CHAPTER XII. ON THE CLIFFS OF JERSEY.
Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C., was the very happiest of men three days later, when he watched Madame Alixe Delavigne gracefully presiding over a pretty tea table, a la russe, in the quaint old mansion, bowered in a garden sloping down to the Thames, where Miss Mildred Anstruther, a venerable maiden aunt, had her “local habitation and, a name!” A lonely woman of colossal wealth and blue blood, high in rank, and decidedly of riper years.
“By Jove! Dear old Aunt Mildred is a tower of strength to me, just now,” reflected the gallant Captain, when, as the soft shadows deepened on lawn and river, he lingered tenderly there in explanation of his official business. It was hardly “official” that Anson Anstruther had fallen into the habit of furtively addressing the now unveiled Madame Berthe Louison, as “Alixe”, but it was even so. Acquaintance can ripen as rapidly on the Thames as by the Arno, given a certain impetus. And the Pilgrim of Love, though still Madame Berthe Louison in France, was Alixe Delavigne in the retreat chosen by the Viceroy.
“Pazienza! Pazienza!” smiled the young soldier, as the impassioned Alixe eagerly demanded to be allowed to approach the orphaned Nadine, at St. Heliers. “You have been so noble, so untiring, do not ruin all by precipitancy now! You see I am already secretly watching over her. I now represent the whole interests of Her Majesty’s Service! And you—only your own loving heart! I must first meet Major Alan Hawke, and send him away to be busied on some apparently important duty, which will keep him away from old Andrew Fraser. We know the old professor’s cunning character. Miser and pedant, he is but a shriveled parchment edition of his heartless, dead brother. We must not alarm him. We have already traced the insured packet to his hands. Now, he properly has the custody of the dead nabob’s will. He may soon have to bring the girl on to London, for the legal formalities of proving it. We do not wish him to send the stolen jewels away in a sudden fright, and so hide them from us forever. If he qualifies duly as executor, and then files the will, then the estate is responsible, through him.
“We will soon know who controls your niece for the three years of her long minority. Hawke must be got out of the way. I will hoodwink him, and every British Consul in the continental towns which he visits will secretly watch him for me. Besides, Major Hardwicke and Murray will be here very soon, to aid me, and to watch Hawke. I wish Alan Hawke to blunder around, hunting for Major Hardwicke, and so give me an opportunity to do my duty secretly, and to aid you in your own labor of love. In the mean time—you must be content to rest tranquilly here; cultivate my dear old aunt, and I will come to you daily so that your quiet life in this ‘moated grange’ will be brightened up a bit. You see,” thoughtfully said Anstruther, “whoever sent old Johnstone to his grave, he had previously spirited the heiress away—all his plans for the future were perfectly matured with all the craft of a man well versed in intrigue for forty years. His bitter hatred of you did not die with him. You may be assured that he has laid out a plan, both in his private letters and in the will to fence you forever out of this girl’s life. So your work must be done in secret. If I can ever effectively help you, I must work on Andrew Fraser and not needlessly alarm both his greed and fear. As soon as it is safe, you shall take up your post near to her; but Hawke must come and go first. He must find no sign of your presence here.” There was cogency in the sentimental soldier’s reasoning.
“He will surely come to my Paris home at No. 9 Rue Berlioz. He knows that address!” murmured Alixe Delavigne, her eyes dropping in a sudden confusion, as a flame of jealousy lit up the young soldier’s fiery glances. For Anson Anstruther had posted there on his first voyage from Geneva to find the bird flown.
“Then you may keep Marie, your maid, here,” slowly replied Anstruther, “and send Jules over to Paris. Alan Hawke will surely seek for you there. Let Jules inform him that you have gone to Jitomir to attend to your Russian interests.”
Alixe Delavigne bowed her head in a mute assent. Day by day the proud self-reliant woman was yielding to the imperious will of the young soldier. It was a soft, self-deception that reassured her on the very evening when he left her.
But there was one now weaving his webs at Lausanne whose fertile brain was busied with sly schemes of his own. Alan Hawke always first considered “his duty to himself” and so the acute Major decided to spy out the land before he precipitately appeared at London, or dared to risk himself at St. Agnes Road, St. Heliers.
“It is just as well to know all that Justine can tell me before I see this young dandy Anstruther, and to find out what Euphrosyne knows before I interrogate her sister,” he murmured; “I must make no mistake with the Viceroy’s kinsman!”
