“Alas! my dear Charlotte, it is no jest. To say that I was thunderstruck would be to put the matter mildly; and I can well imagine what your feelings must be. What he does with this money is more than I can say; I can give a shrewd guess, but I may be doing him an injustice, so I won’t say what that guess is. But it is certainly true that he has raised this money in the fashion I have explained to you. If you still believe that I am guilty of such atrocious bad feeling as to jest withyou on a subject of such a nature, I beg that you will yourself ask him.”
“Yes, I shall certainly ask him,” replied Miss Carlaw.
“That is wise, that is just,” replied her brother. “Perhaps I might suggest that it would be better not to mention my name in the matter. After all, I am not concerned in it in any way, and being a man of peace I do not desire to have this young man’s enmity. He will probably believe that you have heard it through some business channel of which he knows nothing.”
“Oh, you needn’t fear that I shall mention your name. If he admits it, the fact that I know it is sufficient. Have you anything more to say?”
“Nothing, beyond the hope that you will not deal hardly with him. He is young, thoughtless, headstrong; he has been brought up extravagantly, and——”
“With plenty to be extravagant upon,” said Miss Carlaw, with something of a return of her old manner. “Well, brother Bob, I suppose you’ll go home to-night in triumph; you’ll go home and laugh because an old fool has been blind in a double sense; because she’s been fooled as thousands of women have been fooled before, eh? Oh, you need have no mercy; go and tell all your friends, every one who knows you, tell all the world that I have warmed something in my bosom until at last it has stung me. Tell ’em all.”
“Indeed, my dear sister,” said Mr. Carlaw, “you do me a grave injustice. You spoke just now, not without emotion, of our childish years; my heart goes out to you to-night more than it has ever done. I may say that, having seen much of men and women in this queer world of ours, I feared something of this from the beginning; I felt that the boy had not that strength of character, if I may so term it, necessary to take his place with any dignity in an exalted sphere. Humbly he might have done well; the best of us are likely to have our heads turned.”
“There, that will do; I’m quite capable of abusinghim myself, if necessary, without your help. I suppose I ought to thank you for what you’ve told me to-night, but I’m afraid I can’t quite do that. I wish, in my heart of hearts, I might have died five minutes before you came in, for then his kiss was warm upon my old cheek, and I—God help me!—I believed in him. There, don’t speak to me. Go away, please; I want to be alone.”
Mr. Robert Carlaw quietly took his way out of the room and out of the house. As he walked home he looked up at the night sky and smiled softly to himself, and felt that the world was good and that Providence had been specially kind to him.
“Women are strange creatures,” he muttered to himself, “and when they’ve been upset or have had something rudely torn away from them they do remarkable things. Years ago, my dear Charlotte, you rejected my offspring and put Master Comethup Willis in his place. I may be wrong, but I think now, with the swing of the pendulum, it is ten thousand chances to one that you will restore Brian to your favour; and then our begging days are over, and all our fortunes will be made. And I shall have made them.”
THE FALL OF PRINCE CHARMING.
Miss Carlaw stood for a long time in the same attitude after her brother had left her; the whole hideous thing had come upon her so unexpectedly and with such force that she was like one stunned. She began presently to pace about the room, moaning once or twice to herself as she walked, and then again stopping suddenly with a new light on her face and a smile about her lips. But those latter moments were rare and fleeting; they came to her only when she felt for an instant that the storyshe had heard was a hideous invention, and that her faith in Comethup might still remain unshaken.
After a long, long time her heart leaped suddenly at the sound of wheels and the opening of a door; then died down again at the thought of the interview before her. She heard his footstep in the hall, and then knew by the opening of the room door that he was coming to her as he always did. She stood stiff and rigid to receive him.
The sound of the voice she loved so well almost shook her resolution to be stern with him, almost broke her into an appeal. She knew that in another moment his arm would be about her shoulders in the old boyish fashion, and she cried out in an agony, “Stop! Stay where you are. Don’t come near me!”
He stopped dead; so suddenly quiet was he that she almost fancied he had stopped breathing. Then the tension was over; he gave a quick little gasp and said hurriedly, “What’s the matter?”
“Years ago, Comethup, when I first saw you in the house wherein your father lay dead, I drove a bargain with you—a bargain which, child though you were, you were fully capable of understanding. Do you remember it now?”
“Yes, of course.” His heart was beating thickly, and he had a dim and miserable feeling that he knew what was coming.
