CHAPTER XXXVI
It was in the course of the "lessons" that he realized that he had
always argued that the best way to do business was to do it face to
face with people. To stay in England, and let another chap make your
bargains for you in France or Germany or some other outlandish
place, where frog-eating foreigners ran loose, was a fool's trick.
He'd said it often enough. "Get your eye on 'em, and let them know
you've got it on them, and they'd soon find out they were dealing with
Lancashire, and not with foreign knaves and nincompoops." So, when it
became necessary to deal with France, Little Ann packed him up neatly,
so to speak, and in the role of obedient secretarial companion took
him to that country, having for weeks beforehand mentally confronted
the endless complications attending the step. She knew, in the first
place, what the effect of the French language would be upon his
temper: that it would present itself to him as a wall deliberately
built by the entire nation as a means of concealing a deep duplicity
the sole object of which was the baffling, thwarting, and undoing of
Englishmen, from whom it wished to wrest their honest rights. Apoplexy
becoming imminent, as a result of his impotent rage during their first
few days in Paris, she paid a private visit to a traveler's agency,
and after careful inquiry discovered that it was not impossible to
secure the attendance and service of a well-mannered young man who
spoke most of the languages employed by most of the inhabitants of the
globe. She even found that she might choose from a number of such
persons, and she therefore selected with great care.
"One that's got a good temper, and isn't easy irritated," she said to
herself, in summing up the aspirants, "but not one that's easy-
tempered because he's silly. He must have plenty of common sense as
well as be willing to do what he's told."
When her father discovered that he himself had been considering the
desirability of engaging the services of such a person, and had,
indeed already, in a way, expressed his intention of sending her to
"the agency chap" to look him up, she was greatly relieved.
"I can try to teach him what you've taught me, Father," she said, "and
of course he'll learn just by being with you."
The assistant engaged was a hungry young student who had for weeks,
through ill luck, been endeavoring to return with some courage the
gaze of starvation, which had been staring him in the face.
His name was Dudevant, and with desperate struggles he had educated
himself highly, having cherished literary ambitions from his infancy.
At this juncture it had become imperative that he should, for a few
months at least, obtain food. Ann had chosen well by instinct. His
speech had told her that he was intelligent, his eyes had told her
that he would do anything on earth to earn his living.
From the time of his advent, Joseph Hutchinson had become calmer and
had ceased to be in peril of apoplectic seizure. Foreign nations
became less iniquitous and dangerous, foreign languages were less of a
barrier, easier to understand. A pleasing impression that through
great facility he had gained a fair practical knowledge of French,
German, and Italian, supported and exhilarated him immensely.
"It's right-down wonderful how a chap gets to understand these
fellows' lingo after he's listened to it a bit," he announced to Ann.
"I wouldn't have believed it of myself that I could see into it as
quick as I have. I couldn't say as I understand everything they say
just when they're saying it; but I understand it right enough when
I've had time to translate like. If foreigners didn't talk so fast and
run their words one into another, and jabber as if their mouths was
full of puddin', it'd be easier for them as is English. Now, there's
`wee' and `nong.' I know 'em whenever I hear 'em, and that's a good
bit of help."
"Yes," answered Ann, "of course that's the chief thing you want to
know in business, whether a person is going to say `yes' or `no.'"
He began to say "wee" and "nong" at meals, and once broke forth "Passy
mor le burr" in a tone so casually Parisian that Ann was frightened,
because she did not understand immediately, and also because she saw
looming up before her a future made perilous by the sudden
interjection of unexpected foreign phrases it would be incumbent upon
her and Dudevant to comprehend instantaneously without invidious
hesitation.
"Don't you understand? Pass the butter. Don't you understand a bit o'
French like that?" he exclaimed irritatedly. "Buy yourself one o'
these books full of easy sentences and learn some of 'em, lass. You
oughtn't to be travelin' about with your father in foreign countries
and learnin' nothin'. It's not every lass that's gettin' your
advantages."
Ann had not mentioned the fact that she spent most of her rare leisure
moments in profound study of phrase-books and grammars, which she kept
in her trunk and gave her attention to before she got up in the
morning, after she went to her room at night, and usually while she
was dressing. You can keep a book open before you when you are
brushing your hair. Dudevant gave her a lesson or so whenever time
allowed. She was as quick to learn as her father thought he was, and
she was desperately determined. It was really not long before she
understood much more than "wee and nong" when she was present at a
business interview.
"You are a wonderful young lady," Dudevant said, with that well-known
yearning in his eyes. "You are most wonderful."
