Chapter IV

Myrtile came flying to the door. Christopher saw her eyes travel over his shoulder, he saw the sudden cloud upon her face. A queer little stab of pain startled him by its very poignancy.

“Monsieur Gerald, he is not with you?” she asked disconsolately.

Christopher shook his head.

“He was up late last night,” he explained. “I went to his room but he was fast asleep. I dare say he will come on presently.”

The girl looked at the clock--a brazen, loudly ticking of bright gilt.

“He promised to be here early,” she said. “Has he spoken of me? Has he said anything about sending me back?”

“Nothing,” Christopher assured her. “Do you still feel that you don’t want to go back?”

She stood quite still in the middle of the little apartment and looked at him. Something about her was altered. It seemed almost as though she had passed from girlhood to womanhood in the night.

“I will not go back,” she declared fiercely. “It is not that I mind poverty or hard work. It is Pierre Leschamps. I could not bear him near me. He shall never come near me, otherwise I shall die. Even you, Monsieur Christopher, you do not wish me to die.”

Her eyes were swimming with tears. She leaned a little towards him and Christopher patted her encouragingly. Her lips were very close to his, fresh and sweet and quivering. Christopher, conscious of a rare and almost overmastering temptation, turned away brusquely.

“Come outside,” he invited. “I will take you on the Terrace, and we will sit in the sunshine.”

She clapped her hands, herself again almost immediately.

“Oh, I am so anxious to go down to the edge of the sea!” she cried. “It is so wonderful. You will not mind, monsieur, that I have no hat and that my clothes are very poor? If you should meet your friends, they will wonder what place I have with you.”

“I have no friends here,” Christopher assured her, “and if I had, it would not matter. Presently I will try to find Gerald again, and we will make up our minds what to do with you.”

“Monsieur Gerald will arrange everything,” Myrtile said confidently, as they walked out into the sunshine. “He will find me some work--I am sure of that--only I hope that it will not take me far away. I should like to be near him.”

They wandered down from the fashionable part of the promenade to the pebbly beach and along the sands. Myrtile was never tired of the wonder of it all. Often, however, she cast an anxious look backwards.

“You do not think Monsieur Gerald will be searching for us?” she asked timidly.

Christopher was conscious of a curious sense of annoyance which he could not altogether explain. He led the way up the steps and on to the Terrace.

“We will take a seat here,” he suggested. “We can see the hotel and the turning to your lodgings, and you can watch for him.”

She acquiesced willingly, and for the next half-hour she divided her attention between the entrance to the hotel and the passers-by. At the end of that time she became a little self-conscious.

“It is not right, Monsieur Christopher,” she said, “that I sit here with you in these clothes and without a hat. People look at us so strangely.”

“You look very nice,” Christopher assured her, “and besides, it is no one else’s business but our own.”

“Then why do they look at me so strangely?” she persisted. “It must be because I have no toilette, no hat, my shoes are ugly. Indeed, monsieur, it is no place for me. Here are friends of yours coming, I am sure--the beautifully dressed young lady who looks at me so curiously.”

“It is Gerald’s father and sister,” he whispered.

She was suddenly very white and frightened. Christopher rose to his feet. Lady Mary nodded a little coldly, Lord Hinterleys acknowledged his greeting with some surprise.

“Where is Gerald this morning?” his sister asked.

“A little lazy, I am afraid,” Christopher replied. “When he got your message that there was to be no golf to-day, he went to sleep again.”

“And this is your little protégée, I suppose?” Mary remarked, looking at Myrtile.

“This is Myrtile,” Christopher assented. “We are waiting for Gerald now to decide what to do with her.”

“You wish to leave home, I understand?” Mary asked, turning to the girl, who had risen to her feet.

“I will never return there,” Myrtile replied,--“no, not even if Monsieur Gerald himself commanded me to. I would sooner throw myself into the sea.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?” her questioner rejoined coldly.

“The misery I should have to face if I returned would also be extreme,” Myrtile declared. “I am hoping to find some work here.”

“That should not be difficult,” Mary observed. “Give Gerald our love, Christopher. I was sorry to have to put off the golf, but dad didn’t feel equal to Mont Agel this morning.”

