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Title: The mis-rule of three

Author: Florence Warden

Release date: January 9, 2024 [eBook #72669]

Language: English

Original publication: London: T. Fisher Unwin

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIS-RULE OF THREE ***





 THE
 MIS-RULE OF THREE

 By
 FLORENCE WARDEN
 Author of
 “The House on the Marsh,” “The Heart of a Girl,”
 Etc., Etc.




 LONDON
 T. FISHER UNWIN
 Paternoster Square
 1904
 _All Rights Reserved_




 CONTENTS

 I. THEY DISCUSS THE GIRL
 II. THEY FIND THE GIRL
 III. SOMEBODY’S IDEAL
 IV. AND SOMEBODY’S AVERSION
 V. WAS IT AVERSION?
 VI. A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
 VII. SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE
 VIII. BAYRE’S IDEAL
 IX. A MYSTERY
 X. OR A CRIME?
 XI. RIVALS
 XII. THE MEETING
 XIII. PRUDENCE _V._ PASSION
 XIV. TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS
 XV. THE HOSPITALITY OF MR BAYRE
 XVI. A SECRET FOR SALE
 XVII. THE BLACKMAILERS
 XVIII. RETRIBUTION
 XIX. GOOD-BYE
 XX. AND AGAIN GOOD-BYE
 XXI. PARENTS AND GUARDIANS
 XXII. A RUNAWAY
 XXIII. A PHOTOGRAPH
 XXIV. RECONCILIATION
 XXV. THE HIDDEN WOMAN
 XXVI. THE RULE OF THREE BECOMES THE RULE OF ONE




 The Mis-rule of Three

 CHAPTER I.
 THEY DISCUSS THE GIRL

The Diggings were in a street somewhere off Tottenham Court Road, in
a tall, old-fashioned, roomy house which had seen its best days, but
which still made a valiant attempt to hold its own in the respectable
class in a neighbourhood where respectability is not exactly rampant.

For dingy foreigners of the undesirable class abound exceedingly in
those parts, and undesirables of home growth are not unknown there.
Indeed, individuals of both these types did get in, now and then,
within the hospitable shelter of No. 46 itself, in spite of the
anxiety of Mrs Inkersole, the landlady, to preserve the high tone of
the house.

But whoever might occupy the ground floor and the first floor of No.
46, whoever might enjoy the solid mahogany and second-hand chenille
curtains of the former, or bask in the luxury of alleged Sheraton
upholstered in vivid plush and brocade in the latter, the historical
Diggings on the second floor remained for month after month in the
possession of the famous Three, who were known among the landlady’s
family and servants as “The gentlemen.”

Not only did “the gentlemen” occupy the two rooms which constituted
the second floor, but they overflowed upwards into two of the small
apartments of the rabbit warren which is always to be found on the
upper floors of the typical London lodging-house. One of these small
upper rooms belonged to Bartlett Bayre, a tall, thin, dark-skinned,
black-haired young man, who was a clerk at Somerset House in the first
place, and a struggling writer of loftiest ambition but as yet very
indifferent success in the second. His room was remarkable for great
outward neatness, though the internal condition of the wardrobe and
chest of drawers left much to be desired in the way of order.

The little room next to Bayre’s was occupied by Ted Southerley, a big,
broad, stolid, red-faced Northerner, who was “on” two or three papers
of no world-wide circulation and with no very certain prospects, and
on one which actually paid its way and afforded a modest pittance to
its most energetic if, perhaps, slightly commonplace contributor.

The third member of the confraternity was a painter, to whom neither
the Academy nor the New Gallery had as yet opened its doors. As the
happy possessor of a small allowance from home, which enabled him to
enjoy the luxury of being idle and the further luxury of pretending to
be very busy at the same time, Jan Repton occupied the place of honour
among the three friends: that is to say, he had the back room on the
second floor all to himself as combined studio and bedroom. This
apartment, therefore, offered a picturesque combination; an easel
being placed near the window for the benefit of the north light, while
a small bedstead stood in one corner, and a platform for a model
occupied the place of honour in the middle of the room. The bedstead
was used by day for books, newspapers and parcels of various kinds.
The dressing-table made a convenient hat and coat stand; while the
washstand was rendered picturesque with a display of palettes,
canvases, paint-brushes, and all the paraphernalia of the artist’s
profession.

On occasions of state, when friends or cousins from the country were
to be entertained, such choice bits of this outfit as seemed adapted
to the purposes of the picturesque were transferred to the
sitting-room in the front, together with the easel containing the
picture upon which Repton was engaged, the model platform and a few
bits of cheap brocade, remnants bought at drapers’ sales, to be thrown
at random across the well-worn and springless sofa and over the backs
of the lodging-house chairs. Also, on these occasions, the solid
square table, which would then have been particularly useful, was
thrust into the bedroom at the back, so that the visitors might have
their tea uncomfortably in corners, on their own laps, in what was
felt to be the orthodox studio fashion.

Bayre grumbled on these occasions, objecting to this “faking up” of an
unreal atmosphere of artistic luxury to which they were unaccustomed.
Ted Southerley growled more openly at the unnecessary discomfort the
plan entailed. But Jan Repton was inexorable. Art was superior to all
things else: and the artistic atmosphere, according to him, “gave a
tone,” which he was not going to sacrifice for any utilitarian whims
of “you two fellows.”

It may be mentioned that “Jan” was an assumed name and not Repton’s
real baptismal prænomen. He had, in fact, been christened plain
“John”; but finding the appellation unsatisfying, he replaced it by
the three simple letters which gave him at once a distinction in his
small circle, which the circle did not hesitate to inform him was the
only one he would ever possess.

It was after an entertainment which had not been altogether
satisfactory, Repton having tried to sing and Bayre to play the banjo,
both with more exuberant applause than real success, that they were
rearranging the furniture in its everyday position one November
evening when a certain discontent which had of late been growing in
Bayre’s breast reached a momentous crisis.

“I tell you what it is, Repton,” said he, as he managed, after fearful
struggles, to get the fourth and last leg of the table through the
door into the sitting-room, “all this beastly turn-out and turning
everything upside down whenever your friends and relations put in an
appearance here is perfectly sickening. Have friends by all means if
you like, though Southerley and I can do without denuding half the
country parishes in England of their inhabitants at regular intervals
to fill our room and eat our bread-and-butter.”

“Bother your bread-and-butter!” said Repton, cheerfully, as he tilted
the table over into its place in the middle of the room, and dragged
on the dark green tapestry tablecloth with which it was a point of
honour to cover the much-dented sham mahogany top. “You could have
your own relations here if you liked, or if you’ve got any. I’m not
going to let myself grow into a moping misanthrope for you, or for
Southerley either, and so I tell you.”

“Nobody wants you to grow into a moping misanthrope, or into anything
else you don’t like,” boomed out burly Ted Southerley from the cosy if
slightly battered armchair by the fire into which he had dropped with
his pipe when the ladies went away. “But I do think, Repton, for all
our sakes, you might exercise the principle of judicious selection
among your acquaintances, and especially you might introduce a little
more variety among the ladies. Your female cousins are thoroughly
charming, I admit, but they do run a little to the same type now,
don’t they?”

“You have to take your cousins as you can get them,” replied Repton,
cheerfully. “Some of us would be glad enough to have cousins at all;
and if they were such beauties that they were run after by half
London, why, you couldn’t expect them to come up to take tea with us
on a second floor now, could you?”

“I shouldn’t expect it,” snapped Bayre. “And more than that, if I have
to expect it now it’s not because I like it. To have to sit for two
hours listening to a sandy-haired girl who can talk about nothing but
the theatres and the opera, and who is trying all the time to impress
you with the idea that she belongs to a circle in society where she
certainly never set foot herself, and about which you yourself know
little and care less, is no end of a bore.”

“She moves in a circle a precious sight better than yours!” retorted
Repton, nettled. “And as for talking, she was only trying to find
something to say because you were too surly to open your own mouth.
And as for her being sandy--”

“I thought you didn’t like women to be intellectual, Bayre,” put in
Southerley, anxious to prevent a quarrel. “I can’t make out what it is
you want.”

Bayre, thus challenged, sat on the edge of the table, put his hand in
his pocket, swung his leg, and laid down the law upon the subject of
the Eternal Feminine thus:--

“I like a woman,” said he, “who exhales femininity at every pore. That
is to say, one who is above all things modest and even somewhat shy;
one who says little, does not trouble her head about the arts or
sciences, or about intellectual pursuits, when compared with the
interests of the home. There I imagine her supreme; calm, serene,
orderly, diffusing a spirit of comfort, an atmosphere of peace,
wherever she appears. She has no thought of “Society” in the modern
slang sense, because for her Society is concentrated in her home, in
the little circle of human beings who depend upon her, as they would
upon an all-wise, all-providing, all-healing fairy, for help and
sympathy and sunny kindness.”

“What you want is a housekeeper who will darn your socks, cook your
mutton chop, and give her whole mind, what she has of it, to making
you comfortable,” said Repton, scoffingly.

“Not altogether that, though socks are more comfortable when darned
than when in holes, as we occasionally wear them at present, and chops
are undoubtedly better cooked than raw,” replied Bayre, suavely.

“What do you think of his precious feminine ideal, Southerley?” asked
Repton, with a superb raising of his light eyebrows.

“I think it’s all jolly rot,” said Ted, promptly. “I don’t mean I
disapprove of a woman’s being domestic in her tastes--somebody must
look after the house, and see to the dinner and all that sort of
thing, I suppose; and certainly none of those things would get done
very well if they were left to me--but a woman who had her hands
always in dough or in dusters, whose mind was divided between her
saucepan and her cotton reels, would drive me mad.”

“Do _you_ want small talk and Society slip-slop, then, as
accomplishments?” sneered Bayre.

“No,” said Southerley. “What I admire in a woman is spirit and fire,
life and animation. My ideal is a girl who can ride like the wind,
whose feet dance as she walks, whose eyes are all aglow with life and
vitality, and there--I shouldn’t mind if she were a bit of a genius
into the bargain!”

“A genius!” roared Repton, derisively. “What should a female genius
want with you, Southerley?”

“Well, he’s welcome to her!” put in Bayre with contempt. “It’s the
first time I ever heard a sane man say he admired that sort of thing
in a woman! And I should think it would be the last! Intellect in a
woman--intellect out of the common, I mean: of course I don’t mean
that I admire a born fool--is an evil fungus, hideous and useless if
not actually noxious in itself, and fatal, too, to the object upon
which it has made its home.”

“Very poetical, but very absurd,” remarked Southerley. “The female
genius you sneer at so loftily would be much more likely even to
manage the house well than the sheep-woman you think so much of. And
if she didn’t, at any rate she wouldn’t bore you to death as the other
would.”

“Why don’t you get hold of some of your sheep and bring ’em here and
let’s see if we can worship ’em too?” suggested Repton, derisively.
“They’re common enough; surely you must have a few sisters and cousins
and aunts who answer to the description!”

“No,” said Bayre, stolidly. “It happens that I haven’t. I have only
one relation in the world that I know anything about, and that’s not
much.”

“And who’s he--or she?”

“_He_ is an elder brother of my late father’s, a very rich man who
lives a kind of hermit’s life on one of the smaller of the Channel
Islands. A bachelor and reputed to be a miser.”

“A bachelor! And very rich! Why don’t you go and look him up?” said
Southerley, the matter-of-fact.

“Don’t know that he wants me. If he does, he’s kept the fact very much
to himself,” said Bayre.

“If I had a rich bachelor uncle,” said Repton, lightly, “I should go
and get him to leave me all his money, and then find a handy cliff--”

“It would be better, first of all,” said Southerley, gravely, “to find
out just what ‘very rich’ means. It would be a pity to go and burden
one’s soul with a crime under a decent figure. Old gentlemen who live
shut up often get the reputation of great wealth on something under
two hundred a year!”

“That’s a point worth considering,” admitted Bayre.

“Look here, you fellows,” said Repton, who had grown suddenly
thoughtful, “wouldn’t it be a lark if we were all of us to go to the
place--wherever it is--Jersey and Guernsey isn’t it? Or is it the
Scillies?--and hunt up this recluse? If he didn’t take a fancy to
Bayre--and I see heaps of reasons why he shouldn’t--why, he might to
you or me, you know, Southerley? And anyhow it would be a bit of a
spree, and I could find something to paint. Perhaps get known as the
Jersey man, or the Guernsey man, or the Sark man, and make it
impossible for anybody to think about any of those places for ever
after without thinking of Jan Repton.”

“And I,” said Southerley, “might get some decent ‘copy’ out of them, I
fancy. Shirts for sailors at Jersey and Guernsey; cows at Alderney;
rocks, I suppose, at Sark. All interesting things that people are
dying to know all about. This is to be thought of, Bayre.”

“What on earth you want to go to any place for in order to write about
it I don’t know,” observed Bayre, grimly. “For no matter what you see
or what you hear, you always manage to report it under such a veneer
of commonplace that nobody would ever think you got your information
out of anything more up-to-date than the ninth edition of the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_!”

“My dear fellow, when you write for commonplace people you must write
in a commonplace way. Now you, who write for the people that read your
works--people so uncommon that they don’t exist--can ransack the
dictionary for obsolete adjectives and introduce compound words that
nobody has ever heard of with impunity.”

“I may not find it easy to get to my public,” said Bayre, in whose
dark face a flush was rising, “but when I do it won’t consist of the
sweepings of the counter and the stable, or of the representatives of
the culture created by Snick-snacks.”

“Look here,” broke in Repton, who perceived that the atmosphere was
growing rather sultry, “without any chaff, don’t you think a week’s
outing might be got out of this idea? It’s the right time of year, in
the first place, to see the islands in their everyday aspect, with no
taint of the tourist about them.”

“And the right time of year for an awfully rough sea passage!”
observed Southerley, who was not a “good sailor.”

Bayre played with his moustache and reflected.

“When you come to think of it,” said he at last, “it’s not such a bad
notion of yours, Repton, that we should go and pay the old gentleman a
surprise visit. I’ve never been to the Channel Islands, and a blow
across the sea would get rid of some of the cobwebs of this infernal
city.”

“Don’t abuse old London, I beg,” said Southerley. “It’s the only place
worth living in for a man with any brains in his head.”

Repton and Bayre both turned on him looks of scorn. The fact that he
had been, in a small and modest way, successful in those callings of
Art and Literature in which they themselves had so far failed--for
Southerley had had his sketches reproduced in the not over-particular
columns of a Sunday paper--rankled in the breasts of both.

“It happens,” said Bayre, “that I could get a holiday now if I liked,
and I might not be able to do so later. If you fellows agree to go
I’ll make arrangements as soon as you like. I’ve been getting restless
lately. Working with no result is not good enough: dull routine work
for one’s bread-and-butter and nothing more’s not good enough: this
beastly old city’s not good enough: _life’s_ not good enough!”

With which drastic comment on things in general and his own affairs in
particular, Bayre began to swing up and down the room at a great rate,
with his hands in his pockets and his dark eyes gleaming rather
savagely from out of his pale face, to which dark hair worn long gave
a certain individuality at which Southerley, with his close-cropped,
conventional head, and Repton, with what his friends called his sandy
stubble, scoffed long and loudly.

Though neither of the other young men chafed as much under the
conditions of existence as Bayre did, the suggestion of a change, of a
possibly romantic adventure with a sort of object, seized both of
them.

And the end of it was that, without wasting much time in discussion,
they all made arrangements for a journey together to the Channel
Islands, to hunt out in company this mysterious rich bachelor uncle of
Bayre’s in whose existence, perhaps, two of the party scarcely
believed at all.




 CHAPTER II.
 THEY FIND THE GIRL

It was on a Saturday, at 9.15 in the evening, that the three
travellers started from Paddington on their search for adventures and
Bayre’s rich uncle.

It was very cold, and there was an ill-concealed sentiment abroad that
they had chosen a time of year for their expedition which, though
distinctly favourable to their chances of having the train, the boat
and the islands a good deal to themselves, was not so well chosen as
regarded their own comfort and enjoyment.

It was chilly work, as Repton observed, turning out of the train at
Weymouth between two and three o’clock in the morning; and when they
arrived at Guernsey, after a long and rough sea passage, in the gloom
of a November morning, all three travellers were inclined to think
that the mildness of the climate had been exaggerated, and to wonder
what on earth they had left dear, dirty dark London for at such an
unseasonable time.

They had heard, through some acquaintance, before leaving town, of a
quiet little lodging-house kept by a Frenchwoman, where they had made
up their minds to stay, in pursuance of their determination to follow
the usual tourist plans as little as possible.

Their decision involved a rather long walk through streets which
looked, in the circumstances, gloomy, grimy and mean; and when at last
they arrived at Madame Nicolas’ modest establishment, not having taken
the precaution to write and inform her of their coming, they found the
place in a decidedly out-of-season condition.

However, Madame, a brisk, black-eyed little woman, and her one
servant, a raw-boned, good-humoured country girl in short skirt,
jacket tied in by a long apron, and round close cap, were hospitable
and even enthusiastic, and within half an hour the travellers were
sitting down, in a prim, bare-looking _salle-à-manger_, to a
breakfast of rolls, hot coffee and eggs.

Battered and disorganised by their journey, the three friends passed a
lazy day, not straying beyond the limits of the town. They had
already, in some measure, lost sight of the avowed object of their
journey when Bayre, sitting back comfortably in a chair by the fire
while Aurélie was clearing the table after their six-o’clock dinner,
asked the girl, in French, if she knew anything about the little
island of Creux a few miles away.

Repton and Southerley looked at their companion with eyes full of envy
and disgust. Repton had picked up a few words of passable French in
the course of summer excursions to Boulogne and other not unknown
resorts of the Londoner. Southerley could read French books, but had
the proper contempt of a University man for niceties of foreign
pronunciation, so that when he conversed in any language but his own
he was for the most part unappreciated. Bayre, on the other hand, had
condescended to master the French idiom, and had thereby laid himself
open to the suspicion of having a terrible past.

What could the ordinary virtuous Englishman want with a thorough
command of any tongue but his own? So reasoned his two
less-accomplished companions, as, with jealousy in their hearts and
scorn on their lips, they watched and listened, and understood a
little of what he said but not much of what the voluble Aurélie
replied in her Guernsey _patois_.

Oh, yes, Aurélie knew Creux very well; she had been there more than
once herself, but ah! people did not care to go much to Creux since
the strange things that had happened there of late, things that made
people fancy all was not right on that desolate island. She for one
would be very sorry to have to live there, and to lie for nearly a
month after she was dead above the ground without a holy word said by
priest or pastor!

And Aurélie, who showed by her excitement that she was referring to
some event that had recently agitated the neighbourhood, put down her
plates, planted her large hands on her hips, and nodded her head with
much meaning.

“Why, is it so far away as all that? I thought it was only three or
four miles from Guernsey and that communication was constant,” said
Bayre.

“Yes, it is not further than that, and when the sea is smooth and the
wind light one sails across easily enough. But in stormy weather, like
that we had a few months ago, ah! then it is different. It’s all very
well when the boat is out in the middle of the channel, if it is
guided by a man who understands the currents and the way the wind
comes through between the islands. But the shore of Creux is as steep
as a wall, and one can neither embark nor land there in bad weather.
And that’s how it was that Mees Ford, the cross-grained old cousin who
was housekeeper so long to the rich Englishman”--at this point Repton
and Southerley strained their attention to the utmost, for they knew
that they had got upon the track of Bayre’s uncle already--“had to lie
unburied for so long, and that’s how it was that the coffin, with her
dead body in it, was washed away at the very moment when it was being
lowered into the boat which was to bring it across for burial in our
cemetery here.”

Aurélie shuddered at the gruesome story, of which Bayre alone
understood the whole, although his two friends gathered enough of it
to insist upon the repetition of the tale in such English as the girl
could command.

“And when did all this happen?” asked Southerley, who had the
reporter’s liking for details.

“One, two, three, four, five, six montz ago,” replied Aurélie,
helping out his presumably weak intellect by illustration on her
fingers. “Ze weazer was stormy, and ze sea like mountains--so high. It
was like zat for near four week.”

“It must be jolly lonely over there,” remarked Repton.

“And was the rich Englishman drowned when the accident happened?”
asked Southerley.

“Monsieur Bayre? Oh, no. He save himself, zough he cannot save ze boat
from turning over. It was found turned upside down later,” said the
girl; “but ze coffin, no, zat was not found.”

“Did you ever hear of this cousin of your uncle’s, Bayre?” said
Southerley, who thought the story an odd one, and thought also that
the imagination of the islanders might perhaps have been at work upon
it.

“I knew he had a housekeeper who was some relation,” answered Bayre.

“Yes, yes, cousin,” interrupted Aurélie, vivaciously, nodding her
head two or three times to emphasise her words to the two
less-accomplished Englishmen. “She and Monsieur Bayre zey was so much
like one anozer, ze same long face like wood, long chin, straight
mouz, small eyes zat looked out of ze corners--so!”

“You know him, then? You knew them both?” said Bayre.

“I have seen zem, but not often. Monsieur Bayre, wiz his hard face,
and his dress, not like a gentleman’s, but like a fisherman’s, wiz his
jersey, his sea-boots, his cap wiz a peak--I have seen him in his
boat. Mees Ford I have also seen, when I go to Creux, walking in se
cour of ze house, what you call ze yard. But zey do not come here
often. Old Pierre Vazon, and his daughter Marie--zey fetch ze sings
from St Luke’s for ze _château_.”

“_Château_, eh?” said Southerley.

“Oh, that’s what any house that’s not a cottage is called,” explained
Bayre. “It doesn’t necessarily mean a mansion. Have you seen Mr Bayre
much lately, Aurélie?”

“Not so much since he married his young wife--” began the girl.

But the exclamations of the three young men checked her and made her
look round at them.

“Ah! You know him, perhaps, yourselves?” said she quickly, with a sort
of guilty look.

After a moment’s breathless pause they all began to ask her questions
at once, and while she hesitated, confused, as to what sort of replies
she should make, the door opened quickly and Madame Nicolas, whose
attention had perhaps been attracted by the noise they all made by
crying out at the same time, came in and looked angrily at the
servant.

Whether she merely considered that Aurélie was wasting her time, or
whether she was anxious to discourage gossip about her neighbours, it
was impossible to say. But certain it is that Madame did not leave the
room until the maid had gathered up the last vestige of the meal, and
that the young men heard her speak in tones of reproof to the girl
when the door was closed.

Bayre looked at his companions and laughed.

“Well, Repton, what do you say to that?” said he. “Where are my
chances of insinuating myself into the position of heir now?”

“Things begin to look dicky, certainly,” assented Repton, with a
mournful shake of the head. “But it’s all your own fault. You should
have come sooner.”

“Wonder what the wife’s like!” remarked Southerley. “Wonder where he
got her from!”

“Married his kitchenmaid probably,” said Repton. “A sort of Aurélie,
I shouldn’t wonder, who wears an all-round cap and sabots.”

“My uncle is a gentleman, not a clod-hopper,” put in Bayre with
warmth. “I think we may take it for granted he married a woman in his
own rank of life. At least, I object to it’s being taken for granted
that he didn’t.”

“My dear fellow, keep your hair on!” said Repton. “It’s quite
permissible to wonder whether a man who goes about in a jersey and
fisherman’s overalls did or did not marry to suit his rank, or marry
to suit his tastes.”

The discussion threatened to grow warm, as discussions between the
indiscreet Repton and the more serious Bayre often did. Southerley
interposed by observing that they really had nothing to argue upon at
present, and that they had better master their subject before they
proceeded to disagree about it.

One source of information, however, they now found unavailable.
Aurélie had evidently been frightened by her mistress into
discretion, for she would answer no more questions about Monsieur
Bayre, except by a significant shrug and shake of the head.

It was with a mind full of curiosity about his long-neglected uncle,
therefore, that Bartlett Bayre strolled out, on the morning after
their arrival in Guernsey, and made his way down to the harbour.

Southerley was there already, and Bayre saw at once, by the look of
excitement in his usually lymphatic face, that something of interest
had occurred.

“What’s up?” said Bayre, briefly.

“What’s up?” echoed Southerley, getting off the upturned boat on which
he had been sitting, and speaking in a voice of mellifluous thunder.
“Why, I’ve had an adventure.”

“Already?”

“Yes. At least, perhaps you won’t call it an adventure, but I do. You
see that boat out there?”

He pointed to a half-open sailing-boat, strongly made, unpretentious,
that stood out at sea a little way from the harbour. It had two small
masts, but the sails were down and the little craft moved gently up
and down with the swell of the water. There was only one person in it,
a man, who sat almost motionless in the stern, with a pipe in his
mouth. Bayre followed the direction of his friend’s finger with his
eyes, and looked at the boat and its occupant.

“Well?” said he.

“She came ashore in that--” began Southerley.

“Who’s she?”

Southerley looked at him with his face aglow.

“Well, ‘she’ is my ideal, and there you are in a nutshell.”

“No, I’m not there in a nutshell. I don’t understand,” said Bayre,
with stolid petulance.

“Oh, you have no imagination. I tell you there stepped ashore out of
that battered old boat one of the loveliest creatures that ever
walked.” Bayre looked incredulous, but his friend went on: “A queen
disguised in a short stuff skirt and a plain jacket and thick boots,
but a queen all the same. She skipped out of the boat like a fairy:
she tripped along the harbour like a fairy. And I tell you it was all
I could do not to run after her, follow her, try to get another look
at her.”

“Why on earth didn’t you?” said Bayre, contemptuously.

“Because I couldn’t trust myself. I should have gone down on my knees
in the mud and told her there and then that she was the pearl of
women,” retorted Southerley, his enthusiasm growing under the stimulus
of his companion’s contempt. “No, I must wait here till she comes
back, and I shall wait if it’s a fortnight!”

Bayre laughed as he took a scrutinising look round.

“Is that your beauty?” asked he, as there emerged from among the old
houses facing the harbour a girl of the middle height, dressed in a
short skirt of coarse blue serge, and a thick jacket of pilot cloth
with black horn buttons, with a little tasselled fisher-cap on her
head. She moved easily and well in the thick, clumsy boots she wore;
and her sparkling eyes, vivid complexion, and dark hair worn in a
thick plait tied at the nape of the neck were attributes of an
unmistakably pretty girl.

She had a large parcel in her arms, and she was followed by a small
boy of the fisher class, who was staggering under half a dozen
packages of goodly size.

On she came along the pier, picking her way with easy grace of
movement among litter of ship’s lumber and cordage. It was the grace
of over-brimming vitality, of youth and the joy of life. Against his
will Bayre, too, found her fair.

“Didn’t I tell you?” said Southerley, enthusiastically, below his
breath.

“She’s good-looking, of course,” admitted Bayre, grudgingly, “but it’s
not my type.”

However this might be, he watched her as she came along, though with
no such adoration as appeared in his companion’s eyes. With the
ingratitude of her sex, however, it was at Bayre and not at Southerley
that the girl glanced twice as she passed. And even when she had
stopped near the landing-stage and taken her parcels from the boy she
threw a third sidelong look at Bayre, a look which showed that for
some reason he inspired her with at least a passing interest. Taking
out her handkerchief, she waved it to the man in the boat, who took up
his oars instead of hoisting a sail, and began slowly to return to the
pier.

Once again the girl turned, glanced at Bayre, looked down at her
parcels, and seemed to hesitate. Southerley made a step forward, only
too anxious for an excuse to offer his assistance to the young beauty.
But it was to Bayre she turned, as, apparently taking the offer of the
one as the offer of them both, she said, in a bright girl’s voice,
speaking in excellent English but with a slight French accent that was
piquant and pretty,--

“Oh, thank you so much! If you would say, when the boat comes to the
side, that I’ve forgotten something and shall be back directly?”

Bayre murmured his readiness, while Southerley expressed his
vociferously. And with a smile and a pretty word of thanks she fled
back over the ropes and the spars, the barrels and the fishing-nets,
in the direction of the shops.

Southerley was put out that it should have been his companion who
received the beauty’s commission. Bayre laughed at him and went to the
side of the pier to watch the approaching boat.

It was now near enough for him to discern the face of the
hard-featured, elderly man who pulled the oars; and as he looked, as
he marked the long, straight chin, the straight upper lip, and the
rather long grey hair which showed under the man’s peaked cap, he
recognised a certain likeness to his own family, and more especially
to his late father, which convinced him that he was in the presence of
his uncle, Bartlett Bayre.

With a face full of interest he hung over the side of the pier,
watching the boat and its rugged-looking occupant in his oilskins
until the old man was only a few feet from the stone wall of the pier.

Then, leaning over, he hailed him with a smile.

“Ho! Do you know me, Uncle Bartlett?”

The man stopped on his oars, looked up quickly, and stared at the
young man with the watery blue eyes of age.

Bartlett Bayre was still smiling, still holding his hand out in sign
of amity and goodwill. To his surprise, almost to his consternation,
there came over the older man’s face, as he looked upwards, an
expression of horror and alarm impossible to mistake. His
weather-beaten face grew livid, and the pipe, a common clay, suddenly
fell from his lips as if it had been bitten in two.

For the space of a few seconds he sat rigid, as if petrified with
dismay. The next moment he had turned the boat round with one rapid
movement of his right oar, and was rowing out to sea with all his
might.




 CHAPTER III.
 SOMEBODY’S IDEAL

“Uncanny sort of man your uncle!”

Bayre started and looked round. It was Repton who was speaking; he had
come up and joined his friends while Bayre was busy with the man in
the boat.

“Who says it’s my uncle at all?” said Bayre, sharply.

“Why, you do. You addressed him by that affectionate appellation,
though I admit he was not responsive to the appeal.”

