“Poor mothers!” sighed the girl, under her breath. “No, it was nothing. Go on.”
“I knew that he was a soldier, and that wherever there were wars he went to have his share of fighting. I suppose it was this which gripped my imagination, even as a baby. I could read when I was five, and Salvator had told me about our father’s battles. He had been in the Mutiny in India, and he was in Sicily against Garibaldi, and he was with the Austrians four years before I was born, and in the French Foreign Legion afterward. I think I knew all this when I saw him—and if I did not, then I feel that I could have learned it from just looking at him. He was like a statue of War. Ah, how I remember him—the tall, strong, straight, dark, hardfaced, silent man!”
“And you loved him!” commented his companion, with significance.
He shook his head smilingly. The analysis in retrospect of his own childish emotions had a pleasant interest for him. “No; there was no question of love, at all. For example, he liked Salvator—who was then a big boy of fifteen—and he took him off to Spain with him when he left. I cannot remember that he so much as put his hand on my head, or paid the slightest attention to me. He looked at me in a grave way if I put myself in front of his eyes, just as he looked at other things, but he would not turn his eyes to follow me if I moved aside. Do you know that to my fancy that was superb? I was not in the least jealous of Salvator. I only said to myself that when I was his age, I also would march to fight in my father’s battles. And I was proud that he did not bend to me, or put himself out to please me, this huge, cold-eyed, lion-like father of mine. If he had ever kissed me I should have been ashamed—for us both. But nothing was farther from his thoughts. He went away, and at the door he spoke for the first time in my hearing of me. He twisted his thumb toward me, where I stood in the shelter of my mother’s skirts. Mind, he’s an Englishman! he said—and turned on his heel. I have the words in my ears still. ‘Mind, he’s an Englishman!’”
“There is England!” she cried.
They stood up, and his eager eye, following the guidance of her finger, found the faint, broken, thin line of white on the distant water’s edge. Above it, as if they were a part of it, hung in a figured curtain soft clouds which were taking on a rosy tint from the declining sun. He gazed at the remote prospect in silence, but with a quickened breath.
“It is the first time that I have seen it like this—coming toward it, I mean, from somewhere else,” she remarked at last. “I had never been outside England before.”
He did not seem to hear her. With another lingering, clinging gaze at the white speck, he shook himself a little, and turned. “And now I want to tell you about this new, wonderful thing—about why I am this minute within sight of England. You will say it is very strange.”
They moved to their bench again, and he spread the wraps once more, but this time they did not sit quite so close together. It was as if the mere sight of that pale, respectable slip of land on the horizon had in some subtle way affected their relation to each other.
“A week ago,” he began afresh, “at Nice, a messenger from the Crédit Lyonnais brought me a note saying they wished to see me at the bank. They had, it seems, searched for me in several towns along the Riviera, because I had been moving about. It was demanded that I should prove my identity by witnesses, and when that was done I was given a sum of money, and a sealed letter addressed to me, bearing simply my name, Mr. Christian Tower—nothing more. I hurried outside and read its contents. I was requested to get together all my papers—”
He stopped short, arrested by a sharp, half-stifled exclamation from her lips. She had continued looking at him after his mention of his name—at first absent-mindedly, as if something in his talk had sent her thoughts unconsciously astray; then with lifted head, and brows bent together in evident concentration upon some new phase of what he had been saying. Now she interrupted him with visible excitement.
“You say Christian Tower!” She pushed the words at him hurriedly. “What was your father’s name?”
“He was always known as Captain Tower, but I have read it in my papers—his first name was Ambrose.”
She had risen to her feet, in evident agitation, and now strode across to the rail. As he essayed to follow her, she turned, and forced the shadow of a smile into her lips; her eyes remained frightened. “It is all right,” she said with a gasping attempt at reassurance. “I was queer for just an instant; it’s all right. Go on, please. You were to get together your papers—”
“And bring them to Brighton,” he said, much disconcerted. “That is all. But won’t you sit down?”
“I think I would rather stand,” she answered. Her composure was returning, and with it the power to view altogether, and in their proper relation to one another, the several elements of the situation his words had revealed to her. Upon examination, it was curiosity that she felt rather than personal concern—an astonished and most exigent curiosity. But even before this, it grew apparent to her as she thought, came her honorable duty to this young man who had confided in her.
“I think I ought to tell you,” she began, beckoning him nearer where she stood; “yes, you should be told that in all human probability I know the story. It is impossible that I should be mistaken—two such names never got together by accident. And I can assure you that the whole thing is even more extraordinary and astounding than you can possibly imagine. There are people in England who will curl up like leaves thrown on the fire when they see you. But for the moment”—she paused, with a perplexed face and hesitating voice—“go on; tell me a little more. It isn’t clear to me—how much you know. Don’t be afraid; I will be entirely frank with you, when you have finished.”
He patted the rail nervously with his hand, and stared at her in pained bewilderment and impatience. “How much do I know?” he faltered vaguely. “Very little; almost nothing. There was no explanation in the letter. The bankers said nothing, save that they were to give me a thousand francs. But one does not get a thousand francs merely because the wind has changed. There must be a reason for it; and what reason is possible except that there is some inheritance for me? So I argued it out—to myself. I have thought of nothing else, awake or asleep, for the whole week.”
He halted, with anxious appeal in his eyes, and his hands outspread to beseech enlightenment from her. She nodded to show that she understood. “In a minute or two, when I have got it into shape in my mind,” she said soothingly. “But meantime go on. I want you to talk. What have you done during the week?”
Christian threw his hands outward.
“Done?” he asked plaintively. “Murdered time some way or the other. I was free to move an hour after I had read the letter. The money was more than I had ever had before. It was intolerable to me—the thought of not being in motion. In the ‘Indicateur’ I got the times of trains, and I formed my plan. Avignon I had never seen, and then Le Puy—there was a wonderful description of it in a magazine I had read—and then to Paris, and next to Rouen. It was at Rouen that I slept last night. It was my first night’s good sleep—I had tired myself out so completely. Always walking with the map in my mind, going from one church to another, talking to the Suisse, bending back my head to examine capitals and arches, forcing myself to take an interest in what I saw every little minute—so I have come somehow through the week. But now here is rich England within plain sight, and here are you, my new friend—and all my life I have been so poor and without friends!”