Part 26 (1/2)
But here a difficulty presented itself: Johnnie had a slight cold; the evening was clouding over, and threatened rain. It was only after long and earnest pleading that Mrs. Mole gave her consent for ”one little turn” as far as the river and back, while she busied herself about some household matters that were more easily set to rights in the absence of her charge.
With a beating heart, Miss Ross led him down the pathway towards the river, the boy kicking out his feet and taking huge steps with his short legs in a state of high triumph and glee.
Presently, at the water's edge, he looked wistfully up in his companion's face and asked:
”Ain't we going back? Never going back--never--no more?”
”Would you _like_ never to go back, darling?” said Jin, stooping to fold him in her arms.
”I want to go back to Moley!” answered Johnnie, now panic-stricken, and making up his face for a cry.
Heavy drops of rain began to fall, and at the same moment a boat, shooting suddenly round a bend in the river, grated its keel on the shallows under the bank.
CHAPTER XXIII.
”STRANGERS YET.”
The rower of this boat, whose back was necessarily turned to the sh.o.r.e, wore a pea-jacket, with its collar turned up to the brim of a black hat, such as is not usually affected by watermen, either professional or amateur. Through Jin's beating heart shot a sickening throb of misgiving and alarm. She turned cold and faint, catching up her boy and hugging him instinctively to her breast.
As the rower, obviously unused to an oarsman's exercise, rose, straightened himself, and turned round, he started with a violence that shot the boat back into deep water, her chain running out with a clang over her bows. Stupefied as it seemed by this apparition of the man whom she had watched from Mrs. Mole's door three hours ago, Jin's eyes dilated, her jaw dropped, while she gazed in Picard's face as if she had been turned to stone.
He was the first to recover himself, and burst into a laugh, not entirely forced.
”Who would ever have thought it?” said he, shoving the boat close in sh.o.r.e. ”Of all reunions this is the most extraordinary, the most unlooked for. Jump in, Madame, there is no time to lose: in ten minutes it will rain like a water-spout. Great heavens, you are unaltered after all these years, and you have not a grey hair in your head!”
She obeyed mechanically in silence, folding Gustave beneath her shawl, who protested with energy against the embarkation, expressing a strong desire to return to ”Old Moley” forthwith.
Once more in mid-stream, Picard laid on his oars as if doubtful whether to proceed. ”What are you doing with that boy?” he asked.
She had recovered her presence of mind, though still confused and bewildered, as after some stunning blow.
”You _know_ me, Achille,” said she, bending on him the defiant, impracticable gaze he remembered so well. ”Whatever happens, wherever we are bound, the child goes with me! Where are you taking us? What is the meaning of it all?”
Picard's face was not improved by the diabolical expression that swept over it. ”The meaning is this,” he answered in a hoa.r.s.e whisper: ”I am helping Captain Vanguard to run away with my own--bah!” he broke off abruptly, ”there will be time enough for explanations between here and Windsor bridge: the question is now about the child. He must not go a yard farther--he'll be wet to the skin as it is. There are few things I wouldn't part with to--to--undo the wrongs between you and me; but I cannot, and will not, give up the boy!”
She would have been fiercer in all probability, but that Picard, accepting the heavy down-pour, which now commenced, in his thin summer waistcoat and s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, had stripped off his pea-coat, and was wrapping the boy carefully in its folds, without however removing him from his mother's embrace. The little fellow smiled, and tugged playfully at this rugged nurse's whiskers, obviously welcoming the face of a friend, but repeated his request to return to ”Old Moley” as speedily as possible.
”I mean to have no discussions,” said Jin, in tight, concentrated accents that denoted suppressed rage and inflexible resolution. ”I never wished to see your face again, and I shall insist presently on knowing why you are here now; but in the mean time I desire to know what right you have to the child.”
”I like that!” exclaimed Picard with a bitter laugh. ”Rather, what right have you? I saved his life!”
”I gave him birth!” answered Jin collectedly. ”This is the infant you deserted so gallantly and so generously when you left his mother.
Enough! He has no claim on you, my precious; you belong solely and exclusively to me!”
Picard heeded not. Bending over that little bundle, folded so carefully in his pea-jacket, on its mother's knee, he kissed the soft brow tenderly, gently, almost reverently, while a tear hanging in the man's s.h.a.ggy whiskers, dropped on the pure delicate cheek of the child.
”No wonder I loved you,” he muttered. ”I wish I had been a better man, for your sake.”
Miss Ross was touched. ”_Allons!_” said she; ”you and I may come to an understanding, after all. Speak the truth and so will I. How did you find the boy, and where?”