THE CAPTAIN IN STRANGE COMPANY.
For the first time in his remarkably short existence Comethup Willis
began to lead a double life. He had already done so, to a very small
extent, in regard to his meetings with Brian and with the captain; but
now he began systematically to divide his life into two parts. His
reason for this was purely an instinctive one, and he would have been
puzzled, under any circumstances, to explain even to himself why he saw
in his childish mind that such a course of action was necessary. But,
although he admired and almost worshipped his cousin Brian, as a being
superior in every way to his very humble self and of more brilliant
parts, he yet felt that, in a delicate matter like that on which he had
embarked with the captain, Brian must be set aside.
It caused him many heart-pangs to arrive at this conclusion, but to his
childish understanding it was the only thing possible; having once made
up his mind, he kept stiffly to it. He had entered into a compact of
the emotional order with the captain, and he consoled himself for any
disloyalty to Brian with the thought that he was only concerned with
the captain in the matter, and that the secret was not really his own.
This species of deception, while it added a new element of excitement
to his life, made him also frantically desirous of falling in with
every plot and plan arranged or invented by his cousin on the few
occasions on which they met. Those occasions were few indeed, for the
captain had shown, in some curious, curt fashion, that he did not like
the boy Brian; and Brian, for his part, was laughingly contemptuous of
the captain. So that poor Comethup, in order to keep all his friends,
and in the deep desire he had not to wound the feelings of any of them,
had a very difficult task to perform. A child of blunter character or
perception would have got through with the matter very easily, and
would not have troubled about it at all; but Comethup took everything,
even in those days, in deadly earnest, and lay awake many nights in
the dark, sore at heart with the thought that some light word of his
to the captain, or some half-promise broken to Brian, might have
given either of them pain. Comethup had that strange and--for the
possessor--terrible quality of being able to feel, with the utmost
acuteness, any pain borne by those with whom he came in contact; the
quality of feeling it so instantly that it was often more real in its
intensity to him than to them.
It is possible that the captain understood the desire in Comethup's
mind that Brian should not be included in their compact to befriend
'Linda; indeed, it was a matter so completely between Comethup and the
captain that probably neither of them would have thought of including
any one else in their confidence. Moreover, the matter, begun in secret
and at night, had, in all appropriateness, to be carried on in the same
fashion. Even the captain was not too old, and Comethup certainly not
too young, to have a mutually romantic feeling that that was the proper
course to adopt. They talked it over together in all seriousness.
"You see, Comethup," said the captain, "we were not received with
that--that cordiality which could lead us, with any delicacy, to
approach Dr. Vernier again. I'm not quite sure that we wish to do so;
but, in any case, it will be wiser to leave him out of the question."
Comethup nodded, feeling that that argument was unanswerable.
"The question then resolves itself into this," said the captain,
sitting stiffly upright, with a hand on each knee, and looking down
at Comethup, who was imitating his attitude as far as possible, on a
stool before him, "how are we to save fair ladies who are wandering
about in dreary woods, and getting wet, unless we do it by force of
arms, and bid defiance to the enemy?" The captain had, in his many
conversations with the boy, got the true poetic, romantic ring; it was
a never-ceasing delight to Comethup that his wonderful friend was able
to bring that glamour into the commonest circumstance of life.
"We might go and walk round the house, and--and hide among the trees
until she comes out," said Comethup.
The captain shook his head. "Scarcely dignified, I'm afraid, Comethup,"
he said. "Of course," he added with a fine air of carelessness, "we
might happen to stroll past the place, and we might just look in at the
gates, and----"
Comethup understood perfectly, and nodded with much vigour. So complete
indeed was the understanding between them that, when the captain, on
parting with him, said with much ceremony, "You might call for me about
seven o'clock, Comethup, if you are not better employed," the boy felt
his heart leap, and was eager for the expedition.
