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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"I should like to hear," she repeated, seeing that he was silent, "all
that has happened since you went away; all that you may care to tell me."

"My heritage, you mean?"

She moved in her seat but did not look round. She had laid aside her hat
on coming into the house, and as she sat, leaning forward with her hands
clasped together in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the fire which glowed
blue and white for the salt water that was in the drift-wood, her hair,
loosened by the wind, half concealed her face.

"Yes," she answered, slowly.

"Do you know what it is--my heritage?" lapsing, as he often did when
hurried by some pressing thought, into a colloquialism half French.

She shook her head, but made no audible reply.

"Do you suspect what it is?" he insisted.

"I may have suspected, perhaps," she admitted, after a pause.

"When? How long?"

She paused again. Quick and clever as he was, she was no less so. She
weighed the question. Perhaps she found no answer to it, for she turned
toward the door that stood open and looked out into the hall. The light
of the lamp there fell for a moment across her face.

"I think I hear them returning," she said.

"No," he retorted, "for I should hear them before you did. I was brought
up at sea. Do not answer the question, however, if you would rather not.
You ask what has happened since I went away. A great many things have
happened which are of no importance. Such things always happen, do they
not? But one night, when we were quarrelling, Dormer Colville mentioned
your name. He was very much alarmed and very angry, so he perhaps spoke
the truth--by accident. He said that you had always known that I might be
the King of France. Many things happened, as I tell you, which are of no
importance, and which I have already forgotten, but that I remember and
always shall."

"I have always known," replied Miriam, "that Mr. Dormer Colville is a
liar. It is written on his face, for those who care to read."

A woman at bay is rarely merciful.

"And I thought for an instant," pursued Loo, "that such a knowledge might
have been in your mind that night, the last I was here, last summer, on
the river-wall. I had a vague idea that it might have influenced in some
way the reply you gave me then."

He had come a step nearer and was standing over her. She could hear his
hurried breathing.

"Oh, no," she replied, in a calm voice full of friendliness. "You are
quite wrong. The reason I gave you still holds good, and--and always
will."

In the brief silence that followed this clear statement of affairs, they
both heard the rattle of the iron gate by the seawall. Sep and his father
were coming. Loo turned to look toward the hall and the front door, dimly
visible in the shadow of the porch. While he did so Miriam passed her
hand quickly across her face. When Loo turned again and glanced down at
her, her attitude was unchanged.

"Will you look at me and say that again?" he asked, slowly.

"Certainly," she replied. And she rose from her chair. She turned and
faced him with the light of the hall-lamp full upon her. She was smiling
and self-confident.

"I thought," he said, looking at her closely, "as I stood behind you,
that there were tears in your eyes."

She went past him into the hall to meet Sep and his father, who were
already on the threshold.

"It must have been the firelight," she said to Barebone as she passed
him.

A minute later Septimus Marvin was shaking him by the hand with a vague
and uncertain but kindly grasp.

"Sep came running to tell me that you were home again," he said,
struggling out of his overcoat. "Yes--yes. Home again to the old place.
And little changed, I can see. Little changed, my boy. _Tempora
mutantur_, eh? and we _mutamur in illis_. But you are the same."

"Of course. Why should I change? It is too late to change for the better
now."

"Never! Never say that. But we do not want you to change. We looked for
you to come in a coach-and-four--did we not, Miriam? For I suppose you
have secured your heritage, since you are here again. It is a great thing
to possess riches--and a great responsibility. Come, let us have tea and
not think of such things. Yes--yes. Let us forget that such a thing as a
heritage ever came between us--eh, Miriam?"

And with a gesture of old-world politeness he stood aside for his niece
to pass first into the dining-room, whither a servant had preceded them
with a lamp.

"It will not be hard to do that," replied Miriam, steadily, "because he
tells me that he has not yet secured it."

"All in good time--all in good time," said Marvin, with that faith in
some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in
conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly
affairs and sit with folded hands.

He asked many questions which were easy enough to answer; for he had no
worldly wisdom himself, and did not look for it in other people. And then
he related his own adventure--the great incident of his life--his visit
to Paris.

