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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"I told you what it would be. But wait: there is more to come."

His affable eyes made a round of the watching faces, and even exchanged a
sympathetic smile with some, as if to hint that his clothes were only
fine because he belonged to a fine generation, but that his heart was as
human as any beating under a homelier coat.

"There's Passen," said one woman to another, behind the corner of her
apron, within Colville's hearing. "It takes a deal to bring him out o'
doors nowadays, and little Sep and--Miss Miriam."

Dormer Colville heard the words. And he heard something unspoken in the
pause before the mention of the last name. He did not look at once in the
direction indicated by a jerk of the speaker's thumb, but waited until a
change of position enabled him to turn his head without undue curiosity.
He threw back his shoulders and stretched his legs after the manner of
one cramped by standing too long in one attitude.

A hundred yards farther up the river, where the dyke was wider, a
grey-haired man was walking slowly toward the quay. In front of him a boy
of ten years was endeavouring to drag a young girl toward the jetty at a
quicker pace than she desired. She was laughing at his impetuosity and
looking back toward the man who followed them with the abstraction and
indifference of a student.

Colville took in the whole picture in one quick comprehensive glance. But
he turned again as the singer on board "The Last Hope" began another
verse. The words were clearly audible to such as knew the language, and
Colville noted that the girl turned with a sudden gravity to listen to
them.

"Un tel qu'on vantait
Par hasard était
D'origine assez minoe;
Par hasard il plut,
Par hasard il fut
Baron, ministre, et prince."

Captain Clubbe's harsh voice broke into the song with the order to let go
the anchor. As the ship swung to the tide the steersman, who wore neither
coat nor waistcoat, could be seen idly handling the wheel still, though
his duties were necessarily at an end. He was a young man, and a gay
salutation of his unemployed hand toward the assembled people--as if he
were sure that they were all friends--stamped him as the light-hearted
singer, so different from the Farlingford men, so strongly contrasted to
his hearers, who nevertheless jerked their heads sideways in response. He
had, it seemed, rightly gauged the feelings of these cold East Anglians.
They were his friends.

River Andrew's boat was alongside "The Last Hope" now. Some one had
thrown him a rope, which he had passed under his bow thwart and now held
with one hand, while with the other he kept his distance from the tarry
side of the ship. There was a pause until the schooner felt her moorings,
then Captain Clubbe looked over the side and nodded a curt salutation to
River Andrew, bidding him, by the same gesture, wait a minute until he
had donned his shore-going jacket. The steersman was pulling on his coat
while he sought among the crowd the faces of his more familiar friends.
He was, it seemed, a privileged person, and took it for granted that he
should go ashore with the captain. He was, perhaps, one of those who
seemed to be privileged at their birth by Fate, and pass through life on
the sunny side with a light step and laughing lips.

Captain Clubbe was the first to step ashore, with one comprehensive nod
of the head for all Farlingford. Close on his heels the younger sailor
was already returning the greetings of his friends.

"Hullo, Loo!" they said; or, "How do, Barebone?" For their tongues are no
quicker than their limbs, and to this day, "How do?" is the usual
greeting.

The Marquis de Gemosac, who was sitting in the background, gave a sharp
little exclamation of surprise when Barebone stepped ashore, and turned
to Dormer Colville to say in an undertone:

"Ah--but you need say nothing."

"I promised you," answered Colville, carelessly, "that I should tell you
nothing till you had seen him."




CHAPTER III


THE RETURN OF "THE LAST HOPE"

Not only France, but all Europe, had at this time to reckon with one who,
if, as his enemies said, was no Bonaparte, was a very plausible imitation
of one.

In 1849 France, indeed, was kind enough to give the world a breathing
space. She had herself just come through one of those seething years from
which she alone seems to have the power of complete recovery. Paris had
been in a state of siege for four months; not threatened by a foreign
foe, but torn to pieces by internal dissension. Sixteen thousand had been
killed and wounded in the streets. A ministry had fallen. A ministry
always does fall in France. Bad weather may bring about such a descent at
any moment. A monarchy had been thrown down--a king had fled. Another
king; and one who should have known better than to put his trust in a
people.

Half a dozen generals had attempted to restore order in Paris and
confidence in France. Then, at the very end of 1848, the fickle people
elected this Napoleon, who was no Bonaparte, President of the new
Republic, and Europe was accorded a breathing space. At the beginning of
1849 arrangements were made for it--military arrangements--and the year
was almost quiet.

