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 passage 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 passed unobserved 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 principal 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 passing, 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, Barebone—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 passed 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.
And, as Colville had predicted, Barebone sobered down. He would ride now, hour after hour, in silence, whereas at the beginning of the journey he had talked gaily enough, seeing a hundred humorous incidents in the passing events of the day; laughing at the recollection of an interview with some provincial notable who had fallen behind the times, or jesting readily enough with such as showed a turn for joking on the road.
But now the unreality of his singular change of fortune was vanishing. Every village priest who came after dark to take a glass of wine with them at their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial noble greeting him on the step of his remote and quiet house added a note to the drumming reality which dominated his waking moments and disturbed his sleep at night.
Day by day they rode on, passing through two or three villages between such halts as were needed by the horses. At every hamlet, in the large villages, where they rested and had their food, at the remote little town where they passed a night, there was always some one expecting them, who came and talked of the weather and more or less skilfully brought in the numeral nineteen. “Nineteen! Nineteen!” It was a watchword all over France.
Long before, on the banks of the Dordogne, Loo had asked his companion why that word had been selected—what it meant.
“It means Louis XIX.,” replied Dormer Colville, gravely.
And now, as they rode through a country so rural, so thinly populated and remote that nothing like it may be found in these crowded islands, the number seemed to follow them; or, rather, to pass on before them and await their coming.
Often Colville would point silently with his whip to the numerals, scrawled on a gate-post or written across a wall. At this time France was mysteriously flooded with cheap portraits of the great Napoleon. It was before the days of pictorial advertisement, and young ladies who wished to make an advantageous marriage had no means of advertising the fact and themselves in supplements to illustrated papers. The walls of inns and shops and diligence offices were therefore barer than they are to-day. And from these bare walls stared out at this time the well-known face of the great Napoleon. It was an innovation, and as such readily enough accepted.
At every fair, at the great fete of St. Jean, at St. Jean d'Angely and a hundred other fetes of purely local notoriety, at least one hawker of cheap lithographs was to be found. And if the buyer haggled, he could get the portrait of the great Emperor for almost nothing.
“One cannot print it at such a cost,” the seller assured his purchasers, which was no less than the truth.
The fairs were, and are to this day, the link between the remoter villages and the world; and the peasants carried home with them a picture, for the first time, to hang on their walls. Thus the Prince President fostered the Napoleonic legend.
Dormer Colville would walk up to these pictures, and, as often as not, would turn and look over his shoulder at Barebone, with a short laugh. For as often as not, the numerals were scrawled across the face in pencil.
But Barebone had ceased to laugh at the constant repetition now. Soon Colville ceased to point out the silent witness, for he perceived that Loo was looking for it himself, detecting its absence with a gleam of determination in his eyes or noting its recurrence with a sharp sigh, as of the consciousness of a great responsibility.
Thus the reality was gradually forced upon him that that into which he had entered half in jest was no jest at all; that he was moving forward on a road which seemed easy enough, but of which the end was not perceptible; neither was there any turning to one side or the other.
All men who have made a mark—whether it be a guiding or warning sign to those that follow—must at one moment of their career have perceived their road before them, thus. Each must have realised that once set out upon that easy path there is no turning aside and no turning back. And many have chosen to turn back while there was yet time, leaving the mark unmade. For most men are cowards and shun responsibility. Most men unconsciously steer their way by proverb or catchword; and all the wise saws of all the nations preach cowardice.
Barebone saw his road now, and Dormer Colville knew that he saw it.
When they crossed the Loire they passed the crisis, and Colville breathed again like one who had held his breath for long. Those colder, sterner men of Brittany, who, in later times, compared notes with the nobles of Guienne and the Vendee, seemed to talk of a different man; for they spoke of one who rarely laughed, and never turned aside from a chosen path which was in no wise bordered by flowers.
CHAPTER XXI. NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB
Between the Rue de Lille and the Boulevard St. Germain, in the narrow streets which to this day have survived the sweeping influence of Baron Haussmann, once Prefect of the Seine, there are many houses which scarcely seem to have opened door or window since the great Revolution.
