The Last Hope Part 10

"What do you mean?" she asked, in a quick, mechanical voice, as if she had reached a desired crisis at last and was prepared to act.

"Oh, I only mean what I have meant always," he answered. "But I have been afraid--afraid. One hears, sometimes, of a woman who is generous enough to love a man who is a n.o.body--to think only of love. Sometimes--last voyage, when you used to sit where you are sitting now--I have thought that it might have been my extraordinary good fortune to meet such a woman."

He waited for some word or sign, but she sat motionless.

"You understand," he went on, "how contemptible must seem their talk of a heritage in France, when such a thought is in one's mind, even if--"

"Yes," she interrupted, hastily. "You were quite wrong. You were mistaken."

"Mistaking in thinking you--"

"Yes," she interrupted again. "You are quite mistaken, and I am very sorry, of course, that it should have happened."

She was singularly collected, and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.

Barebone's eyes gleamed suddenly; for she had aroused-perhaps purposely--a pride which must have acc.u.mulated in his blood through countless generations. She struck with no uncertain hand.

"Yes," he said, slowly; "it is to be regretted. Is it because I am the son of a nameless father and only the mate of 'The Last Hope'?"

"If you were before the mast--" she answered--"if you were a King, it would make no difference. It is simply because I do not care for you in that way."

"You do not care for me--in that way," he echoed, with a laugh, which made her move as if she were shrinking. "Well, there is nothing more to be said to that."

He looked at her slowly, and then took off his cap as if to bid her good-bye. But he forgot to replace it, and he went away with the cap in his hand. She heard the clink of a chain as he loosed his boat.

CHAPTER X

IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE

The Abbe Touvent was not a courageous man, and the perspiration, induced by the climb from the high-road up that which had once been the ramp to the Chateau of Gemosac, ran cold when he had turned the key in the rusty lock of the great gate. It was not a dark night, for the moon sailed serenely behind fleecy clouds, but the shadows cast by her silvery light might harbour any terror.

It is easy enough to be philosophic at home in a chair beside the lamp.

Under those circ.u.mstances, the Abbe had reflected that no one would rob him, because he possessed nothing worth stealing. But now, out here in the dark, he recalled a hundred instances of wanton murder duly recorded in the newspaper which he shared with three paris.h.i.+oners in Gemosac.

He paused to wipe his brow with a blue cotton handkerchief before pus.h.i.+ng open the gate, and, being alone, was not too proud to peep through the keyhole before laying his shoulder against the solid and weather-beaten oak. He glanced nervously at the loopholes in the flanking towers and upward at the machicolated battlement overhanging him, as if any crumbling peep-hole might harbour gleaming eyes. He hurried through the pa.s.sage beneath the vaulted roof without daring to glance to either side, where doorways and steps to the towers were rendered more fearsome by heavy curtains of ivy.

The enceinte of the castle of Gemosac is three-sided, with four towers jutting out at the corners, from which to throw a flanking fire upon any who should raise a ladder against the great curtains, built of that smooth, white stone which is quarried at Brantome and on the banks of the Dordogne. The fourth side of the enceinte stands on a solid rock, above the little river that loses itself in the flatlands bordering the Gironde, so that it can scarce be called a tributary of that wide water.

A moss-grown path round the walls will give a quick walker ten minutes'

exercise to make the round from one tower of the gateway to the other.

Within the enciente are the remains of the old castle, still solid and upright; erected, it is recorded, by the English during their long occupation of this country. A more modern chateau, built after the final expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient structure, and in the centre of the vast enclosure, raised above the walls, stands a square house, in the Italian style, built in the time of Marie de Medici, and never yet completed. There are, also, gardens and shaded walks and vast stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many crumbling remains inside the walls, that offered a pa.s.sive resistance to the foe in olden time, and as successfully hold their own to-day against the prying eye of a democratic curiosity.

Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were in the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these that the Abbe Touvent directed his tremulous steps.

Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half garden, half hayfield. The hay had been cut, and the scent of the new stack, standing against the walls of the oldest chateau and under its leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the breath of the evening primrose and rosemary cl.u.s.tering in disorder on the ill-defined borders. The grim walls, that had defended the Gemosacs against franker enemies in other days, served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers the fact--which must, however, have been known to them--that the Marquis de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this garden himself, and had made the hay with no other help than that of his old coachman and Marie, that capable, brown-faced _bonne-a-tout-faire_, who is a.s.suredly the best man in France to-day.

In this clear, southern atmosphere the moon has twice the strength of that to which we are accustomed in mistier lands, and the Abbe looked about him with more confidence as he crossed the great court. There were frogs in a rainwater tank constructed many years ago, when some enterprising foe had been known to cut off the water-supply of a besieged chateau, and their friendly croak brought a sense of company and comfort to the Abbe's timid soul.

