CHAPTER XXVI — RETURNED EMPTY
The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, blew the fog-bank away before sunset.
Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. “Give a boy a good education,” he said, a hundred times. “Make a gentleman of him, and you have done your duty by him.”
“Make a gentleman of him—and the world will be glad to feed and clothe him,” was the real thought in his mind, as it was in the mind of nearly all his contemporaries. The wildest dreamer of those days never anticipated that, in the passage of one brief generation, social advancement should be for the shrewdly ignorant rather than for the scholar; that it would be better for a man that his mind be stored with knowledge of the world than the wisdom of the classics; that the successful grocer might find a kinder welcome in a palace than the scholar; that the manufacturer of kitchen utensils might feed with kings and speak to them, without aspirates, between the courses.
Parson Marvin knew none of these things, however; nor suspected that the advance of civilisation is not always progressive, but that she may take hands with vulgarity and dance down-hill, as she does to-day. His one scheme of life for Sep was that he should be sent to the ancient school where field-sports are cultivated to-day and English gentlemen turned upon the world more ignorant than any other gentlemen in the universe. Then, of course, Sep must go to that College with which his father’s life had been so closely allied. And if it please God to call him to the Church, and the College should remember that it had given his father a living, and do the same by him—for that reason and no other—then, of course, Sep would be a made man.
And the making of Sep had been in progress during the winter day that a fog-bank came in from the North Sea and clung tenaciously to the low, surfless coast. In the afternoon the sun broke through at last, wintry and pale. Sep, who, by some instinct—the instinct, it is to be supposed, of young animals—knew that he was destined to be of a generation that should cultivate ignorance out of doors, rather than learning by the fireside, threw aside his books and cried out that he could no longer breathe in his father’s study.
So Parson Marvin went off, alone, to visit a distant parishioner—one who was dying by himself out on the marsh, in a cottage cut off from all the world in a spring tide.
“Don’t forget that it is high tide at five o’clock, and that there is no moon, and that the dykes will be full. You will never find your way across the marsh after dark,” said Sep—the learned in tides and those practical affairs of nature, which were as a closed book to the scholar.
Parson Marvin vaguely acknowledged the warning and went away, leaving Sep to accompany Miriam on her daily errand to the simple shops in Farlingford, which would awake to life and business now that the sea-fog was gone. For the men of Farlingford, like nearly all seafarers, are timorous of bad weather on shore and sit indoors during its passage, while they treat storm and rain with a calm contempt at sea.
“Sail a-coming up the river, master,” River Andrew said to Sep, who was awaiting Miriam in the village street, and he walked on, without further comment, spade on shoulder, toward the church-yard, where he spent a portion of his day, without apparent effect.
So, when Miriam had done her shopping, it was only natural that they should turn their footsteps toward the quay and the river-wall. Or was it fate? So often is the natural nothing but the inevitable in holiday garb.
“That is no Farlingford boat,” said Sep, versed in riverside knowledge, so soon as he saw the balance-lug moving along the line of the river-wall, half a mile below the village.
They stood watching. Few coasters were at sea in these months of wild weather, and there was nothing moving on the quay. The moss-grown slip-way, where “The Last Hope” had been drawn up for repair, stood gaunt and empty, half submerged by the flowing tide. Many Farlingford men were engaged in the winter fisheries on the Dogger, and farther north, in Lowestoft boats. In winter, Farlingford—thrust out into the North Sea, surrounded by marsh—is forgotten by the world.
The solitary boat came round the corner into the wider sheet of water, locally known as Quay Reach.
“A foreigner!” cried Sep, jumping, as was his wont, from one foot to the other with excitement. “It is like the boat that was brought up by the tide, with a dead man in it, long ago. And that was a Belgian boat.”
Miriam was looking at the boat with a sudden brightness in her eyes, a rush of colour to her cheeks, which were round and healthy and of that soft clear pink which marks a face swept constantly by mist and a salty air. In flat countries, where men may see each other, unimpeded by hedge or tree or hillock, across a space measured only by miles, the eye is soon trained—like the sailor’s eye—to see and recognise at a great distance.
