Helen went home with slow steps and a heavy heart.
A heavy heart, indeed; it had beaten wildly enough within the last
hour--now it lay in her breast like a lump of lead. This morning, though
there was nothing happy in her position--though she knew that some great
cloud of misery and doubt hung between them and everything they had
hitherto known, and that even the tranquillity of the moment, such as it
was, might be interrupted in a second, in the twinkling of an eye,--yet
the triumphant light-heartedness of youth had been able to triumph over
all these things. And there had been so warm an atmosphere of life
about them, so much interchange of feeling, keen sympathy, and the
profound happiness of making others happy, that very little sense of
being there as a stranger had remained in Helen’s mind. They were not
strangers--they were more at home in Latour than they had ever been in
Fareham. Here everybody knew them, everybody had a friendly word for
them; more than that, the English family, with its careless, liberal
ways, had now secured the affection of the village. She herself had
never known before what it was to have friends like Cécile and Thérèse,
or to be interested with such familiar kindness in any poor girl as she
had been in the fortunes of little Blanchette. At Fareham the love of
the village publican’s son with the retired tradesman’s daughter would
have been nothing to the great young lady, secluded among her woods and
parks. But here they were more interesting, and concerned her more than
any romance. She had a share in the lives of so many people, and her own
life was full of tranquil occupations, of sympathies, of friendships;
every cottage round about contained something or somebody that
interested her. But what of that? They must all be left behind, as all
her other habits of living, all her previous existence had been. She
would have to give up those first personal friends, not knowing if she
should ever see them more, not hoping to do so--and go away from the
homely little life which had given her her first lively sense of
individual existence--for what? to go where? Helen could not tell. The
world was all dark beyond this one clear spot in which the afternoon sun
had just sunk behind the cottage roofs, and the whole sky overhead was
red with gorgeous reflection. To-morrow, the fine spring morning which
these ruddy lights prophesied, would rise serenely over the same roofs,
and Margot would light her fire, and little Blanchette, out of her
dreams, would awake joyfully to recollect that her troubles were all
over. But where would Helen be? She did not know, but surely away from
Latour, away from everything she knew, out into the world, which always
figured itself before her as darkness--the gloom of night, the clanging
of a great train, pursuing its noisy precipitate way through an unseen
country, to the unknown out of the known. She stood for a moment at the
door, looking wistfully round her at the familiar scene. The houses with
their thatched roofs rose dark against the great glow of redness in the
west. In the distance the homely spire of the church rose up protecting
over them; voices were in the air, all cheerful, confused, half heard,
with now and then one distincter note striking in, as by turns one
figure would start up and separate itself from the little company still
lingering in front of the Lion d’Or.
Somewhere near a woman was singing a baby to sleep, in a sweet drowsy
voice, broken by the rock of her chair upon the wooden floor. On the
other hand a group of little truants, pattering in their _sabots_, were
being pursued homewards to bed by the half-laughing, half-angry mother.
Helen looked round her with wistful eyes, casting a last glance along
the road which led to the _château_, the most dear of all. Along this
road Antoine was sauntering slowly, his hands in his pockets, looking
back as he went, with his eyes always fixed on M. Goudron’s house. His
was the only non-sympathetic figure in all the scene. It broke the
spell. Helen turned from him and breathed her farewell to the village in
one long sigh.
The prattle of Janey was the first thing she heard when she went in. The
child was seated on her father’s knee. She had been telling him a story
about Margot’s children, with whom she had been playing.
“Petit-Jean does not know what a big city is, papa; he thinks Paris is
like Laroche” (Laroche was the next village, and had a street twice as
long as that of Latour, and was looked upon as almost a _chef-lieu_).
“He said, was England like the little island in the pond at the
_château_? Margot’s little children they are very ignorant, they don’t
know anything, papa.”
“And my little Janey knows a great deal?” he said laughing, yet with a
thrill of another sentiment in his voice; “but everybody, my pet, has
not travelled like you.”
“No,” said Janey, complacently. “Only think, I came from India when I
was a little tiny baby--if I could only recollect I should know India
too, and then London, and then that place on the sea where we bought our
things, and then Sainte-Barbe, and then---- Papa, after all this, when
are we doing home?”
“Should you like to do home, Janey?” This time the laugh was so broken
that it was more like a sob.
“Oh yes, papa. I should like to have my big doll Marianna, that I put in
my bed when we came away. Will she always be in my little bed all this
time, staring with her big eyes? I forgot to shut her eyes when I put
her in. Fancy a little girl lying for years and years with open eyes!”
