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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




When his wife died, his sister, the widow of an Indian officer, bustled
eastward, from a fashionable Welsh watering-place, just to satisfy
herself, as she explained to her West-country friends, that he would not
marry his cook before six months elapsed. After that period she proposed
to wash her hands of him. She was accompanied by her only child, Miriam,
who had just left school.

Six months later Septimus Marvin was called upon to give away his sister
to a youthful brother officer of her late husband, which ceremony he
performed with a sigh of relief audible in the farthest recess of the
organ loft. While the wedding-bells were still ringing, the bride, who
was not dreamy or vague like her brother, gave Septimus to understand
that he had promised to provide Miriam with a home--that he really needed
a woman to keep things going at the rectory and to watch over the tender
years of little Sep--and that Miriam's boxes were packed.

Septimus had no recollection of the promise. And his sister was quite
hurt that he should say such a thing as that on her wedding day and spoil
everything. He had no business to make the suggestion if he had not
intended to carry it out. So the bride and bridegroom went away in a
shower of good wishes and rice to the life of organized idleness, for
which the gentleman's education and talents eminently befitted him, and
Miriam returned to Farlingford with Septimus.

In those days the railway passed no nearer to Farlingford than Ipswich,
and before the arrival of their train at that station Miriam had
thoroughly elucidated the situation. She had discovered that she was not
expected at the rectory, and that Septimus had never offered of his own
free will the home which he now kindly pressed upon her--two truths which
the learned historian fondly imagined to be for ever locked up in his own
heart, which was a kind one and the heart of a gentleman.

Miriam also learned that Septimus was very poor. She did not need to be
informed that he was helpless. Her instinct had told her that long ago.
She was only nineteen, but she looked at men and women with those
discerning grey eyes, in which there seemed to lurk a quiet light
like the light of stars, and saw right through them. She was woman
enough--despite the apparent inconsequence of the schoolroom, which still
lent a vagueness to her thoughts and movements--to fall an easy victim to
the appeal of helplessness. Years, it would appear, are of no account in
certain feminine instincts. Miriam had probably been woman enough at ten
years of age to fly to the rescue of the helpless.

She did not live permanently at the rectory, but visited her mother from
time to time, either in England, or at one of the foreign resorts of idle
people. But the visits, as years went by, became shorter and rarer. At
twenty-one Miriam came into a small fortune of her own, left by her
father in the hands of executors, one of whom was that John Turner, the
Paris banker, who had given Dormer Colville a letter of introduction to
Septimus Marvin. The money was sorely needed at the rectory, and Miriam
drew freely enough on John Turner.

"You are an extravagant girl," said that astute financier to her, when
they met at the house of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, at Royan, in France.
"I wonder what you spend it on! But I don't trouble my head about it. You
need not explain, you understand. But you can come to me when you want
advice or help. You will find me--in the background. I am a fat old man,
in the background. Useful enough in my way, perhaps, even to a pretty
girl with a sound judgment."

There were many, who, like Loo Barebone, reflected that there were other
worlds open to Miriam Liston. At first she went into those other worlds,
under the flighty wing of her mother, and looked about her there. Captain
and Mrs. Duncan belonged to the Anglo-French society, which had sprung
into existence since the downfall of Napoleon I, and was in some degree
the outcome of the part played by Great Britain in the comedy of the
Bourbon and Orleanist collapse. Captain Duncan had retired from the army,
changing his career from one of a chartered to an unchartered
uselessness, and he herded with tarnished aristocracy and half-pay
failures in the smoking-rooms of Continental clubs.

Miriam returned, after a short experience of this world, to Farlingford,
as to the better part. At first she accepted invitations to some of the
country houses open to her by her connection with certain great families.
But after a time she seemed to fall under the spell of that quiet life
which is still understood and lived in a few remote places.

"What can you find to do all day and to think about all night at that
bleak corner of England?" inquired her friends, themselves restless by
day and sleepless by night by reason of the heat of their pursuit of that
which is called pleasure.

"If he wants to marry his cook let him do it and be done with us," wrote
her mother from the south of France. "Come and join us at Biarritz. The
Prince President will be here this winter. We shall be very gay.... P.S.
We shall not ask you to stay with us as we are hard up this quarter; but
to share expenses. Mind come."

