"Has my cousin quarrelled with his old friend Doctor Lelever?" she asked. "I've heard nothing of that."

"Ah, dis long time. He tought Doctor Lelever made too little of his megrims. He won't have n.o.body but Dr. Owen now. P'r'aps you know Doctor Owen, ma'am? Mrs. Pedvinn, Doctor; de master's cousin, come up to visit him."

Renouf was heard moving about overhead; opening presses, dragging boxes.

Owen hung up his hat, putting his gloves inside it. He rubbed his lean discoloured hands lightly together, as a fly cleans its forelegs.

"Shall I just step up to him?" he said. "It may calm him, and distract his thoughts."

With soft nimbleness, in a moment he was upstairs. "So that's Doctor Owen?" observed Mrs. Poidevin with interest. "A splendid-looking gentleman! He must be very clever, I'm sure. Is he beginning to get a good practice yet?"

"Ah, bah, our people, as you know, ma'am, dey don't like no strangers, specially no Englishmen. He was very glad when Mr. Renouf sent for him.... 'Twas through Margot there. She got took bad one Sat.u.r.day coming back from market from de heat or de squidge" (crowd), "and Doctor Owen he overtook her on the road in his gig, and druv her home.

Den de master, he must have a talk with him, and so de next time he fancy hisself ill, he send for Doctor Owen, and since den he don't care for Dr. Lelever no more at all."

"I ought to be getting off," remarked Mrs. Poidevin, remembering the hour at which the omnibus left Vauvert; "had I better go up and bid cousin Louis good-bye?"

Mrs. Tourtel thought Margot should go and ask the Doctor's opinion first, but as Margot had already vanished, she went herself.

There was a longish pause, during which Mrs. Poidevin looked uneasily at Tourtel; he with restless furtive eyes at her. Then the housekeeper reappeared, noiseless, cool, determined as ever.

"Mr. Rennuf is quiet now," she said; "de Doctor have given him a soothing draught, and will stay to see how it acts. He tinks you'd better slip quietly away."

On this, Louisa Poidevin left Les Calais; but in spite of her easy superficiality, her unreasoning optimism, she took with her a sense of oppression. Cousin Louis's appeal rang in her ears: "Do not leave me; stay with me, or take me back with you. I am afraid up here, quite alone." And after all, though his fears were but the folly of old age, why, she asked herself, should he not come and stay with them in town if he wished to do so? She resolved to talk it over with Pedvinn; she thought she would arrange for him the little west room, being the furthest from the nurseries; and in planning out such vastly important trifles as to which easy-chair and which bedroom candlestick she would devote to his use, she forgot the old man himself and recovered her usual stolid jocundity.

When Owen had entered the bedroom, he had found Renouf standing over an open portmanteau, into which he was placing hurriedly whatever caught his eye or took his fancy, from the surrounding tables. His hand trembled from eagerness, his pale old face was flushed with excitement and hope. Owen, going straight up to him, put his two hands on his shoulders, and without uttering a word, gently forced him backwards into a chair. Then he sat down in front of him, so close that their knees touched, and fixing his strong eyes on Renouf's wavering ones, and stroking with his finger-tips the muscles behind the ears, he threw him immediately into an hypnotic trance.

"You want to stay here, don't you?" said Owen emphatically. "I want to stay here," repeated the old man through grey lips. His face was become the colour of ashes, his hands were cold to the sight. "You want your cousin to go away and not disturb you any more?

Answer--answer me." "I want my cousin to go away," Renouf murmured, but in his staring, fading eye were traces of the struggle tearing him within.

Owen pressed down the eyelids, made another pa.s.s before the face, and rose on his long legs with a sardonic grin. Margot, leaning across a corner of the bed, had watched him with breathless interest.

"I b'lieve you're de Evil One himself," she said admiringly.

Owen pinched her smooth chin between his tobacco-stained thumb and fingers.

"Pooh! nothing but a trick I learned in Paris," said he; "it's very convenient to be able to put a person to sleep now and again."

"Could you put any one to sleep?"

"Any one I wanted to."

"Do it to me then," she begged him.

"What use, my girl? Don't you do all I wish without?"

She grimaced, and picked at the bed-quilt laughing, then rose and stood in front of him, her round red arms clasped behind her head. But he only glanced at her with professional interest.

"You should get married, my dear, without delay. Pierre would be ready enough, no doubt?"--"Bah! Pierre or annuder--if I brought a weddin'

portion. You don't tink to provide me wid one, I s'pose?"--"You know that I can't. But why don't you get it from the Tourtels? You've earned it before this, I dare swear."

It was now that the housekeeper came up, and took down to Louisa Poidevin the message given above. But first she was detained by Owen, to a.s.sist him in getting his patient into bed.

The old man woke up during the process, very peevish, very determined to get to town. "Well, you can't go till to-morrow den," said Mrs.

Tourtel; "your cousin has gone home, an' now you've got to go to sleep, so be quiet." She dropped all semblance of respect in her tones. "Come, lie down!" she said sharply, "or I'll send Margot to tickle your feet." He shivered and whimpered into silence beneath the clothes.

