“Well, I will not trouble you now. I—I will come again when you are better. Till then,au revoir, au revoir.”
Old Mr Bayre looked up in surprise. His visitor was already at the door, and the younger man, agitated and curious, was by this time on his feet.
“You will have some coffee with me,” said the host, placing his hand upon a spring-bell on a table beside him.
“No, no, my friend, another time, another time.”
Monsieur Blaise was already out of the room, and as old Mr Bayre at once turned away and looked at the fire with no more interest in the visitors, his nephew, with a formal bow of which his host took no notice, followed his companion out of the room.
They passed through the handsome outer saloon, and the smaller one, and found Marie Vazon waiting in the hall. The girl looked from the one face to the other with sly eyes, but Monsieur Blaise said nothing until he and the younger man were out of the house.
Half-way down the avenue he drew a long breath, took off his hat, and wiped his bald forehead with a large coloured silk handkerchief. His face was pale, almost haggard, and his eyes still had the same scared expression as before.
“Mon Dieu!” cried he, “I have had such a shock! I have made such a discovery!”
“Well, what is it? what is it?” cried Bayre, in a fever.
But the older man drew in his lips, recovered himself, and shook his head.
“I am no spy upon my neighbours,” said he. “I would not bring disgrace upon them, no, no matter what they had done. But—I would not marry into that family—for fifty thousand pounds!”
Bayrestared at Monsieur Blaise as he stood shivering and wiping his face with a trembling hand under the bare trees of the avenue. That he was suffering from severe excitement was evident. All the pink colour had left his face; his eyes looked dull and glassy. If he had seen a ghost, or if he had been witness of some frightful crime, he could not have looked less like the comfortable, placid Monsieur Blaise of every day.
“Surely,” said the younger man, persuasively, “you can have no scruples about confiding your discovery to me. Remember I am a member of his family; I am his nephew. I am therefore the last person who could or would help to bring disgrace upon the house.”
But Monsieur Blaise shook his head with decision.
“You say you are his nephew? Well, I don’t doubt it, I never have doubted it since you told me so, but Monsieur Bayre did not receive you as a relation; he did not even speak to you.Hein!”
This was undeniable. Bayre was silent.
“If you belong to his family,” went on Monsieur Blaise, after a short pause, during which he had put on his hat and resumed his walk down the avenue, “it is for you to make inquiries, to consult your lawyers, if you choose. But it is not for me to interfere in the matter, neither is it for me to discuss it. We will, if you please, converse upon some other topic.”
But Bayre was not to be put off like this.
“Surely,” he said, “you have told me too much, or not enough. You have confessed that you received a great shock while sitting with me in my uncle’s presence; how can it, then, be indiscreet to admit what discovery it was that affected you so much?”
“I may have been mistaken,” said Monsieur Blaise, beginning to recover his normal colour, and turning his small eyes cunningly towards his companion, as if to find out how much he had betrayed. “I was excited, nervous. We had talked ourselves, you and I, into a sort of feverish, suspicious state, in which trifles seemed to become mountains. What I saw was nothing; well, what I fancied may have been nothing too.”
Bayre tried to recall every smallest fact connected with their short visit. His uncle had sat between the fireplace and a high window; behind him and his table Bayre remembered that there had hung a curtain, or piece of tapestry, which fell in deep folds. The corner was a dark one; his own attention had been riveted upon his uncle and Monsieur Blaise. It was quite possible that some person might have peeped out from behind the hangings during that short interview, and that Monsieur Blaise might have seen and recognised the face of the intruder.
“Did you see, or fancy you saw, anyone in the room besides our three selves?” he asked abruptly.
By the sudden access of agitation in his companion Bayre saw that his guess was a good one.
“What do you mean? I saw nothing, nobody, no, of course not,” he stammered out incoherently. “It is like that, monsieur, I do not see nothing nor nobody. And I will not be interrogated as if by a judge of instruction. If you have the desire of making inquiries you will do so without my assistance. I have seen nothing and I will say nothing.”
And he made as if to button up his own mouth by pressing the large, loose lips together until they looked like a long white seam.
They had reached the open road, and were about to turn to the right, in the direction of the landing-place, when they heard certain sounds behind them which made them look guiltily, anxiously, at each other.
A girl’s voice that spoke in a sort of sigh, a girl’s light footsteps on the hard road. That was all. It was with a guilty look that they met Miss Eden when she called to them to stop. She had followed them from thechâteau, her hat held on with one hand and no sort of wrap round her shoulders. She was out of breath, and her eyes were full of distress and anxiety.
Monsieur Blaise raised his hat in silence and would have pushed on without further greeting. But she stood in front of them, with determination in her set face.
“Monsieur Blaise, Mr Bayre!” cried she, passionately, “you shall not pass me without speaking. I demand to know why you came and why you went away so quickly. What have you learnt? What have you found out?”
It maddened Bayre to hear the cold and cutting tone in which his companion replied to the unhappy girl.
“Found out, mademoiselle! Found out! I do not understand. We have found nothing out. Is there anything to find?”
She brushed aside these incoherent evasions with an impatient gesture.
“What nonsense!” she cried passionately. “Do you forget that you discussed my guardian’s eccentricity this very morning, and in my presence?”
Monsieur Blaise looked uncomfortable.
“We may have done,” he said vaguely. “I do not remember. We are all eccentric more or less.”
“Why did you come to see him?”
“Why? Why? I—I—we go to see him, to—to—ma foi, mademoiselle, since you have developed eccentricities yourself, since you have the habit of to disappear from your guardian’s house without to inform your friends, I go to your guardian for to formally renounce my pretensions to your hand.”
Bayre was furious at the coolly insolent manner in which Monsieur Blaise made this false statement. But Miss Eden, without allowing him to interfere, went on quietly, her temper quite unruffled,—
“Indeed? You might have withdrawn them this morning when you met me. But then you were not in that mind.”
“Mademoiselle! You accuse me of—”
“Oh, no, no, I accuse you of nothing. But I appeal to you to tell me why you left the house so quickly. I know from Marie Vazon—”
“Ah! What?”
Both Monsieur Blaise and Bayre awaited her answer eagerly.
“Only this, that your abrupt departure has thrown her into a state of the greatest alarm. I found her in the hall, sobbing and screaming, and rocking herself to and fro. Of course she wouldn’t tell me anything, so I’ve come after you to beg you to relieve my anxiety. Mr Bayre, surelyyouwill speak out!”
“Do you think I wouldn’t if I could?” said Bayre, speaking with as much passion as she had shown herself. “I’ve come away because Monsieur Blaise came away. I know nothing. I’m just as much in the dark as yourself.”
