A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope







CHAPTER XXIX


IN THE DARK

Had John Turner been able to see round the curve of his own vast cheeks
he might have perceived the answer to his proposition lurking in a little
contemptuous smile at the corner of Miriam's closed lips. Loo saw it
there, and turned again to the contemplation of the clock on the
mantelpiece which had already given a preliminary click.

Thus they waited until the minutes should elapse, and Turner, with a
smile of simple pleasure at their ready acquiescence in his suggestion,
probably reflected behind his vacuous face that silence rarely implies
indecision.

When at last the clock struck, Loo turned to him with a laugh and a shake
of the head as if the refusal were so self-evident that to put it into
words were a work of supererogation.

"Who makes the offer?" he asked.

Turner smiled on him with visible approbation as upon a quick and worthy
foe who fought a capable fight with weapons above the board.

"No matter--since you are disposed to refuse. The money is in my hands,
as is the offer. Both are good. Both will hold good till to-morrow
morning."

Septimus Marvin gave a little exclamation of approval. He had been
sitting by the table looking from one to the other over his spectacles
with the eager smile of the listener who understands very little, and
while wishing that he understood more, is eager to put in a word of
approval or disapprobation on safe and general lines. It was quite
obvious to John Turner, who had entered the room in ignorance on this
point, that Marvin knew nothing of Barebone's heritage in France while
Miriam knew all.

"There is one point," he said, "which is perhaps scarcely worth
mentioning. The man who makes the offer is not _only the most
unscrupulous_, but is likely to become one of the most powerful men in
Eur--men I know. There is a reverse side to the medal. There always is a
reverse side to the good things of this world. Should you refuse his
ridiculously generous offer you will make an enemy for life--one who is
nearing that point where men stop at nothing."

Turner glanced at Miriam again. Her clean-cut features had a stony
stillness and her eyes looked obstinately at the clock. The banker moved
in his chair as if suddenly conscious that it was time to go.

"Do not," he said to Barebone, "be misled or mislead yourself into a
false estimate of the strength of your own case. The offer I make you
does not in any way indicate that you are in a strong position. It merely
shows the indolence of a man naturally open-handed, who would always
rather pay than fight."

"Especially if the money is not his own."

"Yes," admitted Turner, stolidly, "that is so. Especially if the money is
not his own. I dare say you know the weakness of your own case: others
know it too. A portrait is not much to go on. Portraits are so easily
copied; so easily changed."

He rose as he spoke and shook hands with Marvin.

Then he turned to Miriam, but he did not meet her glance. Last of all he
shook hands with Barebone.

"Sleep on it," he said. "Nothing like sleeping on a question. I am
staying at 'The Black Sailor.' See you tomorrow."

He had come, had transacted his business and gone, all in less than an
hour, with an extraordinary leisureliness almost amounting to indolence.
He had lounged into the house, and now he departed without haste or
explanation. Never hurry, never explain, was the text upon which John
Turner seemed to base the sleepy discourse of his life. For each of us is
a living sermon to his fellows, and, it is to be feared, the majority are
warnings.

Turner had dragged on his thick overcoat, not without Loo's assistance,
and, with the collar turned up about his ears, he went out into the
night, leaving the three persons whom he had found in the drawing-room
standing in the hall looking at the door which he closed decisively
behind him. "Seize your happiness while you can," he had urged. "If
not--" and the decisive closing of a door on his departing heel said the
rest.

The clocks struck ten. It was not worth while going back to the
drawing-room. All Farlingford was abed in those days by nine o'clock.
Barebone took his coat and prepared to follow Turner. Miriam was already
lighting her bedroom candle. She bade the two men good night and went
slowly upstairs. As she reached her own room she heard the front door
closed behind Loo and the rattle of the chain under the uncertain fingers
of Septimus Marvin. The sound of it was like the clink of that other
chain by which Barebone had made fast his boat to the tottering post on
the river-wall.

Miriam's room was at the front of the house, and its square Georgian
windows faced eastward across the river to the narrow spit of marsh-land
and the open sea beyond it. A crescent of moon far gone on the wane,
yellow and forlorn, was rising from the sea. An uncertain path of light
lay across the face of the far-off tide-way--broken by a narrow strip of
darkness and renewed again close at hand across the wide river almost to
the sea-wall beneath the window. From this window no house could be seen
by day--nothing but a vast expanse of water and land hardly less level
and unbroken. No light was visible on sea or land now, nothing but the
waning moon in a cold clear sky.

