The Last Hope Part 22

"When are you going away?" she asked.

"To-night."

And he knew that the very hour of his departure was known to her already.

"And when will you come back?"

"As soon as I can," he answered, half-involuntarily. There was a turn of the head half toward him, something expectant in the tilt at the corner of her parted lips, which made it practically impossible to make any other answer.

"Why?" she asked, in little more than a whisper--then she broke into a gay laugh and leapt off the wall. She walked quickly past him.

"Why?" she repeated over her shoulder as she pa.s.sed him. And he was too quick for her, for he caught her hand and touched it with his lips before she jerked it away from him.

"Because you are here," he answered, with a laugh. But she was grave again and looked at him with a queer searching glance before she turned away and left him standing in the half-light--thinking of Miriam Liston.

CHAPTER XX

"NINETEEN"

As Juliette returned to the Gate House she encountered her father, walking arm-in-arm with Dormer Colville. The presence of the Englishman within the enceinte of the chateau was probably no surprise to her, for she must have heard the clang of the bell just within the gate, which could not be opened from outside; by which alone access was gained to any part of the chateau.

Colville was in riding costume. It was, indeed, his habitual dress when living in France, for he made no concealment of his partnership in a well-known business house in Bordeaux.

"I am a sleeping partner," he would say, with that easy flow of egotistic confidence which is the surest way of learning somewhat of your neighbour's private affairs. "I am a sleeping partner at all times except the vintage, when I awake and ride round among the growers, to test their growth."

It was too early yet for these journeys, for the grapes were hardly ripe.

But any one who wished to move from place to place must needs do so in the saddle in a country where land is so valuable that the width of a road is grudged, and bridle-ways are deemed good enough for the pa.s.sage of the long and narrow carts that carry wine.

Ever since their somewhat precipitate departure from the Villa Cordouan at Royan, Dormer Colville and Barebone had been in company. They had stayed together, in one friend's house or another. Sometimes they enjoyed the hospitality of a chateau, and at others put up with the scanty accommodation of a priest's house or the apartment of a retired military officer, in one of those little towns of provincial France at which the cheap journalists of Paris are pleased to sneer without ceasing.

They avoided the large towns with extraordinary care.

"Why should we go to towns," asked Colville, jovially, "when we have business in the country and the sun is still high in the sky?"

"Yes," he would reply to the questions of an indiscreet fellow-traveller, at table or on the road. "Yes; I am a buyer of wine. We are buyers of wine. We are travelling from place to place to watch the growth. For the wine is hidden in the grape, and the grape is ripening."

And, as often as not, the chance acquaintance of an inn dejeuner would catch the phrase and repeat it thoughtfully.

"Ah! is that so?" he would ask, with a sudden glance at Dormer Colville's companion, who had hitherto pa.s.sed un.o.bserved as the silent subordinate of a large buyer; learning his trade, no doubt. "The grape is ripening.

Good!"

And as sure as he seemed to be struck with this statement of a self-evident fact, he would, in the next few minutes, bring the numeral "nineteen"--_tant bien que mal_--into his conversation.

"With nineteen days of sun, the vintage will be upon us," he would say; or, "I have but nineteen kilometres more of road before me to-day."

Indeed, it frequently happened that the word came in very inappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the front by a clumsy conversationalist.

There is no hazard of life so certain to discover sympathy or antagonism as travel--a fact which points to the wisdom of beginning married life with a journey. The majority of people like to know the worst at once. To travel, however, with Dormer Colville was a liberal education in the virtues. No man could be less selfish or less easily fatigued; which are the two bases upon which rest all the stumbling-blocks of travel.

Up to a certain point, Barebone and Dormer Colville became fast friends during the month that elapsed between their departure from Mrs. St.

Pierre Lawrence's house and their arrival at the inn at Gemosac. The "White Horse," at Gemosac, was no better and no worse than any other "White Horse" in any other small town of France. It was, however, better than the princ.i.p.al inn of a town of the same size in any other habitable part of the globe.