There was no mistaking the attitude of the solitary steersman of this foreign boat stealing quietly up to Farlingford on the flood tide. It was Loo Barebone sitting on the gunwale as he always sat, with one knee raised on the thwart, to support his elbow, and his chin in the palm of his hand, so that he could glance up the head of the sail or ahead, without needing to change his position.
Sep turned and looked up at her.
“I thought you said he was never coming back,” he said, reproachfully.
“So I did. I thought he was never coming back.”
Sep looked at her again, and then at the boat. One never knows how much children, and dogs—who live daily with human beings—understand.
“Your face is very red,” he observed. “That comes from telling untruths.”
“It comes from the cold wind,” replied Miriam, with an odd, breathless laugh.
“If we do not go home, he will be there before us,” said Sep, gravely. “He will make one tack across to the other side, and then make the mouth of the creek.”
They turned and walked, side by side, on the top of the sea-wall toward the rectory. Their figures must have been outlined against the sky, for any watching from the river. The girl, tall and strong, walking with the ease that comes from health and a steadfast mind; the eager, restless boy running and jumping by her side. Barebone must have seen them as soon as they saw him. They were part of Farlingford, these two. He had a sudden feeling of having been away for years, with this difference—that he came back and found nothing changed. Whereas, in reality, he who returns after a long absence usually finds no one awaiting him.
He did as Sep had foretold—crossing to the far side of the river, and then gaining the mouth of the creek in one tack. Miriam and Sep had reached the rectory garden first, and now stood waiting for him. He came on in silence. Last time—on “The Last Hope”—he had come up the river singing.
Sep waved his hand, and, in response, Barebone nodded his head, with one eye peering ahead, for the breeze was fresh.
The old chain was still there, imperfectly fastened round a tottering post at the foot of the tide-washed steps. It clinked as he made fast the boat. Miriam had not heard the sound of it since that night, long ago, when Loo had gone down the steps in the dark and cast off.
“I was given a passage home in a French fishing-boat, and borrowed their dinghy to come ashore in,” said Loo, as he came up the steps. He knew that Farlingford would want some explanation, and that Sep would be proud to give it. An explanation is never the worse for a spice of truth.
“Miriam told me you were never coming home again,” answered Sep, still nourishing that grievance.
“Well, she was wrong, and here I am!” was Loo’s reply, with his old, ready laugh. “And here is Farlingford—unchanged, and no harm done.”
“Why should there be any harm done?” was Sep’s prompt question.
Barebone was shaking hands with Miriam.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered. “Because there always is harm done, I suppose.”
Miriam was thinking that he had changed; that the man who had unmoored his boat at these steps six months ago had departed for ever, and that another had come back in his place. A minute later, as he turned to close the gate that shut off the rectory garden from the river-wall, chance ruled it that their eyes should meet for an instant, and she knew that he had not changed; that he might, perhaps, never change so long as he lived. She turned abruptly and led the way to the house.
Sep had a hundred questions to ask, but only a few of them were personal. Children live in a world of their own, and are not slow to invite those whom they like to come into it, while to the others, they shut the door with a greater frankness than is permissible later in life.
“Father,” he explained, “has gone to see old Doy, who is dying.”
“Is he still dying? He will never die, I am sure; for he has been trying to do it ever since I remember,” laughed Barebone; who was interested, it seemed, in Sep’s affairs, and never noticed that Miriam was walking more quickly than they were.
“And I am rather anxious about him,” continued Sep, with the gravity that comes of a realised responsibility. “He moons along, you know, with his mind far away, and he doesn’t know the path across the marsh a bit. He is bound to lose his way, and it is getting dark. Suppose I shall have to go and look for him.”
“With a lantern,” suggested Loo, darkly, without looking toward Miriam.
