THE MEETING
Miss Eden recovered her self-possession sufficiently to hold out her
hand. The angry M. Blaise took no notice of it.
“Won’t you shake hands with me? What have I done?” said she.
“What have you done?” retorted the stout gentleman, frowning upon her
and her companion with strict impartiality. “That, mademoiselle, is
what everybody has asked for two days. It is a strange thing for a
young lady to disappear from among her friends.”
“I wasn’t very far off,” said she, humbly. “I was staying at the
cottage of the grandmother of one of my guardian’s old servants.”
Monsieur Blaise made a slight motion with his head, which may have
meant approval or disapproval, assent or dissent.
“And why, mademoiselle, did you indulge this caprice?”
Miss Eden hesitated.
“May I help to explain?” said Bayre, diffidently.
“And who are you, monsieur?” said the elder man, with some asperity.
“I am one of the nearest living relations of Mr Bartlett Bayre, whose
namesake I am,” said the young man, readily.
This information evidently surprised Monsieur Blaise, and somewhat
mollified him.
“Then you are a relation of this lady’s also?”
“No,” said Bayre. “But as she is my uncle’s ward, I naturally feel a
great interest in her welfare.”
When he came to this point in his speech, Bayre saw that Monsieur
Blaise began to look at him askance, so he paused.
“Ah! Ah! No doubt!” said Monsieur Blaise, drily. “And she feels an
interest in you, and confides to you only the secret of her
hiding-place.”
Both the young people protested in a breath, so volubly, and with so
much detail, that they managed to convince the elderly gentleman that
Bayre’s discovery of the lady had been an accidental one.
“And why did you go away?” Miss Eden hesitated. “Why, if you wanted to
go away, did you not at least let _me_ know where you were?”
“The fact is, Monsieur Blaise,” broke in Bayre, “that my uncle’s
conduct has been very eccentric lately, and that Miss Eden got
frightened. But she doesn’t like to admit the fact.”
The manner of Monsieur Blaise changed and grew expansive in a moment.
“Ah, ah!” cried he, opening his small blue eyes very wide, so that
they looked like two glass marbles in an undulating field of pink.
“Now I begin to perceive! Eccentric! _Mon Dieu_, I am with you there.
Our friend is eccentric beyond all experience!” He turned quickly to
the girl. “Did he alarm you then, mademoiselle, by his eccentricity?
What is it that he has done?”
Again she hesitated, and again Bayre spoke for her.
“My uncle showed no violence to her,” he said, “and I think it a pity
she ever came away.”
Monsieur Blaise assented vehemently, with so many noddings of his
head, that he looked like one of those toy figures whose loose heads
swing in an open neck.
“Pity! Yes, yes, it is a pity,” he assented. “If you were afraid, Miss
Eden, you should have consulted me. A word to your future husband--”
Miss Eden laughed a little and interrupted him.
“Oh, surely, Monsieur Blaise, you can’t want to marry me still? I am
too erratic for you, you know.”
“Erratic, yes, so you are,” agreed the stout gentleman with
deliberation. “But, _enfin_, it must be that one’s wife have some
defects! And if one knows them beforehand, one is prepared.”
Miss Eden grew pale with consternation.
“But,” she began in a faint voice.
Before she could get any further, Monsieur interrupted her briskly,
and indicating Bayre with a wave of the hand, said, with elaborate
courtesy,--
“Ah! Is it that you wish to marry this gentleman?--this nephew of your
guardian?”
The blood rushed into her pale face as she drew herself up.
“Oh, dear, no. I never thought of such a thing!” she cried
emphatically.
Bayre drew himself up too, and Monsieur Blaise smiled so expansively
that the flesh of his large round face rolled up into a succession of
shiny pink ridges.
“It is well, it is well,” he said, “but we should be grateful for his
excellent suggestion. I agree with him that you should go back to your
guardian’s house, and this gentleman and I will discuss the matter of
his kinsman’s eccentricity, which is undoubted. In the meantime you
need have no cause for alarm while you have two friends near at hand.
You are staying in Guernsey, monsieur?”
“For a few days only. I propose to go over to Creux, and to put up at
the house of the boatman who lives by the landing-place. He lets
lodgings, I know.”
“A good idea!” assented Monsieur Blaise. “In the meantime I should
like to have a few further words with you upon this matter, when we
have seen this young lady safe on her return journey.”
Miss Eden was taken aback by this sudden settling of her destinies,
but she submitted, and returned at once to Madame Portelet’s cottage,
to prepare her hostess for her departure. Monsieur Blaise took Bayre
confidentially by the arm, and walked with him some distance, talking
eagerly, and panting as he talked.