“It is not years and years, Janey.”
“Yes, papa, it is longer, longer than any one can remember--far longer
than _that_,” cried the child, stretching her arms to the widest. “I
want to do home.”
“Here is Helen coming to put you to bed,” he said. She was in his arms
as she sat there, but he strained her closer, kissing her little
upturned face again and again. “My little Janey, my little darling,” he
said, “wherever you are you will not forget your poor father, who was so
fond of you?”
She did not take much notice of this address, being used, more or less,
to speeches of the sort, but slid down from his knee. Helen had to
postpone her explanation till the ceremony of putting the child to bed
was over. Should she be obliged to wake her up again in the dark as had
been done before? And how would it be possible here, thirty miles from
the railway, to fly as they had done from Fareham? Janey chattered
while Helen went over all those miserable calculations. It was almost
dark when she went back to the room in which her father sat alone.
“Have you not gone, Helen? I thought I heard the Précepteur asking for
you at the door.”
“I am not going, papa.” She came and sat down by him in the dark, which
hid her countenance from him. She laid her hand softly upon his. “Papa,
they have come.”
“How you startle me, Helen!” he cried querulously. “Oh, I remember: the
English visitors. Well! I hope you were discreet and did as I said?”
“You were right,” she said, “and I was wrong. I thought it so unlikely;
but don’t they say here that it is the unlikely things that happen?
Papa, one of them is Charley Ashton, whom we met at Sainte-Barbe.”
“Good Lord!” he cried, starting from his chair; then after a pause
reseated himself. “I will keep out of the way,” he said. “I regretted
afterwards that I left Sainte-Barbe when I did. Charley Ashton is not
the sort of fellow to betray any one: and I think,” he said with a half
laugh, “that he was very, very much struck with you. I should not wonder
if that was why he has come back to this neighbourhood--although
Sainte-Barbe is a good way from here.”
These words scarcely conveyed any meaning to Helen’s ear. All she made
out was that her father was not so much alarmed, not so thoroughly
roused to think of his own welfare as he ought to be.
“Papa, he got out of the carriage to talk to me. He spoke of you; he
said I was to warn you, and that this would be enough: I was to tell you
his cousin is with him, Sir John Harvey----”
“My God!” cried Mr Goulburn. This time he got up, pale as ashes, but
soon fell back, not out of carelessness but weakness. His hands resting
upon the table shook it with their trembling. He dropped back again into
his chair, his under lip falling, his face like that of a dead man.
“He has been a sufferer, and he is very bitter. If he gets any suspicion
he will not be silenced. This is what Mr Ashton said. I don’t know what
it means, papa,” said Helen, with a quiver of her lip, “nor why any man
who comes here, any man! should make you run away as if you were a
criminal----”
“It is because I am a criminal, Helen.”
“Papa!”
“No, no,” he said, trying to smile, “not that. God knows I never meant
any harm; but I was led on from one thing to another, and nobody can
understand another man’s temptations. I went farther than I should have
done. Some people--that could not afford it--were brought into trouble
through me; that is all, Helen. I owe a great deal of money, as I told
you. This Sir John is one of the people. It is nothing but money, money.
If I had killed their fathers and mothers, they would not have felt it
half so much. It is money, as I tell you--nothing but money. And now I
must get up and go away from here. Ill, and getting old, and tired,
tired to death----”
He put down his head into his hands, which trembled; his whole stooping
figure shook. He was certainly thinner, weaker, and far older in
appearance than when they came to Latour. Helen sat beside him, looking
at him with a wretched half-sympathy. Perhaps, up to this moment, it had
been herself she had been thinking of most, herself who had done no
harm, who did not even know why it was that she was to be driven from
the new roof where she had found refuge. Now her mind turned, but with a
languid misery, to realise what her father was feeling. He was himself
the cause of his own sufferings. But did that make them easier to bear?
“Poor papa!” she said, involuntarily touching with her hand his
trembling arm. Yes, he was ill, and getting old, and how natural if he
were tired, tired to death! All Helen’s present trouble fell into a sort
of dull and aching pity for him, who was the cause of it. She sat for a
little while in dead silence; and then she said, “What are we to do?”
It was some time before he made her any reply; he was panting for
breath; there was a hectic colour on his cheeks like fever. “If you had
but stayed in the house!” he said. “What did you want with these people
at the _château_? They were strangers--and you should avoid strangers.
