The Silent Shore. John Bloundelle-Burton
then followed the conversation with which this story opens.
"It is a strange thing," Philip said, "but it must be a mistake."
In his own heart, being somewhat of a worldling, he did not think it was any mistake at all. He thought it highly probable that the late Lord Penlyn had, when here, a lady travelling with him who was registered as his wife, but who, in actual fact, was not his wife at all.
After a few moments spent in thought, Gervase turned to his friend and said, "The landlord, the man who stared so hard at me yesterday when we came in, was an elderly person. He may have had this hotel in '54, might even remember this mysterious namesake of mine. I think I will ask him to come up."
"I shouldn't," Philip said. "He isn't at all likely to remember anything about it." In his mind he thought it very probable that the man might, even at that distance of time, remember something of Gervase's father, especially if he had made a long stay at the house, and would perhaps be able to give some reminiscences of his whilom guest that might by no means make his son feel comfortable.
But his remonstrance was unheeded, and the other rang the bell. It was answered by a tidy waitress wearing the cap peculiar to the district, to whom Gervase--who was an excellent linguist--said in very good French:
"If the landlord is in, will you be good enough to say that Lord Penlyn would be glad to speak to him?"
The girl withdrew, and in a few minutes the landlord tapped at the door. When he had received an invitation to enter, he came into the room and bowed respectfully, but, as he did so, Lord Penlyn again noticed that his eyes were fixed upon him with a wondering stare; a stare exactly the same as he had received on the previous day when they entered the hotel. There was nothing rude nor offensive in the look; it partook more of the nature of an incredulous gaze than anything else.
"Milor has expressed a wish to see me," he said as he entered. "He has, I trust, found everything to his wish in my poor house!"
"Perfectly," Gervase answered; "but I want to ask you a question. Will you be seated?" And then when the landlord had taken a chair--still looking intently at him--he went on:
"We found these Livres des Étrangers in your cupboard, and, for want of anything else to read, we took them down and have been amusing ourselves with them. I hope we did not take a liberty."
"Mais, Milor!" the landlord said with a shrug of his shoulders and a twitch of his eyebrows, that were meant to express his satisfaction at his guests being able to find anything to distract them.
"Thank you," Gervase said. "Well! in going through this book--the one of 1854--I have come upon a name so familiar to me, the name of Gervase Occleve, that----"
But before he could finish his sentence the landlord had jumped up from his chair, and was speaking rapidly while he gesticulated in a thorough French fashion.
"C'est ça, mon Dieu, mais oui!" he began. "Occleve--of course! That is the face. Sir, Milor! I salute you! When you entered my house yesterday, I said to myself, 'But where, mon Dieu, but where have I seen him? Or is it but the spirit of some dead one looking at me out of his eyes?' And now that you mention to me the name of Occleve, then in a moment he comes back to me and I see him once again. Ah! ma foi, Milor! but when I regard you, then in verity he returns to me, and I recall him as he used to sit in this very room--parbleu! in that very chair in which you now sit."
The young men had both stared at him with some amazement as he spoke hurriedly and excitedly, repeating himself in his earnestness, and now as he ceased, Gervase said:
"Do I understand you to say, then, that I bear such a likeness to this man, whose name is inscribed here, as to recall him vividly to you?" "Mais, sans doute! you are his son! It must be so. There is only one thing that I do not comprehend. You bear a different name."
"He became Lord Penlyn later in life, and at his death that title came to me."
"Bien compris! And so he is dead! He can scarcely have lived the full space of man's years. And Madame your mother? She is well?"
For a moment the young man hesitated. Then he said: "She is dead too."
"Pauvre dame," the landlord said, and as he spoke it seemed as though he was talking to himself. "She was bright and happy in those days so far off, bright and happy once; and she, too, is gone. And I, who was older than either of them, am left! But, Lord Penlyn," he said, readdressing himself to his guest, "you look younger than your years. It is thirty years since you used to run about those sands outside and play; I have carried you to them often----"
"You carried me to those sands thirty years ago! Why, I was not----"
"Stop!" Philip Smerdon said to him in English, and speaking in a low tone. "Do you not see it all? Say no more."
"Yes," Gervase answered. "Yes, I see it all."
Later on, when the landlord had left the room after insisting upon shaking the hand of "the child he had known thirty years ago," Gervase said:
"So he who was so stern and self-contained, who seemed to be above the ordinary weaknesses of other men, was, after all, worse than the majority of them. I suppose he flung this poor woman off when he married my mother, I suppose he left the boy, for whom this man takes me--to starve or to become a thief preying on his fellow men. It is not pleasant to think that I have an elder brother who may be an outcast, perhaps a felon!"
"I should not take quite such a pessimist view of things as that," Philip said. "For aught you know, the lady he had with him here may have died between 1854 and 1858, and, for the matter of that, so may the boy; or he may have made a good allowance to both when he parted with them. For anything you know to the contrary he might have seen the boy frequently until his death, and have taken care to place him comfortably in the world."
"In such a case I must have known it. I must have met him somewhere."
"Nothing more unlikely! The world is large enough--in spite of the numerous jokes about its smallness--for two peculiarly situated individuals not to meet. If I were you, Jerry, I should think no more about the matter."
"It is not a thing one can easily forget!" the other answered.
The landlord had given them a description of what he remembered of the Gervase Occleve whom he had known thirty years ago, but what he had told them had not thrown much light upon the subject. He described how Gervase Occleve had first come there in the summer of '54 accompanied by his wife (he evidently had never doubted that they were married) and by his son, "the Monsieur now before him," as he said innocently. They had lived very quietly, occupying the very rooms in which they were now sitting, he told the young men; roaming about the sands in the day, or driving over to the adjacent towns and villages, or sailing in a boat that Mr. Occleve hired by the month. They seemed contented and happy enough, he said, and stayed on and on until the autumn's damp and rain, peculiar to that part of the coast, drove them away. It was strange, he thought, that Milor did not remember anything about that period; but it was true, he was but a little child!
Then, he continued, in the following summer they returned again, and again spent some months there--and then, he never saw nor heard of them more. But, so well did he remember Mr. Occleve's face, even after all these years, that, ever since Lord Penlyn had been in the house, he had been puzzling his brains to think where he had seen him before. He certainly should not, he said, have remembered the child he had played with so often, but that his likeness to his father was more than striking. To Madame, his mother, he saw no resemblance at all.
"But I did not tell him," he said to himself afterwards, as he sat in his parlour below and sipped a little red wine meditatively, "I did not tell him that on the second summer a gloom had fallen over them, and that I often saw her in tears, and heard him speak harshly to her. Why should I? À quoi bon to disturb the poor young man's meditations on his dead father and mother!"
And the good landlord went out and served a chopine of petit bleu to one customer, and a tasse of absinthe gommée to another, and entertained