THE CAPTAIN PLAYS THE KNIGHT-ERRANT.
Comethup saw nothing of Brian for two days after that, and, although he
seized the opportunity of making amends to the captain, he said nothing
of the adventure to that gentleman. Indeed, Comethup had been haunted
by the ghost he had seen, in quite a different sense from that which
might have been expected, and the captain seemed altogether unequal
to the occasion. He could think of nothing else; was, indeed, so
desperately sorry for that lonely little ghost that it lost the terrors
it might otherwise have had for him, and melted his heart with pity for
its dreadful fate. He lay awake at night, thinking of it in that garden
of shadows and decay, wandering alone among the trees, and always
with that appealing cry upon its lips. He tried, in a subtle fashion,
to put leading questions to the captain, in an endeavour to discover
something of the condition of ghosts in general, and little ones in
particular; but the captain, being of an eminently practical turn of
mind, dismissed the subject curtly enough. So Comethup was thrown on
his own resources.
On the evening of the second day, after he had left the captain at
the gate, and had saluted him in the fashion they always adopted when
Brian was not present, Comethup felt that he could stand this state of
uncertainty no longer. He remembered that the captain had once told
him that a brave man never shrinks from anything that will help his
fellows--a wise and beautiful thing, which Comethup had not forgotten;
and surely a ghost, and such a little one, was one of his fellows.
Comethup was not quite certain what a ghost was, or what position
in the scheme of things it really occupied; but, with that dogged
determination which lay behind all the gentleness of his character,
he determined, in his simple way, that he could not sleep in his warm
and sweet-smelling bed another night while the ghost wandered crying
about that desolate garden. With a horrible fear tugging at his heart,
and yet with a childish courage urging him on which was greater and
stronger than the fear, he took his cap and stole out of the house, and
ran as fast as his legs would carry him to the house he had visited
with Brian.
It was terrible work getting through that gate; and in the long drive
where the shadows were it was more terrible still. But he went on
slowly, with his hands spread out as if to feel his way, and with
his eyes, very bright and very wide open, peering into the darkness.
He coughed, and hummed a tune, but dared not look behind him; the
desperate business had been begun, and Comethup Willis, trembling in
every limb, had yet fully made up his mind to see the ghost before he
passed again out of the gate, if it were to be seen.
He saw it at last, much nearer the house than it had been before. It
came toward him, more and more slowly as the distance between them
lessened. Comethup backed away a little; but it suddenly stretched out
hands to him, and came forward at a run, so that there was no chance
of escape. And then the horror of the thing, the tense fear that had
been knocking at his heart, fell away from him in a moment. For he
touched warm hands of flesh, and saw that it was a child of about his
own age, looking wonderingly at him. Poor Comethup almost laughed with
the sudden relief, and they remained for a moment after their hands had
dropped away from each other's, looking into each other's faces shyly,
as children do at a first meeting.
"I'm so glad!" said Comethup at last. "I thought you were a ghost.
Where do you come from?"
The child stretched out an arm, and pointed to the house. "There," she
said, "with father." She spoke in a whisper--the whisper of a person
long subdued, and used to the sound only of her own voice. She was very
pretty, with big, dark eyes, and a very white skin; but there was an
elfish, frightened manner about her that had nothing of childhood in
it.
"But the house is all shut up," urged Comethup. "Why doesn't your
father open the shutters?"
"All those rooms are empty," said the child; "they frighten you to go
in them, because you make such a noise, and the eyes in the shutters
stare at you. We live right round the other side."
"But it's such a dreadful place," said Comethup, compassionately,
looking from the bright, eager face of the child to the desolate
garden. "Aren't you very lonely?"
The child nodded and looked about her, and drew instinctively a little
nearer to the boy.
"Doesn't any one come to see you?" asked Comethup.
"Only Mrs. Blissett, in the morning. Mrs. Blissett makes the beds, and
gives me my breakfast and my dinner; then she comes again when it's
dark, and puts me to bed. And she grumbles all the time, and keeps on
asking what the Lord made brats for. That's me, you know," she added,
innocently.
Comethup looked properly sympathetic, and asked, "What is your name?"
