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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




Juliette reflected for a moment, but she did not consult, even by a
glance, Marie; who, in truth, appeared to expect no such confidences, but
awaited the decision with a grim and grudging servitude which was as
deeply pressed in upon her soul as was the habit of command in the soul
of a de Gemosac.

"Yes," said Juliette, at length, "that will be best. It is, of course,
important that my father should reach Bordeaux as soon as possible."

"He will be there at midday to-morrow, if you will come with me now,"
answered Loo, and his gay eyes said "Come!" as clearly as his lips,
though Juliette could not, of course, be expected to read such signals.

The affair was soon settled, and Jean ordered to put the horse into the
high, old-fashioned carriage still in use at the château. For Juliette
de Gemosac seemed to be an illustration of the fact, known to many
much-tried parents, that one is never too young to know one's mind.

"There is a thunder-storm coming from the sea," was Jean's only comment.

There was some delay in starting; for Marie had to change her own clothes
as well as pack her young mistress's simple trunks. But the time did not
hang heavily on the hands of the two waiting in the little drawing-room,
and Marie turned an uneasy glance toward the open door more than once at
the sound of their laughter.

Barebone was riding a horse hired in the village of Mortagne, and quitted
the château first, on foot, saying that the carriage must necessarily
travel quicker than he, as his horse was tired. The night was dark, and
darkest to the west, where lightning danced in and out among heavy clouds
over the sea.

As in all lands that have been torn hither and thither by long wars, the
peasants of Guienne learnt, long ago, the wisdom of dwelling together in
closely built villages, making a long journey to their fields or
vineyards every day. In times past, Gemosac had been a walled town,
dominated, as usual, by the almost impregnable castle.

Barebone rode on, alone, through the deserted vineyards, of which the
scent, like that of a vinery in colder lands, was heavy and damp. The
road runs straight, from point to point, and there was no chance of
missing the way or losing his companions. He was more concerned with
watching the clouds, which were rising in dark towers against the western
sky. He had noted that others were watching them, also, standing at their
doors in every street. It was the period of thunder and hailstorms--the
deadly foe of the vine.

At length Barebone pulled up and waited; for he could hear the sound of
wheels behind him, and noted that it was not increasing in loudness.

"Can you not go faster?" he shouted to Jean, when, at length, the
carriage approached.

Jean made no answer, but lashed his horse and pointed upward to the sky
with his whip. Barebone rode in front to encourage the slower horse. At
the village of Mortagne he signed to Jean to wait before the inn until he
had taken his horse to the stable and paid for its hire. Then he
clambered to the box beside him and they rattled down the long street and
out into the open road that led across the marshes to the port--a few
wooden houses and a jetty, running out from the shallows to the channel.

When they reached the jetty, going slowly at the last through the heavy
dust, the air was still and breathless. The rounded clouds still towered
above them, making the river black with their deep shadows. A few lights
twinkled across the waters. They were the lightships marking the middle
bank of the Gironde, which is many miles wide at this spot and rendered
dangerous by innumerable sand-banks.

"In five minutes it will be upon us," said Jean. "You had better turn
back."

"Oh, no," was the reply, with a reassuring laugh. "In the country where I
come from, they do not turn back."




CHAPTER XIV


THE LIFTED VEIL

"Where is the boatman?" asked Marie, as she followed Juliette and
Barebone along the deserted jetty. A light burnt dimly at the end of it
and one or two boats must have been moored near at hand; for the water
could be heard lapping under their bows, a secretive, whispering sound
full of mystery.

"I am the boatman," replied Loo, over his shoulder. "Are you afraid?"

"What is the good of being afraid?" asked this woman of the world,
stopping at the head of the steps and peering down into the darkness into
which he had descended. "What is the good of being afraid when one is old
and married? I was afraid enough when I was a girl, and pretty and
coquette like Mademoiselle, here. I was afraid enough then, and it was
worth my while--_allez_!"

Barebone made no answer to this dark suggestion of a sprightly past. The
present darkness and the coming storm commanded his full attention. In
the breathless silence, Juliette and Marie--and behind them, Jean,
panting beneath the luggage balanced on his shoulder--could hear the wet
rope slipping through his fingers and, presently, the bump of the heavy
boat against the timber of the steps.

