Chapter II: Part 2

Gibson floundered through an unconvincing explanation. He affected to have doubts as to the Future of the Horse. He declared that, until lately, he had clung to a belief that "these here motor-cars would die out, same as the bicycles did;" but, tardily and bitterly, he has changed his mind. It seems the Horse will not become extinct. There will always be a few horses in the country, just as there will always be a few bows and arrows. But the number of horse-owners in the near future as compared with the horse-owners of the near past is to be in pretty much the same proportion as the archery-club amateurs of to-day in comparison with the English bowmen at Crecy and Agincourt. Gibson didn't put it exactly in this way, but his point is that the Horse, as the Psalmist says, is a vain thing for safety when a young man is looking well ahead for his bread and butter. Gibson wants to stay at Traxelby as long as I will keep him: but, "begging pardon, Ma'am, with a single lady one never knows," and therefore he thinks it is high time he should put himself in the way of qualifying as a chauffeur. Hence France.

"You do right to improve yourself, Gibson," I said. "But why France? Nowadays you can learn to be a chauffeur far better in England."

His face darkened.

"Asking pardon, Ma'am," he said obstinately, "I have a fancy for learning in France."

"Very well," I said. "It's your holiday, and you can spend it wherever you like. If you can manage the language, go to France by all means."

"Then you haven't any objection, Ma'am?"

"Why should I?"

Gibson hesitated. Then he stammered:

"I was afraid, Ma'am, that ... that me goin' to France the same time as you, Ma'am, wouldn't be ... I mean, it would look like taking a liberty."

I perceived that Gibson, like many others of his class, conceives France as a territory about the size of the Isle of Wight, with Paris in the middle.

"But France is a very big country, Gibson," I said. "Far larger than England. Even if I did object to you, we shouldn't be likely to meet. You couldn't learn to be a chauffeur at Saint Veronique. It's the last place in the world. That's why I go there."

Gibson looked at me narrowly.

"I thank you, Ma'am," he said curtly and proudly. And he made room for me to pass.

In his own fashion, Gibson is as good and as likable as Susan. Never till this week has either of them caused me the slightest anxiety. I saw in a flash how matters stood; and I felt in my heart that Gibson deserved the more sympathy of the two. He was deeper-natured than Susan: prouder and capable of a grand passion which my sweeter and shallower Susan could neither receive nor return. His clean-shaven face was almost as handsome as Susan's was pretty; and if he had enjoyed Susan's advantages instead of being brought up among grooms and stable-boys, he might have been as refined. Rather rashly, I let myself go and said:

"No, Gibson, I'm not going in yet. You have not told me what it is that is really troubling you. There is something on your mind."

He stood stock-still at the path-side and vouchsafed no answer for a long time. At last he said abruptly:

"Then you won't prevent me, Ma'am, coming to France?"

"How could I stop you? France is a free country. I couldn't make the French army shoot you, or the French police lock you up. But I'd better say plainly, Gibson, that I object to you coming to Sainte Veronique unless I send for you."

The colour mounted to Gibson's cheeks. He drew himself up and seemed to take some sudden decision. He was about to speak, when the clatter of buckets at the pump, where Hughes was gone for water, drew his gaze to the beloved stables. I followed his eyes as they ranged over the red roofs which had sheltered him at work and at play, at bed and at board, both in Grandma's time and mine, ever since he came to Traxelby as a half-fed boy of fourteen. He heard Nero's neighing and Boxer's answering bark; and I could see that he suffered. But these dear old sights and sounds did not soften his face for long. He pulled himself together again, and began decisively:

"Then if you please, Ma'am, with all respect----"

"No, Gibson," I said, like lightning; "don't finish. Let me finish for you. You were going to say that you give me notice, that you will leave this old place, that you'll give up everything, just to be a free man. No. Don't interrupt. Above all, do have just a little bit of common sense. For instance, instead of giving up Traxelby simply so that you can come to Sainte Veronique, how would it be if you told me like a sensible man what you want to come to Sainte Veronique for?"

He struggled hard with his pride. I helped him out.

"Surely you can trust me, Gibson?"

"I don't say I can't, Ma'am."

"Very well, Gibson," I answered shortly "I've done my best. Good-night."

"No!" cried Gibson, springing across my path. "Miss Gertrude, I ask your pardon It would break my heart to leave this place. But ... good God, this is too hard for me to bear!"

"Speak less loudly," I said. "Now, tell me. Is it about Susan?"

He bent his head.

"You mean," I said, "you've fallen in love with Susan." And then, although my spirit was quailing and failing at the desperate sight of the poor lad's agony, I actually forced myself to try and laugh him out of it, as if it had been no more than a mild attack of calf-love.

"Really, Gibson," I said, as banteringly and gaily as I could, "I'm surprised at you. You're behaving as if Susan's going to Siberia for life instead of to France for a month. No doubt it's very painful and upsetting to be head over ears in love, though I confess I don't know much about it. But surely, Gibson, you can manage to exist without seeing Susan for four little weeks? Be more of a man."

"It's because I'm a man, Ma'am," he rejoined firmly, "that my right place is at Sinn Veeronik. You talk of four little weeks, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I see the same Susan as went away?"

His earnestness was so terrible that I could not maintain my hollow banter, and I was silent.

"I put it plain, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I ever see Susan any more?"