But the captain was a man of bluntness, and totally unused to lurking
ways. They reached the gates in the semi-darkness, and looked in up the
dreary avenue, and then walked slowly on side by side. The captain even
waved his stick skyward, and predicted airily that it would be a fine
day on the morrow. Comethup agreed with him, with more eagerness than
befitted the occasion, even going out of his way to recall impressions
of yesterday's weather as compared with the present. Then, about a
hundred yards from the gate, the captain swung on his heel, and they
strolled back again. Still no sound about the deserted place, and no
little figure in the garden. The captain came from pretence to reality
at a bound, and faced sternly upon Comethup.
"Boy, this isn't right, and I'm not right to be teaching you to hide
and skulk here. I'm going up to the house."
"I think perhaps it would be better," admitted Comethup slowly.
They marched with much determination through the wind-swept garden and
among the drifting leaves. Both Comethup and the captain looked eagerly
all about, but saw nothing; they made the circuit of the house, and
then stopped at the door by which they had previously entered.
The captain raised his stick and struck sharply on the panel; waited
a little, but there was no response. Then he stepped back and glanced
up at the windows; but they were all closely shuttered, and no light
appeared anywhere. The captain stepped up to the door again and renewed
his attack on the panel. After another long period of waiting, there
was a sound of shuffling feet on the bare boards within, and the door
was opened so far as the length of a chain that held it would allow.
The captain pressed forward to the aperture and spoke:
"Is Dr. Vernier within?"
"The doctor say he can't see no one," came the reply.
"Oh, I'm much obliged," said the captain. "I wanted to know if the
child--the little girl--is well? You remember I----"
"Oh, yes, I knows all about you," replied the woman sharply. "And
there's folks as can look after her, and mind their business without
no interferin'." The door was slammed quickly, and they heard the
shuffling feet going down the hall.
The captain remained very upright for a moment, recovering himself;
and then turned to Comethup. "Let that be a warning to you, boy," he
said stiffly, "never to argue with your inferiors. The enemy is not
to be surprised, that's evident; we must try stratagem. As a soldier,
Comethup, I have learned that stratagem is very useful. I despise it,
but it's very useful."
But all the stratagem the captain could employ, and all the loyal aid
given by Comethup in a cause in which he was desperately interested,
failed to bring them any nearer the object of their search. They walked
past the garden many times after that, on many successive days, taking
it casually in their walks first, and afterward going there of set
purpose. But the garden was always empty, and the house apparently
deserted. They had almost given up in despair, when one night, rather
later than usual, when they passed the gates, Comethup, lingering for
a moment, saw the faint flutter of something white among the trees,
and ran to it, crying softly "'Linda!" The captain went in too, but
remained standing just within the gates. With a delicacy which belonged
to him, he let the children meet in their own impulsive, breathless
fashion alone.
'Linda was clinging to the boy, divided between laughter and tears,
when the captain, looking past them, observed a figure hurrying toward
them from the house--the figure of a woman certainly not portly
enough to be Mrs. Blissett. The captain took a few strides forward,
and reached the children at the same moment that the woman came up
with them; she stood, almost in an attitude of defiance, looking at
him. He noticed that she was tall and rather slight, and quite young.
Instinctively his hat came off, and he bowed in his stiff fashion. For
a moment there was silence between them; each seemed to be waiting for
the other to speak.
"What do you want, sir?" she asked at last, in a suppressed voice.
"I merely called--came here, I should say--in the hope of seeing the
child, and knowing that she was well," said the captain. "I found her
here the other night, and, though it is no business, of course, of
mine, I feared that she was lonely, and, forgive me, perhaps neglected.
I came here a few evenings ago, but was refused admittance."
"You are a friend of--of Dr. Vernier's?" she hazarded.
"No, not exactly a friend," replied the captain, diplomatically.
"We--we have met--that is all. Are you the child's nurse?"
The woman bent her head and stretched an arm out, and drew the child
close against her.
"I thought perhaps you might be a--a relative," ventured the captain,
replacing his hat.
