“Tiens! Vous voilà.”
In the stress of the situation Peyrol at once asked himself: Now why does he say that? Where did he expect me to be? The lieutenant need not have spoken at all. He had known him now for about two years off and on, and it had happened many times that they had sat side by side on that bench in a sort of “at arm’s length” equality without exchanging a single word. And why could he not have kept quiet now? That naval officer never spoke without an object, but what could one make of words like that? Peyrol achieved an insincere yawn and suggested mildly:
“A bit of siesta wouldn’t be amiss. What do you think, lieutenant?”
And to himself he thought: “No fear, he won’t go to his room.” He would stay there and thereby keep him, Peyrol, from going down to the cove. He turned his eyes on that naval officer and if extreme and concentrated desire and mere force of will could have had any effect Lieutenant Réal would certainly have been removed suddenly from that bench. But he didn’t move. And Peyrol was astonished to see that man smile, but what astonished him still more was to hear him say:
“The trouble is that you have never been frank with me, Peyrol.”
“Frank with you,” repeated the rover. “You want me to be frank with you? Well, I have wished you to the devil many times.”
“That’s better,” said Lieutenant Réal. “But why? I never tried to do you any harm.”
“Me harm,” cried Peyrol, “to me?” … But he faltered in his indignation as if frightened at it and ended in a very quiet tone: “You have been nosing in a lot of dirty papers to find something against a man who was not doing you any harm and was a seaman before you were born.”
“Quite a mistake. There was no nosing amongst papers. I came on them quite by accident. I won’t deny I was intrigué finding a man of your sort living in this place. But don’t be uneasy. Nobody would trouble his head about you. It’s a long time since you have been forgotten. Have no fear.”
“You! You talk to me of fear … ? No,” cried the rover, “it’s enough to turn a fellow into a sansculotte if it weren’t for the sight of that specimen sneaking around here.”
The lieutenant turned his head sharply, and for a moment the naval officer and the free sea rover looked at each other gloomily. When Peyrol spoke again he had changed his mood.
“Why should I fear anybody? I owe nothing to anybody. I have given them up the prize ship in order and everything else, except my luck; and for that I account to nobody,” he added darkly.
“I don’t know what you are driving at,” the lieutenant said after a moment of thought. “All I know is that you seem to have given up your share of the prize money. There is no record of you ever claiming it.”
Peyrol did not like the sarcastic tone. “You have a nasty tongue,” he said, “with your damned trick of talking as if you were made of different clay.”
“No offence,” said the lieutenant, grave but a little puzzled. “Nobody will drag out that against you. It has been paid years ago to the Invalides’ fund. All this is buried and forgotten.”
Peyrol was grumbling and swearing to himself with such concentration that the lieutenant stopped and waited till he had finished.
“And there is no record of desertion or anything like that,” he continued then. “You stand there as disparu. I believe that after searching for you a little they came to the conclusion that you had come by your death somehow or other.”
“Did they? Well, perhaps old Peyrol is dead. At any rate he has buried himself here.” The rover suffered from great instability of feelings, for he passed in a flash from melancholy into fierceness. “And he was quiet enough till you came sniffing around this hole. More than once in my life I had occasion to wonder how soon the jackals would have a chance to dig up my carcass; but to have a naval officer come scratching round here was the last thing. …” Again a change came over him. “What can you want here?” he whispered, suddenly depressed.
The lieutenant fell into the humour of that discourse. “I don’t want to disturb the dead,” he said, turning full to the rover, who, after his last words, had fixed his eyes on the ground. “I want to talk to the gunner Peyrol.”
Peyrol, without raising his eyes from the ground, growled: “He isn’t there. He is disparu. Go and look at the papers again. Vanished. Nobody here.”
“That,” said Lieutenant Réal in a conversational tone, “that is a lie. He was talking to me this morning on the hillside as we were looking at the English ship. He knows all about her. He told me he spent nights making plans for her capture. He seemed to be a fellow with his heart in the right place. Un homme de cœur. You know him.”
Peyrol raised his big head slowly and looked at the lieutenant.
“Humph,” he grunted. A heavy, noncommittal grunt. His old heart was stirred, but the tangle was such that he had to be on his guard with any man who wore epaulettes. His profile preserved the immobility of a head struck on a medal while he listened to the lieutenant assuring him that this time he had come to Escampobar on purpose to speak with the gunner Peyrol. That he had not done so before was because it was a very confidential matter.
