Chapter XII

Myrtile was seated alone at the far end of the Terrace, outside the Hôtel de Paris, when the tragedy happened. Her first impression was that some very unusual people had found their way on to the promenade,--a fête-day excursion, perhaps, from one of the neighbouring villages. And then the colour seemed slowly drained from her cheeks. She would have got up and fled but her limbs absolutely refused their office. Her slight movement, however, had attracted the attention of the two men. With exclamations of incredulity, they hurried towards her. The incredulity turned swiftly to joy. Myrtile, in such clothes, represented, without a doubt, boundless wealth. It was a morning of good fortune, this!

“Myrtile, thou little rascal!” her stepfather cried, gripping her pearl-coloured gloves in his horny fist. “Pierre, thou seest. It is she indeed. Amazing! It is veritably amazing!”

Pierre Leschamps was not so fluent. His narrow, covetous eyes looked over Myrtile’s slim body lasciviously. What he had lost! He was filled with self-pity.

“It is an escapade, this,” he said. “Thou art ready to return, Myrtile?”

“Never!” the girl declared passionately.

“Oho!” her stepfather exclaimed. “We shall see about that. There is the law, little one. The law does not allow an honest man to be robbed of his daughter--ay, stepdaughter, if you will,” he went on, checking a passionate protest on Myrtile’s lips. “Now, then, out with it, my child. Where did those clothes come from? Who brought you here? Who is supporting you?”

“I am supporting myself,” Myrtile answered. “I sew all the mornings and most of the afternoons.”

The two men laughed unpleasantly. Her father laid his hand upon her shoulder.

“Listen,” he said, “you were carried away from home by two Englishmen in a motor car--rich Englishmen, by all accounts, with much luggage. Where are they?”

“What do you want with them?” Myrtile demanded.

“That is not for thy silly head, little one.”

“There is a matter of compensation,” Pierre growled. “Tell us where to find these Englishmen?”

Myrtile looked wildly around. She scarcely knew whether she prayed for or dreaded Christopher’s return. Then suddenly she saw him close at hand, accompanied, to her infinite relief, by Gerald. She gave a little cry of joy. Now, indeed, all would be well. Gerald would arrange everything.

“So these are they?” her stepfather muttered, as the two young men approached.

“They look like gentlemen of wealth,” Leschamps echoed.

“The stepfather of Myrtile, as I live,” Gerald muttered, under his breath. “Heaven grant that we may escape a brawl out here! Must we----”

“Of course we must,” Christopher answered curtly. “Can’t you see that the child is frightened to death? We’ll have them in the police station, if they make any trouble. The police here haven’t much sympathy with their class.”

Myrtile called to them softly.

“This is my stepfather,” she said, “and his friend, Pierre Leschamps.”

“Mon Dieu!” Gerald exclaimed, in frank horror. “Are you the man whom Myrtile was to marry?”

“I am he, indeed, monsieur,” the innkeeper acknowledged. “I have gone to great expense in the matter. My house was painted and whitewashed and my bedroom papered. The neighbours were all bidden. I had even laid in wine for the feast.”

“Then you ought to have been ashamed of yourself,” Gerald declared. “Why, how old are you, my friend?”

Leschamps patted his stomach.

“I am but fifty years old,” he replied, “a man in the prime of life. Myrtile was promised to me. There is no one else like her. I am without a wife. It is a very serious position for a man with an inn to look after.”

“And what about me?” her stepfather intervened, his voice rising with the recollection of his wrongs. “For many years I have kept that child. I have fed her and clothed her all that time. Now that she is eighteen, now that she is of some use in the world, how does she show her gratitude? What can I do without her, I ask? I was to marry the good Widow Dumay. Now she says ‘no!’ She declares that, without Myrtile, the care of the children is too much for her. She refuses to allow me to arrange for the wedding, unless either Myrtile returns or she has at least five hundred francs with which to arrange for help.”

“Five hundred francs!” Leschamps groaned. “What is that for a wife like Myrtile! It is a blow to me, this. My health has suffered. I am gloomy. My business decreases. The neighbours will no longer drink a bottle of wine with a man who cannot sing a song or smile once during the evening. They go elsewhere. My connection tumbles to pieces. And there are my rooms all painted and my bedroom papered, and I have no wife.”

“It appears to me,” Gerald proposed, “that we had better discuss this matter in my rooms over a bottle of wine--a bottle of champagne, eh? What do you say, gentlemen?”

“Let it be this moment,” Myrtile’s stepfather insisted. “Let us know where we are without further delay. This matter makes me sad. I cannot sleep or eat. I have dug deep into my savings to come here. Oh, it has cost me much money, this journey!”

“And I,” Leschamps declared, “I who have never been in a train before, who have never spent ten sous on my own pleasure, it is ruin, this journey. And I have been sick of the stomach.”

“Follow me, gentlemen,” Gerald invited.

