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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"If the Archangel Gabriel came in, they would still attend to their
business," he replied, in his thick, slow voice. "But he won't. He is not
one of my clients. Quite the contrary."

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence smoothed the fur that bordered her neat jacket
and glanced sideways at her banker. Then she looked round the room. It
was bare enough. A single picture hung on the wall--a portrait of an old
lady. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence raised her eyebrows, and continued her
scrutiny. Here, again, was no iron safe. There were no ledgers, no
diaries, no note-books, no paraphernalia of business. Nothing but a bare
table and John Turner seated at it, in a much more comfortable chair than
that provided for the client, staring apathetically at a date-case which
stood on a bare mantelpiece.

The lady's eyes returned to the portrait on the wall.

"You used to have a portrait of Louis Philippe there," she said.

"When Louis Philippe was on the throne," admitted the banker.

"And now?" inquired this daughter of Eve, looking at the portrait.

"My maternal aunt," replied Turner, making a gesture with two fingers, as
if introducing his client to the portrait.

"You keep her, one may suppose, as a stop-gap--between the dynasties. It
is so safe--a maternal aunt!"

"One cannot hang a republic on the wall, however much one may want to."

"Then you are a Royalist?" inquired Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.

"No; I am only a banker," replied Turner, with his chin sinking lower on
his bulging waistcoat and his eyes scarcely visible beneath the heavy
lids.

The remark, coupled with a thought that Turner was going to sleep, seemed
to remind the client of her business.

"Will you kindly ask one of your clerks to let me know how much money I
have?" she said, casting a glance not wholly innocent of scornful
reproach at the table, so glaringly devoid of the bare necessities of a
banking business.

"Only eleven thousand francs and fourteen sous," replied Turner, with a
promptness which seemed to suggest that he kept no diary or note-book on
the table before him because he had need of neither.

"I feel sure I must have more than that," said Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence,
with some spirit. "I quite thought I had."

But John Turner only moistened his lips and sat patiently gazing at the
date. His attitude dimly suggested--quite in a nice way--that the chair
upon which Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sat was polished bright by the
garments of persons who had found themselves labouring under the same
error.

"Well, I must have a hundred thousand francs to-morrow; that is all.
Simply must. And in notes, too. I told you I should want it when you came
to see me at Royan. You must remember. I told you at luncheon."

"When we were eating a sweetbread _aux champignons._ I remember
perfectly. We do not get sweetbreads like that in Paris."

And John Turner shook his head sadly. "Well, will you let me have the
money to-morrow morning--in notes?"

"I remember I advised you not to sell just now; after we had finished the
sweetbread and had gone on to a _crême renversée_--very good one, too.
Yes, it is a bad time to sell. Things are uncertain in France just now.
One cannot even get one's meals properly served. Cook's head is full of
politics, I suppose."

"To-morrow morning--in notes," repeated Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.

"Now, your man at Royan was excellent--kept his head all through--and a
light hand, too. Got him with you in Paris?"

"No, I have not. To-morrow morning, about ten o'clock--in notes."

And Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence tapped a neat gloved finger on the corner of
the table with some determination.

"I remember--at dessert--you told me you wanted to realise a considerable
sum of money at the beginning of the year, to put into some business
venture. Is this part of that sum?"

"Yes," returned the lady, arranging her veil.

"A venture of Dormer Colville's, I think you told me--while we were
having coffee. One never gets coffee hot enough in a private house, but
yours was all right."

"Yes," mumbled Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, behind her quick finger, busy
with the veil.

Beneath the sleepy lids John Turner's eyes, which were small and
deep-sunken in the flesh, like the eyes of a pig, noted in passing that
his client's cheeks were momentarily pink.

"I hope you don't mean to suggest that there is anything unsafe in Mr.
Colville as a business man?"

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Turner. "On the contrary, he is most
enterprising. And I know no one who smokes a better cigar than
Colville--when he can get it. And the young fellow seemed nice enough."

"Which young fellow?" inquired the lady, sharply.

"His young friend--the man who was with him. I think you told me, after
luncheon, that Colville required the money to start his young friend in
business."

