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 There was a certain inevitable tone of indulgence in this
exclamation which made the girl redden.
“Why do you say ‘Ah!’ like that?”
“Did I say it offensively?” said Bayre, smiling at last.
“I won’t go so far as to say that; but you said it in a tone which
implied—well, I think it implied that you could not expect much from
my performance.”
“If my tone said all that I apologise humbly. And yet, no, on second
thoughts I don’t apologise. For after all, what could there be in a
novel by a young girl just out of school, who knows nothing whatever
of life beyond the four walls of her schoolroom?”
“But one can imagine, even if one doesn’t know.”
There was an indescribable spirit and impulse under these words
which made the young man look at her curiously.
“Yes, yes, but imagination is not of much value unless it has
something to go upon. It is of no more value than a painting done by
a man who had never seen anything but his paint-box. You must
study Nature, copy Nature, before your imagination is of any use to
you!”
“Ah! Now you go too far,” cried she, warmly, “for it is of use, even if
it only serves to make the world look more pleasant than it really is.”
“I don’t call that a use, I call it a danger,” said Bayre, now quite as
warm as she in his argument. “Supposing, for instance, you start by
endowing with all the gifts of your imagination some commonplace
person whom, upon that and that alone, you resolve to marry, would
your imagination be strong enough, do you think, to enable you to
gild your bargain to the end?”
She blushed a rosy red and looked at him half angrily, half
mischievously, with a quick glance.
“Is a man the worse for being commonplace?” she asked. “And is
it likely that I, who, as you say, know nothing of the world and the
people in it, should ever be able to start on a voyage of discovery in
search of the man that isn’t commonplace?”
Bayre laughed. And he thought, rather guiltily, of his own avowed
ideals, which were very much the same as hers. And at the same
moment it flashed through his mind that these same ideals were
unsatisfying in his case; it followed, therefore, that they must be
proved to be so in her case also.
“Look here,” said he, “I’m not going to dispute that many high
qualities, or let us say many serviceable qualities, may be found in
those people whom it’s usual to call commonplace, people with no
imagination, no ideas; but you, with your romantic tendencies—”
“How do you know I have romantic tendencies?”
Bayre answered, after a pause, that it was because she read
novels and wanted to write them. But it occurred to him, even as he
said this, that the real reason for his opinion was that he saw
romance sparkling in her eyes, emanating from her, encircling her.
She was a figure of romance in herself. Frank, sympathetic,
impulsive, imaginative, brimming over with the joy of life, she was the
very incarnation of healthy, joyous, budding womanhood, of the
womanhood that looks out with eyes full of vague golden hope at the
future, and that lives meanwhile in almost ecstatic joy in the present.
“Well,” said she, with a happy smile, “surely it’s rather a shrewd
arrangement to use up one’s romantic tendencies by reading novels,
and perhaps even by writing them, so that they mayn’t interfere with
the prosaic course of one’s actual life.”
“Is actual life prosaic to you?” said Bayre. “A young girl shut up in
a lonely and gloomy house with an old guardian who hardly ever
speaks to her! I never heard of a less prosaic situation in my life.”
“Ah, well, the prose is to come,” said she, lightly. “Your uncle is
very anxious to get me off his hands, and he is to introduce to me to-
morrow a certain neighbour of his who, it seems, has been struck by
my charms, and who proposes humbly to solicit the honour of my fair
hand.”
The girl said this with the most delicious mixture of mischievous
amusement and girlish shyness, blushing and looking away, while at
the same time her eyes danced with fun and her lips were curved
into a smile. Bayre was stupefied, indignant.
He had not the least reason to be, of course.
“And you mean to say that you’re going to let yourself be married
off to a man you care no more for than that?” he asked quite sharply.
“I don’t know whether I care for him; I’ve never seen him yet.”
“Never—seen him!”
 “At least, not to my knowledge. As he has seen me it’s possible I
may recognise his face when he’s formally introduced to me. He
lives at Guernsey, and I’m often over there.”
“And do you really think any happiness could come of a marriage
arranged like that?—in that cold-blooded fashion?” asked Bayre,
warmly.
The girl blushed a deep red.
“My mother was a Frenchwoman,” she answered simply. “And if
you know anything of France you must know that there it is not
customary for girls to have so much freedom of choice as in
England.”
“But you’re English—your father was an Englishman,” said Bayre,
warmly. And then a bright thought struck him: “you see I, being your
guardian’s nephew, may be looked upon as a sort of relation of yours
—”
“Oh, no,” cried Miss Eden, rippling with smiles.
