“HARFORD? No, I don’t know anybody of the name,” Sir John had said; but while Charley was out after dinner, exercising that inalienable privilege of an Englishman to do absurd things, which everybody recognises in France, he heard a great deal about the English family in the village, which made him think. Helen was said to have spoken of Fareham, which Sir John knew very well; and Ashton had recognised this mysterious English girl, whose presence here was so unaccountable. And there was a father in bad health—and a child. What could such people want at Latour? “You shall see her at dinner,” Cécile said; but she did not come to dinner, and Sir John, who had frowned at the prospect of a dinner-party, as he chose to call it, on the first night of his arrival, frowned still more when Helen’s apologies were made, with great earnestness and regrets far more eloquent than anything Helen would have thought of expressing, by the wife of the Précepteur. If she was to come, why didn’t she come? What was the meaning of it? Could it be some entanglement of Charley’s? his cousin thought.
“Had they anything to do with Fareham?” he asked late that night, when Charley had come in, glowing and radiant, from his night walk. “I don’t understand about these English people in the village. Where did you meet them? who are they? I don’t want any equivocal people here, in Cécile’s very village. What could they have to do with Fareham? I never heard the name there.”
“I met them somewhere in the parish,” said Charley, evasively. “I forget exactly in which house. You don’t know all the people in Fareham parish. I believe it was at a school-feast——”
Of how much service that school-feast had been! Sir John was more satisfied, but uncertain still.
“The father is ill,” he said.
“So the Comtesse said,” said Charley, with caution. He was too much on his guard to commit himself.
“A strange place for a sick man—not a doctor, except the parish doctor, within thirty miles. What, in the name of wonder, could have brought them to Latour?”
“I suppose,” said Charley, “it is a very cheap place.”
“Cheap? There is something in that,” said Sir John. Then he paused, and fixing his eyes upon his cousin, “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I shouldn’t wonder a bit if it was another victim of that scoundrel Goulburn,—some poor wretch who has lost every penny, who has dragged himself here, to die perhaps. Don’t you think it would be civil to go and see him, as he is ill? They take no end of interest in him here.”
“There is no hurry about it,” said Charley in dismay; but Sir John was very persistent. He spoke of it again next morning, and the proposal was received with enthusiasm by the ladies.
“We will go together,” Cécile said, who indeed could not contain her impatience till her friend had seen and given an opinion upon her lover. Sir John was a fine, big, imposing Englishman, a pattern of all that a Sir John ought to be—somewhat easily put out in temper, and therefore affording all the excitement of dramatic uncertainty to the vivacious Frenchwoman, who had never as yet found the uncertainty more than piquant. She liked him the better that he was not always on the watch to pay her little attentions like the men she was accustomed to, and prized his approbation all the more that it was so doubtful, and that it took so much trouble to secure it. Cécile was very anxious to exhibit her large, important lover to Helen; and she was also eager to secure Helen’s admiration and approval, of which she felt no doubt. That he was not as the other frivolous young fiancés, or even as this cousin, Cécile felt proudly confident. Sir John, it may be added, was a man of thirty-five, rangé, serious, a public man, a personage. In all these points of view Cécile’s young bosom swelled with pride in him. As has been already insisted upon, virtue, seriousness, and duty are, amongst at least one important portion of the upper classes, of the very highest fashion in France.
Charley did all he could to change their purpose. He said, with a little hesitation, that he had seen Miss Harford, that he had stopped to ask for her father during his walk, and that the invalid meant to keep his bed for a day or two. This, however, had no effect upon the party, which set out very cheerfully in the noonday sunshine, after the second breakfast, to show the village, and to see the English friends who had become so important in the life of Cécile and Thérèse. It would be vain to attempt to tell, since the arrangement, as the reader is aware, never came to anything, with what swift and silent observation the Comtesse and her daughters had scrutinised and decided upon Charley. At the first glance he had succeeded in “pleasing” Thérèse, who knew very well that it was her mother’s purpose to marry her, according to the simple formula of her nation, and who at first believed M. Charles to have come to the château with the same ideas. In this point of view all the ladies found him quite convenable, but—The Comtesse herself questioned Sir John very closely when his cousin went out after dinner for that walk which quite chimed in with her ideas of the English character.
