SOMEBODY’S IDEAL
“Uncanny sort of man your uncle!”
Bayre started and looked round. It was Repton who was speaking; he had
come up and joined his friends while Bayre was busy with the man in
the boat.
“Who says it’s my uncle at all?” said Bayre, sharply.
“Why, you do. You addressed him by that affectionate appellation,
though I admit he was not responsive to the appeal.”
Bayre stood up, angry and mortified.
“I made a mistake, of course,” said he. “Being full of this unknown
uncle, I was quite ready to take for him the first man who seemed to
answer to the description given of him.”
“Then why, if he wasn’t your uncle,” persisted Repton, inquisitively,
“did he seem so much put out by your speaking to him? In fact, he
seemed more than put out, he looked horror-struck.”
“He took me for a lunatic, I suppose,” said Bayre, uneasily.
“I don’t see why he should. After all, even if you had been a lunatic
he could scarcely be afraid of you while he was in the boat and you on
the pier!”
“Of course not,” put in Southerley, who had been watching and
listening very attentively. “The old man’s Bayre’s uncle sure enough.
Why, there’s no mistaking the likeness between them, for one thing.
He’s got your long, straight, sharp chin, Bayre, and there’s something
indefinable besides, which I take for a family likeness. No, the
fact’s plain; he’s your uncle, but he’s in no hurry to acknowledge the
relationship.”
“Then,” retorted Bayre, recovering his temper as he perceived a weapon
for retaliation to his hand, “if he’s my uncle, the lady who was with
him is, of course, the young wife we’ve heard about.”
Both he and Repton burst out laughing on seeing how Southerley’s face
fell at the suggestion.
“Rubbish!” he said angrily. “She’s a girl, not a married woman. I’ll
take my oath she’s not more than eighteen or nineteen.
Besides--besides,” he began to stammer in his agitation, “she--she
wore no wedding-ring!”
“Are you sure?”
“Q-q-quite sure. I--I should have noticed it. I noticed everything
about her.”
“Then you wasted your time,” said Repton, mischievously, “for what
attention she gave to either of you was distinctly given to Bayre.
That points again to the man in the boat being his uncle; the lady
recognised the type.”
“I don’t know what you can have seen to be so jolly cock-sure as to
what she noticed,” remarked Southerley, in a tone of displeasure, “for
you were not in sight when she was on the pier.”
“Not in _your_ sight, because your eyes were so precious full of
somebody else,” retorted Repton, cheerfully. “But _you_ were in sight
of _me_, anyhow. I was behind that boat.”
And he nodded in the direction of one of the small fishing-boats which
had been hauled up on the shore close to the pier, so that the bows,
protruding over the stone-work, had afforded a very good hiding-place.
“You must have had very good eyes to discern this intense admiration
for Bayre in the lady!” said Southerley, growing loud in his scorn.
“Keep your hair on, Southerley,” said Bayre. “He’s only chaffing you.
You can’t suppose the lady felt any more spontaneous admiration for my
charms than I did for hers. So you needn’t waste good jealousy upon me
which might be useful some other time. She looked at me, if she looked
at all, because I looked at her. And I only looked because I wondered
what on earth you could find to rave about in a restless, fidgety,
excitable-looking girl, who looked as if she couldn’t stand still for
two minutes. Depend upon it she’s hysterical, and that she’s the sort
of girl to talk your head off: the kind of woman who would get on your
nerves after the first ten minutes.”
“Hysterical! She’s no more hysterical than you are!” cried Southerley,
in tones less subdued than ever. “You call her hysterical just because
she isn’t stodgy, and you prefer stodgy women, like the ass you are!”
Excited by their argument, neither of the three young men had observed
that the fair subject of their discussion had come back while it was
in progress, and was now standing only a few feet away, where every
word they uttered reached her ears with perfect distinctness. It was,
of course, Repton, the non-talker, who caught sight of her first; and
as, with a glance of horror, he seized Southerley by the arm, she
tripped demurely forward, saying, as she came,--
“Stodgy or hysterical, gentlemen, she will be glad if you will let her
pass.”
The consternation of the three culprits, especially of the two
disputants, was terrible to witness. Southerley’s reddish, open-air
complexion became a beautiful beet-root colour, while Bayre’s darker
skin assumed a sallow tint which was most unbecoming. At the same time
they muttered confused and incoherent apologies, most pitiful to
listen to; and Repton, who felt the comparative security of his own
position, was the only one in a fit state to offer some intelligible
words. Perhaps, however, they were not very well chosen.
