"They are still precisely as they were when you must have pulled them

off: you know where I found them--thrust in among the roots of the

rowan-trees in that little hollow under the brae. There was another

thing," said John, "the skin of an orange."

When he said there was another thing, her eyes blazed up in sudden

anxiety,--then they were dimmed with as sudden a shadow of relief. She

had feared something else: therefore there must be something else to

find there. And then her colour came back, and she laughed out, "The

skin of an orange!" Oh, she understood perfectly what he meant! That was

always what led him on. She understood every allusion. "That was a very

innocent thing," she said; "I would like to know how you associate me

with that."

"It gave me a kind of pleasure to see it," said John; "I thought to

myself I was some good to her after all."

She paused, too, for a moment, casting down her eyes, and then she said:

"I cannot really stand any longer listening to your nonsense about

pocket-handkerchiefs and orange-skins. I hope you yourself know what you

mean. I hope you have not--lost your head altogether. I don't want to be

rude and leave you--but this is more than I shall ever give you the

chance of saying to me again. Mr Percival, the next dance has begun."

"Is that all you have to say?" asked John.

"Every word--and too much!" she said.

I don't know what he had expected, or indeed what he meant at all by

assailing her so bluntly, but he certainly did not make anything by it:

she assumed her air of relieved triumph, but held him at arm's length

all the rest of the evening; and he did not dance at all, but stood in a

doorway and followed her with his eyes--always seeming to see that

triumphant head flower-crowned, issuing from the bandages, and the

white shoes stumbling over the muddy grass.

"What are you glowering at?" said Maxwell, taking him by the arm. "Mind,

I warned you--no interference with me."

"I interfere! You had better think twice before you take any step," John

said.

Then it was Maxwell's turn to glower at him.

"I hope you are not taking leave of your senses," he said.

These two drove home together, very silent, Maxwell in great wrath at

such an extraordinary warning, John consumed with a desire to betray to

him the secret of Marion. He could scarcely open his lips for fear it

should burst forth. A dozen times at least he had framed the words. She

is not what you think. There is something I could tell. I could put her

in jail if I pleased. This last came most frequently of all. I could put

her--in jail. He said it actually under his breath. He repeated it over

a dozen times. He could not understand why his companion did not hear

him. He seemed to himself to have another motive in speaking from that

which anybody would imagine. It was not to expose Marion but to test

Maxwell. He thought if the fellow knew as much as he knew, he would give

her up at once: and with all his soul, he wanted to put this other man

to the test. I don't know how it was that the secret was kept, nor did

John know. He thought it was chiefly the noise of the post-chaise.

Next day John was very restless and excited, unable to keep quiet or to

go on with his work. He had taken his hat two or three times to go out,

but then reflected that to go during the day would be to call forth

suspicion, and perhaps give some other person of a detective cast of

mind a clue to the mystery. He was not at all himself of the detective

mind, and, indeed, the thing was not known, and certainly not prized in

those days. A thief-catcher it would have been called, and "Set a thief

to catch a thief" was a suggestion which everybody thought of in that

connection. But he went out in the afternoon, walking sedately over the

high-standing hill, and reaching the foot just as the evening began to

darken. He made his way again with the same shuffling and sliding over

the muddy field, and, reaching the little declivity behind the

rowan-trees, began his investigation. The roots were so tangled and

twisted, so loosely filled up with earth and stones, that but for the

clayey consistence of the soil, and the damp that penetrated through and

through, he would have feared to bring the entire mound about his ears.

It took him a long time, and the evening grew darker and darker, and he

had almost ceased to hope for any further revelation, when suddenly the

stick with which he was digging struck upon something which gave forth a

metallic sound. With a sort of fury he rushed at it again, and

struggling with a shower of falling stones, and the stem of one young

tree which fell upon his arm, jamming it against the side, he at last

managed to extract a large article, partly metallic, which was deeply

lodged among the roots of the trees. He could scarcely make out its

shape in the darkness, but, half by sight and half by feeling it with

his hands, made sure, with a sensation which brought the blood rushing

to his heart, that it was the mail-bag. He had scarcely quieted down

after this discovery, when, looking up from his extraordinary

treasure-trove, he was aware of another figure coming towards him, so

near already that he could make out it was a woman, and guess what woman

it was. He started back into the shadow of the outlying edge, where he

was absolutely invisible, and stood there, a spectator of the eagerness

with which she advanced to the spot which he had found such difficulty

in discovering, where these things had been hid. She had not even a

stick, but tore at the roots and earth with her hands, plunging her arm

in up to the elbow into the hole which John had made. It was now almost

entirely dark, and probably she thought this was the reason she found

nothing, for suddenly, before he knew what was being done, she had begun

to work with one of the elaborate methods of the time for striking a

light. John stood breathless, invisible, yet so near to her that he felt

her panting breath, while holding his own, quite unprepared for what was

to come next, not knowing what to do. He held the thing for which she

was searching, he held her secret, her freedom, almost her life, in his

hands. Her fingers trembled, it took her a long time to strike that

light--it seemed incredible to him that she was not aware at least that

there was some one by.

Then suddenly the little flame awoke, and to him for a moment the whole

strange little scene became visible. The light leaped up upon her face,

pale with anxiety and alarm, and upon the background of the rugged bank,

her gloves muddy and stained with the damp earth, a quiver in her

person--though even then she was not aware of him for a moment, being so

deeply absorbed in her search. Then she lit a piece of candle which she

had taken from her pocket and held it to the crevice; but John was no

longer able to restrain himself. He touched her sleeve softly with his

hand. With a great start and subdued cry, kept down at that dreadful

moment by a fear still greater than her fright, she let fall the light.

She had not divined who he was--or she was of sufficient power to

pretend so. She said hurriedly, "I was looking for something I had lost;

perhaps you'll help me--I'll--I'll pay you." Her voice went out as her

light had done, dropping in the dark, but leaving an impression of

trembling and quivering in the air. Her terror was very real: she

thought she had disturbed a tramp or beggar taking refuge in this

solitary place.

"This is it, no doubt," said John, putting the bag into her hand: this

time the cry of terror was not to be repressed--and yet there was a

relief in the sound. Of the two, her enemy, who was a gentleman, was

safer to meet in a lonely place in the dark than a tramp. "It is you!"

she cried--"you!" her teeth chattering with the fright and the cold.

"Who should it be," said John, "but I, Miss Wamphrey? I saw by your look

there was something more here, and I came to find it. Did you expect

anything else?"

She was not able to reply. He felt that she made a strong effort to

regain her composure, but could not, being beyond speech. The entire

darkness seemed to palpitate with her trembling. It seemed to him as if

he, too, quivered with it, standing by her side. He had put the bag into

her hands, but it fell out of them upon the damp ground at their feet.

He put out his hand, and gathered both of hers, which did not seem to

have any strength to resist, into his hold.

"Compose yourself," he said, "compose yourself! It was better that I

should find it than another. For God's sake, be calm! I will do you no

harm."

She had not the strength to draw her hands from his now: she was

thankful for the supporting of his grip. "I--I know what it means," she

said, gasping painfully; "I--know what it means. I am prepared--to pay

the penalty. I know that I am in your hands----"

"I think you will find them safe hands," said John. He drew her arm

through his. "Come," he said, "take courage. I don't think you have ever

quailed before."

"Mr Percival," she said, recovering her utterance a little, "why are you

my enemy? I am not your enemy--nor any one's. It did no one any

harm----"

"Except the law and the bank----" he said.

"The bank--was it for the bank?" Her tone changed: her fears came back:

she drew herself away. "If that is so----"

"No," he said, "it was not for the bank. It was for you. I think two can

keep a secret better than one, Miss Marion. And you ate my orange, you

know."

"It saved my life, I think," she said, with a sudden low burst of

hysterical laughter; and then recovering, she put her hands imploringly

upon his arm. "What are you going to do with me? Oh, have mercy upon me!

What are you going to do with me?" she said.

"If you will let me, I should like to marry you, Marion," he said.

* * * * *

A few days after, it happened that John was entertaining young Maxwell

and a few more in his rooms, as it appeared that he was returning sooner

than he had intended to Edinburgh. There was some talk among them of the

great adventure which had accompanied his arrival, and they fell into

discussion on the subject,--what the motives of the guilty person could

be, and whether it was really a woman, and what had become of her. "It

would be droll if you ever recognised that woman you saw, Percival,"

said one of the young men. John acknowledged that it would be droll,

though probably she had nothing to do with it: and he asked the advice

of his assembled friends as to what, in such a singular case, a man

should do, and various suggestions were made, which did not perhaps

throw much light on the subject. They were by no means at one as to

whether they would denounce her or not, always supposing it was a woman.

"Not if she is bonnie," one said, and on the whole this was the general

judgment. "If she turns out to be old and ugly, with her head bound up,

and all the rest of it, give her up--like a shot" (though, by the way,

they did not say like a shot--the slang of their day was different).

"But if she is bonnie, nothing of the kind." John went on to suggest

other difficulties. What if she should be met with in Society? What if

some fellow you knew was going to marry her? This made them all ponder.

"What should you do, Maxwell, if such a thing were told you of a woman

you were in love with?" "I can't contemplate the possibility," said

Maxwell, with a laugh. "By George! but it would be a ticklish position,

though," said one of the others. "Awfully hard upon Percival, still more

hard on the other fellow." "I would never mind if I were fond of her,"

said one. "I should mind awfully," said another. (Be it here observed

that the use of the word _awful_ is not slang, but the Scottish

language.) "You might mind, or you might not mind," said Maxwell,

oracularly, "but none of us would make a woman who had done such a thing

our wife." He had not the least idea that he delivered his friend's

heart from a great weight when he said these words. "So then I am no

traitor even to him," John said to himself.

It was felt at Percival's bank in Edinburgh, that though to marry so

young might be foolish, there was not a word to be said against Miss

Wamphrey of Wamphrey, and that it was a piece of good fortune that the

young ass should have fallen on his feet, and made such a good

connection. Marion had the opportunity, of which she availed herself

quite pleasantly, of refusing Maxwell shortly after; and in spring her

marriage took place. There was some story of their having fallen in love

with each other over the eating of an orange, people said: and very soon

after his marriage, John Percival had the satisfaction of remitting a

sum of money from his brother-in-law, Will Wamphrey, in New Zealand, to

the bank manager at Dunscore.