Bayre stood up, angry and mortified.

“I made a mistake, of course,” said he. “Being full of this unknown
uncle, I was quite ready to take for him the first man who seemed to
answer to the description given of him.”

“Then why, if he wasn’t your uncle,” persisted Repton, inquisitively,
“did he seem so much put out by your speaking to him? In fact, he
seemed more than put out, he looked horror-struck.”

“He took me for a lunatic, I suppose,” said Bayre, uneasily.

“I don’t see why he should. After all, even if you had been a lunatic
he could scarcely be afraid of you while he was in the boat and you on
the pier!”

“Of course not,” put in Southerley, who had been watching and
listening very attentively. “The old man’s Bayre’s uncle sure enough.
Why, there’s no mistaking the likeness between them, for one thing.
He’s got your long, straight, sharp chin, Bayre, and there’s something
indefinable besides, which I take for a family likeness. No, the
fact’s plain; he’s your uncle, but he’s in no hurry to acknowledge the
relationship.”

“Then,” retorted Bayre, recovering his temper as he perceived a weapon
for retaliation to his hand, “if he’s my uncle, the lady who was with
him is, of course, the young wife we’ve heard about.”

Both he and Repton burst out laughing on seeing how Southerley’s face
fell at the suggestion.

“Rubbish!” he said angrily. “She’s a girl, not a married woman. I’ll
take my oath she’s not more than eighteen or nineteen.
Besides--besides,” he began to stammer in his agitation, “she--she
wore no wedding-ring!”

“Are you sure?”

“Q-q-quite sure. I--I should have noticed it. I noticed everything
about her.”

“Then you wasted your time,” said Repton, mischievously, “for what
attention she gave to either of you was distinctly given to Bayre.
That points again to the man in the boat being his uncle; the lady
recognised the type.”

“I don’t know what you can have seen to be so jolly cock-sure as to
what she noticed,” remarked Southerley, in a tone of displeasure, “for
you were not in sight when she was on the pier.”

“Not in _your_ sight, because your eyes were so precious full of
somebody else,” retorted Repton, cheerfully. “But _you_ were in sight
of _me_, anyhow. I was behind that boat.”

And he nodded in the direction of one of the small fishing-boats which
had been hauled up on the shore close to the pier, so that the bows,
protruding over the stone-work, had afforded a very good hiding-place.

“You must have had very good eyes to discern this intense admiration
for Bayre in the lady!” said Southerley, growing loud in his scorn.

“Keep your hair on, Southerley,” said Bayre. “He’s only chaffing you.
You can’t suppose the lady felt any more spontaneous admiration for my
charms than I did for hers. So you needn’t waste good jealousy upon me
which might be useful some other time. She looked at me, if she looked
at all, because I looked at her. And I only looked because I wondered
what on earth you could find to rave about in a restless, fidgety,
excitable-looking girl, who looked as if she couldn’t stand still for
two minutes. Depend upon it she’s hysterical, and that she’s the sort
of girl to talk your head off: the kind of woman who would get on your
nerves after the first ten minutes.”

“Hysterical! She’s no more hysterical than you are!” cried Southerley,
in tones less subdued than ever. “You call her hysterical just because
she isn’t stodgy, and you prefer stodgy women, like the ass you are!”

Excited by their argument, neither of the three young men had observed
that the fair subject of their discussion had come back while it was
in progress, and was now standing only a few feet away, where every
word they uttered reached her ears with perfect distinctness. It was,
of course, Repton, the non-talker, who caught sight of her first; and
as, with a glance of horror, he seized Southerley by the arm, she
tripped demurely forward, saying, as she came,--

“Stodgy or hysterical, gentlemen, she will be glad if you will let her
pass.”

The consternation of the three culprits, especially of the two
disputants, was terrible to witness. Southerley’s reddish, open-air
complexion became a beautiful beet-root colour, while Bayre’s darker
skin assumed a sallow tint which was most unbecoming. At the same time
they muttered confused and incoherent apologies, most pitiful to
listen to; and Repton, who felt the comparative security of his own
position, was the only one in a fit state to offer some intelligible
words. Perhaps, however, they were not very well chosen.

“I assure you--believe me, we--that is to say they--were not talking
of you, madam,” he said earnestly, stimulated in his zeal for his
friends by the delight of knowing that he was the only one of the
three sufficiently innocent to address her. For though Southerley had
indeed defended her charms, he felt that he had not done it in quite
the right way, or in the subdued and refined accents befitting such a
theme.

Luckily for them all, the attention of the lady, who received all
these apologies with an airy and gracious good-humour but little
soothing to their vanity, was speedily distracted by her discovery
that the boat with the old man in it was not waiting for her, as she
had expected, at the landing-place.

She looked about her with consternation. Southerley sprang to the
rescue.

“The er--er--boat-- The er--er--er gentleman has gone away--is over
there,” said he, pointing to the speck which the two weather-beaten
sails of the little boat had now become in the distance.

The young lady looked from the boat to the young men in surprise.

“Why, what have you done? Is it you who have frightened him away?” she
asked.

“Not I. If it’s anybody, it’s--it’s Bayre,” said Southerley, bringing
out the name with some emphasis, as he indicated his dark-faced
companion.

He was prepared for the look which instantly appeared on her face as
she repeated to herself the one word, “Bayre!”

And into her eyes there came a strange expression, not the horror
which they had seen in the face of the old man in the boat, but a look
of interest, of wonder.

Southerley, who knew how to manage a boat--on the Thames, at
least--went on eagerly,--

“Will you let me take you out to him? I can hire a boat here, and I
know how to manage one. Ask my friends here.”

But the girl smiled and shook her head. Even Bayre acknowledged to
himself that she looked very handsome when she smiled, for her teeth
were white and even, and the curve of her lips over them was pretty.

“I won’t trouble you to do that, thank you. For that matter, I can
manage a boat myself. We all learn to do that when we live on the
small islands here.”

All the young men noted this speech, and poor Southerley’s countenance
fell again. For it did look as if this beautiful creature must be old
Mr Bayre’s young wife: Southerley’s soul revolted at the thought. He
persisted in pressing his services. If she would not trust herself
with him, at least it would be something if he could show off his
prowess before her admiring eyes.

“Then let me go after him,” said he, “and tell him that you’re
waiting, tell him to come back.”

She shook her head with a little hesitation.

“I can’t think why he’s gone,” she murmured uneasily.

And then, as if involuntarily, she threw a sidelong look at Bayre.

Southerley seized the occasion of her hesitation, and hailing a
boatman, who was busy with a line in a small craft on the water below,
he hastily made his bargain; and dispensing, after some argument, with
the services of the owner, hoisted the lug sail and started in pursuit
of the man with the pipe and the peaked cap. The pretty girl in the
fisher cap looked the least little bit disconcerted on perceiving that
the broad-shouldered young stranger with the red face and the deep
voice was as good as his word. Instead of the admiration with which
poor Southerley flattered himself that she was regarding his efforts,
she watched him hoist the sail, and, with a slight frown of distress,
said, in a low voice,--

“Why did he do it? He’ll be drowned to a certainty! It’s very
dangerous to go out here without knowing something of the currents.”

“Oh, he can swim,” said Bayre, with indifference.

And Southerley’s other friend added gallantly,--

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being drowned while he was doing you a
service, mademoiselle.”

“But he isn’t!” said she, slowly, turning upon Repton a pair of
wide-open brown eyes. “If you knew old Mr Bayre”--and again she
glanced at the young man of that name--“you’d know that it is no
service to anybody to try to persuade him to do anything he doesn’t
want to do.”

His wife, to a certainty! thought Repton, cynically.

But Bayre took a different view.

“Surely your father will come back for you?” he suggested.

The girl answered promptly,--

“Oh, he’s not my father--he’s no relation--at least--”

And there, tantalisingly, she stopped.

For no reason in particular, certainly no reason they could have given
in words, both the young men felt relieved.

“I--I beg your pardon,” said Repton. “I might have known you wouldn’t
have a father like that.”

Again the girl glanced, rather apprehensively, if rather
mischievously, at the other man.

“If I’m not mistaken,” said she, slowly, “he is a relation of yours.”

Then she paused a moment, and seeing a sort of acknowledgment on the
young man’s face, she added abruptly,--

“Are you his nephew?”

“I--I believe so.”

She looked at him with a little inclination of the head at this
confirmation of the idea she had had about him.

“I thought so,” said she. “You are the son of Mr Richard Bayre, old Mr
Bartlett Bayre’s brother, and your portrait, taken when you were a
little boy, standing beside your father, is at the _château_ in one
of the _salons_.”

Bayre was at once keenly on the alert.

“Does he--do you happen to know--if my uncle ever speaks of me,
madam?” he asked with vivid interest.

“Never,” said she.

And she answered with a look which gave both Bayre and Repton the
impression that the old man had a decidedly hostile feeling towards
his almost unknown young kinsman.

The uncomfortable feeling created by this impression was strongly
increased when, after a short silence, the young girl said abruptly,--

“Are you going back to England soon?”

“Y-y-yes. We have to be back in London in a fortnight,” said Bayre,
with a blank look.

“You live in London?” A look of reflection came into her eyes.
“Everybody in England seems to live in London!”

“Yes.”

Then Repton, rather troubled that the beautiful girl addressed herself
solely to his companion, put in,--

“You know London, of course, mademoiselle?”

There came a sudden flash of something, of eagerness, of longing, of
some feeling, vivid but indescribable, into her face as she said
simply,--

“I wish I did!”

“It’s an awfully jolly place,” went on Repton, insinuating himself
jubilantly into the conversation which Bayre appeared glad to drop out
of. “Lots of life, and movement, and bustle, and social enjoyment. And
then there’s art--divine art!” and Repton made enthusiastic circles in
the air with his right hand, “and the theatres!”

“Ah!--yes!”

It was a sort of sigh that the girl uttered, not looking at him, but
vaguely out at the sea with the steady yearning of eyes that see more
than the physical objects before them.

Then Bayre put in,--

“London’s a beastly hole, full of fog and smoke and mud, and hurrying
people, and jostling ambitions that are never satisfied. As for social
enjoyment, it’s a fallacy. People know you there, not as yourself, but
as only a tiny part of London and its life. Real friendship, real
social enjoyment, real art you get only outside.”

She looked at him with interest.

“I wonder!” she said softly. Then she added, in even a lower tone,
“Still, one would like to try!”

Both the young men were silent, interested, too, in the bubbling
vitality that wanted some outlet, in the vague, girlish unrest that
“wanted to know.”

“In short, if you’re to believe Bayre, London’s a humbug,” said
Repton. “But to us artists life and art are everywhere.”

“Are you an artist?” she asked with frank interest. “With a studio, a
real studio, where you work?”

Repton smiled at the manner of the question.

“I don’t know about being a real artist,” he said, with a sudden
affectation of modesty, “but I have a real studio in Horton Street,
Tottenham Court Road, where I paint pictures.”

“That must be nice.” And then, with that persistent interest in Bayre
which seemed to his companion so offensive and unnecessary, she turned
to him and said, “And are you an artist too?”

“I don’t know,” said he, rather blankly. “If I am, I’m an unsuccessful
one. And my medium is not paint and brushes, but pen and ink.”

“Oh, a writer? That’s nice too!”

“It would be nicer,” said he, drily, “if the medium could be print.”

“That will come! That will come! You are not very old.” Then, after an
instant’s pause, during which she seemed to be gathering up some lost
impressions, she said suddenly, “But I must be thinking of getting
back!”

“Won’t you wait for--for the boat?” stammered Repton.

She had already moved a few paces away, but she paused, and said,
smiling,--

“Oh, no, I can’t. You will thank your friend for me. I’m sorry he
should have taken that trouble.” She turned away, bowing as she did
so, but suddenly changed her mind and came back to them. There was a
strange thoughtfulness and gravity in her face and manner as she
repeated a former question,--

“And you are going back to England--London--soon? In a fortnight?”

Wondering and disconcerted, they both assented. She looked down for a
moment, and then raised her head abruptly.

“Would you take a parcel to England--not for me, but to oblige one of
my friends?”

“Certainly, of course we would.”

“Only too delighted--”

She cut them short with a smile.

“Thank you, thank you very much. You are very kind. I shall see you
again before you go away, then.”

With more smiles, with more bows, she had fled away over the ropes and
among the old barrels, and the two young men were left staring at each
other, with the excitement of the unusual adventure still upon them.

“By Jove, what a lovely girl!” said Repton, enthusiastically.

“H’m! Lovely girl at asking questions; but we didn’t get much out of
her in return,” said his companion, grumpily.

“Well, we couldn’t sit down and put her through her catechism. It was
enough for me just to be in the presence of such a handsome creature.”

“Ah!” grumbled Bayre.

“But not for you, you Grimmgriffenhoof?”

“No. I don’t like her.”

But to judge from the way in which he looked at the boat which
presently came gliding along under the pier, with two boatmen managing
the sails and the pretty girl herself holding the tiller, Bayre’s
dislike of her was at least as absorbing an emotion as the frank
adoration of his two friends.




 CHAPTER IV.
 AND SOMEBODY’S AVERSION

There were “ructions” when Southerley got back to the pier, having
failed to catch up the boat containing the old man, and having failed
also to get a sight of the boat in which the pretty girl had set sail
in her turn.

Southerley was inclined to think the conduct of his two friends
unneighbourly in the extreme. He felt that it was their business to
have detained the lady until his return, though he could not explain
how they should have set about it. He felt that he had been shamefully
tricked, and he did not get over his mortification and resentment
until chance threw in their way, on the following morning, a person
able and willing to communicate to them those details concerning old
Mr Bayre of Creux which Aurélie had been prevented from imparting to
them.

It was a tradesman’s wife in the town, from whom they had bought some
small nick-nacks as souvenirs of their holiday, who told them the
strange story. Mr Bayre, she said, had lived for many years a bachelor
on his little island, with only his starched and penurious old
housekeeper, his cousin, Mees Ford, as companion. The _château_
Madame described as a magnificent and even famous mansion, more like a
museum than an ordinary house, by reason of the splendid collection of
pictures, tapestries, statues and curiosities of all kinds, of which
old Mr Bayre was a well-known collector.

Even this was new to Bartlett Bayre the younger, whose knowledge of
his uncle’s habits was of the slightest, and whose acquaintance with
him had ceased very many years before.

The good woman went on to tell how, on one of the expeditions which
old Mr Bayre periodically made in search of more treasures, he had
found an unexpected one in the shape of a beautiful young wife, whom
he had brought back to Creux and shut up in the dreary _château_ and
the still drearier society of himself and Mees Ford.

“Poor thing!” cried Madame, raising her eyes and her hands with a
shrug of sympathy, “no wonder that she was dull! This beautiful young
creature buried like that in what was little better than a magnificent
tomb!”

“And how long ago was this?” asked Bayre.

“A little more than two years, monsieur, since he brought her to
Creux, and it is six months since she ran away.”

“Ran away!”

All the young men echoed the words in different keys. It was
satisfactory, at any rate, to know that the unknown beauty who had
excited so much attention among them was not the ogre’s wife.

“Then who is the young girl--”

The good woman put up her hand and bowed her head, as an intimation
that she wished to proceed with her tale her own way. And she again
addressed Bayre,--

“She ran away, as well she might; and the only pity is that she was
not allowed to take her baby with her!”

“Baby!”

“Yes, messieurs, a charming baby. She ran away with him, and reached
the port here with him safely. But Marie Vazon, who had charge of the
child, played her false at the last, and left the poor young mother to
go alone to England without him. Oh, those Vazons! They are the spies
of old M. Bayre; father and daughter they have command of everything
for him. And they do say that old M. Bayre and Mees Ford knew what
young Madame was going to do, and that, like the selfish old people
they were, they rejoiced to get rid of her. As for the baby, it is
left to Marie Vazon at the farm. A pretty nurse, _ma foi_!”

And Madame raised her eyebrows with a significant look.

Again Southerley’s voice broke in. All this information about wives
and babies might be very exciting for Bayre, whose chances of being
his uncle’s heir were thus destroyed, but compared with the great
subject, that of the glorious girl in the fisher cap, it was
positively tedious.

“But who is the handsome girl with the long brown hair--” he began
again persistently.

Madame turned to him with a smile.

“Ah! She will not be buried in the tomb-like _château_ any longer,”
she said archly. “Mees Eden is a ward of old M. Bayre’s, and she is
going to be married to a gentleman of the island--of this island, I
mean.”

Southerley gave a groan. But Repton drew himself up.

“Tell me his name that I may go and shoot him,” he said valiantly.
“The islands are all very well, but if you’ll forgive my saying so,
Madame, the lady is too handsome for so confined a sphere: we have
already decided that she must come to England--in fact, that she must
marry one of _us_.”

Madame burst out laughing.

“Ah, you are not the only young gentleman to feel like that about Mees
Eden,” she said. “But M. Bayre he has French ideas about his ward, and
he chooses to marry her to a staid, middle-aged man like himself
rather than to a hot-headed young fellow about whom he could not feel
so sure.”

“But that bright-eyed girl would never let herself be handed over like
a parcel of currants to a man she didn’t care about--a middle-aged man
too!” cried Repton.

“Ah! I cannot say, but I think it is so,” said Madame. “Although Mees
Eden is the daughter of an Englishman, a very old friend of M.
Bayre’s, her mother was a French lady, and she has been brought up at
a school in France. I think she will do as French girls do: they have
spirit, but they are obedient; and why should she not do as her mother
did before her?”

“She must be so dull at Creux,” said Southerley, thoughtfully, “that I
suppose she would do anything for a change.”

“How long has she been here?” asked Bayre, breaking in rather suddenly
and rather imperiously upon the lighter tones of the rest.

“Only a few months. It was after his wife had run away that M. Bayre
sent for her from her school. And then, while she could not get to
Creux by reason of the gales and the stormy weather, his old cousin
died. It was a dreadful business, for the weather was too rough for
her body to be brought over for burial here, and--”

“I know,” interrupted Repton. “They told us. It was washed away.”

Madame nodded.

“Yes. It was a dreadful business. Old M. Bayre has never been quite
the same man since. You see the one shock came close upon the other.
Even if he did not care much for his wife, we must suppose her running
away to have had some effect upon him. And though he and Mees Ford
used to quarrel, still he had been used to her for long years, and
doubtless he felt her death deeply. Now he shuts himself up more than
ever, and he never goes away to London or to Paris as he used to do.
And when strangers come to see his collection they never see him.”

“Oh, we can see his collection, then?” said Repton, with interest.

“Oh, yes. It is his great pride to let strangers see it. Formerly he
or his housekeeper would show them through the rooms, but now it is a
servant who leads visitors through them.”

The young men looked at each other.

“We’ll go over to-morrow,” said Southerley.

Bayre assented, but with a grave and pre-occupied air. The whole tale
was a weird one, and concerning his own family as it did, it gave him
food for reflection.

When, therefore, on the following day, they engaged a couple of
boatmen to take them over to Creux--for Southerley did not offer to
repeat his experience of navigating the channel himself--Bayre
remained moody and thoughtful in the bows while his companions were
chatty and cheerful in the stern.

It was one of those bright and sunny days of which January generally
gives us a few as a set-off against the asperities of the February and
March which must inevitably follow; the first view of the steep and
rocky coast of Creux, with its fringe of jagged rocks, picturesque to
see but dangerous to negotiate, was striking and impressive. The
cliffs, of black and white granite, rose sheer out of the water,
broken and eaten away in many places into deep ravines, where a
softening growth of brown ferns made beautiful the entrance to shadowy
caverns in the rock.

Outside the cliffs many a jagged pinnacle of the granite shot up its
points from a little base of foam into the air, with seabirds circling
round its summit and a soft plash-plash beating against its sides.

Nothing could be seen at first approach beyond the rocks and the steep
cliff; but presently the travellers, struck dumb with appreciation of
the picturesque, found themselves approaching a poor sort of little
pier, close by which a small house, with a man in fisherman’s jersey
lolling in front of it, gave the first sign of human presence on the
island.

With some difficulty the boat was made fast and the three young men
scrambled ashore. A climb of a few minutes brought them to the top of
the cliff, and thence it was but a short quarter of a mile to the
famous _château_, which, half hidden by almost the only clump of
trees on the island, proved to be a long and very unimposing stone
dwelling, large, straggling, and evidently built with an eye rather to
use than to beauty.

On their way the travellers passed a small farmhouse, where a man of
age difficult to fix, with greyish hair and clad in a blouse, saluted
them and watched them with furtive eyes as they made their way towards
the house. He was a very unprepossessing person, with small eyes set
close together, and with the wrinkles of cunning and of avarice on his
weatherbeaten face.

The unimposing entrance to the _château_ was by a small courtyard, on
the other side of which was a pleasant garden in which, in the summer,
fruit and flowers, vegetables and sweet herbs, grew side by side.

A ring at the bell, the clang of which they heard echoing through the
old house, brought to the door a woman of the peasant type, quite
young, probably, and not ill-looking of feature, but with sly blue
eyes and thick lips, and a furtive expression. She was dressed rather
in the simple farmhouse costume than in that of the usual servants of
a country house, and wore the round, close cap which is so generally
becoming.

On making known their wish to see the treasures of M. Bayre’s
collection, they were at once admitted by her into a plain-looking
hall, where they inscribed their names in a large book which lay, with
pens and ink, upon a table at one end.

While they were doing this they heard certain sounds in a little
gallery above them, which informed them that they were observed from
that quarter; and suddenly the girl looked up, and, as if obeying a
signal, begged the gentlemen to excuse her one moment, ran up the
staircase and for a moment disappeared.

When she came hurriedly down again, after an absence of a few seconds
only, she was red and shy. Stammering out her excuses, she said that
only two persons could be shown through the mansion at one time, and
singling out Repton and Southerley, she opened a door on her left hand
and showed them in, while she beckoned to the mortified Bayre to
follow her to the door by which he had entered.

“Oh, come, I say! We don’t want to go in unless we can all go,” cried
Repton, in astonishment.

But Bayre, who understood that his uncle meant to forbid him, and him
alone, the house, waved his hand in token that they were to go without
him, and hurried, without a word, out of the house.

He was in a tumult of irritated feeling. As he threw one glance up at
the windows of the mansion which was so undeservedly closed to him, he
caught sight of the face of Miss Eden, pale and constrained, looking
out. Most unreasonably he at once decided that this girl had somehow
had a hand in his discomfiture, and it was with a feeling of fierce
dislike--or at least he thought it was--and of defiance that he raised
his hat to her and at once dashed into the avenue and disappeared from
her sight.

He could not understand the effect the sight of this girl had upon
him. If he had felt irritated before at his uncle’s refusal to allow
him to enter his house, that feeling was as nothing to the burning
indignation he experienced at the thought that this bit of a girl,
this restless, hysterical, fidgety girl, as he had, in his utter
ignorance, called her, should have been a witness of the gross outrage
which had just been put upon him.

It was in vain he told himself that he did not care what she saw or
what she thought, that she was a capricious, malicious creature who
had herself urged his uncle not to have anything to do with him.

He could not forget her face; he could not get over his annoyance. As
he walked out from under the avenue trees into the winter sunshine he
felt as if unseen eyes were upon him, as if undiscoverable throats
were muttering hoarse laughter from the shelter of the brambles and
the dead ferns that he passed.

But these fancies presently grew into the knowledge that he was indeed
being watched, not by an unseen elfish being, but by the
morose-looking man in blouse and peaked cap whom they had passed at
the farmhouse. And, discovering suddenly a likeness between this
individual and the girl who had opened the door of the mansion, Bayre
had no difficulty in deciding that they were father and daughter, and
guessed that these were the two people of whom he had heard--the
rulers of the island under his uncle, the spies, Vazon and his
daughter Marie.

Bayre had an uncomfortable feeling that this man knew of the slight
which had been put upon him, and that he had been told off to watch
him until he should have left the island. Full of fury as this
suspicion crossed his mind, the young man resolved not to linger about
for his friends but to return at once to the boat and to wait for them
there.

He was, however, drawn aside by the beauty of a singular natural
curiosity which came in his way when he drew near the coast, one of
those strange, funnel-like openings down through the cliffs to the sea
which are such a feature of these islands. Peering down the wide
opening through the green growth and dead bracken which formed a
graceful fringe around the opening, Bayre was fascinated by the long
dark vista, and by the sight and the sound of the incoming tide
dashing little waves of feathery foam against the funnel’s sides.

As he looked, holding his pipe in one hand and his pouch in the other,
more with a wish to seem to be light-hearted than because he felt a
longing to smoke, he was startled by a girl’s voice behind him.

It was a soft voice, a sweet voice; there was no getting away from
that fact. Nevertheless it was the voice of the “hysterical, restless,
fidgety” girl.

“Oh, Mr Bayre, I’m so very, _very_ sorry!”

And turning round so quickly that he narrowly missed precipitating
himself through the funnel into the water below, Bayre saw Miss Eden,
her fisher cap on her head, her jacket, hastily put on, open, and her
eyes brighter, more beautiful than ever.

He tried to feel that he loathed her, but it was a hard task.




 CHAPTER V.
 WAS IT AVERSION?

Bayre tried to look as if he did not understand what it was that the
pretty girl was sorry for. But Miss Eden made short work of his
pretended ignorance by saying gently,--

“I have an idea about your uncle; it is an idea formed upon his
treatment of me and it seems to be consistent with his treatment of
you. Although he sent for me himself from the school where I was, and
wrote me a nice letter implying that he and his cousin were lonely and
that they would be glad to have me, yet now I’m here he seems to avoid
me as much as he can. And now, you see, when he knows that his nephew
is here--for that he recognised you as his nephew I am pretty sure
from something he said--why, he avoids you too.”

Bayre made an attempt at a haughty smile.

“Oh, if he thinks I mind that he won’t let me see over his collection
he’s mistaken. And if he thinks I feel a greater interest in it than
any outsider would do he is mistaken again. I’ve never wished to
obtrude upon my uncle’s seclusion; I never have obtruded upon it. And
if my curiosity as a visiting tourist is at all disappointed, I am
more than compensated by the satisfaction I feel that I have always
been independent of relations who seem to be devoid of the ordinary
instincts of humanity.”

Over Miss Eden’s pretty face there came a slightly puzzled look.

“I don’t say it’s unnatural in the circumstances, but I think you’re
too hard,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve always said to myself
about Mr Bayre, when he has been more than usually brusque in his
manner to me. It is this: Is it fair to judge a man directly after he
has experienced two great shocks? I dare say you know all about them,
what happened in the case of his wife, and then in that of his cousin.
Just think of it,” went on the girl, warmly, her face lighting up with
generous emotion, her voice deep, and low, and thrilling; “to lose
them both, one after the other, within a few weeks!”

“Was he quite without blame?” asked Bayre, quickly. “To judge by what
I have seen of him it’s not likely.”

“What have you seen?” retorted Miss Eden. “Nothing. Less than nothing.
He hasn’t even spoken to you!”

Bayre laughed rather grimly.

“Exactly. A gentleman who shows such marked amiability to a kinsman
would be the sort of person to treat others in the same way.”

She shook her head slowly.

“From what I’ve heard,” she said with conviction, “he must have been
very different before those two things happened. To begin with, he was
very generous. If the poor in the islands wanted help he was always
the first to give it. Now he is soured, changed, I admit; he seems
stunned by his misfortunes, and he shuts himself up to brood upon
them. But I believe that this mood will pass; give him another six
months and I believe he will be his old self again. At least, I hope
so. At present he is suffering from two blows to his affections, and
he seems _afraid_, positively afraid to trust himself to love anybody
else.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t want him to love me,” said Bayre in an
off-hand tone.

“No, it doesn’t matter to you, of course, because your life is spent
away from him,” said the girl, rather ruefully. “But it does to
others, to me, and to--to others besides me.”

And a still graver look passed over her face.

Bayre looked at her and softened in spite of himself.

“Of course it does,” said he, almost humbly. “It must make a very
great difference to you. In fact, I can’t understand how you manage to
exist in such utter loneliness as you describe.”

The girl gave a sort of sigh, which she immediately turned into a
laugh.

“Well, I don’t suppose I shall have to endure it for long. In the
meantime it’s such a pleasant change, after the strict school-hours
I’ve been accustomed to, to get up when I like, to read as much as I
like, to walk, row, sail, bathe just when I like, that I haven’t found
life pall upon me one bit. Whether I should get tired of it if I had
nothing else to look forward to I don’t know; I suppose I should grow
restless and discontented. But at present I can’t say that I’m
suffering tortures on account of the touch of Robinson Crusoeism that
there is in my existence.”

Of course she was not. Bayre glanced at her and understood perfectly
the feeling of freedom after restraint which this live, this brilliant
creature, quivering with vitality, must enjoy in the easy, open-air
life she described: even her reading, he thought to himself, would be
done for the most part out of doors, with the fresh breeze from the
sea blowing upon her young face, the salt spray helping to curl into
graceful little tendrils the loose strands of brown hair which escaped
from the confinement of the black ribbon at the nape of her neck.

“What do you read? Novels, I suppose?” he asked, after a moment’s
pause.

And the moment he had uttered the words he felt that they were an
impertinence. What right had he to question her upon her habits and
tastes? She blushed a little, and he had begun to stammer a kind of
apology when she waved away his words and said frankly,--

“Novels! Yes. I’m afraid it is chiefly novels. But I’ve read Carlyle’s
_French Revolution_, and liked it too!” she added, with a certain
rather comical pride.

“That was indeed most meritorious on your part,” said Bayre, with mock
gravity, feeling the oddest conflict within him between his avowed
tastes and the strong and strange attraction this girl had for him.