"No," she replied, in a low voice, "I am not a relative. Dr. Vernier
has engaged me chiefly to look after the child."
"I am glad," said the captain, with awkward gallantry, "that she is in
such good hands." The situation was becoming embarrassing; the captain
knew that he had no earthly right there, and felt that he must withdraw
his forces without delay. He stooped, and held his hand out to the
child, who shyly took it; bade her "Good-night" with much gentleness,
and turned and left the garden, followed by Comethup, who glanced back
again and again at the little white figure walking with the woman in
the direction of the house.
Comethup was very serious indeed as they walked toward his father's
house. This new figure in the story could not be dealt with with the
ease with which a mere Blissett might be tackled. He saw a prospect
of losing forever that little figure which had so strongly interested
him. He expressed his fears tremblingly to the captain as he trotted
beside him.
"Shall we see her again, sir?"
"Don't know, Comethup," replied the captain, dejectedly. "Direct attack
has failed; stratagem has failed also. I'm afraid we can't do anything
else to assist your little damsel in distress, Comethup."
Comethup went to his bed, to dream that he went again to the garden,
and found the gates fastened strongly against him; that he beat his
hands against the bars of them, crying to the child to let him in, and
to the captain to come with his sword and break the gates down. He
awoke in the dark, with the tears still wet upon his cheeks, and cried
himself to sleep again.
Sick with the necessity for consolation, he went on the following
morning to see the captain. The captain had constituted himself, for
some time past, a sort of informal instructor to Comethup; had dragged
from an old box some very out-of-date lesson books, and was renewing
his own youth by plodding steadily over that first stony ground
of knowledge with the boy, taking infinite delight in his pupil's
progress. Comethup had learned many things at those lessons--scraps of
this and bits of that--and had had, interwoven with the more technical
subjects, a certain thread of hard and pure and very fine morality as
to straightness of living and one's duty to one's fellows, which had
formed the captain's creed throughout all his simple life.
On this particular morning, although neither mentioned his distress
to the other, the matter was very fully in the minds of both, and no
real attempt was made to take lessons seriously. Indeed, the captain,
with a very fine intuition, had guessed what would be the condition of
Comethup's mind, and had not even got out the books. Comethup found him
standing near the window, examining, with a somewhat troubled face, a
pair of boots, passing one finger delicately over places in the uppers
which seemed untrustworthy, and holding them from him at arm's length,
to get a more general effect in regard to their appearance. The soles
of the boots were very thin, and the heels rather high.
"I am going," said the captain, setting the boots down on the window
seat, and gravely returning Comethup's salute, "to pay a visit to
the shoemaker's." He regarded the boots with a thoughtful frown.
"They _might_ go a week or two longer, Comethup, but the result would
probably be disastrous. One gets used in time, when one is not rich, to
judge exactly the moment when delay, in a matter of this kind, is no
longer safe, and when the thing must be done, if it is to be done at
all. It's like fighting a battle, Comethup; either you must strike at a
given moment, or you'd better not strike at all. Will you come with me?"
The captain always addressed the boy with equal courtesy, and Comethup
had learned to reply with gravity. He expressed his willingness now to
accompany the captain, and they set out.
In a quaint little street, in the very heart of the town--a place which
Comethup had not before explored, and which was reached by diving under
an archway and then doubling sharply round a corner--they came upon the
shop which the captain sought. He had wrapped the boots neatly in brown
paper, and carried them tucked under his arm, probably with the desire
that no one should guess his errand; he even glanced about him to right
and left for a moment before stepping into the low doorway of the shop.
It was a very little shop, so low and small that it seemed half
underground; the captain, although by no means a tall man, had to duck
his head a little in entering. Comethup noticed at once that it was
not like an ordinary shop, in that it had no counter, and that only a
heavy bench ran along one side of it, on which an old man was seated,
hammering away with much fierceness on something fastened to his knee.
But Comethup had no time to take in more than the bare details of the
place, for his eyes were arrested by something else: a little figure
perched up on the rough bench beside the man and looking with wide,
astonished eyes at the captain and the boy. It was 'Linda.