I couldn't answer. Worse still, I guessed that his next move would be to ask me how much I knew. So I clung fast to the one hope that buoys me up in all this outrageous business--the hope that Time and Separation will restore Lord Ruddington to such senses as he may possess, and that Susan, like a ruffled dove, will home back to Gibson's faithful heart after all.

"You can't answer, Ma'am," he said almost fiercely.

"Of course I can't, you foolish fellow," I said, recovering my wits and making a show of irritation. "I can't answer for Susan any more than I can for you. How do I know that, when we come back in four weeks' time, poor Susan won't find you consoling yourself with somebody else?"

He brushed my trifling aside.

"Then I'll tell you, Ma'am, something you don't know," he almost hissed in my ear. "God knows who it is: but some one's turned Susan's head. She doesn't do no more than give me hints. It's driving me mad. She doesn't name the party: but it's somebody richer'n a lord."

Gibson flung down his cap and lifted his right hand.

"Hark ye, Miss Gertrude," he said harshly and chokily. "Hark ye while I swear. This is my Bible oath. If he touches a hair on Susan's head, saving what's honest, I'll break every bone in his body! Don't matter to me if it's the king himself. Whoever he is, I'll wring his neck, and swing for it gladly. If I don't, may I be struck dead!"

"Silence, Gibson!" I said sternly. "Don't speak like this to me."

"Then how shall I speak, Ma'am? Answer me that. Me that's worshipped every inch of ground that Susan's trod on for years and years! Me that would go through fire and water and hell----"

"Gibson, listen. You think you've told me what I don't know. What if I knew it already?"

He faced me, startled.

"I say, what if I knew it already? I've never seen this man; but what if I can give you my word that Susan has only written to him once in her life? What if her only letter was to say that she does not love this man, and that she does not know she ever can or will, and that, if she cannot, all the money in the world won't bribe her into marrying him? What if she has told him that she is glad she is going to France? What if she has forbidden him to try and see her till she comes back to England? What if she will see you again, Gibson, before she sees him? Most important of all, what if I tell you that I have made up my mind to look after Susan in this affair as if she were my own younger sister? What if I promise you that she shall not come to harm?"

Gibson drank in my words with greedy ears and devoured me with searching eyes.

"God bless you, Miss Gertrude, God bless you!" he faltered; "and God grant it may be true!"

"So you think I would tell you lies, Gibson?"

"No, Ma'am, no. You're dealing with me fair. But how long will you be able to manage Susan if her head gets any more turned? And oh, Miss Gertrude ... I ask pardon--but this isn't no job for a young lady like you, as pure as an angel, that doesn't know this wicked world. Ma'am, if he's a scoundrel, he'll deceive Susan and he'll deceive you, Ma'am, as easy as looking at you! Oh, Ma'am, you don't understand! I can put up with losing Susan, though it'll kill me. I can put up with her being took away honest. But----"

He brought his lips to my ear and finished his sentence:

"If there's any devil's work, it'll be murder for him and hanging for me. Miss Gertrude, may I come to France?"

I drew a step away.

"No, Gibson," I answered, assuming a calmness and a mastery which I did not feel. "You can't come to France. There is no need. I am sorry for you--deeply sorry--and I respect you for some of the things you have said. But you are excited. You have been brooding. You've got morbid, exaggerated fears."

He came towards me again.

"Gibson, wait till I've finished. You stopped me saying something that ought to satisfy you. It is this. At Sainte Veronique, Susan will be under my eye all the time. If this man follows her, I shall know. And I pledge you my word that, if he comes, I will write to you--no, I will telegraph--and then you can do whatever you please."

"You pledge me your word, Ma'am?"

"I said so."

For at least five seconds he scrutinized my face. Then he stooped down low, as if he was going to kneel at my feet, and began hunting for the cap which he had thrown down among the nasturtiums. He was a long time finding it. When he got up again, he said in clear, low, sad tones:

"Miss Gertrude, I pray to God that I may live to do one half as much for you as you have done this night for me."

"Cheer up, Gibson," I said; "things are hardly ever as bad as they look. Enjoy your holiday all you can. Write down your address and give it me in the morning. It's getting chilly. Good-night."

I hadn't moved twenty yards before he was at my heels once more.

"I beg your pardon, Ma'am," he said breathlessly, "but there's just one other thing."

"Yes?"

"I'm thinking, Ma'am, perhaps you won't name it to Susan that I've spoke like this to-night?"

"You may be easy in mind, Gibson, I'm not likely to say a word about it. And be careful that you never name it to her yourself that we've had this talk."

"Never, Ma'am, as long as I live," said Gibson fervently. And so I managed to get away. On the whole, the Gibson part of this drama of ours has tried me more than Susan's. That Susan should marry a lord, and become mistress of Ruddington Towers, is no more than an oddity, an awkwardness. But it is a very different thing to look on while an honest lad like Gibson sees the girl he worships bribed away from him with money.

To say that I feel like a bather banged about on the stones by the breakers is to put it too weakly. My brains feel like a battlefield, where Greeks and Trojans, Hector and Achilles, have been trampling, and slashing, and charging all the long day. And for Helen and Paris, I have a lady's-maid and a groom!

_Bed-time_.

Another thunderbolt--the loudest and horriblest and most abominable yet!

Susan must be stark mad.

