ever be able to start on a voyage of discovery in search of the man that isn’t commonplace?”
Bayre laughed. And he thought, rather guiltily, of his own avowed ideals, which were very much the same as hers. And at the same moment it flashed through his mind that these same ideals were unsatisfying in his case; it followed, therefore, that they must be proved to be so in her case also.
“Look here,” said he, “I’m not going to dispute that many high qualities, or let us say many serviceable qualities, may be found in those people whom it’s usual to call commonplace, people with no imagination, no ideas; but you, with your romantic tendencies—”
“How do you know I have romantic tendencies?”
Bayre answered, after a pause, that it was because she read novels and wanted to write them. But it occurred to him, even as he said this, that the real reason for his opinion was that he saw romance sparkling in her eyes, emanating from her, encircling her. She was a figure of romance in herself. Frank, sympathetic, impulsive, imaginative, brimming over with the joy of life, she was the very incarnation of healthy, joyous, budding womanhood, of the womanhood that looks out with eyes full of vague golden hope at the future, and that lives meanwhile in almost ecstatic joy in the present.
“Well,” said she, with a happy smile, “surely it’s rather a shrewd arrangement to use up one’s romantic tendencies by reading novels, and perhaps even by writing them, so that they mayn’t interfere with the prosaic course of one’s actual life.”
“Is actual life prosaic to you?” said Bayre. “A young girl shut up in a lonely and gloomy house with an old guardian who hardly ever speaks to her! I never heard of a less prosaic situation in my life.”
“Ah, well, the prose is to come,” said she, lightly. “Your uncle is very anxious to get me off his hands, and he is to introduce to me to-morrow a certain neighbour of his who, it seems, has been struck by my charms, and who proposes humbly to solicit the honour of my fair hand.”
The girl said this with the most delicious mixture of mischievous amusement and girlish shyness, blushing and looking away, while at the same time her eyes danced with fun and her lips were curved into a smile. Bayre was stupefied, indignant.
He had not the least reason to be, of course.
“And you mean to say that you’re going to let yourself be married off to a man you care no more for than that?” he asked quite sharply.
“I don’t know whether I care for him; I’ve never seen him yet.”
“Never—seen him!”
“At least, not to my knowledge. As he has seen me it’s possible I may recognise his face when he’s formally introduced to me. He lives at Guernsey, and I’m often over there.”
“And do you really think any happiness could come of a marriage arranged like that?—in that cold-blooded fashion?” asked Bayre, warmly.
The girl blushed a deep red.
“My mother was a Frenchwoman,” she answered simply. “And if you know anything of France you must know that there it is not customary for girls to have so much freedom of choice as in England.”
“But you’re English—your father was an Englishman,” said Bayre, warmly. And then a bright thought struck him: “you see I, being your guardian’s nephew, may be looked upon as a sort of relation of yours—”
“Oh, no,” cried Miss Eden, rippling with smiles.
“Yes, indeed,” persisted Bayre, emphatically. “My uncle is nothing but an old fossil, who knows little more of the world than you do yourself. I begin to see that it’s nothing less than my duty to bring my own greater knowledge and experience to bear upon this matter. In short, if your guardian won’t do his duty and exercise a proper discretion on your behalf, I shall have to do it for him, and, and—”
“And choose a husband for me?” asked Miss Eden, in the most solemn and demure tone, the while her bright eyes flashed with the humour of the thing.
“Exactly,” replied Bayre, as solemnly as she, while his eyes looked into hers, seeing the roguery in them and answering it with mischief in his own.
By this time both were bubbling over with suppressed laughter, enjoying intensely this huge joke of his vague relationship and assumed authority. Bayre’s disappointment and irritation at his uncle’s snub were both forgotten. Miss Eden had forgotten, too, that her errand in meeting the young man had been one of benevolent sympathy and consolation. They had wandered together away from the opening in the cliff and downwards among the dead fern and brambles towards the shore. Bayre had had to help her, now and then, with a strong hand holding hers as they stepped over loose stones and thorny clumps of bush and bramble. It was pleasant, exciting, this aimless ramble in the winter sunlight, with the sea breeze blowing in their faces and the splash of the waves in their ears.
And then, suddenly, there broke upon them a sound less pleasant, because it called them back to life and prose. This was the voice of Repton calling to Bayre by name. The young man stood still and looked round. Neither Repton nor Southerley was in sight yet, but a glimpse of an old blue blouse and of a crouching back behind a clump of bushes at the top of the cliff showed that the idyllic promenade of the two young people had not been unobserved.
Miss Eden saw the blouse at the same moment, and she frowned angrily.
“There’s that old spy, Pierre Vazon,” cried she. “Nothing that happens here escapes the eyes of him or his daughter. They’re a pair of ignorant, cunning peasants of the lowest type, and I hate them both.”
“Is that his daughter who opened the door of my uncle’s house to us?”
“Yes. She rules everything indoors and her father everything out.”
“The man has a horrible face, and I don’t like the woman’s much better,” said Bayre. “Does my uncle like these people?”
Miss Eden hesitated.
“I sometimes think,” said she, “that—that he’s afraid of them.”
“Afraid! Why should he be?”
“I—don’t—know.” Before Bayre could ask another question the voices of his two friends, still shouting to him, were heard again from above; and the girl, whose manner had changed since the interruption, gave a glance up towards the spot where the peasant was watching, and leapt down towards the shore, away from her companion. “Your friends are calling you, Mr Bayre. Good-bye,” she said, as, with a little inclination of the head, she disappeared in the direction of one of the caverns with which the cliffs were honeycombed.
