The boy looked at him in astonishment; a shade of annoyance crossed his face. “Oh, put him off!” he said.
Comethup shook his head very decidedly; he was troubled, like the gentle little creature he was, at the thought that he would have to show any discourtesy to his cousin; but it was quite imperative that he should meet the captain, and the thing had to be managed somehow. “No, I couldn’t possibly do that. The captain and I are very great friends.”
Brian looked at the sober young face for a moment, and then burst into a roar of laughter. “But he’s so old!” he said, when he had recovered his gravity.
Comethup shook his head again, and smiled. “Not when you know him,” he replied. “Sometimes he seems almost as young as I am, only ever so much wiser.”
The other boy stared at him curiously. “Why, how old are you?” he asked.
“Seven next week,” replied Comethup.
“And I’m nine.” Giving the other time to digest his superiority, he presently added: “Must you really go and see this old chap? You can easily explain afterward.”
Comethup did not waver, but he decided to effect a compromise. “Why don’t you come too?” he said. “He would be very glad to see you.”
Brian looked a little ruefully round the untidy room in which they stood, and decided rapidly that it would be better to do that than to remain in the house alone. “Yes, I’ll come,” he said, and darted out into the hall for his cap.
Comethup ventured a suggestion. “Won’t you—won’t you ask your father?”
Brian laughed, and tossed Comethup’s cap to him. “Not I,” he cried. “Dad never knows where I am. All I have to do is to keep out of the way when I’m not wanted, and be right at his elbow when he thinks he’d like to see me. Come along.”
“We’ll have to run,” said Comethup. “We’re late.”
They arrived breathless at the captain’s cottage, and found the captain, as Comethup had expected, standing with his watch in his hand. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of a second visitor, and Comethup breathlessly explained the situation and tried to make a polite little speech, apologizing for having introduced a visitor without an invitation. But the captain interrupted him by saying stiffly that his cousin was very welcome, and the three set out for the usual walk together.
Somehow or other that afternoon the expedition was not quite a success. In the first place, Comethup and the captain were not quite at their ease; had, in fact, a ridiculous feeling of being on their best behaviour before a stranger. Then, too, the old innocent games—the building of forts, and the pleasant little make-believe world they had created—were things they did not care to venture upon before this boy, whose scornful laughter seemed to come so easily. They sat on a wooden seat on the top of the grass-grown wall of the town, and found themselves talking nicely, as Comethup would have put it, and being very stiff and unnatural and dull in consequence. The captain did not talk about his battles; was quite reserved, in fact, and difficult to lure into any expression of opinion. Comethup, proud of his old friend and of his old friend’s achievements, tried to draw him on to descriptions of happenings with which he himself was beautifully familiar, but which he felt would be interesting to Brian, and give that young gentleman a finer idea of the captain. But the captain was not to be drawn; seemed, indeed, purposely to forget things which had rattled glibly off his tongue but yesterday.
They saw Comethup safely to the gate of his father’s garden, and the captain gravely shook hands with him; knowing his mood, Comethup was positively afraid to salute, and, indeed, the stern eye of the captain forbade it. Brian’s road home lay for some distance in the same direction as the old man’s, and Comethup stood at the gate for some moments, watching them going on together.But the captain walked on one side of the pavement and Brian swung along on the other, as far apart as possible, and they did not appear to have anything to say to each other.
After that, Brian Carlaw entered somewhat largely into Comethup’s existence, to the exclusion, at times, of the captain. Comethup meant no disloyalty to his first friend, and went to bed many a night troubled at the thought that there was a breach growing between them; but Brian, child though he was, had a fine air of appropriating Comethup and planning excursions with him, and arranging boyish expeditions from which the younger child found it difficult to escape. He would dash in, in the morning, with his eyes sparkling and his gay laugh waking up the house, and drag Comethup off, waving aside every remonstrance, and refusing to wait an instant for anything. He had a splendid, reckless fashion, so Comethup thought, of scorning mere ordinary doors and paths, such as were used by mere ordinary boys, and of leaping and rushing across flower-beds or turf, and climbing in at a window, in a most unexpected and daring way. One never knew quite where to have him, or what to expect of him; one never knew quite in what mood he would appear. And each mood was something different from the last, and, whether grave or gay, wholly captivating. If he came with some childish tale of tribulation on his lips, it was a tribulation apparently so great and so real that all one’s heart went out to him and one could not do enough to show how deep was one’s sympathy; at least that was what Comethup felt. If he dashed in, with laughter on his lips and devilry in his eyes, the thing was so infectious, so maddening, that even grave little Comethup was bitten by it and felt the devil leaping in his veins as well, and was ready for anything.
