All through the summer of 1851—a year to be marked for all time in the minds of historians, not in red, but in black letters—the war of politics tossed France hither and thither.
There were, at this time, five parties contending for mastery. Should one of these appear for the moment to be about to make itself secure in power, the other four would at once unite to tear the common adversary from his unstable position. Of these parties, only two were of real cohesion: the Legitimists and the Bonapartists. The Socialists, the Moderate Republicans, and the Orleanists were too closely allied in the past to be friendly in the present. Socialists are noisy, but rarely clever. A man who in France describes himself as Moderate must not expect to be popular for any length of time. The Orleanists were only just out of office. It was scarcely a year since Louis Philippe had died in exile at Claremont—only three years since he signed his abdication and hurried across to Newhaven. It was not the turn of the Orleanists.
There is no quarrel so deadly as a family quarrel; no fall so sudden as that of a house divided against itself. All through the spring and summer of 1851 France exhibited herself in the eyes of the world a laughing-stock to her enemies, a thing of pity to those who loved that great country.
The Republic of 1848 was already a house divided against itself.
Its President, Louis Bonaparte, had been elected for four years. He was, as the law then stood, not eligible again until after the lapse of another four years. His party tried to abrogate this law, and failed. “No matter,” they said, “we shall elect him again, and President he shall be, despite the law.”
This was only one of a hundred such clouds, no bigger than a man’s hand, arising at this time on the political horizon. For France was beginning to wander down that primrose path where a law is only a law so long as it is convenient.
There was one man, Louis Bonaparte, who kept his head when others lost that invaluable adjunct; who pushed on doggedly to a set purpose; whose task was hard even in France, and would have been impossible in any other country. For it is only in France that ridicule does not kill. And twice within the last fifteen years—once at Strasbourg, once at Boulogne—he had made the world hold its sides at the mention of his name, greeting with the laughter which is imbittered by scorn, a failure damned by ridicule.
It has been said that Louis Bonaparte never gave serious thought to the Legitimist party. He had inherited, it would seem, that invaluable knowledge of men by which his uncle had risen to the greatest throne of modern times. He knew that a party is never for a moment equal to a Man. And the Legitimists had no man. They had only the Comte de Chambord.
At Frohsdorff they still clung to their hopes, with that old-world belief in the ultimate revival of a dead régime which was eminently characteristic. And at Frohsdorff there died, in the October of this year, the Duchess of Angoulême, Marie Therese Charlotte, daughter of Marie Antoinette, who had despised her two uncles, Louis XVIII and Charles X, for the concessions they had made—who was more Royalist than the King. She was the last of her generation, the last of her family, and with her died a part of the greatness of France, almost all the dignity of royalty, and the last master-mind of the Bourbon race.
If, as Albert de Chantonny stated, the failure of Turner’s bank was nothing but a ruse to gain time, it had the desired effect. For a space, nothing could be undertaken, and the Marquis de Gemosac and his friends were hindered from continuing the work they had so successfully begun.
All through the summer Loo Barebone remained in France, at Gemosac as much as anywhere. The Marquis de Gemosac himself went to Frohsdorff.
“If she had been ten years younger,” he said, on his return, “I could have persuaded her to receive you. She has money. All the influence is hers. It is she who has had the last word in all our affairs since the death of the Due de Berri. But she is old—she is broken. I think she is dying, my friend.”
It was the time of the vintage again. Barebone remembered the last vintage, and his journey through those provinces that supply all the world with wine, with Dormer Colville for a companion. Since then he had journeyed alone. He had made a hundred new friends, had been welcomed in a hundred historic houses. Wherever he had passed, he had left enthusiasm behind him—and he knew it.
He had grown accustomed to his own power, and yet its renewed evidence was a surprise to him every day. There was something unreal in it. There is always something unreal in fame, and great men know in their own hearts that they are not great. It is only the world that thinks them so. When they are alone—in a room by themselves—they feel for a moment their own smallness. But the door opens, and in an instant they arise and play their part mechanically.
This had come to be Barebone’s daily task. It was so easy to make his way in this world, which threw its doors open to him, greeted him with outstretched hands, and only asked him to charm them by being himself. He had not even to make an effort to appear to be that which he was not. He had only to be himself, and they were satisfied.