The man who worked had looked up at them for a moment sharply out of
keen black eyes, and then had bent his head again over his leather. He
worked as one in a frantic hurry--a man who had no time for thought,
scarcely a moment even to breathe; the hammer rose and fell sharply,
rising up above the level of his head, so closely were his eyes bent on
the work. The child sat quite near to him, smiling at the visitors.
The captain's voice broke in across the hammering, and stopped it.
"Why, little one," he said, gently, "what are you doing here?"
The hammer rested on the leather, the man's knotted hand grasping it
firmly; his black eyes looked up sideways at the captain. "Why not?" he
asked in a quick, harsh voice. "What should harm her?" He did not speak
like a countryman. Comethup was a little afraid of him, and of his
black eyes, but the child beside him only smiled, and did not move.
"Nothing, nothing," said the captain, hastily. "I was merely surprised
to see the child here; she is a little friend of mine--we _are_
friends, are we not, 'Linda?"
The child nodded, and Comethup, emboldened by her smile, crossed to
where she sat and shyly held out his hand. She leaned forward and put
her arm about his neck and kissed him. The shoemaker glanced at them
sharply, and then, with a grunt, started hammering again at his leather.
"We have been looking for you, 'Linda," said Comethup, softly.
The old man caught the remark and paused in his hammering, in the same
fashion as before, and looked quickly round at them. "Yes, that's what
you do from the time they lift you first into your cradle till the hour
they slip a winding sheet round you; it's the old story, begun by baby
lips, and whispered by the dying. Looking for her?" He put out a hand
and touched Comethup on the breast and pushed him almost roughly away.
"Let be, let be; the little maid can bide here as long as she will." He
spoke with a certain stern sadness, and Comethup and the captain looked
at him in perplexity.
"Oh, they're very good friends, and he's a good boy," said the captain,
laughing. "You don't know the boy."
The old man glanced up at him sharply. "No, but they're all alike." He
leaned forward suddenly and took Comethup by the shoulder and drew him
toward himself, looking straight into his eyes. Comethup's heart beat a
little faster than usual, but he did not flinch.
"Well," said the captain, after the scrutiny had lasted for some
moments, "what do you make of him?"
The shoemaker, still keeping a grip of Comethup's shoulder, looked up
at the captain and spoke in a low voice. "A good face," he said, "and
the eyes of one who will dream dreams, and carry them with him always.
I've dreamed my dreams, but"--he passed his hand over his forehead in a
lost, dazed fashion--"I've lost them all." He sighed, and took up his
hammer and fell to work again, muttering to himself. Presently, coming
back to realities with a start, he put down the hammer and asked the
captain civilly if he could do anything for him.
The captain produced his parcel and began, with great care, to point
out exactly what he wanted done and what he desired left undone. The
shoemaker obviously saw here a work on which his finest arts could be
exercised, and listened with equal care to the minute directions. The
business being finished and the price arranged, the captain lingered in
the doorway of the little shop and carelessly put a question:
"Does she come often to see you?"
"When she will," replied the old man, softly hammering. "Sometimes a
week goes by and I see nothing of her; and then she'll slip in and
sit beside me for an hour, and be gone again--so lightly that I think
afterward it's a dream, and that she has not been here at all. It's all
dreams; nothing is real."
"Oh, I'm afraid some things are very real," said the captain gravely.
"No." He brought the hammer down sharply to emphasize the word. "If
they were real we could not bear them; we should go mad. It's because
they are dreams that we can laugh a little sometimes and say that it
doesn't matter, and pray for the hour when we shall wake. Nothing's
real, nothing's real; we should be glad of that." He fell to hammering
again, in the same hurried fashion as when they had first seen him.
