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.