“M. Charles is aware of the situation, of course?” Madame la Comtesse said. “It is well that there should not be any mistake on this point. He knows my intention in respect to Thérèse, and the dispositions of the will, &c.? So far as appearances go, I find him very suitable, and that he will be pleasing to Thérèse is probable. There is nothing against the arrangement. But we must know how it appears to him on his side. There must be no step taken by us which does not meet a response. M. Charles on his part, has he expressed his sentiments? Does he find my daughter pleasing to him on his side? It is necessary to be more explicit on the part of the gentleman: has he given you to understand——”
“Oh dear no!” cried Sir John, alarmed. He had sounded Charley, but had not got a promising response, and now thought it wisest to ignore the plan altogether. “Oh, certainly not. I have not said a word to him, my dear Comtesse. Fancy bringing an Englishman here with the idea that he was on sight! Oh dear no! I brought him on the chance that they might fancy each other, the most likely thing in the world—a pretty girl like Thérèse, and a nice young fellow. It was the most natural thing that they should fall in love with each other.”
“Ah, fall in lofe! that was not my idea,” said Madame de Vieux-bois—Sir John spoke his native language, in which she was not an expert. And after this conversation the Comtesse put her daughters on their guard. “Mes enfans,” she said privately, “we will postpone the question. Ce Monsieur Charles ne me plaît pas. There is something about him—— And I find, besides, that it is too soon to think of marrying Thérèse: she is but seventeen. It will be enough to lose thee, ma Cécile—enough for one year.”
Madame la Comtesse was far too careful a mother to permit her child’s thoughts to dwell upon any one who might be found unresponsive. The girls understood more or less, and they declared their mamma to have reason, as indeed she had in the fullest sense of the word. This, however, subdued Thérèse a little; not that she felt disappointed in respect to Charley Ashton, but that she no longer felt herself in the important position of being about to make the great decision of her life. She could not take Helen aside, as she had intended to do, with pretty airs of gravity, and ask her advice with solemn meaning. “Est-ce qu’il te plaît?” she had intended to say, curving her young brows with all the seriousness that became so momentous a question. She felt that she was coming down from an anticipated elevation, when she had no such important decision to make. And Cécile, too, was disappointed. The crisis was manqué. It failed in the double seriousness, the weighty character she had intended it to have. If they were but a little more reasonable, these Englishmen—a little more amenable to rule! All the time, however, Cécile piqued herself very much upon the delightful fact that her John and she had come together by no arrangement, but had for their part proceeded on strictly English principles, and fallen in love.
It would be difficult to describe the embarrassment of Helen, receiving this party of visitors, meeting the friendly enthusiasm of her companions with the knowledge of her own secret, which she could not disclose to them, in her heart, and with the very much more dreadful secret of which she was the guardian, pressing itself upon her, confusing her mind and weighing heavily upon all her thoughts. She dared not look at Charley at all. To have met him even alone after the revelations of last night, after the strange incomprehensible change in their position towards each other which it had brought about, would have been confusing beyond measure. But when, added to all this, there was the terrible figure of Sir John inspecting her with British suspicion, asking her in every look, Who are you? what business have you here? and the consciousness of her father lurking in his room, whom the mistaking of a door, a wrong turning, might betray,—it may be supposed that no inexperienced girl, standing upon the threshold of her life among things unrealised, could have had a more terrible half-hour than had Helen, alone with this group, having to parry all their questions and meet all their looks without breaking down utterly or running away. She had thought it best to send Janey out to the garden, lest the child, who would have been of so much assistance to her, might make some unwitting disclosure. And there she stood alone, clasping her little delicate hands together, to meet them all, to conceal what was in her—alas! to deceive them. The tears were trembling very near poor Helen’s eyes, her voice wavered now and then as if it would break altogether, her little figure swayed; but yet she stood firm, though she could not tell how she did it. The girls put down her trouble naturally to her father’s illness. They kissed her and whispered sympathy into her ears. “Du courage!” they said, with tears of tender pity and fellow-feeling. “If mamma could but come herself!” But they had no doubt that mamma could send something that would be of use. “It is the emotion of yesterday,” they concluded, with all the ease of spectators. And then Sir John had to be told the incident of yesterday and the goodness of monsieur. This was a blessed relief to Helen, whom he had begun to interrogate about Fareham and all she knew about it.
“I suppose you did not know the last people that lived there? One of those great nouveaux riches, those men that live like princes on other people’s money. He turned out to be a swindl——”
“Helen,” whispered Cécile, drawing her apart before the sentence was completed, “Est-ce qu’il te plaît? I want you to give me your most honest opinion. Je veux qu’il te plaît! Tell me exactly, exactly what you think—for you must like him,” said Sir John’s bride, with a pretty flush of impetuous eagerness. Thérèse, who had believed that she too would have had the same question to put, had surprised certain turns of the head—certain looks which Charley addressed to her friend—and she was curious beyond measure, and bursting with a thousand questions. When the visit was over poor Helen watched them go away, waving her hand to them from the door, keeping up her smile to the last moment. She did not lose the last suspicious glance of Sir John, who looked (accidentally) at her father’s window with all the force of an inquiry, but she scarcely got the comfort of Ashton’s anxious, tender look of sympathy which told all his story to Thérèse. She was at the end of her strength, but nevertheless, she had to rouse herself to go to her father, who wanted to know every particular of the interview.