Part of his rôle was Juliette de Gemosac. He found it quite easy to make love to her; and she, it seemed, desired nothing better. Nothing definite had been said by the Marquis de Gemosac. They were not formally affianced. They were not forbidden to see each other. But the irregularity of these proceedings lent a certain spice of surreptitiousness to their intercourse which was not without its charm. They did not see so much of each other after Loo had spoken to the Marquis de Gemosac on this subject; for Barebone had to make visits to other parts of France. Once or twice Juliette herself went to stay with relatives. During these absences they did not write to each other.
It was, in fact, impossible for Barebone to keep up any correspondence whatever. He heard that Dormer Colville was still in Paris, seeking to snatch something from the wreck of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s fortune. The Marquis de Gemosac had been told that affairs might yet be arranged. He was no financier, however, he admitted; he did not understand such matters, and all that he knew was that the promised help from the Englishwoman was not forthcoming.
“It is,” he concluded, “a question of looking elsewhere. It is not only that we want money. It is that we must have it at once.”
It was not, strictly speaking, Loo’s part to think of or to administer the money. His was the part to be played by Kings—so easy, if the gift is there, so impossible to acquire if it be lacking—to know many people and to charm them all.
Thus the summer ripened into autumn. It had been another great vintage in the south, and Bordeaux was more than usually busy when Barebone arrived there, at daybreak, one morning in November, having posted from Toulouse. He was more daring in winter, and went fearlessly through the streets. In cold weather it is so much easier for a man to conceal his identity; for a woman to hide her beauty, if she wish to—which is a large If. Barebone could wear a fur collar and turn it up round that tell-tale chin, which made the passer-by pause and turn to look at him again if it was visible.
He breakfasted at the old-fashioned inn in the heart of the town, where to this day the diligences deposit their passengers, and then he made his way to the quay, from whence he would take passage down the river. It was a cold morning, and there are few colder cities, south of Paris, than Bordeaux. Barebone hurried, his breath frozen on the fur of his collar. Suddenly he stopped. His new self—that phantom second-nature bred of custom—vanished in the twinkling of an eye, and left him plain Loo Barebone, of Farlingford, staring across the green water toward “The Last Hope,” deep-laden, anchored in mid-stream.
Seeing him stop, a boatman ran toward him from a neighbouring flight of steps.
“An English ship, monsieur,” he said; “just come in. Her anchors are hardly home. Does monsieur wish to go on board?”
“Of course I do, comrade—as quick as you like,” he answered, with a gay laugh. It was odd that the sight of this structure, made of human hands, should change him in a flash of thought, should make his heart leap in his breast.
In a few minutes he was seated in the wherry, half way out across the stream. Already a face was looking over the bulwarks. The hands were on the forecastle, still busy clearing decks after the confusion of letting go anchor and hauling in the jib-boom.
Barebone could see them leave off work and turn to look at him. One or two raised a hand in salutation and then turned again to their task. Already the mate—a Farlingford man, who had succeeded Loo—was standing on the rail fingering a coil of rope.
“Old man is down below,” he said, giving Barebone a hand. From the forecastle came sundry grunts, and half a dozen heads were jerked sideways at him.
Captain Clubbe was in the cabin, where the remains of breakfast had been pushed to one end of the table to make room for pens and ink. The Captain was laboriously filling in the countless documents required by the French custom-house. He looked up, pen in hand, and all the wrinkles, graven by years of hardship and trouble, were swept away like writing from a slate.
He laid aside his pen and held his hand out across the table.
“Had your breakfast?” he asked, curtly, with a glance at the empty coffee-pot.
Loo laughed as he sat down. It was all so familiar—the disorder of the cabin; the smell of lamp-oil; the low song of the wind through the rigging, that came humming in at the doorway, which was never closed, night or day, unless the seas were washing to and fro on the main deck. He knew everything so well; the very pen and the rarely used ink-pot; the Captain’s attitude, and the British care that he took not to speak with his lips that which was in his heart.
