The Last Hope

  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 Englishmanwithin the enceinte of the chateau was probably no surprise to her, forshe must have heard the clang of the bell just within the gate, whichcould not be opened from outside; by which alone access was gained to anypart of the chateau.

  Colville was in riding costume. It was, indeed, his habitual dress whenliving in France, for he made no concealment of his partnership in awell-known business house in Bordeaux.

  "I am a sleeping partner," he would say, with that easy flow of egotisticconfidence which is the surest way of learning somewhat of yourneighbour's private affairs. "I am a sleeping partner at all times exceptthe vintage, when I awake and ride round among the growers, to test theirgrowth."

  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 inthe saddle in a country where land is so valuable that the width of aroad is grudged, and bridle-ways are deemed good enough for the passageof the long and narrow carts that carry wine.

  Ever since their somewhat precipitate departure from the Villa Cordouanat Royan, Dormer Colville and Barebone had been in company. They hadstayed together, in one friend's house or another. Sometimes they enjoyedthe hospitality of a chateau, and at others put up with the scantyaccommodation of a priest's house or the apartment of a retired militaryofficer, in one of those little towns of provincial France at which thecheap 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 havebusiness 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 ofwine. We are travelling from place to place to watch the growth. For thewine is hidden in the grape, and the grape is ripening."

  And, as often as not, the chance acquaintance of an inn dejeuner wouldcatch the phrase and repeat it thoughtfully.

  "Ah! is that so?" he would ask, with a sudden glance at Dormer Colville'scompanion, who had hitherto passed unobserved as the silent subordinateof 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 aself-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 veryinappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the front by a clumsyconversationalist.

  There is no hazard of life so certain to discover sympathy or antagonismas travel--a fact which points to the wisdom of beginning married lifewith a journey. The majority of people like to know the worst at once. Totravel, however, with Dormer Colville was a liberal education in thevirtues. No man could be less selfish or less easily fatigued; which arethe two bases upon which rest all the stumbling-blocks of travel.

  Up to a certain point, Barebone and Dormer Colville became fast friendsduring 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, betterthan the principal inn of a town of the same size in any other habitablepart of the globe.

  There were many reasons why the Marquis de Gemosac had yielded toColville's contention--that the time had not yet come for Loo Barebone tobe 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 whois prepared to take trouble. He must learn that it is necessary to actfor himself. He needs rousing. Let him travel through France, and see forhimself that of which he has as yet only learnt at second-hand. That willrouse him."

  And the journey through the valleys of the Garonne and the Dordogne hadbeen undertaken.

  Another, greater journey, was now afoot, to end at no less a centre ofpolitical life than Paris. A start was to be made this evening, andDormer Colville now came to report that all was ready and the horses atthe 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 inhalingthe scent of the flowers growing knee-deep all around him, "men wouldaccomplish little in their brief lifetime."

  His eyes, dreamy and reflective, wandered over the scene and paused, justfor a moment in passing, on Juliette's face. She continued her way, withno other answer than a smile.

  "She grows, my dear Marquis--she grows every minute of the day andwakes up a new woman every morning," said Colville, in a confidentialaside, and he went forward to meet Loo with his accustomed laugh ofgood-fellowship. He whom the world calls a good fellow is never a wiseman.

  Barebone walked toward the gate without joining in the talk of hiscompanions. He was thoughtful and uneasy. He had come to say good-bye andnothing else. He was wondering if he had really meant what he had said.

  "Come," interrupted Colville's smooth voice. "We must get into the saddleand begone. I was just telling Monsieur and Mademoiselle Juliette, thatany man might be tempted to linger at Gemosac until the active years of alifetime rolled by."

  The Marquis made the needful reply; hoping that he might yet live to seeGemosac--and not only Gemosac, but a hundred chateaux like it--reawakenedto their ancient glory, and thrown open to welcome the restorer of theirfallen fortunes.

  Colville looked from one to the other, and then, with his foot in thestirrup, 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, andto fight for between ourselves when we are tired and cross at the end ofa journey. Come, Barchone--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 ofColville's horse, her face wearing a little mystic smile.

