Thisinterview with Pierre Vazon gave Bartlett Bayre much food for reflection.
That the peasant and his daughter had some hold upon his uncle of a doubtful kind he had long felt sure. Now, however, he could no longer entertain any doubts on the subject.
The worst of it was, that the words used by Pierre Vazon, his tone, his whole attitude, pointed rather to guilt than to madness in his employer. If he had had convincing proofs of his master’s insanity, the peasant would surely not have waited to make it known to a chance visitor to the island, but would have communicated with old Mr Bayre’s legal advisers, whose address could scarcely be unknown to so astute and watchful a person.
Strong though his suspicions of his uncle were, yet stronger was the young man’s disgust at the treachery of the peasant who had lived upon his master’s bounty for so long. And he began to find excuses for the savagery of the old man who, living shut up as he did, after having experienced two cruel blows to his affections, was deceived, betrayed, and perhaps bullied, by creatures meaner than himself.
And then it occurred to him even to excuse the frenzy which had presumably led to his uncle’s intended attack on himself. How would the recluse, living in himself, brooding always over his wrongs and his losses, regard such an attempt as his own nephew had made to get into his house?
Bayre saw the matter now in a new light, and determined to make one more effort to solve the mystery of his uncle’s life, but to make it, not from the outside, in aggressive fashion, but in a mood more sympathetic towards the object of his surmises.
He was in this milder mood when, on the following morning, he met Olwen Eden on the seashore, watching the gradual rising of the water, as the tide came in, round the bases of the pillar-like rocks that fringed the island.
By the way in which she turned at his approach, very slowly, and without surprise, Bayre knew that she had been expecting to see him, perhaps waiting for him to find her.
“I’ve been anxious about you,” said he, as he took her hand.
Already there was a pleasant sense of shy freemasonry between them. No ordinary “Good-morning’s,” “How do you do’s?” and the like worrying necessities of the casual acquaintance were needed between them any longer.
“Anxious! Why?”
“Because of what happened last night. I was afraid he might be angry with you for taking my part.”
“Taking your part? How did I do that?”
“Well, I think, if you hadn’t cried out when you did, that my uncle would have brained me.”
“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I screamed. But, do you know, afterwards, when you’d gone away and he called me out on the landing to speak to me, and to tell me what had happened, I think I began to feel there was some excuse for him.”
“I feel that too,” said Bayre.
And then they both began to look at each other shyly and to laugh heartily at the same moment.
“What did he say?” asked Bayre, at last.
“I can’t tell youall,” said she, with a demure look. “What he said demands considerable expurgation for your ears. We will say that he hinted mildly that the front door is a more desirable entrance for a dutiful and affectionate nephew than the drawing-room window. Will that do?”
Bayre laughed again.
“I feel that myself, I assure you. But, on the other hand, hasn’t he wiped out my offence by attempting to retaliate with an Indian war club?”
“Now let’s be serious,” said she, when they had exhausted their merriment over this view of the case. “He takes the matter very seriously indeed, I can tell you. And when I suggested that his eccentricity might well seem like insanity to a stranger, and that it made you nervous to know that I was in the house, he said that was no excuse for your action. And really, I almost think he was right.”
“So do I. And I mean to apologise to him.”
“I think he would rather not see you again, even for that.”
“But I want to apologise. I want also to put him on his guard against certain persons who are more likely to do him injury than I am.”
She looked at him steadily.
“Do you think he doesn’t know? He’s not mad, Mr Bayre. There’s something mysterious about him and about the place, but I don’t think it’s that. Last night he spoke to me in a way no madman ever could have done.”
“Don’t you know that many insane people could pass for sane, and do so pass? There are many forms of brain disease. There’s the insanity of delusions; there’s that which comes on in paroxysms and leaves the victim calm and even rational in the intervals. How can you explain such a scene as that I witnessed with my own eyes when I saw my uncle destroying his own house?”
Olwen looked puzzled.
“I’ve seen him tapping the walls, as if listening for some expected answer,” admitted she in a low voice. “And then I’ve wondered whether he onlyfanciedthat there was some person hidden about the house. But at other times—”
“Well!”
“I’ve thought differently, as you know.”
“Thereisa woman hidden in the house,” said Bayre, confidently.
And he described to her what he had seen on the previous night in the room with the barred windows. Olwen was not surprised.
“After all,” she said presently, “there’s something in what he said, that it’s no business of ours if he does keep some person shut up in the house.”
“No business of ours?” cried Bayre. “If he keeps a woman shut up against her will!”
“Ah, but it can’t be against her will,” said Olwen, “for there’s no doubt she could make herself heard if she chose. Remember, this place is a regular haunt of tourists in the summer; they come over by dozens to see Mr Bayre’s collection. Now how is it possible, considering that you can get round the house without difficulty, that a woman could be shut up against her will in it, with only a feeble old man as jailer? You can see that it’s impossible.”
“But she may have only been there a few months, or weeks, since the tourist season?” suggested Bayre, half-heartedly.
For indeed Olwen’s objection seemed to be a reasonable one.
“But I’ve been here all that time,” rejoined she. “And though I have the same feeling as you, that there is someone shut up there, I can’t understand how she can be kept there against her will. It’s true I don’t go all over the house; but I do go all round it. And if this absurd thing were possible, that a live woman were imprisoned there, I can’t believe that she wouldn’t have made me some sign during all this time.”
This did indeed seem conclusive, though it left the matter more mysterious than ever.
“It’s only during the last few weeks that you’ve had this idea of a woman shut up there?” said he.
“Yes. Since your first visit. I remember talking to you one day about romance, and your teasing me a little about my ambition to write novels. Well, now that I’ve come in contact with romance, I don’t like it at all; and I’d willingly exchange this uneasy feeling I always have that something’s going to happen—something mysterious, awful—for a nice, tame, flat, commonplace existence such as they describe in books by the word ‘suburban.’ ”
Bayre laughed.
“No,” said he. “Believe me, you’d better suffer the ills you know, the imaginary lady who, after all, doesn’t interfere with you, and the rather lonely existence you lead here, than fly to the cold mutton, the cheap piano and the villa one brick thick, which are some of the suburban ills you dream not of.”