Instead of copying out my draft, she has simply tucked it inside the specimen envelope I addressed, and has posted it to Ruddington!

I'm too utterly sick and tired and disgusted to write down in this diary all that Susan said--which wasn't much--and all that I said--which was even less, but entirely to the point. Susan has gone off, crying--as if she's the one with the grievance!

Thank God for bed!

*BOOK II*

*DIEPPE*

*BOOK II*

_Saturday night_.

The sight, and smell, and sound of the glittering, tumbling sea must have done me good. After last night's and Thursday night's bad dreams and worse wakings, I ought to be as sleepy as a dormouse. Yet I feel quite fresh and keen.

Not that to-day has been any great improvement on yesterday and the day before. To begin with, it put me quite out of temper, at Traxelby station, to see how Susan was far too nasty to Gibson, and how Gibson was far too nice to Susan. And Gibson couldn't possibly have been clumsier in his attempt to give me his address on the sly. It was a miracle that Susan didn't see.

I kept Susan beside me all the way to Newhaven, and also on the boat. It was a turbine steamer, and the sea was smooth, and I ought to have enjoyed the crossing immensely. But I didn't.

Of course, the reason was Susan. We hadn't fairly lost sight of that blinding, towering white cliff above Seaford before Susan said tragically in my ear:

"Oh, Miss, I have such a dreadful feeling!"

Never before have I been cruel to the sea-sick. But it was altogether too much that Susan, who has always been the best sailor in the world, should begin to work up a squeamishness on a turbine, with the sun shining and the sea as calm as a pond, and no one ill, not even the trippers in ready-made yachting-suits. I felt she was doing it just to be important, and interesting, and difficult.

"Nonsense, Susan!" I said, quite roughly: "it's perfectly ridiculous. Don't think about it, and you'll be all right."

"I don't mean that I'm took bad, Miss," said Susan. And she looked aggrieved. Probably it was my fancy; but, in her injured dignity, there seemed to be a blend of Susan Briggs with the future Lady Ruddington.

"What do you mean, then?" I asked grudgingly.

She did not answer at once. When she did, she said mysteriously:

"I've got the feeling, Miss, that ... that it's him!"

"Him?"

"Yes, Miss. He's kept looking at me ever since we landed on the ship."

Susan shot a swift glance to her right, and then, with a modest blush, resumed her scrutiny of the pattern on the rug across her knees. I affected to take an interest in a fishing-smack which was fast dropping astern of us; and, in this way, I was able to examine the part of the boat whither Susan's glance had winged its coy flight.

No doubt, ever so many people have stayed in town for the Harvard and Cambridge Boat-race. Anyhow, there weren't many crossing this morning. We were sitting abaft the funnel, and there was hardly anybody between our two chairs and the gate leading to the second-class.

The second-class deck was fairly full. There the poor "seconds" sat, like animals in a zoo, behind a bar, for us superior mortals to stare at. They were seated oddly, on bags or undersized stools, so that they looked like wrong-doers in the stocks. The very funnel (which soared up from the midst of the first-class deck) showed its contempt by visiting them with a copious and increasing plague of large black grits, until they were sootier than the damned in hell. And after all, had not each and every one of them committed the deadly sin of being either unwilling or unable to pay the extra half-crown or so which would have made them, for three or four glorious hours, the equals of such notables as myself and the future Lady Ruddington? They had the air of accepting their punishment as just.

I picked out two unabashed and unassociated males, either of whom might be Susan's "Him." Keeping my eyes still on the second-class deck, but directing my voice towards Susan's cheek, I asked:

"Which?"

"The gentleman that's staring so, Miss."

"Can't you see there are two staring?" I said. "Which do you mean? Is it the one with the peaked cap and the gilt buttons--the one that's rubbing the back of his head against the side of the life-boat?"

"Oh, no, Miss! It's the gentleman with the cigar and the thick stockings."

The fact that the puffer of the cigar was staring at us without the slightest attempt at dissimulation made it easier for me to take him in from top to toe. The top was hidden in a grey cloth cap, and the toe in a brown boot of a large size. The creature was large-handed, large-featured, and (as I afterwards found) large-laughed and large-voiced. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, continued downwards by the thick grey stockings which had vied with the cigar in Susan's regard. There was a bold ring on the little (or, rather, on the smallest) finger of his left hand. His whole port and mien were idle and evil; and never in my life have I seen more horrid legs.

At a first glance his coarseness was so evidently the coarseness of a low-bred shopman or bookie, that I nearly turned on Susan to rebuke her sharply for wasting my time. But, at a second glance, I became conscious of a sickening doubt. Had I not seen this identical coarseness before, in very high places?

Apart from his one unilluminating letter to Susan, all my meagre knowledge of Lord Ruddington has been collected at second or third hand. Both Alice and I have heard that he is reticent, aloof, rather studious; and the stray reports of him which have reached Traxelby have been pretty much to the same effect. But our informants may have been wrong. Or, as our information is a year old, Lord Ruddington may have changed for the worse. If so, he has galloped downhill at the devil's own pace.

When I had seen a good deal more than enough, I turned my back on him pointedly, and said to Susan:

"Move your chair a little--the way the boat's going. The wind can't hurt you."

Visibly loth, Susan shifted her chair.

"What makes you think it is he, Susan?" I demanded.

"I don't know, Miss," said Susan.

"Come, now. There must be something."

