"NINETEEN"
As Juliette returned to the Gate House she encountered her father,
walking arm-in-arm with Dormer Colville. The presence of the Englishman
within the enceinte of the chateau was probably no surprise to her, for
she must have heard the clang of the bell just within the gate, which
could not be opened from outside; by which alone access was gained to any
part of the château.
Colville was in riding costume. It was, indeed, his habitual dress when
living in France, for he made no concealment of his partnership in a
well-known business house in Bordeaux.
"I am a sleeping partner," he would say, with that easy flow of egotistic
confidence which is the surest way of learning somewhat of your
neighbour's private affairs. "I am a sleeping partner at all times except
the vintage, when I awake and ride round among the growers, to test their
growth."
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 in
the saddle in a country where land is so valuable that the width of a
road is grudged, and bridle-ways are deemed good enough for the passage
of the long and narrow carts that carry wine.
Ever since their somewhat precipitate departure from the Villa Cordouan
at Royan, Dormer Colville and Barebone had been in company. They had
stayed together, in one friend's house or another. Sometimes they enjoyed
the hospitality of a château, and at others put up with the scanty
accommodation of a priest's house or the apartment of a retired military
officer, in one of those little towns of provincial France at which the
cheap 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 have
business 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 of
wine. We are travelling from place to place to watch the growth. For the
wine is hidden in the grape, and the grape is ripening."
And, as often as not, the chance acquaintance of an inn dejeuner would
catch the phrase and repeat it thoughtfully.
"Ah! is that so?" he would ask, with a sudden glance at Dormer Colville's
companion, who had hitherto passed unobserved as the silent subordinate
of 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 a
self-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 very
inappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the front by a clumsy
conversationalist.
There is no hazard of life so certain to discover sympathy or antagonism
as travel--a fact which points to the wisdom of beginning married life
with a journey. The majority of people like to know the worst at once. To
travel, however, with Dormer Colville was a liberal education in the
virtues. No man could be less selfish or less easily fatigued; which are
the two bases upon which rest all the stumbling-blocks of travel.
Up to a certain point, Barebone and Dormer Colville became fast friends
during 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, better
than the principal inn of a town of the same size in any other habitable
part of the globe.
There were many reasons why the Marquis de Gemosac had yielded to
Colville's contention--that the time had not yet come for Loo Barebone to
be 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 who
is prepared to take trouble. He must learn that it is necessary to act
for himself. He needs rousing. Let him travel through France, and see for
himself that of which he has as yet only learnt at second-hand. That will
rouse him."
And the journey through the valleys of the Garonne and the Dordogne had
been undertaken.
Another, greater journey, was now afoot, to end at no less a centre of
political life than Paris. A start was to be made this evening, and
Dormer Colville now came to report that all was ready and the horses at
the 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 inhaling
the scent of the flowers growing knee-deep all around him, "men would
accomplish little in their brief lifetime."
His eyes, dreamy and reflective, wandered over the scene and paused, just
for a moment in passing, on Juliette's face. She continued her way, with
no other answer than a smile.
"She grows, my dear Marquis--she grows every minute of the day and
wakes up a new woman every morning," said Colville, in a confidential
aside, and he went forward to meet Loo with his accustomed laugh of
good-fellowship. He whom the world calls a good fellow is never a wise
man.
Barebone walked toward the gate without joining in the talk of his
companions. He was thoughtful and uneasy. He had come to say good-bye and
nothing else. He was wondering if he had really meant what he had said.
"Come," interrupted Colville's smooth voice. "We must get into the saddle
and begone. I was just telling Monsieur and Mademoiselle Juliette, that
any man might be tempted to linger at Gemosac until the active years of a
lifetime rolled by."
The Marquis made the needful reply; hoping that he might yet live to see
Gemosac--and not only Gemosac, but a hundred châteaux like it--reawakened
to their ancient glory, and thrown open to welcome the restorer of their
fallen fortunes.
Colville looked from one to the other, and then, with his foot in the
stirrup, 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, and
to fight for between ourselves when we are tired and cross at the end of
a 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 of
Colville's horse, her face wearing a little mystic smile.