He said this fiercely, fighting down that ugly subconsciousness that the one-brick-thick villa, or the even lower horror of the cheap flat, was all that he could reasonably hope to offer that foolish woman, whoever she might be, who would ever consent to link her life with the clerk of small salary and unsatisfied ambition.
Perhaps the quick-witted girl guessed something of that which was in his mind, for her answer was given in very gentle, almost soothing, tones.
“I think the thickness of the villa must depend a good deal upon the character of the tenants,” she prettily said.
And Bayre smiled shyly, wishing that he dared say more. But she would not give him time. He was to remember that she had thrust aside all sentiment, had banished it from their intercourse. They were to behave to each other as if that crazy avowal of his love for her had never been offered. Bayre looked wistful, but he submitted. A time would come—perhaps!
“I’m grateful to you for one thing, at any rate,” she said, following the train of her thoughts rather than that of the conversation, “that you’ve got rid of Monsieur Blaise for me.”
“I!” echoed Bayre.
“Yes, you,” said Olwen, as she began to climb the steep path to the top of the cliff. “I have an idea that, but for your coming, and the mysterious visit to my uncle to which it led, I should have dropped at last, in a helpless sort of way, into the lion’s mouth.”
“You wouldn’t!” cried Bayre, indignantly. And hastening after her up the slope, he hissed out in her ear, “If I thought there was any danger of that, I’d stay here, throw up my appointment, spoil my chances in life, such as they are, and stick here like a limpet till I’d persuaded you to spoil your chances too, to come away with me, though it wouldn’t even be to the jerry-built villa, but to two rooms on some dingy top-floor, with a man who would give his life for you!”
Perhaps this bland superiority to sentiment which Miss Eden had worn so bravely was only a mask after all. Certain it is that, as she now turned fiercely and haughtily round on him, addressing him as if he were the lowest of slaves, there burned in her bright eyes a fire which was that neither of anger nor of contempt, while there was something inviting, something sympathetic in the very gesture with which she made as if to beat off her too passionate lover.
“Didn’t I forbid you to talk like that to me? How dare you? Do you suppose I want to starve myself, or to see you starve?” she asked, with her pretty head held very high and her breast heaving with excitement. “Understand, once for all, I forbid you to talk of those things. You’re to go back to your office and work, work, work; and you’re to spend the next ten years of your life perhaps in struggling, struggling to get the hearing that comes to every man who has anything to tell. And I’m going back to my life, which is not such a bad one after all. And if I liked to marry another Monsieur Blaise—(if there’s another such treasure about who would have me)” she added with demure fun sparkling in her eyes—“why, it’s no business of yours, and I’m quite at liberty to do it if I like. There!”
With which girlish challenge Miss Eden turned again, and continued her scramble upwards, not, however, disdaining the help of a friendly but respectful hand when the way was rough or the ground slippery.
“May I just venture to ask,” said Bayre, when they arrived rather breathless at the top of the cliff, “whether you mean to beguile the time with any more novel-writing?”
And if there had been mischief in her eyes during her last speech, it was his turn to be quietly humorous now. She drew herself up defiantly.
“Oh,I havebeguiled it in that way,” she said promptly. “I’ve written a whole one since you were here last.”
“Won’t you let me see it? Being an unsuccessful writer myself, I’m a first-class critic ready-made.”
She shook her head and smiled, looking down.
“Oh, I don’t for a moment suppose it would stand criticism, especially your criticism.”
“Why especially mine?”
“I know, from what you said to me before about my lack of experience, that you’re not prepared to be complimentary.”
“Compliments do a novel no good, either when they’re spoken or when they’re written. What you want to make a book successful is criticism that’s absolutely venomous. Couldn’t you trust me to supply that?”
The girl threw him a bright glance.
“No,” said she, mischievously, as she turned and ran away, leaving him more in love with her than ever.
This interview with the girl he loved acted upon Bartlett Bayre as a powerful stimulant, and under its influence he decided not to delay one moment, but to go once more up to thechâteauand to see his uncle again.
In the apologetic mood in which he now found himself, he felt, without much reason, perhaps, that he would find admission easier than before. He was not, however, called upon to make the attempt, for on entering the avenue which led to the great house, he came face to face with his uncle, wrapped to the chin in a stout ulster, taking a brisk constitutional up and down under the bare trees.
“Oh, it’s you again, is it?” said old Mr Bayre, without removing his old pipe from his mouth.
“Yes, sir, I’ve come to apologise.”
“Good Heavens! that’s news indeed!”
“And I’ve come to warn you that you are putting confidence in certain people who don’t deserve it,” went on the young man, taking no notice of his uncle’s sneer.
The old man looked him full in the eyes.
“Whom do you mean?” said he.
“Come a little way with me, sir, and I’ll show you—without one word, too,” answered the young man.
His uncle continued to look at him with scrutinising eyes for some moments; then, agreeing to the proposition with a simple nod, he went out through the gate at the end of the avenue side by side with him.
The young man led the way towards the cottage of the Vazons without a word more, and his uncle being equally taciturn, they trudged on together, in the face of a keen wind, in dead silence.
They met no one on the way, and when they came to the cottage they walked quickly past the window, and the younger man lifted the latch of the door and led the way into the comfortable living-room, which was kitchen as well.
The only occupant of the room, as it chanced, was the baby in its cradle, so that nothing could have been easier than was the unmasking of the two conspirators.
Young Bayre crossed the room quickly, turned the cradle to the light, and pointed down at the child.
“You are paying the Vazons for the care of a child, sir,” said he. “Is this the one?”
The old man uttered an exclamation, and at that moment the sound of voices brought Marie into the room.
One glance at the faces of the two gentlemen showed her that her fraud was discovered, and she uttered a low, frightened cry.
Old Mr Bayre caught her by the arm in a tumult of rage.
“That child,” cried he, in a shaking voice, a voice full not only of anger but of fear. “Whose is it?”
She looked from the one man to the other, stammered, and turned furiously upon the younger.
“Lâche!” cried she in a hoarse voice, “it is you who have done this. I know it. What business was it of yours to come here making mischief?”
And she stood with her hand to her heart, panting with fear and rage.
“Whose is this child?” repeated old Mr Bayre, furiously. “It is not mine.”
He shook her roughly by the arm as he spoke.
