CHAPTER IX
The Count de Brensault called in Berkeley Square at three o'clock precisely that afternoon, but it was the Princess who received him, and the Princess was alone.
"Well?" he asked, a little eagerly. "Mademoiselle Jeanne is more reasonable, eh? You have good news?"
The Princess motioned him to a seat.
"I think," she said, "we had forgotten how young Jeanne really is. The idea of getting married to any one seems to terrify her. After all, why should we wonder at it? The school where she was brought up was a very, very strict one, and this plunge into life has been a little sudden."
"You think, then," De Brensault asked eagerly, "that it is not I personally whom she objects to so much?"
"Certainly not," the Princess answered. "It is simply you as the man whom it is proposed that she should marry that she dislikes. I have been talking to her for a long time this afternoon. Frankly, I do not know which would be best—to give up the idea of anything of the sort for some time, or to—to—"
"To what?" De Brensault demanded, as the Princess hesitated.
"To take extreme measures," the Princess answered slowly. "Mind, I would not consider such a thing for a moment, if I were not fully convinced that Jeanne, when she is a little older, would be perfectly satisfied with what we have done. On the other hand, one hesitates naturally to worry the child."
"She will not see me?" De Brensault asked. "It is possible that I might be able to persuade her."
"You would do more harm than good," the Princess answered decidedly. "She is terrified just now at the idea. She is in her room shaking like a schoolgirl who is going to be punished. Really, I don't know why I should have been plagued with such a charge. There are so many things I want to do, and I have to stay here to look after Jeanne, because she is too foolish to be trusted with any one else. I want to go to America, and a very dear friend of mine has invited me to go with her and some delightful people on a yachting cruise around the world."
"Then why not use those measures you spoke of?" De Brensault said eagerly. "I shall make Jeanne a very good husband, I assure you. I shall promise you that in a fortnight's time she will be only too delighted with her lot."
The Princess looked at him thoughtfully.
"I wonder," she said, "whether I could trust you."
"Trust me, of course you could, dear Princess!" De Brensault exclaimed eagerly. "I will be kind to her, I promise you. Be sensible. She would feel this way with any one. You yourself have said so. There can be no more suitable marriage for her than with me. Let us call it arranged. Tell me what it is that you propose. Perhaps I may be able to help."
"Jeanne is, of course, not of age," the Princess said thoughtfully, "and she is entirely under my control. In England people are rather foolish about these things, but abroad they understand the situation better."
"Why not in Belgium?" De Brensault exclaimed. "We might go to a little town I know of very near to my estates. Everything could be arranged there very easily. I am quite well-known, and no questions would be asked."
The Princess nodded thoughtfully.
"That might do," she admitted.
"Why not start at once?" De Brensault suggested. "There is nothing to be gained by waiting. We might even leave to-morrow."
The Princess shook her head.
"You are too impetuous, my dear Count," she said.
"But what is there to wait for?" he demanded.
"I must see my lawyers first," she answered slowly, "and before I leave London I must pay some bills."
The Count drew a cheque book from his pocket.
"I will keep my word," he said. "I will pay you on account the amount we spoke of."
The Princess opened her escritoire briskly.
"There is a pen and ink there," she said, "and blotting paper. Really your cheque will be a god-send to me. I seem to have had nothing but expenses lately, and Jeanne's guardians are as mean as they can be. They grumble even at allowing me five thousand a year."
De Brensault twirled his moustache as he seated himself at the table.
"Five thousand a year," he muttered. "It is not a bad allowance for a young girl who is not yet of age."
The Princess shrugged her shoulders.
"My dear Count," she said, "you do not know what our expenses are. Jeanne is extravagant, so am I extravagant. It is all very well for her, but for me it is another matter. I shall be a poor woman when I have resigned my charge."
De Brensault handed the cheque across.
"You will not find me," he said, "ungrateful. And now, my dear lady, let us talk about Jeanne. Do you think that you could persuade her to leave London so suddenly?"
"I am going up-stairs now," the Princess said, "to have a little talk with her. Dine with me here to-night quite quietly, and I will tell you what fortune I have had."
De Brensault went away, on the whole fairly content with his visit. The Princess endorsed his cheque, and with a sigh of relief enclosed it in an envelope, rang for a maid and ordered her carriage. Then she went up-stairs to Jeanne, whom she found busy writing at her desk. She hesitated for a moment, and then went and stood with her hand resting upon the girl's shoulder.
