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!”