Basil and Annette: A Novel

by B. L. Farjeon

"Was not that a waste of time, Corrie?"

"I took my own view of it. There was the dead man soon to be in his grave; here was I with the blood running free through my veins. If he'd been alive he'd have kept his word; I was alive, and I'd keep mine. So I finished the contract out of respect for Mr. Anthony Bidaud, and there the slabs are, stacked and ready. While I was at work my thoughts were on you; four days passed, and you hadn't returned. I concluded that something had happened to you, but that you'd appear some time or another, and all I could do was to hope that you'd come back before I left the place. I had a great wish to see the little lady, but I didn't know how to compass it. Compassed it was, however, without my moving in it. Just a week it was after you'd gone that I was at work in the wood; it was afternoon, a good many hours from sundown, when my laughing jackass began to laugh outrageous. When we're alone together he behaves soberly and decently, contented with quietly laughing and chuckling to himself, and it's only when something out of the way occurs that he gives himself airs. He's the vainest of the vain, Master Basil, and he does it to show off. His tantrums made me look round, and there, standing looking at me and the laughing jackass, without a morsel of fear of me or the bird, was the little lady."

"Annette?" cried Basil.

"The little lady herself," said Old Corrie.

[CHAPTER XV.]

"Was she alone?" asked Basil.

"Yes, quite alone. I dropped my axe, told the jackass to shut up--which it didn't, Master Basil--and took the hand she held out to me. Such a little hand, Master Basil! I give you my word that as I held it in mine my thoughts went back, more years than I care to count, to the time when I was a little 'un myself, snuggling close up to my mother's apron. I can't remember when I'd thought of those days last. They were stowed away in a coffin, and dropped into a grave which stood between me as a boy and me as a man. It's like having lived two lives, one of which was dead and buried. Now, all at once, the dead past came to life, and said, in a manner of speaking, 'I belong to you,' and it didn't seem unnatural. The touch of the little lady's hand was like a magic wand, and if she had said to me, 'Let's have a game of hopscotch,' I believe I should have done it and thought it the proper thing to do. But she said nothing of the sort, only looked at me with melancholy sweetness, and hoped I was not sorry to see her. Sorry! I was heartily and thankfully glad, and I told her so, and the tears came into her pretty eyes, and I said, without thinking at the moment that she'd lost a dear father, 'Don't cry, don't cry! there's nothing to cry for;' but I set myself right directly by saying, 'I mean, I hope it isn't me that makes you cry.' 'No,' she answered, 'it's only that you speak so kind.' My blood boiled up, for those words of hers showed me that since her father's death she had not been treated with kindness, and if she hadn't been a little lady, rich in her own right, I should have offered to run off with her there and then. But under any circumstances that would have been a dangerous thing to do, for her and me; it would have brought her uncle down upon me, and he'd have had the law on his side. So, instead of offering to do a thing so foolish, I said, 'Did you come on purpose to see me?' 'Yes,' she answered, on purpose. 'I gave them the slip, and they don't know where I am.' 'Don't you be afraid then, my little maid,' I said, 'they won't find you here, because they won't venture within half a mile of me. You've done no harm in coming to see a friend, as you may be sure I am. Can I do anything for you?' 'Yes,' she said; 'you like Basil, don't you?' Upon that I said I was as true a friend of yours as I was of hers. 'Will you tell me, please,' she said then, 'why he has gone quite away without trying to see me? I know it wouldn't be easy, because my uncle and aunt are against him; but I thought he would have tried. I have been to every one of his favourite places, in the hope of meeting him, and my uncle has said such hard things of him that my heart is fit to break.' Poor little lady! She could hardly speak for her tears. Well, now, that laughing jackass was making such a chatter, and behaving so outrageous, pretending to sob, which made her sob the more, that I proposed to take her to my hut here, where we could talk quietly. She put her little hand in mine and walked along with me to my hut, and the minute we came in the magpie cried out, 'Little lady, little lady.' She looked up at this, and I told her it was a magpie I was training for her. It gave her greater pleasure than such a little thing as that ought to have done, and though she did not say it in so many words I saw in her face the grateful thought that she still had friends in the world that had grown so sad and lonely. Then I told her all about your last meeting with me--how tenderly you had spoken of her, what love you had for her, and how I had lent you my mare to take you to a place where you hoped to find a doctor and a lawyer who might be able to serve her in some way. The news comforted her, but she was greatly distressed by the fear that you had met with an accident which prevented your return. I wouldn't listen to this for the little maid's sake, and said I was positive you would soon be back, and that nothing was farther from your mind than the idea of going away entirely without seeing her again. 'He will have to make haste,' said the little lady, with a world of thought in her face, 'or he will never be able to find me.' I asked why, and she answered that she believed, when everything was settled, that her uncle would sell the plantation and take her away to Europe. 'Can't it be prevented?' she asked, and I said I was afraid it could not; that her uncle stood now in the place of her father, and could do as he liked. 'If you are compelled to go,' I said, 'you shall take the magpie away with you to remind you of the old place--that is, if you will be allowed to keep it.' 'I shall be,' she said; and now, child as she was, I noticed in her signs of a resolute will I hadn't given her credit for. 'If you give it to me, it will be mine, and they shall not take it from me. I will fight for it, indeed, I will.' I was pleased to hear her speak like that; it showed that she had spirit which would be of use to her when she was a woman grown. She stopped with me as long as she dared, and before she went away she said she would come again, and asked me if I thought I could teach the bird to speak your name. 'It would be easy enough,' I answered, and that is how it comes about that the magpie--which for cleverness and common-sense, Master Basil, I would match against the cunningest bird that ever was hatched--can call out 'Basil--Basil,' as clearly as you pronounce your own name. It was at that meeting, and at every meeting afterwards, she gave me a message to you if you returned. You were to be sure not to go away again without seeing her; if you couldn't contrive it, she would; that proved her spirit again; and that if it should unfortunately happen that you returned after she was taken away you were never to forget that Annette loved you, and would love you all her life, whatever part of the world she might be in. Those are her words as near as I can remember them, and they're easy enough for you to understand, but it isn't so easy to make you understand the voice in which she spoke them. I declare, Master Basil, it runs through me now, broken by little sobs, with her pretty hands clasping and unclasping themselves and her tender body shaking like a reed."

"Dear little Annette," said Basil, and his eyes, too, were tearful, and his voice broken a little; "dear little Annette."

"She's worth a man's thoughts, Master Basil," said Old Corrie, "and a man's pity, and will be better worth em' when she's a woman grown. You're a fortunate man, child as she is, to have won a love like the little lady's, for if I'm a judge of human nature, and I believe myself to be--which isn't exactly conceit on my part, mind you--it's love that will last and never be forgotten. It's no light thing, Master Basil, love like that; when it comes to a man he'll hold on to it if he's got a grain of sense in him."

"You cannot say one word in praise of Annette," said Basil, "that I'm not ready to cap with a dozen. I believe, with you, that she has a soul of constancy, and I hold her in my heart as I would a beloved sister. If I could only help and advise her! But how can I do that when she is to be taken away to a distant land?"