The Last Hope Part 16

And he remembered the lights and shadows on Juliette's hair as he looked down 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 local seafaring interest as to set the fisherman at his ease and make him talk.

They were arranging where to land, and Colville was describing the exact whereabouts of a little jetty used for bathing purposes, which ran out from the sandy sh.o.r.e, quite near to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's house, in the pine-trees, two miles south of Royan. It was no easy matter to find this spot by the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechanically, Loo joined in the search, and presently, when the jetty was reached, helped to make fast in a choppy sea.

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

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

"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 a few yards, and then Dormer Colville slipped his hand within his companion's arm, as was the fas.h.i.+on among men even in England in those more 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 of which he knows nothing, and on taking up his cards finds that he holds a hand all courtcards and trumps--and he doesn't know how to play them."

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

"But as the game progresses," went on Colville, rea.s.suringly, "you will find out how it is played. You will even find that you are a skilled player, and then the gambler's spirit will fire your blood and arouse your energies. You will discover what a d.a.m.ned good game it is. The great game--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 to play the game than yourself; for you have wit and quickness," went on this 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 in the blood, I suppose. There is, you know, in the Bourbon blood a certain strain of--well, let us say of reluctance to begin. Others call it by a different name. One is not a Bourbon for nothing, I suppose. And everything--even if it be a vice--that serves to emphasise ident.i.ty is to be cultivated. But, as I say, you will have to put your back into it later on. At present there will be less to do. You will have to play close and hold your hand, and follow any lead that is given you by de Gemosac, 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--to put it plainly as between men of the world--now that you have had time to think 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, in an aside to himself. "Gad! I wish I could say that I should not be afraid myself under similar circ.u.mstances. My heart was in my mouth, I can tell you, in that cabin when de Gemosac blurted it all out. It came suddenly at the end, and--well!--it rather hit one in the wind. And, as I say, one is not a Bourbon for nothing. You come into a heritage, eight hundred years old, of likes and dislikes, of genius and incapacity, of an astounding cleverness, and a preposterous foolishness without compare in the history of dynasties. But that doesn't matter nowadays. This is a progressive age, you know; even the Bourbons cannot hold back the advance of 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 moment I saw you step ash.o.r.e at Farlingford. You have gone right to the heart of the question at the first bound. It is your friends and your enemies that will give you trouble."

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

"Right again," answered Colville, glancing at him sideways beneath the brim 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 said thoughtfully at length. "Have you ever noticed how an English s.h.i.+p comes into a foreign harbour and takes her berth at her moorings? There is nothing more characteristic of the nation. And one captain is like another. No doubt you have seen Clubbe do it a hundred times. He comes in, all sail set, and steers straight for the berth he has chosen. And there are always half a dozen men in half a dozen small boats who go out to meet him. They stand up and wave their arms, and point this way and that. They ask a hundred questions, and with their hands round their faces, shout their advice. And in answer to one and the other the Captain looks over the side and says, 'You be d.a.m.ned.' That will be the way to deal with some of your friends and all your enemies alike, Barebone, if you mean to get on in France. You will have to look over the side at the people in small boats who are shouting and say, 'You be d.a.m.ned.'"

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

"This is my cousin's house," said Dormer Colville. "It is to be your home for the present. And you need not scruple, as she will tell you, to consider 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 remember that afterward, perhaps, but that is as may be. For the present there is no question of obligations. We are all in the same boat--all playing the same game."

And he laughed below his breath as he closed the gate with caution; for it 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 a good-looking one. _Du reste_--it is not in that direction that your difficulties will lie. You will find it easy enough to get on with the women of the party, I fancy--from what I have observed."

And again he seemed to be amused.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GAMBLERS

In a sense, politics must always represent the game that is most attractive to the careful gambler. For one may play at it without having anything to lose. It is one of the few games within the reach of the adventurous, where no stake need be cast upon the table. The gambler who takes up a political career plays to win or not to win. He may jump up from the gutter and shout that he is the man of the moment, without offering any proof of his a.s.sertion beyond the loudness of a strident voice. And if no one listens to him he loses nothing but his breath.

And in France the man who shouts loudest is almost certain to have the largest following. In England the same does not yet hold good, but the day seems to be approaching when it will.

In France, ever since the great Revolution, men have leapt up from the gutter to grasp the reins of power. Some, indeed, have sprung from the gutter of a palace, which is no more wholesome, it would appear, than the drain of any street, or a ditch that carries off the refuse of a cheap Press.

There are certain rooms in the north wing of the Louvre, in Paris, rooms having windows facing across the Rue de Rivoli toward the Palais Royal, where men must have sat in the comfortable leather-covered chair of the High Official and laughed at the astounding simplicity of the French people. But he laughs best who laughs last, and the People will a.s.suredly be amused in a few months, or a few years, at the very sudden and very humiliating discomfiture of a gentleman falling face-foremost into the street or hanging forlornly from a lamp-post at the corner of it. For some have quitted these comfortable chairs, in these quiet double-windowed rooms overlooking the Rue de Rivoli, for no better fate.

It was in the August of 1850 that a stout gentleman, seated in one of these comfortable chairs, succ.u.mbed so far to the warmth of the palace corridors as to fall asleep. He was not in the room of a high official, but in the waiting-room attached to it.

He knew, moreover, that the High Official himself was scarcely likely to dismiss a previous visitor or a present occupation any the earlier for being importuned; for he was aware of the official's antecedents, and knew that a Jack-in-office, who has shouted himself into office, is nearly always careful to be deaf to other voices than his own.

Moreover, Mr. John Turner was never pressed for time.

"Yes," he had been known to say, "I was in Paris in '48. Never missed a meal."

Whereas others, with much less at stake than this great banker, had omitted not only meals, but their night's rest--night after night--in those stirring times.

John Turner was still asleep when the door leading to the Minister's room was cautiously opened, showing an inner darkness such as prevails in an alcove between double doors. The door opened a little wider. No doubt the peeping eye had made sure that the occupant of the waiting-room was asleep. On the threshold stood a man of middle height, who carried himself with a certain grace and quiet dignity. He was pale almost to sallowness, a broad face with a kind mouth and melancholy eyes, without any light in them. The melancholy must have been expressed rather by the lines of the brows than by the eye itself, for this was without life or expression--the eye of a man who is either very short-sighted or is engaged in looking through that which he actually sees, to something he fancies he perceives beyond it.

His lips smiled, but the smile died beneath a neatly waxed moustache and reached no higher on the mask-like face. Then he disappeared in the outer darkness between the two doors, and the handle made no noise in turning.

In a few minutes an attendant, in a gay uniform, came in by the same door, without seeking to suppress the clatter of his boots on the oak floor.

"Hola! monsieur," he said, in a loud voice. And Mr. John Turner crossed his legs and leant farther back in the chair, preparatory to opening his eyes, which he did directly on the new-comer's face, without any of that vague flitting hither and thither of glance which usually denotes the sleeper surprised.

The eyes were of a clear blue, and Mr. Turner looked five years younger with them open than with them shut. But he was immensely stout.

"Well, my friend," he said, soothingly; for the Minister's attendant had a truculent ministerial manner. "Why so much noise?"

"The Minister will see you."

John Turner yawned and reached for his hat.