One of these, to be precise, is situated in the Ruelle St. Jacob, hardly wider than a lane—a short street with a blind end against high walls—into which any vehicle that enters must needs do so with the knowledge of having to back out again. For there is no room to turn. Which is an allegory. All the windows, in fact, that look forlornly at the blank walls or peep over the high gateways into the Ruelle St. Jacob are Royalist windows looking into a street which is blinded by a high wall and is too narrow to allow of turning.
Many of the windows would appear to have gathered dust since those days more than a hundred years ago when white faces peeped from them and trembling hands unbarred the sash to listen to the roar of voices in the Rue du Bac, in the open space by the church of St. Germain des Pres, in the Cite, all over Paris, where the people were making history.
To this house in the Ruelle St. Jacob, Dormer Colville and Loo Barebone made their way on foot, on their arrival in Paris at the termination of their long journey.
It was nearly dark, for Colville had arranged to approach the city and leave their horses at a stable at Meudon after dusk.
“It is foolish,” he said, gaily, to his companion, “to flaunt a face like yours in Paris by daylight.”
They had driven from Meudon in a hired carriage to the corner of the Champ de Mars, in those days still innocent of glass houses and exhibition buildings, for Paris was not yet the toy-shop of the world; and from the Champ de Mars they came on foot through the ill-paved, feebly lighted streets. In the Ruelle St. Jacob itself there was only one lamp, burning oil, swinging at the corner. The remainder of the lane depended for its illumination on the windows of two small shops retailing firewood and pickled gherkins and balls of string grey with age, as do all the shops in the narrow streets on the wrong side of the Seine.
Dormer Colville led the way, picking his steps from side to side of the gutter which meandered odoriferously down the middle of the street toward the river. He stopped in front of the great gateway and looked up at the arch of it, where the stone carving had been carefully obliterated by some enthusiastic citizen armed with a hatchet.
“Ichabod,” he said, with a short laugh; and cautiously laid hold of the dangling bell-handle which had summoned the porter to open to a Queen in those gay days when Marie Antoinette light-heartedly pushed a falling monarchy down the incline.
The great gate was not opened in response, but a small side door, deep-sunken in the thickness of the wall. On either jamb of the door was affixed in the metal letters ordained by the municipality the number eight. Number Eight Ruelle St. Jacob had once been known to kings as the Hotel Gemosac.
The man who opened carried a lantern and held the door ajar with a grudging hand while he peered out. One could almost imagine that he had survived the downfall and the Restoration, and a couple of republics, behind the high walls.
The court-yard was paved with round cobble-stones no bigger than an apple, and, even by the flickering light of the lantern, it was perceptible that no weed had been allowed to grow between the stones or in the seams of the wide, low steps that led to an open door.
The house appeared to be dark and deserted.
“Yes, Monsieur le Marquis—Monsieur le Marquis is at home,” muttered the man with a bronchial chuckle, and led the way across the yard. He wore a sort of livery, which must have been put away for years. A young man had been measured for the coat which now displayed three deep creases across a bent back.
“Attention—attention!” he said, in a warning voice, while he scraped a sulphur match in the hall. “There are holes in the carpets. It is easy to trip and fall.”
He lighted the candle, and after having carefully shut and bolted the door, he led the way upstairs. At their approach, easily audible in the empty house by reason of the hollow creaking of the oak floor, a door was opened at the head of the stairs and a flood of light met the new-comers.
In the doorway, which was ten feet high, the little bent form of the Marquis de Gemosac stood waiting.
“Ah! ah!” he said, with that pleasant manner of his generation, which was refined and spirituelle and sometimes dramatic, and yet ever failed to touch aught but the surface of life. “Ah! ah! Safely accomplished—the great journey. Safely accomplished. You permit—”
And he embraced Barebone after the custom of his day.