This was followed by the gurgle of a rope through a well-greased sheave
and the square lug, which had been the joy of little Sep Marvin at
Farlingford, crept up to the truck of the stubby mast.

"There is no wind for that," remarked Marie, pessimistically.

"There will be to spare in a few minutes," answered Barebone, and the
monosyllabic Jean gave an acquiescent grunt.

"Luggage first," said Barebone, lapsing into the curtness of the sea.
"Come along. Let us make haste."

They stumbled on board as best they could, and were guided to a safe
place amidships by Loo, who had thrown a spare sail on the bottom of the
boat.

"As low as you can," he said. "Crouch down. Cover yourselves with this.
Right over your heads."

"But why?" grumbled Marie.

"Listen," was all the answer he gave her. And as he spoke, the storm
rushed upon them like a train, with the roar and whirl of a locomotive.

Loo jumped aft to the tiller. In the rush of the hail, they heard him
give a sharp order to Jean, who must have had some knowledge of the sea,
for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a
flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment,
all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness,
and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of
solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which
the women crouched.

"What? Did you speak?" shouted Loo, putting his face close to the canvas.

"It is only Marie calling on the saints," was the answer, in Juliette's
laughing voice.

In a few minutes it was over; and, even at the back of the winds, could
be heard the retreat of the hail as it crashed onward toward the valleys
of which every slope is a named vineyard, to beat down in a few wild
moments the result of careful toil and far-sighted expenditure; to wipe
out that which is unique, which no man can replace--the vintage of a
year.

When the hail ceased beating on it, Juliette pushed back the soaked
canvas, which had covered them like a roof, and lifted her face to the
cooler air. The boat was rushing through the water, and close to
Juliette's cheek, just above the gunwale, rose a curved wave, green and
white, and all shimmering with phosphorescence, which seemed to hover
like a hawk above its prey.

The aftermath of the storm was flying overhead in riven ribbons of cloud,
through which the stars were already peeping. To the westward the sky was
clear, and against the last faint glow of the departed sun the lightning
ran hither and thither, skipping and leaping, without sound or
cessation, like fairies dancing.

Immediately overhead, the sail creaked and tugged at its earings, while
the wind sang its high clear song round mast and halliards.

Juliette turned to look at Barebone. He was standing, ankle deep, in
water, leaning backward to windward, in order to give the boat every
pound of weight he could. The lambent summer-lightning on the western
horizon illuminated his face fitfully. In that moment Juliette saw what
is given to few to see and realise--though sailors, perforce, lie down to
sleep knowing it every night--that under Heaven her life was wholly and
solely in the two hands of a fellow-being. She knew it, and saw that
Barebone knew it, though he never glanced at her. She saw the whites of
his eyes gleaming as he looked up, from moment to moment, to the head of
the sail and stooped again to peer under the foot of it into the darkness
ahead. He braced himself, with one foot against the thwart, to haul in a
few inches of sheet, to which the clumsy boat answered immediately. Marie
was praying aloud now, and when she opened her eyes the sight of the
tossing figure in the stern of the boat suddenly turned her terror into
anger.

"Ah!" she cried, "that Jean is a fool. And he, who pretends to have been
a fisherman when he was young--to let us come to our deaths like this!"

She lifted her head, and ducked it again, as a sea jumped up under the
bow and rattled into the boat.

"I see no ship," she cried. "Let us go back, if we can. Name of God!--we
shall be drowned! I see no ship, I tell you!"

"But I do," answered Barebone, shaking the water from his face, for he
had no hand to spare. "But I do, which is more important. And you are not
even wet!"

And he laughed as he brought the boat up into the wind for a few seconds,
to meet a wild gust. Juliette turned in surprise at the sound of his
voice. In the safe and gentle seclusion of the convent-school no one had
thought to teach her that death may be faced with equanimity by others
than the ordained of the Church, and that in the storm and stress of life
men laugh in strange places and at odd times.

Loo was only thinking of his boat and watching the sky for the last of
the storm--that smack, as it were, in the face--with which the Atlantic
ends those black squalls that she sends us, not without thunder and the
curtailed lightning of northern seas. He was planning and shaping his
course; for the watchers on board "The Last Hope" had already seen him,
as he could ascertain by a second light, which suddenly appeared, swung
low, casting a gleam across the surf-strewn water, to show him where the
ladder hung overside.

