The Lonely House (Lowndes)/Chapter 3I

ILY sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She had been dreaming—dreaming of home, of Aunt Emmeline, and of kind Uncle Tom. And then, all at once, she remembered everything. This at once familiar and unfamiliar place was her bedroom, in the Convalescent Home where she had been treated with such wonderful kindness during the last ten days.

Only ten days since that awful night? It seemed to her a year. Sometimes she still felt as if it was all a dream. And yet—and yet

All at once she covered her face with her hands. To-day, incredible though the fact still seemed, was to be her wedding day!

It was Hercules Popeau who had worked the miracle—for it still seemed a miracle to the two most closely concerned. It was he who had persuaded the cautious English lawyer, Mr. Bowering, that if Lily Fairfield were to be saved from the terrible ordeal of giving evidence against her pseudo-aunt, she must become, before the trial of Countess Polda, Angus Stuart's wife—the chattel of her husband, compelled, that is, to follow him where he ordered her to go.

There had been a good deal of rather anxious discussion. For one thing, Angus Stuart had been unwilling to take advantage of the strange position in which Lily found herself. But once Mr. Bowering and Hercules Popeau had overcome his scruples, Lily had been profoundly moved to see how ecstatically happy her lover had become. Almost as happy, she now whispered, as she was herself!

There came a sudden knocking at the bed-room door, and the matron, walking in, pulled up the blind.

“Am I too early?” she asked solicitously.

Lily shook her head, smiling.

And now, with the sun streaming into the room, for the very first time the awful nightmare which had always been there in the background, even during the last few joyous days, seemed to fade away. Lily forgot the past and thought only of the future.

How wonderful to know that she and Angus were going off alone, this afternoon, to Italy for their honeymoon! It seemed, somehow, too good to be true.

“A large box has come for you from Paris. I wonder what can be in it?” said the matron, smiling.

“But I don't know anyone in Paris!” But even as she said the words one of the V.A.D.'s with whom Lily had made friends during the last few days brought in a large box, covered with that curious black shiny paper with which French people do up parcels.

“I don't think it can be for me,” exclaimed Lily doubtfully.

“Oh yes, it is. It's been expressed by passenger train.”

“How very, very strange!”

She jumped out of bed, and looked down eagerly at the mysterious box. It was addressed “Mademoiselle Fairfield.”

The V.A.D. cut the stout cord, and lifted the wooden lid. Layer after layer of tissue paper was taken out, and then, finally, a beautiful ermine coat emerged, together with a quaint little ermine toque, in which nestled a sprig of orange-blossom and of myrtle!

It was the matron who finally espied a visiting-card, on which was written in tiny characters:

“With the donor's sincere good wishes. Papa Popeau hopes that Mademoiselle Lily will honour him by wearing his wedding gift on her marriage day.”

Lily's eyes filled with tears. How very good this quaint, whimsical, elderly Frenchman had been to her!

Looking back, as they often do look back, to their strange wedding-day, both Angus and Lily Stuart always agree that in many ways it was Papa Popeau, rather than the bridegroom, who had seemed the hero of the occasion. It was he who appeared the central figure of the quaint little group gathered together round the temporary altar which had been set up that day in the hotel where the British chaplain, during that first winter after the War, officiated.

As was but fitting, the Frenchman was best man to his Scots friend, and to everybody's amazement he had appeared garbed in ancient dress clothes, with, on his breast, the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Military Cross!

It was Papa Popeau also who presided at the wedding feast which took place just after the wedding in a private room at the Hôtel de Paris. It was he who put the bride, looking radiantly happy and wearing her superb ermine coat over her old frock—for she felt as if she never wanted to see any of the lovely clothes she had bought with Aunt Cosy again—into the luxurious motor which somehow or other he had managed to procure for the happy pair at very short notice.

In fact, so extraordinarily brilliant were Papa Popeau's various improvisations, and so artful the way in which he had managed to persuade everybody to do exactly what he wanted done, that Mr. Bowering muttered to Angus Stuart: “I begin to see why France won the Battle of the Marne.”

But it was fortunate, perhaps, that Lily did not overhear the final words which Hercules Popeau exchanged with the English solicitor after the two had watched the motor-car containing the now married lovers speeding towards Italy:

“And now, dear sir, while you go back to the fogs of Albion, I will return to the more congenial task of seeing that the Countess Polda is well and truly guillotined!”