“Nothing serious, I hope, sir?” Christopher enquired.

“Nothing at all,” Lord Hinterleys replied. “I was a little tired, and I always feel the air up there rather strong. Tell Gerald I hope we shall see him some time during the day.”

He raised his hat and they passed on, Mary with a nod to Christopher which lacked much of its usual cordiality. Myrtile looked after them and there was trouble in her face.

“They do not like me,” she said. “They do not think that I ought to be here with you. They are right, of course. I am just a little peasant girl in peasant girl’s clothes. Let us go.”

Christopher’s remonstrances were in vain. She turned and walked away, and he was obliged to follow. Just as they were leaving the promenade, however, they came face to face with Gerald, issuing from the hotel. He gave a little start as he recognised Myrtile. Except for a careless thought when he had first awakened, he had forgotten all about her. It was characteristic of him, however, to behave during the next few minutes as though he had been thinking of no one else.

“So Christopher has been stealing a march on me!” he exclaimed. “Has he shown you all the sights, Myrtile?”

“I waited a long time for you,” she replied. “We have been sitting on the Terrace. Monsieur Christopher thought that you would come there.”

“And Myrtile has been a little troublesome,” Christopher said. “She is going back to her rooms to hide because of her clothes.”

“Clothes?” Gerald repeated. “Why, of course she must have clothes. We ought to have thought of that when we brought her away.”

“But, monsieur,” she began timidly, “even the clothes which I have at home--my communion gown----”

Gerald waved his arm.

“Come along,” he invited. “We will transform you. What a joke!”

“Oh, monsieur!” Myrtile cried, with glistening eyes.

“I suggest,” Christopher intervened, “that if we are going to buy her a frock we go to one of those shops higher up in the town.”

Gerald waved aside the suggestion.

“We will go to Lénore’s,” he said. “Madame Lénore is a great pal of mine. Myrtile, you shall have clothes fit for a duchess.”

“Then they would not be fit for me,” Myrtile objected doubtfully.

“Nor, I should think,” Christopher added, “would they help her to obtain a situation.”

Gerald, however, would listen to no remonstrances. He ushered them into a quiet but sumptuous-looking little establishment, only a few doors from the Hôtel de Paris. A Frenchwoman, dark and attractive, came forward to welcome them. As soon as she recognised Gerald, the conventional smile became one of real welcome.

“Ah, monsieur--milord!” she exclaimed. “It is good to see you again! Her ladyship was here only three days ago. I ventured to ask if you were to be expected. Milord does me a great honour by this visit. Will you please to sit down?”

“Madame,” Gerald declared, “I am here on business. We have with us a princess--the Princess Myrtile.”

“A princess?” Madame repeated, with a wondering glance at the girl.

“A princess in everything but clothes,” Gerald explained. “That is your part. We hand her over to you. Dress her, Madame. We will return in an hour.”

Madame’s eyes sparkled. To the real Frenchwoman, every feeling gives way when it becomes a question of profit. She looked at Myrtile appraisingly.

“Mademoiselle will be worth dressing,” she assured them joyfully. “Return, as you say, in an hour, milord, and I can promise that mademoiselle shall be all that you would desire.”

Christopher for the first time intervened.

“Look here, Gerald,” he said, “I don’t think that you are giving Madame quite the right idea.”

“In what respect?”

“Mademoiselle is the daughter of working folk,” Christopher explained. “She requires clothes of good quality, if you will, but clothes in which she can seek a situation. That is so, is it not, Myrtile?”

The girl’s eyes were fixed anxiously upon Gerald.

“I should like to have what Monsieur Gerald would wish me to have,” she replied.

“Mademoiselle has a figure so fashionable,” Madame Lénore murmured, “so slim yet so elegant, and an expression altogether spirituelle. I have some frocks only this morning arrived from Paris, in which she would seem a dream.”

“We do not desire mademoiselle to become a dream,” Christopher said stoutly. “We have the charge of her for a short time only, and the sort of toilette which you have in your mind, I think, Madame Lénore, would be highly unsuitable. Am I not right, Gerald?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” the young man agreed. “I’d rather like to see her in one of Madame Lénore’s creations, though.”

