MISS FFRENCH RETURNS.
They took the girl home with them, and three days later the Ffrenchs
returned. They came entirely unheralded, and it was Janey who brought
the news of their arrival to the Works.
"They've coom," she said, in passing Murdoch on her way to her father.
"Mester Ffrench an' _her_. They rode through th' town this mornin' i' a
kerridge. Nobody knowed about it till they seed 'em."
The news was the principal topic of conversation through the day, and
the comments made were numerous and varied. The most general opinions
were that Ffrench was in a "tight place," or had "getten some crank i'
hond."
"He's noan fond enow o' th' place to ha' coom back fur nowt," said
Floxham. "He's a bit harder up than common, that's it."
In the course of the morning Haworth came in. Murdoch was struck with
his unsettled and restless air; he came in awkwardly, and looking as if
he had something to say, but though he loitered about some time, he did
not say it.
"Come up to the house to-night," he broke out at last. "I want company."
It occurred to Murdoch that he wished to say more, but, after lingering
for a few minutes, he went away. As he crossed the threshold, however,
he paused uneasily.
"I say," he said, "Ffrench has come back."
"So I heard," Murdoch answered.
When he presented himself at the house in the evening, Haworth was alone
as usual. Wines were on the table, and he seemed to have drunk deeply.
He was flushed, and showed still the touch of uneasiness and excitement
he had betrayed in the morning.
"I'm glad you've come," he said. "I'm out of sorts--or something."
He ended with a short laugh, and turned about to pour out a glass of
wine. In doing so his hand trembled so that a few drops fell upon it. He
shook them off angrily.
"What's up with me?" he said.
He drained the glass at a draught, and filled it again.
"I saw Ffrench to-day," he said. "I saw them both."
"Both!" repeated Murdoch, wondering at him.
"Yes. She is with him."
"She!" and then remembering the episode of the handkerchief, he added,
rather slowly, "You mean Miss Ffrench?"
Haworth nodded.
He was pushing his glass to and fro with shaking hands, his voice was
hoarse and uncertain.
"I passed the carriage on the road," he said, "and Ffrench stopped it to
speak to me. He's not much altered. I never saw her before. She's a
woman now--and a handsome woman, by George!"
The last words broke from him as if he could not control them. He looked
up at Murdoch, and as their eyes met he seemed to let himself loose.
"I may as well make a clean breast of it," he said. "I'm--I'm hard hit.
I'm hard hit."
Murdoch flinched. He would rather not have heard the rest. He had had
emotion enough during the last few days, and this was of a kind so novel
that he was overwhelmed by it. But Haworth went on.
"It's a queer thing," he said. "I can't quite make it out. I--I feel as
if I must talk--about it--and yet there's naught to say. I've seen a
woman that's--that's taken hold on me."
He passed his hands across his lips, which were parched and stiff.
"You know the kind of a fellow I've been," he said. "I've known women
enough, and too many; but there's never been one like this. There's
always been plenty like the rest. I sat and stared at this one like a
blockhead. She set me trembling. It came over me all at once. I don't
know what Ffrench thought. I said to myself, 'Here's the first woman
that ever held me back.' She's one of your high kind, that's hard to get
nigh. She's got a way to set a man mad. She'll be hard to get at, by
George!"
Murdoch felt his pulse start. The man's emotion had communicated itself
to him, so far at least.
"I don't know much of women," he said. "I've not been thrown among them;
I----"
"No," said Haworth roughly, "they're not in your line, lad. If they
were, happen I shouldn't be so ready to speak out."
Then he began and told his story more minutely, relating how, as he
drove to the Works, he had met the carriage, and Ffrench had caught
sight of him and ordered the servant to stop; how he had presented his
daughter, and spoken as if she had heard of him often before; how she
had smiled a little, but had said nothing.
"She's got a way which makes a man feel as if she was keeping something
back, and sets him to wondering what it is. She's not likely to be
forgot soon; she gives a chap something to think over."
He talked fast and heatedly, and sometimes seemed to lose himself. Now
and then he stopped, and sat brooding a moment in silence, and then
roused himself with a start, and drank more wine and grew more flushed
and excited. After one of these fitful reveries, he broke out afresh.
"I--wonder what folk'll say to her of me. They wont give me an over good
name, I'll warrant. What a fool I've been! What a d---- fool I've been
all my life! Let them say what they like. They'll make me black enough;
but there is plenty would like to stand in Jem Haworth's shoes. I've
never been beat yet. I've stood up and held my own,--and women _like_
that. And as to th' name," with rough banter, "it's not chaps like you
they fancy, after all."
"As to that," said Murdoch coldly, "I've told you I know nothing of
women."
He felt restive without knowing why. He was glad when he could free
himself and get out into the fresh night air; it seemed all the fresher
after the atmosphere he had breathed in-doors.
The night was bright and mild. After cold, un-springlike weather had
come an ephemeral balminess. The moon was at full, and he stepped across
the threshold into a light as clear as day.
He walked rapidly, scarcely noting the road he passed over until he had
reached the house which stood alone among its trees,--the house Haworth
had pointed out a few months before. It was lighted now, and its lights
attracted his attention.
