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Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope
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22 This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
THE LAST HOPE
BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN.
"What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?" I cried.
"A hidden hope," the voice replied.
CONTENTS
I. LE ROI EST MORT
II. VIVE LE ROI
III. THE RETURN OF "THE LAST HOPE"
IV. THE MARQUIS'S CREED
V. ON THE DYKE
VI. THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS
VII. ON THE SCENT
VIII. THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING
IX. A MISTAKE
X. IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE
XI. A BEGINNING
XII. THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC
XIII. WITHIN THE GATES
XIV. THE LIFTED VEIL
XV. THE TURN OF THE TIDE
XVI. THE GAMBLERS
XVII. ON THE PONT ROYAL
XVIII. THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS
XIX. IN THE BREACH
XX. "NINETEEN"
XXI. NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB
XXII. DROPPING THE PILOT
XXIII. A SIMPLE BANKER
XXIV. THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS
XXV. SANS RANCUNE
XXVI. RETURNED EMPTY
XXVII. OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
XXVIII. BAREBONE'S PRICE
XXIX. IN THE DARK
XXX. IN THE FURROW AGAIN
XXXI. THE THURSDAY OF MADAME DE CHANTONNAY
XXXII. PRIMROSES
XXXIII. DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND
XXXIV. A SORDID MATTER
XXXV. A SQUARE MAN
XXXVI. MRS. ST. PIERRE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND
XXXVII. AN UNDERSTANDING
XXXVIII. A COUP-D'ETAT
XXXIX. "JOHN DARBY"
XL. FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE
CHAPTER I. LE ROI EST MORT
"There; that's it. That's where they buried Frenchman," said
Andrew--known as River Andrew. For there was another Andrew who
earned his living on the sea.
River Andrew had conducted the two gentlemen from "The Black Sailor"
to the churchyard by their own request. A message had been sent to
him in the morning that this service would be required of him, to
which he had returned the answer that they would have to wait until
the evening. It was his day to go round Marshford way with dried
fish, he said; but in the evening they could see the church if they
still set their minds on it.
River Andrew combined the light duties of grave-digger and clerk to
the parish of Farlingford in Suffolk with a small but steady
business in fish of his own drying, nets of his own netting, and
pork slain and dressed by his own weather-beaten hands.
For Farlingford lies in that part of England which reaches seaward
toward the Fatherland, and seems to have acquired from that
proximity an insatiable appetite for sausages and pork. On these
coasts the killing of pigs and the manufacture of sausages would
appear to employ the leisure of the few, who for one reason or
another have been deemed unfit for the sea. It is not our business
to inquire why River Andrew had never used the fickle element. All
that lay in the past. And in a degree he was saved from the
disgrace of being a landsman by the smell of tar and bloaters that
heralded his coming, by the blue jersey and the brown homespun
trousers which he wore all the week, and by the saving word which
distinguished him from the poor inland lubbers who had no dealings
with water at all.
He had this evening laid aside his old sou'wester--worn in fair and
foul weather alike--for his Sunday hat. His head-part was therefore
official and lent additional value to the words recorded. He spoke
them, moreover, with a dim note of aggressiveness which might only
have been racy of a soil breeding men who are curt and clear of
speech. But there was more than an East Anglian bluffness in the
statement and the manner of its delivery, as his next observation at
once explained.
"Passen thinks it's over there by the yew-tree--but he's wrong.
That there one was a wash-up found by old Willem the lighthouse
keeper one morning early. No! this is where Frenchman was laid by."
He indicated with the toe of his sea-boot a crumbling grave which
had never been distinguished by a headstone. The grass grew high
all over Farlingford churchyard, almost hiding the mounds where the
forefathers slept side by side with the nameless "wash-ups," to whom
they had extended a last hospitality.
River Andrew had addressed his few remarks to the younger of his two
companions, a well-dressed, smartly set-up man of forty or
thereabouts, who in turn translated the gist of them into French for
the information of his senior, a little white-haired gentleman whom
he called "Monsieur le Marquis."
He spoke glibly enough in either tongue, with a certain indifference
of manner. This was essentially a man of cities, and one better
suited to the pavement than the rural quiet of Farlingford. To have
the gift of tongues is no great recommendation to the British born,
and River Andrew looked askance at this fine gentleman while he
spoke French. He had received letters at the post-office under the
name of Dormer Colville: a name not unknown in London and Paris,
but of which the social fame had failed to travel even to Ipswich,
twenty miles away from this mouldering churchyard.
