AND AGAIN GOOD-BYE
Bayre saw that nothing was to be got out of the sullen peasant
woman, so he led her out of the room, and into the hall, where Olwen,
who had heard the noise of loud voices, was standing at the foot of
the staircase.
Marie Vazon looked at her with an insolent frown.
“What was that noise?” asked Olwen. “And what was it that dropped or
was thrown out of the window?”
Marie laughed harshly.
“Nothing of yours,” she replied insolently. “And nothing that you need
concern yourselves about, either of you. Better hold your tongues
about us, as well as about your uncle, if you want to keep the family
respected. And you, monsieur, you can let me go. You will get nothing
out of me, I can tell you.”
Bayre quite agreed with her on this point, and he drew the bolts of
the door and let her out. He wanted to follow her, and to find out
what she and her father were going to do with the booty they had
obtained from the mansion; especially was he anxious to know what had
become of the iron box which Marie had thrown out of the window to her
father. But Olwen was suffering so severely from nervous shock,
consequent upon the events of the day and the disturbance of the
night, that she begged him not to leave the house until morning,
alleging the terror she felt at the thought of being alone in the
house with her disabled guardian and with two women-servants, both of
whom were in a state of panic themselves.
Although he feared that this delay would enable the Vazons to get away
with some valuable stolen property, the young man was unable to turn a
deaf ear to the girl’s pleading; and he therefore spent the rest of
the night in an uneasy patrol of the mansion, after shutting down the
window through which Marie had communicated with her father, and cast
out, as he could not but doubt, some of her master’s property.
With the first rays of morning, however, he had decided to go to the
cottage of the Vazons in the hope that he might yet be in time to
intercept their flight. But an unexpected obstacle was placed in his
way. Olwen met him as he was drawing the bolt of the door, and told
him that his uncle wished to see him.
She led him upstairs to the door of the old man’s room, where Bayre
was rather surprised to find the invalid dressed and sitting in an
easy chair by the embers of the fire. The curtains were still drawn,
and the great room, which looked so cosy by candle-light, seemed
cheerless as the grey morning light fell upon the ashes in the grate
and upon the bent head of the old man in the chair.
“What is this Olwen tells me about a robbery in the night by the
Vazons?” asked he. “She says they threw out an iron box. What iron box
was it?”
It was evident that the old man was more uneasy than he wished to
appear. Bayre had not much to tell.
“The girl didn’t seem to know what was in it herself,” said he. “I
heard her say that it probably contained something of value. That was
all. I could not hear whether the father made any reply.”
He saw his uncle’s foot tapping the floor with a rapid, nervous
movement. But the old man only said,--
“I know of no iron box; they have got hold of some lumber, I suppose,
which, in their cupidity, they imagine to be valuable. But they will
find themselves sold. My collection lies all in open cases, with the
exception of a few things which I keep in a safe in the next room.
These people have no discrimination. Olwen has been through the
galleries this morning, and the two saloons, and she says she finds
nothing missing.”
“The girl Marie must have known that I was in the house, too near the
rooms where you keep your collection for a wholesale plundering to
have taken place there in safety.”
The old man grunted ungraciously. Evidently he was loth to admit that
he owed any further obligation to the nephew he disliked so much.
“The jade got at some very good things in the other rooms, though,”
snapped he. “There’s a valuable clock missing from one of the
bedrooms, and some old silver.”
“Well, if you’ll let me go down to their place, as I was on the point
of doing,” said his nephew, making for the door as he spoke, “I may be
in time to prevent their leaving the island till they’ve disgorged.”
But the old man thrust out one hand imperiously.
“No, not you,” cried he, sharply. “You stay here. Olwen, send one of
the servants for Jean, and tell _him_ to go down to the cottage. They
may take the silver and the clock, but I should like to see this iron
box that so much fuss has been made about. Tell him to bring that back
and let the rest go.”
Both his nephew and Olwen were surprised by these directions, which
the girl proceeded dutifully to carry out, leaving the room for that
purpose. Young Bayre, not quite knowing what to do, remained waiting
for his uncle to speak, and finding himself apparently forgotten by
the old gentleman, sat down near the window to wait for fresh
developments. He was as much interested as his uncle in this matter of
the Vazons’ escape, which, since they were certainly in some sort
accomplices of the old man, might lead at last to a solution of the
mystery that certainly surrounded him.
It seemed a long time that he sat there, moving from time to time,
just sufficiently, as he thought, to remind his uncle that he was
still in the room. But never a word did the old man speak, and the
only sign of life he gave was the movement he made from time to time
to stroke the head of the dog which rested at his feet.