Bayrestood for a few moments where she had left him, his mind full of a strange idea suggested by some of her latest words.
His uncle was afraid of the Vazons. Why?
That she had meant to imply something more than a mere idle fancy he knew perfectly well. This fear of the peasant and his daughter on the part of their master and employer had its origin in something stronger than mere prejudice or timidity: so much he felt sure of, so much had the girl’s look and tone implied.
And involuntarily the young man’s thoughts flew back to that strange story of the death of Miss Ford, and of its tragic sequel. Ugly fancies invaded his mind, connecting themselves with his uncle’s strange reluctance to meet him and with these fears of his own servants of which he had just heard.
He was quite glad when the voices of Repton and Southerley, bawling his name in louder tones than before, broke in upon his unpleasant thoughts and at last elicited from him an answering cry.
In a few moments they had met and were making their way together back to the boat.
Repton and Southerley were full of regrets that Bayre had not been with them during their visit to the house, the treasures of which they described with a voluble enthusiasm which, as they both spoke at once, and each described a different room at the same time, produced upon their companion rather a vague sense of magnificence.
“He’s got one of the finest Murillos I ever saw, and an undoubted Rubens, which the National Gallery would give a fortune for,” said Repton.
“Some of the tapestries and china are A1,” said Southerley, talking through Repton’s speech. “And he’s got some old French furniture as good as any in Hertford House.”
“It was an infernal shame, Bayre, that they wouldn’t let you in too,” said Repton. “But perhaps he thought you might be too anxious to claim the rights of kinship when you saw the treasures he’d got.”
“Oh, well, I’d just as soon hear about them as see them,” said Bayre, philosophically. “After all, perhaps there would have been a temptation for me to help myself to a few souvenirs of dear Nunky in the way of portable property.”
His friends, having parted from him when he was in a gloomy and savage condition, were quite surprised to see how completely he had got over his disappointment. They went on condoling with him with a lighter heart.
“It was too bad that you should be condemned to a lonely stroll outside while we were rioting in luxury inside,” said Southerley.
Bayre did not undeceive them. He lit his pipe, which he had been holding unlighted in his hand, settled himself comfortably in the bow of the boat, and gave himself up to thoughts in which neither his friends nor his uncle had any share; and while the other two babbled of their visit to the mansion, and talked imperfect French to the boatmen, both of whom understood every word they said in English, the artful Bayre caught a thrilling glimpse of a white pocket-handkerchief fluttering against a background of cavernous darkness, away under the cliff behind them. Taking off his cap he waved it in the air, a proceeding which caused both Repton and Southerley to turn their heads shorewards with much suddenness.
But they saw nothing, and the rascal in the bows refused to acknowledge that he had seen anything either. A lingering mistrust of him glowed darkly in the eyes of the other two for a little while, but he kept his own counsel, and they could get nothing out of him.
It was two days after this that they all came face to face with another party of three persons in one of the streets in the upper town.
One of these persons was old Mr Bayre, dressed as before in serge trousers and pilot coat, with a pipe between his teeth and his yachting cap drawn well over his eyes. His hands were in his pockets, and he walked along with bent head and shuffling step, and without exchanging a word with his two companions. One of these was a stout Frenchman of middle age, whose round, pink, flabby face was garnished by a huge double chin, and furthermore set off by a pair of blue glasses, which helped, with the big Panama hat he wore, to give him a strange and most unattractive appearance.
The third member of the party was pretty Miss Eden, and on her face there was such a look of subdued dismay that Bartlett Bayre jumped instantly to the conclusion that the stout gentleman in the goggles was the husband chosen for her by her guardian.
Bayre started forward, on meeting the three, with the intention of forcing his uncle into conversation. Vague ideas of remonstrance, not only with his uncle’s treatment of himself but with his treatment of this girl, filled the young man’s mind.
But the wily old recluse was more than a match for him. Before his nephew could traverse the dozen yards that lay between them, Bartlett Bayre, senior, had turned on his heel and disappeared down a turning, where he was able to hide himself within some friendly neighbour’s door.
When Bayre, junior, came back, disappointed, from a vain pursuit, both Miss Eden and the owner of the Panama hat were out of sight.
Restless, excited, moved out of himself by emotions he could scarcely analyse, Bayre was irritated beyond endurance by the talk of his two friends, who had both conceived the same opinion, that the stout gentleman in the goggles must be the pretty girl’s intended husband.
“It’s outrageous, preposterous, impossible!” Repton was bawling, with the light-hearted enthusiasm of an irresponsible person, as Bayre came up. “Of course, such a thing is not to be endured. What! Marry that lovely girl with the creamy skin to an old effigy with a great pink roll at the back of his neck! A wholly hideous and unpaintable person! Perish the thought!”
“She must be rescued undoubtedly,” assented Southerley. “The only question is how to set about it?”
“Oh, there’s one other thing—Who’sto set about it?” said Repton, firmly. “Shall it be you or I?”
“Or shall we let her have her choice, eh, Repton? I don’t mind doing that, because I feel sure she’ll choose me. No girl with those eyes would look twice at a fellow with sandy hair.”
“Perhaps she won’t care for a red face either,” retorted the artist, calmly. “Bayre, what do you say to entering the lists? Some girls like a sallow face and lank hair without any gloss on it.”
“Some people don’t like a pair of tom-fools,” replied Bayre, savagely. “What does it matter to you whom Miss Eden marries? Mind your own business and don’t bawl people’s names out so that everyone for a mile round can hear the stuff you’re talking.”
