When River Andrew stated that there were few at Farlingford who knew
more of Frenchman than himself, it is to be presumed that he spoke by
the letter, and under the reserve that Captain Clubbe was not at the
moment on shore.
For Captain Clubbe had known Frenchman since boyhood.
“I understand,” said Dormer Colville to him two or three days after
the arrival of “The Last Hope,” “that the Marquis de Gemosac cannot do
better than apply to you for some information he desires to possess. In
fact, it is on that account that we are here.”
The introduction had been a matter requiring patience. For Captain
Clubbe had not laid aside in his travels a certain East Anglian distrust
of the unknown. He had, of course, noted the presence of the strangers
when he landed at Farlingford quay, but his large, immobile face had
betrayed no peculiar interest. There had been plenty to tell him all
that was known of Monsieur de Gemosac and Dormer Colville, and a good
deal that was only surmised. But the imagination of even the darksome
River Andrew failed to soar successfully under the measuring blue eye,
and the total lack of comment of Captain Clubbe.
There was, indeed, little to tell, although the strangers had been seen
to go to the rectory in quite a friendly way, and had taken a glass of
sherry in the rector's study. Mrs. Clacy was responsible for this piece
of news, and her profession giving her the entree to almost every back
door in Farlingford enabled her to gather news at the fountain-head. For
Mrs. Clacy went out to oblige. She obliged the rectory on Mondays, and
Mrs. Clubbe, with what was technically described as the heavy wash, on
Tuesdays. Whatever Mrs. Clacy was asked to do she could perform with a
rough efficiency. But she always undertook it with reluctance. It was
not, she took care to mention, what she was accustomed to, but she would
do it to oblige. Her charge was eighteen-pence a day with her dinner,
and (she made the addition with a raised eyebrow, and the resigned sigh
of one who takes her meals as a duty toward those dependent on her) a
bit of tea at the end of the day.
It was on a Wednesday that Dormer Colville met Captain Clubbe face
to face in the street, and was forced to curb his friendly smile and
half-formed nod of salutation. For Captain Clubbe went past him with a
rigid face and steadily averted eyes, like a walking monument. For there
was something in the captain's deportment dimly suggestive of stone,
and the dignity of stillness. His face meant security, his large limbs a
slow, sure action.
Colville and Monsieur de Gemosac were on the quay in the afternoon
at high tide when “The Last Hope” was warped on to the slip-way. All
Farlingford was there too, and Captain Clubbe carried out the difficult
task with hardly any words at all from a corner of the jetty, with Loo
Barebone on board as second in command.
Captain Clubbe could not fail to perceive the strangers, for they stood
a few yards from him, Monsieur de Gemosac peering with his yellow
eyes toward the deck of “The Last Hope,” where Barebone stood on the
forecastle giving the orders transmitted to him by a sign from his
taciturn captain. Colville seemed to take a greater interest in the
proceedings, and noted the skill and precision of the crew with the air
of a seaman.
Presently, Septimus Marvin wandered down the dyke and stood irresolutely
at the far corner of the jetty. He always approached his flock with
diffidence, although they treated him kindly enough, much as they
treated such of their own children as were handicapped in the race of
life by some malformation or mental incapacity.
Colville approached him and they stood side by side until “The Last
Hope” was safely moored and chocked. Then it was that the rector
introduced the two strangers to Captain Clubbe. It being a Wednesday,
Clubbe must have known all that there was to know, and more, of Monsieur
de Gemosac and Dormer Colville; for Mrs. Clacy, it will be remembered,
obliged Mrs. Clubbe on Tuesdays. Nothing, however, in the mask-like
face, large and square, of the ship-captain indicated that he knew aught
of his new acquaintances, or desired to know more. And when Colville
frankly explained their presence in Farlingford, Captain Clubbe nodded
gravely and that was all.
“We can wait, however, until a more suitable opportunity presents
itself,” Colville hastened to add. “You are busy, as even a landsman can
perceive, and cannot be expected to think of anything but your vessel
until the tide leaves her high and dry.”
He turned and explained the situation to the Marquis, who shrugged his
shoulders impatiently as if at the delay. For he was a southerner, and
was, perhaps, ignorant of the fact that in dealing with any born on the
shores of the German Ocean nothing is gained and, more often than not,
all is lost by haste.
“You hear,” Colville added, turning to the Captain, and speaking in a
curter manner; for so strongly was he moved by that human kindness
which is vaguely called sympathy that his speech varied according to his
listener. “You hear the Marquis only speaks French. It is about a fellow
countryman of his buried here. Drop in and have a glass of wine with us
some evening; to-night, if you are at liberty.”
“What I can tell you won't take long,” said Clubbe, over his shoulder;
for the tide was turning, and in a few minutes would be ebbing fast.
“Dare say not. But we have a good bin of claret at 'The Black Sailor,'
and shall be glad of your opinion on it.”
Clubbe nodded, with a curt laugh, which might have been intended to
deprecate the possession of any opinion on a vintage, or to express his
disbelief that Dormer Colville desired to have it.
Nevertheless, his large person loomed in the dusk of the trees soon
after sunset, in the narrow road leading from his house to the church
and the green.
Monsieur de Gemosac and his companion were sitting on the bench outside
the inn, leaning against the sill of their own parlour-window, which
stood open. The Captain had changed his clothes, and now wore those in
which he went to church and to the custom-house when in London or other
large cities.
“There walks a just man,” commented Dormer Colville, lightly, and no
longer word could have described Captain Clubbe more aptly. He would
rather have stayed in his own garden this evening to smoke his pipe in
contemplative silence. But he had always foreseen that the day might
come when it would be his duty to do his best by Loo Barebone. He had
not sought this opportunity, because, being a wise as well as a just
man, he was not quite sure that he knew what the best would be.
He shook hands gravely with the strangers, and by his manner seemed to
indicate his comprehension of Monsieur de Gemosac's well-turned phrases
of welcome. Dormer Colville appeared to be in a silent humour, unless
perchance he happened to be one of those rare beings who can either talk
or hold their tongues as occasion may demand.
“You won't want me to put my oar in, I see,” observed he, tentatively,
as he drew forward a small table whereon were set three glasses and a
bottle of the celebrated claret.
“I can understand French, but I don't talk it,” replied the Captain,
stolidly.
“And if I interpret as we go along, we shall sit here all night, and get
very little said.”
Colville explained the difficulty to the Marquis de Gemosac, and agreed
with him that much time would be saved if Captain Clubbe would be kind
enough to tell in English all that he knew of the nameless Frenchman
buried in Farlingford churchyard, to be translated by Colville to
Monsieur de Gemosac at another time. As Clubbe understood this, and
nodded in acquiescence, there only remained to them to draw the cork and
light their cigars.
“Not much to tell,” said Clubbe, guardedly. “But what there is, is no
secret, so far as I know. It has not been told because it was known
long ago, and has been forgotten since. The man's dead and buried, and
there's an end of him.”
“Of him, yes, but not of his race,” answered Colville.
“You mean the lad?” inquired the Captain, turning his calm and steady
gaze to Colville's face. The whole man seemed to turn, ponderously and
steadily, like a siege-gun.
“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 nobody 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 glass.
“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 glass 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 nobody
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.”