"Jeanne," she said, "I think that we have both been a little hasty."
Jeanne looked up in surprise. Her stepmother's tone was altered. It was no longer cold and dictatorial. There was in it even a note of appeal. Jeanne wondered to find herself so unmoved.
"I am sorry," she said, "if I have said anything unbecoming. You see," she continued, after a moment's pause, "the subject which we were talking about did not seem to me to leave much room for discussion."
"There is no harm in discussing anything," the Princess said, throwing herself into a wicker chair by the side of Jeanne's table. "I am afraid that all that I said must have sounded very cruel and abrupt. You see I have had this thing on my mind for so long. It has been a trouble to me, Jeanne."
Jeanne raised her large eyes and looked steadily at her stepmother. She felt almost ashamed of her coldness and lack of sympathy. The Princess was certainly looking worn and worried.
"I am sorry," Jeanne said stiffly. "I cannot imagine how you could have supported life for a day under such conditions."
Her stepmother sighed.
"That," she said, "is because you have had so little experience of life, and you do not understand its practical necessities. Children like you seem to think that the commonplace necessaries of life drop into our laps as a matter of course, or that they are a sort of gift from Heaven to the deserving. As a matter of fact," the Princess continued, "nothing of the sort happens. Life is often a very cruel and a very difficult thing. We are given tastes, and no means to gratify them. How could I, for instance, face life as a lodging-house keeper, or at best as a sort of companion to some ill-tempered old harridan, who would probably only employ me to have some one to bully? You yourself, Jeanne, are fond of luxuries."
It was a new reflection to Jeanne. She became suddenly thoughtful.
"I have noticed your tastes," the Princess continued. "You would be miserable in anything but silk stockings, wouldn't you? And your ideas of lingerie are quite in accord with the ideas of the modern young woman of wealth. You fill your rooms with flowers. You buy expensive books," she added, taking up for a moment a volume of De Ronsard, bound in green vellum, with uncut edges. "Your tastes in eating and drinking, too," she continued, "are a little on the sybaritic side. Have you realized what it will mean to give all these things up—to wear coarse clothes, to eat coarse food, to get your books from a cheap library, and look at other people's flowers?"
Jeanne frowned. The idea was certainly not pleasing.
"It will be bad for you," the Princess continued, "and it will be very much worse for me, because I have been used to these things all my life. You may think me very brutal at having tried to help you toward the only means of escape for either of us, but I think, dear, you scarcely realize the alternative. It is not only what you condemn yourself to. Remember that you inflict the same punishment on me."
"It is not I who do anything," Jeanne said. "It is you who have brought this upon both of us. All this money that has been spent upon luxuries, it was absurd. If I was not rich I did not need them. I think that it was more than absurd. It was cruel."
The Princess produced a few inches of lace-bordered cambric. A glance at Jeanne's face showed her that the child had developed a new side to her character. There was something pitiless about the straightened mouth, and the cold questioning eyes.
"Jeanne," the Princess said, "you are a fool. Some day you will understand how great a one. I only trust that it may not be too late. The Count de Brensault may not be everything that is to be desired in a husband, but the world is full of more attractive people who would be glad to become your slaves. You will live mostly abroad, and let me assure you that marriage there is the road to liberty. You have it in your power to save yourself and me from poverty. Make a little sacrifice, Jeanne, if indeed it is a sacrifice. Later on you will be glad of it. If you persist in this unreasonable attitude, I really do not know what will become of us."
Jeanne turned her head, but she did not respond in the least to the Princess' softened tone. There was a note of finality about her words, too. She spoke as one who had weighed this matter and made up her mind.
"If there was no other man in the world," she said, "or no other way of avoiding starvation, I would not marry the Count de Brensault."
The Princess rose slowly to her feet.
"Very well," she said, "that ends the matter, of course. I hope you will always remember that it is you who are responsible for anything that may happen now. You had better," she continued, "leave off writing letters which will certainly never be posted, and get your clothes together. We shall go abroad at the latest to-morrow afternoon."
"Abroad?" Jeanne repeated.
"Yes!" the Princess answered. "I suppose you have sense enough to see that we cannot stay on here for you to make your interesting confessions. I should probably have some of these tradespeople trying to put me in prison."