“I fear you may have forgotten it. I asked for your love and your confidence; swore that I would be your friend if you dealt with me openly and squarely through all things and at all times. Have I kept my word?”
“God knows you have!” he replied in a low voice.
“Have you kept yours?—Ah! you are silent on that point. I ask you to-night if you have anything to tell me—anything to say to me?”
He raised his head and looked at her; even made a step toward her with his arms stretched out. Then the arms fell to his sides again and he simply answered, “Nothing.”
Miss Charlotte Carlaw’s face hardened suddenly.“Then the talking must be done by me,” she said. “I reminded you just now of our compact when you were a child; perhaps it will be well to remind you of the penalty for breaking that compact. I swore to you then, and I meant it, that if you ever deceived me, ever proved yourself to be anything but the boy I believed you to be, I’d cast you out and you might starve. I meant it then, and, by the Lord, I’ll keep my word! It has come to my knowledge to-night that you have done what, in my eyes, is a shameful and disgraceful thing; that, trading on the fact that you believed yourself to be my heir, you have borrowed a large sum of money; have used the bounty and generosity of a foolish old woman who believed in you, and so have actually drawn money which you can not possess until after my death. Will you deny that? Is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Comethup.
She gave a long sigh, turned away from him, leaned her arm against the side of the fireplace, and laid her old face against the arm and began to cry helplessly. It was the most pitiful sight imaginable, and yet he could do nothing to comfort her, dared not even go near her. In a dim, forlorn fashion he seemed to see passing before him all that had happened in that very room—the riotous feasts, when he had been a child—the sound of merry laughter; he even seemed to see himself as he had once stood on the table, singing a foolish song, with the captain watching him silently; he could hear his own childish treble, could feel again the old woman’s hand grasping his ankle. And now the room was empty and the generous-hearted old creature, the giver of the feast, who had craved only for his love in return for all her bounty, was crying hopelessly over her shattered idol.
Presently she ceased her weeping and turned upon him with a certain sad fierceness of manner. “Have I ever denied you anything, boy? Was I so much in your way or had you given me so little of your love that you must long for the time when you could step into possession?O God! for the dream I have lost! Why, you’re worse than any murderer—for the things you have killed in me to-night! I honestly believe that that is the unpardonable sin—to kill some trusting fellow-creature’s belief in you.”
“Don’t, don’t!” he cried; “you’ll break my heart!”
“And what of mine; did you think nothing of that? I swear to you that if you had come to me and had told me that you were in want or in difficulties I’d have helped you if I’d had to mortgage everything I possessed. Your income has been a large one; it passes my comprehension to know what you’ve done with the money; I’m quite afraid to think. However, that’s all done with; I’ll never believe in any human creature again. I believed in you with all my heart and soul; I saw in you, or thought I did, something better and truer than in any one else. Now I find my mistake. Thinking over it now, I see what a fool I’ve been. I remember those days on the Continent when we were travelling about, and when your money went more rapidly than I could put it in your hands. I didn’t mind then; I thought you didn’t know the value of it, but would learn in time. Now your chance to learn is gone. You and I part to-night!”
He stood there dumb, knowing that he could say nothing to her, knowing that he dare not plead for himself. Indeed, he did not think of himself at that time; he found himself dimly wondering what was to become of ’Linda when this last sum of money was exhausted. He had never foreseen such a crisis as this. The fashion in which he had supplied Brian and his father with funds, beginning as it had done in his boyhood, had grown to be such a natural thing that he had ceased to be surprised at it, or, indeed, to think about it very much at all. He put himself clearly and quietly outside the question; his heart only ached desperately for this old woman who was destined to be left alone again after all these years, despite all her goodness to him. He stood still for a few moments watching her, and then turned quietly and went toward the door.
She called after him: “Have you nothing to say to me?”
He came back slowly. “Oh, my dear,” he said in a broken voice, “what shall I say to you? To thank you for all that you’ve done, all that I seem so shamefully to have misused, would sound like a mockery. After all, all that you say is good and fair and just; I have lied to you and deceived you and broken my bargain; I can’t say anything more than that. Deep as my gratitude is, I wish—O God, how much I wish!—that you had left me as you found me when I was a little child. I suppose I wasn’t fit or strong enough to take the position you meant for me.”
“I suppose not. And you won’t tell me what you’ve done with all this money?”