Indeed, nothing would rouse him again; even when the captain asked that
he might take the girl with him, and she slipped down from the bench
and walked with Comethup to the door, the shoemaker merely raised his
eyes for a moment to look at her, and went on again with his work. They
heard the noise of the hammering long after they had passed through the
doorway and through the little street; it only seemed to die away when
they came out through the archway into the busier parts of the town.
The captain had a delightful new pupil that day. The three went out
to the marshes beyond the town, and there, at Comethup's modest
suggestion, the captain assisted in the building of the forts and
instructed 'Linda in the first principles of military tactics. She
proved an apt and eager pupil, overleaping obstacles which appeared
to present themselves to the slower mind of the captain, and showing
a delightful sense of the fine art of strategy and a quickness of
resource in a difficult situation, which elicited that gentleman's
warm approval. In the most natural and fearless fashion she walked
back with them to the captain's cottage and partook of the captain's
simple dinner, unconsciously and quickly taking a position in the small
household which no one had dared to occupy before. She showed unbounded
delight at the salute given by Homer, the captain's man, and actually
called him back into the room again and insisted on his repeating the
performance in order that she might see exactly how it was done, making
the blushing man do it very slowly indeed, that she might take in every
turn and twist of his arm.
Comethup trembled a little, lest the captain should take offence; but
the captain's heart had been taken by storm, and he allowed the mite
to rule him as completely as she appeared to rule others with whom she
came in contact outside her father's house. Finally, Comethup received
instructions to take her back home in safety; and the two children
set off hand in hand, the captain standing at the garden gate of his
cottage to watch their departure. She had completed her conquest of
that gallant warrior by seizing him by the lapels of his coat and
drawing his head down in the most unexpected fashion and kissing him
before she dashed out of the cottage with Comethup, whose salute to the
captain was a mere undignified flying wave of the arm, in consequence
of her haste.
At the big iron gates which led to her father's house they saw the
woman standing who had been in the garden on the previous day; she drew
the child swiftly within the gates, and went down on her knees and held
her close to her breast without a word. Comethup, embarrassed, stood
looking on, not knowing whether to go or to stay; he felt, however,
that the necessity of the situation compelled him to explain the
child's absence.
"We met 'Linda quite by accident," he said, "the captain and I, and she
has had dinner with the captain. I do assure you, ma'am"--he had got
that phrase from the captain--"that she has been perfectly safe."
"Oh, I am quite sure she has," replied the woman, looking round at him
with a smile. "And I am very grateful to the captain and to you.--Say
'Good-night,' 'Linda," she added to the child.
Comethup was getting quite used to that rapturous hug with which 'Linda
favoured her friends--was getting rather to like it. He lingered for
a moment outside the gate, until the two figures had disappeared, and
then sped away homeward, planning for to-morrow, and for many other
morrows, in which the captain and 'Linda explored again with him
the wonders of the old town and of the buried ramparts, and renewed
acquaintance, for 'Linda's sake, with all the strange things he had
learned under the captain's tuition.
It happened that night that the captain was restless and ill at ease. A
man of simple tastes and simple habits, he had lived for some years in
the old town, scarcely seeing any one but his man Homer before Comethup
came into his life. It had cost him not a little to shake himself free
from the stiff and rigid rules of life into which he had grown; but,
led by Comethup's persuasive hand, he had done so, and had, in a sense,
renewed his lost youth in the child's company. He was frightened a
little now sometimes when he thought of what it would mean to him if,
by any chance or change of circumstance, he lost the boy; he dared not
contemplate the barren life he had been content to live for so long,
nor think how empty it would be if he had to return to it.
And now, in the strangest fashion, this child had led him to
another--had brought even a softer element into his life, and increased
his responsibilities. The captain, in a gentle, foolish fashion, was
proud of those responsibilities, and would not willingly have let them
go. He might have argued with himself that the children had natural
guardians who could look after them, and whose rights were greater than
any he possessed; but he plumed himself with the idea that the children
had turned to him, and relied upon him more completely than on any one
else. As he paced about his little room in the dark, he seemed to feel
again that baby's arm round his neck and her soft, rounded face pressed
to his hollow one; he thought of her sitting in the strange company of
the old shoemaker; remembered, with a pang, the forlorn little figure
he had first seen in the garden.
