Loo Barebone went back to the Chateau de Gemosac after those travels in
Provence which terminated so oddly on board “The Last Hope,” at anchor
in the Garonne River.
The Marquis received him with enthusiasm and a spirit of optimism which
age could not dim.
“Everything is going a merveille!” he cried. “In three months we shall
be ready to strike our blow--to make our great coup for France. The
failure of Turner's bank was a severe check, I admit, and for a moment
I was in despair. But now we are sure that we shall have the money for
Albert de Chantonnay's Beauvoir estate by the middle of January. The
death of Madame la Duchesse was a misfortune. If we could have persuaded
her to receive you--your face would have done the rest, mon ami--we
should have been invincible. But she was broken, that poor lady. Think
of her life! Few women would have survived half of the troubles that she
carried on those proud shoulders from childhood.”
They were sitting in the little salon in the building that adjoined the
gate-house of Gemosac, of which the stone stairs must have rung beneath
the red spurs of fighting men; of which the walls were dented still with
the mark of arms.
Barebone had given an account of his journey, which had been carried
through without difficulty. Everywhere success had waited upon
him--enthusiasm had marked his passage. In returning to France, he had
stolen a march on his enemies, for nothing seemed to indicate that his
presence in the country was known to them.
“I tell you,” the Marquis explained, “that he has his hands full--that
man in Paris. It is only a month since he changed his ministry. Who
is this St. Arnaud, his Minister of War? Who is Maupas, his Prefect of
Police? Does Monsieur Maupas know that we are nearly ready for our coup?
Bah! Tell me nothing of that sort, gentlemen.”
And this was the universally accepted opinion at this time, of Louis
Bonaparte the President of a tottering Republic, divided against itself;
a dull man, at his wits' end. For months, all Europe had been turning
an inquiring and watchful eye on France. Socialism was rampant. Secret
societies honeycombed the community. There was some danger in the
air--men knew not what. Catastrophe was imminent, and none knew where to
look for its approach. But all thought that it must come at the end of
the year. A sort of panic took hold of all classes. They dreaded the end
of 1851.
The Marquis de Gemosac spoke openly of these things before Juliette. She
had been present when Loo and he talked together of this last journey,
so happily accomplished, so fruitful of result. And Loo did not tell the
Marquis that he had seen his old ship, “The Last Hope,” in the river at
Bordeaux, and had gone on board of her.
Juliette listened, as she worked, beneath the lamp at the table in
the middle of the room. The lace-work she had brought from the
convent-school was not finished yet. It was exquisitely fine and
delicate, and Juliette executed the most difficult patterns with a sort
of careless ease. Sometimes, when the Marquis was more than usually
extravagant in his anticipations of success, or showed a superlative
contempt for his foes, Juliette glanced at Barebone over her lace-work,
but she rarely took part in the talk when politics were under
discussion.
In domestic matters, however, this new chatelaine showed considerable
shrewdness. She was not ignorant of the price of hay, and knew to a cask
how much wine was stored in the vault beneath the old chapel. On these
subjects the Marquis good-humouredly followed her advice sometimes. His
word had always been law in the whole neighbourhood. Was he not the head
of one of the oldest families in France?
“But, pardieu, she shows a wisdom quite phenomenal, that little one,”
the Marquis would tell his friends, with a hearty laugh. It was only
natural that he should consider amusing the idea of uniting wisdom and
youth and beauty in one person. It is still a universally accepted law
that old people must be wise and young persons only charming. Some may
think that they could point to a wise child born of foolish parents; to
a daughter who is well-educated and shrewd, possessing a sense of logic,
and a mother who is ignorant and foolish; to a son who has more sense
than his father: but of course such observers must be mistaken. Old
theories must be the right ones. The Marquis had no doubt of this, at
all events, and thought it most amusing that Juliette should establish
order in the chaos of domestic affairs at Gemosac.
“You are grave,” said Juliette to Barebone, one evening soon after
his return, when they happened to be alone in the little drawing-room.
Barebone was, in fact, not a lively companion; for he had sat staring at
the log-fire for quite three minutes when his eyes might assuredly have
been better employed. “You are grave. Are you thinking of your sins?”
“When I think of those, Mademoiselle, I laugh. It is when I think of you
that I am grave.”
“Thank you.”
“So I am always grave, you understand.”
She glanced quickly, not at him but toward him, and then continued her
lace-making, with the ghost of a smile tilting the corners of her lips.
“It is because I have something to tell you.”
“A secret?” she inquired, and she continued to smile, but differently,
and her eyes hardened almost to resentment.
“Yes; a secret. It is a secret only known to two other people in the
world besides myself. And they will never let you know even that they
share it with you, Mademoiselle.”
“Then they are not women,” she said, with a sudden laugh. “Tell it to
me, then--your secret.”
There had been an odd suggestion of foreknowledge in her manner, as
if she were humouring him by pretending to accept as a secret of vast
importance some news which she had long known--that little air of
patronage which even schoolgirls bestow, at times, upon white-haired
men. It is part of the maternal instinct. But this vanished when she
heard that she was to share the secret with two men, and she repeated,
impatiently, “Tell me, please.”
“It is a secret which will make a difference to us all our lives,
Mademoiselle,” he said, warningly. “It will not leave us the same as it
found us. It has made a difference to all who know it. Therefore, I have
only decided to tell you after long consideration. It is, in fact, a
point of honour. It is necessary for you to know, whatever the result
may be. Of that I have no doubt whatever.”
He laughed reassuringly, which made her glance at him gravely, almost
anxiously.
“And are you going on telling it to other people, afterward,” she
inquired; “to my father, for instance?”
