“We could try,” said Evie.
“The three of us might manage it,” I replied. “It would be quicker. Could you take his feet and I’ll have the other end. Dolly, hold my horse while we try.”
It was not easy but we managed to get him up. He lay limply across my horse, his dangling hands almost touching the ground.
“It will be slow progress,” I said.
“But quicker,” repeated Evie, “than going all the way back and getting help.”
“Let’s go then.”
I mounted my horse and we made our slow return to Eversleigh.
That was how we found Alberic Claremont.
As soon as we arrived at Eversleigh we got him to bed. He opened his eyes and looked at us vaguely.
“He’s probably starving,” said my mother. “We’ll try him with a little soup. But first we’ll send for the doctor.”
When the doctor arrived he said the young man would soon recover. There was nothing wrong with him except that he was suffering from exposure and as we had thought, exhaustion. A few days’ rest and some nourishing food, served in small quantities at first but frequently, and he should soon be quite fit.
The diagnosis proved to be correct. At the end of the first day the young man was able to open his eyes and speak to us.
He spoke in French so we guessed his story even before he told it to us. He had escaped from the Terror and was seeking refuge in England as so many of his fellow countrymen were doing at this time.
They had taken his father to the guillotine. He had done no wrong, but he had been a bailiff to one of the big estates in the south of France. His brother was in the army serving his country. He had been warned that he had been marked as an enemy of the revolution, so he had known there was only one thing for him to do—get away.
He had left his home and travelled through France disguised as a peasant. He had reached the coast. There were ways of getting across, provided money could change hands, and he embarked in a remote bay in France and landed at an equally isolated one in England.
“Were you alone?” asked my mother.
He shook his head. “There were two others. I do not know what became of them. I only know that they shared the boat with me and when I said I was so exhausted that I could not go on they left me.”
“They might have looked after you,” I put in.
“Madame, they were afraid. We have suffered much. I understood, and I implored them to leave me. They say there are too many émigrés arriving and that your government does not want them and may send them back.” He shivered. “They were afraid that if there were three of us…”
“I wonder where they have gone,” I said.
He lifted his shoulders and closed his eyes.
“He is very tired,” said my mother. “Don’t let us disturb him just now.”
The next morning he was much refreshed. We kept him in bed and he seemed very pleased to stay there.
He spoke a little English but it was necessary for us to conduct our conversation in French.
He told us his name was Alberic Claremont. He said: “I can never go back to France. You wouldn’t send me, would you? Would you?”
There was such terror in his eyes that my mother cried out fiercely: “Never.”
Dickon, who had returned late in the evening, had listened to the story without any great surprise.
“They are flying from the Terror in hundreds,” he said. “I wonder we don’t get more of them. What sort of man is he?”
“He’s young,” replied my mother. “He seems educated. I think he has been through terrible dangers.”
“That seems likely.”
“I want to see him quite well before he leaves here.”
“Where will he go to?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he has friends here. Perhaps he can find the friends he came with. I don’t think much of them, leaving him like that on the shore.”
I put in: “You know the spot, close by the old boat house. It’s very lonely there. Evie and Dolly Mather just happened to find him.”
“He might have stayed there for a long time if they hadn’t,” said my mother.
“He would never have survived at this time of the year.”
“Well, let’s see how he shapes up,” said Dickon.
Sophie was very interested to hear how we had rescued the young man. She came to see him and sat by his bed talking to him in their native tongue, and I could see that she had taken a fancy to Alberic Claremont.
Next morning Evie called with Dolly to enquire about the young man they had rescued.
I took them up to his bedroom. He was lying in his bed looking quite different from the young man they had found on the beach.
“So you are the young ladies who found me,” he said in French.
His eyes were on Evie and she flushed a little as she replied in English: “My sister and I were riding. We often go down to the sea. How glad I am that we went yesterday.”
He could not understand very well and I said: “Monsieur Claremont speaks very little English, Evie. Have you any French?”
She flushed again and stammered that she had a little but not much. “Grandmamma insisted that our governess teach Dolly and me French. But we aren’t very good at it, are we, Dolly?”
“You are, Evie,” said Dolly.
“Not very, I’m afraid.”
“Try,” I said.
And she did. She had just enough to make herself understood in simple sentences, and Alberic Claremont seemed to be very pleased to assist her. He tried to speak English and they laughed together while Dolly sat silent, watching her sister’s face all the time.
When she left, Evie asked if she might call again.
I said but of course she must.
My mother commented: “Evie is delighted with him because she has probably saved his life. There is nothing more endearing than someone who owes you a great deal, and what could be more than a life?”
“You sound more like Dickon every day.”
“I suppose one grows a little like someone with whom one is in constant contact.”
“Don’t grow too much like him, dear Maman. Stay yourself.”
“I promise,” she said.
Within a few days Alberic was quite well.
We had family discussions about him. What could we do for him? There he was, a young man restored to health; he had brought French currency with him, but what good was that in England? Where could he go? What could he do? Could he work somewhere? The French were not very popular in England at this time.
It was Sophie who came up with the solution.
She needed servants. She was looking for them now. What if she offered Alberic a post in her household? What could he be? A butler? Could he work in the gardens? It was not so important how he worked as that he did. She would talk to him and discover for what he was best suited.
“In any case,” she said, “he can come to Enderby and stay there until he decides what he must do. When this terrible revolution is over, perhaps there will be changes in France. In which case those French who are sheltering here might want to go back.”
It was a solution, and when it was put to Alberic that for the time being he should go to Enderby and work there for Aunt Sophie in whatever capacity they found most suitable, he accepted with alacrity.
At the end of February Sophie moved into Enderby. Alberic delighted her and Jeanne approved of him. He was an indefatigable worker, and he was so grateful to Sophie for providing a home for him that he declared he would die for her.
Dickon said cynically: “It might be a different story if the noble young gentleman were called upon to carry out his promise. All the same, French melodrama apart, he is reasonably grateful, and as Sophie was looking for people to serve her, she has found one, who because of his position and the fact that he shared her nationality, could prove satisfactory.”