“From all sides,” he said, when the door was closed, “I hear that you have done great things. From every quarter one hears your praise.”
He held him at arm's length.
“Yes,” he said. “Your face is graver and—more striking in resemblance than ever. So now you know—now you have seen.”
“Yes,” answered Barebone, gravely. “I have seen and I know.”
The Marquis rubbed his white hands together and gave a little crackling laugh of delight as he drew forward a chair to the fire, which was of logs as long as a barrel. The room was a huge one, and it was lighted from end to end with lamps, as if for a reception or a ball. The air was damp and mouldly. There were patches of grey on the walls, which had once been painted with garlands of roses and Cupids and pastoral scenes by a noted artist of the Great Age.
The ceiling had fallen in places, and the woodwork of the carved furniture gave forth a subtle scent of dry rot.
But everything was in an exquisite taste which vulgarer generations have never yet succeeded in imitating. Nothing was concealed, but rather displayed with a half-cynical pride. All was moth-ridden, worm-eaten, fallen to decay—but it was of the Monarchy. Not half a dozen houses in Paris, where already the wealth, which has to-day culminated in a ridiculous luxury of outward show, was beginning to build new palaces, could show room after room furnished in the days of the Great Louis. The very air, faintly scented it would seem by some forgotten perfume, breathed of a bygone splendour. And the last of the de Gemosacs scorned to screen his poverty from the eyes of his equals, nor sought to hide from them a desolation which was only symbolic of that which crushed their hearts and bade them steal back from time to time like criminals to the capital.
“You see,” he said to Colville and Barebone, “I have kept my promise, I have thrown open this old house once more for to-night's meeting. You will find that many friends have made the journey to Paris for the occasion—Madame de Chantonnay and Albert, Madame de Rathe and many from the Vendee and the West whom you have met on your journey. And to-night one may speak without fear, for none will be present who are not vouched for by the Almanac de Gotha. There are no Royalists pour rire or pour vivre to-night. You have but time to change your clothes and dine. Your luggage arrived yesterday. You will forgive the stupidity of old servants who have forgotten their business. Come, I will lead the way and show you your rooms.”
He took a candle and did the honours of the deserted dust-ridden house in the manner of the high calling which had been his twenty years ago when Charles X. was king. For some there lingers a certain pathos in the sight of a belated survival, while the majority of men and women are ready to smile at it instead. And yet the Monarchy lasted eight centuries and the Revolution eight years. Perhaps Fate may yet exact payment for the excesses of those eight years from a nation for which the watching world already prepares a secondary place in the councils of empire.
The larger room had been assigned to Loo. There was a subtle difference in the Marquis's manner toward him. He made an odd bow as he quitted the room.
“There,” said Colville, whose room communicated with this great apartment by a dressing-room and two doors. He spoke in English, as they always did when they were alone together. “There—you are launched. You are lance, my friend. I may say you are through the shoals now and out on the high seas—”
He paused, candle in hand, and looked round the room with a reflective smile. It was obviously the best room in the house, with a fireplace as wide as a gate, where logs of pine burnt briskly on high iron dogs. The bed loomed mysteriously in one corner with its baldachin of Gobelin tapestry. Here, too, the dim scent of fallen monarchy lingered in the atmosphere. A portrait of Louis XVI. in a faded frame hung over the mantelpiece.
“And the time will come,” pursued Colville, with his melancholy, sympathetic smile, “when you will find it necessary to drop the pilot—to turn your face seaward and your back upon old recollections and old associations. You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, my friend.”
“Oh yes,” replied Barebone, with a brisk movement of the head, “I shall have to forget Farlingford.”
Colville had moved toward the door that led to his own room. He paused, examining the wick of the candle he carried in his hand. Then, though glib of speech, he decided in favour of silence, and went away without making reply.
Loo sat down in a grey old arm-chair in front of the fire. The house was astoundingly noiseless, though situated in what had once been the heart of Paris. It was one of the few houses left in this quarter with a large garden. And the traffic passing in and out of the Ruelle St. Jacob went slipshod on its own feet. The busy crackle of the wood was the only sound to break a silence which seemed part of this vast palace of memories.