But his anger woke an answering spirit in the girl. Drawing herself away from him, she stood at bay. And frowning up at him from under her thick eyebrows, with a look which changed her rather handsome face into one hideous and repellent, she hissed out, in a menacing tone,—
“Yours? No. Of course I know that.”
Old Mr Bayre paused an instant. Then he made a sort of spring at her, and asked, in a low voice,—
“What has become of the other—of mine?”
The girl looked frightened again. She hesitated, she faltered, she looked from one man to the other, she began to cry and to sob. In vain did the elder try to get a word of answer from her; she would do nothing but sob and complain bitterly that there was no pleasing such masters, that she would take no more care of the child since she was not trusted. Monsieur might get somebody else to do it, for she would not.
And then, in the midst of her weeping, she suddenly stopped, raised her head, and strained her ears. Then, with a joyful cry, “Ha! My father!” she dashed open the door and admitted old Pierre, who looked from one to the other of the group with a mixture of anxiety and brutal cunning in his eyes.
Mariesprang towards her father and poured out a torrent of broken words. Angry, anxious, excited, it was difficult to make out what sentiment was uppermost in her, and her father seemed also, at first, undecided as to the attitude he should adopt towards the two gentlemen.
“They accuse me, my father—they accuse me!” cried the girl, panting. “They say—Monsieur Bayre says—I do not take care of the child. He who comes here but once in six months, what should he know? He says this is not the child we are paid to take care of. My father, answer him, answer them both!”
Old Mr Bayre was standing with his back to the window, his arms folded, and his peaked cap, which he had not taken off on entering the cottage, drawn well down over his eyes. The expression of his mouth, however, denoted sufficiently the stern mood he was in. His nephew remained in the background, feeling awkward, but realising that he was bound to stand by his relative, since it was he who had brought about the discovery of the fraud.
“Whose child is it that you have there?” repeated old Mr Bayre, sternly. “Is it not the child of some fisherman, of some friend or relation of your own, that you are keeping there and making me pay for?”
Pierre had by this time made up his mind as to the attitude he should take up, and he faced his master with surly defiance.
“You shall hear all you want to know on that point, monsieur,” said he, “when we are by ourselves, you and I! It is no matter for discussion before others, as I think you will admit if you consider certain points which will have to be raised.”
This was a challenge. Old Mr Bayre knew this, and was silent for a moment, while Marie, who saw the scale turning in her favour, ventured to indulge in a short laugh. But the exhibition was premature. The old gentleman turned upon her savagely, and cried out, in threatening tones,—
“Silence, girl! I will have this matter sifted to the bottom; and unless you can satisfy me as to what you have done with the child—my child—which I am paying you extravagantly for the care of, you will both leave the island without delay.”
Both father and daughter were for the moment struck dumb by this menace. Then they looked at each other furtively, and appearing to derive confidence from that exchange of glances, stood up to him more boldly than before.
Pierre took the initiative.
“Brave words, monsieur!” said he, “but I think you will be glad to recall them presently. Do you forget what weknow?”
His voice went up shrilly on the last word, but Mr Bayre stood firm.
“You know nothing that can affect me, your master,” he retorted sharply, “but a great deal that can affect yourselves. I don’t mean to take this deception of yours quietly, and so I tell you.”
“And how will you take it when I spread in the islands the story of the last few months?” asked Pierre, not, however, with quite so much assurance as before; for it was clear that he began to have an uneasy feeling that his power over his master was not so great as he had supposed.
Old Mr Bayre laughed harshly and snapped his fingers.
“Take it!” echoed he. “I shall take it as everybody else will take it, as the silly story of a couple of silly peasants who got turned out of their comfortable berth for practising a fraud upon their master, and who have invented a lot of idle tales in the vain hope of injuring him.”
The consternation which this turning of the tables produced upon the Vazons was for the moment overpowering. Marie uttered a moan of horror, while Pierre grew livid with disappointed malice.
Then Marie glanced at the younger Bayre, and an idea flashed into her mind.
“You have told him, told him everything, and you have joined together to keep up this secret, this plot!” cried she, advancing upon the old man and peering angrily into his face. “You think, when there are two of you in it, you can defy us and everybody. But you shall not! Oh, you shall not! You shall neither of you profit by this wickedness—”
“Wickedness! You talk of wickedness,you!” cried old Mr Bayre.
“Yes. What was our deceit to yours? It was a trifle, a nothing. And for you to talk to us of greed! Ha! ha! ha!”
And she burst into an hysterical mocking laugh as she fell back, away from the old man, retreating again to her father’s side.
Young Bayre, not moving from his corner, held his tongue, hoping each moment that some word would drop which would let him as much into the secret as the Vazons believed that he was already.
But a certain reticence, born of their rustic cunning, characterised their utterances even in the heat of passion. They alluded to facts, but they took care to make no direct statement, and for all his interest, and for all their outbursts, he remained as much in the dark as ever.
Old Mr Bayre increased in confidence, too, on realising that his own secret remained undisclosed, and it was with almost a jaunty air that he suddenly turned to his nephew and beckoned him out of the house.
“We are more than a match, I think, Bartlett, for these malignant rustics,” he said, as he led the way out and turned at the door to say, “You understand that I mean to find out where the child is—the child I put in your charge—mychild!”
And he slammed the door in the face of another outburst, half indignant, half plaintive, from father and daughter.
The two gentlemen walked along in silence for some distance. The younger, who had little doubt that he knew where his uncle’s child was, thought it better, in the face of various mysterious circumstances, to keep this knowledge to himself. He could not feel that he was showing brutal callousness to the feelings of a father, since that father had remained for months within a mile of his child without making any attempt to see him. A parent who could be so placidly indifferent to the well-being of his son might well, his nephew thought, be left in ignorance on the matter a little longer.
Old Mr Bayre, on his side, was not inclined to be expansive. He glanced from time to time at his nephew, as if curious to know what he thought of the affair; but beyond a few casual remarks upon the duplicity of these people, and the sagacity his companion had shown in discovering the fraud, he said little until they reached the avenue, where he stopped short, as if with an intimation that at this point it would be fitting to bring their interview to an end.
“What does a young fellow like you know about children, that you should have discovered this deceit?” he asked curiously.