“Yes, indeed,” persisted Bayre, emphatically. “My uncle is nothing
but an old fossil, who knows little more of the world than you do
yourself. I begin to see that it’s nothing less than my duty to bring my
own greater knowledge and experience to bear upon this matter. In
short, if your guardian won’t do his duty and exercise a proper
discretion on your behalf, I shall have to do it for him, and, and—”
“And choose a husband for me?” asked Miss Eden, in the most
solemn and demure tone, the while her bright eyes flashed with the
humour of the thing.
“Exactly,” replied Bayre, as solemnly as she, while his eyes looked
into hers, seeing the roguery in them and answering it with mischief
in his own.
By this time both were bubbling over with suppressed laughter,
enjoying intensely this huge joke of his vague relationship and
assumed authority. Bayre’s disappointment and irritation at his
uncle’s snub were both forgotten. Miss Eden had forgotten, too, that
her errand in meeting the young man had been one of benevolent
sympathy and consolation. They had wandered together away from
the opening in the cliff and downwards among the dead fern and
brambles towards the shore. Bayre had had to help her, now and
then, with a strong hand holding hers as they stepped over loose
stones and thorny clumps of bush and bramble. It was pleasant,
exciting, this aimless ramble in the winter sunlight, with the sea
breeze blowing in their faces and the splash of the waves in their
ears.
And then, suddenly, there broke upon them a sound less pleasant,
because it called them back to life and prose. This was the voice of
Repton calling to Bayre by name. The young man stood still and
looked round. Neither Repton nor Southerley was in sight yet, but a
glimpse of an old blue blouse and of a crouching back behind a
clump of bushes at the top of the cliff showed that the idyllic
promenade of the two young people had not been unobserved.
Miss Eden saw the blouse at the same moment, and she frowned
angrily.
“There’s that old spy, Pierre Vazon,” cried she. “Nothing that
happens here escapes the eyes of him or his daughter. They’re a
pair of ignorant, cunning peasants of the lowest type, and I hate
them both.”
“Is that his daughter who opened the door of my uncle’s house to
us?”
“Yes. She rules everything indoors and her father everything out.”
“The man has a horrible face, and I don’t like the woman’s much
better,” said Bayre. “Does my uncle like these people?”
Miss Eden hesitated.
“I sometimes think,” said she, “that—that he’s afraid of them.”
“Afraid! Why should he be?”
“I—don’t—know.” Before Bayre could ask another question the
voices of his two friends, still shouting to him, were heard again from
above; and the girl, whose manner had changed since the
interruption, gave a glance up towards the spot where the peasant
was watching, and leapt down towards the shore, away from her
companion. “Your friends are calling you, Mr Bayre. Good-bye,” she
said, as, with a little inclination of the head, she disappeared in the
direction of one of the caverns with which the cliffs were
honeycombed.
 CHAPTER VI.
A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

Bayre stood for a few moments where she had left him, his mind full
of a strange idea suggested by some of her latest words.
His uncle was afraid of the Vazons. Why?
That she had meant to imply something more than a mere idle
fancy he knew perfectly well. This fear of the peasant and his
daughter on the part of their master and employer had its origin in
something stronger than mere prejudice or timidity: so much he felt
sure of, so much had the girl’s look and tone implied.
And involuntarily the young man’s thoughts flew back to that
strange story of the death of Miss Ford, and of its tragic sequel. Ugly
fancies invaded his mind, connecting themselves with his uncle’s
strange reluctance to meet him and with these fears of his own
servants of which he had just heard.
He was quite glad when the voices of Repton and Southerley,
bawling his name in louder tones than before, broke in upon his
unpleasant thoughts and at last elicited from him an answering cry.
In a few moments they had met and were making their way
together back to the boat.
Repton and Southerley were full of regrets that Bayre had not
been with them during their visit to the house, the treasures of which
they described with a voluble enthusiasm which, as they both spoke
at once, and each described a different room at the same time,
produced upon their companion rather a vague sense of
magnificence.
“He’s got one of the finest Murillos I ever saw, and an undoubted
Rubens, which the National Gallery would give a fortune for,” said
Repton.
“Some of the tapestries and china are A1,” said Southerley, talking
through Repton’s speech. “And he’s got some old French furniture
as good as any in Hertford House.”
