THE LIFTED VEIL
"Where is the boatman?" asked Marie, as she followed Juliette and
Barebone along the deserted jetty. A light burnt dimly at the end of it
and one or two boats must have been moored near at hand; for the water
could be heard lapping under their bows, a secretive, whispering sound
full of mystery.
"I am the boatman," replied Loo, over his shoulder. "Are you afraid?"
"What is the good of being afraid?" asked this woman of the world,
stopping at the head of the steps and peering down into the darkness into
which he had descended. "What is the good of being afraid when one is old
and married? I was afraid enough when I was a girl, and pretty and
coquette like Mademoiselle, here. I was afraid enough then, and it was
worth my while--_allez_!"
Barebone made no answer to this dark suggestion of a sprightly past. The
present darkness and the coming storm commanded his full attention. In
the breathless silence, Juliette and Marie--and behind them, Jean,
panting beneath the luggage balanced on his shoulder--could hear the wet
rope slipping through his fingers and, presently, the bump of the heavy
boat against the timber of the steps.
This was followed by the gurgle of a rope through a well-greased sheave
and the square lug, which had been the joy of little Sep Marvin at
Farlingford, crept up to the truck of the stubby mast.
"There is no wind for that," remarked Marie, pessimistically.
"There will be to spare in a few minutes," answered Barebone, and the
monosyllabic Jean gave an acquiescent grunt.
"Luggage first," said Barebone, lapsing into the curtness of the sea.
"Come along. Let us make haste."
They stumbled on board as best they could, and were guided to a safe
place amidships by Loo, who had thrown a spare sail on the bottom of the
boat.
"As low as you can," he said. "Crouch down. Cover yourselves with this.
Right over your heads."
"But why?" grumbled Marie.
"Listen," was all the answer he gave her. And as he spoke, the storm
rushed upon them like a train, with the roar and whirl of a locomotive.
Loo jumped aft to the tiller. In the rush of the hail, they heard him
give a sharp order to Jean, who must have had some knowledge of the sea,
for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a
flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment,
all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness,
and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of
solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which
the women crouched.
"What? Did you speak?" shouted Loo, putting his face close to the canvas.
"It is only Marie calling on the saints," was the answer, in Juliette's
laughing voice.
In a few minutes it was over; and, even at the back of the winds, could
be heard the retreat of the hail as it crashed onward toward the valleys
of which every slope is a named vineyard, to beat down in a few wild
moments the result of careful toil and far-sighted expenditure; to wipe
out that which is unique, which no man can replace--the vintage of a
year.
When the hail ceased beating on it, Juliette pushed back the soaked
canvas, which had covered them like a roof, and lifted her face to the
cooler air. The boat was rushing through the water, and close to
Juliette's cheek, just above the gunwale, rose a curved wave, green and
white, and all shimmering with phosphorescence, which seemed to hover
like a hawk above its prey.
The aftermath of the storm was flying overhead in riven ribbons of cloud,
through which the stars were already peeping. To the westward the sky was
clear, and against the last faint glow of the departed sun the lightning
ran hither and thither, skipping and leaping, without sound or
cessation, like fairies dancing.
Immediately overhead, the sail creaked and tugged at its earings, while
the wind sang its high clear song round mast and halliards.
Juliette turned to look at Barebone. He was standing, ankle deep, in
water, leaning backward to windward, in order to give the boat every
pound of weight he could. The lambent summer-lightning on the western
horizon illuminated his face fitfully. In that moment Juliette saw what
is given to few to see and realise--though sailors, perforce, lie down to
sleep knowing it every night--that under Heaven her life was wholly and
solely in the two hands of a fellow-being. She knew it, and saw that
Barebone knew it, though he never glanced at her. She saw the whites of
his eyes gleaming as he looked up, from moment to moment, to the head of
the sail and stooped again to peer under the foot of it into the darkness
ahead. He braced himself, with one foot against the thwart, to haul in a
few inches of sheet, to which the clumsy boat answered immediately. Marie
was praying aloud now, and when she opened her eyes the sight of the
tossing figure in the stern of the boat suddenly turned her terror into
anger.