"It's getting on for twenty-five years come Michaelmas," put in
River Andrew. "I wasn't digger then; but I remember the burial well
enough. And I remember Frenchman--same as if I see him yesterday."
He plucked a blade of grass from the grave and placed it between his
teeth.
"He were a mystery, he were," he added, darkly, and turned to look
musingly across the marshes toward the distant sea. For River
Andrew, like many hawkers of cheap wares, knew the indirect
commercial value of news.
The little white-haired Frenchman made a gesture of the shoulders
and outspread hands indicative of a pious horror at the condition of
this neglected grave. The meaning of his attitude was so obvious
that River Andrew shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Passen," he said, "he don't take no account of the graves. He's
what you might call a bookworm. Always a sitting indoors reading
books and pictures. Butcher Franks turns his sheep in from time to
time. But along of these tempests and the hot sun the grass has
shot up a bit. Frenchman's no worse off than others. And there's
some as are fallen in altogether."
He indicated one or two graves where the mound had sunk, and
suggestive hollows were visible in the grass.
"First, it's the coffin that bu'sts in beneath the weight, then it's
the bones," he added, with that grim realism which is begotten of
familiarity.
Dormer Colville did not trouble to translate these general truths.
He suppressed a yawn as he contemplated the tottering headstones of
certain master-mariners and Trinity-pilots taking their long rest in
the immediate vicinity. The churchyard lay on the slope of rising
ground upon which the village of Farlingford straggled upward in one
long street. Farlingford had once been a town of some commercial
prosperity. Its story was the story of half a dozen ports on this
coast--a harbour silted up, a commerce absorbed by a more prosperous
neighbour nearer to the railway.
Below the churchyard was the wide street which took a turn eastward
at the gates and led straight down to the river-side. Farlingford
Quay--a little colony of warehouses and tarred huts--was separated
from Farlingford proper by a green, where the water glistened at
high tide. In olden days the Freemen of Farlingford had been
privileged to graze their horses on the green. In these later times
the lord of the manor pretended to certain rights over the
pasturage, which Farlingford, like one man, denied him.
"A mystery," repeated River Andrew, waiting very clearly for Mr.
Dormer Colville to translate the suggestive word to the French
gentleman. But Colville only yawned. "And there's few in
Farlingford as knew Frenchman as well as I did."
Mr. Colville walked toward the church porch, which seemed to appeal
to his sense of the artistic; for he studied the Norman work with
the eye of a connoisseur. He was evidently a cultured man, more
interested in a work of art than in human story.
River Andrew, seeing him depart, jingled the keys which he carried
in his hand, and glanced impatiently toward the older man. The
Marquis de Gemosac, however, ignored the sound as completely as he
had ignored River Andrew's remarks. He was looking round him with
eyes which had once been dark and bright, and were now dimly yellow.
He looked from tomb to tomb, vainly seeking one that should be
distinguished, if only by the evidence of a little care at the hands
of the living. He looked down the wide grass-grown street--partly
paved after the manner of the Netherlands--toward the quay, where
the brown river gleamed between the walls of the weather-beaten
brick buildings. There was a ship lying at the wharf, half laden
with hay; a coasting craft from some of the greater tidal rivers,
the Orwell or the Blackwater. A man was sitting on a piece of
timber on the quay, smoking as he looked seaward. But there was no
one else in sight. For Farlingford was half depopulated, and it was
tea-time. Across the river lay the marshes, unbroken by tree or
hedge, barren of even so much as a hut. In the distance, hazy and
grey in the eye of the North Sea, a lighthouse stood dimly, like a
pillar of smoke. To the south--so far as the eye could pierce the
sea haze--marshes. To the north--where the river ran between bare
dykes--marshes.
And withal a silence which was only intensified by the steady hum of
the wind through the gnarled branches of the few churchyard trees
which turn a crouching back toward the ocean.
In all the world--save, perhaps, in the Arctic world--it would be
hard to find a picture emphasising more clearly the fact that a
man's life is but a small matter, and the memory of it like the seed
of grass upon the wind to be blown away and no more recalled.