"'Linda. I think it's a longer name than that, but father calls me
'Linda. What is your name?"
Comethup got it out trippingly; it was always a difficult matter, in
those early years, to get the uncouth thing off his tongue. The girl
looked puzzled, and begged him to repeat it; he did so, with a flush
upon his face. He was already beginning to understand, by the surprise
with which the name was always received, that there was something
remarkable and even ridiculous about it. But this girl apparently
liked it; laughed softly and turned it over on her tongue, and said
"Comethup," with a little break in the middle of it; "yes, it's a
pretty name."
Comethup was gratified, and had a sudden wish that he had paid her the
same compliment. They stood awkwardly and shyly looking at each other,
until the slow, heavy steps of some one trudging through the dead
leaves bestirred them to a recollection of time and place.
"That's Mrs. Blissett," said the child with a sigh, "and I shall have
go to bed. Come back here where she won't see you. Can't you hear
her coming, and grumbling to herself all the way?" The question ended
with a little ripple of laughter, and Comethup, glancing at the child,
saw all her white teeth showing in a smile, and her eyes dancing
with it. She drew him back among the shadows of the trees while the
heavy-footed, murmuring Mrs. Blissett pounded solemnly along toward
the house. They stood quite still, until the footsteps had died away,
and then, to Comethup's great surprise and consternation, this small
girl-child caught him by his jacket, kissed him swiftly, and cried in
a breath: "Good-night, Comethup; come and see me to-morrow," and sped
away from him through the trees.
Comethup stood, in a dazed condition, looking after her for some
moments, and softly rubbing his cheek with one hand where her lips had
touched him; and then, with very mixed emotions, set off for home.
But though the garden was the same, and though the wind whispered
through the trees, and the dead leaves drove at him, it had no further
terrors for him; had, indeed, become a place of wonder and delight, as
everything else seemed to become in his small world. His father, his
little room at home, his mother's sleeping place among the green mounds
in the churchyard, the captain and the building of the forts, Brian
and his reckless expeditions--all these were things of delight to the
boy. And now, in the midst of them, had sprung up a new wonder, growing
beautifully in the midst of the terrors which had seemed to be about
her. He went home with a fast-beating heart, full of his new discovery,
and anxious to unbosom himself regarding it to some one of sympathy.
He was never quite sure of his father; he loved him very dearly, and
thought his soft voice and the quiet, caressing words he used better
than all the music he played in the church. But his father had a dreamy
way of looking over him, or right through him, when some question of
moment was being discussed; of losing himself suddenly in the maze of
his thoughts, and wandering off somewhere where Comethup could not
follow him. So that Comethup often hesitated about giving a confidence
to him, because he feared, in his sensitive little soul, that his
father might not follow it out--whatever it might be--patiently to the
end, as it should be followed; might forget what the all-important
subject was before the tale had half been told. He hesitated now, and
was obliged to confess, sitting up in bed in the moonlight, with his
hands clasped round his linen-covered knees, that his father might not
understand, and might--worst thought of all--look dreamily at him, and
stroke his hair, and say, with a maddening smile: "Yes, yes, my boy.
Of course; just so," and begin to hum an air from some of his beloved
music and straightway forget all else. It was quite certain that it was
impossible for him to tell his father.
Brian, perhaps, had a right to know; Brian had been in the garden with
him, and still believed that the garden held a ghost. But Comethup
shrank more strongly still from the idea of telling his cousin; shook
his head very decidedly in the moonlight when he thought of it. It
may have been purely a matter of instinct, probably was; but in his
childish mind that garden, with its dim shadows and its quaint little
figure whose kiss still seemed hot upon his cheek, was a fairyland into
which he jealously desired to go alone, and in which Brian, in the
imagination, seemed an uncouth figure.
The list of possible sympathizers was narrowing down; there remained
only the captain; and slowly there grew in Comethup's mind the idea
that the captain was, after all, the right person. The boy acted
over to himself a little interview, in which he seemed to know, with
exactitude, what the captain would say and what the captain would do;
was sure of him, so to speak, from the outset. For, in Comethup's mind,
the captain might be abrupt and might be severe; but his rules of
conduct were such that, if followed, a small boy would sleep soundly
in his bed at night, and would not fear the darkness. So he decided to
tell the captain, and, comforted with the thought, fell asleep.
