She did not answer but stood, her two hands clasped together on her breast, seeking to disentangle the confused group, half in half out of the water.
Then they heard Loo Barebone"s voice, cheerful and energetic, almost laughing. Before they could understand what was taking place his voice was audible again, giving a sharp, clear order, and all the black forms rushed together down into the surf. A moment later the boat danced out over the crest of a breaker, splashing into the next and throwing up a fan of spray.
"She"s through, she"s through!" cried some one. And the boat rode for a brief minute head to wind before she turned southward. There were only three on the thwarts--Loo Barebone and two others.
The group now broke up and straggled up toward the fire. One man was being supported, and could scarcely walk. It was Captain Clubbe, hatless, his grey hair plastered across his head by salt water.
He did not heed any one, but sat down heavily on the shingle and felt his leg with one hand, the other arm hung limply.
"Leave me here," he said, gruffly, to two or three who were spreading out a horse-cloth and preparing to carry him. "Here I stay till all are ash.o.r.e."
Behind him were several new-comers, one of them a little man talking excitedly to his companion.
"But it is a folly," he was saying in French, "to go back in such a sea as that."
It was the Marquis de Gemosac, and no one was taking any notice of him.
Dormer Colville, stumbling over the shingle beside him, recognised Miriam in the firelight and turned again to look at her companion as if scarcely believing the evidence of his own eyes.
"Is that you, Turner?" he said. "We are all here,--the Marquis, Barebone, and I. Clubbe took us on board one dark night in the Gironde and brought us home."
"Are you hurt?" asked Turner, curtly.
"Oh, no. But Clubbe"s collar-bone is broken and his leg is crushed. We had to leave four on board; not room for them in the boat. That fool Barebone has gone back for them. He promised them he would. The sea out there is awful!"
He knelt down and held his shaking hands to the flames. Some one handed him a bottle, but he turned first and gave it the Marquis de Gemosac, who was shaking all over like one far gone in a palsy.
Sea Andrew and the coast-guard captain were persuading Captain Clubbe to quit the beach, but he only answered them roughly in monosyllables.
"My place is here till all are safe," he said. "Let me lie."
And with a groan of pain he lay back on the beach. Miriam folded a blanket and placed it under his head. He looked round, recognised her and nodded.
"No place for you, miss," he said, and closed his eyes. After a moment he raised himself on his elbow and looked into the faces peering down at him.
"Loo will beach her anywhere he can. Keep a bright lookout for him," he said. Then he was silent, and all turned their faces toward the sea.
Another snow-squall swept in with a rush from the eastward, and half of the fire was blown away--a trail of sparks hissing on the snow. They built up the fire again and waited, crouching low over the embers. They could see nothing out to sea. There was nothing to be done but to wait.
Some had gone along the sh.o.r.e to the south, keeping pace with the supposed progress of the boat, ready to help should she be thrown ash.o.r.e.
Suddenly the Marquis de Gemosac, shivering over the fire, raised his voice querulously. His emotions always found vent in speech.
"It is a folly," he repeated, "that he has committed. I do not understand, gentlemen, how he was permitted to do such a thing--he whose life is of value to millions."
He turned his head to glance sharply at Captain Clubbe, at Colville, at Turner, who listened with that half-contemptuous silence which Englishmen oppose to unnecessary or inopportune speech.
"Ah!" he said, "you do not understand--you Englishmen--or you do not believe, perhaps, that he is the King. You would demand proofs which you know cannot be produced. I demand no proofs, for I know. I know without any proof at all but his face, his manner, his whole being. I knew at once when I saw him step out of his boat here in this sad village, and I have lived with him almost daily ever since--only to be more sure than at first."
His hearers made no answer. They listened tolerantly enough, as one listens to a child or to any other incapable of keeping to the business in hand.
"Oh. I know more than you suspect," said the Marquis, suddenly. "There are some even in our own party who have doubts, who are not quite sure. I know that there was a doubt as to that portrait of the Queen," he half glanced toward Dormer Colville. "Some say one thing, some another. I have been told that, when the child--Monsieur de Bourbon"s father--landed here, there were two portraits among his few possessions--the miniature and a larger print, an engraving. Where is that engraving, one would ask?"
"I have it in my safe in Paris," said a thick voice in the darkness.
"Thought it was better in my possession than anywhere else."
"Indeed! And now, Monsieur Turner--" the Marquis raised himself on his knees and pointed in his eager way a thin finger in the direction of the banker--"tell me this. Those portraits to which some would attach importance--they are of the d.u.c.h.ess de Guiche. Admitted? Good! If you yourself--who have the reputation of being a man of wit--desired to secure the escape of a child and his nurse, would you content yourself with the mere precaution of concealing the child"s ident.i.ty? Would you not go farther and provide the nurse with a subterfuge, a blind, something for the woman to produce and say, "This is not the little Dauphin. This is so-and-so. See, here is the portrait of his mother?"
What so effective, I ask you? What so likely to be believed as a scandal directed against the hated aristocrats? Can you advance anything against that theory?"
"No, Monsieur," replied Turner.
"But Monsieur de Bourbon knows of these doubts," went on the Marquis.
"They have even touched his own mind, I know that. But he has continued to fight undaunted. He has made sacrifices--any looking at his face can see that. It was not in France that he looked for happiness, but elsewhere. He was not heart-whole--I who have seen him with the most beautiful women in France paying court to him know that. But this sacrifice, also, he made for the sake of France. Or perhaps some woman of whom we know nothing stepped back and bade him go forward alone, for the sake of his own greatness--who can tell?"
Again no one answered him. He had not perceived Miriam, and John Turner, with that light step which sometimes goes with a vast bulk, had placed himself between her and the firelight. Monsieur de Gemosac rose to his feet and stood looking seaward. The snow-clouds were rolling away to the west, and the moon, breaking through, was beginning to illumine the wild sky.
"Gentlemen," said the Marquis, "they have been gone a long time?"
Captain Clubbe moved restlessly, but he made no answer. The Marquis had, of course, spoken in French, and the Captain had no use for that language.
The group round the fire had dwindled until only half a dozen remained.
One after another the watchers had moved away uneasily toward the beach.
The Marquis was right--the boat had been gone too long.
At last the moon broke through, and the snowy scene was almost as light as day.
John Turner was looking along the beach to the south, and one after another the watchers by the fire turned their anxious eyes in the same direction. The sea, whipped white, was bare of any wreck. "The Last Hope"
of Farlingford was gone. She had broken up or rolled into deep water.
A number of men were coming up the shingle in silence. Sea Andrew, dragging his feet wearily, approached in advance of them.
"Boat"s thrown up on the beach," he said to Captain Clubbe. "Stove in by a sea. We"ve found them."
He stood back and the others, coming slowly into the light, deposited their burdens side by side near the fire. The Marquis, who had understood nothing, took a torch from the hand of a bystander and held it down toward the face of the man they had brought last.
It was Loo Barebone, and the clean-cut, royal features seemed to wear a reflective smile.
Miriam had come forward toward the fire, and by chance or by some vague instinct the bearers had laid their burden at her feet. After all, as John Turner had said, Loo Barebone had come back to her. She had denied him twice, and the third time he would take no denial. The taciturn sailors laid him there and stepped back--as if he was hers and this was the inevitable end of his short and stormy voyage.
She looked down at him with tired eyes. She had done the right, and this was the end. There are some who may say that she had done what she thought was right, and this only seemed to be the end. It may be so.
The Marquis de Gemosac was dumb for once. He looked round him with a half-defiant question in his eyes. Then he pointed a lean finger down toward the dead man"s face.
"Others may question," he said, "but I know--I _know_."
THE END