CHAPTER VIII.

BAYRE’S IDEAL

It is impossible to describe the scene of wild confusion which followed the lady’s entrance. Bayre nearly dropped the baby and Repton the milk-jug. While Southerley, the only member of the party who retained a little self-possession, tried in vain, by placing himself between Bayre and the fair visitor, to hide the cause of all their woes.

A preposterous attempt this at the best, since there was no mistaking the unfortunate child’s cries for anything else.

But their consternation was speedily changed to relief. For the lady, with scarcely more than a glance at any one of the young men, burst into the middle of the group, and stretching out her arms with the true woman’s instinct, took the child from Bayre’s well-meaning but clumsy grasp, and holding him against her shoulder while she gently rocked herself to and fro from one foot to the other, spoke to him in words wholly unintelligible to the male ear, as women do to babies.

For a few seconds the young men stood looking shyly at this goddess who had been so miraculously sent to their assistance, admiring beyond words the simple and instinctive art with which she accomplished in a few seconds what they had failed to do in all the hard work of a strenuous half-hour.

Fair-faced, blue-eyed, with one of those little Cupid’s bow mouths that never go with any great intellectual capacity, the newcomer looked just one of those placid, domestic goddesses in praise of whom Bayre was accustomed to speak so highly, and of whom Southerley, on the other hand, expressed so much scorn.

There was a timidity, a modesty in every movement, in every look, which proved how strong must have been the inducement which brought her thus into a room full of strangers. A sort of deprecatory expression in her blue eyes, and a blush which overspread her face from chin to brow, seemed to struggle with the overwhelming feminine instinct which had brought her to the rescue of the crying child.

When the sobs had subsided a little and it was possible to hope to be heard, Southerley dragged forward the best armchair, and said,--

“Won’t you sit down?” She shook her head, but he went on: “Do, please; you must let us have a moment to thank you for--for--for--”

“For saving us from the crime of murder,” cried Repton, tragically, as the lady, after another moment’s hesitation, sat down with the child in her lap.

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said, in a low and gentle voice, as she looked down from him to the child. Then suddenly her tone changed, and she asked sharply, “When was he fed last? I believe he’s hungry.”

There was a rush of men to the table, and the next moment they all clamoured round her, offering such delicacies as a tin of sardines, a plate of winter apples, and some cheese.

The lady looked up and laughed mildly but scornfully.

“For a baby!” cried she. “Cheese! How absurd!”

“But he isn’t a proper, natural baby,” protested Repton, promptly. “Proper babies should drink milk, and when I offered him some he wouldn’t have it.”

“Let _me_ try,” said the lady.

And hugging the child against her breast with one hand, she held a cup of milk-and-water coaxingly to his lips with the other, when behold! he drank eagerly and peacefully, to the admiration of everybody.

“He’s an artful little cuss,” said Repton. “He must have guessed there was an angel--I mean a lady--in the house as soon as he came inside the door, and made up his mind to get her attentions all to himself or perish in the attempt.”

The lady laughed again, but so low, so sweetly, that an answering smile appeared on the face of the child, whom she was now feeding with small morsels of bread-and-butter, with which she had silently beckoned Southerley to supply her.

“It’s his own fault if he’s hungry,” said Southerley, earnestly. “I myself bought him a Banbury cake and a cold sausage on the journey and he wouldn’t have either of them, except as weapons of offence.”

“It’s lucky he knew what was good for him better than you did!” said the lady.

“What would his mother say if she knew you’d tried to feed him with cold sausage?” cried Repton, regaining all his fancied superiority in the matter of infant management now that they no longer had the infant to manage.

The lady was still looking down upon the boy, who was as happy and good again as a child could be.

“Who is his mother?” she asked.

Dead silence.

The lady looked up and caught all the young men interrogating each other with their eyebrows.

“Don’t you know?” she asked with an air of natural surprise.

After another moment’s pause it was Bayre who boldly blurted out the truth.

“We haven’t the least idea.”