The bearer of one of the great names of France stood knee-deep in
the sun-tanned grass and looked slowly round as if seeking to
imprint the scene upon his memory. He turned to glance at the
crumbling church behind him, built long ago by men speaking the
language in which his own thoughts found shape. He looked slowly
from end to end of the ill-kept burial ground, crowded with the
bones of the nameless and insignificant dead, who, after a life
passed in the daily struggle to wrest a sufficiency of food from a
barren soil, or the greater struggle to hold their own against a
greedy sea, had faded from the memory of the living, leaving naught
behind them but a little mound where the butcher put his sheep to
graze.
Monsieur de Gemosac was so absorbed in his reflections that he
seemed to forget his surroundings and stood above the grave, pointed
out to him by River Andrew, oblivious to the cold wind that blew in
from the sea, deaf to the clink of the sexton's inviting keys,
forgetful of his companion who stood patiently waiting within the
porch. The Marquis was a little bent man, spare of limb, heavy of
shoulder, with snow-white hair against which his skin, brown and
wrinkled as a walnut shell, looked sallow like old ivory. His face
was small and aquiline; not the face of a clever man, but clearly
the face of an aristocrat. He had the grand manner too, and that
quiet air of self-absorption which usually envelops the bearers of
historic names.
Dormer Colville watched him with a good-natured patience which
pointed, as clearly as his attitude and yawning indifference, to the
fact that he was not at Farlingford for his own amusement.
Presently he lounged back again toward the Marquis and stood behind
him.
"The wind is cold, Marquis," he said, pleasantly. "One of the
coldest spots in England. What would Mademoiselle say if I allowed
you to take a chill?"
De Gemosac turned and looked at him over his shoulder with a smile
full of pathetic meaning. He spread out his arms in a gesture
indicative of horror at the bleakness of the surroundings; at the
mournfulness of the decaying village; the dreary hopelessness of the
mouldering church and tombs.
"I was thinking, my friend," he said. "That was all. It is not
surprising . . . that one should think."
Colville heaved a sigh and said nothing. He was, it seemed,
essentially a sympathetic man; not of a thoughtful habit himself,
but tolerant of thought in others. It was abominably windy and
cold, although the corn was beginning to ripen; but he did not
complain. Neither did he desire to hurry his companion in any way.
He looked at the crumbling grave with a passing shadow in his clever
and worldly eyes, and composed himself to await his friend's
pleasure.
In his way he must have been a philosopher. His attitude did not
suggest that he was bored, and yet it was obvious that he was
eminently out of place in this remote spot. He had nothing in
common, for instance, with River Andrew, and politely yawned that
reminiscent fish-curer into silence. His very clothes were of a cut
and fashion never before seen in Farlingford. He wore them, too,
with an air rarely assumed even in the streets of Ipswich.
Men still dressed with care at this time; for d'Orsay was not yet
dead, though his fame was tarnished. Mr. Dormer Colville was not a
dandy, however. He was too clever to go to that extreme and too
wise not to be within reach of it in an age when great tailors were
great men, and it was quite easy to make a reputation by clothes
alone.
Not only was his dress too fine for Farlingford, but his personality
was not in tune with this forgotten end of England. His movements
were too quick for a slow-moving race of men; no fools, and wiser
than their midland brethren; slow because they had yet to make sure
that a better way of life had been discovered than that way in which
their Saxon forefathers had always walked.
Colville seemed to look at the world with an exploiting eye. He had
a speculative mind. Had he lived at the end of the Victorian era
instead of the beginning he might have been a notable financier.
His quick glance took in all Farlingford in one comprehensive
verdict. There was nothing to be made of it. It was uninteresting
because it obviously had no future, nor encouraged any enterprise.
He looked across the marshes indifferently, following the line of
the river as it made its devious way between high dykes to the sea.
And suddenly his eye lighted. There was a sail to the south. A
schooner was standing in to the river mouth, her sails glowing
rosily in the last of the sunset light.
Colville turned to see whether River Andrew had noticed, and saw
that landsman looking skyward with an eye that seemed to foretell
the early demise of a favouring wind.
"That's 'The Last Hope,'" he said, in answer to Dormer Colville's
question. "And it will take all Seth Clubbe's seamanship to save
the tide. 'The Last Hope.' There's many a 'Hope,' built at
Farlingford, and that's the last, for the yard is closed and there's
no more building now."
The Marquis de Gemosac had turned away from the grave, but as
Colville approached him he looked back to it with a shake of the
head.
