The Last Hope | Page 4

before seen in Farlingford. He wore them, too, with an air rarely
assumed even in the streets of Ipswich.
Men still dressed with care at this time; for d'Orsay was not yet dead,
though his fame was tarnished. Mr. Dormer Colville was not a dandy,

however. He was too clever to go to that 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