It was in the summer of the next year, 1850, that the Marquis de Gemosac
journeyed to England. It was not his first visit to the country. Sixty
years earlier he had been hurried thither by a frenzied mother, a little
pale-faced boy, not bright or clever, but destined to pass through days
of trial and years of sorrow which the bright and clever would scarcely
have survived. For brightness must always mean friction, while cleverness
will continue to butt its head against human limitations so long as men
shall walk this earth.

He had been induced to make this journey thus, in the evening of his
days, by the Hope, hitherto vain enough, which many Frenchmen had pursued
for half a century. For he was one of those who refused to believe that
Louis XVII had died in the prison of the Temple.

Not once, but many times, Dormer Colville laughingly denied any
responsibility in the matter.

"I will not even tell the story as it was told to me," he said to the
Marquis de Gemosac, to the Abbé Touvent and to the Comtesse de
Chantonnay, whom he met frequently enough at the house of his cousin,
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, in that which is now the Province of the
Charente Inférieure. "I will not even tell you the story as it was told
to me, until one of you has seen the man. And then, if you ask me, I will
tell you. It is nothing to me, you understand. I am no dreamer, but a
very material person, who lives in France because he loves the sunshine,
and the cuisine, and the good, kind hearts, which no government or want
of government can deteriorate."

And Madame de Chantonnay, who liked Dormer Colville--with whom she
admitted she always felt herself in sympathy--smiled graciously in
response to his gallant bow. For she, too, was a materialist who loved
the sunshine and the cuisine; more especially the cuisine.

Moreover, Colville never persuaded the Marquis de Gemosac to come
to England. He went so far as to represent, in a realistic light,
the discomforts of the journey, and only at the earnest desire of
many persons concerned did he at length enter into the matter and
good-naturedly undertake to accompany the aged traveller.

So far as his story was concerned, he kept his word, entertaining the
Marquis on the journey and during their two days' sojourn at the humble
inn at Farlingford with that flow of sympathetic and easy conversation
which always made Madame de Chantonnay protest that he was no Englishman
at all, but all that there was of the most French. Has it not been seen
that Colville refused to translate the dark sayings of River Andrew by
the side of the grass-grown grave, which seemed to have been brought to
the notice of the travellers by the merest accident?

"I promised you that I should tell you nothing until you had seen him,"
he repeated, as the Marquis followed with his eyes the movements of the
group of which the man they called Loo Barebone formed the centre.

No one took much notice of the two strangers. It is not considered good
manners in a seafaring community to appear to notice a new-comer. Captain
Clubbe was naturally the object of universal attention. Was he not
bringing foreign money into Farlingford, where the local purses needed
replenishing now that trade had fallen away and agriculture was so sorely
hampered by the lack of roads across the marsh?

Clubbe pushed his way through the crowd to shake hands with the Rev.
Septimus Marvin, who seemed to emerge from a visionary world of his own
in order to perform that ceremony and to return thither on its
completion.

Then the majority of the onlookers straggled homeward, leaving a few
wives and sweethearts waiting by the steps, with patient eyes fixed on
the spidery figures in the rigging of "The Last Hope." Dormer Colville
and the Marquis de Gemosac were left alone, while the rector stood a few
yards away, glaring abstractedly at them through his gold-rimmed
spectacles as if they had been some strange flotsam cast up by the high
tide.

"I remember," said Colville to his companion, "that I have an
introduction to the pastor of the village, who, if I am not mistaken, is
even now contemplating opening a conversation. It was given to me by my
banker in Paris, who is a Suffolk man. You remember, Marquis, John
Turner, of the Rue Lafayette?"

"Yes--yes," answered the Marquis, absently. He was still watching the
retreating villagers, with eyes old and veiled by the trouble that they
had seen.

"I will take this opportunity of presenting myself," said Colville, who
was watching the little group from the rectory without appearing to do
so. He rose as he spoke and went toward the clergyman, who was probably
much younger than he looked. For he was ill-dressed and ill-shorn, with
straggling grey hair hanging to his collar. He had a musty look, such as
a book may have that is laid on a shelf in a deserted room and never
opened or read. Septimus Marvin, the world would say, had been laid upon
a shelf when he was inducted to the spiritual cure of Farlingford. But no
man is ever laid on a shelf by Fate. He climbs up there of his own will,
and lies down beneath the dust of forgetfulness because he lacks the
heart to arise and face the business of life.