 “It was an infernal shame, Bayre, that they wouldn’t let you in too,”
said Repton. “But perhaps he thought you might be too anxious to
claim the rights of kinship when you saw the treasures he’d got.”
“Oh, well, I’d just as soon hear about them as see them,” said
Bayre, philosophically. “After all, perhaps there would have been a
temptation for me to help myself to a few souvenirs of dear Nunky in
the way of portable property.”
His friends, having parted from him when he was in a gloomy and
savage condition, were quite surprised to see how completely he
had got over his disappointment. They went on condoling with him
with a lighter heart.
“It was too bad that you should be condemned to a lonely stroll
outside while we were rioting in luxury inside,” said Southerley.
Bayre did not undeceive them. He lit his pipe, which he had been
holding unlighted in his hand, settled himself comfortably in the bow
of the boat, and gave himself up to thoughts in which neither his
friends nor his uncle had any share; and while the other two babbled
of their visit to the mansion, and talked imperfect French to the
boatmen, both of whom understood every word they said in English,
the artful Bayre caught a thrilling glimpse of a white pocket-
handkerchief fluttering against a background of cavernous darkness,
away under the cliff behind them. Taking off his cap he waved it in
the air, a proceeding which caused both Repton and Southerley to
turn their heads shorewards with much suddenness.
But they saw nothing, and the rascal in the bows refused to
acknowledge that he had seen anything either. A lingering mistrust of
him glowed darkly in the eyes of the other two for a little while, but he
kept his own counsel, and they could get nothing out of him.
It was two days after this that they all came face to face with
another party of three persons in one of the streets in the upper
town.
One of these persons was old Mr Bayre, dressed as before in
serge trousers and pilot coat, with a pipe between his teeth and his
yachting cap drawn well over his eyes. His hands were in his
pockets, and he walked along with bent head and shuffling step, and
without exchanging a word with his two companions. One of these
was a stout Frenchman of middle age, whose round, pink, flabby
face was garnished by a huge double chin, and furthermore set off
by a pair of blue glasses, which helped, with the big Panama hat he
wore, to give him a strange and most unattractive appearance.
The third member of the party was pretty Miss Eden, and on her
face there was such a look of subdued dismay that Bartlett Bayre
jumped instantly to the conclusion that the stout gentleman in the
goggles was the husband chosen for her by her guardian.
Bayre started forward, on meeting the three, with the intention of
forcing his uncle into conversation. Vague ideas of remonstrance,
not only with his uncle’s treatment of himself but with his treatment of
this girl, filled the young man’s mind.
But the wily old recluse was more than a match for him. Before his
nephew could traverse the dozen yards that lay between them,
Bartlett Bayre, senior, had turned on his heel and disappeared down
a turning, where he was able to hide himself within some friendly
neighbour’s door.
When Bayre, junior, came back, disappointed, from a vain pursuit,
both Miss Eden and the owner of the Panama hat were out of sight.
Restless, excited, moved out of himself by emotions he could
scarcely analyse, Bayre was irritated beyond endurance by the talk
of his two friends, who had both conceived the same opinion, that
the stout gentleman in the goggles must be the pretty girl’s intended
husband.
“It’s outrageous, preposterous, impossible!” Repton was bawling,
with the light-hearted enthusiasm of an irresponsible person, as
Bayre came up. “Of course, such a thing is not to be endured. What!
Marry that lovely girl with the creamy skin to an old effigy with a great
pink roll at the back of his neck! A wholly hideous and unpaintable
person! Perish the thought!”
“She must be rescued undoubtedly,” assented Southerley. “The
only question is how to set about it?”
“Oh, there’s one other thing—Who’s to set about it?” said Repton,
firmly. “Shall it be you or I?”
“Or shall we let her have her choice, eh, Repton? I don’t mind
doing that, because I feel sure she’ll choose me. No girl with those
eyes would look twice at a fellow with sandy hair.”
 “Perhaps she won’t care for a red face either,” retorted the artist,
calmly. “Bayre, what do you say to entering the lists? Some girls like
a sallow face and lank hair without any gloss on it.”
“Some people don’t like a pair of tom-fools,” replied Bayre,
savagely. “What does it matter to you whom Miss Eden marries?
Mind your own business and don’t bawl people’s names out so that
everyone for a mile round can hear the stuff you’re talking.”
“Keep your hair on, my dear friend,” said Repton, with annoying
calmness. “If Miss Eden’s nothing to us, she’s nothing to you either,
you know. Even if you were serious about her it’s not likely your
uncle would entertain you for a suitor when he won’t even allow you
inside his doors.”
