Basil and Annette

"Yes."

"I wanted all day to speak to you about it. I thought I would when we were in the wood alone; then you spoke of my eyes and I thought of my dear mother. You would have loved her, Basil, and she would have loved you. She hears me now-yes, she hears and sees me, Basil, and I think she is glad you came to us."

"I am glad too, Annette."

"Really glad, Basil?"

"Really glad, Annette."

"Then you will not go away from us?"

"What makes you ask that?" Her question, tremulously uttered, formed a pregnant link in the promise he had given her father.

"It is my dream," said Annette. "I dreamt it last night, and it made me sad. You came to say good-bye, and I was unhappy at the thought that I should never see you again. Basil, if that was to happen I should be sorry you ever came at all."

"Then you wish me to stay?"

"Dearly, Basil, dearly! I thought I would speak to father about it; then I thought I would speak to you first."

"Did you not speak to your father?"

"Not about my dream; but about your going away, yes. I asked him to persuade you to stop with us."

"Because, Annette-" he said, and paused. "Because I love you, Basil. I told father so, and he said he loved you, too, and that he wished he had a son like you. Then you would be my brother, and I should be very happy. But father said he was afraid you intended to leave us soon, and that made me dream, I suppose."

"Annette, listen to me."

"I am listening, Basil."

"Your father has spoken to me, and that is why I was so late in coming to you. He asked me to remain here, and I promised him I would."

"You did? Oh, Basil!" Her voice expressed the most perfect joy. She had risen in her excitement, and was now leaning towards him, her lips parted, her eyes glowing.

"Yes, Annette, I promised him, and I promise you. For some years at least we will live together."

She threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

"That will be for ever, Basil. You have made me do happy, so happy!"

"So that is all settled," he said. "But I shall be a tyrant, Annette."

"I don't mind, Basil; I will be very good and obedient. Do you hear, Bruno, do you hear?" She knelt and kissed the faithful dog, and pressed his head to her bosom. "Basil is not going away. He will remain here forever-for ever!"

Basil was very grateful for the little maid's affection, grateful that his lines had fallen in such pleasant places. What more could man desire? But there was a shadow gathering and swiftly approaching which neither of them could see.

They stopped out later than usual that evening, and when they returned to the house Annette was radiant.

"Basil has promised to remain with us, father," she said, in a voice of great joy.

"He has told you, then, dear child?"

"Yes, father, yes. He will stop with us for ever. I don't wish for anything now."

The three happy beings sat together in the verandah during the few brief minutes that divided day and night. In those latitudes there is but little twilight, and the long peaceful rest of an English sunset is unknown. For a few moments the brilliancy was dazzling. Great clouds of amethyst and ruby spread over the western skies, melting soon into sombre shades of purple and crimson. Then the sun dipped down and disappeared, and the skies were overspread with a veil of faded gold, behind which the white stars glittered.

Their souls were in harmony with the spiritual influence of the lovely scene, and there was an ineffable peace in their hearts. Annette kissed Basil before she retired to rest, and whispered: "Brother Basil, 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."