"Margot tells him 'bout witches, an ogres, an sc.r.a.pels her fingures 'long de wall, till he tinks dere goin' to fly 'way wid him," she explained to Owen in an aside. "Oh, I know Margot," he answered laconically, and thought, "May I never lie helpless within reach of such fingers as hers."

He took a step and stumbled over a portmanteau lying open at his feet.

"Put your mischievous paws to some use," he told the girl, "and clear these things away from the floor;" then remembering his rival Le Lievre; "if the old fool had really got away to town, it would have been a nice day's work for us all," he added.

Downstairs he joined the Tourtels in the kitchen, a room situated behind the living-room on the left, with low green gla.s.s windows, rafters and woodwork smoke-browned with the fires of a dozen generations. In the wooden racks over by the chimney hung flitches of home-cured bacon, and the kettle was suspended by three chains over the centre of the wide hearth, where glowed and crackled an armful of sticks. So dark was the room, in spite of the daylight outside, that two candles were set in the centre of the table, enclosing in their circles of yellow light the pale face and silver hair of the housekeeper, and Tourtel's rugged head and weather-beaten countenance.

He had gla.s.ses ready, and a bottle of the cheap brandy for which the Island is famous. "You'll take a drop of something, eh, Doctor?" he said as Owen seated himself on the jonciere, a padded settle--green baize covered, to replace the primitive rushes--fitted on one side of the hearth. He stretched his long legs into the light, and for a moment considered moodily the old gaiters and cobbled boots. "You've seen to the horse?" he asked Tourtel.

"My cert'nly; he's in de stable dis hour back, an' I've given him a feed. I tought maybe you'd make a night of it?"

"I may as well for all the work I have to do," said Owen with sourness; "a d.a.m.ned little Island this for doctors. Nothing ever the matter with anyone except the 'creeps,' and those who have it spend their last penny in making it worse."

"Dere's as much illness here as anywhere," said Tourtel, defending the reputation of his native soil, "if once you gets among de right cla.s.s, among de people as has de time an' de money to make dereselves ill.

But if you go foolin' roun' wid de paysans, what can you expec'? We workin' folks can't afford to lay up an' buy ourselves doctors'

stuff."

"And how am I to get among the right cla.s.s?" retorted Owen, sucking the ends of his moustache into his mouth and chewing them savagely. "A more confounded set of stuck-up, beggarly aristocrats I never met than your people here." His discontented eye rested on Mrs. Tourtel. "That Mrs. Pedvinn is the wife of Pedvinn the Jurat, I suppose?"--"Yes, de Pedvinns of Rohais." "Good people," said Owen thoughtfully; "in with the de Caterelles, and the Dadderney (d'Aldenois) set. Are there children?"--"Tree."

He took a drink of the spirit and water; his bad temper pa.s.sed. Margot came in from upstairs.

"De marster sleeps as dough he'd never wake again," she announced, flinging herself into the chair nearest Owen.

"It's 'bout time he did," Tourtel growled.

"I should have thought it more to your interest to keep him alive?"

Owen inquired. "A good place, surely?"

"A good place if you like to call it so," the wife answered him; "but what, if he go to town, as he say to-night? and what, if he send de notary, to put de scelles here?--den he take up again wid Dr. Lelever, dat's certain." And Tourtel added in his surly key, "Anyway, I've been workin' here dese tirty years now, an' dat's 'bout enough."

"In fact, when the orange is sucked, you throw away the peel? But are you quite sure it is sucked dry?"

"De house an' de lan' go to de Pedvinns, an' all de money die too, for de little he had left when young John went 'crost de seas, he sunk in a 'nuity. Dere's nuddin' but de lining, an' plate, an' such like, as goes to de son."

"And what he finds of that, I expect, will scarcely add to his impedimenta?" said Owen grinning. He thought, "The old man is well known in the island, the name of his medical attendant would get mentioned in the papers at least; just as well Le Lievre should not have the advertis.e.m.e.nt." Besides, there were the Poidevins.

"You might say a good word for me to Mrs. Pedvinn," he said aloud, "I live nearer to Rohais than Lelever does, and with young children she might be glad to have some one at hand."

"You may be sure you won't never find me ungrateful, sir," answered the housekeeper; and Owen, shading his eyes with his hand, sat pondering over the use of this word "ungrateful," with its faint yet perceptible emphasis.

Margot, meanwhile, laid the supper; the remains of a rabbit-pie, a big "pinclos" or spider crab, with thin, red knotted legs, spreading far over the edges of the dish, the apple-goche, hot from the oven, cider, and the now half-empty bottle of brandy. The four sat down and fell to. Margot was in boisterous spirits; everything she said or did was meant to attract Owen's attention. Her cheeks flamed with excitement; she wanted his eyes to be perpetually upon her. But Owen's interest in her had long ceased. To-night, while eating heartily, he was absorbed in his ruling pa.s.sion: to get on in the world, to make money, to be admitted into Island society. Behind the pallid, impenetrable mask, which always enraged yet intimidated Margot, he plotted incessantly, schemed, combined, weighed this and that, studied his prospects from every point of view.

Supper over, he lighted his meerschaum; Tourtel produced a short clay, and the bottle was pa.s.sed between them. The women left them together, and for ten, twenty minutes, there was complete silence in the room.