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.