The Last Hope | Page 4

extreme and too wise not to be within reach of it in an age when great tailors were great men, and it was quite easy to make a reputation by clothes alone.
Not only was his dress too fine for Farlingford, but his personality was not in tune with this forgotten end of England. His movements were too quick for a slow-moving race of men; no fools, and wiser than their midland brethren; slow because they had yet to make sure that a better way of life had been discovered than that way in which their Saxon forefathers had always walked.
Colville seemed to look at the world with an exploiting eye. He had a speculative mind. Had he lived at the end of the Victorian era instead of the beginning he might have been a notable financier. His quick glance took in all Farlingford in one comprehensive verdict. There was nothing to be made of it. It was uninteresting because it obviously had no future, nor encouraged any enterprise. He looked across the marshes indifferently, following the line of the river as it made its devious way between high dykes to the sea. And suddenly his eye lighted. There was a sail to the south. A schooner was standing in to the river mouth, her sails glowing rosily in the last of the sunset light.
Colville turned to see whether River Andrew had noticed, and saw that landsman looking skyward with an eye that seemed to foretell the early demise of a favouring wind.
"That's 'The Last Hope,'" he said, in answer to Dormer Colville's question. "And it will take all Seth Clubbe's seamanship to save the tide. 'The Last Hope.' There's many a 'Hope,' built at Farlingford, and that's the last, for the yard is closed and there's no more building now."
The Marquis de Gemosac had turned away from the grave, but as Colville approached him he looked back to it with a shake of the head.
"After eight centuries of splendour, my friend," he said. "Can that be the end--that?"
"It is not the end," answered Colville, cheerfully. "It is only the end of a chapter. Le roi est mort--vive le roi!"
He pointed with his stick, as he spoke, to the schooner creeping in between the dykes.
CHAPTER II.
VIVE LE ROI

"The Last Hope" had been expected for some days. It was known in Farlingford that she was foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided to put her on the slip-way at the end of the next voyage. Captain Clubbe was a Farlingford man. "The Last Hope" was a Farlingford built ship, and Seth Clubbe was not the captain to go past his own port for the sake of saving a few pounds.
"Farlingford's his nation," they said of him down at the quay. "Born and bred here, man and boy. He's not likely to put her into a Thames dry-dock while the slip-way's standing empty."
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. No one could tell the number of his voyages backward and forward from the Bay to Bristol, to Yarmouth, and even to Bergen, carrying salt-fish to those countries where their religion bids them eat that which they cannot supply from their own waters, and bringing back wine from Bordeaux and brandy from Charente.
It is not etiquette, however, on these wind-swept coasts to inquire too closely into a man's business, and, as in other places, the talk was mostly among those who knew the least--namely, the women. There had been a question of repairing the church. The generation now slowly finding its way to its precincts had discussed the matter since their childhood and nothing had come of it.
One bold spirit put forth the suggestion that the two gentlemen were London architects sent down by the Queen to see to the church. But the idea fell to the ground before the assurance from Mrs. Clopton's own lips that the old gentleman was nothing but a Frenchman.
Mrs. Clopton kept "The Black Sailor," and knew a deal more than she was ready to tell people; which is tantamount to saying that she was a woman in a thousand. It had leaked out, however, that the spokesman of the party, Mr. Dormer Colville, had asked Mrs. Clopton whether it was true that there was claret in the cellars of "The Black Sailor." And any one having doubts could satisfy himself with a sight of the empty bottles, all mouldy, standing in the back yard of the inn.
They were wine-merchants from France, concluded the wiseacres of Farlingford over their evening beer. They had come to Farlingford to see Captain Clubbe. What could be more