“Oh, yes!” replied Sep, with delight. “With a lantern, of course. Nobody but a fool would go out on to the marshes after dark without a lantern. The weed on the water makes it the same as the grass, and that old woman who was nearly drowned last winter, you know, she walked straight in, and thought it was dry land.”
And Loo heard no more, for they were at the door; and Miriam, in the lighted hall, was waiting for them, with all the colour gone from her face.
“He is sure to be in in a few minutes,” she said; for she had heard the end of their talk. She could scarcely have helped hearing Loo’s weighty suggestion of a lantern, which had had the effect he must have anticipated. Sep was already hurriedly searching for matches. It would be difficult to dissuade him from his purpose. What boy would willingly give up the prospect of an adventure on the marsh alone, with a bull’s-eye? Miriam tried, and tried in vain. She gained time, however, and was listening for Marvin’s footstep on the gravel all the while.
Sep found the matches—and it chanced that there was a sufficiency of oil in his lantern. He lighted up and went away, leaving an abominable smell of untrimmed wick behind him.
It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal was a matter of greater importance than it is to-day. A fire burned in the dining-room, glowing warmly on the mellow walls and gleaming furniture; but there was no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large windows facing the sunset sky.
Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the shining, old-fashioned kettle to the hob. She took a chair that stood near, and sat, with her shoulder turned toward him, looking into the fire.
“We will have tea as soon as they come in,” she said, in that voice of camaraderie which speaks of a life-long friendship between a man and a woman—if such a friendship be possible. Is it?—who knows? “They will not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, after having been so long abroad. It is one of the charms of coming home, or one of the alleviations. I don’t know which. And now, tell me all that has happened since you went away—if you care to.”
CHAPTER XXVII — OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
Miriam’s manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as he could remember. He had once thought—indeed, he had made to her the accusation—that she was always conscious of the social gulf existing between them; that she always remembered that she was by birth and breeding a lady, whereas he was the son of an obscure Frenchman who was nothing but a clockmaker whose name could be read (and can to this day be deciphered) on a hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms.
Since his change of fortune he had, as all men who rise to a great height or sink to the depths will tell, noted a corresponding change in his friends. Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection which peeped out at times almost against his puritanical will seemed to have suffered a chill. The men of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed in “The Last Hope” with him, seemed to hold him at a distance. They nodded to him with a brief, friendly smile, but were shy of shaking hands. The hand which they would have held out readily enough, had he needed assistance in misfortune, slunk hastily into a pocket. For he who climbs will lose more friends than the ne’er-do-well. Some may account this to human nature for righteousness and others quite the contrary: for jealousy, like love, lies hidden in unsuspected corners.
Juliette do Gemosac had been quite different to Loo since learning his story. Miriam alone remained unchanged. He had accused her of failing to rise superior to arbitrary social distinctions, and now, standing behind her in the fire-lit dining-room of the rectory, he retracted that accusation once and for all time in his own heart, though her justification came from a contrary direction to that from which it might have been expected.
Miriam alone remained a friend—and nothing else, he added, bitterly, in his own heart. And she seemed to assume that their friendship, begun in face of social distinctions, should never have to suffer from that burthen.
“I should like to hear,” she repeated, seeing that he was silent, “all that has happened since you went away; all that you may care to tell me.”
“My heritage, you mean?”
She moved in her seat but did not look round. She had laid aside her hat on coming into the house, and as she sat, leaning forward with her hands clasped together in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the fire which glowed blue and white for the salt water that was in the drift-wood, her hair, loosened by the wind, half concealed her face.
“Yes,” she answered, slowly.
“Do you know what it is—my heritage?” lapsing, as he often did when hurried by some pressing thought, into a colloquialism half French.
She shook her head, but made no audible reply.
“Do you suspect what it is?” he insisted.
“I may have suspected, perhaps,” she admitted, after a pause.
“When? How long?”
She paused again. Quick and clever as he was, she was no less so. She weighed the question. Perhaps she found no answer to it, for she turned toward the door that stood open and looked out into the hall. The light of the lamp there fell for a moment across her face.
“I think I hear them returning,” she said.
