The Last Hope Part 40

Turner shrugged his shoulders and sat in silence, gnawing the middle joint of his thumb.

"But I must have the money!" cried Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. "It is most important, and I must have it at once. I withdraw it all. See, I brought my cheque-book with me. And I know that there are over a hundred thousand pounds in my account. As well as that, you hold securities for two hundred and fifty thousand more--my whole fortune. The money is not yours: it is mine. I draw it all out, and I insist on having it."

Turner continued to bite his thumb, and glanced at her without speaking.

"Now, d.a.m.n it all, Turner!" said Colville, in a voice suddenly hoa.r.s.e; "hand it over, man."

"I tell you it is gone," was the answer.

"What? Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Then you are a rogue! You are a fraudulent trustee! I always thought you were a d.a.m.ned scoundrel, Turner, and now I know it. I'll get you to the galleys for the rest of your life, I promise you that."

"You will gain nothing by that," returned the banker, staring at the date-card in front of him. "And you will lose any chance there is of recovering something from the wreck. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had better take the advice of her lawyer--in preference to yours."

"Then I am ruined!" said that lady, rising, with an air of resolution.

She was brave, at all events.

"At the present moment, it looks like it," admitted Turner, without meeting her eye.

"What am I to do?" murmured Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, looking helplessly round the room and finally at the banker's stolid face.

"Like the rest of us, I suppose," he admitted. "Begin the world afresh.

Perhaps your friends will come forward."

And he looked calmly toward Colville. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's face suddenly flushed, and she turned away toward the door. Turner rose, laboriously, and opened it.

"There is another staircase through this side door," he said, opening a second door, which had the appearance of a cupboard. "You can avoid the crowd."

They pa.s.sed out together, and Turner, having closed the door behind them, crossed the room to where a small mirror was suspended. He set his tie straight and smoothed his hair, and then returned to his chair, with a vague smile on his face.

Colville took the vacant seat in Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence's brougham. She still held a handkerchief in her hand.

"I do not mind for myself," she exclaimed, suddenly, when the carriage moved out of the court-yard. "It is only for your sake, Dormer."

She turned and glanced at him with eyes that shone, but not with tears.

"Oh! Don't you understand?" she asked, in a whisper. "Don't you see, Dormer?"

"A way out of it?" he answered, hurriedly, almost interrupting her. He withdrew his hand, upon which she had laid her own; withdrew it sympathetically, almost tenderly. "See a way out of it?" he repeated, in a reflective and business-like voice. "No, I am afraid, for the moment, I don't."

He sat stroking his moustache, looking out of the window, while she looked out of the other, resolutely blinking back her tears. They drove back to her hotel without speaking.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

A SORDID MATTER

"_Bon Dieu!_ my old friend, what do you expect?" replied Madame de Chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one May afternoon by the Marquis de Gemosac. "It is the month of May," she further explained, indicating with a gesture of her dimpled hand the roses abloom all around them. For the Marquis had found her in a chair beneath the mulberry-tree in the old garden of that house near Gemosac which looks across the river toward the sea. "It is the month of May. One is young.

Such things have happened since the world began. They will happen until it ends, Marquis. It happened in our own time, if I remember correctly."

And Madame de Chantonnay heaved a prodigious sigh, in memory of the days that were no more.

"Given a young man of enterprise and not bad looking, I allow. He has the grand air and his face is not without distinction. Given a young girl, fresh as a flower, young, innocent, not without feeling. Ah! I know, for I was like that myself. Place them in a garden, in the springtime. What will they talk of--politics? Ah--bah! Let them have long evenings together while their elders play chess or a hand at bezique. What game will they play? A much older game than chess or bezique, I fancy."

"But the circ.u.mstances were so exceptional," protested the Marquis, who had a pleased air, as if his anger were not without an antidote.

"Circ.u.mstances may be exceptional, my friend, but Love is a Rule. You allow him to stay six weeks in the chateau, seeing Juliette daily, and then you are surprised that one fine morning Monsieur de Bourbon comes to you and tells you brusquely, as you report it, that he wants to marry your daughter."

"Yes," admitted the Marquis. "He was what you may describe as brusque. It is the English way, perhaps, of treating such matters. Now, for myself I should have been warmer, I think. I should have allowed myself a little play, as it were. One says a few pretty things--is it not so? One suggests that the lady is an angel and oneself entirely unworthy of a happiness which is only to be compared with the happiness that is promised to us in the hereafter. It is an occasion upon which to be eloquent."

"Not for the English," corrected Madame de Chantonnay, holding up a hand to emphasise her opinion. "And you must remember, that although our friend is French, he has been brought up in that cold country--by a minister of their frozen religion, I understand. I, who speak to you, know what they are, for once I had an Englishman in love with me. It was in Paris, when Louis XVIII was King. And did this Englishman tell me that he was heart-broken, I ask you? Never! On the contrary, he appeared to be of an indifference only to be compared with the indifference of a tree.

He seemed to avoid me rather than seek my society. Once, he made believe to forget that he had been presented to me. A ruse--a mere ruse to conceal his pa.s.sion. But I knew, I knew always."

"And what was the poor man's fate? What was his name, Comtesse?"

"I forget, my friend. For the moment I have forgotten it. But tell me more about Monsieur de Bourbon and Juliette. He is pa.s.sionately in love with her, of course; he is so miserable."

The Marquis reflected for a few moments.

"Well," he said, at last, "he may be so; he may be so, Comtesse."

"And you--what did you say?"

The Marquis looked carefully round before replying. Then he leant forward with his forefinger raised delicately to the tip of his nose.

"I temporised, Comtesse," he said, in a low voice. "I explained as gracefully as one could that it was too early to think of such a development--that I was taken by surprise."

"Which could hardly have been true," put in Madame de Chantonnay in an audible aside to the mulberry-tree, "for neither Guienne nor la Vendee will be taken by surprise."

"I said, in other words--a good many words, the more the better, for one must be polite--'Secure your throne, Monsieur, and you shall marry Juliette.' But it is not a position into which one hurries the last of the house of Gemosac--to be the wife of an unsuccessful claimant, eh?"

Madame de Chantonnay approved in one gesture of her stout hand of these principles and of the Marquis de Gemosac's masterly demonstration of them.

"And Monsieur de Bourbon--did he accept these conditions?"

"He seemed to, Madame. He seemed content to do so," replied the Marquis, tapping his snuff-box and avoiding the lady's eye.

"And Juliette?" inquired Madame, with a sidelong glance.

"Oh, Juliette is sensible," replied the fond father. "My daughter is, I hope, sensible, Comtesse."

"Give yourself no uneasiness, my old friend," said Madame de Chantonnay, heartily. "She is charming."

Madame sat back in her chair and fanned herself thoughtfully. It was the fas.h.i.+on of that day to carry a fan and wield it with grace and effect. To fan oneself did not mean that the heat was oppressive, any more than the use of incorrect English signifies to-day ill-breeding or a lack of education. Both are an indication of a laudable desire to be unmistakably in the movement of one's day.

Over her fan Madame cast a sidelong glance at the Marquis, whom she, like many of his friends, suspected of being much less simple and spontaneous than he appeared.