Bayre turned livid, but said nothing. He did not, indeed, trust
himself to speak.
But that very afternoon, stealing out of the house quietly, while his
friends were smoking in the little salon, he hired a boat and set sail
for the island of Creux.
He meant to see Miss Eden if he died for it. Perhaps some rags of
pretence still hung about his mind as to the reason of the interest he
took in the beautiful girl. But if so, they fell away and left the bare
truth for him to face when, coming upon the girl suddenly in a cleft of
the cliff as he went upwards on landing, he found that the
unexpected meeting sent the blood flying to his head with a force
which made him giddy.
For a moment he said nothing, and, strange to say, the girl was
silent also.
“Well?” said she at last.
She was changed since he had seen her last. The colour had left
her cheeks, and though her eyes were as bright as ever it was with a
different brightness: they seemed to glitter, so he fancied, with
unshed tears. And she had not even the conventional smile of
greeting for him, but let the one word drop from her lips in a rather
husky and tremulous voice, almost, so he thought, as if she felt sure
that he guessed the reason of her sadness.
“I—I wanted to see you again,” stammered he at last. “I came—I
came—to—to see you.”
 He was ashamed of himself. Anything more lame, more clumsy,
than these words it was impossible to imagine. But Miss Eden took
them quite simply.
“Why did you want to see me?” she asked quickly.
“I—I couldn’t speak to you this morning. And I thought perhaps—
perhaps you would think it odd.”
He was floundering hopelessly. Why should she think it odd? he
asked himself with rage at his own lack of words, of ideas. But again
she lifted him out of his embarrassment by saying,—
“I thought you wanted to speak to your uncle, not to me.”
“I wanted to, but I missed him; or rather, he ran away from me.”
“Ah!”
Their eyes met. And he saw that she, as well as he, thought this
shyness on the part of the old recluse mysterious and suspicious.
“Why should he avoid me?”
The girl shook her head.
“Why does he avoid everybody?” she said.
The words raised Bayre’s uneasiness to fever pitch.
“I don’t like to think of your being here all by yourself with those
two wretched peasants and an indifferent guardian,” he began
impetuously.
He had almost said “a guilty guardian,” but had fortunately
checked himself in time.
“Oh, well, I sha’n’t be here long,” she answered, and her face
became more sombre as she spoke.
“That man—who was with you yesterday. Surely he—he was not
—is not—” stammered Bayre, reddening as he put the mutilated
fragment of a question.
She nodded gloomily.
“Yes,” said she, looking away from him and shivering slightly. “That
is Monsieur Blaise, whom my guardian has chosen as my husband.”
“But you will never marry him—you?”
She frowned petulantly.
“Oh, how can I tell? I suppose so,” she said.
“You will be miserable!”
“Shall I? I don’t know. Can anybody ever tell those things? No
doubt he is a good man, and my guardian is anxious, very anxious,
for my marriage.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. To get rid of me, I suppose!”
“I can’t understand you,” broke out Bayre, almost passionately.
“You seem a girl of spirit, of resource, yet you can calmly submit to
be disposed of, by a guardian who doesn’t care for you, to a man
whom you don’t care for—”
“How do you know that?”
She turned upon him with a pretty flash of defiance.
But he waved aside the suggested protest.
“As if you could!” said he, not guessing how absurdly eager and
anxious he was showing himself in this business which was none of
his.
Miss Eden twisted her pretty mouth into a little grimace.
“He’s not exactly the ideal of one’s dreams, perhaps!” she said
under her breath.
Whereat Bayre, grown bolder, laughed outright.
“You won’t do it?” he said, becoming suddenly grave.
But she would not give him a direct answer.
“There are many things to be considered,” was her vague reply.
He stood before her, pulling the long ends of his ragged
moustache, fighting with a hundred impulses, not one of which had
any sort of reason or logic to recommend it. He was interested in this
girl, preposterously interested, considering how far removed she was
from the type which he had always supposed himself to admire the
most. If he had been well off, if even he had been anything but the
struggling poor devil of a beginner at life that he was, he knew that
he should have cast discretion, common sense to the winds, and
that he should have asked her to marry him—him, Bartlett Bayre,
hater of spirited woman, and worshipper at the shrine of placid,
purring womanhood without a word to say for itself.