"I will tell Saunders at once," Jeanne said. "I am quite ready to do anything you think best."
The Princess laughed hardly.
"You will have to manage without Saunders," she answered. "Paupers like us can't afford maids. I am going to discharge every one this afternoon. Have your boxes packed, please, to-night. Your dinner will be sent up to you."
The Princess left the room, and Jeanne heard the key turn in the lock.
CHAPTER X
Jeanne's packing was after all a very small matter. She ignored the cupboards full of gowns, nor did she open one of the drawers of her wardrobe. She simply filled her dressing-case with a few necessaries and hid it under the table. At eight o'clock one of the servants brought her dinner on a tray. Jeanne saw with relief that it was one of the younger parlour maids, and not the Princess' own maid.
"Mary," Jeanne said, taking a gold bracelet from her wrist and holding it out to her, "I am going to give you this bracelet if you will do just a very simple thing for me."
The girl looked at Jeanne and looked at the bracelet. She was too amazed for speech.
"I want you," Jeanne said, "when you go out to leave the door unlocked. That is all. It will not make any difference to you so far as your position here is concerned, because your mistress is sending you all away in a few days."
The girl looked at the bracelet and did not hesitate for a moment.
"I would do it for you without anything, Miss Jeanne," she said. "The bracelet is too good for me."
Jeanne laughed, and pushed it across the table to her.
"Run along," she said. "If you want to do something else, open the back door for me. I am coming downstairs."
The girl looked a little perplexed. The bracelet which she was holding still engrossed most of her thoughts.
"You are not doing anything rash, Miss Jeanne, I hope?" she asked timidly.
Jeanne shook her head.
"What I am doing is not rash at all," she said softly. "It is necessary."
Five minutes later Jeanne walked unnoticed down the back stairs of the house, and out into the street. She turned into Piccadilly and entered a bus.
"Where to, miss?" the man asked, as he came for his fare.
"I do not know," Jeanne said. "I will tell you presently."
The man stared at her and passed on. Jeanne had spoken the truth. She had no idea where she was going. Her one idea was to get away from every one whom she knew, or who had known her, as the Princess' ward and a great heiress. She sat in a corner of the bus, and she watched the stream of people pass by. Even there she shrank from any face or figure which seemed to her familiar. She almost forgot that she, too, had been a victim of her stepmother's deception. She remembered only that she had been the principal figure in it, and that to the whole world she must seem an object for derision and contempt. It was not her fault that she had played a false part in life. But nevertheless she had played it, and it was not likely that many would believe her innocent. The thought of appealing to the Duke, or to Andrew de la Borne, for help, made her cheeks burn with shame. In any ordinary trouble she would have gone to them. This, however, was something too humiliating, too impossible. She felt that it was a blow which she could ask no one to share.
The omnibus rolled on eastwards and reached Liverpool Street. A sudden overwhelming impulse decided Jeanne as to her destination. She remembered that peculiar sense of freedom, that first escape from her cramped surroundings, which had come to her walking upon the marshes of Salthouse. She would go there again, if it was only for a day or two; find rooms somewhere in the village, and write to Monsieur Laplanche from there. Visitors she knew were not uncommon in the little seaside village, and she would easily be able to keep out of the way of Cecil, if he were still there. The idea seemed to her like an inspiration. She went up to the ticket-office and asked for a ticket for Salthouse. The man stared at her.
"Never heard of the place, miss," he said. "It's not on our line."
"It is near Wells on the east coast," she said. "Now I think of it, I remember one has to drive from Wells. Can I have a ticket to there?"
He glanced at the clock.
"The train goes in ten minutes, miss," he said.
Jeanne travelled first, because she had never thought of travelling any other way. She sat in the corner of an empty carriage, looking steadily out of the window, and seeing nothing but the fragments of her little life. Now that she was detached from it, she seemed to realize how little real pleasure she had found in the life which the Princess had insisted upon dragging her into. She remembered how every man whom she had met addressed her with the same EMPRESSEMENT, how their eyes seemed to have followed her about almost covetously, how the girls had openly envied her, how the court of the men had been so monotonous and so unreal. She drew a little breath, almost of relief. When she was used to the idea she might even be glad that this great fortune had taken to itself wings and flitted away. She was no longer the heiress of untold wealth. She was simply a girl, standing on the threshold of life, and looking forward to the happiness which at that age seems almost a natural heritage.