But Miriam remained at Farlingford, and there is nothing to be gained by
seeking to define her motive. There are two arguments against seeking a
woman's motive. Firstly, she probably has none. Secondly, should she have
one she will certainly have a counterfeit, which she will dangle before
your eyes, and you will seize it.

Dormer Colville might almost be considered to belong to the world of
which Captain and Mrs. Duncan were such brilliant ornaments. But he did
not so consider himself. For their world was essentially British,
savoured here and there by a French count or so, at whose person and
title the French aristocracy of undoubted genuineness looked askance.
Dormer Colville counted his friends among these latter. In fact, he moved
in those royalist circles who thought that there was little to choose
between the Napoleonic and the Orleanist _régime_. He carefully avoided
intimacy with Englishmen whose residence in foreign parts was continuous
and in constant need of explanation. Indeed, if a man's life needs
explanation, he must sooner or later find himself face to face with some
one who will not listen to him.

Colville, however, knew all about Captain Duncan, and knew what was
ignored by many, namely, that he was nothing worse than foolish. He knew
all about Miriam, for he was in the confidence of Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence. He knew that that lady wondered why Miriam preferred
Farlingford to the high-bred society of her own circle at Royan
and in Paris.

He thought he knew why Loo Barebone showed so little enterprise. And he
was, as Madame de Chantonnay had frequently told him, more than half a
Frenchman in the quickness of his intuitions. He picked a flower for his
buttonhole from the garden of the "Black Sailor," and set forth the
morning after his interview with Captain Clubbe toward the rectory. It
was a cool July morning, with the sun half obscured by a fog-bank driven
in from the sea. Through the dazzling white of that which is known on
these coasts as the water-smoke the sky shone a cloudless blue. The air
was light and thin. It is the lightest and thinnest air in England.
Dormer Colville hummed a song under his breath as he walked on the top of
the dyke. He was a light-hearted man, full of hope and optimism.

"Am I disturbing your studies?" he asked, with his easy laugh, as he came
rather suddenly on Miriam and little Sep in the turf-shelter at the
corner of the rectory garden. "You must say so if I am."

They had, indeed, their books, and the boy's face wore that abstracted
look which comes from a very earnest desire not to see the many
interesting things on earth and sea, which always force themselves upon
the attention of the young at the wrong time. Colville had already
secured Sep's friendship by the display of a frank ignorance of natural
history only equalled by his desire to be taught.

"We're doing history," replied Sep, frankly, jumping up and shaking
hands.

"Ah, yes. William the Conqueror, ten hundred and sixty-six, and all the
rest of it. I know. At least I knew once, but I have forgotten."

"No. We're doing French history. Miriam likes that best, but I hate it."

"French history," said Colville, thoughtfully. "Yes. That is interesting.
Miss Liston likes that best, does she? Or, perhaps, she thinks that it is
best for you to know it. Do you know all about Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette?"

"Pretty well," admitted Sep, doubtfully.

"When I was a little chap like you, I knew many people who had seen Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette. That was long, long ago," he added, turning to
Miriam to make the admission. "But those are not the things that one
forgets, are they, Miss Liston?"

"Then I wish Sep could know somebody who would make him remember,"
answered Miriam, half closing the book in her hand; for she was very
quick and had seen Colville's affable glance take it in in passing, as it
took in everything within sight.

"A King, for instance," he said, slowly. "A King of France.
Others--prophets and righteous men--have desired to see that, Miss
Liston."

It seemed, however, that he had seen enough to know the period which they
were studying.

"I suppose," he said, after a pause, "that in this studious house you
talk and think history, and more especially French history. It must be
very quiet and peaceful. Much more restful than acting in it as my friend
de Gemosac has done all his life, as I myself have done in a small way.
For France takes her history so much more violently than you do in
England. France is tossed about by it, while England stands and is
hammered on the anvil of Time, as it were, and remains just the same
shape as before."

He broke off and turned to Sep.