“Keep your hair on, my dear friend,” said Repton, with annoying calmness. “If Miss Eden’s nothing to us, she’s nothing to you either, you know. Even if you were serious about her it’s not likely your uncle would entertain you for a suitor when he won’t even allow you inside his doors.”
Bayre turned livid, but said nothing. He did not, indeed, trust himself to speak.
But that very afternoon, stealing out of the house quietly, while his friends were smoking in the littlesalon, he hired a boat and set sail for the island of Creux.
He meant to see Miss Eden if he died for it. Perhaps some rags of pretence still hung about his mind as to the reason of the interest he took in the beautiful girl. But if so, they fell away and left the bare truth for him to face when, coming upon the girl suddenly in a cleft of the cliff as he went upwards on landing, he found that the unexpected meeting sent the blood flying to his head with a force which made him giddy.
For a moment he said nothing, and, strange to say, the girl was silent also.
“Well?” said she at last.
She was changed since he had seen her last. The colour had left her cheeks, and though her eyes were as bright as ever it was with a different brightness: they seemed to glitter, so he fancied, with unshed tears. And she had not even the conventional smile of greeting for him, but let the one word drop from her lips in a rather husky and tremulous voice, almost, so he thought, as if she felt sure that he guessed the reason of her sadness.
“I—I wanted to see you again,” stammered he at last. “I came—I came—to—to see you.”
He was ashamed of himself. Anything more lame, more clumsy, than these words it was impossible to imagine. But Miss Eden took them quite simply.
“Why did you want to see me?” she asked quickly.
“I—I couldn’t speak to you this morning. And I thought perhaps—perhaps you would think it odd.”
He was floundering hopelessly. Why should she think it odd? he asked himself with rage at his own lack of words, of ideas. But again she lifted him out of his embarrassment by saying,—
“I thought you wanted to speak to your uncle, not to me.”
“I wanted to, but I missed him; or rather, he ran away from me.”
“Ah!”
Their eyes met. And he saw that she, as well as he, thought this shyness on the part of the old recluse mysterious and suspicious.
“Why should he avoid me?”
The girl shook her head.
“Why does he avoid everybody?” she said.
The words raised Bayre’s uneasiness to fever pitch.
“I don’t like to think of your being here all by yourself with those two wretched peasants and an indifferent guardian,” he began impetuously.
He had almost said “a guilty guardian,” but had fortunately checked himself in time.
“Oh, well, I sha’n’t be here long,” she answered, and her face became more sombre as she spoke.
“That man—who was with you yesterday. Surely he—he was not—is not—” stammered Bayre, reddening as he put the mutilated fragment of a question.
She nodded gloomily.
“Yes,” said she, looking away from him and shivering slightly. “That is Monsieur Blaise, whom my guardian has chosen as my husband.”
“But you will never marry him—you?”
She frowned petulantly.
“Oh, how can I tell? I suppose so,” she said.
“You will be miserable!”
“Shall I? I don’t know. Can anybody ever tell those things? No doubt he is a good man, and my guardian is anxious, very anxious, for my marriage.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. To get rid of me, I suppose!”
“I can’t understand you,” broke out Bayre, almost passionately. “You seem a girl of spirit, of resource, yet you can calmly submit to be disposed of, by a guardian who doesn’t care for you, to a man whom you don’t care for—”
“How do you know that?”
She turned upon him with a pretty flash of defiance.
But he waved aside the suggested protest.
“As if you could!” said he, not guessing how absurdly eager and anxious he was showing himself in this business which was none of his.
Miss Eden twisted her pretty mouth into a little grimace.
“He’s not exactly the ideal of one’s dreams, perhaps!” she said under her breath.
Whereat Bayre, grown bolder, laughed outright.
“You won’t do it?” he said, becoming suddenly grave.
But she would not give him a direct answer.
“There are many things to be considered,” was her vague reply.
He stood before her, pulling the long ends of his ragged moustache, fighting with a hundred impulses, not one of which had any sort of reason or logic to recommend it. He was interested in this girl, preposterously interested, considering how far removed she was from the type which he had always supposed himself to admire the most. If he had been well off, if even he had been anything but the struggling poor devil of a beginner at life that he was, he knew that he should have cast discretion, common sense to the winds, and that he should have asked her to marry him—him, Bartlett Bayre, hater of spirited woman, and worshipper at the shrine of placid, purring womanhood without a word to say for itself.
As it was, however, that madness was not possible to him. He could not offer to take a girl reared in luxury, as he presumed she was, to share a London garret with him. But the wish, the impulse that prompted this mad thought shone in his eyes, and probably communicated itself to Miss Eden, who blushed when she looked at him, and gave a glance round, preparatory to running away.
“So you’ve come by yourself to-day,” she remarked, turning the conversation as she caught sight of the boat waiting for him.
“Yes. I wanted to see you before—before going away.”
Her manner became thoughtful again.
“When do you go?” said she.
“In four days.”
“Back to London?”
“Yes. I wish—is it too much to ask?—would you send me two lines—no more—for the sake of our half-relationship, you know, just to tell me, to tell me—”
He was so eager that he could not make himself very clear. But she guessed his meaning and smiled gravely.
“Not for the sake of our relationship, which is not very clearly made out, I think, but for the sake of your— Well, never mind of what—perhaps you shall hear of or from me again—some day. What is your address?”
“May I write it down?”
“I shall remember it.”
