The Last Hope

by Henry Seton Merriman

  CHAPTER V

  ON THE DYKE

  Neither had spoken again when their thoughts were turned aside from thatstory which Colville, instead of telling, had been called upon to hear.

  For the man whose story it presumably was passed across the green ere thesound of the ship's bell had died away. He had changed his clothes, orelse it would have appeared that he was returning to his ship. He walkedwith his head thrown up, with long lithe steps, with a gait and carnageso unlike the heavy tread of men wearing sea-boots all their workingdays, that none would have believed him to be born and bred inFarlingford. For it is not only in books that history is written, but inthe turn of a head, in the sound of a voice, in the vague and dreamythoughts half formulated by the human mind 'twixt sleeping and waking.

  Monsieur de Gemosac paused, with his cigarette held poised halfway to hislips, and watched the man go past, while Dormer Colville, leaning backagainst the wall, scanned him sideways between lowered lids.

  It would seem that Barebone must have an appointment. He walked withoutlooking about him, like one who is late. He rather avoided than soughtthe greeting of a friend from the open cottage-doors as he passed on. Onreaching the quay he turned quickly to the left, following the path thatled toward the dyke at the riverside.

  "He is no sailor at heart," commented Colville. "He never even glanced athis ship."

  "And yet it was he who steered the ship in that dangerous river."

  "He may be skilful in anything he undertakes," suggested Colville, inexplanation. "It is Captain Clubbe who will tell us that. For CaptainClubbe has known him since his birth, and was the friend of his father."

  They sat in silence watching the shadowy figure on the dyke, outlineddimly against the hazy horizon. He was walking, still with haste as if toa certain destination, toward the rectory buried in its half circle ofcrouching trees. And already another shadow was hurrying from the houseto meet him. It was the boy, little Sep Marvin, and in the stillness ofthe evening his shrill voice could be heard in excited greeting.

  "What have you brought? What have you brought?" he was crying, as he rantoward Barebone. They seemed to have so much to say to each other thatthey could not wait until they came within speaking distance. The boytook Barebone's hand, and turning walked back with him to the old housepeeping over the dyke toward the sea. He could scarcely walk quietly, forjoy at the return of his friend, and skipped from side to side, pouringout questions and answering them himself as children and women do.

  But Barebone gave him only half of his attention and looked before himwith grave eyes, while the boy talked of nests and knives. Barebonewas looking toward the garden, concealed like an entrenchment behindthe dyke. It was a quiet evening, and the rector was walking slowlybackward and forward on the raised path, made on the dyke itself, like aship-captain on his quarter-deck, with hands clasped behind his bent backand eyes that swept the horizon at each turn with a mechanical monotony.At one end of the path, which was worn smooth by the Reverend SeptimusMarvin's pensive foot, the gleam of a white dress betrayed the presenceof his niece, Miriam Liston.

  "Ah, is that you?" asked the rector, holding out a limp hand. "Yes. Iremember Sep was allowed to sit up till half-past eight in the hope thatyou might come round to see us. Well, Loo, and how are you? Yes--yes."

  And he looked vaguely out to sea, repeating below his breath the words"Yes--yes" almost in a whisper, as if communing secretly with his ownthoughts out of hearing of the world.

  "Of course I should come round to see you," answered Barebone. "Whereelse should I go? So soon as we had had tea and I could change my clothesand get away from that dear Mrs. Clubbe. It seems so strange to come backhere from the racketing world--and France is a racketing world of itsown--and find everything in Farlingford just the same."

  He had shaken hands with the rector and with Miriam Liston as he spoke,and his speech was not the speech of Farlingford men at all, but ratherof Septimus Marvin himself, of whose voice he had acquired the ring ofeducation, while adding to it a neatness and quickness of enunciationwhich must have been his own; for none in Suffolk could have taught it tohim.

  "Just the same," he repeated, glancing at the book Miriam had laid asidefor a moment to greet him and had now taken up again. "That book must bevery large print," he said, "for you to be able to read by this light."

