The Last Hope Part 35

Turner, stumbling along the road to "The Black Sailor," probably wondered why he had failed. It is to be presumed that he knew that the ally he had looked to for powerful aid had played him false at the crucial moment.

His misfortune is common to all men who presume to take anything for granted from a woman.

Barebone, stumbling along in the dark in another direction, was as angry with Miriam as she in her turn was angry with Turner. She was, Barebone reflected, so uncompromising. She saw her course so clearly, so unmistakably--as birds that fly in the night--and from that course nothing, it seemed, would move her. It was a question of temperament and not of principle. For, even half a century ago, high principles were beginning to go out of fashion in the upper strata of a society which in these days tolerates anything except cheating at games.

Barebone himself was of a different temperament. He liked to blind himself to the inevitable end, to temporise with the truth, whereas Miriam, with a sort of dogged courage essentially English, perceived the hard truth at once and clung to it, though it hurt. And all the while Barebone knew at the back of his heart that his life was not his own to shape. At the end, says an Italian motto, stands Destiny. Barebone wanted to make believe; he wanted to pretend that his path lay down a flowery way, knowing all the while that he had a hill to climb and Destiny stood at the top.

Colville had come at the right time. It is the fate of some men to come at the right moment, just as it is the lot of others never to be there when they are wanted and their place is filled by a bystander and an opportunity is gone for ever. Which is always a serious matter, for G.o.d only gives one or two opportunities to each of us.

Colville had come with his ready sympathy, not expressed as the world expresses its sympathy, in words, but by a hundred little self-abnegations. He was always ready to act up to the principles of his companion for the moment or to act up to no principles at all should that companion be deficient. Moreover, he never took it upon himself to judge others, but extended to his neighbour a large tolerance, in return for which he seemed to ask nothing.

"I have a carriage," he said, when on a broader cart-track they could walk side by side, "waiting for me at the roadside inn at the junction of the two roads. The man brought me from Ipswich to the outskirts of Farlingford, and I sent him back to the high road to wait for me there, to put up and stay all night, if necessary."

Barebone was beginning to feel tired. The wind was abominably cold. He heard with satisfaction that Colville had as usual foreseen his wishes.

"I dogged Turner all the way from Paris, hardly letting him out of my sight," Colville explained, cheerily, when they at length reached the road. "It is easy enough to keep in touch with one so remarkably stout, for every one remembers him. What did he come to Farlingford for?"

"Apparently to try and buy me off."

"For Louis Bonaparte?"

"He did not say so,"

"No," said Colville. "He would not say so. But it is pretty generally suspected that he is in that galley, and pulls an important oar in it, too. What did he offer you?"

"Fifty thousand pounds."

"Whew!" whistled Colville. He stopped short in the middle of the road.

"Whew!" he repeated, thoughtfully, "fifty thousand pounds! Gad! They must be afraid of you. They must think that we are in a strong position. And what did you say, Barebone?"

"I refused."

"Why?"

Barebone paused, and after a moment's thought made no answer at all. He could not explain to Dormer Colville his reason for refusing.

"Outright?" inquired Colville, deep in thought.

"Yes."

Colville turned and glanced at him sideways, though it was too dark to see his face.

"I should have thought," he said, tentatively, after a while, "that it would have been wise to accept. A bird in the hand, you know--a d.a.m.ned big bird! And then afterwards you could see what turned up."

"You mean I could break my word later on," inquired Barebone, with that odd downrightness which at times surprised Colville and made him think of Captain Clubbe.

"Well, you know," he explained, with a tolerant laugh, "in politics it often turns out that a man's duty is to break his word--duty toward his party, and his country, and that sort of thing."

Which was plausible enough, as many eminent politicians seem to have found in these later times.

"I dare say it may be so," answered Barebone, "but I refused outright, and there is an end to it."

For now that he was brought face to face with the situation, shorn of side issues and set squarely before him, he envisaged it clearly enough.