"Never!" laughed Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who, if she felt momentarily
uneasy, was quickly reassured. For this was one of those fortunate ladies
who go through life with the comforting sense of being always cleverer
than their neighbour. If the neighbour happen to be a man, and a stout
one, the conviction is the stronger for those facts. "Never! I never told
you that. You must have dreamt it."

"Perhaps I did," admitted the banker, placidly. "I am afraid I often feel
sleepy after luncheon. Perhaps I dreamt it. But I could not hand such a
sum in notes to an unprotected lady, even if I can effect a sale of your
securities so quickly as to have the money ready by to-morrow morning.
Perhaps Colville will call for it himself."

"If he is in Paris."

"Every one is in Paris now," was Mr. Turner's opinion. "And if he likes
to bring his young friend with him, all the better. In these uncertain
times it is not fair on a man to hand to him a large sum of money in
notes." He paused and jerked his thumb toward the window, which was a
double one, looking down into the Rue Lafayette. "There are always people
in the streets watching those who pass in and out of a bank. If a man
comes out smiling, with his hand on his pocket, he is followed, and if an
opportunity occurs, he is robbed. Better not have it in notes."

"I know," replied Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, not troubling further to
deceive one so lethargic and simple. "I know that Dormer wants it in
notes."

"Then let him come and fetch it."

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence rose from her chair and shook her dress into
straighter folds, with the air of having accomplished a task which she
had known to be difficult, but not impossible to one equipped with wit
and self-confidence.

"You will sell the securities, and have it all ready by ten o'clock
to-morrow morning," she repeated, with a feminine insistence.

"You shall have the money to-morrow morning, whether I succeed in selling
for cash or not," was the reply, and John Turner concealed a yawn with
imperfect success.

"A loan?"

"No banker lends--except to kings," replied Turner, stolidly. "Call it an
accommodation."

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence glanced at him sharply over the fur collar which
she was clasping round her neck. Here was a banker, reputed wealthy, who
sat in a bare room, without so much as a fireproof safe to suggest
riches; a business man of world-wide affairs, who drummed indolent
fingers on a bare table; a philosopher with a maxim ever ready to teach,
as all maxims do, cowardice in the guise of prudence, selfishness
masquerading as worldly wisdom, hard-heartedness passing for foresight.
Here was one who seemed to see, and was yet too sleepy to perceive. Mrs.
St. Pierre Lawrence was not always sure of her banker, but now, as ever
before, one glance at his round, heavy face reassured her. She laughed
and went away, well satisfied with the knowledge, only given to women, of
having once more carried out her object with the completeness which is
known as twisting round the little finger.

She nodded to Turner, who had ponderously risen from the chair which was
more comfortable than the client's seat, and held the door open for her
to pass. He glanced at the clock as he did so. And she knew that he was
thinking that it was nearly the luncheon hour, so transparent to the
feminine perception are the thoughts of men.

When he had closed the door he returned to his writing-table. Like many
stout people, he moved noiselessly, and quickly enough when the occasion
demanded haste.

He wrote three letters in a very few minutes, and, when they were
addressed, he tapped on the table with the end of his pen-holder, which
brought, in the twinkling of an eye, that clerk whose business it was to
abandon his books when called.

"I shall not go out to luncheon until I have the written receipt for each
one of those letters," said the banker, knowing that until he went out to
luncheon his six clerks must needs go hungry. "Not an answer," he
explained, "but a receipt in the addressee's writing."

And while the clerk hurried from the room and down the stone stairs at a
break-neck speed, Turner sank back into his chair, with lustreless eyes
fixed on space.

"No one can wait," he was in the habit of saying, "better than I can."




CHAPTER XXIV


THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS

If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo Barebone with him to the
Rue Lafayette he was, in part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired
carriage, of which the blinds were partially lowered.

The driver had been instructed to drive into the roomy court-yard of the
house of which Turner's office occupied the first floor. Carriages
frequently waited there, by the side of a little fountain which splashed
all day and all night into a circular basin.

Colville descended from the carriage and turned to speak to Loo, who was
left sitting within it. Since the unfortunate night at the Hotel Gemosac,
when they had been on the verge of a quarrel, a certain restraint had
characterised their intercourse. Colville was shy of approaching the
subject upon which they had differed. His easy laugh had not laughed away
the grim fact that he had deceived Loo in such a manner that complicity
was practically forced upon an innocent man.