A STORY OF A WEDDING-TOUR.

CHAPTER I.

They had been married exactly a week when this incident occurred.

It was not a love marriage. The man, indeed, had been universally

described as "very much in love," but the girl was not by any one

supposed to be in that desirable condition. She was a very lonely little

girl, without parents, almost without relations. Her guardian was a man

who had been engaged in business relations with her father, and who had

accepted the charge of the little orphan as his duty. But neither he nor

his wife had any love to expend upon her, and they did not feel that

such visionary sentiments came within the line of duty. He was a very

honourable man, and took charge of her small--very small--property with

unimpeachable care.

If anything, he wronged himself rather than Janey, charging her nothing

for the transfers which he made of her farthing's worth of stock from

time to time, to get a scarcely appreciable rise of interest and income

for her. The whole thing was scarcely appreciable, and to a large-handed

man like Mr Midhurst, dealing with hundreds of thousands, it was almost

ridiculous to give a moment's attention to what a few hundreds might

produce. But he did so; and if there is any angel who has to do with

trade affairs, I hope it was carefully put to his account to balance

some of the occasions on which he was not perhaps so particular. Nor did

Mrs Midhurst shrink from her duty in all substantial and real good

offices to the girl. She, who spent hundreds at the dressmaker's every

year on account of her many daughters, did not disdain to get Janey's

serge frocks at a cheaper shop, and to have them made by an inexpensive

workwoman, so that the girl should have the very utmost she could get

for her poor little money.

Was not this real goodness, real honesty, and devotion to their duty?

But to love a little thing like that with no real claim upon them, and

nothing that could be called specially attractive about her, who could

be expected to do it? They had plenty--almost more than enough--of

children of their own. These children were big boys and girls, gradually

growing, in relays, into manhood and womanhood, when this child came

upon their hands. There was no room for her in the full and noisy house.

When she was grown up most of the Midhurst children were married, but

there was one son at home, who, in the well-known contradictiousness of

young people--it being a very wrong and, indeed, impossible thing--was

quite capable of falling in love with Janey--and one daughter, with whom

it was also possible that Janey might come into competition.

The young Midhursts were nice-looking young people enough; but Janey was

very pretty. If Providence did but fully consider all the circumstances,

it cannot but be felt that Providence would not carry out, as often is

done, such ridiculous arrangements. Janey was very pretty. Could

anything more inconvenient, more inappropriate, be conceived?

The poor little girl had, accordingly, spent most of her life at school,

where she had, let it not be doubted, made many friendships and little

loves; but these were broken up by holidays, by the returning home of

the other pupils, while she stayed for ever at school: and not at one

school, but several--for in his extreme conscientiousness her guardian

desired to do her "every justice," as he said, and prepare her fully for

the life--probably that of a governess--which lay before her. Therefore,

when she had become proficient in one part of her education she was

carried on to another, with the highest devotion to her commercial value

no doubt, but a sublime indifference to her little feelings. Thus, she

had been in France for two years, and in Germany for two years, so as to

be able to state that French and German acquired in these countries were

among the list of her accomplishments. English, of course, was the

foundation of all; and Janey had spent some time at a famous academy of

music,--her guardian adding something out of his own pocket to her

scanty means, that she might be fully equipped for her profession. And

then she was brought, I will not say home: Janey fondly said home, but

she knew very well it did not mean home. And it was while Mrs Midhurst

was actually writing out the advertisement for 'The Times,' and the

'Morning Post,' and 'The Guardian,' which was to announce to all the

world that a young lady desired an engagement as governess, that her

husband burst in with the extraordinary news that Mr Rosendale, who had

chanced to travel with Janey from Flushing, on her return, and who had

afterwards, by a still greater chance, met her when asked to lunch at

the Midhursts', and stared very much at her, as they all remarked--had

fallen in love with, and wanted to marry, this humble little girl.

"Fallen in love with Janey!" Mrs Midhurst cried. "Fallen in love with

you, Janey!" said Agnes Midhurst, with a little emphasis on the pronoun.

He was not, indeed, quite good enough to have permitted himself the

luxury of falling in love with Mr Midhurst's daughter, but he was an

astonishing match for Janey. He was a man who was very well off: he

could afford himself such a caprice as that. He was not handsome. There

was a strain of Jewish blood in him. He was a thick-set little man, and

did not dress or talk in perfect taste; but--in love! These two words

made all the difference. Nobody had ever loved her, much less been "in

love" with her. Janey consented willingly enough for the magic of these

two words. She felt that she was going to be like the best of women at

last--to have some one who loved her, some one who was in love with her.

He might not be "joli, joli," as they say in France. She might not feel

any very strong impulse on her own part towards him; but if he was in

love with her--in love! Romeo was no more than that with Juliet. The

thought went to Janey's head. She married him quite willingly for the

sake of this.

I am afraid that Janey, being young, and shy, and strange, was a good

deal frightened, horrified, and even revolted, by her first discoveries

of what it meant to be in love. She had made tremendous discoveries in

the course of a week. She had found out that Mr Rosendale, her husband,

was in love with her beauty, but as indifferent to herself as any of the

persons she had quitted to give herself to him. He did not care at all

what she thought, how she felt, what she liked or disliked. He did not

care even for her comfort, or that she should be pleased and happy,

which, in the first moment even of such a union, and out of pure

self-regard to make a woman more agreeable to himself, a man--even the

most brutal--generally regards more or less. He was, perhaps, not aware

that he did not regard it. He took it for granted that, being his wife,

she would naturally be pleased with what pleased him, and his mind went

no further than this.

Therefore, as far as Janey liked the things he liked, all went well

enough. She had these, but no other. Her wishes were not consulted

further, nor did he know that he failed in any way towards her. He had

little to say to her, except expressions of admiration. When he was not

telling her that she was a little beauty, or admiring her pretty hair,

her pretty eyes, the softness of her skin, and the smallness of her

waist, he had nothing to say. He read his paper, disappearing behind it

in the morning; he went to sleep after his midday meal (for the weather

was warm;) he played billiards in the evening in the hotels to which he

took her on their wedding journey; or he overwhelmed her with caresses

from which she shrank in disgust, almost in terror. That was all that

being in love meant, she found; and to say that she was disappointed

cruelly was to express in the very mildest way the dreadful downfall of

all her expectations and hopes which happened to Janey before she had

been seven days a wife. It is not disagreeable to be told that you are a

little beauty, prettier than any one else. Janey would have been very

well pleased to put up with that; but to be petted like a little lapdog

and then left as a lapdog is--to be quiet and not to trouble in the

intervals of petting--was to the poor little girl, unaccustomed to love

and athirst for it, who had hoped to be loved, and to find a companion

to whom she would be truly dear, a disenchantment and disappointment

which was almost more than flesh and blood could bear.

She was in the full bitterness of these discoveries when the strange

incident occurred which was of so much importance in her life. They were

travelling through France in one of those long night journeys to which

we are all accustomed nowadays; and Janey, pale and tired, had been

contemplating for some time the figure of her husband thrown back in the

corner opposite, snoring complacently with his mouth open, and looking

the worst that a middle-aged man can look in the utter abandonment of

self-indulgence and rude comfort, when the train began to slacken its

speed, and to prepare to enter one of those large stations which look so

ghastly in the desertion of the night.

Rosendale jumped up instinctively, only half awake, as the train

stopped. The other people in the carriage were leaving it, having

attained the end of their journey, but he pushed through them and their

baggage to get out, with the impatience which some men show at any pause

of the kind, and determination to stretch their legs, or get something

to drink, which mark the breaks in the journey. He did not even say

anything to Janey as he forced his way out, but she was so familiar with

his ways by this time that she took no notice. She did take notice,

however when, her fellow-passengers and their packages having all been

cleared away, she suddenly became sensible that the train was getting

slowly into motion again without any sign of her husband.

She thought she caught a glimpse of him strolling about on the opposite

platform before she was quite sure of what was happening. And then there

was a scurry of hurrying feet, a slamming of doors, and as she rose and

ran to the window bewildered, she saw him, along with some other men,

running at full speed, but quite hopelessly, to catch the train. The

last she saw was his face, fully revealed by the light of the lamp,

convulsed with rage and astonishment, evidently with a yell of

denunciation on the lips. Janey trembled at the sight. There was that in

him, too, though as yet in her submissiveness she had never called it

forth, a temper as unrestrained as his love-making, and as little

touched by any thought save that of his own gratification. Her first

sensation was fright, a terror that she was in fault and was about to be

crushed to pieces in his rage: and then Janey sank back in her corner,

and a flood of feeling of quite another kind took possession of her

breast.

Was it possible that she was alone? Was it possible that for the first

time since that terrible moment of her marriage she was more safely by

herself than any locked door or even watchful guardian could keep her,

quite unapproachable in the isolation of the train? Alone!

"Safe!" Janey ventured to say to herself, clasping her hands together

with a mingled sensation of excitement and terror and tremulous delight

which words could not tell.

She did not know what to think at first. The sound of the train plunging

along through the darkness, through the unknown country, filled her mind

as if some one was talking to her. And she was fluttered by the

strangeness of the incident and disturbed by alarms. There was a fearful

joy in thus being alone, in having a few hours, perhaps a whole long

tranquil night, to herself: whatever came of it, that was always so much

gained. But then she seemed to see him in the morning coming in upon her

heated and angry. She had always felt that the moment would come when he

would be angry, and more terrible to confront than any governess, or

even principal of a ladies' college. He would come in furious, accusing

her of being the cause of the accident, of doing something to set the

train in motion; or else he would come in fatigued and dusty, claiming

her services as if she were his valet--a thing which had, more or less,

happened already, and against which Janey's pride and her sense of what

was fit had risen in arms. She thought of this for a little time with

trouble, and of the difficulties she would have in arriving, and where

she would go to, and what she would say. It was an absurd story to tell,

not to his advantage, "I lost my husband at Montbard." How could she say

it? The hotel people would think she was a deceiver. Perhaps they would

not take her in. And how would he know where to find her when he

arrived? He would feel that he had lost her, as much as she had lost

him.