He gave her the address, and she listened in silence, with her eyes fixed intently on the sea. Then she said quickly, as if struck with a sudden thought of deep import,—
“Thank you. I must go now. If Pierre Vazon were to see me talking to you again he would make mischief—at least, he might. I don’t trust him. Good-bye.”
She held out her hand quickly; he pressed it one moment in his, with a thrill which communicated itself perhaps to her. She blushed a rosy red and drew her fingers sharply away.
“Good-bye,” she said again.
And she was gone.
Bayre went back to the boat in a sort of fever. It cut him to the heart to think that this beautiful, bright girl, who affected him so strangely, should be in danger of becoming the wife of that commonplace Monsieur Blaise, with the roll of pink flesh at the back of his neck and the Panama hat and the blue glasses.
When he got back to his friends they were cool, sarcastic, courteous. It was a bad sign when they were courteous!
But they made friends again over an odd discovery. They ran against the beautiful Miss Eden that evening coming out of the telegraph office; and although they had no chance of so much as an exchange of greetings with her, the incident gave them something to talk about which it was imperative to discuss together.
They saw no more of the beauty before their holiday was over, and it was only too plain that she had forgotten the commission with which she had offered to entrust them.
When the last day of their stay arrived, and they piled their light luggage on one of the deck seats of the boat, with a melancholy feeling that the jolly time was over, they perceived a rough-looking peasant girl, in sabots, and bearing what looked like a fish-basket under her arm, standing on the quay looking down upon them.
Presently she came on board, but as she did not come near the spot where the three young men stood chatting and smoking, they took no particular notice of her movements until the boat started, when they saw her again on the quay-side, this time without her burden.
The morning was keen and cold, and there was a grey mist hanging over the water. They had not steamed far on their way when Repton shivered and returned to their light luggage to put on his overcoat.
He had scarcely reached the pile, however, when a loud exclamation burst from his lips and attracted the attention of his two friends. Turning their heads, they saw him bending over something which had been placed among their things but which did not belong to them.
A second look convinced them that this addition to their luggage was nothing less than the fish-basket which the peasant girl had brought on board. And a third and closer look, when they had obeyed Repton’s signal of alarm and joined him, showed them that the contents of the basket were alive.
“It’s—it’s a child! A—live—child!” gasped Repton, hoarsely.
And the consternation he felt was reflected on the faces of Southerley and Bayre.
Therewas no doubt about it; there, in the very middle of their pile of light luggage, some of which had been carefully displaced to make room for it, the three young men found the substantial basket they had last seen under the arm of the peasant girl on the quay; and in the basket, lightly covered over by a dark woollen shawl, through the meshes of which it could breathe perfectly well, was a live child.
Repton had moved the shawl, on seeing something move underneath, just far enough back to disclose the tiny face of a healthy-looking infant, some fifteen to eighteen months old, who, just waking from sleep, was staring up at the strangers with its face puckered in readiness for a good cry.
Repton was the first to ascertain this fact, and his increased consternation took a murderous form.
“Let’s chuck it overboard!” cried he, with ferocity.
“Give it to the stewardess,” suggested Southerley, more humanely.
Bayre, meanwhile, with presence of mind amounting to genius, had dashed forward, and seizing an indiarubber tube attached to a boat-shaped bottle containing some opaque fluid which lay beside the child, had thrust it into the infant’s mouth and thereby checked the utterance of its very first scream.
His friends looked at him in admiration, but the little group of passengers and ship’s hands who had been attracted by the commotion looked with more derision than sympathy upon the heroic fellow as he made further investigations into this alarming article of luggage.
“It’s not a peasant’s child,” he said, when he had noted the quality of the baby’s clothes.
He had an idea in his head which he found it hard to get rid of. His uncle had a child, and that child had been kidnapped from the mother when she ran away from her husband, and had been left to the tender care of the Vazons. As far as he could judge, his uncle’s child would be of about the same age as the infant in the basket. Could it be that this small pink and white thing which had been so mysteriously planted upon them was his own first cousin? And was it by some device of Miss Eden’s, who mistrusted the Vazons, that the infant had been thus entrusted to the care of himself and his companions?
While the chatter and the chaff went on round about him, Bayre debated thus within himself, carefully examining the face of the now placid and contented infant with a scrutinising care which sent a ripple of more or less subdued laughter round the group.
“Look here, you fellows, this child has not been dumped down here by accident,” said he, with a gravity which, instead of subduing them into attention, sent them into fits of renewed laughter. “I’m pretty sure we shall find upon it some intimation as to what we have got to do with it.”
“I recommend,” said Southerley, “that we put it in the captain’s care to take back with him to Guernsey.”
“That’s it,” said Repton. “And in the meantime we’ll just find out who it is that has played us this trick. That girl who brought it on board must certainly have been known either to the captain or to some of the crew, and can easily be found by them.”
It was remarkable, however, that, even as he made this suggestion, the curious group that had gathered round began to melt away; and Bayre was not surprised to find, upon inquiry, that nobody on board knew anything about the peasant girl, but that all who had seen her professed to have supposed that she was bringing some luggage belonging to one of the passengers in the ordinary way.
To consternation, to amusement, there succeeded indignation in the minds of both Repton and Southerley at the trick which had been played upon them. They had been made the laughing-stock of everybody on board, and they could find no one to help them out of the mess.
Both captain and stewardess flatly refused to undertake the responsibility of taking the child back to Guernsey, and the faces of two out of the three young men grew long at the prospect before them.
