A faint dolorous wonder had crossed the mind of Helen. She would not leave him, nothing would make her leave him, lonely as he was. But that momentary pause, and the substitution of I for we, touched his daughter’s heart. She put her hand again softly on his arm.
“Papa, we could not go away by night, all this long, dreadful way—and Janey. If we were to go early, early in the morning, would that not do? It is not so cold now, and the diligence goes so early. That would be best, not to attract any attention; or if we could leave her with Margot till we got settled——”
“Leave—my child!—do you want me to leave my child?” he cried, as if she had suggested something cruel—“till we get settled?” and he laughed. “The only use of that would be to give them a clue to trace us by. We could not live without news of her, and letters are destruction. Do you think we could have been quiet here so long, so quiet, if there had been letters coming after us? No; we must go altogether when we go. But suppose that I were to keep out of the way,” he said in a half entreating tone; “suppose that I kept my room; suppose—I don’t know what is the matter with me—I have lost my courage. This man cannot stay very long with the Vieux-bois, Helen. Don’t you think if I were to shut myself up, to see no one? You could say I was ill——”
“He is going to marry Cécile; they will talk of us, they will describe you, and there will be Mr Ashton, who knows us. It might be right—I mean not very wrong, for me; but he, why should he tell lies for us?” said Helen, mournfully.
Her father recovered himself as by a miracle. He sat up in his chair, and his nervous trembling ceased. He even laughed. “I will manage Charley Ashton,” he said.
Shortly after he was summoned to see Antoine, who had come with the notary to receive the money which had been agreed upon as the price of his services as Baptiste’s remplaçant. Mr Goulburn got up quite revived and restored, and went to his own room, where the two men awaited him. It was his bedroom, but also his sitting-room; the small business he had occupied himself with, since his arrival in Latour, having been all performed there. In a large old bureau, which stood between the window and the fireplace, were all his papers, his writing materials, the few books he had picked up. In a drawer of this bureau he kept his money. Probably there were none of the secondary vexations of his ruined life which affected him so much as the necessity of keeping his money in a drawer, and counting it out to every claimant; but the sums that were necessary for their living were so small that as yet he had not been much disturbed by it. This was the first occasion on which he had taken any serious sum from the stores with which he had provided himself. The notary sat at the table. Antoine, striding across a chair, placed himself in front of the window, between his companion and Mr Goulburn. He watched every movement of the Englishman, who took no heed of his dark looks. “This is one of the worst of your French customs,” he said pettishly. “In England I should have given him a cheque on my bankers without any trouble.” It was not in English flesh and blood not to say this, though, even as he said it, Mr Goulburn remembered, with a bitter pang, what so often he managed to forget, that no English banker would honour a cheque of his, or pay any regard save that of hostile curiosity to his dishonoured name.
“Monsieur, it will be long before a peasant will trust to your cheques; it is not always even that they care for bank-notes. Gold, hard gold, that is what they like best; but Antoine has education, and is very well content with the bank-notes.”
“Perfectly content,” said Antoine. He had his eyes fixed upon the movements of l’Anglais. Mr Goulburn took out one thing after another from the drawer. First, the morocco letter-case which he had sent Helen to fetch on the night of the flight from Fareham, then a pocketbook bursting with papers; then, finally, the thing he was looking for, his chequebook, which he took out with a sigh.
“In England I should fill up one of these forms, and all would be done,” he said, showing it.
Antoine bent curiously forward to look. “Is it money?” he said, with some eagerness, yet suspicion; a book of bank-notes! It seemed not at all unnatural to Antoine that an Englishman should travel with such an article at hand.