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Jeanne Of The Marshes, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 2 - Chapter 12 |
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_ BOOK II CHAPTER XII The days that followed were strange ones for Jeanne. Every morning at sunrise, or before, she would steal out of the little cottage where she was staying, and make her way along the top of one of the high dyke banks to the sea. Often she saw the sun rise from some lonely spot amongst the sandbanks or the marshes, heard the awakening of the birds, and saw the first glimpses of morning life steal into evidence upon the grey chill wilderness. At such times she saw few people. The house where she was staying was apart from the village, and near the head of one of the creeks, and there were times when she would leave it and return without having seen a single human being. She knew, from cautious inquiries made from her landlady's daughter, that Cecil and Major Forrest were still at the Red Hall, and for that reason during the daytime she seldom left the cottage, sitting out in the old-fashioned garden, or walking a little way in the fields at the back. For the future she made no plans. She was quite content to feel that for the present she had escaped from an intolerable situation. The woman from whom Jeanne had taken the rooms, a Mrs. Caynsard, she had seen only once or twice. She was waited upon most of the time by an exceedingly diminutive maid servant, very shy at first, but very talkative afterwards, in broad Norfolk dialect, when she had grown a little accustomed to this very unusual lodger. Now and then Kate Caynsard, the only daughter of the house, appeared, but for the most time she was away, sailing a fishing boat or looking after the little farm. To Jeanne she represented a type wholly strange, but altogether interesting. She was little over twenty years of age, but she was strong and finely built. She had the black hair and dark brown eyes, which here and there amongst the villagers of the east coast remind one of the immigration of worsted spinners and silk weavers from Flanders and the North of France, many centuries ago. She was very handsome but exceedingly shy. When Jeanne, as she had done more than once, tried to talk to her, her abrupt replies gave little opening for conversation. One morning, however, when Jeanne, having returned from a long tramp across the sand dunes, was sitting in the little orchard at the back of the house, she saw her landlady's daughter come slowly out to her from the house. Jeanne put down her book. "Good morning, Miss Caynsard!" she said. "Good morning, miss!" the girl answered awkwardly. "You have had a long walk!" Jeanne nodded. "I went so far," she said, "that I had to race the tide home, or I should have had to wade through the home creek." Kate nodded. "The tide do come sometimes," she said, "at a most awful pace. I have been out after whelks myself, and had to walk home with the sea all round me, and nothing but a ribbon of dry land. One needs to know the ways about on this wilderness." "One learns them by watching," Jeanne remarked. "I suppose you have lived here all your life." "All my life," the girl answered, "and my father and grandfather before me. 'Tis a queer country, but them as is born and bred here seldom leaves it. Sometimes they try. They go to the next village inland, or to some town, or to foreign parts, but sooner or later if they live they come back." Jeanne nodded sympathetically. "It is a wonderful country," she said. "When I saw it first it seemed to me that it was depressing. Now I love it!" "And I," the girl remarked, with a sudden passion in her tone, "I hate it!" Jeanne looked at her, surprised. "It sounds so strange to hear you say that," she remarked. "I should have thought that any one who had lived here always would have loved it. Every day I am here I seem to discover new beauties, a new effect of colouring, a new undertone of the sea, or to hear the cry of some new bird." "It is beautiful sometimes," the girl answered. "I love it when the creeks are full, and the April sun is shining, and the spring seems to draw all manner of living things and colours from the marsh and the pasturage lands. I love it when the sea changes its colour as the clouds pass over the sun, and the wind blows from the west. The place is well enough then. But there are times when it is nothing but a great wilderness of mud, and the grey mists come blowing in, and one is cold here, cold to the bone. Then I hate the place worse than ever." "Have you ever tried to go away for a time?" Jeanne asked. "I went once to London," the girl said, turning her head a little away. "I should have stayed there, I think, if things had turned out as I had expected, but they didn't, and my father died suddenly, so I came home to take care of the farm." Jeanne nodded sympathetically. She was beginning to wonder why this girl had come out from the house with the obvious intention of speaking to her. She stood by her side, not exactly awkward, but still not wholly at her ease, her hands clasped behind her straight back, her black eyebrows drawn together in a little uneasy frown. Her coarse brown skirt was not