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THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER

AND

THE FUGITIVES

THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER

AND

THE FUGITIVES

MRS OLIPHANT

IN THREE VOLUMES

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXC

THE FUGITIVES

THE FUGITIVES.

"I don't mean to confide myself to any one, my good fellow," Mr Goulburn said. He walked along a little in advance of the two, with an air alert and vigorous, restored by the new possibility of traffic.

Janey ran by her father's side, clinging to his finger, and chattering all the way. "What are they saying, papa? They speak so funny. Why don't they speak English? Couldn't they speak English if they liked?"

Mr Goulburn was a man who liked to be popular. He was of the class which servants declare to be "not the least proud." "My little girl thinks you could speak English if you liked," he said, turning to Antoine, the most noted poacher in the district.

"Ah! je voudrais bien! I should then have the pleasure of talking to these demoiselles," the man said, taking off his hat.

"I don't like him," said little Janey. "He has a big cut on his head; he has eyes like the ogre in 'Jack the Giant-killer.' What does he want with you, papa? He will take you into a cave, and he will eat you up. I like the other one best."

"Where are they doing to?" said Janey. "What are they thinking about? I wonder if there are any little children in that big funny castle. Little children are everywhere," said the little girl mournfully, "but you tan't play with them. Helen, don't you want to do home?"

"I don't know; perhaps it would not be home now--not like what it used to be. But you are too little," said Helen, with a sigh; "if I were to tell you, you wouldn't understand."

"Madame goes out early," said the old man. "M. le Pr?cepteur perhaps has gone to the forest to lay in wood for the winter?"

"No; Monsieur le Pr?cepteur has his public duties to think of. Persons in the public service have not time to consider their own advantage," said the lady.

"Ah, how right madame is! how fine is devotion to one's country!" cried the old man, with a grin which divided his long face into two halves, shrivelling up both. He laughed when his neighbour had passed, and went on laughing sardonically under his breath. Then his eyes fell upon Helen and the child. "Tiens! des Anglaises," he said.

"Bonjour, mes demoiselles," he said, and straightway addressed the alarmed Helen in a speech which drove all idea of amusement out of her head, comical though his grimaces were. To be addressed in so much French bewildered the girl, especially as he seemed to be asking something of her which she could not fathom. "Belle appartement, beau jardin, pension si on le veut."

Helen's words failed her. She pointed with much embarrassment along the road by which her father had gone.

"Ah! monsieur est l?-bas? in the woods? Bien, bien, bien! I will wait for monsieur," said the old man.

The girls quickened their steps as they got away from him.

"What does he want, Helen?" Janey said in great alarm.

"Oh, I think he wants us to lodge there," said the elder sister, scarcely less uncomfortable.

The little girl looked up in her face with a dismayed and frightened countenance. "Are we doing to stay here--always?" little Janey said.

"Is it always so quiet?" Helen asked timidly when they reached the Lion d'Or. The mistress of the house stood at the door, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking out for the return of the expected purchasers. She was a buxom woman, in a white cap, with long, heavy ear-rings and bright eyes.

"Only for a day."

"Aha! that is nothing at all. Paris cannot be seen in so little time. The English go too quickly, if you will pardon me for saying so. Paris! Figure to yourself that I was there, mademoiselle, effectively there, for all of a month. I know Paris at my fingers' ends."

"Is that old M. Goudron?" said Helen, pointing to the old man who still stood at his door and watched, with his red and yellow handkerchief tied round his head.

"What is a good number?" said Helen, in her ignorance. She did not know what it meant. That the young man's fate should depend on the very insignificant fact whether he drew five or fifty, was incomprehensible to Helen.

She lifted up the corner of her apron to her eye, but seeing under its shadow the first person of the crowd coming into sight, she returned at once to her business.

"I have bought a corner of the wood; I could not resist the temptation. So far as I can see, I must be able to make my own out of it. Well, perhaps it was foolish; but I must do something, and there is no likelihood of loss at least."

Thus he explained himself somewhat lamely, with a consciousness that what he was saying must sound very strange to her. What did Helen know about his plans, or whether it was foolish or not, and why should he have explained it to her? It alarmed her as much as everything else in the strange and terrible imbroglio through which she could see no light.

"Poor! And you think it is inconsistent with poverty that I should buy a few miserable bits of wood? You have made great progress lately, Helen, to permit yourself to sit in judgment on your father."

She looked at him piteously, with an appeal in her face. "I don't know about it, papa; how can I know, or how can I sit in judgment? Will you please not tell me anything? Because I don't understand, and then it looks as if I understood."

"It seems to me you are no better than a fool, Helen." But when he had said this he went away, and relieved her from the pressure of the new burden to which she was so unaccustomed. The excuse, the apology conveyed in his explanations, gave her a sense of confused misery, incongruity, impossibility, which was almost the worst of all. Oh, why had he ever told her anything? Why had he raised her against her will into that position in which she was forced more or less to judge against her will? She sat, when he had gone, at the window of the little room up-stairs, which was the best room in the Lion d'Or. The white curtains, it need not be said, were fixed fast as if they were glued to the window. To draw them aside would have been more terrible to Madame Dupr? than to break a moral law; the one might have been condoned by public opinion, but the other! Helen sat within the primly fixed muslin which veiled all the world without, and sometimes shed a few tears quietly, while she made an attempt to mend Janey's frock. It was not a handicraft she understood, but at least she could fasten the two gaping sides of a rent together, and that was always some good.

