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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"Not if I am on the wall who amuse myself with a hayfork, Monsieur le
Marquis," replied Marie, with that exaggerated respect which implies a
knowledge of mental superiority. She beckoned curtly to Loo and clattered
down the stairs, followed by Barebone. The others did not attempt to go
to their assistance, and the Marquis de Gemosac had a hundred questions
to ask Colville.

The Englishman had little to tell of his own escape. There were so many
more important arrests to be made that the overworked police of Monsieur
de Maupas had only been able to apportion to him a bungler whom Colville
had easily outwitted.

"And Madame St. Pierre Lawrence?" inquired the Marquis.

"Madame quitted Paris on Tuesday for England under the care of John
Turner, who had business in London. He kindly offered to escort her
across the Channel."

"Then she, at all events, is safe," said the Marquis, with a little wave
of the hand indicating his satisfaction. "He is not brilliant, Monsieur
Turner--so few English are--but he is solid, I think."

"I think he is the cleverest man I know," said Dormer Colville,
thoughtfully. And before they had spoken again Loo Barebone returned.

He, like Marie, had grasped at once the serious aspect of the situation,
whereas the Marquis succeeded only in reaching it with a superficial
touch. He prattled of the political crisis in Paris and bade his friends
rest assured that law and order must ultimately prevail. He even seemed
to cherish the comforting assurance that Providence must in the end
interfere on behalf of a Legitimate Succession. For this old noble was
the true son of a father who had believed to the end in that King who
talked grandiloquently of the works of Seneca and Tacitus while driving
from the Temple to his trial, with the mob hooting and yelling
imprecations into the carriage windows.

The Marquis de Gemosac found time to give a polite opinion on John Turner
while the streets of Gemosac were being cleared by the cavalry from
Saintes, and the Gendarmerie, burning briskly, lighted up a scene of
bloodshed.

"We have raised the drawbridge a few feet," said Barebone; "but the
chains are rusted and may easily be broken by a blacksmith. It will serve
to delay them a few minutes; but it is not the mob we seek to keep out,
and any organised attempt to break in would succeed in half an hour. We
must go, of course."

He turned to Colville, with whom he had met and faced difficulties in the
past. Colville might easily have escaped to England with Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence, but he had chosen the better part. He had undertaken a long
journey through disturbed France only to throw in his lot at the end of
it with two pre-condemned men. Loo turned to him as to one who had proved
himself capable enough in an emergency, brave in face of danger.

"We cannot stay here," he said; "the gates will serve to give us an
hour's start, but no more. I suppose there is another way out of the
château."

"There are two ways," answered the Marquis. "One leads to a house in the
town and the other emerges at the mill down below the walls. But, alas!
both are lost sight of. My ancestors--"

"I know the shorter one," put in Juliette, "the passage that leads to the
mill. I can show you the entrance to that, which is in the crypt of the
chapel, hidden behind the casks of wine."

She spoke to Barebone, only half-concealing, as Marie had done, the fact
that the great respect with which the Marquis de Gemosac was treated was
artificial, and would fall to pieces under the strain of an emergency--a
faint echo of the old regime.

"When you are gone," the girl continued, still addressing Barebone,
"Marie and I can keep them out at least an hour--probably more. We may be
able to keep them outside the walls all night, and when at last they come
in it will take them hours to satisfy themselves that you are not
concealed within the enceinte."

She was quite cool, and even smiled at him with a white face.

"You are always right, Mademoiselle, and have a clear head," said
Barebone.

"But no heart?" she answered in an undertone, under cover of her father's
endless talk to Colville and with a glance which Barebone could not
understand.

In a few minutes Dormer Colville pronounced himself ready to go, and
refused to waste further precious minutes in response to Monsieur de
Gemosac's offers of hospitality. No dinner had been prepared, for Marie
had sterner business in hand and could be heard beneath the windows
urging her husband to display a courage superior to that of a rabbit.
Juliette hurried to the kitchen and there prepared a parcel of cold meat
and bread for the fugitives to eat as they fled.

"We might remain hidden in a remote cottage," Barebone had suggested to
Colville, "awaiting the development of events, but our best chance is
'The Last Hope.' She is at Bordeaux, and must be nearly ready for sea."

So it was hurriedly arranged that they should make their way on foot to a
cottage on the marsh while Jean was despatched to Bordeaux with a letter
for Captain Clubbe.

