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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"There is a trinket--a locket--containing a miniature, which I am assured
is a portrait of Marie Antoinette. This locket is in the possession of
Dormer Colville, who suggests that we should refrain from using violence
to open it until this can be done in France in the presence of suitable
witnesses. A fall or some mishap has so crushed the locket that it can
only be opened by a jeweller provided with suitable instruments. It has
remained closed for nearly a quarter of a century, but a reliable witness
in whose possession it has been since he, who was undoubtedly Louis XVII,
died in his arms, remembers the portrait, and has no doubt of its
authenticity. I have told you enough to make it clear to you that my
search is at last ended. What we require now is money to enable us to
bring this King of France to his own; to bring him, in the first place,
to my humble château of Gemosac, where he can lie hidden until all
arrangements are made. I leave it to you, my dear Albert, to collect this
preliminary sum."

De Chantonnay folded the letter and looked at the faces surrounding the
dimly lighted table.

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who must have known the contents of the letter,
and, therefore, came provided, leaned across the table with a discreet
clink of jewellery and laid before Albert de Chantonnay a note for a
thousand francs.

"I am only an Englishwoman," she said, simply, "but I can help."




CHAPTER XII


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC

There is no sentiment so artificial as international hatred. In olden
days it owed its existence to churchmen, and now an irresponsible press
foments that dormant antagonism. Wherever French and English individuals
are thrown together by a common endeavour, both are surprised at the
mutual esteem which soon develops into friendship. But as nations we are
no nearer than we were in the great days of Napoleon.

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was only one-quarter French and three-quarters
English. Her grandmother had been a St. Pierre; but it was not from that
lady that she inherited a certain open-handedness which took her French
friends by surprise.

"It is not that she has the cause at heart," commented Madame de
Chantonnay, as she walked laboriously on Albert's arm down the ramp of
the Château de Gemosac at the termination of the meeting. "It is not for
that that she throws her note of a thousand francs upon the table and
promises more when things are in train. It is because she can refuse
nothing to Dormer Colville. _Allez_, my son! I have a woman's heart! I
know!"

Albert contented himself with a sardonic laugh. He was not in the humour
to talk of women's hearts; for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's action had
struck a sudden note of British realism into the harmony of his political
fancies. He had talked so much, had listened to so much talk from others,
that the dream of a restored monarchy had at last been raised to those
far realms of the barely possible in which the Gallic fancy wanders in
moments of facile digestion.

It was sufficient for the emergency that the others present at the
meeting could explain that one does not carry money in one's pocket in a
country lane at night, But in their hearts all were conscious of a slight
feeling of resentment toward Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence; of a vague sense
of disappointment, such as a dreamer may experience on being roughly
awakened.

The three priests folded their hands with complacency. Poverty, their
most cherished possession, spoke for itself in their case. The notary
blinked and fumbled at his lips with yellow fingers in hasty thought. He
was a Royalist notary because there existed in the country of the Deux
Sevres a Royalist _clientèle_. In France, even a washerwoman must hold
political views and stand or fall by them. It was astounding how poor
every one felt at that moment, and it rested, as usual, with a woman's
intuition to grasp the only rope within reach. "The vintage," this lady
murmured. The vintage promised to be a bad one. Nothing, assuredly, could
be undertaken, and no promise made, until the vintage was over.

So the meeting broke up without romance, and the conspirators dispersed
to their homes, carrying in their minds that mutual distrust which is
ever awakened in human hearts by the chink of gold, while the dormant
national readiness to detect betrayal by England was suddenly wide awake.

Nevertheless, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had supplied the one ingredient
necessary to leaven the talk of these dreamers into action. Even the
notary found himself compelled to contribute when Albert de Chantonnay
asked him outright for a subscription. And the priests, ably led by the
Abbé Touvent, acted after the manner of the sons of Levi since olden
times. They did not give themselves, but they told others to give, which
is far better.

In due course the money was sent to England. It was the plain truth that
the Marquis de Gemosac had not sufficient in his pocket to equip Loo
Barebone with the clothes necessary to a seemly appearance in France; or,
indeed, to cover the expense of the journey thither. Dormer Colville
never had money to spare. "Heaven shaped me for a rich man," he would
say, lightly, whenever the momentous subject was broached, "but forgot to
fill my pockets."