“Well,” said Captain Clubbe, taking up his pen again, “how are you getting on?”
“With what?”
“With the business that brought you to this country,” answered Clubbe, with a sudden gruffness; for he was, like the majority of big men, shy.
Barebone looked at him across the table.
“Do you know what the business is that brought me to this country?” he asked. And Captain Clubbe looked thoughtfully at the point of his pen.
“Did the Marquis de Gemosac and Dormer Colville tell you everything, or only a little?”
“I don’t suppose they told me everything,” was the reply. “Why should they? I am only a seafaring man.”
“But they told you enough,” persisted Barebone, “for you to draw your own conclusions as to my business over here.”
“Yes,” answered Clubbe, with a glance across the table. “Is it going badly?”
“No. On the contrary, it is going splendidly,” answered Barebone, gaily; and Captain Clubbe ducked his head down again over the papers of the French custom-house. “It is going splendidly, but—”
He paused. Half an hour ago he had no thought in his mind of Captain Clubbe or of Farlingford. He had come on board merely to greet his old friends, to hear some news of home, to take up for a moment that old self of bygone days and drop it again. And now, in half a dozen questions and answers, whither was he drifting? Captain Clubbe filled in a word, slowly and very legibly.
“But I am not the man, you know,” said Barebone, slowly. It was as if the sight of that just man had bidden him cry out the truth. “I am not the man they think me. My father was not the son of Louis XVI, I know that now. I did not know it at first, but I know it now. And I have been going on with the thing, all the same.”
Clubbe sat back in his chair. He was large and ponderous in body. And the habit of the body at length becomes the nature of the mind.
“Who has been telling you that?” he asked.
“Dormer Colville. He told me one thing first and then the other. Only he and you and I know of it.”
“Then he must have told one lie,” said Clubbe, reflectively. “One that we know of. And what he says is of no value either way; for he doesn’t know. No one knows. Your father was a friend of mine, man and boy, and he didn’t know. He was not the same as other men; I know that—but nothing more.”
“Then, if you were me, you would give yourself the benefit of the doubt?” asked Barebone, with a rather reckless laugh. “For the sake of others—for the sake of France?”
“Not I,” replied Clubbe, bluntly.
“But it is practically impossible to go back now,” explained Loo. “It would be the ruin of all my friends, the downfall of France. In my position, what would you do?”
“I don’t understand your position,” replied Clubbe. “I don’t understand politics; I am only a seafaring man. But there is only one thing to do—the square thing.”
“But,” protested Dormer Colville’s pupil, “I cannot throw over my friends. I cannot abandon France now.”
“The square thing,” repeated the sailor, stubbornly. “The square thing; and damn your friends—damn France!”
He rose as he spoke, for they had both heard the customs officers come on board; and these functionaries were now bowing at the cabin-door.
It was early in November that the report took wing in Paris that John Turner’s bank was, after all, going to weather the storm. Dormer Colville was among the first to hear this news, and strangely enough he did not at once impart it to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.
All through the year, John Turner had kept his client supplied with ready money. He had, moreover, made no change in his own mode of living. Which things are a mystery to all who have no money of their own nor the good fortune to handle other people’s. There is no doubt some explanation of the fact that bankers and other financiers seem to fail, and even become bankrupt, without tangible effect upon their daily comfort, but the unfinancial cannot expect to understand it.
There had, as a matter of fact, been no question of discomfort for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence either.
“Can I spend as much as I like?” she had asked Turner, and his reply had been in the affirmative.
“No use in saving?”
“None whatever,” he replied. To which Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence made answer that she did not understand things at all.
“It is no use collecting straws against a flood,” the banker answered, sleepily.
There was, of course, no question now of supplying the necessary funds to the Marquis de Gemosac and Albert de Chantonnay, who, it was understood, were raising the money, not without difficulty, elsewhere. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had indeed heard little or nothing of her Royalist friends in the west. Human nature is the same, it would appear, all the world over, but the upper crust is always the hardest.
When Colville was informed of the rumour, he remembered that he had never quarrelled with John Turner. He had, of course, said some hard things in the heat of the moment, but Turner had not retorted. There was no quarrel. Colville, therefore, took an early opportunity of lunching at the club then reputed to have the best chef in Paris. He went late and found that the majority of members had finished déjeuner and were taking coffee in one or other of the smoking-rooms.
