"Ma chérie, tu n'es pas sortie? tu ne fais rien?"
Bessie awoke from her reverie, and confessed that she was idle this morning, very idle and uncomfortably restless: it was the heat, she thought, and she breathed a vast sigh. Madame invited her to do something by way of relief to her ennui, and after a brief considering fit she said she would go into the cathedral, where it was the coolest, and take her sketching-block.
Oh, for the moist glades of the Forest, for the soft turf under foot and the thick verdure overhead! Bessie longed for them with all her heart as she passed upon the sun-baked stones to the great door of the cathedral. The dusk of its vaulted roof was not cool and sweet like the arching of green branches, but chill with damp odors of antiquity. She sat down in one of the arcades near the portal above the steps that descend into the nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries. Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible worshipper—nothing to interrupt her mood of reverie.
For a long while, that is. Presently chimed in with the music of chisel and mallet the ring of eager young footsteps outside, young men's footsteps, voices and dear English speech. One was freely translating from his guide-book: "The cathedral, many times destroyed, was rebuilt after the fire of 1106, and not completed until the eighteenth century. It is therefore of several styles. The length is one hundred and two mètres and the height twenty-three mètres from floor to vault."
Bessie's breath came and went very fast; so did the blood in her cheeks. Surely that voice she knew. It was Harry Musgrave's voice, and this was why thoughts of the Forest had haunted her all the morning.
The owner of the voice entered, and it was Harry Musgrave—he and two others, all with the fresh air of British tourists not long started on their tour, knapsack on back and walking-stick in hand. They pulled off their gray wideawakes and stared about, lowering their manly tones as they talked; stood a few minutes considering the length, breadth, height, and beauty of general effect in the nave and the choir, and then descended the steps, and in the true national spirit of inquiry walked straight to the stream of sunshine that revealed a door opening into some place unseen. Bessie, sitting in retired shade, escaped their observation. She laughed to herself with an inexpressible gladness. It was certainly not by accident that Harry was here. She would have liked to slip along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings of England were still dukes of Normandy; saw him carried off into the crypt where is shown the pyx of those long-ago times, a curious specimen of mediæval work in brass; and after that she lost him.
Would they climb the dome, those enterprising young men? Bessie took it for granted that they would. But she must see dear Harry again; and oh for a word with him! Perhaps he would seek her out—he might have learnt from her mother where she was at Bayeux—or perhaps he would not dare? Not that Harry's character had ever lacked daring where his wishes were concerned; still, recollecting the trouble that had come of his former unauthorized visit, he might deny himself for her sake. It was not probable, and Bessie would not have bidden him deny himself; she would willingly go through the same trouble again for the same treat. Why had she not taken courage to arrest his progress? How foolish, how heartless it would appear to-morrow if the chance were not renewed to her to-day! She would not have done so silly a thing three years ago—her impulse to follow him, to call out his name, would have been irresistible—but now she felt shy of him. A plague on her shyness!
Bessie's little temper had the better of her for a minute or two. She was very angry with herself, would never forgive herself, she said, if by her own trivial fault she had thrown away this favor of kind Fortune. What must she do, what could she do, to retrieve her blunder? Where seek for him? How find him? She quivered, grew hot and cold again with excitement. Should she go to the Green Square?—he was sure to visit that quarter. Then she remembered a high window in the canon's house that commanded the open spaces round the cathedral; she would go and watch from that high window. It was a long while before she arrived at this determination; she waited to see if the strangers would return to the beautiful chapter-house, to admire its fine tesselated floor and carved stalls, and its chief treasure in the exquisite ivory crucifix of the unfortunately famous princess De Lamballe; but they did not return, and then she hastened home, lest she should be too late. Launcelot was plying his water-can for the sixth time that morning when she entered the court, and she stood in an angle of shadow to feel the air of the light shower.
"Here she is, and just the same as ever!" exclaimed somebody at the salon window.
Bessie was startled into a cry of joy. It was Harry Musgrave himself. Madame Fournier had been honored with his society for quite half an hour while his little friend was loitering and longing pensively in the cathedral. All that lost, precious time! Bessie never recollected how they met, or what they said to each other in the first moments, but Babette, who witnessed the meeting through the glass door at the end of the hall which opened on the terrace, had a firm belief ever afterward that the English ladies and gentlemen embrace with a kiss after absence—a sign whether of simplicity or freedom of manners, she could not decide; so she wisely kept her witness to herself, being a sage person and of discreet experiences.