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The dumbness of the Marquis do 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."
"You have been summoned in haste," he said, "by the request of the Marquis de Gemosac to listen to the perusal of a letter of importance. It may be of the utmost importance to us to France to all the world." He drew the letter from his pocket and opened it amid a breathless silence.
The Marquis de Gemosac gave a curt laugh, which thrilled with a note of that fearful joy known to those who seek to control the uncontrollable. "At that time," he admitted, "it might be so. But not now. At that time there lived Louis XVIII and Charles X, and his sons, the Duc d'Angouleme and the Duc de Berri, who might reasonably be expected to have sons in their turn.
The affair was soon settled, and Jean ordered to put the horse into the high, old-fashioned carriage still in use at the chateau. For Juliette de Gemosac seemed to be an illustration of the fact, known to many much-tried parents, that one is never too young to know one's mind. "There is a thunder-storm coming from the sea," was Jean's only comment.
"For I've brought him up since the cradle. He's been at sea with me in fair weather and foul and he is not the same as us." Dormer Colville attached so much importance to the Captain's grave jest that he interpreted it at once to Monsieur de Gemosac. "Captain Clubbe," he said, "tells us that he does not need to be informed that this Loo Barebone is the man we seek. He has long known it."
"And no one can ever prove anything contrary to that. No one except myself knows of of this doubt which you have stumbled upon. De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, Clubbe all of them are convinced that your father was the Dauphin." "And Miss Liston?" "Miriam Liston she also, of course. And I believe she knew it long before I told her." Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the eyes.
"I will not even tell the story as it was told to me," he said to the Marquis de Gemosac, to the Abbe Touvent and to the Comtesse de Chantonnay, whom he met frequently enough at the house of his cousin, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, in that which is now the Province of the Charente Inferieure. "I will not even tell you the story as it was told to me, until one of you has seen the man.
They did not give themselves, but they told others to give, which is far better. In due course the money was sent to England. It was the plain truth that the Marquis de Gemosac had not sufficient in his pocket to equip Loo Barebone with the clothes necessary to a seemly appearance in France; or, indeed, to cover the expense of the journey thither. Dormer Colville never had money to spare.
The Marquis de Gemosac, himself always on the surface, had stirred others more deeply than he had anticipated or could now understand. France has always been the victim of her own emotions; aroused in the first instance half in idleness, allowed to swell with a semi-restraining laugh, and then suddenly sweeping and overwhelming.
"One is not a Barebone or a Bourbon for nothing," observed Colville, in an aside to himself. "Gad! I wish I could say that I should not be afraid myself under similar circumstances. My heart was in my mouth, I can tell you, in that cabin when de Gemosac blurted it all out. It came suddenly at the end, and well! it rather hit one in the wind. And, as I say, one is not a Bourbon for nothing.
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