“We can’t take the brat back to London with us,” wailed Repton. “It’s you, Bayre, with your confounded philanderings about the island by yourself, who must have brought upon us the reputation of being philanthropists and foundling hospitals, and homes for lost or starving children! And so I vote it’s you who must leave it at the left luggage office at Weymouth. And if you won’t do that, why, Southerley and I must leaveyouthere, that’s all.”
“First,” persisted Bayre, still haunted by his idea, “let us see if there isn’t a letter or direction of any kind packed in with the child.”
“Well, fire away,” said Repton, gloomily. “Here goes.”
And as he spoke he pulled the brown woollen shawl right off the basket with a violent wrench.
As he did so the wind and the violent action together caused a letter, which had been placed in the basket under the shawl, to flutter over the side of the vessel into the sea.
“There you are! What did I tell you?” cried Bayre, excitedly, making a wild grab in the direction of the missive that would have made all clear to them.
To the fresh consternation caused by this mishap there succeeded a wild desire to stop the boat and to secure the precious letter. But the captain would not listen to Repton’s loud expostulations on this subject, and the young man was driven half frantic between his own despair and the reproaches for his hasty action which his two companions did not hesitate to pour upon him.
In the meantime Southerley, partly out of bravado and partly out of real curiosity, had taken his turn at examining the child, and finally announced, with a great show of learning, that he knew from the shape of its headgear that it was a boy.
In his own mind, Bayre, who chose to keep his suspicions to himself, found this confirmation of his idea that the helpless creature who had been so unexpectedly entrusted to them was the heir to his uncle’s property. For he knew that his uncle’s child was a boy. At all hazards, then, the mite must be kept under his eye until he could find out what was the object of entrusting it to him and his companions in this mysterious manner. Once arrived in London he would write to Miss Eden and beg her to enlighten him upon the point.
If it was not the young girl herself who had contrived to send the infant in this manner to some place of greater safety than the cottage of the Vazons, she would at least be able to find out who had done so. As for the fact that she had given him no intimation of the strange commission, Bayre could not be surprised at it. For it was the sort of charge that a man might well have refused if he had known of it beforehand. So he reasoned with himself, and remembered at the same time that Miss Eden had spoken of some commission with which she thought of entrusting them.
In the meantime the child, having disposed of the opaque fluid in the bottle, struggled to sit up, and then to get on its feet and survey the new and rather astonishing world in which it found itself.
Surveying it with the calm scientific curiosity with which a young animal in the Zoo would have inspired him, Southerley drew the attention of his companions to this fact, and even made some solemn and ill-received attempts to conciliate the monster by duckings of the head and twiddlings of the fingers, at which the child stared with grave eyes.
“It’s not very intelligent,” said Southerley, becoming suddenly haughty when he perceived that his antics were creating more amusement among the grown-up persons on board than they did in the object of his playfulness.
“Come, give it a chance,” said Repton, whose first burst of indignation had already given place to something like active interest in the live animal which it seemed so impossible to get rid of. “Wereyouintelligent at eighteen months old?”
And recalling some of the ways by which comparative peace had been secured among the juvenile inhabitants of the nursery in which he had been one of a body of brothers and sisters, Repton began to show off his accomplishments in that direction by the production of his watch, with which he kept the enemy at bay for some minutes.
“He’s not a bad sort of youngster, as youngsters go,” he remarked apologetically, when both Bayre and Southerley began to smile at him in their turn. “But it’s jolly cold for him up here. I vote we take him down below and lend him to the stewardess while we decide what’s to be done with him.”
But when they had carried him downstairs, an operation during which they were objects of general interest, they found it such a fascinating occupation to chat with the stewardess and to play with the child at the same time, that the minutes flew quickly by, and they were half-way across to the mainland before they woke to the fact that they were as far as ever from a conclusion as to what was to be done with their new and unwelcome possession.
By this time they had grown less barbarous in their intentions, so that Bayre’s quiet announcement that he meant to take the child on to London, and to make inquiries from there as to its identity, met with but faint remonstrances.
“It’s rum sort of luggage to bring back with one from abroad,” protested Repton, with comparative meekness.
“An equivocal sort of possession, a baby!” suggested Southerley.
“It’s all right among three of us,” said Bayre, stoutly. “In numbers there is safety. Let us all show an equal amount of interest in him and we are safe from the breath of calumny. Nobody ever heard of a child with three fathers!”
“I don’t know how to show interest in a child of such tender years,” objected Southerley. “I’m ready to teach him Greek, but the question is whether he would be equally ready to learn.”
“There I have the advantage of you,” said Repton. “Painting, my profession, comes by nature. I’ve only got to put a brush in his hand and a canvas in front of him and he’ll go for it right away.”
“And the tragic part of the business is that his productions will be quite as much sought after as his master’s,” remarked Southerley.
“What is to be your share in his education, Bayre?” asked the artist, ignoring the feeble sneer.
“Manners, I think,” said Bayre, thoughtfully. “Manners and the use of the globes. Now any child who can whirl round a globe in its frame knows as much about the use of it as anybody.”
“And now supposing we have some luncheon and drink the young man’s health,” suggested the convivial Repton.
The suggestion being well received, they left the baby, who was getting sleepy and rather fractious, in charge of the stewardess, and adjourned to the saloon, where, their spirits rising under the influence of cold beef and bottled Bass, they drank the health of the youth of whom they had so strangely become the responsible guardians, and fell in with Bayre’s suggestion that they should throw themselves upon the mercy of Mrs Inkersole, their London landlady, and get her to recommend them to some woman whom they could trust to look after the child.