“No, Mademoiselle. It comes to you, and it stops at you. I do not mind
withholding it from your father, and from all the friends who have been
so kind to me in France. I do not mind deceiving kings and emperors,
Mademoiselle, and even the People, which is now always spelt in capital
letters, and must be spoken of with bated breath.”
She gave a scornful little laugh, as at the sound of an old jest--the
note of a deathless disdain which was in the air she breathed.
“Not even the newspapers, which are trying to govern France. All that is
a question of politics. But when it comes to you, Mademoiselle, that is
a different matter.”
“Ah!”
“Yes. It is then a question of love.”
Juliette slowly changed colour, but she gave a little gay laugh of
incredulity and bent her head away from the light of the lamp.
“That is a different code of honour altogether,” he said, gravely. “A
code one does not wish to tamper with.”
“No?” she inquired, with the odd little smile of foreknowledge again.
“No. And, therefore, before I go any farther, I think it best to tell
you that I am not what I am pretending to be. I am pretending to be
the son of the little Dauphin, who escaped from the Temple. He may have
escaped from the Temple; that I don't know. But I know, or at least I
think I know, that he is not buried in Farlingford churchyard and he was
not my father. I can pass as the grandson of Louis XVI.; I know that.
I can deceive all the world. I can even climb to the throne of France,
perhaps. There are many, as you know, who think I shall do it without
difficulty. But I do not propose to deceive YOU, Mademoiselle.”
There was a short silence, while Loo watched her face. Juliette had not
even changed colour. When she was satisfied that he had nothing more to
add, she looked at him, her needle poised in the air.
“Do you think it matters?” she asked, in a little cool, even voice.
It was so different from what he had expected that, for a moment, he
was taken aback. Captain Clubbe's bluff, uncompromising reception of the
same news had haunted his thoughts. “The square thing,” that sailor had
said, “and damn your friends; damn France.” Loo looked at Juliette in
doubt; then, suddenly, he understood her point of view; he understood
her. He had learnt to understand a number of people and a number of
points of view during the last twelve months.
“So long as I succeed?” he suggested.
“Yes,” she answered, simply. “So long as you succeed, I do not see that
it can matter who you are.”
“And if I succeed,” pursued Loo, gravely, “will you marry me,
Mademoiselle?”
“Oh! I never said that,” in a voice that was ready to yield to a really
good argument.
“And if I fail--” Barebone paused for an instant. He still doubted
his own perception. “And if I fail, you would not marry me under any
circumstances?”
“I do not think my father would let me,” she answered, with her eyes
cast down upon her lace-frame.
Barebone leant forward to put together the logs, which burnt with
a white incandescence that told of a frosty night. The Marquis had
business in the town, and would soon return from the notary's, in time
to dress for dinner.
“Well,” said Loo, over his shoulder, “it is as well to understand each
other, is it not?”
“Yes,” she answered, significantly. She ignored the implied sarcasm
altogether. There was so much meaning in her reply that Loo turned to
look at her. She was smiling as she worked.
“Yes,” she went on; “you have told me your secret--a secret. But I have
the other, too; the secret you have not told me, mon ami. I have had it
always.”
“Ah?”
“The secret that you do not love me,” said Juliette, in her little wise,
even voice; “that you have never loved me. Ah! You think we do not know.
You think that I am too young. But we are never too young to know that,
to know all about it. I think we know it in our cradles.”
She spoke with a strange philosophy, far beyond her years. It might
have been Madame de Chantonnay who spoke, with all that lady's vast
experience of life and without any of her folly.
“You think I am pretty. Perhaps I am. Just pretty enough to enable you
to pretend, and you have pretended very well at times. You are good at
pretending, one must conclude. Oh! I bear no ill-will....”
She broke off and looked at him, with a gay laugh, in which there was
certainly no note of ill-will to be detected.
“But it is as well,” she went on, “as you say, that we should understand
each other. Thank you for telling me your secret--the one you have told
me. I am flattered at that mark of your confidence. A woman is always
glad to be told a secret, and immediately begins to anticipate the
pleasure she will take in telling it to others, in confidence.”
She looked up for a moment from her work; for Loo had given a short
laugh. She looked, to satisfy herself that it was not the ungenerous
laugh that nine men out of ten would have cast at her; and it was not.
For Loo was looking at her with frank amusement.
“Oh, yes,” she said; “I know that, too. It is one of the items not
included in a convent education. It is unnecessary to teach us such
things as that. We know them before we go in. Your secret is safe enough
with me, however--the one you have told me. That is the least I can
promise in return for your confidence. As to the other secret, bon Dieu!
we will pretend I do not know it, if you like. At all events, you can
vow that you never told me, if--if ever you are called upon to do so.”
She paused for a moment to finish off a thread. Then, when she reached
out her hand for the reel, she glanced at him with a smile, not unkind.
“So you need not pretend any more, monsieur,” she said, seeing that
Barebone was wise enough to keep silence. “I do not know who you are,
mon ami,” she went on, in a little burst of confidence; “and, as I told
you just now, I do not care. And, as to that other matter, there is no
ill-will. I only permit myself to wonder, sometimes, if she is pretty.
That is feminine, I suppose. One can be feminine quite young, you
understand.”
She looked at him with unfathomable eyes and a little smile, such as men
never forget once they have seen it.
“But you were inclined to be ironical just now, when I said I would
marry you if you were successful. So I mention that other secret just to
show that the understanding you wish to arrive at may be mutual--there
may be two sides to it. I hear my father coming. That is his voice at
the gate. We will leave things as they stand: n'est ce pas?”
She rose as she spoke and went toward the door. The Marquis's voice was
raised, and there seemed to be some unusual clamour at the gate.