"It is a pity," said Marie, when informed of this plan, "that it is not I
who wear the breeches. But I will make it clear to Jean that if he fails
to carry out his task he need not show his face at the gate again."

The Marquis ran hither and thither, making a hundred suggestions, which
were accepted in the soothing manner adopted toward children. He assured
Juliette that their absence would be of short duration; that there was
indeed no danger, but that he was acceding to the urgent persuasions of
Barebone and Colville, who were perhaps unnecessarily alarmed--who did
not understand how affairs were conducted in France. He felt assured that
law and order must prevail.

"But if they have put Albert de Chantonnay in prison, why should you be
safe?" asked Juliette. To which the Marquis replied with a meaning cackle
that she had a kind heart, and that it was only natural that it should be
occupied at that moment with thoughts of that excellent young man who, in
his turn, was doubtless thinking of her in his cell at La Rochelle.

Which playful allusion to Albert de Chantonnay's pretensions was received
by their object with a calm indifference.

"When Jean returns," she said, practically, "I will send him to you at
the Brémonts' cottage with food and clothing. But you must not attempt to
communicate with us. You would only betray your whereabouts and do no
good to us. We shall be quite safe in the château. Marie and I and Madame
Maugiron are not afraid."

At which the Marquis laughed heartily. It was so amusing to think that
one should be young and pretty--and not afraid. In the mean time Barebone
was sealing his letter to Captain Clubbe. He had written it in the
Suffolk dialect, spelling all the words as they are pronounced on that
coast and employing when he could the Danish and Dutch expressions in
daily use on the foreshore, which no French official seeking to translate
could find in any dictionary.

Loo gave his instructions to Jean himself, who received them in a silence
not devoid of intelligence. The man had been round the walls and reported
that nothing stirred beneath them; that there was more than one fire in
the town, and that the streets appeared to be given over to disorder and
riot.

"It is assuredly a change in the Government," he explained, simply. "And
there will be many for Monsieur l'Abbé to bury on Sunday."

Jean was to accompany them to the cottage of an old man who had once
lived by ferrying the rare passenger across the Gironde. Having left them
here, he could reach Blaye before daylight, from whence a passage up the
river to Bordeaux would be easily procurable.

The boatman's cottage stood on the bank of a creek running into the
Gironde. It was a lone building hidden among the low dunes that lie
between the river and the marsh. Any one approaching it by daylight would
be discernible half an hour in advance, and the man's boat, though old,
was seaworthy. None would care to cross the lowlands at night except
under the guidance of one or two, who, like Jean, knew their way even in
the dark.

Colville and Barebone had to help Jean to move the great casks stored in
the crypt of the old chapel by which the entrance to the passage was
masked.

"It is, I recollect having been told, more than a passage--it is a ramp,"
explained the Marquis, who stood by. "It was intended for the passage of
horses, so that a man might mount here and ride out into the mill-stream,
actually beneath the mill-wheel which conceals the exit."

Juliette, a cloak thrown over her evening dress, had accompanied them and
stood near, holding a lantern above her head to give them light. It was
an odd scene--a strange occupation for the last of the de Gemosacs.
Through the gaps in the toppling walls they could hear the roar of voices
and the occasional report of a firearm in the streets of the town below.
The door opened easily enough, and Jean, lighting a candle, led the way.
Barebone was the last to follow. Within the doorway he turned to say
good-bye. The light of the lantern flickered uncertainly on Juliette's
fair hair.

"We may be back sooner than you expect, mademoiselle," said Barebone.

"Or you may go--to England," she answered.




CHAPTER XXXIX


"JOHN DARBY"

Although it was snowing hard, it was not a dark night. There was a half
moon hidden behind those thin, fleecy clouds, which carry the snow across
the North Sea and cast it noiselessly upon the low-lying coast, from
Thanet to the Wash, which knows less rain and more snow than any in
England.

A gale of wind was blowing from the north-east; not in itself a wild
gale, but at short intervals a fresh burst of wind brought with it a
thicker fall of snow, and during these squalls the force of the storm was
terrific. A man, who had waited on the far shore of the river for a quiet
interval, had at last made his way to the Farlingford side. He moored his
boat and stumbled heavily up the steps.

