The day was darkening when he came down again from the hill. Lights were twinkling all round the horizon: the steady light on the point of Antibes, the little revolving one on the pierhead of that little town, which he had always been so fond of watching as it went and came; and in the distance, towards the east, the light of the Cap Fêrat standing out into the sea; and the little glimmer of the household lamps of Cagnes mounting in steps upon the hillside; and below a little flame from the railway and the cafés that surrounded it. When he turned his eyes from the sea, it was the latter that attracted John with a sort of sinister fascination. It flared out vulgarly, coarsely, into the night, so unlike the charm of those beneficent, calm lights held up on every side to guide the travellers at sea; but it drew his feet unwillingly towards the place where that horrible event had occurred which had changed all John's life for him. His father – not the father who slept under that silent shining of the Mediterranean, a father who had never been, except in the boy's dreaming soul, but whom he could not part with, who was a portion of himself – but the other, the dreadful reality, lying in the bare white room yonder, uncovered, in the clothes which seemed to make that reality more horrible still – was he still lying there as before, like a wreck, like something cast up by a wave, lying straight out, the head lower than the feet, in that awful way? John shuddered; but he was drawn, he knew not how, to the place, and stood in the dark opposite for a moment, looking at the glaring light and the men who sat at the round tables in front of the café, talking loud and all together. They had discussed the event till it was exhausted, and all the new lights it threw on l'Anglaise, Madame Jeanne; but now they had returned to their natural topics, and were as noisy as ever, quite unmoved by any recollection of that lump of ended being which lay up-stairs. He stood and watched, with a strange throb of horror and rebellion against that thing to which it appeared he owed his life, and at the same time with a sense of grievance in the carelessness of the men who paid no respect to it. As he stood there, the half-closed shutters were softly opened in that room, and a shadowy figure came out upon the balcony. John knew by the white cap that it was a Sister.
"Pour l'amour de Dieu taisez-vous, mes amis," said a soft voice, audible in the interval of the clamour below.
There were faint lights in the room into which she went silently back. Charity was watching over him, then, – watching and praying. John went away home very quietly, overawed, and saying nothing even to himself.
He was too late for supper, which was arranged on the table, though untouched; but he had no mild reproach to encounter, as he would have had in an ordinary case. His mother was seated at a little table, with a piece of paper and a pencil in her hand, writing, and then pausing to count her words and strike out now one, now another. She was saying over those words to herself aloud as he came in, and only looked up at him, not saying anything to him, continuing her task.
"Beg you to come to guard my son's interests. Beg you come, for boy's sake. Beg come – " She went on, withdrawing or changing a word every time.
"What is it, mother?" said John. These were almost the first words he had addressed to her since he had heard her story.
"I am writing a telegram. It will cost a great deal to go to England; I am trying to put it in as few words as possible."
"May I see it, mother?"
How happy it is to have a subject, something to discuss which is not the one absorbing thing, at the time of a great crisis! The two came together once more over this paper which had to be written so carefully. There was very little money in the house. Indeed they did not live much on money, these two people, but on their garden, and by simple ways of barter, with the smallest possible dependence on any currency; and to have to pay so many francs at the post office for a telegram struck them with dismay. In this point Madame Jeanne, who had lived for one part of her life in a country and class given to telegrams, was more at her ease than John, to whom it seemed incredible that as much as five francs, or even more, could be given for a mere message – a thing that was nothing, and benefited nobody. He asked her a great many questions on the subject.
"Who is this?" he said; "and why do you want him to come here?"
"He is my guardian, John."
"Your guardian? But he does not seem to have taken much care of you, mother."