It will always be like this wherever we go. You will make friends, and
then you will wonder that it is so much harder to go away. What right
have we to make friends? we cannot get any good out of them. We who must
be like this, without any place to rest the sole of our feet, till
we”--he paused a moment--“till I die.”
A faint dolorous wonder had crossed the mind of Helen. She would not
leave him, nothing would make her leave him, lonely as he was. But that
momentary pause, and the substitution of I for we, touched his
daughter’s heart. She put her hand again softly on his arm.
“Papa, we could not go away by night, all this long, dreadful way--and
Janey. If we were to go early, early in the morning, would that not do?
It is not so cold now, and the diligence goes so early. That would be
best, not to attract any attention; or if we could leave her with Margot
till we got settled----”
“Leave--my child!--do you want me to leave my child?” he cried, as if
she had suggested something cruel--“till we get settled?” and he
laughed. “The only use of that would be to give them a clue to trace us
by. We could not live without news of her, and letters are destruction.
Do you think we could have been quiet here so long, so quiet, if there
had been letters coming after us? No; we must go altogether when we go.
But suppose that I were to keep out of the way,” he said in a half
entreating tone; “suppose that I kept my room; suppose--I don’t know
what is the matter with me--I have lost my courage. This man cannot stay
very long with the Vieux-bois, Helen. Don’t you think if I were to shut
myself up, to see no one? You could say I was ill----”
“He is going to marry Cécile; they will talk of us, they will describe
you, and there will be Mr Ashton, who knows us. It might be right--I
mean not very wrong, for me; but he, why should he tell lies for us?”
said Helen, mournfully.
Her father recovered himself as by a miracle. He sat up in his chair,
and his nervous trembling ceased. He even laughed. “I will manage
Charley Ashton,” he said.
Shortly after he was summoned to see Antoine, who had come with the
notary to receive the money which had been agreed upon as the price of
his services as Baptiste’s _remplaçant_. Mr Goulburn got up quite
revived and restored, and went to his own room, where the two men
awaited him. It was his bedroom, but also his sitting-room; the small
business he had occupied himself with, since his arrival in Latour,
having been all performed there. In a large old bureau, which stood
between the window and the fireplace, were all his papers, his writing
materials, the few books he had picked up. In a drawer of this bureau he
kept his money. Probably there were none of the secondary vexations of
his ruined life which affected him so much as the necessity of keeping
his money in a drawer, and counting it out to every claimant; but the
sums that were necessary for their living were so small that as yet he
had not been much disturbed by it. This was the first occasion on which
he had taken any serious sum from the stores with which he had provided
himself. The notary sat at the table. Antoine, striding across a chair,
placed himself in front of the window, between his companion and Mr
Goulburn. He watched every movement of the Englishman, who took no heed
of his dark looks. “This is one of the worst of your French customs,” he
said pettishly. “In England I should have given him a cheque on my
bankers without any trouble.” It was not in English flesh and blood not
to say this, though, even as he said it, Mr Goulburn remembered, with a
bitter pang, what so often he managed to forget, that no English banker
would honour a cheque of his, or pay any regard save that of hostile
curiosity to his dishonoured name.
“Monsieur, it will be long before a peasant will trust to your cheques;
it is not always even that they care for bank-notes. Gold, hard gold,
that is what they like best; but Antoine has education, and is very well
content with the bank-notes.”
“Perfectly content,” said Antoine. He had his eyes fixed upon the
movements of _l’Anglais_. Mr Goulburn took out one thing after another
from the drawer. First, the morocco letter-case which he had sent Helen
to fetch on the night of the flight from Fareham, then a pocketbook
bursting with papers; then, finally, the thing he was looking for, his
chequebook, which he took out with a sigh.
“In England I should fill up one of these forms, and all would be done,”
he said, showing it.
Antoine bent curiously forward to look. “Is it money?” he said, with
some eagerness, yet suspicion; a book of bank-notes! It seemed not at
all unnatural to Antoine that an Englishman should travel with such an
article at hand.
“Not till monsieur puts his signature,” said the smiling notary. “Look!
it is a _livre à souches_. Here is the counterfoil on which monsieur
marks the cipher. It is very ingenious; but in the country in France
there is nothing we trust in like _des bons gros sous_. We like to hear
the money tinkle, _n’est-ce pas_, Antoine? Not that I say anything
against a bank-note, and an English bank-note, monsieur; that is well
known to be unimpeachable all over the world.”
