Had John Turner been able to see round the curve of his own vast cheeks he might have perceived the answer to his proposition lurking in a little contemptuous smile at the corner of Miriam's closed lips. Loo saw it there, and turned again to the contemplation of the clock on the mantelpiece which had already given a preliminary click. Thus they waited until the minutes should elapse, and Turner, with a smile of simple pleasure at their ready acquiescence in his suggestion, probably reflected behind his vacuous face that silence rarely implies indecision.
When at last the clock struck, Loo turned to him with a laugh and a shake of the head as if the refusal were so self-evident that to put it into words were a work of supererogation.
“Who makes the offer?” he asked.
Turner smiled on him with visible approbation as upon a quick and worthy foe who fought a capable fight with weapons above the board.
“No matter—since you are disposed to refuse. The money is in my hands, as is the offer. Both are good. Both will hold good till to-morrow morning.”
Septimus Marvin gave a little exclamation of approval. He had been sitting by the table looking from one to the other over his spectacles with the eager smile of the listener who understands very little, and while wishing that he understood more, is eager to put in a word of approval or disapprobation on safe and general lines. It was quite obvious to John Turner, who had entered the room in ignorance on this point, that Marvin knew nothing of Barebone's heritage in France while Miriam knew all.
“There is one point,” he said, “which is perhaps scarcely worth mentioning. The man who makes the offer is not only the most unscrupulous, but is likely to become one of the most powerful men in Eur—men I know. There is a reverse side to the medal. There always is a reverse side to the good things of this world. Should you refuse his ridiculously generous offer you will make an enemy for life—one who is nearing that point where men stop at nothing.”
Turner glanced at Miriam again. Her clean-cut features had a stony stillness and her eyes looked obstinately at the clock. The banker moved in his chair as if suddenly conscious that it was time to go.
“Do not,” he said to Barebone, “be misled or mislead yourself into a false estimate of the strength of your own case. The offer I make you does not in any way indicate that you are in a strong position. It merely shows the indolence of a man naturally open-handed, who would always rather pay than fight.”
“Especially if the money is not his own.”
“Yes,” admitted Turner, stolidly, “that is so. Especially if the money is not his own. I dare say you know the weakness of your own case: others know it too. A portrait is not much to go on. Portraits are so easily copied; so easily changed.”
He rose as he spoke and shook hands with Marvin. Then he turned to Miriam, but he did not meet her glance. Last of all he shook hands with Barebone.
“Sleep on it,” he said. “Nothing like sleeping on a question. I am staying at 'The Black Sailor.' See you to-morrow.”
He had come, had transacted his business and gone, all in less than an hour, with an extraordinary leisureliness almost amounting to indolence. He had lounged into the house, and now he departed without haste or explanation. Never hurry, never explain, was the text upon which John Turner seemed to base the sleepy discourse of his life. For each of us is a living sermon to his fellows, and, it is to be feared, the majority are warnings.
Turner had dragged on his thick overcoat, not without Loo's assistance, and, with the collar turned up about his ears, he went out into the night, leaving the three persons whom he had found in the drawing-room standing in the hall looking at the door which he closed decisively behind him. “Seize your happiness while you can,” he had urged. “If not—” and the decisive closing of a door on his departing heel said the rest.
The clocks struck ten. It was not worth while going back to the drawing-room. All Farlingford was abed in those days by nine o'clock. Barebone took his coat and prepared to follow Turner. Miriam was already lighting her bedroom candle. She bade the two men good night and went slowly upstairs. As she reached her own room she heard the front door closed behind Loo and the rattle of the chain under the uncertain fingers of Septimus Marvin. The sound of it was like the clink of that other chain by which Barebone had made fast his boat to the tottering post on the river-wall.
Miriam's room was at the front of the house, and its square Georgian windows faced eastward across the river to the narrow spit of marsh-land and the open sea beyond it. A crescent of moon far gone on the wane, yellow and forlorn, was rising from the sea. An uncertain path of light lay across the face of the far-off tide-way—broken by a narrow strip of darkness and renewed again close at hand across the wide river almost to the sea-wall beneath the window. From this window no house could be seen by day—nothing but a vast expanse of water and land hardly less level and unbroken. No light was visible on sea or land now, nothing but the waning moon in a cold clear sky.
Miriam threw herself, all dressed, on her bed with the abandonment of one who is worn out by some great effort, and buried her face in the pillow.
Barebone's way lay to the left along the river-wall by the side of the creek. Turner had gone to the right, taking the path that led down the river to the old quay and the village. Whereas Barebone must turn his back on Farlingford to reach the farm which still crouches behind a shelter of twisted oaks and still bears the name of Maiden's Grave; though the name is now nothing but a word. For no one knows who the maiden was, or where her grave, or what brought her to it.
The crescent moon gave little light, but Loo knew his way beneath the stunted cedars and through the barricade of ilex drawn round the rectory on the northern side. His eyes, trained to darkness, saw the shadowy form of a man awaiting him beneath the cedars almost as soon as the door was closed.
He went toward him, perceiving with a sudden misgiving that it was not John Turner. A momentary silhouette against the northern sky showed that it was Colville, come at last.
“Quick—this way!” he whispered, and taking Barebone's arm he led him through the bushes. He halted in a little open space between the ilex and the river-wall, which is fifteen feet high at the meeting of the creek and the larger stream. “There are three men, who are not Farlingford men, on the outer side of the sea-wall below the rectory landing. Turner must have placed them there. I'll be even with him yet. There is a large fishing-smack lying at anchor inside the Ness—just across the marsh. It is the 'Petite Jeanne.' I found this out while you were in there. I could hear your voices.”
“Could you hear what he said?”
“No,” answered Colville, with a sudden return to his old manner, easy and sympathetic. “No—this is no time for joking, I can tell you that. You have had a na............