“No, I can’t tell you that,” he replied. Before him again he seemed to see the face of ’Linda—’Linda, whose fool’s paradise he had created, and who lived in it contentedly, knowing nothing of what it was founded upon. In his own steadfast, single-hearted way he knew that that secret must be kept, and kept to the end for her sake.
“Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” said the old woman, with a sudden return of her hardness of manner. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. But, since you refuse all explanations, so I refuse to have anything to do with you further, or with any trouble you have created. You have borrowed this money under the belief that you were my heir, but you’ve reckoned without me. Here, to-night, under the very roof where I first gave you all your honours, I strip them from you. Those who lent you the money may get it back as they can; I’ll encourage no such business as that. I’ll warrant they’ll pull long faces when they find they’ve been misled. Yes, I strip everything from you. The boy I loved, the Prince Charming I worshipped, is dead—never has been at all. Another—a creature I don’t know and don’t understand, a stranger to me—has taken his place. Prince Charming has gone—God help me!—forever.”
He turned then and went quietly out of the room.When at the door he looked back for a moment she was seated in her chair with her hands resting on the top of her stick, and her face bowed on the hands; she was rocking herself to and fro in the fashion he remembered so well.
He stole up to his room, struck a light, and looked round that happy place of his boyhood for a long time; then presently closed the door, went down the stairs, put on his hat, and left the house, taking nothing with him, but going out as quietly and as steadfastly to begin the world again as though he had been merely starting for a quiet half-hour’s walk. He had not the faintest idea of what to do or where to go; there was no one to whom he could turn, for even the captain would not understand, and must never be told. Prince Charming, as the old woman had said, was dead; it would surely be wiser that he should be forgotten also.
BRIAN PAYS HIS DEBTS.
Mr. Robert Carlaw, having once started that beautiful and simple scheme which he had devised, felt that something more was necessary for its completion; the first bold stroke had been given, but other bold strokes would be needed. Accordingly, he set about the matter delicately; sent copies of Brian’s books of verse to the old woman, in order, as it were, to prepare the way for the entry of the poet himself into the position which had been so long usurped by another. He had decided not to tell his son anything about the matter until the business had been successfully concluded and Miss Charlotte Carlaw was ready to open her arms to her new heir.
But when day after day went by and then week after week, and there came no response from his sister, hebegan to be possessed with doubts and fears; wondered if, after all, he had snatched away the one means of living left open to them all, and had failed to discover another. He told himself, however, with a knowing shake of the head, that he knew women better than that; he counted on the fact of Miss Carlaw’s desperate loneliness should she have discarded Comethup. Perplexed and troubled and trembling, Mr. Carlaw at last made up his mind to seek his sister and endeavour to learn the true position of affairs.
He was admitted without delay to her presence, and found her standing in the same room and in the same attitude as when he had last seen her, almost as though she had not moved since. But her face was worn, and lines appeared upon it which he did not remember to have seen before; for the rest she was as upright and dignified as ever.
“Well, brother Bob,” she said, with some bitterness, “have you brought me any other fine news? Do you come again, in pure unselfishness, with the desire solely to help a fellow-creature? Come, let’s know what you want. Out with it.”
“My dear sister,” began Mr. Carlaw, “when last I saw you, on a memorable and a painful occasion, I went away with the horrible fear tugging at my heart that it would have been wiser had I said nothing; that the probability was that you would behave—quite naturally, I admit—somewhat harshly to a foolish and headstrong youth. That fear has haunted me ever since, and haunts me still.”
“Well, I’m afraid it will have to continue haunting you, brother Bob,” replied Miss Carlaw dryly. “If you want to know full particulars of the matter I can tell you in a dozen words. I asked my nephew whether the statement was true or false; he admitted that it was true. He left my house that night.”
Mr. Robert Carlaw, remembering his sister’s affliction, felt it safe to indulge in a smile of satisfaction; but his tones when he spoke were tinged with sadness. “Mydear Charlotte,” he said, “this is quite what I feared. Will you not permit me to plead for the boy, to suggest——”
“Not a word,” broke in Miss Carlaw fiercely. “I don’t know why you come here, unless you want to triumph over a lonely old woman; but I want to hear nothing more about the matter. The boy is done with, and I won’t listen to the pleading of an archangel about him. Have you anything more to say?”
Mr. Carlaw hesitated for a few moments and then began his petition lamely. “My dear sister, I will not, of course, say anything further about the unhappy matter if you do not desire to have it spoken about. Perhaps I may say that, more than anything else, my heart has been touched for you; my sympathy has gone out to you in this hour of your loneliness more than you would think possible.”
