"Clairvoyance, of course, and perhaps clairaudience as well."
The lad burst out laughing, and said that he wished it were something more useful.
From all of which it will be guessed that Ethel Ogilvy was a mystic of the first water.
CHAPTER V
MADAME RIENNES
About 11 o"clock on the day following this conversation, G.o.dfrey found himself standing on the platform in the big station of Lucerne.
"How are you going to get to Kleindorf?" Miss Ogilvy asked of him.
"It"s five miles away by the road. I think you had better come to my house and have some _dejeuner_. Afterwards I will send you there in the carriage."
As she spoke a tall gaunt man in ultra-clerical attire, with a very large hooked nose and wearing a pair of blue spectacles, came shuffling towards them.
"Madame is Engleesh?" he said, peering at her through the blue gla.s.ses.
"Oh! it is easy to know it, though I am so blind. Has Madame by chance seen a leetle, leetle Engleesh boy, who should arrive out of this train? I look everywhere and I cannot find him, and the conducteur, he says he not there. No leetle boy in the second cla.s.s. His name it is G.o.dfrey, the son of an English pasteur, a man who fear G.o.d in the right way."
There was something so absurd in the old gentleman"s appearance and method of address, that Miss Ogilvy, who had a sense of humour, was obliged to turn away to hide her mirth. Recovering, she answered:
"I think this is your little boy, Monsieur le Pasteur," and she indicated the tall and handsome G.o.dfrey, who stood gazing at his future instructor open-mouthed. Whoever he had met in his visions, the Pasteur Boiset was not one of them. Never, asleep or waking, had he seen anyone in the least like him.
The clergyman peered at G.o.dfrey, studying him from head to foot.
"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, "I understood he was quite, quite leetle, not a big young man who will eat much and want many things. Well, he will be _bon compagnon_ for Juliette, and Madame too, she like the big better than the leetle. _Il est beau et il a l"air intelligent, n"est ce pas, Madame?_" he added confidentially.
"_Bien beau et tres intelligent_," she replied, observing that G.o.dfrey was engaged in retrieving his overcoat which he had left in the carriage. Then she explained that she had become friendly with this young gentleman, and hoped that he would be allowed to visit her whenever he wished. Also she gave her name and address.
"Oh! yes, Mademoiselle Ogilvee, the rich English lady who live in the fine house. I have heard of her. _Mais voyons!_ Mademoiselle is not Catholic, is she, for I promise to protect this lad from that red wolf?"
"No, Monsieur, fear nothing. Whatever I am, I am not Catholic,"
(though, perhaps, if you knew all, you would think me something much more dangerous, she added to herself.)
Then they said goodbye.
"I say, Miss Ogilvy," exclaimed G.o.dfrey, blushing, "you"ve been awfully kind to me. If it hadn"t been for you I should have missed that train and never heard the last of it. Also, I should have had to go hungry from London here, since I promised my father not to buy anything on the journey, and you know I forgot the basket." (By the way, being addressed, it arrived three days afterwards, a ma.s.s of corruption, with six francs to pay on it, and many papers to be signed.)
"Not at all, G.o.dfrey, it was delightful to have you as a companion--and a friend," she added meaningly. "You will come and see me, won"t you?"
"Yes, of course, if I can. But meanwhile, please wait a minute," and he pulled out his purse.
"What on earth are you going to do, G.o.dfrey? I don"t want your card."
"Card! I haven"t got a card. I am going to make you a present."
"Make me a present?" gasped Miss Ogilvy, a vague vision of half-crowns flashing before her mind.
"Yes, it is rather a curious thing. It was found round the neck-bone of an old knight, whose remains they threw out of the Abbey Church when they put in the heating apparatus. I saw it there, and the s.e.xton gave it to me when he discovered that it was only stone. You will see it has a hole in it, so he must have worn it as an ornament. The grave he lay in was that of a Crusader, for the legs are crossed upon his bra.s.s, although his name has gone. Oh! here it is," and he produced an oblong piece of black graphite or some such stone, covered with mystical engravings.
She seized the object, and examined it eagerly.
"Why, it is a talisman," she said, "Gnostic, I should think, for there is the c.o.c.k upon it, and a lot that I can"t read, probably a magic formula. No doubt the old Crusader got it in the East, perhaps as a gift from some Saracen in whose family it had descended. Oh! my dear boy, I do thank you. You could not have made me a present that I should value more."