The sense of freedom grew on her next morning, as she walked once more upon the marshes, listened to the larks, now in full song, and felt the touch of the salt wind upon her cheeks. She had found rooms very easily, and no one had seemed to treat her coming as anything but a matter of course. One old fisherman of whom she asked questions, told her many queer stories about the Red Hall and its occupants.
"As restless young men as them two as is there now," he admitted, "Mr. Cecil and his friend, I never did see. Fust one of them one day goes to London, back he comes on the next day, and away goes the other. Why they don't go both together the Lord only knows, but that is so for a fact, miss, and you can take it from me. Every week of God's year, one of them goes to London, and directly he comes back the other goes."
"And Mr. Andrew de la Borne?" she asked. "Has he gone back there yet?"
"He have not," the man answered, "but I doubt he'll be back again one day 'fore long. Sure he need be. They're beginning to talk about the shuttered windows at the Red Hall."
The girl turned and looked toward the house, bleak and desolate-looking enough now that the few encircling trees were shorn of their leaves.
"I shouldn't care to live there all the year round," she remarked.
"I've heerd others say the same thing," he answered, "and yet in Salthouse village we're moderate well satisfied with life. It's them as have too much," he continued, "who rush about trying to make more. A simple life and a simple lot is what's best in this world."
"Things were livelier up there," Jeanne remarked, seating herself on the edge of his boat, "when the smugglers used to bring in their goods."
The old man smiled.
"Why that's so, lady," he admitted. "Lord! When I was a boy I mind some great doings. One night there was a great fight. I mind it now. Fifteen of the King's men were lying hidden close to the cove there, and it looked for all the world as though the boats which were being rowed ashore must fall right into their hands. They were watching from the Hall, though, and the Squire's new alarm was set going. It were a cry like a siren, rising and falling like. The boats heerd it and turned back, but three of the Squire's men were set on, and a rare fight there was that night. There was broken heads to be mended, and no mistake. Mat Knowles here, the father of him who keeps the public now, he right forgot to shut his inn, and there it was open two hours past the lawful time, and all were drinking as though it were a great day of rejoicing, instead of being one of sorrow for the De la Bornes. I mind you were here a few weeks ago, miss. You know the two Mr. De la Bornes?"
"Yes!" Jeanne admitted. "I know them slightly."
"Mr. Andrew, he be one of the best," the man declared, "but Mr. Cecil we none of us can understand, him nor his friends. What he is doing up there now with this man what's staying with him, there's none can tell. Maybe they gamble at cards, maybe they just sit and look at one another, but 'tis a strange sort of life anyhow."
"I think it is a very interesting place to live in," Jeanne said. "What became of the siren which warned the smugglers?"
"There's no one here as can tell that, miss," the man answered, "There are them as have fancied on windy nights as they've heerd it, but fancy it have been, in my opinion. Five and twenty years have gone since I've heerd it mysen, and there's few 'as better ears."
"Mr. Andrew de la Borne is not here now, is he?" she asked.
The fisherman shook his head.
"Mr. Andrew," he said, "is mortal afraid of strangers and such like, and there's photographers and newspaper men round in these parts just now, by reason of the disappearance of this young lord that you heerd tell on. Some say he was drowned, and I have heerd folk whisper about a duel with the gentleman as is with Mr. Cecil now. Anyway, it was here that he disappeared from, and though I've not seen it in print, I've heerd as his brother is offering a reward of a thousand pounds to any as might find him. It's a power of money that, miss."
"It is a great deal of money," Jeanne admitted. "I wonder if Lord Ronald was worth it."
CHAPTER XI
The two men sat opposite to one another separated only by the small round table upon which the dessert which had followed their dinner was still standing. Even Forrest's imperturbable face showed signs of the anxiety through which he had passed. The change in Cecil, however, was far more noticeable. There were lines under his eyes and a flush upon his cheeks, as though he had been drinking heavily. The details of his toilette, usually so immaculate, were uncared for. He was carelessly dressed, and his hair no longer shone with frequent brushings. He looked like a person passing through the rapid stages of deterioration.
"Forrest," he said, "I cannot stand it any longer. This place is sending me mad. I think that the best thing we can do is to chuck it."