When it happened that the captain and Comethup met at all, they met, curiously enough, although neither confessed it to the other, by stealth. Brian monopolized the younger boy so much that there were no more arranged meetings, unless the one met the other by accident a daybefore, and was able to suggest that a meeting should be held. On most occasions, if Brian had not appeared by a certain hour, Comethup would steal off to the captain’s cottage. Never a word would be said, but each fully and completely understood the situation; and the captain welcomed Comethup, and Comethup received the welcome, with as much grave courtesy as though they had been in the habit of meeting daily, and there were no outside circumstances in their simple lives to separate them. It was clearly understood on either hand that Brian was elsewhere, or had failed to keep some engagement he had made; and the captain very happily, and Comethup very happily too, but feeling a little bit like a traitor to both sides, would start off, hand in hand, to enjoy one of the old days.
Yet, even on those occasions, so great was the influence of the other boy upon them that they would keep a wary eye open—still without a word to each other—for his possible appearance on the scene. The building of the forts was not the splendid, sole-absorbing thing it used to be, because they did it stealthily. Some one else had entered into their paradise, and had turned the fruit of it a little sour. Comethup tried hard, on those occasions, to be very, very good to the captain; and the captain, for his part, tried hard to appear as though there could be nothing different between them, and as though these stolen days were just as nice and just as spontaneous as the former days had been. But things were different, somehow; their world went differently, and was not the world they had known before. Comethup found his mind wandering, even during the recital of a thrilling battle episode, to that boy with the splendid eyes and the charming manner, and found himself wondering what the boy was doing, and if he carried little Comethup in his mind.
The expeditions with Brian were not of the innocent and sober character which marked those with Captain Garraway-Kyle; Brian was the leader, and was ready at all times for something new; the very soul of the boy seemed to cry out for that; a new discovery, fascinatingto-day, was old and tiresome to-morrow; the day was a hopeless and fretful one that saw nothing new or fantastic accomplished. His enterprise knew no bounds, and fear, in the ordinary mortal sense, was not in him. The captain’s expeditions had been wonderful, and each had furnished a new delight for Comethup; but they paled into insignificance beside the inventions of Brian.
David Willis was a man of many dreamy occupations, a man who never hurried, and whose life may be said to have been filled with odds and ends of employment. So it happened that Comethup came and went as he would, and his father saw but little of him; he knew that the child was happy, and he heard his voice frequently about the house. But beyond that he cared nothing; he was simply content to know that the child was there, and that all was well with him. Thus Comethup had plenty of scope for his adventures, and plenty of time for any expedition that might present itself.
There was an old and half-ruined house which stood on the extreme outskirts of the town and was surrounded by an old, dark, neglected wilderness of a garden. The two children had peeped in through the rusty iron gates occasionally, with their small faces pressed close between the bars, and had speculated upon what the garden contained and who lived in the house. Brian stoutly asserted that the house was empty, and then that it was haunted; he had probably heard his father or the servants say that. It remained, and had remained for some time, the one possible place which they had not explored; Brian would not have confessed it for the world, but he had a deadly fear of it, probably the only fear he knew concerning anything at that time. It frightened him, even while it fascinated him; he would choose that way to walk, even when it meant that to pass the house they would have to go a long way out of the direction they had arranged.
At last one day he came in, with his eyes curiously bright, and announced his intention of exploring the place. They would get in somehow, he said—through awindow if necessary. Comethup was doubtful, but Brian’s stronger will conquered, as usual, and they set off. Near the place, however, the elder boy hesitated, and drew back a little.
“I don’t think we’ll go,” he said. “There won’t be any fun in it.” And he began to walk away.
Comethup felt relieved; he had not liked the expedition from the first. He said nothing, but set out to follow Brian.
But Brian chafed under a sense of degradation all day. He watched Comethup sharply, to be sure that the younger boy was not actually laughing at him; saw scorn in his eyes, when there was no scorn in Comethup’s heart. They had parted for their midday meal, and had been out again in the afternoon, still under that sense of constraint, and Comethup was diligently studying the pictures in an old book alone in the parlour of his father’s house, when Brian came leaping across the flower-beds and cried to him from outside the window:
“Come along; don’t wait for anything. I’m going to that house.”