"After eight centuries of splendour, my friend," he said. "Can that
be the end--that?"
"It is not the end," answered Colville, cheerfully. "It is only the
end of a chapter. Le roi est mort--vive le roi!"
He pointed with his stick, as he spoke, to the schooner creeping in
between the dykes.
CHAPTER II. VIVE LE ROI
"The Last Hope" had been expected for some days. It was known in
Farlingford that she was foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided
to put her on the slip-way at the end of the next voyage. Captain
Clubbe was a Farlingford man. "The Last Hope" was a Farlingford
built ship, and Seth Clubbe was not the captain to go past his own
port for the sake of saving a few pounds.
"Farlingford's his nation," they said of him down at the quay.
"Born and bred here, man and boy. He's not likely to put her into a
Thames dry-dock while the slip-way's standing empty."
All the village gossips naturally connected the arrival of the two
gentlemen from London with the expected return of "The Last Hope."
Captain Clubbe was known to have commercial relations with France.
It was currently reported that he could speak the language. No one
could tell the number of his voyages backward and forward from the
Bay to Bristol, to Yarmouth, and even to Bergen, carrying salt-fish
to those countries where their religion bids them eat that which
they cannot supply from their own waters, and bringing back wine
from Bordeaux and brandy from Charente.
It is not etiquette, however, on these wind-swept coasts to inquire
too closely into a man's business, and, as in other places, the talk
was mostly among those who knew the least--namely, the women. There
had been a question of repairing the church. The generation now
slowly finding its way to its precincts had discussed the matter
since their childhood and nothing had come of it.
One bold spirit put forth the suggestion that the two gentlemen were
London architects sent down by the Queen to see to the church. But
the idea fell to the ground before the assurance from Mrs. Clopton's
own lips that the old gentleman was nothing but a Frenchman.
Mrs. Clopton kept "The Black Sailor," and knew a deal more than she
was ready to tell people; which is tantamount to saying that she was
a woman in a thousand. It had leaked out, however, that the
spokesman of the party, Mr. Dormer Colville, had asked Mrs. Clopton
whether it was true that there was claret in the cellars of "The
Black Sailor." And any one having doubts could satisfy himself with
a sight of the empty bottles, all mouldy, standing in the back yard
of the inn.
They were wine-merchants from France, concluded the wiseacres of
Farlingford over their evening beer. They had come to Farlingford
to see Captain Clubbe. What could be more natural! For Farlingford
was proud of Captain Clubbe. It so often happens that a man going
out into the world and making a great name there, forgets his
birthplace and the rightful claim to a gleam of reflected glory
which the relations of a great man--who have themselves stayed at
home and done nothing--are always ready to consider their due reward
for having shaken their heads over him during the earlier struggles.
Though slow of tongue, the men of Farlingford were of hospitable
inclination. They were sorry for Frenchmen, as for a race destined
to smart for all time under the recollection of many disastrous
defeats at sea. And of course they could not help being ridiculous.
Heaven had made them like that while depriving them of any hope of
ever attaining to good seamanship. Here was a foreigner, however,
cast up in their midst, not by the usual channel indeed, but by a
carriage and pair from Ipswich. He must feel lonesome, they
thought, and strange. They, therefore, made an effort to set him at
his ease, and when they met him in "the street" jerked their heads
at him sideways. The upward jerk is less friendly and usually
denotes the desire to keep strictly within the limits of
acquaintanceship. To Mr. Dormer Colville they gave the upward lift
of the chin as to a person too facile in speech to be desirable.
The dumbness of the Marquis de Gemosac appealed perhaps to a race of
seafaring men very sparingly provided by nature with words in which
to clothe thoughts no less solid and sensible by reason of their
terseness. It was at all events unanimously decided that everything
should be done to make the foreigner welcome until the arrival of
"The Last Hope." A similar unanimity characterised the decision
that he must without delay be shown Frenchman's grave.
River Andrew's action and the unprecedented display of his Sunday
hat on a week-day were nothing but the outcome of a deep-laid
scheme. Mrs. Clopton had been instructed to recommend the gentlemen
to inspect the church, and the rest had been left to the wit of
River Andrew, a man whose calling took him far and wide, and gave
him opportunities of speech with gentlefolk.