“Well, I had heard the age of my young cousin, and it was easy to see that the baby in the Vazons’ care was not only much younger, but was not of the same class,” said Bayre, secretly amused when he remembered at what expense of mental worry his uncommon experience had been gained.
Old Mr Bayre still looked rather puzzled, but all he said was,—
“Ah! Very acute. You have a suspicious mind, I see.” He paused a moment, and then added, without looking at his nephew: “You appear to have a great deal of time to waste in holidays.”
The remark seemed so comically ungrateful, after the service he had just rendered his uncle, that the young man could not help smiling.
“I go back to-morrow,” he said simply. “So, as I suppose you will not wish me to come and take a formal farewell, I can wish you good-bye now.”
He did not offer to shake hands, neither did his uncle. With a scrutinising look at him from under the peak of his cap, the old man nodded, and saying shortly, “Well, good-bye,” disappeared along the avenue.
Young Bayre felt sore, though without much reason. Knowing what he did of his uncle, he might have guessed that the old man would merely balance the small service done him against his nephew’s burglarious entry, and would cry quits.
Uneasy and restless, still puzzling his head about the mystery surrounding thechâteau, and by no means satisfied with the way in which Olwen had taken her leave of him that morning, Bayre was in two minds as to whether he should remain so much as an hour longer on the island of Creux, or whether he should return at once to Guernsey, shaking off the dust from his feet and vowing never to land on the smaller island again.
But the longing for one more interview with Olwen was too strong for him. On the following day he must return to London; he would make one last attempt to see her before he had to go away, and to take what would perhaps prove a last farewell of the only woman who had ever exercised an overwhelming fascination over him.
So that afternoon, after wandering about the island, and noting that the Vazons spied upon his movements with great assiduity, he turned his steps once more in the direction of thechâteau, and was lucky enough to descry the object of his search in the grounds on the further side of the mansion.
Bayre made no scruple of trespassing; there was a wall on this side of no great height, and he scaled it without difficulty, and landed in a bed of flowers which, now that the snow had disappeared, spread a charming carpet of rich colour over the dark earth.
The young girl reddened as he leapt over the flower-beds on his way to her. She had something in her hand which attracted his attention at once.
“The latest novel?” asked he, smiling.
She laughed as she turned over the leaves of a portentous pile of foolscap.
“How would you like me to keep you to your promise, now that you see how much there is of it?” said she, archly.
For answer he took the MS. by force from her hands.
“I’ll stand to my guns nobly,” said he. “And if I can I’ll get it published for you. Don’t expect too much; I’ve never succeeded in selling one of my own. But perhaps something will give me more courage now that I’m trying for you.”
“Oh, of course you won’t get anybody to buy it,” said she, shaking her head slowly. “And if you did, it would be a bad sign for its merit, wouldn’t it? When you have real talent you always have to wait years and years, don’t you?”
“Not always. Dickens was famous at twenty-five.”
“Ah! But then he was Dickens! And I’m not even twenty-five.”
“No. But in half a dozen years you will be. And if you’re celebrated by that time you won’t have reason to complain.”
She smiled, and her pretty eyes glowed, but she still shook her head.
“I’m not so ambitious as that,” she said. “All I want is for you to read this, as you offered to do, you know, and to tell me whether you think there will ever be any chance for me, not to be famous, I don’t hope for that, but to be just one of the modest workers in the field. But there’s one thing you must promise,” and she became very earnest indeed. “It is that you won’t even read one word till you’ve got to London.”
“I promise,” said Bayre. “After all, that won’t be so long to wait. I shall be back there to-morrow.”
To his infinite satisfaction a shade passed over the young girl’s face at this intelligence.
“Yes, I know,” said she. “My guardian told me so an hour ago.”
“Are you glad?” ventured Bayre.
“Don’t ask me,” she said briskly, “because I won’t tell. It’s nothing to you; it never can be anything, whether I’m glad or sorry.”
“You mustn’t say that. In a perfectly frigid and disinterested way you may surely be sorry that your critic, the venomous critic who could be so useful in stinging you to better work, will be too far away to sting by Tuesday morning.”
She suddenly bit her lip.
“That’s unfair of you,” she said rather tremulously. “When I say I don’t wish to feel glad or sorry, you should try to feel the same.”
“Very well. But tell me, will you treat me as you did before? When I write, as I must write about this MS., will you leave me without an answer?”
Suddenly the girl looked up into his face, looked up with such a glory of hidden meaning in her great eyes as set his heart beating very fast. Looking at him still, and blushing a rosy pink, she pointed to the roll of paper in his hands.
“Perhaps when you’ve read that you won’t ask for an answer,” she said. “Good-bye, Mr Bayre.”
She held out her hand. Scarcely master of himself, fighting to keep down the torrent of passion which boiled and surged within him, he pressed her fingers to his lips, secure in the knowledge that, whether the feeling were transitory or not, he had excited in her an emotion such as good Monsieur Blaise could never have done.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” murmured he, hoarsely. “Listen, Olwen—”
But she would not listen. Cleverly waiting for her opportunity, she abruptly tore her hand away and fled towards the house, taking the way of the courtyard, where, for fear of the servants’ eyes, he could not follow her.
Agitated, excited, moved out of himself, Bayre stood for an instant where she had left him, feeling the touch of her sensitive fingers still on his hand, the rays shot by her glorious eyes still shining right into his heart.
It was encouragement, real encouragement that he had got at last. The very bundle of her own writing which he held in his hand was a pledge of that: ill-written, futile as it might be, this girlish outpouring, it was dear to her, at any rate; it was a part of her young self that she would not trust to the eyes of the first person she met.
Even as he thought this his fingers closed upon the paper more tightly. He was turning to leave the garden when there rang through the clear air a sound which made him shiver.
It was a hoarse cry, muffled at first, then clearer, louder, the cry of “Help! Help! Murder!”
“Murder!”
The cry came from some part of the wood which surrounded the house and grounds on all sides but one. It was impossible to recognise the voice, but it was not Olwen’s.
Bayre shouted in answer, and then he heard the cry again; and plunging in among the bushes which grew thick under the trees of the plantation, he presently heard it for the third time, uttered more faintly than before, and then he came suddenly upon a scene of weird horror.