"No, Miss," answered Susan. "It's just a dreadful feeling that keeps coming over me."

"Then the sooner you put the dreadful feeling on one side, the better," I said unpleasantly. "I hardly call it complimentary to Lord Ruddington that you should mistake him for a man like that."

Susan began her new pout--the bride-elect pout that was never in Susan's world till last Thursday. It annoyed me.

"Why," I said, "if that's Lord Ruddington, all I can say is that poor Gibson is fit to be a duke or a prince beside him."

Susan was touched in a raw place. She pouted worse than ever. I couldn't help saying:

"One has only to look at his legs!"

"I was thinking, Miss," said the bride-elect, "that they was rather nice."

She actually turned her head, and had begun to take quite a deliberate peep at the rather nice legs, when I addressed her sharply.

"Susan," I said, "so long as you're with me, you'll be so good as to behave yourself properly. I'm surprised."

She recalled her wanton glance at once, and blushed suitably and sufficiently. Gibson is only partly right about Susan's head being turned. If it were turned more than a very, very little, she wouldn't be able to obey so fully and promptly and shamefacedly when I whistle her straying fancy back to heel.

"What have you done with those two magazines?" I asked. "Why don't you read them? If you don't look at him, he won't look at you."

My dutiful Susan did her best. So did I. But my best was no better than Susan's. Try as I would, I couldn't restrain myself from darting an occasional glance at the brute in grey to see if he was still staring; and, try as I might, I couldn't ignore the fact that Susan was doing the same. At the end of about ten minutes, we did it at the same moment.

"You're looking again, Susan," I snapped angrily. It was mean of me and dishonest, I know. Besides, it was taking an ungenerous advantage of my powers as Susan's mistress. But I had to save my dignity. And Susan would have done the same in my place.

Susan hung her head.

"I'm very sorry, Miss," she said. "I was really trying not to, Miss. But it's such a dreadful feeling. I feel as if I _must_ look."

"Susan," I said ingeniously, "we will suppose, just for a moment, that the creature is Lord Ruddington. For your sake, and his own sake, and everybody's sake, I hope and believe he isn't. But let us suppose he is."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan patiently.

"Susan, I put it to you. If he _is_ Lord Ruddington, what will he think of you for casting sheep's eyes at him, and looking up and looking down, and blushing, and all the rest of it?"

"I don't think it's him as ought to complain, Miss," said Susan, "seeing it's him that's making me do it."

"You don't see what I mean. If he's Lord Ruddington, he knows that you're Susan, and he can hardly help looking at you, though I must say he isn't treating you as he would a lady. But when it's a case of _you_ looking at him, it's different. You see, you're not supposed to have any idea it's Lord Ruddington. All you've got to go by is 'a dreadful feeling'--which is nothing at all. So what must he think of you, when he sees you making eyes at a perfect stranger? He must think you've got glances and blushes for every man who chooses to stare at you."

Susan did not see my point clearly. Indeed, the more I laboured it, the less clearly I saw it myself. Besides, if this was really and truly Lord Ruddington, my attempt at crediting him with superfine feelings was either hypothetical or ludicrous.

"I'm very sorry, Miss," said Susan from the depths of her immeasurable docility. And then we got through another half-hour of pretending to look at magazines, while we were cunningly looking at the creature who was fixedly looking at us.

When it became intolerable, I said to Susan:

"I'm determined not to move. One mustn't even seem to be beaten by such rudeness. But do, for goodness' sake, put it out of your head that it can possibly be Lord Ruddington. What would Lord Ruddington be doing, travelling second-class?"

"I suppose, Miss," answered Susan, so promptly that she must have already thought it out, "he's come after Me. And he thought we shouldn't guess it was him if he rode in the second-class."

I suddenly felt that I had had heaps more than enough of the whole sordid business. I had felt for an hour that Susan knew a little more than she cared to admit. Probably she was right, and this was indeed Lord Ruddington. If so, everything was plain. This coarse-grained young rake's desire of Susan's country freshness and innocence was something even more detestable than the familiar infatuation of some weedy young lordling with a dressy and exuberant and altogether outrageous chorus-girl in town. I felt as if a rosy veil of illusion had been drawn away from life, and it almost turned me faint and sick. The worst of the affair was that Susan, with her wholesome instincts, was not revolted as she ought to have been, even by that which she did not understand.

"Susan," I said abruptly, "I'm not at all satisfied. You keep talking about a dreadful feeling, which is all sheer nonsense. I feel perfectly certain you know something about that man down there that you haven't told me."

"The only thing, Miss----"

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I didn't think there was anything much in it, Miss."

"What? In what?"

"Only that he came out through that little gate when you were downstairs, Miss, changing the money. It was before they locked the gate--before the guard looked at the tickets, just after the boat started."

"What did he say to you?"

"He didn't say anything, Miss," replied Susan regretfully. "All he did was he looked at these bags, Miss, and stood over them till he'd read the names on the labels enough to learn them by heart, and where we were going as well. It was that that gave me such a dreadful feeling. Then the guard came and asked him what he was doing in the first-class, and looked at his ticket, and said it would be four-and-six more; and, with that, he went back again through the gate."

"Susan," I said, "I am really very angry. You ought to have told me this at once. Help me to put these things together. You know how I hate it; but we are going below."