“My dear young friend,” he said earnestly, “I am glad you came here. I
have had certain doubts, certain very odd suspicions, I may now
confess, about our friend at Creux. With a member of his family who
shares my opinion that something is wrong there, I am bold, I am
fearless. We will go together, you and I, to the _château_, we will
meet your uncle face to face, side by side.” And he waved his arm in
the manner of one who storms a fortress sword in hand. “And we will
solve our doubts without delay.”
Bayre caught at this suggestion, which was as opportune for him as for
the other. With Monsieur Blaise he would no doubt be admitted to his
uncle’s presence, and perhaps he would learn more in a single
interview than he would have been able to do in six months of inquiry.
“You have definite suspicions?” asked he.
Monsieur Blaise gave one of his large nods.
“Do you think he is mad?”
“I will say nothing,” said the stout gentleman, “until I am more sure
of what I think. In the meantime let us make an appointment. Shall we
meet at the harbour this afternoon and cross together in time to reach
the _château_ about four?”
“Just as you please.”
“It is agreed then,” said Monsieur Blaise, who for the most part spoke
excellent English, dropping into the French idiom only when he was
strongly excited. “Be at the harbour at half-past two and we will
settle this matter without delay.”
The appointment made, perhaps Monsieur Blaise forgot all about Miss
Eden, for he at once took leave of the younger man and returned to his
own house.
Bayre lingered in the neighbourhood, hoping for another
_tête-à-tête_ with Miss Eden.
He had not to wait long. She came back from the cottage at a brisk
pace, with Nini to carry her travelling-bag. She blushed and would
have passed him with a smile and a few words of casual greeting, but
he would not allow that.
“Send the girl on,” said he, peremptorily, in a low voice.
After a moment’s hesitation Miss Eden obeyed.
“Now,” said he, with a certain imperiousness which surprised himself,
“tell me what you meant by being so indignant when old Blaise asked if
you wanted to marry me?”
The girl’s eyes sparkled, and she held her head high. He was right,
however, in thinking that there was something not discouraging in
their expression.
“Well, I don’t want to marry you,” replied she, blandly.
“Wouldn’t you rather do that than marry him? Now, tell the truth.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr Bayre, by putting on these
stand-and-deliver airs with me. This morning you were quite meek by
comparison.”
“Well, you put my back up by the lofty tone in which you told that old
fellow that you didn’t want to marry me!” said Bayre, looking down
into her face with assurance that surprised himself, as he noted that
she was considerably agitated, although she held fast to a light and
careless tone.
“Well, I didn’t mean to be rude, but what could I say? Would you have
had me tell him that I _did_ want to marry you?”
And at last, for a swift instant, she let her bright eyes glance
towards his face.
“Yes, that’s just what I would have had you say! At least, perhaps it
would have been uncomfortable to say it to him, but I wish to Heaven
you’d say it to _me_.”
Miss Eden shook her head gently.
“That’s not the sort of thing one does in a hurry,” she said. “I don’t
know much about you, Mr Bayre.”
“You know a great deal more about me than you do about that amiable
pink elephant your guardian chose for you. Yet you were ready, or half
ready, to marry him even before you had seen him.”
“Ah, well, that was a different thing. That would have been a marriage
of arrangement, in the French fashion, while the other--”
She checked herself, but it was too late. Bayre beamed all over his
pale face as he made her stop, and whispered eagerly,--
“Say it, yes, say it. The other--would have been a marriage of
inclination?”
But she would not answer him.
“Look, Nini’s dropping my bag!” she suddenly cried.
And with an adroit movement she ran past her companion, and waving him
a farewell with her hand, reached Nini’s side and went on without
looking back again.
Bayre, however, was not disheartened. He could hardly expect to carry
off the prize so early in the fight, but there was something in Miss
Eden’s manner this morning which bade him hope. Without being vain he
felt that he ought to have a fair chance against the pink elephant.
Monsieur Blaise, however, was quite as fully convinced that Miss Eden
was to be his as Bayre was that she inclined to himself. And as the
middle-aged suitor and the young one crossed the rough channel between
Guernsey and Creux together, Monsieur Blaise entertained Bayre, until
he fell sea-sick, with accounts of the changes he contemplated making
in his house-appointments in view of his approaching plunge into late
matrimony.