It was almost the time of the vintage, and the country roads were dotted
with the shambling figures of those knights of industry who seem to
spring from the hedgerows at harvest-time in any country in the world,
when the Abbé Touvent sought out Marie in her cottage at the gates of the
château.

"_A la cave_" answered the lady's voice. "In the cellar--do you not know
that it is Monday and I wash?"

The Abbé did not repeat his summons on the kitchen table with the handle
of his stick, but drew forward a chair.

"I know it is very hot, and that I am tired," he shouted toward the
cellar door, which stood open, giving egress to a warm smell of soap.

"Precisely--and does Monsieur l'Abbé want me to come up as I am?"

The suggestion was darkly threatening, and the Abbé replied that Marie
must take her time, since it was washing-day.

The cottage was built on sloping ground at the gate of the château,
probably of the stones used for some earlier fortification. That which
Marie called the cellar was but half underground, and had an exit to the
garden which grew to the edge of the cliff. It was not long before she
appeared at the head of the stone steps, a square-built woman with a face
that had been sunburnt long ago by work in the vineyards, and eyes
looking straight at the world from beneath a square and wrinkled
forehead.

"Monsieur l'Abbé," she said, shortly--a salutation, and a comment in one;
for it conveyed the fact that she saw it was he and perceived that he was
in his usual health. "It is news from Monsieur, I suppose," she added,
slowly, turning down her sleeves.

"Yes, the Marquis writes that he is on his way to Gemosac and wishes you
to prepare the château for his return."

The Abbé waved his hand toward the castle gates with an air suggestive of
retainers and lackeys, of busy stables and a hundred windows lighted
after dark. His round eyes did not meet the direct glance fixed on his
face, but wandered from one object to another in the room, finally
lighting on the great key of the château gate, which hung on a nail
behind the door.

"Then Monsieur le Marquis is coming into residence," said Marie, gravely.

And by way of reply the Abbé waved his hand a second time toward the
castle walls.

"And the worst of it is," he added, timidly, to this silent admission,
"that he brings a guest."

He moistened his fat lips and sat smiling in a foolish way at the open
door; for he was afraid of all women, and most afraid of Marie.

"Ah!" she retorted, shortly. "To sleep in the oubliette, one may suppose.
For there is no other bed in the château, as you quite well know,
Monsieur l'Abbé. It is another of your kings no doubt. Oh! you need not
hold up your hands--when Monsieur Albert reads aloud that letter from
Monsieur le Marquis, in England, without so much as closing the door of
the banquet hall! It is as well that it was no other than I who stood on
the stairs outside and heard all."

"But it is wrong to listen behind doors," protested the Abbé.

"Ah, bah!" replied this unregenerate sheep of his flock. "But do not
alarm yourself, Monsieur l'Abbé, I can keep a quiet tongue. And a
political secret--what is it? It is an amusement for the rich--your
politics--but a vice for the poor. Come, let us go to the château, while
there is still day, and you can see for yourself whether we are ready for
a guest."

While she spoke she hastily completed a toilet, which, despite the Abbé's
caution, had the appearance of incompleteness, and taking the great key
from behind the door, led the way out into the glare of the setting sun.
She unlocked the great gate and threw her weight against it with quick,
firm movements like the movements of a man. Indeed, she was a better man
than her companion; of a stronger common sense; with lither limbs and a
stouter heart; the best man that France has latterly produced, and, so
far as the student of racial degeneration may foretell, will ever produce
again--her middle-class woman.

Built close against the flanking tower on the left hand of the courtyard
was a low, square house of two stories only. The whole ground floor was
stabling, room and to spare for half a hundred horses, and filled
frequently enough, no doubt, in the great days of the Great Henry. On the
first floor, to which three or four staircases gave access, there were
plenty of apartments; indeed, suites of them. But nearly all stood empty,
and the row of windows looked blank and curtainless across the crumbling
garden to the Italian house.

It was one of the many tragedies of that smiling, sunny land where only
man, it seems, is vile; for nature has enclosed within its frontier-lines
all the varied wealth and beauty of her treasures.

Marie led the way up the first staircase, which was straight and narrow.
The carpet, carefully rolled and laid aside on the landing, was
threadbare and colourless. The muslin curtains, folded back and pinned
together, were darned and yellow with frequent washing and the rust of
ancient damp. She opened the door of the first room at the head of the
stairs. It had once been the apartment of some servitor; now it contained
furniture of the gorgeous days of Louis XIV, with all the colour gone
from its tapestry, all the woodwork grey and worm-eaten.