Loo had ridden far and was tired. He smiled grimly at the fire. It is to be supposed that he was sitting down to the task he had set himself—to forget Farlingford.
There was a great reception at the Hotel Gemosac that night, and after twenty years of brooding silence the rooms, hastily set in order, were lighted up.
There was, as the Marquis had promised, no man or woman present who was not vouched for by a noble name or by history. As the old man presented them, their names were oddly familiar to the ear, while each face looking at Loo seemed to be the face of a ghost looking out of a past which the world will never forget so long as history lives.
And here, again, was the subtle difference. They no longer talked to Loo, but stood apart and spoke among themselves in a hushed voice. Men made their bow to him and met his smile with grave and measuring eyes. Some made a little set speech, which might mean much or nothing. Others embarked on such a speech and paused—faltered, and passed on gulping something down in their throats.
Women made a deep reverence to him and glanced at him with parted lips and white faces—no coquetry in their eyes. They saw that he was young and good-looking; but they forgot that he might think the same of them. Then they passed on and grouped themselves together, as women do in moments of danger or emotion, their souls instinctively seeking the company of other souls tuned to catch a hundred passing vibrations of the heart-strings of which men remain in ignorance. They spoke together in lowered voices without daring, or desiring perhaps, to turn and look at him again.
“It only remains,” some one said, “for the Duchesse d'Angouleme to recognise his claim. A messenger has departed for Frohsdorf.”
And Barebone, looking at them, knew that there was a barrier between him and them which none could cast aside: a barrier erected in the past and based on the sure foundations of history.
“She is an old woman,” said Monsieur de Gemosac to any who spoke to him on this subject. “She is seventy-two, and fifty-eight of those years have been marked by greater misfortunes than ever fell to the lot of a woman. When she came out of prison she had no tears left, my friends. We cannot expect her to turn back willingly to the past now. But we know that in her heart she has never been sure that her brother died in the Temple. You know how many disappointments she has had. We must not awake her sleeping sorrow until all is ready. I shall make the journey to Frohsdorf—that I promise you. But to-night we have another task before us.”
“Yes—yes,” answered his listeners. “You are to open the locket. Where is it?—show it to us.”
And the locket which Captain Clubbe's wife had given to Dormer Colville was handed from one to another. It was not of great value, but it was of gold with stones, long since discoloured, set in silver around it. It was crushed and misshapen.
“It has never been opened for twenty years,” they told each other. “It has been mislaid in an obscure village in England for nearly half a century.”
“The Vicomte de Castel Aunet—who is so clever a mechanician—has promised to bring his tools,” said Monsieur de Gemosac. “He will open it for us—even if he find it necessary to break the locket.”
So the thing went round the room until it came to Loo Barebone.
“I have seen it before,” he said. “I think I remember seeing it long ago—when I was a little child.”
And he handed it to the old Vicomte de Castel Aunet, whose shaking fingers closed round it in a breathless silence. He carried it to the table, and some one brought candles. The Vicomte was very old. He had learnt clock-making, they said, in prison during the Terror.
“Il n'y a moyen,” he whispered to himself. “I must break it.”
With one effort he prised up the cover, but the hinge snapped, and the lid rolled across the table into Barebone's hand.
“Ah!” he cried, in that breathless silence, “now I remember it. I remember the red silk lining of the cover, and in the other side there is the portrait of a lady with—”
The Vicomte paused, with his palm covering the other half of the locket and looked across at Loo. And the eyes of all Royalist France were fixed on the same face.
“Silence!” whispered Dormer Colville in English, crushing Barebone's foot under the table.
CHAPTER XXII. DROPPING THE PILOT
“The portrait of a lady,” repeated Loo, slowly. “Young and beautiful. That much I remember.”
The old nobleman had never removed his covering hand from the locket. He had never glanced at it himself. He looked slowly round the peering faces, two and three deep round the table. He was the oldest man present—one of the oldest in Paris—one of the few now living who had known Marie Antoinette.