The opportunity occurred the very next day. Comethup went to tea with
the captain, firmly resolved to unbosom himself about the whole matter.
But he let the precious moments slip by, and talked of everything else
under the sun, and tried to appear interested in all that the captain
said, while his mind was leaping back to that desolate garden and to
the little figure wandering alone in it. He remembered, too, with a
sudden hot sensation of shame, that the child had cried, "Come again
to-morrow!" and here was to-morrow. Yet he sat there, saying never a
word of what filled his mind, until the moment arrived when it was
necessary for him to return home. For the captain was punctual in all
things, and Comethup arrived at the house at an exact hour, and left it
at another equally rigidly defined.
Comethup got as far as the doorstep before he made up his mind to say
anything; and then, as he brought his hand down from the salute, he
said hurriedly, "I--I wanted to speak to you--about something--sir."
The captain looked down at the small figure gravely. "Important?" he
asked.
Comethup felt his courage oozing. "Not--not very," he replied.
"Keep it till to-morrow," said the captain, nodding at him. "No time
now, you know. Good-bye."
Comethup saluted again, and went miserably away. He returned home, and
sat for a long time at the window, thinking about the child. He had not
promised that he would go again to see her; but it had seemed like a
promise, and he could not bear the thought that she might be waiting
there, with her great, dark, eager eyes straining toward the gate,
looking for him. It was the first time that any real or definite sorrow
had touched his life--the first time that any living thing had seemed
dependent on him for happiness. With the captain it was different;
it was impossible for Comethup's mind to grasp the idea that he was
all-important in the captain's bare existence; that the captain watched
for him, day after day, and felt his old heart jump a little as the
boy swung up the garden path, as he might have felt it jump, in years
gone by, at the coming of a woman. Comethup did not understand that;
he saw only in the captain's kindness and patronage of himself a very
great and sweet graciousness, a something that the captain went out of
his way to do, because he was very kind and very great. Comethup adored
the captain, but he did not know that the captain would have willingly
consented to be pierced through and through with his own old sword
hanging over the dim little looking-glass in his cottage parlour, if he
could thereby have served Comethup.
The hunger at Comethup's heart grew stronger as the evening wore on. A
wind had sprung up, bringing with it some gusts of rain, and flinging
little splashes on to Comethup's face as he sat with his chin in his
hands at the open window. At last, heedless of wind or rain, he caught
up his cap, and set off at a run for the captain's house.
The captain was pacing up and down the little parlour, turning abruptly
on his heel when he reached the edge of the hearthrug, and again when
he almost breasted the old oak bureau at the other side of the room.
Seeing the boy standing panting and white-faced in the doorway with his
cap in his hand, the captain stopped dead, and faced him. Comethup was
trembling so much that he even forgot to salute.
"Oh, sir!" he burst out, almost on the verge of tears. "The little
girl--I thought she was a ghost--in the garden--and it's raining--and I
promised to go and see her--and I haven't been--and Mrs. Blissett says
she's a brat, and--oh, sir--what am I to do?" And poor Comethup burst
into tears and hid his face in the lining of his cap.
It may naturally be supposed that the captain was startled. The first
idea he grasped, however, was that the boy was in distress, and that
was sufficient to stir him to action; he put his arm tenderly round
Comethup's shoulders, stooping a little and trying to draw the cap away
from his face, and led him over to a chair. There, seating himself,
he drew the boy against his knee, saying nothing, but gripping him
tightly with his arm, so that the very presence of that comforting,
encircling thing should make itself felt without the necessity for
words. In a few moments Comethup was calmer, and could give an
intelligent account of what he wanted.
The captain questioned him closely, and Comethup knew whether or not
he was pleased, at each point of the recital, by the tightening or
loosening of the arm about him. When he had finished, and had expressed
his determination to go to the house and see the child, the arm held
him very closely indeed.