There was no one on the quay. The street was deserted, but the lights
within the cottages glowed warmly through red blinds here and there. The
majority of windows were, however, secured with a shutter, screwed tight
from within. The man trotted steadily up the street. He had an
unmistakable air of discipline. It was only six o'clock, but night had
closed in three hours ago. The coast-guard looked neither to one side nor
the other, but ran on at the pace of one who had run far and knows that
he cannot afford to lose his breath; for his night's work was only begun.

The coast-guard station stands on the left-hand side of the street, a
long, low house in a bare garden. In answer to the loud summons, a
red-faced little man opened the door and let out into the night a smell
of bloaters and tea--the smell that pervades all Farlingford at six
o'clock in the evening.

"Something on the Inner Curlo Bank," shouted the coast-guard in his face,
and turning on his heel, he ran with the same slow, organised haste,
leaving the red-faced man finishing a mouthful on the mat.

The next place of call was at River Andrew's, the little low cottage with
rounded corners, below the church.

"Come out o' that," said the coast-guard, with a contemptuous glance of
snow-rimmed eyes at River Andrew's comfortable tea-table. "Ring yer bell.
Something on the Inner Curlo Bank."

River Andrew had never hurried in his life, and like all his fellows, he
looked upon coast-guards as amateurs mindful, as all amateurs are, of
their clothes.

"A'm now going," he answered, rising laboriously from his chair. The
coast-guard glanced at his feet clad in the bright green carpet-slippers,
dear to seafaring men. Then he turned to the side of the mantelpiece and
took the church keys from the nail. For everybody knows where everybody
else keeps his keys in Farlingford. He forgot to shut the door behind
him, and River Andrew, pessimistically getting into his sea-boots, swore
at his retreating back.

"Likely as not, he'll getten howld o' the wrong roup," he muttered;
though he knew that every boy in the village could point out the rope of
"John Darby," as that which had a piece of faded scarlet flannel twisted
through the strands.

In a few minutes the man, who hastened slowly, gave the call, which
every man in Farlingford answered with an emotionless, mechanical
promptitude. From each fireside some tired worker reached out his hand
toward his most precious possession, his sea-boots, as his forefathers
had done before him for two hundred years at the sound of "John Darby."
The women crammed into the pockets of the men's stiff oilskins a piece of
bread, a half-filled bottle--knowing that, as often as not, their
husbands must pass the night and half the next day on the beach, or out
at sea, should the weather permit a launch through the surf.

There was no need of excitement, or even of comment. Did not "John Darby"
call them from their firesides or their beds a dozen times every winter,
to scramble out across the shingle? As often as not, there was nothing to
be done but drag the dead bodies from the surf; but sometimes the dead
revived--some fair-haired, mystic foreigner from the northern seas, who
came to and said, "T'ank you," and nothing else. And next day, rigged out
in dry clothes and despatched toward Ipswich on the carrier's cart, he
would shake hands awkwardly with any standing near and bob his head and
say "T'ank you" again, and go away, monosyllabic, mystic, never to be
heard of more. But the ocean, as it is called at Farlingford, seemed to
have an inexhaustible supply of such Titans to throw up on the rattling
shingle winter after winter. And, after all, they were seafaring men, and
therefore brothers. Farlingford turned out to a man, each seeking to be
first across the river every time "John Darby" called them, as if he had
never called them before.

To-night none paused to finish the meal, and many a cup raised half-way
was set down again untasted. It is so easy to be too late.

Already the flicker of lanterns on the sea-wall showed that the rectory
was astir. For Septimus Marvin, vaguely recalling some schoolboy instinct
of fair-play, knew the place of the gentleman and the man of education
among humbler men in moments of danger and hardship, which should,
assuredly, never be at the back.

"Yonder's parson," some one muttered. "His head is clear now, I'll
warrant, when he hears 'John Darby.'"

"'Tis only on Sundays, when 'John' rings slow, 'tis misty," answered a
sharp-voiced woman, with a laugh. For half of Farlingford was already at
the quay, and three or four boats were bumping and splashing against the
steps. The tide was racing out, and the wind, whizzing slantwise across
it, pushed it against the wooden piles of the quay, making them throb and
tremble.

"Not less'n four to the oars!" shouted a gruff voice, at the foot of the
steps, where the salt water, splashing on the snow, had laid bare the
green and slimy moss. Two or three volunteers stumbled down the steps,
and the first boat got away, swinging down-stream at once, only to be
brought slowly back, head to wind. She hung motionless a few yards from
the quay, each dip of the oars stirring the water into a whirl of
phosphorescence, and then forged slowly ahead.