  Thus they departed, at sunset, on a journey of which old men will stilltalk in certain parts of France. Here and there, in the Angoumois, inGuienne, in the Vendee, and in the western parts of Brittany, the studentof forgotten history may find an old priest who will still persist individing France into the ancient provinces, and will tell how Hope rodethrough the Royalist country when he himself was busy at his first cure.

  The journey lasted nearly two months, and before they passed north of theLoire at Nantes and quitted the wine country, the vintage was over.

  "We must say that we are cider merchants, that is all," observed DormerColville, when they crossed the river, which has always been the greatdivider of France.

  "He is sobering down. I believe he will become serious," wrote he to theMarquis de Gemosac. But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free aspossible.

  "I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot," he explained, airily, to hiscompanion. "The ship is yours, and you probably know more about theshoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you wereat sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe. And yet, before youcould get into port, you found yourself forced to take the compulsorypilot 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 havedone as well without him. So you must put up with my company asgracefully as you can, remembering that you can drop me as soon as youare in port."

  And surely, none other could have occupied an uncomfortable position sogracefully.

  Bar
ebone found that he had not much to do. He soon accommodated himselfto a position which required nothing more active than a ready ear and agracious patience. For, day by day--almost hour by hour--it was his lotto listen to protestations of loyalty to a cause which smouldered nonethe less hotly because it was hidden from the sight of the PrincePresident'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 hehad talked gaily enough, seeing a hundred humorous incidents in thepassing events of the day; laughing at the recollection of an interviewwith some provincial notable who had fallen behind the times, or jestingreadily 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 withthem at their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial noblegreeting him on the step of his remote and quiet house added a note tothe drumming reality which dominated his waking moments and disturbed hissleep at night.

  Day by day they rode on, passing through two or three villages betweensuch halts as were needed by the horses. At every hamlet, in the largevillages, where they rested and had their food, at the remote little townwhere they passed a night, there was always some one expecting them, whocame and talked of the weather and more or less skilfully brought in thenumeral nineteen. "Nineteen! Nineteen!" It was a watchword all overFrance.

  Long before, on the banks of the Dordogne, Loo had asked his companionwhy 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 andremote that nothing like it may be found in these crowded islands, thenumber seemed to follow them; or, rather, to pass on before them andawait 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 wasmysteriously flooded with cheap portraits of the great Napoleon. It wasbefore the days of pictorial advertisement, and young ladies who wishedto make an advantageous marriage had no means of advertising the fact andthemselves in supplements to illustrated papers. The walls of inns andshops 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 ofthe great Napoleon. It was an innovation, and as such readily enoughaccepted.

  At every fair, at the great fete of St. Jean, at St. Jean d'Angely and ahundred other fetes of purely local notoriety, at least one hawker ofcheap lithographs was to be found. And if the buyer haggled, he could getthe 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 remotervillages and the world; and the peasants carried home with them apicture, for the first time, to hang on their walls. Thus the PrincePresident 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 inpencil.

  But Barebone had ceased to laugh at the constant repetition now. SoonColville ceased to point out the silent witness, for he perceived thatLoo was looking for it himself, detecting its absence with a gleam ofdetermination in his eyes or noting its recurrence with a sharp sigh, asof the consciousness of a great responsibility.

  Thus the reality was gradually forced upon him that that into which hehad entered half in jest was no jest at all; that he was moving forwardon a road which seemed easy enough, but of which the end was notperceptible; 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 tothose that follow--must at one moment of their career have perceivedtheir road before them, thus. Each must have realised that once set outupon that easy path there is no turning aside and no turning back. Andmany have chosen to turn back while there was yet time, leaving the markunmade. For most men are cowards and shun responsibility. Most menunconsciously steer their way by proverb or catchword; and all the wisesaws 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 breathedagain like one who had held his breath for long. Those colder, sternermen of Brittany, who, in later times, compared notes with the nobles ofGuienne and the Vendee, seemed to talk of a different man; for they spokeof one who rarely laughed, and never turned aside from a chosen pathwhich was in no wise bordered by flowers.