  "It is large print," answered the girl, with a friendly laugh, as shereturned to it.

  "And you are still resolved to be a sailor?" inquired Marvin, looking athim with kind eyes for ever asleep, it would appear, in some long slumberwhich must have been the death of one of the sources of human energy--ofambition or of hope.

  "Until I find a better calling," answered Loo Barebone, with his eagerlaugh. "When I am away I wonder how any can be content to live inFarlingford and let the world go by. And when I am here I wonder how anycan be so foolish as to fret and fume in the restless world while hemight be sitting quietly at Farlingford."

  "Ah," murmured the rector, musingly, "you are for the world. You, withyour capacities, your quickness for learning, your--well, your lightnessof heart, my dear Loo. That goes far in the great world. To be light ofheart--to amuse. Yes, you are for the world. You might do somethingthere."

  "And nothing in Farlingford?" inquired Barebone, gaily; but he turned, ashe spoke, and glanced once more at Miriam Liston as if in some dim waythe question could not be answered by any other. She was absorbed in herbook again. The print must indeed have been large and clear, for thetwilight was fading fast.

  She looked up and met his glance with direct and steady eyes of a cleargrey. A severe critic of that which none can satisfactorily define--awoman's beauty--would have objected that her face was too wide, and herchin too square. Her hair, which was of a bright brown, grew with asingular strength and crispness round a brow which was serene and square.In her eyes there shone the light of tenacity, and a steady purpose. Astudent of human nature must have regretted that the soul looking out ofsuch eyes should have been vouchsafed to a woman. For strength andpurpose in a man are usually exercised for the good of mankind, while ina woman such qualities must, it would seem, benefit no more than one manof her own generation, and a few who may follow her in the next.

  "There is nothing," she said, turning to her book again, "for a man to doin Farlingford."

  "And for a woman--?" inquired Barebone, without looking at her.

  "There is always something--everywhere."

  And Septimus Marvin's reflective "Yes--yes," as he paused in his walk andlooked seaward, came in appropriately as a grave confirmation of Miriam'sjesting statement.

  "Yes--yes," he repeated, turning toward Barebone, who stood listening tothe boy's chatter. "You find us as you left us, Loo. Was it six monthsago? Ah! How time flies when one remains stationary. For you, I dare say,it seems more."

  "For me--oh yes, it seems more," replied Barebone, with his gay laugh,and a glance toward Miriam.

  "A little older," continued the rector. "The church a little mouldier.Farlingford a little emptier. Old Godbold is gone--the last of theGodbolds of Farlingford, which means another empty cottage in thestreet."

  "I saw it as I came down," answered Barebone. "They look like last year'snests--those empty cottages. But you have been all well, here at therectory, since we sailed? The cottages--well, they are only cottagesafter all."

  Miriam's eyes were raised for a moment from her book.

  "Is it like that they talk in France?" she asked. "Are those thesentiments of the great republic?"

  Barebone laughed aloud.

  "I thought I could make you look up from your book," he answered."One has merely to cast a slur upon the poor--your dear poor ofFarlingford--and you are up in arms in an instant. But I am not theperson to cast a slur, since I am one of the poor of Farlingford myself,and owe it to charity--to the charity of the rectory--that I can read andwrite."

  "But it came to you very naturally," observed Marvin, looking vaguelyacross the marshes to the roofs of the v
illage, "to suggest that thosewho live in cottages are of a different race of beings--"

  He broke off, following his own thoughts in silence, as men soon learn todo who have had no companion by them capable of following whithersoeverthey may lead.

  "Did it?" asked Barebone, sharply. He turned to look at his old friendand mentor with a sudden quick distress. "I hope not. I hope it did notsound like that. For you have never taught me such thoughts, have you?Quite the contrary. And I cannot have learned it from Clubbe."

  He broke off with a laugh of relief, for he had perceived that SeptimusMarvin's thoughts were already elsewhere.

  "Perhaps you are right," he added, turning to Miriam. "It may be that oneshould go to a republic in order to learn--once for all--that all men arenot equal."