"She's just a wonder," Mrs. Bowse and her boarders had said. And the
respectful yearning in the young Frenchman's eyes and voice were well
known to her because she had seen it often before, and remembered it,
in Jem Bowles and Julius Steinberger. That this young man had without
an hour of delay fallen abjectly in love with her was a circumstance
with which she dealt after her own inimitably kind and undeleterious
method, which in itself was an education to any amorous youth.
"I can understand all you tell me," she said when he reached the point
of confiding his hard past to her. "I can understand it because I knew
some one who had to fight for himself just that way, only perhaps it
was harder because he wasn't educated as you are."
"Did he--confide in you?" Dudevant ventured, with delicate hesitation.
"You are so kind I am sure he did, Mademoiselle."
"He told me about it because he knew I wanted to hear," she answered.
"I was very fond of him," she added, and her kind gravity was quite
unshaded by any embarrassment. "I was right-down fond of him."
His emotion rendered him for a moment indiscreet, to her immediate
realization and regret, as was evident by his breaking off in the
midst of his question.
"And now--are you?"
"Yes, I always shall be, Mr. Dudevant."
His adoration naturally only deepened itself as all hope at once
receded, as it could not but recede before the absolute pellucid truth
of her.
"However much he likes me, he will get over it in time. People do,
when they know how things stand," she was thinking, with maternal
sympathy.
It did him no bitter harm to help her with her efforts at learning
what she most needed, and he found her intelligence and modest power
of concentration remarkable. A singularly clear knowledge of her own
specialized requirements was a practical background to them both. She
had no desire to shine; she was merely steadily bent on acquiring as
immediately as possible a comprehension of nouns, verbs, and phrases
that would be useful to her father. The manner in which she applied
herself, and assimilated what it was her quietly fixed intention to
assimilate, bespoke her possession of a brain the powers of which
being concentrated on large affairs might have accomplished almost
startling results. There was, however, nothing startling in her
intentions, and ambition did not touch her. Yet, as she went with
Hutchinson from one country to another, more than one man of affairs
had it borne in upon him that her young slimness and her silence
represented an unanticipated knowledge of points under discussion
which might wisely be considered as a factor in all decisions for or
against. To realize that a soft-cheeked, child-eyed girl was an
element to regard privately in discussions connected with the sale of,
or the royalties paid on, a valuable patent appeared in some minds to
be a situation not without flavor. She was the kind of little person a
man naturally made love to, and a girl who was made love to in a
clever manner frequently became amenable to reason, and might be
persuaded to use her influence in the direction most desired. But such
male financiers as began with this idea discovered that they had been
led into errors of judgment through lack of familiarity with the
variations of type. One personable young man of title, who had just
been disappointed in a desirable marriage with a fortune, being made
aware that the invention was likely to arrive at amazing results, was
sufficiently rash to approach Mr. Hutchinson with formal proposals.
Having a truly British respect for the lofty in place, and not being
sufficiently familiar with titled personages to discriminate swiftly
between the large and the small, Joseph Hutchinson was somewhat unduly
elated.
"The chap's a count, lass," he said. "Tha'u'd go back to Manchester a
countess."
"I've heard they're nearly all counts in these countries," commented
Ann. "And there's countesses that have to do their own washing, in a
manner of speaking. You send him to me, Father."
When the young man came, and compared the fine little nose of Miss
Hutchinson with the large and bony structure dominating the
countenance of the German heiress he had lost, also when he gazed into
the clearness of the infantile blue eyes, his spirits rose. He felt
himself en veine; he was equal to attacking the situation. He felt
that he approached it with alluring and chivalric delicacy. He almost
believed all that he said.
But the pellucid blueness of the gaze that met his was confusingly
unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion. There was
something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so
undisturbed and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he
suddenly felt like a fool whose folly had been found out.
"That's downright silly," remarked Little Ann, not allowing him to
escape from her glance, which unhesitatingly summed up him and his
situation. "And you know it is. You don't know anything about me, and
you wouldn't like me if you did. And I shouldn't like you. We're too
different. Please go away, and don't say anything more about it. I
shouldn't have patience to talk it over."
"Father," she said that night, "if ever I get married at all, there's
only one person I'm going to marry. You know that." And she would say
no more.
By the time they returned to England, the placing of the invention in
divers countries had been arranged in a manner which gave assurance of
a fortune for its owners on a foundation not likely to have
established itself in more adverse circumstances. Mr. Hutchinson had
really driven some admirable bargains, and had secured advantages
which to his last hour he would believe could have been achieved only
by Lancashire shrewdness and Lancashire ability to "see as far through
a mile-stone as most chaps, an' a bit farther." The way in which he
had never allowed himself to be "done" caused him at times to chuckle
himself almost purple with self-congratulation.