She looked incredulously up into his face.
“I shouldn’t have thought you capable of deceiving me, certainly,” said she, “in a matter so important to me. If my guardian were mad, as you seemed to think, you couldn’t, in mercy, keep such a terrible secret to yourself, for my sake. And if—if it were anything else, why, surely you would give me some idea of what was hanging over us, wouldn’t you? If you knew the frightful state of anxiety in which I’m living!”
And her voice suddenly broke and she burst into tears.
Bayre lost his head.
“My darling, my darling, don’t! If you knew what I feel for you, you’d never believe I could deceive you,” cried he, only conscious of her, and not even aware of the fact that poor Monsieur Blaise, brought thus inopportunely face to face with the girl he wished to jilt, had slipped away and was puffing and panting along towards the shore where the boat was waiting.
Miss Eden sobbed on.
“Don’t, don’t,” whispered Bayre, putting his hand upon the girl’s shoulder with diffident tenderness. “Listen. I don’t know anything;youknow more than I do. I can only guess what it was that that miserable old panting rhinoceros”—he had by this time discovered the escape of his ponderous companion—“saw in your guardian’s room.”
And he related the events of their short visit, and told how obstinately Monsieur Blaise had refused to confess what it was that frightened him.
Miss Eden did not look up, but she presently spoke from under the handkerchief which she was pressing to her eyes. Bayre’s hand was still hovering near her shoulder; he was still bending over her in a coaxing attitude.
“Do you think he’s mad?” she asked.
“He gave no sign of insanity just now. It was old Blaise and I who behaved like lunatics, running away within a few seconds of being introduced into the room, and flying from the house as if we’d been thieves with the police at our heels!”
Miss Eden dried her eyes and looked up.
“Yes,” said she. “And I behaved more like a lunatic than he, too. For when I came back here two hours ago I went into thesalle à mangerand found him there, and it wasIwho stammered and spoke brokenly and in confusion. He watched me quietly, and asked me where I had learnt such erratic habits, and whether I expected a husband to put up with them when I married.”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes, quite quietly, and not as if he cared much whether I went away or not. He asked me where I’d been, and I told him. But he didn’t ask me why I went away, or why I came back again. He didn’t seem to care.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“Ye-es.”
And then she hesitated.
“Something not very complimentary?”
“He said that his young fool of a nephew had been ‘sniffing about’ thechâteau, and, and—”
“Well?”
“He said after all you ought to be welcome to look at the outside of his house as you’d never be a penny the better for what was inside.”
“Well, I’ve never expected to be,” retorted Bayre. “I suppose he’ll find out that I’ve been talking to you, and he’ll be angry with you for that.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I do. Look here. Let me go to him boldly and tell him I want to take you away.”
“Oh, no!”
She tried to run away from him. But Bayre caught her by the wrist and held her, and finding that she was shivering, took off his own overcoat, and insisted, although she struggled and protested, on wrapping her in it.
“Now,” said he, coolly, though the coolness did not extend to his eyes, “you can’t run away without robbing me of my property. I’ll let you go in five minutes, but you must be good and listen to me first. You say you are miserable here—”
“Only lately. It’s all changed suddenly,” said she in a piteous tone.
“Well, youaremiserable, and now that you know there’s something wrong, and that you’ve thrown over old Blaise—”
“I didn’t. He’s thrown me over!”
“Well, well, you may congratulate yourself anyhow, I think. For though I may not be a great match, I’m a little more presentable than he is.”
“What you are has nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, but it has, though. Look here, Miss Eden. By-the-bye, haven’t you got a Christian name?”
She hesitated again for a moment, and then said, in a low voice,—
“Olwen.”
Perhaps it was the fact that she was wearing his overcoat which gave him a sort of proprietary feeling. At any rate it was with the simplest straightforwardness that he proceeded, having learnt her Christian name, to call her by it.
“Look here, Olwen, I’m not a rich man; I’ve not even begun to be a successful one. Perhaps I never shall be anything but a struggling man all my life. I tell you so frankly. Perhaps, I say. But I do feel something in me which tells me that if I had the woman I want to struggle for I should be so strong, so dogged, that I should make my way in the long run; I should live for her, I should fight for her, ah! and in the long run I should grow rich for her.”
“I don’t want to be rich,” remarked Miss Eden, plaintively, from under the overcoat.
“Well, then, I could remain poor for her, which would be easier still. Come, come, don’t you think I’d try to make you happy?”
“I—I don’t think my guardian would say so?”
Bayre laughed.
“Would you ask him then?”
“I should have to. You forget, or you don’t understand. Although he hasn’t been very affectionate to me since I’ve been here—since his own troubles, that is to say—Mr Bayre has been a good and kind friend to me ever since my own father’s death. It is he who has paid for my education, too, so that the little my father left should be allowed to accumulate for me. Now you see why I feel an obligation to consult his wishes as far as possible, and why I feel that I did wrong in running away as I did.”
“Well, you had reason to be alarmed. You have reason still. It’s not safe for you to be in the same house with a madman.”
“You don’t know that he’s mad! I don’t know it!”
“Well, there’s something wrong about him, something that makes me very unwilling to leave you under the same roof with him. Yet it’s a delicate business too. For, after all, he’s my own relation; and even old Blaise felt a reluctance about speaking out in the case of a neighbour and friend.”
The two looked gravely into each other’s face.
“It’s full of difficulties,” she said with a sigh. “I feel that I’m pulled first in one direction and then in the other. Though I’ve never been able to be fond of my guardian, I feel I owe a duty to him. And believe me, I should never have run away, as you call it, if I hadn’t been seized with a sort of terror of what was going on, and felt that I must have time to think—to think by myself. And now, what has my thinking brought me to? Nowhere. I’ve had to come back in a sort of disgrace, and I feel that he looks upon me as a traitor.”
Bayre looked uneasy.
“If even one could trust the servants it wouldn’t be so bad,” said he. “But I loathe those Vazons, and the two other women about the place don’t look very intelligent.”
“They’re both in terror of my guardian, and abjectly servile to Marie Vazon,” explained Miss Eden.
“I wonder if they know anything?”
“If they do, they won’t own it. You don’t understand these cunning peasants as well as I do. As long as they get a living here they’ll be content to know nothing, to see nothing, but what they are told to hear and to see. Now, let me give you back your coat. I’m going back to thechâteau.”
She had assumed a very precise, matter-of-fact manner, which Bayre had to accept as a sign that all sentimental subjects were to be shelved for the present. He submitted in silence to take his coat. Then she held out her hand.
“When are you going back?”
“I don’t know yet. In the meantime, I’m staying at the house by the landing-place.”
