The Last Hope Part 42

They did not see so much of each other after Loo had spoken to the Marquis de Gemosac on this subject; for Barebone had to make visits to other parts of France. Once or twice Juliette herself went to stay with relatives. During these absences they did not write to each other.

It was, in fact, impossible for Barebone to keep up any correspondence whatever. He heard that Dormer Colville was still in Paris, seeking to s.n.a.t.c.h something from the wreck of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's fortune.

The Marquis de Gemosac had been told that affairs might yet be arranged.

He was no financier, however, he admitted; he did not understand such matters, and all that he knew was that the promised help from the Englishwoman was not forthcoming.

"It is," he concluded, "a question of looking elsewhere. It is not only that we want money. It is that we must have it at once."

It was not, strictly speaking, Loo's part to think of or to administer the money. His was the part to be played by Kings--so easy, if the gift is there, so impossible to acquire if it be lacking--to know many people and to charm them all.

Thus the summer ripened into autumn. It had been another great vintage in the south, and Bordeaux was more than usually busy when Barebone arrived there, at daybreak, one morning in November, having posted from Toulouse.

He was more daring in winter, and went fearlessly through the streets. In cold weather it is so much easier for a man to conceal his ident.i.ty; for a woman to hide her beauty, if she wish to--which is a large If. Barebone could wear a fur collar and turn it up round that tell-tale chin, which made the pa.s.ser-by pause and turn to look at him again if it was visible.

He breakfasted at the old-fashioned inn in the heart of the town, where to this day the diligences deposit their pa.s.sengers, and then he made his way to the quay, from whence he would take pa.s.sage down the river. It was a cold morning, and there are few colder cities, south of Paris, than Bordeaux. Barebone hurried, his breath frozen on the fur of his collar.

Suddenly he stopped. His new self--that phantom second-nature bred of custom--vanished in the twinkling of an eye, and left him plain Loo Barebone, of Farlingford, staring across the green water toward "The Last Hope," deep-laden, anch.o.r.ed in mid-stream.

Seeing him stop, a boatman ran toward him from a neighbouring flight of steps.

"An English ship, monsieur," he said; "just come in. Her anchors are hardly home. Does monsieur wish to go on board?"

"Of course I do, comrade--as quick as you like," he answered, with a gay laugh. It was odd that the sight of this structure, made of human hands, should change him in a flash of thought, should make his heart leap in his breast.

In a few minutes he was seated in the wherry, half way out across the stream. Already a face was looking over the bulwarks. The hands were on the forecastle, still busy clearing decks after the confusion of letting go anchor and hauling in the jib-boom.

Barebone could see them leave off work and turn to look at him. One or two raised a hand in salutation and then turned again to their task.

Already the mate--a Farlingford man, who had succeeded Loo--was standing on the rail fingering a coil of rope.

"Old man is down below," he said, giving Barebone a hand. From the forecastle came sundry grunts, and half a dozen heads were jerked sideways at him.

Captain Clubbe was in the cabin, where the remains of breakfast had been pushed to one end of the table to make room for pens and ink. The Captain was laboriously filling in the countless doc.u.ments required by the French custom-house. He looked up, pen in hand, and all the wrinkles, graven by years of hardship and trouble, were swept away like writing from a slate.

He laid aside his pen and held his hand out across the table.

"Had your breakfast?" he asked, curtly, with a glance at the empty coffee-pot.

Loo laughed as he sat down. It was all so familiar--the disorder of the cabin; the smell of lamp-oil; the low song of the wind through the rigging, that came humming in at the doorway, which was never closed, night or day, unless the seas were washing to and fro on the main deck.

He knew everything so well; the very pen and the rarely used ink-pot; the Captain's att.i.tude, and the British care that he took not to speak with his lips that which was in his heart.

"Well," said Captain Clubbe, taking up his pen again, "how are you getting on?"

"With what?"

"With the business that brought you to this country," answered Clubbe, with a sudden gruffness; for he was, like the majority of big men, shy.

Barebone looked at him across the table.

"Do you know what the business is that brought me to this country?" he asked. And Captain Clubbe looked thoughtfully at the point of his pen.

"Did the Marquis de Gemosac and Dormer Colville tell you everything, or only a little?"

"I don't suppose they told me everything," was the reply. "Why should they? I am only a seafaring man."

"But they told you enough," persisted Barebone, "for you to draw your own conclusions as to my business over here."

"Yes," answered Clubbe, with a glance across the table. "Is it going badly?"

"No. On the contrary, it is going splendidly," answered Barebone, gaily; and Captain Clubbe ducked his head down again over the papers of the French custom-house. "It is going splendidly, but--"

He paused. Half an hour ago he had no thought in his mind of Captain Clubbe or of Farlingford. He had come on board merely to greet his old friends, to hear some news of home, to take up for a moment that old self of bygone days and drop it again. And now, in half a dozen questions and answers, whither was he drifting? Captain Clubbe filled in a word, slowly and very legibly.

"But I am not the man, you know," said Barebone, slowly. It was as if the sight of that just man had bidden him cry out the truth. "I am not the man they think me. My father was not the son of Louis XVI, I know that now. I did not know it at first, but I know it now. And I have been going on with the thing, all the same."

Clubbe sat back in his chair. He was large and ponderous in body. And the habit of the body at length becomes the nature of the mind.

"Who has been telling you that?" he asked.

"Dormer Colville. He told me one thing first and then the other. Only he and you and I know of it."

"Then he must have told one lie," said Clubbe, reflectively. "One that we know of. And what he says is of no value either way; for he doesn't know.

No one knows. Your father was a friend of mine, man and boy, and he didn't know. He was not the same as other men; I know that--but nothing more."

"Then, if you were me, you would give yourself the benefit of the doubt?" asked Barebone, with a rather reckless laugh. "For the sake of others--for the sake of France?"

"Not I," replied Clubbe, bluntly.

"But it is practically impossible to go back now," explained Loo. "It would be the ruin of all my friends, the downfall of France. In my position, what would you do?"

"I don't understand your position," replied Clubbe. "I don't understand politics; I am only a seafaring man. But there is only one thing to do--the square thing."

"But," protested Dormer Colville's pupil, "I cannot throw over my friends. I cannot abandon France now."

"The square thing," repeated the sailor, stubbornly. "The square thing; and d.a.m.n your friends--d.a.m.n France!"

He rose as he spoke, for they had both heard the customs officers come on board; and these functionaries were now bowing at the cabin-door.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

MRS. ST. PIERRE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND

It was early in November that the report took wing in Paris that John Turner's bank was, after all, going to weather the storm. Dormer Colville was among the first to hear this news, and strangely enough he did not at once impart it to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.

All through the year, John Turner had kept his client supplied with ready money. He had, moreover, made no change in his own mode of living. Which things are a mystery to all who have no money of their own nor the good fortune to handle other people's. There is no doubt some explanation of the fact that bankers and other financiers seem to fail, and even become bankrupt, without tangible effect upon their daily comfort, but the unfinancial cannot expect to understand it.

There had, as a matter of fact, been no question of discomfort for Mrs.

St. Pierre Lawrence either.