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.