After a quick and simple meal, Colville lighted a cigarette and went upstairs. There were two or three small rooms where members smoked or played cards or read the newspapers, and in the quietest of these John Turner was alone, asleep. Colville walked backward into the room, talking loudly as he did so with a friend in the passage. When well over the threshold he turned. John Turner, whose slumbers had been rudely disturbed, was sitting up rubbing his eyes. The surprise was of course mutual, and for a moment there was an awkward pause; then, with a smile of frank good-fellowship, Colville advanced, holding out his hand.
“I hope we have known each other too many years, old fellow,” he said, “to bear any lasting ill-will for words spoken in the heat of anger or disappointment, eh?”
He stood in front of the banker frankly holding out the hand of forgiveness, his head a little on one side, that melancholy smile of toleration for poor human weakness in his eyes.
“Well,” admitted Turner, “we’ve certainly known each other a good many years.”
He somewhat laboriously hoisted himself up, his head emerging from his tumbled collar like the head of a tortoise aroused from sleep, and gave into Colville’s affectionate grasp a limp and nerveless hand.
“No one could feel for you more sincerely than I do,” Colville assured him, drawing forward a chair,—“more than I have done all through these trying months.”
“Very kind, I’m sure,” murmured Turner, looking drowsily at his friend’s necktie. One must look somewhere, and Turner always gazed at the necktie of any one who sat straight in front of him, which usually induced an uneasy fingering of that ornament and an early consultation of the nearest mirror. “Have a cigar.”
There was the faint suggestion of a twinkle beneath the banker’s heavy lids as Colville accepted this peace-offering. It was barely twenty-four hours since he had himself launched in Colville’s direction the rumour which had brought about this reconciliation.
“And I’m sure,” continued the other, turning to cut the end of the cigar, “that no one would be better pleased to hear that better times are coming—eh? What did you say?”
“Nothing. Didn’t speak,” was the reply to this vague interrogation. Then they talked of other things. There was no lack of topics for conversation at this time in France; indeed, the whole country was in a buzz of talk. But Turner was not, it seemed, in a talkative mood. Only once did he rouse himself to take more than a passing interest in the subject touched upon by his easy-going companion.
“Yes,” he admitted, “he may be the best cook in Paris, but he is not what he was. It is this Revision of the Constitution which is upsetting the whole country, especially the lower classes. The man’s hand is shaky. I can see it from his way of pouring the mayonnaise over a salad.”
After touching upon each fresh topic, Colville seemed to return unconsciously to that which must of necessity be foremost in his companion’s thoughts—the possibility of saving Turner’s bank from failure. And each time he learnt a little more. At last, with that sympathetic spontaneity which was his chief charm, Dormer Colville laid his hand confidentially on Turner’s sleeve.
“Frankly, old fellow,” he said, “are you going to pull it through?”
“Frankly, old fellow, I am,” was the reply, which made Colville glance hastily at the clock.
“Gad!” he exclaimed, “look at the time. You have kept me gossiping the whole afternoon. Must be off. Nobody will be better pleased than I am to hear the good news. But of course I am mum. Not a word will they hear from me. Iamglad. Good-bye.”
“I dare say you are,” murmured Turner to the closed door.
Dormer Colville was that which is known as an opportunist. It was a dull grey afternoon. He would be sure to find Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence at home. She had taken an apartment in the Rue de Lille in the St. Germain quarter. His way was past the flower-shop, where he sometimes bestowed a fickle custom. He went in and bought a carnation for his buttonhole.
It is to be presumed that John Turner devoted the afternoon to his affairs. It was at all events evening before he also bent his steps toward the Rue de Lille.
Yes, the servant told him, Madame was at home and would assuredly see him. Madame was not alone. No. It was, however, only Monsieur Colville, who was so frequent a visitor.
Turner followed the servant along the corridor. The stairs had rather tried one who had to elevate such a weight at each step; he breathed hard, but placidly.
