Books: Jeanne Of The Marshes
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E. Phillips Oppenheim >> Jeanne Of The Marshes
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They went down to the beach and he helped her into the boat. Her
maid sat by her side, and he rowed them across with a few powerful
strokes.
"Storm and sunshine," he remarked, "follow one another here as
swiftly as in any corner of the world. Yesterday we had wind and
thunder and rain. To-day, look! The sky is cloudless, the birds are
singing everywhere upon the marshes, the waves can do no more than
ripple in upon the sands. Will you walk across the marshes, Miss
Jeanne, or will you come to the village and wait while I send for a
carriage?"
"We will walk," she answered. "It may be for the last time."
The maid fell behind. Andrew and his companion, who seemed smaller
and slimmer than ever by his side, started on their tortuous way,
here and there turning to the right and to the left to follow the
course of some tidal stream, or avoid the swampy places. The faint
odour of wild lavender was mingled with the brackish scent of the
sea. The ground was soft and spongy beneath their feet, and a breeze
as soft as a caress blew in their faces. Up before them always,
gaunt and bare, surrounded by its belts of weather-stricken trees,
stood the Red Hall. Andrew looked toward it gloomily.
"Do you wonder," he asked, "that a man is sometimes depressed who is
born the heir to a house like that, and to fortunes very similar?"
"Are you poor?" she asked him. "I thought perhaps you were, as your
brother tried to make love to me."
He frowned impatiently at her words.
"For Heaven's sake, child," he said, "don't be so cynical! Don't
fancy that every kind word that is spoken to you is spoken for your
wealth. There are sycophants enough in the world, Heaven knows, but
there are men there as well. Give a few the credit of being honest.
Try and remember that you are--"
He looked at her and away again toward the sea.
"That you are," he repeated, "young enough and attractive enough to
win kind words for your own sake."
"Then," she whispered, leaning towards him, "I do not think that I
am very fortunate."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because," she answered, "one person who might say kind things to
me, and whom my money would never influence a little bit in the
world, does not say them."
"Are you sure," he asked, "that you believe that there is any one in
the world who would be content to take you without a penny?"
She shook her head.
"Not that," she said sadly. "I am not what you call conceited enough
for that, but I would like to believe that I might have a kind word
or two on my own account."
She tried hard to see his face, but he kept it steadfastly turned
away. She sighed. Only a few yards behind the maid was walking.
"Mr. Andrew," she said, "it was you whom I meant. Won't you say
something nice to me for my own sake?"
They were nearing the Hall now, and it seemed natural enough that he
should hold her hand for a minute in his.
"I will tell you," he said quietly, "that your coming has been a
pleasure, and your going will be a pain, and I will tell you that
you have left an empty place that no one else can fill. You have
made what our people here call the witch music upon the marshes for
me, so that I shall never walk here again as long as I live without
hearing it and thinking of you."
"Is that all?" she whispered.
He pretended not to hear her.
"I am nearly double your age," he said, "and I have lived an idle,
perhaps a worthless, life. I have done no harm. My talents, if I
have any, have certainly been buried. If I had met you out in the
world, your world, well, I might have taught myself to forget--"
He broke off abruptly in his sentence. Cecil stood before them,
suddenly emerged from the hand-gate leading into the Hall gardens.
"At last!" he exclaimed, taking Jeanne by the hands. "The Princess
is distracted. We have all been distracted. How could you make us so
unhappy?"
She drew her hands away coldly.
"I fancy that my stepmother," she said, "will have survived my
absence. I was caught in a storm. I expect that your brother has
already told you about it."
He looked from one to the other.
"So you have told her, Andrew," he said simply.
Andrew nodded. The three walked up toward the house in somewhat
constrained silence. She was trying her hardest to make Andrew look
at her, and he was trying his hardest to resist. The Princess came
out to them. The morning was warm, and she was wearing a white
wrapper. Her toilette was not wholly completed, but she was
sufficiently picturesque.
"My dear Jeanne," she cried, "you have nearly sent us mad with
anxiety. How could you wander off like that!"
Jeanne stood a little apart. She avoided the Princess' hands. She
stood upon the soft turf with her hands clasped, her cheeks very
pale, her eyes bright with some inward excitement.
"Do you wish me to answer that question?" she said.
The Princess stared.
"What do you mean, my child?" she exclaimed.
