The Last Hope Part 25

Loo Barebone knew and remembered every incident, every glance. He was in full possession of every faculty, and never had each been so keenly alive to the necessity of the moment. Never had his quick brain been so alert as it was during the rest of the evening. And those who had come to the Hotel Gemosac to confirm their adoption of a figure-head went away with the startling knowledge in their hearts that they had never in the course of an artificial life met a man less suited to play that undignified part.

And all the while, in the back of his mind, there lingered with a deadly patience the desire for the moment which must inevitably come when he should at last find himself alone, face to face, with Dormer Colville.

It was nearly midnight before this moment came. At last the latest guest had taken his leave, quitting the house by the garden door and making his way across that forlorn and weedy desert by the dim light reflected from the clouds above. At last the Marquis de Gemosac had bidden them good night, and they were left alone in the vast bedroom which a dozen candles, in candelabras of silver blackened by damp and neglect, only served to render more gloomy and mysterious.

In the confusion consequent on the departure of so many guests the locket had been lost sight of, and Monsieur de Gemosac forgot to make inquiry for it. It was in Barebone's pocket.

Colville put together with the toe of his boot the logs which were smouldering in a glow of incandescent heat. He turned and glanced over his shoulder toward his companion.

Barebone was taking the locket from his waistcoat pocket and approaching the table where the candles burnt low in their sockets.

"You never really supposed you were the man, did you?" asked Colville, with a ready smile. He was brave, at all events, for he took the only course left to him with a sublime a.s.surance.

Barebone looked across the candles at the face which smiled, and smiled.

"That is what I thought," he answered, with a queer laugh.

"Do not jump to any hasty decisions," urged Colville instantly, as if warned by the laugh.

"No! I want to sift the matter carefully to the bottom. It will be interesting to learn who are the deceived and who the deceivers."

Barebone had had time to think out a course of action. His face seemed to puzzle Colville, who was rarely at fault in such judgments of character as came within his understanding. But he seemed for an instant to be on the threshold of something beyond his understanding; and yet he had lived, almost day and night, for some months with Barebone. Since the beginning--that far-off beginning at Farlingford--their respective positions had been quite clearly defined. Colville, the elder by nearly twenty years, had always been the guide and mentor and friend--the compulsory pilot he had gaily called himself. He had a vast experience of the world. He had always moved in the best French society. All that he knew, all the influence he could command, and the experience upon which he could draw were unreservedly at Barebone's service. The difference in years had only affected their friends.h.i.+p in so far as it defined their respective positions and prohibited any thought of rivalry. Colville had been the unquestioned leader, Barebone the ready disciple.

And now in the twinkling of an eye the positions were reversed. Colville stood watching Barebone's face with eyes rendered almost servile by a great suspense. He waited breathless for the next words.

"This portrait," said Barebone, "of the Queen was placed in the locket by you?"

Colville nodded with a laugh of conscious cleverness rewarded by complete success. There was nothing in his companion's voice to suggest suppressed anger. It was all right after all. "I had great difficulty in finding just what I wanted," he added, modestly.

"What I remember--though the memory is necessarily vague--was a portrait of a woman older than this. Her style of dress was more elaborate. Her hair was dressed differently, with sort of curls at the side, and on the top, half buried in the hair, was the imitation of a nest--a dove's nest.

Such a thing would naturally stick in a child's memory. It stuck in mine."

"Yes--and nearly gave the game away to-night," said Colville, gulping down the memory of those tense moments.

"That portrait--the original--you have not destroyed it?"

"Oh no. It is of some value," replied Colville, almost naively. He felt in his pocket and produced a silver cigar-case. The miniature was wrapped in a piece of thin paper, which he unfolded. Barebone took the painting and examined it with a little nod of recognition. His memory had not failed after twenty years.

"Who is this lady?" he asked.

Dormer Colville hesitated.