"Tell Monsieur de Gemosac that I have Mademoiselle and her maid here in
the boat," Barebone called out to Captain Clubbe, whose large face loomed
above the lantern he was holding overside, as he made fast the rope that
had been thrown across his boat and lowered the dripping sail. The water
was smooth enough under the lee of "The Last Hope," which, being deeply
laden, lay motionless at her anchor, with the stream rustling past her
cables.

"Stand up, mademoiselle," said Barebone, himself balanced on the
after-thwart. "Hold on to me, thus, and when I let you go, let yourself
go."

There was no time to protest or to ask questions. And Juliette felt
herself passed on from one pair of strong arms to another, until she was
standing on the deck under the humming rigging, surrounded by men who
seemed huge in their gleaming oil-skins.

"This way, mademoiselle," said one, who was even larger than the others,
in English, of which she understood enough to catch his meaning. "I will
take you to your father. Show a light this way, one of you."

His fingers closed round her arm, and he led her, unconscious of a
strength that almost lifted her from her feet, toward an open door, where
a lamp burnt dimly within. It smelt abominably of an untrimmed wick,
Juliette thought, and the next minute she was kissing her father, who lay
full length on a locker in the little cabin.

She asked him a hundred questions, and waited for few of the answers.
Indeed, she supplied most of them herself; for she was very quick and
gay.

"I see," she cried, "that your foot has been tied up by a sailor. He has
tried to mend it as if it were a broken spar. I suppose that was the
Captain who brought me to you, and then ran away again, as soon as he
could. Yes; I have Marie with me. She is telling them to be careful with
the luggage. I can hear her. I am so glad we had a case of fever at the
school. It was a lay sister, a stupid woman. But how lucky that I should
be at home just when you wanted me!"

She stood upright again, after deftly loosening the bandage round her
father's ankle, and looked at him and laughed.

"Poor, dear old papa," she said. "One sees that you want some one to take
care of you. And this cabin--oh! _mon Dieu_! how bare and uncomfortable!
I suppose men have to go to sea alone because they can persuade no woman
to go with them."

She pounced upon her father again, and arranged afresh the cushions
behind his back, with a little air of patronage and protection. Her back
was turned toward the door, when some one came in, but she heard the
approaching steps and looked quickly round the cabin walls.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed, in a gay whisper. "No looking-glass! One sees
that it is only men who live here."

And she turned, with smiling eyes and a hand upraised to her disordered
hair, to note the new-comer. It was Dormer Colville, who laid aside his
waterproof as he came and greeted her as an old friend. He had, indeed,
known her since her early childhood, and had always succeeded in keeping
pace with her, even in the rapid changes of her last year at school.

"Here is an adventure," he said, shaking hands. "But I can see that you
have taken no harm, and have not even been afraid. For us, it is a
pleasant surprise."

He glanced at her with a smiling approbation, not without a delicate
suggestion of admiration, such as he might well permit himself, and she
might now even consider her due. He was only keeping pace.

"I stayed behind to initiate your maid, who is, of course, unused to a
ship, and the steward speaks but little French. But now they are
arranging your cabin together."

"How delightful!" cried Juliette. "I have never been on a ship before,
you know. And it is all so strange and so nice. All those big men, like
wet ghosts, who said nothing! I think they are more interesting than
women; perhaps it is because they talk less."

"Perhaps it is," admitted Colville, with a sudden gravity, similar to
that with which she had made the suggestion.

"You should hear the Sisters talk--when they are allowed," she said,
confidentially.

"And whisper when they are not. I can imagine it," laughed Colville. "But
now you have left all that behind, and have come out into the world--of
men, one may say. And you have begun at once with an adventure."

"Yes! And we are going to Bordeaux, papa and I, until his foot is well
again. Of course, I was in despair when I was first told of it, but now
that I see him I am no longer anxious. And your messenger assured me that
it was not serious."

She paused to look round the cabin, to make sure that they were alone.

"How strange he is!" she said to both her hearers, in confidence, looking
from one to the other with a quick, bird-like turn of the head and bright
eyes. "I have never seen any one like him."

"No?" said Dormer Colville, encouragingly.