These opportunities tempted River Andrew to go beyond his
instructions so far as to hint that he could, if encouraged, make
disclosures of interest respecting Frenchman. Which was untrue; for
River Andrew knew no more than the rest of Farlingford of a man who,
having been literally cast up by the sea at their gates, had lived
his life within those gates, had married a Farlingford woman, and
had at last gone the way of all Farlingford without telling any who
or what he was.
From sundry open cottage doors and well-laden tea-tables glances of
inquiry were directed toward the strangers' faces as they walked
down the street after having viewed the church. Some prescient
females went so far as to state that they could see quite distinctly
in the elder gentleman's demeanour a sense of comfort and
consolation at the knowledge thus tactfully conveyed to him that he
was not the first of his kind to be seen in Farlingford.
Hard upon the heels of the visitors followed River Andrew, wearing
his sou'wester now and carrying the news that "The Last Hope" was
coming up on the top of the tide.
Farlingford lies four miles from the mouth of the river, and no ship
can well arrive unexpected at the quay; for the whole village may
see her tacking up under shortened sail, heading all ways, sometimes
close-hauled, and now running free as she follows the zigzags of the
river.
Thus, from the open door, the villagers calculated the chances of
being able to finish the evening meal at leisure and still be down
at the quay in time to see Seth Clubbe bring his ship alongside.
One by one the men of Farlingford, pipe in mouth, went toward the
river, not forgetting the kindly, sideward jerk of the head for the
old Frenchman already waiting there.
It was nearly the top of the tide and the clear green water swelled
and gurgled round the weedy piles of the quay, bringing on its
surface tokens from the sea--shadowy jelly-fish, weed, and froth.
"The Last Hope" was quite close at hand now, swinging up in mid-
stream. The sun had set and over the marshes the quiet of evening
brooded hazily. Captain Clubbe had taken in all sail except a jib.
His anchor was swinging lazily overside, ready to drop. The
watchers on the quay could note the gentle rise and fall of the
crack little vessel as the tide lifted her from behind. She seemed
to be dancing to her home like a maiden back from school. The swing
of her tapering masts spoke of the heaving seas she had left behind.
It was characteristic of Farlingford that no one spoke. River
Andrew was already in his boat, ready to lend a hand should Captain
Clubbe wish to send a rope ashore. But it was obvious that the
captain meant to anchor in the stream for the night: so obvious
that if any one on shore had mentioned the conclusion his speech
would have called for nothing but a contemptuous glance from the
steady blue eyes all round him.
It was equally characteristic of a Farlingford ship that there were
no greetings from the deck. Those on shore could clearly perceive
the burly form of Captain Clubbe, standing by the weather rigging.
Wives could distinguish their husbands, and girls their lovers; but,
as these were attending to their business with a taciturn
concentration, no hand was raised in salutation.
The wind had dropped now. For these are coasts of quiet nights and
boisterous days. The tide was almost slack. "The Last Hope" was
scarcely moving, and in the shadowy light looked like a phantom ship
sailing out of a dreamy sunset sky.
Suddenly the silence was broken, so unexpectedly, so dramatically,
that the old Frenchman, to whose nature such effects would naturally
appeal with a lightning speed, rose to his feet and stood looking
with startled eyes toward the ship. A clear strong voice had broken
joyously into song, and the words it sang were French:
"C'est le Hasard,
Qui, tot ou tard,
Ici bas nous seconde;
Car,
D'un bout du monde
A l'autre bout,
Le Hasard seul fait tout."
Not only were the words incongruous with their quaint, sadly gay air
of a dead epoch of music and poetry; but the voice was in startling
contrast to the tones of a gruff and slow-speaking people. For it
was a clear tenor voice with a ring of emotion in it, half laughter,
half tears, such as no Briton could compass himself, or hear in
another without a dumb feeling of shame and shyness.
But those who heard it on the shore--and all Farlingford was there
by this time--only laughed curtly. Some of the women exchanged a
glance and made imperfectly developed gestures, as of a tolerance
understood between mothers for anything that is young and
inconsequent.
"We've gotten Loo Barebone back at any rate," said a man, bearing
the reputation of a wit. And after a long pause one or two
appreciators answered:
"You're right," and laughed good-humouredly.
The Marquis de Gemosac sat down again, with a certain effort at
self-control, on the balk of timber which had been used by some
generations of tide-watchers. He turned and exchanged a glance with
Dormer Colville, who stood at his side leaning on his gold-headed
cane. Colville's expression seemed to say:
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