Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/305

7, 1863.] “Yes, we shall enter the harbour presently. You will have some one to meet you there, I suppose?”

“Oh, no,” the young lady answered, lifting her arched brown eyebrows, “not at Dieppe. Papa will meet me at Paris; but he could never come all the way to Dieppe, just to take me back to Paris. He could never afford such an expense as that.”

“No, to be sure; and you know no one at Dieppe.”

“Oh, no, I don’t know any one in all France except papa.”

Her face, bright as it was even in repose, was lit up with a new brightness as she spoke of her father.

“You are very fond of your papa, I think,” the Englishman said.

“Oh, yes, I love him very, very much. I have not seen him for more than a year. The journey costs so much between England and France, and I have been at school near London, at Brixton; I dare say you know Brixton; but I am going to France now, for good.”

“Indeed! You seem very young to leave school.”

“But I’m not going to leave school,” the young lady answered, eagerly. “I am going to a very expensive school in Paris, to finish my education; and then—”

She paused here, hesitating and blushing a little.

“And then what?”

“I am going to be a governess. Papa is not rich. He has no fortune now.”

“He has had a fortune, then?”

“He has had three.”

The young lady’s grey eyes were lit up with a certain look of triumph as she said this.

“He has been very extravagant, poor dear,” she continued, apologetically; “and he has spent three fortunes, altogether. But he has been always so courted and admired, you know, that it is not to be wondered at. He knew the Prince Regent, and Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Brummel, and the Duke of York, and—oh, all sorts of people, ever so intimately; and he was a member of the Beefsteak Club, and wore a silver gridiron in his button-hole, and he is the most delightful man in society, even now, though he is very old.”

“Very old! And you are so young.”

The Englishman looked almost incredulously at his animated companion.

“Yes, I am papa’s youngest child. He has been married twice. I have no real brothers and sisters. I have only half-brothers and sisters, who don’t really and truly care for me, you know. How should they? They were grown up when I was born, and I have scarcely ever seen them. I have only papa in all the world.”

“You have no mother, then?”

“No, mamma died when I was three years old.”

The “Empress” packet was entering the harbour by this time. The grey-headed Englishman went away to look after his portmanteaus and hat-boxes, but he returned presently to the fair-haired school-girl.

“Will you let me help you with your luggage,” he said. “I will go and look after it if you will tell me for what to inquire.”

“You are very kind. I have only one box. It is directed to Miss Vane, Paris.”

“Very well, Miss Vane, I will go and find your box. Stay,” he said, taking out his card-case, “this is my name, and if you will permit me, I will see you safely to Paris.”

“Thank you, sir. You are very kind.”

The young lady accepted her new friend’s service as frankly as it was offered. He had grey hair, and in that one particular at least resembled her father. That was almost enough to make her like him.

There was the usual confusion and delay at the Custom-house—a little squabbling and a good deal of bribery; but everything was managed, upon the whole, pretty comfortably. Most of the passengers dropped in at the Hôtel de l’Europe, or some of the other hotels upon the stony quay; a few hurried off to the market-place to stare at the cathedral church of Saint Jacques, or the great statue of Abraham Duquesne, the rugged sea-king, with broad-brimmed hat and waving plumes, high boots and flowing hair, and to buy peaches and apricots of the noisy market women. Others wandered in the slimy and slippery fish-market, fearfully and wonderingly contemplative of those hideous conger-eels, dog-fish, and other piscatorial monstrosities which seem peculiar to Dieppe. Miss Vane and her companion strolled into the dusky church of Saint Jacques by a little wooden door in a shady nook of the edifice. A few solitary women were kneeling here and there, half-hidden behind their high-backed rush chairs. A fisherman was praying upon the steps of a little chapel, in the solemn obscurity.

“I have never been here before,” Miss Vane whispered. “I came by Dover and Calais the last time; but this way is so much cheaper, and I don’t mind the long sea voyage a bit. Thank you for bringing me to see this cathedral.”

Half-an-hour after this the two travellers were seated in a first-class carriage, with other railway passengers, French and English, hurrying through the fair Norman landscape.

Miss Vane looked out at the bright hills and woods, the fruitful orchards, and white-roofed cottages, so villa-like, fantastical, and beautiful; and her face brightened with the brightening of the landscape under the hot radiance of the sun. The grey-headed gentleman felt a quiet pleasure in watching that earnest, hopeful, candid face; the grey eyes, illumined with gladness; the parted lips, almost tremulous with delight, as the sunny panorama glided by the open window.

The quiet old bachelor’s heart had been won by his companion’s frank acceptance of his simple service.

“Another girl of her age would have been as frightened of a masculine stranger as of a wild beast,” he thought, “and would have given herself all manner of missish airs; but this young damsel smiles in my face, and trusts me with almost infantile simplicity. I hope her father is a good man. I don’t much like that talk of Sheridan and Beau Brummel and the Beefsteak