"They got to know what they was dealing with, them chaps. They was
sharp, but Joe was a bit sharper," he would say.
They found letters waiting for them when they reached London.
"There's one fro' thy grandmother," Hutchinson said, in dealing out
the package. "She's written to thee pretty steady for an old un."
This was true. Letters from her had followed them from one place to
another. This was a thick one in an envelop of good size.
"Aren't tha going to read it? " he asked.
"Not till you've had your dinner, Father. You've had a long day of it
with that channel at the end. I want to see you comfortable with your
pipe."
The hotel was a good one, and the dinner was good. Joseph Hutchinson
enjoyed it with the appetite of a robust man who has had time to get
over a not too pleasant crossing. When he had settled down into a
stout easy-chair with the pipe, he drew a long and comfortable breath
as he looked about the room.
"Eh, Ann, lass," he said, "thy mother 'd be fine an' set up if she
could see aw this. Us having the best that's to be had, an' knowin' we
can have it to the end of our lives, that's what it's come to, tha
knows. No more third-class railway-carriages for you and me. No more
`commercial' an' `temperance' hotels. Th' first cut's what we can
have--th' upper cut. Eh, eh, but it's a good day for a man when he's
begun to be appreciated as he should be."
"It's a good day for those that love him," said Little Ann. "And I
dare say mother knows every bit about it."
"I dare say she does," admitted Hutchinson, with tender lenience. "She
was one o' them as believed that way. And I never knowed her to be
wrong in aught else, so I'm ready to give in as she was reet about
that. Good lass she was, good lass."
He had fallen into a contented and utterly comfortable doze in his
chair when Ann sat down to read her grandmother's letter. The old
woman always wrote at length, giving many details and recording
village events with shrewd realistic touches. Throughout their
journeyings, Ann had been followed by a record of the estate and
neighborhood of Temple Barholm which had lacked nothing of atmosphere.
She had known what the new lord of the manor did, what people said,
what the attitude of the gentry had become; that the visit of the
Countess of Mallowe and her daughter had extended itself until
curiosity and amusement had ceased to comment, and passively awaited
results. She had heard of Miss Alicia and her reincarnation, and knew
much of the story of the Duke of Stone, whose reputation as a "dommed
clever owd chap" had earned for him a sort of awed popularity. There
had been many "ladies." The new Temple Barholm had boldly sought them
out and faced them in their strongholds with the manner of one who
would confront the worst and who revealed no tendency to flinch. The
one at Stone Hover with the "pretty color" and the one with the
dimples had appeared frequently upon the scene. Then there had been
Lady Joan Fayre, who had lived at his elbow, sitting at his table,
driving in his carriages with the air of cold aloofness which the
cottagers "could na abide an' had no patience wi'." She had sometimes
sat and wondered and wondered about things, and sometimes had flushed
daisy-red instead of daisy-pink; and sometimes she had turned rather
pale and closed her soft mouth firmly. But, though she had written
twice a week to her grandmother, she had recorded principally the
successes and complexities of the invention, and had asked very few
questions. Old Mrs. Hutchinson would tell her all she must know, and
her choice of revelation would be made with a far-sightedness which
needed no stimulus of questioning. The letter she had found awaiting
her had been long on its way, having missed her at point after point
and followed her at last to London. It looked and felt thick and solid
in its envelop. Little Ann opened it, stirred by the suggestion of
quickened pulse-beats with which she had become familiar. As she bent
over it she looked sweetly flushed and warmed.
Joseph Hutchinson's doze had almost deepened into sleep when he was
awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder. She was standing by
him, holding some sheets of her grandmother's letter, and several
other sheets were lying on the table. Something had occurred which had
changed her quiet look.
"Has aught happened to your grandmother?" he asked.
"No, Father, but this letter that's been following me from one place
to another has got some queer news in it."
"What's up, lass? Tha looks as if summat was up."
"The thing that's happened has given me a great deal to think of," was
her answer. "It's about Mr. Temple Barholm and Mr. Strangeways."
He became wide-awake at once, sitting up and turning in his chair in
testy anxiety.
"Now, now," he exclaimed, "I hope that cracked chap's not gone out an'
out mad an' done some mischief. I towd Temple Barholm it was a foolish
thing to do, taking all that trouble about him. Has he set fire to th'
house or has he knocked th' poor lad on th' head?"
"No, he hasn't, Father. He's disappeared, and Mr. Temple Barholm's
disappeared, too."
"Disappeared?" Hutchinson almost shouted. "What for, i' the Lord's
name?"
"Nobody knows for certain, and people are talking wild. The village is
all upset, and all sorts of silly things are being said."