And he proceeded, in as few words as possible, to relate the whole story of their tragic experience of the day, to which the lady listened with wondering eyes.

“It’s all very strange,” said she. “But how very, very awkward for you!”

And then she burst out laughing, and the three young men, with a delightful feeling that this angel would help them out of their embarrassment, and that at any rate the baby had brought them a charming acquaintance, joined heartily in her merriment. Whereat the small boy made an ineffectual attempt to clap his pudgy hands in sympathy.

The movement caught the woman’s watchful eye, and she caught the child up to her neck and smothered him with kisses.

“Then--then,” stammered she when, blushing a rosy red, she looked up after this caress, “at present the child is in the singular position of having no mother, but three fathers?”

“That’s it exactly,” laughed Repton.

“And the worst of it is,” said Bayre, “that it’s one of those cases in which three men are not equal to one woman.”

The lady looked down at the child and hesitated.

“I suppose,” she said, “that it won’t be very long before you find out who the child belongs to?”

“Oh, no,” said Bayre, promptly. “We’re going to set about making inquiries at once. I’m writing to-night.”

“Who to?” cried Repton and Southerley in a breath, sinking grammar in their excitement.

But Bayre was dignified and reticent.

“Leave it to me,” said he. “It’s a matter where discretion is necessary.”

Southerley and Repton exchanged looks of suspicion and scorn. This fellow was trifling with the truth; for they were artful enough to know that the person to whom this discreet creature would apply was the last person who could help him in such a matter--the pretty girl from Creux.

“And in the meantime?” asked the lady.

“In the meantime,” said Southerley, promptly, “we could not think of allowing the child out of our care. You see we feel responsible for him. We don’t know who he is: the whole affair was very mysterious.”

Then there was a long pause. All the young men were hoping for the offer which presently came from the charming visitor.

“I’ve got rooms here myself on the ground floor,” she said. “After all, that’s not so very far away, is it? Supposing you were to let me look after the child for you until you have found out what you have to do with him? You can get an answer to your letter in three or four days, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes,” said Repton, eagerly.

“And you could trust me with him, couldn’t you? I haven’t had much experience with children,” she went on, “but I’ve had a baby cousin to look after, and--”

“We could trust you implicitly,” said Southerley, with unblushing magnanimity. “You have the real woman’s instinct with children, that’s certain.”

The lady rose at once, cuddling the baby, who was growing sleepy again.

“Then I think I’ll put him to bed at once,” she said, “for it’s plain that he’s tired out. Poor--ickle--manny. Poor ickle manny! Didn’t zey know what to do wiz a poor ickle mite-mite? Bye-bye. Cuddle down.”

And as she crooned these words low in the ears of the child she crossed the room towards the door, leaving the three young men in a state of subdued ecstasy. Then they all rushed to open the door for her.

But the stolid Southerley retained enough composure to say,--

“I beg your pardon, but--er--er--won’t you let us know your name? You see, as the responsible guardians of the child, we ought to be able to say in a moment, if we are asked, in whose care we’ve placed it.”

The lady stopped in the doorway, laughed in some confusion, and answered hurriedly,--

“Oh--oh, yes, of course. My name is Merriman--Miss Merriman. Good-night.”

The next moment she was gone.

The three men went back to the fireplace in complete silence. It was a fitting climax, this visit of the new beauty, to a wonderful day.

Repton broke the spell. Stretching his arms and drawing forth a deep sigh, he said,--

“Well, of all--!”

And then he paused.

Southerley pulled a chair up to the fire, arranged his feet over the fender to the exclusion of his companions, and became sentimental.

“Odd how pretty that baby talk sounds from a woman’s lips!” he said musingly. “I’ve always thought it so silly. But after hearing that handsome woman use it--by Jove!--I begin to see there’s some meaning in it after all!”