Comethup knew perfectly well which house was meant, but he affected ignorance, and said weakly, “Which house?”
“Oh, you know; the haunted one; the one we didn’t go to to-day. Come along.”
Comethup closed the book, but kept a finger between the leaves. “It’s very late,” he urged, “and it’ll soon be getting dark.”
Brian stood with his hands on the window sill, impatiently kicking at the house wall. “You’re afraid,” he said, looking up at Comethup.
Comethup shook his head, but his drawn brows showed anxiety. “No, I’m not afraid,” he said, slowly. “But I’d rather wait until to-morrow, if you want to see the house.”
“No one ever goes to a house that’s haunted in the daytime,” said Brian. “I’m going now.”
“It’s nicer in the daytime,” urged Comethup, gettingone leg down from the window seat and dangling it irresolutely. “But I’ll come if you like.”
“Come along then,” cried the other. “You’re so slow; you can’t make up your mind quickly, as I do.”
Comethup knew that the reproach was justified, and felt humbled accordingly. He was not altogether so happy in this adventure as he had been in all those which had preceded it. In the first place, he had to steal out of the house into the mysterious summer evening, being careful that no one saw him. His father was in church practising; he could hear the slow droning of the organ, like the hum of a gigantic tired insect going to sleep with the rest of the world. Comethup wished that he had gone into the church with his father, and sat there, out of the way of temptation such as this.
The evening was warm and heavy, and a hundred sweet odours came from the gardens which fringed the road. Brian talked valiantly and loudly as they went along of how foolish it was to be afraid of anything, just because it happened to be dark, and of a hundred other matters tending to keep up his ebbing courage. Comethup was silent, doggedly determined to go through with the business, now that he had embarked upon it, and with a plaintive hope in his heart that it might not be so dreadful, after all.
Curiously enough, that part of the outskirts of the town in which the house lay seemed always to be darker and more sombre-looking than any other. All the houses about there were very old, with high walls and tall, rustling old trees; with paths in their gardens which seemed always full of dead leaves and weeds at all times of the year. And that particular house was the most sombre and dismal-looking of them all. It had originally been a very fine house; there were the remains of carvings on the stone pillars which supported the gates. But everything was in decay; one of the great gates hung merely by one hinge, and swayed perilously when it was touched; the other stood permanently ajar.
Their young hearts were beating very heavily whenthey reached the gates. A wind had risen, and was coming from the distant sea across the flat marshland; it stirred the trees and bent their long limbs, so that they seemed to point down at the two small, trembling figures, and to ask who they were, and to plot and whisper against them. Comethup and Brian gripped hands tightly as they slipped through the aperture between the gates. The wind seemed specially to haunt that place; it sent a dusty, whirling eddy of last year’s leaves charging at them and fluttering about them as they went hesitatingly up the long drive. Brian stopped halfway to the house and pushed his cap back on his clustering hair with well-assumed carelessness, and said: “There’s nothing to be seen; I don’t think we’ll go any farther. Besides, we ought to be home.”
Comethup kept steadily on up the drive. “I’m going up to the house,” he said.
There was nothing left for Brian but to follow him, which he did, keeping a wary eye behind him. They gained confidence as they went on, and even raised their voices a little above the whisper in which they had spoken previously. They ploughed their way through the neglected grounds where the paths were scarcely to be distinguished for the mass of tangled weeds which overgrew them, and came up to the house. Not a light showed anywhere; the windows were all shuttered, and the doors apparently fastened.
“I don’t believe any one lives here,” said Brian, sinking his voice again to a whisper. “But I don’t think we’ll go in to-night; we’ve seen a good deal, haven’t we?”
Comethup evidently thought that he had done sufficient to clear him from that accusation of cowardice; but, for the keeping up of appearances, he spoke with apparent reluctance: “Oh, if you like; perhaps we had better go home.”
The house behind them, standing up gray and stark and sombre in the twilight, was a far more terrible thing than it had been when they faced it. By common consent they hurried a little as they trotted along among the deadleaves. The wind, too, was at their back now, and flung fluttering things about their legs and against their ears; they were afraid to look round, and yet afraid to go on without glancing behind them. Halfway down the drive, too, they heard a rustling among the trees, a louder rustling than that caused by the wind. Brian stopped still, and Comethup wondered why his heart kept jumping up into his throat and nearly choking him. Then, from among the shadows of the trees, came a little figure all in white—a figure smaller even than Comethup, but very terrible coming in that fashion, and in that hour and in that place. At any other time they might have said it was a little child, a girl; but now their nerves were too unstrung for practical things. There could be no mistake about its identity. With a sort of simultaneous gasp they set off at headlong speed down the drive, straight for the gate.