As it was, however, that madness was not possible to him. He
could not offer to take a girl reared in luxury, as he presumed she
was, to share a London garret with him. But the wish, the impulse
that prompted this mad thought shone in his eyes, and probably
communicated itself to Miss Eden, who blushed when she looked at
him, and gave a glance round, preparatory to running away.
 “So you’ve come by yourself to-day,” she remarked, turning the
conversation as she caught sight of the boat waiting for him.
“Yes. I wanted to see you before—before going away.”
Her manner became thoughtful again.
“When do you go?” said she.
“In four days.”
“Back to London?”
“Yes. I wish—is it too much to ask?—would you send me two lines
—no more—for the sake of our half-relationship, you know, just to
tell me, to tell me—”
He was so eager that he could not make himself very clear. But
she guessed his meaning and smiled gravely.
“Not for the sake of our relationship, which is not very clearly made
out, I think, but for the sake of your— Well, never mind of what—
perhaps you shall hear of or from me again—some day. What is your
address?”
“May I write it down?”
“I shall remember it.”
He gave her the address, and she listened in silence, with her
eyes fixed intently on the sea. Then she said quickly, as if struck with
a sudden thought of deep import,—
“Thank you. I must go now. If Pierre Vazon were to see me talking
to you again he would make mischief—at least, he might. I don’t trust
him. Good-bye.”
She held out her hand quickly; he pressed it one moment in his,
with a thrill which communicated itself perhaps to her. She blushed a
rosy red and drew her fingers sharply away.
“Good-bye,” she said again.
And she was gone.
Bayre went back to the boat in a sort of fever. It cut him to the
heart to think that this beautiful, bright girl, who affected him so
strangely, should be in danger of becoming the wife of that
commonplace Monsieur Blaise, with the roll of pink flesh at the back
of his neck and the Panama hat and the blue glasses.
When he got back to his friends they were cool, sarcastic,
courteous. It was a bad sign when they were courteous!
 But they made friends again over an odd discovery. They ran
against the beautiful Miss Eden that evening coming out of the
telegraph office; and although they had no chance of so much as an
exchange of greetings with her, the incident gave them something to
talk about which it was imperative to discuss together.
They saw no more of the beauty before their holiday was over, and
it was only too plain that she had forgotten the commission with
which she had offered to entrust them.
When the last day of their stay arrived, and they piled their light
luggage on one of the deck seats of the boat, with a melancholy
feeling that the jolly time was over, they perceived a rough-looking
peasant girl, in sabots, and bearing what looked like a fish-basket
under her arm, standing on the quay looking down upon them.
Presently she came on board, but as she did not come near the
spot where the three young men stood chatting and smoking, they
took no particular notice of her movements until the boat started,
when they saw her again on the quay-side, this time without her
burden.
The morning was keen and cold, and there was a grey mist
hanging over the water. They had not steamed far on their way when
Repton shivered and returned to their light luggage to put on his
overcoat.
He had scarcely reached the pile, however, when a loud
exclamation burst from his lips and attracted the attention of his two
friends. Turning their heads, they saw him bending over something
which had been placed among their things but which did not belong
to them.
A second look convinced them that this addition to their luggage
was nothing less than the fish-basket which the peasant girl had
brought on board. And a third and closer look, when they had
obeyed Repton’s signal of alarm and joined him, showed them that
the contents of the basket were alive.
“It’s—it’s a child! A—live—child!” gasped Repton, hoarsely.
And the consternation he felt was reflected on the faces of
Southerley and Bayre.
 CHAPTER VII.
SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE

There was no doubt about it; there, in the very middle of their pile of
light luggage, some of which had been carefully displaced to make
room for it, the three young men found the substantial basket they
had last seen under the arm of the peasant girl on the quay; and in
the basket, lightly covered over by a dark woollen shawl, through the
meshes of which it could breathe perfectly well, was a live child.
Repton had moved the shawl, on seeing something move
underneath, just far enough back to disclose the tiny face of a
healthy-looking infant, some fifteen to eighteen months old, who, just
waking from sleep, was staring up at the strangers with its face
puckered in readiness for a good cry.
Repton was the first to ascertain this fact, and his increased
consternation took a murderous form.
“Let’s chuck it overboard!” cried he, with ferocity.
“Give it to the stewardess,” suggested Southerley, more humanely.
Bayre, meanwhile, with presence of mind amounting to genius,
had dashed forward, and seizing an indiarubber tube attached to a
boat-shaped bottle containing some opaque fluid which lay beside
the child, had thrust it into the infant’s mouth and thereby checked
the utterance of its very first scream.