With much prevision he had telegraphed the date of his probable arrival in London to Captain Anstruther from Munich, adding that convenient fairy tale, “Delayed by illness” and he had also left this telegram behind, so as to be sent on to allow him four days leeway near Geneva.
The signature bore also an injunction to answer to Hotel Binda, Paris. “This is no little card game,” muttered Hawke. “It is for rank, wealth, and the hand of Miss Million, the rose of Delhi.”
Alan Hawke was practically received with open arms by the fluttering-hearted Euphrosyne, who nobly resigned herself to Justine’s victory over Alan Hawke’s heart. For the younger sister’s letters had filled the elder’s mind with rosy dreams of enhanced family prosperity.
“Only this telegram. That is all!” murmured the preceptress, as she handed the Major a dispatch dated at St. Heliers, stating, “Arrived, well, news of Mr. Johnstone’s assassination just received. Will write!”
“This is all I know of this strange homecoming, as yet!” summed up the child of Minerva.
Hawke softly delved into Mademoiselle Euphrosyne’s inner consciousness until he knew all the corners of the simple woman’s heart.
“I am quite sure that she speaks the simple truth!” he decided, after he had informed the Swiss woman of his address, “Hotel Binda, Paris.” “I must go on there by the night train,” he at once resolved. “Here is a juncture where all our various interests are deeply involved. You and Justine may lose the well-earned reward of years. I must be near Justine, now, to protect you both. I fear this old mummy Fraser! If he controls the fortune, then he and his hopeful son will probably steal half of it. Thats a fair allowance for an ordinary executor! It is all for one, and, one for all, now! Write under seal to Justine that I am near—only do not mention names!” With an affected tenderness, Hawke kissed the pallid lips of the daughter of Minerva, and slipped away to Lausanne, whence he took the midnight train for Paris.
“I might look around and dispose of my jewels in Paris,” he thought as he neared that “gay and festive city.” But his serious business with the Credit Lyonnais as to the negotiation of the four “raised” bills of exchange, and his desire to at once come to terms with Madame Berthe Louison, caused him to postpone the vending of the jewels so neatly extorted from Ram Lal.
“I have lots of ready money now—too much, even, for safety in travel, and the jewels will keep.” With a strange anxious craving to see his fair employer he drove directly to No. 9 Rue Berlioz on his arrival in Paris. The impassive face of Jules Victor met his gaze at the door.
“Madame, suddenly summoned to Poland, had begged Monsieur le Major to address her by letter, as telegrams were most unreliable in Russian Poland. Monsieur would, however, surely find letters at his London address, and it was true that Madame had not expected Monsieur’s arrival for a fortnight.”
“I don’t believe a damned word of this fellow’s yarn. There is some sly juggling here!” ejaculated the Major as he drove back to the Hotel Binda. His brow was black as he descended, and it grew blacker still when he read a telegram from Euphrosyne Delande. He studied over the unwelcome news while he made a careful business toilet to visit the Credit Lyonnais. And a white rage shone out upon his handsome face as he learned that Justine was useless to him now. “Discharged without even a reward! Thrust out like a beggar without a word of warning.” “Justine on her way home. Passed through Paris last night. Can you not return?” The signature “Euphrosyne” was a guaranty of the unwelcome truth. Major Hawke swore a deep and bitter oath as he penned a telegram to the Swiss preceptress: “Coming to-night. Arrive to-morrow at ten o’clock. Keep all secret.” And he boldly signed the name “Alan Hawke” to that and to a message to Captain Anson Anstruther: “Delayed four days here by private business.”
He raged as he hastily soliloquized: “I will at once present these drafts regularly through the Credit Lyonnais. I will go and get the whole story from Justine. I will pay off that tiger cat, Madame Louison, for her sneaking away. She fancies she has done with me now! Ah! By God! She thinks so? Wait! And this old Scotch saw-file! I’ll break him up! If I can only trace those stolen jewels to him, I’ll have them or send the old miser off in irons to a life transportation! I begin to see the whole game at last! And I swear that I’ll get to the girl if I have to carry her off!”
He went down to the Credit Lyonnais in an elegant “mufti” garb, and depositing a thousand pounds sterling to his credit, left the four drafts for five thousand pounds each for collection, carelessly referring to Messrs. Grindlay & Co., of Delhi, London, and many other places, and mentioning the name of that eminent private native banker, money-lender, and jeweler, the well-known Ram Lal Singh. “He shall back his indorsement!” laughed Alan Hawke.