He did not want fifty thousand pounds. He had only wanted the money for a moment because the thought leapt into his mind that fifty thousand pounds meant Miriam. Then he saw that little contemptuous smile tilting the corner of her lips, and he had no use for a million.

If he could not have Miriam, he would be King of France. It is thus that history is made, for those who make it are only men. And Clio, that greatest of the daughters of Zeus, about whose feet cl.u.s.ter all the famous names of the makers of this world's story, has, after all, only had the reversion of the earth's great men. She has taken them after some forgotten woman of their own choosing has had the first refusal.

Thus it came about that the friendship so nearly severed one evening at the Hotel Gemosac, in Paris, was renewed after a few months; and Barebone felt a.s.sured once more that no one was so well disposed toward him as Dormer Colville.

There was no formal reconciliation, and neither deemed it necessary to refer to the past. Colville, it will be remembered, was an adept at that graceful tactfulness which is somewhat clumsily described by this tolerant generation as going on as if nothing had happened.

By the time that the waning moon was high enough in the eastern sky to shed an appreciable light upon their path, they reached the junction of the two roads and set off at a brisk pace southward toward Ipswich. So far as the eye could reach, the wide heath was deserted, and they talked at their ease.

"There is nothing for it but to wake up my driver and make him take us back to Ipswich to-night. To-morrow morning we can take train to London and be there almost as soon as John Turner realises that you have given him the slip," said Colville, cheerily.

"And then?"

"And then back to France--where the sun shines, my friend, and the spring is already in the air. Think of that! It is so, at least, at Gemosac, for I heard from the Marquis before I quitted Paris. Your disappearance has nearly broken a heart or two down there, I can tell you. The old Marquis was in a great state of anxiety. I have never seen him so upset about anything, and Juliette did not seem to be able to offer him any consolation."

"Back to France?" echoed Barebone, not without a tone of relief, almost of exultation, in his voice. "Will it be possible to go back there, since we have to run away from Farlingford?"

"Safer there than here," replied Colville. "It may sound odd, but it is true. De Gemosac is one of the most powerful men in France--not intellectually, perhaps, but by reason of his great name--and they would not dare to touch a protege or a guest of his. If you go back there now you must stay at Gemosac; they have put the chateau into a more habitable condition, and are ready to receive you."

He turned and glanced at Loo's face in the moonlight.

"There will be a difference, you understand. You will be a different person from what you were when last there," he went on, in a m.u.f.fled voice.

"Yes, I understand," replied Barebone, gravely. Already the dream was taking shape--Colville's persuasive voice had awakened him to find that it was no dream, but a reality--and Farlingford was fading back into the land of shadows. It was only France, after all, that was real.

"That journey of ours," explained Colville, vaguely, "has made an extraordinary difference. The whole party is aroused and in deadly earnest now."

Barebone made no answer, and they walked on in meditative silence toward the roadside inn, which stood up against the southern sky a few hundred yards ahead.

"In fact," Colville added, after a silence, "the ball is at your feet, Barebone. There can be no looking back now."

And again Barebone made no answer. It was a tacit understanding, then.

For greater secrecy, Barebone walked on toward Ipswich alone, while Colville went into the inn to arouse his driver, whom he found slumbering in the wide chimney corner before a log fire. From Ipswich to London, and thus on to Newhaven, they journeyed pleasantly enough in company, for they were old companions of the road, and Colville's unruffled good humour made him an easy comrade for travel even in days when the idea of comfort reconciled with speed had not suggested itself to the mind of man.

Such, indeed, was his foresight that he had brought with him to London, and there left awaiting further need of it, that personal baggage which Loo had perforce left behind him at the Hotel Gemosac in Paris.

They made but a brief halt in London, where Colville admitted gaily that he had no desire to be seen.

"I might meet my tailor in Piccadilly," he said. "And there are others who may perhaps consider themselves aggrieved."

At Colville's club, where they dined, he met more than one friend.

"Hallo!" said one who had the ruddy countenance and bluff manners of a retired major. "Hallo! Who'd have expected to see you here? I didn't know--I--thought--eh! dammy!"