The Last Hope Part 6

"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 n.o.body 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 gla.s.s.

"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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 ident.i.ty 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.