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence received him with an unusualempressement. Dormer Colville, who was discovered sitting as far from her as the size of the room allowed, was less eager, but he brought forward a chair for the banker and glanced sharply at his face as he sat down.
“So glad to see you,” the hostess explained. “It is really kind of you to come and cheer one up on such a dull afternoon. Dormer and I—won’t you take off your coat? No, letmeput it aside for you. Dormer and I were just—just saying how dull it was. Weren’t we?”
She looked from one to the other with a rather unnatural laugh. One would have thought that she was engaged in carrying off a difficult situation and, for so practised a woman of the world, not doing it very well. Her cheeks were flushed, which made her look younger, and a subtle uncertainty in her voice and manner added to this illusion charmingly. For a young girl’s most precious possession is her inexperience. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, for the first time in her life, was not sure of herself.
“Now I hope you have not come on business,” she added, drawing forward her own chair and passing a quick hand over her hair. “Bother business! Do not let us think about it.”
“Not exactly,” replied Turner, recovering his breath. “Quite agree with you. Let us say, ‘Bother business,’ and not think of it. Though, for an old man who is getting stout, there is nothing much left but business and his dinner, eh?”
“No. Do not say that,” cried the lady. “Never say that. It is time enough to think that years hence when we are all white-haired. But I used to think that myself once, you know. When I first had my money. Do you remember? I was so pleased to have all that wealth that I determined to learn all about cheque-books and things and manage it myself. So you taught me, and at last you admitted that I was an excellent man of business. I know I thought I was myself. And I suppose I lapsed into a regular business woman and only thought of money and how to increase it. How horrid you must have thought me!”
“Never did that,” protested Turner, stoutly.
“But I know I learnt to think much too much about it,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence went on eagerly. “And now that it is all gone, I do not carethatfor it.”
She snapped her finger and thumb and laughed gaily.
“Not that,” she repeated. She turned and glanced at Dormer Colville, raising her eyebrows in some mute interrogation only comprehensible to him. “Shall I tell him?” she asked, with a laugh of happiness not very far removed from tears. Then she turned to the banker again.
“Listen,” she said. “I am going to tell you something which no one else in the world can tell you. Dormer and I are going to be married. I dare say lots of people will say that they have expected it for a long time. They can say what they like. We don’t care. And I am glad that you are the first person to hear it. We have only just settled it, so you are the very first to be told. And I am glad to tell you before anybody else because you have been so kind to me always. You have been my best friend, I think. And the kindest thing you ever did for me was to lose my money, for if you had not lost it, Dormer never would have asked me to marry him. He has just said so himself. And I suppose all men feel that. All the nice ones, I mean. It is one of the drawbacks of being rich, is it not?”
“I suppose it is,” answered Turner, stolidly, without turning an eyelash in the direction of Colville. “Perhaps that is why no one has ever asked me to marry them.”
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence laughed jerkily at this witticism. She laughed again when John Turner rose from his chair to congratulate her, but the laugh suddenly ceased when he raised her hand to his lips with a courtesy which was even in those days dying out of the world, and turned away from him hastily. She stood with her back toward them for a minute or two looking at some flowers on a side table. Then she came back into the middle of the room, all smiles, replacing her handkerchief in her pocket.
“So that is the news I have to tell you,” she said.
John Turner had placidly resumed his chair after shaking hands with Dormer Colville for the second time since luncheon.
“Yes,” he answered, “it is news indeed. And I have a little news to give you. I do not say that it is quite free from the taint of business, but at all events it is news. Like yours, it has the merit of being at first hand, and you are the first to hear it. No one else could tell it to you.”
He broke off and rubbed his chin while he looked apathetically at Colville’s necktie.
“It has another merit, rare enough,” he went on. “It is good news. I think, in fact I may say I am sure, that we shall pull through now and your money will be safely returned to you.”
“I am so glad,” said Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, with a glance at Dormer Colville. “I cannot tell you how glad I am.”
She looked at the banker with bright eyes and the flush still in her cheeks that made her look younger and less sure of herself.
“Not only for my own sake, you know. For yours, because I am sure you must be relieved, and for—well, for everybody’s sake. Tell me all about it, please.” And she pushed her chair sideways nearer to Colville’s.