And the figure came running after them, crying something piteously to them. But that was worse than anything else; they almost tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get out through the gates; in fact, they never stopped running till they were far down the road, and breathless. Then Brian leaned against a wall and surveyed Comethup with horror-struck eyes. “It was the ghost!” he said; “and it ran after us!”
“Yes,” said Comethup, slowly, and a little doubtfully, “it was the ghost.”
“And it was pretty big, too,” said Brian, fanning himself with his cap. “They don’t look so large in the dark.”
Comethup lay awake a long time that night in his little room under the roof. He was not frightened; he was quite calm as he looked out through the uncurtained window at the blinking stars. He seemed to set everything else aside, and to hear only the piteous, pleading voice crying to him in the garden; he was quite sorry now that he had run away; and very, very sorry, in his childish mind, for the ghost.
“It was a very little ghost,” he murmured to himself as he fell asleep.
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 thatdesolate 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 whereshe 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. Sothat 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 gardenpath, 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 glimpsesof 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 thisbaby 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 tendercurve 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 hisdesk, 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 workto 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 canIdo?” 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.
TELLS OF AN ERRING WOMAN.
While the captain and Comethup were trudging steadily homeward through the rain, the man in the dull upstairs room sat within his circle of light, trying to fix his mind upon the work before him. He held his broad forehead between his palms, and set his lips, and bent his eyes steadily upon the printed page, tapping out a little impatient measure with his foot, in anger with himself that he could not concentrate his attention. Finally, he got up impatiently, kicking the books out of his path, and began to stride up and down that end of the room, having something again of the appearance of a hunted, animal trotting to and fro within the measure of its cage.
“Am I such a brute?” he asked at last; “are there no days behind these—far away in the background—when things were better and fairer, and when I dreamed a dream, as other men have dreamed, of something greater even than books? It was all lies, lies, lies! The man who hugs a woman to his breast can only hold her safely if he pays the price, and knits her to him with chains of gold, forged tightly. His fleshly arms are never strong enough; she will slip out of them; all the tales of woman’s constancy and woman’s virtue have no word of truth in them; the women were virtuous because their lack of virtue was never discovered.”
He began to pace up and down again, locking his hands behind him, and alternately clasping them behind his head.
“Why should I care?” he began again, restlessly. “There is a fate in all these things, and if the fate means that this child shall grow up, and live, and cheat another man, why, then the fate must do its work, and nothing that I can say will change it. I have had it in my mind sometimes to pray—if any prayers could avail—thatthe child might die; that’s one of the mysteries of this strange creation of ours, that so fair and sweet a thing should grow up, to foul men’s ways, and spoil their work. I wonder if I——”
He was interrupted by the abrupt entry of Mrs. Blissett. That worthy woman appeared altogether demoralized, shaken to her prosaic depths; she came in panting, with one hand pressed to her ample bosom. The man stopped in his walk and turned savagely upon her, although without speaking.
“Please, sir, there’s a lady, sir, as do be come to see ye; and she——”
Dr. Vernier, with an angry exclamation, took a stride toward her, but stopped suddenly. There was a shadow behind the woman—the shadow of some one else, creeping into the room with a hand against the wall as though groping blindly. The man had seen it, and stood, like one turned to stone, watching it. Mrs. Blissett, following the direction of his eyes, turned swiftly, and backed away from it. The figure, still with a hand against the wall, came slowly along the side of the room, with her eyes fixed only on him. He seemed to recover himself at last with a start, drew a deep breath, and waved Mrs. Blissett from the room with an impatient arm. “You need not stay—you need not stay. I will see the lady.”
Mrs. Blissett evidently had a vague idea that this was a night when anything might happen; she had performed her small duties about the place for many months, and had never seen a living creature come to the house, and on this night the place had already been twice invaded. She backed out of the room with a sigh of resignation and closed the door.
The stranger had put an arm across her eyes, as though to shield herself from the doctor’s gaze, and was leaning against the wall; she seemed, from the shaking of her slight body, to be weeping. There was silence between them for some moments—a silence which the man broke; his voice sounded strained and unnatural.
