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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"She is quite harmless," Juliette explained, gaily, to Barebone, on the
first occasion when they were alone together. This did not present itself
until Loo had been quartered in the Italian house for some days, with his
own servant. Although he took luncheon and dinner with the family in the
old building near to the gate-house, and spent his evenings in Juliette's
drawing-room, the Marquis or Madame Maugiron was always present, and as
often as not, they played a game of chess together.

"She is quite harmless," said Juliette, tying, with a thread, the
primroses she had been picking in that shady corner of the garden which
lay at the other side of the Italian house. The windows of Barebone's
apartment, by the way, looked down upon this garden, and he, having
perceived her, had not wasted time in joining her in the morning
sunshine.

"I wonder if I shall be as harmless when I am her age."

And, indeed, danger lurked beneath her lashes as she glanced at him,
asking this question with her lips and a hundred others with her eyes,
with her gay air of youth and happiness--with her very attitude of
coquetry, as she stood in the spring sunshine, with the scent of the
primroses about her.

"I think that any one who approaches you will always do so at his peril,
Mademoiselle."

"Then why do it?" she asked, drawing back and busying herself with the
flowers, which she laid against her breast, as if to judge the effect of
their colour against the delicate white of her dress. "Why run into
danger? Why come downstairs at all?"

"Why breathe?" he retorted, with a laugh. "Why eat, or drink, or sleep?
Why live? _Mon Dieu!_ because there is no choice. And when I see you in
the garden, there is no choice for me, Mademoiselle. I must come down and
run into danger, because I cannot help it any more than I can help--"

"But you need not stay," she interrupted, cleverly. "A brave man may
always retire from danger into safety."

"But he may not always want to, Mademoiselle."

"Ah!"

And, with a shrug of the shoulders, she inserted the primroses within a
very small waistband and turned away.

"Will you give me those primroses, Mademoiselle?" asked Loo, without
moving; for, although she had turned to go, she had not gone.

She turned on her heel and looked at him, with demure surprise, and then
bent her head to look at the flowers at her own waist.

"They are mine," she answered, standing in that pretty attitude, her hair
half concealing her face. "I picked them myself."

"Two reasons why I want them."

"Ah! but," she said, with a suggestion of thoughtfulness, "one does not
always get what one wants. You ask a great deal, Monsieur."

"There is no limit to what I would ask, Mademoiselle."

She laughed gaily.

"If--" she inquired, with raised eyebrows.

"If I dared."

Again she looked at him with that little air of surprise.

"But I thought you were so brave?" she said. "So reckless of danger? A
brave man assuredly does not ask. He takes that which he would have."

It happened that she had clasped her hands behind her back, leaving the
primroses at her waist uncovered and half falling from the ribbon.

In a moment he had reached out his hand and taken them. She leapt back,
as if she feared that he might take more, and ran back toward the house,
placing a rough, tangle of brier between herself and this robber. Her
laughing face looked at him through the brier.

"You have your primroses," she said, "but I did not give them to you. You
want too much, I think."

"I want what that ribbon binds," he answered. But she turned away and ran
toward the house, without waiting to hear.




CHAPTER XXXIII


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND

It was late when Dormer Colville reached the quiet sea-coast village of
Royan on the evening of his return to the west. He did not seek Mrs. St.
Pierre Lawrence until the luncheon hour next morning, when he was
informed that she was away from home.

"Madame has gone to Paris," the man said, who, with his wife, was left in
charge of the empty house. "It was a sudden resolution, one must
conclude," he added, darkly, "but Madame took no one into her confidence.
She received news by post, which must have brought about this sudden
decision."

Colville was intimately acquainted with his cousin's affairs; many
hazarded an opinion that, without the help of Madame St. Pierre Lawrence,
this rolling stone would have been bare enough. She had gone to Paris for
one of two reasons, he concluded. Either she had expected him to return
thither from London, and had gone to meet him with the intention of
coming to some arrangement as to the disposal of the vast sum of money
now in Turner's hands awaiting further developments, or some hitch had
occurred with respect to John Turner himself.

Dormer Colville returned, thoughtfully, to his lodging, and in the
evening set out for Paris.