Just as this idea rose in her mind, like a new thing full of strange

suggestions, the train began to shorten speed again, and presently

stopped once more. She felt it to do so with a pang of horror. No doubt

he had climbed up somewhere, at the end or upon the engine, and was now

to be restored to his legitimate place, to fall upon her either in

fondness or in rage, delighted to get back to her, or angry with her for

leaving him behind: she did not know which would be the worst. Her heart

began to beat with fright and anticipation. But to her great relief it

was only the guard who came to the door. He wanted to know if madame was

the lady whose husband had been left behind; and to offer a hundred

apologies and explanations. One of those fools at Montbard had

proclaimed twenty minutes' pause when there were but five. If he had but

heard he would have put it right, but he was at the other end of the

train. But madame must not be too much distressed; a few hours would put

it all right.

"Then there is another train?" said Janey, her poor little head buzzing

between excitement and relief.

"Not for some hours," said the guard. "Madame will understand that there

is not more than one _rapide_ in the middle of the night; but in the

morning quite early there is the train omnibus. Oh, very early, at five

o'clock. Before madame is ready for her dinner monsieur will be at her

side."

"Not till evening, then?" said Janey, with again a sudden acceleration

of the movement of her heart.

The guard was desolated. "Not before evening. But if madame will remain

quietly in the carriage when the train arrives at the station, I will

find the omnibus of the hotel for her--I will see to everything! Madame,

no doubt, knows which hotel to go to?"

Janey, as a matter of fact, did not know. Her husband had told her none

of the details of the journey; but she said with a quick breath of

excitement--

"I will go to the one that is nearest, the one at the Gare. There will

be no need, for any omnibus."

"And the baggage? Madame has her ticket?"

"I have nothing," cried Janey, "except my travelling-bag. You must

explain that for me. But otherwise--otherwise, I think I can manage."

"Madame speaks French so well," the man said, with admiration. It was,

indeed, a piece of good fortune that she had been made to acquire the

language in the country: that she was not frightened to find herself in

a foreign place, and surrounded by people speaking a strange tongue, as

many a young English bride would have been. There was a moment of

tremendous excitement and noise at the station while all was explained

to a serious _chef de Gare_, and a gesticulating band of porters and

attendants, whose loud voices, as they all spoke together, would have

frightened an ordinary English girl out of her wits. But Janey, in the

strange excitement which had taken possession of her, and in her

fortunate acquaintance with the language, stood still as a little rock

amid all the confusion. "I will wait at the hotel till my husband

comes," she said, taking out the travelling-bag and her wraps, and

maintaining a composure worthy of all admiration. Not a tear, not an

outcry. How astonishing are these English, cried the little crowd, with

that swift classification which the Frenchman loves.

Janey walked into the hotel with her little belongings, not knowing

whether she was indeed walking upon her feet or floating upon wings. She

was quite composed. But if any one could only have seen the commotion

within that youthful bosom! She locked the door of the little delightful

solitary room in which she was placed. It was not delightful at all; But

to Janey it was a haven of peace, as sweet, as secluded from everything

alarming and terrible, as any bower. Not till evening could he by any

possibility arrive--the man who had caused such a revolution in her

life. She had some ten hours of divine quiet before her, of blessed

solitude, of thought. She did not refuse to take the little meal that

was brought to her, the breakfast of which she stood in need; and she

was glad to be able to bathe her face, to take off her dusty dress, and

put on the soft and fresh one, which, happily, had folded into very

small space, and therefore could be put into her bag. Her head still

buzzed with the strangeness of the position, yet began to settle a

little. When she had made all these little arrangements she sat down to

consider. Perhaps you will think there was very little to consider,

nothing but how to wait till the next train brought him, which, after

all, was not a very great thing to do. Appalling, perhaps, to a little

inexperienced bride; but not to Janey, who had travelled alone so often,

and knew the language, and all that.

But whoever had been able to look into Janey's mind would have seen that

something more was there,--a very, very different thing from the

question of how best to await his coming back. Oh, if he had loved her,

Janey would have put up with many things! She would have schooled

herself out of all her private repugnances; she would have been so

grateful to him, so touched by the affection which nobody had ever

bestowed upon her before! But he did not love her. He cared nothing

about herself, Janey; did not even know her, or want to know her, or

take into consideration her ways or her wishes. He was in love with her

pretty face, her fresh little beauty, her power of pleasing him. If ever

that power ceased, which it was sure to do, sooner or later, she would

be to him less than nothing, the dreary little wife whom everybody has

seen attached to a careless man: Janey felt that this was what was in

store for her. She felt the horror of him, and his kind of loving, which

had been such a miserable revelation to her. She felt the relief, the

happiness, ah, the bliss, of having lost him for a moment, of being

alone.

She took out her purse from her pocket, which was full of the change she

had got in Paris of one of the ten-pound notes which her guardian had

given her when she left his house on her wedding morning. She took out

the clumsy pocket-book, an old one, in which there were still nine

ten-pound notes. It was all her fortune, except a very, very small

investment which brought her in some seven pounds a-year. This was the

remainder of another small investment which had been withdrawn in order

to provide her with her simple trousseau, leaving this sum of a hundred

pounds which her guardian had given her, advising her to place it at

once for security in her husband's hands. Janey had not done this, she

scarcely could tell why. She spread them on the table--the nine notes,

the twelve napoleons of shining French money. A hundred pounds: she had

still the twelve francs which made up the sum. She had spent nothing.

There were even the few coppers over for the _agio_. She spread them all

out, and counted them from right to left, and again from left to right.

Nine ten-pound notes, twelve and a-half French napoleons--or louis, as

people call them nowadays--making a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds is

a large sum in the eyes of a girl. It may not be much to you and me, who

know that it means only ten times ten pounds, and that ten pounds goes

like the wind as soon as you begin to spend it. But to Janey! Why, she

could live upon a hundred pounds for--certainly for two years: for two

long delightful years, with nobody to trouble her, nobody to scold,

nobody to interfere. Something mounted to her head like the fumes of

wine. Everything began to buzz again, to turn round, to sweep her away

as on a rapidly mounting current. She put back all the money in the

pocket-book--her fortune, the great sum that made her independent; and

she put back her things into the bag. A sudden energy of resolution

seized her. She put on her hat again, and as she looked at herself in

the glass encountered the vision of a little face which was new to her.

It was not that of Janey, the little governess-pupil; it was not young

Mrs Rosendale. It was full of life, and meaning, and energy, and

strength. Who was it? Janey? Janey herself, the real woman, whom nobody

had ever seen before.

CHAPTER II.

It is astonishing how many things can be done in sudden excitement and

passion which could not be possible under any other circumstances. Janey

was by nature a shy girl and easily frightened, accustomed indeed to do

many things for herself, and to move quietly without attracting

observation through the midst of a crowd; but she had never taken any

initiative, and since her marriage had been reduced to such a state of

complete dependence on her husband's wishes and plans that she had not

attempted the smallest step on her own impulse.

Now, however, she moved about with a quiet assurance and decision which

astonished herself. She carried her few possessions back again to the

railway station, leaving the small gold piece of ten francs to pay, and

much overpay, her hour's shelter and entertainment at the hotel.

Nobody noticed her as she went through the bustle of the place and back

to the crowded station, where a little leisurely local train was about

starting--a slow train occupied by peasants and country folk, and which

stopped at every station along the line. English people abound in that

place at all hours, except at this particular moment, when the _rapide_

going towards Italy had but newly left and the little country train was

preparing in peace. Nobody seemed to notice Janey as she moved about

with her bag on her arm. She took her ticket in her irreproachable

French "acquired in the country," which attracted no attention. She got

into a second-class carriage in which there were already various country

people, and especially a young mother with a baby, and its nurse in a

white round cap with long streaming ribbons. Janey's heart went out to

these people. She wondered if the young woman was happy, if her husband

loved her, if it was not very sweet to have a child--a child must love

you; it would not mind whether your cheeks were rosy or pale, whether

you were pretty or not, whether you had accomplishments or languages

acquired in the country.

Looking at this baby, Janey almost forgot that she was going out upon

the world alone, and did not know where. It is a tremendous thing to do

this, to separate from all the world you are acquainted with, to plunge

into the unknown. Men do it often enough, though seldom without some

clue, some link of connection with the past and way of return. Janey was

about to cut herself off as by the Fury's shears from everything. She

would never join her husband again. She would never fear her guardian

again. She must drop out of sight like a stone into the sea. There was

no longing love to search for her, no pardon to be offered, no one who

would be heart-struck at the thought of the little girl lost and

unhappy. Only anger would be excited by her running away, and a desire

to punish, to shake her little fragile person to pieces, to make her

suffer. She knew that if she did it at all, it must be final. But this

did not overwhelm her. What troubled Janey a great deal more than the

act of severance which she was about to accomplish, was the inevitable

fib or fibs she must tell in order to account for her appearance in the

unknown. She did not like to tell a fib, even a justifiable one. It was

against all her traditions, against her nature. She felt that she could

never do it anything but badly, never without exciting suspicions; and

she must needs have some story, some way of accounting for herself.

This occupied her mind while the slow train crawled from station to

station. It was the most friendly, idle, gossiping little train. It

seemed to stop at the merest signal-box to have a talk, to drink as it

were a social glass administered through that black hose, with a friend;

it stopped wherever there were a few houses, it carried little parcels,

it took up a leisurely passenger going next door, and the little

electric bell went on tingling, and the guard cried "En voiture!" and

the little bugle sounded. Janey was amused by all these little sounds

and sights, and the country all flooded with sunshine, and the flowers

everywhere, though it was only March, and dark black weather when she

had left home.

