A Fascinating Traitor Part 30

Without a word, Justine Delande led the startled girl into the house.

"You are to see your uncle at once! After our breakfast! And I will be with you." faltered Justine, with an averted face.

The orphaned girl was now dimly conscious of some impending blow. She had been frightened at the solemnity of Douglas Fraser's hasty farewell, and, while Justine Delande affected to touch the breakfast spread in their rooms by the Swiss lady's maid, now gloomy in an attack of heimweh, Nadine saw a four-wheeler rattle away over the lawn, while old Andrew Fraser grimly watched it until the gates clanged behind the departing Anglo-Indian. Over the low wall, on the road, Douglas Fraser caught a last glimpse of the graceful girl standing there. He sadly waved an adieu, and Nadine Johnstone was left with but one friend in the world, save the silent Swiss governess. Though the two women were sumptuously lodged "in fair upper chambers," opening east and south, with their maid near at hand, the gloomy chill of the silent household had already penetrated the lonely girl's heart. No single sign of the warmer amenities. Only books, books, dusty books, by the thousand, piled helter-skelter in every available nook and cranny.

The servants were slouching and sullen, and they moved about their duties with gloomy brows. Even the gardener and his two stout boys struck sadly away with mattock and spade as if digging graves. No chirp of bird, no baying of a friendly dog, no burst of childish merriment broke the droning silence. And this was the home to which a father had doomed his only child.

When the frightened maid tapped at the door to summon her mistress, her feeble rapping sounded like a hammer falling sadly on the hollow coffin lid. The girl stammered, "The master would like to see you both in the library." And with a sinking heart Nadine Fraser Johnstone descended the stair.

She had only cast a frightened glimpse at the yellowed, bony face, the cavernous eye sockets, the bushy eyebrows, beneath which a cold intellectual gleam still feebly flickered. Andrew Fraser had bent his tall form over her, and peering down at her had whispered after their few words of greeting:

"Did ye gain aught in knowledge of Thibet in your Indian life? My life work lies there, and Hugh has sorely disappointed me. He was to send me books and maps and papers for my 'History of Thibet and the Wanderings of the Ten Tribes.'" With a confused negation the girl had fled away to the cheerless shelter of the great rooms whose drab and gray arrangements bespoke the Reformatory or a Refuge for the Friendless.

And the stern old scholar waited for the fluttering bird whom adverse Fate had driven into his dismal lair with all the pompous severity of a guardian and trustee.

Seated at a long desk littered with a mult.i.tude of papers, Professor Andrew Fraser coldly bowed the two women to convenient seats. The parvenu banker who had fled away after a bankruptcy due to the erection and embellishment of "The Folly," had approved a semi-medieval plan of construction which suggested a Norman stronghold or a Corsican mansion arranged for a stubborn defense. Books, globes, maps, and papers littered the floors, and were piled nearby in convenient heaps with tell-tale flying signals of copious note taking. It was a bristling Redoubt of Learning.

But on this sunny morning the retired Professor of Edinburg University held sundry letters, dispatches, and legal papers clutched in his claw-like hands. His eye rested upon Justine Delande, in a semi-hostile glare, as he slowly said:

"I've sent for ye, as in the place of your father's daughter, ye must know of the changes that come to us, with the chances of Life and the sair ways o' the world." He was nervously fumbling with a selection of the papers and he paused and coughed ominously. "There has come to us news which has posted my son Douglas hastily back to India, to do your father's last bidding."

Nadine Johnstone's trembling hand clutched Justine Delande's still rounded arm.

"Her father the double of this grim ogre?" There was horror in her conjecture, but no pang of affection at the easily divined disclosure.

"The news came to us suddenly, yesterday, and Douglas and I are left now to screen ye from the robbers and cormorants of the world! Ye're one of the richest women in Britain now--Hugh Fraser's daughter--for yere guid father is no more! A sudden death--a sudden death! and his will leaves you to me as a legal charge, for yere body and yere estate, till ye come o' the legal age. T'hafs the next three years!"

