THE RULE OF THREE BECOMES THE RULE OF ONE
It was plain to them all before the day was over that the
discoveries of the morning had hastened the end of the impostor who
had passed so long as old Bartlett Bayre.
She would not suffer Bayre himself to come again into her presence,
nor would she allow the name of her cousin’s widow to be mentioned
before her. Arbitrary and eccentric to the last, she made a favour of
permitting Olwen to wait upon her, and when, on the following morning
before daylight, she passed quietly away, only Olwen and Madame
Portelet were in the room.
Nobody could help feeling that her death was the best way, for herself
as well as for others, out of the difficult position in which she had
placed herself; and when the doctor and the lawyer, who were summoned
from Guernsey, not in time to see her in life but in time to learn the
extraordinary story while she lay dead in the great dark room, met
Bartlett Bayre and the two ladies in one of the saloons downstairs,
there was much discussion as to the best way of making known the truth
to the world.
For it could not be kept hidden. Already, as they knew, there were
rumours abroad in Guernsey, spread by the Vazons; and now the burial
of Miss Ford and the re-burial of old Bartlett Bayre would of
necessity set folk talking.
It was arranged that these gentlemen should take upon themselves the
responsibility of giving the whole truth of the strange tale to the
little world of the islands. And they could only hope, for the sake of
the family credit, that it would not get into the English newspapers.
When the will came to be read it was found, as Bayre already partly
knew, that the estate and collection of old Bartlett Bayre had been
left to his son, who was to remain during his minority in the
guardianship of his first cousin, Bartlett Bayre, junior.
In his care also the precious collection was left, and it was
expressly stated that Miss Ford (of whose indifference to his
collection the old man complained) should leave the _château_ and
retire to a house belonging to her cousin in Guernsey.
There was no mention whatever of his young wife in the will of the old
gentleman; he had treated her as if she did not exist.
It was not until after the reading of the will, when the lawyer and
the doctor had gone back to Guernsey, that Bayre, for the first time,
found himself alone with Olwen. Mrs Bartlett Bayre, in a very subdued
and tearful condition, had stolen out of the house by herself on the
first opportunity.
Then for the first time Olwen grew absurdly shy and began to talk
about the weather.
“Oh, we can leave the weather alone for a little while,” said Bayre,
coolly. “We have other things to discuss--novels for one thing.”
She grew very red.
“Oh, I was so sorry afterwards that I troubled you with my nonsense,”
she said with an assumption of indifference. “You can send it back to
me; I’ll give you the stamps; or--no, you can put it into your
waste-paper basket--or--”
“Thank you--so much,” said he, “for both those suggestions. You may
give me the stamps if you like; I never refuse postage stamps. But it
would be a pity to put your manuscript into the waste-paper basket,
for I heard on Friday night that it had been accepted by a publisher,
who, by-the-bye, has rejected everything he’s seen of mine.”
The girl was transfixed with delight.
“Ac--cepted,” faltered she, “really and truly accepted! Do you mean
that they’re going to _print_ it?”
“Print it, bind it, and put your name on the back in gilt letters,”
replied he. “More than that, they’re going to pay you for it.”
Olwen clasped her hands; she almost staggered with delight.
“Oh, no! oh, no!” she whispered ecstatically; “it’s too much, it’s too
much!”
“Well, I don’t know about being too much,” said Bayre, reflectively.
“I shouldn’t like to write many novels on the same terms if I had
nothing else to live by. Of course, they say it’s immature and crude,
and the work of a beginner: those are the excuses they make for
offering you only ten pounds for it. But poor as the pay is, I should
advise you to take it; it’s a beginning, you know.”
“Take it!” cried Olwen, incredulously. “You think it necessary to
advise me to take it? Why, why, it’s magnificent, colossal! Didn’t
Milton only get five pounds for _Paradise Lost_?”
“Ah, but that was poetry, and Milton was different,” said Bayre.
She laughed joyously.
“Oh, Mr Bayre, I can never thank you enough. You’ve given me more
happiness than anybody else has ever done in all my life.”
He made a rush for the opportunity, but before he could more than open
his lips she checked him by an abrupt turn in the conversation.
“Isn’t it dreadful about poor Mrs Bayre? That she should be left
without a penny?”