With a lordly insouciance, Major Alan Hawke then strolled out of the great bank and deliberately arranged his line of future action while he was taking his ease at his inn.
“First, to pick up all the threads of this queer intrigue through Justine. I must go back to her at Geneva. Then, to be sure that Berthe Louison is not repeating her cunning Delhi tricks with the dead man’s brother. She might frighten him. Then, armed at all points, I must hasten on to report to Anstruther. I must have him give me a short leave as soon as I can get it, but before I open my siege trenches I must develop all the enemy’s strength. What the devil is Berthe Louison up to now?”
In the night train, speeding back to Geneva, Major Hawke remembered some old desperate associates of an enforced “social eclipse” at Granville-sur-Mer. “With a half a dozen resolute fellows I might hang around Jersey and, perhaps, force my way into the stronghold. It depends on where the mansion is located. If the jewels are there, I will either have them or else bend the old man to my will by threatened disclosures. But I must first fool Anstruther and my pretty employer. If Justine had only remained at Jersey I might have easily won my way to the girl’s side. And yet she will be under a long three years guardianship.” Some busy devil at his side whispered: “She would be helpless if she were carried off.” And as the enraged schemer finished the last of a dozen cigars and took a pull at his pocket flask, he disposed himself to sleep, grumbling.
“They have upset all the chessmen. Old Fraser and the Louison, too, are playing at cross purposes—evidently. They have, however, spoiled my little game. I will spoil theirs!” He grinned as he decided “I will do a bit of the Romeo act with Justine, and come back by Granville to Boulogne. If the old gang is to be found there, I may get one of them to spy the whole thing out. All these Jersey people are half French in their birth and ways. I can sneak some fellow in from Granville. There might be a chance. I’ll get to the old fellow, or the girl, or the jewels—by God! I will! For I hold the trump cards.”
And yet his flattering hopes of gaining a permanent rank returned to affright him in planning such a bold deed. “Ah! I must get some trusty fellow—perhaps, in London,” he muttered as his head dropped, and the train bore him on to the halls of learning, where poor Justine was now weeping on her sister’s bosom, and unveiling all the secrets of a hungry heart to the sympathetic Euphrosyne.
But, saddest of all the coterie who had trodden the tessellated floors of the marble house at Delhi, was a lonely girl sobbing herself to sleep, that very night, in a gray castellated mansion house perched upon a sunny cliff of Jersey.
The fair gardens and splendid halls of the luxurious home seemed but the limits of a cheerless prison to the broken-hearted girl who had been astounded when her one friend, Douglas Fraser, the companion of a thirty-five days’ journey, left her without a word. Nadine Johnstone had opened her heart, shyly, to her manly young kinsman, Douglas Fraser. And yet she guarded, as only a maiden’s heart can, the secret of the blossoming love for Hardwicke—the man who had saved her life. She asked her hungry heart if he would follow on her way, led by the appeal of her shining eyes.
Worn, harassed, and wearied out by travel, she had sought a refuge in Justine Delande’s clinging arms, on the night of their arrival from Boulogne, for the path from India had been but a series of shadow-dance glimpses of strange scenes. The ashen face of the tottering old pedant had offered her no welcome to a happy home.
“How hideously like my father, this old bookworm,” murmured the frightened girl in a strange repulsion, as she fled away to her room. It was a grateful relief when the servant maid announced that the travelers would be served in their rooms.
“The Master lives entirely alone,” the girl said shortly. Late that first night the lonely girl sat gazing at the windows rattling under the flying wrack, while Douglas Fraser and his father communed below her until the midnight hour. Suddenly Justine Delande was summoned to join them “on urgent business,” and the heiress of a million sat with clasped hands, murmuring:
“Will he ever find me out here? This is only a cheerless prison. I am, forever, lost to the world.” There was that in Justine Delande’s face on her return which startled the heart-sick wanderer.
“Ask me nothing—nothing to-night. Only sleep, my darling,” murmured the devoted Swiss. The shadows deepened over Nadine Johnstone as she fell asleep dreaming of her mother, the gentle vision, and, the absent lover of her girlish heart.
Sunny gleams came with the dawn, and Nadine was already wandering in the beautiful gardens of “The Banker’s Folly,” as the home perched on the hill was termed. It was there that Douglas Fraser suddenly came upon her, walking with the white-faced Justine. Both women could see that he bore tidings of grave import, and another shadow settled on Nadine’s heart, as she clasped Justine’s hand.