Miriam threw herself, all dressed, on her bed with the abandonment of one
who is worn out by some great effort, and buried her face in the pillow.

Barebone's way lay to the left along the river-wall by the side of the
creek. Turner had gone to the right, taking the path that led down the
river to the old quay and the village. Whereas Barebone must turn his
back on Farlingford to reach the farm which still crouches behind a
shelter of twisted oaks and still bears the name of Maiden's Grave;
though the name is now nothing but a word. For no one knows who the
maiden was, or where her grave, or what brought her to it.

The crescent moon gave little light, but Loo knew his way beneath the
stunted cedars and through the barricade of ilex drawn round the rectory
on the northern side. His eyes, trained to darkness, saw the shadowy form
of a man awaiting him beneath the cedars almost as soon as the door was
closed.

He went toward him, perceiving with a sudden misgiving that it was not
John Turner. A momentary silhouette against the northern sky showed that
it was Colville, come at last.

"Quick--this way!" he whispered, and taking Barebone's arm he led him
through the bushes. He halted in a little open space between the ilex and
the river-wall, which is fifteen feet high at the meeting of the creek
and the larger stream. "There are three men, who are not Farlingford men,
on the outer side of the sea-wall below the rectory landing. Turner must
have placed them there. I'll be even with him yet. There is a large
fishing-smack lying at anchor inside the Ness--just across the marsh. It
is the 'Petite Jeanne.' I found this out while you were in there. I could
hear your voices."

"Could you hear what he said?"

"No," answered Colville, with a sudden return to his old manner, easy and
sympathetic. "No--this is no time for joking, I can tell you that. You
have had a narrow escape, I assure you, Barebone. That man, the Captain
of the 'Petite Jeanne,' is well known. There are plenty of people in
France who want to get quietly rid of some family encumbrance--a man in
the way, you understand, a son too many, a husband too much, a stepson
who will inherit--the world is full of superfluities. Well, the Captain
of the 'Petite Jeanne' will take them a voyage for their health to the
Iceland fisheries. They are so far and so remote--the Iceland fisheries.
The climate is bad and accidents happen. And if the 'Petite Jeanne'
returns short-handed, as she often does, the other boats do the same. It
is only a question of a few entries in the custom-house books at Fécamp.
Do you see?"

"Yes," admitted Barebone, thoughtfully. "I see."

"I suppose it suggested itself to you when you were on board, and that is
why you took the first chance of escape."

"Well, hardly; but I escaped, so it does not matter."

"No." acquiesced Colville. "It doesn't matter. But how are we to get out
of this? They are waiting for us under the sea-wall. Is there a way
across the marsh?"

"Yes--I know a way. But where do you want to go to-night?"

"Out of this," whispered Colville, eagerly. "Out of Farlingford and
Suffolk before the morning if we can. I tell you there is a French
gunboat at Harwich, and another in the North Sea. It may be chance and it
may not. But I suspect there is a warrant out against you. And, failing
that, there is the 'Petite Jeanne' hanging about waiting to kidnap you a
second time. And Turner's at the bottom of it, damn him!"

Again Dormer Colville allowed a glimpse to appear of another man quite
different from the easy, indolent man-of-the-world, the well-dressed
adventurer of a day when adventure was mostly sought in drawing-rooms,
when scented and curled dandies were made or marred by women. For a
moment Colville was roused to anger and seemed capable of manly action.
But in an instant the humour passed and he shrugged his shoulders and
gave a short, indifferent laugh beneath his breath.

"Come," he said, "lead the way and I will follow. I have been out here
since eight o'clock and it is deucedly cold. I followed Turner from
Paris, for I knew he was on your scent. Once across the marsh we can talk
without fear as we go along."

Barebone obeyed mechanically, leading the way through the bushes to the
kitchen-garden and over an iron fencing on to the open marsh. This
stretched inland for two miles without a hedge or other fence but the
sunken dykes which intersected it across and across. Any knowing his way
could save two miles on the longer way by the only road connecting
Farlingford with the mainland and tapping the great road that runs north
and south a few miles inland.

