The Princess moved to the window and back again.
“I, too, Nigel,” she said, “have had shocks. Jeanne has come back. She
has been at Salthouse all the time.”
“It was probably she, then, who sent for De la Borne,” Forrest said
wearily.
“Perhaps so,” the Princess assented, “but listen to this. It will
surprise you. She came back and she told De Brensault in this room only
a short while ago that her supposed fortune was a myth. De Brensault
took it like a lamb. He wants to marry her still.”
Forrest looked up in amazement.
“And will he?” he asked.
“Oh, I do not know!” the Princess answered. “Nigel, I am sick of life
myself. There are times when everything you have been trying for seems
not worth while, when even one’s fundamental ideas come tottering down.
Just now I feel as though every stone in the foundation of what has
seemed to me to mean life, is rotten and insecure. I am tired of it.
Shall I tell you what I feel like doing?”
“Yes!” he answered.
“I have a little house in Silesia, where I am still a great lady,
half-a-dozen servants, perhaps, farms which bring in a trifle of money.
I think I will go and live there. I think I will get up in the mornings
as Jeanne does, and try to love my mountains, and go about amongst my
people, and try to spell life with different letters. Come with me,
Nigel. There is shooting and fishing there, and horses wild enough for
even you to find pleasure in riding. We have tried many things in life.
Let us make one last throw, and try the land of Arcady.”
He looked at her, at first in amazement. Afterwards some change seemed
to come into his face, called there, perhaps, by what he saw in hers.
“Ena,” he said, “you mean it?”
“Absolutely,” she answered. “Fortunately we are both free, and we can
set our peasants an absolutely respectable example. You shall be farmer
and I will be housewife. Nigel, it is an inspiration.”
He bent over her fingers.
“I wonder,” he murmured, “if there is good enough left in me to make it
worth your while.”
Late that afternoon another caller thundered at the door of the house
in Berkeley Square. The Duke of Westerham desired to see Miss Le
Mesurier. The butler was respectful but doubtful. Miss Le Mesurier had
just arrived from a journey and was lying down. The Duke, however, was
insistent. He waited twenty minutes in a small back morning-room and
presently Jeanne came in to him.
He held out his hands.
“Little girl,” he said, “you know what you promised. I am afraid that
you have forgotten.”
She smiled pitifully.
“No,” she said, “I have not forgotten. I went away alone because I had
to go, because I wanted to be quite alone and quite quiet. Now I have
come home, and there is no one who can help me at all.”
“Rubbish!” he answered. “There was never trouble in the world where a
friend couldn’t help. What is it now?”
She shook her head.
“I cannot tell you,” she said, “only I am going to marry the Count de
Brensault.”
“I’m hanged if you are!” the Duke declared vigorously. “Look here, Miss
Jeanne. This is your stepmother’s doing. I know all about it. Don’t you
believe that in this country you are obliged to marry any one whom you
don’t want to.”
“But I do want to,” Jeanne answered, “or rather I don’t mind whom I do
marry, or whether I marry any one or no one.”
The Duke was grave.
“I thought,” he said, “that my friend Andrew had a chance.”
Her face was suddenly burning.
“Mr. Andrew,” she said, “does not want me; I mean that it is
impossible. Oh, if you please,” she added, bursting into tears, “won’t
you let me alone? I am going to marry the Count de Brensault. I have
quite made up my mind. Perhaps you have not heard that it is all a
mistake about my having a great fortune. The Count de Brensault is very
kind, and he is going to marry me although I have no money.”
The Duke stared at her for several moments. Then he rang the bell.
“Will you tell your mistress,” he said to the servant, “that the Duke
of Westerham would be exceedingly obliged if she would spare him five
minutes here and now.”
The man bowed and withdrew. The Princess came almost at once.
“Madam,” the Duke said, “I trust that you will forgive my sending for
you, but I am very much interested in the happiness of our little
friend Miss Jeanne here. She tells me that she is going to marry the
Count de Brensault, that she has lost her fortune and she is evidently
very unhappy. Will you forgive me if I ask you whether this marriage is
being forced upon her?”
The Princess hesitated.
