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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




"We can wait, however, until a more suitable opportunity presents
itself," Colville hastened to add. "You are busy, as even a landsman can
perceive, and cannot be expected to think of anything but your vessel
until the tide leaves her high and dry."

He turned and explained the situation to the Marquis, who shrugged his
shoulders impatiently as if at the delay. For he was a southerner, and
was, perhaps, ignorant of the fact that in dealing with any born on the
shores of the German Ocean nothing is gained and, more often than not,
all is lost by haste.

"You hear," Colville added, turning to the Captain, and speaking in a
curter manner; for so strongly was he moved by that human kindness which
is vaguely called sympathy that his speech varied according to his
listener. "You hear the Marquis only speaks French. It is about a
fellow-countryman of his buried here. Drop in and have a glass of wine
with us some evening; to-night, if you are at liberty."

"What I can tell you won't take long," said Clubbe, over his shoulder;
for the tide was turning, and in a few minutes would be ebbing fast.

"Dare say not. But we have a good bin of claret at 'The Black Sailor,'
and shall be glad of your opinion on it."

Clubbe nodded, with a curt laugh, which might have been intended to
deprecate the possession of any opinion on a vintage, or to express his
disbelief that Dormer Colville desired to have it.

Nevertheless, his large person loomed in the dusk of the trees soon after
sunset, in the narrow road leading from his house to the church and the
green.

Monsieur de Gemosac and his companion were sitting on the bench outside
the inn, leaning against the sill of their own parlour-window, which
stood open. The Captain had changed his clothes, and now wore those in
which he went to church and to the custom-house when in London or other
large cities.

"There walks a just man," commented Dormer Colville, lightly, and no
longer word could have described Captain Clubbe more aptly. He would
rather have stayed in his own garden this evening to smoke his pipe in
contemplative silence. But he had always foreseen that the day might come
when it would be his duty to do his best by Loo Barebone. He had not
sought this opportunity, because, being a wise as well as a just man, he
was not quite sure that he knew what the best would be.

He shook hands gravely with the strangers, and by his manner seemed to
indicate his comprehension of Monsieur de Gemosac's well-turned phrases
of welcome. Dormer Colville appeared to be in a silent humour, unless
perchance he happened to be one of those rare beings who can either talk
or hold their tongues as occasion may demand.

"You won't want me to put my oar in, I see," observed he, tentatively, as
he drew forward a small table whereon were set three glasses and a bottle
of the celebrated claret.

"I can understand French, but I don't talk it," replied the Captain,
stolidly.

"And if I interpret as we go along, we shall sit here all night, and get
very little said."

Colville explained the difficulty to the Marquis de Gemosac, and agreed
with him that much time would be saved if Captain Clubbe would be kind
enough to tell in English all that he knew of the nameless Frenchman
buried in Farlingford churchyard, to be translated by Colville to
Monsieur de Gemosac at another time. As Clubbe understood this, and
nodded in acquiescence, there only remained to them to draw the cork and
light their cigars.

"Not much to tell," said Clubbe, guardedly. "But what there is, is no
secret, so far as I know. It has not been told because it was known long
ago, and has been forgotten since. The man's dead and buried, and there's
an end of him."

"Of him, yes, but not of his race," answered Colville.

"You mean the lad?" inquired the Captain, turning his calm and steady
gaze to Colville's face. The whole man seemed to turn, ponderously and
steadily, like a siege-gun.

"That is what I meant," answered Colville. "You understand," he went on
to explain, as if urged thereto by the fixed glance of the clear blue
eye--"you understand, it is none of my business. I am only here as the
Marquis de Gemosac's friend. Know him in his own country, where I live
most of the time."

Clubbe nodded.

"Frenchman was picked up at sea fifty-five years ago this July," he
narrated, bluntly, "by the 'Martha and Mary' brig of this port. I was
apprentice at the time. Frenchman was a boy with fair hair and a womanish
face. Bit of a cry-baby I used to think him, but being a boy myself I was
perhaps hard on him. He was with his--well, his mother."

Captain Clubbe paused. He took the cigar from his lips and carefully
replaced the outer leaf, which had wrinkled. Perhaps he waited to be
asked a question. Colville glanced at him sideways and did not ask it.