"Do you?" Forrest answered drily. "That may be all very well for you, a countryman, with enough to live on, and the whole world before you. As for me, I couldn't face it. I have passed middle age, and my life runs in certain grooves. It must run in them now until the end. I cannot break away. I would not if I could. Existence would simply be intolerable for me if that young fool were ever allowed to tell his story."
"We cannot keep him for ever," Cecil answered gloomily. "We cannot play the jailer here all our lives. Besides, there is always the danger of being found out. There are two detectives in the place already, and I am fairly certain that if they have been in the house while we have been out—"
"There is nothing for them to discover here," Forrest answered. "I should keep the doors open. Let them search if they want to."
"That is all very well," Cecil answered, "but if these fellows hang about the place, sooner or later they will hear some of the stories these villagers are only too anxious to tell."
Forrest nodded.
"There," he said, "I am not disinclined to agree with you. Hasn't it ever struck you, De la Borne," he continued, after a moment's slight hesitation, "that there is only one logical way out of this?"
"No!" Cecil answered eagerly. "What way? What do you mean?"
Forrest filled his glass to the brim with wine before he answered. Then he passed the decanter back to Cecil.
"We are not children, you and I," he said. "Why should we let a boy like Engleton play with us? Why do we not let him have the issue before him in black and white? We say to him now—'Sign this paper, pledge your word of honour, and you may go.' He declines. He declines because the alternative of staying where he is is endurable. I propose that we substitute another alternative. Drink your wine, De la Borne. This is a chill house of yours, and one loses courage here. Drink your wine, and think of what I have said."
Cecil set down his glass empty.
"Well," he said, "what other alternative do you propose?"
"Can't you see?" Forrest answered. "We cannot keep Engleton shut up for ever. I grant you that that is impossible. But if he declines to behave like a reasonable person, we can threaten him with an alternative which I do not think he would have the courage to face."
"You mean?" Cecil gasped.
"I mean," Forrest answered, "what your grandfather would have told him, or your great grandfather, in half a dozen words weeks ago. At full tide there is sea enough to drown a dozen such as he within a few yards of where he lies. Why should we keep him carefully and safe, knowing that the moment he steps back into life you and I are doomed men?"
Cecil drew a little breath and lifted his hand to his forehead. He was surprised to find it wet. All the time he was gazing at Forrest with fascinated eyes.
"Look here," he said, in a hoarse whisper, "we mustn't talk like this. Engleton will turn round in a day or two. People would think, if they heard us, that we were planning a murder."
"In a woman's decalogue," Forrest said, "there is no sin save the sin of being found out. Why not in ours? No one ever had such a chance of getting rid of a dangerous enemy. The whole thing is in our hands. We could never be found out, never even questioned. If, by one chance in a thousand, his body is ever recovered, what more natural? Men have been drowned before on the marshes here many a time."
"Go on!" Cecil said. "You have thought this out. Tell me exactly what you propose."
"I propose," Forrest answered, "that we narrow the issues, and that we put them before him in plain English, now—to-night—while the courage is still with us. It must be silence or death. I tell you frankly how it is with me. I would as soon press a pistol to my forehead and pull the trigger as have this boy go back into the world and tell his story. For you, too, it would be ruin."
Cecil sank back into his chair, and looked with wide-open but unseeing eyes across the table, through the wall beyond. He saw his future damned by that one unpardonable accusation. He saw himself sent out into the world penniless, an outcast from all the things in life which made existence tolerable. He knew very well that Andrew would never forgive. There was no mercy to be hoped for from him. There was nothing to be looked for anywhere save disaster, absolute and entire. He looked across at Forrest, and something in his companion's face sent a cold shiver through his veins.
"We might go and see what he says," he faltered. "I haven't been there since the morning, have you?"
"No!" Forrest answered. "Solitude is good for him. Let us go now, together."
Without another word they rose from the table. Cecil led the way into the library, where he rang for a servant.
"Set out the card-table here," he ordered, "and bring in the whisky and soda. After that we do not wish to be disturbed. You understand?"
"Certainly, sir," the man answered.
They waited until the things were brought. Afterwards they locked the door. Cecil went to a drawer and took out a couple of electric torches, one of which he handed to Forrest. Then he went to the wall, and after a few minutes' groping, found the spring. The door swung open, and a rush of unwholesome air streamed into the room. They made their way silently along the passage until at last they reached the sunken chamber. Cecil took a key from his pocket and opened the door.
