Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/306

298 Club. No very good school for fathers, that, I should fancy. I wish her mother had been alive, poor child. I hope she is going to a happy home, and a happy future.”

The train stopped at Rouen, and Miss Vane accepted a cup of coffee and some brioches from her companion. The red August sunset was melting into grey mistiness by this time, and the first shimmer of the moonlight was silvery on the water as they crossed the Seine and left the lighted city behind them. The grey-headed Englishman fell asleep soon after this, and before long there was a low chorus of snoring, masculine and feminine, audible in the comfortable carriage; only broken now and then, when the train stopped with a jerk at some fantastic village that looked like a collection of Swiss toy cottages in the dim summer night.

But, let these matter-of-fact people snore and slumber as they might, there was no such thing as sleep for Eleanor Vane. It would have been utter sacrilege to have slept in the face of all that moonlighted beauty, to have been carried sleeping through that fairy landscape. The eager school-girl’s watchful eyes drank in the loveliness of every hill and valley, the low scattered woodland, the wandering streams, and that perplexing Seine, which the rumbling carriage crossed so often with a dismal hollow sound in the stillness of the night.

No; Miss Vane’s bright grey eyes were not closed once in that evening journey; and at last, when the train entered the great Parisian station, when all the trouble and confusion of arrival began—that wearisome encounter of difficulty which makes cowardly travellers wish the longest journey longer than it is—the young lady’s head was thrust out of the window, and her eager eyes wandered hither and thither amongst the faces of the crowd.

Yes, he was there—her father. That white-haired old man, with the gold-headed cane, and the aristocratic appearance. She pointed him out eagerly to her fellow-passenger.

“That is papa—you see,—the handsome man. He is coming this way, but he doesn’t see us. Oh, let me out, please; let me go to him!”

She trembled in her eagerness, and her fair face flushed crimson with excitement. She forgot her carpet-bag, her novel, her crochet, her smelling-bottle, her cloak, her parasol—all her paraphernalia; and left her companion to collect them as best he might. She was out of the carriage and in her father’s arms she scarcely knew how. The platform seemed deserted all in a moment, for the passengers had rushed away to a great dreary salle d’attente, there to await the inspection of their luggage. Miss Vane, her fellow-traveller, and her father were almost alone, and she was looking up at the old man’s face in the lamplight.

“Papa, dear, papa, darling, how well you are looking; as well as ever, as well as ever, I think!”

Her father drew himself up proudly. He was past seventy years of age, but he was a very handsome man. His beauty was of that patrician type which loses little by age. He was tall and broad-chested, erect as a Grenadier, but not fat. The Prince Regent might become corpulent, and lay himself open to the insolent sneers of his sometime boon companion and friend; but Mr. George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane held himself on his guard against that insidious foe which steals away the graces of so many elderly gentlemen. Mr. Vane’s aristocratic bearing imparted such a stamp to his clothes, that it was not easy to see the shabbiness of his garments; but those garments were shabby; carefully as they had been brushed, they bore the traces of that slow decay which is not to be entirely concealed, whatever the art of the wearer.

Miss Vane’s travelling companion saw all this. He had been so much interested by the young lady’s frank and fearless manner, that he would fain have lingered in the hope of learning something of her father’s character, but he felt that he had no excuse for delaying his departure.

“I will wish you good night, now, Miss Vane,” he said, kindly, “since you are safely restored to your papa.”

Mr. Vane lifted his grey eyebrows, looked at his daughter interrogatively; rather suspiciously, the traveller thought.

“Oh, papa, dear,” the young lady answered, in reply to that questioning look, “this gentleman was on board the boat with me, and he has been so very kind.”

She searched in her pocket for the card which her acquaintance had given her, and produced that document, rather limp and crumpled. Her father looked at it, murmured the name inscribed upon it twice or thrice, as if trying to attach some importance thereto, but evidently failed in doing so.

“I have not the honour of—a—haw—knowing this name sir,” he said, lifting his hat stiffly about half a yard from his silvered head; “but for your courtesy and kindness to my child, I hope you will accept my best thanks. I was prevented by important business of—a—haw—not altogether undiplomatic character—from crossing the Channel to fetch my daughter; and—aw—also—prevented from sending my servant—by—aw—I thank you for your politeness, sir. You are a stranger, by the way. Can I do anything for you in Paris? Lord Cowley is my very old friend; any service that I can render you in that quarter—I—”

The traveller bowed and smiled.

“Thank you very much,” he said, “I am no stranger in Paris. I will wish you good night; good night, Miss Vane.”

But Mr. Vane was not going to let his daughter’s friend off so easily. He produced his card-case, murmured more pompous assurances of his gratitude, and tendered further offers of patronage to the quiet traveller, who found something rather oppressive in Mr. Vane’s civility. But it was all over at last, and the old man led his daughter off to look for the trunk which contained all her worldly possessions.

The stranger looked wistfully after the father and child.

“I hope she may have a happy future,” he thought, rather despondingly; “the old man is