The look of joy that flashed over her face showed him how much relieved she was to find that a friend upon whom she could rely was to be so near.
But she would not give him time to profit by this discovery. With one quick, shy, blushing glance at him she fled away in the direction of thechâteau, leaving him strangely excited, and yet comforted, too.
Bayrewent straight back to the landing-place, where, as he had expected, he found that Monsieur Blaise had pushed off without him and was now some distance on his way back to Guernsey. He could even see the recumbent figure of the fickle lover in the stern of the boat; for Monsieur would not undertake the management of the tiller, but left the business of the boat to the two men, and displayed the better part of valour by lying with his head upon the seat and his eyes closed, subduing qualms, both physical and mental, with what success he could.
Bayre found lodgings, as he had proposed, at the little house of a man who lived close to the landing-place, who made money in the summer by bringing visitors to Creux, and filled up his time in the winter and autumn by fishing.
The young man had only a few days’ leave from his duties in town, and was doubtful as to whether he should be able to get an extension, which indeed he scarcely dared to ask for. But he could not tear himself away from the islands without some clearer knowledge than he yet possessed on the subject of the mystery which surrounded his uncle, on account of the effect it might have upon Olwen Eden.
So deeply intent was he upon the solution of this uncanny mystery, so entirely absorbed by his thoughts of the girl, that when he crossed to St Luke’s that evening, and found a letter at Madame Nicolas’ house from Jan Repton, he felt a pang of guilt on discovering that he had almost entirely neglected the mission on which he was supposed to have come.
Repton’s letter ran thus:—
“Dear B.,—Southerley’s going to punch your head for you when you get back, and I think you jolly well deserve it. Here have we been waiting for the wire you promised to send as soon as you found out who it was that landed us with this brat; and I’m ready to bet you’ve forgotten all about us, and it and everything but your own affairs!“I hate a fellow who can’t think of anything else when he’s got a love-affair on hand! Why, I can manage half a dozen at a time, and never miss an appointment or forget to post a letter!“I don’t say Southerley isn’t as bad as you. And there’s another thing. He’s got it into his head that this Miss Merriman is moping because you’re away; so if you get off with a whole bone in your body when he’s done with you, you may think yourself lucky. And I jolly well hope you won’t, for I know very well it was you got us into this mess, and here you’ve left us to bear the brunt of it, and the chaff, and the rest of it! The way that minx Susan grins and cheeks us now is intolerable. And she has the impudence to run up when there’s a Punch and Judy show in the street to ask if we would like her to tell the man to give a show ‘to please the baby!’“And there’s some idiot who’s got a room on the top floor, who will sit with his door open singing some doggerel about ‘Molly and I and the baby!’ at the top of his voice as soon as he hears us on the stairs.“Southerley pretends he doesn’t care, and I don’t suppose he would care as long as he had an excuse to go down and talk to Miss Merriman under pretence of seeing the brat—‘the co-operative kid’ as he calls it. But Miss Merriman seems to be getting rather anxious at our not hearing from you, so I suppose she’s getting tired of the bother of the animal, and no wonder!“What we’re going to do with it when she refuses to look after it any longer I don’t know. But unless I get a wire from you within forty-eight hours, I shall take it to the workhouse myself in a brown-paper parcel and give your name with it. So look out! Yours till the breaking of heads,“Jan R.”
“Dear B.,—Southerley’s going to punch your head for you when you get back, and I think you jolly well deserve it. Here have we been waiting for the wire you promised to send as soon as you found out who it was that landed us with this brat; and I’m ready to bet you’ve forgotten all about us, and it and everything but your own affairs!
“I hate a fellow who can’t think of anything else when he’s got a love-affair on hand! Why, I can manage half a dozen at a time, and never miss an appointment or forget to post a letter!
“I don’t say Southerley isn’t as bad as you. And there’s another thing. He’s got it into his head that this Miss Merriman is moping because you’re away; so if you get off with a whole bone in your body when he’s done with you, you may think yourself lucky. And I jolly well hope you won’t, for I know very well it was you got us into this mess, and here you’ve left us to bear the brunt of it, and the chaff, and the rest of it! The way that minx Susan grins and cheeks us now is intolerable. And she has the impudence to run up when there’s a Punch and Judy show in the street to ask if we would like her to tell the man to give a show ‘to please the baby!’
“And there’s some idiot who’s got a room on the top floor, who will sit with his door open singing some doggerel about ‘Molly and I and the baby!’ at the top of his voice as soon as he hears us on the stairs.
“Southerley pretends he doesn’t care, and I don’t suppose he would care as long as he had an excuse to go down and talk to Miss Merriman under pretence of seeing the brat—‘the co-operative kid’ as he calls it. But Miss Merriman seems to be getting rather anxious at our not hearing from you, so I suppose she’s getting tired of the bother of the animal, and no wonder!
“What we’re going to do with it when she refuses to look after it any longer I don’t know. But unless I get a wire from you within forty-eight hours, I shall take it to the workhouse myself in a brown-paper parcel and give your name with it. So look out! Yours till the breaking of heads,
“Jan R.”
Bayre did not quite place implicit confidence in Jan’s veracity, or pay too much heed to his dark threats. But he thought it best to send a telegram of a reassuring but vague character, and then he reflected that he had really better be pushing his inquiries in the direction Jan desired.
So on the following morning he went to the house of the Vazons, and getting inside by a ruse, with a boy who was delivering logs for fuel, he found himself in the presence not only of Marie Vazon of the sly eyes, but of the baby.
And having perhaps become both more suspicious, more observant, and more experienced of late in the matter of infants, he had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the baby in the cradle was not his cousin, but was a peasant’s child of an age more tender than that of the hero of their adventure.
He jumped at once to the conclusion that Marie was passing this child off as old Monsieur Bayre’s for the sake of the payment she got from him. It was strange that a father could be thus deceived, he thought; but old Mr Bayre was not an ordinary man, so that it was perhaps too much to expect that he should be an ordinary father.
“What has become of Monsieur Bayre’s child?” he asked the girl point-blank, seeing at once, by the guilty look in her eyes, that she knew she was found out.
“This is M. Bayre’s son, monsieur,” said she, promptly.
“Oh, no, it’s not. I don’t suppose this child is more than ten or twelve months old,” hazarded he, making a guess which was still over the mark. “And this child’s hair is red, what there is of it, while Mr Bayre’s son has hair almost flaxen.”
The girl frowned sulkily, and her eyes shifted uneasily from his face to the child’s and back again.
“It’s no business of yours, at any rate,” she said defiantly, at last.
