CHAPTER XV

CAVENDISH SQUARE ONCE MORE

(1)

For the second time that day Baptiste was distractedly polishing his silver. About every six minutes a tear rolled off his sharp nose on to salver or tankard and had to be wiped off, and the dull patch rubbed up again. Lal Khan, putting Mr. Elphinstone's bedroom to rights with long, dusky fingers, stared mournfully at a miniature propped on the dressing-table, and shook his head. And still further upstairs Mrs. Elspeth Saunders was mending stockings; her nose was red, so too her eyes. In the kitchen the cook and the rest of the domestics were discussing the situation, as they had almost unceasingly discussed it for the last few days since Elspeth's return. Her own account of what had happened they had long ago threshed bare: had thrilled to hear how, when she reached Rose Cottage at seven o'clock that fateful morning, as arranged, she had been met by one of the old ladies with the horrifying news that their guest had evidently spirited Anne-Hilarion away in the night; how, almost beside herself at this intelligence, she had suffered them to hustle her into a postchaise on a totally false scent, which caused her to traverse many miles of the county of Kent until, half-crazed and wholly destitute of money, she returned at last in sheer desperation to London, there to hear that La Vireville had already started to France in pursuit of the child. The opinion of the region was divided, some of its inmates inclining to blame Mrs. Saunders, some to commiserate. And it was either the consciousness of unjust condemnation or of her own innate superiority which kept Elspeth so much alone in the big house over which hung that piercing sense of something gone that would never, perhaps, come back again. . . .

"'Twas but a few days syne A was tellin' a piece to the bairn in his bed!" Elspeth rapped her thimble suddenly against her teeth, flung down her mending, and marched downstairs. At the library door she knocked, and, receiving no answer, looked in. The room was empty and the fire burnt low. Muttering to herself anent the negligence of "yon black heathen," she made it up. There was a book open on the table, but no signs that Mr. Elphinstone had been occupied, as of custom, with his memoirs. Elspeth left the library and went to the pantry.

"Where is the maister, d'ye ken?" she asked of the polisher.

"I tink he go again to the ministère, I do not know," responded Baptiste, sighing.

"Tae the meenister!" retorted Elspeth. "What wad be the sense in that noo? Gif prayin' could bring the wean back, A reckon he'd been here these mony days!" (Had not she herself, descendant of the Covenanters, taken the incredible step of removing Our Lady of Pontmain from the back of the drawer where, immediately upon the Marquis's departure, she had been stowed away, and putting her in the very centre of the mantelpiece in the lost child's room--a deed for which she nightly besought forgiveness?)

"That is ver' true," agreed the Frenchman, "but it is not that which I mean, Madame Saundair. I mean he go to the--how do you call it?--there where are the State Secretaries."

"Why for canna ye say what ye mean, then?" snapped the lady. "That mebbe will dae gude. At least they arena French there. A've had eno' o' yer Frenchies tae last ma life!"

Baptiste withered.

"Those . . . those weemen at Canterbury!" proceeded Elspeth. "And then--what d'ye call him, the Chevaleer . . . what gar'd Glenauchtie send _him_ after the bairn instead o' an Englishman? Him that jockeyed the wean oot o' his bed at nicht! Belike 'tis he's spirited him awa the noo!"

Baptiste made no effort to defend his compatriot. He had long ago realised that to live in peace with Mrs. Saunders required a policy of thoroughgoing self-effacement, and had decided that on the whole it was worth it. Otherwise he might have retorted that she, pure of any Gallic strain though she was, had not proved singularly successful in her guardianship. Instead, he feebly used his wash-leather on a ladle.

"There's ane gude thing," resumed Elspeth, "that the Marquis doesna ken yet awhile."

"But when he return!" exclaimed the old man, lifting eyes and hands to heaven.

He was still in this attitude when there came a rousing rat-tat at the hall-door.