“Well, she ran away, you know.”
“Well, but he did everything to prove that he wanted her to. I’ve
heard a great deal about it, and I know that life was made unendurable
to her here. It seems a dreadful thing that he should have died
without forgiving her, or making any provision for her.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, he probably knew that where her boy was
she would be, and that the same hands that cared for the boy would
care for her.”
“Oh, yes, yours,” said Olwen, with sudden coldness.
“Yes, mine,” acquiesced Bayre, buoyantly. “When he’s treated me so
handsomely, and placed such confidence in me whom he could only
remember as a boy, the least I can do is to carry out what I’m sure
were his wishes.”
“Oh, yes, of course. You will have to live here, will you not?”
“I’m not bound to, but that seems to have been my uncle’s wish. He has
left money to be devoted to the upkeep of the place until the time his
son comes of age, and that fund is to be administered by me. And
besides that, as you heard, he’s left me ten thousand pounds.”
“You’ll be quite rich. You’ll marry her, of course?”
“That would be the simplest way of settling things, if it could be
managed, wouldn’t it?” said Bayre, demurely.
“Certainly. It would be a perfectly charming arrangement. I
congratulate you already.”
Her manner was very haughty, and flighty, and cool.
“You’d better wait till she’s accepted me, or at least till I’ve
proposed, hadn’t you? It’s dangerous to congratulate too soon.
Supposing it were to come to nothing, you know, I should feel so
foolish, after receiving your congratulations.”
“Oh, but it sha’n’t come to nothing. I’ll speak to her for you
myself.”
“You dare!” said Bayre, simply.
And Olwen began to laugh under her breath. He caught her by the wrist.
“Are you going to wait, Olwen, till you come across a fellow like the
hero of your book?” asked he, in the driest of dry tones.
She bit her lip, and looking down, struggled to get away.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said she, quickly; “men outside books are never
like those inside them. It’s useless to expect it.”
“I think so too. Better give up all hope of meeting a paper-and-print
hero, and settle down with a harmless, commonplace
ten-thousand-pounder, who can turn his back upon the jerry-built flat
and the villa one-brick-thick.”
“Why, it is a romance, a real romance!” murmured the girl, softly,
when he had kissed her for the second time.
“But it isn’t all your own, remember. I had a hand in this too. It
takes one for the romance of the pen, but two for the romance of a
kiss.”
And they laughed softly over the little joke, and, laughing still,
reached the avenue of the shut-up house.
Little as they loved or respected the memory of Miss Ford, they felt
bound to remain in the island until the double interment had taken
place at Guernsey of that lady and of old Mr Bayre, whose rude coffin
was unearthed and transported with that of his cousin to the larger
island, where the strange events of the past few months had caused
such a buzz of scandal that the three young people were very glad when
the sombre ceremony was over and they could get away to London.
It was on the Wednesday that they arrived in town, and Olwen
accompanied Mrs Bayre to her rooms, where she was to stay with her and
the famous baby for the present.
It was arranged before they left Bayre that the two ladies should
honour the Diggings with their presence on the following afternoon,
and that they should bring the heir of Creux with them.
The Diggings, therefore, on the day of the festivity, were a glorious
sight. Cut flowers were not enough. Palms and ferns and other plants
were bought, their pots were decorated with silk handkerchiefs of
artistic colourings, and they were arranged about the room in every
available space, until there was not a corner anywhere that you could
find room to place so much as a book or a plate upon.
Although it was a mild day, the fire was made to roar up the chimney,
with the well-meaning belief that ladies and children were hothouse
flowers, who throve best in excessive warmth.
Tarts, cakes, sweets and delicacies of all kinds were ordered in such
abundance (the young men considered it mean to order less than a dozen
of any one thing) that Mrs Inkersole grew quite pathetic, and warned
them that in a week of living on nothing but pastry they would never
be able to eat it all up.
To suit the Gargantuan appetites they supposed the ladies to possess,
tea was ordered, and milk and coffee, on the same magnificent scale,
so that the preparations resembled rather those for a glorified school
treat than the entertainment of two ladies and a child whose age was
still reckoned in months.
But none of the three saw anything absurd or unnecessary in all this,
but rather troubled their heads lest something should have been
forgotten than asked whether they had provided too much.