"Ah!" she cried, "that Jean is a fool. And he, who pretends to have been
a fisherman when he was young--to let us come to our deaths like this!"
She lifted her head, and ducked it again, as a sea jumped up under the
bow and rattled into the boat.
"I see no ship," she cried. "Let us go back, if we can. Name of God!--we
shall be drowned! I see no ship, I tell you!"
"But I do," answered Barebone, shaking the water from his face, for he
had no hand to spare. "But I do, which is more important. And you are not
even wet!"
And he laughed as he brought the boat up into the wind for a few seconds,
to meet a wild gust. Juliette turned in surprise at the sound of his
voice. In the safe and gentle seclusion of the convent-school no one had
thought to teach her that death may be faced with equanimity by others
than the ordained of the Church, and that in the storm and stress of life
men laugh in strange places and at odd times.
Loo was only thinking of his boat and watching the sky for the last of
the storm--that smack, as it were, in the face--with which the Atlantic
ends those black squalls that she sends us, not without thunder and the
curtailed lightning of northern seas. He was planning and shaping his
course; for the watchers on board "The Last Hope" had already seen him,
as he could ascertain by a second light, which suddenly appeared, swung
low, casting a gleam across the surf-strewn water, to show him where the
ladder hung overside.
"Tell Monsieur de Gemosac that I have Mademoiselle and her maid here in
the boat," Barebone called out to Captain Clubbe, whose large face loomed
above the lantern he was holding overside, as he made fast the rope that
had been thrown across his boat and lowered the dripping sail. The water
was smooth enough under the lee of "The Last Hope," which, being deeply
laden, lay motionless at her anchor, with the stream rustling past her
cables.
"Stand up, mademoiselle," said Barebone, himself balanced on the
after-thwart. "Hold on to me, thus, and when I let you go, let yourself
go."
There was no time to protest or to ask questions. And Juliette felt
herself passed on from one pair of strong arms to another, until she was
standing on the deck under the humming rigging, surrounded by men who
seemed huge in their gleaming oil-skins.
"This way, mademoiselle," said one, who was even larger than the others,
in English, of which she understood enough to catch his meaning. "I will
take you to your father. Show a light this way, one of you."
His fingers closed round her arm, and he led her, unconscious of a
strength that almost lifted her from her feet, toward an open door, where
a lamp burnt dimly within. It smelt abominably of an untrimmed wick,
Juliette thought, and the next minute she was kissing her father, who lay
full length on a locker in the little cabin.
She asked him a hundred questions, and waited for few of the answers.
Indeed, she supplied most of them herself; for she was very quick and
gay.
"I see," she cried, "that your foot has been tied up by a sailor. He has
tried to mend it as if it were a broken spar. I suppose that was the
Captain who brought me to you, and then ran away again, as soon as he
could. Yes; I have Marie with me. She is telling them to be careful with
the luggage. I can hear her. I am so glad we had a case of fever at the
school. It was a lay sister, a stupid woman. But how lucky that I should
be at home just when you wanted me!"
She stood upright again, after deftly loosening the bandage round her
father's ankle, and looked at him and laughed.
"Poor, dear old papa," she said. "One sees that you want some one to take
care of you. And this cabin--oh! _mon Dieu_! how bare and uncomfortable!
I suppose men have to go to sea alone because they can persuade no woman
to go with them."
She pounced upon her father again, and arranged afresh the cushions
behind his back, with a little air of patronage and protection. Her back
was turned toward the door, when some one came in, but she heard the
approaching steps and looked quickly round the cabin walls.
"Heavens!" she exclaimed, in a gay whisper. "No looking-glass! One sees
that it is only men who live here."
