The Last Hope Part 23

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 pa.s.sing 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 vanis.h.i.+ng.

Every village priest who came after dark to take a gla.s.s of wine with them at their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial n.o.ble 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, and young ladies who wished to make an advantageous marriage had no means of advertising the fact and themselves in supplements to ill.u.s.trated 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 fete of St. Jean, at St. Jean d'Angely and a hundred other fetes 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 a.s.sured 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 repet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.bles of Guienne and the Vendee, 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.

Chapter XXI

NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB

Between the Rue de Lille and the Boulevard St. Germain, in the narrow streets which to this day have survived the sweeping influence of Baron Haussmann, once Prefect of the Seine, there are many houses which scarcely seem to have opened door or window since the great Revolution.

One of these, to be precise, is situated in the Ruelle St. Jacob, hardly wider than a lane--a short street with a blind end against high walls--into which any vehicle that enters must needs do so with the knowledge of having to back out again. For there is no room to turn.

Which is an allegory. All the windows, in fact, that look forlornly at the blank walls or peep over the high gateways into the Ruelle St. Jacob are Royalist windows looking into a street which is blinded by a high wall and is too narrow to allow of turning.

Many of the windows would appear to have gathered dust since those days more than a hundred years ago when white faces peeped from them and trembling hands unbarred the sash to listen to the roar of voices in the Rue du Bac, in the open s.p.a.ce by the church of St. Germain des Pres, in the Cite, all over Paris, where the people were making history.

To this house in the Ruelle St. Jacob, Dormer Colville and Loo Barebone made their way on foot, on their arrival in Paris at the termination of their long journey.

It was nearly dark, for Colville had arranged to approach the city and leave their horses at a stable at Meudon after dusk.

"It is foolish," he said, gaily, to his companion, "to flaunt a face like yours in Paris by daylight."

They had driven from Meudon in a hired carriage to the corner of the Champ de Mars, in those days still innocent of gla.s.s houses and exhibition buildings, for Paris was not yet the toy-shop of the world; and from the Champ de Mars they came on foot through the ill-paved, feebly lighted streets. In the Ruelle St. Jacob itself there was only one lamp, burning oil, swinging at the corner. The remainder of the lane depended for its illumination on the windows of two small shops retailing firewood and pickled gherkins and b.a.l.l.s of string grey with age, as do all the shops in the narrow streets on the wrong side of the Seine.

Dormer Colville led the way, picking his steps from side to side of the gutter which meandered odoriferously down the middle of the street toward the river. He stopped in front of the great gateway and looked up at the arch of it, where the stone carving had been carefully obliterated by some enthusiastic citizen armed with a hatchet.

"Ichabod," he said, with a short laugh; and cautiously laid bold of the dangling bell-handle which had summoned the porter to open to a Queen in those gay days when Marie Antoinette light-heartedly pushed a falling monarchy down the incline.

The great gate was not opened in response, but a small side door, deep-sunken in the thickness of the wall. On either jamb of the door was affixed in the metal letters ordained by the munic.i.p.ality the number eight. Number Eight Ruelle St. Jacob had once been known to kings as the Hotel Gemosac.

The man who opened earned a lantern and held the door ajar with a grudging hand while he peered out. One could almost imagine that he had survived the downfall and the Restoration, and a couple of republics, behind the high walls.

The court-yard was paved with round cobble-stones no bigger than an apple, and, even by the flickering light of the lantern, it was perceptible that no weed had been allowed to grow between the stones or in the seams of the wide, low steps that led to an open door.

The house appeared to be dark and deserted.

"Yes, Monsieur le Marquis--Monsieur le Marquis is at home," muttered the man with a bronchial chuckle, and led the way across the yard. He wore a sort of livery, which must have been put away for years. A young man had been measured for the coat which now displayed three deep creases across a bent back.

"Attention--attention!" he said, in a warning voice, while he sc.r.a.ped a sulphur match in the hall. "There are holes in the carpets. It is easy to trip and fall."

He lighted the candle, and after having carefully shut and bolted the door, he led the way upstairs. At their approach, easily audible in the empty house by reason of the hollow creaking of the oak floor, a door was opened at the head of the stairs and a flood of light met the new-comers.

In the doorway, which was ten feet high, the little bent form of the Marquis de Gemosac stood waiting.

"Ah! ah!" he said, with that pleasant manner of his generation, which was refined and spirituelle and sometimes dramatic, and yet ever failed to touch aught but the surface of life. "Ah! ah! Safely accomplished--the great journey. Safely accomplished. You permit--"

And he embraced Barebone after the custom of his day. "From all sides,"

he said, when the door was closed, "I hear that you have done great things. From every quarter one hears your praise."

He held him at arm's length.

"Yes," he said. "Your face is graver and--more striking in resemblance than ever. So now you know--now you have seen."

"Yes," answered Barebone, gravely. "I have seen and I know."

The Marquis rubbed his white hands together and gave a little crackling laugh of delight as he drew forward a chair to the fire, which was of logs as long as a barrel. The room was a huge one, and it was lighted from end to end with lamps, as if for a reception or a ball. The air was damp and mouldly. There were patches of grey on the walls, which had once been painted with garlands of roses and Cupids and pastoral scenes by a noted artist of the Great Age.

The ceiling had fallen in places, and the woodwork of the carved furniture gave forth a subtle scent of dry rot.

But everything was in an exquisite taste which vulgarer generations have never yet succeeded in imitating. Nothing was concealed, but rather displayed with a half-cynical pride. All was moth-ridden, worm-eaten, fallen to decay--but it was of the Monarchy. Not half a dozen houses in Paris, where already the wealth, which has to-day culminated in a ridiculous luxury of outward show, was beginning to build new palaces, could show room after room furnished in the days of the Great Louis. The very air, faintly scented it would seem by some forgotten perfume, breathed of a bygone splendour. And the last of the de Gemosacs scorned to screen his poverty from the eyes of his equals, nor sought to hide from them a desolation which was only symbolic of that which crushed their hearts and bade them steal back from time to time like criminals to the capital.

"You see," he said to Colville and Barebone, "I have kept my promise, I have thrown open this old house once more for to-night's meeting. You will find that many friends have made the journey to Paris for the occasion--Madame de Chantonnay and Albert, Madame de Rathe and many from the Vendee and the West whom you have met on your journey. And to-night one may speak without fear, for none will be present who are not vouched for by the Almanac de Gotha. There are no Royalists _pour rire_ or _pour vivre_ to-night. You have but time to change your clothes and dine. Your luggage arrived yesterday. You will forgive the stupidity of old servants who have forgotten their business. Come, I will lead the way and show you your rooms."

He took a candle and did the honours of the deserted dust-ridden house in the manner of the high calling which had been his twenty years ago when Charles X was king. For some there lingers a certain pathos in the sight of a belated survival, while the majority of men and women are ready to smile at it instead. And yet the Monarchy lasted eight centuries and the Revolution eight years. Perhaps Fate may yet exact payment for the excesses of those eight years from a nation for which the watching world already prepares a secondary place in the councils of empire.