We didn't go below; but we went as far forward as we could, and sat gazing southward until a little low moan of joy from a French-woman at my side told me that she had caught sight of the faint white ramparts of France.

As the cliffs rose higher from the sea and spread widelier to the east and west, my spirits rose and expanded with them. If Lord Ruddington was following us, there was his insult to me as well as his designs upon Susan to be dealt with. So long as we were cramped up on a ship, he had the advantage of us; but with the hugeness of France unfolding before me, I felt myself his match, and began spoiling for a fight.

I didn't have to wait long. As we entered Dieppe harbour, a sailor unlocked the gate of the second-class pen, and the inmates streamed out all over the main deck. Susan was for hurrying to swell the serried mass of Britons who invariably fight like Bushmen to be first on the gangway. But I kept her in her place, and we were among the last to disembark.

Ruddington--if it's truly he--was waiting for us at the Customs. He had got his own bag passed and chalk-marked already. I was prepared for developments, but not for what actually followed. Ignoring me, with the coolest insolence, he marched straight up to Susan, clawed carelessly at his cloth cap, and said:

"Can I be of any assistance?"

Susan shrank under my wing, all crimson confusion. I turned on him sharply.

"What is it you want?" I demanded.

He coloured up; having, I suppose, some poor remnant of shame after all. Then he stammered:

"I thought I might be of some assistance."

"Thank you," I said. "None is needed." And I turned my back.

When we had got everything through, we went into the buffet, and drank thin tea out of thick cups, while He stood at the bar with a long glass of something-and-soda. Susan had been so thoroughly cowed into speechlessness and good behaviour that I was able to take counsel with myself in peace.

We had deposited the trunks in the _consigne_ until Monday, the day I had intended to resume the journey to Sainte Veronique. The bags were piled up at Susan's feet, labelled with the labels He had so coolly looked at. I wished my writing wasn't so legible. No doubt he had memorized the address--Hotel du Cheval d'Or, Dieppe.

All the way to Newhaven in the train, my poor little week-end time-table had seemed so lovely. Saturday, 4 P.M., arrive at the Cheval d'Or; 4.15 P.M., a bath and change; 5 P.M., a peep into St. Jacques and _une petite promenade_ along the front; 6.30 P.M., a short and early dinner, with a _sole Normande_, a _caneton Rouennais_, a bit of Neufchatel cheese, some wild strawberries, and a broad-based, high-soaring, unemptiable carafe of cider; 8 P.M., this diary (with, I devoutly hoped, not a word in it about Susan); 9 P.M., bed; Sunday, a little dash upon Rouen, a run round the churches, and back for seven-o'clock dinner at the Cheval d'Or; Monday, 8.30 A.M., depart for Sainte Veronique. But now the dream was shattered. The gilt was off the Cheval d'Or, and he was the one horse in all France that I might not mount.

I sat and debated whether it would be best to go to one of the other Dieppe hotels, sending the Cheval d'Or the price of the rooms by post, or to climb straight into the Paris train and spend the night in Rouen. At last I decided that we had better stick to Dieppe and go to the Astor, where their idea of welcoming you to Normandy is to try and make you believe you're at the Carlton, and where you can't drink cider without feeling that you're a perfect monster of parsimony. It was maddening. But it had to be faced.

He drained the last drop of his something-and-soda and strode out quickly with his bag--doubtless to entrench himself in good time at the Cheval d'Or. When He was safely off the premises, I went to the platform door to find a porter. Behind the excited crowd of officials who implore you to take your seat for Paris, I espied their rivals--that silent band, with the names of hotels gilt-lettered on their caps, whose dumb eloquence pleads with you to remain in Dieppe. I had almost caught the "Astor" man's eye, when a face I dimly remembered pushed itself into sight. The face looked at me from under a cap inscribed "Hotel du Cheval d'Or." It was Pierre, that best of porters. He knew me. I was too late.

I've learned a lesson and drawn a moral. Whenever I've forgotten, or been too lazy, to write beforehand to an hotel, I never once remember coming to the smallest harm. But whenever I've been a paragon of methodicalness and have given two or three days' notice, how often haven't I found myself shoved away into a back room or an annexe? If only I hadn't wired to the Cheval d'Or last night, I could have tossed Pierre a pleasant look and have gone off to the Astor, leaving Ruddington all alone in his glory.

Pierre had us and our bags in his omnibus in a twinkling; and, five minutes later, we were in the very muzzle of the Cheval d'Or. Out flew Madame Legendre, all smiles and hearty welcomes, and it is the simple-literal truth that, at the same moment, Justine was haling a perfectly adorable new-plucked _caneton_ into her kitchen by his neck.

Something forced me to glance up to the sunny stuccoed walls and snowy-curtained casements of the main hotel building on the left-hand side of the court. A man was leaning out of a second-floor window. When he caught sight of me, he swiftly drew in his head. It was He!

My mind made itself up in a moment. I plunged boldly into an extensive and variegated falsehood. I declared that when I telegraphed last night, I didn't know that some great friends of mine were at the Astor. It was the greatest disappointment to me not to stay, as arranged, at the Cheval d'Or. On my way back to England from Sainte Veronique, I would be sure to pay Madame Legendre at least a week's visit. Meanwhile, could Madame, as an exceptional favour, allow Pierre to carry us round to the Astor?