With a single glance of stern deprecation, Andrew Fraser saw the girl totter and her head fall upon the bosom of the woman who had "sorrowed of her sorrows" in all the years of the lonely colorless infancy, childhood, and budding womanhood! The old bookworm clung to the papers as if that "doc.u.mentary evidence" was an absolute guaranty, and he held it ready to proffer in support of his theorem. His toughened heart-strings were silent at natural affection's touch, and only tw.a.n.ged to the never-dying greed for gold--useless gold!

In an unmoved wonder, the senile scholar listened to the broken sobs of the child of Valerie Delavigne. He was astounded at her financial carelessness, when she moaned:

"Let me go away! Let me go!" and then she cried, "What care I for all this money--this useless wealth. He is gone! I am now alone in the world! And--and, now I never will know the story of the past!" There was a stony gleam on the old Scotchman's face as the girl sobbed, "Mother!

Mother! Lost to me forever, now." The cunning old Scotchman's face darkened at the mention of that long-forbidden name. The woman who had deserted the rich nabob.

With uneasy, tottering steps the old scholar paced the room, watching the two women in a grim silence, until Justine Delande, with a woman's questioning eyes, pointed to the rooms above.

"Before ye go, and I'll now give ye these whole papers and doc.u.ments, I would say that my dead brother Hugh has here in his will laid out yere whole life for the three years of the minority. He has put on me the thankless labor and care of watching over yere worldly gear, and of keeping ye safely to the lines of prudence and of a just economy. And my duty to my dead brother, I will do just as his own words and hand and seal lay it down! To-morrow I will have much to say to you. If ye will come back to me here, Madame Delande, when my ward goes to her own room, I'll see ye at once on a brief matter o' business. And now I'll wait till ye take her away!" It was a half hour before Justine Delande descended to the rooms where the old egoist chafed at the loss of time stolen from the maundering researches on Thibet and the Ten Tribes.

"Woman! woman! I sent up for ye twice!" he barked, as the half-defiant Swiss governess at length joined him.

"I know my duty to my dear child, Nadine!" said the stout-hearted governess, with a crimsoning cheek. The old man opened a check-book, and sternly said:

"Sit ye there! I'll arrange yere business in a few minutes! And, then, ye can find other duties, and know them as ye care to. I'll have none of yere hoity-toity airs here!" Regardless of the look of horror stealing over the face of Justine, the old man coldly proceeded as if receding from the pulpit. "My late brother, Hugh Fraser Johnstone, of Delhi and Calcutta, has sent me his own last instructions and orders. I have here the last receipt for the stipend which ye have been allowed--and, I'm duly following his orders, when I give ye this check for the six months that has yet too to run.

"And-look ye here! A twenty-pound note to take ye back to Geneva! When ye sign this receipt for the stipend, ye are free to leave my house at once. There's some letters and a couple of telegrams for ye! Bring me the maid, now, and I'll pay her in the same way; and, moreover, I will give her ten pounds to take her home. Then, ye'll both remember ye are not to sleep another night here! I'll give ye the whole day to say good-bye and to make up yere boxes. There will be two four-wheelers here after yere dinner, and ye'll find the Royal Victoria Hotel suited to ye both, at St. Heliers. If ye choose to go, the morning boat takes ye to Granville. Bring the maid here now! Do you linger, woman? I'll be obeyed and forthwith!"

With flas.h.i.+ng eyes, Justine Delande sprang up, facing the flinty-hearted old Scotsman. "I will never abandon Nadine here! She will die in your cheerless prison!" she cried. But the old pedant glowered pitilessly at the startled woman, who cried: "To turn me away like a dog--after these many years!" And her sobs woke the echoes of the vaulted room.

"Hearken, my leddy!" barked old Fraser, "One more word, and I'll have the gardener put ye off the premises! The girl ye speak of is young and strong. She'll have just what the Court gives her, and what her father laid out for her, and I'll work my will, and I'll do his will. Ye're speaking to no fule, here now! Take yere money and yere letters, and bring me the maid, or I'll bundle ye both in a jiffey into the Queen's highway. I'll have none but my own servants here--now!"

