The Duke's Daughter and The Fugitives vol. 2/3 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER V.

IT was scarcely daylight of the ruddy but chill October morning, when the travellers set out from the station at which they had been dropped. They had been left there to wait for the diligence, which only left on the arrival of another train from Paris. All had been black and silent at the little station of Montdard, when they were shot out, to the dismay of two or three half-awakened officials, who regarded them with alarm and suspicion. It was very rarely indeed that any one arrived in the middle of the night at Montdard, except from Paris, the train from which did not come in till five o’clock. What were they to do in the meantime? Mr Goulburn had got little Janey in his arms fast asleep. With her dangling feet, and her pale little head thrown back on his shoulder, she looked more like a sick young woman, long and wasted, than a child. Helen followed closely as a shadow, asking no questions, following every indication of her father’s will, silent and watchful, cold and miserable. The gloom around and the suspicious looks of the railway men, and the cold that went to her heart, all began to be familiar. It did not even occur to her to think of the existence which had ended about ten days ago, the life of warmth and luxury and softness, which knew no disturbance, which was waited upon by assiduous servants, and spent in such careful guardianship. She thought of it no more. What she wished for was not her draped and curtained room at Fareham, with its carpets in which the feet sank, but a comfortable bench somewhere, or rush-bottomed chair in a corner out of the wind, where she could get her ulster more closely about her, and put a shawl over Janey’s feet; or, as the very climax of comfort, another white-curtained wooden room with two little beds, where she could lie down with Janey next to her. Helen in her heart had bidden farewell to Fareham for ever and ever. She did not know even where they were going; and it gave her a gleam of comfort to hear her father explain to the sleepy yet vigilant porter in his blouse, that he was going to Latour, where there was to be a sale of the woods on the property of the late Count Bernard de Vieux-bois. Mr Goulburn explained that he had heard of this only at the last moment, and that, as he had no time to lose, he had been obliged to bring his daughters with him, though the journey was so fatiguing for the little one. The French heart is very open to children, and the man with the blouse managed to open the door of a dismal salle, where at least la petite would be sheltered from the cold wind. How kind they are to Janey! Helen thought. The rough peasant-porter with his bristly beard, a man who might have figured in a revolutionary riot, and probably had done so, one time or another, caressed a floating lock of her fair hair which fell from her father’s shoulder with his rough hand, with the softest look of reverence and pity. “Pauvre petite!”—he brought an old braided overcoat, fine, but faded, from an inner room to lay on her feet—“It would have been better to leave her à la maison,” he said. À la maison! People who know no better, say the French have no word that means home; but Helen felt this word go through and through her like a sword. Where was the house to which Janey belonged, where she could find her little bed and her little corner by right? As for Mr Goulburn, he put himself on the bench against the wall in the most painfully constrained attitude to make Janey comfortable. His face, as he looked down upon the child, was lighted up with the most trembling tenderness. He had wronged many people and deprived many children of bread, but he loved his own with a passionate devotion. He could not separate himself from his child. Helen, so watchful beside him, saw it all with an ache of wonder in her heart. She did not understand, perhaps, that clinging of a guilty man to the one thing innocent and sweet in his life. She was sorry for her poor little sister thus dragged about the world, and perhaps a little sorry for herself. If it was necessary for him to fly from one place to another, why should little Janey be made to fly too? And Helen turned her thoughts back upon the Lion d’Or with unspeakable regret. It was not an attractive place, but still it was shelter and safety. What thoughts were going on in her father’s mind, who could say? There were other places of refuge which would have been safer than France, but he had little time to choose. It was not much more than chance which had determined the route they took in leaving England, and he had remembered Sainte-Barbe as the most unfrequented place he had ever seen. But the village which he had chosen must surely be out of the world if ever village was. Among the hills of Burgundy, above the vineyards, beyond the reach of commerce, in the country where the old Gauls fought, and where even the Prussians had not penetrated—what could be more safe? and yet who could guarantee its safety? “We should have been better in Spain,” he was saying to himself.

