Bayrefound Miss Merriman in the dining-room, which, with a woman’s taste, she had managed to make very pretty. The shabby leather sofa was covered by a piece of handsome tapestry of subdued tints, and the cottage piano stood out from the wall in the modern manner, adorned with a handsome embroidered back, and with a vase of flowers on one corner.
There was a work-basket, too, in the room, and there was a most dainty cot, in which the baby boy lay asleep.
The gas was not alight, but a little table lamp, with a pretty shade, was standing on a small table which had a woman’s work upon it, too far from the cot for the light to fall upon the sleeping infant.
“I thought you’d like to see him,” said Miss Merriman, as she bent over the cot, looking a very Juno in her plain dress of navy serge, cut just low enough at the neck to show the full beauties of a superb white throat.
But it was not so much her physical beauty which attracted Bayre as a certain tender look in her eyes which he thought amounted to self-betrayal.
With a certain air of unaccustomed responsibility the young man said, watching her the while,—
“Yes, indeed. I have very strong reasons for wishing to see the little chap. I’ve found out something about him.”
She looked up quickly, anxiously.
“Ah!”
“I’ve found out, I think beyond a doubt, that he’s not only my first cousin, but that I’m his guardian.”
The answer which this announcement drew from the lady would have been surprising enough but for Bayre’s own suspicions.
“His guardian! He can’t have a guardian till his father’s dead?”
Bayre took her quickly upon her words.
“Who is his father, then?” he asked.
She bit her lip, feeling that she had betrayed herself.
“How should I know?” said she. “I meant only that neither you nor anyone else can be guardian to the child until you can prove that he’s an orphan.Ishe an orphan?”
“I think not,” said Bayre, rather drily. And then he added, after a pause: “Would you like me to say what I think?”
A look of fear came into her great ox eyes. She grasped the rail of the cot firmly for a few moments, and then said, in a very dignified and touching manner, “I think, if you want to do your best for the child—and I’m sure that you do—you had better say as little as possible till you know more than you do.”
“Very well,” said he, gently.
There was a pause, and then she said, in a very low voice, “I’m glad you’ve come back. It was getting rather difficult for me. Those two friends of yours, good fellows, dear fellows, but—”
“Well?”
“They don’t know, and they don’t guess, and it makes things difficult.”
“Do you want them to guess?” asked Bayre.
“No, no,” cried Miss Merriman, quickly. “I don’t want anyone to guess anything, not evenyou. And you must remember that I’ve made no admissions, none whatever. I’ve taken care of this child, who has three fathers and no mother, purely out of good-nature. You understand?”
“I do.”
“But you’ll tell your friends, won’t you?—and especially Mr Southerley, who has been very kind”—and Miss Merriman looked down with a heightened colour—“that while I’m most grateful to them I feel that they are doing more than they ought. I don’t want their flowers; I don’t want their sweets. They’re spending a fortune in things of that sort just because they look upon me as a disinterested philanthropist, which I’m not, who has taken charge of this child from abstract motives of kindness—which I’ve not.”
Bayre looked at the sideboard indicated by the lady, and there he saw such a fine show of flowers, and of bon-bons in elegant wrappers, as would have set up a florist or confectioner in business in a small way.
He looked at her and smiled.
“They’ve been so very lavish,” he said, “that one wonders whether it was all gratitude, or something else, which prompted such profusion.”
Miss Merriman’s beautiful face puckered into lines of distress.
“That’s just what I’m afraid of,” admitted she, sadly. “I don’t mind with Mr Repton; he’s very nice, but he takes things lightly, doesn’t he? But Mr Southerley—”
Her voice faltered, and Bayre began to look rather grave.
“Shall I hint to him that there’s—an obstacle?” asked he, in a low voice.
But she refused emphatically.
“Certainly not. How can you say there’s an obstacle when you know nothing whatever about me except that I’ve good-naturedly relieved you all of a burden?” she said firmly. “No. What I want you to do is to tell them that—that—”
“I’ll tell them that you’re engaged to be married,” said Bayre, with a happy thought. “That will put an end to any aspirations either of them might have without letting them into any secrets.”
“You don’t know any of my secrets,” retorted Miss Merriman, sharply.
Bayre gave her one look and then bowed without speaking.
She had to be content with that; for although she began to interrogate him quickly as to what he knew, or guessed, she changed her mind before he could make any reply, and telling him haughtily that he could invent what he pleased about her, she let him go.
Bayre felt himself to be in a difficulty. Certainly he did not know very much of absolute knowledge, but he could guess a good deal; and if his suspicions were correct there was an end to Southerley’s hopes. Between a chivalrous wish to respect the secret of a lady, a secret, too, which he could not be said to have more than guessed at, and his wish to spare his friend the pain of useless longing, Bayre found himself placed in a dilemma.
The consequence was that when he re-entered the common sitting-room there was just enough uneasiness discernible in his look and manner to fill both his friends with anxiety.
Of course this anxiety took an insulting form.
“Well, have you cut us out?” asked Repton, mockingly, looking at him askance from his armchair.
“Not that I know of,” said Bayre, quietly.
“What did she want you for?” growled Southerley in a dictatorial tone.
“Oh, to ask if I had found out anything about the child, of course.”
“And have you?”
“I think so. It’s my uncle’s child, and my first cousin, I have every reason to believe.”
“Then,” cried Repton, springing up in the delight of an interesting discovery, “we’ve only got to wring its neck for you and you’ll be heir to all the old gentleman’s property!”
“I don’t know so much about that,” said Bayre, laughing. “At the same time I’m awfully grateful to you for the suggestion that you’re so ready to oblige me.”
“Oh, well,” said Repton, “it cuts two ways, you know. Of course you’d have to keep Southerley and me out of the proceeds, and handsomely too. I’d let you off with a yacht and a cottage at Deal. But I don’t know what Southerley might want; a house in Park Lane, perhaps, to live in when he’d married Miss Merriman.”
“Hold your tongue, you fool!” said Southerley, in a deep bass voice.
“Well,” said Repton, “I know you won’t be satisfied unless you do marry her. I never saw any fellow so gone on any woman as you are on her. The way the conversation finds its way round to Miss Merriman every ten minutes, even if it starts at the differential calculus—(it never does, by-the-bye, and I haven’t the remotest idea what the differential calculus is)—is perfectly sickening.”