Septimus Marvin was not alone, but was accompanied by a bulky man, not
unknown in Farlingford--John Turner, of Ipswich, understood to live
"foreign," but to return, after the manner of East Anglians, when
occasion offered. The rector was in oilskins and sou'wester, like any one
else, and the gleam of his spectacles under the snowy brim of his
headgear seemed to strike no one as incongruous. His pockets bulged with
bottles and bandages. Under his arm he carried a couple of blanket
horse-cloths, useful for carrying the injured or the dead.

"The Curlo--the Inner Curlo--yes, yes!" he shouted in response to
information volunteered on all sides. "Poor fellows! The Inner Curlo,
dear, dear!"

And he groped his way down the steps, into the first boat he saw, with a
simple haste. John Turner followed him. He had tied a silk handkerchief
over his soft felt hat and under his chin.

"No, no!" he said, as Septimus Marvin made room for him on the
after-thwart. "I'm too heavy for a passenger. Put my weight on an oar,"
and he clambered forward to a vacant thwart.

"Mind you come back for us, River Andrew!" cried little Sep's thin voice,
as the boat swirled down stream. His wavering bull's-eye lantern followed
it, and showed River Andrew and another pulling stroke to John Turner's
bow, for the banker had been a famous oar on the Orwell in his boyhood.
Then, with a smack like a box on the ear, another snow-squall swept in
from the sea, and forced all on the quay to turn their backs and crouch.
Many went back to their homes, knowing that nothing could be known for
some hours. Others crouched on the landward side of an old coal-shed,
peeping round the corner.

Miriam and Sep, and a few others, waited on the quay until River Andrew
or another should return. It was an understood thing that the helpers,
such as could man a boat or carry a drowned man, should go first. In a
few minutes the squall was past, and by the light of the moon, now thinly
covered by clouds, the black forms of the first to reach the other shore
could be seen straggling across the marsh toward the great shingle-bank
that lies between the river and the sea. Two boats were moored at the far
side, another was just making the jetty, while a fourth was returning
toward the quay. It was River Andrew, faithful to his own element, who
preferred to be first here, rather than obey orders on the open beach.

There were several ready to lend a helping hand against tide and wind,
and Miriam and Sep were soon struggling across the shingle, in the
footsteps of those who had gone before. The north-east wind seared their
faces like a hot iron, but the snow had ceased falling. As they reached
the summit of the shingle-bank, they could see in front of them the black
line of the sea, and on the beach, where the white of the snow and the
white of the roaring surf merged together, a group of men.

One or two stragglers had left this group to search the beach, north or
south; but it was known, from a long and grim experience, that anything
floating in from the tail of the Inner Curlo Bank must reach the shore at
one particular point. A few lanterns twinkled here and there, but near
the group of watchers a bonfire of wreckage and tarry fragments and old
rope, brought hither for the purpose, had been kindled.

Two boats, hauled out of reach of a spring tide, were being leisurely
prepared for launching. There was no hurry; for it had been decided by
the older men that no boat could be put to sea through the surf then
rolling in. At the turn of the tide, in two hours' time, something might
be done.

"Us cannot see anything," a bystander said to Miriam. "It is just there,
where I am pointing. Sea Andrew saw something a while back--says it
looked like a schooner."

The man stood pointing out to sea to the southward. He carried an
unlighted torch--a flare, roughly made, of tarred rope, bound round a
stick. At times, one or another would ignite his flare, and go down the
beach holding it above his head, while he stood knee deep in the churning
foam to peer out to sea. He would presently return, without comment, to
beat out his flare against his foot and take his place among the silent
watchers. No one spoke; but if any turned his head sharply to one side or
other, all the rest wheeled, like one man, in the same direction and
after staring at the tumbled sea would turn reproachful glances on the
false alarmist.

Suddenly, after a long wait, four men rushed without a word into the
surf; their silent fury suggesting oddly the rush of hounds upon a fox.
They had simultaneously caught sight of something dark, half sunk in the
shallow water. In a moment they were struggling up the shingle slope
toward the fire, carrying a heavy weight. They laid their burden by the
fire, where the snow had melted away, and it was a man. He was in
oilskins, and some one cut the tape that tied his sou'wester. His face
was covered with blood.