There was no path, for few ever passed this way. By day, a solitary
shepherd watched his flocks here. By night the marsh was deserted. Across
some of the dykes a plank is thrown, the whereabouts of which is
indicated by a post, waist-high, driven into the ground, easily enough
seen by day, but hard to find after dark. Not all the dykes have a plank,
and for the most part the marsh is divided into squares, each only
connected at one point with its neighbour.

Barebone knew the way as well as any in Farlingford, and he struck out
across the thick grass which crunched briskly under the foot, for it was
coated with rime, and the icy wind blew in from the sea a freezing mist.
Once or twice Barebone, having made a bee-line across from dyke to dyke,
failed to strike the exact spot where the low post indicated a plank, and
had to pause and stoop down so as to find its silhouette against the sky.
When they reached a plank he tried its strength with one foot and then
led the way across it, turning and waiting at the far end for Colville to
follow. It was unnecessary to warn him against a slip, for the plank was
no more than nine inches wide and shone white with rime. Each foot must
be secure before its fellow was lifted.

Colville, always ready to fall in with a companion's humour, ever quick
to understand the thoughts of others, respected his silence. Perhaps he
was not far from guessing the cause of it.

Loo was surprised to find that Dormer Colville was less antipathetic than
he had anticipated. For the last month, night and day, he had dreaded
Colville's arrival, and now that he was here he was almost glad to see
him; almost glad to quit Farlingford. And his heart was hot with anger
against Miriam.

Turner's offer had at all events been worth considering. Had he been
alone when it was made he would certainly have considered it; he would
have turned it this way and that. He would have liked to play with it as
a cat plays with a mouse, knowing all the while that he must refuse in
the end. Perhaps Turner had made the offer in Miriam's presence,
expecting to find in her a powerful ally. It was only natural for him to
think this. Ever since the beginning, men have assigned to women the rôle
of the dissuader, the drag, the hinderer. It is always the woman,
tradition tells us, who persuades the man to be a coward, to stay at
home, to shirk a difficult or a dangerous duty.

As a matter of fact, Turner had made this mistake. He had always wondered
why Miriam Liston elected to live at Farlingford when with her wealth and
connections, both in England and France, she might live a gayer life
elsewhere. There must, he reflected, be some reason for it.

When whosoever does anything slightly unconventional or leaves undone
what custom and gossip make almost obligatory, a relation or a mere
interfering neighbour is always at hand to wag her head and say there
must be some reason for it. Which means, of course, one specific reason.
And the worst of it is that she is nearly always right.

John Turner, laboriously putting two small numerals together, after his
manner, had concluded that Loo Barebone was the reason. Even banking may,
it seems, be carried on without the loss of all human weakness,
especially if the banker be of middle age, unmarried, and deprived by an
unromantic superfluity of adipose tissue of the possibility of living
through a romance of his own. Turner had consented to countenance, if not
actually to take part in, a nefarious scheme, to rid France and the
present government of one who might easily bring about its downfall, on
certain conditions. Knowing quite well that Loo Barebone could take care
of himself at sea, and was quite capable of effecting an escape if he
desired it, he had put no obstacle in the way of the usual voyage to the
Iceland fisheries. Since those days many governments in France have
invented many new methods of disposing of a political foe. Dormer
Colville was only anticipating events when he took away the character of
the Captain of the "Petite Jeanne."

Turner had himself proposed this alternative method of securing
Barebone's silence. He had even named the sum. He had seized the
excellent opportunity of laying it before Barebone in the quiet intimacy
of the rectory drawing-room with Miriam in the soft lamp-light beside
him, with the scent of the violets at her breast mingling with the warm
smell of the wood fire.

And Barebone had laughed at the offer.




CHAPTER XXX


IN THE FURROW AGAIN

Turner, stumbling along the road to "The Black Sailor," probably wondered
why he had failed. It is to be presumed that he knew that the ally he had
looked to for powerful aid had played him false at the crucial moment.

His misfortune is common to all men who presume to take anything for
granted from a woman.

Barebone, stumbling along in the dark in another direction, was as angry
with Miriam as she in her turn was angry with Turner. She was, Barebone
reflected, so uncompromising. She saw her course so clearly, so
unmistakably--as birds that fly in the night--and from that course
nothing, it seemed, would move her. It was a question of temperament and
not of principle. For, even half a century ago, high principles were
beginning to go out of fashion in the upper strata of a society which in
these days tolerates anything except cheating at games.