“What rot!” growled Southerley, with a restless turn in his chair.
Bayre looked at him out of the corners of his eyes.
“I hope that’s not true,” said he, “for I happen to know that she’s engaged.”
Southerley started to his feet.
“How do you know?” he asked angrily. “How should you know more than we do about it? unless—”
Repton took up his speech when he dropped it.
“By Jove!” cried he, “unless you’re engaged to her yourself?”
Although Bayre excused himself with vehemence, showed them the absurdity of the suggestion seeing that he had met the lady less often than they had, yet he did not feel sure that he succeeded in convincing them. And there remained a certain shadow over the intercourse of the three during the next few days. One reason for this was his extreme reticence about his visit to the islands. He did not say enough about anything or anybody to satisfy their minds. He was not engaged to Miss Eden, so he said; he was not reconciled to his uncle. On the whole, Repton and Southerley were of opinion that he was either a liar or that he had wasted his time. So that he had more time to himself than usual during the next few days, and he made use of it to devour at his leisure the manuscript novel Olwen had entrusted to his care.
As he read sympathetically, of course, two things became manifest to him. The one was that the olive-skinned hero with the brown eyes and the wavy black hair had been inspired by the girl’s conception of himself; and the other was that, amid all the traces of girlish inexperience and inexpertness with which the tale abounded, there was yet a saving grace, a charm of vivacity and of freshness which, as he was old enough to know, are the commonest marks of real ability in a beginner.
The first discovery touched him the most. But the second had a pathetic interest also; for he recognised the fact that, with all her disadvantages as compared with himself in the way of actual experience of life, there was something in the girl’s manuscript which his own more solid productions lacked, a something which made it not improbable that he would be more successful in disposing of her work than he was in disposing of his own.
Full of his impressions of her tale, he sat down to write to her on the third day after his return to town. He treated the matter of the novel very guardedly indeed; spoke well of it, warned her not to be too hopeful, remarked that her hero, while not unheroic, was very unlike a real man. Thus Bayre thought he would put her off the scent of his own intuition that the hero was meant for his own portrait. He added that he did not despair of selling the work, and that he would set about it at once. But she must not expect to set up a carriage out of the proceeds.
And then he turned to graver matters. Suspecting her complicity in the abduction of his infant cousin, and resenting her want of confidence in him over the matter, he said nothing about the child and nothing about Miss Merriman. But he told of his discovery of the broken iron box and its contents, and of the will which his uncle had made eight months previously. He asked her advice as to whether he should send these papers to her for his uncle, or to Mr Bayre’s solicitors. Perhaps she, he said, was in a better position than he to decide whether old Mr Bayre was in a fit state to be troubled with matters of business. For he reminded her that the old gentleman was evidently suffering from weakness of memory, as he had professed to have no remembrance whatever of the iron box.
He did not deny that he had read enough of the will to learn, to his surprise, how differently his uncle had thought of him a few months before, but he admitted that the document could have none but a sentimental interest now.
“If only,” went on poor Bayre, “he had continued in the same mind towards me, perhaps some day I might have been able to offer you something better than love in a villa one-brick-thick. However, I don’t mean to give up hope. Heaven keep you out of the way of another Monsieur Blaise! Remember, you have promised to write. So keep your promise unless you want me to throw up my berth here and come over again to find out why you don’t.—Yours,“Bartlett Bayre.”
“If only,” went on poor Bayre, “he had continued in the same mind towards me, perhaps some day I might have been able to offer you something better than love in a villa one-brick-thick. However, I don’t mean to give up hope. Heaven keep you out of the way of another Monsieur Blaise! Remember, you have promised to write. So keep your promise unless you want me to throw up my berth here and come over again to find out why you don’t.—Yours,
“Bartlett Bayre.”
He was finishing this letter in his own room, by the light of a couple of inferior candles, when there came a thump at the door, and without waiting for permission Southerley put his head in.
“Hallo, what’s up?” asked Bayre, perceiving that the usually somewhat phlegmatic red face of the stalwart pressman was the colour of whitey-brown paper, and that his eyes had an unusual look.
“May I come in?” asked Southerley, hoarsely, when he was well inside and had shut the door carefully behind him. “I want to ask you something.” Then his eyes fell on the letter, which Bayre was elaborately trying to hide with a transparent assumption of carelessness. “You’re writing letters, I see?”
Bayre tried to look as if he had forgotten the fact.
“Miss Eden?” went on Southerley in a mysterious voice.
“H’m,” nodded Bayre, shamefacedly.
It is a humiliating thing to have it found out that you are over head and ears in love with a woman! But Southerley took it very nicely.
“That’s all right!” he said with a sigh of relief in proportion to his size.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, look here. I haven’t been quite sure that you were not sweet upon the girl downstairs. But you wouldn’t be carrying on with both of them at once, now, would you?”
“Good heavens, no, man! And how do you know that either of them would so much as look at me?”
Southerley sighed again and wiped his face.
“Oh, well, well, women are odd creatures!” he observed frankly. “Anyhow, since you’ve given me your word it’s all right I—I want you to do something for me.”
“Well, what?”
Southerley began to pant heavily as he sat with his hands on his knees on one of Bayre’s boxes.
“I want you to propose for me to Miss Merriman.”
“Good heavens, man, are you mad?”
“Something very like it sometimes since I’ve seen so much of that girl,” said the giant, slowly. “I can’t tell you the effect she has upon me.”
“Effect! Rubbish! Haven’t you often said your ideal of woman is a gen—”
“Oh, woman of genius be blowed!” cried Southerley, impatiently. “One says those things before one’s hit, just because one must always be talking of women, even if it’s only talking balderdash. But I tell you it’s serious with me now. I must know how she feels, I must, I must.”
“But haven’t I told you—” began Bayre.
“Told me fiddlesticks! You’ve said she’s engaged. Well, somehow I don’t believe she is. She wears no ring. Besides, how should you know? She didn’t tell you in so many words she was engaged, did she?”
“N-n-no,” admitted his friend.
“Has she ever said she cared about anybody?”
“N-n-no.”
“Then you just go and ask her this minute if she can care for me!”