"Not that one," said Marie, as the Abbé struggled with the lever that
fastened the window. "That one has not been opened for many years. See!
the glass rattles in the frame. It is the other that opens."

Without comment the Abbé opened the other window and threw back the
shutters, from which all the paint had peeled away, and let in the
scented air. Mignonette close at hand--which had bloomed and died and
cast its seed amid the old walls and falling stones since Marie
Antoinette had taught the women of France to take an interest in their
gardens; and from the great plains beyond--flat and fat--carefully laid
there by the Garonne to give the world its finest wines, rose up the
subtle scent of vines in bloom.

"The drawing-room," said Marie, and making a mock-curtsey toward the
door, which stood open to the dim stairs, she made a grand gesture with
her hand, still red and wrinkled from the wash-tub. "Will the King of
France be pleased to enter and seat himself? There are three chairs, but
one of them is broken, so his Majesty's suite must stand."

With a strident laugh she passed on to the next room through folding
doors.

"The principal room," she announced, with that hard irony in her voice,
which had, no doubt, penetrated thither from the soul of a mother who
had played no small part in the Revolution. "The guest-chamber, one may
say, provided that Monsieur le Marquis will sleep on the floor in the
drawing-room, or in the straw down below in the stable."

The Abbé threw open the shutter of this room also and stood meekly eyeing
Marie with a tolerant smile. The room was almost bare of furniture. A bed
such as peasants sleep on; a few chairs; a dressing-table tottering
against the window-breast, and modestly screened in one corner, the
diminutive washing-stand still used in southern France. For Gemosac had
been sacked and the furniture built up into a bonfire when Marie was a
little child and the Abbé Touvent a fat-faced timorous boy at the
Seminary of Saintes.

"Beyond is Mademoiselle's room," concluded Marie, curtly. She looked
round her and shrugged her shoulders with a grim laugh which made the
Abbé shrink. They looked at each other in silence, the two participants
in the secret of Gemosac; for Marie's husband, the third who had access
to the chateau, did not count. He was a shambling, silent man, now
working in the vineyard beneath the walls. He always did what his wife
told him, without comment or enthusiasm, knowing well that he would be
blamed for doing it badly.

The Abbé had visited the rooms once before, during a brief passage of the
Marquis, soon after his wife's death in Paris. But, as a rule, only Marie
and Jean had access to the apartment. He looked round with an eye always
ready with the tear of sympathy; for he was a soft-hearted man. Then he
looked at Marie again, shamefacedly. But she, divining his thoughts,
shrugged her shoulders.

"Ah, bah!" she said, "one must take the world as it is. And Monsieur
le Marquis is only a man. One sees that, when he announces his return
on washing-day, and brings a guest. You must write to him, that is all,
and tell him that with time I can arrange, but not in a hurry like
this. Where is the furniture to come from? A chair or two from the
banquet-hall; I can lend a bed which Jean can carry in after dark so that
no one knows; you have the jug and basin you bought when the Bishop came,
that you must lend--" She broke off and ran to the window. "Good," she
cried, in a despairing voice, "I hear a carriage coming up the hill. Run,
Monsieur l'Abbé--run to the gate and bolt it. Guest or no guest, they
cannot see the rooms like this. Here, let me past."

She pushed him unceremoniously aside at the head of the stairs and ran
past him. Long concealment of the deadly poverty within the walls had
taught her to close the gates behind her whenever she entered, but now
for greater security, or to gain time, she swung the great oaken beam
round on its pivot across the doors on the inside. Then turning round on
her heels she watched the bell that hung above her head. The Abbé, who
had followed her as quickly as he could, was naively looking for a
peep-hole between the timbers of the huge doors.

A minute later the bell swung slowly, and gave a single clang which
echoed beneath the vaulted roof, and in the hollow of the empty towers on
either side.

"Marie, Marie!" cried a gay girlish voice from without. "Open at once. It
is I."

"There," said Marie, in a whisper. "It is Mademoiselle, who has returned
from the good Sisters. And the story that you told of the fever at
Saintes is true."




CHAPTER XIII


WITHIN THE GATES

The great bell hanging inside the gates of Gemosac was silent for two
days after the return of Juliette de Gemosac from her fever-stricken
convent school, at Saintes.

