Bareheaded, Jeanne walked upon the yellow sands close to the softly
breaking waves. Inland stretched the marshes, with their patches of
vivid green, their clouds of faintly blue wild lavender, their sinuous
creeks stealing into the bosom of the land. She climbed on to a grassy
knoll, warm with the sun's heat, and threw herself down upon the turf.
She turned her back upon the Hall and looked steadily seawards, across
the waste of sands and pasture-land to where sky and sea met. Here at
least was peace. She drew a long breath of relief, cast aside the book
which she had never dreamed of reading, and lay full length in the
grass, with her eyes upturned to where a lark was singing his way down
from the blue sky.
Andrew came before long, speeding his way out of the village harbour in
his little catboat. She watched him cross the sandy bar of the inlet,
and run his boat presently upon the beach below where she sat. Then she
shook out her skirts and made room for him by her side.
"Really, Mr. Andrew," she said, resting her chin upon her hands, and
looking up at him with her full dark eyes, "you are becoming almost
gallant. Until now, when I have been weary, and have wished to talk to
you, I have had almost to come and fetch you. To-day it is you who come
to me. That is a good sign."
"It is true," he admitted. "I have kept my telescope fixed upon the
sands here for more than an hour. I wanted to see you."
"You have something to tell me about last night?" she asked gravely.
"No!" he answered, "I did not come here to talk about that."
"Did you know," she asked, "who your lodger really was?"
"Yes," he said, "I guessed! I will be frank with you, Miss Jeanne, if
you will allow me. I do not like your stepmother and I do not like
Major Forrest, but I think that the Duke is going altogether too far
when he suspects them of having anything to do with the disappearance
of his brother."
She drew a little sigh of relief.
"Oh! I am glad to hear you say that," she declared. "It is all so
horrible. I could not sleep last night for thinking about it."
"Lord Ronald will probably turn up in a day or two," Andrew said
gravely. "We will not talk any more about him."
She settled herself a little more comfortably, and smoothed out her
skirts. Then she looked up at him with faintly parted lips.
"What shall we talk about, Mr. Andrew?" she said softly.
"About ourselves," he answered, "or rather about you. It seems to me
that we both stand a little outside the game of life, as your friends
up there understand it."
He waved his large brown hand in the direction of the Hall.
"You are a child, fresh from boarding-school, too young to understand,
too young to know where to look for your friends, or discriminate
against your enemies. I am a rough sort of fellow, also, outside their
lives, from necessity, from every reason which the brain of man could
evolve. Sometimes we outsiders see more than is intended. Is the
Princess of Strurm really your stepmother?"
"Of course she is," Jeanne answered. "She was married to my father when
I was quite a little girl, and she has visited me at the convent where
I was at school, all my life, and when I left last year it was she who
came for me. Why do you ask so strange a question?"
"Because," he said, "I should consider her about the worst possible
guardian that a child like you could have. Tell me, what is it that
goes on all day up at the Hall there--or rather what was it that did go
on before Engleton went away?--eating and drinking, cards, and God
knows what sort of foolishness! Nothing else, nothing worth doing, not
a thing said worth listening to! It's a rotten life for a child like
you. They tell me you're an heiress. Are you?"
She smoothed her crumpled skirts, and looked steadily at the tip of her
brown shoe.
"One of the greatest in Europe," she answered. "No one knows how rich I
am. You see all the money was left to me when I was six years old, and
it is so strictly tied up that no one has had power to touch a single
penny until I am of age. That is why it has gone on increasing and
increasing."
"And when are you of age?" he asked.
"Next year," she answered.
"By that time, I imagine," Andrew continued, "your stepmother will have
sold you to some broken-down hanger-on of hers. Haven't you any other
relations, Miss Jeanne?"
She laughed softly.
"You are a ridiculous person," she said. "I am very fond of my
stepmother. I think that she is a very clever woman."
"Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "A clever woman she may be, but a good
woman, no! I am sure of that. You may judge a person by the company
they keep. Neither she or this man Forrest are fit associates for a
child of your age."
She laughed softly.
"They don't do me any harm," she said. "Mr. De la Borne and Lord Ronald
have asked me to marry them, of course, but then every young man does
that when he knows who I am. My stepmother has promised me at least
that I shall not be bothered by any of them just yet. I am going to be
presented next season, we are going to have a house in town, and I am
going to choose a husband of my own."
It was Andrew now who looked long and steadily out seawards. She
watched him covertly from under her heavily lidded eyes.
