Part 55 (1/2)
”Are you going to catechise me?” laughed Stephen. ”No--you are right there. Fifteen years ago they called me 'Esueillechien.' Now, have you heard my name before?”
”I cannot say either 'yes' or 'no,' unless you choose to come home with me to see my mother. She may know you better than I can.”
”I'll come home with you fast enough,” Stephen was beginning, when the end of the sentence dashed his hopes down. ”'To see your--mother!'
That won't do, young man. I have looked myself on her dead face--or else you are not the man for whom I took you.”
”I can answer you no questions till you do so,” replied Rudolph firmly.
”Come, then, have with you,” returned Stephen, linking his arm in that of the younger man. ”Best to make sure. I shall get to know something, if it be only that you are not the right fellow.”
”Now?” asked Rudolph, rather disconcertedly. He was not in the habit of acting in this ready style about everything that happened, but required a little while to make up his mind to a fresh course.
”Have you not found out yet,” said Stephen, marching him into Saint Paul's Churchyard, ”that _now_ is the only time a man ever has for anything?”
”Well, you don't let the gra.s.s grow under your feet,” observed Rudolph, laughing.
Being naturally of a rather dreamy and indolent temperament, he was not accustomed to getting over the ground with the rapidity at which Stephen led him.
”There's never time to waste time,” was the sententious reply.
In a shorter period than Rudolph would have thought possible, they arrived at the corner of Mark Lane.
”You live somewhere about here,” said Stephen coolly, ”but I don't know where exactly. You'll have to show me your door.”
”You seem to know a great deal about me,” answered Rudolph in an amused tone. ”This is my door. Come in.”
Stephen followed him into the jeweller's shop, where Countess sat waiting for customers, with the big white dog lying at her feet.
”I'm thankful to see, young man, that your 'mother' is no mother of yours. Your flaxen locks were never cut from those jet tresses. But I don't know who you are--” he turned to her--”unless Ermine be right that Countess the Jewess took the boy. Is that it?”
”That is it,” she replied, flus.h.i.+ng at the sound of her old name. ”You are Stephen the Watchdog, if I mistake not? Yes, I am Countess--or rather, I was Countess, till I was baptised into the Christian faith.
So Ermine is yet alive? I should like to see her. I would fain have her to come forward as my witness, when I deliver the boy unhurt to his father at the last day.”
”But how on earth did you do it?” broke out Stephen in amazement. ”Why, you could scarcely have heard at Reading of what had happened,--I should have thought you could not possibly have heard, until long after all was over.”
”I was not at Reading,” she said in a constrained tone. ”I was living in Dorchester. And I heard of the arrest from Regina.”
”Do, for pity's sake, tell me all about it!”
”I will tell you every thing: but let me tell Ermine with you. And,-- Stephen--you will not try to take him from me? He is all I have.”
”No, Countess,” said Stephen gravely. ”You have a right to the life that you have saved. Will you come with me now? But perhaps you cannot leave together? Will the house be rifled when you return?”
”Not at all,” calmly replied Countess. ”We will both go with you.”
She rose, disappeared for a moment, and came back clad in a fur-lined cloak and hood. Turning the key in the press which held the stock, she stooped down and attached the key to the dog's collar.
”On guard, Olaf! Keep it!” was all she said to the dog. ”Now, Stephen, we are ready to go with you.”
Olaf got up somewhat sleepily, shook himself, and then lay down close to the screen, his head between his paws, so that he could command a view of both divisions of the chamber. He evidently realised his responsibility.