His friends looked at him in admiration, but the little group of
passengers and ship’s hands who had been attracted by the
commotion looked with more derision than sympathy upon the heroic
fellow as he made further investigations into this alarming article of
luggage.
“It’s not a peasant’s child,” he said, when he had noted the quality
of the baby’s clothes.
He had an idea in his head which he found it hard to get rid of. His
uncle had a child, and that child had been kidnapped from the
mother when she ran away from her husband, and had been left to
the tender care of the Vazons. As far as he could judge, his uncle’s
child would be of about the same age as the infant in the basket.
Could it be that this small pink and white thing which had been so
mysteriously planted upon them was his own first cousin? And was it
by some device of Miss Eden’s, who mistrusted the Vazons, that the
infant had been thus entrusted to the care of himself and his
companions?
While the chatter and the chaff went on round about him, Bayre
debated thus within himself, carefully examining the face of the now
placid and contented infant with a scrutinising care which sent a
ripple of more or less subdued laughter round the group.
“Look here, you fellows, this child has not been dumped down
here by accident,” said he, with a gravity which, instead of subduing
them into attention, sent them into fits of renewed laughter. “I’m
pretty sure we shall find upon it some intimation as to what we have
got to do with it.”
“I recommend,” said Southerley, “that we put it in the captain’s
care to take back with him to Guernsey.”
“That’s it,” said Repton. “And in the meantime we’ll just find out
who it is that has played us this trick. That girl who brought it on
board must certainly have been known either to the captain or to
some of the crew, and can easily be found by them.”
It was remarkable, however, that, even as he made this
suggestion, the curious group that had gathered round began to melt
away; and Bayre was not surprised to find, upon inquiry, that nobody
on board knew anything about the peasant girl, but that all who had
seen her professed to have supposed that she was bringing some
luggage belonging to one of the passengers in the ordinary way.
To consternation, to amusement, there succeeded indignation in
the minds of both Repton and Southerley at the trick which had been
played upon them. They had been made the laughing-stock of
everybody on board, and they could find no one to help them out of
the mess.
Both captain and stewardess flatly refused to undertake the
responsibility of taking the child back to Guernsey, and the faces of
two out of the three young men grew long at the prospect before
them.
 “We can’t take the brat back to London with us,” wailed Repton.
“It’s you, Bayre, with your confounded philanderings about the island
by yourself, who must have brought upon us the reputation of being
philanthropists and foundling hospitals, and homes for lost or
starving children! And so I vote it’s you who must leave it at the left
luggage office at Weymouth. And if you won’t do that, why,
Southerley and I must leave you there, that’s all.”
“First,” persisted Bayre, still haunted by his idea, “let us see if
there isn’t a letter or direction of any kind packed in with the child.”
“Well, fire away,” said Repton, gloomily. “Here goes.”
And as he spoke he pulled the brown woollen shawl right off the
basket with a violent wrench.
As he did so the wind and the violent action together caused a
letter, which had been placed in the basket under the shawl, to flutter
over the side of the vessel into the sea.
“There you are! What did I tell you?” cried Bayre, excitedly, making
a wild grab in the direction of the missive that would have made all
clear to them.
To the fresh consternation caused by this mishap there succeeded
a wild desire to stop the boat and to secure the precious letter. But
the captain would not listen to Repton’s loud expostulations on this
subject, and the young man was driven half frantic between his own
despair and the reproaches for his hasty action which his two
companions did not hesitate to pour upon him.
In the meantime Southerley, partly out of bravado and partly out of
real curiosity, had taken his turn at examining the child, and finally
announced, with a great show of learning, that he knew from the
shape of its headgear that it was a boy.
In his own mind, Bayre, who chose to keep his suspicions to
himself, found this confirmation of his idea that the helpless creature
who had been so unexpectedly entrusted to them was the heir to his
uncle’s property. For he knew that his uncle’s child was a boy. At all
hazards, then, the mite must be kept under his eye until he could find
out what was the object of entrusting it to him and his companions in
this mysterious manner. Once arrived in London he would write to
Miss Eden and beg her to enlighten him upon the point.
 If it was not the young girl herself who had contrived to send the
infant in this manner to some place of greater safety than the cottage
of the Vazons, she would at least be able to find out who had done
so. As for the fact that she had given him no intimation of the strange
commission, Bayre could not be surprised at it. For it was the sort of
charge that a man might well have refused if he had known of it
beforehand. So he reasoned with himself, and remembered at the
same time that Miss Eden had spoken of some commission with
which she thought of entrusting them.