Barebone himself was of a different temperament. He liked to blind
himself to the inevitable end, to temporise with the truth, whereas
Miriam, with a sort of dogged courage essentially English, perceived the
hard truth at once and clung to it, though it hurt. And all the while
Barebone knew at the back of his heart that his life was not his own to
shape. At the end, says an Italian motto, stands Destiny. Barebone wanted
to make believe; he wanted to pretend that his path lay down a flowery
way, knowing all the while that he had a hill to climb and Destiny stood
at the top.

Colville had come at the right time. It is the fate of some men to come
at the right moment, just as it is the lot of others never to be there
when they are wanted and their place is filled by a bystander and an
opportunity is gone for ever. Which is always a serious matter, for God
only gives one or two opportunities to each of us.

Colville had come with his ready sympathy, not expressed as the
world expresses its sympathy, in words, but by a hundred little
self-abnegations. He was always ready to act up to the principles of his
companion for the moment or to act up to no principles at all should that
companion be deficient. Moreover, he never took it upon himself to judge
others, but extended to his neighbour a large tolerance, in return for
which he seemed to ask nothing.

"I have a carriage," he said, when on a broader cart-track they could
walk side by side, "waiting for me at the roadside inn at the junction of
the two roads. The man brought me from Ipswich to the outskirts of
Farlingford, and I sent him back to the high road to wait for me there,
to put up and stay all night, if necessary."

Barebone was beginning to feel tired. The wind was abominably cold. He
heard with satisfaction that Colville had as usual foreseen his wishes.

"I dogged Turner all the way from Paris, hardly letting him out of my
sight," Colville explained, cheerily, when they at length reached the
road. "It is easy enough to keep in touch with one so remarkably stout,
for every one remembers him. What did he come to Farlingford for?"

"Apparently to try and buy me off."

"For Louis Bonaparte?"

"He did not say so,"

"No," said Colville. "He would not say so. But it is pretty generally
suspected that he is in that galley, and pulls an important oar in it,
too. What did he offer you?"

"Fifty thousand pounds."

"Whew!" whistled Colville. He stopped short in the middle of the road.
"Whew!" he repeated, thoughtfully, "fifty thousand pounds! Gad! They must
be afraid of you. They must think that we are in a strong position. And
what did you say, Barebone?"

"I refused."

"Why?"

Barebone paused, and after a moment's thought made no answer at all. He
could not explain to Dormer Colville his reason for refusing.

"Outright?" inquired Colville, deep in thought.

"Yes."

Colville turned and glanced at him sideways, though it was too dark to
see his face.

"I should have thought," he said, tentatively, after a while, "that it
would have been wise to accept. A bird in the hand, you know--a damned
big bird! And then afterwards you could see what turned up."

"You mean I could break my word later on," inquired Barebone, with that
odd downrightness which at times surprised Colville and made him think of
Captain Clubbe.

"Well, you know," he explained, with a tolerant laugh, "in politics it
often turns out that a man's duty is to break his word--duty toward his
party, and his country, and that sort of thing."

Which was plausible enough, as many eminent politicians seem to have
found in these later times.

"I dare say it may be so," answered Barebone, "but I refused outright,
and there is an end to it."

For now that he was brought face to face with the situation, shorn of
side issues and set squarely before him, he envisaged it clearly enough.
He did not want fifty thousand pounds. He had only wanted the money for a
moment because the thought leapt into his mind that fifty thousand pounds
meant Miriam. Then he saw that little contemptuous smile tilting the
corner of her lips, and he had no use for a million.

If he could not have Miriam, he would be King of France. It is thus that
history is made, for those who make it are only men. And Clio, that
greatest of the daughters of Zeus, about whose feet cluster all the
famous names of the makers of this world's story, has, after all, only
had the reversion of the earth's great men. She has taken them after some
forgotten woman of their own choosing has had the first refusal.

Thus it came about that the friendship so nearly severed one evening at
the Hotel Gemosac, in Paris, was renewed after a few months; and Barebone
felt assured once more that no one was so well disposed toward him as
Dormer Colville.