Strange, because it was more than the ordinary admiration which a
young man feels for a beautiful girl. Now that he saw more of her he
felt drawn by a sort of magnetic attraction in her sparkling eyes,
something which made him inquisitive to read into the depths of that
bright young soul, something that told him, much more plainly than did
her words, that she was no ordinary pretty girl, but that she had a
nature which could feel and a head which could think.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” she replied, laughing again. “But when a man
talks of novels there is always a suggestion in his words that they
are beneath _him_, at all events.”

“_I_ am not in a position to say that they’re beneath me,” said Bayre.
“I want to write them. Indeed, if the truth were told--”

“You’ve written one already? Well, so have I!”

“Ah!”

There was a certain inevitable tone of indulgence in this exclamation
which made the girl redden.

“Why do you say ‘Ah!’ like that?”

“Did I say it offensively?” said Bayre, smiling at last.

“I won’t go so far as to say that; but you said it in a tone which
implied--well, I think it implied that you could not expect much from
my performance.”

“If my tone said all that I apologise humbly. And yet, no, on second
thoughts I don’t apologise. For after all, what could there be in a
novel by a young girl just out of school, who knows nothing whatever
of life beyond the four walls of her schoolroom?”

“But one can imagine, even if one doesn’t know.”

There was an indescribable spirit and impulse under these words which
made the young man look at her curiously.

“Yes, yes, but imagination is not of much value unless it has
something to go upon. It is of no more value than a painting done by a
man who had never seen anything but his paint-box. You must study
Nature, copy Nature, before your imagination is of any use to you!”

“Ah! Now you go too far,” cried she, warmly, “for it is of use, even
if it only serves to make the world look more pleasant than it really
is.”

“I don’t call that a use, I call it a danger,” said Bayre, now quite
as warm as she in his argument. “Supposing, for instance, you start by
endowing with all the gifts of your imagination some commonplace
person whom, upon that and that alone, you resolve to marry, would
your imagination be strong enough, do you think, to enable you to gild
your bargain to the end?”

She blushed a rosy red and looked at him half angrily, half
mischievously, with a quick glance.

“Is a man the worse for being commonplace?” she asked. “And is it
likely that I, who, as you say, know nothing of the world and the
people in it, should ever be able to start on a voyage of discovery in
search of the man that isn’t commonplace?”

Bayre laughed. And he thought, rather guiltily, of his own avowed
ideals, which were very much the same as hers. And at the same moment
it flashed through his mind that these same ideals were unsatisfying
in his case; it followed, therefore, that they must be proved to be so
in her case also.

“Look here,” said he, “I’m not going to dispute that many high
qualities, or let us say many serviceable qualities, may be found in
those people whom it’s usual to call commonplace, people with no
imagination, no ideas; but you, with your romantic tendencies--”

“How do you know I have romantic tendencies?”

Bayre answered, after a pause, that it was because she read novels and
wanted to write them. But it occurred to him, even as he said this,
that the real reason for his opinion was that he saw romance sparkling
in her eyes, emanating from her, encircling her. She was a figure of
romance in herself. Frank, sympathetic, impulsive, imaginative,
brimming over with the joy of life, she was the very incarnation of
healthy, joyous, budding womanhood, of the womanhood that looks out
with eyes full of vague golden hope at the future, and that lives
meanwhile in almost ecstatic joy in the present.

“Well,” said she, with a happy smile, “surely it’s rather a shrewd
arrangement to use up one’s romantic tendencies by reading novels, and
perhaps even by writing them, so that they mayn’t interfere with the
prosaic course of one’s actual life.”

“Is actual life prosaic to you?” said Bayre. “A young girl shut up in
a lonely and gloomy house with an old guardian who hardly ever speaks
to her! I never heard of a less prosaic situation in my life.”

“Ah, well, the prose is to come,” said she, lightly. “Your uncle is
very anxious to get me off his hands, and he is to introduce to me
to-morrow a certain neighbour of his who, it seems, has been struck by
my charms, and who proposes humbly to solicit the honour of my fair
hand.”

The girl said this with the most delicious mixture of mischievous
amusement and girlish shyness, blushing and looking away, while at the
same time her eyes danced with fun and her lips were curved into a
smile. Bayre was stupefied, indignant.

He had not the least reason to be, of course.

“And you mean to say that you’re going to let yourself be married off
to a man you care no more for than that?” he asked quite sharply.

“I don’t know whether I care for him; I’ve never seen him yet.”

“Never--seen him!”

“At least, not to my knowledge. As he has seen me it’s possible I may
recognise his face when he’s formally introduced to me. He lives at
Guernsey, and I’m often over there.”

“And do you really think any happiness could come of a marriage
arranged like that?--in that cold-blooded fashion?” asked Bayre,
warmly.

The girl blushed a deep red.

“My mother was a Frenchwoman,” she answered simply. “And if you know
anything of France you must know that there it is not customary for
girls to have so much freedom of choice as in England.”

“But you’re English--your father was an Englishman,” said Bayre,
warmly. And then a bright thought struck him: “you see I, being your
guardian’s nephew, may be looked upon as a sort of relation of
yours--”

“Oh, no,” cried Miss Eden, rippling with smiles.

“Yes, indeed,” persisted Bayre, emphatically. “My uncle is nothing but
an old fossil, who knows little more of the world than you do
yourself. I begin to see that it’s nothing less than my duty to bring
my own greater knowledge and experience to bear upon this matter. In
short, if your guardian won’t do his duty and exercise a proper
discretion on your behalf, I shall have to do it for him, and, and--”

“And choose a husband for me?” asked Miss Eden, in the most solemn and
demure tone, the while her bright eyes flashed with the humour of the
thing.

“Exactly,” replied Bayre, as solemnly as she, while his eyes looked
into hers, seeing the roguery in them and answering it with mischief
in his own.

By this time both were bubbling over with suppressed laughter,
enjoying intensely this huge joke of his vague relationship and
assumed authority. Bayre’s disappointment and irritation at his
uncle’s snub were both forgotten. Miss Eden had forgotten, too, that
her errand in meeting the young man had been one of benevolent
sympathy and consolation. They had wandered together away from the
opening in the cliff and downwards among the dead fern and brambles
towards the shore. Bayre had had to help her, now and then, with a
strong hand holding hers as they stepped over loose stones and thorny
clumps of bush and bramble. It was pleasant, exciting, this aimless
ramble in the winter sunlight, with the sea breeze blowing in their
faces and the splash of the waves in their ears.

And then, suddenly, there broke upon them a sound less pleasant,
because it called them back to life and prose. This was the voice of
Repton calling to Bayre by name. The young man stood still and looked
round. Neither Repton nor Southerley was in sight yet, but a glimpse
of an old blue blouse and of a crouching back behind a clump of bushes
at the top of the cliff showed that the idyllic promenade of the two
young people had not been unobserved.

Miss Eden saw the blouse at the same moment, and she frowned angrily.

“There’s that old spy, Pierre Vazon,” cried she. “Nothing that happens
here escapes the eyes of him or his daughter. They’re a pair of
ignorant, cunning peasants of the lowest type, and I hate them both.”

“Is that his daughter who opened the door of my uncle’s house to us?”

“Yes. She rules everything indoors and her father everything out.”

“The man has a horrible face, and I don’t like the woman’s much
better,” said Bayre. “Does my uncle like these people?”

Miss Eden hesitated.

“I sometimes think,” said she, “that--that he’s afraid of them.”

“Afraid! Why should he be?”

“I--don’t--know.” Before Bayre could ask another question the voices
of his two friends, still shouting to him, were heard again from
above; and the girl, whose manner had changed since the interruption,
gave a glance up towards the spot where the peasant was watching, and
leapt down towards the shore, away from her companion. “Your friends
are calling you, Mr Bayre. Good-bye,” she said, as, with a little
inclination of the head, she disappeared in the direction of one of
the caverns with which the cliffs were honeycombed.




 CHAPTER VI.
 A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

Bayre stood for a few moments where she had left him, his mind full
of a strange idea suggested by some of her latest words.

His uncle was afraid of the Vazons. Why?

That she had meant to imply something more than a mere idle fancy he
knew perfectly well. This fear of the peasant and his daughter on the
part of their master and employer had its origin in something stronger
than mere prejudice or timidity: so much he felt sure of, so much had
the girl’s look and tone implied.

And involuntarily the young man’s thoughts flew back to that strange
story of the death of Miss Ford, and of its tragic sequel. Ugly
fancies invaded his mind, connecting themselves with his uncle’s
strange reluctance to meet him and with these fears of his own
servants of which he had just heard.

He was quite glad when the voices of Repton and Southerley, bawling
his name in louder tones than before, broke in upon his unpleasant
thoughts and at last elicited from him an answering cry.

In a few moments they had met and were making their way together back
to the boat.

Repton and Southerley were full of regrets that Bayre had not been
with them during their visit to the house, the treasures of which they
described with a voluble enthusiasm which, as they both spoke at once,
and each described a different room at the same time, produced upon
their companion rather a vague sense of magnificence.

“He’s got one of the finest Murillos I ever saw, and an undoubted
Rubens, which the National Gallery would give a fortune for,” said
Repton.

“Some of the tapestries and china are A1,” said Southerley, talking
through Repton’s speech. “And he’s got some old French furniture as
good as any in Hertford House.”

“It was an infernal shame, Bayre, that they wouldn’t let you in too,”
said Repton. “But perhaps he thought you might be too anxious to claim
the rights of kinship when you saw the treasures he’d got.”

“Oh, well, I’d just as soon hear about them as see them,” said Bayre,
philosophically. “After all, perhaps there would have been a
temptation for me to help myself to a few souvenirs of dear Nunky in
the way of portable property.”

His friends, having parted from him when he was in a gloomy and savage
condition, were quite surprised to see how completely he had got over
his disappointment. They went on condoling with him with a lighter
heart.

“It was too bad that you should be condemned to a lonely stroll
outside while we were rioting in luxury inside,” said Southerley.

Bayre did not undeceive them. He lit his pipe, which he had been
holding unlighted in his hand, settled himself comfortably in the bow
of the boat, and gave himself up to thoughts in which neither his
friends nor his uncle had any share; and while the other two babbled
of their visit to the mansion, and talked imperfect French to the
boatmen, both of whom understood every word they said in English, the
artful Bayre caught a thrilling glimpse of a white pocket-handkerchief
fluttering against a background of cavernous darkness, away under the
cliff behind them. Taking off his cap he waved it in the air, a
proceeding which caused both Repton and Southerley to turn their heads
shorewards with much suddenness.

But they saw nothing, and the rascal in the bows refused to
acknowledge that he had seen anything either. A lingering mistrust of
him glowed darkly in the eyes of the other two for a little while, but
he kept his own counsel, and they could get nothing out of him.

It was two days after this that they all came face to face with
another party of three persons in one of the streets in the upper
town.

One of these persons was old Mr Bayre, dressed as before in serge
trousers and pilot coat, with a pipe between his teeth and his
yachting cap drawn well over his eyes. His hands were in his pockets,
and he walked along with bent head and shuffling step, and without
exchanging a word with his two companions. One of these was a stout
Frenchman of middle age, whose round, pink, flabby face was garnished
by a huge double chin, and furthermore set off by a pair of blue
glasses, which helped, with the big Panama hat he wore, to give him a
strange and most unattractive appearance.

The third member of the party was pretty Miss Eden, and on her face
there was such a look of subdued dismay that Bartlett Bayre jumped
instantly to the conclusion that the stout gentleman in the goggles
was the husband chosen for her by her guardian.

Bayre started forward, on meeting the three, with the intention of
forcing his uncle into conversation. Vague ideas of remonstrance, not
only with his uncle’s treatment of himself but with his treatment of
this girl, filled the young man’s mind.

But the wily old recluse was more than a match for him. Before his
nephew could traverse the dozen yards that lay between them, Bartlett
Bayre, senior, had turned on his heel and disappeared down a turning,
where he was able to hide himself within some friendly neighbour’s
door.

When Bayre, junior, came back, disappointed, from a vain pursuit, both
Miss Eden and the owner of the Panama hat were out of sight.

Restless, excited, moved out of himself by emotions he could scarcely
analyse, Bayre was irritated beyond endurance by the talk of his two
friends, who had both conceived the same opinion, that the stout
gentleman in the goggles must be the pretty girl’s intended husband.

“It’s outrageous, preposterous, impossible!” Repton was bawling, with
the light-hearted enthusiasm of an irresponsible person, as Bayre came
up. “Of course, such a thing is not to be endured. What! Marry that
lovely girl with the creamy skin to an old effigy with a great pink
roll at the back of his neck! A wholly hideous and unpaintable person!
Perish the thought!”

“She must be rescued undoubtedly,” assented Southerley. “The only
question is how to set about it?”

“Oh, there’s one other thing--_Who’s_ to set about it?” said Repton,
firmly. “Shall it be you or I?”

“Or shall we let her have her choice, eh, Repton? I don’t mind doing
that, because I feel sure she’ll choose me. No girl with those eyes
would look twice at a fellow with sandy hair.”

“Perhaps she won’t care for a red face either,” retorted the artist,
calmly. “Bayre, what do you say to entering the lists? Some girls like
a sallow face and lank hair without any gloss on it.”

“Some people don’t like a pair of tom-fools,” replied Bayre, savagely.
“What does it matter to you whom Miss Eden marries? Mind your own
business and don’t bawl people’s names out so that everyone for a mile
round can hear the stuff you’re talking.”

“Keep your hair on, my dear friend,” said Repton, with annoying
calmness. “If Miss Eden’s nothing to us, she’s nothing to you either,
you know. Even if you were serious about her it’s not likely your
uncle would entertain you for a suitor when he won’t even allow you
inside his doors.”

Bayre turned livid, but said nothing. He did not, indeed, trust
himself to speak.

But that very afternoon, stealing out of the house quietly, while his
friends were smoking in the little _salon_, he hired a boat and set
sail for the island of Creux.

He meant to see Miss Eden if he died for it. Perhaps some rags of
pretence still hung about his mind as to the reason of the interest he
took in the beautiful girl. But if so, they fell away and left the
bare truth for him to face when, coming upon the girl suddenly in a
cleft of the cliff as he went upwards on landing, he found that the
unexpected meeting sent the blood flying to his head with a force
which made him giddy.

For a moment he said nothing, and, strange to say, the girl was silent
also.

“Well?” said she at last.

She was changed since he had seen her last. The colour had left her
cheeks, and though her eyes were as bright as ever it was with a
different brightness: they seemed to glitter, so he fancied, with
unshed tears. And she had not even the conventional smile of greeting
for him, but let the one word drop from her lips in a rather husky and
tremulous voice, almost, so he thought, as if she felt sure that he
guessed the reason of her sadness.

“I--I wanted to see you again,” stammered he at last. “I came--I
came--to--to see you.”

He was ashamed of himself. Anything more lame, more clumsy, than these
words it was impossible to imagine. But Miss Eden took them quite
simply.

“Why did you want to see me?” she asked quickly.

“I--I couldn’t speak to you this morning. And I thought
perhaps--perhaps you would think it odd.”

He was floundering hopelessly. Why should she think it odd? he asked
himself with rage at his own lack of words, of ideas. But again she
lifted him out of his embarrassment by saying,--

“I thought you wanted to speak to your uncle, not to me.”

“I wanted to, but I missed him; or rather, he ran away from me.”

“Ah!”

Their eyes met. And he saw that she, as well as he, thought this
shyness on the part of the old recluse mysterious and suspicious.

“Why should he avoid me?”

The girl shook her head.

“Why does he avoid everybody?” she said.

The words raised Bayre’s uneasiness to fever pitch.

“I don’t like to think of your being here all by yourself with those
two wretched peasants and an indifferent guardian,” he began
impetuously.

He had almost said “a guilty guardian,” but had fortunately checked
himself in time.

“Oh, well, I sha’n’t be here long,” she answered, and her face became
more sombre as she spoke.

“That man--who was with you yesterday. Surely he--he was not--is
not--” stammered Bayre, reddening as he put the mutilated fragment of
a question.

She nodded gloomily.

“Yes,” said she, looking away from him and shivering slightly. “That
is Monsieur Blaise, whom my guardian has chosen as my husband.”

“But you will never marry him--you?”

She frowned petulantly.

“Oh, how can I tell? I suppose so,” she said.

“You will be miserable!”

“Shall I? I don’t know. Can anybody ever tell those things? No doubt
he is a good man, and my guardian is anxious, very anxious, for my
marriage.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To get rid of me, I suppose!”

“I can’t understand you,” broke out Bayre, almost passionately. “You
seem a girl of spirit, of resource, yet you can calmly submit to be
disposed of, by a guardian who doesn’t care for you, to a man whom you
don’t care for--”

“How do you know that?”

She turned upon him with a pretty flash of defiance.

But he waved aside the suggested protest.

“As if you could!” said he, not guessing how absurdly eager and
anxious he was showing himself in this business which was none of his.

Miss Eden twisted her pretty mouth into a little grimace.

“He’s not exactly the ideal of one’s dreams, perhaps!” she said under
her breath.

Whereat Bayre, grown bolder, laughed outright.

“You won’t do it?” he said, becoming suddenly grave.

But she would not give him a direct answer.

“There are many things to be considered,” was her vague reply.

He stood before her, pulling the long ends of his ragged moustache,
fighting with a hundred impulses, not one of which had any sort of
reason or logic to recommend it. He was interested in this girl,
preposterously interested, considering how far removed she was from
the type which he had always supposed himself to admire the most. If
he had been well off, if even he had been anything but the struggling
poor devil of a beginner at life that he was, he knew that he should
have cast discretion, common sense to the winds, and that he should
have asked her to marry him--him, Bartlett Bayre, hater of spirited
woman, and worshipper at the shrine of placid, purring womanhood
without a word to say for itself.

As it was, however, that madness was not possible to him. He could not
offer to take a girl reared in luxury, as he presumed she was, to
share a London garret with him. But the wish, the impulse that
prompted this mad thought shone in his eyes, and probably communicated
itself to Miss Eden, who blushed when she looked at him, and gave a
glance round, preparatory to running away.

“So you’ve come by yourself to-day,” she remarked, turning the
conversation as she caught sight of the boat waiting for him.

“Yes. I wanted to see you before--before going away.”

Her manner became thoughtful again.

“When do you go?” said she.

“In four days.”

“Back to London?”

“Yes. I wish--is it too much to ask?--would you send me two lines--no
more--for the sake of our half-relationship, you know, just to tell
me, to tell me--”

He was so eager that he could not make himself very clear. But she
guessed his meaning and smiled gravely.

“Not for the sake of our relationship, which is not very clearly made
out, I think, but for the sake of your-- Well, never mind of
what--perhaps you shall hear of or from me again--some day. What is
your address?”

“May I write it down?”

“I shall remember it.”

He gave her the address, and she listened in silence, with her eyes
fixed intently on the sea. Then she said quickly, as if struck with a
sudden thought of deep import,--

“Thank you. I must go now. If Pierre Vazon were to see me talking to
you again he would make mischief--at least, he might. I don’t trust
him. Good-bye.”

She held out her hand quickly; he pressed it one moment in his, with a
thrill which communicated itself perhaps to her. She blushed a rosy
red and drew her fingers sharply away.

“Good-bye,” she said again.

And she was gone.

Bayre went back to the boat in a sort of fever. It cut him to the
heart to think that this beautiful, bright girl, who affected him so
strangely, should be in danger of becoming the wife of that
commonplace Monsieur Blaise, with the roll of pink flesh at the back
of his neck and the Panama hat and the blue glasses.

When he got back to his friends they were cool, sarcastic, courteous.
It was a bad sign when they were courteous!

But they made friends again over an odd discovery. They ran against
the beautiful Miss Eden that evening coming out of the telegraph
office; and although they had no chance of so much as an exchange of
greetings with her, the incident gave them something to talk about
which it was imperative to discuss together.

They saw no more of the beauty before their holiday was over, and it
was only too plain that she had forgotten the commission with which
she had offered to entrust them.

When the last day of their stay arrived, and they piled their light
luggage on one of the deck seats of the boat, with a melancholy
feeling that the jolly time was over, they perceived a rough-looking
peasant girl, in sabots, and bearing what looked like a fish-basket
under her arm, standing on the quay looking down upon them.

Presently she came on board, but as she did not come near the spot
where the three young men stood chatting and smoking, they took no
particular notice of her movements until the boat started, when they
saw her again on the quay-side, this time without her burden.

The morning was keen and cold, and there was a grey mist hanging over
the water. They had not steamed far on their way when Repton shivered
and returned to their light luggage to put on his overcoat.

He had scarcely reached the pile, however, when a loud exclamation
burst from his lips and attracted the attention of his two friends.
Turning their heads, they saw him bending over something which had
been placed among their things but which did not belong to them.

A second look convinced them that this addition to their luggage was
nothing less than the fish-basket which the peasant girl had brought
on board. And a third and closer look, when they had obeyed Repton’s
signal of alarm and joined him, showed them that the contents of the
basket were alive.

“It’s--it’s a child! A--live--child!” gasped Repton, hoarsely.

And the consternation he felt was reflected on the faces of Southerley
and Bayre.




 CHAPTER VII.
 SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE

There was no doubt about it; there, in the very middle of their pile
of light luggage, some of which had been carefully displaced to make
room for it, the three young men found the substantial basket they had
last seen under the arm of the peasant girl on the quay; and in the
basket, lightly covered over by a dark woollen shawl, through the
meshes of which it could breathe perfectly well, was a live child.

Repton had moved the shawl, on seeing something move underneath, just
far enough back to disclose the tiny face of a healthy-looking infant,
some fifteen to eighteen months old, who, just waking from sleep, was
staring up at the strangers with its face puckered in readiness for a
good cry.

Repton was the first to ascertain this fact, and his increased
consternation took a murderous form.

“Let’s chuck it overboard!” cried he, with ferocity.

“Give it to the stewardess,” suggested Southerley, more humanely.

Bayre, meanwhile, with presence of mind amounting to genius, had
dashed forward, and seizing an indiarubber tube attached to a
boat-shaped bottle containing some opaque fluid which lay beside the
child, had thrust it into the infant’s mouth and thereby checked the
utterance of its very first scream.

His friends looked at him in admiration, but the little group of
passengers and ship’s hands who had been attracted by the commotion
looked with more derision than sympathy upon the heroic fellow as he
made further investigations into this alarming article of luggage.

“It’s not a peasant’s child,” he said, when he had noted the quality
of the baby’s clothes.

He had an idea in his head which he found it hard to get rid of. His
uncle had a child, and that child had been kidnapped from the mother
when she ran away from her husband, and had been left to the tender
care of the Vazons. As far as he could judge, his uncle’s child would
be of about the same age as the infant in the basket. Could it be that
this small pink and white thing which had been so mysteriously planted
upon them was his own first cousin? And was it by some device of Miss
Eden’s, who mistrusted the Vazons, that the infant had been thus
entrusted to the care of himself and his companions?

While the chatter and the chaff went on round about him, Bayre debated
thus within himself, carefully examining the face of the now placid
and contented infant with a scrutinising care which sent a ripple of
more or less subdued laughter round the group.

“Look here, you fellows, this child has not been dumped down here by
accident,” said he, with a gravity which, instead of subduing them
into attention, sent them into fits of renewed laughter. “I’m pretty
sure we shall find upon it some intimation as to what we have got to
do with it.”

“I recommend,” said Southerley, “that we put it in the captain’s care
to take back with him to Guernsey.”

“That’s it,” said Repton. “And in the meantime we’ll just find out who
it is that has played us this trick. That girl who brought it on board
must certainly have been known either to the captain or to some of the
crew, and can easily be found by them.”

It was remarkable, however, that, even as he made this suggestion, the
curious group that had gathered round began to melt away; and Bayre
was not surprised to find, upon inquiry, that nobody on board knew
anything about the peasant girl, but that all who had seen her
professed to have supposed that she was bringing some luggage
belonging to one of the passengers in the ordinary way.

To consternation, to amusement, there succeeded indignation in the
minds of both Repton and Southerley at the trick which had been played
upon them. They had been made the laughing-stock of everybody on
board, and they could find no one to help them out of the mess.

Both captain and stewardess flatly refused to undertake the
responsibility of taking the child back to Guernsey, and the faces of
two out of the three young men grew long at the prospect before them.

“We can’t take the brat back to London with us,” wailed Repton. “It’s
you, Bayre, with your confounded philanderings about the island by
yourself, who must have brought upon us the reputation of being
philanthropists and foundling hospitals, and homes for lost or
starving children! And so I vote it’s you who must leave it at the
left luggage office at Weymouth. And if you won’t do that, why,
Southerley and I must leave _you_ there, that’s all.”

“First,” persisted Bayre, still haunted by his idea, “let us see if
there isn’t a letter or direction of any kind packed in with the
child.”

“Well, fire away,” said Repton, gloomily. “Here goes.”

And as he spoke he pulled the brown woollen shawl right off the basket
with a violent wrench.

As he did so the wind and the violent action together caused a letter,
which had been placed in the basket under the shawl, to flutter over
the side of the vessel into the sea.

“There you are! What did I tell you?” cried Bayre, excitedly, making a
wild grab in the direction of the missive that would have made all
clear to them.

To the fresh consternation caused by this mishap there succeeded a
wild desire to stop the boat and to secure the precious letter. But
the captain would not listen to Repton’s loud expostulations on this
subject, and the young man was driven half frantic between his own
despair and the reproaches for his hasty action which his two
companions did not hesitate to pour upon him.

In the meantime Southerley, partly out of bravado and partly out of
real curiosity, had taken his turn at examining the child, and finally
announced, with a great show of learning, that he knew from the shape
of its headgear that it was a boy.

In his own mind, Bayre, who chose to keep his suspicions to himself,
found this confirmation of his idea that the helpless creature who had
been so unexpectedly entrusted to them was the heir to his uncle’s
property. For he knew that his uncle’s child was a boy. At all
hazards, then, the mite must be kept under his eye until he could find
out what was the object of entrusting it to him and his companions in
this mysterious manner. Once arrived in London he would write to Miss
Eden and beg her to enlighten him upon the point.

If it was not the young girl herself who had contrived to send the
infant in this manner to some place of greater safety than the cottage
of the Vazons, she would at least be able to find out who had done so.
As for the fact that she had given him no intimation of the strange
commission, Bayre could not be surprised at it. For it was the sort of
charge that a man might well have refused if he had known of it
beforehand. So he reasoned with himself, and remembered at the same
time that Miss Eden had spoken of some commission with which she
thought of entrusting them.

In the meantime the child, having disposed of the opaque fluid in the
bottle, struggled to sit up, and then to get on its feet and survey
the new and rather astonishing world in which it found itself.

Surveying it with the calm scientific curiosity with which a young
animal in the Zoo would have inspired him, Southerley drew the
attention of his companions to this fact, and even made some solemn
and ill-received attempts to conciliate the monster by duckings of the
head and twiddlings of the fingers, at which the child stared with
grave eyes.

“It’s not very intelligent,” said Southerley, becoming suddenly
haughty when he perceived that his antics were creating more amusement
among the grown-up persons on board than they did in the object of his
playfulness.

“Come, give it a chance,” said Repton, whose first burst of
indignation had already given place to something like active interest
in the live animal which it seemed so impossible to get rid of. “Were
_you_ intelligent at eighteen months old?”

And recalling some of the ways by which comparative peace had been
secured among the juvenile inhabitants of the nursery in which he had
been one of a body of brothers and sisters, Repton began to show off
his accomplishments in that direction by the production of his watch,
with which he kept the enemy at bay for some minutes.

“He’s not a bad sort of youngster, as youngsters go,” he remarked
apologetically, when both Bayre and Southerley began to smile at him
in their turn. “But it’s jolly cold for him up here. I vote we take
him down below and lend him to the stewardess while we decide what’s
to be done with him.”

But when they had carried him downstairs, an operation during which
they were objects of general interest, they found it such a
fascinating occupation to chat with the stewardess and to play with
the child at the same time, that the minutes flew quickly by, and they
were half-way across to the mainland before they woke to the fact that
they were as far as ever from a conclusion as to what was to be done
with their new and unwelcome possession.

By this time they had grown less barbarous in their intentions, so
that Bayre’s quiet announcement that he meant to take the child on to
London, and to make inquiries from there as to its identity, met with
but faint remonstrances.

“It’s rum sort of luggage to bring back with one from abroad,”
protested Repton, with comparative meekness.

“An equivocal sort of possession, a baby!” suggested Southerley.

“It’s all right among three of us,” said Bayre, stoutly. “In numbers
there is safety. Let us all show an equal amount of interest in him
and we are safe from the breath of calumny. Nobody ever heard of a
child with three fathers!”

“I don’t know how to show interest in a child of such tender years,”
objected Southerley. “I’m ready to teach him Greek, but the question
is whether he would be equally ready to learn.”

“There I have the advantage of you,” said Repton. “Painting, my
profession, comes by nature. I’ve only got to put a brush in his hand
and a canvas in front of him and he’ll go for it right away.”

“And the tragic part of the business is that his productions will be
quite as much sought after as his master’s,” remarked Southerley.

“What is to be your share in his education, Bayre?” asked the artist,
ignoring the feeble sneer.

“Manners, I think,” said Bayre, thoughtfully. “Manners and the use of
the globes. Now any child who can whirl round a globe in its frame
knows as much about the use of it as anybody.”

“And now supposing we have some luncheon and drink the young man’s
health,” suggested the convivial Repton.