And Southerley plunged across the room, hauled his friend out of his chair and flung him at the door. There Bayre, however, planted himself, and protested,—
“If you must be such a confounded fool as to want to propose to her after what I’ve told you,” said he, surlily, “why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I can’t,” gasped the timid little lad of six feet three in a deep bass voice. “Look here, do you think I haven’t tried? I’ve been down those blessed stairs four times this evening! Four times, mind you, and I’ve got as far as the door, and I’ve heard her singing to that brat. And I tell you the sound of her voice made me feel so queer that I couldn’t go in, because I knew the words would stick in my throat and I should make a fool of myself.”
“Youarebad!” remarked Bayre, critically, as he contemplated the giant’s moist face.
“Well, get on, if you don’t want to be kicked downstairs,” retorted Southerley, beginning to get irritated by his friend’s unaccountable perverseness.
Bayre raised his eyebrows and turned slowly.
“It won’t be of any use,” said he, as he opened the door and went downstairs.
Bayrefelt very nervous over his errand, and when Miss Merriman cried “Come in,” in answer to his knock, he was almost as awkward as Southerley himself would have been, and she gave him a searching look as he crossed the room like a sly schoolboy.
She was sitting near the fire, and the baby, in a state of great glee, was turning out the contents of her work-basket on the rug at her feet. Bayre felt that he was called upon to explain his appearance with promptitude.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said, “but I’ve been sent here by—by somebody else—by Southerley, in fact, with a message which I hardly dare to give.”
Before he was half-way through the speech the lady had looked away; and from the expression of her face he could guess that she had an uneasy suspicion as to the nature of his errand.
“Then why give it,” said she, quickly, in a slightly tremulous voice, “if it’s of no use, and if it’s painful to you?”
“Because I must; because I’ve promised. Forgive me if I’m clumsy over it. The fact is the fellow’s lost his head; I think perhaps he knows there’s not much hope for him; I myself have told him there’s not. But he persists in hoping, hoping, or rather he’s got into such a state that he can’t rest till he’s got a definite answer, even if it’s the wrong one. He’s in love with you, head over ears in love, and he wants to know if you could ever care for him.”
Although he knew that she must have guessed what was coming, Miss Merriman pretended to feel surprised. But it was a poor, worried sort of pretence, without either nature or sincerity.
“Why, it’s absurd,” she said quickly. “What does he know of me? I never heard anything so ridiculous.”
And then there was a short pause, during which she sat very still.
“You’re not offended?” said Bayre, gently.
“Offended!” She just got out the word and then broke down into a flood of tears.
Bayre was appalled. To see a woman cry was a dreadful thing at any time; but to feel that he had opened the floodgates himself, and when he ought to have known better, was a thought of unspeakable horror.
“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely. “And don’t, oh,don’t! You make me feel a brute, and yet I couldn’t help myself. I’ll tell him—I’ll go and tell him—” He was flying to the door, impelled thereto not only by the woman’s tears but by the yells of the small child, who was on his feet by Miss Merriman’s knee, screaming in sympathy after the manner of his kind.
Miss Merriman recovered herself sufficiently to speak.
“No,” she cried imperiously. “Don’t tell him anything. You’re not to tell him anything. Let him think what he likes until—”
“Until what?”
“Never mind.”
She waved her hand in farewell without looking at him, and Bayre made his way reluctantly enough upstairs, where he found Southerley in waiting on the half-landing.
“No good, of course?” said the big man, trembling like a leaf.
Bayre shook his head.
“Any reason?”
“No. Sorry. I did my best.”
Southerley took it very quietly; he just nodded and went upstairs softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Then he went out at once, without seeing either of the others again, and he did not come back until long after they were both in bed.
And he alone of the three made no remark whatever when Susan informed them on the following evening that Miss Merriman had gone away and had taken the child with her.
Repton gave a long whistle.
“Well, I’m blest!” he exclaimed tersely.
Bayre was indignant. Surely he had a right to know where she was taking the child, he who claimed not only to be the infant’s cousin but to have more than a fanciful claim to be its guardian! Miss Merriman was surely carrying a woman’s privileges too far.
“Cousin or no cousin, it’s abominable,” said Repton, indignantly. “We’ve had all the trouble of the journey from Guernsey, all the expense of milk and biscuits, sausage rolls and bananas for the brat, and flowers and sweets for her. And now we’re left in the lurch like this! It’s infamous. I’m hurt in my very tenderest feelings. I shall advertise.”
“What! For the price of the flowers and the bon-bons?” laughed Bayre.
“Of course not. But I have a third share in the proprietorship of that infant. And it may be worth money some day. Besides, I ought to have been consulted.”
All this time Southerley never moved a muscle. But that he was hard hit it was impossible not to see. His eyes looked glassy and his ruddy skin livid.
“Cheer up, old man!” cried Repton, giving him a ferocious thump on the back. “She wasn’t worth troubling about, a woman who could go without a word after that last box from Fuller’s—the one with the gold ribbon and the picture of the two cupids in a basket. Thank goodness, she’ll never be able to look at those two pink cupids without a self-reproachful thought of you and me!”
But even this thought did not appear to have a consoling effect upon Southerley, who shook him off impatiently and went out again without a word.
“Fool!” cried Repton, contemptuously, “to care so much for a woman who didn’t care two pins about him.”
But Bayre, who remembered Miss Merriman’s tears, was less harsh in his judgment.
“I have an idea,” said he, slowly, “that she didn’tdareto care!”
But he would not proffer any solution of this enigmatic remark.
And before the day was out he had something to divert his attention in the shape of a letter from Miss Eden.
A surprising letter it was, and tantalising, too, for it was evidently written in a sort of breathless way, while the writer was at a white heat of emotion, and it told him just enough to make him want to know more.
It was as follows:—
“Dear Mr Bayre,—I got your letter. I have said nothing about it. I think you had better keep the papers yourself for a little while—those, I mean, that you found in the iron box. I will write to you again in a day or two, perhaps. I am afraid this letter is disjointed, but I have had a sort of shock, and I have not got over it yet. Do not be alarmed: we are all well here, or as well as you could expect, remembering the state in which you left us all. The Vazons have not come back and we have heard nothing more of them. We think they must be still in the islands, but they are not at Creux. Nini has come to stay here; she is a trustworthy girl, and I am very glad to have her, for I should not like to be here quite alone.“Now I am going to tell you something which will surprise you. I have found out who the woman is shut up here. I cannot tell you more now, except this—that she is not here against her will.—Yours sincerely,“Olwen Eden.”