“And meanwhile you, Bayre, solemnly undertake to find out who the actual possessor is, and to dispose of the infant to the lawful owner.”
Bayre expressed his belief that he was equal to this task, and the matter was settled.
But the three temporary fathers soon found that a railway journey in charge of a lively young man of eighteen months is not an unmixed joy.
A sort of terror had seized upon the whole party long before London was reached; and when they found themselves in the cab, with the child now happily asleep in his basket cradle in one corner, a solemn silence, broken only by hushed whispers of dismal import, fell upon them all as they reflected upon the coming interview with Mrs Inkersole and the result it might have upon their long-standing tenancy.
“If she turns us out,” growled Repton under his breath, tremulously anxious not to wake the slumbering terror, “we shall have to wander about the streets singing for our bread with the child in a basket on a barrow in front of us. For certain am I that no self-respecting landlady would ever take in as fresh lodgers three young men and a miraculous baby!”
“It’s all your fault, Bayre,” said Southerley, sombrely. “I’m certain we could have found some better way out of the mess than this but for your infernal obstinacy.”
Bayre said nothing in particular. He was only too thankful to have got his own way, being, as he was, still in the belief that Miss Eden had wished him to take charge of the child, his uncle’s son as he believed him to be, and to deliver him into the hands of some safer guardian. Here was a fine excuse for communicating with her, and he meant to avail himself of it that very night.
When they reached the house in the street off Tottenham Court Road they found their difficulties begin at the very door. A determined attempt which Southerley and Repton were making to smuggle in the infant in its basket unremarked was foiled by a shrill squeal from under the brown woollen shawl as they reached the door-mat.
Susan, Mrs Inkersole’s most trusted lieutenant, uttered a gasp of amazement.
“Why, sir, what have you got there?” said she to Repton, who began to laugh idiotically, but without replying.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Southerley, testily, as he tried to rush the defences and to attain the staircase.
But Susan was firm.
“Is it a dog, sir?” she asked, seizing one end of the shawl and holding tight, while Repton looked at her fiercely, and Southerley showed an ominous disposition to drop his end of the basket and to run for it.
“Good gracious, no! What should we want a dog for?” said Repton, irritably.
“Because,” went on Susan, with firmness, “Mrs Inkersole can’t abide dogs—”
“But I tell you it isn’t a dog,” roared Repton, infuriated by the renewed squeals, unmistakable in their origin, which by this time came from the basket. While at the same moment a well-developed pink leg, which had kicked itself free of shoe and sock, was suddenly protruded from the wraps with which it had been covered, leaving no possible doubt as to the species of the animal underneath.
“Is that a dog, do you think?” asked Repton, with desperate calmness, pointing to the assertive limb.
Susan uttered a faint scream.
“Whatever do you gentlemen want with a baby?” she asked feebly.
“We don’t want anything with it,” replied the artist, fiercely. “We want to get rid of it, that’s what we want. And if you know any person idiotic enough to wish to possess a healthy human infant, of the male sex and with perfectly-developed lungs, why, give him or her our address, and tell him or her to apply early—”
“Hush!” broke in Susan in a frightened whisper.
And as she spoke she glanced towards the second door on the right, which was being softly opened and held ajar, as if some person behind it were listening to the conversation.
“What’s the matter?” asked Repton, leaving Southerley to take the basket and its living contents up the stairs, with the help of Bayre, who had now followed the others into the house after settling with the cabman.
“Oh, there’s a new lady in the dining-rooms—a student,” replied Susan in a low voice. “And perhaps she wouldn’t like it if she knew there’d be a child in the house crying half the day. But surely, sir, you don’t mean to keep it there, do you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Repton, helplessly. “The little wretch was plumped down into the middle of our luggage when we came away this morning, and Mr Bayre thought it best to bring it on with us and to try to find out who it belongs to from here. But it’s a mad business. Here comes Mrs Inkersole. Oh, shut her up! Tell her anything, anything!”
And unable to stand a strict examination on the part of the landlady with neither of his friends to back him up, Repton flew up the stairs and straight into his room on the second floor.
But in the front room the unfortunate infant was making its presence known by a succession of screams so piercing that all three young men became possessed with a dreadful fear that it would shriek itself into a premature grave, and that they would conjointly be held responsible for its death in convulsions.
In vain they all three tried to soothe it. In vain Repton, seizing the milk-jug, which had been placed upon the table with the tea-things, tried to pour some of the milk into the child’s mouth, a proceeding in which he nearly succeeded in choking him. In vain Southerley dangled his watch before the boy’s eyes till he almost threw the works out of gear. In vain Bayre, the most anxious and miserable of the three, took the child in his arms and tossed it in the air with many frantic attempts to soothe and please it.
Still the unhappy and frightened babe screamed on, and was rapidly growing apopletic in his distress when they were all startled by a knock at the door.
“Oh, come in!” cried Bayre, foreseeing a terrible interview with the landlady which would bring their misfortunes to a climax.
But it was not Mrs Inkersole who entered. Looking shyly round her, bowing to the three young men with a downcast and blushing face, there entered, quietly dressed in black, a woman, a beautiful young woman, tall, broad-shouldered, with fluffy fair hair and the face of an overgrown baby, just the placid-looking, womanly, slow-moving creature whom Bayre had pictured as his ideal.
Itis impossible to describe the scene of wild confusion which followed the lady’s entrance. Bayre nearly dropped the baby and Repton the milk-jug. While Southerley, the only member of the party who retained a little self-possession, tried in vain, by placing himself between Bayre and the fair visitor, to hide the cause of all their woes.
