CHAPTER XIV — THE LIFTED VEIL

“Where is the boatman?” asked Marie, as she followed Juliette and Barebone along the deserted jetty. A light burnt dimly at the end of it and one or two boats must have been moored near at hand; for the water could be heard lapping under their bows, a secretive, whispering sound full of mystery.

“I am the boatman,” replied Loo, over his shoulder. “Are you afraid?”

“What is the good of being afraid?” asked this woman of the world, stopping at the head of the steps and peering down into the darkness into which he had descended. “What is the good of being afraid when one is old and married? I was afraid enough when I was a girl, and pretty and coquette like Mademoiselle, here. I was afraid enough then, and it was worth my while—allez!”

Barebone made no answer to this dark suggestion of a sprightly past. The present darkness and the coming storm commanded his full attention. In the breathless silence, Juliette and Marie—and behind them, Jean, panting beneath the luggage balanced on his shoulder—could hear the wet rope slipping through his fingers and, presently, the bump of the heavy boat against the timber of the steps.

This was followed by the gurgle of a rope through a well-greased sheave and the square lug, which had been the joy of little Sep Marvin at Farlingford, crept up to the truck of the stubby mast.

“There is no wind for that,” remarked Marie, pessimistically.

“There will be to spare in a few minutes,” answered Barebone, and the monosyllabic Jean gave an acquiescent grunt.

“Luggage first,” said Barebone, lapsing into the curtness of the sea. “Come along. Let us make haste.”

They stumbled on board as best they could, and were guided to a safe place amidships by Loo, who had thrown a spare sail on the bottom of the boat.

“As low as you can,” he said. “Crouch down. Cover yourselves with this. Right over your heads.”

“But why?” grumbled Marie.

“Listen,” was all the answer he gave her. And as he spoke, the storm rushed upon them like a train, with the roar and whirl of a locomotive.

Loo jumped aft to the tiller. In the rush of the hail, they heard him give a sharp order to Jean, who must have had some knowledge of the sea, for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which the women crouched.

“What? Did you speak?” shouted Loo, putting his face close to the canvas.

“It is only Marie calling on the saints,” was the answer, in Juliette’s laughing voice.

In a few minutes it was over; and, even at the back of the winds, could be heard the retreat of the hail as it crashed onward toward the valleys of which every slope is a named vineyard, to beat down in a few wild moments the result of careful toil and far-sighted expenditure; to wipe out that which is unique, which no man can replace—the vintage of a year.

When the hail ceased beating on it, Juliette pushed back the soaked canvas, which had covered them like a roof, and lifted her face to the cooler air. The boat was rushing through the water, and close to Juliette’s cheek, just above the gunwale, rose a curved wave, green and white, and all shimmering with phosphorescence, which seemed to hover like a hawk above its prey.

The aftermath of the storm was flying overhead in riven ribbons of cloud, through which the stars were already peeping. To the westward the sky was clear, and against the last faint glow of the departed sun the lightning ran hither and thither, skipping and leaping, without sound or cessation, like fairies dancing.

Immediately overhead, the sail creaked and tugged at its earings, while the wind sang its high clear song round mast and halliards.

Juliette turned to look at Barebone. He was standing, ankle deep, in water, leaning backward to windward, in order to give the boat every pound of weight he could. The lambent summer-lightning on the western horizon illuminated his face fitfully. In that moment Juliette saw what is given to few to see and realise—though sailors, perforce, lie down to sleep knowing it every night—that under Heaven her life was wholly and solely in the two hands of a fellow-being. She knew it, and saw that Barebone knew it, though he never glanced at her. She saw the whites of his eyes gleaming as he looked up, from moment to moment, to the head of the sail and stooped again to peer under the foot of it into the darkness ahead. He braced himself, with one foot against the thwart, to haul in a few inches of sheet, to which the clumsy boat answered immediately. Marie was praying aloud now, and when she opened her eyes the sight of the tossing figure in the stern of the boat suddenly turned her terror into anger.

“Ah!” she cried, “that Jean is a fool. And he, who pretends to have been a fisherman when he was young—to let us come to our deaths like this!”

She lifted her head, and ducked it again, as a sea jumped up under the bow and rattled into the boat.

“I see no ship,” she cried. “Let us go back, if we can. Name of God!—we shall be drowned! I see no ship, I tell you!”