"'Tis warm," said the man who had cut away the oilskin cap, and with his
hand he wiped the blood away from the eyes and mouth. Some one in the
background drew a cork, with his teeth, and a bottle was handed down to
those kneeling on the ground.

Suddenly the man sat up--and coughed.

"Shipmets," he said, with a splutter, and lay down again.

Some one held the bottle to his lips and wiped the blood away from his
face again.

"My God!" shouted a bystander, gruffly. "'Tis William Brooke, of the
Cottages."

"Yes. 'Tis me," said the man, sitting up again. "Not that arm, mate;
don't ye touch it. 'Tis bruk. Yes; 'tis me. And 'The Last Hope' is on the
tail of the Inner Curlo--and the spar that knocked me overboard fell on
the old man, and must have half killed him. But Loo Barebone's aboard."

He rose to his knees, with one arm hanging straight and piteous from his
shoulder, then slowly to his feet. He stood wavering for a moment, and
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spluttered. Then, looking
straight in front of him, with that strange air of a whipped dog which
humble men wear when the hand of Heaven is upon them, he staggered up the
beach toward the river and Farlingford.

"Where are ye goin'?" some one asked.

"Over to mine," was the reply. "A'm going to my old woman, shipmets."

And he staggered away in the darkness.




CHAPTER XL


FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE

After a hurried consultation, Septimus Marvin was deputed to follow the
injured man and take him home, seeing that he had as yet but half
recovered his senses. This good Samaritan had scarcely disappeared when a
shout from the beach drew the attention of all in another direction.

One of the outposts was running toward the fire, waving his lantern and
shouting incoherently. It was a coast-guard.

"Comin' ashore in their own boat," he cried. "They're coming in in their
own boat!"

"There she rides--there she rides!" added Sea Andrew, almost immediately,
and he pointed to the south.

Quite close in, just outside the line of breakers, a black shadow was
rising and falling on the water. It seemed to make scarcely any way at
all, and each sea that curled underneath the boat and roared toward the
beach was a new danger.

"They're going to run her in here," said Sea Andrew. "There's more left
on board; that's what that means, and they're goin' back for 'em. If
'twasn't so they'd run in anywheres and let her break."

For one sailor will always tell what another is about, however great the
distance intervening.

Slowly the boat came on, rolling tremendously on the curve of the
breakers, between the broken water of the tideway and the spume of the
surf.

"That's Loo at the hellum," said Sea Andrew--the keenest eyes in
Farlingford.

And suddenly Miriam swayed sideways against John Turner, who was perhaps
watching her, for he gripped her arm and stood firm. No one spoke. The
watchers on the beach stared open-mouthed, making unconscious grimaces as
the boat rose and fell. All had been ready for some minutes; every
preparation made according to the time-honoured use of these coasts: four
men with life-lines round them standing knee-deep waiting to dash in
deeper, others behind them grouped in two files, some holding the slack
of the life-lines, forming a double rank from the shore to the fire,
giving the steersman his course. There was no need to wave a torch or
shout an order. They were Farlingford men on the shore and Farlingford
men in the boat.

At last, after breathless moments of suspense, the boat turned, and came
spinning in on the top of a breaker, with the useless oars sticking out
like the legs of some huge insect. For a few seconds it was impossible to
distinguish anything. The moment the boat touched ground, the waves
beating on it enveloped all near it in a whirl of spray, and the black
forms seemed to be tumbling over each other in confusion.

"You see," said Turner to Miriam, "he has come back to you after all."

She did not answer but stood, her two hands clasped together on her
breast, seeking to disentangle the confused group, half in half out of
the water.

Then they heard Loo Barebone's voice, cheerful and energetic, almost
laughing. Before they could understand what was taking place his voice
was audible again, giving a sharp, clear order, and all the black forms
rushed together down into the surf. A moment later the boat danced out
over the crest of a breaker, splashing into the next and throwing up a
fan of spray.

"She's through, she's through!" cried some one. And the boat rode for a
brief minute head to wind before she turned southward. There were only
three on the thwarts--Loo Barebone and two others.

The group now broke up and straggled up toward the fire. One man was
being supported, and could scarcely walk. It was Captain Clubbe, hatless,
his grey hair plastered across his head by salt water.

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