The sea was calmer than it had been on the previous day, but the wind
had not yet gone down altogether. The sky was grey with clouds, and
the sea-birds were whirling wildly round the black rocks about the
little island, as the boat was carried on the crest of a wave into the
shelter of the little landing-place.
It was a matter of great difficulty to land Monsieur Blaise neatly,
for he was demoralised by sea-sickness, and was by no means agile at
the best of times.
Once on shore, however, excitement gave him speed, and although he
panted a great deal, he managed to keep up a good pace as he and his
companion walked together to the house of old Bartlett Bayre.
As he had anticipated, Marie Vazon, who opened the door to them, did
not dare refuse admittance to the younger man when he was accompanied
by so important a person as Monsieur Blaise. She was, however, in a
state of considerable agitation as, after a moment’s hesitation, she
turned abruptly and led the way into a little _salon_, where she left
them, to announce their arrival to her master.
It was a commonplace room this, with the usual polished floor and
simple furniture of a French country house; and it was not until,
after the lapse of some minutes, Marie Vazon returned and led them
through a long apartment, splendid with pictures, with Louis Quinze
furniture, and with Sèvres china in priceless cabinets, that Bayre
got his first idea of the treasures shut up in the old country house.
From this room they were shown into a smaller one, handsomely
carpeted, and luxurious in glory of embroidered curtains and deep,
square, carved armchairs, upholstered in damask of rich hues and
surmounted by imperial eagles in ormolu.
Here, with his back to the light, crouching in skull-cap and
dressing-gown over the wood fire, was the lean and shrunken figure of
old Bartlett Bayre, spectacles on nose, and the eternal pipe in his
mouth.
He looked up when they entered, and invited them to be seated, not in
words, but by a half-sulky movement of the head.
Bayre sat at a little distance, but Monsieur Blaise, more bold, drew a
chair to the side of the old recluse.
“You have been suffering, my friend,” said he.
“Not more than usual. I am getting old, old and broken,” answered Mr
Bayre, fretfully, with a glance at his unwelcome nephew. “There are
plenty of folk who rejoice in that fact, doubtless,” he added grimly.
Bartlett reddened, but said nothing.
“Ah, well, we must not worry ourselves upon those points,” said
Monsieur Blaise, cheerfully. “We have come to congratulate you on
having found your niece. She has returned, has she not?”
“Um, I believe so,” replied Mr Bayre, without enthusiasm. “Was it your
doing, her going away?”
“I! What a question! No. I told her to come back, and I have come to
suggest some final arrangements regarding her marriage with me.”
“Ah!”
As he spoke Monsieur Blaise had gradually drawn his chair nearer and
nearer, and young Bayre, watching him intently, was surprised to see
a sudden change which came over his fat face when he was close to the
old man.
As for the recluse, he kept his eyes on the floor, or on the points of
his own slippers, so that he noted nothing of this close scrutiny, of
this change of expression on his visitor’s face.
All at once, without the slightest warning, Monsieur Blaise stood up.
Bayre, still watching him, thought that he was going to denounce his
host where he stood. But instead of that, Monsieur Blaise said
abruptly, after drawing one of those stertorous breaths which the
slightest exertion evoked from him,--
“Well, I will not trouble you now. I--I will come again when you are
better. Till then, _au revoir, au revoir_.”
Old Mr Bayre looked up in surprise. His visitor was already at the
door, and the younger man, agitated and curious, was by this time on
his feet.
“You will have some coffee with me,” said the host, placing his hand
upon a spring-bell on a table beside him.
“No, no, my friend, another time, another time.”
Monsieur Blaise was already out of the room, and as old Mr Bayre at
once turned away and looked at the fire with no more interest in the
visitors, his nephew, with a formal bow of which his host took no
notice, followed his companion out of the room.
They passed through the handsome outer saloon, and the smaller one,
and found Marie Vazon waiting in the hall. The girl looked from the
one face to the other with sly eyes, but Monsieur Blaise said nothing
until he and the younger man were out of the house.
Half-way down the avenue he drew a long breath, took off his hat, and
wiped his bald forehead with a large coloured silk handkerchief. His
face was pale, almost haggard, and his eyes still had the same scared
expression as before.
“_Mon Dieu!_” cried he, “I have had such a shock! I have made such a
discovery!”
“Well, what is it? what is it?” cried Bayre, in a fever.
But the older man drew in his lips, recovered himself, and shook his
head.
“I am no spy upon my neighbours,” said he. “I would not bring disgrace
upon them, no, no matter what they had done. But--I would not marry
into that family--for fifty thousand pounds!”