"Dark night," the Captain continued, after a short silence, "and a heavy
sea, about mid-channel off Dieppe. We sighted a French fishing-boat
yawing about abandoned. Something queer about her, the skipper thought.
Those were queer times in France. We hailed her, and getting no answer
put out a boat and boarded her. There was nobody on board but a woman and
a child. Woman was half mad with fear. I have seen many afraid, but never
one like that. I was only a boy myself, but I remember thinking it wasn't
the sea and drowning she was afraid of. We couldn't find out the smack's
name. It had been painted out with a tar-brush, and she was half full
of water. The skipper took the woman and child off, and left the
fishing-smack as we found her yawing about--all sail set. They reckoned
she would founder in a few minutes. But there was one old man on board,
the boatswain, who had seen many years at sea, who said that she wasn't
making any water at all, because he had been told to look for the leak
and couldn't find it. He said that the water had been pumped into her so
as to waterlog her; and it was his belief that she had not been abandoned
many minutes, that the crew were hanging about somewhere near in a boat
waiting to see if we sighted her and put men on board."

Mr. Dormer Colville was attending to the claret, and pressed Captain
Clubbe by a gesture of the hand to empty his glass.

"Something wrong somewhere?" he suggested, in a conversational way.

"By daylight we were ramping up channel with three French men-of-war
after us," was Captain Clubbe's comprehensive reply. "As chance had it,
the channel squadron hove in sight round the Foreland, and the Frenchmen
turned and left us."

Clubbe marked a pause in his narrative by a glass of claret, taken at one
draught like beer.

"Skipper was a Farlingford man, name of Doy," he continued. "Long as he
lived he was pestered by inquiries from the French government respecting
a Dieppe fishing-smack supposed to have been picked up abandoned at sea.
He had picked up no fishing-smack, and he answered no letters about it.
He was an old man when it happened, and he died at sea soon after my
indentures expired. The woman and child were brought here, where
nobody could speak French, and, of course, neither of them could speak
any English. The boy was white-faced and frightened at first, but he
soon picked up spirit. They were taken in and cared for by one and
another--any who could afford it. For Farlingford has always bred
seafaring men ready to give and take."

"So we were told yesterday by the rector. We had a long talk with him in
the morning. A clever man, if--"

Dormer Colville did not complete the remark, but broke off with a sigh.
He had no doubt seen trouble himself. For it is not always the ragged and
unkempt who have been sore buffeted by the world, but also such as have a
clean-washed look almost touching sleekness.

"Yes," said Clubbe, slowly and conclusively. "So you have seen the
parson."

"Of course," Colville remarked, cheerfully, after a pause; for we cannot
always be commiserating the unfortunate. "Of course, all this happened
before his time, and Monsieur de Gemosac does not want to learn from
hearsay, you understand, but at first hand. I fancy he would, for
instance, like to know when the woman, the--mother died."

Clubbe was looking straight in front of him. He turned in his
disconcerting, monumental way and looked at his questioner, who had
imitated with a perfect ingenuousness his own brief pause before the word
mother. Colville smiled pleasantly at him.

"I tell you frankly, Captain," he said, "it would suit me better if she
wasn't the mother."

"I am not here to suit you," murmured Captain Clubbe, without haste or
hesitation.

"No. Well, let us say for the present that she was the mother. We can
discuss that another time. When did she die?"

"Seven years after landing here."

Colville made a mental calculation and nodded his head with satisfaction
at the end of it. He lighted another cigarette.

"I am a business man, Captain," he said at length. "Fair dealing and a
clean bond. That is what I have been brought up to. Confidence for
confidence. Before we go any further--" He paused and seemed to think
before committing himself. Perhaps he saw that Captain Clubbe did not
intend to go much further without some _quid pro quo_. "Before we go any
further, I think I may take it upon myself to let you into the Marquis's
confidence. It is about an inheritance, Captain. A great inheritance
and--well, that young fellow may well be the man. He may be born to
greater things than a seafaring life, Captain."

"I don't want any marquis to tell me that," answered Clubbe, with his
slow judicial smile. "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."




Chapter VII


ON THE SCENT

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."

Which was a near enough rendering, perhaps, to pass muster in the hearing
of two persons imperfectly acquainted with the languages so translated.
Then, turning again to the sailor, he continued:

"Monsieur de Gemosac would naturally wish to know whether there were
papers or any other means of identification found on the woman or the
child?"

