The Last Hope Part 14

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 chateau 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 rea.s.suring 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 b.u.mp 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 phosph.o.r.escence, 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 G.o.d!--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 pa.s.sed 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.