"He said he was an Englishman; but, of course, he is not. He is, French,
and has not the manner of a _bourgeoie_ or a sailor. He has the manner of
an aristocrat--one would say a Royalist--like Albert de Chantonnay, only
a thousand times better."

"Yes," said Colville, glancing at Monsieur de Gemosac.

"More interesting, and so quick and amusing. He spoke of a heritage in
France, and yet he said he was an Englishman. I hope he will secure his
heritage."

"Yes," murmured Colville, still looking at Monsieur de Gemosac.

"And then, when we were in the boat," continued Juliette, still in
confidence to them both, "he changed quite suddenly. He was short and
sharp. He ordered us to do this and that; and one did it, somehow,
without question. Even Marie obeyed him without hesitating, although
she was half mad with fear. We were in danger. I knew that. Any one must
have known it. And yet I was not afraid; I wonder why? And he--he
laughed--that was all. _Mon Dieu!_ he was brave. I never knew that any
one could be so brave!"

She broke off suddenly, with her finger to her lips; for some one had
opened the cabin door. Captain Clubbe came in, filling the whole cabin
with his bulk, and on his heels followed Loo Barebone, his face and hair
still wet and dripping.

"Mademoiselle was wondering," said Dormer Colville, who, it seemed, was
quick to step into that silence which the object of a conversation is apt
to cause--"Mademoiselle was wondering how it was that you escaped
shipwreck in the storm."

"Ah! because one has a star. Even a poor sailor may have a star,
mademoiselle. As well as the Prince Napoleon, who boasts that he has one
of the first magnitude, I understand."

"You are not a poor sailor, monsieur," said Juliette.

"Then who am I?" he asked, with a gay laugh, spreading out his hands and
standing before them, beneath the swinging lamp.

The Marquis de Gemosac raised himself on one elbow.

"I will tell you who you are," he said, in a low, quick voice, pointing
one hand at Loo. "I will tell you." And his voice rose.

"You are the grandson of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. You are the Last
Hope of the French. That is your heritage. Juliette! this is the King of
France!"

Juliette turned and looked at him, with all the colour gone from her
face. Then, instinctively, she dropped on one knee, and before he had
understood, or could stop her, had raised his hand to her lips.




CHAPTER XV


THE TURN OF THE TIDE

"Tide's a-turning, sir," said a voice at the open doorway of the cabin,
and Captain Clubbe turned his impassive face toward Dormer Colville, who
looked oddly white beneath the light of the lamp.

Barebone had unceremoniously dragged his hand away from the hold of
Juliette's fingers. He made a step back and then turned toward the door
at the sound of his shipmate's well-known voice. He stood staring out
into the darkness like one who is walking in his sleep. No one spoke, and
through the open doorways no sound came to them but the song of the wind
through the rigging.

At last Barebone turned, and there was no sign of fear or misgiving in
his face. He looked at Clubbe, and at no one else, as if the Captain and
he were alone in the cabin where they had passed so many years together
in fair weather, to bring out that which is evil in a man, and foul, to
evolve the good.

"What do _you_ say?" he asked, in English, and he must have known that
Captain Clubbe understood French better than he was ready to admit.

Clubbe passed his hand slowly across his cheek and chin, not in order to
gain time, or because he had not an answer ready, but because he came of
a slow-speaking race. His answer had been made ready weeks before while
he sat on the weather-beaten seat set against the wall of "The Black
Sailor" at Farlingford.

"Tide's turned," he answered, simply. "You'd better get your oilskins on
again and go."

"Yes," said Loo, with a queer laugh. "I fancy I shall want my oilskins."

The boat which had been sent from Royan, at the order of the pilot, who
went ashore there, had followed "The Last Hope" up the river, and was now
lying under the English ship's stern awaiting her two passengers and the
turn of the tide.

Dormer Colville glanced at the cabin clock.

"Then," he said, briskly, "let us be going. It will be late enough as it
is before we reach my cousin's house."

He turned and translated his remark for the benefit of the Marquis and
Juliette, remembering that they must needs fail to understand a colloquy
in the muttered and clipped English of the east coast. He was nervously
anxious, it would appear, to tide over a difficult moment; to give Loo
Barebone breathing space, and yet to avoid unnecessary question and
answer. He had not lived forty adventurous years in the world without
learning that it is the word too much which wrecks the majority of human
schemes.