“I heard Harvey’s voice,” Mr Goulburn said. “There was always something objectionable in his voice. Big Philistine! Cécile de Vieux-bois is a great deal too good for him. He has dined with me dozens of times, but I think it was always in town, and at my club. He could not have any suspicion. Did he seem to you to have any suspicion, Helen?”
“He had a great deal of suspicion, papa, but I don’t think he knew what he suspected. He can’t understand what we are doing here. Provided,” said Helen, with a little French idiom of which she was unconscious, “provided he does not come another time and take us unawares.”
“He shall not take me unawares, you may trust to me, Helen; I shall not budge till the big brute is gone.”
Her father spoke in a reassuring tone, as if promising for her sake to abjure all imprudence. Their positions seemed to have changed, she could not tell how. She was no longer the wistful follower in a flight, the motive of which she was ignorant of. One would have thought rather that it was some indiscretion of hers that had brought this danger upon him, some rashness which he was too generous to reproach her with. “I will do my best for you, you may trust to me,” was what he seemed to be saying; and this brought the confusion in her mind to a climax. She went about all the long day after like one in a dream.
“It cannot be for cheapness these people have come here,” said Sir John to Charley. “You heard that story about the substitute? That does not look like poverty. Besides, I don’t believe the man is ill. The girl didn’t look as if it were true. He is keeping out of our way. Depend upon it there is something shady about him. I think I’ve seen the girl before.”
“Very likely; she is very young, but she has been out a little,” said Charley hurriedly, anxious to avoid any following out of the subject. “One meets everybody one time or another. Even I, who have spent my time in anything but balls——”
“Yes; by the way, how is it you seem to know the girl so well?” said Sir John.
“I wish, if it’s all the same to you,” cried Charley, out of patience, “that you’d speak a little more civilly. I don’t see why you should call a young lady whom you know nothing of, ‘the girl,’ in that contemptuous way. Yes; it does matter to me. I don’t know that I ever met any one in my life that I admired so much.”
“Whew!” Sir John gave a prolonged whistle of amazement; “why, she’s not fit to hold the candle to Thérèse,” he said; then added drily, “the more reason why I should find out all about them. I am a great deal older than you are, and I don’t mean you to make a fool of yourself if I can help it, Charley.”
“I think you had better mind your own business,” the other said, in high revolt.
And thus Sir John acquired a double motive. He questioned Cécile at great length, and even took her to task for giving her confidence so easily. “If it should turn out, as is most likely to be the case, a person entirely unworthy of your friendship!” he said.
The château was all in agitation over this subject, the girls indignantly protesting, the mother disposed to take alarm. Decidedly the possession of a serious, rangé, important English lover of thirty-five brings its penalties with it; but perhaps, indeed, a lover of any age, however free and easy in his own relationships, would have been equally anxious to guard the lady endowed with his valuable affections from any connection with inappropriate acquaintances. For the moment, however, his zeal did not increase the comfort of the house.
The day was feverish and long—how long and feverish and full of alarm and apprehension perhaps only Helen knew. She sat at watch at her window all the day, trembling whenever she saw any one approach from the direction of the château. In the afternoon Charley came in and consoled her, but rather with a repetition of that sentiment about two being better than one, than with any more immediately satisfactory information. Helen thought the day would never come to an end; and there seemed no comfort in the fact that sooner or later it must come to an end, for what was there to hope but that to-morrow would be like it? After dinner, when the village was all still, her father looked cautiously into the sitting-room. “I must get a breath of air,” he said, half apologetically, half reproachfully. It was as if this imprisonment to his room was Helen’s fault.
“Papa, I don’t think I can bear it another day. Let us go away, let us go away!” she cried.
“I thought it was you who objected to going away,” he said peevishly.
Helen sat down again before her little lamp at the table. This time she had some darning to do. She sat and listened for every step, for every breath. Oh, to go away, to go away! she said to herself. To go where? She could not tell. Was there safety anywhere? Was there any spot on earth where this sickening, shameful danger, this concealment would not come again? Was it not out of the world, away from life and its torments altogether, where alone they could be safe? After a while Mr Goulburn came back. He was nervous too, and shaken by the alarm that seemed in the air.
