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.