Seeing that Dormer Colville was approaching him, he came forward with a
certain scholarly ease of manner as if he had once mixed with the best on
an intellectual equality.

Colville's manners were considered perfect, especially by those who were
unable to detect a fine line said to exist between ease and too much
ease. Mr. Marvin recollected John Turner well. Ten years earlier he had,
indeed, corresponded at some length with the Paris banker respecting a
valuable engraving. Was Mr. Colville interested in engravings? Colville
confessed to a deep and abiding pleasure in this branch of art, tempered,
he admitted with a laugh, by a colossal ignorance. He then proceeded to
give the lie to his own modesty by talking easily and well of mezzotints
and etchings.

"But," he said, interrupting himself with evident reluctance, "I am
forgetting my obligations. Let me present to you my companion, an old
friend, the Marquis de Gemosac."

The two gentlemen bowed, and Mr. Marvin, knowing no French, proceeded to
address the stranger in good British Latin, after the manner of the
courtly divines of his day. Which Latin, from its mode of pronunciation,
was entirely unintelligible to its hearer.

In return, the rector introduced the two strangers to his niece, Miriam
Liston.

"The mainstay of my quiet house," he added, with his vague and dreamy
smile.

"I have already heard of you," said Dormer Colville at once, with his
modest deference, "from my cousin, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence."

He seemed, as sailors say, never to be at a loose end; but to go through
life with a facile readiness, having, as it were, his hands full of
threads among which to select, with a careless affability, one that must
draw him nearer to high and low, men and women, alike.

They talked together for some minutes, and, soon after the discovery that
Mariam Liston was as good a French scholar as himself, and therefore able
to converse with the Marquis de Gemosac, Colville regretted that it was
time for them to return to their simple evening meal at "The Black
Sailor."

"Well," said Colville to Monsieur de Gemosac, as they walked slowly
across the green toward the inn, embowered in its simple cottage-garden,
all ablaze now with hollyhocks and poppies--"well, after your glimpse at
this man, Marquis, are you desirous to see more of him?"

"My friend," answered the Frenchman, with a quick gesture, descriptive of
a sudden emotion not yet stilled, "he took my breath away. I can think of
nothing else. My poor brain is buzzing still, and I know not what answers
I made to that pretty English girl. Ah! You smile at my enthusiasm; you
do not know what it is to have a great hope dangling before the eyes all
one's life. And that face--that face!"

In which judgment the Marquis was no doubt right. For Dormer Colville was
too universal a man to be capable of concentrated zeal upon any one
object. He laughed at the accusation.

"After dinner," he answered, "I will tell you the little story as it was
told to me. We can sit on this seat, outside the inn, in the scent of the
flowers and smoke our cigarette."

To which proposal Monsieur de Gemosac assented readily enough. For he was
an old man, and to such the importance of small things, such as dinner or
a passing personal comfort, are apt to be paramount. Moreover, he was a
remnant of that class to which France owed her downfall among the
nations; a class represented faithfully enough by its King, Louis XVI,
who procrastinated even on the steps of the guillotine.

The wind went down with the sun, as had been foretold by River Andrew,
and the quiet of twilight lay on the level landscape like sleep when the
two travellers returned to the seat at the inn door. A distant curlew was
whistling cautiously to its benighted mate, but all other sounds were
still. The day was over.

"You remember," said Colville to his companion, "that six months after
the execution of the King, a report ran through Paris and all France that
the Dillons had succeeded in rescuing the Dauphin from the Temple."

"That was in July, 1793--just fifty-seven years ago--the news reached me
in Austria," answered the Marquis.

Colville glanced sideways at his companion, whose face was set with a
stubbornness almost worthy of the tenacious Bourbons themselves.

"The Queen was alive then," went on the Englishman, half diffidently, as
if prepared for amendment or correction. "She had nearly three months to
live. The separation from her children had only just been carried out.
She was not broken by it yet. She was in full possession of her health
and energy. She was one of the cleverest women of that time. She was
surrounded by men, some of whom were frankly half-witted, others who were
drunk with excess of a sudden power for which they had had no
preparation. Others, again, were timorous or cunning. All were ignorant,
and many had received no education at all. For there are many ignorant
people who have been highly educated, Marquis."