Loo had not given his decision yet. He had waited a week, during which
time Colville had not dared to ask him whether his mind was made up.
There was a sort of recklessness in Loo's manner which at once puzzled
and alarmed his mentor. At times he was gay, as he always had been, and
in the midst of his gaiety he would turn away with a gloomy face and go
to his own room.

To press the question would be to precipitate a catastrophe. Dormer
Colville decided to go on as if nothing had happened. It is a compromise
with the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all resort at some
crisis or another in life.

"I will not be long," he assured Barebone, with a gay laugh. The prospect
of handling one hundred thousand francs in notes was perhaps
exhilarating; though the actual possession of great wealth would seem to
be of the contrary tendency. There is a profound melancholy peculiar to
the face of the millionaire. "I shall not be long; for he is a man of his
word, and the money will be ready."

John Turner was awaiting his visitor, and gave a large soft hand inertly
into Colville's warm grasp.

"I always wish I saw more of you," said the new-comer.

"Is there not enough of me already?" inquired the banker, pointing to the
vacant chair, upon which fell the full light of the double window. A
smaller window opposite to it afforded a view of the court-yard. And it
was at this smaller window that Colville glanced as he sat down, with a
pause indicative of reluctance.

Turner saw the glance and noted the reluctance. He concluded, perhaps, in
the slow, sure mind that worked behind his little peeping eyes, that Loo
Barebone was in the carriage in the court-yard, and that Colville was
anxious to return to him as soon as possible.

"It is very kind of you to say that, I am sure," pursued Turner, rousing
himself to be pleasant and conversational. "But, although the loss is
mine, my dear Colville, the fault is mostly yours. You always know where
to find me when you want my society. I am anchored in this chair, whereas
one never knows where one has a butterfly like yourself."

"A butterfly that is getting a bit heavy on the wing," answered Colville,
with his wan and sympathetic smile. He sat forward in the chair in an
attitude antipathetic to digression from the subject in hand.

"I do not see any evidence of that. One hears of you here and there
in France. I suppose, for instance, you know more than any man in
Paris at the present moment of the--" he paused and suppressed a yawn,
"the--er--vintage. Anything in it--eh?"

"So far as I could judge, the rains came too late; but I shall be glad to
tell you all about it another time. This morning--"

"Yes; I know. You want your money. I have it all ready for you. But I
must make out some sort of receipt, you know."

Turner felt vaguely in his pocket, and at last found a letter, from which
he tore the blank sheet, while his companion, glancing from time to time
at the window, watched him impatiently.

"Seems to me," said Turner, opening his inkstand, "that the vintage of
1850 will not be drunk by a Republic."

"Ah! indeed."

"What do you think?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, my mind was more occupied in the quality of
the vintage than in its ultimate fate. If you make out a receipt on
behalf of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, I will sign it," answered Colville,
fingering the blotting-paper.

"Received on behalf of, and for, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, the sum of one
hundred thousand francs," muttered the banker, as he wrote.

"She is only a client, you understand, my dear Colville," he went on,
holding out his hand for the blotting-paper, "or I would not part with
the money so easily. It is against my advice that Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence realises this sum."

"If a woman sets her heart on a thing, my dear fellow--" began Colville,
carelessly.

"Yes, I know--reason goes to the wall. Sign there, will you?"

Turner handed him pen and receipt, but Colville was looking toward the
window sunk deep in the wall on the inner side of the room. This was not
a double window, and the sound of carriage wheels rose above the gentle,
continuous plash of the little fountain in the court-yard.

Colville rose from his seat, but to reach the window he had to pass
behind Turner's chair. Turner rose at the same moment, and pushed his
chair back against the wall in doing so. This passage toward the window
being completely closed by the bulk of John Turner, Colville hurried
round the writing-table. But Turner was again in front of him, and,
without appearing to notice that his companion was literally at his
heels, he opened a large cupboard sunk in the panelling of the wall. The
door of it folded back over the little window, completely hiding it.

Turning on his heel, with an agility which was quite startling in one so
stout, he found Colville's colourless face two feet from his own. In
fact, Colville almost stumbled against him. For a moment they looked each
other in the eyes in silence. With his right hand, John Turner held the
cupboard-door over the window.