Left home! and she had no home now, anywhere, no place to take refuge

in, nobody to write to, to appeal to, to tell if she was happy or

unhappy. But Janey did not care! She felt a strange elation of ease and

relief. All alone, but everybody smiling upon her, the young mother

opposite beginning to chatter, the baby to crow to her, the nurse to

smile and approve of the _bonne petite_ dame who took so much notice of

the child. Her head was swimming, but with pleasure, and the blessed

sensation of freedom--pleasure tinctured with the exhilaration of

escape, and the thrill of fright which added to the excitement. Yet at

that moment she was certainly in no danger. He was toiling along, no

doubt, fuming and perhaps swearing, on another slow train on the other

side of Marseilles. Janey laughed to herself a little guiltily at the

thought.

And she had escaped! It was not her doing primarily. She might have gone

on all her life till she had died, but for that accident which was none

of her doing. It was destiny that had done it, fate. The cage door had

been opened and the bird had flown away. And how nice it would be to

settle down, with this little mother, just about her own age, for a

neighbour, and to help to bring the baby up! The kind, sweet faces they

all had, mother and baby and _bonne_ all smiling upon her! When Janey

looked out on the other side she saw the sea flashing in the sunshine,

the red porphyry rocks reflecting themselves in the brilliant blue, and

village after village perched upon a promontory or in the hollow of a

bay. She had never in all her life before felt that sensation of

blessedness, of being able to do what she liked, of having no one to

call her to account. She did not know where she was going, but that was

part of the pleasure. She did not want to know where she was going.

Then suddenly this sentiment changed, and she saw in a moment a place

that smiled at her like the smiling of the mother and baby. It was one

of those villages in a bay: a range of blue mountains threw forth a

protecting arm into the sea to shield it: the roofs were red, the houses

were white, they were all blazing in the sun. Soft olives and palms

fringed the deep green of the pines that rolled back in waves of verdure

over the country behind, and strayed down in groups and scattered files

to the shore below. Oh, what a cheerful, delightsome place! and this was

where the little group with the baby were preparing to get out. "I will

go too," said Janey to herself; and her heart gave a little bound of

pleasure. She was delighted to reach the place where she was going to

stay--just as she had been delighted to go on in the little pottering

train, not knowing where she was going, and not wishing to know.

This was how Janey settled herself on the day of her flight from the

world. She scarcely knew what story it was she told to the young woman

whose face had so charmed her, and whom she asked whether she would be

likely to find lodgings anywhere, lodgings that would not be too

expensive.

"My husband is--at sea," Janey heard herself saying. She could scarcely

tell what it was that put those words into her head.

"Oh, but yes," the other young woman cried with rapture. Nothing was

more easy to get than a lodging in St Honorat, which was beginning to

try to be a winter resort, and was eager to attract strangers. Janey had

dreamed of a cottage and a garden, but she was not dissatisfied when she

found herself in a sunbright room on the second floor of a tall white

house facing the sea. It had a little balcony all to itself. The water

rippled on the shore just over the road, the curve of the blue mountains

was before her eyes.

I do not say that when she had settled down, when the thrill of movement

was no longer in her brain, Janey was not without a shiver at the

thought of what she had done. When the sun set, and that little chill

which comes into the air of the south at the moment of its setting

breathed a momentary cold about her, and when the woman of the house

carefully closed the shutters and shut out the shining of the bay, and

she was left alone with her candle, something sank in Janey's

heart--something of the unreasonable elation, the fantastic happiness,

of the day. She thought of "Mr Rosendale" (she had never got so near her

husband as to call him by any other name) arriving, of the fuss there

would be about her and the inquiries.

Was it rash to have come to a place so near as this--within an hour or

two of where he was? Was there a danger that some one might have seen

her? that it might be found out that she had taken her ticket? But then

she had taken her ticket for a place much farther along the coast. She

thought she could see him arrive all flaming with anger and eagerness,

and the group that would gather round him, and how he would be betrayed

by his bad French, and the rage he would get into! Again she laughed

guiltily; but then got very grave again trying to count up all the

chances--how some porter might have noticed and might betray her, how he

might yet come down upon her furiously, to wreak upon her all the fury

of his discomfiture. Janey knew by instinct that though it was in no way

her fault, her husband would wreak his vengeance upon her even for being

left behind by the train. She became desperate as she sat and thought it

all over. It would be better for her to leap from the window, to throw

herself into the sea, than to fall into his hands. There would be no

forgiveness for her if he once laid hands upon her. Now that she had

taken this desperate step, she must stand by it to the death.

CHAPTER III.

Ten years had passed away since the time of that wedding tour.

Ten years! It is a very long time in a life. It makes a young man

middle-aged, and a middle-aged man old. It takes away the bloom of

youth, and the ignorance of the most inexperienced; and yet what a

little while it is!--no more than a day when you look back upon it. The

train from Marseilles to Nice, which is called the _rapide_, goes every

day, and most people one time or another have travelled by it.

One day last winter one of the passengers in this train, established

very comfortably in the best corner of a sleeping carriage in which he

had passed the night luxuriously, and from which he was now looking out

upon the shining sea, the red rocks, the many bays and headlands of the

coast, suddenly received such a shock and sensation as seldom occurs to

any one. He was a man of middle-age and not of engaging aspect. His face

was red, and his eyes were dull yet fiery. He had the air of a man who

had indulged himself much and all his inclinations, had loved good

living and all the joys of the flesh, had denied himself nothing--and

was now paying the penalties. Such men, to tell the truth, are not at

all unusual apparitions on that beautiful coast or in the train

_rapide_. No doubt appearances are deceitful, and it is not always a bad

man who bears that aspect or who pays those penalties: but in this case

few people would have doubted.

His eyes were bloodshot, he had a scowl upon his brow, his foot was

supported upon a cushion. He had a servant with him to whom he rarely

spoke but with an insult. Not an agreeable man--and the life he was now

leading, whatever it had been, was not an agreeable life. He was staring

out at the window upon the curves of the coast, sometimes putting up the

collar of his fur coat over his ears, though it was a warm morning, and

the sun had all the force of April. What he was thinking of it would be

difficult to divine--perhaps of the good dinner that awaited him at

Monte Carlo when he got there, perhaps of his good luck in being out of

England when the east winds began to blow, perhaps of something quite

different--some recollection of his past. The _rapide_ does not stop at

such small places as St Honorat, which indeed had not succeeded in

making itself a winter resort. It was still a very small place. There

were a few people on the platform when the train rushed through. It

seemed to pass like a whirlwind, yet notwithstanding, in that moment two

things happened. The gentleman in the corner of the carriage started in

his seat, and flung himself half out of the window, with a sudden roar

which lost itself in the tunnel into which the train plunged. There was

an awful minute in that tunnel: for the servant thought his master had

taken a fit, and there was no light to see what convulsions he might

have fallen into, while at the same time he fought furiously against the

man's efforts to loose his wrappings and place him in a recumbent

position, exclaiming furiously all the time. He had not taken a fit, but

when the train emerged into the light he was as near to it as

possible--purple-red in his face, and shouting with rage and pain.

"Stop the train! stop the train!" he shouted. "Do you hear, you fool?

stop the train! Ring the bell or whatever it is! break the ---- thing!

Stop the train!"

"Sir, sir! if you will only be quiet, I will get your medicine in a

moment!"

"Medicine, indeed!" cried the master, indignantly, and every furious

name that he could think of mounted to his lips--fool, idiot, ass,

swine--there was no end to his epithets. "I tell you I saw her, I saw

her!" he shouted. "Stop the train! Stop the train!"

On the other hand, among the few insignificant persons, peasants and

others, who had been standing on the platform at St Honorat when the

_rapide_ dashed past, there had been a woman and a child. The woman was

not a peasant: she was very simply dressed in black, with one of the

small bonnets which were a few years ago so distinctively English, and

with an air which corresponded to that simple coiffure. She was young,

and yet had the air of responsibility and motherhood which marks a

woman who is no longer in the first chapter of life. The child, a boy of

nine or ten, standing close by her side, had seized her hand just as the

train appeared impatiently to call her attention to something else; but,

by some strange spell of attraction or coincidence, her eyes fixed upon

that window out of which the gouty traveller was looking. She saw him as

he saw her, and fell back dragging the boy with her as if she would have

sunk into the ground. It was only a moment and the _rapide_ was gone,

screaming and roaring into the tunnel, making too much noise with the

rush and sweep of its going to permit the shout of the passenger to be

heard.

Ten years, ten long years, during which life had undergone so many

changes! They all seemed to fly away in a moment, and the girl who had

arrived at the little station of St Honorat alone, a fugitive, elated

and intoxicated with her freedom, suddenly felt herself again the little

Janey who had emancipated herself so strangely,--though she had for a

long time been frightened by every train that passed and every stranger

who came near.

In the course of these long years all this had changed. Her baby had

been born, her forlorn state had called forth great pity, great remark

and criticism, in the village where she had found refuge,--great censure

also, for the fact of her marriage was not believed by everybody. But

she was so lonely, so modest, and so friendly, that the poor little

English stranger was soon forgiven. Perhaps her simple neighbours were

glad to find that a prim Englishwoman, supposed to stand so fierce on

her virtue, was in reality so fallible--or perhaps pity put all other

sentiments out of court. She told her real story to the priest when the

boy was baptised, and though he tried to persuade her to return to her

husband, he only half believed in that husband, since the story was told

not under any seal of confession. Janey never became absolutely one of

his flock. She was a prim little Protestant in her heart, standing

strong against the saints, but devoutly attending church, believing with

simple religiousness that to go to church was better than not to go to

church, whatever the rites might be, and reading her little English

service steadily through all the prayers of the Mass, which she never

learned to follow. But her boy was like the other children of St

Honorat, and learned his catechism and said his lessons with the rest.

There were various things which she did to get a living, and got it very

innocently and sufficiently, though in the humblest way. She taught

English to the children of some of the richer people in the village: she

taught them music. She had so much credit in this latter branch, that

she often held the organ in church on a holiday and pleased everybody.

Then she worked very well with her needle, and would help on an

emergency at first for pure kindness, and then, as her faculties and her

powers of service became known, for pay, with diligence and readiness.

