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Jeanne Of The Marshes, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 1 - Chapter 15 |
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_ BOOK I CHAPTER XV Bareheaded, Jeanne walked upon the yellow sands close to the softly breaking waves. Inland stretched the marshes, with their patches of vivid green, their clouds of faintly blue wild lavender, their sinuous creeks stealing into the bosom of the land. She climbed on to a grassy knoll, warm with the sun's heat, and threw herself down upon the turf. She turned her back upon the Hall and looked steadily seawards, across the waste of sands and pasture-land to where sky and sea met. Here at least was peace. She drew a long breath of relief, cast aside the book which she had never dreamed of reading, and lay full length in the grass, with her eyes upturned to where a lark was singing his way down from the blue sky. Andrew came before long, speeding his way out of the village harbour in his little catboat. She watched him cross the sandy bar of the inlet, and run his boat presently upon the beach below where she sat. Then she shook out her skirts and made room for him by her side. "Really, Mr. Andrew," she said, resting her chin upon her hands, and looking up at him with her full dark eyes, "you are becoming almost gallant. Until now, when I have been weary, and have wished to talk to you, I have had almost to come and fetch you. To-day it is you who come to me. That is a good sign." "It is true," he admitted. "I have kept my telescope fixed upon the sands here for more than an hour. I wanted to see you." "You have something to tell me about last night?" she asked gravely. "No!" he answered, "I did not come here to talk about that." "Did you know," she asked, "who your lodger really was?" "Yes," he said, "I guessed! I will be frank with you, Miss Jeanne, if you will allow me. I do not like your stepmother and I do not like Major Forrest, but I think that the Duke is going altogether too far when he suspects them of having anything to do with the disappearance of his brother." She drew a little sigh of relief. "Oh! I am glad to hear you say that," she declared. "It is all so horrible. I could not sleep last night for thinking about it." "Lord Ronald will probably turn up in a day or two," Andrew said gravely. "We will not talk any more about him." She settled herself a little more comfortably, and smoothed out her skirts. Then she looked up at him with faintly parted lips. "What shall we talk about, Mr. Andrew?" she said softly. "About ourselves," he answered, "or rather about you. It seems to me that we both stand a little outside the game of life, as your friends up there understand it." He waved his large brown hand in the direction of the Hall. "You are a child, fresh from boarding-school, too young to understand, too young to know where to look for your friends, or discriminate against your enemies. I am a rough sort of fellow, also, outside their lives, from necessity, from every reason which the brain of man could evolve. Sometimes we outsiders see more than is intended. Is the Princess of Strurm really your stepmother?" "Of course she is," Jeanne answered. "She was married to my father when I was quite a little girl, and she has visited me at the convent where I was at school, all my life, and when I left last year it was she who came for me. Why do you ask so strange a question?" "Because," he said, "I should consider her about the worst possible guardian that a child like you could have. Tell me, what is it that goes on all day up at the Hall there--or rather what was it that did go on before Engleton went away?--eating and drinking, cards, and God knows what sort of foolishness! Nothing else, nothing worth doing, not a thing said worth listening to! It's a rotten life for a child like you. They tell me you're an heiress. Are you?" She smoothed her crumpled skirts, and looked steadily at the tip of her brown shoe. "One of the greatest in Europe," she answered. "No one knows how rich I am. You see all the money was left to me when I was six years old, and it is so strictly tied up that no one has had power to touch a single penny until I am of age. That is why it has gone on increasing and increasing." "And when are you of age?" he asked. "Next year," she answered. "By that time, I imagine," Andrew continued, "your stepmother will have sold you to some broken-down hanger-on of hers. Haven't you any other relations, Miss Jeanne?" She laughed softly. "You are a ridiculous person," she said. "I am very fond of my stepmother. I think that she is a very clever woman." "Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "A clever woman she may be, but a good woman, no! I am sure of that. You may judge a person by the company they keep. Neither she or this man Forrest are fit associates for a child of your age." She laughed softly. "They don't do me any harm," she said. "Mr. De la Borne and Lord Ronald have asked me to marry them, of course, but then every young man does that when he knows who I am. My stepmother has promised me at least that I shall not be bothered by any of them just yet. I am going to be presented next season, we are going to have a house in town, and I am going to choose a husband of my own." It was Andrew now who looked long