It all ended in a determination to see the shoemaker and to learn
something more of him. He had visited him on one or two occasions when
a specially delicate matter of repairing had to be explained and when
the man Homer could scarcely have been intrusted with it, but beyond
that he knew nothing of the man. The captain weighed the _pros_ and
_cons_ of the matter carefully, and finally put on his hat and set out
for the shoemaker's house.
It was a fine moonlight night, and the captain, on turning into the
little street through the archway, saw that the door of the shoemaker's
shop was open, and that the man he sought was sitting on the step, with
his feet in the room and his back propped against the doorpost. The
captain walked on, carelessly swinging his cane, and trying to hum a
tune; stopped opposite the little shop, and remarked upon the beauty
of the night. The old man grunted some inaudible reply, and looked up
at him suspiciously; he was smoking a short, black pipe, pulling and
puffing at it as furiously and rapidly as he appeared to do everything.
"If you've come about those boots----" he began aloud, but the captain
checked him.
"No; of course I did not expect them yet," he replied. "I happened to
be strolling round this way, and thought I should like a chat with you."
The shoemaker took his pipe from between his teeth and stared at the
captain for a moment; then replaced the pipe and nodded. The captain
was a little disconcerted, but he had an obstinate feeling that he
would not go away with his purpose defeated, and so he leaned against
the other doorpost and smiled and nodded back at the shoemaker.
"Yes," he said airily, "I was interested in what you said
to-day--about--about what you call your dreams; and about--the child."
The shoemaker did a surprising thing: he got up suddenly, thrust his
face toward the captain, and looked at him in the moonlight steadily;
then turned abruptly, and stumbled down the two steps which led into
his shop, leaving the captain gasping and staring after him. In a few
moments the captain, looking in through the doorway, saw the glimmer
of a light; then saw the old man bending to light a candle which stood
on the bench while a gigantic shadow, grotesque and hideous, danced
and sprawled all over the wall behind him and the ceiling above. When
he had got the candle alight, and had carefully set his foot upon the
match, he went to the door again and beckoned. "Come in," he said; and
the captain went down the two steps a little doubtfully.
The shoemaker closed the door and dropped a wooden bar across it. The
door fitted above the two steps; the shoemaker seated himself upon the
topmost one and waved his hand toward the bench, on one end of which
the candle stood.
"Sit down," said the man.
The captain seated himself, and glanced somewhat apprehensively about
him. The window was shuttered, and the tools with which the man worked
had been piled neatly together on a little table with a raised edge
which stood against the wall. Boots in every stage of formation and
repair lay all bout the place--some mere gaping upper parts, and others
having but the faint suggestion of what they might ultimately become in
roughly cut leather sheets. The captain drew his coat-tails about his
knees and rested his hands on them, and waited for the other to speak.
The shoemaker waited for some moments, and then began in a low voice,
with his eyes bent on the ground:
"I wasn't born in these parts--it doesn't matter where I came from;
some might call me a rough and common man, working at a dirty trade.
Yet time was when I read and talked and held my own with men who'd been
to school and college. Many and many a night I've laid awake reading
and thinking and working--trying, as men say, to better myself. And
what has it all brought me?" He threw out his arms with a passionate
gesture and without raising his head, and let them fall at his sides
again.
The captain was silent, wondering what was coming, seeing in the man's
attitude and in his voice some long, pent-up story, and wondering, in
his simple fashion, why the man should have chosen him to hear the tale.
"My life was not all work and book-learning. I married. Looking at me
now, any man might say I am a hard and bitter creature; but I was the
happiest in the world then. We had a child--a baby girl--the fairest,
sweetest thing that ever came straight out of God's arms."
He sprang up with a cry and waved his arms fiercely above his head.