“I don’t seem happy in the village to-night,” he said, “though it is all as quiet as usual. I think that big bully must use up all the air for his own breathing, I can’t get any.” He opened the persiennes as he spoke, then drew them close again. “I think I shall go into the garden, Helen. I must get breath somewhere. I have shut the front door. Go to bed. I shall go and sit in the summer-house to get my breath.”
“Will you take some of the Comtesse’s drops, papa? She said they were so good.”
“Ether,” he said—“simple ether; it smells too strong. What do I want with your old wife’s medicines? No; I’ll go and sit out in the garden and get my breath. Poor child, you are tired, and it is no wonder. But all is safe now for the night, Helen; go to bed.”
All was safe for the night. The dreadful day was over with all its terrors—everything was still. The village had gone to sleep all the earlier that it had been so late on the night before. Helen felt too much alarmed to open the door again to look out for Charley Ashton. She took her father’s advice passively, and went to her room, where Janey was sleeping peacefully. Something, she could not tell what, kept her from undressing. She lay down upon her bed to wait till her father should come in from the garden. He might want something before he went finally to rest. But Helen was worn out with the long trial of the day, and lying across her bed fully dressed, she dropped to sleep.
All was safe for the night—so some one else thought who was standing under the shadow of Père Goudron’s wall. The moon was veiled and dim, but yet was shining and casting a shadow more dark than the ordinary darkness of the night. It was not possible to see what it was at the corner under the window, but something moved; it was as if a part of the darkness detached itself slowly from the rest; where all was black, a something blacker than the air, yet separate from the wall, rising upward. It moved noiselessly across the front of the house. All was quiet, so still that a breath might have been heard, but nothing was audible. A faint glimmer showed where Mr Goulburn in his impatience had opened the persiennes. He had drawn them close again, but he had not fastened them. He had a contempt for bolts and bars in this quiet place. They were open, and the window was open, showing a little glimmer of light. But in the darkness even that far-away glimmer showed. The moving thing below put up a hand and cautiously, softly opened the unfastened persiennes, then climbed up noiselessly, a long, dark, undistinguishable figure, into the room, drawing the shutters close behind. Was all safe? There was a pause, and the empty room became full of a living presence, a breath, a danger. Beyond the folding-doors, which were closed, Helen slept profoundly the sleep of utter weariness. Across the passage the faint little ray of the veilleuse shone steadily through the half-opened door. The question was—Did any one lie there, sleeping or waking? The intruder took what was, in the circumstances, a long time to consider. Then he advanced silently. To himself it seemed that the whole house creaked and shivered under his feet, but Helen, fast asleep, heard nothing; and if out in the garden a vague sound reached her father’s ears, he imagined it was only Helen moving about her bedroom, where her light was still burning. That watching light seemed to make all safe, and the little veilleuse, on the other hand, guarded the empty chamber. The thief trembled before it. He paused and wiped his forehead, not daring to confront it. But he had gone too far now not to go on. The man’s heart, which was beating wildly with excitement, gave a great jump when, peeping in, he saw the room vacant, the bed unoccupied. He went in and closed the door.
All were sleeping quietly in the house, except Père Goudron, who lay quiet enough, but not asleep, thinking of the folly of l’Anglais, who had given away so much money for the sake of a young man who was nothing to him, and wondering in what way he could manage to secure some of those same superabundant riches for himself. He could not himself violently have robbed l’Anglais, or any one else. But he, too, had seen the book with the French notes, and he longed for a share of them. He was turning over in his mind what fable he could invent, what tale of poverty he could tell, to beguile some more of those notes out of the rich man’s pocket. He heard the creak, the startling sound of movement, but thought nothing of it. His lodgers did not keep the regular hours he did; they were like all the English, early one night, late another, never to be relied upon. But he lay still and pondered, intent upon inventing some story by which he, too, might get a share of the spoil.
Mr Goulburn, for his part, sat on the bench in the garden, and tried, as he had said, to get his breath. It had never been so bad before. His heart laboured, thumping like a steam-engine, creaking and struggling as if the machinery was all rusty and out of gear. What was the meaning of it? There had never been anything the matter with his heart till that old witch at the château decided that he had heart disease. She was not an old witch; but that is how men of middle age describe their female contemporaries who have displeased them. The moon was high in the sky, but veiled and watery, giving a sort of milky whiteness to the atmosphere rather than light. Under this faint pale glimmer he sat with a small acacia waving its long leaflets over him. It must be a sultry night—certainly there was no air to breathe; he could not get any. Harvey with his big English lungs must have exhausted it, he thought, with a faint joke in his mind in the midst of his bodily distress. No air to breathe. He bethought himself by-and-by of the Comtesse’s drops, which, after all, might do some good. At first he thought he would call Helen to get them for him. Then a pitying recollection of her wan face crossed his mind. He would not disturb her, poor child; he would go himself. He rose and came in slowly, his labouring heart sounding in the stillness, his very limbs feeble with its excited action.