"A matter of business," he explained. "Some duplicates--one or two of my
prints which I had decided to part with. Miriam also wished me to see
into some small money matters of her own. Her guardian, John Turner,
you may remember, resides in Paris. A schoolfellow of my own, by the
way. But our ways diverged later in life. I found him unchanged--a kind
heart--always a kind heart. He attempts to conceal it, as many do, under
a flippant, almost a profane, manner of speech. _Brutum fulmen._ But I
saw through it--I saw through it."

And the rector beamed on Loo through his spectacles with an innocent
delight in a Christian charity which he mistook for cunning.

"You see," he went on, "we have spent a little money on the rectory.
To-morrow you will see that we have made good the roof of the church. One
could not ask the villagers to contribute, knowing that the children want
boots and scarcely know the taste of jam. Yes, John Turner was very kind
to me. He found me a buyer for one of my prints."

The rector broke off with a sharp sigh and drank his tea.

"We shall never miss it," he added, with the hopefulness of those who can
blind themselves to facts. "Come, tell me your impressions of France."

"I have been there before," replied Loo, with a curtness so unusual as to
make Miriam glance at him. "I have been there before, you know. It would
be more interesting to hear your own impressions, which must be fresher."

Miriam knew that he did not want to speak of France, and wondered why.
But Marvin, eager to talk of his favourite study, seized the suggestion
in all innocence. He had gone to Paris as he had wandered through life,
with the mind of a child, eager, receptive, open to impression. Such
minds pass by much that is of value, but to one or two conclusions they
bring a perceptive comprehension which is photographic in its accuracy.

"I have followed her history with unflagging interest since boyhood," he
said, "but never until now have I understood France. I walked through the
streets of Paris and I looked into the faces of the people, and I
realised that the astonishing history of France is true. One can see it
in those faces. The city is brilliant, beautiful, unreal. The reality is
in the faces of the people. Do you remember what Wellington said of them
half a century ago? 'They are ripe,' he said, 'for another Napoleon.' But
he could not see that Napoleon on the political horizon. And that is what
I saw in their faces. They are ripe for something--they know not what."

"Did John Turner tell you that?" asked Loo, in an eager voice. "He who
has lived in Paris all his life?"

And Miriam caught the thrill of excitement in the voice that put this
question. She glanced at Loo. His eyes were bright and his cheeks
colourless. She knew that she was in the presence of some feeling that
she did not understand. It was odd that an old scholar, knowing nothing
but history, could thus stir a listener whose touch had hitherto only
skimmed the surface of life.

"No," answered Marvin, with assurance. "I saw it myself in their faces.
Ah! if another such as Napoleon could only arise--such as he, but
different. Not an adventurer, but a King and the descendant of Kings--not
allied, as Napoleon was, with a hundred other adventurers."

"Yes," said Loo, in a muffled voice, looking away toward the fire.

"A King whose wife should be a Queen," pursued the dreamer.

"Yes," said Loo again, encouragingly.

"They could save France," concluded Marvin, taking off his spectacles and
polishing them with a silk handkerchief. Loo turned and looked at him,
for the action so characteristic of a mere onlooker indicated that the
momentary concentration of a mind so stored with knowledge that confusion
reigned there was passing away.

"From what?" asked Loo. "Save France from what?"

"From inevitable disaster, my boy," replied Marvin, gravely. "That is
what I saw in those gay streets."

Loo glanced at him sharply. He had himself seen the same all through
those provinces which must take their cue from Paris whether they will or
no.

"What a career!" murmured Marvin. "What a mission for a man to have in
life--to save France! One does not like to think of the world without a
France to lead it in nearly everything, or with a France, a mere ghost of
her former self, exploited, depleted by another Bonaparte. And we must
look in vain for that man as did the good Duke years ago."

"I should like to have a shot at it," put in Sep, who had just despatched
a large piece of cake.

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed his father, only half in jest.

"Better sit all day under the lee of a boat and make nets, like Sea
Andrew," advised Loo, with a laugh.

"Do you think so?" said Miriam, without looking up.

"All the same, I'd like to have a shot at it," persisted Sep. "Pass the
cake, please."

Loo had risen and was looking at the clock. His face was drawn and tired
and his eyes grave.

"You will come in and see us as often as you can while you are
here?" said the kindly rector, as if vaguely conscious of a change in
this visitor. "You will always find a welcome whether you come in a
coach-and-four or on foot--you know that."