For some moments the captain sat perfectly still; then he got up,
walked across to the window, and looked out. Darkness had already
fallen, and the wind and rain were making havoc among the captain's
roses. It was characteristic of the captain that he took the whole
matter from the boy's standpoint; never appeared to consider for an
instant that he might be interfering in some one else's business. He
saw only, as Comethup had done, the child alone in the garden, haunted
by fears of the echoing, half-empty house, and of Mrs. Blissett.
Finally, with a grunt, he turned sharply away from the window, walked
across the room to a long cupboard, and pulled open its double doors
with a jerk; then he pulled out from it a long, old-fashioned military
cloak, very rusty and faded, and swung it round his shoulders with a
single movement of his arm. "We'll go and find her, boy," he said, and
Comethup followed him obediently from the room.
The captain took down his hat from the peg in the hall and rammed it on
his head a little more tightly than usual, and opened the cottage door.
A drifting spray of rain drove in at them, and the captain threw out a
fold of his cloak, like a huge wing, and drew it round the boy. Then
they passed out of the cottage together.
Comethup had only a dim remembrance afterward of that walk; of
passing people in the streets, and seeing only their feet and ankles;
of hearing everything muffled and blurred through the heavy cloak;
of catching glimpses of a storm-twisted sky through certain tiny
moth-holes and thinnesses of the cloak as it touched his face.
Presently the captain threw back an edge of it, and Comethup saw that
they were standing before the iron gates.
"Go first," said the captain, in a low voice, "and call to her. Don't
frighten her if she is there."
So Comethup stepped softly into the garden, treading cautiously over
the wet leaves, and feeling the heavy rain drops from the branches
above him tumbling on his hair and shoulders. He called "'Linda!
'Linda!" as he went.
Out of the darkness near the house came the little figure at last,
as he had hoped; not joyfully, or with laughter on its lips, but
bedraggled, and wet, and trembling, and piteous. She ran to him and
caught him eagerly, whispering his name brokenly between her sobs, and
hiding her tear-stained face against his childish shoulder. She did not
see the captain, who stood with his arms folded beneath his military
cloak, looking down at them.
"'Linda, dear," said the boy, "you are all wet. Don't shake so; nothing
can hurt you. And here's my friend the captain; he's a soldier, you
know, and fights people." This last as a reassurance to the child that
she had powerful friends indeed.
The girl looked up at the captain, looked at him for a long moment in
silence. Comethup, turning about, saw that the captain had thrown back
his cloak and had dropped on one knee, and was holding out his long,
thin old arms toward the child; the cloak fell all about him like a
tent. She scarcely seemed to hesitate a moment, but went within the
shelter of the tent, and was drawn close there, with the captain's head
bent above her. Comethup was so surprised that he did not even think
how the captain would be spoiling the knee of his trousers in the wet
grass.
"Little maid, little maid," said the captain, "what brings you out here
in this dreadful place alone? Is there no one to care for you, poor
baby?"
"I came out to see--Comethup," said the child, getting over the name
with difficulty, "and Mrs. Blissett saw me and said I should stop here
in the dark, and banged the door and went in. I 'spects she's forgotten
me."
The captain murmured something concerning Mrs. Blissett behind his
heavy mustache, and suddenly gathered the child up in his arms and rose
to his feet. And when he spoke, although his voice was very gentle, it
was very determined.
"Where's your father, baby?"
"He's writing, and talking to himself," replied the child.
"I'll talk to him," said the captain. "Which way do I go--round here?"
The child told him the way, and he marched steadily through the wet
leaves and the long grass, with Comethup following him, until he came
to a door. Still holding the child in his arms, he began vigorously to
kick at the door, flinging his foot at it at regular intervals like
musket-shots. A sharp and querulous voice replied suddenly from the
other side:
"Stay where ye be, ye brat! I bean't goin' to 'ave ye runnin' in and
out just as ye likes. And stop a-kickin' that door."
"Open the door!" cried the captain, in a very loud voice.
There was a shuffling of feet on the other side, and the door was
pulled open. A candle had been set down on some bare, uncarpeted stairs
near at hand, and was flaring in the wind; a heavy, surprised-looking
country-woman stood in the doorway, looking out at the little group.
"Are you Mrs. Blissett?" asked the captain, rapping out the words
fiercely.
"Yes, sir, I be," said the woman, hurriedly bending herself at the
knees, in a sort of staggering courtesy.