“She’s certainly handsome,” said Repton, “very handsome. And handsome inside and out, mind. The way she looked at that child showed the sort of woman she was--motherly, domestic, _safe_. By-the-bye, Bayre, there’s your ideal ready to hand, my boy!--gentle, placid, slow-moving, possibly not too quick-witted, and handsome besides. What could you wish for more?”

But before Bayre could reply, Southerley struck in, with some irritation,--

“What’s it got to do with him? He’s too much taken up with Miss Eden to have any thoughts to spare for anybody else. I suppose he doesn’t intend to monopolise all the women in the world!”

“I don’t know that I’ve monopolised so much as one yet,” said Bayre, meekly, from his corner.

He had thrown himself back in a chair away from the others, and was looking thoughtful.

“What’s the matter, Bayre?” asked Repton.

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Bless me! You don’t say so. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going,” said Bayre, rising slowly from his chair with the same grave look on his face, “to put it into words, and to put those words into a letter. Good-night, you fellows!”

And with a nod he went out of the room.

But when it came to the point of taking pen in hand and beginning that momentous letter to Miss Eden, Bayre found his courage fail him. And instead of expressing the idea of which he had spoken, he contented himself with giving her the bare details of the adventure with the baby, the loss of the letter which had been on the child, and the appearance on the scene of the opportune Miss Merriman. Then he ran out, posted his letter, which he had written in studiously careful terms, that she might not think he was presuming upon their short acquaintance, and went back to his room in a state of considerable suspense.

The suspense continued for days, and went on for a whole fortnight, for Miss Eden vouchsafed no reply.

In the meantime, however, neither Miss Merriman nor the other two young men appeared to take greatly to heart the unexpected continuation of the period of their guardianship of the miraculous baby. Every day these three good fathers, mindful of their responsibilities, called dutifully at the ground-floor sitting-room, where they interviewed the object of their solicitude, and expressed their gratitude to Miss Merriman in trifling gifts of flowers and bonbons, which she was reluctant to accept, but which, as they pointed out to her, she was bound to allow them to bring, since she refused to let them pay for the large quantities of bread-and-butter and sponge-cake, milk and beef-tea, which their _protégé_ consumed.

So that the period of suspense proved entirely supportable to two out of the three young guardians, and it was only Bayre who chafed under it.

He pointed out that they could not allow Miss Merriman to burden herself indefinitely with the care of another person’s child, and grew so fervid in his conscientious scruples on this head that nothing would satisfy him but to get leave of absence again (not without difficulty and even perjury in a mitigated form) and to return to Guernsey with the avowed intention of solving the mystery of the child’s parentage, and with an unavowed intention which both Repton and Southerley had no difficulty in divining.

The weather had changed for the worse since his first journey to the islands. It blew a gale as he crossed, and the snow and sleet drove in his face as he persisted in remaining on deck, watching for the first glimpse of the rocky coast.

But the atmosphere was not clear enough for him to discern anything until the vessel was close to harbour, and the thin white covering to road and roof, cliff and steeple, made everything ghostly and dismal in the light of a grey March day.

Bayre went straight to Madame Nicolas’ house, and, as he had taken the precaution to telegraph, he found an appetising breakfast waiting for him.

Keeping Madame in conversation, all with one object in view, he began by questioning her on indifferent subjects, and gradually worked round to the one thing of which his heart and mind were full.

Whether Madame had heard anything of the adventure with the baby he did not know, as she did not mention it, nor did he.

It was after a little pause for breath on her side that he presently asked, as if the matter were of no particular interest to him,--

“By-the-bye, have you seen anything of old M. Bayre and his young ward since we were here?”

Madame stood up and stared at him strangely.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” she said in a low voice.

Bayre could scarcely keep his voice steady.

“Heard what?” said he.

“Why, the young lady was to be married to a gentleman of the island--this island--a Monsieur Blaise.”

“Yes, yes, so I heard. Well?”

“The wedding was arranged, so I understand; it was to be very quiet.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the young lady has disappeared.”

Bayre started up, his brain on fire.

“It’s not--it can’t be true!” he cried hoarsely.