Without uncovering the locket, he handed it to Barebone across the table with a bow worthy of the old regime and his own historic name.
“It is right that you should be the first to see it,” he said. “Since there is no longer any doubt that the lady was your father's mother.”
Loo took the locket, looked at it with strangely glittering eyes and steady lips. He gave a sort of gasp, which all in the room heard. He was handing it back to the Vicomte de Castel Aunet without a word of comment, when a crashing fall on the bare floor startled every one. A lady had fainted.
“Thank God!” muttered Dormer Colville almost in Barebone's ear and swayed against him. Barebone turned and looked into a face grey and haggard, and shining with perspiration. Instinctively he grasped him by the arm and supported him. In the confusion of the moment no one noticed Colville; for all were pressing round the prostrate lady. And in a moment Colville was himself again, though the ready smile sat oddly on such white lips.
“For God's sake be careful,” he said, and turned away, handkerchief in hand.
For the moment the portrait was forgotten until the lady was on her feet again, smiling reassurances and rubbing her elbow.
“It is nothing,” she said, “nothing. My heart—that is all.”
And she staggered to a chair with the reassuring smile frozen on her face.
Then the portrait was passed from hand to hand in silence. It was a miniature of Marie Antoinette, painted on ivory, which had turned yellow. The colours were almost lost, but the face stood clearly enough. It was the face of a young girl, long and narrow, with the hair drawn straight up and dressed high and simply on the head without ornament.
“It is she,” said one and another. “C'est bien elle.”
“It was painted when she was newly a queen,” commented the Vicomte de Castel Aunet. “I have seen others like it, but not that one before.”
Barebone stood apart and no one offered to approach him. Dormer Colville had gone toward the great fireplace, and was standing by himself there with his back toward the room. He was surreptitiously wiping from his face the perspiration which had suddenly run down it, as one may see the rain running down the face of a statue.
Things had taken an unexpected turn. The Marquis de Gemosac, himself always on the surface, had stirred others more deeply than he had anticipated or could now understand. France has always been the victim of her own emotions; aroused in the first instance half in idleness, allowed to swell with a semi-restraining laugh, and then suddenly sweeping and overwhelming. History tells of a hundred such crises in the pilgrimage of the French people. A few more—and historians shall write “Ichabod” across the most favoured land in Europe.
It is customary to relate that, after a crisis, those most concerned in it know not how they faced it or what events succeeded it. “He never knew,” we are informed, “how he got through the rest of the evening.”
Loo Barebone knew and remembered every incident, every glance. He was in full possession of every faculty, and never had each been so keenly alive to the necessity of the moment. Never had his quick brain been so alert as it was during the rest of the evening. And those who had come to the Hotel Gemosac to confirm their adoption of a figure-head went away with the startling knowledge in their hearts that they had never in the course of an artificial life met a man less suited to play that undignified part.
And all the while, in the back of his mind, there lingered with a deadly patience the desire for the moment which must inevitably come when he should at last find himself alone, face to face, with Dormer Colville.
It was nearly midnight before this moment came. At last the latest guest had taken his leave, quitting the house by the garden door and making his way across that forlorn and weedy desert by the dim light reflected from the clouds above. At last the Marquis de Gemosac had bidden them good night, and they were left alone in the vast bedroom which a dozen candles, in candelabras of silver blackened by damp and neglect, only served to render more gloomy and mysterious.
In the confusion consequent on the departure of so many guests the locket had been lost sight of, and Monsieur de Gemosac forgot to make inquiry for it. It was in Barebone's pocket.
Colville put together with the toe of his boot the logs which were smouldering in a glow of incandescent heat. He turned and glanced over his shoulder toward his companion.
Barebone was taking the locket from his waistcoat pocket and approaching the table where the candles burnt low in their sockets.
“You never really supposed you were the man, did you?” asked Colville, with a ready smile. He was brave, at all events, for he took the only course left to him with a sublime assurance.