"Do you know the story of the little boy who was a King?" he asked,
abruptly. "They put him in prison and he escaped. He was carried out in a
clothes-basket. Funny, is it not? And he escaped from his enemies and
reached another country, where he became a sailor. He grew to be a man
and he married a woman of that country, and she died, leaving him with a
little boy. And then he died himself and left the little boy, who was
taken care of by his English relations, who never knew that he was a
King. But he was; for his father was a King before him, and his
grandfathers--far, far back. Back to the beginning of the book that Miss
Liston holds in her hand. The little boy--he was an orphan, you
see--became a sailor. He never knew that he was a King--the Hope of his
country, of all the old men and the wise men in it--the holder of the
fate of nations. Think of that."

The story pleased Sep, who sat with open lips and eager eyes, listening
to it.

"Do you think it is an interesting story? What do you think is the end of
it?"

"I don't know," answered Sep, gravely.

"Neither do I. No one knows the end of that story--yet. But if you were a
King--if you were that boy--what would you do? Would you go and be a
King, or would you be afraid?"

"No. I should go and be a King. And fight battles."

"But you would have to leave everybody. You would have to leave your
father."

"I should not mind that," answered Sep, brutally.

"You would leave Miss Liston?"

"I should have to," was the reply, with conviction.

"Ah, yes," said Colville, with a grave nod of the head. "Yes. I suppose
you would have to if you were anything of a man at all. There would be no
alternative--for a real man."

"Besides," put in Sep, jumping from side to side on his seat with
eagerness, "she would make me--wouldn't you, Miriam?"

Colville had turned away and was looking northward toward the creek,
known as Maiden's Grave, running through the marshes to the river. A
large lug-sail broke the flat line of the horizon, though the boat to
which it belonged was hidden by the raised dyke.

"Would she?" inquired Colville, absent-mindedly, without taking his eyes
from the sail which was creeping slowly toward them. "Well--you know Miss
Liston's character better than I do, Sep. And no doubt you are right. And
you are not that little boy, so it doesn't matter; does it?"

After a pause he turned and glanced sideways at Miriam, who was looking
straight in front of her with steady eyes and white cheeks.

They could hear Loo Barebone singing gaily in the boat, which was hidden
below the level of the dyke. And they watched, in a sudden silence, the
sail pass down the river toward the quay.




CHAPTER IX


A MISTAKE

The tide was ebbing still when Barebone loosed his boat, one night, from
the grimy steps leading from the garden of Maiden's Grave farm down to
the creek. It was at the farm-house that Captain Clubbe now lived when on
shore. He had lived there since the death of his brother, two years
earlier--that grim Clubbe of Maiden's Grave, whose methods of life and
agriculture are still quoted on market days from Colchester to Beccles.

The evenings were shorter now, for July was drawing to a close, and the
summer is brief on these coasts. The moon was not up yet, but would soon
rise. Barebone hoisted the great lug-sail, that smelt of seaweed and
tannin. There was a sleepy breeze blowing in from the cooler sea, to take
the place of that hot and shimmering air which had been rising all day
from the corn-fields. He was quicker in his movements than those who
usually handled these stiff ropes and held the clumsy tiller. Quick--and
quiet for once. He had been three nights to the rectory, only to find the
rector there, vaguely kind, looking at him with a watery eye, through the
spectacles which were rarely straight upon his nose, with an unasked
question on his hesitating lips.

For Septimus Marvin knew that Colville, in the name of the Marquis de
Gemosac, had asked Loo Barebone to go to France and institute proceedings
there to recover a great heritage, which it seemed must be his. And
Barebone had laughed and put off his reply from day to day for three
days.

Few knew of it in Farlingford, though many must have suspected the true
explanation of the prolonged stay of the two strangers at the "Black
Sailor." Captain Clubbe and Septimus Marvin, Dormer Colville and Monsieur
de Gemosac shared this knowledge, and awaited, impatiently enough, an
answer which could assuredly be only in the affirmative. Clubbe was busy
enough throughout the day at the old slip-way, where "The Last Hope" was
under repair--the last ship, it appeared likely, that the rotten timbers
could support or the old, old shipwrights mend.

Loo Barebone was no less regular in his attendance at the river-side, and
worked all day, on deck or in the rigging, at leisurely sail-making or
neat seizing of a worn rope. He was gay, and therefore incomprehensible
to a slow-thinking, grave-faced race.

"What do I want with a heritage?" he asked, carelessly. "I am mate of
'The Last Hope'--and that is all. Give me time. I have not made up my
mind yet, but I think it will be No."