"I have the money here," he said, "in this cupboard." And as he spoke, a
hollow rumble, echoing in the court-yard, marked the exit of a carriage
under the archway into the Rue Lafayette. There had been only one
carriage in attendance in the court-yard--that in which Colville had left
Barebone.

"Here, in this cupboard," repeated Turner to unheeding ears. For Dormer
Colville was already hurrying across the room toward the other window
that looked out into the Rue Lafayette. The house was a lofty one, with a
high entresol, and from the windows of the first floor it was not
possible to see the street immediately below without opening the sashes.

Turner closed the cupboard and locked it, without ceasing to watch
Colville, who was struggling with the stiff fastening of the outer sash.

"Anything the matter?" inquired the banker, placidly. "Lost a dog?"

But Colville had at length wrenched open the window and was leaning out.
The roar of the traffic drowned any answer he may have made. It was
manifest that the loss of three precious minutes had made him too late.
After a glance down into the street, he came back into the centre of the
room and snatched up his hat from Turner's bare writing-table.

He hurried to the door, but turned again, with his back against it, to
face his companion, with the eyes usually so affable and sympathetic,
ablaze for once with rage.

"Damn you!" he cried. "Damn you!"

And the door banged on his heels as he hurried through the outer office.

Turner was left standing, a massive incarnation of bewilderment, in the
middle of the room. He heard the outer door close with considerable
emphasis. Then he sat down again, his eyebrows raised high on his round
forehead, and gazed sadly at the date-card.

* * * * *

Colville had left Leo Barebone seated in the hired carriage in a frame of
mind far from satisfactory. A seafaring life, more than any other,
teaches a man quickness in action. A hundred times a day the sailor needs
to execute, with a rapidity impossible to the landsman, that which
knowledge tells him to be the imminent necessity of the moment. At sea,
life is so far simpler than in towns that there are only two ways: the
right and the wrong. In the devious paths of a pavement-ridden man there
are a hundred byways: there is the long, long lane of many turnings
called Compromise.

Loo Barebone had turned into this lane one night at the Hotel Gemosac, in
the Ruelle St. Jacob, and had wandered there ever since. Captain Clubbe
had taught him the two ways of seamanship effectively enough. But the
education fell short of the necessities of this crisis. Moreover,
Barebone had in his veins blood of a race which had fallen to low estate
through Compromise and Delay.

Let those throw the first stone at him who have seen the right way gaping
before their feet with a hundred pitfalls and barriers, apparently
insurmountable, and have resolutely taken that road. For the devious path
of Compromise has this merit--that the obstacles are round the corner.

Barebone, absorbed in thought, hardly noticed that the driver of his
carriage descended from the box and lounged toward the archway, where the
hum of traffic and the passage of many people would serve to beguile a
long wait. After a minute's delay, a driver returned and climbed to the
seat--but it was not the same driver. He wore the same coat and hat, but
a different face looked out from the sheep-skin collar turned up to the
ears. There was no one in the court-yard to notice this trifling change.
Barebone was not even looking out of the window. He had never glanced at
the cabman's face, whose vehicle had happened to be lingering at the
corner of the Ruelle St. Jacob when Colville and his companion had
emerged from the high doorway of the Hotel Gemosac.

Barebone was so far obeying instructions that he was leaning back in the
carriage, his face half hidden by the collar of his coat. For it was a
cold morning in mid-winter. He hardly looked up when the handle of the
door was turned. Colville had shut this door five minutes earlier,
promising to return immediately. It was undoubtedly his hand that opened
the door. But suddenly Barebone sat up. Both doors were open.

Before he could make another movement, two men stepped quietly into the
carriage, each closing the door by which he had entered quickly and
noiselessly. One seated himself beside Barebone, the other opposite to
him, and each drew down a blind. They seemed to have rehearsed the
actions over and over again, so that there was no hitch or noise or
bungling. The whole was executed as if by clock-work, and the carriage
moved away the instant the doors were closed.

In the twilight, within the carriage, the two men grasped Loo Barebone,
each by one arm, and held him firmly against the back of the carriage.

"Quietly, _mon bon monsieur_; quietly, and you will come to no harm."

Barebone made no resistance, and only laughed.

"You have come too soon," he said, without attempting to free his arms,
which were held, as if by a vice, at the elbow and shoulder. "You have
come too soon, gentlemen! There is no money in the carriage. Not so much
as a sou."