“No,” he retorted, “for I should hear them before you did. I was brought up at sea. Do not answer the question, however, if you would rather not. You ask what has happened since I went away. A great many things have happened which are of no importance. Such things always happen, do they not? But one night, when we were quarrelling, Dormer Colville mentioned your name. He was very much alarmed and very angry, so he perhaps spoke the truth—by accident. He said that you had always known that I might be the King of France. Many things happened, as I tell you, which are of no importance, and which I have already forgotten, but that I remember and always shall.”
“I have always known,” replied Miriam, “that Mr. Dormer Colville is a liar. It is written on his face, for those who care to read.”
A woman at bay is rarely merciful.
“And I thought for an instant,” pursued Loo, “that such a knowledge might have been in your mind that night, the last I was here, last summer, on the river-wall. I had a vague idea that it might have influenced in some way the reply you gave me then.”
He had come a step nearer and was standing over her. She could hear his hurried breathing.
“Oh, no,” she replied, in a calm voice full of friendliness. “You are quite wrong. The reason I gave you still holds good, and—and always will.”
In the brief silence that followed this clear statement of affairs, they both heard the rattle of the iron gate by the seawall. Sep and his father were coming. Loo turned to look toward the hall and the front door, dimly visible in the shadow of the porch. While he did so Miriam passed her hand quickly across her face. When Loo turned again and glanced down at her, her attitude was unchanged.
“Will you look at me and say that again?” he asked, slowly.
“Certainly,” she replied. And she rose from her chair. She turned and faced him with the light of the hall-lamp full upon her. She was smiling and self-confident.
“I thought,” he said, looking at her closely, “as I stood behind you, that there were tears in your eyes.”
She went past him into the hall to meet Sep and his father, who were already on the threshold.
“It must have been the firelight,” she said to Barebone as she passed him.
A minute later Septimus Marvin was shaking him by the hand with a vague and uncertain but kindly grasp.
“Sep came running to tell me that you were home again,” he said, struggling out of his overcoat. “Yes—yes. Home again to the old place. And little changed, I can see. Little changed, my boy. Tempora mutantur, eh? and we mutamur in illis. But you are the same.”
“Of course. Why should I change? It is too late to change for the better now.”
“Never! Never say that. But we do not want you to change. We looked for you to come in a coach-and-four—did we not, Miriam? For I suppose you have secured your heritage, since you are here again. It is a great thing to possess riches—and a great responsibility. Come, let us have tea and not think of such things. Yes—yes. Let us forget that such a thing as a heritage ever came between us—eh, Miriam?”
And with a gesture of old-world politeness he stood aside for his niece to pass first into the dining-room, whither a servant had preceded them with a lamp.
“It will not be hard to do that,” replied Miriam, steadily, “because he tells me that he has not yet secured it.”
“All in good time—all in good time,” said Marvin, with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly affairs and sit with folded hands.
He asked many questions which were easy enough to answer; for he had no worldly wisdom himself, and did not look for it in other people. And then he related his own adventure—the great incident of his life—his visit to Paris.
“A matter of business,” he explained. “Some duplicates—one or two of my prints which I had decided to part with. Miriam also wished me to see into some small money matters of her own. Her guardian, John Turner, you may remember, resides in Paris. A schoolfellow of my own, by the way. But our ways diverged later in life. I found him unchanged—a kind heart—always a kind heart. He attempts to conceal it, as many do, under a flippant, almost a profane, manner of speech. Brutum fulmen. But I saw through it—I saw through it.”
And the rector beamed on Loo through his spectacles with an innocent delight in a Christian charity which he mistook for cunning.
“You see,” he went on, “we have spent a little money on the rectory. To-morrow you will see that we have made good the roof of the church. One could not ask the villagers to contribute, knowing that the children want boots and scarcely know the taste of jam. Yes, John Turner was very kind to me. He found me a buyer for one of my prints.”
The rector broke off with a sharp sigh and drank his tea.