“Oh, yes, it is. You are being paid to look after one child, and you seem unable or unwilling to tell what you’ve done with it, and you try to pass off a much younger one for that given into your care. Such a matter is everybody’s business, and mine especially, as I am a member of Monsieur Bayre’s family.”
“You’d better complain to Monsieur Bayre, then,” said Marie, sullenly.
“That’s just what I’m going to do.”
The girl looked scared for a moment; then she shrugged her shoulders.
“Go then, tell him, and see what thanks you get,” said she, insolently. “Go, I say, if you dare.”
And she shot a steely glance at him out of her blue eyes.
Defiant as her manner was, Bayre detected in the girl’s face an even greater uneasiness than he would have expected, considering the hold the Vazons, father and daughter, appeared to have over their nominal master. He pondered this fact as he left the cottage, and determined to carry out his threat at once.
This he found to be impracticable, however, for on presenting himself at thechâteauhe found himself confronted by Pierre Vazon himself, who surlily refused him admittance, saying that Monsieur Bayre had given strict orders that he was not to enter the house.
Thus denied, Bayre considered himself justified in further attempts to obtain information by outside means, and after passing an uneasy day on the island, without one glimpse either of Olwen or of his uncle, he returned to the neighbourhood of thechâteauafter dark, in the hope that when lighting up time came he might be able to make more discoveries.
The great house looked desolate indeed with only a room lighted here and there, and with whole suites in darkness. The great hall with the long row of high windows, in which he had seen the groping figure which he believed to have been that of his uncle tearing up the floor-boards, had no light glimmering behind the dusky panes.
The room in which Bayre and Monsieur Blaise had been received, and the two apartments through which they had passed on their way thither, were equally in darkness.
But at the corner of the mansion, where the strings of dead Virginia creeper hung over the two narrow barred windows high up in the wall, there was a moving light behind the closed shutters.
Bayre’s attention was instantly attracted. This was the room, this closed room at the end of the house, on the first floor, at the window of which Olwen had seen, or fancied she saw, a woman’s hand thrust out.
Was it a woman who was moving about inside now? It was only the flickering of the light above and between the cracks of the shutters which betrayed the presence of something human within. But slight as the indication was, it was unmistakable, and Bayre felt that he could not rest until he should have discovered whether some one was really imprisoned there.
He stood back on the broad path and calculated his chances of reaching these windows as he had done those of the great hall.
But the walls here were of brick, offering no foothold, and the creeper did not appear to be strong enough to bear his weight.
While he was considering what action to take next, the flickering light became stationary, and remained so for some minutes.
Stepping further back to get a better look at the barred and shuttered windows, and at the narrow slit of light above them, Bayre presently perceived a faint glimmer appearing in like manner above the shutters of the French windows on his right. By the flickering he could see that while the light above the higher windows was still, that behind the French windows was being carried about.
He crossed the path and came close to the glass, listening. For there were certain sounds to be made out, as of the pushing about of heavy furniture, with an occasional succession of short, sharp raps, as of some person knocking for admittance at a closed door.
Bayre took out his pocket-knife and tried to slip the catch of the window nearest to him. After a few attempts, during which the sounds within became louder, he succeeded; but the slight noise he made over this coincided with a sudden cessation of the sounds within.
There was a rapid step across the floor, and he heard someone breathing heavily on the other side of the still closed shutters. Then the footsteps retreated quickly, and Bayre stood listening, shaking the shutters gently, preparatory to making an attempt to burst them open.
That he was on the track of the mystery at last he felt certain. These strange nocturnal sounds, this haunting of the house by a being who was declared by Olwen to be a woman, would be satisfactorily explained if only he could effect an entrance now while the disturbance was in full swing.
So thought Bayre, and after only a few seconds’ pause he stepped back, with the intention of dealing such a blow upon the shutters as would probably force them open.
But before he could do this he heard a click and the fall of the iron bar with a clanking sound against the wood, and the next moment the shutters flew back and his uncle, with a small lantern in his right hand, stood face to face with him.
Bayre was startled, and an exclamation broke from his lips; for he had never seen on any human face such an expression of rage and defiance, proud, menacing, savage, as now distorted the rugged features, the light eyes, wrinkled cheeks, and long hatchet chin of old Bartlett Bayre.
His voice was hoarse and broken with passion as he cried,—
“I thought so. I thought so. You rascal, you thief! It is you who play the spy upon me, who haunt my house and listen at my doors, you, you, you.”
And as he spoke the old man shuffled out upon the path, lantern in hand, and shook his clenched fist in the young man’s face, panting and husky with rage.
Bayre was taken aback. This was an unexpected turn of events, but one which he felt he ought to have been prepared for. As it was, the angry old man certainly appeared to have right on his side as he stood, his face still convulsed with rage, in front of the man who had thus been caught in an attempt at burglarious entry into his premises.
Bayre saw at once that this loose dark dressing-gown, tied round the waist by a frayed cord, was the very garment in which he had seen his uncle groping on the floor of the great hall on the first day of his investigations; the old man shivered as he stood, slippered and hatless, with his lank and sparse grey locks ruffled by the night wind, clutching at the sides of his collar and holding them together against his lean throat.
“What do you want here? What do you want?” croaked out he, after a pause of a few moments, during which his nephew reflected upon the answer he should give to his accuser.
“I want,” cried young Bayre, boldly, suddenly resolving on the bold course of telling the whole truth without disguise, “to know who the woman is that you have shut up in your house.”
To his surprise, the whole demeanour of the old man changed at once. The convulsive twitchings of his features gave place to a sudden calmness, while he peered into the face of the younger man with a sly intentness which prepared the other for the fact that he had a crafty antagonist to deal with.
Coming quite close to young Bayre, and staring up into his face with the lantern held high enough for them to see clearly into each other’s eyes, he croaked out, in a jeering voice,—
“What’s that to you?”
Young Bayre was thunderstruck. He was prepared for denial, for indignation, for a torrent of abuse. But this cynical speech, which he took for an avowal, struck him dumb. The old man saw his advantage, and went quietly on, in the same aggressive, jibing tone,—
“What business is it of yours if I keep half a dozen women shut up in my house, eh? Are you the master of my house, or the head of my family, that you should interfere with me? If you’ve found a mare’s nest, my friend, don’t come here straining your precious eyes by looking through brick walls and wooden doors, but go to the police, go, go, go.” And with each insulting repetition of the word the old man thrust a skinny finger into his face. “And lay information against me, me,me, master of Creux and benefactor to my neighbours! Say that you, a stranger, a distant relation of the man whose property you covet—”
“I do not covet your property. I’ve never asked you for a shilling!” cried Bayre, hotly.
“No, because you knew very well you would never get it if you did,” retorted the old man, grimly. “Tell the police, I say, that you, a penniless adventurer—”
“I’m no adventurer.”
