The Last Hope Read online

  CHAPTER IX

  A MISTAKE

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

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

  For Septimus Marvin knew that Colville, in the name of the Marquis deGemosac, had asked Loo Barebone to go to France and institute proceedingsthere to recover a great heritage, which it seemed must be his. AndBarebone had laughed and put off his reply from day to day for threedays.

  Few knew of it in Farlingford, though many must have suspected the trueexplanation of the prolonged stay of the two strangers at the "BlackSailor." Captain Clubbe and Septimus Marvin, Dormer Colville and Monsieurde Gemosac shared this knowledge, and awaited, impatiently enough, ananswer which could assuredly be only in the affirmative. Clubbe was busyenough throughout the day at the old slip-way, where "The Last Hope" wasunder repair--the last ship, it appeared likely, that the rotten timberscould support or the old, old shipwrights mend.

  Loo Barebone was no less regular in his attendance at the river-side, andworked all day, on deck or in the rigging, at leisurely sail-making orneat seizing of a worn rope. He was gay, and therefore incomprehensibleto 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 mymind yet, but I think it will be No."

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

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

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

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

  "There is no knowing," admitted Colville, with his air of suppressing ahalf-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 hoistedthe sail and felt for the tiller in the dark, he was, perhaps, meditatingon 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 areimpulsive 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 boatthat 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 theslip-way, little suspecting that Miriam and Sep were just above himbehind the dyke, where they had sat three days before listening to DormerColville's story of the little boy who was a King. To-night he ran theboat into the coarse and wiry grass where Septimus Marvin's own dinghylay, half hidden by the reeds, and he stumbled ashore clutching at thedewy grass as he climbed the side of the dyke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "It is not worth looking grave about. And I am sorry if I was rude aminute 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 youwant."

  Her voice was oddly placid. It almost seemed to suggest that she had cometo-night for a certain purpose; that one subject of conversation alonewould 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 downat her. He was suddenly grave now. The _roles_ were again reversed; forit was the woman who was tenacious to one purpose and the man who seemedinconsequent, 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 humblysituated.

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

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

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

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

  "Indeed!" she said, gently and interrogatively, as if at last he hadreached 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 anequality."

  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 hethought 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, tocoming back here--" He paused and kicked the turf-wall with his heel, asif to remind her that she h
ad sat in the same corner before and he hadleant against the same wall, talking to her. "They are good fellows, ofcourse, with a hundred fine qualities which I lack, but they do notunderstand half that one may say, or think--even the Captain. He is welleducated, in his way, but it is only the way of a coasting-captain whohas 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. Inever forget that. I am the son of his cousin. I know that, and thusrelated to many in Farlingford. But I have never called him cousin, andhe has never asked me to."

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

  "Oh!" he said, with a sudden laugh of comprehension. "You have heardwhat, I suppose, is common talk in Farlingford. You know what has broughtthese people here--this Monsieur de Gemosac, and the other--what is hisname? 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 thedark he could not refrain from adding to the meaning of mere words ahundred-fold by the help of his lean hands and mobile face.

  "I have heard of it, of course," she admitted, "from several people. ButI have heard most from Captain Clubbe. He takes it more seriously thanyou do. You do not know, because he is one of those men who are mostsilent with those to whom they are most attached. He thinks that it isprovidential that my uncle should have had the desire to educate you, andthat 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. Youwill find circumstances too strong for you. You will have to go to Franceto claim your--heritage."

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

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

  "I prefer Farlingford. I am half a Clubbe--and the other half!--Heavenknows what that is! The offshoot of some forgotten seedling blown awayfrom 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 becausehe was ashamed of what he knew. You never saw him, or you would haveknown his dread of France, or anything that was French. He was a manliving in a dream. His body was here in Farlingford, but his mind waselsewhere--who knows where? And at times I feel that, too--thatunreality--as if I were here, and somewhere else at the same time. Butall 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 inthe sky, just above the horizon, casting a feeble light on earth. Looturned and looked at Miriam, who had always met his glance with herthoughtful, steady eyes. But now she turned away.

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

  "You are more than that."

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

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

  "What do you mean?" she asked, in a quick, mechanical voice, as if shehad reached a desired crisis at last and was prepared to act.

  "Oh, I only mean what I have meant always," he answered. "But I have beenafraid--afraid. One hears, sometimes, of a woman who is generous enoughto love a man who is a nobody--to think only of love. Sometimes--lastvoyage, when you used to sit where you are sitting now--I have thoughtthat it might have been my extraordinary good fortune to meet such awoman."

  He waited for some word or sign, but she sat motionless.

  "You understand," he went on, "how contemptible must seem their talk of aheritage in France, when such a thought is in one's mind, even if--"

  "Yes," she interrupted, hastily. "You were quite wrong. You weremistaken."

  "Mistaking in thinking you--"

  "Yes," she interrupted again. "You are quite mistaken, and I am verysorry, of course, that it should have happened."

  She was singularly collected, and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.Barebone's eyes gleamed suddenly; for she had aroused-perhapspurposely--a pride which must have accumulated in his blood throughcountless generations. She struck with no uncertain hand.

  "Yes," he said, slowly; "it is to be regretted. Is it because I am theson of a nameless father and only the mate of 'The Last Hope'?"

  "If you were before the mast--" she answered--"if you were a King, itwould make no difference. It is simply because I do not care for you inthat way."

  "You do not care for me--in that way," he echoed, with a laugh, whichmade her move as if she were shrinking. "Well, there is nothing more tobe said to that."

  He looked at her slowly, and then took off his cap as if to bid hergood-bye. But he forgot to replace it, and he went away with the cap inhis hand. She heard the clink of a chain as he loosed his boat.