"Thank you--yes. I know that."

The rector peered at him through his spectacles. "I hope," he said, "that
you will soon be successful in getting your own. You are worried about
it, I fear. The responsibilities of wealth, perhaps. And yet many rich
people are able to do good in the world, and must therefore be happy."

"I do not suppose I shall ever be rich," said Loo, with a careless laugh.

"No, perhaps not. But let us hope that all will be for the best. You must
not attach too much importance to what I said about France, you know. I
may be wrong. Let us hope I am. For I understand that your heritage is
there."

"Yes," answered Loo, who was shaking hands with Sep and Miriam, "my
heritage is there."

"And you will go back to France?" inquired Marvin, holding out his hand.

"Yes," was the reply, with a side glance in the direction of Miriam. "I
shall go back to France."




CHAPTER XXVIII


BAREBONE'S PRICE

At Farlingford, forgotten of the world, events move slowly and men's
minds assimilate change without shock. Old people look for death long
before it arrives, so that when at last the great change comes it is
effected quite calmly. There is no indecent haste, no scrambling to put a
semblance of finish to the incomplete, as there is in the hurried death
of cities. Young faces grow softly mellow without those lines and anxious
crow's-feet that mar the features of the middle-aged, who, to earn their
daily bread or to kill the tedium of their lives, find it necessary to
dwell in streets.

"Loo's home again," men told each other at "The Black Sailor"; and the
women, who discussed the matter in the village street, had little to add
to this bare piece of news. There was nothing unusual about it. Indeed,
it was customary for Farlingford men to come home again. They always
returned, at last, from wide wanderings, which a limited conversational
capacity seemed to deprive of all interest. Those that stayed at home
learnt a few names, and that was all.

"Where are ye now from, Willum?" the newly returned sailor would be
kindly asked, with the sideward jerk of the head.

"A'm now from Va'paraiso."

And that was all that there was to be said about Valparaiso and the
experiences of this circumnavigator. Perhaps it was not considered good
form to inquire further into that which was, after all, his own business.
If you ask an East Anglian questions he will tell you nothing; if you do
not inquire he will tell you less.

No one, therefore, asked Barebone any questions. More especially is it
considered, in seafaring communities, impolite to make inquiry into your
neighbour's misfortune. If a man have the ill luck to lose his ship, he
may well go through the rest of his life without hearing the mention of
her name. It was understood in Farlingford that Loo Barebone had resigned
his post on "The Last Hope" in order to claim a heritage in France. He
had returned home, and was living quietly at Maidens Grave Farm with Mrs.
Clubbe. It was, therefore, to be presumed that he had failed in his
quest. This was hardly a matter for surprise to such as had inherited
from their forefathers a profound distrust in Frenchmen.

The brief February days followed each other with that monotony, marked by
small events, that quickly lays the years aside. Loo lingered on, with a
vague indecision in his mind which increased as the weeks passed by and
the spell of the wide marsh-lands closed round his soul. He took up again
those studies which the necessity of earning a living had interrupted
years before, and Septimus Marvin, who had never left off seeking, opened
new historical gardens to him and bade him come in and dig.

Nearly every morning Loo went to the rectory to look up an obscure
reference or elucidate an uncertain period. Nearly every evening, after
the rectory dinner, he returned the books he had borrowed, and lingered
until past Sep's bedtime to discuss the day's reading. Septimus Marvin,
with an enthusiasm which is the reward of the simple-hearted, led the way
down the paths of history while Loo and Miriam followed--the man with the
quick perception of his race, the woman with that instinctive and
untiring search for the human motive which can put heart into a printed
page of history.

Many a whole lifetime has slipped away in such occupations; for history,
already inexhaustible, grows in bulk day by day. Marvin was happier than
he had ever been, for a great absorption is one of Heaven's kindest
gifts.

For Barebone, France and his quest there, the Marquis de Gemosac, Dormer
Colville, Juliette, lapsed into a sort of dream, while Farlingford
remained a quiet reality. Loo had not written to Dormer Colville. Captain
Clubbe was trading between Alexandria and Bristol. "The Last Hope" was
not to be expected in England before April. To communicate with Colville
would be to turn that past dream, not wholly pleasant, into a grim
reality. Loo therefore put off from day to day the evil moment. By nature
and by training he was a man of action. He tried to persuade himself that
he was made for a scholar and would be happy to pass the rest of his days
in the study of that history which had occupied Septimus Marvin's
thoughts during a whole lifetime.