A moment more and the quiet of the sleeping house was broken by a hideous commotion. There was a sound of a door pushed open, a loud exclamation, a momentary conflict of voices, the door dashed back against the wall. Then a wild, long cry, a dull thud upon the floor. By that time Père Goudron had got out of his bed, and was calling upon Blanchette and Ursule, and scrambling for a light, and Helen waking in wild terror out of her sleep, had sprung up and seized her candle. She was so transported with anxiety and terror that the voices that followed conveyed no information to her ear; but M. Goudron heard the persiennes dashed open, and a muffled leap into the street. Next moment Helen’s cries resounded through the house and rang out into the night.
“Papa, papa, speak to me!” she cried; “speak to me, papa!”
Madame Dupré, who had just fastened up her last shutter, heard it, and rushed to the door—then ran back again and dragged Baptiste out of bed in his first sleep.
“L’Anglais!—something has happened to l’Anglais,” she said.
And then by degrees one house after another woke, and eager heads peered forth at the doors and windows. Baptiste, rushing across the road half dressed, with Auguste at his heels, was called to from one side and another in a dozen startled voices.
“What is it? What has happened?” they all asked breathless. He answered only by repeating what his mother had told him.
“L’Anglais—something has happened to l’Anglais,” Baptiste said.
Two men were coming down the road from the château. It was not much more than ten o’clock, and Sir John had come out with Charley, much against the will of the latter, to smoke his cigar.
“I’ll take a turn with you,” the baronet had said. “It’s muggy to-night, with all those trees about. If you had hit it off with Thérèse, Charley, I’d have advised you to thin these woods. But it’s no use thinking about that. What an odd piece of luck, however, that you should have found this Miss—Miss——”
“Helen,” said Ashton, with a bitterness he could scarcely restrain. Rather this familiarity than to speak of her by a false name.
“Miss—Helen—that’s it. Cécile never says the other name. You don’t say you know the father, Charley? I’d advise you to find out what sort of person he is, and all about him, before you go any farther, old man. It is queer that, just at the other one’s door, so to speak, you should have found this Miss—Helen.”
“I wish you would not speak of the other one, John. It is very disrespectful to a very charming young lady. There has never been any other one. You offend me when you talk so, by offending her. I have the greatest reverence for the ladies here—both——”
“You need not be so particular. She would not be offended. She knows very well that this marriage is manqué, and she is not inconsolable. But, look here: you must not go a step further till you know all particulars. I say, what is that? What an infernal row!” said Sir John.
The sound of the sudden cry affronting the silence, and even the fall that followed, ringing out into the great quiet with all the intensity of a sudden calamity, reached them both, though they were scarcely within sight of Père Goudron’s house. They rushed on without another word, Charley quickening his steps to a run, as they perceived where the tumult was. By this time dark figures were coming out into the street from the cottages near, and everything was in commotion. M. Goudron’s door stood wide open; the persiennes had been thrown open also, and what seemed a flood of light poured out into the street. Charley rushed in, and Sir John followed. In the midst of a group of eager spectators a pale figure was lying on the bed. He had struck his forehead against something as he fell, and a drop or two of blood slowly congealing upon it showed the blow. His lips were open, hanging apart, dry and parched, his eyes half closed, and showing a dull, inexpressive light. The two Englishmen went forward, joining themselves to the group. The village doctor, half dressed, stood holding a mirror to the dry lips. Old Goudron, like a living skeleton, with a nervous quiver in his old bones, held a candle, like Time or Death himself assisting at the deathbed. In one corner Ursule was praying on her knees. Helen stood, pallid as the dead face itself, supporting the pillows on which he was propped, at the head of the bed.
Sir John was slow to take in the chief feature of the scene; he mastered everything else before he perceived that: the doctor, with the little mirror in his hand, upon which no stain of living breath was to be seen; the old bony figure by the bed; the young daughter, silent and distraught; then his eyes fixed themselves on the face of the man round whom they had all collected. His sudden shout shook the room. He cried out in astonishment, in consternation and horror. “My God! it is Goulburn himself!” Sir John said.