In the meantime the child, having disposed of the opaque fluid in
the bottle, struggled to sit up, and then to get on its feet and survey
the new and rather astonishing world in which it found itself.
Surveying it with the calm scientific curiosity with which a young
animal in the Zoo would have inspired him, Southerley drew the
attention of his companions to this fact, and even made some
solemn and ill-received attempts to conciliate the monster by
duckings of the head and twiddlings of the fingers, at which the child
stared with grave eyes.
“It’s not very intelligent,” said Southerley, becoming suddenly
haughty when he perceived that his antics were creating more
amusement among the grown-up persons on board than they did in
the object of his playfulness.
“Come, give it a chance,” said Repton, whose first burst of
indignation had already given place to something like active interest
in the live animal which it seemed so impossible to get rid of. “Were
you intelligent at eighteen months old?”
And recalling some of the ways by which comparative peace had
been secured among the juvenile inhabitants of the nursery in which
he had been one of a body of brothers and sisters, Repton began to
show off his accomplishments in that direction by the production of
his watch, with which he kept the enemy at bay for some minutes.
“He’s not a bad sort of youngster, as youngsters go,” he remarked
apologetically, when both Bayre and Southerley began to smile at
him in their turn. “But it’s jolly cold for him up here. I vote we take him
down below and lend him to the stewardess while we decide what’s
to be done with him.”
 But when they had carried him downstairs, an operation during
which they were objects of general interest, they found it such a
fascinating occupation to chat with the stewardess and to play with
the child at the same time, that the minutes flew quickly by, and they
were half-way across to the mainland before they woke to the fact
that they were as far as ever from a conclusion as to what was to be
done with their new and unwelcome possession.
By this time they had grown less barbarous in their intentions, so
that Bayre’s quiet announcement that he meant to take the child on
to London, and to make inquiries from there as to its identity, met
with but faint remonstrances.
“It’s rum sort of luggage to bring back with one from abroad,”
protested Repton, with comparative meekness.
“An equivocal sort of possession, a baby!” suggested Southerley.
“It’s all right among three of us,” said Bayre, stoutly. “In numbers
there is safety. Let us all show an equal amount of interest in him
and we are safe from the breath of calumny. Nobody ever heard of a
child with three fathers!”
“I don’t know how to show interest in a child of such tender years,”
objected Southerley. “I’m ready to teach him Greek, but the question
is whether he would be equally ready to learn.”
“There I have the advantage of you,” said Repton. “Painting, my
profession, comes by nature. I’ve only got to put a brush in his hand
and a canvas in front of him and he’ll go for it right away.”
“And the tragic part of the business is that his productions will be
quite as much sought after as his master’s,” remarked Southerley.
“What is to be your share in his education, Bayre?” asked the
artist, ignoring the feeble sneer.
“Manners, I think,” said Bayre, thoughtfully. “Manners and the use
of the globes. Now any child who can whirl round a globe in its frame
knows as much about the use of it as anybody.”
“And now supposing we have some luncheon and drink the young
man’s health,” suggested the convivial Repton.
The suggestion being well received, they left the baby, who was
getting sleepy and rather fractious, in charge of the stewardess, and
adjourned to the saloon, where, their spirits rising under the
influence of cold beef and bottled Bass, they drank the health of the
youth of whom they had so strangely become the responsible
guardians, and fell in with Bayre’s suggestion that they should throw
themselves upon the mercy of Mrs Inkersole, their London landlady,
and get her to recommend them to some woman whom they could
trust to look after the child.
“And meanwhile you, Bayre, solemnly undertake to find out who
the actual possessor is, and to dispose of the infant to the lawful
owner.”
Bayre expressed his belief that he was equal to this task, and the
matter was settled.
But the three temporary fathers soon found that a railway journey
in charge of a lively young man of eighteen months is not an
unmixed joy.
A sort of terror had seized upon the whole party long before
London was reached; and when they found themselves in the cab,
with the child now happily asleep in his basket cradle in one corner,
a solemn silence, broken only by hushed whispers of dismal import,
fell upon them all as they reflected upon the coming interview with
Mrs Inkersole and the result it might have upon their long-standing
tenancy.