Her cousin’s face was grave as he said, in a broken voice: “I must hasten away instantly to catch the boat, and I have to return immediately to India. There’s no time for a word. My father will tell you all! It is a matter of life and death to our whole family interests. May God keep you, Nadine!” the young man kindly said, as he bent and kissed her hand. “I have tried to make your long journey bearable!” And then, a wrinkled face at a window appeared to end the coming disclosure, for Douglas was softening. A harsh voice rose up in a half shriek:
“Douglas! Douglas!” and the young man turned back, without another word, springing away, over the graveled walks. Nadine’s face grew ashen white, as the presage of coming disaster chilled her heart.
Without a word, Justine Delande led the startled girl into the house. “You are to see your uncle at once! After our breakfast! And I will be with you.” faltered Justine, with an averted face.
The orphaned girl was now dimly conscious of some impending blow. She had been frightened at the solemnity of Douglas Fraser’s hasty farewell, and, while Justine Delande affected to touch the breakfast spread in their rooms by the Swiss lady’s maid, now gloomy in an attack of heimweh, Nadine saw a four-wheeler rattle away over the lawn, while old Andrew Fraser grimly watched it until the gates clanged behind the departing Anglo-Indian. Over the low wall, on the road, Douglas Fraser caught a last glimpse of the graceful girl standing there. He sadly waved an adieu, and Nadine Johnstone was left with but one friend in the world, save the silent Swiss governess. Though the two women were sumptuously lodged “in fair upper chambers,” opening east and south, with their maid near at hand, the gloomy chill of the silent household had already penetrated the lonely girl’s heart. No single sign of the warmer amenities. Only books, books, dusty books, by the thousand, piled helter-skelter in every available nook and cranny.
The servants were slouching and sullen, and they moved about their duties with gloomy brows. Even the gardener and his two stout boys struck sadly away with mattock and spade as if digging graves. No chirp of bird, no baying of a friendly dog, no burst of childish merriment broke the droning silence. And this was the home to which a father had doomed his only child.
When the frightened maid tapped at the door to summon her mistress, her feeble rapping sounded like a hammer falling sadly on the hollow coffin lid. The girl stammered, “The master would like to see you both in the library.” And with a sinking heart Nadine Fraser Johnstone descended the stair.
She had only cast a frightened glimpse at the yellowed, bony face, the cavernous eye sockets, the bushy eyebrows, beneath which a cold intellectual gleam still feebly flickered. Andrew Fraser had bent his tall form over her, and peering down at her had whispered after their few words of greeting:
“Did ye gain aught in knowledge of Thibet in your Indian life? My life work lies there, and Hugh has sorely disappointed me. He was to send me books and maps and papers for my ‘History of Thibet and the Wanderings of the Ten Tribes.’” With a confused negation the girl had fled away to the cheerless shelter of the great rooms whose drab and gray arrangements bespoke the Reformatory or a Refuge for the Friendless.
And the stern old scholar waited for the fluttering bird whom adverse Fate had driven into his dismal lair with all the pompous severity of a guardian and trustee.
Seated at a long desk littered with a multitude of papers, Professor Andrew Fraser coldly bowed the two women to convenient seats. The parvenu banker who had fled away after a bankruptcy due to the erection and embellishment of “The Folly,” had approved a semi-medieval plan of construction which suggested a Norman stronghold or a Corsican mansion arranged for a stubborn defense. Books, globes, maps, and papers littered the floors, and were piled nearby in convenient heaps with tell-tale flying signals of copious note taking. It was a bristling Redoubt of Learning.
But on this sunny morning the retired Professor of Edinburg University held sundry letters, dispatches, and legal papers clutched in his claw-like hands. His eye rested upon Justine Delande, in a semi-hostile glare, as he slowly said:
“I’ve sent for ye, as in the place of your father’s daughter, ye must know of the changes that come to us, with the chances of Life and the sair ways o’ the world.” He was nervously fumbling with a selection of the papers and he paused and coughed ominously. “There has come to us news which has posted my son Douglas hastily back to India, to do your father’s last bidding.”
Nadine Johnstone’s trembling hand clutched Justine Delande’s still rounded arm.