“I assure you--believe me, we--that is to say they--were not talking
of you, madam,” he said earnestly, stimulated in his zeal for his
friends by the delight of knowing that he was the only one of the
three sufficiently innocent to address her. For though Southerley had
indeed defended her charms, he felt that he had not done it in quite
the right way, or in the subdued and refined accents befitting such a
theme.
Luckily for them all, the attention of the lady, who received all
these apologies with an airy and gracious good-humour but little
soothing to their vanity, was speedily distracted by her discovery
that the boat with the old man in it was not waiting for her, as she
had expected, at the landing-place.
She looked about her with consternation. Southerley sprang to the
rescue.
“The er--er--boat-- The er--er--er gentleman has gone away--is over
there,” said he, pointing to the speck which the two weather-beaten
sails of the little boat had now become in the distance.
The young lady looked from the boat to the young men in surprise.
“Why, what have you done? Is it you who have frightened him away?” she
asked.
“Not I. If it’s anybody, it’s--it’s Bayre,” said Southerley, bringing
out the name with some emphasis, as he indicated his dark-faced
companion.
He was prepared for the look which instantly appeared on her face as
she repeated to herself the one word, “Bayre!”
And into her eyes there came a strange expression, not the horror
which they had seen in the face of the old man in the boat, but a look
of interest, of wonder.
Southerley, who knew how to manage a boat--on the Thames, at
least--went on eagerly,--
“Will you let me take you out to him? I can hire a boat here, and I
know how to manage one. Ask my friends here.”
But the girl smiled and shook her head. Even Bayre acknowledged to
himself that she looked very handsome when she smiled, for her teeth
were white and even, and the curve of her lips over them was pretty.
“I won’t trouble you to do that, thank you. For that matter, I can
manage a boat myself. We all learn to do that when we live on the
small islands here.”
All the young men noted this speech, and poor Southerley’s countenance
fell again. For it did look as if this beautiful creature must be old
Mr Bayre’s young wife: Southerley’s soul revolted at the thought. He
persisted in pressing his services. If she would not trust herself
with him, at least it would be something if he could show off his
prowess before her admiring eyes.
“Then let me go after him,” said he, “and tell him that you’re
waiting, tell him to come back.”
She shook her head with a little hesitation.
“I can’t think why he’s gone,” she murmured uneasily.
And then, as if involuntarily, she threw a sidelong look at Bayre.
Southerley seized the occasion of her hesitation, and hailing a
boatman, who was busy with a line in a small craft on the water below,
he hastily made his bargain; and dispensing, after some argument, with
the services of the owner, hoisted the lug sail and started in pursuit
of the man with the pipe and the peaked cap. The pretty girl in the
fisher cap looked the least little bit disconcerted on perceiving that
the broad-shouldered young stranger with the red face and the deep
voice was as good as his word. Instead of the admiration with which
poor Southerley flattered himself that she was regarding his efforts,
she watched him hoist the sail, and, with a slight frown of distress,
said, in a low voice,--
“Why did he do it? He’ll be drowned to a certainty! It’s very
dangerous to go out here without knowing something of the currents.”
“Oh, he can swim,” said Bayre, with indifference.
And Southerley’s other friend added gallantly,--
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being drowned while he was doing you a
service, mademoiselle.”
“But he isn’t!” said she, slowly, turning upon Repton a pair of
wide-open brown eyes. “If you knew old Mr Bayre”--and again she
glanced at the young man of that name--“you’d know that it is no
service to anybody to try to persuade him to do anything he doesn’t
want to do.”
His wife, to a certainty! thought Repton, cynically.
But Bayre took a different view.
“Surely your father will come back for you?” he suggested.
The girl answered promptly,--
“Oh, he’s not my father--he’s no relation--at least--”
And there, tantalisingly, she stopped.
For no reason in particular, certainly no reason they could have given
in words, both the young men felt relieved.
“I--I beg your pardon,” said Repton. “I might have known you wouldn’t
have a father like that.”
Again the girl glanced, rather apprehensively, if rather
mischievously, at the other man.
“If I’m not mistaken,” said she, slowly, “he is a relation of yours.”
Then she paused a moment, and seeing a sort of acknowledgment on the
young man’s face, she added abruptly,--
“Are you his nephew?”
“I--I believe so.”
She looked at him with a little inclination of the head at this
confirmation of the idea she had had about him.
“I thought so,” said she. “You are the son of Mr Richard Bayre, old Mr
Bartlett Bayre’s brother, and your portrait, taken when you were a
little boy, standing beside your father, is at the _château_ in one
of the _salons_.”
Bayre was at once keenly on the alert.
