Mrs.Bundy had of course given him the address he needed, and on emerging from the station he was on the point of asking what direction he should take.His attention however at this moment was drawn away by the bustle of the departing boat.He had been long enough shut up in London to be conscious of refreshment in the mere act of turning his face to Paris.He wandered off to the pier in company with happier tourists and, leaning on a rail, watched enviously the preparation, the agitation of foreign travel.It was for some minutes a foretaste of adventure; but, ah, when was he to have the very draught? He turned away as he dropped this interrogative sigh, and in doing so perceived that in another part of the pier two ladies and a little boy were gathered with something of the same wistfulness.The little boy indeed happened to look round for a moment, upon which, with the keenness of the predatory age, he recognised in our young man a source of pleasures from which he lately had been weaned.He bounded forward with irrepressible cries of "Geegee!" and Peter lifted him aloft for an embrace.On putting him down the pilgrim from Jersey Villas stood confronted with a sensibly severe Miss Teagle, who had followed her little charge.
"What's the matter with the old woman?" he asked himself as he offered her a hand which she treated as the merest detail.Whatever it was, it was (and very properly, on the part of a loyal suivante)the same complaint as that of her employer, to whom, from a distance, for Mrs.Ryves had not advanced an inch, he flourished his hat as she stood looking at him with a face that he imagined rather white.Mrs.
Ryves's response to this salutation was to shift her position in such a manner as to appear again absorbed in the Calais boat.Peter Baron, however, kept hold of the child, whom Miss Teagle artfully endeavoured to wrest from him--a policy in which he was aided by Sidney's own rough but instinctive loyalty; and he was thankful for the happy effect of being dragged by his jubilant friend in the very direction in which he had tended for so many hours.Mrs.Ryves turned once more as he came near, and then, from the sweet, strained smile with which she asked him if he were on his way to France, he saw that if she had been angry at his having followed her she had quickly got over it.
"No, I'm not crossing; but it came over me that you might be, and that's why I hurried down--to catch you before you were off.""Oh, we can't go--more's the pity; but why, if we could," Mrs.Ryves inquired, "should you wish to prevent it?""Because I've something to ask you first, something that may take some time." He saw now that her embarrassment had really not been resentful; it had been nervous, tremulous, as the emotion of an unexpected pleasure might have been."That's really why I determined last night, without asking your leave first to pay you this little visit--that and the intense desire for another bout of horse-play with Sidney.Oh, I've come to see you," Peter Baron went on, "and Iwon't make any secret of the fact that I expect you to resign yourself gracefully to the trial and give me all your time.The day's lovely, and I'm ready to declare that the place is as good as the day.Let me drink deep of these things, drain the cup like a man who hasn't been out of London for months and months.Let me walk with you and talk with you and lunch with you--I go back this afternoon.Give me all your hours in short, so that they may live in my memory as one of the sweetest occasions of life."The emission of steam from the French packet made such an uproar that Baron could breathe his passion into the young woman's ear without scandalising the spectators; and the charm which little by little it scattered over his fleeting visit proved indeed to be the collective influence of the conditions he had put into words."What is it you wish to ask me?" Mrs.Ryves demanded, as they stood there together;to which he replied that he would tell her all about it if she would send Miss Teagle off with Sidney.Miss Teagle, who was always anticipating her cue, had already begun ostentatiously to gaze at the distant shores of France and was easily enough induced to take an earlier start home and rise to the responsibility of stopping on her way to contend with the butcher.She had however to retire without Sidney, who clung to his recovered prey, so that the rest of the episode was seasoned, to Baron's sense, by the importunate twitch of the child's little, plump, cool hand.The friends wandered together with a conjugal air and Sidney not between them, hanging wistfully, first, over the lengthened picture of the Calais boat, till they could look after it, as it moved rumbling away, in a spell of silence which seemed to confess--especially when, a moment later, their eyes met--that it produced the same fond fancy in each.The presence of the boy moreover was no hindrance to their talking in a manner that they made believe was very frank.Peter Baron presently told his companion what it was he had taken a journey to ask, and he had time afterwards to get over his discomfiture at her appearance of having fancied it might be something greater.She seemed disappointed (but she was forgiving) on learning from him that he had only wished to know if she judged ferociously his not having complied with her request to respect certain seals.
"How ferociously do you suspect me of having judged it?" she inquired.
"Why, to the extent of leaving the house the next moment."They were still lingering on the great granite pier when he touched on this matter, and she sat down at the end while the breeze, warmed by the sunshine, ruffled the purple sea.She coloured a little and looked troubled, and after an instant she repeated interrogatively:
"The next moment?"