"There were a few papers. The woman had a Roman Catholic Missal in her
pocket, and the child a small locket with a miniature portrait in it."

"Of the Queen Marie Antoinette?" suggested Colville, quickly.

"It may well have been. It is many years since I saw it. It was faded
enough. I remember that it had a fall, and would not open afterward. No
one has seen it for twenty-five years or so."

"The locket or the portrait?" inquired Colville, with a light laugh, with
which to disclaim any suggestion of a cross-examination.

"The portrait."

"And the locket?"

"My wife has it somewhere, I believe."

Colville gave an impatient laugh. For the peaceful air of Farlingford had
failed to temper that spirit of energy and enterprise which he had
acquired in cities--in Paris, most likely. He had no tolerance for quiet
ways and a slow, sure progress, such as countrymen seek, who are so
leisurely that the years slide past and death surprises them before they
have done anything in the world but attend to its daily demand for a
passing effort.

"Ah!" he cried, "but all that must be looked into if we are to do
anything for this young fellow. You will find the Marquis anxious to be
up and doing at once. You go so slowly in Farlingford, Captain. The world
is hurrying on and this chance will be gone past before we are ready. Let
us get these small proofs of identity collected together as soon as
possible. Let us find that locket. But do not force it open. Give it to
me as it is. Let us find the papers."

"There are no papers," interrupted Captain Clubbe, with a calm
deliberation quite untouched by his companion's hurry.

"No papers?"

"No; for Frenchman burnt them before my eyes."

Dormer Colville meditated for a moment in silence. Although his manner
was quick, he was perhaps as deliberate in his choice of a question as
was Captain Clubbe in answering it.

"Why did he do that? Did he know who he was? Did he ever say anything to
you about his former life--his childhood--his recollections of France?"

"He was not a man to say much," answered Clubbe, himself no man to repeat
much.

Colville had been trying for some time to study the sailor's face,
quietly through his cigar smoke.

"Look here, Captain," he said, after a pause. "Let us understand each
other. There is a chance, just a chance, that we can prove this Loo
Barebone to be the man we think him, but we must all stand together. We
must be of one mind and one purpose. We four, Monsieur de Gemosac, you,
Barebone, and my humble self. I fancy--well, I fancy it may prove to be
worth our while."

"I am willing to do the best I can for Loo," was the reply.

"And I am willing to do the best I can for Monsieur de Gemosac, whose
heart is set on this affair. And," Colville added, with his frank laugh,
"let us hope that we may have our reward; for I am a poor man myself, and
do not like the prospect of a careful old age. I suppose, Captain, that
if a man were overburdened with wealth he would scarcely follow a
seafaring life, eh?"

"Then there is money in it?" inquired Clubbe, guardedly.

"Money," laughed the other. "Yes--there is money for all concerned, and
to spare."

Captain Clubbe had been born and bred among a people possessing little
wealth and leading a hard life, only to come to want in old age. It was
natural that this consideration should carry weight. He was anxious to do
his best for the boy who had been brought up as his own son. He could
think of nothing better than to secure him from want for the rest of his
days. There were many qualities in Loo Barebone which he did not
understand, for they were quite foreign to the qualities held to be
virtues in Farlingford; such as perseverance and method, a careful
economy, and a rigid common sense. Frenchman had brought these strange
ways into Farlingford when he was himself only a boy of ten, and they had
survived his own bringing up in some of the austerest houses in the town,
so vitally as to enable him to bequeath them almost unchastened to his
son.

As has been noted, Loo had easily lived down the prejudices of his own
generation against an un-English gaiety, and inconsequence almost
amounting to emotion. And nothing is, or was in the solid days before
these trumpet-blowing times, so unwelcome in British circles as emotion.

Frenchman had no doubt prepared the way for his son; but the
peculiarities of thought and manner which might be allowed to pass in a
foreigner would be less easily forgiven in Loo, who had Farlingford blood
in his veins. For his mother had been a Clubbe, own cousin, and, as
gossips whispered, once the sweetheart of Captain Clubbe himself and
daughter of Seth Clubbe of Maiden's Grave, one of the largest farmers on
the Marsh.

