The Last Hope Part 8

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 t.i.tle 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 _regime_. 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 b.u.t.tonhole 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 d.y.k.e. 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 pa.s.sing, 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 d.y.k.e.

"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 d.y.k.e. And they watched, in a sudden silence, the sail pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.