How hoarse and broken the sound was! Helen took fright. “Papa, you are ill!” she cried.
He went on laughing, not able to stop himself. “Not a bit,” he said, sitting down and panting for breath. “Bonjour, M. Goudron; you are a wise man, you are not led by the nose like me. Janey, my pet, tell your Blanchette to dry her eyes. We can’t have any crying such a bright morning; and let her send this conscrit to me.”
“It would be better, a great deal better, for him to accept the lot he has drawn, and serve as be ought, and give up all follies,” said old Goudron, gathering himself up out of his chair. He stood for a moment balancing himself on his long legs, somewhat crest-fallen, yet recovering his grin. “I have to thank mademoiselle for her excellent coffee,” he said, “and her hospitality, truly English. Tenez, mademoiselle la petite; you will say au revoir before I go?”
Janey put her two hands behind her, and fixed him with two glittering eyes. “I am afraid I shall see you again, but I wish I never might,” she cried. “You are a bad, bad, horrible old man!”
“And you, you are a charmante petite demoiselle,” said M. Goudron, grinning at her till his old face seemed cut in two.
CHAPTER XII.
The day of the tirage au sort was not one which could be spent like other days, after the supreme excitement of the morning. There was a great deal of wine consumed in Latour, and a perfect babel of talk. It soon became known in the village, after a great many excited communications between the Lion d’Or and M. Goudron’s house, that l’Anglais had offered to procure a substitute for Baptiste. At first the little eager world was incredulous of such an extraordinary announcement. L’Anglais! a stranger, one who had nothing to do with the Duprés or the Goudrons, or even with the district, or any interest in the Lion d’Or! but it was very evident that something was going on in which the stranger and Baptiste and Blanchette and all their respective families were involved. Madame Dupré, who had been assisted to her room by a whole assembly of weeping and sympathetic neighbours, had been disinterred from the midst of them and conducted across the street by Baptiste, very solemn and pale, yet with an expression quite different from the despair on his face when he had come home from the Mairie with his fatal number. It was Blanchette who, laughing, crying, with the tears on her cheeks and a voice broken with sobs, yet an extraordinary gleam of happiness about her, had flown across the street, light as a bird, to call them. They had all disappeared into the rooms on the ground-floor, where there had been a tumult of talking and crying, two or three voices audible together, a thing never heard before since the English family, who spoke, the Latourois thought, almost in whispers, had taken possession. And then the Curé had been sent for; and M. le Maire himself, coming home after presiding officially over the business of the day, still with his scarf on, and in all the pride of office, had stepped in. This diverted the attention of many from the noisy youths who had escaped, and who were celebrating their freedom—and from those who had been drawn, and who were trying to forget it and drown their despair. And when Madame Dupré came back, a changed woman, her head high, her countenance radiant, the whole community was stirred. It was true then? Many were the wistful women who crossed the road after, and hung about the door, and cast anxious looks at the window. Why should Baptiste Dupré be the only one to be delivered? L’Anglais probably did it out of mere eccentricity, they thought, not out of regard to Baptiste, and no doubt he was enormously rich, and did not know what to do with his money; and if he bought back Baptiste, why not Jean and Pierre? The mothers of Jean and Pierre, who had drawn the numbers 2 and 4, could not see the difference. They hung about the door all the day, thinking if he would but appear they might find courage to speak to him. The lucky Baptiste to have caught his attention! M. Goudron himself was not visible. He did not stand at the door and grin as he was in the habit of doing. The commotion had subdued him at least, and if there had been nothing else for which to thank l’Anglais, this was something, for these poor women, with their hearts full, felt that they could not have borne Père Goudron’s grin. And soon it became whispered in the crowd that it was Antoine who was going to accept Baptiste’s place. He had served already, being so much older, and most people were very glad to hear that he was going out of Latour. It would be so much the better for the other young men. Antoine had announced himself as ready to be any one’s remplaçant; things had been going badly with him all the winter, and the money tempted him. There had been great bargainings in the room where so much unusual talking had been going on and so many people crowded together; and at last, by the help of the Maire and Curé and old Père Goudron himself—who, now that nobody expected him to supply the funds, could not keep himself out of the negotiations—Antoine consented to take fifteen hundred francs as the price of his service. He was giving himself, as he declared, “dirt-cheap”; but as Mr Goulburn, though he was so liberal, had his wits about him, and old Goudron was the keenest at a bargain in all Burgundy, the whole preliminaries were arranged the same morning, and the money was to be paid as soon as possible.
“For we are birds of passage,” the Englishman said, “there is no knowing how long we may stay.” That same night, no later, all guarantees having been given, Antoine was to get his price; and thus, after thanks and blessings innumerable, the scene ended. It was a relief to them all when the outpourings of gratitude were over and all those effusive people gone. “In England they would have felt it just as much, but they would not have made such a fuss,” Mr Goulburn said with a sigh of relief.
“You could not have done it in England,” said Helen. “I think it is very good of you to do it, papa.”
He looked at her with a smile on his face. “Do you know, I think so too—it was very good of me. But it was all for Janey,” he said; “it will come off her fortune. I have got her fortune laid by all safe. I don’t speak of yours, Helen, for you know you have something from your mother. You have a hundred a-year, and as it has always been left untouched to accumulate, there should be a good deal more than a hundred a-year now. It is as well you should know, in case of——”