He led them into the hotel, much to the amazement of the liveried servants, took them up in the lift, in which both nearly collapsed upon the floor, and ushered them into his sitting room. For a few moments, effrontery and avarice were alike powerless. They were dumb with amazement. They looked around them, muttering inarticulate words. Leschamps dabbed at the perspiration on his forehead with a bright, cherry-coloured handkerchief. Her stepfather looked helplessly across the room to where Myrtile was seated side by side with Christopher. Gerald ordered champagne, which was brought in by a servant dressed in knee breeches and silk stockings. Leschamps secretly pinched himself. Gerald, the central figure of the little party, towards whom every one turned and on whom Myrtile’s eyes were unswervingly fixed, began to rather enjoy the situation.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said, after he had moved them up to the table and placed the bottle of wine between them, “let us deal with this question in a few words. Your stepdaughter, Myrtile, is not coming back to you, Monsieur Sargot; neither will she become your wife, Monsieur Leschamps. She will be well taken care of and that is all that concerns you. We would like, if possible, to arrange this matter pleasantly, although we admit no claim. At what price do you, Monsieur Sargot, place your daughter’s services? And you, Monsieur Leschamps, at what figure do you put your expenses in preparing for your wedding which will never take place?”

“It is a hard question,” Myrtile’s stepfather declared, seizing the bottle and pouring himself out another glass of wine.

“It will be a great loss for me,” the innkeeper groaned.

“Myrtile did all the cooking,” Jean Sargot continued. “There was no one made such a ragout, and the children with her were like angels.”

“That is not true,” Myrtile intervened calmly. “The children were always bad-tempered and difficult to manage.”

“She has lost her head, the little one,” her stepfather lamented.

“There is not another girl in the valley one would marry by the side of her,” the innkeeper muttered.

Gerald waited until they had finished. He was leaning against the back of a sofa, smoking a cigarette which he had just lit.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “it is for you to name a sum. All that I ask is that Myrtile be left in peace.”

“The Widow Dumay,” Myrtile’s stepfather said, watching Gerald closely, “declared that I ought to have in the stocking another two thousand francs, if I am deprived of Myrtile.”

Gerald opened his pocketbook.

“Will the same sum content you, Leschamps?” he asked.

Pierre Leschamps tried to sigh. His eyes, however, betrayed his greedy satisfaction.

“I will accept it,” he said. “May Myrtile be happy!”

Myrtile’s stepfather struck the table with his fist.

“Look here, all of you,” he expostulated, “this is all very well, but why should Pierre Leschamps have as much as I--I who have lost my daughter----”

“She was to have been my wife,” Leschamps growled.

“It was I who was to give her to you,” the other retorted. “You have lost nothing because she never belonged to you. Five hundred francs would pay you many times over for all the expense you have been to in your miserable little house. The rest of your two thousand should come to me.”

The faces of the two men were aflame. Pierre Leschamps was tugging viciously at his little black moustache. There was a purple flush on Sargot’s cheeks. They seemed about to fall on each other. Gerald struck the table with the flat of his hand.

“Look here,” he enjoined, “unless you both want to be ordered out of the room without a sou, hold your peace.”

No threat could have been more effective. They stood looking at him like dumb animals. He silently filled the glass of each with more wine.

“Now remember that you are friends and comrades,” he begged. “There is, after all, something in what Jean Sargot has said. To lose a stepdaughter is more than to lose a promised wife. I will add a thousand francs to your amount, Jean Sargot.”

“And I shall have my two thousand?” Leschamps cried.

“You shall have your two thousand,” Gerald promised.

Their eyes hung upon his pocketbook like the eyes of sick animals. Gerald counted out the money but retained it in his hand.

“You, monsieur,” he said, addressing Myrtile’s stepfather, “will sign a paper which my friend here will write out, promising to resign all claim to Myrtile and never to attempt to see her again.”

“I will sign it,” the man agreed.

Christopher sat at the desk and wrote out a few brief sentences. Jean Sargot signed it without even confessing his inability to read. They stood up to receive the money. Myrtile, and even Christopher, watched them, fascinated. Their brown, nailless fingers clutched and trembled as they counted the notes. Each in turn buttoned them into the inside pocket of his coat. It was more than they had dreamed of, this. Myrtile, a village child, to be worth a fortune!

“It is finished, then, this affair,” Sargot declared, as he drained his glass.

“It is finished,” Gerald agreed. “I will ring for a page to show you out.”

“You need have no anxiety about Myrtile,” Christopher said. “She will be found a suitable home and she will lead a suitable life.”

Jean Sargot suddenly remembered that he was her stepfather. He brushed his coat sleeve across his eyes.

“Little one,” he cried, “embrace me. This is, then, farewell.”

Myrtile rose to her feet but she remained at the other side of the table.

“I wish you farewell and I wish you good fortune,” she said. “I would rather not embrace you. You have been hard and cruel to me, as you have been to others. Try and be kinder to your own children. And as for you, Pierre Leschamps,” she went on, “do not dream for a moment that I would ever have married you. I would sooner have thrown myself into the quarry.”

“The little one was always strange,” Leschamps muttered, almost apologetically.

They stumbled out of the room after the page who presently arrived. Gerald broke into a shout of laughter as they disappeared. Myrtile’s eyes, however, were filled with tears. Christopher, too, was grave, but it was to Gerald the girl turned.

“I have cost you a great deal, I am afraid,” she said. “Now I belong to you.”

She leaned towards him. Christopher intervened almost harshly.

“To us,” he declared, throwing down a little bundle of notes upon the table. “You and I are Myrtile’s joint guardians, Gerald. That was our understanding. I shall hold you to your promise.”

Myrtile’s head was buried on Gerald’s shoulder. Gerald himself was for a moment half embarrassed, half carried away by Myrtile’s calm assumption. He looked into Christopher’s grey eyes, however, and he pulled himself together.

“That’s all right, old chap,” he promised. “We’ll steer clear of trouble--somehow.”