“Madame is very young; we hope you will place her with people you know.”
Monsieur Mérino was mentioned, however, by the husband himself. It transpired Madame owed him money. She wished to see him again to pay him.
“I will pay him,” said Monsieur Koelen icily; “I will call at his hotel on my way.”
“_Bien, mon chéri_,” she murmured, in a faint voice.
In a turn of the hand, as they would have said themselves, her affairs were arranged. She was to go to Eastbourne, under the care of some elderly aunts, Monsieur Koelen presently announced.
We had thought he looked like a hunted hare. He had that expression of mortal agony stamped on his face, which is often seen--more shame for us!--on some poor dumb creature in terror for its life; but he had still enough spirit in him to reduce Madame Koelen to abject submission.
We could see he was oppressed with melancholy: that his heart was bursting over the children. We understood that this parting was perhaps worse for him than those first rushed farewells.
He seemed scarcely to have arrived before he was gone again. The young wife must have had some spark of feeling left--perhaps, after all, under the almost savage desire for a fling she had a stratum of natural affection, common loyalty--for she wept bitterly after his departure, and, that night, for the first time, came into the little chapel and prayed.
We met the nurse with the children in the garden, just as the father was being driven away: a small, upright creature this, with flax-blue eyes and corn-coloured hair, which she wore in plaits tightly wound round her head. She did not look a day more than sixteen, but she had the self-possession of forty; and possessed resource also, as was demonstrated by her dealings with Baby.
“Monsieur is so sad. Madame is so sad, because of Antwerp, _n’est-ce pas?_” she said to us, and by the sly look in those blue eyes we saw that she was in her mistress’s confidence.
It was true that he was sad for Antwerp; if the word “sad” can be used to describe that bleak despair which we have noticed in so many Belgian men who have found shelter in this country.
“It is impossible that Antwerp should hold out,” he said to us; “the spies and traitors have done their work too well. The spies are waiting for them inside our walls. They know every nook in every fort, every weak spot better than we do ourselves.”