In a little clearing, not many feet from a small round pond which was swollen by the recent wet weather, two men were struggling in a hand-to-hand tussle, in which one of them was obviously getting the best of it. This one was Pierre Vazon, who, hatless, with a scar across his face and blood in his matted hair, was kneeling on the body of his master and twisting the neck-cloth of the latter more and more tightly round his throat. Bayre uttered a cry of horror: his uncle lay gasping on the ground, his face livid, his eye-balls starting, trying in vain to utter more than a stifled cry.
He was indeed very nearly at the last gasp, and the blood was coming from his nostrils as he made a feeble attempt to clutch the arms of his assailant and to free himself from the fatal pressure under which he felt his very life ebbing away.
One moment was enough for Bayre to take in every detail of the scene, and to understand that the rascally blackmailer, now that his master had defied him, intended to murder him, since his own career of successful dishonesty had come to an end.
The appearance of Mr Bayre’s nephew, however, put an instant change upon the face of affairs.
“Rascal!” cried the young man, as he leapt down the slope, at the foot of which the outrage had taken place.
And seizing the peasant by the neck of his blouse, he applied to him the very same tactics that Pierre had applied to his master; and twisting a strong hand so tightly in the clothes about his neck that the peasant cried for mercy in his turn, he dragged him off the body of the prostrate old man, and edging him nearer and nearer to the black and slimy water of the little pond, at last, with a sudden deft movement, flung him with a splash into it.
It was not deep enough to drown the rogue, who, however, continued to utter yelping cries as he floundered out of the mud; but Bayre had no more attention to spare for him: his uncle, whom he at first believed to be dying, claimed all his care.
But, by an astonishing circumstance, the very approach of his preserver seemed to fill him with more terror than had the attack of his murderous servant. Old Mr Bayre, still panting and gasping for breath, turned his bloodshot eyes upon his nephew, and at the sight of him, by a supreme effort, turned over, and scrambling up upon his hands and knees, dragged himself away on all fours into the shelter of the trees and bushes, as if an encounter with his nephew were more to be feared than that through which he had just passed.
Bayre, astonished as he was, rather admired the old man’s consistency and pluck. Frankly disliking his nephew, persistently showing his dislike in avoidance when he could, in tone and manner when he could not, he was game to the last, and ran away from the young man’s help as he had previously done from his visits.
The flesh, however, was weaker than the spirit, and by the time he had crawled as far as the door of the mansion, leaving a trail of blood on the stones of the courtyard from a wound in his neck, the old man sank down exhausted, unable to pull the iron bell-handle, or even to knock for admittance.
Luckily he had been seen from the house, and Marie Vazon opened the door and let him in. The girl’s face was white with alarm; and young Bayre, who had followed his unfortunate uncle at a little distance, ready with assistance in case he should have to give in, felt no fear that she would be as brutal as her father.
However, he did not feel sufficient confidence in her to leave the feeble old man entirely to her care. After waiting for a short space, to give these two time to leave the hall, he rang the bell, and was glad to find his summons answered by one of the other servants, an older woman of the same unpolished class, who opened the door only a little way and peeped at him with a face full of alarm.
“You had better let me in,” he said with authority. “You know who I am—Mr Bayre’s nephew. I have just been witness to an assault made upon him by Pierre Vazon, who would have killed him but for my interference.”
Whether the woman would have dared to let him in, torn as she evidently was between fear of offending her master and terror of the Vazons, Bayre did not know. But at that moment Olwen, who evidently knew something of the business already, came running into the hall, and held the door wide for him to enter.
“Thank heaven you were still here!” she whispered hoarsely. “You’ve saved his life, and he knows it.”
The servant had disappeared, leaving the two young people alone.
“How is he? Shall I go across for a doctor?” asked Bayre.
She shook her head.
“He won’t allow it. I’ve just asked him. He’s very weak, but he’s so determined, so obstinate, that I think his spirit will pull him through. Wait here. He shall see you before you go.”
But Bayre had already made up his mind that he would not leave the house until he had seen the second member of the Vazon family turned out of it; as he well knew that, though Marie might not be as brutal as her father, she could only remain as a traitor in the camp, and her presence, as a connection of a would-be murderer, could not be tolerated there any longer.
“I don’t mean to go,” said he, “until I have seen Vazon’s daughter as well as himself not only out of the house but off the island. You might tell the young woman so, and perhaps she will take herself off at once and save trouble.”
It is more than probable that Marie Vazon, who had already heard from her master something of what had happened, was listening outside the door as the young man spoke. However that may be, when Olwen left the room with the intention of giving her notice to go, Marie was nowhere to be seen. Olwen found her uncle lying on the sofa in the ground-floor room he usually occupied in the day time, the room where he had had the memorable interview with his nephew and Monsieur Blaise.
A small log fire was burning on the hearth, and the heavy window curtains were drawn so as to exclude almost all light. The old man lay on a dark-coloured sofa with his back to those few rays of light which could make their way in under the circumstances. He was quite alone.
“How do you feel now?” she asked gently.
“Better. Quite well,” snapped the old man, shortly. “I only wanted a mouthful of my old brandy to put me right.”
And he pointed to a decanter and tiny glass on a table near him.
“Who got it out for you?” asked she.
“That girl Marie,” answered the old man.
And although she could not see his face clearly, Olwen could tell by his voice that he for one would show no reluctance at parting with her.
“Your nephew wants to see her and her father off the island before he goes away,” said Olwen, watching for the effect of her words.
It was electric. The old man struggled up to his elbow and stared at her.
“Ah, you have let him in then? I’m to get rid of one greedy rascal only to let in another?”
“Not greedy,” said she, gently. “You can’t fairly accuse him of that.”
“Greedy and inquisitive,” repeated the old man, obstinately. “What right has he to come here? He’s not my heir; he’ll never get a penny from me. And he may save himself the trouble of his visits for all he’ll ever get out of Creux.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Olwen, with a little demure archness in her tone.
The old man stared at her indignantly.
“What fools girls are!” said he, scornfully. “Don’t you see that he only comes after you because he thinks you’ll have some of my money?”
“Oh, no, he doesn’t. He knows, as I know, what a strong dislike you have taken to him, and we don’t either of us expect anything from you. That doesn’t prevent our wishing to do our duty, and it didn’t prevent him from saving your life. Remember that.”