The long and short of it is that, so far, I have outwitted him; and here I am, spending my first French night in an English hotel. As one might as well be damned for fifty fibs as for one, I have told Madame Legendre that I want to pass all my time with my friends here at the Astor; and that if any one who knows me inquires, ever so pressingly, she isn't to acknowledge that she has the faintest idea where I've gone. She's promised. As for Pierre, I have bought him body and soul for ten francs, cash down; and if Ruddington begins asking questions he'll be told that the English lady and her maid have changed their minds and gone on to Paris.

Alas, poor dreams! I have just eaten a Paris dinner and have sent it down with London claret. And I'm going to sleep in an English bedroom, instead of in a French one. I did so want a French one, with a curtained bed and a pudgy quilt, and an Empire mirror over the mantelpiece, to say nothing of a gilt clock, and two bronze horses, and four or five nice pious pictures of martyrs all stuck full of arrows. But one can't have everything; and it's enough for me that I've beaten Ruddington to-day, as I shall beat him to-morrow and every other day until I can believe that he's something better than a libertine cad.

He's done me one good turn, at any rate. Scribbling down all this has made me deliciously drowsy. So now to make up all those arrears of sleep.

_Sunday_, 9 _a.m._

I've slept like baby twins.

Such a sweet morning! I got up at seven and took Susan with me to Low Mass. The sunlight streaming through the windows of the choir was divine.

How different this Latin mass in France from last Sunday morning's service in Traxelby church! At Traxelby we are always so orderly, so dignified. Here at Dieppe the people grab each a chair and put it down where they like, so that they're all higgledy-piggledy instead of sitting in decorous ranks and rows. And, except for the Gospel and Credo and the Canon, they make no pretence at sitting and standing and kneeling according to any fixed usage or principle. Some seem to be following the Proper in their missals, while others just pray, or think, or finger their beads. Susan says they behaved dreadfully, and that it didn't seem a bit like proper Church.

I felt differently. The roughness and freedom and individuality were less soothing than our elegant orderliness at Traxelby; but the realities that underlie religion seemed nearer and warmer. These faithful Dieppois looked more like the men and women of old who thronged the hillsides of Palestine and sat down entranced upon the grass; and they looked less like that chilly, respectable, dull-souled thing---- How shall I put it? Perhaps it's this. They looked more like "the multitude" of the Gospels, and less like "a congregation."

If I were not already an excommunicate heretic and schismatic, I should have surely lost my soul for my inattention to Mass. I couldn't help comparing this Sunday with last. Last Sunday, Alice was with me as in the old days. And Susan hadn't had her letter. And Gibson hadn't talked to me in the garden. Everything was orderly, dignified, low-pulsed, soothing, like last Sunday's matins in Traxelby church. But to-day, Susan's letter is a fact. So is Gibson's oath. And Ruddington is at the Cheval d'Or. My life is suddenly disordered--just as Traxelby church would be if these Dieppois were suddenly turned loose among the chairs. Yet I'm not sure that last Sunday was better. Realities, glowing human realities, have suddenly began to crowd, living and breathing, all around me--just as I felt reality, warm and near, in the rough and unpunctiliously celebrated Mass.

I couldn't help thinking some odd thoughts as I looked at one little panel of a stained window over my head. It showed a kneeling girlish figure, in white, with long yellow hair. On her right was a Bishop, coped and mitred, extending his hand; and on her left was a loutish leering fellow with a steel cap and a sword. I'm not ecclesiologist enough to know what it was all about. Possibly it meant the Soul being strengthened by the Sacraments against the onslaughts of the World. More probably it was in praise of some virgin martyr. But the odd thing was that if the yellow-haired, rather insipid damsel had had more colour in her cheeks she would have been the image of Susan. The large-mouthed, large-eared, large-limbed brute who was tempting or threatening her was not wholly unlike the cur at the Cheval d'Or. Most amazing and haunting of all, the Bishop, with his youthful, keen, honest, manly, wholesome, clean-shaven face, was simply a coped and mitred--Gibson!

Here they are, bringing the coffee in cups! Never mind. On Tuesday I shall be drinking it with a big Normandy soup-spoon out of a little Normandy bowl.

_Noon_.

He has tracked us down.

Coming away from High Mass at St. Remi, we walked slap into him in the Grande Rue.

I could have boxed Susan's ears for her ridiculous goings-on. Such flushings and flutterings and scurryings can't possibly have been seen in the town before. Yet, as we came back to the Astor by the zigzaggest route I could find, she positively turned her head twice. Of course he was following.

I'm quite prepared to find he's secured the next table to mine for lunch.

What worries me isn't so much to-day's meetings. It's to-morrow's. If we can't dodge him at Dieppe, how shall we manage at Sainte Veronique? Then there's my ridiculous promise to our poor young Bishop Gibson.

I'm forced to acknowledge that Alice is right. I'm neither old enough nor wise enough to keep up Traxelby and go travelling abroad with no companion save Susan. It looks strange, and it doesn't work.

If this creature is indeed Lord Ruddington, I don't trust him to deal honestly by Susan. In that case, Gibson is just the man for the job. Once let me be sure that it's Ruddington and Gibson shall have his telegram within half an hour.

_Half-past three_.

I've laughed and I've cried.

