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 shore. 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.
the evenings were shorter now, for july was drawing to a close, and the summer is brief on these coasts. the moon was not up yet, but would soon rise. barebone hoisted the great lug-sail, that smelt of seaweed and tannin. there was a sleepy breeze blowing in from the cooler sea, to take the place of that hot and shimmering air which had been rising all day from the corn-fields. he was quicker in his movements than those who usually handled these stiff ropes and held the clumsy tiller. quick—and quiet for once. he had been three nights to the rectory, only to find the rector there, vaguely kind, looking at him with a watery eye, through the spectacles which were rarely straight upon his nose, with an unasked question on his hesitating lips.
for septimus marvin knew that colville, in the name of the marquis de gemosac, had asked loo barebone to go to france and institute proceedings there to recover a great heritage, which it seemed must be his. and barebone had laughed and put off his reply from day to day for three days.
few knew of it in farlingford, though many must have suspected the true explanation of the prolonged stay of the two strangers at the “black sailor.” captain clubbe and septimus marvin, dormer colville and monsieur de gemosac shared this knowledge, and awaited, impatiently enough, an answer which could assuredly be only in the affirmative. clubbe was busy enough throughout the day at the old slip-way, where “the last hope” was under repair—the last ship, it appeared likely, that the rotten timbers could support or the old, old shipwrights mend.
loo barebone was no less regular in his attendance at the river-side, and worked all day, on deck or in the rigging, at leisurely sail-making or neat seizing of a worn rope. he was gay, and therefore incomprehensible to a slow-thinking, grave-faced race.
“what do i want with a heritage?” he asked, carelessly. “i am mate of 'the last hope'—and that is all. give me time. i have not made up my mind yet, but i think it will be no.”
and oddly enough, it was colville who preached patience to his companions in suspense.
“give him time,” he said. “there can only be one answer to such a proposal. but he is young. it is not when we are young that we see the world as it really is, but live in a land of dreams. give him time.”
the marquis de gemosac was impatient, however, and was for telling barebone more than had been disclosed to him.
“there is no knowing,” he cried, “what that canaille is doing in france.”
“there is no knowing,” admitted colville, with his air of suppressing a half-developed yawn, “but i think we know, all the same—you and i, marquis. and there is no hurry.”
after three days loo barebone had still given no answer. as he hoisted the sail and felt for the tiller in the dark, he was, perhaps, meditating on this momentous reply, or perhaps he had made up his mind long before, and would hold to the decision even to his own undoing, as men do who are impulsive and not strong. the water lapped and gurgled round the bows, for the wind was almost ahead, and it was only by nursing the heavy boat that he saved the necessity of making a tack across the narrow creek. in the morning he had, as usual, run down into the river and to the slip-way, little suspecting that miriam and sep were just above him behind the dyke, where they had sat three days before listening to dormer colville's story of the little boy who was a king. to-night he ran the boat into the coarse and wiry grass where septimus marvin's own dinghy lay, half hidden by the reeds, and he stumbled ashore clutching at the dewy grass as he climbed the side of the dyke.
he went toward the turf-shelter half despondently, and then stopped short a few yards away from it. for miriam was there. he thought she was alone, and paused to make sure before he spoke. she was sitting at the far corner, sheltered from the north wind. for farlingford is like a ship—always conscious of the lee- and the weather-side, and all who live there are half sailors in their habits—subservient to the wind.
“at last,” said loo, with a little vexed laugh. he could see her face turned toward him, but her eyes were only dark shadows beneath her hair. her face looked white in the darkness. her answering laugh had a soothing note in it.
“why—at last?” she asked. her voice was frank and quietly assured in its friendliness. they were old comrades, it seemed, and had never been anything else. the best friendship is that which has never known a quarrel, although poets and others may sing the tenderness of a reconciliation. the friendship that has a quarrel and a reconciliation in it is like a man with a weak place left in his constitution by a past sickness. he may die of something else in the end, but the probability is that he must reckon at last with that healed sore. the friendship may perish from some other cause—a marriage, or success in life, one of the two great severers—but that salved quarrel is more than likely to recur and kill at last.
these two had never fallen out. and it was the woman who, contrary to custom, fended the quarrel now.
“oh! because i have been here three nights in succession, i suppose, and did not find you here. i was disappointed.”
“but you found uncle septimus in his study. i could hear you talking there until quite late.”
“of course i was very glad to see him and talk with him. for it is to him that i owe a certain half-developed impatience with the uneducated—with whom i deal all my life, except for a few hours now and then in the study and here in the turf-shelter with you. i can see—even in the dark—that you look grave. do not do that. it is not worth that.”
he broke off with his easy laugh, as if to banish any suggestion of gravity coming from himself.
“it is not worth looking grave about. and i am sorry if i was rude a minute ago. i had no right, of course, to assume that you would be here. i suppose it was impertinent—was that it?”
“i will not quarrel,” she answered, soothingly—“if that is what you want.”
her voice was oddly placid. it almost seemed to suggest that she had come to-night for a certain purpose; that one subject of conversation alone would interest her, and that to all others she must turn a deaf ear.
he came a little nearer, and, leaning against the turf wall, looked down at her. he was suddenly grave now. the roles were again reversed; for it was the woman who was tenacious to one purpose and the man who seemed inconsequent, flitting from grave to gay, from one thought to another. his apology had been made graciously enough, but with a queer pride, quite devoid of the sullenness which marks the pride of the humbly situated.
“no; i do not want that,” he answered. “i want a little sympathy, that is all; because i have been educated above my station. and i looked for it from those who are responsible for that which is nearly always a catastrophe. and it is your uncle who educated me. he is responsible in the first instance, and, of course, i am grateful to him.”