“Does he--do you happen to know--if my uncle ever speaks of me,
madam?” he asked with vivid interest.
“Never,” said she.
And she answered with a look which gave both Bayre and Repton the
impression that the old man had a decidedly hostile feeling towards
his almost unknown young kinsman.
The uncomfortable feeling created by this impression was strongly
increased when, after a short silence, the young girl said abruptly,--
“Are you going back to England soon?”
“Y-y-yes. We have to be back in London in a fortnight,” said Bayre,
with a blank look.
“You live in London?” A look of reflection came into her eyes.
“Everybody in England seems to live in London!”
“Yes.”
Then Repton, rather troubled that the beautiful girl addressed herself
solely to his companion, put in,--
“You know London, of course, mademoiselle?”
There came a sudden flash of something, of eagerness, of longing, of
some feeling, vivid but indescribable, into her face as she said
simply,--
“I wish I did!”
“It’s an awfully jolly place,” went on Repton, insinuating himself
jubilantly into the conversation which Bayre appeared glad to drop out
of. “Lots of life, and movement, and bustle, and social enjoyment. And
then there’s art--divine art!” and Repton made enthusiastic circles in
the air with his right hand, “and the theatres!”
“Ah!--yes!”
It was a sort of sigh that the girl uttered, not looking at him, but
vaguely out at the sea with the steady yearning of eyes that see more
than the physical objects before them.
Then Bayre put in,--
“London’s a beastly hole, full of fog and smoke and mud, and hurrying
people, and jostling ambitions that are never satisfied. As for social
enjoyment, it’s a fallacy. People know you there, not as yourself, but
as only a tiny part of London and its life. Real friendship, real
social enjoyment, real art you get only outside.”
She looked at him with interest.
“I wonder!” she said softly. Then she added, in even a lower tone,
“Still, one would like to try!”
Both the young men were silent, interested, too, in the bubbling
vitality that wanted some outlet, in the vague, girlish unrest that
“wanted to know.”
“In short, if you’re to believe Bayre, London’s a humbug,” said
Repton. “But to us artists life and art are everywhere.”
“Are you an artist?” she asked with frank interest. “With a studio, a
real studio, where you work?”
Repton smiled at the manner of the question.
“I don’t know about being a real artist,” he said, with a sudden
affectation of modesty, “but I have a real studio in Horton Street,
Tottenham Court Road, where I paint pictures.”
“That must be nice.” And then, with that persistent interest in Bayre
which seemed to his companion so offensive and unnecessary, she turned
to him and said, “And are you an artist too?”
“I don’t know,” said he, rather blankly. “If I am, I’m an unsuccessful
one. And my medium is not paint and brushes, but pen and ink.”
“Oh, a writer? That’s nice too!”
“It would be nicer,” said he, drily, “if the medium could be print.”
“That will come! That will come! You are not very old.” Then, after an
instant’s pause, during which she seemed to be gathering up some lost
impressions, she said suddenly, “But I must be thinking of getting
back!”
“Won’t you wait for--for the boat?” stammered Repton.
She had already moved a few paces away, but she paused, and said,
smiling,--
“Oh, no, I can’t. You will thank your friend for me. I’m sorry he
should have taken that trouble.” She turned away, bowing as she did
so, but suddenly changed her mind and came back to them. There was a
strange thoughtfulness and gravity in her face and manner as she
repeated a former question,--
“And you are going back to England--London--soon? In a fortnight?”
Wondering and disconcerted, they both assented. She looked down for a
moment, and then raised her head abruptly.
“Would you take a parcel to England--not for me, but to oblige one of
my friends?”
“Certainly, of course we would.”
“Only too delighted--”
She cut them short with a smile.
“Thank you, thank you very much. You are very kind. I shall see you
again before you go away, then.”
With more smiles, with more bows, she had fled away over the ropes and
among the old barrels, and the two young men were left staring at each
other, with the excitement of the unusual adventure still upon them.
“By Jove, what a lovely girl!” said Repton, enthusiastically.
“H’m! Lovely girl at asking questions; but we didn’t get much out of
her in return,” said his companion, grumpily.
“Well, we couldn’t sit down and put her through her catechism. It was
enough for me just to be in the presence of such a handsome creature.”
“Ah!” grumbled Bayre.
“But not for you, you Grimmgriffenhoof?”
“No. I don’t like her.”
But to judge from the way in which he looked at the boat which
presently came gliding along under the pier, with two boatmen managing
the sails and the pretty girl herself holding the tiller, Bayre’s
dislike of her was at least as absorbing an emotion as the frank
adoration of his two friends.