Then Justine Delande, without another word, stepped forward, and, seizing the pen, signed her receipt for wages due, in silence. She defiantly gathered up her withheld letters and papers. She returned in a few moments with the maid, whose ox-like eyes glowed in the sudden joy of a return to Switzerland. For the ranz des vaches was now ringing in the stout peasant girl's ears. "There, that's all, now!" rasped the old man, when the maid had gathered up her dole. "The butler will go down to town with ye and see ye safe, and he will leave word at the bank to pay yere checks. I keep no siller here. It's a lonely house." And the dead tyrant worked his will through the living one, as his stony heart had laid out the future.

Justine Delande faced the old miser pedant as she indignantly cried: "G.o.d protect and keep the poor orphan who has drifted out of one h.e.l.l on earth into another! Your dead brother robbed her of a mother's love, and you--you old vampire--you would bury her alive! She shall know yet her dead mother's love, and--her brutal father's shame!"

Before the excited woman could select another period of flowing invective from her thronging emotions, the gaunt old scholar had pushed her out into the hall and slid a bolt upon his door, with a vicious click. There were certain qualms of fear already unsettling his triumphant calmness.

While Justine Delande, with flaming cheeks, sprang up the stair, and barricaded herself with the sobbing heiress, the old man, his eyes gleaming with all the conscious pride of tyranny, seated himself and indited a note directed to

PROFESSOR ALARIC HOBBS, (of Waukesha University, U. S. A.), ROYAL VICTORIA HOTEL, ST. HELIERS, JERSEY.

He had already dismissed from his mind the sorrows of the orphaned niece--he cared not for the spirited onslaught of the Swiss woman--and he rejoiced in his heart at the fact of Douglas Fraser's departure to gather up the loose ends of his dead brother's great fortune. "It's a vixenish baggage--this Swiss teacher! Hugh was right to bid me cut those cords at once and forever between them! The girl shall have discipline, and, that baggage, her mother, is well out of the world! I'll work Hugh's will! She shall come under!" With a secret glee he ran over a schedule of chapter headings upon Thibet, Tibet, Tubet--the land of Bod--Bodyul or Ala.s.sa. He was drifting back into the dreamland of the pedant, but a few hours deserted.

"This Yankee fellow has a keen wit! His ideas on the Ten Tribes are wonderful! His life has been a study of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and the history of the American Indians! I will be a bit decent to the fellow, and I'll get at the meat of his knowledge! He's young and a great chatterer, maybe, but a help to me. Body o' me! But to get there myself--to Thibet.

"Ah!" sighed the old misanthrope, "I'm too old now! And Hugh has failed me! Nothing from him. This sair blow cuts off the last hope! And no educated men of Thibet ever travel! Blindness--blindness everywhere!"

he babbled on, while above him, two women, in an agonized leave-taking, were silently sobbing in each other's arms, while the happy Swiss servant made her boxes. Nadine Johnstone's utter wretchedness gave her no sense of a loss by the hand of Death. For a father's love she had never known, and her mother--a mystery!

The two women cowering together above the old pedant's den with sorrowing hearts communed while Justine Delande directed the packing of her slender belongings. There was a new spirit of revolt stirring in Nadine Johnstone's breast, and her face glowed with the resentment of an outraged heart. When all was ready for Justine's flitting, the heiress of a million pounds finished a little memorandum, which she calmly explained to the Swiss preceptress. The sense of her future rights stirred her like a bugle blast, and with clear eyes, she looked beyond the three years toward Freedom.

"It rests with you, Justine, as to whether I am left friendless for three years of a gloomy captivity. First you are to telegraph to Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers, Delhi, and if you receive no reply, then telegraph to General Willoughby for the Major's address. When at Granville, and, not before, send this letter to Major Hardwicke at the 'Junior United Service Club, London'." The beautiful girl was blus.h.i.+ng rosy red as the sympathetic Swiss folded her to her breast. "Then, when you get to Paris, go to No. 9 Rue Berlioz, and leave this letter there for Madame Berthe Louison. Go yourself. Trust no one. When you have conferred with dear Euphrosyne, you can send all your letters to Madame Louison at Paris under cover. She will find out a safe way to get them to me--even if she has to send her man, Jules, over here. He is quick-witted, and he will find a way to reach me."

There was a dawning wonder in Justine's eyes.

"Who is this strange Madame Louison? Can you trust her?"