“he could never have educated you,” put in miriam, “if you had not been ready for the education.”
barebone put aside the point. he must, at all events, have learnt humility from septimus marvin—a quality not natural to his temperament.
“and you are responsible, as well,” he went on, “because you have taught me a use for the education.”
“indeed!” she said, gently and interrogatively, as if at last he had reached the point to which she wished to bring him.
“yes; the best use to which i could ever put it. to talk to you on an equality.”
he looked hard at her through the darkness, which was less intense now; for the moon was not far below the horizon. her face looked white, and he thought that she was breathing quickly. but they had always been friends; he remembered that just in time.
“it is only natural that i should look forward, when we are at sea, to coming back here—” he paused and kicked the turf-wall with his heel, as if to remind her that she had sat in the same corner before and he had leant against the same wall, talking to her. “they are good fellows, of course, with a hundred fine qualities which i lack, but they do not understand half that one may say, or think—even the captain. he is well educated, in his way, but it is only the way of a coasting-captain who has risen by his merits to the command of a foreign-going ship.”
miriam gave an impatient little sigh. he had veered again from the point.
“you think that i forget that he is my relative,” said loo, sharply, detecting in his quickness of thought a passing resentment. “i do not. i never forget that. i am the son of his cousin. i know that, and thus related to many in farlingford. but i have never called him cousin, and he has never asked me to.”
“no,” said miriam, with averted eyes, in that other voice, which made him turn and look at her, catching his breath.
“oh!” he said, with a sudden laugh of comprehension. “you have heard what, i suppose, is common talk in farlingford. you know what has brought these people here—this monsieur de gemosac, and the other—what is his name? dormer colville. you have heard of my magnificent possibilities. and i—i had forgotten all about them.”
he threw out his arms in a gesture of gay contempt; for even in the dark he could not refrain from adding to the meaning of mere words a hundred-fold by the help of his lean hands and mobile face.
“i have heard of it, of course,” she admitted, “from several people. but i have heard most from captain clubbe. he takes it more seriously than you do. you do not know, because he is one of those men who are most silent with those to whom they are most attached. he thinks that it is providential that my uncle should have had the desire to educate you, and that you should have displayed such capacity to learn.”
“capacity?” he protested—“say genius! do not let us do things by halves. genius to learn—yes; go on.”
“ah! you may laugh,” miriam said, lightly, “but it is serious enough. you will find circumstances too strong for you. you will have to go to france to claim your—heritage.”
“not i, if it means leaving farlingford for ever and going to live among strange people, like the marquis de gemosac, for instance, who gives me the impression of a thousand petty ceremonies and a million futile memories.”
he turned and lifted his face to the breeze which blew from the sea over flat stretches of sand and seaweed—the crispest, most invigorating air in the world except that which blows on the baltic shores.
“i prefer farlingford. i am half a clubbe—and the other half!—heaven knows what that is! the offshoot of some forgotten seedling blown away from france by a great storm. if my father knew, he never said anything. and if he knew, and said nothing, one may be sure that it was because he was ashamed of what he knew. you never saw him, or you would have known his dread of france, or anything that was french. he was a man living in a dream. his body was here in farlingford, but his mind was elsewhere—who knows where? and at times i feel that, too—that unreality—as if i were here, and somewhere else at the same time. but all the same, i prefer farlingford, even if it is a dream.”
the moon had risen at last; a waning half-moon, lying low and yellow in the sky, just above the horizon, casting a feeble light on earth. loo turned and looked at miriam, who had always met his glance with her thoughtful, steady eyes. but now she turned away.
“farlingford is best, at all events,” he said, with an odd conviction. “i am only the grandson of old seth clubbe, of maiden's grave. i am a farlingford sailor, and that is all. i am mate of 'the last hope'—at your service.”
“you are more than that.”
he made a step nearer to her, looking down at her white face, averted from him. for her voice had been uncertain—unsteady—as if she were speaking against her will.
“even if i am only that,” he said, suddenly grave, “farlingford may still be a dream—farlingford and—you.”
“what do you mean?” she asked, in a quick, mechanical voice, as if she had reached a desired crisis at last and was prepared to act.
“oh, i only mean what i have meant always,” he answered. “but i have been afraid—afraid. one hears, sometimes, of a woman who is generous enough to love a man who is a nobody—to think only of love. sometimes—last voyage, when you used to sit where you are sitting now—i have thought that it might have been my extraordinary good fortune to meet such a woman.”
he waited for some word or sign, but she sat motionless.
“you understand,” he went on, “how contemptible must seem their talk of a heritage in france, when such a thought is in one's mind, even if—”
“yes,” she interrupted, hastily. “you were quite wrong. you were mistaken.”
“mistaking in thinking you—”
“yes,” she interrupted again. “you are quite mistaken, and i am very sorry, of course, that it should have happened.”
she was singularly collected, and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. barebone's eyes gleamed suddenly; for she had aroused—perhaps purposely—a pride which must have accumulated in his blood through countless generations. she struck with no uncertain hand.
“yes,” he said, slowly; “it is to be regretted. is it because i am the son of a nameless father and only the mate of 'the last hope'?”
“if you were before the mast—” she answered—“if you were a king, it would make no difference. it is simply because i do not care for you in that way.”
“you do not care for me—in that way,” he echoed, with a laugh, which made her move as if she were shrinking. “well, there is nothing more to be said to that.”
he looked at her slowly, and then took off his cap as if to bid her good-bye. but he forgot to replace it, and he went away with the cap in his hand. she heard the clink of a chain as he loosed his boat.