He himself had not seen Turner since that morning in the banker's office
in the Rue Lafayette, when they had parted so unceremoniously, in a
somewhat heated spirit. But, on reflection, Colville, who had sought to
reassure himself with regard to one whose name stood for the incarnation
of gastronomy and mental density in the Anglo-French clubs of Paris, had
come to the conclusion that nothing was to be gained by forcing a quarrel
upon Turner. It was impossible to bring home to him an accusation of
complicity in an outrage which had been carried through with remarkable
skill. And when it is impossible to force home an accusation, a wise man
will hold his tongue.

Colville could not prove that Turner had known Barebone to be in the
carriage waiting in the courtyard, and his own action in the matter had
been limited to the interposition of his own clumsy person between
Colville and the window; which might, after all, have been due to
stupidity. This, as a matter of fact, was Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's
theory on the subject. For that lady, resting cheerfully on the firm
basis of a self-confidence which the possession of money nearly always
confers on women, had laughed at Turner all her life, and now proposed to
continue that course of treatment.

"Take my word," she had assured Colville, "he was only acting in his
usual dense way, and probably thinks now that you are subject to brief
fits of mental aberration. I am not afraid of him or anything that he can
do. Leave him to me, and devote all your attention to finding Loo
Barebone again."

Upon which advice Colville had been content to act. He had a faith in
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's wit which was almost as great as her own; and
thought, perhaps rightly enough, that if any one were a match for John
Turner it was his sprightly and capable client. For there are two ways of
getting on in this world: one is to get credit for being cleverer than
you are, and the other to be cleverer than your neighbour suspects. But
the latter plan is seldom followed, for the satisfaction it provides must
necessarily be shared with no confidant.

Colville knew where to look for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence in Paris, where
she always took an apartment in a quiet and old-fashioned hotel rejoicing
in a select Royalist clientèle on the Place Vendôme. On arriving at the
capital, he hurried thither, and was told that the lady he sought had
gone out a few minutes earlier. "But Madame's maid," the porter added,
"is no doubt within."

Colville was conducted to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's room, and was hardly
there before the lady's French maid came hurrying in with upraised hands.

"A just Heaven has assuredly sent Monsieur at this moment!" she
exclaimed. "Madame only quitted this room ten minutes ago, and she was
agitated--she, who is usually so calm. She would tell me nothing; but I
know--I, who have done Madame's hair these ten years! And there is only
one thing that could cause her anxiety--except, of course, any mishap to
Monsieur; that would touch the heart--yes!"

"You are very kind, Catherine," said Colville, with a laugh, "to think me
so important. Is that letter for me?" And he pointed to a note in the
woman's hand.

"But--yes!" was the reply, and she gave up the letter, somewhat
reluctantly. "There is only one thing, and that is money," she concluded,
watching him tear open the envelope.

"I am going to John Turner's office," Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence wrote.
"If, by some lucky chance, you should pass through Paris, and happen to
call this morning, follow me to the Rue Lafayette. M. St. P. L."

It was plain enough. Colville reflected that Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had
heard of the success of his mission to England and the safe return to
Gemosac of Loo Barebone. For the moment, he could not think how the news
could have reached her. She might have heard it from Miriam Liston; for
their journey hack to Gemosac had occupied nearly a week. On learning the
good news, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had promptly grasped the situation;
for she was very quick in thought and deed. The money would be wanted at
once. She had gone to Turner's office to withdraw it in person.

Dormer Colville bought a flower in a shop in the Rue de la Paix, and had
it affixed to his buttonhole by the handmaid of Flora, who made it her
business to linger over the office with a gentle familiarity no doubt
pleasing enough to the majority of her clients.

Colville was absent-minded as he drove, in a hired carriage, to the Rue
Lafayette. He was wondering whether Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's maid had
any grounds for stating that a mishap to him would touch her mistress's
heart. He was a man of unbounded enterprise; but, like many who are
gamblers at heart, he was superstitious. He had never dared to try his
luck with Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. She was so hard, so worldly, so
infinitely capable of managing her own affairs and regulating her own
life, that to offer her his hand and heart in exchange for her fortune
had hitherto been dismissed from his mind as a last expedient, only to be
faced when ruin awaited him.