"What sort o' things?"
"You know what servants at big houses are--how they hear bits of talk
and make much of it," she explained. "They've been curious and
chattering among themselves about Mr. Strangeways from the first. It
was Burrill that said he believed he was some relation that was being
hid away for some good reason. One night Mr. Temple Barholm and
Captain Palliser were having a long talk together, and Burrill was
about--"
"Aye, he'd be about if he thought there was a chance of him hearing
summat as was none of his business," jerked out Hutchinson, irately.
"They were talking about Mr. Strangeways, and Burrill heard Captain
Palliser getting angry; and as he stepped near the door he heard him
say out loud that he could swear in any court of justice that the man
he had seen at the west room window--it's a startling thing, Father--
was Mr. James Temple Barholm." For the moment her face was pale.
Hereupon Hutchinson sprang up.
"What!" His second shout was louder than his first. "Th' liar! Th'
chap's dead, an' he knows it. Th' dommed mischief-makin' liar!"
Her eyes were clear and speculatively thoughtful, notwithstanding her
lack of color.
"There have been people that have been thought dead that have come
back to their friends alive. It's happened many a time," she said. "It
wouldn't be so strange for a man that had no friends to be lost in a
wild, far-off place where there was neither law nor order, and where
every man was fighting for his own life and the gold he was mad after.
Particularly a man that was shamed and desperate and wanted to hide
himself. And, most of all, it would be easy, if he was like Mr.
Strangeways, and couldn't remember, and had lost himself."
As her father listened, the angry redness of his countenance moderated
its hue. His eyes gradually began to question and his under jaw fell
slightly.
"Si' thee, lass," he broke out huskily, "does that mean to say tha
believes it?"
"It's not often you can believe what you don't know," she answered. "I
don't know anything about it. There's just one thing I believe,
because I know it. I believe what grandmother does. Read that."
She handed him the final sheet of old Mrs. Hutchinson's letter. It was
written with very black ink and in an astonishingly bold and clear
hand. It was easy to read the sentences with which she ended.
There's a lot said. There's always more saying than doing. But it's
right-down funny to see how the lad has made hard and fast friends
just going about in his queer way, and no one knowing how he did it. I
like him myself. He's one of those you needn't ask questions about. If
there's anything said that isn't to his credit, it's not true. There's
no ifs, buts, or ands about that, Ann.
Little Ann herself read the words as her father read them.
"That's the thing I believe, because I know it," was all she said.
"It's the thing I'd swear to mysel'," her father answered bluffly.
"But, by Judd--"
She gave him a little push and spoke to him in homely Lancashire
phrasing, and with some soft unsteadiness of voice.
"Sit thee down, Father love," she said, "and let me sit on thy knee."
He sat down with emotional readiness, and she sat on his stout knee
like a child. It was a thing she did in tender or troubled moments as
much in these days as she had done when she was six or seven. Her
little lightness and soft young ways made it the most natural thing in
the world, as well as the prettiest. She had always sat on his knee in
the hours when he had been most discouraged over the invention. She
had known it made him feel as though he were taking care of her, and
as though she depended utterly on him to steady the foundations of her
world. What could such a little bit of a lass do without "a father"?
"It's upset thee, lass," he said. "It's upset thee."
He saw her slim hands curl themselves into small, firm fists as they
rested on her lap.
"I can't bear to think that ill can be said of him, even by a wastrel
like Captain Palliser," she said. "He's MINE."
It made him fumble caressingly at her big knot of soft red hair.
"Thine, is he?" he said. "Thine! Eh, but tha did say that just like
thy mother would ha' said it; tha brings the heart i' my throat now
and again. That chap's i' luck, I can tell him--same as I was once."
"He's mine now, whatever happens," she went on, with a firmness which
no skeptic would have squandered time in the folly of hoping to shake.
"He's done what I told him to do, and it's ME he wants. He's found out
for himself, and so have I. He can have me the minute he wants me--the
very minute."
"He can?" said Hutchinson. "That settles it. I believe tha'd rather
take him when he was i' trouble than when he was out of it. Same as
tha'd rather take him i' a flat in Harlem on fifteen dollar a week
than on fifteen hundred."
"Yes, Father, I would. It'd give me more to do for him."
"Eh, eh," he grunted tenderly, "thy mother again. I used to tell her
as the only thing she had agen me was that I never got i' jail so she
could get me out an' stand up for me after it. There's only one thing
worrits me a bit: I wish the lad hadn't gone away."
"I've thought that out, though I've not had much time to reason about
things," said Little Ann. "If he's gone away, he's gone to get
something; and whatever it happens to be, he'll be likely to bring it
back with him, Father."