“I was lonely for a good many years, brother Bob, and it didn’t seem to affect you much. Come, deal squarely with me; what is it you want to say?”
“My dear Charlotte, you are ever impatient; but that is characteristic of you, and I think I love you for it—I’m quite sure I do. I was going to suggest, if I might be permitted to do so, that having been used for so long to young society you will naturally feel the desire for that sort of society very strongly. In a word, my dear sister, you want to be taken out of yourself, as it were.”
“Well, go on,” said Miss Carlaw, who was listening intently.
Thus encouraged, her brother proceeded more glibly: “Now, it has seemed to me that if you could receive visits from—may I say it?—from those who are interested in you, those whose society is cheerful, whose lives are fresh and sweet and unspotted from the world, it would have a beneficial effect upon you. Now, for example, my son Brian——”
She burst suddenly into a peal of bitter, scornful laughter; the man stopped and looked at her angrily. “You’re a bad pleader, brother Bob,” she said; “youdon’t do the thing well at all. So this is your idea, is it? You think that as I have got rid of one who seemed all the world to me, and who seemed to take the first place in my heart—you think, because of that, you’ll suggest a substitute.” She stamped her foot and rapped her stick upon the ground. “No, a thousand times no! I tried with one; thought him the best there was on earth; I’ll try no more. Still less should I be disposed to put in his place one who comes of such a stock as you. It’s a pretty idea, brother Bob; ’pon my word, it’s a fine idea! But it won’t do; from this moment forward I’ve done with everything and every one. I thought I could find love and truth in the world; I’ve failed to find them, although God knows I’ve tried hard enough. Therefore I have the right to say that I don’t believe they exist; and Ishallsay it, and take my way through life accordingly. Now, I ask only one thing and I intend to have it; and that one thing is—to be left alone, to be troubled no more with any of you!”
“But, my dear sister, be reasonable; think for a moment of——”
“Think!” she echoed bitterly. “Do you imagine that I haven’t thought and thought and thought until my brain reels; until all my past days, good and bad, file before my darkened eyes like a long-drawn-out procession that never ends? Is it possible for you, I wonder, to understand all that this thing means to me? Is it possible for you to know how I wander through the empty rooms of this place and hear his voice again as I heard it when he was a child? Heavens, man! do you know what it is to have set up something to worship, to have had nothing else in all your life that was quite so fine and splendid, and then to be told quite suddenly that you’ve been dreaming; that it never existed, that you’ve been cheating yourself all the time and have got to unlearn all the pretty fable you’ve taught yourself? And then you think I could fill his place; you imagine I could start all over again with the chance of being cheated afresh? I know now what was meant when itwas written that a rich man couldn’t enter into heaven; I suppose it applies equally well to a rich woman. This was my heaven, more than a paradise; and my accursed wealth has driven me out of it and closed it to me forever! If I had been poor, he might have clung to me and cared for nothing else, but the money stood in the way. Well, I ought to have known; I’m old enough to have learned my lesson before this. Now, brother Bob, let’s put an end to this; go your way and I’ll go mine. That’s my final word.”
He knew that she meant it; saw in one horrible moment that he had lost, and that to plead with her would be of no more use than to fling himself against a rock. Coming out into the streets he walked along with his hat tilted on the back of his head, staring before him in a dazed fashion as he went.
“My dear Bob Carlaw,” he muttered to himself, “you’ve most decidedly made a horrible mess of things. You’ve killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, with a vengeance. I thought this was going to be the smartest thing I’d ever done. Worst of all, there’s Brian to be faced, and Brian’s temper is positively devilish. This comes of trying to help others; if I’d fought for my own hand through life I believe I should really have cut a figure in the world, after all.”
He kept his miserable secret for some weeks, hoping that an event would occur which would render it unnecessary for the matter to be disclosed at all, trusting in that Providence which in a vague fashion he had alternately blessed and cursed all his days. There was a forced gaiety about him at this time; he burst into unnatural snatches of song at the most inopportune and unexpected moments, as though to keep his spirits up and to assure his doubting mind that all was well. But the crash came when Brian, finding that funds were running low, airily suggested to his father that the usual appeal should be made to Comethup Willis.