"Mr. Andrew," she said softly, "I wish very much--"
Then she stopped short, and he looked at her a little abruptly.
"What is it that you wish?" he asked.
"I wish that you did not wear such strange clothes and that you did not
talk the dialect of these fishermen, and that you had more money. Then
you too might come and see me, might you not, when we have that house
in London?"
He laughed boisterously.
"I fancy I see myself in London, paying calls," he declared. "Give me
my catboat and fishing line. I'd rather sail down the home creek, with
a northeast gale in my teeth, than walk down Piccadilly in patent
boots."
She sighed.
"I am afraid," she admitted, "that as a town acquaintance you are
hopeless."
"I am afraid so," he answered, looking steadily seawards. "We country
people have strong prejudices, you see. It seems to us that all the sin
and all the unhappiness and all the decadence and all the things that
mar the beauty of the world, come from the cities and from life in the
cities. No wonder that we want to keep away. It isn't that we think
ourselves better than the other folk. It is simply that we have
realized pleasures greater than we could find in paved streets and
under smoke-stained skies. We know what it is to smell the salt wind,
to hear it whistling in the cords and the sails of our boats, to feel
the warmth of the sun, to listen to the song of the birds, to watch the
colouring of God's land here. I suppose we have the thing in our
bloods; we can't leave it. We hear the call of the other things
sometimes, but as soon as we obey we are restless and unhappy. It is
only an affair of time, and generally a very short time. One cannot
fight against nature."
"No!" she answered softly. "One cannot fight against nature. But there
are children of the cities, children of the life artificial as well as
children of nature. Look at me!"
He turned toward her quickly.
"Look at me!" she commanded, and he obeyed.
He saw her pale skin, which the touch of the sun seemed to have no
power to burn or coarsen. The clear, wonderful eyes, the delicate
eyebrows, the masses of dark hair, the scarlet lips. He saw her white
throat swelling underneath her muslin blouse. The daintiness of her
gown, airy and simple, yet fresh from a Paris workshop. The stockings
and shoes, exquisite, but strangely out of place with their high heels
buried in the sand.
"How do I know," she demanded, "that I am not one of the children of
the cities, that I was not fashioned and made for the gas-lit life, to
eat unreal food at unreal hours, and feed my brain upon the unreal
epigrams of the men whom you would call decadents. Two days here, a
week--very well. In a month I might be bored. Who shall guarantee me
against it?"
"No one," he answered. "And yet there is something in your blood which
calls for the truth, which hates the shams, which knows real beauty.
Why don't you try and cultivate it? In your heart you know where the
true things lie. Consider! Every one with great wealth can make or mar
many lives. You enter the world almost as a divinity. Your wealth is
reckoned as a quality. What you do will be right. What you condemn will
be wrong. It is a very important thing for others as well as yourself,
that you should see a clear way through life."
A moment's intense dejection seized upon her. The tears stood in her
eyes as she looked away from him.
"Who is there to show it me?" she asked. "Who is there to help me find
it?"
"Not those friends whom you have left to play bridge in a room with
drawn curtains at this hour of the day," he answered. "Not your
stepmother, or any of her sort. Try and realize this. Even the weakest
of us is not dependent upon others for support. There is only one sure
guide. Trust yourself. Be faithful to the best part of yourself. You
know what is good and what is ugly. Don't be coerced, don't be led into
the morass."
She looked at him and laughed gaily. Her mood had changed once more
with chameleon-like swiftness.
"It is all very well for you," she declared. "You are six foot four,
and you look as though you could hew your way through life with a
cudgel. One could fancy you a Don Quixote amongst the shams, knocking
them over like ninepins, and moving aside neither to the right nor to
the left. But what is a poor weak girl to do? She wants some one, Mr.
Andrew, to wield the cudgel for her."
It was several seconds before he turned his head. Then he found that,
although her lips were laughing, her eyes were longing and serious. She
sprang suddenly to her feet and leaned towards him.
"This is the most delightful nonsense," she whispered. "Please!"
She was in his arms for a moment, her lips had clung to his. Then she
was away, flying along the sands at a pace which seemed to him
miraculous, swinging her hat in her hands, and humming the maddening
refrain of some French song, which it seemed to him was always upon her
lips, and which had haunted him for days. He hesitated, uncertain
whether to follow, ashamed of himself, ashamed of the passion which was
burning in his blood. And while he hesitated she passed out of sight,
turning only once to wave her hand as she crossed the line of
grass-grown hillocks which shut him out from her view.