John Turner bit the first joint of his thumb reflectively. It is so rare that one can tell any one all about anything.
“Tell me first,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence suggested, “whether Miriam Liston’s money is all safe as well.”
“Miriam’s money never was in danger,” he replied. “Miriam is my ward; you are only my client. There is no chance of Miriam being able to make ducks and drakes of her money.”
“That sounds as if I had been trying to do that with mine.
“Well,” admitted the banker, with a placid laugh, “if it had not been for my failure—”
“Don’t call it hard names,” put in Dormer Colville, generously. “It was not a failure.”
“Call it a temporary suspension of payment, then,” agreed the banker, imperturbably. “If it had not been for that, half your fortune would have been goodness knows where by now. You wanted to put it into some big speculation in this country, if I remember aright. And big speculations in France are the very devil just now. Whereas, now, you see, it is all safe and you can invest it in the beginning of next year in some good English securities. It seems providential, does it not?”
He rose as he spoke and held out his hand to say good-bye. He asked the question of Colville’s necktie, apparently, for he smiled stupidly at it.
“Well, I do not understand business after all, I admit that,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence called out gaily to him as he went toward the door. “I do not understand things at all.”
“No, and I don’t suppose you ever will,” Turner replied as he followed the servant into the corridor.
Loo Barebone went back to the Château de Gemosac after those travels in Provence which terminated so oddly on board “The Last Hope,” at anchor in the Garonne River.
The Marquis received him with enthusiasm and a spirit of optimism which age could not dim.
“Everything is goingà merveille!” he cried. “In three months we shall be ready to strike our blow—to make our greatcoupfor France. The failure of Turner’s bank was a severe check, I admit, and for a moment I was in despair. But now we are sure that we shall have the money for Albert de Chantonnay’s Beauvoir estate by the middle of January. The death of Madame la Duchesse was a misfortune. If we could have persuaded her to receive you—your face would have done the rest, mon ami—we should have been invincible. But she was broken, that poor lady. Think of her life! Few women would have survived half of the troubles that she carried on those proud shoulders from childhood.”
They were sitting in the little salon in the building that adjoined the gate-house of Gemosac, of which the stone stairs must have rung beneath the red spurs of fighting men; of which the walls were dented still with the mark of arms.
Barebone had given an account of his journey, which had been carried through without difficulty. Everywhere success had waited upon him—enthusiasm had marked his passage. In returning to France, he had stolen a march on his enemies, for nothing seemed to indicate that his presence in the country was known to them.
“I tell you,” the Marquis explained, “that he has his hands full—that man in Paris. It is only a month since he changed his ministry. Who is this St. Arnaud, his Minister of War? Who is Maupas, his Prefect of Police? Does Monsieur Manpas know that we are nearly ready for ourcoup?Bah! Tell me nothing of that sort, gentlemen.”
And this was the universally accepted opinion at this time, of Louis Bonaparte the President of a tottering Republic, divided against itself; a dull man, at his wits’ end. For months, all Europe had been turning an inquiring and watchful eye on France. Socialism was rampant. Secret societies honeycombed the community. There was some danger in the air—men knew not what. Catastrophe was imminent, and none knew where to look for its approach. But all thought that it must come at the end of the year. A sort of panic took hold of all classes. They dreaded the end of 1851.
The Marquis de Gemosac spoke openly of these things before Juliette. She had been present when Loo and he talked together of this last journey, so happily accomplished, so fruitful of result. And Loo did not tell the Marquis that he had seen his old ship, “The Last Hope,” in the river at Bordeaux, and had gone on board of her.
Juliette listened, as she worked, beneath the lamp at the table in the middle of the room. The lace-work she had brought from the convent-school was not finished yet. It was exquisitely fine and delicate, and Juliette executed the most difficult patterns with a sort of careless ease. Sometimes, when the Marquis was more than usually extravagant in his anticipations of success, or showed a superlative contempt for his foes, Juliette glanced at Barebone over her lace-work, but she rarely took part in the talk when politics were under discussion.