But the pig-headed old man only growled out,—
“He knew if Vazon had strangled me this afternoon he would have got nothing. And he hoped, by saving my life, to induce me to alter my will.”
The idea that young Bayre should have been influenced by any such sordid motives as he rushed forward to his uncle’s assistance was so absurd that the girl burst out laughing.
“I think you’re a little prejudiced,” she said. “But I won’t tease you about it now. I’ll go and tell him that you’re more afraid of him than the Vazons, and that you don’t wish him to stay in the house.”
Perhaps reason began to get the better of the old man’s prejudice, or perhaps the very real peril he had escaped suddenly came back to his mind and made him timorous. He put out a trembling hand and detained her to say,—
“Well, well, let him stay if he likes. Let’s play one rogue off against the other!”
With which grateful remark he let her go.
She and Bayre laughed softly together over the scene, which she described to him, and then she brought in her own little silver kettle and stand, with which she was in the habit of making tea for herself and her guardian in the afternoon; and the two young people amused themselves very well in making the spirit-lamp boil the water, and in very discreet conversation over their tea afterwards.
She kept well on her guard, and was decidedly prim. But he could not help knowing, though no allusion was made to the precious bundle of MS. which he was carrying about with him or to the secret tie by which this bound them together, that Olwen was even brighter than usual, and that the happiness which sparkled in her eyes might be ascribed to the pleasure she felt in his visit.
There were so many anxious questions disturbing their minds that they both seemed to take a perverse satisfaction in avoiding them all; so they discussed neither the Vazons and their probable conduct nor the mystery of the woman whom they believed to be shut up in thechâteau; nor the strange prejudice with which old Mr Bayre regarded his nephew.
It was not until Olwen rose to carry a cup of tea to her guardian that she suddenly turned at the door and said, in a low voice,—
“What do you think these Vazons will do? I’m afraid of them.”
“I’ll give information to the police when I get back to Guernsey,” said he, in the same tone, “and in the meantime we’d better keep careful watch. I should like to know what has become of the girl.”
The result of their fears and of their consultation was that Bayre decided to remain awake and to keep watch in order to circumvent any attempt which might be made upon old Mr Bayre that night.
At his nephew’s suggestion, Olwen had proposed that the police of Guernsey should be communicated with that very day. But old Mr Bayre flatly forbade this, and the prohibition seemed so strange, considering that the attack upon him had been a murderous one, that it was no wonder the suspicions of the two young people concerning old Mr Bayre himself began to grow strong again.
Why, unless he feared the result of an investigation into his house and his affairs, should the old man object to such an obvious measure for his own protection?
He gave as a reason for his objection that he was loth to treat old servants with harshness, and he added that he was sure Vazon had no intention of killing him, although he admitted that they had had a quarrel.
But this reason appeared very like a lame excuse, since old Mr Bayre was by no means now, whatever he might have been once, the benevolent old philanthropist, brimming over with loving-kindness towards his fellow-creatures, which such leniency would have seemed to imply that he was.
The wind began to rise soon after dark, and Bayre felt the weird influence of the great shut-up house when he was left to himself in the night silence, in the baresalonwith its polished floor and its white walls.
Old Mr Bayre had managed, after rejecting the proffered help of his nephew, to get upstairs to his bedroom with the help of the stronger of the two servants; he was nervous, Olwen said, and peered and listened as he went slowly upwards.
He too seemed to have suspicions of the baffled blackmailers, so Olwen thought.
Now that he was left alone, young Bayre found his thoughts revert again to the mystery about the mansion; he began to listen for footsteps along the corridors above, to wonder whether this night-watch would bring him any nearer the clue to the secret.
Creeping softly about the room, he soon fancied that he could hear another step as stealthy as his own in one of the adjoining apartments, and after some time he was almost sure that he could make out the sound of whispering voices.
Opening the door at the end of the room very carefully, he became aware that the whispering came from a room beyond that, and that the voices were those of two persons.
Traversing this second apartment in the same stealthy manner as he had done the first, and slipping off his boots so that he might make the less noise, Bayre reached the door at the end, and was then aware, by the wind which blew through the keyhole and round the crack of the door, that there was either a door or a window open in the room beyond—the room whence the voices came.
By this time he could make out that the voice which spoke from the inner side of the open door or window was that of Marie Vazon, and he judged that she was conversing with someone outside the house, who, he had little doubt, was her father.
From certain further sounds Bayre guessed that the precious pair were engaged in robbing the house, and that Marie, from the inside, was handing such articles of portable property as she fancied to her father, who stood without.
And as the apparent loneliness of the house made them bolder, both father and daughter allowed their voices to grow a little louder, so that in the end Bayre was able to make out what they said.
“I couldn’t get into the old man’s bedroom, for it was locked all day,” she said, “nor into the museum rooms, for they were locked too. But I’ve got some money and some good things, besides what I’ve given you, and I’ve found a little iron box that probably contains something of value. Here.”
When she got as far as that, Bayre judged that it was time to interfere. Opening the door quickly, he sprang upon the girl, who was standing without a light by the open window, mounted on a chair.
“What have you got there, you thieves?” cried he, seizing her arm as he spoke and trying to drag it down.
But she was too quick for him. He heard the iron box fall with a dull sound, as of something heavy, to the ground outside, before he succeeded in dragging her down from her perch. “Let me go!” cried she. “Let me go, monsieur, and I’ll tell you a secret—your uncle’s secret.”
“Tell nothing, tell nothing!” warned the old peasant’s voice from outside. “A secret is worth a good price,ma fille. Keep it close.”
And the girl, looking up with a shudder at the determined face of the young man who still held her by the arm, closed her lips firmly, and crossed her arms, and defied him.
Bayresaw that nothing was to be got out of the sullen peasant woman, so he led her out of the room, and into the hall, where Olwen, who had heard the noise of loud voices, was standing at the foot of the staircase.
Marie Vazon looked at her with an insolent frown.
“What was that noise?” asked Olwen. “And what was it that dropped or was thrown out of the window?”
Marie laughed harshly.
“Nothing of yours,” she replied insolently. “And nothing that you need concern yourselves about, either of you. Better hold your tongues about us, as well as about your uncle, if you want to keep the family respected. And you, monsieur, you can let me go. You will get nothing out of me, I can tell you.”