She had only been a widow three years. She had never been a sentimental
woman, and now her liberty and her wealth were obviously so dear to her
that, in common sense, he could scarcely, with any prospect of success,
ask her outright to part with them. Moreover, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence
knew all about Dormer Colville, as men say. Which is only a saying; for
no human being knows all about another human being, nor one-half, nor
one-tenth of what there is to know. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence knew enough,
at all events, Colville reflected, rather ruefully, to disillusionise a
schoolgirl, much more a woman of the world, knowing good and evil.

He had not lived forty years in the world, and twenty years in that world
of French culture which digs and digs into human nature, without having
heard philosophers opine that, in matters of the heart, women have no
illusions at all, and that it is only men who go blindfold into the
tortuous ways of love. But he was too practical a man to build up a false
hope on so frail a basis as a theory applied to a woman's heart.

He bought a flower for his buttonhole then, and squared his shoulders,
without any definite design. It was a mere habit--the habit acquired by
twenty years of unsuccessful enterprise, and renewed effort and deferred
hope--of leaving no stone unturned.

His cab wheeled into the Rue Lafayette, and the man drove more slowly,
reading the numbers on the houses. Then he stopped altogether, and turned
round in his seat.

"Citizen," he said, "there is a great crowd at the house you named. It
extends half across the street. I will go no further. It is not I who
care about publicity."

Colville stood up and looked in the direction indicated by his driver's
whip. The man had scarcely exaggerated. A number of people were waiting
their turn on the pavement and out into the roadway, while two gendarmes
held the door. Dormer Colville paid his cabman and walked into that
crowd, with a sinking heart.

"It is the great English banker," explained an on-looker, even before he
was asked, "who has failed."

Colville had never found any difficulty in making his way through a
crowd--a useful accomplishment in Paris at all times, where government is
conducted, thrones are raised and toppled over, provinces are won and
lost again, by the mob. He had that air of distinction which, if wielded
good-naturedly, is the surest passport in any concourse. Some, no doubt,
recognised him as an Englishman. One after another made way for him.
Persons unknown to him commanded others to step aside and let him pass;
for the busybody we have always with us.

In a few minutes he was at the top of the stairs, and there elbowed his
way into the office, where the five clerks sat bent up over their
ledgers. The space on the hither side of the counter was crammed with
men, who whispered impatiently together. If any one raised his voice, the
clerk whose business it was lifted his head and looked at the speaker
with a mute surprise.

One after another these white-faced applicants leant over the counter.

"_Voyons_, Monsieur!" they urged; "tell me this or inform me of that."

But the clerk only smiled and shook his head.

"Patience, Monsieur," he answered. "I cannot tell you yet. We are
awaiting advices from London."

"But when will you receive them?" inquired several, at once.

"It may be to-morrow. It may not be for several days."

"But can one see Mr. Turner?" inquired one, more daring than the rest.

"He is engaged."

Colville caught the eye of the clerk, and by a gesture made it known that
he must be allowed to pass on into the inner room. Once more his air of
the great world, his good clothes, his flower in the buttonhole, gave him
the advantage over others; and the clerk got down from his stool.

"Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence is with him, I know," whispered Colville. "I
come by appointment to meet her here."

He was shown in without further trouble, and found Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence sitting, white-faced and voluble, in the visitors' chair.

John Turner had his usual air of dense placidity, but the narrow black
tie he always tied in a bow was inclined slightly to one side; his hair
was ruffled, and, although the weather was not warm, his face wore a
shiny look. Any banker, with his clients clamouring on the stairs and out
into the street, might look as John Turner looked.

"You have heard the news?" asked Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, turning
sharply in her chair and looking at Colville with an expression of sudden
relief. She carried a handkerchief in her hand, but her eyes were dry.
She was, after all, only a forerunner of those who now propose to manage
human affairs. And even in these later days of their great advance, they
have not left their pocket-handkerchiefs behind them.

"I was told by one of the crowd," replied Colville, with a side smile
full of sympathy for Turner, "that the--er--bank had come to grief."

"Was just telling Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence," said Turner, imperturbably,
"that it is too early in the day to throw up the sponge and cry out that
all is lost."

"All!" echoed Colville, angrily. "But do you mean to say--Why, surely,
there is generally something left."

Turner shrugged his shoulders and sat in silence, gnawing the middle
joint of his thumb.