A preposterous attempt this at the best, since there was no mistaking the unfortunate child’s cries for anything else.
But their consternation was speedily changed to relief. For the lady, with scarcely more than a glance at any one of the young men, burst into the middle of the group, and stretching out her arms with the true woman’s instinct, took the child from Bayre’s well-meaning but clumsy grasp, and holding him against her shoulder while she gently rocked herself to and fro from one foot to the other, spoke to him in words wholly unintelligible to the male ear, as women do to babies.
For a few seconds the young men stood looking shyly at this goddess who had been so miraculously sent to their assistance, admiring beyond words the simple and instinctive art with which she accomplished in a few seconds what they had failed to do in all the hard work of a strenuous half-hour.
Fair-faced, blue-eyed, with one of those little Cupid’s bow mouths that never go with any great intellectual capacity, the newcomer looked just one of those placid, domestic goddesses in praise of whom Bayre was accustomed to speak so highly, and of whom Southerley, on the other hand, expressed so much scorn.
There was a timidity, a modesty in every movement, in every look, which proved how strong must have been the inducement which brought her thus into a room full of strangers. A sort of deprecatory expression in her blue eyes, and a blush which overspread her face from chin to brow, seemed to struggle with the overwhelming feminine instinct which had brought her to the rescue of the crying child.
When the sobs had subsided a little and it was possible to hope to be heard, Southerley dragged forward the best armchair, and said,—
“Won’t you sit down?” She shook her head, but he went on: “Do, please; you must let us have a moment to thank you for—for—for—”
“For saving us from the crime of murder,” cried Repton, tragically, as the lady, after another moment’s hesitation, sat down with the child in her lap.
“Oh, I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said, in a low and gentle voice, as she looked down from him to the child. Then suddenly her tone changed, and she asked sharply, “When was he fed last? I believe he’s hungry.”
There was a rush of men to the table, and the next moment they all clamoured round her, offering such delicacies as a tin of sardines, a plate of winter apples, and some cheese.
The lady looked up and laughed mildly but scornfully.
“For a baby!” cried she. “Cheese! How absurd!”
“But he isn’t a proper, natural baby,” protested Repton, promptly. “Proper babies should drink milk, and when I offered him some he wouldn’t have it.”
“Letmetry,” said the lady.
And hugging the child against her breast with one hand, she held a cup of milk-and-water coaxingly to his lips with the other, when behold! he drank eagerly and peacefully, to the admiration of everybody.
“He’s an artful little cuss,” said Repton. “He must have guessed there was an angel—I mean a lady—in the house as soon as he came inside the door, and made up his mind to get her attentions all to himself or perish in the attempt.”
The lady laughed again, but so low, so sweetly, that an answering smile appeared on the face of the child, whom she was now feeding with small morsels of bread-and-butter, with which she had silently beckoned Southerley to supply her.
“It’s his own fault if he’s hungry,” said Southerley, earnestly. “I myself bought him a Banbury cake and a cold sausage on the journey and he wouldn’t have either of them, except as weapons of offence.”
“It’s lucky he knew what was good for him better than you did!” said the lady.
“What would his mother say if she knew you’d tried to feed him with cold sausage?” cried Repton, regaining all his fancied superiority in the matter of infant management now that they no longer had the infant to manage.
The lady was still looking down upon the boy, who was as happy and good again as a child could be.
“Who is his mother?” she asked.
Dead silence.
The lady looked up and caught all the young men interrogating each other with their eyebrows.
“Don’t you know?” she asked with an air of natural surprise.
After another moment’s pause it was Bayre who boldly blurted out the truth.
“We haven’t the least idea.”
And he proceeded, in as few words as possible, to relate the whole story of their tragic experience of the day, to which the lady listened with wondering eyes.
“It’s all very strange,” said she. “But how very, very awkward for you!”
And then she burst out laughing, and the three young men, with a delightful feeling that this angel would help them out of their embarrassment, and that at any rate the baby had brought them a charming acquaintance, joined heartily in her merriment. Whereat the small boy made an ineffectual attempt to clap his pudgy hands in sympathy.
The movement caught the woman’s watchful eye, and she caught the child up to her neck and smothered him with kisses.
“Then—then,” stammered she when, blushing a rosy red, she looked up after this caress, “at present the child is in the singular position of having no mother, but three fathers?”
“That’s it exactly,” laughed Repton.
“And the worst of it is,” said Bayre, “that it’s one of those cases in which three men are not equal to one woman.”
The lady looked down at the child and hesitated.
“I suppose,” she said, “that it won’t be very long before you find out who the child belongs to?”
“Oh, no,” said Bayre, promptly. “We’re going to set about making inquiries at once. I’m writing to-night.”
“Who to?” cried Repton and Southerley in a breath, sinking grammar in their excitement.
But Bayre was dignified and reticent.
“Leave it to me,” said he. “It’s a matter where discretion is necessary.”
Southerley and Repton exchanged looks of suspicion and scorn. This fellow was trifling with the truth; for they were artful enough to know that the person to whom this discreet creature would apply was the last person who could help him in such a matter—the pretty girl from Creux.
“And in the meantime?” asked the lady.
“In the meantime,” said Southerley, promptly, “we could not think of allowing the child out of our care. You see we feel responsible for him. We don’t know who he is: the whole affair was very mysterious.”
Then there was a long pause. All the young men were hoping for the offer which presently came from the charming visitor.