Engleton was in evil straits, but there was no sign of yielding in his face as he looked up. He was seated before a small table upon which a common lamp was burning. His clothes hung about him loosely. His face was haggard. A short, unbecoming beard disfigured his face. He wore no collar or necktie, and his general appearance was altogether dishevelled. Forrest looked at him critically.
"My dear Engleton!" he began.
"What the devil do you want with me at this time of night?" Engleton interrupted. "Have you come down to see how I amuse myself during the long evenings? Perhaps you would like to come and play cut-throat. I'll play you for what stakes you like, and thank you for coming, if you'll leave the door open and let me breathe a little better air."
"It is your own fault that you are here," Cecil de la Borne declared. "It is all your cursed obstinacy. Listen! I tell you once more that what you saw, or fancied you saw, was a mistake. Forget it. Give your word of honour to forget it, never to allude to it at any time in your life, and you can walk out of here a free man."
Engleton nodded.
"I have no doubt of it," he answered. "The worst of it is that nothing in the world would induce me to forego the pleasure I promise myself, before very long, too, of giving to the whole world the story of your infamy. I am not tractable to-night. You had better go away, both of you. I am more likely to fight."
Forrest sat down on the edge of a chest.
"Engleton," he said, "don't be a fool. It can do you no particular good to ruin Cecil here and myself, just because you happen to be suspicious. Let that drop. Tell us that you have decided to let it drop, and the world can take you into its arms again."
"I refuse," Engleton answered. "I refuse once and for always. I tell you that I have made up my mind to see you punished for this. How I get out I don't care, but I shall get out, and when I do, you two will be laid by the heels."
"We came here to-night," Forrest said slowly, "prepared to compromise with you."
"There is no compromise," Engleton answered fiercely. "There is nothing which you could offer which could repay me for the horror of the nights you have left me to shiver here in this d—d vault. Don't flatter yourself that I shall ever forget it. I stay on because I cannot escape, but I would sooner stay here for ever than beg for mercy from either of you."
"Upon my word," Forrest declared, "our friend is quite a hero."
"I am hero enough, at any rate," Engleton answered, "to refuse to bargain with you. Get out, both of you, before I lose my temper."
Forrest came a little further into the room. The thunder of the sea seemed almost above their heads. The little lamp on the table by Engleton's side gave little more than a weird, unnatural light around the circle in which he sat.
"That isn't quite all that we came to say," Forrest remarked coldly. "To tell you the truth we have had enough of playing jailer."
"I can assure you," Engleton answered, "that I have had equally enough of being your prisoner."
"We are agreed, then," Forrest continued smoothly. "You will probably be relieved when I tell you that we have decided to end it."
Engleton rose to his feet.
"So much the better," he said. "You might keep me here till doomsday, and the end would be the same."
"We do not propose," Forrest continued, "to keep you here till doomsday, or anything like it. What we have come to say to you is this—that if you still refuse to give your promise—I need not say more than that—we are going to set you free."
"Do you mean that literally?" Engleton asked.
"Perhaps not altogether as you would wish to understand it," Forrest admitted. "We shall give you a chance at high tide to swim for your life."
Engleton shrunk a little back. After all, his nerves were a little shattered.
"Out there?" he asked, pointing to the seaward end of the passage.
Forrest nodded.
"It will be a chance for you," he said.
Engleton looked at them for a moment, dumbfounded.
"It will be murder," he said slowly.
Forrest shrugged his shoulders.
"You may call it so if you like," he answered. "Personally, I should not be inclined to agree with you. You will be alive when you go into the sea. If you cannot swim, the fault is not ours."
"And when, may I ask," Engleton continued, "do you propose to put into operation your amiable plan?"
"Just whensoever we please, you d—d obstinate young puppy!" Forrest cried, suddenly losing his nerve. "Curse your silent tongue and your venomous face! You think you can get the better of us, do you? Well, you are mistaken. You'll tell no stories from amongst the seaweed."
Engleton nodded.
"I shall take particular good care," he said, "to avoid the seaweed."
"Enough," Forrest declared. "Listen! Here is the issue. We are tired of negative things. To-night you sign the paper and give us your word of honour to keep silent, or before morning, when the tide is full, you go into the sea!"
"I warn you," Engleton said, "that I can swim."
"I will guarantee," Forrest answered suavely, "that by the time you reach the water you will have forgotten how."