In the circumstances it seemed a very, very long time before Olwen’s
voice was heard outside, and opening the door, she admitted not only
herself but a sturdy-looking man in a blouse, whom young Bayre had
seen at work in the grounds.
This person, it appeared, was Jean. Old Mr Bayre raised his head with
sudden and vivid interest.
“Well?” he asked sharply.
Jean replied in French, in gruff tones.
“They’re gone, m’sieu,” he said. “The Vazons have left Creux.”
The old man sank back in his chair and there was dead silence for a
few moments. Jean looked at Olwen, then at young Bayre, and shrugged
his shoulders.
“_Ma foi!_” he said shortly, “they were a good riddance. Old Vazon did
little work, but he did plenty of grumbling. And as for Marie--” And
he shrugged his shoulders again with a gesture signifying that he did
not think much of her in any capacity.
And then, as nobody made any remark to him, Jean pulled his forelock
to the company and shuffled out of the room and down the stairs.
Olwen became alarmed at the strange depression into which old Mr Bayre
appeared to have sunk, and going softly to his side, she leant over
him and asked him how he was.
Opening his eyes, the old man caught sight of his nephew and instantly
pointed with a shaking finger to the door.
“Go away,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Go at once. And let me never
see your face again.”
Weak as he was, he woke for the moment into such a passion of
determination and resentment, as he uttered these words, that Olwen
feared for the result if the object of his vehement prejudice should
remain any longer under his roof. She therefore ran across the room to
young Bayre, who had already opened the door to go out, and following
him to the head of the stairs, held out her hand and said hurriedly,--
“Yes, yes, you had better go away at once. I’m not afraid of being
left with him now that the Vazons are away. And I’ll write to you;
I’ll be sure to write.”
Already the old man’s voice, harsh and broken, was calling to her to
return to him. She looked up once, her great eyes full of light, kind,
reluctant to let her good friend go.
An answering light came into the young man’s eyes. He retained her
hand, drawing her towards him.
“Olwen, kiss me,” he whispered.
For one moment she held back, but she yielded, and their lips met for
the first time.
Then, as the old man’s voice was heard again, she drew herself away
and stole into the room, and the young man, staggering and feeling for
the banisters, went slowly downstairs.
A minute later he was outside the house, walking at a rapid pace
towards the Vazons’ cottage. Jean, who was in the grounds near the
mansion, had caught sight of him, and came up with him, panting,
before he reached his destination.
“They were a bad lot, the pair of them,” cried Jean, who was evidently
highly delighted by the disappearance of father and daughter; “only
for some reason or other there was no saying a word against them to
old M. Bayre. Why, we could all have told him how Nini Portelet came
over here one day when Marie had left monsieur’s child alone in the
cottage, and how she took it over to St Luke’s with her. It was when
you and your friends were over here, monsieur, that it happened. And
Marie didn’t put herself out about it, but just borrowed the child of
a St Luke’s fisherman, and got her money from old Monsieur Bayre as
usual. Ah, they were a pair of beauties! She gave the child back to
its mother yesterday, and I guessed somehow that they might be missing
to-day. As a matter of fact, I know they crossed over to St Luke’s
before it was light.”
Bayre entered the deserted cottage, where the disordered state of the
living-room spoke of a sudden departure. Among the displaced articles
of furniture, not good enough to be worth any attempt to take away,
there were certain signs, cynically left without disguise, of the
robbery committed at the _château_ on the previous night.
There was a tablecloth, heavily and handsomely fringed, in which,
without doubt, some of the booty had been hastily wrapped up by Marie.
There were a few plated articles which had been inadvertently carried
away with the silver. And there was the iron box about which so much
fuss had been made.
Yes, lying bent and broken among the ashes on the hearth, after having
evidently been forced open with a bent poker which lay near, was the
very box which Marie had dropped out of the window to her father; and
lying on the uneven tiles of the floor, at a little distance from it,
was a heap of papers which Bayre at once judged to have been its
contents.
He picked these up and began to examine them. To his astonishment and
perplexity, the very first of these to attract his attention was one
in which the words “my nephew and namesake Bartlett Bayre,” were the
first to catch his eye.
Further inspection proved this to be a will made and signed by his
uncle only nine months previously, and in it he found that he himself
was not only left a legacy of ten thousand pounds, but was appointed
guardian of the testator’s infant son and heir.
Bayre started to his feet, so much amazed at what he had read that for
the moment he seemed scarcely able to think or even to see.
