The Last Hope Part 21

Beyond the garden, the rough outline of the walls cut a straight line across the distant plains, which melted away into the haze of the marsh-lands by the banks of the Gironde far to the westward.

The Marquis had dined. They dined early in those days in France, and coffee was still served after the evening meal.

The sun was declining toward the sea in a clear copper-coloured sky, but a fresh breeze was blowing in from the estuary to temper the heat of the later rays.

The Marquis was beating time with one finger, and within the room, to an impromptu accompaniment invented by Juliette, Barebone was singing:

C'est le Hasard, Qui, tot ou tard, Ici-bas nous seconde; Car, D'un bout du monde A l'autre bout, Le Hasard seul fait tout.

He broke off with a laugh in which Juliette's low voice joined.

"That is splendid, mademoiselle," he cried, and the Marquis clapped his thin hands together.

Un tel qu'on vantait Par hasard etait D'origine a.s.sez mince; Par hasard il plut, Par hasard il fut Baron, ministre et prince: C'est le Hasard, Qui, tot ou tard, Ici bas nous seconde; Car, D'un bout du monde A l'autre bout, Le Hasard seul fait tout.

"There--that is all I know. It is the only song I sing."

"But there are other verses," said Juliette, resting her hands on the keys of the wheezy spinet which must have been a hundred years old. "What are they about?"

"I do not know, mademoiselle," he answered, looking down at her. "I think it is a love-song."

She had pinned some mignonette, strong scented as autumn mignonette is, in the front of her muslin dress, and the heavy heads had dragged the stems to one side. She put the flowers in order, slowly, and then bent her head to enjoy the scent of them.

"It scarcely sounds like one," she said, in a low and inquiring voice.

The Marquis was a little deaf. "Is it all chance then?"

"Oh yes," he answered, and as he spoke without lowering his voice she played softly on the old piano the simple melody of his song. "It is all chance, mademoiselle. Did they not teach you that at the school at Saintes?"

But she was not in a humour to join in his ready laughter. The room was rosy with the glow of the setting sun, she breathed the scent of the mignonette at every breath, the air which she had picked out on the spinet in unison with his clear and sympathetic voice had those minor tones and slow slurring from note to note which are characteristic of the gay and tearful songs of southern France and all Spain. None of which things are conducive to gaiety when one is young.

She glanced at him with one quick turn of the head and made no answer.

But she played the air over again--the girls sing it to this day over their household work at Farlingford to other words--with her foot on the soft pedal. The Marquis hummed it between his teeth at the other end of the room.

"This room is hot," she exclaimed, suddenly, and rose from her seat without troubling to finish the melody. "And that window will not open, mademoiselle; for I have tried it," added Barebone, watching her impatient movements.

"Then I am going into the garden," she said, with a sharp sigh and a wilful toss of the head. It was not his fault that the setting sun, against which, as many have discovered, men shut their doors, should happen to be burning hot or that the window would not open. But Juliette seemed to blame him for it or for something else, perhaps. One never knows. Barebone did not follow her at once, but stood by the window talking to the Marquis, who was in a reminiscent humour. The old man interrupted his own narrative, however.

"There," he cried, "is Juliette on that wall overhanging the river. It is where the English effected a breach long ago, my friend--you need not smile, for you are no Englishman--and the chateau has only been taken twice through all the centuries of fighting. There! She ventures still farther. I have told her a hundred times that the wall is unsafe."

"Shall I go and warn her the hundred-and-first time?" asked Loo, willing enough.

"Yes, my friend, do. And speak to her severely. She is only a child, remember."

"Yes--I will remember that."

Juliette did not seem to hear his approach across the turf where the goats fed now, but stood with her back toward him, a few feet below him, actually in that breach effected long ago by those pestilential English.

They must have prized out the great stones with crowbars and torn them down with their bare hands.

Juliette was looking over the vineyards toward the river, which gleamed across the horizon. She was humming to herself the last lines of the song:

D'un bout du monde A l'autre bout, Le Hasard seul fait tout.