“Her father the double of this grim ogre?” There was horror in her conjecture, but no pang of affection at the easily divined disclosure. “The news came to us suddenly, yesterday, and Douglas and I are left now to screen ye from the robbers and cormorants of the world! Ye’re one of the richest women in Britain now—Hugh Fraser’s daughter—for yere guid father is no more! A sudden death—a sudden death! and his will leaves you to me as a legal charge, for yere body and yere estate, till ye come o’ the legal age. T’hafs the next three years!”
With a single glance of stern deprecation, Andrew Fraser saw the girl totter and her head fall upon the bosom of the woman who had “sorrowed of her sorrows” in all the years of the lonely colorless infancy, childhood, and budding womanhood! The old bookworm clung to the papers as if that “documentary evidence” was an absolute guaranty, and he held it ready to proffer in support of his theorem. His toughened heart-strings were silent at natural affection’s touch, and only twanged to the never-dying greed for gold—useless gold!
In an unmoved wonder, the senile scholar listened to the broken sobs of the child of Valerie Delavigne. He was astounded at her financial carelessness, when she moaned:
“Let me go away! Let me go!” and then she cried, “What care I for all this money—this useless wealth. He is gone! I am now alone in the world! And—and, now I never will know the story of the past!” There was a stony gleam on the old Scotchman’s face as the girl sobbed, “Mother! Mother! Lost to me forever, now.” The cunning old Scotchman’s face darkened at the mention of that long-forbidden name. The woman who had deserted the rich nabob.
With uneasy, tottering steps the old scholar paced the room, watching the two women in a grim silence, until Justine Delande, with a woman’s questioning eyes, pointed to the rooms above.
“Before ye go, and I’ll now give ye these whole papers and documents, I would say that my dead brother Hugh has here in his will laid out yere whole life for the three years of the minority. He has put on me the thankless labor and care of watching over yere worldly gear, and of keeping ye safely to the lines of prudence and of a just economy. And my duty to my dead brother, I will do just as his own words and hand and seal lay it down! To-morrow I will have much to say to you. If ye will come back to me here, Madame Delande, when my ward goes to her own room, I’ll see ye at once on a brief matter o’ business. And now I’ll wait till ye take her away!” It was a half hour before Justine Delande descended to the rooms where the old egoist chafed at the loss of time stolen from the maundering researches on Thibet and the Ten Tribes.
“Woman! woman! I sent up for ye twice!” he barked, as the half-defiant Swiss governess at length joined him.
“I know my duty to my dear child, Nadine!” said the stout-hearted governess, with a crimsoning cheek. The old man opened a check-book, and sternly said:
“Sit ye there! I’ll arrange yere business in a few minutes! And, then, ye can find other duties, and know them as ye care to. I’ll have none of yere hoity-toity airs here!” Regardless of the look of horror stealing over the face of Justine, the old man coldly proceeded as if receding from the pulpit. “My late brother, Hugh Fraser Johnstone, of Delhi and Calcutta, has sent me his own last instructions and orders. I have here the last receipt for the stipend which ye have been allowed—and, I’m duly following his orders, when I give ye this check for the six months that has yet too to run.
“And-look ye here! A twenty-pound note to take ye back to Geneva! When ye sign this receipt for the stipend, ye are free to leave my house at once. There’s some letters and a couple of telegrams for ye! Bring me the maid, now, and I’ll pay her in the same way; and, moreover, I will give her ten pounds to take her home. Then, ye’ll both remember ye are not to sleep another night here! I’ll give ye the whole day to say good-bye and to make up yere boxes. There will be two four-wheelers here after yere dinner, and ye’ll find the Royal Victoria Hotel suited to ye both, at St. Heliers. If ye choose to go, the morning boat takes ye to Granville. Bring the maid here now! Do you linger, woman? I’ll be obeyed and forthwith!”
With flashing eyes, Justine Delande sprang up, facing the flinty-hearted old Scotsman. “I will never abandon Nadine here! She will die in your cheerless prison!” she cried. But the old pedant glowered pitilessly at the startled woman, who cried: “To turn me away like a dog—after these many years!” And her sobs woke the echoes of the vaulted room.
“Hearken, my leddy!” barked old Fraser, “One more word, and I’ll have the gardener put ye off the premises! The girl ye speak of is young and strong. She’ll have just what the Court gives her, and what her father laid out for her, and I’ll work my will, and I’ll do his will. Ye’re speaking to no fule, here now! Take yere money and yere letters, and bring me the maid, or I’ll bundle ye both in a jiffey into the Queen’s highway. I’ll have none but my own servants here—now!”