“Do not be afraid,” said Mr Goulburn, putting back the cheque-book and
the morocco case, and opening the pocket-book--“these are notes of the
Bank of France.” Antoine looked at it, devouring it from under his heavy
eyebrows. What countless sums might there not be in that drawer! First,
the leather case, no doubt full of _valeurs_ of one kind or another;
then the book of English money, half as thick as a _paroissien_; then
the bursting pocket-book full of French notes. There is no end to the
wealth of those other English; and to think that all should lie almost
within reach of a man’s hand, in a drawer against Père Goudron’s outer
wall!
Mr Goulburn took out the notes one by one, three notes for five hundred
francs each--a fortune! but nothing to the riches that remained. He took
them out from a sheaf of others carelessly, closing the pocket-book
again and laying it down quite at his ease, not at all excited by the
possession of so much money, almost within reach of the dangerous eyes
that were watching him.
“Here is your money, my _brave homme_,” he said. “M. le Notaire tells me
all the formalities have been gone through. Do not put it away in a
drawer, as I have to do, but invest it, Antoine, invest it; put it
somewhere where it will bring you in good interest. That is what we call
a very pretty little nest-egg in England. If you manage it well, if you
take care of it, there is no telling to what it may grow.”
“Monsieur gives you very excellent advice,” said the notary. “I hope you
will take it, Antoine. There are a few little things against you, as
indeed there are against most young men, but I hope you will clear them
all off, and come back to the village when your service is done with
your _livret_ in the best possible order. You have helped to give peace
and comfort to one house, and that should be a pleasant thing to think
of.”
Antoine received all these good wishes and good counsels with an air of
preoccupation. Fifteen hundred francs! it was a fortune. Still, what it
was was nothing to what was in the pocket-book which lay so carelessly
on the bureau. A thirst, a hunger got into his mind. Was it his fault?
was it not rather that of the Englishman with his careless ways? Never,
never, in all his life, had he seen what he believed to be so much money
before. Instinctively his eyes glanced round under cover of his dark
brows. There was the window on one side, a window which gave upon the
street, within reach of a man of Antoine’s height; and on the other the
door. The bed was at the other side of the room. A clever person might
get through a great deal of work without even awaking the sleeper,
without doing any more harm.
Helen went out to the door an hour or two later, when her father--who
complained of fatigue and agitation, and was querulous and peevish with
her, as if the visit of the English strangers was her fault--had gone to
bed. It was still not very late. Everything was in full activity at the
Lion d’Or, and the sound of the voices, and now and then a scrap of
song, still sounded into the quiet air of the night, softened by the
distance and by the milder atmosphere, humid and soft, which had
succeeded the long frosts. It made the girl’s heart beat to see some one
standing waiting for her in the shadow of the house. The moon was
shining behind, and all in front of Père Goudron’s was in the blackest
shadow. Helen had never had a lover. It was not of that she thought now,
as she opened the door cautiously; but yet there was something in this
meeting which made her heart beat strangely. Young Ashton came close to
the door.
“I have told them I always walk at night; they think everything possible
to the eccentricity of an Englishman,” he said with a half smile, “so
that I am at your disposal whatever you may be going to do.”
“We are to do nothing,” she said. “He will keep his room; he will say he
is ill. Indeed he is not well, Mr Ashton; something is the matter with
him, I cannot tell what. He is nervous, he is not himself; he says he
has no courage to go away. Perhaps you will not stay long at the
_château_?”
“You wish us to be gone?” he said, with a tone of vexation.
“Can I help it?” said Helen. “Do you think I shall have a moment’s rest
till you are gone?--or after?” she added mournfully; “for how can I tell
who may come next?--some one not so kind as you.”
“That is what I think,” he said anxiously; “you will never feel safe. If
it were I that was the danger, whatever it might cost me, I would go;
but it is not I. It is John, and he has come to see his future wife. One
cannot expect him to go, do you think? I am not in his case.”
He said this with much marked meaning, and looked at Helen so closely,
that she could not but remark it, and wonder, with a nervous tremour,
what did he mean?
“Miss Goulburn,” he said, “this is not the time to talk of such things,
is it? I am going back to India soon; and I want to marry. I know it
sounds brutal what I am saying. If you will marry me, it would be one
way of settling all this. We could see him placed comfortably somewhere
out of the way, in Spain perhaps, and you would not need to go home to
be troubled by what is said. It is wicked that you should be dragged
about, you so innocent as you are, flying from one place to another. I
cannot bear to think of it. Even your name---- Will you take mine,
Helen? If you would do it, I cannot tell you how happy it would make
me. I never had any hope; but this has always been in my mind since that
school-feast when you were only a little girl.”
