CHAPTER XXV
CONFESSION
The arm which now held her was an arm of iron. She was conscious of a great hubbub going on about her: of angry voices and hurrying feet, and a gabble of words which deafened her. Once she saw Gatelet, held back by strong hands; she heard Richard Watts telling those who came up to the café that the daughter of Madame Hélène had been insulted in the place. But of the rest she remembered little, except that the same strong arm led her quickly from the scene, and that she passed through narrow streets, unfamiliar to her, and was taken at length into some house, and into a little sitting-room there. When she asked where she was, an English voice answered her, and an English hand held a glass of wine to her lips.
“In the house of those that will take care of you, my dear—and, not a word until you have drunk every drop; not a word, lady.”
She obeyed willingly, and looked up to see a kindly old dame, in a white cotton dress, spotlessly clean, and wearing a bonnet which recalled the lanes of England. Richard Watts himself, standing at the dame’s side, watched her approvingly. Everything in that light and airy room was English—the substantial buffet, the guns on the walls, the pictures of hunting scenes, the great flagons of silver. But the gentle face of the woman was the most typical English thing of all.
“How good you are to me!” Beatrix said, again and again; “how good it is to hear an English voice!”
Old Richard Watts cried “Bravo!”
“English voices, English hands—that’s it, young lady. Stand by that and you’ll never come to any harm. Eh, Anne Brown, is the little passenger to stand by that? English voices and English hands—gad’s truth, it’s there in a sentence—the whole of it.”
He walked to and fro, cracking his fingers excitedly; but the old dame continued to say, “God bless me!” as she had said ever since her master brought so strange a guest to the house.
“In a café? My word! And a Frenchman insulting her; oh, my dear, my dear, that we should hear such things!”