“Where have you come from?”
“A long way—a very long way,” replied the woman without uncovering her face.
“Why have you come back here?” His voice was dull and level and hard, and his face might have been cut out of stone, for any changing expression it wore. “You chose your own path; why have you abandoned it?”
She was weeping so bitterly that for a time she could not answer his question. At last she turned her face fully to him, a young and rather pretty face, but haggard and wild with weeping and with sorrow; he looked at it unmoved.
“I have been seeking for you a long time,” she said at last, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “There has been a hunger here”—she struck herself relentlessly on the breast—“greater than I could bear. I could not sleep; I have even prayed to die. I want to see—to see the child!”
The man raised his arm fiercely, as though to ward off her approach, and took a step backward. “No!” he cried, almost in a shout.
“I ask nothing else,” she pleaded. “If anything could have held me true to the old life—if anything could have bent me to your will, and starved the soul out of me, it would have been the child. I tell you something has gone out of me here”—she struck herself again—“and I shall die if I can not hold her in my arms again. You are a man; you do not understand. You can find it in your heart to laugh at me, because I was able to leave her; but she is flesh of my flesh, and I can not tear her from me. Let me see her; let me know that she is well; let me see her smile into my eyes again; let me kiss her! Man, hear the rain and the wind; I have come through them these many weary miles, and I will go through them again. Let me see her, if only for a few minutes, and I swear to you, by the God that gave her to me, that I will go away, and trouble you no more! Only let me ease my hunger.” She was down on her knees at his feet, stretching out her hands to clasp them; he backed away to avoid her.
“You did not think of all this before,” he said, slowly. “Where is the man?”
“Dead!” she said, in a low voice.
“Ah! I thought so; I should scarcely have seen you here again had he been alive. And what do you think is to become of you now?” He asked the question with the bitter savagery of one who sees something that has wronged him in the dust at his feet, helpless, and is gladdened by the sight.
“I do not care,” she said. “It does not matter; can’t you understand that nothing matters? But my child, my baby; that has been the bitter thing through all. Do you think that I would plead to you as I do now for anything else? Do you think that I would kneel at your feet in any other cause?”
The man began to pace up and down the room again, grasping his strong, square chin by one hand, and bending his brows in thought. The woman drew herself slowly to her feet and watched him intently. After a moment the man faced about, leaned his back against the wall, folded his arms, and looked down at her.
“Hysterics, or appeals, or tears are useless in a matter of this kind,” he said; “let us look at it clearly and dispassionately, as though it lay outside ourselves. You have no right here; your part in my life and in the child’s is played out and done with—do you understand that? You cut yourself off from it all long ago; I have set myself to forget your very name, and I do not suppose that the child can remember you. From the standpoint of justice and morality, you have simply ceased to exist; you’re outside the pale—a lost, abandoned woman. Do you understandthat?”
The woman did not answer; she stood rocking herself to and fro, like a creature in pain, with her hands pressed tightly to her eyes.
“When I married you,” the man went on, “I gave you everything that a woman could desire—money, culture, a home. No thinking woman wants more than that. You chose to tell me that the life you led was dull and spiritless;that I was always with my books; that my friends did not interest you, and that you found their conversation tedious. I think once—it’s an old forgotten thing, and I’m not quite sure about it—but I think once you told me that you had hoped for something else; I believe you said some foolish schoolgirl nonsense about love. Well, I gave you all I had to offer, and I fail to see how any reasonable woman could ask for more.”
“No, you never would understand that,” she murmured behind her hands.
“Then you made the acquaintance of this other man, a ne’er-do-weel, a child laughing in the sunshine, with no purpose in his life and no character in his face. But,” he went on, sneeringly, “he was the pretty, empty-headed fool you wanted; he could quote rhymes to you, and fill your ears with things that had no substance in them—things such as every man has whispered to the woman he craves since the world first began. Well, you believed him; you caught at the shadow, and lost the substance. Now he’s dead, you think you can come back here, as though nothing had happened.”
“I do not; I only want to see my baby. Give me but an hour with her; let me assure myself that she is well; let me see her only in her sleep if you will. I must see her; this hunger at my heart will drive me mad.”
“It has not driven you mad before,” he said, with a laugh.