Their preparations had been made beforehand in readiness for the return
of the tide, without the help of which the voyage back to Royan against a
contrary wind must necessarily be long and wearisome.

There was nothing to wait for. Captain Clubbe was not the man to prolong
a farewell or waste his words in wishes for the future, knowing how vain
such must always be. Loo was dazed still by the crash of the storm and
the tension of the effort to bring his boat safely through it.

The rest had not fully penetrated to his inmost mind yet. There had been
only time to act, and none to think, and when the necessity to act was
past, when he found himself crouching down under the weather gunwale of
the French fishing-boat without even the necessity of laying hand on
sheet or tiller, when, at last, he had time to think, he found that the
ability to do so was no longer his. For Fortune, when she lifts up or
casts down, usually numbs the understanding at the first turn of her
wheel, sending her victim staggering on his way a mere machine,
astonishingly alive to the necessity of the immediate moment, careful of
the next step, but capable of looking neither forward nor backward with
an understanding eye.

The waning moon came up at last, behind a distant line of trees on the
Charente side, lighting up with a silver lining the towering clouds of
the storm, which was still travelling eastward, leaving in its wake
battered vines and ruined crops, searing the face of the land as with a
hot iron. Loo lifted his head and looked round him. The owner of the boat
was at the tiller, while his assistant sat amidships, his elbows on his
knees, looking ahead with dreamy eyes. Close to Barebone, crouching from
the wind which blew cold from the Atlantic, was Dormer Colville, affably
silent. If Loo turned to glance at him he looked away, but when his back
was turned Loo was conscious of watching eyes, full of sympathy, almost
uncomfortably quick to perceive the inward working of another's mind, and
suit his own thereto.

Thus the boat plunged out toward the sea and the flickering lights that
mark the channel, tacking right across to that spit of land lying between
the Gironde and the broad Atlantic, where grows a wine without match in
all the world. Thus Loo Barebone turned his back on the ship which had
been his home so long and set out into a new world; a new and unknown
life, with the Marquis de Gemosac's ringing words buzzing in his brain
yet; with the warm touch of Juliette's lips burning still upon his hand.

"You are the grandson of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette! You are the Last
Hope of France!"

And he remembered the lights and shadows on Juliette's hair as he looked
down upon her bent head.

Colville was talking to the "patron" now. He knew the coast, it seemed,
and, somewhere or other, had learnt enough of such matters of local
seafaring interest as to set the fisherman at his ease and make him talk.

They were arranging where to land, and Colville was describing the exact
whereabouts of a little jetty used for bathing purposes, which ran out
from the sandy shore, quite near to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's house, in
the pine-trees, two miles south of Royan. It was no easy matter to find
this spot by the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechanically, Loo
joined in the search, and presently, when the jetty was reached, helped
to make fast in a choppy sea.

They left the luggage on the jetty and walked across the silent sand side
by side.

"There," said Colville, pointing forward. "It is through that opening in
the pine-trees. A matter of five minutes and we shall be at my cousin's
house."

"It is very kind of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence," answered Barebone,
"to--well, to take me up. I suppose that is the best way to look at it."

Colville laughed quietly.

"Yes--put it thus, if you like," he said. They walked on in silence for a
few yards, and then Dormer Colville slipped his hand within his
companion's arm, as was the fashion among men even in England in those
more expansive days.

"I think I know how you feel," he said, suiting his step to Barebone's.
"You must feel like a man who is set down to a table to play a game of
which he knows nothing, and on taking up his cards finds that he holds a
hand all courtcards and trumps--and he doesn't know how to play them."

Barebone made no answer. He had yet to unlearn Captain Clubbe's
unconscious teaching that a man's feelings are his own concern and no
other has any interest or right to share in them, except one woman, and
even she must guess the larger half.

"But as the game progresses," went on Colville, reassuringly, "you will
find out how it is played. You will even find that you are a skilled
player, and then the gambler's spirit will fire your blood and arouse
your energies. You will discover what a damned good game it is. The great
game--Barebone--the great game! And France is the country to play it in."

He stamped his foot on the soil of France as he spoke.

"The moment I saw you I knew that you would do. No man better fitted to
play the game than yourself; for you have wit and quickness," went on
this friend and mentor, with a little pressure on his companion's arm.
"But--you will have to put your back into it, you know."

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