CHAPTER XII
The days that followed were strange ones for Jeanne. Every morning at sunrise, or before, she would steal out of the little cottage where she was staying, and make her way along the top of one of the high dyke banks to the sea. Often she saw the sun rise from some lonely spot amongst the sandbanks or the marshes, heard the awakening of the birds, and saw the first glimpses of morning life steal into evidence upon the grey chill wilderness. At such times she saw few people. The house where she was staying was apart from the village, and near the head of one of the creeks, and there were times when she would leave it and return without having seen a single human being. She knew, from cautious inquiries made from her landlady's daughter, that Cecil and Major Forrest were still at the Red Hall, and for that reason during the daytime she seldom left the cottage, sitting out in the old-fashioned garden, or walking a little way in the fields at the back. For the future she made no plans. She was quite content to feel that for the present she had escaped from an intolerable situation.
The woman from whom Jeanne had taken the rooms, a Mrs. Caynsard, she had seen only once or twice. She was waited upon most of the time by an exceedingly diminutive maid servant, very shy at first, but very talkative afterwards, in broad Norfolk dialect, when she had grown a little accustomed to this very unusual lodger. Now and then Kate Caynsard, the only daughter of the house, appeared, but for the most time she was away, sailing a fishing boat or looking after the little farm. To Jeanne she represented a type wholly strange, but altogether interesting. She was little over twenty years of age, but she was strong and finely built. She had the black hair and dark brown eyes, which here and there amongst the villagers of the east coast remind one of the immigration of worsted spinners and silk weavers from Flanders and the North of France, many centuries ago. She was very handsome but exceedingly shy. When Jeanne, as she had done more than once, tried to talk to her, her abrupt replies gave little opening for conversation. One morning, however, when Jeanne, having returned from a long tramp across the sand dunes, was sitting in the little orchard at the back of the house, she saw her landlady's daughter come slowly out to her from the house. Jeanne put down her book.
"Good morning, Miss Caynsard!" she said.
"Good morning, miss!" the girl answered awkwardly. "You have had a long walk!"
Jeanne nodded.
"I went so far," she said, "that I had to race the tide home, or I should have had to wade through the home creek."
Kate nodded.
"The tide do come sometimes," she said, "at a most awful pace. I have been out after whelks myself, and had to walk home with the sea all round me, and nothing but a ribbon of dry land. One needs to know the ways about on this wilderness."
"One learns them by watching," Jeanne remarked. "I suppose you have lived here all your life."
"All my life," the girl answered, "and my father and grandfather before me. 'Tis a queer country, but them as is born and bred here seldom leaves it. Sometimes they try. They go to the next village inland, or to some town, or to foreign parts, but sooner or later if they live they come back."
Jeanne nodded sympathetically.
"It is a wonderful country," she said. "When I saw it first it seemed to me that it was depressing. Now I love it!"
"And I," the girl remarked, with a sudden passion in her tone, "I hate it!"
Jeanne looked at her, surprised.
"It sounds so strange to hear you say that," she remarked. "I should have thought that any one who had lived here always would have loved it. Every day I am here I seem to discover new beauties, a new effect of colouring, a new undertone of the sea, or to hear the cry of some new bird."
"It is beautiful sometimes," the girl answered. "I love it when the creeks are full, and the April sun is shining, and the spring seems to draw all manner of living things and colours from the marsh and the pasturage lands. I love it when the sea changes its colour as the clouds pass over the sun, and the wind blows from the west. The place is well enough then. But there are times when it is nothing but a great wilderness of mud, and the grey mists come blowing in, and one is cold here, cold to the bone. Then I hate the place worse than ever."
"Have you ever tried to go away for a time?" Jeanne asked.
"I went once to London," the girl said, turning her head a little away. "I should have stayed there, I think, if things had turned out as I had expected, but they didn't, and my father died suddenly, so I came home to take care of the farm."
Jeanne nodded sympathetically. She was beginning to wonder why this girl had come out from the house with the obvious intention of speaking to her. She stood by her side, not exactly awkward, but still not wholly at her ease, her hands clasped behind her straight back, her black eyebrows drawn together in a little uneasy frown. Her coarse brown skirt was not long enough to conceal her wonderfully shaped ankles. Sun and wind had done little more than slightly tan her clear complexion. She had somehow the appearance of a girl of some other nation. There was something stronger, more forceful, more brilliant about her, than her position seemed to warrant.