“No, I tried to forget;hemade me forget. Oh, don’t you understand that a woman may be righteous even in her sin; that she may cling to a man sinfully sometimes, just because she has promised? It is too late in the day now for us to blame each other, or for me to attempt to justify myself. Only believe that I have left all that old unhappiness behind. John, you will let me see her?”
“How did you find out where I was?” asked the man, after a pause.
“I went to the old home and found that you had left. I made fruitless inquiries for a long time, and at last, quite by accident, happened upon some one who had seenyou in this town. I came here yesterday and got a quiet lodging, and set about to look for you. Indeed”—as the man made an impatient gesture—“indeed, I have not come to trouble you again; I will go away, and you shall not see me any more.”
The man appeared to be thinking deeply. After a long pause, during which she looked at him appealingly, with her hands tightly clasped, he spoke, going first to the door, and assuring himself that it was shut.
“When I left the home you dishonoured and abandoned,” he began, “I dismissed the servants and brought the child with me, and came here secretly. I had some pride, more perhaps than you imagined, and I did not want the stupid story bandied about on every one’s lips. I determined to set aside that mistake and begin over again. So I chose this old house, in a town where no one knew me; I got a woman to come in, day by day, to do what little work there was to be done, and to look after the child. It’s a dreary place,” he said, looking round the darkened room with a sigh, “but the child has to suffer, I suppose, for the sins of the mother; that’s an inevitable law. It’s an inevitable law also that punishment follows sin—not in the next world only, if there be one, but here. I should be wanting in something, failing to carry out what I have so often preached and written, if I did not recognise that punishment must follow your sin, and that you—poor frail mortal that you are—have inevitably and unconsciously rushed upon your own punishment. It shall be a fine and a bitter one, I promise you. Listen to me.”
She looked up at him tremblingly, striving to read in his inscrutable face the meaning of his words.
“You shall not only see the child for an hour; you shall live here, in the same house with it, as long as you like.” Then, as she would have cried out, he put up one hand to stop her, and laughed, and went on mercilessly: “But on one condition. I have told you that no one here knows anything of my story; they believe, I think, that the mother of the child is dead. Let them still think so.The condition I impose is that you shall remain in this house, under the name by which I first knew you; that you shall occupy the position of housekeeper; that you shall see the child, and attend to her wants in every way, and at any time you like. I have discovered to-night that she has been somewhat neglected by the person I paid to look after her; you will have a deeper interest in her than that, and may be trusted, I think, to look after her well.” He laughed again, then suddenly stepped across to her and took her fiercely by the arms and looked into her eyes. “But understand this: She is to know nothing of the relationship that exists between you; she will know you only as a paid dependent. The instant that, from any endearment you give her, or any word you let slip, she learns that you are her mother, you leave this place, and see her no more! Do you understand that?”
She shrank away from him and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, I can not, I can not!” she cried.
He pointed to the door. “Go as you came; you have no right here; I have been a fool to permit you to stay even so long as this. Go at once, or I will have you turned from the doors!”
“No, no, stop!” she cried. “If there is no other way, I accept your condition.”
“Good. But you must clearly understand that you have absolutely no interest in the child’s life; she goes or comes as I bid or as I permit; you have no voice in anything which concerns her. But you may see her, provided always that you respect that condition, and that she does not learn of the relationship between you. The instant I discover that she even guesses what it is, you leave this house, and you never return. Is that clear?”
“Yes, yes, I accept. Indeed, if there is no other way—and I know I deserve not even so much as this—if there is no other way, then I am grateful.”
“You have need to be. For the future you take your old name, and we will prefix something respectable to it, for propriety’s sake and for the child’s. You will beknown as Mrs. Dawson, and there is no necessity for you to tell anything concerning yourself that you do not care to have known.”
“I understand; I understand perfectly. May I—may I see the child—now?”
“She is asleep, I suspect,” replied the man, coldly.
“Indeed—indeed I will not wake her,” cried the eager woman.
“Very well. You will find her room at the top of the house, the door on the left.” Then, as she was moving rapidly across the room, he called to her. “You will find a spare bed in that room; it was used by the woman Blissett, who attends on her, when ’Linda was very ill some time since. You may sleep there to-night; I will have another room prepared for you to-morrow.”
She reached the door, and then turned to look back at him, with some words of thanks on her lips. But he was at his desk, with his head buried among his books and papers; and she stole quietly out and closed the door. Then, with a light and rapid step she flew up the stairs, calling softly as she went, in a whisper, “’Linda, ’Linda, my baby!”