And she turned, with smiling eyes and a hand upraised to her disordered
hair, to note the new-comer. It was Dormer Colville, who laid aside his
waterproof as he came and greeted her as an old friend. He had, indeed,
known her since her early childhood, and had always succeeded in keeping
pace with her, even in the rapid changes of her last year at school.
"Here is an adventure," he said, shaking hands. "But I can see that you
have taken no harm, and have not even been afraid. For us, it is a
pleasant surprise."
He glanced at her with a smiling approbation, not without a delicate
suggestion of admiration, such as he might well permit himself, and she
might now even consider her due. He was only keeping pace.
"I stayed behind to initiate your maid, who is, of course, unused to a
ship, and the steward speaks but little French. But now they are
arranging your cabin together."
"How delightful!" cried Juliette. "I have never been on a ship before,
you know. And it is all so strange and so nice. All those big men, like
wet ghosts, who said nothing! I think they are more interesting than
women; perhaps it is because they talk less."
"Perhaps it is," admitted Colville, with a sudden gravity, similar to
that with which she had made the suggestion.
"You should hear the Sisters talk--when they are allowed," she said,
confidentially.
"And whisper when they are not. I can imagine it," laughed Colville. "But
now you have left all that behind, and have come out into the world--of
men, one may say. And you have begun at once with an adventure."
"Yes! And we are going to Bordeaux, papa and I, until his foot is well
again. Of course, I was in despair when I was first told of it, but now
that I see him I am no longer anxious. And your messenger assured me that
it was not serious."
She paused to look round the cabin, to make sure that they were alone.
"How strange he is!" she said to both her hearers, in confidence, looking
from one to the other with a quick, bird-like turn of the head and bright
eyes. "I have never seen any one like him."
"No?" said Dormer Colville, encouragingly.
"He said he was an Englishman; but, of course, he is not. He is, French,
and has not the manner of a _bourgeoie_ or a sailor. He has the manner of
an aristocrat--one would say a Royalist--like Albert de Chantonnay, only
a thousand times better."
"Yes," said Colville, glancing at Monsieur de Gemosac.
"More interesting, and so quick and amusing. He spoke of a heritage in
France, and yet he said he was an Englishman. I hope he will secure his
heritage."
"Yes," murmured Colville, still looking at Monsieur de Gemosac.
"And then, when we were in the boat," continued Juliette, still in
confidence to them both, "he changed quite suddenly. He was short and
sharp. He ordered us to do this and that; and one did it, somehow,
without question. Even Marie obeyed him without hesitating, although
she was half mad with fear. We were in danger. I knew that. Any one must
have known it. And yet I was not afraid; I wonder why? And he--he
laughed--that was all. _Mon Dieu!_ he was brave. I never knew that any
one could be so brave!"
She broke off suddenly, with her finger to her lips; for some one had
opened the cabin door. Captain Clubbe came in, filling the whole cabin
with his bulk, and on his heels followed Loo Barebone, his face and hair
still wet and dripping.
"Mademoiselle was wondering," said Dormer Colville, who, it seemed, was
quick to step into that silence which the object of a conversation is apt
to cause--"Mademoiselle was wondering how it was that you escaped
shipwreck in the storm."
"Ah! because one has a star. Even a poor sailor may have a star,
mademoiselle. As well as the Prince Napoleon, who boasts that he has one
of the first magnitude, I understand."
"You are not a poor sailor, monsieur," said Juliette.
"Then who am I?" he asked, with a gay laugh, spreading out his hands and
standing before them, beneath the swinging lamp.
The Marquis de Gemosac raised himself on one elbow.
"I will tell you who you are," he said, in a low, quick voice, pointing
one hand at Loo. "I will tell you." And his voice rose.
"You are the grandson of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. You are the Last
Hope of the French. That is your heritage. Juliette! this is the King of
France!"
Juliette turned and looked at him, with all the colour gone from her
face. Then, instinctively, she dropped on one knee, and before he had
understood, or could stop her, had raised his hand to her lips.