He gave a short laugh and lighted a cigarette. "Mind," he continued,
after a pause devoted to reflection which appeared to be neither deep nor
painful, for he smiled as he gazed across the hazy marshes, "mind, I am
no enthusiast, as you yourself have observed. I plead no cause. She was
not my Queen, Marquis, and France is not my country. I endeavour to look
at the matter with the eye of common-sense and wisdom. And I cannot
forget that Marie Antoinette was at bay: all her senses, all her wit
alert. She can only have thought of her children. Human nature would
dictate such thoughts. One cannot forget that she had devoted friends,
and that these friends possessed unlimited money. Do you think, Marquis,
that any one man of that rabble was above the reach--of money?"

And Mr. Dormer Colville's reflective smile, as he gazed at the distant
sea, would seem to indicate that, after a considerable experience of men
and women, he had reluctantly arrived at a certain conclusion respecting
them.

"No man born of woman, Marquis, is proof against bribery or flattery--or
both."

"One can believe anything that is bad of such dregs of human-kind, my
friend," said Monsieur de Gemosac, contemptuously.

"I speak to one," continued Colville, "who has given the attention of a
lifetime to the subject. If I am wrong, correct me. What I have been told
is that a man was found who was ready, in return for a certain sum paid
down, to substitute his own son for the little Dauphin--to allow his son
to take the chance of coming alive out of that predicament. One can
imagine that such a man could be found in France at that period."

Monsieur de Gemosac turned, and looked at his companion with a sort of
surprise.

"You speak as if in doubt, Monsieur Colville," he said, with a sudden
assumption of that grand manner with which his father had faced the
people on the Place de la Révolution--had taken a pinch of snuff in the
shadow of the guillotine one sunny July day. "You speak as if in doubt.
Such a man was found. I have spoken with him: I, who speak to you."




CHAPTER IV


THE MARQUIS'S CREED

Dormer Colville smiled doubtfully. He was too polite, it seemed, to be
sceptical, and by his attitude expressed a readiness to be convinced as
much from indifference as by reasoning.

"It is intolerable," said the Marquis de Gemosac, "that a man of your
understanding should be misled by a few romantic writers in the pay of
the Orleans."

"I am not misled, Marquis; I am ignorant," laughed Colville. "It is not
always the same thing."

Monsieur de Gemosac threw away his cigarette and turned eagerly toward
his companion.

"Listen," he said. "I can convince you in a few words."

And Colville leaned back against the weather-worn seat with the air of
one prepared to give a post-prandial attention.

"Such a man was found as you yourself suggest. A boy was found who could
not refuse to run that great risk, who could not betray himself by
indiscreet speech--because he was dumb. In order to allay certain rumours
which were going the round of Europe, the National Convention sent three
of its members to visit the Dauphin in prison, and they themselves have
left a record that he answered none of their questions and spoke no word
to them. Why? Because he was dumb. He merely sat and looked at them
solemnly, as the dumb look. It was not the Dauphin at all. He was hidden
in the loft above. The visit of the Conventionals was not satisfactory.
The rumours were not stilled by it. There is nothing so elusive or so
vital as a rumour. Ah! you smile, my friend."

"I always give a careful attention to rumours," admitted Colville. "More
careful than that which one accords to official announcements."

"Well, the dumb boy was not satisfactory. Those who were paid for this
affair began to be alarmed. Not for their pockets. There was plenty of
money. Half the crowned heads in Europe, and all the women, were ready to
open their purses for the sake of a little boy, whose ill-treatment
appealed to their soft hearts: who in a sense was sacred, for he was
descended from sixty-six kings. No! Barras and all the other scoundrels
began to perceive that there was only one way out of the difficulty into
which they had blundered. The Dauphin must die! So the dumb boy
disappeared. One wonders whither he went and what his fate might be--"

"With so much to tell," put in Dormer Colville, musingly; "so much
unspoken."

It was odd how the _rôles_ had been reversed. For the Marquis de Gemosac
was now eagerly seeking to convince his companion. The surest way to
persuade a man is to lead him to persuade himself.