And oddly enough, it was Colville who preached patience to his companions
in suspense.

"Give him time," he said. "There can only be one answer to such a
proposal. But he is young. It is not when we are young that we see the
world as it really is, but live in a land of dreams. Give him time."

The Marquis de Gemosac was impatient, however, and was for telling
Barebone more than had been disclosed to him.

"There is no knowing," he cried, "what that _canaille_ is doing in
France."

"There is no knowing," admitted Colville, with his air of suppressing a
half-developed yawn, "but I think we know, all the same--you and I,
Marquis. And there is no hurry."

After three days Loo Barebone had still given no answer. As he hoisted
the sail and felt for the tiller in the dark, he was, perhaps, meditating
on this momentous reply, or perhaps he had made up his mind long before,
and would hold to the decision even to his own undoing, as men do who are
impulsive and not strong. The water lapped and gurgled round the bows,
for the wind was almost ahead, and it was only by nursing the heavy boat
that he saved the necessity of making a tack across the narrow creek.
In the morning he had, as usual, run down into the river and to the
slip-way, little suspecting that Miriam and Sep were just above him
behind the dyke, where they had sat three days before listening to Dormer
Colville's story of the little boy who was a King. To-night he ran the
boat into the coarse and wiry grass where Septimus Marvin's own dinghy
lay, half hidden by the reeds, and he stumbled ashore clutching at the
dewy grass as he climbed the side of the dyke.

He went toward the turf-shelter half despondently, and then stopped
short a few yards away from it. For Miriam was there. He thought she was
alone, and paused to make sure before he spoke. She was sitting at the
far corner, sheltered from the north wind. For Farlingford is like a
ship--always conscious of the lee- and the weather-side, and all who live
there are half sailors in their habits--subservient to the wind.

"At last," said Loo, with a little vexed laugh. He could see her face
turned toward him, but her eyes were only dark shadows beneath her hair.
Her face looked white in the darkness. Her answering laugh had a soothing
note in it.

"Why--at last?" she asked. Her voice was frank and quietly assured in its
friendliness. They were old comrades, it seemed, and had never been
anything else. The best friendship is that which has never known a
quarrel, although poets and others may sing the tenderness of a
reconciliation. The friendship that has a quarrel and a reconciliation in
it is like a man with a weak place left in his constitution by a past
sickness. He may die of something else in the end, but the probability is
that he must reckon at last with that healed sore. The friendship may
perish from some other cause--a marriage, or success in life, one of the
two great severers--but that salved quarrel is more than likely to recur
and kill at last.

These two had never fallen out. And it was the woman who, contrary to
custom, fended the quarrel now.

"Oh! because I have been here three nights in succession, I suppose, and
did not find you here. I was disappointed."

"But you found Uncle Septimus in his study. I could hear you talking
there until quite late."

"Of course I was very glad to see him and talk with him. For it is to him
that I owe a certain half-developed impatience with the uneducated--with
whom I deal all my life, except for a few hours now and then in the study
and here in the turf-shelter with you. I can see--even in the dark--that
you look grave. Do not do that. It is not worth that."

He broke off with his easy laugh, as if to banish any suggestion of
gravity coming from himself.

"It is not worth looking grave about. And I am sorry if I was rude a
minute ago. I had no right, of course, to assume that you would be here.
I suppose it was impertinent--was that it?"

"I will not quarrel," she answered, soothingly--"if that is what you
want."

Her voice was oddly placid. It almost seemed to suggest that she had come
to-night for a certain purpose; that one subject of conversation alone
would interest her, and that to all others she must turn a deaf ear.

He came a little nearer, and, leaning against the turf wall, looked down
at her. He was suddenly grave now. The _róles_ were again reversed; for
it was the woman who was tenacious to one purpose and the man who seemed
inconsequent, flitting from grave to gay, from one thought to another.
His apology had been made graciously enough, but with a queer pride,
quite devoid of the sullenness which marks the pride of the humbly
situated.

"No; I do not want that," he answered. "I want a little sympathy, that is
all; because I have been educated above my station. And I looked for it
from those who are responsible for that which is nearly always a
catastrophe. And it is your uncle who educated me. He is responsible in
the first instance, and, of course, I am grateful to him."