The suggestion being well received, they left the baby, who was
getting sleepy and rather fractious, in charge of the stewardess, and
adjourned to the saloon, where, their spirits rising under the
influence of cold beef and bottled Bass, they drank the health of the
youth of whom they had so strangely become the responsible guardians,
and fell in with Bayre’s suggestion that they should throw themselves
upon the mercy of Mrs Inkersole, their London landlady, and get her to
recommend them to some woman whom they could trust to look after the
child.

“And meanwhile you, Bayre, solemnly undertake to find out who the
actual possessor is, and to dispose of the infant to the lawful
owner.”

Bayre expressed his belief that he was equal to this task, and the
matter was settled.

But the three temporary fathers soon found that a railway journey in
charge of a lively young man of eighteen months is not an unmixed joy.

A sort of terror had seized upon the whole party long before London
was reached; and when they found themselves in the cab, with the child
now happily asleep in his basket cradle in one corner, a solemn
silence, broken only by hushed whispers of dismal import, fell upon
them all as they reflected upon the coming interview with Mrs
Inkersole and the result it might have upon their long-standing
tenancy.

“If she turns us out,” growled Repton under his breath, tremulously
anxious not to wake the slumbering terror, “we shall have to wander
about the streets singing for our bread with the child in a basket on
a barrow in front of us. For certain am I that no self-respecting
landlady would ever take in as fresh lodgers three young men and a
miraculous baby!”

“It’s all your fault, Bayre,” said Southerley, sombrely. “I’m certain
we could have found some better way out of the mess than this but for
your infernal obstinacy.”

Bayre said nothing in particular. He was only too thankful to have got
his own way, being, as he was, still in the belief that Miss Eden had
wished him to take charge of the child, his uncle’s son as he believed
him to be, and to deliver him into the hands of some safer guardian.
Here was a fine excuse for communicating with her, and he meant to
avail himself of it that very night.

When they reached the house in the street off Tottenham Court Road
they found their difficulties begin at the very door. A determined
attempt which Southerley and Repton were making to smuggle in the
infant in its basket unremarked was foiled by a shrill squeal from
under the brown woollen shawl as they reached the door-mat.

Susan, Mrs Inkersole’s most trusted lieutenant, uttered a gasp of
amazement.

“Why, sir, what have you got there?” said she to Repton, who began to
laugh idiotically, but without replying.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Southerley, testily, as he tried to rush the
defences and to attain the staircase.

But Susan was firm.

“Is it a dog, sir?” she asked, seizing one end of the shawl and
holding tight, while Repton looked at her fiercely, and Southerley
showed an ominous disposition to drop his end of the basket and to run
for it.

“Good gracious, no! What should we want a dog for?” said Repton,
irritably.

“Because,” went on Susan, with firmness, “Mrs Inkersole can’t abide
dogs--”

“But I tell you it isn’t a dog,” roared Repton, infuriated by the
renewed squeals, unmistakable in their origin, which by this time came
from the basket. While at the same moment a well-developed pink leg,
which had kicked itself free of shoe and sock, was suddenly protruded
from the wraps with which it had been covered, leaving no possible
doubt as to the species of the animal underneath.

“Is that a dog, do you think?” asked Repton, with desperate calmness,
pointing to the assertive limb.

Susan uttered a faint scream.

“Whatever do you gentlemen want with a baby?” she asked feebly.

“We don’t want anything with it,” replied the artist, fiercely. “We
want to get rid of it, that’s what we want. And if you know any person
idiotic enough to wish to possess a healthy human infant, of the male
sex and with perfectly-developed lungs, why, give him or her our
address, and tell him or her to apply early--”

“Hush!” broke in Susan in a frightened whisper.

And as she spoke she glanced towards the second door on the right,
which was being softly opened and held ajar, as if some person behind
it were listening to the conversation.

“What’s the matter?” asked Repton, leaving Southerley to take the
basket and its living contents up the stairs, with the help of Bayre,
who had now followed the others into the house after settling with the
cabman.

“Oh, there’s a new lady in the dining-rooms--a student,” replied Susan
in a low voice. “And perhaps she wouldn’t like it if she knew there’d
be a child in the house crying half the day. But surely, sir, you
don’t mean to keep it there, do you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Repton, helplessly. “The little wretch
was plumped down into the middle of our luggage when we came away this
morning, and Mr Bayre thought it best to bring it on with us and to
try to find out who it belongs to from here. But it’s a mad business.
Here comes Mrs Inkersole. Oh, shut her up! Tell her anything,
anything!”

And unable to stand a strict examination on the part of the landlady
with neither of his friends to back him up, Repton flew up the stairs
and straight into his room on the second floor.

But in the front room the unfortunate infant was making its presence
known by a succession of screams so piercing that all three young men
became possessed with a dreadful fear that it would shriek itself into
a premature grave, and that they would conjointly be held responsible
for its death in convulsions.

In vain they all three tried to soothe it. In vain Repton, seizing the
milk-jug, which had been placed upon the table with the tea-things,
tried to pour some of the milk into the child’s mouth, a proceeding in
which he nearly succeeded in choking him. In vain Southerley dangled
his watch before the boy’s eyes till he almost threw the works out of
gear. In vain Bayre, the most anxious and miserable of the three, took
the child in his arms and tossed it in the air with many frantic
attempts to soothe and please it.

Still the unhappy and frightened babe screamed on, and was rapidly
growing apopletic in his distress when they were all startled by a
knock at the door.

“Oh, come in!” cried Bayre, foreseeing a terrible interview with the
landlady which would bring their misfortunes to a climax.

But it was not Mrs Inkersole who entered. Looking shyly round her,
bowing to the three young men with a downcast and blushing face, there
entered, quietly dressed in black, a woman, a beautiful young woman,
tall, broad-shouldered, with fluffy fair hair and the face of an
overgrown baby, just the placid-looking, womanly, slow-moving creature
whom Bayre had pictured as his ideal.




 CHAPTER VIII.
 BAYRE’S IDEAL

It is impossible to describe the scene of wild confusion which
followed the lady’s entrance. Bayre nearly dropped the baby and Repton
the milk-jug. While Southerley, the only member of the party who
retained a little self-possession, tried in vain, by placing himself
between Bayre and the fair visitor, to hide the cause of all their
woes.

A preposterous attempt this at the best, since there was no mistaking
the unfortunate child’s cries for anything else.

But their consternation was speedily changed to relief. For the lady,
with scarcely more than a glance at any one of the young men, burst
into the middle of the group, and stretching out her arms with the
true woman’s instinct, took the child from Bayre’s well-meaning but
clumsy grasp, and holding him against her shoulder while she gently
rocked herself to and fro from one foot to the other, spoke to him in
words wholly unintelligible to the male ear, as women do to babies.

For a few seconds the young men stood looking shyly at this goddess
who had been so miraculously sent to their assistance, admiring beyond
words the simple and instinctive art with which she accomplished in a
few seconds what they had failed to do in all the hard work of a
strenuous half-hour.

Fair-faced, blue-eyed, with one of those little Cupid’s bow mouths
that never go with any great intellectual capacity, the newcomer
looked just one of those placid, domestic goddesses in praise of whom
Bayre was accustomed to speak so highly, and of whom Southerley, on
the other hand, expressed so much scorn.

There was a timidity, a modesty in every movement, in every look,
which proved how strong must have been the inducement which brought
her thus into a room full of strangers. A sort of deprecatory
expression in her blue eyes, and a blush which overspread her face
from chin to brow, seemed to struggle with the overwhelming feminine
instinct which had brought her to the rescue of the crying child.

When the sobs had subsided a little and it was possible to hope to be
heard, Southerley dragged forward the best armchair, and said,--

“Won’t you sit down?” She shook her head, but he went on: “Do, please;
you must let us have a moment to thank you for--for--for--”

“For saving us from the crime of murder,” cried Repton, tragically, as
the lady, after another moment’s hesitation, sat down with the child
in her lap.

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said, in a low and gentle
voice, as she looked down from him to the child. Then suddenly her
tone changed, and she asked sharply, “When was he fed last? I believe
he’s hungry.”

There was a rush of men to the table, and the next moment they all
clamoured round her, offering such delicacies as a tin of sardines, a
plate of winter apples, and some cheese.

The lady looked up and laughed mildly but scornfully.

“For a baby!” cried she. “Cheese! How absurd!”

“But he isn’t a proper, natural baby,” protested Repton, promptly.
“Proper babies should drink milk, and when I offered him some he
wouldn’t have it.”

“Let _me_ try,” said the lady.

And hugging the child against her breast with one hand, she held a cup
of milk-and-water coaxingly to his lips with the other, when behold!
he drank eagerly and peacefully, to the admiration of everybody.

“He’s an artful little cuss,” said Repton. “He must have guessed there
was an angel--I mean a lady--in the house as soon as he came inside
the door, and made up his mind to get her attentions all to himself or
perish in the attempt.”

The lady laughed again, but so low, so sweetly, that an answering
smile appeared on the face of the child, whom she was now feeding with
small morsels of bread-and-butter, with which she had silently
beckoned Southerley to supply her.

“It’s his own fault if he’s hungry,” said Southerley, earnestly. “I
myself bought him a Banbury cake and a cold sausage on the journey and
he wouldn’t have either of them, except as weapons of offence.”

“It’s lucky he knew what was good for him better than you did!” said
the lady.

“What would his mother say if she knew you’d tried to feed him with
cold sausage?” cried Repton, regaining all his fancied superiority in
the matter of infant management now that they no longer had the infant
to manage.

The lady was still looking down upon the boy, who was as happy and
good again as a child could be.

“Who is his mother?” she asked.

Dead silence.

The lady looked up and caught all the young men interrogating each
other with their eyebrows.

“Don’t you know?” she asked with an air of natural surprise.

After another moment’s pause it was Bayre who boldly blurted out the
truth.

“We haven’t the least idea.”

And he proceeded, in as few words as possible, to relate the whole
story of their tragic experience of the day, to which the lady
listened with wondering eyes.

“It’s all very strange,” said she. “But how very, very awkward for
you!”

And then she burst out laughing, and the three young men, with a
delightful feeling that this angel would help them out of their
embarrassment, and that at any rate the baby had brought them a
charming acquaintance, joined heartily in her merriment. Whereat the
small boy made an ineffectual attempt to clap his pudgy hands in
sympathy.

The movement caught the woman’s watchful eye, and she caught the child
up to her neck and smothered him with kisses.

“Then--then,” stammered she when, blushing a rosy red, she looked up
after this caress, “at present the child is in the singular position
of having no mother, but three fathers?”

“That’s it exactly,” laughed Repton.

“And the worst of it is,” said Bayre, “that it’s one of those cases in
which three men are not equal to one woman.”

The lady looked down at the child and hesitated.

“I suppose,” she said, “that it won’t be very long before you find out
who the child belongs to?”

“Oh, no,” said Bayre, promptly. “We’re going to set about making
inquiries at once. I’m writing to-night.”

“Who to?” cried Repton and Southerley in a breath, sinking grammar in
their excitement.

But Bayre was dignified and reticent.

“Leave it to me,” said he. “It’s a matter where discretion is
necessary.”

Southerley and Repton exchanged looks of suspicion and scorn. This
fellow was trifling with the truth; for they were artful enough to
know that the person to whom this discreet creature would apply was
the last person who could help him in such a matter--the pretty girl
from Creux.

“And in the meantime?” asked the lady.

“In the meantime,” said Southerley, promptly, “we could not think of
allowing the child out of our care. You see we feel responsible for
him. We don’t know who he is: the whole affair was very mysterious.”

Then there was a long pause. All the young men were hoping for the
offer which presently came from the charming visitor.

“I’ve got rooms here myself on the ground floor,” she said. “After
all, that’s not so very far away, is it? Supposing you were to let me
look after the child for you until you have found out what you have to
do with him? You can get an answer to your letter in three or four
days, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes,” said Repton, eagerly.

“And you could trust me with him, couldn’t you? I haven’t had much
experience with children,” she went on, “but I’ve had a baby cousin to
look after, and--”

“We could trust you implicitly,” said Southerley, with unblushing
magnanimity. “You have the real woman’s instinct with children, that’s
certain.”

The lady rose at once, cuddling the baby, who was growing sleepy
again.

“Then I think I’ll put him to bed at once,” she said, “for it’s plain
that he’s tired out. Poor--ickle--manny. Poor ickle manny! Didn’t zey
know what to do wiz a poor ickle mite-mite? Bye-bye. Cuddle down.”

And as she crooned these words low in the ears of the child she
crossed the room towards the door, leaving the three young men in a
state of subdued ecstasy. Then they all rushed to open the door for
her.

But the stolid Southerley retained enough composure to say,--

“I beg your pardon, but--er--er--won’t you let us know your name? You
see, as the responsible guardians of the child, we ought to be able to
say in a moment, if we are asked, in whose care we’ve placed it.”

The lady stopped in the doorway, laughed in some confusion, and
answered hurriedly,--

“Oh--oh, yes, of course. My name is Merriman--Miss Merriman.
Good-night.”

The next moment she was gone.

The three men went back to the fireplace in complete silence. It was a
fitting climax, this visit of the new beauty, to a wonderful day.

Repton broke the spell. Stretching his arms and drawing forth a deep
sigh, he said,--

“Well, of all--!”

And then he paused.

Southerley pulled a chair up to the fire, arranged his feet over the
fender to the exclusion of his companions, and became sentimental.

“Odd how pretty that baby talk sounds from a woman’s lips!” he said
musingly. “I’ve always thought it so silly. But after hearing that
handsome woman use it--by Jove!--I begin to see there’s some meaning
in it after all!”

“She’s certainly handsome,” said Repton, “very handsome. And handsome
inside and out, mind. The way she looked at that child showed the sort
of woman she was--motherly, domestic, _safe_. By-the-bye, Bayre,
there’s your ideal ready to hand, my boy!--gentle, placid,
slow-moving, possibly not too quick-witted, and handsome besides. What
could you wish for more?”

But before Bayre could reply, Southerley struck in, with some
irritation,--

“What’s it got to do with him? He’s too much taken up with Miss Eden
to have any thoughts to spare for anybody else. I suppose he doesn’t
intend to monopolise all the women in the world!”

“I don’t know that I’ve monopolised so much as one yet,” said Bayre,
meekly, from his corner.

He had thrown himself back in a chair away from the others, and was
looking thoughtful.

“What’s the matter, Bayre?” asked Repton.

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Bless me! You don’t say so. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going,” said Bayre, rising slowly from his chair with the same
grave look on his face, “to put it into words, and to put those words
into a letter. Good-night, you fellows!”

And with a nod he went out of the room.

But when it came to the point of taking pen in hand and beginning that
momentous letter to Miss Eden, Bayre found his courage fail him. And
instead of expressing the idea of which he had spoken, he contented
himself with giving her the bare details of the adventure with the
baby, the loss of the letter which had been on the child, and the
appearance on the scene of the opportune Miss Merriman. Then he ran
out, posted his letter, which he had written in studiously careful
terms, that she might not think he was presuming upon their short
acquaintance, and went back to his room in a state of considerable
suspense.

The suspense continued for days, and went on for a whole fortnight,
for Miss Eden vouchsafed no reply.

In the meantime, however, neither Miss Merriman nor the other two
young men appeared to take greatly to heart the unexpected
continuation of the period of their guardianship of the miraculous
baby. Every day these three good fathers, mindful of their
responsibilities, called dutifully at the ground-floor sitting-room,
where they interviewed the object of their solicitude, and expressed
their gratitude to Miss Merriman in trifling gifts of flowers and
bonbons, which she was reluctant to accept, but which, as they pointed
out to her, she was bound to allow them to bring, since she refused to
let them pay for the large quantities of bread-and-butter and
sponge-cake, milk and beef-tea, which their _protégé_ consumed.

So that the period of suspense proved entirely supportable to two out
of the three young guardians, and it was only Bayre who chafed under
it.

He pointed out that they could not allow Miss Merriman to burden
herself indefinitely with the care of another person’s child, and grew
so fervid in his conscientious scruples on this head that nothing
would satisfy him but to get leave of absence again (not without
difficulty and even perjury in a mitigated form) and to return to
Guernsey with the avowed intention of solving the mystery of the
child’s parentage, and with an unavowed intention which both Repton
and Southerley had no difficulty in divining.

The weather had changed for the worse since his first journey to the
islands. It blew a gale as he crossed, and the snow and sleet drove in
his face as he persisted in remaining on deck, watching for the first
glimpse of the rocky coast.

But the atmosphere was not clear enough for him to discern anything
until the vessel was close to harbour, and the thin white covering to
road and roof, cliff and steeple, made everything ghostly and dismal
in the light of a grey March day.

Bayre went straight to Madame Nicolas’ house, and, as he had taken the
precaution to telegraph, he found an appetising breakfast waiting for
him.

Keeping Madame in conversation, all with one object in view, he began
by questioning her on indifferent subjects, and gradually worked round
to the one thing of which his heart and mind were full.

Whether Madame had heard anything of the adventure with the baby he
did not know, as she did not mention it, nor did he.

It was after a little pause for breath on her side that he presently
asked, as if the matter were of no particular interest to him,--

“By-the-bye, have you seen anything of old M. Bayre and his young ward
since we were here?”

Madame stood up and stared at him strangely.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” she said in a low voice.

Bayre could scarcely keep his voice steady.

“Heard what?” said he.

“Why, the young lady was to be married to a gentleman of the
island--this island--a Monsieur Blaise.”

“Yes, yes, so I heard. Well?”

“The wedding was arranged, so I understand; it was to be very quiet.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the young lady has disappeared.”

Bayre started up, his brain on fire.

“It’s not--it can’t be true!” he cried hoarsely.




 CHAPTER IX.
 A MYSTERY

Madame Nicolas looked at Bartlett Bayre with a shrewd suspicion in
her eyes. It was evident that the young man took much more than the
interest of a casual stranger in Miss Eden’s disappearance.

She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

“_Ma foi_, monsieur, I do not myself think it so surprising that a
good-looking girl like Miss Eden should object to being married off to
a man old enough to be her father, and by no means attractive at that.
Not that I have a word to say against Monsieur Blaise, who is a most
worthy gentleman, and well-to-do. But one must make allowance for the
natural tastes of a young girl, especially of a girl whose father was
an Englishman.”

Bayre heard very little of these words, and he presently broke in,
with great suddenness,--

“When did she disappear?”

“I understand she has not been seen for three days.”

Bayre rose from the table with a strange look on his face and walked
straight towards the door.

“Where are you going, monsieur?” asked his hostess, rather alarmed by
the effect of her words.

She knew of the relationship between him and the recluse of Creux, and
she felt uneasy lest the young man should take some aggressive action
against the magnate, which might possibly get her into bad odour among
her neighbours. For, like all the inhabitants of small islands, the
natives were clannish, and strongly resented any interference from
outsiders.

Bayre had his fingers upon the handle.

“I’m going to try to find out what has become of her,” said he, “and
to see the Creux people about it.”

“Oh, nobody fears a tragedy,” she said quickly, though her tone was
not particularly reassuring. “It is some girlish freak, no doubt. And
in a few days she will return to her guardian’s house, satisfied with
having given this little proof of spirit.”

But this suggestion did not satisfy Bayre, who knew more of the
sensitive and emotional girl, after two or three short interviews,
than the majority of the islanders would have found out in a couple of
years’ acquaintance. Remembering as he did the change which came over
her after her introduction to her proposed husband, he could not even
feel that her disappearance was a matter of great surprise. That she
could conceive the idea of running away, either back to the school she
had left in France, or to friends in England, seemed to him a
perfectly possible thing. Yet surely, if she had followed such a
course, she would have been recognised on the journey! The boats were
not crowded at that early season of the year, and she was of course
well-known by sight to the people whom she must meet on such a
journey.

Full of fears which he dared not define, Bayre left the house and made
his way towards the harbour. As luck would have it, one of the very
first persons who attracted his attention as he approached the quay
was the peasant girl who had placed the baby in its basket among the
luggage of the three friends. She was some distance away from him,
sauntering towards him with a market basket on her arm, and chatting
with another girl of about the same age and class. He saw her before
she saw him; but as soon as he attracted her attention by quickening
his pace to meet her, she stopped, turned pale, uttered a frightened
exclamation, then turned and ran away at the top of her speed, her
sabots clanking noisily on the ground as she went.

Of course he gave chase. But in a locality where she was at home and
he was not, it was easy for her to escape him.

Baffled in his pursuit, and rendered more curious than ever by the
guilty knowledge he had descried on her face, Bayre stopped in a chase
which was exciting the amusement of casual passers-by, and retraced
his steps towards the quay.

He decided that it would not be very difficult to trace this girl at a
later time, since it was plain that she frequented the town, even if
she did not live in it. In the meantime his first inquiries must be
made in Creux.

He got nothing out of the boatmen who took him across to the little
island; they had heard of the disappearance of the young lady, and one
crudely and callously suggested that she might have drowned herself as
the result of a love affair.

It was not gay at Creux! And for a young girl, too! Monsieur Bayre was
an eccentric, a droll man! Strange things had happened on the island
before. But there--let each man mind his own affairs and the world
would go on very well.

Neither of the men would be more explicit than this: they had their
living to get, and great part of it was got in the summer time by
taking visitors to Guernsey across the water to Creux to see the
famous museum, as they called the treasure-filled mansion of the old
recluse.

Bayre began to understand how little sympathy he should meet with in
the course of his investigations. Whatever freaks his uncle might be
guilty of, he was held in reverence here as a Grand Seigneur, a man of
wealth, and a source of legitimate income or of splendid charity.

When Bayre landed on his uncle’s little island, his overcoat buttoned
up to the chin, his cap well drawn over his eyes, and his body bent to
meet keen wind and driving snow, he knew that for all he might find
out concerning Miss Eden’s disappearance and his uncle’s
eccentricities he must depend upon himself alone.

Nevertheless, he took the strongly-built cottage of Pierre Vazon on
his way, although the truth was the last thing he expected to hear
from the lips of that unprepossessing person.

The home of the Vazons was a large stone-built cottage, built on a
rather bleak spot, and sheltered only by a few now bare trees, and by
its own outbuildings. There was nobody to be seen about outside, and
it is impossible to exaggerate the desolation of the aspect of the
whole island, seen thus through the driving snow, which had already
covered the ground to the extent of an inch or so, making the sea
around it appear of an inky darkness.

Bayre went boldly up to the cottage and looked in at the window as he
passed. And he received a great shock on seeing that Marie Vazon, who
was sitting by the window with her sewing, had a child, a well-dressed
child, in a cradle at her feet.

Here then was a blow at one of his cherished beliefs. It was Marie
Vazon who had charge of his uncle’s infant son, and the identity of
the child who had been entrusted to the care of him and his friends
was now as mysterious as ever.

As he stopped at the window, gazing in with an expression of
bewilderment and dismay on his face, Marie Vazon noticed that a shadow
was darkening the window, and glanced up.

He saw a swift look of amazement and alarm pass over the stolid
peasant face, and then she looked quickly down again and went on with
her sewing.

Bayre hesitated as to whether he should enter the cottage and make
some inquiries there, or push on for his uncle’s house. While he
debated with himself, he heard a rough voice behind him, and Pierre
Vazon came up, greeting him in his French _patois_, in a manner half
servile, half insolent.

“You are back again soon, monsieur,” said he, placing himself in front
of the young man, and looking at him askance. “It is bad weather for
travelling now.”

“Yes,” said Bayre.

“Monsieur must have strong reasons to bring him across in the snow and
the bitter cold,” went on the man, with scarcely veiled curiosity.

“I hear you have had a strange event since my last visit,” said Bayre,
without answering his implied question. “Is it true that Miss Eden is
no longer here with her guardian?”

“_Parbleu_, monsieur, so it seems. We have seen nothing of her for two
days. But your English young ladies--and Miss Eden was very
English--they are so independent, we were not much surprised to find
she had ended by thinking Creux too quiet for her.”

“You mean that no attempt has been made to find her, either by you or
by her guardian, Mr Bayre?”

“Well, monsieur, I hunted all over the island for her, and my daughter
too, as well as she could. But she has Monsieur Bayre’s child to look
after,” went on the man, keeping his interlocutor fixed steadily with
his small slits of eyes, “so that she has not much time for anything
else.”

It occurred to Bayre as strange that the man should watch him in this
peculiar fashion while he made this statement about the child, but he
could think of no adequate reason for doubting the truth of his words.
At the same time an impulse of curiosity made him ask abruptly,--

“Can I see the child?”

Pierre looked at him askance and shook his head.

He seemed to be searching for an excuse, Bayre thought. At last he
found one.

“Since you have not been received by Monsieur Bayre, monsieur,” said
Vazon, “I don’t know whether I ought to let you see his child.”

Bayre shrugged his shoulders.

“As you like,” said he.

And turning on his heel abruptly, he saw, as he passed the cottage
window once more, that Marie Vazon was no longer sitting within.
Looking round, he caught sight of Pierre disappearing hastily within
the door of the cottage, and heard him turn the key in the lock. So,
with one more look in at the window to ascertain whether the baby in
the cradle was really alive, a fact which the infant obligingly proved
by thrusting a crumpled fist outside its covering, he started in the
direction of the mansion.

What was wrong? What was going on here, in this forgotten little spot
of earth cut off by the sea from the rest of mankind?

That something was amiss Bayre was sure. Vague as his suspicions were,
impossible as it was for him to make out what it was that he feared,
there was such a strangely unsatisfactory atmosphere surrounding
Pierre Vazon and his daughter, such a disquieting air of mingled
servility and insolence in their address, such an expression of low
cunning on both their faces, that the more he considered the matter
the more uneasy Bayre became.

That they had had any hand in the disappearance of Miss Eden he did
not believe. Why should they lay themselves open to ugly suspicions by
interfering with a person who was not likely to stand in the way of
their interests? If she had been the darling of her guardian’s heart,
and they had suspected him of designing to benefit her in his will to
the exclusion of their claims upon him, Bayre might have conceived it
possible that the cunning peasants should have motives for getting her
out of the way.

But everything went to show that, so far from being fond of his ward,
the old man looked upon her simply as a burden and an unwelcome guest,
to be got rid of by marriage as quickly as possible.

Far more likely was it that the high-spirited girl, after a scene of
resistance to old Mr Bayre’s wishes in the matter of her marriage, had
broken the ties between her and her guardian and left the island of
her own accord.

But surmise was not enough: he felt that he must have fact to satisfy
him. And the person to whom he would apply was his uncle himself. He
would not be put off this time. And as he marched up the avenue under
the snow-laden branches of the leafless trees, he resolved that he
would take no denials, that he would gain admittance by hook or by
crook to the presence of the mysterious recluse, and would try to
probe to the reason of the strange dislike to meeting him which his
uncle had shown.

He pulled the old-fashioned iron handle, and heard the bell clang
through the house. Almost without a moment’s waiting he found the door
opened; but a new thrill of suspicion and dismay struck a chill to his
heart when he found that it was again Marie Vazon who had opened it to
him.

His astonishment for the moment took away his powers of speech. She
must have run up to the great house while he was in conversation with
Pierre. And his hopes of getting admittance grew low as he met her
cunning blue eyes and noted that she did not open the door very wide.

She waited for him to speak.

“I wish to see Monsieur Bayre, my uncle,” he said boldly at last.

Marie drew the door a little closer, shook her head, and smiled.

“Ah, monsieur, I regret that Monsieur Bayre cannot receive you--cannot
receive anybody. He is ill--ill in bed,” said she.

“Will you take him my card? And I should like to scribble a few words
on it first.”

He had taken out his pocket-book and found a card before he perceived
that Marie Vazon had deftly and without noise put the chain on the
door. Too indignant to say another word, he gave up the intention of
writing anything on the card, and merely passing it to the girl
through the narrow opening that was left, he went away.

What did this mean?

If he had not remembered that it was his uncle himself who had given
the first intimation of his unwillingness to meet him, Bayre would now
have suspected that the Vazons, for some reason of their own, wished
to prevent the coming together of their master and himself. But with
his two attempts to speak to his uncle, and his previous repulsion
from the very house fresh in his mind, the young man could scarcely
entertain this idea.

What then could be the motive for this marvellous eccentricity? He had
never heard, from any of the inhabitants of the islands, a hint that
his uncle was other than perfectly sane, or he might have ascribed
this shyness to a caprice of insanity.

On the contrary, although all were agreed that his two recent
misfortunes, the loss of his wife and the death of his cousin, had had
a great effect upon him, yet everybody spoke highly of the old man as
a good neighbour and a generous benefactor. How could his nephew’s
visit in the company of his two friends be looked upon as an intrusion
which justified such persistent and aggressive snubs?--snubs which
seemed inconsistent with the known character of the man, and which
nothing in his nephew’s personal history could be held to justify.

So mysterious, so incomprehensible did his uncle’s whole conduct seem,
that Bayre conquered his first impulse, which was to turn his back
upon the house with all possible speed, and resolved instead to play
the spy a little, not more in the interests of his own natural
curiosity than in his intense desire to learn what had become of Miss
Eden.

When he had reached the avenue, therefore, he slackened his steps, and
getting through the thin hedge on the left without difficulty,
approached the house once more, this time by way of the other side,
where a thick plantation had been partly cleared for a smooth lawn
which, now an undulating sheet of snow, stretched away from the house
to the sheltering wood behind.

A curious building it was, this low-roofed, rambling mansion, which
had evidently grown to its present dimensions from a most modest
country villa. The original building it was that Bayre came to first,
a white-washed pile of simplest architecture, the ground-floor windows
of which were closed up with heavy shutters. Most desolate did they
look, these long windows down to the ground, with the closed shutters
behind them. Beyond these he came to a stone extension, with a row of
windows narrow and high, at least ten feet from the ground. He looked
up at them with interest. There were no shutters to these, but he
could see that there were iron bars on the inner side.

