I shall have happier dreams to-night."
He kissed her tenderly, and bade her good-night. Unclouded happiness shone in her eyes as she stole to her room, where she knelt by her bedside, and uttered the name of Basil in her prayers.
Anthony Bidaud gazed at his daughter till she entered the house, and even then kept his eyes fixed upon the door through which she had disappeared.
"It is years," he said to Basil, "since I have felt so thoroughly content as I do to-night. Come to my room early in the morning; I shall not write to my lawyer till then, and I wish you to see the letter."
Shortly after all the inmates of the house were asleep.
And while they slept, there walked across the distant plains towards the plantation, a man and a woman who had had that goal in view for three months past. It was summer when they left their home across the seas. It was summer when they reached the land to which the woman had been summoned. But, judging from their faces, no summer errand was theirs.
"Walk quicker," said the man, surlily. "We must get there before sunrise. My heart is bent upon it."
"I am fit to drop," said the woman. "How much farther have we to go?"
"According to information, fifteen miles. Walk quicker, quicker! Have you travelled so far to faint at the last moment? Remember we have not a penny left to purchase food, and have already fasted too many hours. I see visions of ease and comfort, of wine and food, ay, and of riches too. I am eager to get at them."
"Do you remember," said the woman, "that you were not bidden to come?"
"What of that?" retorted the man. "I have my tale ready. Leave me to play my part. Our days of poverty are over. This is the last of them. Walk quicker, quicker!"
CHAPTER V
A little after sunrise Basil was awake and out, hastening to the river for his morning bath. He had slept well and soundly, but he had had vivid dreams. The events of the day had sunk deep in his mind; it would have been strange otherwise, for they had altered the currents of his whole future life. They had furnished him with a secure and happy home; they had placed him in a position of responsibility which he hailed with satisfaction and a sense of justifiable pride; moreover, they had assured him that he had won the affection of a kind and generous gentleman and of a sweet-tempered and gentle little maid. He was no longer an outcast; he was no longer alone in the world.
Until this void was supplied he had not felt it. Young, buoyant, and with a fund of animal spirits which was the secret of his cheerful nature, sufficient for the day had been the good thereof; but now quite suddenly an unexpected and sweetly serious duty had been offered to him, and he had accepted it. He would perform it faithfully and conscientiously.
Every word Anthony Bidaud had spoken to him had impressed itself upon his mind. He could have repeated their conversation almost word for word. It was this which had inspired his dreams, which formed, as it were, a panorama of the present and the future.
Annette as she was at this moment, a child, appeared to him and he lived over again their delightful rambles; for although it was but yesterday that they were enjoyed, the duty he had taken upon himself seemed to send them far back into the past; but still Annette was a child, and her sunny ways belonged to childhood. The story of "Paul and Virginia" had been a favourite with him when he was a youngster, and his dreams at first were touched by the colour of that simple tale. The life he had lived these last few weeks on Anthony Bidaud's plantation favoured the resemblance: the South Sea Islanders who worked on the land, the waterfalls, the woods, the solitudes, the protecting bond which linked him to Annette-all formed in his sleeping fancies a companion idyll to the charming creation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. He carried Annette over the river, he wandered with her through the shadows of the mountains, they were lost and found, they sat together under the shade of the velvet sunflower-tree; and in this part of his dreams he himself was a youth and not a man.
So much for the present, and it was due to his light heart and the happiness he had found that his dreams did not take the colour of the subsequent tragedy which brought the lives of these woodland children to their sad and pathetic end. His future and Annette's was brighter than that of Paul and Virginia. He beheld her as a woman, and he was still her protector. She represented the beauty of the entire world of thought and action. Her figure was faultless, her face most lovely, her movements gracefully perfect. There are countenances upon which an eternal cloud appears to rest, and which even when they smile are not illumined. Upon Annette's countenance rested an eternal sunshine, and this quality of light irradiated not only all surrounding visible objects, but all hopes and feelings of the heart. When Basil awoke these felicitous fancies were not obliterated or weakened, as most such fancies are in waking moments, and as he walked towards the river they lightened his footsteps and made him glad. Wending his way along a cattle track dotted with gum-trees, he saw beneath the branches of one a woman whose face was strange to him. She was not English born, and as she reclined in an attitude of fatigue against the tree's trunk there was about her an air of exhaustion which stirred Basil to compassion for her apparently forlorn condition. He remembered his own days and nights of weary tramping through the bush, and, pausing, he looked down upon her, and she peered up at him through her half-closed lids.
"Good morning," said Basil.
"Is it?" she asked, with a heavy sigh.
"Is it what?"
"Good morning. To me it is a bad morning."
Basil looked round. The heavens were luminous with vivid colour, the birds were flying busily to and from their nests, nature's myriad pulses throbbed with gladness. To him it was the best, the brightest of days. But this sad woman before him was pale and worn; there were traces not only of exhaustion but of hunger in her face.
"You are hungry," said Basil.
"Don't mock me," said the woman, in no gracious tone; "let me rest."
"If you follow this track," persisted Basil, "the way I have come, you will see the Home Station. They will give you breakfast there."
For a moment the woman appeared inclined to accept his kindness she made a movement upwards, but almost immediately she relinquished her intention.
"No," she said, "I will wait."
He was loth to leave her in her distressful plight, but her churlish manner was discouraging.
"Will you not let me help you?"
"You can help me," said the woman, "by leaving me."
He had no alternative. "If you think better of it," he said, "you can obtain shelter and food at the Home Station." Then he passed on to the river.
A stranger was there, already stripping for the purpose of bathing. Scarcely looking at him, Basil was about to remove to a more retired spot when he observed something in the water which caused him to run to the man, who was removing his last garment, and seize his arm.
"What for?" demanded the stranger.
He spoke fairly good English, as did the woman who had declined his assistance, but with a foreign accent. He was brown, and thin, and wrinkled, and Basil saw at once that he was not an Englishman.
"I presume you have not breakfasted yet," was Basil's apparently inconsequential answer to the question.
"Not yet," said the stranger impatiently, shaking himself free from Basil's grasp. "Why do you stop me? Is not the river free?"
"Quite