"You ask me," Jeanne said, "why I went wandering off into the
marshes. I will tell you. It is because I am unhappy. It is because
I do not like the life into which you have brought me, nor the
people with whom we live. I do not like late hours, supper parties
and dinner parties, dances where half the people are bourgeois, and
where all the men make stupid love to me. I do not like the shops,
the vulgar shop people, fashionable clothes, and fashionable
promenading. I am tired of it already. If I am rich, why may I not
buy the right to live as I choose?"
The Princess rarely allowed herself to show surprise. At this
moment, however, she was completely overcome.
"What is it you want, then, child?" she demanded.
"I should like," Jeanne answered, "to buy Mr. De la Borne's house
upon the island, and live there, with just a couple of maids, and my
books. I should like some friends, of course, but I should like to
find them for myself, amongst the country people, people whom I
could trust and believe in, not people whose clothes and manners and
speech are all hammered out into a type, and whose real self is so
deeply buried that you cannot tell whether they are honest or
rogues. That is what I should like, stepmother, and if you wish to
earn my gratitude, that is how you will let me live."
The Princess stared at the child as though she were a lunatic.
"Jeanne," she exclaimed weakly, "what has become of you?"
"Nothing," Jeanne answered, "only you asked me a question, and I
felt an irresistible desire to answer you truthfully. It would have
come sooner or later."
Andrew turned slowly toward the girl, who stood looking at her
stepmother with flushed cheeks and quivering lips.
"Miss Le Mesurier," he said, "on one condition I will sell you the
island, but on only one."
"And that is?" she asked.
The Princess recovered herself just in time, and sailed in between
them.
"Mr. De la Borne," she said, "my daughter is too young for such
conversations. For two years she is under my complete guidance. She
must obey me just as though she were ten years older and married,
and I her husband. The law has given me absolute control over her.
You understand that yourself, don't you, Jeanne?"
"Yes," Jeanne answered quietly, "I understand."
"Go indoors, please," the Princess said. "I have something to say to
Mr. De la Borne."
"And I, too," Jeanne said. "Let me stay and say it. I will not be
five minutes."
The Princess pointed toward the door.
"I will not have it," she said coldly. "Cecil, take my daughter
indoors. I insist upon it."
She turned away unwillingly. The Princess took Andrew by the arm and
led him to a more distant seat.
"Now, if you please, my dear Mr. Andrew," she said, "will you tell
me what it is that you have done to my foolish little girl?"
CHAPTER XXI
The Princess arranged her skirts so that they drooped gracefully,
and turned upon her companion with one of those slow mysterious
smiles, which many people described but none could imitate.
"Mr. De la Borne," she said, "I can talk to you as I could not talk
to your brother, because you are an older and a wiser man. You may
not have seen much of the world, but you are at any rate not a young
idiot like Cecil. Will you listen to me, please?"
"It seems to me," Andrew answered drily, "that I am already doing
so."
"I am not going to ask you," she continued, "whether you are in love
with my little girl or not, because the whole thing is too
ridiculous. I have no doubt that she has some sort of a fancy for
you. It is evident that she has. I want you to remember that she is
fresh from school, that as yet she has not entered life, and that a
few months ago she did not know a man from a gate-post."
"An admirable simile," Andrew murmured.
"What I want you to understand is," the Princess continued, "that as
yet she cannot possibly be in a position to make up her mind as to
her future. She has seen nothing of the world, and what she has seen
has been the least favourable side. She has a perfectly enormous
fortune, so ridiculously tied up that although I am never out of
debt and always borrowing money, I cannot touch a penny of it, not
even with her help. Very soon she will be of age, and the amount of
her fortune will be known. I can assure you that it will be a
surprise to every one."
Andrew bowed his head indifferently.
"Very possibly," he answered, "and yet, madam, if your daughter has
the wisdom to see that the matter of her wealth is after all but a
trifle amongst the conditions which make for happiness, why should
you deny her the benefits of that wisdom?"
"My dear friend," she continued earnestly, "for this reason--because
Jeanne to-day is too young to choose for herself. She has not got
over that sickly sentimental age, when a girl makes a hero of
anything unusual in the shape of a man, and finds a sort of
unwholesome satisfaction in making sacrifices for his sake. It may
be that Jeanne may, after all, look to what you call the simple life
for happiness. Well, if she does that after a year or so, well and
good. But she shall not do so with my consent, without indeed my
downright opposition, until she has had an opportunity of testing
both sides, of weighing the matter thoroughly from every point of
view. Do you not agree with me, Mr. De la Borne?"