“A penniless adventurer,” repeated old Mr Bayre, his voice going up into a squeak of rage, “have a notion that there’s a woman concealed in my house! See what they’ll say to you, you pitiful sneak and spy! See what honour and credit you will win for yourself by trying to foul your own nest, to bring disgrace upon the head of your own family!”
Again young Bayre was for the moment dumb; the passion which possessed the old man, the torrent of wounded pride which gushed forth in his speech and glowed in his sunken eyes, impressed his nephew with a sort of respect and remorse, and he began to wonder whether he had not taken fancies, both his own and those of others, for facts too readily.
But even as he began to hunt for suitable words in which to make a sort of apology, there passed suddenly over the withered old face below him an expression of cunning and malice combined which revived all his suspicions and made him stand to his guns.
“If I’ve played the spy, sir,” he said boldly, “you’ve brought my action upon yourself by your own outrageous behaviour. If a sane man will behave like an insane one, if he will surround himself with dubious people and behave in a suspicious way, he has no one to blame but himself if a stranger to the place comes to the conclusion that there’s something about his way of life that wants inquiring into.”
Again the old man appeared to be impressed by his words, and for a moment he remained silent, holding his lantern hanging by his side, and pulling the sides of his dressing-gown yet more closely over his throat.
Then he spoke again, not angrily, not loudly, but with a keen suspicion in his tones.
“Who told you about this woman?” he asked abruptly.
The young man hesitated. He did not wish to implicate Olwen; yet what could he say?
He pointed suddenly to the barred windows above their heads.
“Who is in that room?” he asked sharply.
The old man turned and looked up. There was just a second’s pause. Then he turned again, so abruptly that the lantern nearly swung out of his hand.
“Come and see,” said he in a low voice.
And beckoning his nephew to follow him, he stepped into the house through the open doors of the French window, and setting down his lantern on the polished floor, barred the shutters behind them without another word.
Itwas an apartment which he had not yet seen in which young Bartlett now found himself shut in with his elder namesake. More like one of the galleries of a museum than a room in a private house, this saloon with its panelled walls of white and gold, its pillars and its painted ceiling, was bare in the centre, but lined all along the sides with cabinets and show-cases, full of treasures of all kinds.
The most casual glance at the contents of these cases showed to the least experienced eye that the collection was one of great value. Exquisite specimens of rare porcelain, beautiful enamels, ancient jewels of all countries, weapons of great price, treasures of lace and of embroidery, all were represented here.
Bayre was attracted, in spite of his eagerness to solve the mystery surrounding his uncle, by what he saw. He was just enough of a connoisseur to appreciate and to wish to examine more closely the rare and costly objects around him; and even as his uncle occupied himself in replacing the heavy iron bar across the shutters, he drew near to the first cabinet on the left hand and peered with interest and curiosity at the carved ivories within.
The light was very bad, being supplied solely by the lantern which old Mr Bayre carried with him and had now placed on the floor, but the young man made out enough to prove that report had not exaggerated the beauty and the value of the collection.
As he looked the light grew a little better, and he found old Mr Bayre standing by his side, holding the lantern aloft. The young man was for the moment under the impression that his uncle, softened a little by the interest the treasures excited in his visitor, was courteously enabling him to see them more distinctly.
He turned, pointing with one hand to one of those fantastic jewels which mediæval art loved to devise out of huge mis-shapen pearls, when, coming thus suddenly face to face with the owner of the treasures, he was surprised to find that the light was held, not for him to inspect the jewels, but for their owner to inspect him.
And again young Bayre asked himself whether this lined, haggard, crafty old countenance, with its furrows and the lurking malignity in its half-closed eyes, was that of a sane man or of one who was the victim of mania.
Old Mr Bayre seemed to understand that he had in some measure betrayed himself by the expression of his own countenance, for he tried to laugh away the look of sudden consternation which he saw on his nephew’s face. Showing the gaps between his yellow teeth in a mirthless opening of the mouth which was meant for a genial laugh, he said, in a more conciliatory tone than he had yet used,—
“Some nice things there, eh? Good things, uncommon things? Do you know much about objects of that sort?”
“Not perhaps more than the average Londoner is bound to know through the museums and collections he’s visited,” said the young man, “but enough to know that you have something to be proud of here.”
The old man laughed again, cunningly, as if with some secret enjoyment.
“Worth some thousands of pounds, pictures and furniture and what you see,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of the rest of the cabinets.
“Yes,” said young Bayre, shortly.
He was surprised and disappointed to hear in the old man’s tone something more like the pride of a tradesman at the market value of the goods around him than the tender enthusiasm of the real connoisseur.
Mr Bayre rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking at his nephew out of the corners of his eyes, and then beckoned to him to follow across the room in the direction of a door at the further end, above which there was an elaborate device in white and gold.
Young Bayre followed slowly, reflecting that he did not know by what door he should be finally ejected from the building, and that this might be his last chance of seeing the treasures through which he was passing. His guide, perceiving that he lingered, stopped near the door to say, impatiently and almost contemptuously,—
“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time to see those things, and all the rest besides. Now you’re here you won’t be satisfied, I suppose, until you have been afforded an opportunity of counting up on your fingers the value of every farthing’s worth.”
Bayre said nothing, but again he was surprised. Had the old man been always like this, or was the late crisis in his life answerable for a most singular metamorphosis? Had he made his collection with some ulterior purpose, either of disposing of it at a high price or bequeathing it to the nation with posthumous ostentation?
This latter idea seemed a probable one, he thought, for throughout the old man’s whole demeanour, in every word he uttered and in every look he threw at his nephew, there seemed to run the same idea of rejoicing at what he conceived to be the young man’s disappointed greed.
They passed almost side by side out of the long room into a narrow passage, at the end of which was a steep and inconvenient staircase, which had evidently been an afterthought in the construction of the house.
The old man went up first, dangling the lantern and humming to himself as he went, and making so much noise that it flashed through the mind of the younger man that this might be a warning to someone near at hand to get out of the way.
At the top of the stairs, on a landing as narrow and stuffy as the staircase, Mr Bayre turned round again and said loudly,—
“This is the room, this”—and he thumped at the door on his left as he spoke—“where you say I have a woman concealed. Well, go in and see for yourself.”
Changing his lantern into his left hand, and fumbling for a few suggestive moments, he at last fitted into the lock a key which he took from the pocket of his dressing-gown, and turning it with great deliberation, he threw open the door and ushered his companion into a room so oppressively close that Bayre thought the windows could not have been opened for many days.
Once well inside, however, he forgot this inconvenience in the curiosity which the appearance of the room aroused in him.
