“I don’t suppose they told me everything,” was the reply. “Why should they? I am only a seafaring man.”
“But they told you enough,” persisted Barebone, “for you to draw your own conclusions as to my business over here.”
“Yes,” answered Clubbe, with a glance across the table. “Is it going badly?”
“No. On the contrary, it is going splendidly,” answered Barebone, gaily; and Captain Clubbe ducked his head down again over the papers of the French custom-house. “It is going splendidly, but—”
He paused. Half an hour ago he had no thought in his mind of Captain Clubbe or of Farlingford. He had come on board merely to greet his old friends, to hear some news of home, to take up for a moment that old self of bygone days and drop it again. And now, in half a dozen questions and answers, whither was he drifting? Captain Clubbe filled in a word, slowly and very legibly.
“But I am not the man, you know,” said Barebone, slowly. It was as if the sight of that just man had bidden him cry out the truth. “I am not the man they think me. My father was not the son of Louis XVI, I know that now. I did not know it at first, but I know it now. And I have been going on with the thing, all the same.”
Clubbe sat back in his chair. He was large and ponderous in body. And the habit of the body at length becomes the nature of the mind.
“Who has been telling you that?” he asked.
“Dormer Colville. He told me one thing first and then the other. Only he and you and I know of it.”
“Then he must have told one lie,” said Clubbe, reflectively. “One that we know of. And what he says is of no value either way; for he doesn’t know. No one knows. Your father was a friend of mine, man and boy, and he didn’t know. He was not the same as other men; I know that—but nothing more.”