His uncle, only nine short months ago, had been so kindly disposed
towards him that he had made him a handsome legacy! How then had it
happened, unless indeed the old man’s mind had become unhinged, that
he had shown his nephew, from the first sight of him, nothing but
aversion of the strongest kind?
The thing was so strange that Bayre could not trust himself to
consider it thoroughly at that time. Hastily gathering up all the rest
of the papers which he could find, he decided, after a moment’s
hesitation, not to take them back to the _château_, but to carry them
with him to London, and to communicate with Olwen from there, telling
her of his find, and asking her advice as to whether he should send
them to her or to his uncle’s solicitors.
They would, he thought, be better judges of his uncle’s real state of
mind than he could be; and in any case the will could not be of much
value, as his uncle had undoubtedly altered his dispositions long
since.
So utterly absorbed was he in the strange events which had happened,
and in this last, perhaps the strangest discovery of all, that the
journey to London seemed only half the length of the journey away from
it.
He had sent no word as to the day he was returning, so that when he
entered the sitting-room at the Diggings at ten o’clock at night he
found Southerley and Repton smoking together by the fire, in a state
of gloom and abstraction, and with the supper-table laid for only two.
“Hallo!” said Repton, sulkily. “You, is it?”
But Southerley only scowled and said nothing.
“Yes, it’s me,” replied Bayre, with ungrammatical cheeriness. “How are
you, eh? Have you got any bottled stout? And how’s the--”
But Repton sprang up with a yell and a tragic uplifting of the arm.
“Don’t dare to pronounce that evil brat’s name here,” cried he,
sepulchrally. “Unless you want to be chucked out of window.”
“But why not?” persisted Bayre, who felt a redoubled interest in the
child whose guardian it had certainly once been his uncle’s intention
that he should be.
Repton pointed to Southerley with a tragic forefinger.
“Ask _him_!” said he in a hollow voice.
Southerley growled a little, and then moved sulkily in his chair.
“Oh, the child’s right enough, as children go, I suppose,” said he.
“The trouble of it is that Miss Merriman has grown so much attached to
the wretched little animal that there’s no talking to her, no getting
her attention, no interesting her in anything but its miserable little
mewlings and pukings.”
“That’s the worst of the domestic women you’re so fond of, Bayre,”
went on Repton; “when there’s a child about they won’t pay the least
attention to anything or anybody else. Whenever we go, as, of course,
being two out of its three fathers, we’re bound to go, to inspect the
child, and see that it’s properly fed and clothed and educated--”
Bayre interrupted with a mocking laugh, but Repton went steadily and
stodgily on: “Whenever we seek to do our duty, as I say, Miss Merriman
makes fun of us, and says, ‘Did its nice ickle papas tum to see if its
bockle was too warm-warm?’ And such stuff as that. Now you’re come
back I hope you’ll try to bring this young woman to reason, and--”
“I hope you won’t try to do anything of the sort,” growled Southerley
in a saturnine manner from his chair. “That would be just the last
straw, for you to interfere. For we know you like domestic women, and
so no doubt you’d worm yourself into her confidence, and--”
“And we should be nowhere!” added Repton. “That’s true.”
“Certainly we’re nowhere already,” went on Southerley, meditatively.
“I’m only hoping you’ll be nowhere too!”
“You needn’t trouble your heads about me,” said Bayre, airily. “I’ve
not the least wish to enter the lists, I assure you.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when there was a soft knock
at the door, and to the rage and consternation of two out of the three
young men, beautiful Miss Merriman, who had not been once to the
Diggings since Bayre went away, peeped into the room and smiled a
gracious “How do you do?” to that fortunate young man.
“Oh, Mr Bayre,” cried she, sweetly, “could you come downstairs a
moment? I have something to ask you about the little boy, and whether
you’ve heard anything of his parents.”
Bayre having, of course, expressed his ready assent, she retreated
with a smile evenly distributed among them all, and left the three
young men together. Repton made as if to stab the too lucky Bayre with
the bread-knife.
“Villain,” he said, “you deserve to die. But first you shall interview
the lady, and we’ll listen outside to see that you don’t take a mean
advantage of your visit to the baby’s native haunts.”
Southerley, who was more uneasy than Repton, looked up sullenly.
“Oh, let him go,” said he, in a sort of despair. “May as well be put
out of one’s misery at once. Go and ask her to marry you, and, for
goodness’ sake, get it quickly over.”
From which Bayre, as he went downstairs, with a brand-new suspicion
concerning Miss Merriman in his mind, opined that poor Southerley was
as false to his ideal of a woman of genius as the only possible
lady-love as he, Bayre, was false to his.