It was a long and narrow apartment, with the two shuttered windows at one end, and an enormous satinwood wardrobe, old and rather battered, at the other.
Between the windows was a dressing-table of the makeshift sort, apparently consisting of a pile of boxes covered with an old-fashioned arrangement of faded pink calico and muslin discoloured with dust and age.
On the top was a small mirror on a stand, of the kind that is usually found in servants’ bedrooms, and beside it was a candle burning in a flat candlestick.
Piled up on the available surface of the dressing-table was a heterogeneous mass of small articles, all of women’s use, such as hairpins, ornamental combs for the hair, bracelets, brooches, rings, a powder-puff, some reels of cotton and silk, and a packet of needles.
In front of the dressing-table was a common cane-bottomed chair, over the back of which hung a dressing-gown and the trained skirt of a lady’s silken dress. This garment attracted Bayre’s attention by the old-fashioned pattern of the brocade of which it was composed.
More traces of a woman’s occupation were visible on all sides: on one chair was a pile of laces and fans; on another, a magnificent cloak lined with fur; on a chest in one corner was a great heap of feathers, crumpled artificial flowers, and bits of lace and ribbon; while on the floor lay little heaps of old satin slippers, soiled gloves, and a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends, all appertaining to the feminine toilet.
Young Bayre had not the least doubt that a woman had been in the room quite recently, probably within a few moments of his entrance with the old man. For, with his senses well on the alert, he noted one significant fact—there was dust on the surface of the chest, and there was dust on the stand of the mirror, but there was none on the various articles that lay about the room; they had evidently been taken quite recently from their cupboards and drawers.
Old Mr Bayre’s explanation of what he saw, therefore, was not satisfactory.
“This room,” said he, “is just as it was left by my wife when she took it into her head to run away from me eight months ago.”
“And has the candle been burning in that candlestick for all these eight months?” asked the young man, rashly.
His uncle threw at him a malevolent look, which he felt that his impudence deserved.
“No,” said the old man, shortly, “I was in here myself a few minutes ago.”
Bayre did not believe him. Since his statement that the crumpled finery and women’s trifles had been lying there for months was evidently not true, what confidence could be put in his other assertions? Besides, there was, so the young man felt, something not exactly definable about the disposition of the various things lying about which suggested the hand of a woman rather than the heavier, more careless touch of a man.
And by a sudden inspiration he stepped forward to the chair by the dressing-table and laid his hand upon the brocaded skirt.
It was quite warm.
Bayre turned to his uncle with a significant look and the old man frowned slightly and immediately averted his eyes sullenly.
“Are you not satisfied now?” he asked shortly.
Bayre glanced round the room. There was a door nearly opposite the one by which they had entered. The old man crossed the room testily and threw it open. It was not locked.
“If you are not satisfied yet, you shall be,” said he. “Come this way.”
Leaving the candle burning on the dressing-table, and carrying his lantern as before, he led the way again with heavy steps; and Bayre found himself in another room, large and bare, a state bedroom of an old-fashioned type, with a ponderous wooden bedstead hung with faded damask curtains. Through this room they passed with leisurely steps, the old man always in front, raising his lantern ostentatiously from time to time, and asking every few minutes, in a jeering tone, whether his visitor saw anything he should like to examine further.
And from this room they passed into a corridor, with windows on the one side and a row of doors on the other.
Old Mr Bayre tried the handles of all these and found some open, in which case he insisted on his guest’s entering and making such investigations as he pleased. Sometimes they were locked, and there was much searching for keys, some of which the old man professed to have mislaid, on which occasions he would ask, with elaborate civility, if it was his nephew’s pleasure that he should go and look for them.
But whenever they went into a room they found no trace of any living creature within. Nothing but bare-looking apartments furnished in the taste of a past day—funereal bedsteads, ponderous wardrobes, polished floors, and a mouldy smell of little-frequented, closely-shut-up rooms, where the air remained stagnant for weeks.
Sometimes a rat would scurry across the polished floor, slipping and sliding as he ran in unaccustomed terror, or a loud squeaking and scampering behind the skirting-boards of the room would denote a panic among the mice at the disturbance.
So they went on, not indeed examining every room, but getting a general impression of dead hospitality and of vanished state.
But all the time, as they walked along or when they stood still, Bayre was haunted by the belief that he could hear the pattering of lighter feet than theirs not far off, stopping when they stopped, going on again when they went on.
Again and again he would turn quickly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fancied companion. But the lantern threw no light behind, and if anyone followed them or preceded them he could not discover the fact.
His guide grew jocose at last, humming to himself in a cracked old voice, and making jesting remarks upon his disappointment.
“Young folk love a mystery,” said he, throwing the words over his shoulder, as it were, as he went on, swinging his lantern and clanking his keys along the passages. “Especially if they can manufacture it round the figure of a woman. Now I’ve always hated mysteries and mystery-mongers myself, even when I was a young man. And as for women, I can only say I had nothing to do with them till late in life, and I sincerely wish I had never had anything to do with them at all.”
They had long since left that portion of the building which contained the shut-up rooms, had passed through a long succession of wide attics, which the young man knew must be above the great hall, and had descended to a newer part of the house, where a different atmosphere disclosed the fact that it was less deserted than the rest.
“This,” said old Mr Bayre, “is all we use of the old place now. You shall see my own rooms, young man, since we are here. I dare say you’ll not be in a hurry to call upon me again.”
Uttering these words in the same jibing tone, the old man opened the door of a luxuriously-furnished bed-chamber, where a fire burned brightly on the dogs, throwing out a pleasant perfume of burning logs, and shedding bright reflections upon the polished floor, the ceiling above, and the panels of the dark mahogany furniture.
The half-tester bedstead was massively carved and hung with dark green velvet to match the drawn window curtains, the little stumpy sofa and the two low armchairs. An old retriever, lying on a rug before the fire, wagged his tail lazily on their entrance, but did not get up.
Rather to the young man’s surprise, his uncle motioned him to take one of the armchairs, and proceeded to light two wax candles, which stood on a heavy writing-table at some distance from the fire.
“You shall drink to our next merry meeting,” said he, grimly, as he unlocked a cupboard and took out a massive decanter of gilded Bohemian glass and a couple of oddly-shaped glasses that matched it. “Oh, yes, I insist. You forced your way in, in your tender anxiety to see me. I can’t let you go unrefreshed.”
Bayre felt that he shivered. Yet he scarcely knew why.
The room was warm, cosy, handsome. The greeting of the dog, unceremonious and affectionate to its master, with never a growl or a sniff at the stranger, ought, he thought, to have set him at his ease.
