Then from this exquisite and innocent affection she passed back into the tumult of her own thoughts and plans. Through the restless night her parents were often in her mind. She was the child of revolt, and as she thought of the meeting before her she seemed to be but entering upon a heritage inevitable from the beginning. A sense of enfranchisement, of passionate enlargement, upheld her, as of a life coming to its fruit.
“Creil!”
A flashing vision of a station and its lights, and the Paris train rushed on through cold showers of sleet and driving wind, a return of winter in the heart of spring.
On they sped through the half-hour which still divided them from the Gare du Nord. Julie, in her thick veil, sat motionless in her corner. She was not conscious of any particular agitation. Her mind was strained not to forget any of Warkworth’s directions. She was to drive across immediately to the Gare de Sceaux, in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, where he would meet her. They were to dine at an obscure inn near the station, and go down by the last train to the little town in the wooded valley of the Bièvre, where they were to stay.
She had her luggage with her in the carriage. There would be no customhouse delays.
Ah, the lights of Paris beginning! She peered into the rain, conscious of a sort of homecoming joy. She loved the French world and the French sights and sounds—these tall, dingy houses of the banlieue, the dregs of a great architecture; the advertisements; the look of the streets.
The train slackened into the Nord Station. The blue-frocked porters crowded into the carriages.
“C’est tout, madame? Vous n’avez pas de grands bagages?”
“No, nothing. Find me a cab at once.”
There was a great crowd outside. She hurried on as quickly as she could, revolving what was to be said if any acquaintance were to accost her. By great good luck, and by travelling second class both in the train and on the boat, she had avoided meeting anybody she knew. But the Nord Station was crowded with English people, and she pushed her way through in a nervous terror.
“Miss Le Breton!”
She turned abruptly. In the white glare of the electric lights she did not at first recognize the man who had spoken to her. Then she drew back. Her heart beat wildly. For she had distinguished the face of Jacob Delafield.
He came forward to meet her as she passed the barrier at the end of the platform, his aspect full of what seemed to her an extraordinary animation, significance, as though she were expected.
“Miss Le Breton! What an astonishing, what a fortunate meeting! I have a message for you from Evelyn.”
“From Evelyn?” She echoed the words mechanically as she shook hands.
“Wait a moment,” he said, leading her aside towards the waiting-room, while the crowd that was going to the douane passed them by. Then he turned to Julie’s porter.
“Attendez un instant.”
The man sulkily shook his head, dropped Julie’s bag at their feet, and hurried off in search of a more lucrative job.
“I am going back tonight,” added Delafield, hurriedly. “How strange that I should have met you, for I have very sad news for you! Lord Lackington had an attack this morning, from which he cannot recover. The doctors give him perhaps forty-eight hours. He has asked for you—urgently. The Duchess tells me so in a long telegram I had from her today. But she supposed you to be in Bruges. She has wired there. You will go back, will you not?”
“Go back?” said Julie, staring at him helplessly. “Go back tonight?”
“The evening train starts in little more than an hour. You would be just in time, I think, to see the old man alive.”
She still looked at him in bewilderment, at the blue eyes under the heavily moulded brows, and the mouth with its imperative, and yet eager—or tremulous?—expression. She perceived that he hung upon her answer.
She drew her hand piteously across her eyes as though to shut out the crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality beside her. Despair was in her heart. How to consent? How to refuse?
“But my friends,” she stammered—“the friends with whom I was going to stay—they will be alarmed.”
“Could you not telegraph to them? They would understand, surely. The office is close by.”
She let herself be hurried along, not knowing what to do. Delafield walked beside her. If she had been able to observe him, she must have been struck afresh by the pale intensity, the controlled agitation of his face.
“Is it really so serious?” she asked, pausing a moment, as though in resistance.
“It is the end. Of that there can be no question. You have touched his heart very deeply. He longs to see her, Evelyn says. And his daughter and granddaughter are still abroad—Miss Moffatt, indeed, is ill at Florence with a touch of diphtheria. He is alone with his two sons. You will go?”
Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in upon her—his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their meeting, his grave, commanding manner.
“How could you know I was here?” she said, in bewilderment.
“I didn’t know,” he said, slowly. “But, thank God, I have met you. I dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to see him again—just to give him his last wish—won’t you?” he said, pleadingly. “Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for you?”
“No, thank you. I—I must think how to word it. Please wait.”
She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low groan burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment turned round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to write. There was no escape. She must submit; and all was over.
She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at