"But I must have the money!" cried Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. "It is most
important, and I must have it at once. I withdraw it all. See, I brought
my cheque-book with me. And I know that there are over a hundred thousand
pounds in my account. As well as that, you hold securities for two
hundred and fifty thousand more--my whole fortune. The money is not
yours: it is mine. I draw it all out, and I insist on having it."

Turner continued to bite his thumb, and glanced at her without speaking.

"Now, damn it all, Turner!" said Colville, in a voice suddenly hoarse;
"hand it over, man."

"I tell you it is gone," was the answer.

"What? Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Then you are a rogue! You
are a fraudulent trustee! I always thought you were a damned scoundrel,
Turner, and now I know it. I'll get you to the galleys for the rest of
your life, I promise you that."

"You will gain nothing by that," returned the banker, staring at the
date-card in front of him. "And you will lose any chance there is of
recovering something from the wreck. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had better
take the advice of her lawyer--in preference to yours."

"Then I am ruined!" said that lady, rising, with an air of resolution.
She was brave, at all events.

"At the present moment, it looks like it," admitted Turner, without
meeting her eye.

"What am I to do?" murmured Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, looking helplessly
round the room and finally at the banker's stolid face.

"Like the rest of us, I suppose," he admitted. "Begin the world afresh.
Perhaps your friends will come forward."

And he looked calmly toward Colville. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's face
suddenly flushed, and she turned away toward the door. Turner rose,
laboriously, and opened it.

"There is another staircase through this side door," he said, opening a
second door, which had the appearance of a cupboard. "You can avoid the
crowd."

They passed out together, and Turner, having closed the door behind them,
crossed the room to where a small mirror was suspended. He set his tie
straight and smoothed his hair, and then returned to his chair, with a
vague smile on his face.

Colville took the vacant seat in Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's brougham. She
still held a handkerchief in her hand.

"I do not mind for myself," she exclaimed, suddenly, when the carriage
moved out of the court-yard. "It is only for your sake, Dormer."

She turned and glanced at him with eyes that shone, but not with tears.

"Oh! Don't you understand?" she asked, in a whisper. "Don't you see,
Dormer?"

"A way out of it?" he answered, hurriedly, almost interrupting her. He
withdrew his hand, upon which she had laid her own; withdrew it
sympathetically, almost tenderly. "See a way out of it?" he repeated, in
a reflective and business-like voice. "No, I am afraid, for the moment, I
don't."

He sat stroking his moustache, looking out of the window, while she
looked out of the other, resolutely blinking back her tears. They drove
back to her hotel without speaking.




CHAPTER XXXIV


A SORDID MATTER

"_Bon Dieu!_ my old friend, what do you expect?" replied Madame de
Chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one May afternoon
by the Marquis de Gemosac. "It is the month of May," she further
explained, indicating with a gesture of her dimpled hand the roses abloom
all around them. For the Marquis had found her in a chair beneath the
mulberry-tree in the old garden of that house near Gemosac which looks
across the river toward the sea. "It is the month of May. One is young.
Such things have happened since the world began. They will happen until
it ends, Marquis. It happened in our own time, if I remember correctly."

And Madame de Chantonnay heaved a prodigious sigh, in memory of the days
that were no more.

"Given a young man of enterprise and not bad looking, I allow. He has the
grand air and his face is not without distinction. Given a young girl,
fresh as a flower, young, innocent, not without feeling. Ah! I know, for
I was like that myself. Place them in a garden, in the springtime. What
will they talk of--politics? Ah--bah! Let them have long evenings
together while their elders play chess or a hand at bézique. What game
will they play? A much older game than chess or bézique, I fancy."

"But the circumstances were so exceptional," protested the Marquis, who
had a pleased air, as if his anger were not without an antidote.

"Circumstances may be exceptional, my friend, but Love is a Rule. You
allow him to stay six weeks in the château, seeing Juliette daily, and
then you are surprised that one fine morning Monsieur de Bourbon comes to
you and tells you brusquely, as you report it, that he wants to marry
your daughter."

"Yes," admitted the Marquis. "He was what you may describe as brusque. It
is the English way, perhaps, of treating such matters. Now, for myself I
should have been warmer, I think. I should have allowed myself a little
play, as it were. One says a few pretty things--is it not so? One
suggests that the lady is an angel and oneself entirely unworthy of a
happiness which is only to be compared with the happiness that is
promised to us in the hereafter. It is an occasion upon which to be
eloquent."

