Barbara in Brittany

by E. A. Gillie

From it one could get a beautiful view across the River Rance, to the wooded slopes beside Dinard, and, finding a seat beneath a lime-tree, Barbara sat down. She had been there about a quarter of an hour, and was almost asleep, when she heard stealthy footsteps coming through the grass beside her, and the next moment her startled eyes fell upon the solicitor's son of Neuilly remembrance!

She got rather a fright at first, but he certainly got a much worse one; and before he had recovered it had flashed across her mind quite clearly that the man who was at that moment talking to Mademoiselle Thérèse, was the solicitor himself. Before she could move from her place, the son had cast himself down on his knees, and was begging her incoherently to spare him and his father—not to inform against them. The thought of going to prison, he said, would kill him, as it had his mother, as it nearly had his sister; and if she would spare them, he would take his father away at once.

To see the boy crying there like a child almost made Barbara give way and let things go as they liked; but then she remembered how meanly his father had cheated the people in Neuilly—a widow's family too—and what a life he seemed to have led his own wife and children; then, calling to mind his horrid manner and cruel, sensuous face, she steeled herself against him.

"I shall certainly inform against your father," she said gravely. "And I think the best thing that you and your sister can do, is to get away at once, before it is too late."

The boy wrung his hands. "My sister has gone already," he moaned, "to some Scotch relations—simple people—who said they would take her in if she would have nothing more to do with our father. But I could not go—there was money only for one."

Barbara looked at the pathetic figure before her, and suddenly forgot all her promises not to get entangled in any more plots or other dangerous enterprises, and almost before she realised what she was doing, she was scribbling a message in French on the back of an envelope.

From where they stood they could see the little house of Mademoiselle Viré, and the entrance to the lane in which it stood. Pointing out the roof of the house to her companion, she told him to run there with the note, and, if the people let him in, to wait until she came.

She felt it was a very bold, and perhaps an impertinent thing to do, but she was almost sure that Mademoiselle Viré would do as she asked. As soon as she saw him so far on his way, she ran to the inn, and went through to the kitchen, where a maid was cooking.

"Bring your master to me, as quickly as possible," the girl said peremptorily. "You need not be afraid" she added, seeing that the woman—not unnaturally—looked upon her with suspicion. "I will touch nothing, and the quicker you come back the better I shall be pleased."

The maid eyed her doubtfully for a few minutes, then shrugged her shoulders and ran out of the room. Her master would, at least, be able to get rid of this obnoxious stranger, she thought. He came quickly enough, with an anxious expression on his rosy face, and Barbara had to tell the story twice or thrice before he seemed to understand. It was rather unpleasant work telling a foreigner about the evil deeds of a fellow-countryman, but it seemed the right thing to do, though the thought of it haunted the girl for some time.