Thus they departed, at sunset, on a journey of which old men will still
talk in certain parts of France. Here and there, in the Angoumois, in
Guienne, in the Vendée, and in the western parts of Brittany, the student
of forgotten history may find an old priest who will still persist in
dividing France into the ancient provinces, and will tell how Hope rode
through the Royalist country when he himself was busy at his first cure.
The journey lasted nearly two months, and before they passed north of the
Loire at Nantes and quitted the wine country, the vintage was over.
"We must say that we are cider merchants, that is all," observed Dormer
Colville, when they crossed the river, which has always been the great
divider of France.
"He is sobering down. I believe he will become serious," wrote he to the
Marquis de Gemosac. But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as
possible.
"I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot," he explained, airily, to his
companion. "The ship is yours, and you probably know more about the
shoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you were
at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe. And yet, before you
could get into port, you found yourself forced to take the compulsory
pilot 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 have
done as well without him. So you must put up with my company as
gracefully as you can, remembering that you can drop me as soon as you
are in port."
And surely, none other could have occupied an uncomfortable position so
gracefully.
Barebone found that he had not much to do. He soon accommodated himself
to a position which required nothing more active than a ready ear and a
gracious patience. For, day by day--almost hour by hour--it was his lot
to listen to protestations of loyalty to a cause which smouldered none
the less hotly because it was hidden from the sight of the Prince
President'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 he
had talked gaily enough, seeing a hundred humorous incidents in the
passing events of the day; laughing at the recollection of an interview
with some provincial notable who had fallen behind the times, or jesting
readily 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 with
them at their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial noble
greeting him on the step of his remote and quiet house added a note to
the drumming reality which dominated his waking moments and disturbed his
sleep at night.
Day by day they rode on, passing through two or three villages between
such halts as were needed by the horses. At every hamlet, in the large
villages, where they rested and had their food, at the remote little town
where they passed a night, there was always some one expecting them, who
came and talked of the weather and more or less skilfully brought in the
numeral nineteen. "Nineteen! Nineteen!" It was a watchword all over
France.
Long before, on the banks of the Dordogne, Loo had asked his companion
why 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 and
remote that nothing like it may be found in these crowded islands, the
number seemed to follow them; or, rather, to pass on before them and
await 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 was
mysteriously flooded with cheap portraits of the great Napoleon. It was
before the days of pictorial advertisement, and young ladies who wished
to make an advantageous marriage had no means of advertising the fact and
themselves in supplements to illustrated papers. The walls of inns and
shops 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 of
the great Napoleon. It was an innovation, and as such readily enough
accepted.
At every fair, at the great fête of St. Jean, at St. Jean d'Angély and a
hundred other fêtes of purely local notoriety, at least one hawker of
cheap lithographs was to be found. And if the buyer haggled, he could get
the 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 remoter
villages and the world; and the peasants carried home with them a
picture, for the first time, to hang on their walls. Thus the Prince
President 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 in
pencil.
But Barebone had ceased to laugh at the constant repetition now. Soon
Colville ceased to point out the silent witness, for he perceived that
Loo was looking for it himself, detecting its absence with a gleam of
determination in his eyes or noting its recurrence with a sharp sigh, as
of the consciousness of a great responsibility.
Thus the reality was gradually forced upon him that that into which he
had entered half in jest was no jest at all; that he was moving forward
on a road which seemed easy enough, but of which the end was not
perceptible; 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 to
those that follow--must at one moment of their career have perceived
their road before them, thus. Each must have realised that once set out
upon that easy path there is no turning aside and no turning back. And
many have chosen to turn back while there was yet time, leaving the mark
unmade. For most men are cowards and shun responsibility. Most men
unconsciously steer their way by proverb or catchword; and all the wise
saws 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 breathed
again like one who had held his breath for long. Those colder, sterner
men of Brittany, who, in later times, compared notes with the nobles of
Guienne and the Vendée, seemed to talk of a different man; for they spoke
of one who rarely laughed, and never turned aside from a chosen path
which was in no wise bordered by flowers.