long enough to conceal her wonderfully shaped ankles. Sun and wind had done little more than slightly tan her clear complexion. She had somehow the appearance of a girl of some other nation. There was something stronger, more forceful, more brilliant about her, than her position seemed to warrant. "There is a question, miss," she said at last, abruptly, "I should like to ask you. I should have asked you when you first came, if I had been in when you came to look at the rooms." "What is it?" Jeanne asked quietly. "I've a good eye for faces," Kate said, "and I seldom forget one. Weren't you the young lady who was staying up at the Red Hall a few weeks ago?" Jeanne nodded. "Yes," she said, "I was staying there. It was because I liked the place so much, and because I was so much happier here than in London, that I came back." There was a moment's silence. Jeanne looked up and found Kate's magnificent eyes fixed steadfastly upon her face. "Is it for no other reason, miss," she asked, "that you have come back?" "For none other in the world," Jeanne answered. "I was unhappy in London, and I wanted to get somewhere where I should be quite unknown. That is why I came here." "You didn't come back," Kate asked, "to see more of Mr. De la Borne, then?" The simple directness of the question seemed to rob it of its impertinence. Jeanne laughed goodhumouredly. "I can assure you that I did not," she answered. "To tell you the truth, and I hope that you will be kind and remember that I do not wish any one to know this, the reason why I only go out so early in the morning or late at night is because I do not wish to see any one from the Red Hall. I do not wish them to know that I am here." "They do gossip in a small place like this most amazing," the girl said slowly. "When you and the other lady came down from London to stay up yonder, they did say that you were a great heiress, and that Mr. De la Borne was counting on marrying you, and buying back all the lands that have slipped away from the De la Bornes back to Burnham Market and Wells township." Jeanne shrugged her shoulders. "I cannot help," she said, "what people say. Every one has spoken of me always as being very rich, and a good many men have wanted to marry me to spend my money. That is why I came down here, if you want to know, Miss Caynsard. I came to escape from a man whom my stepmother was determined that I should marry, and whom I hated." The girl looked at her wonderingly. "It is a strange manner of living," she said, "when a girl is not to choose her own man." "In any case," Jeanne said smiling, "if I had but one or two to choose from in the world, I should never choose Mr. De la Borne." The girl was gloomily silent. She was looking up towards the Red Hall, her lips a little parted, her face dark, her brows lowering. "'Tis a family," she said slowly, "that have come down well-nigh to their last acre. They hold on to the Hall, but little else. Folk say that for four hundred years or more the De la Bornes have heard the sea thunder from within them walls. 'Tis, perhaps, as some writer has said in a book I've found lately, that the old families of the country, when once their menkind cease to be soldiers or fighters in the world, do decay and become rotten. It is so with the De la Bornes, or rather with one of them." "Mr. Andrew," Jeanne remarked timidly. "Mr. Andrew," the girl interrupted, "is a great gentleman, but he is never one of those who would stop the rot in a decaying race. He is a great strong man is Mr. Andrew, and deceit and littleness are things he knows nothing of. I wish he were here to-day." The girl's face wore a troubled expression. Jeanne began to suspect that she had not as yet come to the real object of this interview. "Why do you wish that Mr. Andrew were here?" Jeanne asked. "What could he do for you that Mr. Cecil could not?" A strange look filled the girl's eyes. "I think," she said, "that I would not go to Mr. Cecil whatever might betide, but there is a matter--" She hesitated again. Jeanne looked at her thoughtfully. "You have something on your mind, I think, Miss Caynsard," she said. "Can I help you? Do you wish to tell me about it?" The girl seemed to have made up her mind. She was standing quite close to Jeanne now, and she spoke without hesitation. "You remember the young lord," she said, "of whom there has been so much in the papers lately? He was staying at the Red Hall when you were, and is supposed to have left for London early one morning and disappeared." "Lord Ronald Engleton," Jeanne said. "Yes, I know all about that, of course." "Sometimes," Kate said slowly, "I have had strange thoughts about him. Mr. Cecil and the other man, Major Forrest they call him, are still at the Hall, and the servants say that they do little but drink and swear at one another. I wonder sometimes why they are there, and why Mr. Andrew stays away." Jeanne leaned a little forward in her chair. Something in the other's words had interested her. "There is something," she said, "behind in your thoughts. What is it?" The girl was silent for a moment. "To-night," she said, "if you have the courage to come with me, I will show you what I mean." _ |
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