"He could never have educated you," put in Miriam, "if you had not been
ready for the education."

Barebone put aside the point. He must, at all events, have learnt
humility from Septimus Marvin--a quality not natural to his temperament.

"And you are responsible, as well," he went on, "because you have taught
me a use for the education."

"Indeed!" she said, gently and interrogatively, as if at last he had
reached the point to which she wished to bring him.

"Yes; the best use to which I could ever put it. To talk to you on an
equality."

He looked hard at her through the darkness, which was less intense now;
for the moon was not far below the horizon. Her face looked white, and he
thought that she was breathing quickly. But they had always been friends;
he remembered that just in time.

"It is only natural that I should look forward, when we are at sea, to
coming back here--" He paused and kicked the turf-wall with his heel, as
if to remind her that she had sat in the same corner before and he had
leant against the same wall, talking to her. "They are good fellows, of
course, with a hundred fine qualities which I lack, but they do not
understand half that one may say, or think--even the Captain. He is well
educated, in his way, but it is only the way of a coasting-captain who
has risen by his merits to the command of a foreign-going ship."

Miriam gave an impatient little sigh. He had veered again from the point.

"You think that I forget that he is my relative," said Loo, sharply,
detecting in his quickness of thought a passing resentment. "I do not. I
never forget that. I am the son of his cousin. I know that, and thus
related to many in Farlingford. But I have never called him cousin, and
he has never asked me to."

"No," said Miriam, with averted eyes, in that other voice, which made him
turn and look at her, catching his breath.

"Oh!" he said, with a sudden laugh of comprehension. "You have heard
what, I suppose, is common talk in Farlingford. You know what has brought
these people here--this Monsieur de Gemosac, and the other--what is his
name? Dormer Colville. You have heard of my magnificent possibilities.
And I--I had forgotten all about them."

He threw out his arms in a gesture of gay contempt; for even in the
dark he could not refrain from adding to the meaning of mere words a
hundred-fold by the help of his lean hands and mobile face.

"I have heard of it, of course," she admitted, "from several people. But
I have heard most from Captain Clubbe. He takes it more seriously than
you do. You do not know, because he is one of those men who are most
silent with those to whom they are most attached. He thinks that it is
providential that my uncle should have had the desire to educate you, and
that you should have displayed such capacity to learn."

"Capacity?" he protested--"say genius! Do not let us do things by halves.
Genius to learn--yes; go on."

"Ah! you may laugh," Miriam said, lightly, "but it is serious enough. You
will find circumstances too strong for you. You will have to go to France
to claim your--heritage."

"Not I, if it means leaving Farlingford for ever and going to live among
strange people, like the Marquis de Gemosac, for instance, who gives me
the impression of a thousand petty ceremonies and a million futile
memories."

He turned and lifted his face to the breeze which blew from the sea over
flat stretches of sand and seaweed--the crispest, most invigorating air
in the world except that which blows on the Baltic shores.

"I prefer Farlingford. I am half a Clubbe--and the other half!--Heaven
knows what that is! The offshoot of some forgotten seedling blown away
from France by a great storm. If my father knew, he never said anything.
And if he knew, and said nothing, one may be sure that it was because
he was ashamed of what he knew. You never saw him, or you would have
known his dread of France, or anything that was French. He was a man
living in a dream. His body was here in Farlingford, but his mind was
elsewhere--who knows where? And at times I feel that, too--that
unreality--as if I were here, and somewhere else at the same time. But
all the same, I prefer Farlingford, even if it is a dream."

The moon had risen at last; a waning half-moon, lying low and yellow in
the sky, just above the horizon, casting a feeble light on earth. Loo
turned and looked at Miriam, who had always met his glance with her
thoughtful, steady eyes. But now she turned away.

"Farlingford is best, at all events," he said, with an odd conviction. "I
am only the grandson of old Seth Clubbe, of Maiden's Grave. I am a
Farlingford sailor, and that is all. I am mate of 'The Last Hope'--at
your service."

"You are more than that."

He made a step nearer to her, looking down at her white face, averted
from him. For her voice had been uncertain--unsteady--as if she were
speaking against her will.

"Even if I am only that," he said, suddenly grave, "Farlingford may still
be a dream--Farlingford and--you."

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