"You speak reasonably, madam," he assented.
"Jeanne," she continued, "has perhaps charmed you a little. She is,
after all, just now a child of nature. She is something of an
artist, too. Beautiful places and sights and sounds appeal to her.
"She is ready, with her imperfect experience, to believe that there
is nothing greater or better worth cultivating in life. But I want
you to consider the effects of heredity. Jeanne comes from restless,
brilliant people. Her mother was a leader of society, a pleasure-
loving, clever, unscrupulous woman. Her father was a financier and a
diplomat, many-sided, versatile, but with as complex a disposition
as any man I ever met. Jeanne will ripen as the years go on;
something of her mother, something of her father will appear. It is
my place, knowing these things, to see that she does not make a
fatal mistake. All that I say to you, Mr. De la Borne, is to let her
go, to give her her chance, to let her see with both eyes before she
does anything irremediable. I think that I may almost appeal to you,
as a reasonable man and a gentleman, to help me in this."
Andrew de la Borne looked out through the wizened branches of his
stunted trees, to the white-flecked sea rolling in below. The
Princess was right. He knew that she was right. Those other thoughts
were little short of madness. Jeanne was no coquette at heart, but
she was a child. She had great responsibilities. She was turned into
the world with a heavy burden upon her shoulders. It was not he or
any man who could help her. She must fight her own battle, win or
lose her own happiness. A few years' time might see her the wife of
a great statesman or a great soldier, proud and happy to feel
herself the means by which the man she loved might climb one step
higher upon the great ladder of fame. How like a child's dream these
few days upon the marshes, talking to one who was no more than a
looker-on at the great things of life, must seem! He could imagine
her thinking of them with a shiver as she remembered her escape. The
Princess was right, she was very right indeed. He rose to his feet.
"Madam," he said, "I have not pretended to misunderstand you. I
think that you have spoken wisely. Your stepdaughter must solve for
herself the great riddle. It is not for any one of us to handicap
her in her choice while she is yet a child."
"You are going, Mr. De la Borne?" she asked.
He pointed to a brown-sailed fishing-boat passing slowly down from
the village toward the sea.
"That is one of my boats," he said. "I shall signal to her from the
island to call for me. I need a change, and she is going out into
the North Sea for five weeks' fishing."
The Princess held out her hand, and Andrew took it in his.
"You are a man," she said. "I wish there were more of your sort in
the world where I live."
The Princess stood for a moment on the edge of the lawn, watching
Andrew's tall figure as he strode across the marsh toward the
village. Never once did he look back or hesitate on his swift,
vigorous way. Then she sighed a little and turned away toward the
house. After all, this was a man, although he was so far removed
from the type she knew and understood.
Cecil was walking restlessly up and down the hall when she entered.
He drew her eagerly into the library.
"Look here," he said, "Forrest declares that he is going. He is
upstairs now packing his things."
"Your brother," the Princess answered, "scarcely left him much
alternative."
"That's all very well," Cecil answered, "but if he goes I go. I am
not going to be left here alone."
The Princess looked at him, and the colour came into his cheeks. It
is never well for a man when he sees such a look upon a woman's
face.
"It isn't that I'm afraid," Cecil declared. "I can stand any
ordinary danger, but I am not going to be left shut up here alone,
with the whole responsibility upon me. I couldn't do it. It wouldn't
be fair to ask me."
"There is no fresh news, I suppose?" the Princess asked.
"None," Cecil answered gloomily. "If only we could see our way to
the end of it, I shouldn't mind."
The Princess was thoughtful for a few moments.
"Well," she said, "I don't know, after all, if Forrest need go just
yet. Your brother has made up his mind to go fishing for several
weeks. I think that he is going to start to-day."
"Do you mean it?" Cecil exclaimed, incredulously.
The Princess nodded.
"He has been philandering with Jeanne," she said, "and his
magnificent conscience is taking him out into the North Sea."
Cecil's features relaxed. After all, though he played at maturity,
he was little more than a boy.
"Fancy old Andrew!" he exclaimed. "Gone on a child like Miss Jeanne,
too! Well, anyhow, that makes it all right about Forrest staying,
doesn't it?"
"He shall stop," the Princess answered slowly. "Jeanne and I will
stay, too, until Monday. Perhaps by that time--"
"By that time," Cecil repeated, "something may have happened."
