The Last Hope | Page 9

am forgetting my obligations. Let me present to you my companion, an old friend, the Marquis de Gemosac."
The two gentlemen bowed, and Mr. Marvin, knowing no French, proceeded to address the stranger in good British Latin, after the manner of the courtly divines of his day. Which Latin, from its mode of pronunciation, was entirely unintelligible to its hearer.
In return, the rector introduced the two strangers to his niece, Miriam Liston.
"The mainstay of my quiet house," he added, with his vague and dreamy smile.
"I have already heard of you," said Dormer Colville at once, with his modest deference, "from my cousin, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence."
He seemed, as sailors say, never to be at a loose end; but to go through life with a facile readiness, having, as it were, his hands full of threads among which to select, with a careless affability, one that must draw him nearer to high and low, men and women, alike.
They talked together for some minutes, and, soon after the discovery that Miriam Liston was as good a French scholar as himself, and therefore able to converse with the Marquis de Gemosac, Colville regretted that it was time for them to return to their simple evening meal at "The Black Sailor."
"Well," said Colville to Monsieur de Gemosac, as they walked slowly across the green toward the inn, embowered in its simple cottage- garden, all ablaze now with hollyhocks and poppies--"well, after your glimpse at this man, Marquis, are you desirous to see more of him?"
"My friend," answered the Frenchman, with a quick gesture, descriptive of a sudden emotion not yet stilled, "he took my breath away. I can think of nothing else. My poor brain is buzzing still, and I know not what answers I made to that pretty English girl. Ah! You smile at my enthusiasm; you do not know what it is to have a great hope dangling before the eyes all one's life. And that face-- that face!"
In which judgment the Marquis was no doubt right. For Dormer Colville was too universal a man to be capable of concentrated zeal upon any one object. He laughed at the accusation.
"After dinner," he answered, "I will tell you the little story as it was told to me. We can sit on this seat, outside the inn, in the scent of the flowers and smoke our cigarette."
To which proposal Monsieur de Gemosac assented readily enough. For he was an old man, and to such the importance of small things, such as dinner or a passing personal comfort, are apt to be paramount. Moreover, he was a remnant of that class to which France owed her downfall among the nations; a class represented faithfully enough by its King, Louis XVI., who procrastinated even on the steps of the guillotine.
The wind went down with the sun, as had been foretold by River Andrew, and the quiet of twilight lay on the level landscape like sleep when the two travellers returned to the seat at the inn door. A distant curlew was whistling cautiously to its benighted mate, but all other sounds were still. The day was over.
"You remember," said Colville to his companion, "that six months after the execution of the King, a report ran through Paris and all France that the Dillons had succeeded in rescuing the Dauphin from the Temple."
"That was in July, 1793--just fifty-seven years ago--the news reached me in Austria," answered the Marquis.
Colville glanced sideways at his companion, whose face was set with a stubbornness almost worthy of the tenacious Bourbons themselves.
"The Queen was alive then," went on the Englishman, half diffidently, as if prepared for amendment or correction. "She had nearly three months to live. The separation from her children had only just been carried out. She was not broken by it yet. She was in full possession of her health and energy. She was one of the cleverest women of that time. She was surrounded by men, some of whom were frankly half-witted, others who were drunk with excess of a sudden power for which they had had no preparation. Others, again, were timorous or cunning. All were ignorant, and many had received no education at all. For there are many ignorant people who have been highly educated, Marquis."
He gave a short laugh and lighted a cigarette.
"Mind," he continued, after a pause devoted to reflection which appeared to be neither deep nor painful, for he smiled as he gazed across the hazy marshes, "mind, I am no enthusiast, as you yourself have observed. I plead no cause. She was not my Queen, Marquis, and France is not my country. I endeavour to look at the matter with the eye of common-sense and wisdom. And I cannot forget that Marie Antoinette was at bay: all her senses, all her wit alert. She