But on the third day, soon after nightfall, it rang once more, breaking
suddenly in on the silence of the shadowy courts and gardens, bidding the
frogs in the tank be still with a soft, clear voice, only compassed by
the artificers who worked in days when silver was little accounted of in
the forging of a bell.

It was soon after eight o'clock, and darkness had not long covered the
land and sent the workers home. There was no moon. Indeed, the summons to
the gate, coming so soon after nightfall, seemed to suggest the arrival
of a traveller, who had not deemed it expedient to pass through the
winding streets of Gemosac by daylight.

The castle lies on a height, sufficiently removed from the little town to
temper the stir of its streets to a pleasant and unobtrusive evidence of
neighbourhood. Had the traveller come in a carriage, the sound of its
wheels would certainly have been heard; and nearer at hand, the tramp of
horses on the hollow of the old drawbridge, not raised these hundred
years, must have heralded the summons of the bell. But none of these
sounds had warned Juliette de Gemosac, who sat alone in the little white
room upstairs, nor Marie and her husband, dumb and worn by the day's
toil, who awaited bedtime on a stone seat by the stable door.

Juliette, standing at the open window, heard Jean stir himself, and
shuffle, in his slippers, toward the gate.

"It is some one who comes on foot," she heard Marie say. "Some
beggar--the roads are full of them. See that he gets no farther than the
gate."

She heard Jean draw back the bolts and answer gruffly, in a few words,
through the interstice of a grudging door, what seemed to be inquiries
made in a voice that was not the voice of a peasant. Marie rose and went
to the gate. In a few minutes they returned, and Juliette drew back from
the window, for they were accompanied by the new-comer, whose boots made
a sharper, clearer sound on the cobble-stones.

"Yes," Juliette heard him explain, "I am an Englishman, but I come from
Monsieur de Gemosac, for all that. And since Mademoiselle is here, I must
see her. It was by chance that I heard, on the road, that there is fever
at Saintes, and that she had returned home. I was on my way to Saintes to
see her and give her my news of her father."

"But what news?" asked Marie, and the answer was lost as the speakers
passed into the doorway, the new-comer evidently leading the way, the
peasant and his wife following without protest, and with that instinctive
obedience to unconscious command which will survive all the iconoclasm of
a hundred revolutions.

There followed a tramping on the stairs and a half-suppressed laugh as
the new-comer stumbled upward. Marie opened the door slowly.

"It is a gentleman," she announced, "who does not give his name."

Juliette de Gemosac was standing at the far side of the table, with the
lamp throwing its full light upon her. She was dressed in white, with a
blue ribbon at her waist and wrists. Another ribbon of the same colour
tied back her hair, which was of a bright brown, with curls that caught
the light in a score of tendrils above her ears. No finished coquette
could have planned a prettier surprise than that which awaited Loo
Barebone, as he made Marie stand aside, and came, hat in hand, into the
room.

He paused for an instant, breathless, before Juliette, who stood, with a
little smile of composed surprise parting her lips. This child, fresh
from the quiet of a convent-school, was in no wise taken aback nor at a
loss how to act. She did not speak, but stood with head erect, not
ungracious, looking at him with clear brown eyes, awaiting his
explanation. And Loo Barebone, all untaught, who had never spoken to a
French lady in his life, came forward with an assurance and a readiness
which must have lain dormant in his blood, awaiting the magic of this
moment.

"Since my name would convey nothing to Mademoiselle," he said, with a bow
which he had assuredly not learnt in Farlingford, "it was useless to
mention it. But it is at the disposal of Mademoiselle, nevertheless. It
is an English name--Barebone. I am the Englishman who has been fortunate
enough to engage the interest of your father, who journeyed to England to
find me--and found me."

He broke off with a laugh, spreading out his arms to show himself, as it
were, and ask indulgence.

"I have a heritage, it appears, in France," he went on, "but know nothing
of it, yet. For the weather has been bad and our voyage a stormy one. I
was to have been told during the journey, but we had no time for that.
And I know no more than you, mademoiselle."

Juliette had changed colour, and her cheeks, which were usually of a most
delicate pink, were suddenly quite white. She did not touch upon the
knowledge to which he referred, but went past it to its object.

"You do not speak like an Englishman," she said. "For I know one or two.
One came to the school at Saintes. He was a famous English prelate, and
he had the manner--well, of a tree. And when he spoke, it was what one
would expect of a tree, if it suddenly had speech. But you--you are not
like that."

