He threw out his arms in a gesture of gay contempt; for even in the dark he could not refrain from adding to the meaning of mere words a hundred-fold by the help of his lean hands and mobile face.
“I have heard of it, of course,” she admitted, “from several people. But I have heard most from Captain Clubbe. He takes it more seriously than you do. You do not know, because he is one of those men who are most silent with those to whom they are most attached. He thinks that it is providential that my uncle should have had the desire to educate you, and that you should have displayed such capacity to learn.”
“Capacity?” he protested—“say genius! Do not let us do things by halves. Genius to learn—yes; go on.”
“Ah! you may laugh,” Miriam said, lightly, “but it is serious enough. You will find circumstances too strong for you. You will have to go to France to claim your—heritage.”
“Not I, if it means leaving Farlingford for ever and going to live among strange people, like the Marquis de Gemosac, for instance, who gives me the impression of a thousand petty ceremonies and a million futile memories.”
He turned and lifted his face to the breeze which blew from the sea over flat stretches of sand and seaweed—the crispest, most invigorating air in the world except that which blows on the Baltic shores.
“I prefer Farlingford. I am half a Clubbe—and the other half!—Heaven knows what that is! The offshoot of some forgotten seedling blown away from France by a great storm. If my father knew, he never said anything. And if he knew, and said nothing, one may be sure that it was because he was ashamed of what he knew. You never saw him, or you would have known his dread of France, or anything that was French. He was a man living in a dream. His body was here in Farlingford, but his mind was elsewhere—who knows where? And at times I feel that, too—that unreality—as if I were here, and somewhere else at the same time. But all the same, I prefer Farlingford, even if it is a dream.”
The moon had risen at last; a waning half-moon, lying low and yellow in the sky, just above the horizon, casting a feeble light on earth. Loo turned and looked at Miriam, who had always met his glance with her thoughtful, steady eyes. But now she turned away.
“Farlingford is best, at all events,” he said, with an odd conviction. “I am only the grandson of old Seth Clubbe, of Maiden’s Grave. I am a Farlingford sailor, and that is all. I am mate of ‘The Last Hope’—at your service.”
“You are more than that.”