There was no formal reconciliation, and neither deemed it necessary to
refer to the past. Colville, it will be remembered, was an adept at that
graceful tactfulness which is somewhat clumsily described by this
tolerant generation as going on as if nothing had happened.

By the time that the waning moon was high enough in the eastern sky to
shed an appreciable light upon their path, they reached the junction of
the two roads and set off at a brisk pace southward toward Ipswich. So
far as the eye could reach, the wide heath was deserted, and they talked
at their ease.

"There is nothing for it but to wake up my driver and make him take us
back to Ipswich to-night. To-morrow morning we can take train to London
and be there almost as soon as John Turner realises that you have given
him the slip," said Colville, cheerily.

"And then?"

"And then back to France--where the sun shines, my friend, and the spring
is already in the air. Think of that! It is so, at least, at Gemosac, for
I heard from the Marquis before I quitted Paris. Your disappearance has
nearly broken a heart or two down there, I can tell you. The old Marquis
was in a great state of anxiety. I have never seen him so upset about
anything, and Juliette did not seem to be able to offer him any
consolation."

"Back to France?" echoed Barebone, not without a tone of relief, almost
of exultation, in his voice. "Will it be possible to go back there, since
we have to run away from Farlingford?"

"Safer there than here," replied Colville. "It may sound odd, but it is
true. De Gemosac is one of the most powerful men in France--not
intellectually, perhaps, but by reason of his great name--and they would
not dare to touch a protégé or a guest of his. If you go back there now
you must stay at Gemosac; they have put the château into a more habitable
condition, and are ready to receive you."

He turned and glanced at Loo's face in the moonlight.

"There will be a difference, you understand. You will be a different
person from what you were when last there," he went on, in a muffled
voice.

"Yes, I understand," replied Barebone, gravely. Already the dream was
taking shape--Colville's persuasive voice had awakened him to find that
it was no dream, but a reality--and Farlingford was fading back into the
land of shadows. It was only France, after all, that was real.

"That journey of ours," explained Colville, vaguely, "has made an
extraordinary difference. The whole party is aroused and in deadly
earnest now."

Barebone made no answer, and they walked on in meditative silence toward
the roadside inn, which stood up against the southern sky a few hundred
yards ahead.

"In fact," Colville added, after a silence, "the ball is at your feet,
Barebone. There can be no looking back now."

And again Barebone made no answer. It was a tacit understanding, then.

For greater secrecy, Barebone walked on toward Ipswich alone, while
Colville went into the inn to arouse his driver, whom he found slumbering
in the wide chimney corner before a log fire. From Ipswich to London, and
thus on to Newhaven, they journeyed pleasantly enough in company, for
they were old companions of the road, and Colville's unruffled good
humour made him an easy comrade for travel even in days when the idea of
comfort reconciled with speed had not suggested itself to the mind of
man.

Such, indeed, was his foresight that he had brought with him to London,
and there left awaiting further need of it, that personal baggage which
Loo had perforce left behind him at the Hotel Gemosac in Paris.

They made but a brief halt in London, where Colville admitted gaily that
he had no desire to be seen.

"I might meet my tailor in Piccadilly," he said. "And there are others
who may perhaps consider themselves aggrieved."

At Colville's club, where they dined, he met more than one friend.

"Hallo!" said one who had the ruddy countenance and bluff manners of a
retired major. "Hallo! Who'd have expected to see you here? I didn't
know--I--thought--eh! dammy!"

And a hundred facetious questions gleamed from the major's eye.

"All right, my boy," answered Colville, cheerfully. "I am off to France
to-morrow morning."

The Major shook his head wisely as if in approval of a course of conduct
savouring of that prudence which is the better part of valour, glanced at
Loo Barebone, and waited in vain for an invitation to take a vacant chair
near at hand.

"Still in the south of France, I suppose?"

"Still in the south of France," replied Colville, turning to Barebone in
a final way, which had the effect of dismissing this inquisitive idler.

While they were at dinner another came. He was a raw-boned Scotchman, who
spoke in broken English when the waiter was absent and in perfect French
when that servitor hovered near.

"I wish I could show my face in Paris," he said, frankly, "but I can't.
Too much mixed up with Louis Philippe to find favour in the eyes of the
Prince President."

"Why?" asked Colville. "What could you gain by showing in Paris a face
which I am sure has the stamp of innocence all over it?"

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