"Not for the English," corrected Madame de Chantonnay, holding up a hand
to emphasise her opinion. "And you must remember, that although our
friend is French, he has been brought up in that cold country--by a
minister of their frozen religion, I understand. I, who speak to you,
know what they are, for once I had an Englishman in love with me. It was
in Paris, when Louis XVIII was King. And did this Englishman tell me that
he was heart-broken, I ask you? Never! On the contrary, he appeared to be
of an indifference only to be compared with the indifference of a tree.
He seemed to avoid me rather than seek my society. Once, he made believe
to forget that he had been presented to me. A ruse--a mere ruse to
conceal his passion. But I knew, I knew always."

"And what was the poor man's fate? What was his name, Comtesse?"

"I forget, my friend. For the moment I have forgotten it. But tell me
more about Monsieur de Bourbon and Juliette. He is passionately in love
with her, of course; he is so miserable."

The Marquis reflected for a few moments.

"Well," he said, at last, "he may be so; he may be so, Comtesse."

"And you--what did you say?"

The Marquis looked carefully round before replying. Then he leant forward
with his forefinger raised delicately to the tip of his nose.

"I temporised, Comtesse," he said, in a low voice. "I explained as
gracefully as one could that it was too early to think of such a
development--that I was taken by surprise."

"Which could hardly have been true," put in Madame de Chantonnay in an
audible aside to the mulberry-tree, "for neither Guienne nor la Vendée
will be taken by surprise."

"I said, in other words--a good many words, the more the better, for one
must be polite--'Secure your throne, Monsieur, and you shall marry
Juliette.' But it is not a position into which one hurries the last of
the house of Gemosac--to be the wife of an unsuccessful claimant, eh?"

Madame de Chantonnay approved in one gesture of her stout hand of these
principles and of the Marquis de Gemosac's masterly demonstration of
them.

"And Monsieur de Bourbon--did he accept these conditions?"

"He seemed to, Madame. He seemed content to do so," replied the Marquis,
tapping his snuff-box and avoiding the lady's eye.

"And Juliette?" inquired Madame, with a sidelong glance.

"Oh, Juliette is sensible," replied the fond father. "My daughter is, I
hope, sensible, Comtesse."

"Give yourself no uneasiness, my old friend," said Madame de Chantonnay,
heartily. "She is charming."

Madame sat back in her chair and fanned herself thoughtfully. It was the
fashion of that day to carry a fan and wield it with grace and effect. To
fan oneself did not mean that the heat was oppressive, any more than the
use of incorrect English signifies to-day ill-breeding or a lack of
education. Both are an indication of a laudable desire to be unmistakably
in the movement of one's day.

Over her fan Madame cast a sidelong glance at the Marquis, whom she, like
many of his friends, suspected of being much less simple and spontaneous
than he appeared.

"Then they are not formally affianced?" she suggested.

"_Mon Dieu!_ no. I clearly indicated that there were other things to be
thought of at the present time. A very arduous task lies before him, but
he is equal to it, I am certain. My conviction as to that grows as one
knows him better."

"But you are not prepared to allow the young people to force you to take
a leap in the dark," suggested Madame de Chantonnay. "And that poor
Juliette must consume her soul in patience; but she is sensible, as you
justly say. Yes, my dear Marquis, she is charming."

They were thus engaged in facile talk when Albert de Chantonnay emerged
from the long window of his study, a room opening on to a moss-grown
terrace, where this plotter walked to and fro like another Richelieu and
brooded over nation-shaking schemes.

He carried a letter in his hand and wore an air of genuine perturbment.
But even in his agitation he looked carefully round before he spoke.

"Here," he said to the Marquis and his fond mother, who watched him with
complacency--"here I have a letter from Dormer Colville. It is
necessarily couched in very cautious language. He probably knows, as I
know, that any letter addressed to me is liable to be opened. I have
reason to believe that some of my letters have not only been opened, but
that copies of them are actually in the possession of that man--the head
of that which is called the Government."

He turned and looked darkly into a neighbouring clump of rhododendrons,
as if Louis Napoleon were perhaps lurking there. But he was nevertheless
quite right in his suspicions, which were verified twenty years later,
along with much duplicity which none had suspected.

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