“But I do,” answered Barebone, shaking the water from his face, for he had no hand to spare. “But I do, which is more important. And you are not even wet!”

And he laughed as he brought the boat up into the wind for a few seconds, to meet a wild gust. Juliette turned in surprise at the sound of his voice. In the safe and gentle seclusion of the convent-school no one had thought to teach her that death may be faced with equanimity by others than the ordained of the Church, and that in the storm and stress of life men laugh in strange places and at odd times.

Loo was only thinking of his boat and watching the sky for the last of the storm—that smack, as it were, in the face—with which the Atlantic ends those black squalls that she sends us, not without thunder and the curtailed lightning of northern seas. He was planning and shaping his course; for the watchers on board “The Last Hope” had already seen him, as he could ascertain by a second light, which suddenly appeared, swung low, casting a gleam across the surf-strewn water, to show him where the ladder hung overside.

“Tell Monsieur de Gemosac that I have Mademoiselle and her maid here in the boat,” Barebone called out to Captain Clubbe, whose large face loomed above the lantern he was holding overside, as he made fast the rope that had been thrown across his boat and lowered the dripping sail. The water was smooth enough under the lee of “The Last Hope,” which, being deeply laden, lay motionless at her anchor, with the stream rustling past her cables.

“Stand up, mademoiselle,” said Barebone, himself balanced on the after-thwart. “Hold on to me, thus, and when I let you go, let yourself go.”

There was no time to protest or to ask questions. And Juliette felt herself passed on from one pair of strong arms to another, until she was standing on the deck under the humming rigging, surrounded by men who seemed huge in their gleaming oil-skins.

“This way, mademoiselle,” said one, who was even larger than the others, in English, of which she understood enough to catch his meaning. “I will take you to your father. Show a light this way, one of you.”

His fingers closed round her arm, and he led her, unconscious of a strength that almost lifted her from her feet, toward an open door, where a lamp burnt dimly within. It smelt abominably of an untrimmed wick, Juliette thought, and the next minute she was kissing her father, who lay full length on a locker in the little cabin.

She asked him a hundred questions, and waited for few of the answers. Indeed, she supplied most of them herself; for she was very quick and gay.

“I see,” she cried, “that your foot has been tied up by a sailor. He has tried to mend it as if it were a broken spar. I suppose that was the Captain who brought me to you, and then ran away again, as soon as he could. Yes; I have Marie with me. She is telling them to be careful with the luggage. I can hear her. I am so glad we had a case of fever at the school. It was a lay sister, a stupid woman. But how lucky that I should be at home just when you wanted me!”

She stood upright again, after deftly loosening the bandage round her father’s ankle, and looked at him and laughed.

“Poor, dear old papa,” she said. “One sees that you want some one to take care of you. And this cabin—oh!mon Dieu! how bare and uncomfortable! I suppose men have to go to sea alone because they can persuade no woman to go with them.”

She pounced upon her father again, and arranged afresh the cushions behind his back, with a little air of patronage and protection. Her back was turned toward the door, when some one came in, but she heard the approaching steps and looked quickly round the cabin walls.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed, in a gay whisper. “No looking-glass! One sees that it is only men who live here.”

And she turned, with smiling eyes and a hand upraised to her disordered hair, to note the new-comer. It was Dormer Colville, who laid aside his waterproof as he came and greeted her as an old friend. He had, indeed, known her since her early childhood, and had always succeeded in keeping pace with her, even in the rapid changes of her last year at school.

“Here is an adventure,” he said, shaking hands. “But I can see that you have taken no harm, and have not even been afraid. For us, it is a pleasant surprise.”

He glanced at her with a smiling approbation, not without a delicate suggestion of admiration, such as he might well permit himself, and she might now even consider her due. He was only keeping pace.

“I stayed behind to initiate your maid, who is, of course, unused to a ship, and the steward speaks but little French. But now they are arranging your cabin together.”

“How delightful!” cried Juliette. “I have never been on a ship before, you know. And it is all so strange and so nice. All those big men, like wet ghosts, who said nothing! I think they are more interesting than women; perhaps it is because they talk less.”

“Perhaps it is,” admitted Colville, with a sudden gravity, similar to that with which she had made the suggestion.

“You should hear the Sisters talk—when they are allowed,” she said, confidentially.