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
His Grace the Duke of Westerham stepped forward from the hearthrug,
in the middle of which he had been standing, and held out both his
hands. His lips were parted in a smile, and there was a twinkle in
his eyes.
"My dear Andrew," he exclaimed, "it is delightful to see you. You
seem to bring the salt of the North Sea into our frowsy city."
Andrew grasped his friend's hands.
"I have been fishing with some of my men for three weeks," he said,
"off the Dogger Bank. The salt does cling to one, you know, and I
suppose I am as black as a nigger."
The Duke sighed a little.
"My dear Andrew," he said, "you make one wonder whether it is worth
while to count for anything at all in the world. You represent the
triumph of physical fitness. You could break me, or a dozen like me,
in your hands. You know what the faddists of the moment say? They
declare that brains and genius have had their day--that the greatest
man in the world nowadays is the strongest."
Andrew smiled as he settled down in the armchair which his friend
had wheeled towards him.
"You do not believe in your own doctrines," he remarked. "You would
not part with a tenth part of your brains for all my muscle."
The Duke paused to think.
"It is not only the muscle," he said. "It is this appearance of
splendid physical perfection. You have but to show yourself in a
London drawing-room, and you will establish a cult. Do you want to
be worshipped, friend Andrew--to wear a laurel crown, and have
beautiful ladies kneeling at your feet?"
"Chuck it!" Andrew remarked good humouredly. "I didn't come here to
be chaffed. I came here on a serious mission."
The Duke nodded.
"It must indeed have been serious," he said, "for you to have had
your hair cut and your beard trimmed, and to have attired yourself
in the garments of civilization. You are the last man whom I should
have expected to have seen in a coat which might have been cut by
Poole, if it wasn't, and wearing patent boots."
"Jolly uncomfortable they are," Andrew remarked, looking at them.
"However, I didn't want to be turned away from your doors, and I
still have a few friends in town whom I daren't disgrace. Honestly,
Berners, I came up to ask you something."
The Duke was sympathetic but silent.
"Well?" he remarked encouragingly.
"The fact is," Andrew continued, "I wonder whether you could help me
to get something to do. We have decided to let the Red Hall, Cecil
and I. The rents have gone down to nothing, and altogether things
are pretty bad with us. I don't know that I'm good for anything. I
don't see, to tell you the truth, exactly what place there is in the
world that I could fill. Nevertheless, I want to do something. I
love the villager's life, but after all there are other things to be
considered. I don't want to become quite a clod."
The Duke produced a cigar box, passed it to Andrew, and deliberately
lighted a cigar himself.
"Friend Andrew," he said, "you have set me a puzzle. You have set me
a good many since I used to run errands for you at Eton, but I think
that this is the toughest."
Andrew nodded.
"You'll think your way through it, if any one can," he remarked. "I
don't expect anything, of course, that would enable me to afford
cigars like this, but I'd be glad to find some work to do, and I'd
be glad to be paid something for it."
The Duke was silent for a moment. He looked down at his cigar and
then suddenly up again.
"Has that young idiot of a brother of yours been making a fool of
himself?" he asked.
"Cecil is never altogether out of trouble," Andrew answered drily.
"He seems to have taken bridge up with rather unfortunate results,
and there were some other debts which had to be paid, but we needn't
talk about those. The point is that we're jolly well hard up for a
year or two. He's got to work, and so have I. If it wasn't for
looking after him, I should go to Canada to-morrow."
"D----d young idiot!" the Duke muttered. "He's spent his own money
and yours too, I suppose. Never mind, the money's gone."
"It isn't only the money," Andrew interrupted. "The fact is, I'm not
altogether satisfied, as I told you before, with living just for
sport. I'm not a prejudiced person. I know that there are greater
things in the world, and I don't want to lose sight of them
altogether. We De la Bornes have contributed poets and soldiers and
sailors and statesmen to the history of our country, for many
generations. I don't want to go down to posterity as altogether a
drone. Of course, I'm too late for anything really worth doing. I
know that just as well as you can tell me. At the same time I want
to do something, and I would rather not go abroad, at any rate to
stay. Can you suggest anything to me? I know it's jolly difficult,
but you were always one of those sort of fellows who seem to see
round the corner."
"Do you want a permanent job?" the Duke asked. "Or would a temporary
one fit you up for a time?"
"A temporary one would be all right, if it was in my line," Andrew
answered.