She found a niche in the little place which she filled perfectly, though

only accident seemed to have made it for her. She had fifty pounds of

her little fortune laid by for the boy. She had a share of a cottage in

a garden--not an English cottage indeed, but the upper floor of a

two-storeyed French house; and she and her boy did much in the garden,

cultivating prettinesses which do not commend themselves much to the

villagers of St Honorat. Whether she ever regretted the step she had

taken nobody ever knew. She might have been a lady with a larger house

than any in St Honorat, and servants at her call. Perhaps she sometimes

thought of that; perhaps she felt herself happier as she was; sometimes,

I think, she felt that if she had known the boy was coming she might

have possessed her soul in patience, and borne even with Mr Rosendale.

But then at the time the decisive step was taken she did not know.

She hurried home in a great fright, not knowing what to do; then calmed

herself with the thought that even if he had recognised her, there were

many chances against his following her, or at least finding her, with no

clue, and after so many years. And then a dreadful panic seized her at

the thought that he might take her boy from her. He had known nothing

about the boy: but if he discovered that fact it would make a great

difference. He could not compel Janey to return to him, but he could

take the boy. When this occurred to her she started up again, having

just sat down, and put on her bonnet and called the child.

"Are you going out again, mother?" he cried.

"Yes, directly, directly: come, John, come, come!" she said, putting his

cap upon his head and seizing him by the hand. She led him straight to

the presbytery, and asked for the _curé_, and went in to the good priest

in great agitation, leaving the boy with his housekeeper.

"M. l'Abbé," she said, with what the village called her English

directness, "I have just seen my husband go past in the train!"

"Not possible!" said M. l'Abbé, who only half believed there was a

husband at all.

"And he saw me. He will come back, and I am afraid he will find me. I

want you to do something for me."

"With pleasure," said the priest; "I will come and meet Monsieur your

husband, and I will explain----"

"That is not what I want you to do. I want you to let John stay with

you, to keep him here till--till----He will want to take him away from

me!" she cried.

"He will want to take you both away, _chère petite dame_. He has a right

to do so."

"No, no! but I do not ask you what is his right. I ask you to keep John

safe; to keep him here--till the danger has passed away!"

The priest tried to reason, to entreat, to persuade her that a father,

not to say a husband, had his rights. But Janey would hear no reason:

had she heard reason either from herself or another, she would not have

been at St Honorat now. And he gave at last a reluctant consent. There

was perhaps no harm in it after all. If a man came to claim his rights,

he would not certainly go away again without some appeal to the

authorities--which was a thing it must come to sooner or later,--if

there was indeed a husband at all, and the story was true.

Janey then went back to her home. She thought she could await him there

and defy him. "I will not go with you," she would say. "I may be your

wife, but I am not your slave. You have left me alone for ten years. I

will not go with you now!" She repeated this to herself many times, but

it did not subdue the commotion in her being. She went out again when it

became too much for her, locking her door with a strange sense that she

might never come back again. She walked along the sea shore, repeating

these words to herself, and then she walked up and down the streets, and

went into the church and made the round of it, passing all the altars

and wondering if the saints did pay any attention to the poor women who

were there, as always, telling St Joseph or the Blessed Mary all about

it. She sank down in a dark corner, and said--

"Oh, my God! oh, my God!"

She could not tell Him about it in her agitation, with her heart beating

so, but only call His attention, as the woman in the Bible touched the

Redeemer's robe. And then she went out and walked up and down again. I

cannot tell what drew her back to the station--what fascination, what

dreadful spell. Before she knew what she was doing she found herself

there, walking up and down, up and down.

As if she were waiting for some one! "You have come to meet a friend?"

some one said to her, with an air of suspicion. And she first nodded and

then shook her head; but still continued in spite of herself to walk up

and down. Then she said to herself that it was best so--that to get it

over would be a great thing, now John was out of the way; he would be

sure to find her sooner or later--far better to get it over! When the

train came in, the slow local train, coming from the side of Italy, she

drew herself back a little to watch. There was a great commotion when it

drew up at the platform. A man got out and called all the loungers about

to help to lift out a gentleman who was ill,--who had had a bad attack

in the train.

"Is there anywhere here we can take him to? Is there any decent hotel?

Is there a room fit to put my master in?" he cried.

He was English with not much French at his command, and in great

distress. Janey, forgetting herself and her terrors, and strong in the

relief of the moment that he whom she feared had not come, went up to

offer her help. She answered the man's questions; she called the right

people to help him; she summoned the _chef de Gare_ to make some

provision for carrying the stricken man to the hotel.

"I will go with you," she said to the servant, who felt as if an angel

speaking English had suddenly come to his help. She stood by full of

pity, as they lifted that great inert mass out of the carriage. Then she

gave a great cry and fell back against the wall.

It was a dreadful sight the men said afterwards, enough to overcome the

tender heart of any lady, especially of one so kind as Madame Jeanne. A

huge man, helpless, unconscious, with a purple countenance, staring

eyes, breathing so that you could hear him a mile off. No wonder that

she covered her eyes with her hands not to see him; and then covered her

ears with her hands not to hear him: but finally she hurried away to the

hotel to prepare for him, and to call the doctor, that no time should be

lost. Janey felt as if she was restored for the moment to life when

there was something she could do. The questions were all postponed. She

did not think of flight or concealment, or even of John at the

presbytery. "He is my husband," she said, with awe in her heart.

This was how the train brought back to Janey the man whom the train had

separated from her ten years before. The whole tragedy was of the

railway, the noisy carriages, the snorting locomotives. He was taken to

the hotel, but he never came to himself again, and died there next day,

without being able to say what his object was, or why he had got out of

the _rapide_, though unable to walk, and insisted on returning to St

Honorat. It cost him his life; but then his life was not worth a day's

purchase, all the doctors said, in the condition in which he was.

Friends had to be summoned, and men of business, and it was impossible

but that Janey's secret should be made known. When she found herself and

her son recognised, and that there could be no doubt that the boy was

his father's heir, she was struck with a great horror which she never

quite got over all her life. She had not blamed herself before; but now

seemed to herself no less than the murderer of her husband: and could

not forgive herself, nor get out of her eyes the face she had seen, nor

out of her ears the dreadful sound of that labouring breath.

JOHN.

CHAPTER I.

"Djohn, Djohn!" cried the boy, "come back: the mother is looking for

you--something has happened. At once, at once, you must go home!"

"What has happened? Is she ill? Has she hurt herself? Has there been an

accident?" demanded John, a tall lad of sixteen, dressed, like the first

speaker, in country clothes of French cut, but with a certain difference

which marked his different nationality.

"There has been an accident, but not to her. Make haste! It is very

exciting. It is a gentleman that is hurt, and he is your father. Half

the village is at the door. So go, quick, quick! I have run before them

all to tell you."

"A gentleman who is my father! My father is dead years ago," said the

elder boy, with a flush on his face.

"Nevertheless it is quite true what I say. Come quick, come quick! I am

going back: something new may have happened even since I came away."

With that the little French villager rattled off on his noisy shoes,

full of excitement, down the stony street towards the railway station,

calling to some other youths, as he passed, also to come quick, for that

something tremendous had happened _chez l'Anglaise_. That little group

clattered after him, all agog in a moment with the precious thought of

some distraction; for few things ever happened in these regions. But the

person most concerned hung back. He had never been out of this village

in his life--he knew no other mode of existence; yet when Jean called

to John that his home was the scene of a mysterious catastrophe, John

held back with a proud shame and horror which could not endure

publicity. Perhaps his slowness of brain took a moment more to fathom

the mere fact of a catastrophe; but in reality his heart was already

beating loudly in his breast, and his head beginning to buzz and swell,

while still he kept up the fiction of walking deliberately and yielding

to no excitement. What was it that had happened? Nothing had happened in

all John's life but what happened every day. He had been born and lived

always in that little town of Cagnes. He was the son of _l'Anglaise_,

and, as a matter of fact, though he had been brought up just like them,

he was not the same as the other boys. There was something in him

different: he was slower than they were, more deliberate, more calm. He

did not quarrel as they did, noisily, with shrieks, and sometimes tears;

but he was more dangerous than the rest when his composure was really

disturbed. His mother was a very shrinking, quiet woman, who lived in a

small house with a big garden on the lower slope of the hill. She was

one who said little to anybody, even to her son whom she adored; but she

was a very useful person in her quiet way, and though she was English,

and silent, and a stranger, was rather popular than otherwise in Cagnes.

Everybody knew _l'Anglaise_, who was a feature in the small community,

not like anybody else. People who knew her well called her Madame

Jeanne. She had arrived there quite by accident in the first grief of

her widowhood, with a pathetic story, as was commonly told and reported.

She had gone to meet her husband, a sailor, at Marseilles; but instead

of finding him had received the news of his death--and being very

lonely, had strayed on distracted until she saw the little town of

Cagnes rising upon its hill above the prosaic line of the railway, and

all the green and lovely country round. She had stopped there at hazard,

in the sickness of her heart; and there her son had been born, and she

had lived ever since. I am not aware that any one had heard this story

from her own lips. Certainly John had never heard it; but he understood

somehow, as everybody else did in Cagnes, that this was his mother's

story. So many things there are in the world which have come into the

common mind somehow, exist by some vitality of their own, and do not

need to be re-told. John would have gone to the stake for it, and so

would half the population of Cagnes, that his father was a sailor and

died before he was born. What, then, did this ridiculous little Jean,

Jean au Meunier, the miller's son, mean by his ridiculous story? John

would not follow down the steep and stony street, where every step made

such a noise on the flags, as if he were moved by that absurd tale. But

presently he dived down one of the side lanes which led down the slope

of the hill, almost perpendicularly between two lines of houses, until

you came to the broken slopes farther down, where you could zigzag your

way among the prickly aloe bushes, and the terraces of the olive

gardens. His mother's cottage lay at the foot of the hill, with its

large, sloping, sunny garden, in which the trees in blossom, peach and

apple, stood out against the grey background of the olives, and the last

of the winter oranges made a show for more than they were worth upon the

darker green of the trees. John's heart beat very loud indeed as he

tumbled down these steps, slipping and springing in his haste; but he

was half-disappointed, half-relieved, to find no crowd, no commotion

about the house. The door was locked as usual, and the key hid under the

great white bank of marguerites, as it always was when his mother had

gone out. There was not a sign about of anything but the ordinary calm.

