The Last Hope Part 15

"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-gla.s.s! 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 a.s.sured 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 impa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e there, had followed "The Last Hope" up the river, and was now lying under the English ship's stern awaiting her two pa.s.sengers 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sistant 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!"