"There is a question, miss," she said at last, abruptly, "I should like to ask you. I should have asked you when you first came, if I had been in when you came to look at the rooms."
"What is it?" Jeanne asked quietly.
"I've a good eye for faces," Kate said, "and I seldom forget one. Weren't you the young lady who was staying up at the Red Hall a few weeks ago?"
Jeanne nodded.
"Yes," she said, "I was staying there. It was because I liked the place so much, and because I was so much happier here than in London, that I came back."
There was a moment's silence. Jeanne looked up and found Kate's magnificent eyes fixed steadfastly upon her face.
"Is it for no other reason, miss," she asked, "that you have come back?"
"For none other in the world," Jeanne answered. "I was unhappy in London, and I wanted to get somewhere where I should be quite unknown. That is why I came here."
"You didn't come back," Kate asked, "to see more of Mr. De la Borne, then?"
The simple directness of the question seemed to rob it of its impertinence. Jeanne laughed goodhumouredly.
"I can assure you that I did not," she answered. "To tell you the truth, and I hope that you will be kind and remember that I do not wish any one to know this, the reason why I only go out so early in the morning or late at night is because I do not wish to see any one from the Red Hall. I do not wish them to know that I am here."
"They do gossip in a small place like this most amazing," the girl said slowly. "When you and the other lady came down from London to stay up yonder, they did say that you were a great heiress, and that Mr. De la Borne was counting on marrying you, and buying back all the lands that have slipped away from the De la Bornes back to Burnham Market and Wells township."
Jeanne shrugged her shoulders.
"I cannot help," she said, "what people say. Every one has spoken of me always as being very rich, and a good many men have wanted to marry me to spend my money. That is why I came down here, if you want to know, Miss Caynsard. I came to escape from a man whom my stepmother was determined that I should marry, and whom I hated."
The girl looked at her wonderingly.
"It is a strange manner of living," she said, "when a girl is not to choose her own man."
"In any case," Jeanne said smiling, "if I had but one or two to choose from in the world, I should never choose Mr. De la Borne."
The girl was gloomily silent. She was looking up towards the Red Hall, her lips a little parted, her face dark, her brows lowering.
"'Tis a family," she said slowly, "that have come down well-nigh to their last acre. They hold on to the Hall, but little else. Folk say that for four hundred years or more the De la Bornes have heard the sea thunder from within them walls. 'Tis, perhaps, as some writer has said in a book I've found lately, that the old families of the country, when once their menkind cease to be soldiers or fighters in the world, do decay and become rotten. It is so with the De la Bornes, or rather with one of them."
"Mr. Andrew," Jeanne remarked timidly.
"Mr. Andrew," the girl interrupted, "is a great gentleman, but he is never one of those who would stop the rot in a decaying race. He is a great strong man is Mr. Andrew, and deceit and littleness are things he knows nothing of. I wish he were here to-day."
The girl's face wore a troubled expression. Jeanne began to suspect that she had not as yet come to the real object of this interview.
"Why do you wish that Mr. Andrew were here?" Jeanne asked. "What could he do for you that Mr. Cecil could not?"
A strange look filled the girl's eyes.
"I think," she said, "that I would not go to Mr. Cecil whatever might betide, but there is a matter—"
She hesitated again. Jeanne looked at her thoughtfully.
"You have something on your mind, I think, Miss Caynsard," she said. "Can I help you? Do you wish to tell me about it?"
The girl seemed to have made up her mind. She was standing quite close to Jeanne now, and she spoke without hesitation.
"You remember the young lord," she said, "of whom there has been so much in the papers lately? He was staying at the Red Hall when you were, and is supposed to have left for London early one morning and disappeared."
"Lord Ronald Engleton," Jeanne said. "Yes, I know all about that, of course."
"Sometimes," Kate said slowly, "I have had strange thoughts about him. Mr. Cecil and the other man, Major Forrest they call him, are still at the Hall, and the servants say that they do little but drink and swear at one another. I wonder sometimes why they are there, and why Mr. Andrew stays away."
Jeanne leaned a little forward in her chair. Something in the other's words had interested her.
"There is something," she said, "behind in your thoughts. What is it?"
The girl was silent for a moment.
"To-night," she said, "if you have the courage to come with me, I will show you what I mean."