Bayre went further in his search and passed round a protruding wing,
beyond which was a courtyard where the stones were moss-grown, little
patches of green peeping up between the snow-drifts.

There was a sort of atmosphere about this corner which suggested the
home of the sleeping beauty, for the trees had been allowed to grow as
they liked, and their branches straggled across the pathway which led
from this point through the wood. There was a stable, small for the
size of the mansion, as was to be expected on the island: it appeared
to be untenanted, and one of the windows was broken. The servants’
quarters, which were at this end of the house, had a desolate
appearance. Bayre could hear certain sounds of work going on within;
but it was rather the clanking of one pair of sabots on the flagged
floor, and the clatter caused by one, or at most two, pair of hands,
than the life and bustle of a large establishment.

He turned into the footpath, came upon a stiff-terraced garden with
some mournful evergreens and still more mournful statues, and turned
back towards the house.

It was that row of long, narrow windows high up in the wall that
fascinated him and made him wonder what was behind: for this part of
the house looked like a scrap of mediævalism wedged awkwardly between
the products of other periods. Here, he thought, must be the treasures
of which he had heard so much. As he stood looking upwards and
wondering what was within, a strange sound reached his ears, as of the
splintering of wood, the rattling of boards, and blows with a heavy
instrument upon some hard substance. A movable pane in the window
immediately over his head, opened for ventilation, enabled him to
ascertain that these sounds came from the interior of the building.

The surface of the stone wall was rough: the young man’s curiosity was
great. After a moment’s hesitation he threw his scruples to the winds,
and with the assistance of an ill-kept growth of ivy which covered the
lower part of the wall under some of the windows, managed to hoist
himself to the level of one of them and to look in.

When his eyes, dazzled by the glare of the snow outside, had got used
to the obscurity within, he found himself gazing upon a spectacle so
strange, so grim, that he began to have a sort of feeling that the
cold must have benumbed his senses and distorted his vision, so that
real objects took the fantastic shape of things seen in dreams.

In the dimness of an open timber roof he saw winged things fluttering
about, perching on the beams, uttering odd little twitterings and
cooings in the darkness. On the wall opposite to him there were
tapestries, some almost colourless with age, and some beautiful in
tints which, in the dim light, all took a softening tone of tender
mouse grey. There were glints of steel, too, against these hangings;
here and there a ghostly figure in ancient armour, with lance in rest
and helmet plumed, stood out from the dim background.

Clinging on with difficulty to the narrow slanting ledge, Bayre looked
in with eager eyes, saw these things before him, and at one end, hazy
in the distance, a gallery crossing the great hall from end to end,
where old silver lamps hung by chains from above, and where the pipes
of an organ and the graceful outline of a harp gleamed faintly out of
the misty grey.

The other end of the hall he could not see. But he saw pictures
hanging below the level of the windows, and on the floor beneath
something that groped its way along slowly and painfully like an
animal hunting for food.

Dog, or wild beast, or what? For a long time Bayre strained his eyes,
unable to make out what that dark object was that groped and groped,
at first quietly, and then with a sudden impulse of impatience, in the
obscurity below him.

His heart seemed to leap up with an indescribable sensation which was
partly horror and partly sheer amazement, when the creature suddenly
reared up from the dark boards of the floor and showed the face of a
man, withered, haggard, tense with an unearthly eagerness of longing.

“My uncle!”

The words were formed by the young man’s lips, but they did not reach
the stage of uttered sound. He was, indeed, too sick with amazement at
this uncanny sight to be able to speak at that moment.

Before he quite knew what the impression was which this sight had made
upon him, the figure in the old dark coat was bending again upon the
floor, and Bayre saw him raise a hatchet over his head and bring it
down sharply upon the boards.

That fact was enough. Only one explanation, surely, could there be of
the action of a man who would set to work to destroy his own dwelling
in such a manner.

But before the young man had had time for another look, another
thought, he suddenly found himself seized by the legs from below, and
turning, saw that Pierre Vazon, with alarm and dismay on his face, and
another and younger man, also in a blouse, had made him prisoner.




 CHAPTER X.
 OR A CRIME?

Bayre did not wait for a second summons to descend. He kicked
himself free of the grasp of his captors and slid down to the ground
beside them.

“_Mon Dieu!_ monsieur, this is a strange way to visit a gentleman’s
house!” cried Vazon, stammering with indignation and evident alarm. “I
took you for a burglar, a thief. What do you want haunting a
gentleman’s house when he will not allow you inside?”

“My uncle is mad,” replied Bayre, shortly.

“Mad? No. Not more mad than country gentlemen always are when they
live by themselves and have nobody to contradict their whims,”
retorted the plain-spoken peasant, scoffingly. “I call it more like
madness for a gentleman to play the spy upon his relations and to hang
about where he has been given to understand that he is not wanted.”

“I shall have an inquiry made into this,” said Bayre, shortly. “There
are others concerned.”

And he walked away without further comment.

That he had alarmed Pierre Vazon by this threat of bringing outside
inquiry into the matter was evident a few moments later when Pierre
came running down the avenue after him, his manner changed from
insolence to abject servility.

“One moment, monsieur,” he cried, gaining his point by his
earnestness, and inducing the young man to stop and listen. “Pardon my
rough manners if I said anything to displease you. I am but a peasant,
with the manners of the soil. Remember, I love my master; I’ve served
him many years now, and the thought that he should be interfered with,
even in his caprices, seems like treason to me. Look here, monsieur. I
know monsieur your uncle is eccentric; everyone knows it. But it is
the eccentricity of a good man, a generous one, one with a good heart.
If he amuses himself as others do not, where is the harm? Leave him in
peace to enjoy the few years of life remaining to him, months only, it
may be, for he is old and broken now.”

Doubtful though he was of Vazon’s entire good faith, the young man
could not help being touched by his earnestness, and he promised not
to do anything rashly or without due thought.

“But mind,” he went on, “I am not going to leave the island again
without having seen my uncle and judged of his condition with my own
eyes. So I warn you that, when I return, as I shall do in a few days,
you had better rather help me than hinder me in my purpose of getting
an interview with him.”

The old peasant gave a curious glance at the dark sea, which was
already even rougher than it had been a couple of hours before, when
Bayre came across from St Luke’s. And Bayre wondered whether the old
man was speculating as to the chances of communication between the
islands being cut off, as it was sometimes in the winter, by the spell
of tempestuous weather.

“Certainly, certainly, monsieur, I will do my best, my very best. And
when Pierre Vazon gives his word it is as the word of a gentleman.”

And with this parting speech, uttered with an air of uncouth dignity,
raising his cap with great deference, Pierre Vazon disappeared in the
direction of his own cottage.

Bayre hastened to the landing-place, where the boat was waiting to
take him back. It was a very difficult matter to embark, and the two
men in charge of the little craft whistled softly to themselves as
they started on the return journey over the wild water, as sailors do
under the excitement of a stormy day at sea.

The waves dashed into the open boat, which carried very little sail,
for wind and sea ran high; and half a dozen times before the party
reached St Luke’s they were threatened with the submerging of the
boat.

A little knot of people assembled on the pier to watch the boat as,
cleverly handled by the two men, it crested the waves and finally ran
into shelter. And there, in the very front rank of the watchers, Bayre
saw, to his surprise and delight, the peasant girl whom he wished to
trace. He hid his face so that he might get out of the boat without
her seeing him. But when he had landed, amidst the congratulations of
the fishermen, who told him it was a risky thing to go out in such a
sea, the young man was surprised to note that the girl did not attempt
to run away on catching sight of him, but stared as if she had
forgotten him altogether.

His first thought was that he must be mistaken and that this could not
be the girl who had taken the baby on board. But a second inspection
made him change his mind; and when she turned slowly away, talking to
another girl, and making her way unconcernedly up the town, he
followed at a safe distance, quite convinced that he was right after
all, and that she was indeed the girl who had avoided him that
morning.

She passed from the harbour to the marketplace, and thence up the one
hundred and forty-five steps into the New Town, Bayre still following,
and wondering whither this expedition would lead him. For he was not
without suspicions that she might trick him after all, and that he
might find himself at the end of his journey no wiser than at the
beginning.

Right out of the town she went, and inland across country that looked
bleak and uninteresting, with its scant supply of bare trees and its
flat enclosures.

The snow no longer fell, but the wind was still high. And by the time
the girl had reached the byway which led to a small stone farmhouse,
the day had begun to draw in towards evening.

He lingered in the background till he saw her enter the little
dwelling, and then, resolved to find out the truth about the child if
possible, he went up the lane and knocked boldly at the door by which
she had entered.

It was opened at once--by Miss Eden.

The cry of joy he uttered at the sight of her was so spontaneous, so
heartfelt, that the young girl, who was smiling and holding out her
hand, blushed and looked down as she met his glowing eyes.

“Come in,” she said.

And then, when he stepped into the beamed living-room, and saw the
peasant girl grinning at him sympathetically from the background, he
could not doubt that he had been made the victim of a most pleasant
little plot between the two young women.

“This,” said Miss Eden, leading him across the stone-flagged floor,
with its neat strips of home-made carpet, to a wooden armchair, where
an old woman in an all-round white cap sat knitting by the fire, “is
M. Bayre’s nephew, Madame Portelet.”

The old woman gave him a smileless but not uncordial welcome, speaking
in the muffled tones of the deaf. And then Miss Eden turned to the
young girl.

“It was Nini here who led you into this trap, by my command, Mr
Bayre.” Nini dropped a curtsey. “When she saw you in the town this
morning she came back and reported the fact. And then she went back
and decoyed you here.”

Bayre was bewildered. Into all the delight he felt at finding Miss
Eden safe and sound there would obtrude the pain of the mystery which
surrounded not only her but his uncle and the unidentified baby. He
began to feel, too, that he should never have the courage to ask all
the questions he would have liked to have answered.

Miss Eden, indeed, led the talk as she liked. He fell instinctively
into the position of her adoring humble servant, and accepted the tea
she made for him, and the bread-and-butter which she cut with her own
hands, without anticipating by so much as a word the moment when she
would choose to enlighten him as to her strange position.

The time came at last. Nini had disappeared with the tea-tray into the
back regions of the farmhouse, and Miss Eden led him to the window and
sat down, while he stood leaning against the opposite end of the deep
window-seat.

“You are surprised to see me here,” she said.

“I--I was only too delighted to s-s-see you anywhere,” stammered he.
“When they told me you had disappeared, I--I--”

“Did you think I had drowned myself?” asked she with a pretty
sauciness which enthralled him.

“I--I don’t know what I thought.”

“What has brought you back here?”

He looked at her, hesitated, and then stammered out,--

“Y-y-you, chiefly, I think.”

“Thank you. But--I don’t understand how I can have had anything to do
with it.”

“Did you get my letter?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t answer it. Yet you half-promised--”

“To answer you if you wrote? I don’t remember doing that.”

“No. But you did promise to let me hear of or from you some day.”

“Ah! That’s vague, isn’t it?”

“In the meantime at least--thank Heaven!--you have thrown over old
Blaise.”

“How do you know that?”

“Wasn’t it to escape him that you ran away?”

“Not altogether, I think. Though I admit that his likeness to
everybody else of his generation was rather excessive.”

“Why have you run away then?”

In the dim light, which came partly from the waning daylight and
partly from a dim little lamp, he saw that she grew very pale as she
answered,--

“I--I had a fright.”

Remembering what he had seen that day, Bayre was on the alert in a
moment.

“Ah!” said he. “Was it my uncle who frightened you? Tell me all about
it. Indeed, I know something of the cause already, I think.”

She leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

“Since you and your friends went away,” she began, “Mr Bayre has shown
a strange restlessness and irritability; and instead of merely
treating me with indifference, as he did before, he has seemed to take
an absolute and strong dislike to me, so much so that he scarcely
spoke to me without harshness, or a sort of querulousness still more
difficult to endure. And in the meantime the two Vazons, who presume
upon having the care of your uncle’s child”--Bayre listened intently
to these words, but dared make no remark upon them--“kept more closely
about him than ever, and evidently influenced the way he treated me.
Naturally I resented this. And I resented, too, the way in which I was
being thrown into the arms of this good Monsieur Blaise, who, I must
tell you, is by no means so deeply enamoured of my charms as your
uncle wished to make out, but who seemed rather to submit to the
thought of marrying me than to show any enthusiasm over it.”

“What!” cried Bayre, indignantly. “I can’t believe it! Is he deaf and
blind?”

Miss Eden laughed and blushed very prettily.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said she, “but at any rate you could see for
yourself that he is past the age at which a man rushes headlong into
matrimony. It seems he made careful inquiries into my ‘dot,’ and was
disappointed to find I had only seventy pounds a year of my own.”

“The cad! The rascal!”

“Oh, not at all! Much more prudent than to dash into marriage, as some
very silly young Englishmen might do--”

“Yes, yes, so they might--”

“Without making careful inquiries into their responsibilities. Well,
he submitted with a good grace to my poverty-stricken condition, and
things were in a very nice train, when--when--something happened,
something that frightened me.”

“What was it?” asked Bayre, leaning down and guessing what sort of
incident it was that had caused her alarm.

“It was something that made me think I ought to have time to find out
a little more, and to consult somebody as to what I ought to do.
Something which made me wonder whether I should do so wisely as I had
supposed in following your uncle’s advice as to my marriage.”

“Yes, yes, go on. You saw something about him that made you
suspect--what?”

“Why, that there’s someone living at the _château_ besides himself.”

Bayre started back, staring at her in perplexity, as the memory of his
discovery of that afternoon returned vividly to his mind.

“Someone besides himself! Who?” asked he, sharply.

“I don’t know. But it’s someone nobody knows anything about except
himself and the two Vazons,” said Miss Eden. “And--and--I think
it’s--a woman.”

Bayre stood up, struck with a horrible thought. Was his uncle keeping
his own young wife shut up in his house with himself and the two
Vazons for gaolers?




 CHAPTER XI.
 RIVALS

“Tell me all you know about this,” said Bayre, abruptly, when he had
silently pondered for some moments on Miss Eden’s statement. “You may
trust me. You wouldn’t have told me so much if you hadn’t felt sure of
that.”

“That’s true. Well, what I know amounts to very little. But one day,
as I was walking in the garden close to that end of the house that’s
shut up--”

“Where the windows open down to the ground?” asked Bayre.

“The room next to that one it was, the very last room of all, where
there are two windows barred on the outside and shuttered on the
inside. You may not have noticed them, for there’s a creeper which has
been neglected, a Virginia creeper, on that corner of the house; and
the long dead branches hang like great bunches of string down over the
windows.”

Bayre remembered the ragged Virginia creeper, though he had failed to
notice the iron bars behind them, or the fact that these two windows
were shuttered like those of the longer room beyond.

“Well?” said he.

“It was late one afternoon,” she went on, “that I saw the shutters of
one of these windows put back and a hand thrust out to open the
window. I was startled, and I must have made some sound, for I saw
that the hand was a woman’s, and that the fingers were loaded with
rings. It was drawn back instantly, and I heard a sort of tussle going
on inside the room, and voices speaking low and hurriedly. And
presently someone came to the window and looked out: but it was not
the woman; it was your uncle. He looked down at me angrily, shut the
window and closed the shutters.”

“You asked him about it, of course?”

“I shouldn’t have dared. But he told me, of his own accord, that he
had caught one of the maids decking herself out in some jewellery
which he kept in a locked-up room.”

“And may not that have been the truth?”

“I don’t think so. There are only three women about the house at any
time: Marie Vazon, who is the only one who might dare such a thing,
lives at her father’s, and is not very much at the big house at all.
The other two are an old woman and her niece, neither of whom dares to
stay a minute longer out of the servants’ quarters than she can help.
And all three women have hands which are large and red, and the
fingers of which could not wear rings of ordinary size. Well, such
rings as I saw--valuable as they must have been if they were real--are
not made in extraordinary sizes!”

“Do you think, then, that it’s his young wife he is keeping shut up
there?”

By the look of consternation which passed over Miss Eden’s face, Bayre
saw that this idea had not occurred to her.

“I never thought of that,” she said quickly. Then, as this suggestion
seemed to fill her with horror, she cried quickly, “Let’s ask Nini
about her. Oh, no, oh, no, I’m sure it can’t have been his wife.”

And Miss Eden rose from her seat, and hurrying across the room, opened
a door at the back and brought in the peasant girl with a teacup in
one hand and a cloth in the other.

“Nini lived at your uncle’s house all the time from before his
marriage till a few weeks ago, when her grandmother had to send for
her to come back here to her own home,” explained Miss Eden. “Ask her
and she will tell you what she thought of young Mrs Bayre, and whether
she was the kind of person who could be shut up against her will. You
can ask her in English or French; she speaks both.”

Nini, who looked intelligent for her class, nodded assent to this
speech, looking down modestly upon the floor. But Bayre had a sort of
idea that, simple as she looked, he should get no one word more out of
her than she chose to give. Obediently, however, he began to ask her
questions.

“You were at Creux when young Madame Bayre ran away?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you see her run away?”

“No, sir. She took Marie Vazon with her. She had better have taken me.
I shouldn’t have left her in the lurch and let her go off without her
child as Marie did.”

“Ah! The child! Was that the child you brought on board in a basket
and dumped down among the luggage of my friends and me?” asked Bayre,
with what he considered to be startling suddenness.

But Nini was on her guard, of course.

“_Plait-il?_” she asked blandly, raising her eyes stolidly to his
face.

“You won’t own to that, I see,” he said irritably. And turning shortly
to Miss Eden, he observed, with some constraint,--

“This girl is the heroine of the incident I wrote to you about from
London, Miss Eden. It was she who planted a young child among our
luggage. I’m sure of it.”

There was a moment’s silence. Nini did not attempt any further
contradiction. She looked stolidly down on the flagged floor again and
waited for further questions. Miss Eden’s conduct was equally
unsatisfying.

“There must be some mistake, I think,” she said. “But, in any case,
that’s not the matter under discussion, is it?”

“If she won’t tell the truth in one matter it’s not likely she will in
another,” said Bayre, drily.

“Let me try,” said Miss Eden, sweetly, and she addressed the girl at
once. “What sort of life did they lead at the _château_ when old Mr
Bayre brought back his young wife, Nini?”

“It was not very comfortable, mademoiselle. Young Madame did not like
Mees Ford, and Mees Ford did not like young Madame. Mees Ford was all
for save, save: Madame liked ease, comfort, expense. Madame did not
like to see her husband always consulting his cousin instead of her.
Madame want her husband always to go away, especially when the baby
came. It was not gay for Madame, who was young, to sit always in the
great _salon_, the room where the shutters are now always closed, with
that effigy, Mees Ford, opposite to her, knit, knit, knitting always
as if for her life. One, two, three, four, always, count, count,
counting. And poor young Madame sitting opposite, yawning over a book.
Even her child was not allowed to be with her much. Old M. Bayre was
proud of him, but he did not like the noise of a child’s crying. So it
had to be kept in rooms that were a long way off, in the charge of its
nurse and of Marie Vazon. And when the child was eight months old the
nurse went away and he was left to Marie Vazon only. Madame did not
like Marie, and that was another trouble. Mees Ford stood by the
Vazons, father and daughter, while Madame hated them. _Ma foi_, I, for
one, was not surprised when Madame ran away. The only wonder was she
stood the life so long.”

“Did you ever hear any hint that she didn’t run away after all?” asked
Miss Eden.

The girl looked up in real surprise.

“No, mademoiselle,” she answered with the accent of sincerity.

“Do you think it possible that she never went away at all, but that
she was kept shut up at the _château_?”

The girl smiled incredulously.

“Oh, no; even if she was not very clever she would not have let
herself be treated so. And besides, it must have been known.”

Miss Eden looked at Bayre.

“Was it jealousy of Miss Ford’s interference, then, that drove her
away?” he asked.

“It was the miserable life they all led together,” replied the girl,
promptly. “For Monsieur Bayre and his cousin quarrelled--they had
always done so even before his marriage, and it was worse afterwards.
He liked her, he respected her, but she was avaricious and mean, and
so there was always a conflict between him and her as to the things he
did. It was a wretched life for young Madame. She was too timid, too
gentle to quarrel herself, but she had to listen to it all and to
suffer for it.”

“And after she left, did you ever hear anything of her again?”

“Not a word. Monsieur Bayre and his cousin behaved as if she had never
existed. At least, as far as we servants knew. They quarrelled more
than ever, perhaps, and we saw less of him than we had done before.
And when his cousin died in an apopletic fit--during a quarrel one
night, I believe--he shut himself up altogether for a time. He was
broken, aged; we were sorry for him.”

Miss Eden turned to Bayre again.

“That will do, Nini,” she said.

And the girl dropped them a rustic curtsey and returned to her work in
the wash-house.

“She hasn’t told much that I didn’t know before,” said Bayre, drily.

He was offended by the bland impudence with which she denied her own
action in regard to the child in the basket, and was inclined to
resent the mystification in which he felt sure that Miss Eden had her
share.

“Well, no doubt she’s told you all she could.”

“I don’t think so. However, we need not discuss that.” And he prepared
to go. “At any rate, I’m thankful to have found you alive and well,
Miss Eden.”

“Thank you. You are going?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I see you again?”

There was just enough of something that was not indifference in her
voice, as she put the question, for Bayre to feel himself softening
against his will.

“Oh, I--I don’t know,” he began. And then he said abruptly, “Do you
wish to see me again--before I go?”

She lowered her eyelids demurely.

“Not if you think it too much trouble to come so far out of your way,
Mr Bayre.”

“Oh, that’s just what I do feel, of course, that it’s too much
trouble,” said he.

Miss Eden affected to misunderstand his tone.

“I thought so. Then good-bye, Mr Bayre.”

And she put out her hand with an off-hand coolness which, although he
felt convinced that it was only assumed to annoy and pique him, made
him furious.

“Oh, good-bye,” said he, with as little cordiality as was consistent
with common decency, as he touched and dropped her offered hand and
went to the door.

Miss Eden shut it after him, and he went back into St Luke’s, with
just one glance behind which showed him only the closed door and no
face at the window, in a state of rage and irritation of the keenest
possible kind.

To think that he should have made such a fool of himself as to take
this journey, at the risk of giving grievous offence by asking for a
second holiday, just to see a disingenuous coquette who led him on
only to deceive him. For that she knew all about the trick played upon
him and his friends by Nini he felt convinced. Even her light way of
passing over the subject was confirmation of that fact.

He wished he had not come. He was no nearer to the truth about the
child than he had been before. While his interview with Miss Eden had
only served to strengthen the impression she had previously made upon
him, at the same time it for the first time raised in him doubts of
her frankness.

Why did she make a mystery of the incident of the child? Did she think
him incapable of keeping a secret? or did she think that he would
resent being called upon to have any share in the safekeeping of the
child who was his uncle’s heir?

In spite of the fact that he had seen another child at the Vazons’
cottage, Bayre still thought that the hero of the basket was his
infant cousin. But in the face of Miss Eden’s rather haughty silence
upon this point he dared not even ask the question. He was so angry
and hurt, without quite knowing why, that he told himself he should
take no more trouble over the matter, but should go back to London and
wait for further developments, leaving Miss Eden to get out of her own
difficulties as she might, and his uncle to be dealt with by Monsieur
Blaise, who would no doubt in the end make some inquiries and discover
the mystery, whatever it might be, that was connected with the
_château_ of Creux.

He felt some self-reproach down in the bottom of his heart at the idea
of leaving it to a stranger to unearth a family secret. But, after
all, he told himself, it was no affair of his, and the man whom old Mr
Bayre had chosen for a sort of son-in-law had more reason for
interference in the family affairs than a blood-relation who had been
kept at arm’s-length.

In this mood he reached St Luke’s and passed an uneasy evening. But
with a bright morning came softer thoughts and feelings, so that when
he took his early walk, after his roll and coffee, he instinctively
went up to the New Town and struck inland in the direction of Madame
Portelet’s cottage.

By the luckiest accident in the world--in spite of his stoical resolve
to have no more to do with her this was how he described it to
himself--he met Miss Eden before he came in sight of the humble
dwelling where she had found a temporary refuge.

She blushed very prettily at sight of him, and this fact gave him some
secret satisfaction, to counterbalance the remembrance of her cool
dismissal of the previous afternoon. But she took care to minimise the
effect of this by raising her eyebrows and saying,--

“Then you haven’t gone back yet, Mr Bayre?”

“N-n-no,” said he. He turned and walked in silence for a few seconds
beside her. “Are you sorry, Miss Eden, that I’ve not gone back?”

“I’m sorry you don’t seem to have enjoyed this visit as much as you
did your last,” she replied discreetly.

“Well, you’re not as nice to me as you were last time, you know.”

“I?”

“Yes. You.”

He was regaining confidence a little. She was so much more coquettish
than she had been on his first visit, that it suddenly dawned upon him
that there might be a more flattering explanation of her conduct than
the one of indifference.

“I’ve had a good deal to worry me since you were here before,” she
explained more soberly, almost humbly. “Surely you know enough to
understand that. Does a girl run away from her guardian’s house, as I
did, without great provocation?”

“Of course not, of course not. Forgive me if, if I seem--seem--”

“I forgive you, certainly. And I can understand the trouble you are in
yourself about all this. After all, Mr Bayre is your own uncle, and
whatever concerns him, concerns the family, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. I’m glad you feel that. And you won’t think me intrusive if,
feeling that, I feel also very much troubled about his treatment of
you?”

“Oh, that’s nothing. I shall be all right.”

“Yes, but how? What are you going to do?”

“Well, I’ve written to someone, someone in England, to suggest that I
should go there.”

“Let me see you safely to the other side, then--”

“Oh, no, thank you. I must have time to decide if that is best. I have
written, and I am waiting for her answer.”

“This is some lady you know well that you think of going to?”

“No, I’ve never seen her,” began Miss Eden, rather reluctantly.

“And you mean to trust yourself to someone you don’t know?”

The tears sprang to the girl’s eyes.

“I have to,” said she, petulantly. “I have no near relations; you
might have guessed that, since your uncle, who was only an old friend
of my father’s, is my only guardian.”

Bayre’s heart began to beat very fast.

“No friends!” said he in a low voice, which was not very steady.

Miss Eden grew nervous and confused.

“Oh, no, of course I don’t mean that exactly,” she said with a little
laugh. “Of course I’ve plenty of friends in one sense. But it is only
very particular friends that one cares to live with--”

“But you said you didn’t even know her?” persisted Bayre, grown warm
and earnest. “Why don’t you go to some of the friends you do know?”

“Well,” said she, desperately, “I want to be independent. If I were to
stay with people older than myself I should have to fall in with their
ways, to live their lives, and perhaps I shouldn’t like it.”

“But it would be safer for you, better for you,” urged Bayre,
excitedly; “a girl who knows nothing of life, or men and women!”

“Oh, but don’t you think one’s instincts are guide enough? I do. It’s
an exploded idea that girls can’t take care of themselves just as well
as young men.”

“Oh, no, it’s not,” retorted Bayre, dictatorially. “Come, be advised
by me. You can trust me to this extent, can’t you? Let me know where
this lady lives and I’ll go to see her, take her a message from you,
don’t you see? And I’ll find out all about her.”

“And supposing I were to say she lives in Lancashire, for instance?”

“I’d go just the same,” said Bayre, passionately. “Go straight there
the moment I got to England.”

“Would you? Would you really do that? But I don’t see why you should.
Why should you?”

There was just enough agitation in the girl’s voice, showing that she
was touched, grateful, for the young man to be thrown at once off his
balance.

“Because I love you,” was his straightforward answer, uttered in a low
voice that thrilled her in spite of herself.

She did not shrink away, she did not answer; but she walked on beside
him silently, biting her lip, and looking down. His head was still
bent as he tried to look into her face, feeling that he had hazarded
his all on one cast and that her next words must make or mar him for
ever.

While they were both at white heat, as it were, he in the thraldom of
his passion and she held by a pang of new and strange emotion, there
fell upon them, like water upon a conflagration, the sound of a thick,
husky man’s voice--the voice of a man to whom exercise was a burden
and a fatigue.

“_Hein!_” said the voice.

And at the sound the two young people shivered guiltily and stopped,
turning, as they did so, to face the direction whence the sound came.

And on the other side of a low stone wall, where a clump of evergreens
had hidden him from sight as they passed, they saw the portly form,
the round, red face, and the Panama hat of Monsieur Blaise.

But he was not wearing his blue goggles. He had taken these off and
held them in one hand, in order that he might have a clearer and
better view of the guilty couple.




 CHAPTER XII.
 THE MEETING

Miss Eden recovered her self-possession sufficiently to hold out her
hand. The angry M. Blaise took no notice of it.

“Won’t you shake hands with me? What have I done?” said she.

“What have you done?” retorted the stout gentleman, frowning upon her
and her companion with strict impartiality. “That, mademoiselle, is
what everybody has asked for two days. It is a strange thing for a
young lady to disappear from among her friends.”

“I wasn’t very far off,” said she, humbly. “I was staying at the
cottage of the grandmother of one of my guardian’s old servants.”

Monsieur Blaise made a slight motion with his head, which may have
meant approval or disapproval, assent or dissent.

“And why, mademoiselle, did you indulge this caprice?”

Miss Eden hesitated.

“May I help to explain?” said Bayre, diffidently.

“And who are you, monsieur?” said the elder man, with some asperity.

“I am one of the nearest living relations of Mr Bartlett Bayre, whose
namesake I am,” said the young man, readily.