"Then what the devil do you mean by putting this baby out in the
rain?" exclaimed the captain. "Stand aside, and let me in. Where's your
master!"
The woman was at first too startled to reply; she backed against the
wall, and waved one hand feebly toward the stairs. The captain nodded
at the candle, and the woman, with her eyes blinking nervously, groped
for it, picked it up, and backed away with it.
"Go first," said the captain, "and tell your master that a gentleman
wishes to see him.--Comethup, follow me."
The woman hesitated for a moment, and then went before them heavily up
the stairs with the candle. The door leading into the garden remained
open, and Comethup felt the wet wind blowing about his legs as he
followed the captain, who marched steadily close behind the woman. The
child had stolen an arm up round the captain's neck, under his cloak;
and he was holding her against his breast with one arm, while his tall
old silk hat, dripping with rain, swung in his disengaged hand.
At the top of the first flight of stairs the woman stopped at a door
and bent her head as though listening, and then rapped with her
knuckles. After a moment or two, receiving no answer, she turned the
handle and went hesitatingly in, the captain following her closely, and
Comethup hard on the heels of the captain.
The room in which they found themselves was so very dark that for
a moment those unused to it would not have noticed that it had any
light in it at all, or any occupant. But, far away in one corner of
it, Comethup saw a little round gleam of light, which reminded him
of the gleam of lanterns he had seen men carry on country roads on
winter nights, and, close beside the gleam, watching them intently and
frowningly, a face. Even before the lips parted, and the harsh voice
spoke, Comethup had that face indelibly impressed upon his mind, to
haunt him long afterward, in its curious detached circle of light,
while he lay in his bed under his father's roof.
It was a stern, strong, forbidding face--a face of hard lines and
straight firmnesses, without a single tender curve or hollow about
it, to proclaim that there was any softness in the man to whom it
belonged. The patch of light showed a great, high forehead, from which
the hair had long been pushed back and pushed off by impatient hands;
beneath this, straight black eyebrows almost meeting, and, under them,
eyes as cold and piercing as steel in moonlight. The man, as he sat,
was literally hemmed in by books; as the light of the candle carried
by Mrs. Blissett penetrated farther through the shadows, Comethup saw
that there were piles of books all about his feet, and about the legs
of the desk at which he sat; the desk itself was loaded with them, and
staggering heaps of them leaned against the wall and perched perilously
on chairs and other articles of furniture. In the silence which
followed their entry, while the man looked at them from beside his
little shaded reading-lamp, Comethup could distinctly hear the heavy,
agitated breathing of Mrs. Blissett.
"Well, what's this, what's this? What has happened? What do you all
want? Can't you speak? Is the house on fire?" All these questions were
rapidly jerked out in harsh, impatient tones, with a little querulous
note at the end of each, like the fretful tones of a child.
Mrs. Blissett was eagerly commencing a voluble reply which should
excuse her own delinquencies, when the captain stepped forward, with
the child still easily resting on his arm, bent his head stiffly and
spoke.
"Sir, I ask your pardon for intruding at such an hour, but I am a blunt
man, trained all my life to prompt action. I found this mite--this
baby--wandering in the grounds outside this house, drenched to the
skin, and crying as it hurts a man to hear a child cry. I understood
that she lived here, and had been shut out in the rain by this woman"
(the captain indicated the trembling Mrs. Blissett with a jerk of his
head). "So I brought her in." The captain stepped forward a little, and
uncovered the face of the child; she was sleeping peacefully, with her
head against his breast.
The man did not reply; he got up abruptly from his desk, kicking
over some of the piles of books about his feet as he moved, and began
striding up and down that end of the room, with something of the
appearance of a hunted animal, turning his face furtively toward them
as he turned in his walk, yet keeping always at the greatest possible
distance away. As he came to the desk once or twice, and fumbled
nervously among the papers and books upon it, Comethup was able to see
that his dress was very unkempt and shabby, and stained as a man might
stain it who read during hurriedly snatched meals, and was careless how
he ate. He spoke at last, in the same querulous voice; he spoke like a
man labouring under the lash of some secret trouble, and yet desirous
of putting himself right with the world. These people might have been
sternly arrayed against him, so strongly and petulantly did he offer
his excuses.