The diligence started at five o’clock for Latour. It was speedily filled, in the little interior, with five or six young peasant-women in their white caps, each with a baby, little foundlings, or the children of poor shopkeepers and workpeople in Paris, brought to the country to be reared—the healthy hills of la Haute Bourgogne being much approved for that purpose. The travellers managed with great difficulty to get possession for themselves of the banquette, a covered seat like a sort of phaeton, with leathern curtains capable of closing in front, which occupies the place behind the coachman in these rural vehicles. They had ten long leagues to traverse before they got to their journey’s end. Poor little Janey, very pale and shivering, lost for the first time her childish adaptability, and whimpered pitifully, with cold feet, and the wretchedness of her disturbed rest; and a more melancholy and jaded party never confronted the morning mists. They rattled along as in a dream, seeing the country gradually unfold itself, now just visible in the faint grey of the dawn, anon developing into clearer light, the hills rising black against the yellow east, then showing their grass slopes and broken bits of cliff as the sun struck here and there a long golden dart driving away the shadows. A crisp sprinkling of hoarfrost was upon the fields, and the roads were hard, and resounded under the horses’ feet, which made sound enough, with all the jingling of the rude harness, and all the creaking of the springless coach, for a whole cavalcade. In front of the banquette, beside the coachman, sat a large priest and a man wrapped in the thick blue overcoat with its braided collar which the French peasant loves. The talk of these two was all of the old Count de Vieux-bois’s woods. The hills between which the road passed were entirely bare of trees, and Count Bernard had been the subject of much pleasantry, the priest said, when he planted his lands with an unprofitable crop of forest. But time had proved Count Bernard to be right. These voices went on dreamily in Helen’s ear, making a sort of drowsy song to the accompaniment of the wheels and the horses’ hoofs. But Mr Goulburn listened closely to all the heavy talk. The impulse of trade was strong in him, and the idea of turning over money now in his present downfall and fugitive condition roused him. He had seized upon the pretext, catching it up at the moment of necessity from an advertisement in one of the papers, to give an excuse for his hurried journey. But the idea pleased him the more he dwelt upon it. He listened with the greatest attention to all that was being said; he recovered the activity and energy of mind that was natural to him. To outwit fate in such a way would be in itself a kind of triumph. He did not disturb little Janey’s head, which lay on his shoulder, but he withdrew his arm from her as his thoughts quickened. A man of business is always a man of business, however direful may be the plight in which he finds himself. Pale, uncared for, haggard as he looked in the morning light, his bosom’s lord sat more lightly upon its throne than it had done since he left England. So far even as appearances went, there was this good in Mr Goulburn’s false decorations of hair, that they did not grow in the night.

They passed through a number of villages, changing horses with much noise and clangour here and there—a proceeding which cheered up Janey almost as much as the thoughts of a bargain did her father; and through one quaint and wonderful town, all walled and embattled, where the lanterns still hung across the streets as in the days when aristocrats were hanged by that easy method of getting rid of an undesirable intruder; and by dreary old châteaux, grey and homely, without any softening of trees or park to link them to the surrounding country. By-and-by, after a long, long waste of road, they came upon the masses of trees which had hung upon the horizon like clouds, and which showed where Count Vieux-bois’s estates began. Beautiful feathery larches, big pines, and sturdy oaks clothed the slopes, and changed the whole character of the country. And after a while the diligence rattled into a long village street with a church at one end and a quaint old castle at the other, more imposing than anything they had yet seen. The street was irregular, now broad, now narrow, widening out in the centre into a kind of place or square, in which there were two or three white houses, several storeys high, with green persiennes half closed. The rest of the place consisted of cottages, mostly thatched and humble, with a little post-office, and a cavernous shop in which were all kinds of possible and impossible goods. The “general merchant” of France is different from him of England, just as sabots and blouses are different from country-made shoes and fustian coats. And at Latour the sabots and the blouses were universal. M. le Curé himself wore a pair over his shoes in bad weather, leaving them at the door of every house he visited. The diligence stopped with a jarring shock and noise, suddenly drawn up before the humble door of another Lion d’Or, a popular sign in the district. But this one was little more than an auberge, a village public-house, with its description posted up in straggling letters, ICI on loge à Pied et à CHEVAL. There was no porte cochère, no courtyard to mark the importance of the hotel, but only a salle à manger looking out upon the pavement, low-roofed and dark, and smelling as usual, but worse than usual, of bad cigars and the pot au feu.

