She turned away, making a gesture to him to go back. They were opposite the Lion d’Or, where still the conscrits were hanging about with their coloured ribbons, and Baptiste receiving once again perpetual congratulation. Antoine, with his hands in his pockets, strolled along in the middle of the street, biting a straw which he held in his mouth. He was looking at M. Goudron’s windows with bended brows. Amid all the peaceful surroundings, he alone caught Charley Ashton’s eyes as a sinister figure meaning mischief; but he was far too much occupied with other thoughts to waste any upon the village bully at a moment so full of heavier trouble and pain.
CHAPTER XIII.
Helen went home with slow steps and a heavy heart.
A heavy heart, indeed; it had beaten wildly enough within the last hour—now it lay in her breast like a lump of lead. This morning, though there was nothing happy in her position—though she knew that some great cloud of misery and doubt hung between them and everything they had hitherto known, and that even the tranquillity of the moment, such as it was, might be interrupted in a second, in the twinkling of an eye,—yet the triumphant light-heartedness of youth had been able to triumph over all these things. And there had been so warm an atmosphere of life about them, so much interchange of feeling, keen sympathy, and the profound happiness of making others happy, that very little sense of being there as a stranger had remained in Helen’s mind. They were not strangers—they were more at home in Latour than they had ever been in Fareham. Here everybody knew them, everybody had a friendly word for them; more than that, the English family, with its careless, liberal ways, had now secured the affection of the village. She herself had never known before what it was to have friends like Cécile and Thérèse, or to be interested with such familiar kindness in any poor girl as she had been in the fortunes of little Blanchette. At Fareham the love of the village publican’s son with the retired tradesman’s daughter would have been nothing to the great young lady, secluded among her woods and parks. But here they were more interesting, and concerned her more than any romance. She had a share in the lives of so many people, and her own life was full of tranquil occupations, of sympathies, of friendships; every cottage round about contained something or somebody that interested her. But what of that? They must all be left behind, as all her other habits of living, all her previous existence had been. She would have to give up those first personal friends, not knowing if she should ever see them more, not hoping to do so—and go away from the homely little life which had given her her first lively sense of individual existence—for what? to go where? Helen could not tell. The world was all dark beyond this one clear spot in which the afternoon sun had just sunk behind the cottage roofs, and the whole sky overhead was red with gorgeous reflection. To-morrow, the fine spring morning which these ruddy lights prophesied, would rise serenely over the same roofs, and Margot would light her fire, and little Blanchette, out of her dreams, would awake joyfully to recollect that her troubles were all over. But where would Helen be? She did not know, but surely away from Latour, away from everything she knew, out into the world, which always figured itself before her as darkness—the gloom of night, the clanging of a great train, pursuing its noisy precipitate way through an unseen country, to the unknown out of the known. She stood for a moment at the door, looking wistfully round her at the familiar scene. The houses with their thatched roofs rose dark against the great glow of redness in the west. In the distance the homely spire of the church rose up protecting over them; voices were in the air, all cheerful, confused, half heard, with now and then one distincter note striking in, as by turns one figure would start up and separate itself from the little company still lingering in front of the Lion d’Or.
Somewhere near a woman was singing a baby to sleep, in a sweet drowsy voice, broken by the rock of her chair upon the wooden floor. On the other hand a group of little truants, pattering in their sabots, were being pursued homewards to bed by the half-laughing, half-angry mother. Helen looked round her with wistful eyes, casting a last glance along the road which led to the château, the most dear of all. Along this road Antoine was sauntering slowly, his hands in his pockets, looking back as he went, with his eyes always fixed on M. Goudron’s house. His was the only non-sympathetic figure in all the scene. It broke the spell. Helen turned from him and breathed her farewell to the village in one long sigh.
The prattle of Janey was the first thing she heard when she went in. The child was seated on her father’s knee. She had been telling him a story about Margot’s children, with whom she had been playing.
“Petit-Jean does not know what a big city is, papa; he thinks Paris is like Laroche” (Laroche was the next village, and had a street twice as long as that of Latour, and was looked upon as almost a chef-lieu). “He said, was England like the little island in the pond at the château? Margot’s little children they are very ignorant, they don’t know anything, papa.”
“And my little Janey knows a great deal?” he said laughing, yet with a thrill of another sentiment in his voice; “but everybody, my pet, has not travelled like you.”
“No,” said Janey, complacently. “Only think, I came from India when I was a little tiny baby—if I could only recollect I should know India too, and then London, and then that place on the sea where we bought our things, and then Sainte-Barbe, and then—— Papa, after all this, when are we doing home?”
“Should you like to do home, Janey?” This time the laugh was so broken that it was more like a sob.