Loo Barebone laughed with an easy gaiety, which seemed infectious, though
Marie did not join in it, but stood scowling in the doorway.

"Yes," he said, "you have described them exactly. I know a hundred who
are like great trees. Many are so, but they are kind and still like
trees--the English, when you know them, mademoiselle."

"They?" she said, with her prettily arched eyebrows raised high.

"We, I mean," he answered, quickly, taking her meaning in a flash. "I
almost forgot that I was an Englishman. It is my heritage, perhaps, that
makes me forget--or yourself. It is so easy and natural to consider one's
self a Frenchman--and so pleasant."

Marie shuffled with her feet and made a movement of impatience, as if to
remind them that they were still far from the business in hand and were
merely talking of themselves, which is the beginning of all things--or
may be the beginning of the inevitable end.

"But I forgot," said Barebone, at once. "And it is getting late. Your
father has had a slight misfortune. He has sprained his ankle. He is on
board my ship, the ship of which I am--I have been--an officer, lying at
anchor in the river near here, off the village of Mortagne. I came from
Mortagne at your father's request, with certain messages, for yourself,
mademoiselle, and for Marie--if Madame is Marie."

"Yes," replied the grim voice in the doorway. "Madame is Marie."

Loo had turned toward her. It seemed his happy fate to be able to disarm
antagonism at the first pass. He looked at Marie and smiled; and slowly,
unwillingly, her grim face relaxed.

"Well," he said, "you are not to expect Monsieur le Marquis to-night, nor
yet, for some time to come. For he will go on to Bordeaux, where he can
obtain skilled treatment for his injured ankle, and remain there until he
can put his foot to the ground. He is comfortable enough on board the
ship, which will proceed up the river to-morrow morning to Bordeaux.
Monsieur le Marquis also told me to set your mind at rest on another
point. He was to have brought with him a guest--"

Loo paused and bowed to Marie, with a gay grace.

"A humble one. But I am not to come to Gemosac just now. I am going,
instead, with Monsieur Dormer Colville, to stay at Royan with Mrs. St.
Pierre Lawrence. It is, I hope, a pleasure deferred. I cannot, it
appears, show myself in Bordeaux at present, and I quit the ship
to-night. It is some question of myself and my heritage in France, which
I do not understand."

"Is that so?" said Marie. "One can hardly believe it."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing," replied Marie, looking at his face with a close scrutiny,
as if it were familiar to her.

"And that is all that I had to tell you, Madame Marie," concluded
Barebone.

And, strangely enough, Marie smiled at him as he turned away, not
unkindly.

"To you, mademoiselle," he went on, turning again to Juliette, whose hand
was at her hair, for she had been taken by surprise, "my message is
simpler. Monsieur, your father, will be glad to have your society at
Bordeaux, while he stays there, if that is true which the Gironde pilot
told him--of fever at Saintes, and the hurried dispersal of the schools."

"It is true enough, monsieur," answered Juliette, in her low-pitched
voice of the south, and with a light of anticipation in her eye; for it
was dull enough at Gemosac, all alone in this empty château. "But how am
I to reach Bordeaux?"

"Your father did not specify the route or method. He seemed to leave that
to you, mademoiselle. He seemed to have an entire faith in your judgment,
and that is why I was so surprised when I saw you. I thought--well, I
figured to myself that you were older, you understand."

He broke off with a laugh and a deprecatory gesture of the hand, as
if he had more in his mind but did not want to put it into words. His
meaning was clear enough in his eyes, but Juliette was fresh from a
convent-school, where they seek earnestly to teach a woman not to be a
woman.

"One may be young, and still have understanding, monsieur," she said,
with the composed little smile on her demure lips, which must only have
been the composure of complete innocence: almost a monopoly of children,
though some women move through life without losing it.

"Yes," answered Loo, looking into her eyes. "So it appears. So, how will
you go to Bordeaux? How does one go from Gemosac to Bordeaux?"

"By carriage to Mortagne, where a boat is always to be obtained. It is a
short journey, if the tide is favourable," broke in Marie, who was
practical before she was polite.

"Then," said Loo, as quick as thought, "drive back with me now to
Mortagne. I have left my horse in the town, my boat at the pier at
Mortagne. It is an hour's drive. In an hour and a half you will be on
board 'The Last Hope,' at anchor in the river. There is accommodation on
board for both you and Madame; for I, alas! Leave the ship to-night with
Monsieur Colville, and thus vacate two cabins."

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