Jan Repton’s bedroom-studio was transformed into a bower of
strongly-perfumed hothouse flowers for the ladies to take off their
hats in, although even Susan reminded them that ladies kep’ their ’ats
on to tea.
They silenced her with scorn, and went their own way unheeding.
And when at last, with a modest ring, the two ladies and the baby
arrived and ascended the stairs with soft tread, and were ushered into
the presence of the three hosts, one would have thought that they were
three smug young curates or mild-mannered Y.M.C.A.’s, so trim and
still and subdued were they after all the fuss and the fluster, the
fuming and the shouting, the running about and the hiding away that
had been going on for hours before.
The ladies, too, were very quiet and rather shy, and Mrs Bayre, in
particular, kept her eyes fixed upon her little boy with maternal
pride, which struck Southerley as being rather forced.
When the door and a window had been opened to cool the appalling
atmosphere, however, and they had all sat down to tea, not in the
orthodox fashion in twos and threes about the room, but upon Bayre’s
advice, to an honest round table, they presently began to lose a
little of the stiffness which had characterised the proceedings at the
outset, and at last Jan Repton, suddenly plunging, as men do, from
acute shyness to confidence even more acute, turned to Mrs Bayre and
said,--
“Look here, Mrs Bayre, I don’t think it’s fair that I should be left
out of the general post. If Miss Eden takes Bayre, and Southerley
takes you, _I_ must have the baby!”
For one moment the consternation which followed this audacious and
awful speech was too deep for words. For, be it noted that Southerley
and Mrs Bayre had conducted themselves from the outset as strangers of
the deepest dye, and no one ignorant of recent events would have
thought it possible that there was any feeling in either of them of a
sentimental nature towards the other.
These terrible words, however, caused them to look up, to catch each
other’s eye, to look down, to laugh feebly, to “give themselves away”
in a manner which would have tortured a person of finer feelings than
Repton.
The artist, however, was conscious only of a pause, a ghastly silence,
and he went on, with the utmost cheerfulness,--
“Come, Bayre, come, Southerley, that’s fair, isn’t it?”
For one moment Southerley’s fresh-coloured face showed symptoms of
apoplexy. The next, an inspiration seized him.
“Mrs--er--Bayre,” he said solemnly, “let us discuss the proposition of
this frivolous person.”
And with that he rose, and with courage which he had never shown
before, and which he was never in his life to show again, he
deliberately left his chair at the other side of the table and took
one next to her. And she laughed prettily and fell in with his humour,
and affected to turn her back upon Repton and to devote herself to
serious discussion with him.
And that the discussion really did become serious may be supposed, for
during the rest of the evening these two were never very far apart.
Presently a sense of something having happened stole over the
assembly, and Repton found himself, with brilliant indiscretion,
discussing the secretly-arrived-at situation with the same
outspokenness as before.
“It now becomes a serious question,” he urged plaintively, “who is to
educate that child. We were three of us, and we managed as well as
could be expected. But now that there are five, the matter must be
reconsidered. Who is to have the charge of the heir of Creux?”
“I am,” said Mrs Bayre, lifting her chubby boy and pressing his round
cheek against hers.
“And I,” murmured Southerley, in a deep-voiced growl, “shall have the
charge of you.”
“It’s a great pity,” said Repton, whose devotion to the child was as
strong as it was new; “I’d have made an artist of him!”
“But the question is, you know,” said Bayre, “what he would have made
of you.”
And then they all laughed; it took very little to set them laughing on
that happy evening. And so the problem of the rule of three was solved
in the easiest possible manner, and perhaps Jan Repton was not the
least happy of the group.
“After all, there’s one’s art!” he remarked to the ladies, as he
showed them, with pride, one of his paintings. It was on a most
beautiful easel, one they could admire with a free conscience. But the
picture itself was one of the worst you ever saw!
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.
The Wycil & Co. edition (New York, 1903) was consulted for the changes
listed below.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ fisher-cap/fisher cap,
seabirds/sea-birds, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: quotation mark pairings and missing periods and commas.
[Chapter XII]
Change “_Barlett_ reddened, but said nothing” to _Bartlett_.
[Chapter XIII]
“Well, well, you may _congratulale_ yourself anyhow,” to
_congratulate_.
[End of text]