Some one, however, called to him from the road, as he stood, not knowing

what to do next, in front of the gate.

"Hé, le Djohn!" cried this passer-by, "thy mother is not here. You will

find her at the Hôtel de la Gare, with the gentleman who is dying, or

like to die."

"What gentleman?" cried John, striding over the broken ground towards

the speaker.

"Do I know? Some one who came in search of her and thee. It is thought

thy real father. But why ask me? Go and see for thyself!"

John paused a little till this man had passed, disappearing into the

valley. He would not allow a mere peasant, a clodhopper, to see the

commotion in which his mind was; but as soon as the passer-by was out of

sight he took to his heels and ran all the way, which was more than a

mile, through the opening of the valley to the white Route Nationale

which ran along the coast, on the other side of which was the little new

station and a half-built house, emblazoned with the ambitious title of

Hôtel de la Gare, in the meantime not much more than a _café_, where the

Cagnois went on Sundays to drink their bocks and breathe the dust they

love. Here, sure enough, there was a crowd at the door, and many signs

of excitement--the men standing about and describing something to each

other, two railway porters surrounded by the closest group, and the

women all pressing up the steps, shaking their heads and asking

questions of the proprietor, who stood blocking up the doorway. John

had run as only a boy can all the way until he came in sight of this

little throng; then he altered his aspect, slowed down by degrees,

thrust his hands into his pockets, and came the rest of the way in slow

marching time, as if he were going along for his proper diversion, and

had nothing on his mind. There was a great outcry, however, before he

reached the spot, and he saw his mother led out into the balcony and

placed there in a chair, apparently fainting, one woman sprinkling water

upon her head, another fanning her, two or three hanging about wringing

their hands. When John saw this he made a sudden forward movement, and

forced his way through the crowd, which, as soon as it was seen who he

was, gave way before him.

"It is her boy--let him go to her. Djohn, God bless thee! be good to thy

poor mother. Let him go in, let him go in, Père Rondilet--it is her

boy."

But, notwithstanding these encouragements and the readiness of everybody

to help him, it was not so easy for John to attain to his mother. There

were two rooms which opened upon that balcony, the doors of both of

which were shut and guarded, one by a spare, trim, English-looking man,

the other by one of the women who knew Madame Jeanne, and who now took

John's head in her two hands, kissed him, leaving a tear on his cheek,

and begged him to have patience a little.

"Thy mother has had a great shock," she said. "She has an attack of the

nerves--how could it be otherwise after such a discovery? Wait a little

till she comes to herself, my little friend." "Little friend" does not

mean anything so soft and tender in English as _mon petit ami_ did; but

we must take the faults of our language along with its qualities.

"What does it mean?" cried John. "What lies are they all saying about my

father? My father was dead before I was born."

"I beg pardon," said the English-looking man, in very slow and difficult

French; "is this the English lady's son?"

John answered abruptly in English, perhaps even a little rudely. "Who

are you?" He was very much irritated and troubled, poor boy. He divined

a certain inferiority in the man, and the horrible question, Was this

perhaps his father? crossed his mind.

"I am Mr Rothbury's servant--I may say his confidential man; and I know

everything," was the strange reply.

The good woman who had just spoken to John stood open-mouthed with

admiration to hear the boy whom she had known all her life thus express

himself in a foreign tongue with an aplomb which was extraordinary, and

which the strange gentleman _quite_ a gentleman in the opinion of Mère

Pointêt, understood and replied to with so much deference. Decidedly

John, who had been brought up among them all, and considered just as one

of the other boys, had more in him than anybody thought.

"What do you mean by everything?" said John. "And who is Mr Rothbury? I

don't suppose there is anything to know."

"This is not a place to explain, if you are not acquainted with the

circumstances, sir," the English valet said.

John was not at all accustomed to be spoken to in this tone; and though

it was meant to be very respectful, it seemed to him something like

mockery. He grew very red with the idea that he was being laughed at.

"Perhaps you mistake me for some one else," he said. "I can speak

English because my mother is English--that is all; and I won't stand

being made fun of, I can tell you. Though you are," he added after a

moment with reluctant candour, "a great deal bigger than me."

"I am not making fun of you, sir. I am your father's valet; it wouldn't

become me, especially with him, poor gentleman, lying dead on the other

side of the door."

"Lying dead!"

A kind of horror seized upon John. He had never, that he knew of, been

so near to any one who was dead. He drew back a step, with the timidity

that is born of awe.

"Would you like to see him, sir?" the valet said.

"What does he say?" said the Mère Pointêt. "It is just: you ought to go

and see him, you who belong to him. Thy mother is too much agitated--it

would kill her to remain there; but thou, boy, go--it is only right,

since the man is thy father, whatever he may have been in his life."

"I have no father--my father died long ago," the boy cried.

But presently, without wishing it, he found himself in the room which

the valet unlocked to admit him. A man lay on the bed in his ordinary

clothes--the clothes in which he had travelled. Nothing as yet had been

done of those last offices which are performed for the dead. The windows

which opened on the balcony were half-closed with shutters, but open

enough to let the sounds without come in; the room was, if not "the

worst inn's worst room," at all events the bare, newly-plastered,

half-furnished room of a poor railway hotel. There were no curtains, no

veil of any kind to conceal the terrible fact of that big figure lying

there, in all the dreadful ordinariness of a tweed travelling suit, and

boots upon which the dust of the road still lay.

"You must not think it was the shock alone," the valet said, moving on

tiptoe, and speaking in a whisper. "It was a great shock, of course; but

it happened yesterday. My master saw Mrs Rothbury standing on the

platform at the station as the train went by. Shows how much he had

thought of her, doesn't it, sir, that just a glimpse like that as we

went by was enough, after all these years? To be sure, the train slowed

as we went through the stations. I saw the lady too, and I believe it

was you, sir, along with her; but then I had never seen my poor master's

wife. And he didn't know anything about you, if you'll excuse me saying

it. He would have come back here last night if he hadn't been taken so

bad. He's been ill a long time, my poor master has--gout and many other

things. But when he saw you, sir, there was no holding him. 'Struthers,'

said he (my name is Struthers, sir)--'there's a child, she's got a

child--and a boy too: what I've always wished for was a boy.' The doctor

had to let him come this morning,--he wouldn't be kept back; but he said

to me, the doctor did, 'It's as much as his life is worth.' Family

quarrels are dreadful things. I don't want to say a word against your

mother, sir. She had her reasons, no doubt of it; but my poor master

might have been a better man as well as a happier if----It's not for a

servant to make remarks. Come a little nearer this way."

"I don't want to see him," said John, trembling. "I don't know who he

is. I don't wish to hear anything more about him."

"He is your father, sir," said the valet, reproachfully; and John stood

still with a strange fascination, yet repugnance, while the man withdrew

the handkerchief which covered the face. The boy trembled from head to

foot at the sight. It was a face in which there was little of the

dignity and solemnity that so often comes even upon the homeliest faces

when death has touched them--a large heavy countenance with bloated

features, and eyes half-closed, with something of a stare in them under

the light-coloured, scanty eyelashes. It was impossible to believe that

the man was dead. The redness natural to it had hardly departed from the

coarse face; a few limp locks of hair, laid over in life to hide the

baldness, straggled now about the swollen temples--not a face to be

remembered as that of a boy's father. John stumbled away, covering his

face with his hands. What did it mean? His father?--but he had had no

father since ever he was born.

Presently he was told that his mother was better--that she wanted him to

take her home; but she did not say anything to him when he went into the

next room where she was. She had her little black bonnet on, which

always made so great a difference between her and the village women in

their white caps, and which John had been unconsciously proud of, as a

sign that she was not as they were, but an English lady such as he had

read of in books. Her face was covered with a thick veil, and she took

hold of his boyish arm with a sort of clutch, holding it against his,

and almost resting her head upon his shoulder, for she was a little

woman, and he was taller already than she was. In this way he led her

through the crowd at the door, feeling the importance of it, even though

he felt his heart turned from his mother in the shock of this discovery.

She had deceived him in some dreadful way, he scarcely as yet knew how;

but, at all events, he was her protector now, her defence against all

these prying people. He held her up with his arm, and he made signs to

them with his disengaged hand not to press upon her, not to speak to

her. He was her protector, that was certain,--even though he might be

angry with her, it was his business to take care of her, and not that of

any other person in the world. They went along together, she always

holding fast by his arm, her head bowed, her face hidden by her veil,

along the white line of the Route Nationale, where scattered groups

stood about every house, though thinning as they went on, and stared at

her and him--until they turned into the valley road and the slopes of

broken ground, beyond which the cottage lay. It was only when they were

there, and no one within sight or hearing, that she spoke.

"Oh, John, you are angry with me," she said.

"How can I be angry with you? But you have deceived me, mother," said

the boy.

"I have never deceived you--nor any one. All that--that was said of me,

that I suppose you have heard--was not from me, John. I said nothing at

all. I meant always when you were older to tell you, but I never thought

you seemed to care."

"Not care!" he said.

He could not have told her even now the pang which was hot in his heart

for the loss of his sailor father, the young father of whom he had

dreamed so often, who had been coming home so joyfully to his wife and

child, and whom death had seized in the middle of his happiness. He had

thought of him so often, imaging him forth to himself, that it almost

seemed to John as if he could have painted a picture of the young man

sweeping the horizon to be the first to see land--that land which he was

never to see. He meant to paint a picture of it one day, which should

move every heart. He had almost heard the swish of the waves along the

vessel's side, the sound of the wind in the sails, and seen the wistful

look in that face,--which now he was to learn had never existed, never

looked out for land, never borne that disappointment which had wrung his

son's heart for him so many, many times. It was with a visionary anguish

that the boy realised all this. "Not care!" What was there that he had

cared for more? Scarcely even this mother, bowed down with trouble, who

clung to his arm. The mother, though he loved her, was still a mortal

and fallible: little questions rose between them: she came to decisions

which were not always just according to John's way of thinking, and said

things that jarred upon him. But the father was beyond all that. He was

the true ideal, without fault, full of unknown treasures of tenderness

and wisdom. It would have astonished that mother beyond measure, she who

thought she knew her son so well and possessed all his affection, to

know how much closer still that vision was to John's heart.