“Milord and monsieur,” Madame said, “leave it to me. Return in an hour. There shall be two costumes ready. You shall take your choice. If mademoiselle will have the goodness to step this way----”

The two young men wandered out. They made their way back to the Terrace, where Lord Hinterleys walked for a time, leaning on Gerald’s arm. Mary drew Christopher on one side.

“So that is your little protégée,” she remarked.

“That is she,” Christopher admitted.

“I do not wish to seem a prude,” Mary continued, “or anything else disagreeable, but do you really think that you are doing the right thing, Christopher, in sitting about on the Terrace with a peasant girl dressed--er--according to her position? The whole escapade, I think, is ridiculous. I am not so surprised at Gerald but I am surprised at you.”

Christopher was conscious of some irritation. He liked and admired Lady Mary, but it seemed to him that her attitude was a little unsympathetic.

“I can quite understand the whole incident seeming ill-advised,” he admitted, “but, looking back at it, I honestly cannot see what else we could have done.”

“You could have left the girl where she was,” Mary insisted.

Christopher shook his head.

“You didn’t see her,” he replied. “No one could have left her. When I think of what we saw in her face, even now I am inclined to shiver.”

“Is she different, then, from other girls faced with an uncomfortable home situation?”

“I think that what I am going to say may sound absurd,” Christopher admitted, “but she is different. She may be only a peasant by birth, but she has a soul.”

“Really!” his companion murmured.

“No actress could have simulated the horror we saw shining out of her face,” he persisted. “I don’t think that I should ever have thought of bringing her away--it was Gerald who did that--but I think that he was right, and I should never consent to sending her back unless she were willing to go.”

“And exactly what do you two young men propose to do with her, then?” Mary enquired. “The girl is very attractive. You are aware, I suppose, that the situation lends itself to misconstruction?”

He looked at her reproachfully.

“I suppose there are very few of our actions which might not be misinterpreted in one way or another,” he replied.

She accepted the challenge of his eyes, looking him squarely in the face.

“It is not you I am so much afraid of,” she said. “It is Gerald.”

“But you don’t believe----” he began.

“I believe that Gerald’s intentions are always good,” she interrupted; “he is capable, even, of idealism. On the other hand, he is fatally weak, especially where women are concerned. I fancy,” she went on, “you will find that you have assumed a dual responsibility, and I fancy, too, that some day you will be sorry for it.”

They slackened their pace. Just ahead, Gerald and his father had met two women, old friends, with whom they were exchanging greetings. Lord Hinterleys was talking with the elder; Gerald to her daughter. The slight air of boredom, which the latter so often wore, had completely disappeared. He was leaning towards the girl tenderly, almost affectionately. His eyes were holding hers, he was talking earnestly and apparently with conviction. Lady Mary touched her companion’s arm.

“That is the Gerald whom you have to fear,” she said. “You might trust him in any other walk of life, but, although he is my own brother, I don’t believe that he has a grain of conscience where women are concerned. He doesn’t care about that girl, she is not the sort of person he ever would care for, yet she will go back to lunch to-day convinced that she has made a conquest, thinking of what he has said to her, and finding every one else’s manner and words ordinary. Gerald has the spirit of the philanderer in his blood. If the girl attracts him sufficiently, you, at any rate--and probably he--will be sorry you did not leave her to her village lover.”

“You have described Gerald correctly when you called him a philanderer,” Christopher admitted. “I put myself in court, and on his behalf I plead guilty to the charge. On the other hand, I have greater faith in his kindness of heart and his sense of honour than you seem to have. This child is helpless and innocent. For that reason I believe that she will be as safe with Gerald as with me.”

Lady Mary sighed. The look of trouble still lingered in her eyes.

“I hope that you may be right,” she said. “I am not a superstitious person, but I have some sort of foreboding about that child. I feel that she is going to bring trouble, somehow or other.--In any case, let us change the subject. The Rushmores have arrived and want some tennis. Shall we play--say--Wednesday afternoon?”

“Delighted!” Christopher assented, already pleasantly conscious of a changing atmosphere.