“I can understand French, but I don’t talk it,” replied the Captain, stolidly.
“And if I interpret as we go along, we shall sit here all night, and get very little said.”
Colville explained the difficulty to the Marquis de Gemosac, and agreed with him that much time would be saved if Captain Clubbe would be kind enough to tell in English all that he knew of the nameless Frenchman buried in Farlingford churchyard, to be translated by Colville to Monsieur de Gemosac at another time. As Clubbe understood this, and nodded in acquiescence, there only remained to them to draw the cork and light their cigars.
“Not much to tell,” said Clubbe, guardedly. “But what there is, is no secret, so far as I know. It has not been told because it was known long ago, and has been forgotten since. The man’s dead and buried, and there’s an end of him.”
“Of him, yes, but not of his race,” answered Colville.
“You mean the lad?” inquired the Captain, turning his calm and steady gaze to Colville’s face. The whole man seemed to turn, ponderously and steadily, like a siege-gun.
“That is what I meant,” answered Colville. “You understand,” he went on to explain, as if urged thereto by the fixed glance of the clear blue eye—“you understand, it is none of my business. I am only here as the Marquis de Gemosac’s friend. Know him in his own country, where I live most of the time.”
Clubbe nodded.
“Frenchman was picked up at sea fifty-five years ago this July,” he narrated, bluntly, “by the ‘Martha and Mary’ brig of this port. I was apprentice at the time. Frenchman was a boy with fair hair and a womanish face. Bit of a cry-baby I used to think him, but being a boy myself I was perhaps hard on him. He was with his—well, his mother.”
Captain Clubbe paused. He took the cigar from his lips and carefully replaced the outer leaf, which had wrinkled. Perhaps he waited to be asked a question. Colville glanced at him sideways and did not ask it.