CAVENDISH SQUARE ONCE MORE
(1)
For the second time that day Baptiste was distractedly polishing
his silver. About every six minutes a tear rolled off his sharp
nose on to salver or tankard and had to be wiped off, and the
dull patch rubbed up again. Lal Khan, putting Mr. Elphinstone's
bedroom to rights with long, dusky fingers, stared mournfully at
a miniature propped on the dressing-table, and shook his head. And
still further upstairs Mrs. Elspeth Saunders was mending stockings;
her nose was red, so too her eyes. In the kitchen the cook and
the rest of the domestics were discussing the situation, as they
had almost unceasingly discussed it for the last few days since
Elspeth's return. Her own account of what had happened they had
long ago threshed bare: had thrilled to hear how, when she reached
Rose Cottage at seven o'clock that fateful morning, as arranged,
she had been met by one of the old ladies with the horrifying news
that their guest had evidently spirited Anne-Hilarion away in the
night; how, almost beside herself at this intelligence, she had
suffered them to hustle her into a postchaise on a totally false
scent, which caused her to traverse many miles of the county of
Kent until, half-crazed and wholly destitute of money, she returned
at last in sheer desperation to London, there to hear that La
Vireville had already started to France in pursuit of the child.
The opinion of the region was divided, some of its inmates inclining
to blame Mrs. Saunders, some to commiserate. And it was either
the consciousness of unjust condemnation or of her own innate
superiority which kept Elspeth so much alone in the big house
over which hung that piercing sense of something gone that would
never, perhaps, come back again. . . .
"'Twas but a few days syne A was tellin' a piece to the bairn in
his bed!" Elspeth rapped her thimble suddenly against her teeth,
flung down her mending, and marched downstairs. At the library
door she knocked, and, receiving no answer, looked in. The room
was empty and the fire burnt low. Muttering to herself anent the
negligence of "yon black heathen," she made it up. There was a
book open on the table, but no signs that Mr. Elphinstone had been
occupied, as of custom, with his memoirs. Elspeth left the library
and went to the pantry.
"Where is the maister, d'ye ken?" she asked of the polisher.
"I tink he go again to the ministère, I do not know," responded
Baptiste, sighing.
"Tae the meenister!" retorted Elspeth. "What wad be the sense in
that noo? Gif prayin' could bring the wean back, A reckon he'd
been here these mony days!" (Had not she herself, descendant of
the Covenanters, taken the incredible step of removing Our Lady
of Pontmain from the back of the drawer where, immediately upon
the Marquis's departure, she had been stowed away, and putting
her in the very centre of the mantelpiece in the lost child's
room--a deed for which she nightly besought forgiveness?)
"That is ver' true," agreed the Frenchman, "but it is not that
which I mean, Madame Saundair. I mean he go to the--how do you
call it?--there where are the State Secretaries."
"Why for canna ye say what ye mean, then?" snapped the lady. "That
mebbe will dae gude. At least they arena French there. A've had
eno' o' yer Frenchies tae last ma life!"
Baptiste withered.
"Those . . . those weemen at Canterbury!" proceeded Elspeth. "And
then--what d'ye call him, the Chevaleer . . . what gar'd Glenauchtie
send _him_ after the bairn instead o' an Englishman? Him that
jockeyed the wean oot o' his bed at nicht! Belike 'tis he's spirited
him awa the noo!"
Baptiste made no effort to defend his compatriot. He had long ago
realised that to live in peace with Mrs. Saunders required a policy
of thoroughgoing self-effacement, and had decided that on the whole
it was worth it. Otherwise he might have retorted that she, pure of
any Gallic strain though she was, had not proved singularly successful
in her guardianship. Instead, he feebly used his wash-leather on a
ladle.
"There's ane gude thing," resumed Elspeth, "that the Marquis doesna
ken yet awhile."
"But when he return!" exclaimed the old man, lifting eyes and
hands to heaven.
He was still in this attitude when there came a rousing rat-tat
at the hall-door.