"Straight out of God's arms!" he cried, in a loud voice. "Let any man
deny that she has gone straight back into them!"
"She is dead, then?" said the captain softly.
The man dropped his arms and stared about him for a moment helplessly.
"Yes, but that happened long after. I can remember her now, as a tiny
child, coming into the room where I worked and climbing on the bench
beside me, and prattling to me in her baby fashion--music sweeter than
any other that a man hears. I wish"--he had begun to roam restlessly up
and down the place, swinging his arms as he went--"I wish it might have
been possible for her to remain like that forever. But, of course, that
wasn't to be. She grew up, and I was proud of her and proud to think
that she belonged to me and held me dearer than any one else. Then
into our paradise came the man--as the man always comes. I think he
must have loved her--at first, at least; she was so good and beautiful
and pure that no man could pass her by and look into her eyes without
loving her. And then--oh, ages ago; I've forgotten when it was--she
went away, and wrote me a letter saying that she had gone with him and
that she would never forget me, and that some day she would come back
with him, and that we were all to be happy together."
The captain's elbow was resting on his knee and his head was propped on
his hand, so that the hand shaded his eyes. The shoemaker went on, in a
dull, heavy voice. He had clearly forgotten that he had a listener.
"I tried to find him, tried everywhere. I watched for her, night after
night, until they said that want of sleep and care and sorrow had
driven me ill. It was then I first began to dream; I have dreamed ever
since. And when at last I was better, and was able to get again to my
work, her mother was gone; they did not tell me where at first, but
afterward I learned that she had died, and I was completely alone. I
came here then; it was a place where no one knew me, and none could
ask questions. And here, two years ago, a letter followed me, written
by the man, and saying that she was dead. That is the hardest thing of
all--that she died in some strange land, far over the seas; and I can
not even know where she lies buried, or where she sleeps, or whether
the sun shines on her grave. It doesn't matter--it doesn't matter."
The captain raised his head and looked at him. "Perhaps she was happy
in her new life; perhaps----"
The man broke in upon the words fiercely. "She died in shame and
want and misery. The man had tired of his plaything; in his cold and
brutal letter he told me that they had not agreed, and that he had
deemed it wiser to part from her. He begged of me to believe"--the
scorn in the old man's voice as he flung out his arm passionately was
terrible--"that he would have married her had it been possible; he was
sorry for her death."
He had drawn his arm, in an uncouth fashion, across his eyes, and his
voice shook as he finished. Presently he let his arm fall to his side
and looked about him in that curious, helpless way, with something of a
smile upon his face.
"And so you see," he went on, in a gentler tone, "I live on here from
day to day, and dream my dreams; and am happy to forget sometimes which
is truth and which is dream. And then quite suddenly one day, while I
sat at my work here, I lifted up my eyes and saw--O God, my heart leaps
now when I think of it!--saw _her_, as I thought, come back to me, a
baby again, standing in the doorway smiling. That was the best dream of
all; that is the best dream still." He raised his eyes, laughed aloud,
and clasped his hands.
"Does she come here often?" asked the captain, gently.
"Yes, often and often. We do not even speak to each other sometimes,
but I like to feel her close beside me, just as the other one sat, ages
and ages ago. Who knows"--he laid a hand upon the captain's arm and
sank his voice to a whisper--"who knows but that she is mine, come
back, like a fairy child, in purity and innocence, to comfort me, and
to tell me that all the rest has been a dream indeed? How else should
she come to me? Yes, I like to think that--it comforts me."
The captain would not have stripped away that dream from the man for
the world. He was so touched that he begged quite humbly that he might
be permitted to come again to see him; and finally went out into the
darkness and took his way homeward. But the captain was troubled in
spirit, and the shining heavens above him did not seem to have quite
the clear and fine message of peace that they had held so long for
his simple soul. He took a circuitous route, and came again to the
great dreary place where the child lived and looked in through the
dilapidated gates. He sighed a little as he turned away, and whispered
softly, "God keep you, baby--God keep you!"