"It's a brighter-looking place than it was then," he said.
He never afterward could exactly recall how it was that at this moment
he started, turned, and for a breath's space came to a full stop.
He had passed out of the shadow of the high boundary wall into the broad
moonlight which flooded the gate-way. The iron gates were open, and a
white figure stood in the light--the figure of a tall young woman who
did not move.
He was so near that her dress almost touched him. In another moment he
was hurrying along the road again, not having spoken, and scarcely
understanding the momentary shock he had received.
"That," he said to himself,--"that was she!"
When he reached home and opened the door of the little parlor, Christian
Murdoch was sitting alone by the dying fire in the grate. She turned and
looked at him.
"Something," she said, "has happened to you. What is it?"
"I don't know," he answered, "that anything has happened to me--anything
of importance."
She turned to the fire again and sat gazing at it, rubbing the back of
one hand slowly with the palm of the other, as it lay on her knee.
"Something has happened to _me_," she said. "To-day I have seen some one
I know."
"Some one you know?" he echoed. "Here?"
She nodded her head.
"Some one I know," she repeated, "though I do not know her name. I
should like to know it."
"_Her_ name," he said. "Then it is a woman?"
"Yes, a woman--a young woman. I saw her abroad--four--five times."
She began to check off the number of times on her fingers.
"In Florence once," she said. "In Munich twice; in Paris--yes, in Paris
twice again."
"When and how?" he asked.
As he spoke, he thought of the unruffled serenity of the face he had
just seen.
"Years ago, the first time," she answered, without the least change of
tone, "in a church in Florence. I went in because I was wet and cold and
hungry, and it was light and warm there. I was a little thing, and left
to ramble in the streets. I liked the streets better than my mother's
room. I was standing in the church, looking at the people and trying to
feel warm, when a girl came in with a servant. She was handsome and well
dressed, and looked almost like a woman. When she saw me, she laughed. I
was such a little thing, and so draggled and forlorn. That was why she
laughed. The next year I saw her again, at Munich. Her room was across
the street and opposite mine, and she sat at the window, amusing herself
by playing with her dog and staring at me. She had forgotten me, but I
had not forgotten her; and she laughed at me again. In Paris it was the
same thing. Our windows were opposite each other again. It was five
years after, but that time she knew me, though she pretended she did
not. She drove past the house to-day, and I saw her. I should like to
know her name."
"I think I can tell you what it is," he said. "She is a Miss Ffrench.
Her father is a Broxton man. They have a place here."
"Have they?" she asked. "Will they live here?"
"I believe so," he answered.
She sat for a moment, rubbing her hand slowly as before, and then she
spoke.
"So much the worse," she said,--"so much the worse for me."
She went up to her room when she left him. It was a little room in the
second story, and she had become fond of it. She often sat alone there.
She had been sitting at its window when Rachel Ffrench had driven by in
the afternoon. The window was still open she saw as she entered, and a
gust of wind passing through it had scattered several light articles
about the floor. She went to pick them up. They were principally loose
papers, and as she bent to raise the first one she discovered that it
was yellow with age and covered with a rough drawing of some mechanical
appliance. Another and another presented the same plan--drawn again and
again, elaborately and with great pains at times, and then hastily as if
some new thought had suggested itself. On several were written dates,
and on others a few words.
She was endeavoring to decipher some of these faintly written words when
a fresh gust of rising wind rushed past her as she stood, and
immediately there fell upon her ear a slight ghostly rustle. Near her
was a small unused closet whose door had been thrown open, and as she
turned toward it there fluttered from one of the shelves a sheet of
paper yellower than the rest. She picked it up and read the words
written upon the back of the drawing. They had been written twenty-six
years before.
"To-day the child was born. It is a boy. By the time he is a year old my
work will be done."
The girl's heart began to beat quickly. The papers rustled again, and a
kind of fear took possession of her.
"_He_ wrote it," she said aloud. "The man who is dead--who is _dead_;
and it was not finished at all."
She closed the window, eager to shut out the wind; then she closed the
door and went back to the papers. Her fancies concerning Stephen Murdoch
had taken very definite shape from the first. She knew two things of
him; that he had been gentle and unworldly, and that he had cherished
throughout his life a hope which had eluded him until death had come
between him and his patient and unflagging labor.
The sight of the yellow faded papers moved her to powerful feeling. She
had never had a friend; she had stood alone from her earliest childhood,
and here was a creature who had been desolate too--who must have been
desolate, since he had been impelled to write the simple outcome of his
thoughts again and again upon the paper he wrought on, as if no human
being had been near to hear. It was this which touched her most of all.
There was scarcely a sheet upon which some few words were not written.
Each new plan bore its date, and some hopeful or weary thought. He had
been tired often, but never faithless to his belief. The end was never
very far off. A few days, one more touch, would bring it,--and then he
had forgotten all the past.
"I can afford to forget it," he said once. "It only seems strange now
that it should have lasted so long when so few steps remain to be
taken."
These words had been written on his leaving America. He was ready for
his departure. They were the last record. When she had read them,
Christian pushed the papers away and sat gazing into space with dilated
eyes.
"He died," she said. "He is _dead_. Nothing can bring him back; and it
is forgotten."