"It cannot be for no particular purpose that the boy has been created so
different from any about him," Captain Clubbe muttered, reflectively, as
he thought of Dormer Colville's words. For he had that simple faith in an
Almighty Purpose, without which no wise man will be found to do business
on blue water.

"It is strange how a man may be allowed to inherit from a grandfather he
has never seen a trick of manner, or a face which are not the manner or
face of his father," observed Colville, adapting himself, as was his
habit, to the humour of his companion. "There must, as you suggest, be
some purpose in it. God writes straight on crooked lines, Captain."

Thus Dormer Colville found two points of sympathy with this skipper of a
slow coaster, who had never made a mistake at sea nor done an injustice
to any one serving under him; a simple faith in the Almighty Purpose and
a very honest respect for money. This was the beginning of a sort of
alliance between four persons of very different character which was to
influence the whole lives of many.

They sat on the tarred seat set against the weather-beaten wall of "The
Black Sailor" until darkness came stealing in from the sea with the quiet
that broods over flat lands, and an unpeopled shore. Colville had many
questions to ask and many more which he withheld till a fitter occasion.
But he learnt that Frenchman had himself stated his name to be Barebone
when he landed, a forlorn and frightened little boy, on this barren
shore, and had never departed from that asseveration when he came to
learn the English language and marry an English wife. Captain Clubbe told
also how Frenchman, for so he continued to be called long after his real
name had been written twice in the parish register, had soon after his
marriage destroyed the papers carefully preserved by the woman whom he
never called mother, though she herself claimed that title.

She had supported herself, it appeared, by her needle, and never seemed
to want money, which led the villagers to conclude that she had some
secret store upon which to draw when in need. She had received letters
from France, which were carefully treasured by her until her death, and
for long afterward by Frenchman, who finally burnt all at his marriage,
saying that he was now an Englishman and wanted to retain no ties with
France. At this time, Clubbe remembered, Louis XVIII was firmly
established on the throne of France, the Restoration--known as the
Second--having been brought about by the Allied Powers with a high hand
after the Hundred Days and the final downfall of Napoleon.

Frenchman may well have known that it might be worth his while to return
to France and seek fortune there; but he never spoke of this knowledge
nor made reference to the recollections of his childhood, which cast a
cold reserve over his soul and steeped it with such a deadly hatred of
France and all things French, that he desired to sever all memories that
might link him with his native country or awake in the hearts of any
children he should beget the desire to return thither.

A year after his marriage his wife died, and thus her son, left to the
care of a lonely and misanthropic father, was brought up a Frenchman
after all, and lisped his first words in that tongue.

"He lived long enough to teach him to speak French and think like a
Frenchman, and then he died," said Captain Clubbe--"a young man reckoning
by years, but in mind he was an older man than I am today."

"And his secret died with him?" suggested Dormer Colville, looking at the
end of his cigar with a queer smile. But Captain Clubbe made no answer.

"One may suppose that he wanted it to die with him, at all events," added
Colville, tentatively.

"You are right," was the reply, a local colloquialism in common use, as a
clincher to a closed argument or an unwelcome truth. Captain Clubbe rose
as he spoke and intimated his intention of departing, by jerking his head
sideways at Monsieur de Gemosac, who, however, held out his hand with a
Frenchman's conscientious desire to follow the English custom.

"I'll be getting home," said Clubbe, simply. As he spoke he peered across
the marsh toward the river, and Colville, following the direction of his
gaze, saw the black silhouette of a large lug-sail against the eastern
sky, which was softly grey with the foreglow of the rising moon.

"What is that?" asked Colville.

"That's Loo Barebone going up with the sea-breeze. He has been down to
the rectory. He mostly goes there in the evening. There is a creek, you
know, runs down from Maiden's Grave to the river."

"Ah!" answered Colville, thoughtfully, almost as if the creek and the
large lug-sail against the sky explained something which he had not
hitherto understood.

"I thought he might have come with you this evening," he added, after a
pause. "For I suppose everybody in Farlingford knows why we are here. He
does not seem very anxious to seek his fortune in France."

"No," answered Clubbe, lifting his stony face to the sky and studying the
little clouds that hovered overhead awaiting the moon. "No--you are
right."