"Do you know the history of that period?" he inquired, after a moment's reflection. For the last hour he had been trying to decide on a course of conduct. During the last few minutes he had been forced to change it half a dozen times.

"Septimus Marvin, of Farlingford, is one of the greatest living authorities on those reigns. I learnt a good deal from him," was the answer.

"That lady is, I think, the d.u.c.h.esse de Guiche."

"You think--"

"Even Marvin could not tell you for certain," replied Colville, mildly.

He did not seem to perceive a difference in Barebone's manner toward himself. The quickest intelligence cannot follow another's mind beyond its own depth.

"Then the inference is that my father was the illegitimate son of the Comte d'Artois."

"Afterward Charles X, of France," supplemented Colville, significantly.

"Is that the inference?" persisted Barebone. "I should like to know your opinion. You must have studied the question very carefully. Your opinion should be of some interest, though--"

"Though--" echoed Colville, interrogatively, and regretted it immediately.

"Though it is impossible to say when you speak the truth and when you lie."

And any who doubted that there was royal blood in Leo Barebone's veins would a.s.suredly have been satisfied by a glance at his face at that moment; by the sound of his quiet, judicial voice; by the sudden and almost terrifying sense of power in his measuring eyes.

Colville turned away with an awkward laugh and gave his attention to the logs on the hearth. Then suddenly he regained his readiness of speech.

"Look here, Barebone," he cried. "We must not quarrel; we cannot afford to do that. And after all, what does it matter? You are only giving yourself the benefit of the doubt--that is all. For there is a doubt. You may be what you--what we say you are, after all. It is certain enough that Marie Antoinette and Fersen were in daily correspondence. They were both clever--two of the cleverest people in France--and they were both desperate. Remember that. Do you think that they would have failed in a matter of such intense interest to her, and therefore to him? All these pretenders, Naundorff and the others, have proved that quite clearly, but none has succeeded in proving that he was the man."

"And do you think that I shall be able to prove that I am the man--when I am not?"

By way of reply Dormer Colville turned again to the fireplace and took down the print of Louis XVI engraved from a portrait painted when he was still Dauphin. A mirror stood near, and Colville came to the table carrying the portrait in one hand, the looking-gla.s.s in the other.

"Here," he said, eagerly, "Look at one and then at the other. Look in the mirror and then at the portrait. Prove it! Why, G.o.d has proved it for you."

"I do not think we had better bring Him into the question," was the retort: an odd reflex of Captain Clubbe's solid East Anglian piety. "No.

If we go on with the thing at all, let us be honest enough to admit to ourselves that we are dishonest. The portrait in that locket points clearly enough to the Truth."

"The portrait in that locket is of Marie Antoinette," replied Colville, half sullenly. "And no one can ever prove anything contrary to that. No one except myself knows of--of this doubt which you have stumbled upon.

De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, Clubbe--all of them are convinced that your father was the Dauphin."

"And Miss Liston?"

"Miriam Liston--she also, of course. And I believe she knew it long before I told her."

Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the eyes. Colville wondered a second time why Loo Barebone reminded him of Captain Clubbe to-night.

"What makes you believe that?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. But that isn't the question. The question is about the future. You see how things are in France. It is a question of Louis Napoleon or a monarchy--you see that. Unless you stop him he will be Emperor before a year is out, and he will drag France in the gutter. He is less a Bonaparte than you are a Bourbon. You remember that Louis Bonaparte himself was the first to say so. He wrote a letter to the Pope, saying so quite clearly. You will go on with it, of course, Barebone. Say you will go on with it! To turn back now would be death. We could not do it if we wanted to. _I_ have been trying to think about it, and I cannot.

That is the truth. It takes one's breath away. At the mere thought of it I feel as if I were getting out of my depth."

"We have been out of our depths the last month," admitted Barebone, curtly.

And he stood reflecting, while Colville watched him.

"If I go on," he said, at length, "I go on alone."