The Last Hope

Henry Seton Merriman

The Last Hope

EAN 8596547216834

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [email protected]

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. LE ROI EST MORT

CHAPTER II. VIVE LE ROI

CHAPTER III. THE RETURN OF THE LAST HOPE

CHAPTER IV. THE MARQUIS'S CREED

CHAPTER V. ON THE DYKE

CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS

CHAPTER VII. ON THE SCENT

CHAPTER VIII. THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING

CHAPTER IX. A MISTAKE

CHAPTER X. IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE

CHAPTER XI. A BEGINNING

CHAPTER XII. THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC

CHAPTER XIII. WITHIN THE GATES

CHAPTER XIV. THE LIFTED VEIL

CHAPTER XV. THE TURN OF THE TIDE

CHAPTER XVI. THE GAMBLERS

CHAPTER XVII. ON THE PONT ROYAL

CHAPTER XVIII. THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS

CHAPTER XIX. IN THE BREACH

CHAPTER XX. NINETEEN

CHAPTER XXI. NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB

CHAPTER XXII. DROPPING THE PILOT

CHAPTER XXIII. A SIMPLE BANKER

CHAPTER XXIV. THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS

CHAPTER XXV. SANS RANCUNE

CHAPTER XXVI. RETURNED EMPTY

CHAPTER XXVII. OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

CHAPTER XXVIII. BAREBONE'S PRICE

CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE DARK

CHAPTER XXX. IN THE FURROW AGAIN

CHAPTER XXXI. THE THURSDAY OF MADAME DE CHANTONNAY

CHAPTER XXXII. PRIMROSES

CHAPTER XXXIII. DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND

CHAPTER XXXIV. A SORDID MATTER

CHAPTER XXXV. A SQUARE MAN

CHAPTER XXXVI. MRS. ST. PIERRE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND

CHAPTER XXXVII. AN UNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER XXXVIII. A COUP-D'ETAT

CHAPTER XXXIX. JOHN DARBY

CHAPTER XL. FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE

CHAPTER I. LE ROI EST MORT

Table of Contents

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

Table of Contents

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:

I told you what it would be. But wait: there is more to come.

His affable eyes made a round of the watching faces, and even exchanged a sympathetic smile with some, as if to hint that his clothes were only fine because he belonged to a fine generation, but that his heart was as human as any beating under a homelier coat.

There's Passen, said one woman to another, behind the corner of her apron, within Colville's hearing. It takes a deal to bring him out o' doors nowadays, and little Sep and—Miss Miriam.

Dormer Colville heard the words. And he heard something unspoken in the pause before the mention of the last name. He did not look at once in the direction indicated by a jerk of the speaker's thumb, but waited until a change of position enabled him to turn his head without undue curiosity. He threw back his shoulders and stretched his legs after the manner of one cramped by standing too long in one attitude.

A hundred yards farther up the river, where the dyke was wider, a grey-haired man was walking slowly toward the quay. In front of him a boy of ten years was endeavouring to drag a young girl toward the jetty at a quicker pace than she desired. She was laughing at his impetuosity and looking back toward the man who followed them with the abstraction and indifference of a student.

Colville took in the whole picture in one quick comprehensive glance. But he turned again as the singer on board The Last Hope began another verse. The words were clearly audible to such as knew the language, and Colville noted that the girl turned with a sudden gravity to listen to them.

"Un tel qu'on vantait

Par hasard etait

D'origine assez mince;

Par hasard il plut,

Par hasard il fut

Baron, ministre, et prince."

Captain Clubbe's harsh voice broke into the song with the order to let go the anchor. As the ship swung to the tide the steersman, who wore neither coat nor waistcoat, could be seen idly handling the wheel still, though his duties were necessarily at an end. He was a young man, and a gay salutation of his unemployed hand toward the assembled people—as if he were sure that they were all friends—stamped him as the light-hearted singer, so different from the Farlingford men, so strongly contrasted to his hearers, who nevertheless jerked their heads