Then Justine Delande, without another word, stepped forward, and, seizing the pen, signed her receipt for wages due, in silence. She defiantly gathered up her withheld letters and papers. She returned in a few moments with the maid, whose ox-like eyes glowed in the sudden joy of a return to Switzerland. For the ranz des vaches was now ringing in the stout peasant girl’s ears. “There, that’s all, now!” rasped the old man, when the maid had gathered up her dole. “The butler will go down to town with ye and see ye safe, and he will leave word at the bank to pay yere checks. I keep no siller here. It’s a lonely house.” And the dead tyrant worked his will through the living one, as his stony heart had laid out the future.
Justine Delande faced the old miser pedant as she indignantly cried: “God protect and keep the poor orphan who has drifted out of one hell on earth into another! Your dead brother robbed her of a mother’s love, and you—you old vampire—you would bury her alive! She shall know yet her dead mother’s love, and—her brutal father’s shame!”
Before the excited woman could select another period of flowing invective from her thronging emotions, the gaunt old scholar had pushed her out into the hall and slid a bolt upon his door, with a vicious click. There were certain qualms of fear already unsettling his triumphant calmness.
While Justine Delande, with flaming cheeks, sprang up the stair, and barricaded herself with the sobbing heiress, the old man, his eyes gleaming with all the conscious pride of tyranny, seated himself and indited a note directed to
PROFESSOR ALARIC HOBBS, (of Waukesha University, U. S. A.), ROYAL VICTORIA HOTEL, ST. HELIERS, JERSEY.
He had already dismissed from his mind the sorrows of the orphaned niece—he cared not for the spirited onslaught of the Swiss woman—and he rejoiced in his heart at the fact of Douglas Fraser’s departure to gather up the loose ends of his dead brother’s great fortune. “It’s a vixenish baggage—this Swiss teacher! Hugh was right to bid me cut those cords at once and forever between them! The girl shall have discipline, and, that baggage, her mother, is well out of the world! I’ll work Hugh’s will! She shall come under!” With a secret glee he ran over a schedule of chapter headings upon Thibet, Tibet, Tubet—the land of Bod—Bodyul or Alassa. He was drifting back into the dreamland of the pedant, but a few hours deserted.
“This Yankee fellow has a keen wit! His ideas on the Ten Tribes are wonderful! His life has been a study of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and the history of the American Indians! I will be a bit decent to the fellow, and I’ll get at the meat of his knowledge! He’s young and a great chatterer, maybe, but a help to me. Body o’ me! But to get there myself—to Thibet.
“Ah!” sighed the old misanthrope, “I’m too old now! And Hugh has failed me! Nothing from him. This sair blow cuts off the last hope! And no educated men of Thibet ever travel! Blindness—blindness everywhere!” he babbled on, while above him, two women, in an agonized leave-taking, were silently sobbing in each other’s arms, while the happy Swiss servant made her boxes. Nadine Johnstone’s utter wretchedness gave her no sense of a loss by the hand of Death. For a father’s love she had never known, and her mother—a mystery!
The two women cowering together above the old pedant’s den with sorrowing hearts communed while Justine Delande directed the packing of her slender belongings. There was a new spirit of revolt stirring in Nadine Johnstone’s breast, and her face glowed with the resentment of an outraged heart. When all was ready for Justine’s flitting, the heiress of a million pounds finished a little memorandum, which she calmly explained to the Swiss preceptress. The sense of her future rights stirred her like a bugle blast, and with clear eyes, she looked beyond the three years toward Freedom.
“It rests with you, Justine, as to whether I am left friendless for three years of a gloomy captivity. First you are to telegraph to Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers, Delhi, and if you receive no reply, then telegraph to General Willoughby for the Major’s address. When at Granville, and, not before, send this letter to Major Hardwicke at the ‘Junior United Service Club, London’.” The beautiful girl was blushing rosy red as the sympathetic Swiss folded her to her breast. “Then, when you get to Paris, go to No. 9 Rue Berlioz, and leave this letter there for Madame Berthe Louison. Go yourself. Trust no one. When you have conferred with dear Euphrosyne, you can send all your letters to Madame Louison at Paris under cover. She will find out a safe way to get them to me—even if she has to send her man, Jules, over here. He is quick-witted, and he will find a way to reach me.”