There were many reasons why the Marquis de Gemosac had yielded to Colville's contention--that the time had not yet come for Loo Barebone to be his guest at the chateau.

"He is inclined to be indolent," Colville had whispered. "One recognises, in many traits of character, the source from whence his blood is drawn.

He will not exert himself so long as there is some one else at hand who is prepared to take trouble. He must learn that it is necessary to act for himself. He needs rousing. Let him travel through France, and see for himself that of which he has as yet only learnt at second-hand. That will rouse him."

And the journey through the valleys of the Garonne and the Dordogne had been undertaken.

Another, greater journey, was now afoot, to end at no less a centre of political life than Paris. A start was to be made this evening, and Dormer Colville now came to report that all was ready and the horses at the gate.

"If there were scenes such as this for all of us to linger in, mademoiselle," he said, lifting his face to the western sky and inhaling the scent of the flowers growing knee-deep all around him, "men would accomplish little in their brief lifetime."

His eyes, dreamy and reflective, wandered over the scene and paused, just for a moment in pa.s.sing, on Juliette's face. She continued her way, with no other answer than a smile.

"She grows, my dear Marquis--she grows every minute of the day and wakes up a new woman every morning," said Colville, in a confidential aside, and he went forward to meet Loo with his accustomed laugh of good-fellowship. He whom the world calls a good fellow is never a wise man.

Barebone walked toward the gate without joining in the talk of his companions. He was thoughtful and uneasy. He had come to say good-bye and nothing else. He was wondering if he had really meant what he had said.

"Come," interrupted Colville's smooth voice. "We must get into the saddle and begone. I was just telling Monsieur and Mademoiselle Juliette, that any man might be tempted to linger at Gemosac until the active years of a lifetime rolled by."

The Marquis made the needful reply; hoping that he might yet live to see Gemosac--and not only Gemosac, but a hundred chateaux like it--reawakened to their ancient glory, and thrown open to welcome the restorer of their fallen fortunes.

Colville looked from one to the other, and then, with his foot in the stirrup, turned to look at Juliette, who had followed them to the gate.

"And mademoiselle," he said; "will she wish us good luck, also? Alas!

those times are gone when we could have asked for her ribbon to wear, and to fight for between ourselves when we are tired and cross at the end of a journey. Come, Barchone--into the saddle."

They waited, both looking at Juliette; for she had not spoken.

"I wish you good luck," she said, at length, patting the neck of Colville's horse, her face wearing a little mystic smile.

Thus they departed, at sunset, on a journey of which old men will still talk in certain parts of France. Here and there, in the Angoumois, in Guienne, in the Vendee, and in the western parts of Brittany, the student of forgotten history may find an old priest who will still persist in dividing France into the ancient provinces, and will tell how Hope rode through the Royalist country when he himself was busy at his first cure.

The journey lasted nearly two months, and before they pa.s.sed north of the Loire at Nantes and quitted the wine country, the vintage was over.

"We must say that we are cider merchants, that is all," observed Dormer Colville, when they crossed the river, which has always been the great divider of France.

"He is sobering down. I believe he will become serious," wrote he to the Marquis de Gemosac. But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as possible.

"I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot," he explained, airily, to his companion. "The ship is yours, and you probably know more about the shoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you were at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe. And yet, before you could get into port, you found yourself forced to take the compulsory pilot on board and make him welcome with such grace as you could command, feeling all the while that he did not want to come and you could have done as well without him. So you must put up with my company as gracefully as you can, remembering that you can drop me as soon as you are in port."

And surely, none other could have occupied an uncomfortable position so gracefully.

Barebone found that he had not much to do. He soon accommodated himself to a position which required nothing more active than a ready ear and a gracious patience. For, day by day--almost hour by hour--it was his lot to listen to protestations of loyalty to a cause which smouldered none the less hotly because it was hidden from the sight of the Prince President's spies.