This information evidently surprised Monsieur Blaise, and somewhat
mollified him.

“Then you are a relation of this lady’s also?”

“No,” said Bayre. “But as she is my uncle’s ward, I naturally feel a
great interest in her welfare.”

When he came to this point in his speech, Bayre saw that Monsieur
Blaise began to look at him askance, so he paused.

“Ah! Ah! No doubt!” said Monsieur Blaise, drily. “And she feels an
interest in you, and confides to you only the secret of her
hiding-place.”

Both the young people protested in a breath, so volubly, and with so
much detail, that they managed to convince the elderly gentleman that
Bayre’s discovery of the lady had been an accidental one.

“And why did you go away?” Miss Eden hesitated. “Why, if you wanted to
go away, did you not at least let _me_ know where you were?”

“The fact is, Monsieur Blaise,” broke in Bayre, “that my uncle’s
conduct has been very eccentric lately, and that Miss Eden got
frightened. But she doesn’t like to admit the fact.”

The manner of Monsieur Blaise changed and grew expansive in a moment.

“Ah, ah!” cried he, opening his small blue eyes very wide, so that
they looked like two glass marbles in an undulating field of pink.
“Now I begin to perceive! Eccentric! _Mon Dieu_, I am with you there.
Our friend is eccentric beyond all experience!” He turned quickly to
the girl. “Did he alarm you then, mademoiselle, by his eccentricity?
What is it that he has done?”

Again she hesitated, and again Bayre spoke for her.

“My uncle showed no violence to her,” he said, “and I think it a pity
she ever came away.”

Monsieur Blaise assented vehemently, with so many noddings of his
head, that he looked like one of those toy figures whose loose heads
swing in an open neck.

“Pity! Yes, yes, it is a pity,” he assented. “If you were afraid, Miss
Eden, you should have consulted me. A word to your future husband--”

Miss Eden laughed a little and interrupted him.

“Oh, surely, Monsieur Blaise, you can’t want to marry me still? I am
too erratic for you, you know.”

“Erratic, yes, so you are,” agreed the stout gentleman with
deliberation. “But, _enfin_, it must be that one’s wife have some
defects! And if one knows them beforehand, one is prepared.”

Miss Eden grew pale with consternation.

“But,” she began in a faint voice.

Before she could get any further, Monsieur interrupted her briskly,
and indicating Bayre with a wave of the hand, said, with elaborate
courtesy,--

“Ah! Is it that you wish to marry this gentleman?--this nephew of your
guardian?”

The blood rushed into her pale face as she drew herself up.

“Oh, dear, no. I never thought of such a thing!” she cried
emphatically.

Bayre drew himself up too, and Monsieur Blaise smiled so expansively
that the flesh of his large round face rolled up into a succession of
shiny pink ridges.

“It is well, it is well,” he said, “but we should be grateful for his
excellent suggestion. I agree with him that you should go back to your
guardian’s house, and this gentleman and I will discuss the matter of
his kinsman’s eccentricity, which is undoubted. In the meantime you
need have no cause for alarm while you have two friends near at hand.
You are staying in Guernsey, monsieur?”

“For a few days only. I propose to go over to Creux, and to put up at
the house of the boatman who lives by the landing-place. He lets
lodgings, I know.”

“A good idea!” assented Monsieur Blaise. “In the meantime I should
like to have a few further words with you upon this matter, when we
have seen this young lady safe on her return journey.”

Miss Eden was taken aback by this sudden settling of her destinies,
but she submitted, and returned at once to Madame Portelet’s cottage,
to prepare her hostess for her departure. Monsieur Blaise took Bayre
confidentially by the arm, and walked with him some distance, talking
eagerly, and panting as he talked.

“My dear young friend,” he said earnestly, “I am glad you came here. I
have had certain doubts, certain very odd suspicions, I may now
confess, about our friend at Creux. With a member of his family who
shares my opinion that something is wrong there, I am bold, I am
fearless. We will go together, you and I, to the _château_, we will
meet your uncle face to face, side by side.” And he waved his arm in
the manner of one who storms a fortress sword in hand. “And we will
solve our doubts without delay.”

Bayre caught at this suggestion, which was as opportune for him as for
the other. With Monsieur Blaise he would no doubt be admitted to his
uncle’s presence, and perhaps he would learn more in a single
interview than he would have been able to do in six months of inquiry.

“You have definite suspicions?” asked he.

Monsieur Blaise gave one of his large nods.

“Do you think he is mad?”

“I will say nothing,” said the stout gentleman, “until I am more sure
of what I think. In the meantime let us make an appointment. Shall we
meet at the harbour this afternoon and cross together in time to reach
the _château_ about four?”

“Just as you please.”

“It is agreed then,” said Monsieur Blaise, who for the most part spoke
excellent English, dropping into the French idiom only when he was
strongly excited. “Be at the harbour at half-past two and we will
settle this matter without delay.”

The appointment made, perhaps Monsieur Blaise forgot all about Miss
Eden, for he at once took leave of the younger man and returned to his
own house.

Bayre lingered in the neighbourhood, hoping for another
_tête-à-tête_ with Miss Eden.

He had not to wait long. She came back from the cottage at a brisk
pace, with Nini to carry her travelling-bag. She blushed and would
have passed him with a smile and a few words of casual greeting, but
he would not allow that.

“Send the girl on,” said he, peremptorily, in a low voice.

After a moment’s hesitation Miss Eden obeyed.

“Now,” said he, with a certain imperiousness which surprised himself,
“tell me what you meant by being so indignant when old Blaise asked if
you wanted to marry me?”

The girl’s eyes sparkled, and she held her head high. He was right,
however, in thinking that there was something not discouraging in
their expression.

“Well, I don’t want to marry you,” replied she, blandly.

“Wouldn’t you rather do that than marry him? Now, tell the truth.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr Bayre, by putting on these
stand-and-deliver airs with me. This morning you were quite meek by
comparison.”

“Well, you put my back up by the lofty tone in which you told that old
fellow that you didn’t want to marry me!” said Bayre, looking down
into her face with assurance that surprised himself, as he noted that
she was considerably agitated, although she held fast to a light and
careless tone.

“Well, I didn’t mean to be rude, but what could I say? Would you have
had me tell him that I _did_ want to marry you?”

And at last, for a swift instant, she let her bright eyes glance
towards his face.

“Yes, that’s just what I would have had you say! At least, perhaps it
would have been uncomfortable to say it to him, but I wish to Heaven
you’d say it to _me_.”

Miss Eden shook her head gently.

“That’s not the sort of thing one does in a hurry,” she said. “I don’t
know much about you, Mr Bayre.”

“You know a great deal more about me than you do about that amiable
pink elephant your guardian chose for you. Yet you were ready, or half
ready, to marry him even before you had seen him.”

“Ah, well, that was a different thing. That would have been a marriage
of arrangement, in the French fashion, while the other--”

She checked herself, but it was too late. Bayre beamed all over his
pale face as he made her stop, and whispered eagerly,--

“Say it, yes, say it. The other--would have been a marriage of
inclination?”

But she would not answer him.

“Look, Nini’s dropping my bag!” she suddenly cried.

And with an adroit movement she ran past her companion, and waving him
a farewell with her hand, reached Nini’s side and went on without
looking back again.

Bayre, however, was not disheartened. He could hardly expect to carry
off the prize so early in the fight, but there was something in Miss
Eden’s manner this morning which bade him hope. Without being vain he
felt that he ought to have a fair chance against the pink elephant.

Monsieur Blaise, however, was quite as fully convinced that Miss Eden
was to be his as Bayre was that she inclined to himself. And as the
middle-aged suitor and the young one crossed the rough channel between
Guernsey and Creux together, Monsieur Blaise entertained Bayre, until
he fell sea-sick, with accounts of the changes he contemplated making
in his house-appointments in view of his approaching plunge into late
matrimony.

The sea was calmer than it had been on the previous day, but the wind
had not yet gone down altogether. The sky was grey with clouds, and
the sea-birds were whirling wildly round the black rocks about the
little island, as the boat was carried on the crest of a wave into the
shelter of the little landing-place.

It was a matter of great difficulty to land Monsieur Blaise neatly,
for he was demoralised by sea-sickness, and was by no means agile at
the best of times.

Once on shore, however, excitement gave him speed, and although he
panted a great deal, he managed to keep up a good pace as he and his
companion walked together to the house of old Bartlett Bayre.

As he had anticipated, Marie Vazon, who opened the door to them, did
not dare refuse admittance to the younger man when he was accompanied
by so important a person as Monsieur Blaise. She was, however, in a
state of considerable agitation as, after a moment’s hesitation, she
turned abruptly and led the way into a little _salon_, where she left
them, to announce their arrival to her master.

It was a commonplace room this, with the usual polished floor and
simple furniture of a French country house; and it was not until,
after the lapse of some minutes, Marie Vazon returned and led them
through a long apartment, splendid with pictures, with Louis Quinze
furniture, and with Sèvres china in priceless cabinets, that Bayre
got his first idea of the treasures shut up in the old country house.

From this room they were shown into a smaller one, handsomely
carpeted, and luxurious in glory of embroidered curtains and deep,
square, carved armchairs, upholstered in damask of rich hues and
surmounted by imperial eagles in ormolu.

Here, with his back to the light, crouching in skull-cap and
dressing-gown over the wood fire, was the lean and shrunken figure of
old Bartlett Bayre, spectacles on nose, and the eternal pipe in his
mouth.

He looked up when they entered, and invited them to be seated, not in
words, but by a half-sulky movement of the head.

Bayre sat at a little distance, but Monsieur Blaise, more bold, drew a
chair to the side of the old recluse.

“You have been suffering, my friend,” said he.

“Not more than usual. I am getting old, old and broken,” answered Mr
Bayre, fretfully, with a glance at his unwelcome nephew. “There are
plenty of folk who rejoice in that fact, doubtless,” he added grimly.

Bartlett reddened, but said nothing.

“Ah, well, we must not worry ourselves upon those points,” said
Monsieur Blaise, cheerfully. “We have come to congratulate you on
having found your niece. She has returned, has she not?”

“Um, I believe so,” replied Mr Bayre, without enthusiasm. “Was it your
doing, her going away?”

“I! What a question! No. I told her to come back, and I have come to
suggest some final arrangements regarding her marriage with me.”

“Ah!”

As he spoke Monsieur Blaise had gradually drawn his chair nearer and
nearer, and young Bayre, watching him intently, was surprised to see
a sudden change which came over his fat face when he was close to the
old man.

As for the recluse, he kept his eyes on the floor, or on the points of
his own slippers, so that he noted nothing of this close scrutiny, of
this change of expression on his visitor’s face.

All at once, without the slightest warning, Monsieur Blaise stood up.
Bayre, still watching him, thought that he was going to denounce his
host where he stood. But instead of that, Monsieur Blaise said
abruptly, after drawing one of those stertorous breaths which the
slightest exertion evoked from him,--

“Well, I will not trouble you now. I--I will come again when you are
better. Till then, _au revoir, au revoir_.”

Old Mr Bayre looked up in surprise. His visitor was already at the
door, and the younger man, agitated and curious, was by this time on
his feet.

“You will have some coffee with me,” said the host, placing his hand
upon a spring-bell on a table beside him.

“No, no, my friend, another time, another time.”

Monsieur Blaise was already out of the room, and as old Mr Bayre at
once turned away and looked at the fire with no more interest in the
visitors, his nephew, with a formal bow of which his host took no
notice, followed his companion out of the room.

They passed through the handsome outer saloon, and the smaller one,
and found Marie Vazon waiting in the hall. The girl looked from the
one face to the other with sly eyes, but Monsieur Blaise said nothing
until he and the younger man were out of the house.

Half-way down the avenue he drew a long breath, took off his hat, and
wiped his bald forehead with a large coloured silk handkerchief. His
face was pale, almost haggard, and his eyes still had the same scared
expression as before.

“_Mon Dieu!_” cried he, “I have had such a shock! I have made such a
discovery!”

“Well, what is it? what is it?” cried Bayre, in a fever.

But the older man drew in his lips, recovered himself, and shook his
head.

“I am no spy upon my neighbours,” said he. “I would not bring disgrace
upon them, no, no matter what they had done. But--I would not marry
into that family--for fifty thousand pounds!”




 CHAPTER XIII.
 PRUDENCE _V._ PASSION

Bayre stared at Monsieur Blaise as he stood shivering and wiping his
face with a trembling hand under the bare trees of the avenue. That he
was suffering from severe excitement was evident. All the pink colour
had left his face; his eyes looked dull and glassy. If he had seen a
ghost, or if he had been witness of some frightful crime, he could not
have looked less like the comfortable, placid Monsieur Blaise of every
day.

“Surely,” said the younger man, persuasively, “you can have no
scruples about confiding your discovery to me. Remember I am a member
of his family; I am his nephew. I am therefore the last person who
could or would help to bring disgrace upon the house.”

But Monsieur Blaise shook his head with decision.

“You say you are his nephew? Well, I don’t doubt it, I never have
doubted it since you told me so, but Monsieur Bayre did not receive
you as a relation; he did not even speak to you. _Hein!_”

This was undeniable. Bayre was silent.

“If you belong to his family,” went on Monsieur Blaise, after a short
pause, during which he had put on his hat and resumed his walk down
the avenue, “it is for you to make inquiries, to consult your lawyers,
if you choose. But it is not for me to interfere in the matter,
neither is it for me to discuss it. We will, if you please, converse
upon some other topic.”

But Bayre was not to be put off like this.

“Surely,” he said, “you have told me too much, or not enough. You have
confessed that you received a great shock while sitting with me in my
uncle’s presence; how can it, then, be indiscreet to admit what
discovery it was that affected you so much?”

“I may have been mistaken,” said Monsieur Blaise, beginning to recover
his normal colour, and turning his small eyes cunningly towards his
companion, as if to find out how much he had betrayed. “I was excited,
nervous. We had talked ourselves, you and I, into a sort of feverish,
suspicious state, in which trifles seemed to become mountains. What I
saw was nothing; well, what I fancied may have been nothing too.”

Bayre tried to recall every smallest fact connected with their short
visit. His uncle had sat between the fireplace and a high window;
behind him and his table Bayre remembered that there had hung a
curtain, or piece of tapestry, which fell in deep folds. The corner
was a dark one; his own attention had been riveted upon his uncle and
Monsieur Blaise. It was quite possible that some person might have
peeped out from behind the hangings during that short interview, and
that Monsieur Blaise might have seen and recognised the face of the
intruder.

“Did you see, or fancy you saw, anyone in the room besides our three
selves?” he asked abruptly.

By the sudden access of agitation in his companion Bayre saw that his
guess was a good one.

“What do you mean? I saw nothing, nobody, no, of course not,” he
stammered out incoherently. “It is like that, monsieur, I do not see
nothing nor nobody. And I will not be interrogated as if by a judge of
instruction. If you have the desire of making inquiries you will do so
without my assistance. I have seen nothing and I will say nothing.”

And he made as if to button up his own mouth by pressing the large,
loose lips together until they looked like a long white seam.

They had reached the open road, and were about to turn to the right,
in the direction of the landing-place, when they heard certain sounds
behind them which made them look guiltily, anxiously, at each other.

A girl’s voice that spoke in a sort of sigh, a girl’s light footsteps
on the hard road. That was all. It was with a guilty look that they
met Miss Eden when she called to them to stop. She had followed them
from the _château_, her hat held on with one hand and no sort of wrap
round her shoulders. She was out of breath, and her eyes were full of
distress and anxiety.

Monsieur Blaise raised his hat in silence and would have pushed on
without further greeting. But she stood in front of them, with
determination in her set face.

“Monsieur Blaise, Mr Bayre!” cried she, passionately, “you shall not
pass me without speaking. I demand to know why you came and why you
went away so quickly. What have you learnt? What have you found out?”

It maddened Bayre to hear the cold and cutting tone in which his
companion replied to the unhappy girl.

“Found out, mademoiselle! Found out! I do not understand. We have
found nothing out. Is there anything to find?”

She brushed aside these incoherent evasions with an impatient gesture.

“What nonsense!” she cried passionately. “Do you forget that you
discussed my guardian’s eccentricity this very morning, and in my
presence?”

Monsieur Blaise looked uncomfortable.

“We may have done,” he said vaguely. “I do not remember. We are all
eccentric more or less.”

“Why did you come to see him?”

“Why? Why? I--I--we go to see him, to--to--_ma foi_, mademoiselle,
since you have developed eccentricities yourself, since you have the
habit of to disappear from your guardian’s house without to inform
your friends, I go to your guardian for to formally renounce my
pretensions to your hand.”

Bayre was furious at the coolly insolent manner in which Monsieur
Blaise made this false statement. But Miss Eden, without allowing him
to interfere, went on quietly, her temper quite unruffled,--

“Indeed? You might have withdrawn them this morning when you met me.
But then you were not in that mind.”

“Mademoiselle! You accuse me of--”

“Oh, no, no, I accuse you of nothing. But I appeal to you to tell me
why you left the house so quickly. I know from Marie Vazon--”

“Ah! What?”

Both Monsieur Blaise and Bayre awaited her answer eagerly.

“Only this, that your abrupt departure has thrown her into a state of
the greatest alarm. I found her in the hall, sobbing and screaming,
and rocking herself to and fro. Of course she wouldn’t tell me
anything, so I’ve come after you to beg you to relieve my anxiety. Mr
Bayre, surely _you_ will speak out!”

“Do you think I wouldn’t if I could?” said Bayre, speaking with as
much passion as she had shown herself. “I’ve come away because
Monsieur Blaise came away. I know nothing. I’m just as much in the
dark as yourself.”

She looked incredulously up into his face.

“I shouldn’t have thought you capable of deceiving me, certainly,”
said she, “in a matter so important to me. If my guardian were mad, as
you seemed to think, you couldn’t, in mercy, keep such a terrible
secret to yourself, for my sake. And if--if it were anything else,
why, surely you would give me some idea of what was hanging over us,
wouldn’t you? If you knew the frightful state of anxiety in which I’m
living!”

And her voice suddenly broke and she burst into tears.

Bayre lost his head.

“My darling, my darling, don’t! If you knew what I feel for you, you’d
never believe I could deceive you,” cried he, only conscious of her,
and not even aware of the fact that poor Monsieur Blaise, brought thus
inopportunely face to face with the girl he wished to jilt, had
slipped away and was puffing and panting along towards the shore where
the boat was waiting.

Miss Eden sobbed on.

“Don’t, don’t,” whispered Bayre, putting his hand upon the girl’s
shoulder with diffident tenderness. “Listen. I don’t know anything;
_you_ know more than I do. I can only guess what it was that that
miserable old panting rhinoceros”--he had by this time discovered the
escape of his ponderous companion--“saw in your guardian’s room.”

And he related the events of their short visit, and told how
obstinately Monsieur Blaise had refused to confess what it was that
frightened him.

Miss Eden did not look up, but she presently spoke from under the
handkerchief which she was pressing to her eyes. Bayre’s hand was
still hovering near her shoulder; he was still bending over her in a
coaxing attitude.

“Do you think he’s mad?” she asked.

“He gave no sign of insanity just now. It was old Blaise and I who
behaved like lunatics, running away within a few seconds of being
introduced into the room, and flying from the house as if we’d been
thieves with the police at our heels!”

Miss Eden dried her eyes and looked up.

“Yes,” said she. “And I behaved more like a lunatic than he, too. For
when I came back here two hours ago I went into the _salle à manger_
and found him there, and it was _I_ who stammered and spoke brokenly
and in confusion. He watched me quietly, and asked me where I had
learnt such erratic habits, and whether I expected a husband to put up
with them when I married.”

“Did he say that?”

“Yes, quite quietly, and not as if he cared much whether I went away
or not. He asked me where I’d been, and I told him. But he didn’t ask
me why I went away, or why I came back again. He didn’t seem to care.”

“Did he say anything about me?”

“Ye-es.”

And then she hesitated.

“Something not very complimentary?”

“He said that his young fool of a nephew had been ‘sniffing about’ the
_château_, and, and--”

“Well?”

“He said after all you ought to be welcome to look at the outside of
his house as you’d never be a penny the better for what was inside.”

“Well, I’ve never expected to be,” retorted Bayre. “I suppose he’ll
find out that I’ve been talking to you, and he’ll be angry with you
for that.”

“I don’t care.”

“But I do. Look here. Let me go to him boldly and tell him I want to
take you away.”

“Oh, no!”

She tried to run away from him. But Bayre caught her by the wrist and
held her, and finding that she was shivering, took off his own
overcoat, and insisted, although she struggled and protested, on
wrapping her in it.

“Now,” said he, coolly, though the coolness did not extend to his
eyes, “you can’t run away without robbing me of my property. I’ll let
you go in five minutes, but you must be good and listen to me first.
You say you are miserable here--”

“Only lately. It’s all changed suddenly,” said she in a piteous tone.

“Well, you _are_ miserable, and now that you know there’s something
wrong, and that you’ve thrown over old Blaise--”

“I didn’t. He’s thrown me over!”

“Well, well, you may congratulate yourself anyhow, I think. For though
I may not be a great match, I’m a little more presentable than he is.”

“What you are has nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, but it has, though. Look here, Miss Eden. By-the-bye, haven’t you
got a Christian name?”

She hesitated again for a moment, and then said, in a low voice,--

“Olwen.”

Perhaps it was the fact that she was wearing his overcoat which gave
him a sort of proprietary feeling. At any rate it was with the
simplest straightforwardness that he proceeded, having learnt her
Christian name, to call her by it.

“Look here, Olwen, I’m not a rich man; I’ve not even begun to be a
successful one. Perhaps I never shall be anything but a struggling man
all my life. I tell you so frankly. Perhaps, I say. But I do feel
something in me which tells me that if I had the woman I want to
struggle for I should be so strong, so dogged, that I should make my
way in the long run; I should live for her, I should fight for her,
ah! and in the long run I should grow rich for her.”

“I don’t want to be rich,” remarked Miss Eden, plaintively, from under
the overcoat.

“Well, then, I could remain poor for her, which would be easier still.
Come, come, don’t you think I’d try to make you happy?”

“I--I don’t think my guardian would say so?”

Bayre laughed.

“Would you ask him then?”

“I should have to. You forget, or you don’t understand. Although he
hasn’t been very affectionate to me since I’ve been here--since his
own troubles, that is to say--Mr Bayre has been a good and kind friend
to me ever since my own father’s death. It is he who has paid for my
education, too, so that the little my father left should be allowed to
accumulate for me. Now you see why I feel an obligation to consult his
wishes as far as possible, and why I feel that I did wrong in running
away as I did.”

“Well, you had reason to be alarmed. You have reason still. It’s not
safe for you to be in the same house with a madman.”

“You don’t know that he’s mad! I don’t know it!”

“Well, there’s something wrong about him, something that makes me very
unwilling to leave you under the same roof with him. Yet it’s a
delicate business too. For, after all, he’s my own relation; and even
old Blaise felt a reluctance about speaking out in the case of a
neighbour and friend.”

The two looked gravely into each other’s face.

“It’s full of difficulties,” she said with a sigh. “I feel that I’m
pulled first in one direction and then in the other. Though I’ve never
been able to be fond of my guardian, I feel I owe a duty to him. And
believe me, I should never have run away, as you call it, if I hadn’t
been seized with a sort of terror of what was going on, and felt that
I must have time to think--to think by myself. And now, what has my
thinking brought me to? Nowhere. I’ve had to come back in a sort of
disgrace, and I feel that he looks upon me as a traitor.”

Bayre looked uneasy.

“If even one could trust the servants it wouldn’t be so bad,” said he.
“But I loathe those Vazons, and the two other women about the place
don’t look very intelligent.”

“They’re both in terror of my guardian, and abjectly servile to Marie
Vazon,” explained Miss Eden.

“I wonder if they know anything?”

“If they do, they won’t own it. You don’t understand these cunning
peasants as well as I do. As long as they get a living here they’ll be
content to know nothing, to see nothing, but what they are told to
hear and to see. Now, let me give you back your coat. I’m going back
to the _château_.”

She had assumed a very precise, matter-of-fact manner, which Bayre had
to accept as a sign that all sentimental subjects were to be shelved
for the present. He submitted in silence to take his coat. Then she
held out her hand.

“When are you going back?”

“I don’t know yet. In the meantime, I’m staying at the house by the
landing-place.”

The look of joy that flashed over her face showed him how much
relieved she was to find that a friend upon whom she could rely was to
be so near.

But she would not give him time to profit by this discovery. With one
quick, shy, blushing glance at him she fled away in the direction of
the _château_, leaving him strangely excited, and yet comforted, too.




 CHAPTER XIV.
 TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS

Bayre went straight back to the landing-place, where, as he had
expected, he found that Monsieur Blaise had pushed off without him and
was now some distance on his way back to Guernsey. He could even see
the recumbent figure of the fickle lover in the stern of the boat; for
Monsieur would not undertake the management of the tiller, but left
the business of the boat to the two men, and displayed the better part
of valour by lying with his head upon the seat and his eyes closed,
subduing qualms, both physical and mental, with what success he could.

Bayre found lodgings, as he had proposed, at the little house of a man
who lived close to the landing-place, who made money in the summer by
bringing visitors to Creux, and filled up his time in the winter and
autumn by fishing.

The young man had only a few days’ leave from his duties in town, and
was doubtful as to whether he should be able to get an extension,
which indeed he scarcely dared to ask for. But he could not tear
himself away from the islands without some clearer knowledge than he
yet possessed on the subject of the mystery which surrounded his
uncle, on account of the effect it might have upon Olwen Eden.

So deeply intent was he upon the solution of this uncanny mystery, so
entirely absorbed by his thoughts of the girl, that when he crossed to
St Luke’s that evening, and found a letter at Madame Nicolas’ house
from Jan Repton, he felt a pang of guilt on discovering that he had
almost entirely neglected the mission on which he was supposed to have
come.

Repton’s letter ran thus:--


 “Dear B.,--Southerley’s going to punch your head for you when you
 get back, and I think you jolly well deserve it. Here have we been
 waiting for the wire you promised to send as soon as you found out who
 it was that landed us with this brat; and I’m ready to bet you’ve
 forgotten all about us, and it and everything but your own affairs!

 “I hate a fellow who can’t think of anything else when he’s got a
 love-affair on hand! Why, I can manage half a dozen at a time, and
 never miss an appointment or forget to post a letter!

 “I don’t say Southerley isn’t as bad as you. And there’s another
 thing. He’s got it into his head that this Miss Merriman is moping
 because you’re away; so if you get off with a whole bone in your body
 when he’s done with you, you may think yourself lucky. And I jolly
 well hope you won’t, for I know very well it was you got us into this
 mess, and here you’ve left us to bear the brunt of it, and the chaff,
 and the rest of it! The way that minx Susan grins and cheeks us now is
 intolerable. And she has the impudence to run up when there’s a Punch
 and Judy show in the street to ask if we would like her to tell the
 man to give a show ‘to please the baby!’

 “And there’s some idiot who’s got a room on the top floor, who will
 sit with his door open singing some doggerel about ‘Molly and I and
 the baby!’ at the top of his voice as soon as he hears us on the
 stairs.

 “Southerley pretends he doesn’t care, and I don’t suppose he would
 care as long as he had an excuse to go down and talk to Miss Merriman
 under pretence of seeing the brat--‘the co-operative kid’ as he calls
 it. But Miss Merriman seems to be getting rather anxious at our not
 hearing from you, so I suppose she’s getting tired of the bother of
 the animal, and no wonder!

 “What we’re going to do with it when she refuses to look after it any
 longer I don’t know. But unless I get a wire from you within
 forty-eight hours, I shall take it to the workhouse myself in a
 brown-paper parcel and give your name with it. So look out! Yours till
 the breaking of heads,

                                                    “Jan R.”


Bayre did not quite place implicit confidence in Jan’s veracity, or
pay too much heed to his dark threats. But he thought it best to send
a telegram of a reassuring but vague character, and then he reflected
that he had really better be pushing his inquiries in the direction
Jan desired.

So on the following morning he went to the house of the Vazons, and
getting inside by a ruse, with a boy who was delivering logs for fuel,
he found himself in the presence not only of Marie Vazon of the sly
eyes, but of the baby.

And having perhaps become both more suspicious, more observant, and
more experienced of late in the matter of infants, he had no
difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the baby in the cradle was
not his cousin, but was a peasant’s child of an age more tender than
that of the hero of their adventure.

He jumped at once to the conclusion that Marie was passing this child
off as old Monsieur Bayre’s for the sake of the payment she got from
him. It was strange that a father could be thus deceived, he thought;
but old Mr Bayre was not an ordinary man, so that it was perhaps too
much to expect that he should be an ordinary father.

“What has become of Monsieur Bayre’s child?” he asked the girl
point-blank, seeing at once, by the guilty look in her eyes, that she
knew she was found out.

“This is M. Bayre’s son, monsieur,” said she, promptly.

“Oh, no, it’s not. I don’t suppose this child is more than ten or
twelve months old,” hazarded he, making a guess which was still over
the mark. “And this child’s hair is red, what there is of it, while Mr
Bayre’s son has hair almost flaxen.”

The girl frowned sulkily, and her eyes shifted uneasily from his face
to the child’s and back again.

“It’s no business of yours, at any rate,” she said defiantly, at last.

“Oh, yes, it is. You are being paid to look after one child, and you
seem unable or unwilling to tell what you’ve done with it, and you try
to pass off a much younger one for that given into your care. Such a
matter is everybody’s business, and mine especially, as I am a member
of Monsieur Bayre’s family.”

“You’d better complain to Monsieur Bayre, then,” said Marie, sullenly.