Yet the young man felt that there was something sinister in this hospitality from a man who professed nothing but aversion for him, and he would have refused it if he could.
Mr Bayre, however, was obstinate. Bringing the decanter and glasses to the long, narrow table near the fireplace, where lay some books, papers and a spectacle-case, he poured out some dark liquor that dropped out slowly, and told his guest to drink it off.
“It will keep the cold out on your journey back,” said he.
The young man put the glass to his lips with a suspicion of which he felt ashamed. Old Mr Bayre sipped his with a nod and a sort of smirk. The contents of the glass were a liqueur unknown to the younger man, sweet, strong, heady.
“Drink it,” urged his host. “Do you think I want to poison you?”
His nephew obeyed with a rather hollow laugh. He did not, of course, suppose that his uncle had designs upon his life, but that there was some secret and malevolent intention underlying his grim hospitality the unwilling guest felt sure.
The potent liquor seemed to have a mollifying effect upon old Mr Bayre, who began to stroke the head of his dog, the while he looked meditatively at his guest, and presently said, with abruptness,—
“How long is it since I saw you last, Bartlett?”
“About twenty years, I should think, sir,” replied the young man.
“Ah! and how many do you think will it be before I see you again?”
The question was put with a sort of grim jocularity.
“Am I to judge by the warmth of your reception of me, sir, or by some other criterion?”
The old man laughed, actually chuckled to himself, as he rubbed his knees.
“Ah, well, ah, well,” said he, “I was more amiable once, Bartlett. We don’t grow sweeter as we grow older. Look here, I don’t suppose we shall see much more of each other in the years to come than we have in the years that are past. I don’t see why we should. Do you?”
“N-n-o, sir.”
“But in the meantime we’ll patch up a friendship, if it’s only for half an hour. You shall see some of my things, some that I prize, some that are not shown to everybody. Stay where you are,” he went on, as he rose, and crossing the polished floor poured out a second glass for his nephew and refilled his own. “I’ll bring you something to look at, something you won’t see the counterpart of in any of your London museums.”
As he spoke he went out of the room and fumbled about, by the light of his lantern, with keys and locks, with drawers and cupboards.
Rather despising himself for his own suspicions, young Bayre could not quite conquer them. He therefore flung the second glassful of the liqueur into the fire, where it blazed up fiercely, throwing long tongues of vivid light on the heavy furniture and hangings of the room.
His uncle came peeping to the door, went back again, and returned with an armful of treasures quaint and curious, a gold cup with a notable history, a jewel that had belonged to Marie Antoinette, and many other strange and beautiful things. Together they admired them, the old man at last showing some enthusiasm for his precious curios, and chuckling at the envy his purchases had excited in other connoisseurs.
At length the young man judged that he might take his leave, since he felt convinced he should get no nearer to the truth of the mystery if he were to stay until the following morning. He rose, and making some sort of apology, which came awkwardly from his lips in the singular circumstances, moved in the direction of the door by which he had entered the room.
But his uncle beckoned him to come through the small room from which he had just brought his treasures, and they passed together through this outer chamber to a wide and handsome landing new to the guest.
Here there was a velvet divan against the wall, and a bearskin rug on the floor, while round about, on the panelled walls, there hung, in massive frames, a few large pictures, each one of which was a masterpiece.
There was an oil-lamp suspended from the roof over the staircase, enclosed in a magnificent lantern, which had formerly hung in the mansion of a French nobleman. By the faint light this gave Bayre saw enough of the paintings around him to assure himself that they were worthy of the rest of the collection, and when his uncle signed to him to go down first, he went slowly, gazing about him at every step.
Between the pictures were trophies of shields, swords, spears and other weapons, arranged against the dark oak panelling. He had got half-way down to the first turn in the staircase, when he was startled by a shrill scream in a woman’s voice.
Turning quickly, the young man saw his uncle on the step behind him, with a heavy Indian war-club uplifted in his hands, and an expression on his withered face and in his sunken eyes which could only be described in one word—murderous.
Itwas the work of a moment. The scream, the turn, the threatening gesture, then the dropping of the weapon and an abrupt change on the old man’s face, accompanied by a loud, forced laugh. Bayre scarcely realised what it all meant, even as he stepped hastily down to the half-landing and looked up into the misty recesses of the galleried floor above.
Then from out of the dimness he saw a face, the face of Olwen Eden; and if he had not known before what the look and gesture meant which he had surprised in his uncle, he knew now.
And there passed suddenly through his heart a great throb of joy, of exultation, for he saw in the white face the look every man longs to see on the countenance of the woman he loves—the look which is an avowal and a promise.
Old Mr Bayre, still laughing harshly, replaced the club among the other weapons on the wall. But his hands were not steady, for it fell with a crash to the ground, and then slid down the stairs to young Bayre’s feet.
The visitor thought it prudent to pick up the weapon and to retain it for future defensive purposes. His uncle left off laughing suddenly.
“Give that to me,” he said.
“Not yet, sir. When I take my leave of you will be soon enough.”
Old Mr Bayre uttered an indignant grunt, but before he could speak, Olwen had run down the stairs past him and stood by the young man’s side.
“What are you doing here?” asked the old man, gruffly.
She turned and looked up.
“I’ll show him the way out,” she said. “I can draw the bolts myself and turn the key. And that will save you the risk of catching cold.”
With a grunt and a muttered grumble, Mr Bayre was apparently on the point of retreating up the stairs; but pausing for an instant to look down upon the young people, something in their attitude struck him, as he peered down by the light of his lantern and of the dim lamp above, and he descended the stairs with leisurely footsteps, keeping his eyes fixed upon his nephew.
“I can show him out,” said the old man, with disagreeable emphasis. “I shall be delighted to. Olwen, you can go back to your room.”
The girl hesitated and held out her hand.
“Good-bye, Mr Bayre,” said she.
The old man placed himself between them, but the young one would not be put off. He took the girl’s hand and held it in his for a moment, saying, in a voice the significance of which was unmistakable, “Good-bye. And—thank you.”
She ran upstairs, and the two men, the younger still holding the club, were left face to face on the little square half-landing.
The look of veiled malignity on the old man’s face was as strong as ever.
“You had better not indulge any thoughts of my ward, Bartlett,” said he, drily, as soon as the last sound of the girl’s light footsteps had died away in the gallery above. “For she will marry money, money, money. There’s no satisfaction in anything but money, and money she must have. Not mine. I have other uses for mine.”