"Ah! Justine!" murmured Nadine, "She is only one who loves me, for love's own sake, but I know I can trust her. She knows something of my mother's past life--something that I do not know. This old tyrant will now try to cut me off from all the outside world. He has had some strange power given to him by the father who was only my father in name.

"I will obey you. I swear it!" cried Justine. "And old Simpson will probably be coming on soon. He loves you. He will serve you."

"Yes," joyously exclaimed Nadine, with a glowing face. "And he adores Major Hardwicke, whose father saved his life at Lucknow. There is one dawning hope. You are not to write one word till you hear from me. I know that Madame Louison will manage to send Jules to me in some safe disguise," she proudly cried, "and remember--I shall not be always a poor prisoner with her hands tied. The day of my deliverance comes. When I am twenty-one, I can reward both you and Euphrosyne. She shall have a home to live in ease. And you,--you shall go out into the world with me, and aid me to find my mother. Even in the tomb I shall find her. I shall know of her love. For I shall see her loving face, even only in a picture. The face that has blessed me in my dreams."

Justine Delande saw a future reward awaiting the two faithful guardians of the childhood of Miss Million. With a sudden impulse, she cried: "There is one to aid even nearer to us now than Major Hardwicke. For I have a telegram from Euphrosyne, that Major Haivke is at Geneva."

Nadine Johnstone rose and seized both of Justine's hands: "Promise me now, by my dead mother's grave, that you will never tell that man anything of our secret compact of to-day! I fear him! I disliked him from the first! He had strange dealings with the dead." The girl's face was stern. "If I am approached by him in any way, I will cease every communication with you forever! I will have no aid of Alan Hawke."

And when the parting hour came, Justine Delande was amazed at the cold dignity with which Nadine Johnstone faced the grim old uncle. It was only at the gate of the "Banker's Folly," that the heiress for the last time kissed her friend in adieu. "Fear not for me. I have learned the lesson of Life. Remember!" she whispered. "Keep the faith! Guard my trusts!" and then, Justine sobbed: "Loyal a la, mort!"

The evening shades were darkening the sculptured sh.o.r.es of Rozel Bay, where clumsy luggers lay far below, high and dry on the beach, behind the great masonry pier. Skiffs and fis.h.i.+ng-boats lined the sh.o.r.es, and the soft breeze moved the foliage of the luxuriant garden. The white stars were peeping out and twinkling in the gray and lonely sea, as Nadine s.h.i.+vered and walked firmly back to the portico, where the old recluse awaited her.

With a stiff motion of perfunctory courtesy, he motioned the heiress into the frosty-looking drawing-room, now lit up with spectral gleams of wax candles. For he would treat his ward with a frozen dignity.

Andrew Fraser coughed in a hollow warning and wasted no words in his first bulletin of "General Orders." "I have here a certified copy of your late father's will," he said, "for your perusal. You will see all the conditions of life which he has wisely laid down for you. I have telegraphed on to London for his solicitor to send a representative here, and the original testament will be duly filed at Doctors' Commons, at once. I shall at once provide you with suitable women attendants.

I have already engaged a proper housekeeper, to whom you can state all your wishes. With regard to money matters and your correspondence, you must consult me! For the present, you will readily see that I deem it imprudent for you to leave these s.p.a.cious and splendid grounds! But, ye'll find ways to busy yourself. Women always do!"

The old pedant marveled at the young woman's composure, for she simply bowed and awaited a termination of the interview. Slightly disconcerted, he abruptly demanded: "Have you anything to say?"

"Only this, Andrew Fraser," coldly replied the heiress. "Your sending away the only woman whom I know in the world has marked you as a tyrant and a jailer." Her spirit was as unyielding as his own, and he winced.

"Ye'll find I had your father's warrant. I'll go on to the end and obey him! There are to be no old a.s.sociations kept up, and when ye come to your own ye can do all ye will! I'll go my way in my duty and do it as it seems right!" When he finished he was alone, for the daughter of Valerie Delavigne had pa.s.sed him with a glance of unutterable contempt.

There was fire in the eye of the rebellious girl, and the elastic firmness of youth in her tread, but above stairs, in her own lonely rooms, her courage faded away quickly. But she wrapped her sorrows in her own proud young heart and turned her eyes to the far East. "Will he come?" she murmured.