"You never said a word," she cried now, with a vague pang; "you never

asked a question. How was I to know? But I meant always to tell you when

you should be older. Oh, John! I know now that I was very rash and

imprudent; but then I did not think of that, I was so young, and life

was very hard upon me. I was disposed of just as they pleased. I was

more unhappy than any one can ever know. And I have never regretted it

till now. I have lived a life of peace with my own child. I have been

quite happy--I who was so wretched, John."

"I wish you would tell me how it all happened," he said, almost coldly.

He turned his head away from her. He gave her still the support of his

arm--so much support as was in it, for it began to tremble in her close

pressure and even with her slight weight. He was so young, such a child,

to encounter such a sudden tempest of feeling; but he did not in any way

return the mute caress with which from time to time she pressed that

boyish arm. It is seldom, perhaps, that a mother is to a child as she

thinks she is; but she consoled herself that he was angry, and had

perhaps some right to be angry now; and she waited until they had

reached the house--the little home full of all the associations of his

life--before she told him her tale.

She had married--or rather had been married with very little

consultation of her own wishes--an inexperienced girl, overcoming her

own repugnances (of which, indeed, how could a mother speak to her boy?)

in the belief that she was loved for the first time in her life; for she

had no parents, no brothers or sisters, nobody to give her any

affection. She had, however, found, even in the first fortnight of her

married life, that the love which she longed for was as far from her as

ever. An accident, the most foolish and purposeless--the husband getting

out of a railway carriage and being left behind as the train went

on--had left her, troubled, miserable, alone, with a whole day to think

over her fate. And in that moment, in her girlish rashness, she had

decided it. She had escaped, leaving no clue. Chance had brought her to

Cagnes, the little smiling, ancient town on its hill, which had pleased

her fancy. It was a place where no one was likely to look for the little

runaway English bride; and though she had no doubt that pursuit had been

made, she had never been disturbed by any inquiries--never till the day

before, when, standing accidentally in the little railway-station with

John, as he must remember, she had seen her husband's face look out, and

knew that she was recognised. Then she had known what would happen. She

had hung about the station all day to see if he came back. And he did

come back, but so ill, and in such a tempest of passion, that it had

been fatal to him.

She told her tale very quietly, shedding a few tears; and she said at

the end, "I do not know if it was wrong: it was breaking my

marriage-vow; but I did not know when I made that vow what I was binding

myself to--nor how unbearable it would be. And I have never, never

regretted--oh, John! never till to-day."

"And why do you regret it to-day?" asked the boy, harshly; "because you

have been found out, or because he has died?"

"Oh, John! oh, John!" cried the poor woman, covering her face with her

hands.

CHAPTER II.

Perhaps he was not so kind as he ought to have been to his mother. At

sixteen how can it be expected that a boy could enter into a woman's

feelings and put himself in her place? It seemed utterly wild to

him--without reason, without sense, a defiance of all laws. What a thing

to do! to fling off the people who belonged to you, whoever they were,

because they had made a mistake about a railway train!

After her story was told, there was not very much conversation between

the mother and son. He went and worked in the garden a little with great

energy: which was John's chief work, for the garden formed a great part

of their living,--what with the flowers, which were sent into the Nice

market, and vegetables, which were the staple of their own food. And

then suddenly he threw down his spade and went out, feeling that he

could think it all over better if he were out of reach of any call upon

him. He went up the valley, which was so green and sweet--the valley

where farther up the violets are grown in furrows like corn, filling the

air with sweetness, though they have no higher destination than the

greasy boilers of Grasse. John clambered up one side of the hills to a

favourite spot among the trees, whence he could see all the wide

landscape stretching out before him--the soft sea, in all its shimmering

tints of blue, and the long cape of Antibes stretching far out into the

water. There were not many of his comrades who cared at all for the

view; but it was inarticulately dear to John, who never said anything

about it, but climbed to that mount of vision in all his perplexities,

to take counsel of the boundless horizon and the long-stretching lines

of the hills. But to-night it made his heart sick to look out upon that

vast panorama of sea and sky, one more blue than the other, crossed by

soft whitenesses of cloud and shadow, and looking like one quarter, at

least, of the great globe. How often had he gazed out over it, and

thought of his sailor father nearing home! Oh, the fine vision of that

hope unfulfilled, that life so full of gentle wishes long subdued, of

longing love and expectation, and almost certainty of happiness to come!

And now he was told that it had never been. This it was which filled him

with the very rage of grief and loss. Hot tears like fire filled his

eyes. No father, no sailor coming out of the unknown, with light in his

face to bless the memory of his child!--no father at all, except that

horrible figure at the hotel, the swollen and bloated face, the dead

glare under the eyelashes, the ignoble countenance. John was French

enough to fling himself down on the hillside, amid the bushes of cistus,

and dig his hands into the soil in a paroxysm of pain and misery, though

he was also English enough to be ashamed of this frenzy, and to pick

himself up and do his best to subdue it. Must he give it up for ever,

that vision which had accompanied him during almost all his conscious

life? She said it had never come from her--she had not deceived him; and

perhaps it was true, though he was quite unconscious that he had never

betrayed to her that fancy and longing of his heart; but, at least, she

must have known what the neighbours said--the story that some one must

have invented, but which every one held as the truth, and he most of

all. John wondered whether if he had ever betrayed that ideal she would

have let him know that it was an illusion, and that his real father was

very different. He doubted very much if she would have done so, or if he

would ever have known the truth at all, except for the catastrophe of

to-day; and with this thought a chill doubt of his mother and of

everything in earth and heaven came into the boy's heart. Who would ever

tell him the truth if she did not? and was he sure that he knew

everything now, and that it might not change again, like a dissolving

view? The foundations of the world were shaken, and he was not sure that

at any moment the earth might not yawn and a gulf open before his very

feet.

The day was darkening when he came down again from the hill. Lights were

twinkling all round the horizon: the steady light on the point of

Antibes, the little revolving one on the pierhead of that little town,

which he had always been so fond of watching as it went and came; and in

the distance, towards the east, the light of the Cap Fêrat standing out

into the sea; and the little glimmer of the household lamps of Cagnes

mounting in steps upon the hillside; and below a little flame from the

railway and the _cafés_ that surrounded it. When he turned his eyes from

the sea, it was the latter that attracted John with a sort of sinister

fascination. It flared out vulgarly, coarsely, into the night, so unlike

the charm of those beneficent, calm lights held up on every side to

guide the travellers at sea; but it drew his feet unwillingly towards

the place where that horrible event had occurred which had changed all

John's life for him. His father--not the father who slept under that

silent shining of the Mediterranean, a father who had never been, except

in the boy's dreaming soul, but whom he could not part with, who was a

portion of himself--but the other, the dreadful reality, lying in the

bare white room yonder, uncovered, in the clothes which seemed to make

that reality more horrible still--was he still lying there as before,

like a wreck, like something cast up by a wave, lying straight out, the

head lower than the feet, in that awful way? John shuddered; but he was

drawn, he knew not how, to the place, and stood in the dark opposite for

a moment, looking at the glaring light and the men who sat at the round

tables in front of the _café_, talking loud and all together. They had

discussed the event till it was exhausted, and all the new lights it

threw on _l'Anglaise_, Madame Jeanne; but now they had returned to their

natural topics, and were as noisy as ever, quite unmoved by any

recollection of that lump of ended being which lay up-stairs. He stood

and watched, with a strange throb of horror and rebellion against that

thing to which it appeared he owed his life, and at the same time with a

sense of grievance in the carelessness of the men who paid no respect to

it. As he stood there, the half-closed shutters were softly opened in

that room, and a shadowy figure came out upon the balcony. John knew by

the white cap that it was a Sister.

"_Pour l'amour de Dieu taisez-vous, mes amis_," said a soft voice,

audible in the interval of the clamour below.

There were faint lights in the room into which she went silently back.

Charity was watching over him, then,--watching and praying. John went

away home very quietly, overawed, and saying nothing even to himself.

He was too late for supper, which was arranged on the table, though

untouched; but he had no mild reproach to encounter, as he would have

had in an ordinary case. His mother was seated at a little table, with a

piece of paper and a pencil in her hand, writing, and then pausing to

count her words and strike out now one, now another. She was saying over

those words to herself aloud as he came in, and only looked up at him,

not saying anything to him, continuing her task.

"Beg you to come to guard my son's interests. Beg you come, for boy's

sake. Beg come----" She went on, withdrawing or changing a word every

time.

"What is it, mother?" said John. These were almost the first words he

had addressed to her since he had heard her story.

"I am writing a telegram. It will cost a great deal to go to England; I

am trying to put it in as few words as possible."

"May I see it, mother?"

How happy it is to have a subject, something to discuss which is not the

one absorbing thing, at the time of a great crisis! The two came

together once more over this paper which had to be written so carefully.

There was very little money in the house. Indeed they did not live much

on money, these two people, but on their garden, and by simple ways of

barter, with the smallest possible dependence on any currency; and to

have to pay so many francs at the post office for a telegram struck them

with dismay. In this point Madame Jeanne, who had lived for one part of

her life in a country and class given to telegrams, was more at her

ease than John, to whom it seemed incredible that as much as five

francs, or even more, could be given for a mere message--a thing that

was nothing, and benefited nobody. He asked her a great many questions

on the subject.

"Who is this?" he said; "and why do you want him to come here?"

"He is my guardian, John."

"Your guardian? But he does not seem to have taken much care of you,

mother."

"He did, as far as he knew. He thought that to marry me to some one

who--would take care of me--was the best."

"But then he did not choose well--or else----"

"I was to blame, John. I don't want to clear myself. I was young, and I

thought only of the moment and not of what was to follow. I didn't even

know," she said, dropping her head abashed before her boy, "that God was

going to send me a--child to comfort me. Oh!" she cried, taking his hand

suddenly, "I am not sorry! I am not sorry, though I am to blame. How do

I know how you would have been brought up? And we have lived very

happily; and you are a good boy, a good boy, my own John----"

He let her cry upon his shoulder, but he did not know what answer to

make. He could not yet forgive her the loss of his father--the sailor

who had never come home. But his voice was more gentle as he said,

"Mother, if it is to be sent to-night, I must run to post with it now."

