In his way he must have been a philosopher. His attitude did not suggest that he was bored, and yet it was obvious that he was eminently out of place in this remote spot. He had nothing in common, for instance, with River Andrew, and politely yawned that reminiscent fish-curer into silence. His very clothes were of a cut and fashion never 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.