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.