In domestic matters, however, this new châtelaine showed considerable shrewdness. She was not ignorant of the price of hay, and knew to a cask how much wine was stored in the vault beneath the old chapel. On these subjects the Marquis good-humouredly followed her advice sometimes. His word had always been law in the whole neighbourhood. Was he not the head of one of the oldest families in France?
“But,pardieu, she shows a wisdom quite phenomenal, that little one,” the Marquis would tell his friends, with a hearty laugh. It was only natural that he should consider amusing the idea of uniting wisdom and youth and beauty in one person. It is still a universally accepted law that old people must be wise and young persons only charming. Some may think that they could point to a wise child born of foolish parents; to a daughter who is well-educated and shrewd, possessing a sense of logic, and a mother who is ignorant and foolish; to a son who has more sense than his father: but of course such observers must be mistaken. Old theories must be the right ones. The Marquis had no doubt of this, at all events, and thought it most amusing that Juliette should establish order in the chaos of domestic affairs at Gemosac.
“You are grave,” said Juliette to Barebone, one evening soon after his return, when they happened to be alone in the little drawing-room. Barebone was, in fact, not a lively companion; for he had sat staring at the log-fire for quite three minutes when his eyes might assuredly have been better employed. “You are grave. Are you thinking of your sins?”
“When I think of those, Mademoiselle, I laugh. It is when I think of you that I am grave.”
“Thank you.”
“So I am always grave, you understand.”
She glanced quickly, not at him but toward him, and then continued her lace-making, with the ghost of a smile tilting the corners of her lips.
“It is because I have something to tell you.”
“A secret?” she inquired, and she continued to smile, but differently, and her eyes hardened almost to resentment.
“Yes; a secret. It is a secret only known to two other people in the world besides myself. And they will never let you know even that they share it with you, Mademoiselle.”
“Then they are not women,” she said, with a sudden laugh. “Tell it to me, then—your secret.”
There had been an odd suggestion of foreknowledge in her manner, as if she were humouring him by pretending to accept as a secret of vast importance some news which she had long known—that little air of patronage which even schoolgirls bestow, at times, upon white-haired men. It is part of the maternal instinct. But this vanished when she heard that she was to share the secret with two men, and she repeated, impatiently, “Tell me, please.”
“It is a secret which will make a difference to us all our lives, Mademoiselle,” he said, warningly. “It will not leave us the same as it found us. It has made a difference to all who know it. Therefore, I have only decided to tell you after long consideration. It is, in fact, a point of honour. It is necessary for you to know, whatever the result may be. Of that I have no doubt whatever.”
He laughed reassuringly, which made her glance at him gravely, almost anxiously.
“And are you going on telling it to other people, afterward,” she inquired; “to my father, for instance?”
“No, Mademoiselle. It comes to you, and it stops at you. I do not mind withholding it from your father, and from all the friends who have been so kind to me in France. I do not mind deceiving kings and emperors, Mademoiselle, and even the People, which is now always spelt in capital letters, and must be spoken of with bated breath.”
She gave a scornful little laugh, as at the sound of an old jest—the note of a deathless disdain which was in the air she breathed.
“Not even the newspapers, which are trying to govern France. All that is a question of politics. But when it comes to you, Mademoiselle, that is a different matter.”
“Ah!”
“Yes. It is then a question of love.”
Juliette slowly changed colour, but she gave a little gay laugh of incredulity and bent her head away from the light of the lamp.
“That is a different code of honour altogether,” he said, gravely. “A code one does not wish to tamper with.”
“No?” she inquired, with the odd little smile of foreknowledge again.
“No. And, therefore, before I go any farther, I think it best to tell you that I am not what I am pretending to be. I am pretending to be the son of the little Dauphin, who escaped from the Temple. He may have escaped from the Temple; that I don’t know. But I know, or at least I think I know, that he is not buried in Farlingford churchyard and he was not my father. I can pass as the grandson of Louis XVI; I know that. I can deceive all the world. I can even climb to the throne of France, perhaps. There are many, as you know, who think I shall do it without difficulty. But I do not propose to deceiveyou, Mademoiselle.”