"Mebbe that's the Marquis the noo!" ejaculated Mrs. Saunders. And,
though it was not her place to do so, she flung off her apron and
rushed to answer it.
(2)
Lieutenant Francis Tollemache, therefore, standing on the steps,
received one of the most painful shocks of his life when a gaunt
Scottish female, darting forth, caught his small companion from
the ground and almost stifled him with kisses, and then showed a
decided disposition to cast herself on his breast also. He prepared
to defend himself, backing hurriedly to the limits of the portico,
and saying disjointedly, "My good woman, my good woman . . ." And
then in a moment there was some old man actually trying to kiss
his hand, and from the back of the hall there was even advancing
a salaaming native in a turban, while more and more female servants
came flocking towards the doorstep. It was intolerable! In a minute
or two there would be a crowd outside, and already Mr. Tollemache
was conscious of the enraptured gaze of the hackney coachman who
had brought them there.
"Good God!" he exclaimed, very red. "For Heaven's sake let's get
inside!" But even within the hall the whirl of greetings and emotion
continued, and Anne-Hilarion kept disappearing from view in successive
avalanches of embraces, till at last his voice was upraised, asking,
"Grandpapa! Where is Grandpapa? Has Papa come back?"
"Yes, where is the master of the house?" demanded Mr. Tollemache,
with some indignation, and was most unseasonably answered in French
by the old man. Meanwhile, one of the younger domestics in the
background was threatened with a fit of hysterics, and had to be
removed. During this episode Anne skipped about the hall, and ran
into the library and the dining-room in turn. "Oh, I wish Grandpapa
were in! When will he be back?" he queried, and mixed with his
inquiries the unfortunate young officer heard the remark, "There,
you see, it's no foreigner as has brought him back,"--to which the
cook, who had an affinity on the lower deck of H.M.S. _Thunderer_,
responded with pride, "No, it's a Navy gentleman!"
"Anne," said Mr. Tollemache firmly, holding out his hand, "I must
be going. Good-bye!"
The Comte de Flavigny came at once and caught him by the cuff of
his uniform. "No, no, M. le lieutenant! No, I do not want you to
go! Come into the bibliothèque and wait for Grandpapa!" he said,
with a little tug, and the domestic crowd, waking all at once to
a sense of their forgotten duties, concurred in this request, which,
to tell the truth, accorded very well with Mr. Tollemache's most
secret wish. It was not that he at all desired to receive the
thanks of Mr. Elphinstone, but--though he would have died on the
scaffold rather than admit it--he hankered for just a few minutes
more of Anne's society before the final good-bye.
"If you would come into Mr. Elphinstone's study, sir?" suggested
Elspeth respectfully, as he hesitated. Since she now evinced no
desire to embrace him, he was about to accede to her request when
there was a knock at the front door, which opened to admit the
grinning and curious face of the hackney coachman, demanding to
know if he was to wait any longer.
So it was not Anne only who was overjoyed when Mr. Elphinstone
walked suddenly in.
* * * * *
Late that evening--much later than he ought to have been
up--Anne-Hilarion still sat contentedly though sleepily enfolded in
his grandfather's arms. He had ceased to ask questions, for they
had all been satisfactorily answered . . . all except that "Did
you miss me, Grandpapa?" to which Grandpapa had seemed incapable
of replying. So his last remark was a statement.
"I had to leave my goldfish behind with those ladies." For he had
satisfied himself that Elspeth had not brought it back with her
after all.
"Don't speak of those women!" said the gentle old man fiercely.
"As for your goldfish, child, you shall have a whole aquarium
if you wish."
"Then I could put my big shell inside," murmured Anne drowsily.
"M. le Chevalier said it came from . . . came from. . . ." He ceased
suddenly; he was asleep.
Conscience-stricken at last, Mr. Elphinstone rang the bell for
Elspeth, and was left by the fire to reflect on the inexhaustible
mercy of Heaven, and on the debt that he owed to a man away in
Jersey, whom he scarcely knew, whom he could not even thank--a
debt that in any case, so far as he could see, must ever go unpaid,
for it was unpayable.