“And whisper when they are not. I can imagine it,” laughed Colville. “But now you have left all that behind, and have come out into the world—of men, one may say. And you have begun at once with an adventure.”

“Yes! And we are going to Bordeaux, papa and I, until his foot is well again. Of course, I was in despair when I was first told of it, but now that I see him I am no longer anxious. And your messenger assured me that it was not serious.”

She paused to look round the cabin, to make sure that they were alone.

“How strange he is!” she said to both her hearers, in confidence, looking from one to the other with a quick, bird-like turn of the head and bright eyes. “I have never seen any one like him.”

“No?” said Dormer Colville, encouragingly.

“He said he was an Englishman; but, of course, he is not. He is, French, and has not the manner of abourgeoieor a sailor. He has the manner of an aristocrat—one would say a Royalist—like Albert de Chantonnay, only a thousand times better.”

“Yes,” said Colville, glancing at Monsieur de Gemosac.

“More interesting, and so quick and amusing. He spoke of a heritage in France, and yet he said he was an Englishman. I hope he will secure his heritage.”

“Yes,” murmured Colville, still looking at Monsieur de Gemosac.

“And then, when we were in the boat,” continued Juliette, still in confidence to them both, “he changed quite suddenly. He was short and sharp. He ordered us to do this and that; and one did it, somehow, without question. Even Marie obeyed him without hesitating, although she was half mad with fear. We were in danger. I knew that. Any one must have known it. And yet I was not afraid; I wonder why? And he—he laughed—that was all.Mon Dieu!he was brave. I never knew that any one could be so brave!”

She broke off suddenly, with her finger to her lips; for some one had opened the cabin door. Captain Clubbe came in, filling the whole cabin with his bulk, and on his heels followed Loo Barebone, his face and hair still wet and dripping.

“Mademoiselle was wondering,” said Dormer Colville, who, it seemed, was quick to step into that silence which the object of a conversation is apt to cause—“Mademoiselle was wondering how it was that you escaped shipwreck in the storm.”

“Ah! because one has a star. Even a poor sailor may have a star, mademoiselle. As well as the Prince Napoleon, who boasts that he has one of the first magnitude, I understand.”

“You are not a poor sailor, monsieur,” said Juliette.

“Then who am I?” he asked, with a gay laugh, spreading out his hands and standing before them, beneath the swinging lamp.

The Marquis de Gemosac raised himself on one elbow.

“I will tell you who you are,” he said, in a low, quick voice, pointing one hand at Loo. “I will tell you.” And his voice rose.

“You are the grandson of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. You are the Last Hope of the French. That is your heritage. Juliette! this is the King of France!”

Juliette turned and looked at him, with all the colour gone from her face. Then, instinctively, she dropped on one knee, and before he had understood, or could stop her, had raised his hand to her lips.

“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, who looked oddly white beneath the light of the lamp.

Barebone had unceremoniously dragged his hand away from the hold of Juliette’s fingers. He made a step back and then turned toward the door at the sound of his shipmate’s well-known voice. He stood staring out into the darkness like one who is walking in his sleep. No one spoke, and through the open doorways no sound came to them but the song of the wind through the rigging.

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

“What doyousay?” he asked, in English, and he must have known that Captain Clubbe understood French better than he was ready to admit.

Clubbe passed his hand slowly across his cheek and chin, not in order to gain time, or because he had not an answer ready, but because he came of a slow-speaking race. His answer had been made ready weeks before while he sat on the weather-beaten seat set against the wall of “The Black Sailor” at Farlingford.

“Tide’s turned,” he answered, simply. “You’d better get your oilskins on again 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, who went ashore there, had followed “The Last Hope” up the river, and was now lying under the English ship’s stern awaiting her two passengers and the turn of the tide.

Dormer Colville glanced at the cabin clock.

“Then,” he said, briskly, “let us be going. It will be late enough as it is before we reach my cousin’s house.”

He turned and translated his remark for the benefit of the Marquis and Juliette, remembering that they must needs fail to understand a colloquy in the muttered and clipped English of the east coast. He was nervously anxious, it would appear, to tide over a difficult moment; to give Loo Barebone breathing space, and yet to avoid unnecessary question and answer. He had not lived forty adventurous years in the world without learning that it is the word too much which wrecks the majority of human schemes.