"Mebbe that's the Marquis the noo!" ejaculated Mrs. Saunders. And, though it was not her place to do so, she flung off her apron and rushed to answer it.

(2)

Lieutenant Francis Tollemache, therefore, standing on the steps, received one of the most painful shocks of his life when a gaunt Scottish female, darting forth, caught his small companion from the ground and almost stifled him with kisses, and then showed a decided disposition to cast herself on his breast also. He prepared to defend himself, backing hurriedly to the limits of the portico, and saying disjointedly, "My good woman, my good woman . . ." And then in a moment there was some old man actually trying to kiss his hand, and from the back of the hall there was even advancing a salaaming native in a turban, while more and more female servants came flocking towards the doorstep. It was intolerable! In a minute or two there would be a crowd outside, and already Mr. Tollemache was conscious of the enraptured gaze of the hackney coachman who had brought them there.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, very red. "For Heaven's sake let's get inside!" But even within the hall the whirl of greetings and emotion continued, and Anne-Hilarion kept disappearing from view in successive avalanches of embraces, till at last his voice was upraised, asking, "Grandpapa! Where is Grandpapa? Has Papa come back?"

"Yes, where is the master of the house?" demanded Mr. Tollemache, with some indignation, and was most unseasonably answered in French by the old man. Meanwhile, one of the younger domestics in the background was threatened with a fit of hysterics, and had to be removed. During this episode Anne skipped about the hall, and ran into the library and the dining-room in turn. "Oh, I wish Grandpapa were in! When will he be back?" he queried, and mixed with his inquiries the unfortunate young officer heard the remark, "There, you see, it's no foreigner as has brought him back,"--to which the cook, who had an affinity on the lower deck of H.M.S. _Thunderer_, responded with pride, "No, it's a Navy gentleman!"

"Anne," said Mr. Tollemache firmly, holding out his hand, "I must be going. Good-bye!"

The Comte de Flavigny came at once and caught him by the cuff of his uniform. "No, no, M. le lieutenant! No, I do not want you to go! Come into the bibliothèque and wait for Grandpapa!" he said, with a little tug, and the domestic crowd, waking all at once to a sense of their forgotten duties, concurred in this request, which, to tell the truth, accorded very well with Mr. Tollemache's most secret wish. It was not that he at all desired to receive the thanks of Mr. Elphinstone, but--though he would have died on the scaffold rather than admit it--he hankered for just a few minutes more of Anne's society before the final good-bye.

"If you would come into Mr. Elphinstone's study, sir?" suggested Elspeth respectfully, as he hesitated. Since she now evinced no desire to embrace him, he was about to accede to her request when there was a knock at the front door, which opened to admit the grinning and curious face of the hackney coachman, demanding to know if he was to wait any longer.

So it was not Anne only who was overjoyed when Mr. Elphinstone walked suddenly in.

* * * * *

Late that evening--much later than he ought to have been up--Anne-Hilarion still sat contentedly though sleepily enfolded in his grandfather's arms. He had ceased to ask questions, for they had all been satisfactorily answered . . . all except that "Did you miss me, Grandpapa?" to which Grandpapa had seemed incapable of replying. So his last remark was a statement.

"I had to leave my goldfish behind with those ladies." For he had satisfied himself that Elspeth had not brought it back with her after all.

"Don't speak of those women!" said the gentle old man fiercely. "As for your goldfish, child, you shall have a whole aquarium if you wish."

"Then I could put my big shell inside," murmured Anne drowsily. "M. le Chevalier said it came from . . . came from. . . ." He ceased suddenly; he was asleep.

Conscience-stricken at last, Mr. Elphinstone rang the bell for Elspeth, and was left by the fire to reflect on the inexhaustible mercy of Heaven, and on the debt that he owed to a man away in Jersey, whom he scarcely knew, whom he could not even thank--a debt that in any case, so far as he could see, must ever go unpaid, for it was unpayable.