There was a dawning wonder in Justine’s eyes.
“Who is this strange Madame Louison? Can you trust her?”
“Ah! Justine!” murmured Nadine, “She is only one who loves me, for love’s own sake, but I know I can trust her. She knows something of my mother’s past life—something that I do not know. This old tyrant will now try to cut me off from all the outside world. He has had some strange power given to him by the father who was only my father in name.
“I will obey you. I swear it!” cried Justine. “And old Simpson will probably be coming on soon. He loves you. He will serve you.”
“Yes,” joyously exclaimed Nadine, with a glowing face. “And he adores Major Hardwicke, whose father saved his life at Lucknow. There is one dawning hope. You are not to write one word till you hear from me. I know that Madame Louison will manage to send Jules to me in some safe disguise,” she proudly cried, “and remember—I shall not be always a poor prisoner with her hands tied. The day of my deliverance comes. When I am twenty-one, I can reward both you and Euphrosyne. She shall have a home to live in ease. And you,—you shall go out into the world with me, and aid me to find my mother. Even in the tomb I shall find her. I shall know of her love. For I shall see her loving face, even only in a picture. The face that has blessed me in my dreams.”
Justine Delande saw a future reward awaiting the two faithful guardians of the childhood of Miss Million. With a sudden impulse, she cried: “There is one to aid even nearer to us now than Major Hardwicke. For I have a telegram from Euphrosyne, that Major Hawke is at Geneva.”
Nadine Johnstone rose and seized both of Justine’s hands: “Promise me now, by my dead mother’s grave, that you will never tell that man anything of our secret compact of to-day! I fear him! I disliked him from the first! He had strange dealings with the dead.” The girl’s face was stern. “If I am approached by him in any way, I will cease every communication with you forever! I will have no aid of Alan Hawke.”
And when the parting hour came, Justine Delande was amazed at the cold dignity with which Nadine Johnstone faced the grim old uncle. It was only at the gate of the “Banker’s Folly,” that the heiress for the last time kissed her friend in adieu. “Fear not for me. I have learned the lesson of Life. Remember!” she whispered. “Keep the faith! Guard my trusts!” and then, Justine sobbed: “Loyal a la mort!”
The evening shades were darkening the sculptured shores of Rozel Bay, where clumsy luggers lay far below, high and dry on the beach, behind the great masonry pier. Skiffs and fishing-boats lined the shores, and the soft breeze moved the foliage of the luxuriant garden. The white stars were peeping out and twinkling in the gray and lonely sea, as Nadine shivered and walked firmly back to the portico, where the old recluse awaited her.
With a stiff motion of perfunctory courtesy, he motioned the heiress into the frosty-looking drawing-room, now lit up with spectral gleams of wax candles. For he would treat his ward with a frozen dignity.
Andrew Fraser coughed in a hollow warning and wasted no words in his first bulletin of “General Orders.” “I have here a certified copy of your late father’s will,” he said, “for your perusal. You will see all the conditions of life which he has wisely laid down for you. I have telegraphed on to London for his solicitor to send a representative here, and the original testament will be duly filed at Doctors’ Commons, at once. I shall at once provide you with suitable women attendants. I have already engaged a proper housekeeper, to whom you can state all your wishes. With regard to money matters and your correspondence, you must consult me! For the present, you will readily see that I deem it imprudent for you to leave these spacious and splendid grounds! But, ye’ll find ways to busy yourself. Women always do!”
The old pedant marveled at the young woman’s composure, for she simply bowed and awaited a termination of the interview. Slightly disconcerted, he abruptly demanded: “Have you anything to say?”
“Only this, Andrew Fraser,” coldly replied the heiress. “Your sending away the only woman whom I know in the world has marked you as a tyrant and a jailer.” Her spirit was as unyielding as his own, and he winced.
“Ye’ll find I had your father’s warrant. I’ll go on to the end and obey him! There are to be no old associations kept up, and when ye come to your own ye can do all ye will! I’ll go my way in my duty and do it as it seems right!” When he finished he was alone, for the daughter of Valerie Delavigne had passed him with a glance of unutterable contempt.
There was fire in the eye of the rebellious girl, and the elastic firmness of youth in her tread, but above stairs, in her own lonely rooms, her courage faded away quickly. But she wrapped her sorrows in her own proud young heart and turned her eyes to the far East. “Will he come?” she murmured.