But Janey was enchanted with the corner of the wood which her father had bought. He took them to see it in the afternoon, Antoine and Baptiste both following--Antoine as the possible wood-cutter for the removal of the trees, Baptiste as the host and natural care-taker of the strangers. With the latter, Janey had already made great friends in her fashion. The means of communication between them was limited, but that has little to do with real amity. When there had been something in the conversation which pleased Janey, she left her father's hand, and came up running and smiling to this new ally. "N'est-ce pas, Monsieur Baptiste?" Janey cried; and the young fellow replied with a broad grin, "Oui, mademoiselle." Janey's little laugh rang through the trees after every interpellation of this kind. It was an admirable joke, which pleased everybody. As for Antoine, he did his best to attract a similar confidence, but without any success. He was not young and smiling like his rival. He was a tall and powerful man, with the head of a brigand, black-eyed and black-bearded, and his smile was uneasy and unreal; but Baptiste was brown and curly, his hair all hyacinthine, his boyish moustache curling over a perpetual smile. And the road into the woods was so cheerful and bright, that no wonder Janey was delighted. The oaks had begun to blaze in red and brown; the feathery larches drooped their delicate branches against an illuminated background of autumn tints; big green laurels and hollies made solid towers of green among the varied copse. A few magnificent foxgloves still remaining threw up their shafts of flowers, and there was not a bit of brushwood that had not some cluster of scarlet haws or trailing russet of a bramble to make it bright. The corner which Mr Goulburn had bought was like a little pine-forest in itself--a regiment of tall and even firs. The sun was slanting in upon the red and golden columns upon which the dense yet varied roof of green was supported. Underneath, the brown carpet of fallen foliage, years upon years of growth, made slippery elastic cushions, which, with here and there a bank of emerald moss breaking through, were warm and soft. There were projections of twisted roots to make thrones of, and a tinkle of an unseen rivulet close by filled the air with music, when it could be heard for the sighing and murmuring overhead as the wind swept through the boughs. "Oh, let us never do away again! let us stay here for ever and ever!" cried little Janey; and then her little voice rang off into peals of laughter as she called out, "N'est-ce pas, Monsieur Baptiste?" "Oui, ma bonne petite demoiselle," said Baptiste, with his genial grin. He did not understand a word, but what did that matter? Mr Goulburn was touched by his child's enthusiasm. "We shall not stay for ever and ever, but we may stay a good long time, my little Janey," he said; "it is a pretty place and quiet. Even Helen thinks so, who is never pleased."

"Oh no, no, no!" cried little Janey, like a little fury. This time her father was not so much touched by her opinion. He told her she was a little goose, and finally he went out himself with old M. Goudron, desiring severely that the heroine of the afternoon should be put to bed. The day is over early in October, and when the two girls went up to their room, and lighted their solitary candle, it was a great deal less cheerful than in the ruddy woods, with the sunshine penetrating between the tall columns of the pines. The rush-bottomed chairs groaned at every movement upon the wooden floor. There was no fire, though the evening was cold, and the candle threw but a miserable light upon the two little wooden beds and the humble furniture, of which there was so little. "I want to do home," sobbed little Janey as she went weeping to bed. And Helen sat down again, and put the two gaping mouths of the rent together; or, rather, finished the joining of them which she had begun in the morning. She felt that it was not very well done. The daughter of a millionaire, with all kinds of servants at her call, how was she to know how to mend her little sister's frock? If that had been all! Helen felt herself able to learn; but how to arrange into something that was comprehensible this jarred and broken thread of life she did not know. By-and-by the nightly noise began below, which had ceased to disturb little Janey's sleep. Madame Dupr? kept good wine, and Baptiste was a favourite in the village. The men came in, in their heavy boots, and talked in voices louder than the clodhoppers of an English village. Often Helen sprang to her feet and ran to the door, thinking there was some deadly quarrel. It was only Jean or Pierre more eloquent than usual. Opposite, at the Cheval Blanc, there was the same tumult; but the village round about these two noisy places was as silent as a sleeping city. It was too cold for the women to stand about the doors and have their evening gossip. Helen went to her window and peeped out by the side of the blind when she had finished her mending. She could see M. Goudron's house opposite, and her father standing in the moonlight outside the door. A little superstitious thrill ran through her, she could not tell why; and just then Antoine came up, and stood and talked. They came back to the inn together, the big hulking figure of the villager, in his blue blouse, towering over Mr Goulburn. Helen did not like the man, but her dislike of him did not seem enough to account for the sense of alarm with which she saw them cross the street together. She was relieved when her father came into the light under the window and entered the Lion d'Or.

Margot smiled; she could forgive the patriotic denial, but she was aware that she knew better. "All the same," she said, "it must be sad to live in a perpetual fog and never to see the sun. For that I could never support your England, notwithstanding all that you have there. Of what use is wealth when you cannot see the sky?" said Margot. Helen was too indignant to reply.

"Interfere!" said Helen, not knowing what to think.

"All the world is here," he said, "to-night. I find you on your throne, madame, the queen of the village."

Madame Dupr? was so pleased that she accorded him a civility shown to few. She got up to offer him a seat, and called to Baptiste to bring her a certain precious little bottle.

"Monsieur must taste it--it is genuine," she said; "it was brought me from the hands of the monks who have the secret."

"Ah, the monks!" some one said; "they like to keep all the good things to themselves."

"And with good reason," said Mr Goulburn. "Could I make anything so good as this, certainly I should keep it to myself."

Old M. Goudron, who was sitting by, took his cigar out of his mouth.

"Madame is too good," said the old man; "she would say a good word for the devil, if there is such a person, and if he were a customer at the Lion d'Or."

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