The Last Hope Read online

  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 impassive face toward Dormer Colville, wholooked oddly white beneath the light of the lamp.

  Barebone had unceremoniously dragged his hand away from the hold ofJuliette's fingers. He made a step back and then turned toward the doorat the sound of his shipmate's well-known voice. He stood staring outinto the darkness like one who is walking in his sleep. No one spoke, andthrough the open doorways no sound came to them but the song of the windthrough the rigging.

  At last Barebone turned, and there was no sign of fear or misgiving inhis face. He looked at Clubbe, and at no one else, as if the Captain andhe were alone in the cabin where they had passed so many years togetherin fair weather, to bring out that which is evil in a man, and foul, toevolve the good.

  "What do _you_ say?" he asked, in English, and he must have known thatCaptain Clubbe understood French better than he was ready to admit.

  Clubbe passed his hand slowly across his cheek and chin, not in order togain time, or because he had not an answer ready, but because he came ofa slow-speaking race. His answer had been made ready weeks before whilehe sat on the weather-beaten seat set against the wall of "The BlackSailor" at Farlingford.

  "Tide's turned," he answered, simply. "You'd better get your oilskins onagain 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, whowent ashore there, had followed "The Last Hope" up the river, and was nowlying under the English ship's stern awaiting her two passengers and theturn of the tide.

  Dormer Colville glanced at the cabin clock.

  "Then," he said, briskly, "let us be going. It will be late enough as itis before we reach my cousin's house."

  He turned and translated his remark for the benefit of the Marquis andJuliette, remembering that they must needs fail to understand a colloquyin the muttered and clipped English of the east coast. He was nervouslyanxious, it would appear, to tide over a difficult moment; to give LooBarebone breathing space, and yet to avoid unnecessary question andanswer. He had not lived forty adventurous years in the world withoutlearning that it is the word too much which wrecks the majority of humanschemes.

  Their preparations had been made beforehand in readiness for the returnof the tide, without the help of which the voyage back to Royan against acontrary wind must necessarily be long and wearisome.

  There was nothing to wait for. Captain Clubbe was not the man to prolonga farewell or waste his words in wishes for the future, knowing how vainsuch must always be. Loo was dazed still by the crash of the storm andthe tension of the effort to bring his boat safely through it.

  The rest had not fully penetrated to his inmost mind yet. There had beenonly time to act, and none to think, and when the necessity to act waspast, when he found himself crouching down under the weather gunwale ofthe French fishing-boat without even the necessity of laying hand onsheet or tiller, when, at last, he had time to think, he found that theability to do so was no longer his. For Fortune, when she lifts up orcasts down, usually numbs the understanding at the first turn of herwheel, sending her victim staggering on his way a mere machine,astonishingly alive to the necessity of the immediate moment, careful ofthe next step, but capable of looking neither forward nor backward withan understanding eye.

  The waning moon came up at last, behind a distant line of trees on theCharente side, lighting up with a silver lining the towering clouds ofthe storm, which was still travelling eastward, leaving in its wakebattered vines and ruined crops, searing the face of the land as with ahot iron. Loo lifted his head and looked round him. The owner of the boatwas at the tiller, while his assistant sat amidships, his elbows on hisknees, looking ahead with dreamy eyes. Close to Barebone, crouching fromthe wind which blew cold from the Atlantic, was Dormer Colville, affablysilent. If Loo turned to glance at him he looked away, but when his backwas turned Loo was conscious of watching eyes, full of sympathy, almostuncomfortably quick to perceive the inward working of another's mind, andsuit his own thereto.

  Thus the boat plunged out toward the sea and the flickering lights thatmark the channel, tacking right across to that spit of land lying betweenthe Gironde and the broad Atlantic, where grows a wine without match inall the world. Thus Loo Barebone turned his back on the ship which hadbeen his home so long and set out into a new world; a new and unknownlife, with the Marquis de Gemosac's ringing words buzzing in his brainyet; 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 LastHope of France!"

  And he remembered the lights and shadows on Juliette's hair as he lookeddown upon her bent head.

  Colville was talking to the "patron" now. He knew the coast, it seemed,and, somewhere or other, had learnt enough of such matters of localseafaring interest as to set the fisherman at his ease and make him talk.

  They were arranging where to land, and Colville was describing the exactwhereabouts of a little jetty used for bathing purposes, which ran outfrom the sandy shore, quite near to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's house, inthe pine-trees, two miles south of Royan. It was no easy matter to findthis spot by the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechanically, Loojoined in the search, and presently, when the jetty was reached, helpedto make fast in a choppy sea.

  They left the luggage on the jetty and walked across the silent sand sideby side.

  "There," said Colville, pointing forward. "It is through that opening inthe pine-trees. A matter of five minutes and we shall be at my cousin'shouse."

  "It is very kind of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence," answered Barebone,"to--well, to take me up. I suppose that is the best way to look at it."