Barebone looked across the candles at the face which smiled, and smiled.
“That is what I thought,” he answered, with a queer laugh.
“Do not jump to any hasty decisions,” urged Colville instantly, as if warned by the laugh.
“No! I want to sift the matter carefully to the bottom. It will be interesting to learn who are the deceived and who the deceivers.”
Barebone had had time to think out a course of action. His face seemed to puzzle Colville, who was rarely at fault in such judgments of character as came within his understanding. But he seemed for an instant to be on the threshold of something beyond his understanding; and yet he had lived, almost day and night, for some months with Barebone. Since the beginning—that far-off beginning at Farlingford—their respective positions had been quite clearly defined. Colville, the elder by nearly twenty years, had always been the guide and mentor and friend—the compulsory pilot he had gaily called himself. He had a vast experience of the world. He had always moved in the best French society. All that he knew, all the influence he could command, and the experience upon which he could draw were unreservedly at Barebone's service. The difference in years had only affected their friendship in so far as it defined their respective positions and prohibited any thought of rivalry. Colville had been the unquestioned leader, Barebone the ready disciple.
And now in the twinkling of an eye the positions were reversed. Colville stood watching Barebone's face with eyes rendered almost servile by a great suspense. He waited breathless for the next words.
“This portrait,” said Barebone, “of the Queen was placed in the locket by you?”
Colville nodded with a laugh of conscious cleverness rewarded by complete success. There was nothing in his companion's voice to suggest suppressed anger. It was all right after all. “I had great difficulty in finding just what I wanted,” he added, modestly.
“What I remember—though the memory is necessarily vague—was a portrait of a woman older than this. Her style of dress was more elaborate. Her hair was dressed differently, with sort of curls at the side, and on the top, half buried in the hair, was the imitation of a nest—a dove's nest. Such a thing would naturally stick in a child's memory. It stuck in mine.”
“Yes—and nearly gave the game away to-night,” said Colville, gulping down the memory of those tense moments.
“Oh no. It is of some value,” replied Colville, almost naively. He felt in his pocket and produced a silver cigar case. The miniature was wrapped in a piece of thin paper, which he unfolded. Barebone took the painting and examined it with a little nod of recognition. His memory had not failed after twenty years.
“Who is this lady?” he asked.
Dormer Colville hesitated.
“Do you know the history of that period?” he inquired, after a moment's reflection. For the last hour he had been trying to decide on a course of conduct. During the last few minutes he had been forced to change it half a dozen times.
“Septimus Marvin, of Farlingford, is one of the greatest living authorities on those reigns. I learnt a good deal from him,” was the answer.
“That lady is, I think, the Duchesse de Guiche.”
“You think—”
“Even Marvin could not tell you for certain,” replied Colville, mildly. He did not seem to perceive a difference in Barebone's manner toward himself. The quickest intelligence cannot follow another's mind beyond its own depth.
“Then the inference is that my father was the illegitimate son of the Comte d'Artois.”
“Afterward Charles X., of France,” supplemented Colville, significantly.
“Is that the inference?” persisted Barebone. “I should like to know your opinion. You must have studied the question very carefully. Your opinion should be of some interest, though—”
“Though—” echoed Colville, interrogatively, and regretted it immediately.
“Though it is impossible to say when you speak the truth and when you lie.”
And any who doubted that there was royal blood in Loo Barebone's veins would assuredly have been satisfied by a glance at his face at that moment; by the sound of his quiet, judicial voice; by the sudden and almost terrifying sense of power in his measuring eyes.
Colville turned away with an awkward laugh and gave his attention to the logs on the hearth. Then suddenly he regained his readiness of speech.