“That’s just what I’m going to do.”

The girl looked scared for a moment; then she shrugged her shoulders.

“Go then, tell him, and see what thanks you get,” said she,
insolently. “Go, I say, if you dare.”

And she shot a steely glance at him out of her blue eyes.

Defiant as her manner was, Bayre detected in the girl’s face an even
greater uneasiness than he would have expected, considering the hold
the Vazons, father and daughter, appeared to have over their nominal
master. He pondered this fact as he left the cottage, and determined
to carry out his threat at once.

This he found to be impracticable, however, for on presenting himself
at the _château_ he found himself confronted by Pierre Vazon himself,
who surlily refused him admittance, saying that Monsieur Bayre had
given strict orders that he was not to enter the house.

Thus denied, Bayre considered himself justified in further attempts to
obtain information by outside means, and after passing an uneasy day
on the island, without one glimpse either of Olwen or of his uncle, he
returned to the neighbourhood of the _château_ after dark, in the
hope that when lighting up time came he might be able to make more
discoveries.

The great house looked desolate indeed with only a room lighted here
and there, and with whole suites in darkness. The great hall with the
long row of high windows, in which he had seen the groping figure
which he believed to have been that of his uncle tearing up the
floor-boards, had no light glimmering behind the dusky panes.

The room in which Bayre and Monsieur Blaise had been received, and the
two apartments through which they had passed on their way thither,
were equally in darkness.

But at the corner of the mansion, where the strings of dead Virginia
creeper hung over the two narrow barred windows high up in the wall,
there was a moving light behind the closed shutters.

Bayre’s attention was instantly attracted. This was the room, this
closed room at the end of the house, on the first floor, at the window
of which Olwen had seen, or fancied she saw, a woman’s hand thrust
out.

Was it a woman who was moving about inside now? It was only the
flickering of the light above and between the cracks of the shutters
which betrayed the presence of something human within. But slight as
the indication was, it was unmistakable, and Bayre felt that he could
not rest until he should have discovered whether some one was really
imprisoned there.

He stood back on the broad path and calculated his chances of reaching
these windows as he had done those of the great hall.

But the walls here were of brick, offering no foothold, and the
creeper did not appear to be strong enough to bear his weight.

While he was considering what action to take next, the flickering
light became stationary, and remained so for some minutes.

Stepping further back to get a better look at the barred and shuttered
windows, and at the narrow slit of light above them, Bayre presently
perceived a faint glimmer appearing in like manner above the shutters
of the French windows on his right. By the flickering he could see
that while the light above the higher windows was still, that behind
the French windows was being carried about.

He crossed the path and came close to the glass, listening. For there
were certain sounds to be made out, as of the pushing about of heavy
furniture, with an occasional succession of short, sharp raps, as of
some person knocking for admittance at a closed door.

Bayre took out his pocket-knife and tried to slip the catch of the
window nearest to him. After a few attempts, during which the sounds
within became louder, he succeeded; but the slight noise he made over
this coincided with a sudden cessation of the sounds within.

There was a rapid step across the floor, and he heard someone
breathing heavily on the other side of the still closed shutters. Then
the footsteps retreated quickly, and Bayre stood listening, shaking
the shutters gently, preparatory to making an attempt to burst them
open.

That he was on the track of the mystery at last he felt certain. These
strange nocturnal sounds, this haunting of the house by a being who
was declared by Olwen to be a woman, would be satisfactorily explained
if only he could effect an entrance now while the disturbance was in
full swing.

So thought Bayre, and after only a few seconds’ pause he stepped back,
with the intention of dealing such a blow upon the shutters as would
probably force them open.

But before he could do this he heard a click and the fall of the iron
bar with a clanking sound against the wood, and the next moment the
shutters flew back and his uncle, with a small lantern in his right
hand, stood face to face with him.

Bayre was startled, and an exclamation broke from his lips; for he had
never seen on any human face such an expression of rage and defiance,
proud, menacing, savage, as now distorted the rugged features, the
light eyes, wrinkled cheeks, and long hatchet chin of old Bartlett
Bayre.

His voice was hoarse and broken with passion as he cried,--

“I thought so. I thought so. You rascal, you thief! It is you who play
the spy upon me, who haunt my house and listen at my doors, you, you,
you.”

And as he spoke the old man shuffled out upon the path, lantern in
hand, and shook his clenched fist in the young man’s face, panting and
husky with rage.

Bayre was taken aback. This was an unexpected turn of events, but one
which he felt he ought to have been prepared for. As it was, the angry
old man certainly appeared to have right on his side as he stood, his
face still convulsed with rage, in front of the man who had thus been
caught in an attempt at burglarious entry into his premises.

Bayre saw at once that this loose dark dressing-gown, tied round the
waist by a frayed cord, was the very garment in which he had seen his
uncle groping on the floor of the great hall on the first day of his
investigations; the old man shivered as he stood, slippered and
hatless, with his lank and sparse grey locks ruffled by the night
wind, clutching at the sides of his collar and holding them together
against his lean throat.

“What do you want here? What do you want?” croaked out he, after a
pause of a few moments, during which his nephew reflected upon the
answer he should give to his accuser.

“I want,” cried young Bayre, boldly, suddenly resolving on the bold
course of telling the whole truth without disguise, “to know who the
woman is that you have shut up in your house.”

To his surprise, the whole demeanour of the old man changed at once.
The convulsive twitchings of his features gave place to a sudden
calmness, while he peered into the face of the younger man with a sly
intentness which prepared the other for the fact that he had a crafty
antagonist to deal with.

Coming quite close to young Bayre, and staring up into his face with
the lantern held high enough for them to see clearly into each other’s
eyes, he croaked out, in a jeering voice,--

“What’s that to you?”

Young Bayre was thunderstruck. He was prepared for denial, for
indignation, for a torrent of abuse. But this cynical speech, which he
took for an avowal, struck him dumb. The old man saw his advantage,
and went quietly on, in the same aggressive, jibing tone,--

“What business is it of yours if I keep half a dozen women shut up in
my house, eh? Are you the master of my house, or the head of my
family, that you should interfere with me? If you’ve found a mare’s
nest, my friend, don’t come here straining your precious eyes by
looking through brick walls and wooden doors, but go to the police,
go, go, go.” And with each insulting repetition of the word the old
man thrust a skinny finger into his face. “And lay information against
me, me, _me_, master of Creux and benefactor to my neighbours! Say
that you, a stranger, a distant relation of the man whose property you
covet--”

“I do not covet your property. I’ve never asked you for a shilling!”
cried Bayre, hotly.

“No, because you knew very well you would never get it if you did,”
retorted the old man, grimly. “Tell the police, I say, that you, a
penniless adventurer--”

“I’m no adventurer.”

“A penniless adventurer,” repeated old Mr Bayre, his voice going up
into a squeak of rage, “have a notion that there’s a woman concealed
in my house! See what they’ll say to you, you pitiful sneak and spy!
See what honour and credit you will win for yourself by trying to foul
your own nest, to bring disgrace upon the head of your own family!”

Again young Bayre was for the moment dumb; the passion which possessed
the old man, the torrent of wounded pride which gushed forth in his
speech and glowed in his sunken eyes, impressed his nephew with a sort
of respect and remorse, and he began to wonder whether he had not
taken fancies, both his own and those of others, for facts too
readily.

But even as he began to hunt for suitable words in which to make a
sort of apology, there passed suddenly over the withered old face
below him an expression of cunning and malice combined which revived
all his suspicions and made him stand to his guns.

“If I’ve played the spy, sir,” he said boldly, “you’ve brought my
action upon yourself by your own outrageous behaviour. If a sane man
will behave like an insane one, if he will surround himself with
dubious people and behave in a suspicious way, he has no one to blame
but himself if a stranger to the place comes to the conclusion that
there’s something about his way of life that wants inquiring into.”

Again the old man appeared to be impressed by his words, and for a
moment he remained silent, holding his lantern hanging by his side,
and pulling the sides of his dressing-gown yet more closely over his
throat.

Then he spoke again, not angrily, not loudly, but with a keen
suspicion in his tones.

“Who told you about this woman?” he asked abruptly.

The young man hesitated. He did not wish to implicate Olwen; yet what
could he say?

He pointed suddenly to the barred windows above their heads.

“Who is in that room?” he asked sharply.

The old man turned and looked up. There was just a second’s pause.
Then he turned again, so abruptly that the lantern nearly swung out of
his hand.

“Come and see,” said he in a low voice.

And beckoning his nephew to follow him, he stepped into the house
through the open doors of the French window, and setting down his
lantern on the polished floor, barred the shutters behind them without
another word.




 CHAPTER XV.
 THE HOSPITALITY OF MR BAYRE

It was an apartment which he had not yet seen in which young
Bartlett now found himself shut in with his elder namesake. More like
one of the galleries of a museum than a room in a private house, this
saloon with its panelled walls of white and gold, its pillars and its
painted ceiling, was bare in the centre, but lined all along the sides
with cabinets and show-cases, full of treasures of all kinds.

The most casual glance at the contents of these cases showed to the
least experienced eye that the collection was one of great value.
Exquisite specimens of rare porcelain, beautiful enamels, ancient
jewels of all countries, weapons of great price, treasures of lace and
of embroidery, all were represented here.

Bayre was attracted, in spite of his eagerness to solve the mystery
surrounding his uncle, by what he saw. He was just enough of a
connoisseur to appreciate and to wish to examine more closely the rare
and costly objects around him; and even as his uncle occupied himself
in replacing the heavy iron bar across the shutters, he drew near to
the first cabinet on the left hand and peered with interest and
curiosity at the carved ivories within.

The light was very bad, being supplied solely by the lantern which old
Mr Bayre carried with him and had now placed on the floor, but the
young man made out enough to prove that report had not exaggerated the
beauty and the value of the collection.

As he looked the light grew a little better, and he found old Mr Bayre
standing by his side, holding the lantern aloft. The young man was for
the moment under the impression that his uncle, softened a little by
the interest the treasures excited in his visitor, was courteously
enabling him to see them more distinctly.

He turned, pointing with one hand to one of those fantastic jewels
which mediæval art loved to devise out of huge mis-shapen pearls,
when, coming thus suddenly face to face with the owner of the
treasures, he was surprised to find that the light was held, not for
him to inspect the jewels, but for their owner to inspect him.

And again young Bayre asked himself whether this lined, haggard,
crafty old countenance, with its furrows and the lurking malignity in
its half-closed eyes, was that of a sane man or of one who was the
victim of mania.

Old Mr Bayre seemed to understand that he had in some measure betrayed
himself by the expression of his own countenance, for he tried to
laugh away the look of sudden consternation which he saw on his
nephew’s face. Showing the gaps between his yellow teeth in a
mirthless opening of the mouth which was meant for a genial laugh, he
said, in a more conciliatory tone than he had yet used,--

“Some nice things there, eh? Good things, uncommon things? Do you know
much about objects of that sort?”

“Not perhaps more than the average Londoner is bound to know through
the museums and collections he’s visited,” said the young man, “but
enough to know that you have something to be proud of here.”

The old man laughed again, cunningly, as if with some secret
enjoyment.

“Worth some thousands of pounds, pictures and furniture and what you
see,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of the rest of the
cabinets.

“Yes,” said young Bayre, shortly.

He was surprised and disappointed to hear in the old man’s tone
something more like the pride of a tradesman at the market value of
the goods around him than the tender enthusiasm of the real
connoisseur.

Mr Bayre rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking at his nephew out of
the corners of his eyes, and then beckoned to him to follow across the
room in the direction of a door at the further end, above which there
was an elaborate device in white and gold.

Young Bayre followed slowly, reflecting that he did not know by what
door he should be finally ejected from the building, and that this
might be his last chance of seeing the treasures through which he was
passing. His guide, perceiving that he lingered, stopped near the door
to say, impatiently and almost contemptuously,--

“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time to see those things, and all the rest
besides. Now you’re here you won’t be satisfied, I suppose, until you
have been afforded an opportunity of counting up on your fingers the
value of every farthing’s worth.”

Bayre said nothing, but again he was surprised. Had the old man been
always like this, or was the late crisis in his life answerable for a
most singular metamorphosis? Had he made his collection with some
ulterior purpose, either of disposing of it at a high price or
bequeathing it to the nation with posthumous ostentation?

This latter idea seemed a probable one, he thought, for throughout the
old man’s whole demeanour, in every word he uttered and in every look
he threw at his nephew, there seemed to run the same idea of rejoicing
at what he conceived to be the young man’s disappointed greed.

They passed almost side by side out of the long room into a narrow
passage, at the end of which was a steep and inconvenient staircase,
which had evidently been an afterthought in the construction of the
house.

The old man went up first, dangling the lantern and humming to himself
as he went, and making so much noise that it flashed through the mind
of the younger man that this might be a warning to someone near at
hand to get out of the way.

At the top of the stairs, on a landing as narrow and stuffy as the
staircase, Mr Bayre turned round again and said loudly,--

“This is the room, this”--and he thumped at the door on his left as he
spoke--“where you say I have a woman concealed. Well, go in and see
for yourself.”

Changing his lantern into his left hand, and fumbling for a few
suggestive moments, he at last fitted into the lock a key which he
took from the pocket of his dressing-gown, and turning it with great
deliberation, he threw open the door and ushered his companion into a
room so oppressively close that Bayre thought the windows could not
have been opened for many days.

Once well inside, however, he forgot this inconvenience in the
curiosity which the appearance of the room aroused in him.

It was a long and narrow apartment, with the two shuttered windows at
one end, and an enormous satinwood wardrobe, old and rather battered,
at the other.

Between the windows was a dressing-table of the makeshift sort,
apparently consisting of a pile of boxes covered with an old-fashioned
arrangement of faded pink calico and muslin discoloured with dust and
age.

On the top was a small mirror on a stand, of the kind that is usually
found in servants’ bedrooms, and beside it was a candle burning in a
flat candlestick.

Piled up on the available surface of the dressing-table was a
heterogeneous mass of small articles, all of women’s use, such as
hairpins, ornamental combs for the hair, bracelets, brooches, rings, a
powder-puff, some reels of cotton and silk, and a packet of needles.

In front of the dressing-table was a common cane-bottomed chair, over
the back of which hung a dressing-gown and the trained skirt of a
lady’s silken dress. This garment attracted Bayre’s attention by the
old-fashioned pattern of the brocade of which it was composed.

More traces of a woman’s occupation were visible on all sides: on one
chair was a pile of laces and fans; on another, a magnificent cloak
lined with fur; on a chest in one corner was a great heap of feathers,
crumpled artificial flowers, and bits of lace and ribbon; while on the
floor lay little heaps of old satin slippers, soiled gloves, and a
miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends, all appertaining to the
feminine toilet.

Young Bayre had not the least doubt that a woman had been in the room
quite recently, probably within a few moments of his entrance with the
old man. For, with his senses well on the alert, he noted one
significant fact--there was dust on the surface of the chest, and
there was dust on the stand of the mirror, but there was none on the
various articles that lay about the room; they had evidently been
taken quite recently from their cupboards and drawers.

Old Mr Bayre’s explanation of what he saw, therefore, was not
satisfactory.

“This room,” said he, “is just as it was left by my wife when she took
it into her head to run away from me eight months ago.”

“And has the candle been burning in that candlestick for all these
eight months?” asked the young man, rashly.

His uncle threw at him a malevolent look, which he felt that his
impudence deserved.

“No,” said the old man, shortly, “I was in here myself a few minutes
ago.”

Bayre did not believe him. Since his statement that the crumpled
finery and women’s trifles had been lying there for months was
evidently not true, what confidence could be put in his other
assertions? Besides, there was, so the young man felt, something not
exactly definable about the disposition of the various things lying
about which suggested the hand of a woman rather than the heavier,
more careless touch of a man.

And by a sudden inspiration he stepped forward to the chair by the
dressing-table and laid his hand upon the brocaded skirt.

_It was quite warm._

Bayre turned to his uncle with a significant look and the old man
frowned slightly and immediately averted his eyes sullenly.

“Are you not satisfied now?” he asked shortly.

Bayre glanced round the room. There was a door nearly opposite the one
by which they had entered. The old man crossed the room testily and
threw it open. It was not locked.

“If you are not satisfied yet, you shall be,” said he. “Come this
way.”

Leaving the candle burning on the dressing-table, and carrying his
lantern as before, he led the way again with heavy steps; and Bayre
found himself in another room, large and bare, a state bedroom of an
old-fashioned type, with a ponderous wooden bedstead hung with faded
damask curtains. Through this room they passed with leisurely steps,
the old man always in front, raising his lantern ostentatiously from
time to time, and asking every few minutes, in a jeering tone, whether
his visitor saw anything he should like to examine further.

And from this room they passed into a corridor, with windows on the
one side and a row of doors on the other.

Old Mr Bayre tried the handles of all these and found some open, in
which case he insisted on his guest’s entering and making such
investigations as he pleased. Sometimes they were locked, and there
was much searching for keys, some of which the old man professed to
have mislaid, on which occasions he would ask, with elaborate
civility, if it was his nephew’s pleasure that he should go and look
for them.

But whenever they went into a room they found no trace of any living
creature within. Nothing but bare-looking apartments furnished in the
taste of a past day--funereal bedsteads, ponderous wardrobes, polished
floors, and a mouldy smell of little-frequented, closely-shut-up
rooms, where the air remained stagnant for weeks.

Sometimes a rat would scurry across the polished floor, slipping and
sliding as he ran in unaccustomed terror, or a loud squeaking and
scampering behind the skirting-boards of the room would denote a panic
among the mice at the disturbance.

So they went on, not indeed examining every room, but getting a
general impression of dead hospitality and of vanished state.

But all the time, as they walked along or when they stood still, Bayre
was haunted by the belief that he could hear the pattering of lighter
feet than theirs not far off, stopping when they stopped, going on
again when they went on.

Again and again he would turn quickly, hoping to catch a glimpse of
the fancied companion. But the lantern threw no light behind, and if
anyone followed them or preceded them he could not discover the fact.

His guide grew jocose at last, humming to himself in a cracked old
voice, and making jesting remarks upon his disappointment.

“Young folk love a mystery,” said he, throwing the words over his
shoulder, as it were, as he went on, swinging his lantern and clanking
his keys along the passages. “Especially if they can manufacture it
round the figure of a woman. Now I’ve always hated mysteries and
mystery-mongers myself, even when I was a young man. And as for women,
I can only say I had nothing to do with them till late in life, and I
sincerely wish I had never had anything to do with them at all.”

They had long since left that portion of the building which contained
the shut-up rooms, had passed through a long succession of wide
attics, which the young man knew must be above the great hall, and had
descended to a newer part of the house, where a different atmosphere
disclosed the fact that it was less deserted than the rest.

“This,” said old Mr Bayre, “is all we use of the old place now. You
shall see my own rooms, young man, since we are here. I dare say
you’ll not be in a hurry to call upon me again.”

Uttering these words in the same jibing tone, the old man opened the
door of a luxuriously-furnished bed-chamber, where a fire burned
brightly on the dogs, throwing out a pleasant perfume of burning logs,
and shedding bright reflections upon the polished floor, the ceiling
above, and the panels of the dark mahogany furniture.

The half-tester bedstead was massively carved and hung with dark green
velvet to match the drawn window curtains, the little stumpy sofa and
the two low armchairs. An old retriever, lying on a rug before the
fire, wagged his tail lazily on their entrance, but did not get up.

Rather to the young man’s surprise, his uncle motioned him to take one
of the armchairs, and proceeded to light two wax candles, which stood
on a heavy writing-table at some distance from the fire.

“You shall drink to our next merry meeting,” said he, grimly, as he
unlocked a cupboard and took out a massive decanter of gilded Bohemian
glass and a couple of oddly-shaped glasses that matched it. “Oh, yes,
I insist. You forced your way in, in your tender anxiety to see me. I
can’t let you go unrefreshed.”

Bayre felt that he shivered. Yet he scarcely knew why.

The room was warm, cosy, handsome. The greeting of the dog,
unceremonious and affectionate to its master, with never a growl or a
sniff at the stranger, ought, he thought, to have set him at his ease.

Yet the young man felt that there was something sinister in this
hospitality from a man who professed nothing but aversion for him, and
he would have refused it if he could.

Mr Bayre, however, was obstinate. Bringing the decanter and glasses to
the long, narrow table near the fireplace, where lay some books,
papers and a spectacle-case, he poured out some dark liquor that
dropped out slowly, and told his guest to drink it off.

“It will keep the cold out on your journey back,” said he.

The young man put the glass to his lips with a suspicion of which he
felt ashamed. Old Mr Bayre sipped his with a nod and a sort of smirk.
The contents of the glass were a liqueur unknown to the younger man,
sweet, strong, heady.

“Drink it,” urged his host. “Do you think I want to poison you?”

His nephew obeyed with a rather hollow laugh. He did not, of course,
suppose that his uncle had designs upon his life, but that there was
some secret and malevolent intention underlying his grim hospitality
the unwilling guest felt sure.

The potent liquor seemed to have a mollifying effect upon old Mr
Bayre, who began to stroke the head of his dog, the while he looked
meditatively at his guest, and presently said, with abruptness,--

“How long is it since I saw you last, Bartlett?”

“About twenty years, I should think, sir,” replied the young man.

“Ah! and how many do you think will it be before I see you again?”

The question was put with a sort of grim jocularity.

“Am I to judge by the warmth of your reception of me, sir, or by some
other criterion?”

The old man laughed, actually chuckled to himself, as he rubbed his
knees.

“Ah, well, ah, well,” said he, “I was more amiable once, Bartlett. We
don’t grow sweeter as we grow older. Look here, I don’t suppose we
shall see much more of each other in the years to come than we have in
the years that are past. I don’t see why we should. Do you?”

“N-n-o, sir.”

“But in the meantime we’ll patch up a friendship, if it’s only for
half an hour. You shall see some of my things, some that I prize, some
that are not shown to everybody. Stay where you are,” he went on, as
he rose, and crossing the polished floor poured out a second glass for
his nephew and refilled his own. “I’ll bring you something to look at,
something you won’t see the counterpart of in any of your London
museums.”

As he spoke he went out of the room and fumbled about, by the light of
his lantern, with keys and locks, with drawers and cupboards.

Rather despising himself for his own suspicions, young Bayre could not
quite conquer them. He therefore flung the second glassful of the
liqueur into the fire, where it blazed up fiercely, throwing long
tongues of vivid light on the heavy furniture and hangings of the
room.

His uncle came peeping to the door, went back again, and returned with
an armful of treasures quaint and curious, a gold cup with a notable
history, a jewel that had belonged to Marie Antoinette, and many other
strange and beautiful things. Together they admired them, the old man
at last showing some enthusiasm for his precious curios, and chuckling
at the envy his purchases had excited in other connoisseurs.

At length the young man judged that he might take his leave, since he
felt convinced he should get no nearer to the truth of the mystery if
he were to stay until the following morning. He rose, and making some
sort of apology, which came awkwardly from his lips in the singular
circumstances, moved in the direction of the door by which he had
entered the room.

But his uncle beckoned him to come through the small room from which
he had just brought his treasures, and they passed together through
this outer chamber to a wide and handsome landing new to the guest.

Here there was a velvet divan against the wall, and a bearskin rug on
the floor, while round about, on the panelled walls, there hung, in
massive frames, a few large pictures, each one of which was a
masterpiece.

There was an oil-lamp suspended from the roof over the staircase,
enclosed in a magnificent lantern, which had formerly hung in the
mansion of a French nobleman. By the faint light this gave Bayre saw
enough of the paintings around him to assure himself that they were
worthy of the rest of the collection, and when his uncle signed to him
to go down first, he went slowly, gazing about him at every step.

Between the pictures were trophies of shields, swords, spears and
other weapons, arranged against the dark oak panelling. He had got
half-way down to the first turn in the staircase, when he was startled
by a shrill scream in a woman’s voice.

Turning quickly, the young man saw his uncle on the step behind him,
with a heavy Indian war-club uplifted in his hands, and an expression
on his withered face and in his sunken eyes which could only be
described in one word--murderous.




 CHAPTER XVI.
 A SECRET FOR SALE

It was the work of a moment. The scream, the turn, the threatening
gesture, then the dropping of the weapon and an abrupt change on the
old man’s face, accompanied by a loud, forced laugh. Bayre scarcely
realised what it all meant, even as he stepped hastily down to the
half-landing and looked up into the misty recesses of the galleried
floor above.

Then from out of the dimness he saw a face, the face of Olwen Eden;
and if he had not known before what the look and gesture meant which
he had surprised in his uncle, he knew now.

And there passed suddenly through his heart a great throb of joy, of
exultation, for he saw in the white face the look every man longs to
see on the countenance of the woman he loves--the look which is an
avowal and a promise.

Old Mr Bayre, still laughing harshly, replaced the club among the
other weapons on the wall. But his hands were not steady, for it fell
with a crash to the ground, and then slid down the stairs to young
Bayre’s feet.

The visitor thought it prudent to pick up the weapon and to retain it
for future defensive purposes. His uncle left off laughing suddenly.

“Give that to me,” he said.

“Not yet, sir. When I take my leave of you will be soon enough.”

Old Mr Bayre uttered an indignant grunt, but before he could speak,
Olwen had run down the stairs past him and stood by the young man’s
side.

“What are you doing here?” asked the old man, gruffly.

She turned and looked up.

“I’ll show him the way out,” she said. “I can draw the bolts myself
and turn the key. And that will save you the risk of catching cold.”

With a grunt and a muttered grumble, Mr Bayre was apparently on the
point of retreating up the stairs; but pausing for an instant to look
down upon the young people, something in their attitude struck him, as
he peered down by the light of his lantern and of the dim lamp above,
and he descended the stairs with leisurely footsteps, keeping his eyes
fixed upon his nephew.

“I can show him out,” said the old man, with disagreeable emphasis. “I
shall be delighted to. Olwen, you can go back to your room.”

The girl hesitated and held out her hand.

“Good-bye, Mr Bayre,” said she.

The old man placed himself between them, but the young one would not
be put off. He took the girl’s hand and held it in his for a moment,
saying, in a voice the significance of which was unmistakable,
“Good-bye. And--thank you.”

She ran upstairs, and the two men, the younger still holding the club,
were left face to face on the little square half-landing.

The look of veiled malignity on the old man’s face was as strong as
ever.

“You had better not indulge any thoughts of my ward, Bartlett,” said
he, drily, as soon as the last sound of the girl’s light footsteps had
died away in the gallery above. “For she will marry money, money,
money. There’s no satisfaction in anything but money, and money she
must have. Not mine. I have other uses for mine.”

“Of course, sir,” said the young man, more disgusted than ever with
his old relation, in whom avarice appeared to have swallowed up every
feeling of good-nature, of affection, and of ordinary human kindness,
“you have a right to do as you please with your own property, and to
entertain what opinions you please about the value of money and its
place in the world, but I should have thought you might make allowance
for the difference between the feelings of an old man and those of a
young girl. Surely if she doesn’t think money the one thing needful
she might have a voice in her own destiny?”

“She’ll think as I do when she’s as old as I,” retorted the amiable
old gentleman, promptly. “And in the meantime I’m going to save her
from doing anything foolish. So be warned. Come along.”

As the young man declined to go first, his uncle led the way into the
great shadowy hall, where their footsteps echoed in dark recesses and
among the tall pillars which supported the staircase.

“You’ll remember what I’ve said?” said the old man as he drew back the
bolts of the heavy front door, which was not that by which visitors
were usually admitted, but was a state entrance now apparently unused.

“Yes, and I’m much obliged to you for that and--all your other kind
acts.”

Old Mr Bayre, with his hand still on the bolts, laughed again
boisterously.

“Oh, you’re thin-skinned,” said he. “And nervous, I suppose. You don’t
seem to understand that you had no more right to make a forced
entrance into my house, as I caught you doing, than if you were a
common tramp. And you well deserve the fright I gave you when you
thought--you thought--Ha, ha! you thought, I suppose, that I was going
to brain you with that club!”

“It did look like it,” said the young man, shortly.

The old man glanced at the weapon, which was still in his nephew’s
hand.

“Well, well, you were mistaken. People don’t do those things,” said
he. “So now you can put that down and get out as quickly as you like.”

As he spoke he opened the door, letting a gust of cold night air blow
into the hall, force back the heavy door, and whirl the skirt of his
dressing-gown about him like a sheath. And so, inhospitable, grim to
the last, he let his nephew pass out without another word, and shut
the door behind him with a loud clang.

Young Bayre shuddered, not with the remembrance of the peril he could
not doubt that he had escaped, but at the thought that Olwen was shut
up in the house with this half-insane old man, who was no doubt
irritated against her on account of the part she had played in the
events of his own visit.

Bayre could not endure this thought. It was true that his uncle had
shown towards the young girl none of the strange and startling
animosity which he had not scrupled to exhibit to himself. But with
the belief strong in his mind that such eccentricity as that of the
old man could not be far removed from insanity, Bayre wondered whether
the fact of her having interfered on his behalf, as she had done,
might not have inflamed her guardian against her.

Yet what could he do? He could not return to the house; indeed, any
such attempt would be more likely to do harm than good to the object
of his solicitude.

Bayre was perplexed, troubled, confounded by all he had gone through.

That there was a mystery about his uncle and his great lonely house
was undoubted: that he had someone shut up there, as Olwen believed,
seemed almost as certain. The strange manner in which he had taken
care to open no room too quickly, and to give any person who might be
within ample time for concealment, remained in the young man’s mind as
a most significant fact.

