IN THE FURROW AGAIN
Turner, stumbling along the road to "The Black Sailor," probably wondered
why he had failed. It is to be presumed that he knew that the ally he had
looked to for powerful aid had played him false at the crucial moment.
His misfortune is common to all men who presume to take anything for
granted from a woman.
Barebone, stumbling along in the dark in another direction, was as angry
with Miriam as she in her turn was angry with Turner. She was, Barebone
reflected, so uncompromising. She saw her course so clearly, so
unmistakably--as birds that fly in the night--and from that course
nothing, it seemed, would move her. It was a question of temperament and
not of principle. For, even half a century ago, high principles were
beginning to go out of fashion in the upper strata of a society which in
these days tolerates anything except cheating at games.
Barebone himself was of a different temperament. He liked to blind
himself to the inevitable end, to temporise with the truth, whereas
Miriam, with a sort of dogged courage essentially English, perceived the
hard truth at once and clung to it, though it hurt. And all the while
Barebone knew at the back of his heart that his life was not his own to
shape. At the end, says an Italian motto, stands Destiny. Barebone wanted
to make believe; he wanted to pretend that his path lay down a flowery
way, knowing all the while that he had a hill to climb and Destiny stood
at the top.
Colville had come at the right time. It is the fate of some men to come
at the right moment, just as it is the lot of others never to be there
when they are wanted and their place is filled by a bystander and an
opportunity is gone for ever. Which is always a serious matter, for God
only gives one or two opportunities to each of us.
Colville had come with his ready sympathy, not expressed as the
world expresses its sympathy, in words, but by a hundred little
self-abnegations. He was always ready to act up to the principles of his
companion for the moment or to act up to no principles at all should that
companion be deficient. Moreover, he never took it upon himself to judge
others, but extended to his neighbour a large tolerance, in return for
which he seemed to ask nothing.
"I have a carriage," he said, when on a broader cart-track they could
walk side by side, "waiting for me at the roadside inn at the junction of
the two roads. The man brought me from Ipswich to the outskirts of
Farlingford, and I sent him back to the high road to wait for me there,
to put up and stay all night, if necessary."
Barebone was beginning to feel tired. The wind was abominably cold. He
heard with satisfaction that Colville had as usual foreseen his wishes.
"I dogged Turner all the way from Paris, hardly letting him out of my
sight," Colville explained, cheerily, when they at length reached the
road. "It is easy enough to keep in touch with one so remarkably stout,
for every one remembers him. What did he come to Farlingford for?"
"Apparently to try and buy me off."
"For Louis Bonaparte?"
"He did not say so,"
"No," said Colville. "He would not say so. But it is pretty generally
suspected that he is in that galley, and pulls an important oar in it,
too. What did he offer you?"
"Fifty thousand pounds."
"Whew!" whistled Colville. He stopped short in the middle of the road.
"Whew!" he repeated, thoughtfully, "fifty thousand pounds! Gad! They must
be afraid of you. They must think that we are in a strong position. And
what did you say, Barebone?"
"I refused."
"Why?"
Barebone paused, and after a moment's thought made no answer at all. He
could not explain to Dormer Colville his reason for refusing.
"Outright?" inquired Colville, deep in thought.
"Yes."
Colville turned and glanced at him sideways, though it was too dark to
see his face.
"I should have thought," he said, tentatively, after a while, "that it
would have been wise to accept. A bird in the hand, you know--a damned
big bird! And then afterwards you could see what turned up."
"You mean I could break my word later on," inquired Barebone, with that
odd downrightness which at times surprised Colville and made him think of
Captain Clubbe.
"Well, you know," he explained, with a tolerant laugh, "in politics it
often turns out that a man's duty is to break his word--duty toward his
party, and his country, and that sort of thing."
Which was plausible enough, as many eminent politicians seem to have
found in these later times.
"I dare say it may be so," answered Barebone, "but I refused outright,
and there is an end to it."
For now that he was brought face to face with the situation, shorn of
side issues and set squarely before him, he envisaged it clearly enough.
He did not want fifty thousand pounds. He had only wanted the money for a
moment because the thought leapt into his mind that fifty thousand pounds
meant Miriam. Then he saw that little contemptuous smile tilting the
corner of her lips, and he had no use for a million.
If he could not have Miriam, he would be King of France. It is thus that
history is made, for those who make it are only men. And Clio, that
greatest of the daughters of Zeus, about whose feet cluster all the
famous names of the makers of this world's story, has, after all, only
had the reversion of the earth's great men. She has taken them after some
forgotten woman of their own choosing has had the first refusal.
Thus it came about that the friendship so nearly severed one evening at
the Hotel Gemosac, in Paris, was renewed after a few months; and Barebone
felt assured once more that no one was so well disposed toward him as
Dormer Colville.
There was no formal reconciliation, and neither deemed it necessary to
refer to the past. Colville, it will be remembered, was an adept at that
graceful tactfulness which is somewhat clumsily described by this
tolerant generation as going on as if nothing had happened.
By the time that the waning moon was high enough in the eastern sky to
shed an appreciable light upon their path, they reached the junction of
the two roads and set off at a brisk pace southward toward Ipswich. So
far as the eye could reach, the wide heath was deserted, and they talked
at their ease.
"There is nothing for it but to wake up my driver and make him take us
back to Ipswich to-night. To-morrow morning we can take train to London
and be there almost as soon as John Turner realises that you have given
him the slip," said Colville, cheerily.
"And then?"