There were several men seated at the long table eating their breakfast when Helen and little Janey followed their father into the room; one or two others who had finished their meal were smoking their cigars—they were all talking in high voices, harsh to unaccustomed ears. The farther end, the only unoccupied place, was far from the window, and in a kind of twilight. Little Janey grasped her father’s hand tight till the little soft fingers almost hurt him. “Oh, take me away,” she cried, “take me away! I won’t do there. Take me home, papa—take me to my own home.”

He took her in his arms and carried her to the quiet corner. “My little pet,” he said, “I wish I could; but it’s a long, long way off, Janey. You must try and be contented here.”

“Oh, papa,” said the child, “I want to do home! I want to do home! I don’t like it here. I don’t like—nothing at all but—home.”

“Janey, Janey!—speak to her, Helen. You will like it better after: the people are always very kind to you. And you are tired, my little love. You will like it better when you know——”

“I want to do home!” cried Janey; but the sudden odour of the soup put under her nose wrought a revolution in her mind. “And I am so hungry,” she said, her tears drying up. She raised her head from her father’s shoulder where she had been past all consolation the moment before—and slid down from his knee. Ah! why is six so much more easy to console than eighteen? or eighteen than fifty? might be said in other circumstances. But in the present case the father and the little child had both regained their spirits, and it was only Helen whose heart lay like a lump of lead in her breast.

That evening Mr Goulburn called her into the small room which he was to occupy, with an air of some embarrassment. There had been no sitting-room possible at Sainte-Barbe, yet it was practicable to occupy a corner in the salle à manger, when all was quiet there. But in the Lion d’Or at Latour it was never quiet. In the evening the villagers came in to consume slowly their sour piquette, or bitter chope, and fill the place with clouds of smoke; and the two crowded yet scantily furnished bedrooms, in which the strangers were lodged, were the only places in which they could talk. Mr Goulburn called Helen into his room. He was embarrassed, and did not know how to begin. Helen’s look of inquiry seemed to paralyse him. He stammered and hesitated and cleared his throat. At length he said, with the rapidity of one who is anxious to get over a painful operation, “I wanted to speak to you, Helen. There is one little matter: unnecessary to enter into my reasons for it. While we are here, I mean to call myself by my mother’s name, Harford, instead of Goulburn.”

“Papa!” her pale countenance was suffused with the most violent colour. Pale, worn out, and weary as her looks had been a moment since, she was of the colour of passion now.

“I mean what I say,” he said sharply, his own disguised face catching fire at hers. There was a touch of shame in his anger, yet his eyes blazed into a sudden burst of fury, which again was partly put on to hide the shame. “I do not see that I need enter into all my reasons to you. I am satisfied that it is expedient, or I would not do it; and that ought to be enough for my child.”

“It is not enough, it is not enough, papa,” said Helen. “I cannot call myself out of my name.”

“Then you will do what you please,” he said; “but I shall employ the name I have told you; you can do what you please: but in that case you shall not be owned as a daughter of mine.”

The world seemed to go round and round with Helen,—the poor little world so bare and poverty-stricken, the walls with their blue and white striped paper, the bare boards and white-curtained windows. She looked at him piteously, seeing his face blurred and magnified through the two tears of pain and passion in her eyes. “Why is it?” she said with a pathetic appeal; “oh, tell me why it is! If I knew why, perhaps I could bear it better. Oh, papa, tell me why!”

His first impulse was to silence her imperiously and send her away, but a better inspiration followed. “Did you never hear of men in business who were ruined, Helen? Did you never read of destruction coming in a single day? I was a rich man a fortnight since, and never dreamt that such a calamity—was possible. It came upon me all at once. Misfortune of the most complete kind—ruin. I had nothing for it but to take you and the child and hurry away.”

“Oh, is that all, papa? are you sure that is all? Not—what they were speaking of last night?—not—oh, forgive me!—I did not understand; only the loss of your money—no more that that, papa?”

A painful contraction, almost a grimace, went over his face. The rage which he had partially assumed before was now real, but he did not show it. He clenched his fist at her, but kept it in his pocket, and put on a smile which looked something between a grin and a snarl. “Most people would think it was quite enough—and more than enough. Now you know my secret. I did not want—to make you unhappy,” he said.