“Dear Mr Bayre,—I got your letter. I have said nothing about it. I think you had better keep the papers yourself for a little while—those, I mean, that you found in the iron box. I will write to you again in a day or two, perhaps. I am afraid this letter is disjointed, but I have had a sort of shock, and I have not got over it yet. Do not be alarmed: we are all well here, or as well as you could expect, remembering the state in which you left us all. The Vazons have not come back and we have heard nothing more of them. We think they must be still in the islands, but they are not at Creux. Nini has come to stay here; she is a trustworthy girl, and I am very glad to have her, for I should not like to be here quite alone.
“Now I am going to tell you something which will surprise you. I have found out who the woman is shut up here. I cannot tell you more now, except this—that she is not here against her will.—Yours sincerely,
“Olwen Eden.”
Bayre was on thorns to know more, and he could not understand why, having told him so much, she could not have trusted him with the whole of the secret. Was it something she did not like to trust to paper? Was it his young wife whom old Mr Bayre was keeping concealed at thechâteau? And if so, was she in her right mind?
He wrote at once, begging Olwen to let him know more, but yet expressing himself guardedly, for fear the letter should fall into other hands than hers.
He could not rest for thinking about this, wondering whether his uncle knew of the discovery made by Olwen, and whether, in that case, he would make any difference in his treatment of her.
His anxiety grew as day after day passed and no answer came to his second letter. He could not get another holiday or he would have gone back to Creux without delay. In his distress he thought of writing to Madame Nicolas, his landlady at St Luke’s, to ask whether she had heard anything of old Mr Bayre and his household.
The good woman answered almost by return of post, but the information she had to give was exceedingly vague, and was rather in the nature of gossip than of anything definite.
She had not seen old Monsieur Bayre lately, neither had anyone she knew. But she had heard that he was ill, that there had been changes in his household, and that the young lady had gone away to London and was singing somewhere under the name of Señora Pia, or some such title. As Madame Nicolas did not even mention the Vazons by name, it seemed probable that they had kept quiet and had not made any attempt to turn the tables upon their late master.
This letter, vague as it was, filled Bayre with anxiety and distress. He knew there must be some foundation for this story about Olwen, and it tallied too well with her silence for him to neglect the clue.
“Singing in London under the name of Señora Pia!” This was vague indeed. He seized the newspapers and studied their columns with eager scrutiny. But it was not until the third day after the receipt of this letter that, after having read on the first page of theDaily Telegraphall the names of all the ladies and gentlemen who were advertised in the music publishers’ announcements as singing songs in different parts of England, the name “Signora Beata” attracted his attention and made him decide to set off that very evening on what might be a wild-goose chase after all.
“Signora Beata” was to sing “Those Sweet, Sweet Eyes of Thine” and another ballad with an equally vapid title at the Bromley Institute. And as it was not very far away, Bayre thought it worth while to take the journey on this very slender clue.
The hall was crowded. Bayre got a programme and found that Signora Beata did not appear before the fourth number in the programme. He had to sit through a new loyal song, rendered lustily by the baritone but conspicuous for its loving adhesion to one note. He had to hear a glee, and he had to endure a recitation.
Then came the turn of number four, and it was as much as he could do not to start out of his seat with surprise when Signora Beata appeared and proved to be, not indeed Olwen Eden, but another old friend in the person of Miss Merriman.
She looked magnificent in a dress of cream satin, which showed off her beautiful neck and the exquisite poise of her head to great advantage. She wore no jewels, but half-a-dozen roses of different colours were arranged on the front of her dress, and another was placed upright on one side of her head and worn as an aigrette. Long white suède gloves completed the costume, and Bayre thought that he had never seen so beautiful a woman, and was glad Southerley was not there to have his chains further riveted.
He became quite anxious to hear her sing, and was not in the least surprised at the burst of applause which greeted her as soon as she came to the front of the platform. It seemed to him that if her voice proved to be as superb as her appearance she was wasting herself at Bromley.
But with the first bars of the song came not exactly disenchantment, but a decidedly modified appreciation of the beauty’s art. She had a good voice, not in the first rank, but pleasant to listen to; the weakness of her performance lay in the fact that her voice had not been sufficiently cultivated, and that she was possessed by an overpowering nervousness which, while it rather added to her charm as a woman, decidedly marred her efforts as a singer.
In brief she had, though singing as a “professional,” scarcely got beyond the stage of “gifted amateur.”
But her beauty, her modesty, her statuesque grace, carried all before them, and the audience applauded her as if she had been Patti herself.
Bayre began now to understand that Madame Nicolas had mixed up in her mind what she had heard about one woman with what she had heard about another, and he resolved, now that he was in for it, to run Signora Beata to earth.
He found the rest of the concert tedious, except when the beauty was on the platform, and as soon as her last appearance on the programme was made he slipped out of his seat and went outside to wait for her.
She fled out of the building so quickly and so quietly, however, that he was not able to speak to her, and he got into the same train, but not into the same carriage, and then when he had seen her enter an omnibus he got on the top of the vehicle, determined to track her down.
She alighted finally at that part of London which used to be known as Brompton, but which has since, by the profuse use of the name “Egerton” instead of the older and homelier ones, purged away the Brompton taint and become something far higher in the social scale.
Here Bayre followed the lady into a side street where little cards over the door announced “Apartments,” and at one of these she stopped and proceeded to open it with a latch-key.
Bayre stopped too at the foot of the steps and looked up.
She heard the footsteps stop and looked round quickly. An exclamation broke from her lips.
“You’ve followed me!” she cried.
“Yes—Signora.”
She started, hesitated, then shut the door again and came down the steps.
“Why have you done this?” she said passionately.
“Why have you run away, without a word, withmycousin, my ward, Miss Merriman?”
“Your ward!” She laughed derisively. “Don’t talk nonsense. You know that that is a mere farce. You know well enough that I’m his mother.”
“Yes, and you’re something else,” replied Bayre, coolly. “You’remy aunt, Mrs Bartlett Bayre.”
She met his eyes, and then looked down; but she made no attempt to contradict him.
