“Forgive us, my children,” she said, “it relieves the heart to weep. Trouble we have borne without complaint, but now joy comes, the tears come also. Adolphe, my brother, you are more able to speak. Tell them. I can no more.”
She sunk down in a chair and covered her face with her hands.
Thus appealed to, Monsieur stood up at the end of the table facing the sea, like one prepared to make a speech, took off his sailor hat, and passed his hand thoughtfully over his closely-cropped head. Susan and Sophia Jane, still puzzled and confused, stared up at him spellbound without saying a word, deeply impressed. For suddenly there seemed to be a change in Monsieur. He looked taller, and drew a deep breath like one who is relieved from some oppression. It was as though a burden had dropped from his shoulders, and set him free to stand quite upright at last.
His grey eyes, though red with weeping, had a light in them now of hope and courage, and he fixed them on the distance as though he were talking to someone far away across the sea in his native country.
“My children,” he said, “my sister has told you that we have borne our troubles without complaint, and that is true. But they have been hard troubles. Not only often to be hungry and very weary in the body—that is bad, but there is worse. It is a sore thing to be hungry in the mind and grieved in the spirit. To leave one’s real work undone, so that one may earn something to eat and drink, to have no outlet for one’s thoughts, to lose the conversation and sympathy of literary men. That is a bondage and a slavery, and that is what a man who is very poor must do. He must leave his best part unused, wasted, unknown. He is bound and fettered as though with iron. But that is now past. To-day we hear that we are no longer poor people. This letter tells me that I am now a rich man. Free. Free to go back to Paris to take up again my neglected work, to see my sister’s adorable patience rewarded by a life of ease and leisure—to see again my friends—”
Monsieur stopped suddenly, and Mademoiselle, clasping his hand, immediately rushed in with a mixture of French and English.
“Oh, Adolphe! Adolphe! it is too much. Figure it all to yourself! The Champs Elysées, and the Bois, and the toilettes and the sunshine. To dine at Phillippe’s perhaps, and go the theatre, and to hear French words, and see French faces, and taste a French cuisine again. Nothing more English at all! No more cold looks and cold skies—”
“Calm yourself, Delphine, my sister,” said Monsieur, “we forget our little friends here.”
“It is true,” said Mademoiselle wiping her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and glancing at the children’s upturned astonished faces, “I am too much exalted. I will restrain myself. Voyons petites amies,” she continued, sitting down between them, “it is this which has so much moved us. It is that a magnificent, yes, a magnificent fortune comes to my brother by the death of his cousin. It is a little sudden at first, but,” drawing herself up with dignity, “he will adorn the position, and we shall now resume the ‘De’ in our name, for our family is an ancient one.”
“Shall you go away?” asked Sophia Jane.