“I’ve got rooms here myself on the ground floor,” she said. “After all, that’s not so very far away, is it? Supposing you were to let me look after the child for you until you have found out what you have to do with him? You can get an answer to your letter in three or four days, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes,” said Repton, eagerly.
“And you could trust me with him, couldn’t you? I haven’t had much experience with children,” she went on, “but I’ve had a baby cousin to look after, and—”
“We could trust you implicitly,” said Southerley, with unblushing magnanimity. “You have the real woman’s instinct with children, that’s certain.”
The lady rose at once, cuddling the baby, who was growing sleepy again.
“Then I think I’ll put him to bed at once,” she said, “for it’s plain that he’s tired out. Poor—ickle—manny. Poor ickle manny! Didn’t zey know what to do wiz a poor ickle mite-mite? Bye-bye. Cuddle down.”
And as she crooned these words low in the ears of the child she crossed the room towards the door, leaving the three young men in a state of subdued ecstasy. Then they all rushed to open the door for her.
But the stolid Southerley retained enough composure to say,—
“I beg your pardon, but—er—er—won’t you let us know your name? You see, as the responsible guardians of the child, we ought to be able to say in a moment, if we are asked, in whose care we’ve placed it.”
The lady stopped in the doorway, laughed in some confusion, and answered hurriedly,—
“Oh—oh, yes, of course. My name is Merriman—Miss Merriman. Good-night.”
The next moment she was gone.
The three men went back to the fireplace in complete silence. It was a fitting climax, this visit of the new beauty, to a wonderful day.
Repton broke the spell. Stretching his arms and drawing forth a deep sigh, he said,—
“Well, of all—!”
And then he paused.
Southerley pulled a chair up to the fire, arranged his feet over the fender to the exclusion of his companions, and became sentimental.
“Odd how pretty that baby talk sounds from a woman’s lips!” he said musingly. “I’ve always thought it so silly. But after hearing that handsome woman use it—by Jove!—I begin to see there’s some meaning in it after all!”
“She’s certainly handsome,” said Repton, “very handsome. And handsome inside and out, mind. The way she looked at that child showed the sort of woman she was—motherly, domestic,safe. By-the-bye, Bayre, there’s your ideal ready to hand, my boy!—gentle, placid, slow-moving, possibly not too quick-witted, and handsome besides. What could you wish for more?”
But before Bayre could reply, Southerley struck in, with some irritation,—
“What’s it got to do with him? He’s too much taken up with Miss Eden to have any thoughts to spare for anybody else. I suppose he doesn’t intend to monopolise all the women in the world!”
“I don’t know that I’ve monopolised so much as one yet,” said Bayre, meekly, from his corner.
He had thrown himself back in a chair away from the others, and was looking thoughtful.
“What’s the matter, Bayre?” asked Repton.
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Bless me! You don’t say so. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going,” said Bayre, rising slowly from his chair with the same grave look on his face, “to put it into words, and to put those words into a letter. Good-night, you fellows!”
And with a nod he went out of the room.
But when it came to the point of taking pen in hand and beginning that momentous letter to Miss Eden, Bayre found his courage fail him. And instead of expressing the idea of which he had spoken, he contented himself with giving her the bare details of the adventure with the baby, the loss of the letter which had been on the child, and the appearance on the scene of the opportune Miss Merriman. Then he ran out, posted his letter, which he had written in studiously careful terms, that she might not think he was presuming upon their short acquaintance, and went back to his room in a state of considerable suspense.
The suspense continued for days, and went on for a whole fortnight, for Miss Eden vouchsafed no reply.
In the meantime, however, neither Miss Merriman nor the other two young men appeared to take greatly to heart the unexpected continuation of the period of their guardianship of the miraculous baby. Every day these three good fathers, mindful of their responsibilities, called dutifully at the ground-floor sitting-room, where they interviewed the object of their solicitude, and expressed their gratitude to Miss Merriman in trifling gifts of flowers and bonbons, which she was reluctant to accept, but which, as they pointed out to her, she was bound to allow them to bring, since she refused to let them pay for the large quantities of bread-and-butter and sponge-cake, milk and beef-tea, which theirprotégéconsumed.
So that the period of suspense proved entirely supportable to two out of the three young guardians, and it was only Bayre who chafed under it.
He pointed out that they could not allow Miss Merriman to burden herself indefinitely with the care of another person’s child, and grew so fervid in his conscientious scruples on this head that nothing would satisfy him but to get leave of absence again (not without difficulty and even perjury in a mitigated form) and to return to Guernsey with the avowed intention of solving the mystery of the child’s parentage, and with an unavowed intention which both Repton and Southerley had no difficulty in divining.
The weather had changed for the worse since his first journey to the islands. It blew a gale as he crossed, and the snow and sleet drove in his face as he persisted in remaining on deck, watching for the first glimpse of the rocky coast.
But the atmosphere was not clear enough for him to discern anything until the vessel was close to harbour, and the thin white covering to road and roof, cliff and steeple, made everything ghostly and dismal in the light of a grey March day.
Bayre went straight to Madame Nicolas’ house, and, as he had taken the precaution to telegraph, he found an appetising breakfast waiting for him.
Keeping Madame in conversation, all with one object in view, he began by questioning her on indifferent subjects, and gradually worked round to the one thing of which his heart and mind were full.
Whether Madame had heard anything of the adventure with the baby he did not know, as she did not mention it, nor did he.
It was after a little pause for breath on her side that he presently asked, as if the matter were of no particular interest to him,—