“Of course, sir,” said the young man, more disgusted than ever with his old relation, in whom avarice appeared to have swallowed up every feeling of good-nature, of affection, and of ordinary human kindness, “you have a right to do as you please with your own property, and to entertain what opinions you please about the value of money and its place in the world, but I should have thought you might make allowance for the difference between the feelings of an old man and those of a young girl. Surely if she doesn’t think money the one thing needful she might have a voice in her own destiny?”
“She’ll think as I do when she’s as old as I,” retorted the amiable old gentleman, promptly. “And in the meantime I’m going to save her from doing anything foolish. So be warned. Come along.”
As the young man declined to go first, his uncle led the way into the great shadowy hall, where their footsteps echoed in dark recesses and among the tall pillars which supported the staircase.
“You’ll remember what I’ve said?” said the old man as he drew back the bolts of the heavy front door, which was not that by which visitors were usually admitted, but was a state entrance now apparently unused.
“Yes, and I’m much obliged to you for that and—all your other kind acts.”
Old Mr Bayre, with his hand still on the bolts, laughed again boisterously.
“Oh, you’re thin-skinned,” said he. “And nervous, I suppose. You don’t seem to understand that you had no more right to make a forced entrance into my house, as I caught you doing, than if you were a common tramp. And you well deserve the fright I gave you when you thought—you thought—Ha, ha! you thought, I suppose, that I was going to brain you with that club!”
“It did look like it,” said the young man, shortly.
The old man glanced at the weapon, which was still in his nephew’s hand.
“Well, well, you were mistaken. People don’t do those things,” said he. “So now you can put that down and get out as quickly as you like.”
As he spoke he opened the door, letting a gust of cold night air blow into the hall, force back the heavy door, and whirl the skirt of his dressing-gown about him like a sheath. And so, inhospitable, grim to the last, he let his nephew pass out without another word, and shut the door behind him with a loud clang.
Young Bayre shuddered, not with the remembrance of the peril he could not doubt that he had escaped, but at the thought that Olwen was shut up in the house with this half-insane old man, who was no doubt irritated against her on account of the part she had played in the events of his own visit.
Bayre could not endure this thought. It was true that his uncle had shown towards the young girl none of the strange and startling animosity which he had not scrupled to exhibit to himself. But with the belief strong in his mind that such eccentricity as that of the old man could not be far removed from insanity, Bayre wondered whether the fact of her having interfered on his behalf, as she had done, might not have inflamed her guardian against her.
Yet what could he do? He could not return to the house; indeed, any such attempt would be more likely to do harm than good to the object of his solicitude.
Bayre was perplexed, troubled, confounded by all he had gone through.
That there was a mystery about his uncle and his great lonely house was undoubted: that he had someone shut up there, as Olwen believed, seemed almost as certain. The strange manner in which he had taken care to open no room too quickly, and to give any person who might be within ample time for concealment, remained in the young man’s mind as a most significant fact.
Was it his young wife? And if so, what was her mental condition? Remembering that ghastly display of soiled and ancient finery in the room with the barred windows, Bayre was inclined to think that imprisonment might have turned the brain of the captive, whoever she might be. And ugly doubts of his uncle, of whose malignity he had had ample proofs, rose in his mind again. What if he should make an attempt to reduce his bright young ward to the condition of the mysterious prisoner whose existence Olwen herself suspected?
The thought was such a terrible one that Bayre suddenly went back towards the great house, filled with vague longing to rescue the young girl from the shelter of such a doubtful home.
As he came near he saw a window in the middle of the building open, and a hand, the very turn of which he recognised, dark as it was, waving a handkerchief to him as he stopped.
He saw no face; he heard no sound. But there was something in the action that comforted him; for he had an idea that it was meant to put heart into him, and hope. He waved his own handkerchief in return, in silence also. Then the window closed and all was darkness again.
With a heart full of tender longings, but also with vague fears, he turned and went away.
He got into the avenue, and thence into the road; but before he was half-way to his lodging he was sure that he was being followed. It was not a pleasant sensation, with the doubts he had concerning the goodwill of the inhabitants of the island towards him. And after a time, during which he had ascertained beyond a doubt that his suspicions were correct, Bayre doubled back quickly, and discovered, as he had half-expected, the lean form of Pierre Vazon hidden behind a clump of brambles.
“Hallo!” cried he. “Following me, eh?”
Pierre did not appear to be taken aback by the discovery. He drew himself up at once, and said,—
“Precisely, monsieur. I was following you. And I only wanted to be at a safe distance from thechâteaubefore I spoke to you.”
“Well, we are a long way off now.”
“Yes, yes.” The man looked at him with sly eyes which were, the young man thought, as disagreeable in their way as his uncle’s were in another. If there was no malignity in those of Vazon, there was much cunning.
“And now, what have you to say?”
Pierre came very close to him.
“Am I too bold in asking whether you are anxious to find out the mystery of the great lonelychâteau, monsieur?” he asked in a thick whisper.
Bayre could not wholly repress a convulsive movement at these words.
“Mystery! Is there a mystery?” he asked, trying to speak carelessly.
Pierre laughed softly under his breath.
“Oh, I think monsieur is sure of that!”
“Well, if there is, what business is it of yours, or of mine?”
“Well, monsieur, my business is that of my master, whoever he may be,” said Pierre, in the same subdued key. “And yours, I suppose, is to learn something about your relation—and his wealth.”
These last words he said very slowly, with deep meaning.
“My uncle’s wealth,” replied Bayre, sharply, “as you call it, is not my affair, nor will it ever have any concern for me.”
“It might have,” said Pierre, slowly. “With a little word in your ear, sir, if you would choose that I should say it, your uncle’s wealth might be a very interesting matter to you.”
“Why, you old rascal, do you suppose I should levy blackmail upon my own relation?” cried Bayre, indignantly.
“Ah, well, it does him very little good, monsieur. Even his collection, which pleases all the world, has ceased to give him much pleasure,” said Pierre. “So much money, money, shut up in pictures, and enamels, and nicknacks. That is so,hein!”
Vazon understood his master pretty well, Bayre thought, as he gave the would-be betrayer another look.
“And he has a secret, you say?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Which you are ready to sell to me?”
“Well, well, who has a greater right to it than you, his near relation? And secrets are worth money, money. And young men like you, monsieur, can do with money, eh?”
And the peasant, like a rough Mephistopheles, came close to his ear.
Bayre drew back and looked down at him.
“Well, look here, much as I want money—I don’t deny that—I’d rather scrape along through life on as many pence a day as my uncle has pounds than buy his secrets from the vermin who take his pay and are ready to sell their master!”
And with a gesture of unutterable contempt Bayre turned away and made briskly for the cliff.
He heard a mocking laugh behind him, and the word “Fool!” uttered in no very subdued tone, as he reached the path which led to the cottage where he was staying.