When the clumsy island serving girl had trimmed the fire and drawn the heavy curtains, Nadine Johnstone locked her doors. She sat spellbound, with a wildly beating heart, until she had read the last of the sixteen provisions of her father’s vindictive will. Though the whole fortune was left absolutely to her, with the exception of twenty-five thousand pounds each to Andrew Fraser and his son, she was tied up by restrictions so infamously brutal, that her three years of minority stretched out before her as a death in life. Five hundred pounds a year of pin money were allowed to her until her majority, “to be expended with the approval of her guardian.”
In an agony of lonely sorrow she threw herself, dressed, upon her bed and sobbed herself into forgetfulness, her last cry for help mingling the names of Berthe Louison and Harry Hardwicke. “Will Justine be true to her oath?” she faltered, as she drifted into the blessed release of dreamland.
As the night wore on, Justine Delande, tossing on her bed in the Royal Victoria Hotel, waited for the dawn, to sail for Granville. She had telegraphed in curt words her dismissal, and she burned to reach Geneva, for to her the sight of Alan Hawke’s face was the one oasis in her desert of sorrow.
Long after Nadine Johnstone had closed her tired eyelids, stern old Andrew Fraser cowered below, glowering over his library fire, clad in a huge plaid dressing gown. His greedy eyes watched the dancing flames, and he rubbed the thin palms in triumph, while he sipped his nightly glass of Highland whisky grog. It had been a famous secret campaign for the surviving brother.
“If all goes on well; all goes well!” he crooned. “There’s Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx’s hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them for myself. For the boy? But he never must know! Ah! I must hide them well! This stubborn girl knows nothing! That is right! Janet Fairbarn will be here in two days, and I’ll have another man to keep watch; yes, and a good dog, too! For the gallants must never cross my wall!”
“He! He! She’ll no fule with Janet Fairbarn,” he gloated, “and the will gives me every power. I must find a place of safety for the jewels,” he mused. “I’m glad that I burned Hughie’s letter, as he told me. There’s nothing now to show for them. The bank would not be safe. Never must they go out of my hands. And, I can write a sealed letter for Douglas, to be opened by him alone, if I should be called away. I can put it in the bank, and take a receipt and send the boy the receipt. But, no human being must know that I have them.” He tottered away to his sleep murmuring, “But safer still, to turn them into yellow gold. There’s a deal of them. I must find out in time how to dispose of them, but never till the lass above is gone and my accounts all discharged.” And the old miser, who had already robbed his dead brother, slept softly in love with his own exceeding cunning.
Of all the loungers on the wind-swept wharf at Granville-sur-Mer next day, decidedly the most natty was Jules Victor, who was now awaiting the return of the little St. Helier’s packet, to engage a special cabin for himself, with all a Gaul’s horror of the stormy passage. He sprang forward, in a genuine surprise, as Mademoiselle Justine Delande, aided by the stout Swiss maid, tottered over the gangplank. “Madame is ill, a la bonne heure! Let me conduct you to the Hotel Croix d’Or, where Madame Louison is even now awaiting the Paris train.” The ex-zouave was a miracle of politeness and, he proudly conducted Justine to a waiting fiacre, having deftly reserved himself the choice of staterooms. With the skill of his artful kind, Jules hastened upstairs at the Hotel Croix d’Or, to announce to his mistress the lucky find of a windy afternoon on Granville quay.
That night, when Justine Delande reached Paris, she was assured in her heart that her own future fortunes were safe, and that her sister would surely be the recipient of Nadine Johnstone’s future bounty. For Madame Berthe Louison, ever armed against possible treachery, announced her own instant departure for Poland. “But, I leave Jules in charge in Paris, and he will find the way to deliver your letters to your young friend.”
When Justine Delande was safely escorted to the train by the smiling Madame Berthe Louison, she proceeded to register a packet for London, addressed to “Major Harry Hardwicke.”
That young officer’s heart was light, three days later, when he received the letter of Nadine which Madame Louison had cajoled easily from the Swiss woman. And the happy Major’s heart was no lighter than Nadine’s for the watchful Janet Fairbarn, now on duty, with her selected subordinates, wondered to see the pale-faced girl laugh merrily as she chatted over the garden wall with a strolling French peddler. “I may trade at the gate, may I not, Miss Janet,” said Nadine, “or is that one of the crimes?” But Jules Victor had brought her a new life. She whispered, “He will come!”