“We shall never miss it,” he added, with the hopefulness of those who can blind themselves to facts. “Come, tell me your impressions of France.”
“I have been there before,” replied Loo, with a curtness so unusual as to make Miriam glance at him. “I have been there before, you know. It would be more interesting to hear your own impressions, which must be fresher.”
Miriam knew that he did not want to speak of France, and wondered why. But Marvin, eager to talk of his favourite study, seized the suggestion in all innocence. He had gone to Paris as he had wandered through life, with the mind of a child, eager, receptive, open to impression. Such minds pass by much that is of value, but to one or two conclusions they bring a perceptive comprehension which is photographic in its accuracy.
“I have followed her history with unflagging interest since boyhood,” he said, “but never until now have I understood France. I walked through the streets of Paris and I looked into the faces of the people, and I realised that the astonishing history of France is true. One can see it in those faces. The city is brilliant, beautiful, unreal. The reality is in the faces of the people. Do you remember what Wellington said of them half a century ago? ‘They are ripe,’ he said, ‘for another Napoleon.’ But he could not see that Napoleon on the political horizon. And that is what I saw in their faces. They are ripe for something—they know not what.”
“Did John Turner tell you that?” asked Loo, in an eager voice. “He who has lived in Paris all his life?”
And Miriam caught the thrill of excitement in the voice that put this question. She glanced at Loo. His eyes were bright and his cheeks colourless. She knew that she was in the presence of some feeling that she did not understand. It was odd that an old scholar, knowing nothing but history, could thus stir a listener whose touch had hitherto only skimmed the surface of life.
“No,” answered Marvin, with assurance. “I saw it myself in their faces. Ah! if another such as Napoleon could only arise—such as he, but different. Not an adventurer, but a King and the descendant of Kings—not allied, as Napoleon was, with a hundred other adventurers.”
“Yes,” said Loo, in a muffled voice, looking away toward the fire.
“A King whose wife should be a Queen,” pursued the dreamer.
“Yes,” said Loo again, encouragingly.
“They could save France,” concluded Marvin, taking off his spectacles and polishing them with a silk handkerchief. Loo turned and looked at him, for the action so characteristic of a mere onlooker indicated that the momentary concentration of a mind so stored with knowledge that confusion reigned there was passing away.
“From what?” asked Loo. “Save France from what?”
“From inevitable disaster, my boy,” replied Marvin, gravely. “That is what I saw in those gay streets.”
Loo glanced at him sharply. He had himself seen the same all through those provinces which must take their cue from Paris whether they will or no.
“What a career!” murmured Marvin. “What a mission for a man to have in life—to save France! One does not like to think of the world without a France to lead it in nearly everything, or with a France, a mere ghost of her former self, exploited, depleted by another Bonaparte. And we must look in vain for that man as did the good Duke years ago.”
“I should like to have a shot at it,” put in Sep, who had just despatched a large piece of cake.
“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed his father, only half in jest.
“Better sit all day under the lee of a boat and make nets, like Sea Andrew,” advised Loo, with a laugh.
“Do you think so?” said Miriam, without looking up.
“All the same, I’d like to have a shot at it,” persisted Sep. “Pass the cake, please.”
Loo had risen and was looking at the clock. His face was drawn and tired and his eyes grave.
“You will come in and see us as often as you can while you are here?” said the kindly rector, as if vaguely conscious of a change in this visitor. “You will always find a welcome whether you come in a coach-and-four or on foot—you know that.”
“Thank you—yes. I know that.”
The rector peered at him through his spectacles. “I hope,” he said, “that you will soon be successful in getting your own. You are worried about it, I fear. The responsibilities of wealth, perhaps. And yet many rich people are able to do good in the world, and must therefore be happy.”
“I do not suppose I shall ever be rich,” said Loo, with a careless laugh.
“No, perhaps not. But let us hope that all will be for the best. You must not attach too much importance to what I said about France, you know. I may be wrong. Let us hope I am. For I understand that your heritage is there.”