Perhaps he was right. He might have been happy enough to pass his days
thus if life were unchanging; if Septimus Marvin should never age and
never die; if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch on the
deeper thoughts, her half-French way of understanding the unspoken, with
her steady friendship which might change, some day, into something else.
This was, of course, inconsistent. Love itself is the most inconsistent
of all human dreams; for it would have some things change and others
remain ever as they are. Whereas nothing stays unchanged for a single
day: love, least of all. For it must go forward or back.

"See!" cried Septimus Marvin, one evening, laying his hand on the open
book before him. "See how strong are racial things. Here are the Bourbons
for ever shutting their eyes to the obvious, for ever putting off the
evil moment, for ever temporising--from father to son, father to son;
generation after generation. Finally we come to Louis XVI. Read his
letters to the Comte d'Artois. They are the letters of a man who knows
the truth in his own heart and will not admit it even to himself."

"Yes," admitted Loo. "Yes--you are right. It is racial, one must
suppose."

And he glanced at Miriam, who did not meet his eyes but looked at the
open page, with a smile on her lips half sad, wholly tolerant.

Next morning, Loo thought, he would write to Dormer Colville. But the
following evening came, and he had not done so. He went, as usual, to the
rectory, where the same kind welcome awaited him. Miriam knew that he had
not written. Like him, she knew that an end of some sort must soon come.
And the end came an hour later.

Some day, Barebone knew, Dormer Colville would arrive. Every morning he
half looked for him on the sea-wall, between "The Black Sailor" and the
rectory garden. Any evening, he was well aware, the smiling face might
greet him in the lamp-lit drawing-room.

Sep had gone to bed earlier that night. The rector was reading aloud an
endless collection of letters, from which the careful student could
scarcely fail to gather side-lights on history. Both Miriam and Loo heard
the clang of the iron gate on the sea-wall.

A minute or two later the old dog, who lived mysteriously in the back
premises, barked, and presently the servant announced that a gentleman
was desirous of speaking to the rector. There were not many gentlemen
within a day's walk of the rectory. Some one must have put up at "The
Black Sailor." Theoretically, the rector was at the call of any of his
parishioners at all moments; but in practice the people of Farlingford
never sought his help.

"A gentleman," said Marvin, vaguely; "well, let him come in, Sarah."

Miriam and Barebone sat silently looking at the door. But the man who
appeared there was not Dormer Colville. It was John Turner.

He evinced no surprise on seeing Barebone, but shook hands with him with
a little nod of the head, which somehow indicated that they had business
together.

He accepted the chair brought forward by Marvin and warmed his hands at
the fire, in no hurry, it would appear, to state the reason for this
unceremonious call. After all, Marvin was his oldest friend and Miriam
his ward. Between old friends, explanations are often better omitted.

"It is many years," he said, at length, "since I heard their talk. They
speak with their tongues and their teeth, but not their lips."

"And their throats," put in Marvin, eagerly. "That is because they are of
Teuton descent. So different from the French, eh, Turner?"

Turner nodded a placid acquiescence. Then he turned, as far, it would
appear, as the thickness of his neck allowed, toward Barebone.

"Saw in a French paper," he said, "that the 'Petite Jeanne' had put in to
Lowestoft, to replace a dinghy lost at sea. So I put two and two
together. It is my business putting two and two together, and making five
of them when I can, but they generally make four. I thought I should find
you here."

Loo made no answer. He had only seen John Turner once in his life--for a
short hour, in a room full of people, at Royan. The banker stared
straight in front of him for a few moments. Then he raised his sleepy
little eyes directly to Miriam's face. He heaved a sigh, and fell to
studying the burning logs again. And the colour slowly rose to Miriam's
cheeks. The banker, it seemed, was about his business again, in one of
those simple addition sums, which he sometimes solved correctly.

"To you," he said, after a moment's pause, with a glance in Loo's
direction, "to you, it must appear that I am interfering in what is not
my own business. You are wrong there."

He had clasped his hands across his abnormal waistcoat, and he half
closed his eyes as he blinked at the fire.