"And then back to France--where the sun shines, my friend, and the spring
is already in the air. Think of that! It is so, at least, at Gemosac, for
I heard from the Marquis before I quitted Paris. Your disappearance has
nearly broken a heart or two down there, I can tell you. The old Marquis
was in a great state of anxiety. I have never seen him so upset about
anything, and Juliette did not seem to be able to offer him any
consolation."
"Back to France?" echoed Barebone, not without a tone of relief, almost
of exultation, in his voice. "Will it be possible to go back there, since
we have to run away from Farlingford?"
"Safer there than here," replied Colville. "It may sound odd, but it is
true. De Gemosac is one of the most powerful men in France--not
intellectually, perhaps, but by reason of his great name--and they would
not dare to touch a protégé or a guest of his. If you go back there now
you must stay at Gemosac; they have put the château into a more habitable
condition, and are ready to receive you."
He turned and glanced at Loo's face in the moonlight.
"There will be a difference, you understand. You will be a different
person from what you were when last there," he went on, in a muffled
voice.
"Yes, I understand," replied Barebone, gravely. Already the dream was
taking shape--Colville's persuasive voice had awakened him to find that
it was no dream, but a reality--and Farlingford was fading back into the
land of shadows. It was only France, after all, that was real.
"That journey of ours," explained Colville, vaguely, "has made an
extraordinary difference. The whole party is aroused and in deadly
earnest now."
Barebone made no answer, and they walked on in meditative silence toward
the roadside inn, which stood up against the southern sky a few hundred
yards ahead.
"In fact," Colville added, after a silence, "the ball is at your feet,
Barebone. There can be no looking back now."
And again Barebone made no answer. It was a tacit understanding, then.
For greater secrecy, Barebone walked on toward Ipswich alone, while
Colville went into the inn to arouse his driver, whom he found slumbering
in the wide chimney corner before a log fire. From Ipswich to London, and
thus on to Newhaven, they journeyed pleasantly enough in company, for
they were old companions of the road, and Colville's unruffled good
humour made him an easy comrade for travel even in days when the idea of
comfort reconciled with speed had not suggested itself to the mind of
man.
Such, indeed, was his foresight that he had brought with him to London,
and there left awaiting further need of it, that personal baggage which
Loo had perforce left behind him at the Hotel Gemosac in Paris.
They made but a brief halt in London, where Colville admitted gaily that
he had no desire to be seen.
"I might meet my tailor in Piccadilly," he said. "And there are others
who may perhaps consider themselves aggrieved."
At Colville's club, where they dined, he met more than one friend.
"Hallo!" said one who had the ruddy countenance and bluff manners of a
retired major. "Hallo! Who'd have expected to see you here? I didn't
know--I--thought--eh! dammy!"
And a hundred facetious questions gleamed from the major's eye.
"All right, my boy," answered Colville, cheerfully. "I am off to France
to-morrow morning."
The Major shook his head wisely as if in approval of a course of conduct
savouring of that prudence which is the better part of valour, glanced at
Loo Barebone, and waited in vain for an invitation to take a vacant chair
near at hand.
"Still in the south of France, I suppose?"
"Still in the south of France," replied Colville, turning to Barebone in
a final way, which had the effect of dismissing this inquisitive idler.
While they were at dinner another came. He was a raw-boned Scotchman, who
spoke in broken English when the waiter was absent and in perfect French
when that servitor hovered near.
"I wish I could show my face in Paris," he said, frankly, "but I can't.
Too much mixed up with Louis Philippe to find favour in the eyes of the
Prince President."
"Why?" asked Colville. "What could you gain by showing in Paris a face
which I am sure has the stamp of innocence all over it?"
The Scotchman laughed curtly.
"Gain?" he answered. "Gain? I don't say I would, but I think I might be
able to turn an honest penny out of the approaching events."
"What events?"
"The Lord alone knows," replied the Scotchman, who had never set foot in
his country, but had acquired elsewhere the prudent habit of never
answering a question. "France doesn't, I am sure of that. I am thinking
there will be events, though, before long, Colville. Will there not,
now?"
Colville looked at him with an open smile.
"You mean," he said, slowly, "the Prince President."
"That is what he calls himself at present. I'm wondering how long. Eh!
man. He is just pouring money into the country from here, from America,
from Austria--from wherever he can get it."
"Why is he doing that?"
"You must ask somebody who knows him better than I do. They say you knew
him yourself once well enough, eh?"
"He is not a man I have much faith in," said Colville, vaguely. "And
France has no faith in him at all."
"So I'm told. But France--well, does France know what she wants? She
mostly wants something without knowing what it is. She is like a woman.
It's excitement she wants, perhaps. And she will buy it at any cost, and
then find afterward she has paid too dear for it. That is like a woman,
too. But it isn't another Bonaparte she wants, I am sure of that."
"So am I," answered Colville, with a side glance toward Barebone, a mere
flicker of the eyelids.
"Not unless it is a Napoleon of that ilk."
"And he is not," completed Colville.
"But--" the Scotchman paused, for a waiter came at this moment to tell
him that his dinner was ready at a table nearer to the fire. "But," he
went on, in French, for the waiter lingered, "but he might be able to
persuade France that it is himself she wants--might he not, now? With
money at the back of it, eh?"
"He might," admitted Colville, doubtfully. The Scotchman moved away, but
came back again.
"I am thinking," he said, with a grim smile, "that like all intelligent
people who know France, you are aware that it is a King she wants."
"But not an Orleans King," replied Colville, with his friendly and
indifferent laugh.
The Scotchman smiled more grimly still and went away.
He was seated too near for Colville and Loo to talk of him. But Colville
took an opportunity to mention his name in an undertone. It was a name
known all over Europe then, and forgotten now.