“Come inside,” she said suddenly, “and we can talk better. You must know everything now.”
Bayrefollowed Miss Merriman into the house, and into the little ground-floor sitting-room, where she turned up the gas and showed the folding doors open into the adjoining room, where a maid sat reading a novelette by the light of a candle beside the baby’s cot.
“Wait here a moment, I always go and kiss my baby the moment I come in; nothing can interfere with that ceremony,” she said, with a pretty defiance which Bayre liked.
And as she disappeared through the folding-doors, which she shut after her, her attitude seemed to say that now she had once owned that that baby was hers she would brandish him in the eyes of the world and snap her fingers at destiny.
Bayre heard the soft whisperings of the two women, the mysterious cooings and cawings they made over the sleeping child. And when Miss Merriman swept majestically back into the room again, dressed in a plain grey tea-gown, with one of her roses pinned in it, he remembered his old ideal of the simple, domestic-minded woman, and he sympathised with Southerley’s adoration of this beautiful creature.
“Now,” she said defiantly, “perhaps you’ll explain why you have followed me, why you have come.”
Bayre was rather amused, and rather resentful.
“You must remember,” said he, “that whatever suspicions I may have had concerning your relationship to the child, all that I absolutely knew was that he was my uncle’s son, and that therefore it was a personal duty of mine to know what became of him. My friends too, Repton and Southerley—” She interrupted him with a quick gesture.
“Surely,” she said, panting a little, “you can’t pretend they have a right to know anything whatever about me!”
She was standing on one side of the table and Bayre was on the other. He leaned upon it to look earnestly into her face.
“Indeed I do,” he retorted. “I say that Southerley at least has a right to know that you are a married woman, and I say that it is not fair to him to conceal the fact.”
“How—not fair?” said the lady, sinking into a chair and speaking in quite a timid and subdued voice. “How could I know that—that it mattered to him?”
“I think,” said Bayre, still leaning on the table, though she made a gesture to invite him to be seated, “that women know those things sooner than the men themselves. It seems to me that you must have seen what his feelings were, and his hopes; and though I know women do these cruel things and think little of them, yet I’m sorry that you, a member of my family and the mother of that child, should be so heartless.”
“Heartless! I’m not that,” replied Miss Merriman.
And as she looked up with the tears raining down her face, Bayre felt compunction at his own severity.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I suppose I have no right to speak like this. But surely you might have trusted us. Don’t you think so?”
Miss Merriman was silent for a few moments, wiping her eyes quietly, and sobbing a little. Then she seemed suddenly to make up her mind to a great effort, and looking up, she pointed to a chair and said, peremptorily,—
“Sit down. You shall not scold me without hearing a word in my defence. I begin to think you’re as hard, as impossible, as your uncle himself.”
Bayre sat down. He was longing to hear something of the strange story she had to tell, and was quite ready to admit that all the fault of his uncle’s unhappy marriage had not been on the side of the wife.
“Now you’ve been to Creux—” she began. “You’ve been there twice, and you’ve seen your uncle, have you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, do you think he is the sort of man to make a young wife happy?”
“Emphatically no,” admitted Bayre, promptly. “But surely you could see that before you married him?”
The poor lady clasped her hands and looked at him rather dismally.
“Do you know,” she asked earnestly, “the sort of life a girl leads among poor and proud relations who don’t always take the trouble to hide that she’s a burden upon them, even though they won’t consent to her trying to earn her own living? Well, if you can imagine that, you know the position I was in when I met your uncle and when he asked me to be his wife. There wasn’t even a question of my refusing: it was taken for granted by everybody that it was a splendid thing for me, and when I ventured to suggest that, being thirty or forty years older than I, he was rather old for me, I was looked upon as a monster of ingratitude for finding any fault. So we were married, and until we got to Creux it was bearable enough. I was a new toy, and he was kind to me. I was grateful too, really,” she insisted with pathetic earnestness.
“Of course, of course, I’m quite sure you were,” said Bayre, gently.
The lady went on,—
“But when we once got back to Creux life became almost intolerable at once, and all from the same cause—his cousin, Miss Ford.”
“Of course she wouldn’t approve of his marriage,” said Bayre.
“But she had no right to be jealous, vindictive, cruel,” urged Miss Merriman. “After all, her cousin had a right to marry, and she was provided for, for she had a little money of her own. But she was a perfect monster of avarice, and when my baby was born and she knew that he would have her cousin’s property she became so outrageously rude and harsh to me that I could not and would not bear it.”
“Did my uncle allow it?” asked Bayre, wondering whether the strange degeneration in his uncle had begun some time back.
“He didn’t see all of it,” said she. “Miss Ford was very artful, and she assumed to me when we were by ourselves an overbearing tone which she never used in your uncle’s presence. When I told him about this, and protested, he professed that I was exaggerating, making mountains out of mole-hills. And as my influence over him, such as it was, dwindled away directly we got back into the neighbourhood of this old cousin, you may imagine how all these scenes ended. He gradually took her part more and more, and blamed me for the uncomfortable life we all led. You see this Miss Ford had been his housekeeper for many years, and she was a very clever woman. Did you never see her?”
“Never. She died, you know, last year, before I ever went to Creux.”
“Ah, yes, yes!”
“Now that was just after you ran away, wasn’t it? When she was dead why didn’t you go back to your husband and child?” asked Bayre, gently.
“I wanted to, oh, I wanted to,” cried poor “Miss Merriman,” down whose cheeks the tears were again falling. “I should never have run away but for her.”
“How did it happen?” asked Bayre. “Will you tell me? I don’t ask out of curiosity, of course, but in the hope that I may be able to do something. Perhaps I could patch up this quarrel—not by myself, for my uncle can’t bear the sight of me, but through Miss Eden.”
“Ah! Miss Eden! What is she like?”
“You’ve never seen her?”
“Never.”
“But you’ve been in correspondence with her,” said Bayre. “I think I can guess that it was by arrangement with her that ‘Miss Merriman’ happened to be at hand when three poor travellers returned to town in charge of some particularly lively luggage!”
She looked down.
“I wonder you didn’t guess before,” she said drily. “Women are not so ready to undertake the care of other people’s children as I was to undertake the care of my own!”
“Yet you left Creux without him,” said Bayre.