"I am so glad," said G.o.dfrey.
"Yes, but I am ashamed to take it from you. Well, I"ll leave it back to you one day."
"Leave it back! Then you must die before me, and why should you do that? You are quite young."
"Because I shall," she answered with a sad little smile. "I look stronger than I am. Meanwhile you will come and tell me all about this talisman."
"I have told you all I know, Miss Ogilvy."
"Do you think so? I don"t. But look, your old pasteur is calling that the diligence is coming. Good-bye. I"ll send the carriage for you next Sunday in time for _dejeuner_."
A few minutes later G.o.dfrey found himself packed in a rumbling old diligence amidst a number of peasant women with baskets. Also there was a Roman Catholic priest who sat opposite to the Pasteur. For a while these two eyed each other with evident animosity, just like a pair of rival dogs, G.o.dfrey thought to himself.
At the outskirts of the town they pa.s.sed a shrine, in which was the image of some saint. The priest crossed himself and bowed so low that he struck the knee of the Pasteur, who remonstrated in an elaborate and sarcastic fashion. Then the fight began, and those two holy men belaboured each other, with words, not fists, for the rest of the journey. G.o.dfrey"s French was sadly to seek, still before it was done, he did wonder whether all their language was strictly Christian, for such words as _Sapristi_, and _Nom de Dieu_, accompanied by snapping of the fingers, and angry stares, struck him as showing a contentious and even a hostile spirit. Moreover, that was not the end of it, since of the occupants of the diligence, about one half seemed to belong to the party of the priest, and the other half to the party of the Pasteur.
By degrees all of these were drawn into the conflict. They shouted and screamed at each other, they waved their arms, and incidentally their baskets, one of which struck G.o.dfrey on the nose, and indeed nearly came to actual fisticuffs.
Apparently the driver was accustomed to such scenes, for after a glance through his little window he took no further notice. So it went on until at last he pulled up and shouted:
"_Voyageurs pour Kleindorf, descendez. Vite, s"il vous plait._"
"Here we do get down, young Monsieur," said the Pasteur, suddenly relapsing into a kind of unnatural calm. Indeed, at the door he turned and bowed politely to his adversary, wishing him _bon voyage_, to which the priest replied with a solemn benediction in the most Catholic form.
"He is not bad of heart, that priest," said the Pasteur, as he led the way to the gate of a little shrubbery, "but he do try to steal my sheep, and I protect them from him, the blood-toothed wolf. Jean, Jean!"
A brawny Swiss appeared and seized the baggage. Then they advanced across the belt of shrubbery to a lawn, through which ran a path. Lo!
in the centre of that lawn grew such a fruit-tree, covered with large cherries or small plums, as G.o.dfrey had described to Miss Ogilvy, and beyond it stood the long white house, old, and big, and peaceful looking. What he had not described, because of them his subliminal sense had given him no inkling, were the two ladies, who sat expectant on the verandah, that commanded a beautiful view of the lake and the mountains beyond.
By a kind of instinct distilled from his experience of clergymen"s belongings, G.o.dfrey had expected to see a dowdy female, with a red, fat face, and watery eyes, perhaps wearing an ap.r.o.n and a black dress hooked awry, accompanied by a snub-nosed little girl with straight hair, and a cold in the head. In place of these he saw a fashionably-dressed, Parisian-looking lady, who still seemed quite young, very pleasant to behold, with her dark eyes and graceful movements, and a girl, apparently about his own age, who was equally attractive.
She was brown-eyed, with a quick, mobile face, and a lithe and shapely, if as yet somewhat unformed figure. The long thick plait in which her chestnut hair was arranged could not hide its plenitude and beauty, while the smallness of her hands and feet showed breeding, as did her manners and presence. The observant G.o.dfrey, at his first sight of Juliette, for such was her name, marvelled how it was possible that she should be the daughter of that plain and ungainly old pasteur. On this point it is enough to say that others had experienced the same wonder, and remained with their curiosity unsatisfied. But then he might as well have inquired how he, G.o.dfrey, came to be his father"s son, since in the whole universe no two creatures could have been more diverse.
Monsieur Boiset waddled forward, with a gait like to that of a superannuated duck, followed at some distance by G.o.dfrey and the stalwart Jean with the luggage.
"My dears," he called out in his high voice, "I have found our new little friend; the train brought him safely. Here he is."
Madame and Juliette looked about them.
"I see him not," said Madame.