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All the village gossips naturally connected the arrival of the two gentlemen from London with the expected return of "The Last Hope." Captain Clubbe was known to have commercial relations with France. It was currently reported that he could speak the language.
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 own thoughts out of hearing of the world. "Of course I should come round to see you," answered Barebone. "Where else should I go? So soon as we had had tea and I could change my clothes and get away from that dear Mrs. Clubbe.
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."
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.
He does not seem very anxious to seek his fortune in France." "No," answered Clubbe, lifting his stony face to the sky and studying the little clouds that hovered overhead awaiting the moon. "No you are right." Then he turned with a jerk of the head and left them.
It was nearly the top of the tide and the clear green water swelled and gurgled round the weedy piles of the quay, bringing on its surface tokens from the sea shadowy jelly-fish, weed, and froth. "The Last Hope" was quite close at hand now, swinging up in mid-stream. The sun had set and over the marshes the quiet of evening brooded hazily. Captain Clubbe had taken in all sail except a jib.
But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as possible. "I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot," he explained, airily, to his companion. "The ship is yours, and you probably know more about the shoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you were at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe.
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.
"What does he want?" And to judge from Mr. Dormer Colville's pace it would appear that he chiefly desired to interrupt their tete-a-tete. 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.
"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.
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