“If she turns us out,” growled Repton under his breath, tremulously
anxious not to wake the slumbering terror, “we shall have to wander
about the streets singing for our bread with the child in a basket on a
barrow in front of us. For certain am I that no self-respecting landlady
would ever take in as fresh lodgers three young men and a
miraculous baby!”
“It’s all your fault, Bayre,” said Southerley, sombrely. “I’m certain
we could have found some better way out of the mess than this but
for your infernal obstinacy.”
Bayre said nothing in particular. He was only too thankful to have
got his own way, being, as he was, still in the belief that Miss Eden
had wished him to take charge of the child, his uncle’s son as he
believed him to be, and to deliver him into the hands of some safer
guardian. Here was a fine excuse for communicating with her, and
he meant to avail himself of it that very night.
When they reached the house in the street off Tottenham Court
Road they found their difficulties begin at the very door. A
determined attempt which Southerley and Repton were making to
smuggle in the infant in its basket unremarked was foiled by a shrill
squeal from under the brown woollen shawl as they reached the
door-mat.
Susan, Mrs Inkersole’s most trusted lieutenant, uttered a gasp of
amazement.
“Why, sir, what have you got there?” said she to Repton, who
began to laugh idiotically, but without replying.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Southerley, testily, as he tried to rush the
defences and to attain the staircase.
But Susan was firm.
“Is it a dog, sir?” she asked, seizing one end of the shawl and
holding tight, while Repton looked at her fiercely, and Southerley
showed an ominous disposition to drop his end of the basket and to
run for it.
“Good gracious, no! What should we want a dog for?” said
Repton, irritably.
“Because,” went on Susan, with firmness, “Mrs Inkersole can’t
abide dogs—”
“But I tell you it isn’t a dog,” roared Repton, infuriated by the
renewed squeals, unmistakable in their origin, which by this time
came from the basket. While at the same moment a well-developed
pink leg, which had kicked itself free of shoe and sock, was suddenly
protruded from the wraps with which it had been covered, leaving no
possible doubt as to the species of the animal underneath.
“Is that a dog, do you think?” asked Repton, with desperate
calmness, pointing to the assertive limb.
Susan uttered a faint scream.
“Whatever do you gentlemen want with a baby?” she asked feebly.
“We don’t want anything with it,” replied the artist, fiercely. “We
want to get rid of it, that’s what we want. And if you know any person
idiotic enough to wish to possess a healthy human infant, of the male
sex and with perfectly-developed lungs, why, give him or her our
address, and tell him or her to apply early—”
“Hush!” broke in Susan in a frightened whisper.
And as she spoke she glanced towards the second door on the
right, which was being softly opened and held ajar, as if some person
behind it were listening to the conversation.
“What’s the matter?” asked Repton, leaving Southerley to take the
basket and its living contents up the stairs, with the help of Bayre,
who had now followed the others into the house after settling with
the cabman.
“Oh, there’s a new lady in the dining-rooms—a student,” replied
Susan in a low voice. “And perhaps she wouldn’t like it if she knew
there’d be a child in the house crying half the day. But surely, sir, you
don’t mean to keep it there, do you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Repton, helplessly. “The little wretch
was plumped down into the middle of our luggage when we came
away this morning, and Mr Bayre thought it best to bring it on with us
and to try to find out who it belongs to from here. But it’s a mad
business. Here comes Mrs Inkersole. Oh, shut her up! Tell her
anything, anything!”
And unable to stand a strict examination on the part of the
landlady with neither of his friends to back him up, Repton flew up
the stairs and straight into his room on the second floor.
But in the front room the unfortunate infant was making its
presence known by a succession of screams so piercing that all
three young men became possessed with a dreadful fear that it
would shriek itself into a premature grave, and that they would
conjointly be held responsible for its death in convulsions.
In vain they all three tried to soothe it. In vain Repton, seizing the
milk-jug, which had been placed upon the table with the tea-things,
tried to pour some of the milk into the child’s mouth, a proceeding in
which he nearly succeeded in choking him. In vain Southerley
dangled his watch before the boy’s eyes till he almost threw the
works out of gear. In vain Bayre, the most anxious and miserable of
the three, took the child in his arms and tossed it in the air with many
frantic attempts to soothe and please it.
Still the unhappy and frightened babe screamed on, and was
rapidly growing apopletic in his distress when they were all startled
by a knock at the door.
“Oh, come in!” cried Bayre, foreseeing a terrible interview with the
landlady which would bring their misfortunes to a climax.