“Not by my own wish,” said she, looking up with flashing eyes. “I was tricked by Marie Vazon. When life grew too intolerable for me at thechâteau, and I made up my mind to run away with my baby, I was obliged to take Marie into my confidence. She pretended to sympathise with me, crossed over with me and the baby to St Luke’s to catch the boat for Southampton, and then when I was on board preparing a cosy place for him in the cabin downstairs, she stole off the boat with my little one and left me to go away without him.”
The remembrance of the trick which had broken her heart when it was played upon her brought fresh tears into the mother’s eyes.
“They were artful customers, those Vazons,” said Bayre; “when you found you had been deceived, had you no thought of trying to get back?”
She nodded emphatically.
“He wouldn’t take me back. It was his cousin’s fault, of course. I wrote and I wrote, and I begged and I begged, but it was of no use. And when I knew his cousin was dead I wrote again to him and also to Miss Eden. From him I got no answer. From Miss Eden I got a sweet, womanly letter telling me she’d tried her best for me but that he simply wouldn’t hear her.”
Remembering his uncle’s wooden countenance, and the blank look with which he listened to anything he didn’t want to hear, Bayre could quite understand this.
He rose to go with a grave face.
“It’s an unhappy business,” said he. “I wish I could do anything. If I can, will you let me know?”
She rose too, with a strange look of unsatisfied longing in her great eyes.
“You are very good, very kind,” said she. And then she paused. “I like to think of your kindness, and of that of those two others. You must forgive me for running away; there were some things I couldn’t bear.”
Bayre felt the blood rising to his face.
“You mean—Southerley?” he said in a very low voice.
She made an impatient gesture.
“Oh, no, no, no, I don’t mean anything,” she said restlessly. “What should Mr Southerley matter to me, a married woman? You say strange things, Mr Bayre.”
He smiled at her pretty petulance.
“Well,” said he, “of course it would be too desperately wicked of you, Mrs Bayre, to see anything attractive enough to endanger your peace of mind in any man but Mr Bayre—”
He paused upon the name, and she suddenly looked up at him with an unaccustomed light of humour in her eyes. And when their eyes met they both laughed outright.
“After all,” said she, desperately, “why should I deny it to you? Why should I not acknowledge that Ididfind something in this handsome young friend of yours which made me feel that it would be wiser not to see him again? I’m very human, I’m afraid. And—my life has not been a very happy one. Where’s the harm of owning that I’m only a woman, especially when I’m trying, trying hard, hard to be an honourable and good one—for my child’s sake!”
Bayre could not answer, but he nodded ferociously two or three times in sympathetic assent.
“Now,” said she, “you must go. Already my landlady, who knows me as the pink of discretion, will be wondering who you are.”
“That’s all right,” said Bayre, smiling. “Tell her the truth. Tell her I’m your nephew.”
At that her youth got the better of her and she burst out laughing.
“The truth will not always bear to be told,” said she. “In this case I’m sure I shall not venture it.”
Before he reached the door she rushed to the mantelpiece and took from it a large unframed photograph of herself in the dress she had worn on the concert platform that evening.
“Take this souvenir of your aunt,” said she, demurely, “and write on it that it’s a present to her dutiful nephew. Good-bye.”
He wondered why she had given him the picture, and it was not until he had got half-way home that it occurred to him to think that perhaps she liked the thought that her picture, in all her brilliant beauty, should lie about the house where Southerley was.
He did not quite know whether this idea of his did the lady injustice; but he decided that, innocent as this little bit of coquetry might be, he would not risk fanning a hopeless flame in his friend’s breast.
There was a sort of suspicion, however, in the faces of both Repton and Southerley when he got home and found them playing cribbage by the fire. They wanted to know where he had been, and said rude things when he wouldn’t tell them. And then, as luck would have it, Southerley pounced into his bedroom when he had retired for the night, and found Signora Beata’s portrait stuck in his looking-glass, in front of which he was taking off his collar.
Southerley made for the portrait in a rage.
“Who’s this?” roared he, as he seized the photograph, which Bayre in vain tried to intercept.
The owner of the picture took the bull by the horns.
“It’s my aunt,” shouted he, as he made a clutch at it.
“Aunt be blowed! It’s not. It’s—it’s—”
“It’s the wife of my uncle and namesake, old Bartlett Bayre of Creux, and the mother of the child we brought over from St Luke’s a few weeks ago,” said Bayre, deliberately.
The two young men looked each other straight in the face for a few moments.
Then Southerley tumbled into a chair, looking very queer about the eyes.
“Good lord! Do you mean it?”
“Rather.”
Southerleydropped his head into his hands. His friend said nothing. What could he say? He did not like the look of those two strong, nervous hands with the sinews standing up like cords. He began to hum to himself, and to make a clatter with his hair-brushes.
Then Southerley looked up abruptly, his face haggard and wet.
“She might have told me. She might have trusted me,” he said hoarsely. “And I—if I hadn’t been such a great chuckle-headed fool I might have known, I might have known.”
Bayre was thankful to see that he took it so quietly.
“As to telling you,” he said gently, “I dare say it was better not to. Poor thing! What could she do for the best but what she has done? Just get away without any fuss or any scenes, and try to forget you, as she ought. It’s a hard case, an awfully hard case.”
“I must see her, I must!” cried Southerley, starting up.
“Better not. I sha’n’t help you, at any rate. I’m going to try to get her to go back to her husband.”
“What!” bellowed Southerley. “To shut herself up with that unbearable old fossil, who—who—who—”
Bayre did not answer, for it suddenly occurred to him that there was a mystery about his uncle which he should like to have solved before attempting to bring about even the most half-hearted reconciliation.
Southerley was walking up and down the little room at a great rate.
“What good would it do,” he asked, turning sharply, “to get her to shut herself up again with a man who’s at least half a lunatic? You know very well I shouldn’t say this if there were the least chance of a real reconciliation between them. But knowing what you do know about your uncle, you must feel as sure as I do that to shut these two unhappy creatures, the mother and the child, in the same house with him would only be to drive at least the woman into the same condition of half-wittedness that he has reached himself.”
Bayre rubbed his head distractedly. He could not but have doubts of the same kind himself.
“Well, well, how do you know that it isn’t the feeling that he’s driven away his wife and child that has made my uncle what he now is?” suggested he.
