CHAPTER XIII. AN ASIATIC LION IN HIDING.
Madame Alixe Delavigne sat alone in her snug apartment of the Hotel Croix d’Or, at Granville-sur-Mer, four days after Justine Delande had been driven forth from the Banker’s Folly! The perusal of a long letter from Jules Victor was interrupted by the arrival of a telegram from that rising young soldier, Captain Anson Anstruther. It needed but a single glance to call the resolute woman to action.
Smartly ringing the bell, she ordered the maid, her bill, and a voiture to convey her to the Boulogne station. “So, Hardwicke and Captain Murray are safely in London! Major Hawke is at Geneva, and I am to hide at Rosebank Villa until he has reported and been sent away on his continental tour of the great jewel dealers!”
With flying fingers the lady soon penned a letter addressed to “Monsieur Alois Vautier, Marchand-en-petit, Hotel Bellevue, St. Aubin, Jersey.” “He can telegraph to me at Richmond, and one of us will soon be on the ground to aid him! Now, ‘the longest way round is the nearest way home!’” laughed the ci-devant Madame Louison, as she departed for Boulogne, an hour later, having carefully mailed her letter personally, and sent a brief telegram to the active Jules Victor.
The ex-Zouave had easily made the rounds of the pretty islet of Jersey, in his capacity of merchant of small wares, long before Alixe Delavigne, braving the stormy channel, had proceeded from Folkestone directly to Richmond, and hidden herself in the leafy bowers of Rosebank Villa. Smiling, gay and debonnair with all the women servants, he had a pinch of snuff, a cigar of fair quality, or a pipe full of tabac for coachman and groom, supplemented with many a petit verre from his capacious flask. His Gallic gallantry, with the gift of a trinket or ribbon, made him welcome with simple milk-maid or pert house “slavey,” and the dapper little Frenchman was already an established favorite in the wine-room of the Hotel Bellevue.
His greatest triumph, however, was the secret demonstration of the cheapness of Jersey prices to the London sewing woman and smart lady’s maid, now chafing under Janet Fairbarn’s iron rule at the “Banker’s Folly.” “Nom de pipe! But I have to make shameful rabaissements de prix,” muttered Jules, as he adroitly worked upon the susceptibilities of the two new maid servants. While one or the other of these women always accompanied Miss Nadine Johnstone in her daily wanderings through the splendid gardens of the Folly, the merry voice of Jules Victor was often heard by them singing on his way down the road. The gift of a famous brule gueule had propitiated the simple Jersey gardener, whose stout boy rejoiced in a new leather jacket, almost a gift, and the second man, Andrew Fraser’s reinforcement, a famous drinker, was soon a nightly companion of “Alois Vautier” at the one little “public,” down under the scarped hill at Rizel Bay.
Andrew Fraser, closeted with the London lawyer, had almost forgotten the existence of Nadine Johnstone.
A formal interview as to the filing of her father’s will, a mere mute exhibition of perfunctory courtesy, released Nadine to her own devices, while Professor Andrew Fraser returned to his afternoon studies with that famous young Yankee savant, Professor Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University.
The beautiful captive was now happy in dissembling her contentment, for, though the sharp-featured Scotch housekeeper, Janet Fairbarn, keenly watched all her outgoings, sending always one of the women as an “outside guard,” the heiress had learned some of woman’s secret arts quickly. The peddler, Alois Vautier, brought to her letters and messages which made her lonely heart light, even in her stately semi-durance. And the epistles of Major Harry Hardwicke left her with a heart trembling in delight after their perusal.