“Look here, Barebone,” he cried. “We must not quarrel; we cannot afford to do that. And after all, what does it matter? You are only giving yourself the benefit of the doubt—that is all. For there is a doubt. You may be what you—what we say you are, after all. It is certain enough that Marie Antoinette and Fersen were in daily correspondence. They were both clever—two of the cleverest people in France—and they were both desperate. Remember that. Do you think that they would have failed in a matter of such intense interest to her, and therefore to him? All these pretenders, Naundorff and the others, have proved that quite clearly, but none has succeeded in proving that he was the man.”
“And do you think that I shall be able to prove that I am the man—when I am not?”
By way of reply Dormer Colville turned again to the fireplace and took down the print of Louis XVI. engraved from a portrait painted when he was still Dauphin. A mirror stood near, and Colville came to the table carrying the portrait in one hand, the looking-glass in the other.
“Here,” he said, eagerly. “Look at one and then at the other. Look in the mirror and then at the portrait. Prove it! Why, God has proved it for you.”
“I do not think we had better bring Him into the question,” was the retort: an odd reflex of Captain Clubbe's solid East Anglian piety. “No. If we go on with the thing at all, let us be honest enough to admit to ourselves that we are dishonest. The portrait in that locket points clearly enough to the Truth.”
“The portrait in that locket is of Marie Antoinette,” replied Colville, half sullenly. “And no one can ever prove anything contrary to that. No one except myself knows of—of this doubt which you have stumbled upon. De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, Clubbe—all of them are convinced that your father was the Dauphin.”
“And Miss Liston?”
“Miriam Liston—she also, of course. And I believe she knew it long before I told her.”
Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the eyes. Colville wondered a second time why Loo Barebone reminded him of Captain Clubbe to-night.
“What makes you believe that?” he asked.
“Oh, I don't know. But that isn't the question. The question is about the future. You see how things are in France. It is a question of Louis Napoleon or a monarchy—you see that. Unless you stop him he will be Emperor before a year is out, and he will drag France in the gutter. He is less a Bonaparte than you are a Bourbon. You remember that Louis Bonaparte himself was the first to say so. He wrote a letter to the Pope, saying so quite clearly. You will go on with it, of course, Barebone. Say you will go on with it! To turn back now would be death. We could not do it if we wanted to. I have been trying to think about it, and I cannot. That is the truth. It takes one's breath away. At the mere thought of it I feel as if I were getting out of my depth.”
“We have been out of our depths the last month,” admitted Barebone, curtly.
And he stood reflecting, while Colville watched him.
“If I go on,” he said, at length, “I go on alone.”
“Better not,” urged Colville, with a laugh of great relief. “For you would always have me and my knowledge hanging over you. If you succeeded, you would have me dunning you for hush-money.”
Which seemed true enough. Few men knew more of one side of human nature than Dormer Colville, it would appear.
“I am not afraid of that.”
“You can never tell,” laughed Colville, but his laugh rather paled under Barebone's glance. “You can never tell.”
“Wise men do not attempt to blackmail—kings.”
And Colville caught his breath.
“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted, after a pause. “You seem to be taking to the position very kindly, Barebone. But I do not mind, you know. It does not matter what we say to each other, eh? We have been good friends so long. You must do as you like. And if you succeed, I must be content to leave my share of the matter to your consideration. You certainly seem to know the business already, and some day perhaps you will remember who taught you to be a King.”
“It was an old North Sea skipper who taught me that,” replied Barebone. “That is one of the things I learnt at sea.”
“Yes—yes,” agreed Colville, almost nervously. “And you will go on with the thing, will you not? Like a good fellow, eh? Think about it till to-morrow morning. I will go now. Which is my candle? Yes. You will think about it. Do not jump to any hasty decision.”
He hurried to the door as he spoke. He could not understand Barebone at all.
“If I do go on with it,” was the reply, “it will not be in response to any of your arguments. It will be only and solely for the sake of France.”
“Yes—of course,” agreed Colville, and closed the door behind him.
In his own room he turned and looked toward the door leading through to that from which he had hurriedly escaped. He passed his hand across his face, which was white and moist.
“For the sake of France!” he echoed in bewilderment. “For the sake of France! Gad! I believe he IS the man after all.”