Then he turned with a jerk of the head and left them. The Marquis de
Gemosac watched him depart, and made a gesture toward the darkness of the
night, into which he had vanished, indicative of a great despair.

"But," he exclaimed, "they are of a placidity--these English. There is
nothing to be done with them, my friend, nothing to be done with such men
as that. Now I understand how it is that they form a great nation. It is
merely because they stand and let you thump them until you are tired, and
then they proceed to do what they intended to do from the first."

"That is because we know that he who jumps about most actively will be
the first to feel fatigue, Marquis," laughed Colville, pleasantly. "But
you must not judge all England from these eastern people. It is here that
you will find the concentrated essence of British tenacity and
stolidity--the leaven that leavens the whole."

"Then it is our misfortune to have to deal with these concentrated
English--that is all."

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders with that light despair which is
incomprehensible to any but men of Latin race.

"No, Marquis! there you are wrong," corrected Dormer Colville, with a
sudden gravity, "for we have in Captain Clubbe the very man we want--one
of the hardest to find in this chattering world--a man who will not say
too much. If we can only make him say what we want him to say he will not
ruin all by saying more. It is so much easier to say a word too much than
a word too little. And remember he speaks French as well as English,
though, being British, he pretends that he cannot."

Monsieur de Gemosac turned to peer at his companion in the darkness.

"You speak hopefully, my friend," he said. "There is something in your
voice--"

"Is there?" laughed Colville, who seemed elated. "There may well be. For
that man has been saying things in that placid monotone which would have
taken your breath away had you been able to understand them. A hundred
times I rejoiced that you understood no English, for your impatience,
Marquis, might have silenced him as some rare-voiced bird is silenced by
a sudden movement. Yes, Marquis, there is a locket containing a portrait
of Marie Antoinette. There are other things also. But there is one
draw-back. The man himself is not anxious to come forward. There are
reasons, it appears, here in Farlingford, why he should not seek his
fortune elsewhere. To-morrow morning--"

Dormer Colville rose and yawned audibly. It almost appeared that he
regretted having permitted himself a moment's enthusiasm on a subject
which scarcely affected his interests.

"To-morrow morning I will see to it."




CHAPTER VIII


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING

The Reverend Septimus Marvin had lost his wife five years earlier. It was
commonly said that he had never been the same man since. Which was
untrue. Much that is commonly said will, on investigation, be found to be
far from the truth. Septimus Marvin had, so to speak, been the same man
since infancy. He had always looked vaguely at the world through
spectacles; had always been at a loss among his contemporaries--a
generation already tainted by that shallow spirit of haste which is known
to-day as modernity--at a loss for a word; at a loss for a companion
soul.

He was a scholar and a learned historian. His companions were books, and
he communed in spirit with writers who were dead and gone.

Had he ever been a different man his circumstances would assuredly have
been other. His wife, for instance, would in all human probability have
been alive. His avocation might have been more suited to his
capabilities. He was not intended for a country parish, and that
practical, human comprehension of the ultimate value of little daily
details, without which a pastor never yet understood his flock, was not
vouchsafed to him.

"Passen takes no account o' churchyard," River Andrew had said, and
neither he nor any other in Farlingford could account for the special
neglect to which was abandoned that particular corner of the burial
ground where the late Mrs. Marvin reposed beneath an early Victorian
headstone of singular hideousness.

Mr. Marvin always went round the other way.

"Seems as he has forgotten her wonderful quick," commented the women of
Farlingford. But perhaps they were wrong. If he had forgotten, he might
be expected to go round by the south side of the church by accident
occasionally, especially as it was the shorter way from the rectory to
the porch. He was an absent-minded man, but he always remembered, as
River Andrew himself admitted, to go north about. And his wife's grave
was overgrown by salted grass as were the rest.

Farlingford had accepted him, when his College, having no use for such a
dreamer elsewhere, gave him the living, not only with resignation, but
with equanimity. This remote parish, cut off from the busier mainland by
wide heaths and marshes, sparsely provided with ill-kept roads, had never
looked for a bustling activity in its rectors. Their forefathers had been
content with a gentleman, given to sport and the pursuits of a country
squire, marked on the seventh day by a hearty and robust godliness. They
would have preferred Parson Marvin to have handled a boat and carried a
gun. But he had his good qualities. He left them alone. And they are the
most independent people in the world.

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