  "You say it with so much conviction," was the retort, "that you must haveknown it before."

  "But I do not know it. I deny such knowledge. Where could I have learnedsuch a principle?"

  He spread out his arms in emphatic denial. For he was quick in all hisgestures--quick to laugh or be grave--quick, with the rapidity of a womanto catch a thought held back by silence or concealed in speech.

  Marvin merely looked at him with a dreamy smile and lapsed again intothose speculations which filled his waking moments; for the business oflife never received his full attention. He contemplated the world fromafar off, and was like that blind man at Bethsaida who saw men as treeswalking, and rubbed his eyes and wondered. He turned at the sound of thechurch clock and looked at his son, whose attitude towards Barebone wasthat of an admiring younger brother.

  "Sep," he said, "your extra half-hour has passed. You will have timetomorrow and for many days to come to exchange views with Loo."

  The boy was old before his time, as the children of elderly parentsalways are.

  "Very well," he said, with a grave nod. "But you must not tell Loo wherethose young herons are after I am gone to bed."

  He went slowly toward the house, looking back suspiciously from time totime.

  "Herons? no. Why should I? Where are they?" muttered Mr. Marvin, vaguely,and he absent-mindedly followed his son, leaving Miriam Liston sitting inthe turf shelter, built like an embrasure in the dyke, and Barebonestanding a little distance from her, looking at her.

  A silence fell upon them--the silence that follows the departure of athird person when those who are left behind turn a new page. Miriam laidher book upon her lap and looked across the river now slowly turning toits ebb. She did not look at Barebone, but her eyes were conscious of hisproximity. Her attitude, like his, seemed to indicate the knowledge thatthis moment had been inevitable from the first, and that there was nodesire on either part to avoid it or to hasten its advent.

  "I had a haunting fear as we came up the river," he said at length,quietly and with an odd courtesy of manner, "that you might have goneaway. That is the calamity always hanging over this quiet house."

  He spoke with the ease of manner which always indicates a longfriendship, or a close _camaraderie_, resulting from common interests ora common endeavour.

  "Why should I go away?" she asked.

  "On the other hand, why should you stay?"

  "Because I fancy I am wanted," she replied, in the lighter tone which hehad used. "It is gratifying to one's vanity, you know, whether it be trueor not."

  "Oh, it is true enough. One cannot imagine what they would do withoutyou."

  He was watching Septimus Marvin as he spoke. Sep had joined him and waswalking gravely by his side toward the house. They were ill-assorted.

  "But there is a limit even to self-sacrifice and--well, there is anotherworld open to you."

  She gave a curt laugh as if he had touched a topic upon which they woulddisagree.

  "Oh--yes," he laughed. "I leave myself open to a _tu quoque_, I know.There are other worlds open to me also, you would say."

  He looked at her with his gay and easy smile; but she made no answer, andher resolute lips closed together sharply. The subject had been closed bysome past conversation or incident which had left a memory.

  "Who are those two men staying at 'The Black Sailor?'" she asked,changing the subject, or only turning into a by-way, perhaps. "You sawthem."

  She seemed to take it for granted that he should have seen them, thoughhe had not appeared to look in their direction.

  "Oh--yes. I saw them, but I do not know who they are. I came straighthere as soon as I could."

  "One of them is a Frenchman," she said, taking no heed of the excusegiven for his ignorance of Farlingford news.

  "The old man--I thought so. I felt it when I looked at him. It wasperhaps a fellow feeling. I suppose I am a Frenchman after all. Clubbealways says I am one when I am at the wheel and let the ship go off thewind."

  Miriam was looking along the dyke, peering into the gathering darkness.

  "One of them is coming toward us now," she said, almost warningly. "Notthe Marquis de Gemosac, but the other--the Englishman."

  "Confound him," muttered Barebone. "What does he want?"

  And to judge from Mr. Dormer Colville's pace it would appear that hechiefly desired to interrupt their _tete-a-tete_.