"We've got to send three delegates to a convention to be held at The
Hague in a fortnight's time, for the revision of the International
Fishing laws," the Duke remarked. "Could you take that on?"
"I should think so," Andrew answered. "I've been out with the men
from our part of the world since I was a child, and I know pretty
well all that there is to be known on our side about it. What is the
convention about?"
"There are at least a dozen points to be considered," the Duke
answered. "I'll send you the papers to any address you like, to-
morrow. They're at my office now in Downing Street. Look 'em
through, and see whether you think you could take it on. I have two
men already appointed, but they are both lawyers, and I wanted some
one who knew more about the practical side of it."
"I should think," Andrew remarked, "that this is my job down to the
ground. What's the fee?"
"The fee's all right," the Duke answered. "You won't grumble about
that, I promise you. You'll get a lump sum, and so much a day, but
the whole thing, of course, will be over in a fortnight. What to do
with you after that I can't for the moment think."
"We may hit upon something," Andrew said cheerfully. "What are you
doing for lunch? Will you come round to the 'Travellers' with me?
It's the only London club I've kept going, but I dare say we can get
something fit to eat there."
"I'm jolly sure of it," the Duke answered, "but while you're in
London you're going to do your lunching with me. We'll go to the
Athenaeum and show these sickly-looking scholars and bishops what a
man should look like. It's almost time for luncheon, isn't it?"
"Past," Andrew answered. "It was half-past twelve when I got here."
"Then we will leave at once," the Duke declared. "I have nothing to
do this morning, fortunately. You don't care about driving, I know.
We'll walk. It isn't half a mile."
They turned into the street together.
"By the by," the Duke asked, "what has become of your brother's
friends? I mean the little party that we broke into so
unceremoniously."
"The Princess and Miss Le Mesurier are, I believe, in London,"
Andrew answered. "I was very surprised to hear this morning that
Forrest was still down at the Red Hall with Cecil. By the by, Ronald
has turned up again, of course?"
The Duke hesitated for so long that Andrew turned towards him, and
noticed for the first time the anxious lines in his face.
"Since the day he left the Red Hall," the Duke said, "Ronald has
neither been seen nor heard from. I forgot that you had been outside
civilization for nearly a month. Although I have tried hard, I have
not been able to keep the affair altogether out of the papers."
Andrew was thunderstruck.
"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Why, Berners, this is one of the
strangest things I ever heard of. What are you doing about it?"
"I am employing detectives," the Duke answered. "I do not see what
else I could do. They have been down to the Red Hall. In fact I
believe one of them is still in the vicinity. Your brother's story
as to his departure seems to be quite in order, although no one at
the railway station is able to remember his travelling by that
train. They seem to remember the car, however, which is practically
the same thing, and several people saw Major Forrest bringing it
back early in the morning."
"Did any one," Andrew asked slowly, "see Lord Ronald in the car on
his way to the station?"
"Not a soul," the Duke answered.
Andrew was honestly perplexed. Jeanne's statement that she had seen
Forrest leaving the Red Hall with the car empty except for himself,
he had never regarded seriously. Even now he could only conclude
that she had been mistaken.
"Have any large cheques been presented against your brother's
account?" he asked.
The Duke shook his head.
"Not one," he answered.
"Have the detectives any clue at all?"
"Not the ghost of one," the Duke answered. "Ronald had a few
harmless little entanglements, but absolutely nothing that could
have proved of any anxiety to him. He had several engagements during
the last ten days which I know that he meant to keep. Something must
have happened to him, God knows when or where! But here we are at
the club. Andrew, I see that you have no umbrella, so I need not
repeat the old joke about the bishops."
"What a selfish fellow I am!" Andrew remarked, as they seated
themselves at a small table in the luncheon room. "Here have I been
bothering you about my affairs, and all the time you have had this
thing on your mind. Berners, I want you to tell me something."
"Go ahead," the Duke answered.
"Have you any idea in your head that Ronald has come to any harm at
the Red Hall?"
The Duke shook his head.
"No!" he answered decidedly. "Frankly, if he had been there with
Forrest alone, that would have been my first idea, but with your
brother there, and the Princess, it is impossible to suspect
anything, even if one knew what to suspect. The only possible clue
as to his disappearance which is connected in any way with the Red
Hall is that I understand he was paying attentions to Miss Le
Mesurier, which she was disinclined to accept."
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