Bayre quite agreed with her on this point, and he drew the bolts of the door and let her out. He wanted to follow her, and to find out what she and her father were going to do with the booty they had obtained from the mansion; especially was he anxious to know what had become of the iron box which Marie had thrown out of the window to her father. But Olwen was suffering so severely from nervous shock, consequent upon the events of the day and the disturbance of the night, that she begged him not to leave the house until morning, alleging the terror she felt at the thought of being alone in the house with her disabled guardian and with two women-servants, both of whom were in a state of panic themselves.
Although he feared that this delay would enable the Vazons to get away with some valuable stolen property, the young man was unable to turn a deaf ear to the girl’s pleading; and he therefore spent the rest of the night in an uneasy patrol of the mansion, after shutting down the window through which Marie had communicated with her father, and cast out, as he could not but doubt, some of her master’s property.
With the first rays of morning, however, he had decided to go to the cottage of the Vazons in the hope that he might yet be in time to intercept their flight. But an unexpected obstacle was placed in his way. Olwen met him as he was drawing the bolt of the door, and told him that his uncle wished to see him.
She led him upstairs to the door of the old man’s room, where Bayre was rather surprised to find the invalid dressed and sitting in an easy chair by the embers of the fire. The curtains were still drawn, and the great room, which looked so cosy by candle-light, seemed cheerless as the grey morning light fell upon the ashes in the grate and upon the bent head of the old man in the chair.
“What is this Olwen tells me about a robbery in the night by the Vazons?” asked he. “She says they threw out an iron box. What iron box was it?”
It was evident that the old man was more uneasy than he wished to appear. Bayre had not much to tell.
“The girl didn’t seem to know what was in it herself,” said he. “I heard her say that it probably contained something of value. That was all. I could not hear whether the father made any reply.”
He saw his uncle’s foot tapping the floor with a rapid, nervous movement. But the old man only said,—
“I know of no iron box; they have got hold of some lumber, I suppose, which, in their cupidity, they imagine to be valuable. But they will find themselves sold. My collection lies all in open cases, with the exception of a few things which I keep in a safe in the next room. These people have no discrimination. Olwen has been through the galleries this morning, and the two saloons, and she says she finds nothing missing.”
“The girl Marie must have known that I was in the house, too near the rooms where you keep your collection for a wholesale plundering to have taken place there in safety.”
The old man grunted ungraciously. Evidently he was loth to admit that he owed any further obligation to the nephew he disliked so much.
“The jade got at some very good things in the other rooms, though,” snapped he. “There’s a valuable clock missing from one of the bedrooms, and some old silver.”
“Well, if you’ll let me go down to their place, as I was on the point of doing,” said his nephew, making for the door as he spoke, “I may be in time to prevent their leaving the island till they’ve disgorged.”
But the old man thrust out one hand imperiously.
“No, not you,” cried he, sharply. “You stay here. Olwen, send one of the servants for Jean, and tellhimto go down to the cottage. They may take the silver and the clock, but I should like to see this iron box that so much fuss has been made about. Tell him to bring that back and let the rest go.”
Both his nephew and Olwen were surprised by these directions, which the girl proceeded dutifully to carry out, leaving the room for that purpose. Young Bayre, not quite knowing what to do, remained waiting for his uncle to speak, and finding himself apparently forgotten by the old gentleman, sat down near the window to wait for fresh developments. He was as much interested as his uncle in this matter of the Vazons’ escape, which, since they were certainly in some sort accomplices of the old man, might lead at last to a solution of the mystery that certainly surrounded him.
It seemed a long time that he sat there, moving from time to time, just sufficiently, as he thought, to remind his uncle that he was still in the room. But never a word did the old man speak, and the only sign of life he gave was the movement he made from time to time to stroke the head of the dog which rested at his feet.
In the circumstances it seemed a very, very long time before Olwen’s voice was heard outside, and opening the door, she admitted not only herself but a sturdy-looking man in a blouse, whom young Bayre had seen at work in the grounds.
This person, it appeared, was Jean. Old Mr Bayre raised his head with sudden and vivid interest.
“Well?” he asked sharply.
Jean replied in French, in gruff tones.
“They’re gone, m’sieu,” he said. “The Vazons have left Creux.”
The old man sank back in his chair and there was dead silence for a few moments. Jean looked at Olwen, then at young Bayre, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Ma foi!” he said shortly, “they were a good riddance. Old Vazon did little work, but he did plenty of grumbling. And as for Marie—” And he shrugged his shoulders again with a gesture signifying that he did not think much of her in any capacity.
And then, as nobody made any remark to him, Jean pulled his forelock to the company and shuffled out of the room and down the stairs.
Olwen became alarmed at the strange depression into which old Mr Bayre appeared to have sunk, and going softly to his side, she leant over him and asked him how he was.
Opening his eyes, the old man caught sight of his nephew and instantly pointed with a shaking finger to the door.
“Go away,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Go at once. And let me never see your face again.”
Weak as he was, he woke for the moment into such a passion of determination and resentment, as he uttered these words, that Olwen feared for the result if the object of his vehement prejudice should remain any longer under his roof. She therefore ran across the room to young Bayre, who had already opened the door to go out, and following him to the head of the stairs, held out her hand and said hurriedly,—
“Yes, yes, you had better go away at once. I’m not afraid of being left with him now that the Vazons are away. And I’ll write to you; I’ll be sure to write.”
Already the old man’s voice, harsh and broken, was calling to her to return to him. She looked up once, her great eyes full of light, kind, reluctant to let her good friend go.
An answering light came into the young man’s eyes. He retained her hand, drawing her towards him.
“Olwen, kiss me,” he whispered.
For one moment she held back, but she yielded, and their lips met for the first time.
Then, as the old man’s voice was heard again, she drew herself away and stole into the room, and the young man, staggering and feeling for the banisters, went slowly downstairs.
A minute later he was outside the house, walking at a rapid pace towards the Vazons’ cottage. Jean, who was in the grounds near the mansion, had caught sight of him, and came up with him, panting, before he reached his destination.