“Rot!” said Southerley, laconically.
This being Bayre’s opinion also, he forbore to remonstrate with his friend upon his extremely vulgar retort.
“At any rate it would be better for her than to—to—to—”
“To—to—to—what?”
“Well, to go about the world without anyone to take care of her. It’s an awful position, you know, for a beautiful woman like that.”
“I know it is. But after all, there’s no reason why she should shut herself up and refuse to see her friends. I think it’s a great pity she went away from here; I say it quite disinterestedly. After all, you are some sort of relation to her, you know—”
“Nephew,” said Bayre, promptly.
Southerley made a gesture of impatience.
“At any rate, you have the same name. And—and—and we were interested in the child, you know, all of us. Now it’s better for a boy—”
Bayre interrupted him by a burst of ironical laughter; and Southerley, who took things seriously, checked himself and withdrew, with the remark that he was not going to stay there to listen to his friend making a fool of himself.
But indeed Bayre’s merriment had been of a hollow sort, for he felt the bitter irony of the situation quite as strongly as Southerley did.
It was two days after this that Bayre, who was in a state of greater anxiety than ever concerning Olwen, experienced a thrill of mingled emotions on finding a letter waiting for him on the sitting-room table. It was from Olwen, and it bore the St Luke’s postmark. It was very short, and the hand-writing betrayed the agitation of the writer.
“Dear Mr Bayre,—I am writing against orders, but I feel that I ought and I must. I think your uncle is dying, but he will not see a doctor, though I sent for one on my own responsibility. If by any means you can come, I do earnestly beg you to do so.—Yours sincerely,“Olwen Eden.”
“Dear Mr Bayre,—I am writing against orders, but I feel that I ought and I must. I think your uncle is dying, but he will not see a doctor, though I sent for one on my own responsibility. If by any means you can come, I do earnestly beg you to do so.—Yours sincerely,
“Olwen Eden.”
He knew that there was more involved than the death of his uncle; the very letter in his hands, short, almost curt, dry and barren of information as it was, showed that the writer had something to communicate too important to be told in a letter. At whatever cost, he felt that he should have to go back to Creux.
And then came another thought; his uncle’s wife must know, and at once. So he put a copy of Olwen’s letter upon paper, since he could not trust the epistle itself out of his hands, and enclosed it with a couple of lines to Signora Beata.
The next day was Friday, and having, not without difficulty, succeeded in getting two days’ leave, Bayre came back to the Diggings soon after four to prepare for his journey on the morrow. He found Southerley in the sitting-room, and he told him briefly about the letter and his proposed journey.
“And,” he added, “I’ve written to his wife.”
“You mean Miss Merriman?”
“Yes, Miss Merriman, if you like. But remember, she is Mrs Bayre—Mrs Bartlett Bayre.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” said Southerley, walking up and down the room. “Will she go to him?”
“I don’t know, but I should think so.”
Southerley nodded, but said nothing, and Bayre left him and went upstairs.
And five minutes after, while Southerley was still pacing up and down like a bear in its cage, Susan opened the door and announced,—
“Miss Merriman!”
She was very pale, and the expression of her face was one of guilt and confusion. But if she was shy, Southerley was more so. He offered her that armchair the springs of which were in the least imperfect condition, and sat down himself on the most rickety of them all, tongue-tied, restless and bashful.
Miss Merriman was all in black, and the black spotted veil she wore increased the effect of her pallor.
“They told me Mr Bayre was here,” she said.
Southerley started as if he had never heard the name.
“Bayre! Oh, yes, yes. So he is, I believe. Shall I—shall I go and tell him?”
“I—I want to know,” she said, in a tremulous voice, “whether he’ll take me with him—to Creux. You know all about it, of course?”
From shyness poor Southerley rushed into rash confidence.
“Yes, I know. Why didn’t you tell us before? What reason had you for not letting us into your secret at first?”
He had shifted his seat uneasily, and was now sitting on the arm of his rickety chair, thumping the back of it nervously as he spoke.
She rose restlessly and stood near the fireplace.
“I didn’t want you to know, I didn’t want anybody to know. I was so afraid of losing my boy again. I lost him by a trick before as perhaps you know, perhaps Mr Bayre told you. And so I hid my own name, for fear they might get to know at Creux that I had got my child back. Though I don’t think they’d have cared. Isn’t it wonderful—that they shouldn’t have cared?”
It seemed to Southerley, now standing at the other corner by the mantelpiece, that the look of maternal love which shone in her eyes as she asked this question was the most beautiful expression he had ever seen on a woman’s face.
“You mean that old Mr Bayre didn’t care?”
“Yes. Think of it! For weeks he never went near the cottage where he believed his child to be! Oh, I could have forgiven him everything but that!”
“You’ll have to forgive him that too, now,” said Southerley, with a sort of gruff gentleness.
She looked frightened.
“Oh, perhaps he’s not really so ill,” said she, in a whisper. “I don’t want him to be ill.”
She meant more than that, and Southerley understood the pangs in the woman’s heart. Even at the price of freedom for herself she did not want him to die.
“If he gets well you’ll stay there, I suppose?” said Southerley, pulling himself together and trying to speak in the tone of a conveyancing clerk during business hours.
She looked scared.
“I—I suppose I shall have to, if he wishes it.”
“But you don’t want to?”
He had no business to say this, and he knew it. But the matter was so vitally interesting to him, he cared so deeply what became of her, that he found himself floundering into hopeless indiscretions of speech before he knew where he was.
She drew a long breath, stared in front of her and broke passionately into the truth.
“I can’t want to, I can’t, I can’t. I’ve tried to want to, I’ve written saying I wanted to, but oh! it’s too hard, it’s too hard. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; you’ve no business to ask me such things, no business to listen to my answers. But I tell you there are some things one can’t forget, some slights one can’t forgive; and I was made to suffer, in little things, stupid things, but so deeply that the remembrance of it will never die out of my heart. There! I ought not to say this, especially now when he’s ill: but it’s true, and I can’t help it.”
“Poor thing!”
It was a most ludicrous appellation, and he knew it, as he looked sympathetically at the beautiful woman before him. But the words came straight from his heart, and she was grateful. She smiled up at him through the tears which were gathering in her eyes.