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

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

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

The waning moon came up at last, behind a distant line of trees on the Charente side, lighting up with a silver lining the towering clouds of the storm, which was still travelling eastward, leaving in its wake battered vines and ruined crops, searing the face of the land as with a hot iron. Loo lifted his head and looked round him. The owner of the boat was at the tiller, while his assistant sat amidships, his elbows on his knees, looking ahead with dreamy eyes. Close to Barebone, crouching from the wind which blew cold from the Atlantic, was Dormer Colville, affably silent. If Loo turned to glance at him he looked away, but when his back was turned Loo was conscious of watching eyes, full of sympathy, almost uncomfortably quick to perceive the inward working of another’s mind, and suit his own thereto.

Thus the boat plunged out toward the sea and the flickering lights that mark the channel, tacking right across to that spit of land lying between the Gironde and the broad Atlantic, where grows a wine without match in all the world. Thus Loo Barebone turned his back on the ship which had been his home so long and set out into a new world; a new and unknown life, with the Marquis de Gemosac’s ringing words buzzing in his brain yet; 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 Last Hope of France!”

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 shore, 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 fashion 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, reassuringly, “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 damned 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 identity 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 circumstances. 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 ashore 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 ship 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 damned.’ 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 damned.’”

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.

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 assertion 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 assuredly 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, succumbed 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.

“Holà! 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.

“The Minister is pressed for time.”

“So was I,” replied the Englishman, who spoke perfect French, “when I first sat down here, half an hour ago. But even haste will pass in time.”

He rose, and followed the servant into the inner room, where he returned the bow of a little white-bearded gentleman seated at a huge desk.

“Well, sir,” said this gentleman, with the abrupt manner which has come to be considered Napoleonic on the stage or in the political world to-day. “Your business?”

The servant had withdrawn, closing the door behind him with an emphasis of the self-accusatory sort.

“I am a banker,” replied John Turner, looking with an obese deliberation toward one of the deep windows, where, half-concealed by the heavy curtain, a third person stood gazing down into the street.

The Minister smiled involuntarily, forgetting his dignity of a two-years’ growth.

“Oh, you may speak before Monsieur,” he said.

“But I am behind him,” was the immediate reply.

The gentleman leaning against the window-breast did not accept this somewhat obvious invitation to show his face. He must have heard it, however, despite an absorption which was probably chronic; for he made a movement to follow with his glance the passage of some object of interest in the street below. And the movement seemed to supply John Turner with the information he desired.

“Yes, I am a banker,” he said, more genially.

The Minister gave a short laugh.

“Monsieur,” he said, “every one in Europe knows that. Proceed.”

“And I only meddle in politics when I see the possibility of making an honest penny.”

“Already made—that honest penny—if one may believe the gossip—of Europe,” said the Minister. “So many pence that it is whispered that you do not know what to do with them.”

“It is unfortunate,” admitted Turner, “that one can only dine once a day.”

The little gentleman in office had more than once invited his visitor to be seated, indicating by a gesture the chair placed ready for him. After a slow inspection of its legs, Mr. John Turner now seated himself. It would seem that he, at the same time, tacitly accepted the invitation to ignore the presence of a third person.

“Since you seem to know all about me,” he said, “I will not waste any more of your time, or mine, by trying to make you believe that I am eminently respectable. The business that brought me here, however, is of a political nature. A plain man, like myself, only touches politics when he sees his gain clearly. There are others who enter that field from purer motives, I am told. I have not met them.”

The Minister smiled on one side of his face, and all of it went white. He glanced uncomfortably at that third person, whom he had suggested ignoring.

“And yet,” went on John Turner, very dense or greatly daring, “I have lived many years in France, Monsieur le Ministre.”

The Minister frowned at him, and made a quick gesture of one hand toward the window.

“So long,” pursued the Englishman, placidly, “as the trains start punctually, and there is not actually grape-shot in the streets, and one may count upon one’s dinner at the hour, one form of government in this country seems to me to be as good as another, Monsieur le Ministre. A Bourbon Monarchy or an Orleans Monarchy, or a Republic, or—well, an Empire, Monsieur le Ministre.”

“Mon Dieu!have you come here to tell me this?” cried the Minister, impatiently, glancing over his shoulder toward the window, and with one hand already stretched out toward the little bell standing on his desk.

