The Last Hope Read online

  Chapter VII

  ON THE SCENT

  Dormer Colville attached so much importance to the Captain's grave jestthat he interpreted it at once to Monsieur de Gemosac.

  "Captain Clubbe," he said, "tells us that he does not need to be informedthat 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 hearingof 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 werepapers or any other means of identification found on the woman or thechild?"

  "There were a few papers. The woman had a Roman Catholic Missal in herpocket, 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 fadedenough. I remember that it had a fall, and would not open afterward. Noone has seen it for twenty-five years or so."

  "The locket or the portrait?" inquired Colville, with a light laugh, withwhich 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 hadfailed to temper that spirit of energy and enterprise which he hadacquired in cities--in Paris, most likely. He had no tolerance for quietways and a slow, sure progress, such as countrymen seek, who are soleisurely that the years slide past and death surprises them before theyhave done anything in the world but attend to its daily demand for apassing effort.

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

  "There are no papers," interrupted Captain Clubbe, with a calmdeliberation 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 mannerwas quick, he was perhaps as deliberate in his choice of a question aswas Captain Clubbe in answering it.

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

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

  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 eachother. There is a chance, just a chance, that we can prove this LooBarebone to be the man we think him, but we must all stand together. Wemust 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 beworth 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, whoseheart 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, anddo not like the prospect of a careful old age. I suppose, Captain, thatif a man were overburdened with wealth he would scarcely follow aseafaring life, eh?"

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

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

  Captain Clubbe had been born and bred among a people possessing littlewealth and leading a hard life, only to come to want in old age. It wasnatural that this consideration should carry weight. He was anxious to dohis best for the boy who had been brought up as his own son. He couldthink of nothing better than to secure him from want for the rest of hisdays. There were many qualities in Loo Barebone which he did notunderstand, for they were quite foreign to the qualities held to bevirtues in Farlingford; such as perseverance and method, a carefuleconomy, and a rigid common sense. Frenchman had brought these strangeways into Farlingford when he was himself only a boy of ten, and they hadsurvived 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 hisson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Frenchman may well have known that it might be worth his while to returnto France and seek fortune there; but he never spoke of this knowledgenor made reference to the recollections of his childhood, which cast acold reserve over his soul and steeped it with such a deadly hatred ofFrance and all things French, that he desired to sever all memories thatmight link him with his native country or awake in the hearts of anychildren he should beget the desire to return thither.

&n
bsp; A year after his marriage his wife died, and thus her son, left to thecare of a lonely and misanthropic father, was brought up a Frenchmanafter all, and lisped his first words in that tongue.

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

  "And his secret died with him?" suggested Dormer Colville, looking at theend 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," addedColville, tentatively.

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

  "I'll be getting home," said Clubbe, simply. As he spoke he peered acrossthe marsh toward the river, and Colville, following the direction of hisgaze, saw the black silhouette of a large lug-sail against the easternsky, 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 tothe rectory. He mostly goes there in the evening. There is a creek, youknow, runs down from Maiden's Grave to the river."

  "Ah!" answered Colville, thoughtfully, almost as if the creek and thelarge lug-sail against the sky explained something which he had nothitherto understood.

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

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

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

  "But," he exclaimed, "they are of a placidity--these English. There isnothing to be done with them, my friend, nothing to be done with such menas that. Now I understand how it is that they form a great nation. It ismerely because they stand and let you thump them until you are tired, andthen 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 bethe first to feel fatigue, Marquis," laughed Colville, pleasantly. "Butyou must not judge all England from these eastern people. It is here thatyou will find the concentrated essence of British tenacity andstolidity--the leaven that leavens the whole."

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

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

  "No, Marquis! there you are wrong," corrected Dormer Colville, with asudden gravity, "for we have in Captain Clubbe the very man we want--oneof the hardest to find in this chattering world--a man who will not saytoo much. If we can only make him say what we want him to say he will notruin all by saying more. It is so much easier to say a word too much thana 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 yourvoice--"

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

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

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