“Oh, unhappy! it is the contrary; if you knew how happy you have made me!” said Helen, with the first real smile that had visited them for days in her wet eyes. “You have taken off the weight here—oh, it is all gone, and I can breathe. You have lost your money, poor papa! I am so sorry, and yet I can’t help being glad. After all, what does it matter? We have enough, and we are together. Oh, if you knew the things that have been going through my wicked, wretched heart! Papa, will you forgive me?” the girl cried, growing pale and clasping her hands. “Oh, I ought to ask your pardon on my knees!”

“We will dispense with that formula,” said her father, with a chilly smile which froze her fervour; “perhaps this will teach you to refrain from hasty judgment. There can scarcely be a case, let me entreat you to believe, in which I shall not be the best judge of us two.”

“Yes, papa,” she said submissively: then added with a timid look, “but would it not have been better to have stayed and met it in the face, whatever it was? To be unfortunate is not any harm. What could ruin do to us, but to make us poor? Papa——”

A sharp laugh from him cut her short; he could have struck her as he struck Janey when she found out his disguise, but he did not dare to treat the elder sister so, and she was more easily managed in the other way. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you are doing precisely what you have just promised not to do. We have agreed that I am the best judge, and the judge I mean to be, in my own concerns. Therefore go to bed, and recollect that to-morrow you are Miss Harford—and know nothing about that other name.”

She shrank a little away, looking at him with piteous eyes. “Yes, papa,” she said; “but——” and stood looking with a beseeching, tender entreaty. She clasped her hands, but she did not say anything, though every moving line of her face, the glimmer of moisture in her eyes, the quiver in her lips, all spoke. In his impatience he stamped his foot on the floor.

“By Jove! you will drive me mad,” he cried, “with your fancies and your hesitations. Do what I tell you—hold your tongue, if you are so scrupulous about an innocent social pretence. What does it matter to those French clowns what name I call myself by? Will they be any the wiser? And I hold that a man has as much right to his mother’s name as his father’s. It is the same thing. There, Helen, I forgive your nonsense, because you are tired out, poor child! Go to bed.”

“Yes, papa,” she said, but still she did not budge. All this time the voices and noises were going on below, sounds of disputation, quick fire of talk, more vivacious and louder in tone than anything English; outside and in, there were sounds of conversation going on. All this babel of sound continued while these two quiet English persons had their explanation, which meant so much; the rest meant nothing. When Helen thought of it after, she always remembered the discussion in the salle à manger, and the clatter of words which Jeannette on the top storey flung down to her mistress below-stairs.

But as for herself she had said her say. Her father bade her good night in a peremptory tone, dismissing her beyond appeal. But he was very kind, and kissed her, though she was conscious of a thrill and tremor about him when he did so, which she could not understand to be suppressed rage. But as it was, Helen retired with a weight gone from her heart, as she said—yet not such a complete relief as she had felt at the first moment. Only ruin, only poverty! these were nothing. But then—people were sorry for men who had lost all their money, nobody was cruel to them, or thought it their fault; it was nothing to be ashamed of; the best people in the world (she reflected) have been poor; therefore why, why had he fled from home? Why had he not faced the worst? Better even, Helen thought, to have endured a little vexation, to have given up everything, than to have become fugitives, and worn disguises, and feared a friendly face, and changed their name. The weight came back as these strange details recurred to her mind. That false beard! would any deprivation, any scorn of cruel creditors, any misfortune have been so bad, so debasing, so shameful as that? And why should Charley Ashton’s honest face have so appalled him? Ah! Charley Ashton could meet the gaze of all the world and never flinch; he would not disguise himself, nor hide himself, whatever might be the danger. Helen tried to represent to herself that she was not the judge, as he had said—that her father must know best; but there is nothing so difficult to believe as this, especially when reason seems all on our side.

The pain was gnawing again when she lay down by Janey’s side. Poverty: but we are not poor! Helen said to herself, almost leaping up in her bed. They had spent a great deal of money and spared nothing; indeed there had never been any attempt to spare anything. It was not an art they understood. But, happily, sleep began to steal upon her young eyes, even in the midst of her agitation. The night before had been one long vigil; she could not be kept awake, even by the misery of these thoughts.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.