The door of the Italian house stood open, for the interior had never been completed, and only one apartment, a lofty banqueting-hall, had ever been furnished. Within the doorway, the Abbe fumbled in the pocket of his soutane and rattled a box of matches. He carried a parcel in his hand, which he now unfolded, and laid out on the lid of a mouldy chest half a dozen candles. When he struck a match a flight of bats whirred out of the doorway, and the Abbe's breath whistled through his teeth.

He lighted two candles, and carrying them, alight, in one hand--not without dexterity, for candles played an important part in his life--he went forward. The flickering light showed his face to be a fat one, kind enough, gleaming now with perspiration and fear, but s.h.i.+ny at other times with that Christian tolerance which makes men kind to their own failings.

It was very dark within the house, for all the shutters were closed.

The Abbe lighted a third candle and fixed it, with a drop of its own wax, on the high mantel of the great banqueting-hall. There were four or five candlesticks on side-tables, and a candelabra stood in the centre of a long table, running the length of the room. In a few minutes the Abbe had illuminated the apartment, which smelt of dust and the days of a dead monarchy. Above his head, the bats were describing complicated figures against a ceiling which had once been painted in the Italian style, to represent a trellis roof, with roses and vines entwined. Half a dozen portraits of men, in armour and wigs, looked down from the walls. One or two of them were rotting from their frames, and dangled a despondent corner out into the room.

There were chairs round the table, set as if for a phantom banquet amid these mouldering environments, and their high carved backs threw fantastic shadows on the wall.

While the Abbe was still employed with the candles, he heard a heavy step and loud breathing in the hall without, where he had carefully left a light.

"Why did you not wait for me on the hill, _malhonnete_?" asked a thick voice, like the voice of a man, but the manner was the manner of a woman.

"I am sure you must have heard me. One hears me like a locomotive, now that I have lost my slimness."

She came into the room as she spoke, unwinding a number of black, knitted shawls, in which she was enveloped. There were so many of them, and of such different shape and texture, that some confusion ensued. The Abbe ran to her a.s.sistance.

"But, Madame," he cried, "how can you suspect me of such a crime? I came early to make these preparations. And as for hearing you--would to Heaven I had! For it needs courage to be a Royalist in these days--especially in the dark, by one's self."

He seemed to know the shawls, for he disentangled them with skill and laid them aside, one by one.

The Comtesse de Chantonnay breathed a little more freely, but no friendly hand could disenc.u.mber her of the mountains of flesh, which must have weighed down any heart less buoyant and courageous.

"Ah, bah!" she cried, gaily. "Who is afraid? What could they do to an old woman? Ah! you hold up your hands. That is kind of you. But I am no longer young, and there is my Albert--with those stupid whiskers. It is unfilial to wear whiskers, and I have told him so. And you--who could harm you--a priest? Besides, no one could be a priest, and not a Royalist, Abbe!"

"I know it, Madame, and that is why I am one. Have we been seen, Madame la Comtesse? The village was quiet, as you came through?"

"Quiet as my poor husband in his grave. Tell me? Abbe, now, honestly, am I thinner? I have deprived myself of coffee these two days."

The Abbe walked gravely round her. It was quite an excursion.

"Who would have you different, Madame, to what you are?" he temporized.

"To be thin is so ungenerous. And Albert--where is he? You have not surely come alone?"

"Heaven forbid!--and I a widow!" replied Madame de Chantonnay, arranging, with a stout hand, the priceless lace on her dress. "Albert is coming. We brought a lantern, although it is a moon. It is better. Besides, it is always done by those who conspire. And Albert had his great cloak, and he fell up a step in the courtyard and dropped the lantern, and lost it in the long gra.s.s. I left him looking for it, in the dark. He was not afraid, my brave Albert!"

"He has the dauntless heart of his mother," murmured the Abbe, gracefully, as he ran round the table setting the chairs in order. He had already offered the largest and strongest to the Comtesse, and it was creaking under her now, as she moved to set her dress in order.

"a.s.suredly," she admitted, complacently. "Has not France produced a Jeanne d'Arc and a d.u.c.h.esse de Berri? It was not from his father, at all events, that he inherited his courage. For he was a poltroon, that man.

Yes, my dear Abbe, let us be honest, and look at life as it is. He was a poltroon, and I thought I loved him--for two or three days only, however.

And I was a child then. I was beautiful."

"Was?" echoed the Abbe, reproachfully.

"Silence, wicked one! And you a priest."

"Even an ecclesiastic, Madame, may have eyes," he said, darkly, as he snuffed a candle and, subsequently, gave himself a mechanical thump on the chest, in the region of the heart.