There was a short silence, while Loo watched her face. Juliette had not even changed colour. When she was satisfied that he had nothing more to add, she looked at him, her needle poised in the air.
“Do you think it matters?” she asked, in a little cool, even voice.
It was so different from what he had expected that, for a moment, he was taken aback. Captain Clubbe’s bluff, uncompromising reception of the same news had haunted his thoughts. “The square thing,” that sailor had said, “and damn your friends; damn France.” Loo looked at Juliette in doubt; then, suddenly, he understood her point of view; he understood her. He had learnt to understand a number of people and a number of points of view during the last twelve months.
“So long as I succeed?” he suggested.
“Yes,” she answered, simply. “So long as you succeed, I do not see that it can matter who you are.”
“And if I succeed,” pursued Loo, gravely, “will you marry me, Mademoiselle?”
“Oh! I never said that,” in a voice that was ready to yield to a really good argument.
“And if I fail—” Barebone paused for an instant. He still doubted his own perception. “And if I fail, you would not marry me under any circumstances?”
“I do not think my father would let me,” she answered, with her eyes cast down upon her lace-frame.
Barebone leant forward to put together the logs, which burnt with a white incandescence that told of a frosty night. The Marquis had business in the town, and would soon return from the notary’s, in time to dress for dinner.
“Well,” said Loo, over his shoulder, “it is as well to understand each other, is it not?”
“Yes,” she answered, significantly. She ignored the implied sarcasm altogether. There was so much meaning in her reply that Loo turned to look at her. She was smiling as she worked.
“Yes,” she went on; “you have told me your secret—a secret. But I have the other, too; the secret you have not told me,mon ami. I have had it always.”
“Ah?”
“The secret that you do not love me,” said Juliette, in her little wise, even voice; “that you have never loved me. Ah! You think we do not know. You think that I am too young. But we are never too young to know that, to know all about it. I think we know it in our cradles.”
She spoke with a strange philosophy, far beyond her years. It might have been Madame de Chantonnay who spoke, with all that lady’s vast experience of life and without any of her folly.
“You think I am pretty. Perhaps I am. Just pretty enough to enable you to pretend, and you have pretended very well at times. You are good at pretending, one must conclude. Oh! I bear no ill-will ...”
She broke off and looked at him, with a gay laugh, in which there was certainly no note of ill-will to be detected.
“But it is as well,” she went on, “as you say, that we should understand each other. Thank you for telling me your secret—the one you have told me. I am flattered at that mark of your confidence. A woman is always glad to be told a secret, and immediately begins to anticipate the pleasure she will take in telling it to others, in confidence.”
She looked up for a moment from her work; for Loo had given a short laugh. She looked, to satisfy herself that it was not the ungenerous laugh that nine men out of ten would have cast at her; and it was not. For Loo was looking at her with frank amusement.
“Oh, yes,” she said; “I know that, too. It is one of the items not included in a convent education. It is unnecessary to teach us such things as that. We know them before we go in. Your secret is safe enough with me, however—the one you have told me. That is the least I can promise in return for your confidence. As to the other secret,bon Dieu! we will pretend I do not know it, if you like. At all events, you can vow that you never told me, if—if ever you are called upon to do so.”
She paused for a moment to finish off a thread. Then, when she reached out her hand for the reel, she glanced at him with a smile, not unkind.
“So you need not pretend any more, monsieur,” she said, seeing that Barebone was wise enough to keep silence. “I do not know who you are,mon ami,” she went on, in a little burst of confidence; “and, as I told you just now, I do not care. And, as to that other matter, there is no ill-will. I only permit myself to wonder, sometimes, if she is pretty. That is feminine, I suppose. One can be feminine quite young, you understand.”
She looked at him with unfathomable eyes and a little smile, such as men never forget once they have seen it.
“But you were inclined to be ironical just now, when I said I would marry you if you were successful. So I mention that other secret just to show that the understanding you wish to arrive at may be mutual—there may be two sides to it. I hear my father coming. That is his voice at the gate. We will leave things as they stand:n’est ce pas?”
She rose as she spoke and went toward the door. The Marquis’s voice was raised, and there seemed to be some unusual clamour at the gate.