“You say it so capitally, Crickledon.”

“And then old Tinman said, ’And a D. to you; and if I lift my finger, it’s Big D. on your back.”

“And what did Mr. Smith say, then?”

“He said, like a man shot, my husband says he said, ‘My God!’”

Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.

“You tell me, Crickledon, your husband actually heard that—­just those words?—­the tones?”

“My husband says he heard him say, ‘My God!’ just like a poor man shot or stabbed.  You may speak to Crickledon, if you speaks to him alone, sir.  I say you ought to know.  For I’ve noticed Mr. Smith since that day has never looked to me the same easy-minded happy gentleman he was when we first knew him.  He would have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but Crickledon thought I’d better be independent, and Mr. Smith said to me, ’Perhaps you’re right, Crickledon, for who knows how long I may be among you?’”

Herbert took the solace of tobacco in Crickledon’s shop.  Thence, with the story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house on the beach.

CHAPTER VIII

The moon was over sea.  Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp at the pebbles.

Mrs. Crickledon’s dinner and the state of his heart made young Fellingham indifferent to a wintry atmosphere.  It sufficed him that the night was fair.  He stretched himself on the shingle, thinking of the Manzanilla, and Annette, and the fine flavour given to tobacco by a dry still air in moonlight—­thinking of his work, too, in the background, as far as mental lassitude would allow of it.  The idea of taking Annette to see his first play at the theatre when it should be performed—­was very soothing.  The beach rather looked like a stage, and the sea like a ghostly audience, with, if you will, the broadside bulks of black sailing craft at anchor for representatives of the newspaper piers.  Annette was a nice girl; if a little commonplace and low-born, yet sweet.  What a subject he could make of her father!  “The Deserter” offered a new complication.  Fellingham rapidly sketched it in fancy—­Van Diemen, as a Member of the Parliament of Great Britain, led away from the House of Commons to be branded on the bank!  What a magnificent fall!  We have so few intensely dramatic positions in English real life that the meditative author grew enamoured of this one, and laughed out a royal “Ha!” like a monarch reviewing his well-appointed soldiery.

“There you are,” said Van Diemen’s voice; “I smelt your pipe.  You’re a rum fellow, to belying out on the beach on a cold night.  Lord!  I don’t like you the worse for it.  Twas for the romance of the moon in my young days.”

“Where is Annette?” said Fellingham, jumping to his feet.