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.