“This is Janey’s fortune,” she said, looking up with a smile into the face of the man beside her. “Are you doing to keep it safe for me?”
He sat and looked at her, helpless; he would have knocked down any man who had seized upon it—wrested it from the most powerful claimant; but before the little child he was helpless. He gazed at her blankly, stupidly, in the height of his dismay.
“I will not dive it to Sir John,” said Janey, “because he does not look kind. He does not like Helen or me; he did not like papa: but I will dive it to Charley, for he is the one that is good. Catch, Charley!” cried the little girl, throwing the precious case like a ball across the table. She clapped her hands when Ashton caught it, with a laugh of childish pleasure. A ball or a fortune, what did it matter to Janey? “And look, Helen, who is coming!” the child said. “I was sent to tell you, but I forgot. Here she is coming! she is coming! and we are all doing home to our own house, and never to cry any more.”
In another moment Helen’s forlorn solitude, her helpless loneliness were over. She flew past Sir John, who rose stumbling to his feet, and Charley, who stood bewildered with Janey’s fortune in his hand, and fell into the outstretched arms of a smiling and weeping woman who had come in after Janey, at the open door.
Doubt, and danger, and suspicion of herself and of everything around her, had been closing about Helen. She had looked around her vainly into the blackness and found no guidance, no one even to tell her what she ought to do. She had no mother, nor any friend that absolutely belonged to her; nevertheless, when she flew into Mrs Ashton’s arms, the world had settled down again out of those giddy whirlings and confused eccentricities. She did not know what she might be called upon to do or to give up; but life had taken its natural shape again to the bewildered girl. She was not out of the labyrinth, but she had found the clue.
After the arrival of these strangers, Charley Ashton’s father and step-mother, the village of Latour advanced daily in its knowledge of the ways of the English,—a most curious and interesting study, which gave great amusement to the cottagers. Mr and Mrs Ashton took the apartments in M. Goudron’s house which had been so sadly vacated by l’Anglais, he who had escaped from all his pursuers by a night journey more sudden than any of his previous flights. The Latourois had been very sorry for the man who had died among them; but they were very glad, as was natural, to forget that tragical conclusion, and to amuse themselves with all the difficulties about monsieur’s bath, and madame’s tea. The Curé looked with amused tolerance, yet contempt, at the costume of the clergyman, and at the droll pretences of that Protestant personage to be a priest like himself; and Madame Dupré, with an effort, for the sake of the benefactor who had liberated Baptiste, put up with the fastidiousness of the new visitors who turned up their noses at her pot-au-feu, and expected to find the refinements of the Trois Frères in the little auberge. “Talk of French cookery!” the new-comers cried; and they endeavoured to teach Margot how to “cook a joint” over her handful of charcoal, and to make English mustard out of the dark-complexioned powder which was all that was to be had in Latour. To see them walking about for ever, taking perpetual constitutionals, filled the villagers with wonder. But it would be impossible to describe the interest of Blanchette and Baptiste when there dawned upon them a pleasing certainty of the fate which was reserved for mademoiselle. Little Blanchette was the one who had divined it from the first. The day M. Charles had come to the château, that very day she had read it in his face. The loves of Cécile and Sir John afforded them no such sympathetic satisfaction. And indeed, Sir John took his departure immediately, carrying with him the valuable case which held Janey’s fortune. He washed his hands, he said, of the other matter. The Ashtons were on the spot to look after it for themselves, and if the father did not object to such a connection, of course it was no concern of his, who was merely a cousin. A cloud, a faint veil of separation, fell between Helen and the girls at the château, in consequence of Sir John’s opposition. Perhaps it gave Cécile her first experience of the difficulties that attend marriage with an Englishman. She did her best to be loyal both to her friend and her future husband, but the conflict was not without pain.
But what did any such paltry pain matter in the opening of the new day which came to Helen out of the clouds of the morning, sweet and dazzling in all the glories of life and spring? Her oldest friends put her hand into her lover’s hand, and his father said the blessing over them. Let all the Sir Johns in the world object, what harm could it do? They went to Paris and bought the bride her Indian outfit,—she who had nothing. Helen’s hundred a-year had accumulated as her father had said. It came from her mother, and was honestly hers, and there was no reason why she should not use it. And it was at Paris that the young pair were married; and from thence that they set out to their distant home. But before they left Latour there was a pretty ceremony, at which their presence was indispensable. Helen and little Janey put aside their black dresses and put on white ones to honour Blanchette’s marriage. And when the religious ceremony took place, after the first day’s performance at the Mairie, the bride herself, holding her husband by the hand, turned aside and led the way among all the iron crosses on the graves to the place where l’Anglais lay under a green mound, without any name. He had forfeited his name, his good fame, and honour. Nevertheless little Blanchette wept over the mound, and, kneeling down in her veil and myrtle crown, laid a white wreath upon the grass, and said a prayer for his soul. Did it do him any good in those dark countries whither the fugitive had taken flight “unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d”?
“Ma bonne, douce demoiselle,” said Blanchette amid her tears, “how he was good to us, monsieur votre père! Never shall a week pass when you are far, far away from Latour, but Baptiste and me, we will say a prayer for the repose of his soul.”
The others said nothing, but stood silent about the nameless grave. What harm he had done, what suffering he had caused! and yet he was but as other men, and gratitude gave him a prayer and a tear.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.