"I am a sort of intermediary angel," he went on, "between private persons
in France and their friends in England. Nothing to do with state affairs,
you understand, at least, very little. Many persons in England have
relations or property in France. French persons fall in love with people
on this side of the Channel, and vice versa. And, sooner or later, all
these persons, who are in trouble with their property or their
affections, come to me, because money is invariably at the bottom of the
trouble. Money is invariably at the bottom of all trouble. And I
represent money."

He pursed up his lips and gazed somnolently at the fire.

"Ask anybody," he went on, dreamily, after a pause, "if that is not the
bare truth. Ask Colville, ask Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, ask Miriam
Liston, sitting here beside us, if I exaggerate the importance of--of
myself."

"Every one," admitted Barebone, cheerfully, "knows that you occupy a
great position in Paris."

Turner glanced at him and gave a thick chuckle in his throat.

"Thank you," he said. "Very decent of you. And that point being
established, I will explain further, that I am not here of my own free
will. I am only an agent. No man in his senses would come to Farlingford
in mid-winter unless--" he broke off, with a sharp sigh, and glanced down
at Miriam's slipper resting on the fender, "unless he was much younger
than I am. I came because I was paid to do it. Came to make you a
proposition."

"To make me a proposition?" inquired Loo, as the identity of Turner's
hearers had become involved.

"Yes. And I should recommend you to give it your gravest consideration.
It is one of the most foolish propositions, from the proposer's point of
view, that I have ever had to make. I should blush to make it, if it were
any use blushing, but no one sees blushes on my cheeks now. Do not decide
in a hurry--sleep on it. I always sleep on a question."

He closed his eyes, and seemed about to compose himself to slumber then
and there.

"I am no longer young," he admitted, after a pause, "and therefore
propose to take one of the few alleviations allowed to advancing years
and an increasing avoirdupois. I am going to give you some advice. There
is only one thing worth having in this life, and that is happiness. Even
the possibility of it is worth all other possibilities put together. If a
man have a chance of grasping happiness--I mean a home and the wife he
wants.... and all that--he is wise to throw all other chances to the
wind. Such, for instance, as the chance of greatness, of fame or wealth,
of gratified vanity or satisfied ambition."

He had spoken slowly, and at last he ceased speaking, as if overcome by a
growing drowsiness. A queer silence followed this singular man's words.
Barebone had not resumed his seat. He was standing by the mantelpiece, as
he often did, being quick and eager when interested, and not content to
sit still and express himself calmly in words, but must needs emphasise
his meaning by gestures and a hundred quick movements of the head.

"Go on," he said. "Let us have the proposition."

"And no more advice?"

Loo glanced at Miriam. He could see all three faces where he stood, but
only by the light of the fire. Miriam was nearest to the hearth. He could
see that her eyes were aglow--possibly with anger.

Barebone shrugged his shoulders.

"You are not an agent--you are an advocate," he said.

Turner raised his eyes with the patience of a slumbering animal that has
been prodded.

"Yes," he said--"your advocate. There is one more chance I should advise
any man to shun--to cast to the four winds, and hold on only to that
tangible possibility of happiness in the present--it is the chance of
enjoying, in some dim and distant future, the satisfaction of having, in
a half-forgotten past, done one's duty. One's first duty is to secure, by
all legitimate means, one's own happiness."

"What is the proposition?" interrupted Barebone, quickly; and Turner,
beneath his heavy lids, had caught in the passing the glance from
Miriam's eyes, for which possibly both he and Loo Barebone had been
waiting.

"Fifty thousand pounds," replied the banker, bluntly, "in first-class
English securities, in return for a written undertaking on your part to
relinquish all claim to any heritage to which you may think yourself
entitled in France. You will need to give your word of honour never to
set foot on French soil--and that is all."

"I never, until this moment," replied Barebone, "knew the value of my own
pretensions."

"Yes," said Turner, quietly; "that is the obvious retort. And having
made it, you can now give a few minutes' calm reflection to my
proposition--say five minutes, until that clock strikes half-past
nine--and then I am ready to answer any questions you may wish to ask."

Barebone laughed good-humouredly, and so far fell in with the suggestion
that he leant his elbow on the corner of the mantelpiece, and looked at
the clock.

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