“Yes,” answered Loo, who was shaking hands with Sep and Miriam, “my heritage is there.”
“And you will go back to France?” inquired Marvin, holding out his hand.
“Yes,” was the reply, with a side glance in the direction of Miriam. “I shall go back to France.”
CHAPTER XXVIII — BAREBONE’S PRICE
At Farlingford, forgotten of the world, events move slowly and men’s minds assimilate change without shock. Old people look for death long before it arrives, so that when at last the great change comes it is effected quite calmly. There is no indecent haste, no scrambling to put a semblance of finish to the incomplete, as there is in the hurried death of cities. Young faces grow softly mellow without those lines and anxious crow’s-feet that mar the features of the middle-aged, who, to earn their daily bread or to kill the tedium of their lives, find it necessary to dwell in streets.
“Loo’s home again,” men told each other at “The Black Sailor”; and the women, who discussed the matter in the village street, had little to add to this bare piece of news. There was nothing unusual about it. Indeed, it was customary for Farlingford men to come home again. They always returned, at last, from wide wanderings, which a limited conversational capacity seemed to deprive of all interest. Those that stayed at home learnt a few names, and that was all.
“Where are ye now from, Willum?” the newly returned sailor would be kindly asked, with the sideward jerk of the head.
“A’m now from Va’paraiso.”
And that was all that there was to be said about Valparaiso and the experiences of this circumnavigator. Perhaps it was not considered good form to inquire further into that which was, after all, his own business. If you ask an East Anglian questions he will tell you nothing; if you do not inquire he will tell you less.
No one, therefore, asked Barebone any questions. More especially is it considered, in seafaring communities, impolite to make inquiry into your neighbour’s misfortune. If a man have the ill luck to lose his ship, he may well go through the rest of his life without hearing the mention of her name. It was understood in Farlingford that Loo Barebone had resigned his post on “The Last Hope” in order to claim a heritage in France. He had returned home, and was living quietly at Maidens Grave Farm with Mrs. Clubbe. It was, therefore, to be presumed that he had failed in his quest. This was hardly a matter for surprise to such as had inherited from their forefathers a profound distrust in Frenchmen.
The brief February days followed each other with that monotony, marked by small events, that quickly lays the years aside. Loo lingered on, with a vague indecision in his mind which increased as the weeks passed by and the spell of the wide marsh-lands closed round his soul. He took up again those studies which the necessity of earning a living had interrupted years before, and Septimus Marvin, who had never left off seeking, opened new historical gardens to him and bade him come in and dig.
Nearly every morning Loo went to the rectory to look up an obscure reference or elucidate an uncertain period. Nearly every evening, after the rectory dinner, he returned the books he had borrowed, and lingered until past Sep’s bedtime to discuss the day’s reading. Septimus Marvin, with an enthusiasm which is the reward of the simple-hearted, led the way down the paths of history while Loo and Miriam followed—the man with the quick perception of his race, the woman with that instinctive and untiring search for the human motive which can put heart into a printed page of history.
Many a whole lifetime has slipped away in such occupations; for history, already inexhaustible, grows in bulk day by day. Marvin was happier than he had ever been, for a great absorption is one of Heaven’s kindest gifts.
For Barebone, France and his quest there, the Marquis de Gemosac, Dormer Colville, Juliette, lapsed into a sort of dream, while Farlingford remained a quiet reality. Loo had not written to Dormer Colville. Captain Clubbe was trading between Alexandria and Bristol. “The Last Hope” was not to be expected in England before April. To communicate with Colville would be to turn that past dream, not wholly pleasant, into a grim reality. Loo therefore put off from day to day the evil moment. By nature and by training he was a man of action. He tried to persuade himself that he was made for a scholar and would be happy to pass the rest of his days in the study of that history which had occupied Septimus Marvin’s thoughts during a whole lifetime.