"It is not for money that we have come," replied the man who had first
spoken--and the absolute silence of his companion was obviously the
silence of a subordinate.

"Though, for a larger sum than monsieur is likely to offer, one might
make a mistake, and allow of escape--who knows?"

The remark was made with the cynical honesty of dishonesty which had so
lately been introduced into France by him who was now Dictator of that
facile people.

"Oh! I offer nothing," replied Barebone. "For a good reason. I have
nothing to offer. If you are not thieves, what are you?"

The carriage was rattling along the Rue Lafayette, over the
cobble-stones, and the inmates, though their faces were close together,
had to shout in order to be heard.

"Of the police," was the reply. "Of the high police. I fancy that
monsieur's affair is political?"

"Why should you fancy that?"

"Because my comrade and I are not engaged on other cases. The criminal
receives very different treatment. Permit me to assure you of that.
And no consideration whatever. The common police is so unmannerly.
There!--one may well release the arms--since we understand each other."

"I shall not try to escape--if that is what you mean," replied Barebone,
with a laugh.

"Nothing else--nothing else," his affable captor assured him.

And for the remainder of a long drive through the noisy streets the three
men sat upright in the dim and musty cab in silence.




CHAPTER XXV


SANS RANCUNE

A large French fishing-lugger was drifting northward on the ebb tide with
its sails flapping idly against the spars. It had been a fine morning,
and the Captain, a man from Fécamp, where every boy that is born is born
a sailor, had been fortunate in working his way in clear weather across
the banks that lie northward of the Thames.

He had predicted all along in a voice rendered husky by much shouting in
dirty weather that the fog-banks would be drifting in from the sea before
nightfall. And now he had that mournful satisfaction which is the special
privilege of the pessimistic. These fog-banks, the pest of the east
coast, are the materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift
westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across the face of the sky.
They roll across the North Sea from their home in the marshes of Holland
on the face of the waters, and the mariner, groping his way with dripping
eyelashes and a rosy face through them, can look up and see the blue sky
through the rifts overhead. When the fog-bank touches land it rises,
slowly lifted by the warm breath of the field. On the coast-line it lies
low; a mile inland it begins to break into rifts, so that any one working
his way down one of the tidal rivers, sails in the counting of twenty
seconds from sunshine into a pearly shadow. Five miles inland there is a
transparent veil across the blue sky slowly sweeping toward the west, and
rising all the while, until those who dwell on the higher lands of Essex
and Suffolk perceive nothing but a few fleecy clouds high in the heavens.

The lugger was hardly moving, for the tide had only turned half an hour
ago.

"Provided," the Captain had muttered within the folds of his woollen
scarf rolled round and round his neck until it looked like a dusky
life-belt--"provided that they are ringing their bell on the Shipwash, we
shall find our way into the open. Always sea-sick, this traveller, always
sea-sick!"

And he turned with a kindly laugh to Loo Barebone, who was lying on a
heap of old sails by the stern rail, concealing as well as he could the
pangs of a consuming hunger.

"One sees that you will never be a sailor," added the man from Fécamp,
with that rough humour which sailors use.

"Perhaps I do not want to be one," replied Barebone, with a ready gaiety
which had already made him several friends on this tarry vessel, although
the voyage had lasted but four days.

"Listen," interrupted the Captain, holding up a mittened hand. "Listen! I
hear a bell, or else it is my conscience."

Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of
Harwich River. But he did not deem it necessary for one who was a
prisoner on board, and no sailor, to interfere in the navigation of a
vessel now making its way to the Faröe fisheries for the twentieth time.

"My conscience," he observed, "rings louder than that."

The Captain took a turn round the tiller with a rope made fast to the
rail for the purpose, and went to the side of the ship, lifting his nose
toward the west.

"It is the land," he said. "I can smell it. But it is only the Blessed
Virgin who knows where we are."

He turned and gave a gruff order to a man half hidden in the mist in the
waist of the boat to try a heave of the lead.

The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now--the uncertain,
hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway--with its
melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land
more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint
"tap-tap" was now audible. Barebone knew it to be the sound of a
caulker's hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side. They
were drifting past the mouth of the Harwich River.

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