She turned with a pretty swing of her skirts to gather them in her hand.

"You must go no farther, mademoiselle," said Loo.

She stopped, half bending to take her skirt, but did not look back. Then she took two steps downward from stone to stone. The blocks were half embedded in the turf and looked ready to fall under the smallest additional weight.

"It is not I who say so, but your father who sent me," explained the admonisher from above.

"Since it is all chance--" she said, looking downward.

She turned suddenly and looked up at him with that impatience which gives way in later life to a philosophy infinitely to be dreaded when it comes; for its real name is Indifference.

Her movements were spasmodic and quick as if something angered her, she knew not what; as if she wanted something, she knew not what.

"I suppose," she said, "that it was chance that saved our lives that night two months ago, out there."

And she stood with one hand stretched out behind her pointing toward the estuary, which was quiet enough now, looking up at him with that strange anger or new disquietude--it was hard to tell which--glowing in her eyes.

The wind fluttered her hair, which was tied low down with a ribbon in the mode named "a la diable" by some French wit with a sore heart in an old man's breast. For none other could have so aptly described it.

"All chance, mademoiselle," he answered, looking over her head toward the river.

"And it would have been the same had it been only Marie or Marie and Jean in the boat with you?"

"The boat would have been as solid and the ropes as strong."

"And you?" asked the girl, with a glance from her persistent eyes.

"Oh no!" he answered, with a laugh. "I should not have been the same. But you must not continue to stand there, mademoiselle; the wall is unsafe."

She shrugged her shoulders and stood with half-averted face, looking down at the vineyards which stretched away to the dunes by the river. Her cheeks were oddly flushed.

"Your father sent me to say so," continued Loo, "and if he sees that you take no heed he will come himself to learn why."

Juliette gave a curt laugh and climbed the declivity toward him. The argument was, it seemed, a sound one. When she reached his level he made a step or two along the path that ran round the enceinte--not toward the house, however--but away from it. She accepted the tacit suggestion, not tacitly, however.

"Shall we not go and tell papa we have returned without mishap?" she amended, with a light laugh.

"No, mademoiselle," he answered. It was his turn to be grave now and she glanced at him with a gleam of satisfaction beneath her lids. She was not content with that, however, but wished to make him angry. So she laughed again and they would have quarrelled if he had not kept his lips firmly closed and looked straight in front of him.

They pa.s.sed between the unfinished ruin known as the Italian house and the rampart. The Italian house screened them from the windows of that portion of the ancient stabling which the Marquis had made habitable when he bought back the chateau of Gemosac from the descendant of an adventurous republican to whom the estate had been awarded in the days of the Terror. A walk of lime-trees bordered that part of the garden which lies to the west of the Italian house, and no other part was visible from where Juliette paused to watch the sun sink below the distant horizon.

Loo was walking a few paces behind her, and when she stopped he stopped also. She sat down on the low wall, but he remained standing.

Her profile, clear-cut and delicate with its short chin and beautifully curved lips, its slightly aquiline nose and crisp hair rising in a bold curve from her forehead, was outlined against the sky. He could see the gleam of the western light in her eyes, which were half averted. While she watched the sunset, he watched her with a puzzled expression about his lips.

He remembered perhaps the Marquis's last words, that Juliette was only a child. He knew that she could in all human calculation know nothing of the world; that at least she could have learned nothing of it in the convent where she had been educated. So, if she knew anything, she must have known it before she went there, which was impossible. She knew nothing, therefore, and yet she was not a child. As a matter of fact, she was the most beautiful woman Loo Barebone had ever seen. He was thinking that as she sat on the low wall, swinging one slipper half falling from her foot, watching the sunset, while he watched her and noted the anger slowly dying from her eyes as the light faded from the sky. That strange anger went down, it would appear, with the sun. After the long silence--when the low bars of red cloud lying across the western sky were fading from pink to grey--she spoke at last in a voice which he had never heard before, gentle and confidential.