Perhaps he was right. He might have been happy enough to pass his days thus if life were unchanging; if Septimus Marvin should never age and never die; if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch on the deeper thoughts, her half-French way of understanding the unspoken, with her steady friendship which might change, some day, into something else. This was, of course, inconsistent. Love itself is the most inconsistent of all human dreams; for it would have some things change and others remain ever as they are. Whereas nothing stays unchanged for a single day: love, least of all. For it must go forward or back.
“See!” cried Septimus Marvin, one evening, laying his hand on the open book before him. “See how strong are racial things. Here are the Bourbons for ever shutting their eyes to the obvious, for ever putting off the evil moment, for ever temporising—from father to son, father to son; generation after generation. Finally we come to Louis XVI. Read his letters to the Comte d’Artois. They are the letters of a man who knows the truth in his own heart and will not admit it even to himself.”
“Yes,” admitted Loo. “Yes—you are right. It is racial, one must suppose.”
And he glanced at Miriam, who did not meet his eyes but looked at the open page, with a smile on her lips half sad, wholly tolerant.
Next morning, Loo thought, he would write to Dormer Colville. But the following evening came, and he had not done so. He went, as usual, to the rectory, where the same kind welcome awaited him. Miriam knew that he had not written. Like him, she knew that an end of some sort must soon come. And the end came an hour later.
Some day, Barebone knew, Dormer Colville would arrive. Every morning he half looked for him on the sea-wall, between “The Black Sailor” and the rectory garden. Any evening, he was well aware, the smiling face might greet him in the lamp-lit drawing-room.
Sep had gone to bed earlier that night. The rector was reading aloud an endless collection of letters, from which the careful student could scarcely fail to gather side-lights on history. Both Miriam and Loo heard the clang of the iron gate on the sea-wall.
A minute or two later the old dog, who lived mysteriously in the back premises, barked, and presently the servant announced that a gentleman was desirous of speaking to the rector. There were not many gentlemen within a day’s walk of the rectory. Some one must have put up at “The Black Sailor.” Theoretically, the rector was at the call of any of his parishioners at all moments; but in practice the people of Farlingford never sought his help.
“A gentleman,” said Marvin, vaguely; “well, let him come in, Sarah.”
Miriam and Barebone sat silently looking at the door. But the man who appeared there was not Dormer Colville. It was John Turner.
He evinced no surprise on seeing Barebone, but shook hands with him with a little nod of the head, which somehow indicated that they had business together.
He accepted the chair brought forward by Marvin and warmed his hands at the fire, in no hurry, it would appear, to state the reason for this unceremonious call. After all, Marvin was his oldest friend and Miriam his ward. Between old friends, explanations are often better omitted.
“It is many years,” he said, at length, “since I heard their talk. They speak with their tongues and their teeth, but not their lips.”
“And their throats,” put in Marvin, eagerly. “That is because they are of Teuton descent. So different from the French, eh, Turner?”
Turner nodded a placid acquiescence. Then he turned, as far, it would appear, as the thickness of his neck allowed, toward Barebone.
“Saw in a French paper,” he said, “that the ‘Petite Jeanne’ had put in to Lowestoft, to replace a dinghy lost at sea. So I put two and two together. It is my business putting two and two together, and making five of them when I can, but they generally make four. I thought I should find you here.”
Loo made no answer. He had only seen John Turner once in his life—for a short hour, in a room full of people, at Royan. The banker stared straight in front of him for a few moments. Then he raised his sleepy little eyes directly to Miriam’s face. He heaved a sigh, and fell to studying the burning logs again. And the colour slowly rose to Miriam’s cheeks. The banker, it seemed, was about his business again, in one of those simple addition sums, which he sometimes solved correctly.
“To you,” he said, after a moment’s pause, with a glance in Loo’s direction, “to you, it must appear that I am interfering in what is not my own business. You are wrong there.”
He had clasped his hands across his abnormal waistcoat, and he half closed his eyes as he blinked at the fire.