Was it his young wife? And if so, what was her mental condition?
Remembering that ghastly display of soiled and ancient finery in the
room with the barred windows, Bayre was inclined to think that
imprisonment might have turned the brain of the captive, whoever she
might be. And ugly doubts of his uncle, of whose malignity he had had
ample proofs, rose in his mind again. What if he should make an
attempt to reduce his bright young ward to the condition of the
mysterious prisoner whose existence Olwen herself suspected?

The thought was such a terrible one that Bayre suddenly went back
towards the great house, filled with vague longing to rescue the young
girl from the shelter of such a doubtful home.

As he came near he saw a window in the middle of the building open,
and a hand, the very turn of which he recognised, dark as it was,
waving a handkerchief to him as he stopped.

He saw no face; he heard no sound. But there was something in the
action that comforted him; for he had an idea that it was meant to put
heart into him, and hope. He waved his own handkerchief in return, in
silence also. Then the window closed and all was darkness again.

With a heart full of tender longings, but also with vague fears, he
turned and went away.

He got into the avenue, and thence into the road; but before he was
half-way to his lodging he was sure that he was being followed. It was
not a pleasant sensation, with the doubts he had concerning the
goodwill of the inhabitants of the island towards him. And after a
time, during which he had ascertained beyond a doubt that his
suspicions were correct, Bayre doubled back quickly, and discovered,
as he had half-expected, the lean form of Pierre Vazon hidden behind a
clump of brambles.

“Hallo!” cried he. “Following me, eh?”

Pierre did not appear to be taken aback by the discovery. He drew
himself up at once, and said,--

“Precisely, monsieur. I was following you. And I only wanted to be at
a safe distance from the _château_ before I spoke to you.”

“Well, we are a long way off now.”

“Yes, yes.” The man looked at him with sly eyes which were, the young
man thought, as disagreeable in their way as his uncle’s were in
another. If there was no malignity in those of Vazon, there was much
cunning.

“And now, what have you to say?”

Pierre came very close to him.

“Am I too bold in asking whether you are anxious to find out the
mystery of the great lonely _château_, monsieur?” he asked in a thick
whisper.

Bayre could not wholly repress a convulsive movement at these words.

“Mystery! Is there a mystery?” he asked, trying to speak carelessly.

Pierre laughed softly under his breath.

“Oh, I think monsieur is sure of that!”

“Well, if there is, what business is it of yours, or of mine?”

“Well, monsieur, my business is that of my master, whoever he may be,”
said Pierre, in the same subdued key. “And yours, I suppose, is to
learn something about your relation--and his wealth.”

These last words he said very slowly, with deep meaning.

“My uncle’s wealth,” replied Bayre, sharply, “as you call it, is not
my affair, nor will it ever have any concern for me.”

“It might have,” said Pierre, slowly. “With a little word in your ear,
sir, if you would choose that I should say it, your uncle’s wealth
might be a very interesting matter to you.”

“Why, you old rascal, do you suppose I should levy blackmail upon my
own relation?” cried Bayre, indignantly.

“Ah, well, it does him very little good, monsieur. Even his
collection, which pleases all the world, has ceased to give him much
pleasure,” said Pierre. “So much money, money, shut up in pictures,
and enamels, and nicknacks. That is so, _hein_!”

Vazon understood his master pretty well, Bayre thought, as he gave the
would-be betrayer another look.

“And he has a secret, you say?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Which you are ready to sell to me?”

“Well, well, who has a greater right to it than you, his near
relation? And secrets are worth money, money. And young men like you,
monsieur, can do with money, eh?”

And the peasant, like a rough Mephistopheles, came close to his ear.

Bayre drew back and looked down at him.

“Well, look here, much as I want money--I don’t deny that--I’d rather
scrape along through life on as many pence a day as my uncle has
pounds than buy his secrets from the vermin who take his pay and are
ready to sell their master!”

And with a gesture of unutterable contempt Bayre turned away and made
briskly for the cliff.

He heard a mocking laugh behind him, and the word “Fool!” uttered in
no very subdued tone, as he reached the path which led to the cottage
where he was staying.




 CHAPTER XVII.
 THE BLACKMAILERS

This interview 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 you _all_,” 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 only _fancied_ that there was some person hidden about the house.
But at other times--”

“Well!”

“I’ve thought differently, as you know.”

“There _is_ a 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 have_ beguiled 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 the _château_ and 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.




 CHAPTER XVIII.
 RETRIBUTION

Marie sprang 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 we _know_?”

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--_my_ child!”

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 the _château_, 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 the _château_, 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!”




 CHAPTER XIX.
 GOOD-BYE

“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 the
_château_; 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 bare _salon_ with 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.




 CHAPTER XX.
 AND AGAIN GOOD-BYE

Bayre saw 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 tell _him_ to 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 the _château_ on 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 the _château_, 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.

“Ask _him_!” 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.




 CHAPTER XXI.
 PARENTS AND GUARDIANS

Bayre found 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. _Is_ he 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 even _you_. 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.”


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.”

“You _are_ bad!” 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.




 CHAPTER XXII.
 A RUNAWAY

Bayre felt 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’t _dare_ to 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.”


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 the
_château_? 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 the _Daily
Telegraph_ all 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, with _my_ cousin, 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’re _my
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.”




 CHAPTER XXIII.
 A PHOTOGRAPH

Bayre followed 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 the
_château_, 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 I _did_ find 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.”




 CHAPTER XXIV.
 RECONCILIATION

Southerley dropped 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.”


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 for _him_! 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.




 CHAPTER XXV.
 THE HIDDEN WOMAN

Olwen had started to her feet in amazement and perplexity. Bayre led
the fainting lady to a sofa and made her sit down. Both were too much
occupied with her to pay much attention to old Mr Bayre, who, on
meeting the visitor’s eyes and hearing her scream, had promptly
relapsed into his former huddled-up condition in the armchair.

Olwen went down on her knees beside Miss Merriman, took off her
travelling cloak and loosened her dress. Bayre, looking round for
something that might prove helpful in the emergency, saw a bottle of
strong smelling-salts on the dressing-table at the far end of the
room, and bringing it back with him, gave it to Olwen.

“It’s all right,” cried the girl, “she’ll be herself in a minute.
Fetch a little water.”

Bayre looked round him once more, and an exclamation broke from his
lips. The armchair in front of the fire, in which his uncle had sat
huddled up, was empty.

Olwen looked round too and noted this fact, And her eyes met those of
the young man.

“What is it? What does it mean?”

“Hush! she’ll be able to tell us in a minute. There’s something very
strange under all this,” said he.

They could hear the noise of someone moving about in the small
adjoining room where old Mr Bayre kept some of the most valuable of
his curiosities, and they guessed that the old man himself was there,
within hearing. So they said nothing more for a few minutes, until,
indeed, the colour began to return to Miss Merriman’s face and she sat
upright. Then she brushed them aside and looked towards the armchair.

“Where has she gone?” asked she in a hoarse voice.

Olwen and Bayre looked at each other, the girl growing suddenly paler,
the young man too much mystified to speak.

“Where is she?” repeated Miss Merriman in a whisper.

“She!” stammered Olwen.

The visitor nodded.

“Do you mean my uncle?” said Bayre, in impressive, deliberate tones,
thinking that the shock of the meeting had affected her to the point
of making her hysterical.

But Miss Merriman sprang to her feet, and searching every corner of
the room with her eyes, said, in a low voice indeed, but quite
distinctly, quite sanely,--

“No, I don’t mean your uncle. I mean your uncle’s cousin--Miss Ford.”

Olwen started to her feet.

“I thought you were going to say that,” she said.

“What?”

She turned to him with excitement. Miss Merriman seemed still too much
agitated to be talked to.

“Yes. The idea only came into my head a moment ago. I think I
understand now the mystery of the woman hidden in the house.”

Bayre could not yet understand.

“What is all this about a woman?” said he. “I see no woman, I see no
Miss Ford. Can’t you speak more plainly?”

Before she could answer they were all startled by a mocking, harsh
laugh, and turning towards the spot whence it came, they saw, standing
in the doorway between the bedroom and the small apartment adjoining,
a quaint, weird figure. While the short, sparse grey hair, the hatchet
face, pale, lined and wrinkled, were those of the old man they had
seen huddled up in the armchair a few moments previously, the rest of
the figure, now clad in a woman’s bodice and skirt of rusty black
alpaca, drove home to them all with startling distinctness the fact of
the fraud which had been played upon them.

“Miss Ford! It’s Miss Ford!” cried Miss Merriman, almost in a scream.
“Where is my husband?”

“He’s been dead for a good many months now,” was the cool reply of the
queer figure in rusty black, in the same hard, masculine tones which
had so effectually helped her in her long imposture. “You’ve been a
widow, my dear, ever since the early summer, ever since the night when
_I_, his cousin and your devoted friend, was supposed to die.”

The cynical effrontery with which the old woman thus confessed the
imposture she had practised had such an effect upon them all that it
was some moments before they could speak. Miss Ford, meanwhile, with
her faded eyes, her cadaverous hatchet face, and her attitude of
callous defiance, was the only self-possessed person in the room.

“Ha! ha!” laughed she again. “To think what a pack of fools you all
were, to be outwitted so easily by an old woman! Why, it’s only a
chance that has found me out now; neither you,” and she looked
scornfully at Bayre, “nor you,” and she looked still more scornfully
at Olwen, “would have found me out but for this accident of Mrs
Bayre’s turning up! Well, it doesn’t matter now; I’ve played out the
game. I made up my mind I’d never be turned out of the _château_
while I lived, and I’ve kept my word, in spite of my cousin’s
intentions, in spite of everything and everybody.”

It was a shocking and pitiable spectacle, that of the fierce old woman
struggling between her determined will and her physical weakness. For
even as she finished speaking, her voice broke and she staggered
rather than walked back to the old armchair which she had quitted in
male attire a quarter of an hour before.

A glimmering of the truth as to the reason of this most singular fraud
had by this time reached the minds of two out of the three persons
present. Mistress of Creux Miss Ford had been during her cousin’s
bachelorhood; mistress she had continued to be, at some cost of
personal cruelty, during the unhappy reign of her cousin’s young wife;
mistress she had contrived to be, through gross imposture, up to the
end. For that the end was not very far off for her was clearly
apparent to those who looked at the ash-coloured face and the sunken
eyes, and who heard the broken voice and laboured breathing of the
indomitable woman.

“Blaise knew you then!” cried young Bayre, suddenly. “That’s what he
must have found out when he came here with me!”

Miss Ford smiled feebly.

“Well, I believe he did find me out on the day he came here with you,”
she admitted. “Recognised me, I fancy, by the mark I have here on my
forehead.” And she indicated with one of her lean fingers a mole that
grew almost under the hair over her right temple. “I could pass well
enough for my cousin with my cap on; but in a room it’s more
difficult. Still, it didn’t much matter, for Monsieur Blaise didn’t
dare to ‘give me away.’”

“And the Vazons knew you, of course?”

“Yes, the rogues! They knew it and made me pay for it. But after all,
in spite of their threats, what good have they done themselves by
their knowledge? I’ve no doubt they have tried to make capital out of
the truth over in Guernsey; but who’d believe it?”

Bayre was amazed, almost to the point of admiration, at the old
woman’s audacious cunning. As she said, the story was too
inconceivable to be readily believed, especially after this lapse of
time. She took a pride in her deception, and the silence which
followed her speech was presently broken by herself with a quiet
chuckle of pride at her own cleverness.

“Yes,” she said, nodding her head two or three times towards the fire,
at which she was warming her thin yellow hands, “there was no fear of
my being discovered by anybody about here when they had once got used
to the sight of poor old Monsieur Bayre, so broken down with grief at
the loss of his cousin and of his beautiful young wife”--and she
looked round to throw a vixenish glance at Miss Merriman, who was
sitting in a state of stupefaction beside Olwen on the sofa--“that he
seemed ‘quite a different man!’ Ha, ha, ha!”

Bayre remembered his first impressions of the shambling figure which
he had taken for that of his uncle, and he realised the improbability
that anyone should descry feminine attributes in that creature with
the large masculine features, the masculine walk, with the pipe
between its teeth and the peaked cap drawn over its eyes.

The silence was broken by Olwen, who suddenly cried,--

“Then the woman shut up here, hidden away, the woman whose
knitting-needles I used to hear, was--”

“Eliza Ford,” croaked the impostor with grim enjoyment. “I couldn’t
give up my knitting, and I was not above certain little feminine
vanities.” She suddenly burst into another grim laugh, and turning
round to Olwen, said, “You saw something one day, didn’t you? You saw
a hand covered with rings at the window of the old powdering-room.
Well, that was mine. I used to vary the monotony of being a shabby old
man by hunting about in the old wardrobes and decking myself out in
what I found there and in the jewel-cases! Strange freak at my time of
life, eh?”

And she suddenly turned upon them with an air and tone so masculine
that Bayre found himself shivering at the uncanny sight and sound.

“And you, young sir,” she went on, turning to him, “you remember the
surprise visit you paid me one night, and the pleasant promenade we
had through the rooms?”

“I remember,” said Bayre, with a strange feeling of sickness from the
shock and the memories combined.

“And I’m sure you can’t have forgotten how we came to a room, the old
powdering-room it was, where feminine finery lay strewed about in all
directions, and where you found that one of the dresses was warm, as
if it had just been taken off?”

Bayre nodded.

“Well, _I_ had just taken it off, I, Eliza Ford; and it was I who had
been amusing myself with all the trumpery you saw about--high-heeled
shoes, fans, false hair, and the rest. Oh! it was a splendid farce to
watch your face, and to linger and speak loud, and try to trick you
into thinking that there was some young beauty in hiding about the
place! Oh, I enjoyed the fun amazingly!”

“You didn’t show yourself very grateful,” said Bayre, drily, “to judge
by the act Miss Eden surprised you in!”

The old woman grew suddenly grave, and from mocking her tone grew
malicious.

“Grateful? No. I hated you. I would have killed you if I could,” she
said spitefully.

“But why?” asked he, astonished at what looked like the outburst of a
malignant old witch.

But to this question she made no answer. And yet, after all, the
aversion she had shown him was the most surprising part of the whole
matter.

He tried another question.

“What was it I saw you hunting for that day in the great hall,” asked
he, “when you appeared to be tearing up the boards of the floor?”

Her face grew sombre again.

“Oh,” said she, after a pause, “I was looking for something, something
that had been hidden from me, something I wanted to find.”

A light came into Bayre’s mind.

“Was it your cousin’s will?” asked he, sharply.

By the convulsive movement which passed through her he knew that he
had made a good guess.

“If so,” he went on very quietly, “you didn’t succeed in finding it, I
know.”

Into the wicked old leathern face there came a look of malicious
anxiety, and Bayre began to understand things more clearly.

“I suppose,” said he, “that my uncle made a will which did not please
you, and that he would not let you know where he kept it, and that it
was because you knew its provisions that you determined to carry out
this fraud. You were alone with him when he died--”

“Do you mean to insinuate?--” she began fiercely.

“No, of course not. I only insinuate that you took advantage of his
sudden death, and of the fact that communication with Guernsey was cut
off at that time, to work this deceit. The story runs that Miss Ford’s
body in its coffin was carried away at the upsetting of the boat which
was to take it across to Guernsey. Is it of any use to ask you the
truth underlying that fiction?”

“Your uncle lies buried in the wood outside the _château_,” said Miss
Ford, simply. “I did all the work myself; the Vazons may know where he
lies, but nobody else does. I cut a cross in the bark of a beech tree
near the head of the grave.”

Cunning as the woman was, adept at deceit as she was, Bayre saw no
reason to doubt the truth of this account, which he indeed
subsequently verified. There remained the matter of the will.

“I suppose,” he said, “that if my uncle had left the _château_ to you
for life you would never have done this extraordinary thing?”

She shot at him a suspicious look.

“We need not discuss that,” she said. “I _have_ enjoyed the _château_
for my life, and it will belong to his son when he is of age. The
matter, after all, does not interest you.”

“Supposing,” suggested Bayre, “that I had been mentioned in the will?
Supposing I had been appointed guardian of the child and custodian of
my uncle’s collection?”

The old face looked livid in the shadow.

“We needn’t waste time supposing things,” she said presently. “The
will has been destroyed.”

“Ah!” said Bayre.

“Not by me,” retorted the old woman, quickly. “What I should have done
with it if I had found it doesn’t concern you or anybody now. As a
matter of fact, it was hidden away by old Bartlett Bayre in a garret
among some lumber, and was enclosed in an iron box. The Vazons stole
the box with other things, and it was found broken open in their
cottage by Jean, who found also the ashes of the papers that had been
locked inside.”

“Not all of them, I think,” said Bayre, in a low voice.

He was beginning to feel rather afraid of the effect which the
discovery of the will in his possession might have upon the old woman.
Wicked, grasping, malicious and deceitful as she was, he was not
anxious for the occurrence of another tragedy before his eyes.

But his words were enough to wake all her suspicions. Half-rising in
her chair, leaning on the arm of it, she hissed out at him,--

“Let me see it! Let me see it!”

“Not now,” said he, gently but firmly; “you shall see it another time,
in the presence of your solicitors and mine.”

One more doubt she had to satisfy, and only one.

“What was the date of it?” she asked sharply.

“April the 30th of last year,” answered he at once.

She asked no more questions; she was satisfied. Passing one thin hand
restlessly over her face she sank back almost lifeless in her chair.




 CHAPTER XXVI.
 THE RULE OF THREE BECOMES THE RULE OF ONE

It was plain to them all before the day was over that the
discoveries of the morning had hastened the end of the impostor who
had passed so long as old Bartlett Bayre.

She would not suffer Bayre himself to come again into her presence,
nor would she allow the name of her cousin’s widow to be mentioned
before her. Arbitrary and eccentric to the last, she made a favour of
permitting Olwen to wait upon her, and when, on the following morning
before daylight, she passed quietly away, only Olwen and Madame
Portelet were in the room.

Nobody could help feeling that her death was the best way, for herself
as well as for others, out of the difficult position in which she had
placed herself; and when the doctor and the lawyer, who were summoned
from Guernsey, not in time to see her in life but in time to learn the
extraordinary story while she lay dead in the great dark room, met
Bartlett Bayre and the two ladies in one of the saloons downstairs,
there was much discussion as to the best way of making known the truth
to the world.

For it could not be kept hidden. Already, as they knew, there were
rumours abroad in Guernsey, spread by the Vazons; and now the burial
of Miss Ford and the re-burial of old Bartlett Bayre would of
necessity set folk talking.

It was arranged that these gentlemen should take upon themselves the
responsibility of giving the whole truth of the strange tale to the
little world of the islands. And they could only hope, for the sake of
the family credit, that it would not get into the English newspapers.

When the will came to be read it was found, as Bayre already partly
knew, that the estate and collection of old Bartlett Bayre had been
left to his son, who was to remain during his minority in the
guardianship of his first cousin, Bartlett Bayre, junior.

In his care also the precious collection was left, and it was
expressly stated that Miss Ford (of whose indifference to his
collection the old man complained) should leave the _château_ and
retire to a house belonging to her cousin in Guernsey.

There was no mention whatever of his young wife in the will of the old
gentleman; he had treated her as if she did not exist.

It was not until after the reading of the will, when the lawyer and
the doctor had gone back to Guernsey, that Bayre, for the first time,
found himself alone with Olwen. Mrs Bartlett Bayre, in a very subdued
and tearful condition, had stolen out of the house by herself on the
first opportunity.

Then for the first time Olwen grew absurdly shy and began to talk
about the weather.

“Oh, we can leave the weather alone for a little while,” said Bayre,
coolly. “We have other things to discuss--novels for one thing.”

She grew very red.

“Oh, I was so sorry afterwards that I troubled you with my nonsense,”
she said with an assumption of indifference. “You can send it back to
me; I’ll give you the stamps; or--no, you can put it into your
waste-paper basket--or--”

“Thank you--so much,” said he, “for both those suggestions. You may
give me the stamps if you like; I never refuse postage stamps. But it
would be a pity to put your manuscript into the waste-paper basket,
for I heard on Friday night that it had been accepted by a publisher,
who, by-the-bye, has rejected everything he’s seen of mine.”

The girl was transfixed with delight.

“Ac--cepted,” faltered she, “really and truly accepted! Do you mean
that they’re going to _print_ it?”

“Print it, bind it, and put your name on the back in gilt letters,”
replied he. “More than that, they’re going to pay you for it.”

Olwen clasped her hands; she almost staggered with delight.

“Oh, no! oh, no!” she whispered ecstatically; “it’s too much, it’s too
much!”

“Well, I don’t know about being too much,” said Bayre, reflectively.
“I shouldn’t like to write many novels on the same terms if I had
nothing else to live by. Of course, they say it’s immature and crude,
and the work of a beginner: those are the excuses they make for
offering you only ten pounds for it. But poor as the pay is, I should
advise you to take it; it’s a beginning, you know.”

“Take it!” cried Olwen, incredulously. “You think it necessary to
advise me to take it? Why, why, it’s magnificent, colossal! Didn’t
Milton only get five pounds for _Paradise Lost_?”

“Ah, but that was poetry, and Milton was different,” said Bayre.

She laughed joyously.

“Oh, Mr Bayre, I can never thank you enough. You’ve given me more
happiness than anybody else has ever done in all my life.”

He made a rush for the opportunity, but before he could more than open
his lips she checked him by an abrupt turn in the conversation.

“Isn’t it dreadful about poor Mrs Bayre? That she should be left
without a penny?”

“Well, she ran away, you know.”

“Well, but he did everything to prove that he wanted her to. I’ve
heard a great deal about it, and I know that life was made unendurable
to her here. It seems a dreadful thing that he should have died
without forgiving her, or making any provision for her.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, he probably knew that where her boy was
she would be, and that the same hands that cared for the boy would
care for her.”

“Oh, yes, yours,” said Olwen, with sudden coldness.

“Yes, mine,” acquiesced Bayre, buoyantly. “When he’s treated me so
handsomely, and placed such confidence in me whom he could only
remember as a boy, the least I can do is to carry out what I’m sure
were his wishes.”

“Oh, yes, of course. You will have to live here, will you not?”

“I’m not bound to, but that seems to have been my uncle’s wish. He has
left money to be devoted to the upkeep of the place until the time his
son comes of age, and that fund is to be administered by me. And
besides that, as you heard, he’s left me ten thousand pounds.”

“You’ll be quite rich. You’ll marry her, of course?”

“That would be the simplest way of settling things, if it could be
managed, wouldn’t it?” said Bayre, demurely.

“Certainly. It would be a perfectly charming arrangement. I
congratulate you already.”

Her manner was very haughty, and flighty, and cool.

“You’d better wait till she’s accepted me, or at least till I’ve
proposed, hadn’t you? It’s dangerous to congratulate too soon.
Supposing it were to come to nothing, you know, I should feel so
foolish, after receiving your congratulations.”

“Oh, but it sha’n’t come to nothing. I’ll speak to her for you
myself.”

“You dare!” said Bayre, simply.

And Olwen began to laugh under her breath. He caught her by the wrist.

“Are you going to wait, Olwen, till you come across a fellow like the
hero of your book?” asked he, in the driest of dry tones.

She bit her lip, and looking down, struggled to get away.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said she, quickly; “men outside books are never
like those inside them. It’s useless to expect it.”

“I think so too. Better give up all hope of meeting a paper-and-print
hero, and settle down with a harmless, commonplace
ten-thousand-pounder, who can turn his back upon the jerry-built flat
and the villa one-brick-thick.”

“Why, it is a romance, a real romance!” murmured the girl, softly,
when he had kissed her for the second time.

“But it isn’t all your own, remember. I had a hand in this too. It
takes one for the romance of the pen, but two for the romance of a
kiss.”

And they laughed softly over the little joke, and, laughing still,
reached the avenue of the shut-up house.

Little as they loved or respected the memory of Miss Ford, they felt
bound to remain in the island until the double interment had taken
place at Guernsey of that lady and of old Mr Bayre, whose rude coffin
was unearthed and transported with that of his cousin to the larger
island, where the strange events of the past few months had caused
such a buzz of scandal that the three young people were very glad when
the sombre ceremony was over and they could get away to London.

It was on the Wednesday that they arrived in town, and Olwen
accompanied Mrs Bayre to her rooms, where she was to stay with her and
the famous baby for the present.

It was arranged before they left Bayre that the two ladies should
honour the Diggings with their presence on the following afternoon,
and that they should bring the heir of Creux with them.

The Diggings, therefore, on the day of the festivity, were a glorious
sight. Cut flowers were not enough. Palms and ferns and other plants
were bought, their pots were decorated with silk handkerchiefs of
artistic colourings, and they were arranged about the room in every
available space, until there was not a corner anywhere that you could
find room to place so much as a book or a plate upon.

Although it was a mild day, the fire was made to roar up the chimney,
with the well-meaning belief that ladies and children were hothouse
flowers, who throve best in excessive warmth.

Tarts, cakes, sweets and delicacies of all kinds were ordered in such
abundance (the young men considered it mean to order less than a dozen
of any one thing) that Mrs Inkersole grew quite pathetic, and warned
them that in a week of living on nothing but pastry they would never
be able to eat it all up.

To suit the Gargantuan appetites they supposed the ladies to possess,
tea was ordered, and milk and coffee, on the same magnificent scale,
so that the preparations resembled rather those for a glorified school
treat than the entertainment of two ladies and a child whose age was
still reckoned in months.

But none of the three saw anything absurd or unnecessary in all this,
but rather troubled their heads lest something should have been
forgotten than asked whether they had provided too much.

Jan Repton’s bedroom-studio was transformed into a bower of
strongly-perfumed hothouse flowers for the ladies to take off their
hats in, although even Susan reminded them that ladies kep’ their ’ats
on to tea.

They silenced her with scorn, and went their own way unheeding.

And when at last, with a modest ring, the two ladies and the baby
arrived and ascended the stairs with soft tread, and were ushered into
the presence of the three hosts, one would have thought that they were
three smug young curates or mild-mannered Y.M.C.A.’s, so trim and
still and subdued were they after all the fuss and the fluster, the
fuming and the shouting, the running about and the hiding away that
had been going on for hours before.

The ladies, too, were very quiet and rather shy, and Mrs Bayre, in
particular, kept her eyes fixed upon her little boy with maternal
pride, which struck Southerley as being rather forced.

When the door and a window had been opened to cool the appalling
atmosphere, however, and they had all sat down to tea, not in the
orthodox fashion in twos and threes about the room, but upon Bayre’s
advice, to an honest round table, they presently began to lose a
little of the stiffness which had characterised the proceedings at the
outset, and at last Jan Repton, suddenly plunging, as men do, from
acute shyness to confidence even more acute, turned to Mrs Bayre and
said,--

“Look here, Mrs Bayre, I don’t think it’s fair that I should be left
out of the general post. If Miss Eden takes Bayre, and Southerley
takes you, _I_ must have the baby!”

For one moment the consternation which followed this audacious and
awful speech was too deep for words. For, be it noted that Southerley
and Mrs Bayre had conducted themselves from the outset as strangers of
the deepest dye, and no one ignorant of recent events would have
thought it possible that there was any feeling in either of them of a
sentimental nature towards the other.

These terrible words, however, caused them to look up, to catch each
other’s eye, to look down, to laugh feebly, to “give themselves away”
in a manner which would have tortured a person of finer feelings than
Repton.

The artist, however, was conscious only of a pause, a ghastly silence,
and he went on, with the utmost cheerfulness,--

“Come, Bayre, come, Southerley, that’s fair, isn’t it?”

For one moment Southerley’s fresh-coloured face showed symptoms of
apoplexy. The next, an inspiration seized him.

“Mrs--er--Bayre,” he said solemnly, “let us discuss the proposition of
this frivolous person.”

And with that he rose, and with courage which he had never shown
before, and which he was never in his life to show again, he
deliberately left his chair at the other side of the table and took
one next to her. And she laughed prettily and fell in with his humour,
and affected to turn her back upon Repton and to devote herself to
serious discussion with him.

And that the discussion really did become serious may be supposed, for
during the rest of the evening these two were never very far apart.

Presently a sense of something having happened stole over the
assembly, and Repton found himself, with brilliant indiscretion,
discussing the secretly-arrived-at situation with the same
outspokenness as before.

“It now becomes a serious question,” he urged plaintively, “who is to
educate that child. We were three of us, and we managed as well as
could be expected. But now that there are five, the matter must be
reconsidered. Who is to have the charge of the heir of Creux?”

“I am,” said Mrs Bayre, lifting her chubby boy and pressing his round
cheek against hers.

“And I,” murmured Southerley, in a deep-voiced growl, “shall have the
charge of you.”

“It’s a great pity,” said Repton, whose devotion to the child was as
strong as it was new; “I’d have made an artist of him!”

“But the question is, you know,” said Bayre, “what he would have made
of you.”

And then they all laughed; it took very little to set them laughing on
that happy evening. And so the problem of the rule of three was solved
in the easiest possible manner, and perhaps Jan Repton was not the
least happy of the group.

“After all, there’s one’s art!” he remarked to the ladies, as he
showed them, with pride, one of his paintings. It was on a most
beautiful easel, one they could admire with a free conscience. But the
picture itself was one of the worst you ever saw!

 THE END




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.

The Wycil & Co. edition (New York, 1903) was consulted for the changes
listed below.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ fisher-cap/fisher cap,
seabirds/sea-birds, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Punctuation: quotation mark pairings and missing periods and commas.

[Chapter XII]

Change “_Barlett_ reddened, but said nothing” to _Bartlett_.

[Chapter XIII]

“Well, well, you may _congratulale_ yourself anyhow,” to
_congratulate_.

 [End of text]








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