PART TWO (continued 3)

“Ah, Monsieur Tod, but you are très, très gentil, très généreux.”

“Am I?” said Tod. “But why? I have never enjoyed myself like this before.”

He was looking at Claire with eyes of wonder and of tenderness.

“You will spoil her, monsieur,” said André roguishly.

Madame snubbed him.

“Love never spoilt a good woman, my son. Take that to heart.”

Then Claire escaped.

“Tod is hungry,” she asserted.

“I’m not,” said her man.

“But you must be, because I am,” and she laughed back at them from the doorway. “I shall be back in one moment, and I will help to get some supper.”

“It is ready,” Josephine called after her: “we waited for you.”

Tod wandered out into the orchard, because the sunset was there and a blackbird was singing, and all his happiness seemed part of the sunset and the green leaves and the blackbird’s song. Tod had never thought that life could be so good. He idled to and fro under the apple trees, filled to the lips with a precious and innocent tenderness, a simple man whose very simplicity was his strength.

Presently he heard Claire calling him.

“Tod! Tod!”

He turned and met her where a red rose bush grew by the garden gate, and Tod stood still. She had changed her new frock and put on her simple black working skirt, a white blouse and the little apron with the blue pansies. It was the Claire of all his memories, the Claire of the schoolhouse, the Claire who had won him in her daintily shabby clothes.

“Dear God!” said Tod, “nothing will ever be better than that. It’s the woman, not the clothes.”

Chapter Forty-six

One summer afternoon Mr. Julian Burgetrode met the Channel boat at Folkestone.

Standing behind a crane, a friend unseen, he watched the crowd on the boat’s deck and their sheep’s progress towards the gangway. Mr. Burgetrode had to look elsewhere for Tod and for Tod’s wife, for they were not among the people who pushed and struggled to extricate handbags and suit-cases.

“Silly fools,” he said, “and to think we had an army!”

Then he caught sight of Tod, Tod standing a little apart and absorbed in an affectionate argument with a little woman in black, a charmingly sturdy little woman who looked up into Tod’s face and maintained a grip of her handbag.

“I will carry it,” Claire was saying; “I am not so helpless.”

It was Tod who gave in, and like a big, amused, and a devoted boy, but Mr. Burgetrode was not interested in Tod; his attention was absorbed by Tod’s French wife. The Colossus had very keen sight, and he watched this little woman in black while she was wholly unconscious of being observed. He had an impression of a full round face, pale, but not with the pallor of Paris, a wreath of soft brown hair, two big grey eyes, a mouth that was both generous and shrewd, and a very firm little chin. She was dressed quite simply in that costume that had been bought at Lille before the war, and the black velour cloak, and the hat that had come from Eu. She was one of those women who combine animation and repose, who look both fragile and strong. Mr. Burgetrode had a full view of her face as she talked to Tod, and it made him think of soft white light, pure and yet sensitively passionate.

“French,” said Mr. Burgetrode to himself, “but yet not the France of Paris. A little fair girl with a white throat and a passion for one man in those grey eyes of hers. A very great passion perhaps. And she understands.”

The crowd poured off the boat, and Tod was shepherding Claire towards the gangway, making a sort of sacred space about her. Mr. Burgetrode saw him glance over his shoulder, and then set his back squarely and forcibly against the energetic person of a bullet-headed Englishman who was thinking of nothing but a seat in the luncheon-car. Tod held the man back till Claire was on the gangway. Mr. Burgetrode liked the squareness and the determination of Tod’s back.

He went forward hat in hand to meet them.

“Hallo, sir! I hadn’t seen you. It’s very good of you to come and meet us.”

Mr. Burgetrode was smiling.

“So here you are. And this is my adopted daughter? I am very charmed to welcome you, madame.”

Mr. Burgetrode spoke excellent French, and for the moment he had something of the manner of a Frenchman. Standing there bareheaded, he held out a hand to Claire.

“It is Mr. Burgetrode,” said Tod.

She gave him a little smile, and then looked straight at Julian Burgetrode. Their hands met. Claire’s eyes and face were as open as the light to him; he was Tod’s big friend, and hers, a cleverer man than Tod, she knew that at once; but great with the same greatness, so she thought. She showed no fear of Julian Burgetrode, no knowledge of the necessity in an attitude that should please him. It was possible that he might be jealous of her. She smiled that aside.

“I have wished so much to see you, monsieur.”

Mr. Burgetrode still held her hand. He liked her simplicity, her unaffectedness, her dignity that was like the dignity of a child. She had come to a strange land, bravely, without tears, trusting a man. And he, too, was trusted. The bigness of him offered its homage.

“Well, now you see me, Madame Claire. Is it a surprise for both of us? I think I have the right to the greater pleasure.”

The woman in her answered the more subtle man in him.

“You will have no cause to be afraid of me, monsieur.”

“My dear child!” said Mr. Burgetrode with unusual emotion; “Tod, you scoundrel, why didn’t you tell me?”

Tod looked puzzled.

“What, sir?”

A sudden smile passed between Claire and Mr. Burgetrode.

“Of course you told me! I beg your pardon. I didn’t visualise it, that’s all.”

They followed the porter and the luggage along the pier, Claire walking between the two men, and looking with eyes of amazement at all those people who seemed in so savage and helpless a hurry.

“How droll,” she said with a glance at Mr. Burgetrode, “I expected England to be so calm.”

“Calm!” echoed the great man; “no, we are not calm. We are much too discontented.”

Tod walked on to speak to the porter.

“My husband is not discontented,” said Claire.

Mr. Burgetrode’s fierce blue eyes softened when he looked at this little woman.

“He is a very unusual man.”

“He is the best and most generous man in the world,” she said, and then with a passionately serious light in her grey eyes, “it is my affair that he shall always be happy.”

Tod came back to them.

“There’s a big crowd in the Customs.”

“No hurry,” said Mr. Burgetrode. “I booked three seats on the luncheon-car.”

“Will they want to open my box and disarrange all my pretty things?”

“Smile at them, madame,” said Mr. Burgetrode with an air of mischief. “Tod, you had better leave it to your wife.”

Julian Burgetrode had yet another opportunity of watching these two children of his while they were dealing with a bored and rather irritable official. Tod chose to act as spokesman. Claire stood at his side, looking up at him with eyes of adoration, motherliness, pride.

“I’m asking you if you have anything to declare, sir. It’s no use——”

“I haven’t anything; but my wife——”

“Open the lady’s trunk,” said the man brusquely.

Claire looked at Tod.

“What does he say?”

“He wishes to see your trunk?”

“Quelle horreur!” said Claire.

She took a little bunch of keys out of her vanity-bag and turned to the official.

“Monsieur,” she began, using for the first time her quaint academic English, “I am married, one week. I have one Paris costume, three silk petticoats, my lingerie——”

The man stared at her. She was preparing to unlock her trunk.

“You will not disarrange all my pretty things, monsieur, please?”

Mr. Burgetrode saw that something had happened to the official. His bored face broadened to a smile. He looked at Tod and chalked the luggage.

“That’s all right, sir. I won’t bother the lady.”

“You can put your keys back, ma chérie,” said Tod.

Claire thanked the official.

“It is very agreeable of you, monsieur. I have told you the truth; it is just my little trousseau.”

“Don’t mention it, madam,” said the man.

Mr. Burgetrode swept them away. He was laughing somewhere in the depths of those fierce eyes of his.

“I was wrong,” he said to himself, “quite wrong. I shall never be jealous of this child.”

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of The Prophetic Marriage by Warwick Deeping]