"The only solution was for the Dauphin to die--in public. So another
substitution was effected," continued Monsieur de Gemosac. "A dying boy
from the hospital was made to play the part of the Dauphin. He was not at
all like him; for he was tall and dark--taller and darker than a son of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette could ever have been. The prison was
reconstructed so that the sentry on guard could not see his prisoner, but
was forced to call to him in order to make sure that he was there. It was
a pity that he did not resemble the Dauphin at all, this scrofulous
child. But they were in a hurry, and they were at their wits' ends. And
it is not always easy to find a boy who will die in a given time. This
boy had to die, however, by some means or other. It was for France, you
understand, and the safety of the Great Republic."

"One hopes that he appreciated his privilege," observed Colville,
philosophically.

"And he must die in public, duly certified for by persons of undoubted
integrity. They called in, at the last moment, Desault, a great doctor of
that day. But Desault was, unfortunately, honest. He went home and told
his assistant that this was not the Dauphin, and that, whoever he might
be, he was being poisoned. The assistant's name was Choppart, and this
Choppart made up a medicine, on Desault's prescription, which was an
antidote to poison."

Monsieur de Gemosac paused, and, turning to his companion, held up one
finger to command his full attention.

"Desault died, my friend, four days later, and Choppart died five days
after him, and the boy in the Temple died three days after Choppart. And
no one knows what they died of. They were pretty bunglers, those
gentlemen of the Republic! Of course, they called in others in a hurry;
men better suited to their purpose. And one of these, the citizen
Pelletan, has placed on record some preposterous lies. These doctors
certified that this was the Dauphin. They had never seen him before, but
what matter? Great care was taken to identify the body. Persons of
position, who had never seen the son of Louis XVI, were invited to visit
the Temple. Several of them had the temerity to protect themselves in the
certificate. 'We saw what we were informed was the body of the Dauphin,'
they said."

Again the old man turned, and held up his hand in a gesture of warning.

"If they wanted a witness whose testimony was without question--whose
word would have laid the whole question in that lost and forgotten grave
for ever--they had one in the room above. For the Dauphin's sister was
there, Marie Thérèse Charlotte, she who is now Duchess of Angoulême. Why
did they not bring her down to see the body, to testify that her brother
was dead and the line of Louis XVI ended? Was it chivalry? I ask you if
these had shown chivalry to Madame de Lamballe? to Madame Elizabeth? to
Marie Antoinette? Was it kindness toward a child of unparalleled
misfortune? I ask you if they had been kind to those whom they called the
children of the tyrant? No! They did not conduct her to that bedside,
because he who lay there was not her brother. Are we children, Monsieur,
to be deceived by a tale of a sudden softness of heart? They wished to
spare this child the pain! Had they ever spared any one pain--the
National Assembly?"

And the Marquis de Gemosac's laugh rang with a hatred which must, it
seems, outlive the possibility of revenge.

"There was to be a public funeral. Such a ceremony would have been of
incalculable value at that time. But, at the last minute, their courage
failed them. The boy was thrown into a forgotten corner of a Paris
churchyard, at nine o'clock one night, without witnesses. The spot itself
cannot now be identified. Do you tell me that that was the Dauphin? Bah!
my friend, the thing was too childish!"

"The ignorant and the unlettered," observed Colville, with the air of
making a concession, "are always at a disadvantage--even in crime."

"That the Dauphin was, in the mean time, concealed in the garret of the
Tower appears to be certain. That he was finally conveyed out of the
prison in a clothes-basket is as certain, Monsieur, as it is certain that
the sun will rise to-morrow. And I believe that the Queen knew, when she
went to the guillotine, that her son was no longer in the Temple. I
believe that Heaven sent her that one scrap of comfort, tempered as it
was by the knowledge that her daughter remained a prisoner in their
hands. But it was to her son that her affections were given. For the
Duchess never had the gift of winning love. As she is now--a cold, hard,
composed woman--so she was in her prison in the Temple at the age of
fifteen. You may take it from one who has known her all his life. And
from that moment to this--"

The Marquis paused, and made a gesture with his hands, descriptive of
space and the unknown.

"From that moment to this--nothing. Nothing of the Dauphin."

He turned in his seat and looked questioningly up toward the crumbling
church, with its square tower, stricken, years ago, by lightning; with
its grass-grown graveyard marked by stones all grey and hoary with
immense age and the passage of cold and stormy winters.

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