“They were a bad lot, the pair of them,” cried Jean, who was evidently highly delighted by the disappearance of father and daughter; “only for some reason or other there was no saying a word against them to old M. Bayre. Why, we could all have told him how Nini Portelet came over here one day when Marie had left monsieur’s child alone in the cottage, and how she took it over to St Luke’s with her. It was when you and your friends were over here, monsieur, that it happened. And Marie didn’t put herself out about it, but just borrowed the child of a St Luke’s fisherman, and got her money from old Monsieur Bayre as usual. Ah, they were a pair of beauties! She gave the child back to its mother yesterday, and I guessed somehow that they might be missing to-day. As a matter of fact, I know they crossed over to St Luke’s before it was light.”
Bayre entered the deserted cottage, where the disordered state of the living-room spoke of a sudden departure. Among the displaced articles of furniture, not good enough to be worth any attempt to take away, there were certain signs, cynically left without disguise, of the robbery committed at thechâteauon the previous night.
There was a tablecloth, heavily and handsomely fringed, in which, without doubt, some of the booty had been hastily wrapped up by Marie. There were a few plated articles which had been inadvertently carried away with the silver. And there was the iron box about which so much fuss had been made.
Yes, lying bent and broken among the ashes on the hearth, after having evidently been forced open with a bent poker which lay near, was the very box which Marie had dropped out of the window to her father; and lying on the uneven tiles of the floor, at a little distance from it, was a heap of papers which Bayre at once judged to have been its contents.
He picked these up and began to examine them. To his astonishment and perplexity, the very first of these to attract his attention was one in which the words “my nephew and namesake Bartlett Bayre,” were the first to catch his eye.
Further inspection proved this to be a will made and signed by his uncle only nine months previously, and in it he found that he himself was not only left a legacy of ten thousand pounds, but was appointed guardian of the testator’s infant son and heir.
Bayre started to his feet, so much amazed at what he had read that for the moment he seemed scarcely able to think or even to see.
His uncle, only nine short months ago, had been so kindly disposed towards him that he had made him a handsome legacy! How then had it happened, unless indeed the old man’s mind had become unhinged, that he had shown his nephew, from the first sight of him, nothing but aversion of the strongest kind?
The thing was so strange that Bayre could not trust himself to consider it thoroughly at that time. Hastily gathering up all the rest of the papers which he could find, he decided, after a moment’s hesitation, not to take them back to thechâteau, but to carry them with him to London, and to communicate with Olwen from there, telling her of his find, and asking her advice as to whether he should send them to her or to his uncle’s solicitors.
They would, he thought, be better judges of his uncle’s real state of mind than he could be; and in any case the will could not be of much value, as his uncle had undoubtedly altered his dispositions long since.
So utterly absorbed was he in the strange events which had happened, and in this last, perhaps the strangest discovery of all, that the journey to London seemed only half the length of the journey away from it.
He had sent no word as to the day he was returning, so that when he entered the sitting-room at the Diggings at ten o’clock at night he found Southerley and Repton smoking together by the fire, in a state of gloom and abstraction, and with the supper-table laid for only two.
“Hallo!” said Repton, sulkily. “You, is it?”
But Southerley only scowled and said nothing.
“Yes, it’s me,” replied Bayre, with ungrammatical cheeriness. “How are you, eh? Have you got any bottled stout? And how’s the—”
But Repton sprang up with a yell and a tragic uplifting of the arm.
“Don’t dare to pronounce that evil brat’s name here,” cried he, sepulchrally. “Unless you want to be chucked out of window.”
“But why not?” persisted Bayre, who felt a redoubled interest in the child whose guardian it had certainly once been his uncle’s intention that he should be.
Repton pointed to Southerley with a tragic forefinger.
“Askhim!” said he in a hollow voice.
Southerley growled a little, and then moved sulkily in his chair.
“Oh, the child’s right enough, as children go, I suppose,” said he. “The trouble of it is that Miss Merriman has grown so much attached to the wretched little animal that there’s no talking to her, no getting her attention, no interesting her in anything but its miserable little mewlings and pukings.”
“That’s the worst of the domestic women you’re so fond of, Bayre,” went on Repton; “when there’s a child about they won’t pay the least attention to anything or anybody else. Whenever we go, as, of course, being two out of its three fathers, we’re bound to go, to inspect the child, and see that it’s properly fed and clothed and educated—” Bayre interrupted with a mocking laugh, but Repton went steadily and stodgily on: “Whenever we seek to do our duty, as I say, Miss Merriman makes fun of us, and says, ‘Did its nice ickle papas tum to see if its bockle was too warm-warm?’ And such stuff as that. Now you’re come back I hope you’ll try to bring this young woman to reason, and—”
“I hope you won’t try to do anything of the sort,” growled Southerley in a saturnine manner from his chair. “That would be just the last straw, for you to interfere. For we know you like domestic women, and so no doubt you’d worm yourself into her confidence, and—”
“And we should be nowhere!” added Repton. “That’s true.”
“Certainly we’re nowhere already,” went on Southerley, meditatively. “I’m only hoping you’ll be nowhere too!”
“You needn’t trouble your heads about me,” said Bayre, airily. “I’ve not the least wish to enter the lists, I assure you.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when there was a soft knock at the door, and to the rage and consternation of two out of the three young men, beautiful Miss Merriman, who had not been once to the Diggings since Bayre went away, peeped into the room and smiled a gracious “How do you do?” to that fortunate young man.
“Oh, Mr Bayre,” cried she, sweetly, “could you come downstairs a moment? I have something to ask you about the little boy, and whether you’ve heard anything of his parents.”
Bayre having, of course, expressed his ready assent, she retreated with a smile evenly distributed among them all, and left the three young men together. Repton made as if to stab the too lucky Bayre with the bread-knife.
“Villain,” he said, “you deserve to die. But first you shall interview the lady, and we’ll listen outside to see that you don’t take a mean advantage of your visit to the baby’s native haunts.”
Southerley, who was more uneasy than Repton, looked up sullenly.
“Oh, let him go,” said he, in a sort of despair. “May as well be put out of one’s misery at once. Go and ask her to marry you, and, for goodness’ sake, get it quickly over.”
From which Bayre, as he went downstairs, with a brand-new suspicion concerning Miss Merriman in his mind, opined that poor Southerley was as false to his ideal of a woman of genius as the only possible lady-love as he, Bayre, was false to his.