  Colville laughed quietly.

  "Yes--put it thus, if you like," he said. They walked on in silence for afew yards, and then Dormer Colville slipped his hand within hiscompanion's arm, as was the fashion among men even in England in thosemore expansive days.

  "I think I know how you feel," he said, suiting his step to Barebone's."You must feel like a man who is set down to a table to play a game ofwhich he knows nothing, and on taking up his cards finds that he holds ahand all courtcards and trumps--and he doesn't know how to play them."

  Barebone made no answer. He had yet to unlearn Captain Clubbe'sunconscious teaching that a man's feelings are his own concern and noother has any interest or right to share in them, except one woman, andeven she must guess the larger half.

  "But as the game progresses," went on Colville, reassuringly, "you willfind out how it is played. You will even find that you are a skilledplayer, and then the gambler's spirit will fire your blood and arouseyour energies. You will discover what a damned good game it is. The greatgame--Barebone--the great game! And France is the country to play it in."

  He stamped his foot on the soil of France as he spoke.

  "The moment I saw you I knew that you would do. No man better fitted toplay the game than yourself; for you have wit and quickness," went onthis friend and mentor, with a little pressure on his companion's arm."But--you will have to put your back into it, you know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well--I noticed at Farlingford a certain reluctance to begin. It is inthe blood, I suppose. There is, you know, in the Bourbon blood a certainstrain of--well, let us say of reluctance to begin. Others call it by adifferent name. One is not a Bourbon for nothing, I suppose. Andeverything--even if it be a vice--that serves to emphasise identity is tobe cultivated. But, as I say, you will have to put your back into itlater on. At present there will be less to do. You will have to playclose and hold your hand, and follow any lead that is given you by deGemosac, or by my humble self. You will find that easy enough, I know.For you have all a Frenchman's quickness to understand. And I suppose--toput it plainly as between men of the world--now that you have had
time tothink it over--you are not afraid, Barebone?"

  "Oh no!" laughed Barebone. "I am not afraid."

  "One is not a Barebone--or a Bourbon--for nothing," observed Colville, inan aside to himself. "Gad! I wish I could say that I should not be afraidmyself under similar circumstances. My heart was in my mouth, I can tellyou, in that cabin when de Gemosac blurted it all out. It came suddenlyat the end, and--well!--it rather hit one in the wind. And, as I say, oneis not a Bourbon for nothing. You come into a heritage, eight hundredyears old, of likes and dislikes, of genius and incapacity, of anastounding cleverness, and a preposterous foolishness without compare inthe history of dynasties. But that doesn't matter nowadays. This is aprogressive age, you know; even the Bourbons cannot hold back the advanceof the times."

  "I come into a heritage of friends and of enemies," said Barebone,gaily--"all ready made. That seems to me more important."

  "Gad! you are right," exclaimed Colville. "I said you would do the momentI saw you step ashore at Farlingford. You have gone right to the heart ofthe question at the first bound. It is your friends and your enemies thatwill give you trouble."

  "More especially my friends," suggested Loo, with a light laugh.

  "Right again," answered Colville, glancing at him sideways beneath thebrim of his hat. And there was a little pause before he spoke again.

  "You have probably learnt how to deal with your enemies at sea," he saidthoughtfully at length. "Have you ever noticed how an English ship comesinto a foreign harbour and takes her berth at her moorings? There isnothing more characteristic of the nation. And one captain is likeanother. No doubt you have seen Clubbe do it a hundred times. He comesin, all sail set, and steers straight for the berth he has chosen. Andthere are always half a dozen men in half a dozen small boats who go outto meet him. They stand up and wave their arms, and point this way andthat. They ask a hundred questions, and with their hands round theirfaces, shout their advice. And in answer to one and the other the Captainlooks over the side and says, 'You be damned.' That will be the way todeal with some of your friends and all your enemies alike, Barebone, ifyou mean to get on in France. You will have to look over the side at thepeople in small boats who are shouting and say, 'You be damned.'"

  They were at the gate of a house now, set down in a clearing amid thepine-trees.

  "This is my cousin's house," said Dormer Colville. "It is to be your homefor the present. And you need not scruple, as she will tell you, toconsider it so. It is not a time to think of obligations, you understand,or to consider that you are running into any one's debt. You may rememberthat afterward, perhaps, but that is as may be. For the present there isno question of obligations. We are all in the same boat--all playing thesame game."

  And he laughed below his breath as he closed the gate with caution; forit was late and the house seemed to hold none but sleepers.

  "As for my cousin herself," he continued, as they went toward the door,"you will find her easy to get on with--a clever woman, and agood-looking one. _Du reste_--it is not in that direction that yourdifficulties will lie. You will find it easy enough to get on with thewomen of the party, I fancy--from what I have observed."

  And again he seemed to be amused.