“Yes,” answered Turner, leaning forward to draw the bell out of reach. He nodded his head with a friendly smile, and his fat cheeks shook. “Yes, and other things as well. Some of those other matters are perhaps even more worthy of your earnest attention. It is worth your while to listen. More especially, as you are paid for it—by the hour.”

He laughed inside himself, with a hollow sound, and placidly crossed his legs.

“Yes; I came to tell you, firstly, that the present form of government, and, er—any other form which may evolve from it—”

“Oh!—proceed, monsieur!” exclaimed the Minister, hastily, while the man in the recess of the window turned and looked over his shoulder at John Turner’s profile with a smile, not unkind, on his sphinx-like face.

“—has the inestimable advantage of my passive approval. That is why I am here, in fact. I should be sorry to see it upset.”

He broke off, and turned laboriously in his chair to look toward the window, as if the gaze of the expressionless eyes there had tickled the back of his neck like a fly. But by the time the heavy banker had got round, the curtain had fallen again in its original folds.

“—by a serious Royalist plot,” concluded Turner, in his thick, deliberate way.

“So, assuredly, would any patriot or any true friend of France,” said the Minister, in his best declamatory manner.

“Um—m. That is out of my depth,” returned the Englishman, bluntly. “I paddle about in the shallow water at the edge and pick up what I can, you understand. I am too fat for avoyantbathing-costume, and the deep waters beyond, Monsieur le Ministre.”

The Minister drummed impatiently on his desk with his five fingers, and looked at Turner sideways beneath his brows.

“Royalist plots are common enough,” he said, tentatively, after a pause.

“Not a Royalist plot with money in it,” was the retort. “I dare say an honest politician, like yourself, is aware that in France it is always safe to ignore the conspirator who has no money, and always dangerous to treat with contempt him who jingles a purse. There is only a certain amount of money in the world, Monsieur le Ministre, and we bankers usually know where it is. I do not mean the money that the world pours into its own stomach. That is always afloat—changing hands daily. I mean the Great Reserves. We watch those, you understand. And if one of the Great Reserves, or even one of the smaller reserves, moves, we wonder why it is being moved and we nearly always find out.”

“One supposes,” said the Minister, hazarding an opinion for the first time, and he gave it with a sidelong glance toward the window, “that it is passing from the hands of a financier possessing money into those of one who has none.”

“Precisely. And if a financier possessing money is persuaded to part with it in such a quarter as you suggest, one may conclude that he has good reason to anticipate a substantial return for the loan. You, who are a brilliant collaborateur in the present government, should know that, if any one does, Monsieur le Ministre.”

The Minister glanced toward the window, and then gave a good-natured and encouraging laugh, quite unexpectedly, just as if he had been told to do so by the silent man looking down into the street, who may, indeed, have had time to make a gesture.

“And,” pursued the banker, “if a financier possessing money parts with it—or, to state the case more particularly, if a financier possessing no money, to my certain knowledge, suddenly raises it from nowhere definite, for the purposes of a Royalist conspiracy, the natural conclusion is that the Royalists have got hold of something good.”

John Turner leant back in his chair and suppressed a yawn.

“This room is very warm,” he said, producing a pocket-handkerchief. Which was tantamount to a refusal to say more.

The Minister twisted the end of his moustache in reflection. It was at this time the fashion in France to wear the moustache waxed. Indeed, men displayed thus their political bias to all whom it might concern.

“There remains nothing,” said the official at length, with a gracious smile, “but to ask your terms.”

For he who was afterward Napoleon the Third had introduced into French political and social life a plain-spoken cynicism which characterises both to this day.

“Easy,” replied Turner. “You will find them easy. Firstly, I would ask that your stupid secret police keeps its fingers out; secondly, that leniency be assured to one person, a client of mine—the woman who supplies the money—who is under the influence—well, that influence which makes women do nobler and more foolish things, monsieur, than men are capable of.”

He rose as he spoke, collected his hat and stick, and walked slowly to the door. With his hand on the handle, he paused.

“You can think about it,” he said, “and let me know at your leisure. By the way, there is one more point, Monsieur le Ministre. I would ask you to let this matter remain a secret, known only to our two selves and—the Prince President.”

And John Turner went out, without so much as a glance toward the window.

Back to IndexNext