"I don't know you, sir; I have no desire to know you. There is an old
adage which says something about fools stepping in where angels fear
to tread. What if the child was in the rain? What if every living
creature that bears the brand of her sex wandered homeless and outcast
to-night? Would the world be the poorer? Would any single thing that
affects its progress, or its virtue, or its beauty, if you will have it
so, be changed or stand still? This woman"--he fiercely indicated Mrs.
Blissett--"was given a certain duty, and, like all of her class, having
received payment for it, she neglects to perform it. Don't you know
enough of the world yet, or where have you been living all your days,
that you don't know that?" Then, with a certain sudden jealousy, he
made a movement toward the captain, and asked, "What do you want with
the child? How does she concern you?"
The captain's arm tightened a little round the sleeping child. "I do
you the justice to suppose, sir, that, in spite of what you have said,
even you would not leave a baby out of doors on such a night as this,"
he said.
"Well, well, who said I should? But there are more important things in
the world than children; I have work to do here, and have no time to
give to the guardianship of babies."
"She is your child?" said the captain. "I have already heard how the
mite wanders round this place at night, lonely and neglected. Is there
no one to care for her?"
The man laughed, in a curious, hard fashion, and looked straight at the
captain. "No, no one," he said. "Really, sir, you take a great deal
upon yourself. You trespass on my property, and you interfere with my
domestic affairs. Is there anything else about which you would care to
make an inquiry?"
The sarcastic note was lost on the captain; he answered bluntly and
simply, as was his habit:
"I am an old and a very lonely man, sir, and, although I was brought
up to the profession of a soldier, I have thought sometimes that I am
not altogether fitted for it. I have some tenderness of heart still
left in me, and I could not have slept in my bed to-night with the
knowledge that this child was neglected and unhappy. I have no desire
to interfere in any business which does not concern me; but it must
occur to you that it is a strange life for a child to be----"
"Well, the fault of that is not mine,", said the man, swinging about
suddenly and facing the captain. "She--she has no mother, and I am
occupied with--with other things. You--you should not trouble; what can
_I_ do?" He spoke like a fretful child, walked to his desk, and began
turning over the leaves of a book.
The captain was puzzled; saw no prospect, with such a creature as this,
of making him understand the responsibilities of a parent. He turned
to Mrs. Blissett and put the child in her arms, and said with some
sternness: "Take her away, and warm and dry her, and put her to bed.
And be tender with her."
Mrs. Blissett vanished hurriedly with ejaculations of "My precious! The
dear lamb!" and the like, and the captain faced the father once more.
That gentleman, now that the chief object of the disturbance was gone,
seemed only anxious to be rid of his visitor; he seated himself at his
desk, and appeared to be busied with his books.
"Perhaps," said the captain stiffly, "after this intrusion I ought to
give you my name. I am Captain Garraway-Kyle, at present living in this
town, and I beg you to believe that my intrusion here to-night was with
the best possible motives. I assure you----"
"Yes, yes, I quite understand," exclaimed the petulant voice of the
other. "And my name is Vernier--Doctor Vernier; you may have heard of
me."
"No," replied the captain, "I regret that I have not."
"Ah! Good-night!" Dr. Vernier's head was down among his books, so that,
by the glow of the lamp, they could only see the top of it. But the
captain had not finished yet.
"I am sorry for the little child, and for her loneliness," he said,
"and if I might be permitted----"
The hard face glanced up for a moment and the brows were drawn together
in a straight dark line. "Thank you; I desire no one to assist me in
the management of my house. Once more--good-night."
The captain bowed stiffly, turned on his heel, and walked out of the
room, followed by Comethup, whose presence the doctor had not even
appeared to notice. They found their way out of the dark house, and
through the garden into the road. There the captain stood upright for a
moment, thinking deeply, and then looked down at Comethup. "Comethup,"
he said, "we won't be put off like this, eh?"
"No," said Comethup.
"We must go and see her again, and--and look after her, eh?"
"I think so," said Comethup.
They solemnly shook hands on that decision, the captain bending a
little to perform the operation, and then walked away homeward.