The telegram was made up at last. It was not written in telegramese, and

it cost more money than it ought. The reader will see how many words

might have been spared. It was addressed to C. Courthill, Esq.,

Grosvenor Square, London.

"_You will have heard I am here and my husband dead. Have been

living here all time. Beg you come take care of my boy._--JANE."

He ran with it all the way, counting the francs in his hand--eight

francs, enough to have bought a great many things. He grudged the money

very much, wondering why there should be so much haste, and if a letter

would not have done as well, which would have cost twenty-five centimes

and no more. But there are some things in which even a big boy must give

in to his mother, especially when all the francs are hers. He returned

more slowly, thinking this time more than he would have acknowledged of

his supper.

And thus the day that had made such a change in his life, and indeed

made far more changes than he had the least idea of, came at last to an

end.

In the morning he said more cheerfully, "Don't be so discouraged, little

mother. When the funeral is over and those people have come and gone, we

shall forget everything, and things will go on just as before."

Madame Jeanne shook her head; but she was thankful for the softening in

her boy's tone, and said no more.

He thought a great deal during the interval that elapsed before the

arrival of the people who had been summoned from England and the formal

funeral which followed immediately. It was not that there was any

connection between this event, so far as he realised it, and the

development of his own life. But a touch of fiery stimulation had been

given to his mind, and his thoughts flew beyond this very unpleasant,

but, so far as he was aware, inoperative catastrophe, to the real matter

which was of importance, which was, what was going to be done with him?

He was not so submissive as a French boy. Something of the English

breeding his mother had given him, and the English books he had read,

had given independence to his thoughts. He had made up his mind not to

settle down, half-peasant, half-villager, to the lowly life of the

country, to grow vegetables for his own nourishment and flowers for the

market at Nice. He wanted to go away from Cagnes--to go to Paris,

perhaps even to London, and study art. Since ever he had known himself,

he had loved a pencil beyond any other toy. He had scribbled upon

stones, upon palings, upon doors, upon every wall that came in his way,

since ever he could remember. The consequence was, that he had got as

far unaided as a kind of caricature--perhaps the first step, as it is

the easiest. He made sketches of the country-folk, which were very

amusing to their neighbours, getting a kind of flying likeness with a

burlesque touch, with the end that everybody was delighted by all the

portraits in his picture-gallery except their own. His ardent desire was

to go to Paris to perfect himself in his art, to become a great painter,

and to send home a great deal of money to his mother. Perhaps he did not

think very much of the lonely life she would lead, of the change it

would make to her; but he did think of acquiring a very handsome house,

perhaps the chateau which was on the very top of the hill, and commanded

all the views--on the one side the sea, with Antibes on its promontory,

and on the other the mountains and the valley, the great Rocher of St

Jeannet, which cleaves the lines of little hills asunder, and the snow

of the Maritime Alps behind. What backgrounds he would get for his

pictures in that beautiful country! He would come back from Paris and

the studios as soon as he was rich enough, and live there in the lovely

spring, and study and make sketches, and live the old life which made

his mother happy. Yes, he would take up that life again, and she would

be as happy as ever, if she had only the patience to wait. But after

this great disturbance John did not feel as if he could settle. He had

said that things should go on just as before; but when his mother shook

her head John's mind too made a great and sudden start, and he saw that

things could not be as they had been before. At sixteen one is almost a

man: the other lads were beginning to think of the time when they must

draw their numbers, when independence would begin; he, as an Englishman,

would not be called upon to draw any number; but he could not live upon

his mother any longer--he must get to his work and begin his life.

He had resolved to talk to her about this the day after the funeral,

when everything, he thought, would be over, the Englishmen gone back

again, and the ordinary conditions of existence resumed. It might be

hard upon her after all the excitement; but John felt that he would be

cruel only to be kind, and that it would be best to have it over. The

looks of the Englishmen did not altogether please him. He was French

enough to have a little hostile feeling to these two middle-aged, or

rather old gentlemen (as he thought), with their looks of exaggerated

gravity and trouble, who came into his mother's cottage as if they

disapproved of it highly, as if it were something they had a right to

interfere with. What right had they to interfere? They had, of course,

to do with the funeral, at which John, in a very curious jumble of

feeling, had to walk as chief mourner, not knowing whether he were more

gratified by the importance of his position, or overawed by the

melancholy, or anxious to have all the fuss over and everything settled

back into the old lines. But he was angry when both the Englishmen

accompanied him back, all being over, to his home. He did not want them

there again. He wanted to be rid of them, now that their business was

completed. And they talked to each other over his head, as it were, as

they walked along, amusing themselves by discourse and discussions of

what was to happen to a certain "he" with whom they seemed to have a

great deal to do. "He must be made a ward in Chancery," one said, "and

proper guardians appointed"; and "his education will have to be attended

to," said the other,--"of course he can have had none hitherto." "What

a chance for a lad like that!" John felt a little sorry for the boy,

whoever he was, whom they discussed like this. Madame Jeanne rose to

meet them as they came in, darkening the little house with their big,

black shadow. Everything was in solemn order to receive them, and she

herself dressed in black, looking as John had never seen her look

before. She was very pale, but had a kind of dignity about her in her

black dress. She bade them be seated as a princess might have done, and

then she drew John close to her and took his hand in hers.

"I understand," she said, her voice rather faint but firm, "that you

have come now to speak to me about my boy."

"There are a great many things to speak to you about, Janey," said Mr

Courthill, the man to whom the telegram had been sent. "You could not

expect that our departed friend should have shown you any consideration

after the way in which you treated him."

"I expect nothing," said Madame Jeanne, hurriedly; "I am quite willing

to allow that I deserve nothing from him."

"And he was not aware that you had a child."

"No; I did not," she said, drooping her head, "know myself--or else it

might have made a difference."

"I am glad to hear you say that--I am very glad to hear you say that;

all the same, when you did know, it was your duty to have communicated a

fact which was of so much importance, and which would, as you must have

known, have given him so much pleasure."

Madame Jeanne shivered a little, as John felt, but she made no reply.

"Is not this losing time?" said the other lawyer. "You will have

opportunities afterwards of reading lessons to Mrs Rothbury, Courthill.

She may have taken a foolish step--she certainly did--but we can't

change that now. She might have had a better provision had she acted

otherwise. Our part is to tell her what is the state of affairs now----"

"I am coming to that. I only want you to feel, Janey, that you have no

right to expect any consideration----"

"I expect nothing," she said--"nothing!" dropping John's hand to clasp

her own together. Then she turned to him again, and took it back in

hers. "The only thing that vexes me," she said, sadly, "is that I have

ruined the boy. I ought to have thought--Who was I, to keep the joy all

to myself? I acknowledge humbly that his father ought to have known."

"I am glad," said Mr Courthill, "to see you in such a proper frame of

mind."

"Mrs Rothbury," said the other, impatiently, "I don't see that my part

is to moralise. I must tell you without any more circumlocution that

your husband has died intestate. There is no will."

"There is no will?" She looked from one to another with the blank of

ignorance. What this meant for her or for her child she was without the

faintest suspicion. "Indeed," she repeated, earnestly, "I have no right

to anything. I never expected anything. I only hoped perhaps that, being

proved to have a son----"

"His next of kin," said the lawyer, "and only heir."

There was a great silence in the room--a poor little cottage room, white

wooden chairs and table; nothing that could be called a carpet on the

floor; roses waving in at the windows in the luxuriance of a Provençal

spring, but no other ornament. The boy's acute ears took in the words

without understanding them; the mother repeated them vaguely with a kind

of consternation.

"His heir! what do you mean? what do you mean?" she said.

"Janey, though you deserved no consideration, no generosity----"

She turned from this moralising voice to the stranger on the other side.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"You, of course, will take your lawful portion as the widow. We are

aware, Mrs Rothbury, that you have not, perhaps, fulfilled the duties of

a wife--but otherwise you have done your husband no wrong. There is

nothing that can be objected to in your conduct--and your son is his

father's natural and only heir. I have long wished him to make a will;

but he never would--guided, we may believe, by a higher instinct. It was

what he wished for before everything, a son who would be his heir."

Then Madame Jeanne, who had been so calm, hid her face in her hands. The

tears burst forth in a flood. "I have no right, no right to anything of

his. I have kept John from him," she cried. "How was I to know it was

the desire of his life?"

John caught the strange news at last with a sudden glow of illumination.

He stood in his clumsy peasant youthfulness, unable to say a word, or to

give any evidence of his excitement, gazing at the speaker with

wide-open eyes.

"And, my boy," the lawyer continued, "you must understand your

responsibility, and give your mind to the training which will make you

fit for it; for you will be a very rich man."

An inarticulate sound escaped from the boy's throat. Oh, the sailor who

had never come home, who had left his son nothing but love and honour!

It was the anguish of the pang with which at last and for ever that

tender apparition floated away, which wrung that cry out of John's

heart.

"But, mind you, you deserved nothing from him," said the voice of the

other man, see-sawing with uplifted hand from his chair--the guardian

who had delivered John's mother to her fate.

"And I would rather have nothing," she cried. "I do not deny it. I did

not do my duty by him,--how can I take anything from him? And I can make

my own living, as I have done so long--if you will only think of the

boy."

"Mother!" said John, tremulous, with his eyes shining, "it appears we

cannot take our own way again. We are not the only people in the world.

I am worse off than you, because I have lost what I believed in--my

father; and even my mother in a way. But now I've seen him," he added,

with a shiver, "and I don't blame you. If you had only told me from the

first!"

"He was an excellent man of business--a very successful man--a father

you would have been proud of," Mr Courthill said.

Another shudder of emotion shook the boy for a moment. "Anyhow," he

said, "that's the truth at last." He set himself very square on his feet

and faced the two Englishmen with that curious sense of hostility to

them, as if it were they who had injured him; and yet an attitude which

was entirely British, though he was not aware of it. "And I'll stick to

it. I am not one for running away," said John.