Helen did not remember anything about the school-feast. She was
perplexed by this reference to it which clouded over the sharp
distinctness of the proposal which preceded it. And when he paused she
could not speak, she was struck dumb, half by the sudden business-like
character of the proposal, and half by the wonder of it. She had never
thought (had she? she was not so sure after the first moment) of
anything of the sort. She stood bewildered, and gazed blankly at him in
the blackness of the night.
“I have been too hasty, and frightened you. I knew I should; but how can
I help it? There is no time to lose. Tell me only one thing: you are not
going to marry any one else?”
“Oh no, no,” said Helen; then she added simply, “No one has ever asked
me before.”
He came a little closer and took her hand. “I thought you must have seen
at Sainte-Barbe,” he said. “I was half out of my mind with joy to see
you, and next day miserable when I found you had gone. Helen, if you
think you could like me, there will be plenty, plenty of love on my
side. And think what a motive I should have to take care of your father.
We could settle him somewhere--you and I together--where he would be
safe, quite safe. And after a while they will give up thinking about
him. It would be for his advantage,” said the young man earnestly. “Give
me a little hope, and I will keep John off--he shall never suspect. No,”
cried Charley, vehemently, “I will not make any condition. I will keep
John off, anyhow; you may calculate upon me. I will be your watchman to
keep danger away, whether you give me hope or not.”
“Mr Ashton,” said Helen, “you are very, very kind. How can I give you
what I have not got? Hope! I have not any. Before you came I felt as if
I must give up, and let things happen as they would.”
“But you don’t feel that now?” he said eagerly; “you think it is worth
while to try again, to fight your best, however hard it may be, not to
give in? That is what you feel now?”
“Yes; it is you that have given me hope; not that I can give it you.”
“Don’t you see it is the same thing?” he cried. “It is because we are
two of us--not one poor individual standing alone, but two to do
everything together: that makes all the difference in the world.”
Helen did not speak, but she felt it, she could not tell why. Yes, there
was a difference. The burden was lighter; there was a change in the air;
the road did not seem to lead away entirely into the darkness as it had
done an hour before. Two of them!--was that the reason of the change?
“Helen! that would be all, almost all, I wanted--if you feel so too.”
She did not make any direct reply; but she said, “I could not go to
India, and leave him. It would not be possible to leave him. If he were
well, if he were safe--but how could I leave him now?”
“He would wish it,” said young Ashton very decidedly, “if he knew. He is
not a bad man, Helen.” (He paused here, and made a little mental
reservation with natural severity.) “He does not want to make you
wretched, dragging you after him. He would wish it if he knew.”
There was another pause, and then Helen abandoned this subject
altogether, and said, with a little quiver in her voice which--was it
possible?--sounded half like laughter, “You were--perhaps: they thought
it possible--to have been the _futur_ of Thérèse?”
“Folly!” he cried. “John thought it would answer; as if any Englishman
would make such a bargain: the woods to look after, and a very pretty
young lady! What would he have said, I wonder, if he had been brought in
cold blood to Cécile? But he did not know my heart was full of some one
else; that is his only excuse.”
At this moment a bell tinkled inside, and Helen started; he was standing
very near to her now, close up in the shadow of the doorway, two that
looked like one. And she did not make any objection. But now she
disengaged herself softly.
“It is papa who wants me,” she said.
“Then it is a bargain, dear. I will be on the watch; I will keep off
John. I will come and see what you think to-morrow night.”
“Good night,” she whispered. It sounded like an echo of the last word he
had said.
Mr Goulburn had raised himself half out of his bed, his eyes were
feverish and shining. “Who was that?” he said. “You were talking to some
one at the door.”
Helen stood with a candle in her hand, which threw a vivid light upon
her face, bringing out its soft brilliancy of tint, the blush that hung
over it like a faint rose-shadow, the dewy dazzlement of agitation in
the eyes amid the surrounding darkness. She said very softly, with a
little catch of her breath, “It was Mr Ashton, papa.”
Mr Goulburn lay back upon his pillows with a relieved face; he laughed.
“That is all right,” he said--“now I shall sleep in peace. I have two
guardians instead of one.”
“Papa thinks so _too_,” Helen said to herself, as she went into the room
where Janey was sleeping. It had all been very sudden, and she did not
understand it; but there was a wonderful difference. “It is because
there are two of us--not one standing alone.” Were there ever words that
meant so much? And papa thought so _too_.