“No,” she said, “it is not that. Jeanne told him of her loss of
fortune. She told him, too, without any prompting from me, that she
would marry him if he still wished it. That is all that I know.”
The Duke bowed. He moved a few steps across towards the Princess.
“Princess,” he said, “will you make a friend? Will you let me take your
little girl to my sister’s for say one week? You shall have her back
then, and you shall do as you will with her.”
“Willingly,” the Princess answered. “I am only anxious that she should
be happy.”
The Duke marvelled then at the sincerity in her tone. Nevertheless, for
fear she should change her mind, he hurried Jeanne out of the house
into his brougham.
CHAPTER XX
“So this,” the Duke said, “is your wonderful land.”
“Is there anything like it in the world?” Jeanne asked as she stood
bareheaded on the grass-banked dyke with her face turned seaward.
Above their heads the larks were singing. To their right stretched the
marshes and pasture land, as yet untouched by the sea, glorious with
streaks of colour, fragrant with the perfume of wild lavender and
mosses. To their left, through the opening in the sandbanks, came
streaming the full tide, rushing up into the land, making silver
water-ways of muddy places, bringing with it all the salt and freshness
and joy of the sea. Over their heads the seagulls cried. Far away a
heron lifted its head from a tuft of weeds, and sent his strange call
travelling across the level distance.
“Oh, it is beautiful to be here again!” Jeanne said. “Even though it
hurts,” she added, in a lower tone, “it is beautiful.”
A little boat came darting down the shallows. Kate Caynsard stood up
and waved her hand. Jeanne waved back. A sudden flush of colour stained
her cheeks. Her first impulse seemed to be to turn away. She conquered
it, however, and beckoned to the girl, who ran her boat close to them.
“My last sail,” the girl cried, as she stepped to land. “I am saying
good-bye to all these wonderful places, Miss Le Mesurier,” she added.
“To-morrow we are going to sail for Canada.”
Jeanne looked at her in amazement.
“You are going to Canada?” she asked.
The girl, too, was surprised.
“Have you not heard?” she said. “I thought, perhaps, that Mr. Andrew
might have told you. Cecil and I are sailing to-morrow, directly after
we are married. He has bought a farm out there.”
Jeanne felt for a moment that the beautiful world was spinning round
her. She clutched at the Duke’s arm.
“You are going to Canada with Cecil?” she exclaimed.
“Of course,” Kate answered, a little shyly. “I thought, in fact I know
that I told you about him. Won’t you wish me joy?” she added, holding
out her hand a little timidly.
Jeanne grasped it. To the girl’s surprise Jeanne’s eyes were full of
tears.
“Oh, I am so foolish!” she declared. “I have been so mad. I thought–
You said Mr. De la Borne.”
“Hang it all!” the Duke exclaimed. “I believe you thought that she
meant our friend Andrew. Don’t you know that all the world here half
the time calls Cecil, Mr. De la Borne, and Andrew, Mr. Andrew?”
Kate looked behind her, and touched the Duke on the sleeve.
“Wouldn’t you like, sir,” she asked, a little timidly, “to come for a
sail with me?”
The Duke saw what she saw, and notwithstanding his years and his
weight, he clambered into the little boat. Jeanne turned round and
walked slowly towards the man who came so swiftly along the dyke. It
was a dream! She felt that it must be a dream!
Andrew, with his gun over his shoulder, his rough tweed clothes
splashed with black mud, gazed at her as though she were an apparition.
Then he saw something in her face which told him so much that he forgot
the little catboat, barely out of sight, he forgot the little
red-roofed village barely a mile away, he forgot the lone figures of
the shrimpers, standing like sentinels far away in the salt pools. He
took Jeanne into his arms, and he felt her lips melt upon his.
“The Duke was right, then,” he murmured a moment later, as he stood
back for a moment, his face transformed with the new thing that had
come into his life.
“Dear man!” Jeanne murmured.
They watched the boat gliding away in the distance.
“I believe,” he declared, “that they went away on purpose.”
She laughed as they scrambled down on to the marsh, and turned toward
the place where he had first met her.
“I believe they did,” she answered.