To think that all last night and all this morning I fully believed we were deep in Act III. of a tragedy (Act I.: Miss Langley's Boudoir at Traxelby Grange. Act II.: The Grange Garden); and that when I walked into the _salle-a-manger_ for _dejeuner_ and saw the Brute in Grey at a corner table, my mind was so prepared for an ultimate Act V., that the only uncertainty was as to whether Gibson would do it with a revolver or with a knife!

It isn't Act III., and there isn't any tragedy. It turns out to be merely the comic relief of a melodrama.

He was already lunching when I sat down with Susan at my table. Of course I placed Susan with her back to him; but I didn't notice at first that I had also placed her opposite a mirror wherein she could look at him far better than I could myself.

He was too far off for me to hear him clearly; but I made out that he insistently addressed his English waiter in lamentable French. I hung my head for my country and its aristocracy, and thought more meanly than ever of its public schools. He consumed a succession of expensive dishes, and his plate was ostentatiously flanked by a bottle of champagne.

"It's a whole bottle, Miss," whispered Susan, regarding it with reverence in the mirror; "not one of those little ones."

"If you can see him, he can see you, Susan," I said severely. "Whoever he is, he can be no gentleman to follow you like this. Eat your cutlet, and keep your eyes on your plate. And don't dawdle. I want to go upstairs again as quick as we can."

For one nasty moment, Susan hung on the very brink of rebellion. But habit or coquetry, or self-interest or pure obedience, or genuine modesty, prevailed; and she answered with perfect meekness:

"Very well, Miss, I'm ready now."

It spoilt my lunch; but I got up and we both went out. I asked for coffee and the French time-table to be brought into the drawing-room, where he wasn't likely to come. There, I sat down to work out plans in quiet.

But the quiet didn't last. Within five minutes, his large voice broke out angrily in the hall. Susan shivered on the lounge beside me. His clamour was like the vicious baying of an extra-sized wolf newly cheated of a nice young lamb.

"Oh, Miss!" moaned Susan, as white as a sheet. "He's coming in here! Whatever shall I do?"

"Sit still," I snapped. "Hold your tongue. Let us listen."

Straining my ears, I discerned that the noise was a composite one, and that the three chief contributors were the Brute in Grey, the waiter, and some third party--probably the manager.

"It's a [----] swindle!" roared the Grey One. (The blank stands for something far worse than "damned.")

"I told the gentleman it was _a la carte_," put in the waiter.

"You're a common impostor!" said the manager.

I edged along the lounge and peeped through the half-open door. The Grey One was standing with his legs apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes. Too much meat and drink had combined with anger and fear to turn his evil face nearly purple. At a safe distance stood the waiter, pale and excited, with the Grey One's bill on a silver salver. Two other waiters and the porter were massed across the doorway in case the Grey One should take to his long, horrid legs. The manager, implacable and contemptuous, leaned against his office door.

"What's all this beastly row about?" asked one of the guests of the hotel, a young Englishman, coming irritably out of the _salle-a-manger_.

"I'm deeply sorry, sir. This ... gentleman," said the manager, with a withering look at the Grey One, "has eaten his luncheon and doesn't want to pay for it."

"He won't pay," echoed the waiter feebly.

"It's a [----] lie," bellowed the Grey One. "I _will_ pay. I want to pay. But I'm not going to be [----] well swindled. It's the same as knocking me down and going through my [----] pockets, and I'll see you in hell before I stand it!"

Another young Englishman came out and joined the first.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Dunno exactly," answered his friend. "Waiter says this chap's trying on a bilk. Chap himself says they've rooked him on his lunch."

"The gentleman _would_ talk French," said the pale waiter, gaining courage. "I don't know French, nor 'e don't neither. I told 'im it was _a la carte_ as soon as 'e pointed to the canteloup."

"It's a barefaced robbery," cried the Grey One, swearing dreadfully. "But it's no use trying it on _me_. My uncle knows France as well as he knows Battersea Park. And what did he tell me? That you don't pay more than three or four francs in France for a dinner fit for a lord! Why, even in the French resteronts in Soho, you don't pay more than eighteenpence for five courses."

The manager made a gesture of scorn and despair.

"Perhaps you'll tell us why you ordered a cigar and a whole bottle of _Veuve Clicquot_?" he asked.

"Don't go cross-examining _me_," roared the Grey One. "I know the ropes, so don't you forget it. Everybody knows that, in France, wine's cheaper than beer."

"That's it!" chuckled one of the young Englishmen gaily. "Wine's cheaper than beer, and therefore fizz is cheaper than bottled ale!"

"There you are!" cried the Grey One in triumph. "And as for your [----] old cigar, you don't have me there either. One of the fellows at our place came back from France only last week. At least, it was Holland he'd been to, but it's all the same. And what did he pay for the cigars he smuggled back? Three for tuppence! Beauties! Yet here it is in your [----] bill, 'Cigars, one franc.' I say it's----"

"You've said all I'm willing to listen to," retorted the manager, as the two young Englishmen went back to their feeding. "For the last time, are you going to pay?"

"I'll pay six francs and not a penny more," muttered the Grey One, distinctly frightened.

"You'll pay your bill," said the manager decidedly. "The total is thirty-one francs, seventy-five centimes. I can't have our guests annoyed by a minute's further argument. I recommend you to save yourself from very unpleasant consequences."

All the fight went out of the Grey One suddenly. He gazed wistfully at the door, which was still held in force by the menials. Then he fumbled in his pockets.