“I am a sort of intermediary angel,” he went on, “between private persons in France and their friends in England. Nothing to do with state affairs, you understand, at least, very little. Many persons in England have relations or property in France. French persons fall in love with people on this side of the Channel, and vice versa. And, sooner or later, all these persons, who are in trouble with their property or their affections, come to me, because money is invariably at the bottom of the trouble. Money is invariably at the bottom of all trouble. And I represent money.”
He pursed up his lips and gazed somnolently at the fire.
“Ask anybody,” he went on, dreamily, after a pause, “if that is not the bare truth. Ask Colville, ask Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, ask Miriam Liston, sitting here beside us, if I exaggerate the importance of—of myself.”
“Every one,” admitted Barebone, cheerfully, “knows that you occupy a great position in Paris.”
Turner glanced at him and gave a thick chuckle in his throat.
“Thank you,” he said. “Very decent of you. And that point being established, I will explain further, that I am not here of my own free will. I am only an agent. No man in his senses would come to Farlingford in mid-winter unless—” he broke off, with a sharp sigh, and glanced down at Miriam’s slipper resting on the fender, “unless he was much younger than I am. I came because I was paid to do it. Came to make you a proposition.”
“To make me a proposition?” inquired Loo, as the identity of Turner’s hearers had become involved.
“Yes. And I should recommend you to give it your gravest consideration. It is one of the most foolish propositions, from the proposer’s point of view, that I have ever had to make. I should blush to make it, if it were any use blushing, but no one sees blushes on my cheeks now. Do not decide in a hurry—sleep on it. I always sleep on a question.”
He closed his eyes, and seemed about to compose himself to slumber then and there.
“I am no longer young,” he admitted, after a pause, “and therefore propose to take one of the few alleviations allowed to advancing years and an increasing avoirdupois. I am going to give you some advice. There is only one thing worth having in this life, and that is happiness. Even the possibility of it is worth all other possibilities put together. If a man have a chance of grasping happiness—I mean a home and the wife he wants.... and all that—he is wise to throw all other chances to the wind. Such, for instance, as the chance of greatness, of fame or wealth, of gratified vanity or satisfied ambition.”
He had spoken slowly, and at last he ceased speaking, as if overcome by a growing drowsiness. A queer silence followed this singular man’s words. Barebone had not resumed his seat. He was standing by the mantelpiece, as he often did, being quick and eager when interested, and not content to sit still and express himself calmly in words, but must needs emphasise his meaning by gestures and a hundred quick movements of the head.
“Go on,” he said. “Let us have the proposition.”
“And no more advice?”
Loo glanced at Miriam. He could see all three faces where he stood, but only by the light of the fire. Miriam was nearest to the hearth. He could see that her eyes were aglow—possibly with anger.
Barebone shrugged his shoulders.
“You are not an agent—you are an advocate,” he said.
Turner raised his eyes with the patience of a slumbering animal that has been prodded.
“Yes,” he said—“your advocate. There is one more chance I should advise any man to shun—to cast to the four winds, and hold on only to that tangible possibility of happiness in the present—it is the chance of enjoying, in some dim and distant future, the satisfaction of having, in a half-forgotten past, done one’s duty. One’s first duty is to secure, by all legitimate means, one’s own happiness.”
“What is the proposition?” interrupted Barebone, quickly; and Turner, beneath his heavy lids, had caught in the passing the glance from Miriam’s eyes, for which possibly both he and Loo Barebone had been waiting.
“Fifty thousand pounds,” replied the banker, bluntly, “in first-class English securities, in return for a written undertaking on your part to relinquish all claim to any heritage to which you may think yourself entitled in France. You will need to give your word of honour never to set foot on French soil—and that is all.”
“I never, until this moment,” replied Barebone, “knew the value of my own pretensions.”
“Yes,” said Turner, quietly; “that is the obvious retort. And having made it, you can now give a few minutes’ calm reflection to my proposition—say five minutes, until that clock strikes half-past nine—and then I am ready to answer any questions you may wish to ask.”
Barebone laughed good-humouredly, and so far fell in with the suggestion that he leant his elbow on the corner of the mantelpiece, and looked at the clock.