“I’m glad you’re sorry for me,” said she, ingenuously. “I’m sorry for myself. But I ought not to be: I ought to be spending my time being sorry forhim! For after all, it must be very, very lonely for him—”
“But he seems to like loneliness,” said Southerley, sharply.
“I don’t suppose he does now he’s ill!”
“Well, Miss Eden’s there.”
“Yes.”
“What will you do with the boy? Shall you take him with you?” asked Southerley, anxiously.
“Not on that cold journey,” she said with a sudden plaintiveness in her tone. “Besides, I’d rather know first how I’m going to be received myself!”
“Well, he can’t be unkind to you now!”
It was evident that the recollection of former unkindness was still so strong in the unhappy woman that she shrank from the approaching ordeal.
“N-o-o-o,” she said faintly, “and at any rate young Mr Bayre will be there—”
“I wish to Heaven I were going to be there!” moaned Southerley.
She drew herself up, looking rather frightened.
“Oh, no, I’m glad you won’t be!” she panted out.
“Why? Why?”
“Oh, he was horribly jealous if I—if anybody—”
And then she broke off, faltering, crimson, confused: but not more crimson, not more confused, not, alas! more delighted than was Southerley, who recognised in this little outburst the fact that the ill-used wife had noticed and had not been unmoved by his own clumsy, silent adoration.
But, if she had been for a moment indiscreet, she repented very quickly and very severely.
“I do wish Mr Bayre would come!” she said with asperity, which smote her hearer to the heart.
Drawing instantly back like a snail into its shell, he made a clumsy dash for the door, and saying incoherently, “Oh, ah, yes, yes, I—I forgot—I—I’ll tell him!” he fled out of the room and lumbered up the stairs.
Although she had been so anxious to see Bayre, Miss Merriman did not stay long discussing the journey with him; they arranged to meet at Paddington on the following morning, and, five minutes later, the beautiful visitor quitted the house, leaving the young men in a state of much excitement over the approaching event of the journey to Creux and its result.
“If that wretched old lunatic goes on living,” observed Southerley, “I shall cut my throat.”
But Bayre reprimanded him severely.
“You won’t do anything so crazy,” he retorted quietly. “You’ll find a nice girl, not like Miss Mer—I mean my aunt, but like your own ideal, and you’ll marry her and settle down happily with her, and she’ll write your articles for you and save the public from much inferior literature. And my aunt will settle down comfortably at Creux, with the boy and her husband—”
Before he could get any further with his harangue, however, the door of the room was violently slammed, and he found himself alone.
The next morning was cold and cheerless, and when Bayre met the lady at the station they both looked rather blue. Southerley had been forbidden by his friend to put in an appearance, but he insisted on sending some chocolates for her refreshment during the journey, in spite of Bayre’s threat that he would represent them to be his own present.
The two travellers did very little talking, and Bayre could see the lady’s handkerchief go furtively up to her eyes now and then, and he wondered what the thoughts were that brought the tears.
As soon as they landed at St Luke’s they got a boat to take them across to Creux, and on the way they learned that the popular notion was that old Monsieur Bayre was not long for this world, and that he was dying as he had lived, an eccentric recluse, refusing to see doctor or clergyman, and morose to the last.
The boatman who told them all this did not recognise the lady, who sat heavily veiled and simply dressed in black in the stern of the boat, and who said nothing whatever while the short voyage lasted.
But as Bayre helped her up the steep cliff path she whispered to him, in a quavering voice,—
“I’m afraid; oh, I’m so dreadfully afraid!”
“Afraid of what?” said he, cheerily.
But she drew a deep breath and only faltered,—
“I—I think I don’t quite know.”
Before they reached the house they had to decide upon a plan of action, since both knew that old Mr Bayre would never see his wife if her arrival were first formally announced to him. She must be smuggled in, undoubtedly. It was settled that Bayre should be spokesman, that she should follow him into the house without speaking and without raising her veil, and trust to luck to make her way unmolested.
Bayre expected to have the door shut in his face, so he prepared to make a dash for it and to force a way in if necessary.
It was a long time before anybody answered their summons, so long, indeed, that both began to be afraid that the door was not to be opened at all to them. Presently, however, they heard the sound of heavy steps inside, and the door was opened by Nini Portelet, who looked alarmed when she saw the visitors.
“You must let us in, please,” said Bayre, gently forcing a passage for himself and his companion.
The girl muttered something below her breath, and mentioned Miss Eden’s name.
“Yes, we should like to see her, please,” said he, as they stood a moment in the hall.
“She is with monsieur. He is very ill,” stammered Nini.
And as she spoke she glanced in the direction of the passage that led to the room where Bayre had seen his uncle on his last visit.
He took a bold step.
“Is he downstairs then?” asked he, at the same time walking in the direction of the lower room, and glancing at the lady to indicate that she was to follow him.
Nini got frightened.
“No, but—”
She attempted to get between the lady and the entrance to the passage, but Bayre was still more determined than she, and he said, in a voice of authority,—
“Don’t interfere. We have important business here. We must pass.”
The girl muttered something about her duty, then, suddenly perceiving that the contest was an unequal one, she uttered a low cry of terror, and disappeared into the passage that led to the servants’ quarters.
Miss Merriman was trembling like a leaf, and he had to cheer and encourage her as he led her gently in the direction of his uncle’s room.
“Come in,” cried Olwen’s voice when he knocked.
“I can’t! Let me go back!” murmured Miss Merriman, in a choking voice.
But he insisted.
“No, no. Remember, it is your duty.”
He turned the handle, and holding her firmly by the arm, led her into the room.
The old man was not in bed. He was sitting huddled up as usual in his armchair by the little wood fire that burned in the grate, and Olwen, who sat at a little distance, held a book in her hand, as if she had been reading to him.
It was she who caught sight of the visitors first, and guessing at once who the veiled lady was, she started forward in her chair with an exclamation.
“What is it? What is it?” asked old Mr Bayre, testily.
At the sound of his voice Miss Merriman began to tremble so violently that Bayre thought she would have fallen. The next moment the old man turned round, with a frown, and faced the intruders.
Miss Merriman uttered an exclamation, started forward, stared intently into the face of the old man, who shrank and quailed before her. Then, with a loud shriek, she fell back, fainting and white, into the young man’s supporting arms.