"I can't," he muttered sulkily. "I haven't got the money. I've only got twenty-four francs. And there'll be my bill at the Shevvle Daw."

"The Cheval d'Or!" echoed the manager. "If you're at the Cheval d'Or, what the deuce have you come lunching here for?"

"To meet some friends," said the Grey One brazenly. "They're staying in the hotel."

The manager was perturbed.

"What friends?" he asked.

"Two ladies," the Grey One replied.

Within the next minute the two ladies' names would have been asked for, and, no doubt, the hard-pressed brute would have given mine. I pulled the door open wide, and stepped into the hall.

"I can't help hearing," I said. "You talk so loud. What ladies do you mean?"

He jumped. Then he stood stark, as if he had been struck by lightning.

"Perhaps Madame knows something of this affair," the manager began in French.

"Only a little," I replied in English. "All I know is that this---- By the way, hadn't you better ask his name and address?"

"My name," he said wretchedly, "is Lamb--John Lamb. I'm head clerk at Phipps Brothers, the timber-merchants, Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush. You'll have heard of Phipps Brothers?" he added imploringly.

"All I know of Mr. John Lamb," I went on, "is this. He stared at us all the way from Newhaven. He spied about, reading the names on our labels. He pushed himself on us at the Customs. He followed us to the Cheval d'Or, and practically drove us out of the rooms we had taken. He has dogged us through half the streets in Dieppe this morning. Lastly, he has given us the honour of his company at lunch."

The manager was about to work up, for my benefit, a polite adequacy of fiery indignation. But Mr. John Lamb forestalled him. Plucking up courage, he retorted impudently:

"Well, and what if it's true? We aren't in England, are we? Everybody knows they're more free-and-easy in France."

The manager was loaded and primed for an explosion. But I got in another word.

"Didn't I give you a broad enough hint at the Customs?" I asked.

"Yes," he said coarsely. "You did. But what about the other young lady? Let her come out here, fair and square, and say if she didn't egg me on. 'Tisn't my fault for thinking I was in for a soft thing. _You_'re not to blame, of course. _You_'ve snubbed me right enough all along, no error. To tell the truth, Ma'am, I thought you were sick because it was the other young lady I was struck with, and not _you_."

What possessed him to add this insult to injury, when he was actually in the lion's mouth, only himself knows. It wasn't courage; for he had suddenly gone paler and shakier than before. Probably he was clinging in desperation to a last mad hope that he had indeed made a conquest of "the other young lady," and that she would rush out in my wake to intercede for him, and to set him free.

As I turned round and took my first step back to the drawing-room, the manager exploded like a thousand bombs. How the Grey One managed to stand unconsumed amidst those lightnings of wrath and thunderings of menace, I can't conceive. As to his past, the Grey One learned that he was directly descended from a long line of cads, rogues, gaol-birds, and impostors; and as to his future, it appeared that the greater part of it (after he had been soundly kicked, thrashed, and horse-whipped) was to be spent in a French prison. While this fiery storm was blazing and smashing around his grey cloth cap, I neither saw Mr. John Lamb, of Phipps Brothers, nor heard him. He took it lying down.

In the end, it turned out that Mr. Lamb was possessed of an English sovereign and the return half of a week-end ticket as well as his twenty-four francs. He paid; and was flung forth into the sunshine with just enough to face Madame Legendre and to keep himself alive until the boat starts for England, in the dark and the cold, a little after midnight.

From his final and ardent, but fruitless, plea that the manager should accept the deposit of his watch and ring, and allow him to send a post-office order from England to redeem them, I gathered that this was Mr. Lamb's first visit to France; that he has got leave from Phipps Brothers till Wednesday morning; and that Mrs. Lamb doesn't expect him back to Amelia Road until Tuesday night.

I'm sick of writing about the creature, so I'll stop. Yet, if I chance to wake up about three o'clock to-morrow morning, with the air nipping and the wind blustery and the moon overcast, I'm not sure that I sha'n't think of Mr. John Lamb, and feel just a tiny, wee bit sorry for him.

*BOOK III*

*SAINTE VERONIQUE*

*TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE*

Some of the Letters printed in Book III. are found in the MS. of
the Diary only in abridgments, and one is missing altogether.
The Transcriber has copied them from the originals _in extenso_,
and has inserted them in their proper places.

*BOOK III*

_Monday_, 4 _p.m._

At last!

It's like coming home. I'm in my dear old room; with the front window looking over the beck and the willows to the sea, and the side window opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year; and, if I leaned out far enough, there are three rosy apples that I could pluck straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind.

The Dupoiriers are delighted I've come. Poor things, considering the gorgeous summer, they haven't been doing over well. Yet the hotel is sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains, that I always loathed, have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the summer-house stripped of creepers and painted white: but, if it's less picturesque, it is also more possible. Last year I didn't dare to sit in it because of the earwigs.

There's a new Marie. The old Marie, with the red hair, who wouldn't more than half-fill my water-jugs, left only last week. The new Marie is a black-haired, black-eyed one, and far nicer. There's a letter for me from Alice. And, of course, there's a letter for Susan from the regrettable Ruddington. But I'm not going to bother with either of them till I've had a peep at the path that winds along the beck to the sea.

_In the summer-house_.

I do wish Alice wouldn't!