and steadily out seawards. She watched him covertly from under her heavily lidded eyes. "Mr. Andrew," she said softly, "I wish very much--" Then she stopped short, and he looked at her a little abruptly. "What is it that you wish?" he asked. "I wish that you did not wear such strange clothes and that you did not talk the dialect of these fishermen, and that you had more money. Then you too might come and see me, might you not, when we have that house in London?" He laughed boisterously. "I fancy I see myself in London, paying calls," he declared. "Give me my catboat and fishing line. I'd rather sail down the home creek, with a northeast gale in my teeth, than walk down Piccadilly in patent boots." She sighed. "I am afraid," she admitted, "that as a town acquaintance you are hopeless." "I am afraid so," he answered, looking steadily seawards. "We country people have strong prejudices, you see. It seems to us that all the sin and all the unhappiness and all the decadence and all the things that mar the beauty of the world, come from the cities and from life in the cities. No wonder that we want to keep away. It isn't that we think ourselves better than the other folk. It is simply that we have realized pleasures greater than we could find in paved streets and under smoke-stained skies. We know what it is to smell the salt wind, to hear it whistling in the cords and the sails of our boats, to feel the warmth of the sun, to listen to the song of the birds, to watch the colouring of God's land here. I suppose we have the thing in our bloods; we can't leave it. We hear the call of the other things sometimes, but as soon as we obey we are restless and unhappy. It is only an affair of time, and generally a very short time. One cannot fight against nature." "No!" she answered softly. "One cannot fight against nature. But there are children of the cities, children of the life artificial as well as children of nature. Look at me!" He turned toward her quickly. "Look at me!" she commanded, and he obeyed. He saw her pale skin, which the touch of the sun seemed to have no power to burn or coarsen. The clear, wonderful eyes, the delicate eyebrows, the masses of dark hair, the scarlet lips. He saw her white throat swelling underneath her muslin blouse. The daintiness of her gown, airy and simple, yet fresh from a Paris workshop. The stockings and shoes, exquisite, but strangely out of place with their high heels buried in the sand. "How do I know," she demanded, "that I am not one of the children of the cities, that I was not fashioned and made for the gas-lit life, to eat unreal food at unreal hours, and feed my brain upon the unreal epigrams of the men whom you would call decadents. Two days here, a week--very well. In a month I might be bored. Who shall guarantee me against it?" "No one," he answered. "And yet there is something in your blood which calls for the truth, which hates the shams, which knows real beauty. Why don't you try and cultivate it? In your heart you know where the true things lie. Consider! Every one with great wealth can make or mar many lives. You enter the world almost as a divinity. Your wealth is reckoned as a quality. What you do will be right. What you condemn will be wrong. It is a very important thing for others as well as yourself, that you should see a clear way through life." A moment's intense dejection seized upon her. The tears stood in her eyes as she looked away from him. "Who is there to show it me?" she asked. "Who is there to help me find it?" "Not those friends whom you have left to play bridge in a room with drawn curtains at this hour of the day," he answered. "Not your stepmother, or any of her sort. Try and realize this. Even the weakest of us is not dependent upon others for support. There is only one sure guide. Trust yourself. Be faithful to the best part of yourself. You know what is good and what is ugly. Don't be coerced, don't be led into the morass." She looked at him and laughed gaily. Her mood had changed once more with chameleon-like swiftness. "It is all very well for you," she declared. "You are six foot four, and you look as though you could hew your way through life with a cudgel. One could fancy you a Don Quixote amongst the shams, knocking them over like ninepins, and moving aside neither to the right nor to the left. But what is a poor weak girl to do? She wants some one, Mr. Andrew, to wield the cudgel for her." It was several seconds before he turned his head. Then he found that, although her lips were laughing, her eyes were longing and serious. She sprang suddenly to her feet and leaned towards him. "This is the most delightful nonsense," she whispered. "Please!" She was in his arms for a moment, her lips had clung to his. Then she was away, flying along the sands at a pace which seemed to him miraculous, swinging her hat in her hands, and humming the maddening refrain of some French song, which it seemed to him was always upon her lips, and which had haunted him for days. He hesitated, uncertain whether to follow, ashamed of himself, ashamed of the passion which was burning in his blood. And while he hesitated she passed out of sight, turning only once to wave her hand as she crossed the line of grass-grown hillocks which shut him out from her view. _ |
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