Mr. Robert Carlaw, in coward fashion, put off the matter for a day or two; and then, when concealment was nolonger possible, blurted out the truth, not without tears. He implored his son, his dear son, to remember that he had at all times been a fond and indulgent parent, and that he had in this as in all other things acted for the best. He urged, moreover, that they should not yet despair; his eccentric sister might restore Comethup to her favour, or might, best of all, look with kindly eyes upon Brian and his young wife. Their credit was good, owing to the costly manner in which they had lived. There was still time, the trembling man argued, in which to look about them and make up their minds what to do.
To say that Brian was stunned by the intelligence would be to put the matter mildly. In characteristic fashion he had gone on from day to day, complacently confident that the next would bring all that he needed to make life pleasant; and here in a moment he saw the whole thing stripped away from him—saw in imagination the pleasant prospect upon which he had so long gazed closed in by the hard, dull wall of privation, against which he might beat his hands in vain. He had lived in luxury like a spoiled child, ministering to his every whim and caprice, happy and flattered and careless of everything and every one about him. When at last he fully grasped what had happened, his fury and violence were greater even than his father could have imagined; he cursed that long-suffering man roundly, cursed every circumstance of what he termed his poverty-stricken existence, and ended his outburst by whimpering feebly, like a child thrust out suddenly in the cold and the darkness.
Left alone, the natural cowardice of the man took a new form. It had never been his habit to bear the burdens of life—that was a matter which might more easily be left to others; he determined he would not bear this one. To justify his conduct had never been necessary; he had been fortunate in seeing always the easiest path to travel, and had immediately taken it, even though such an action involved the stepping over some one else to reach it. Consequently there was no thought in his mind now of the sufferings or troubles which might be incurredby any one near to him. Brian Carlaw was the one person to be considered, and Brian Carlaw must not starve. If any justification were necessary, he told himself with something of pride that he had a work to perform—a work for which the world asked and waited; he owed a duty to the world and must perform it at whatever cost. This being the case, when his first anger was gone he looked about for a means of escape. Difficulties were closing in about him, and he must get away from the net while yet there was time.
So it happened that, not for the first time in the history of this amazing pair, Mr. Robert Carlaw found himself one day again deserted. Brian had gone, leaving behind him a letter to his father written in quite his best and airiest fashion, and urging that gentleman to break the news to the deserted wife.
Mr. Robert Carlaw was, not unnaturally, annoyed; he felt that his son’s action savoured of base ingratitude when it was remembered that the father had tried to do so much. “And the worst of it is,” he muttered to himself as he read the letter, “that he’s left the woman on my hands. That’s the coolest part of the business.”
’Linda, all unsuspecting, greeted him with a smile as he entered the room; for he went to her at once, ready to blurt out the matter without preface or disguise of any kind. He felt that he was the deeply injured party, and it was convenient that she should be there that he might pour out his wrongs to her.
“You look troubled,” she said gently. “Is anything the matter?”
“Matter! The most infernal, disgraceful, and degrading business that has ever come to my knowledge. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth!’—well, I’ve found out whatthatmeans. Here am I, who have sacrificed myself, sacrificed everything on earth, for the sake of an ungrateful rascal who deserts me at a moment’s notice. And then you ask me if anything is the matter!”
She had risen from her chair and was looking at him with a troubled expression, with the fingers of one handtrembling nervously at her throat. In the storm of words she had caught only one or two; one of them she had caught particularly. “Deserted!” she whispered. “I don’t understand you.”
“Well, there’s not much mystery about it, I should think,” he cried brutally. “Brian has gone.”
She looked at him in silence for a moment with a sudden fear whitening her face; then a little laugh crept to her lips and trembled there, as though she would cheat herself with the thought that the man was jesting. “But where has he gone?” she asked lightly. “Have you been quarrelling with him again?”
“Quarrel? There has been no question of quarrelling. The fellow has simply sneaked away and left me—I mean us—in the lurch. I suppose you know what it means when rats desert the sinking ship, don’t you? Well, we are sinking, and away goes the first rat.”
She came swiftly across to him and caught him by the arm and looked into his face. “Do you mean what you say? Where is Brian? I won’t believe—oh, I’ll go and find him!”
Halfway to the door his voice arrested her. “You may shriek the house down and you won’t find him. He’s miles away. Egad! when I come to think of it”—Mr. Robert Carlaw scratched his chin and smiled—“he’s a pretty cool hand. And I’m not sure that it isn’t what his poor old father would have done under the circumstances.” He turned over the letter he held in his hands and looked at it. “And the phrasing is beautiful, quite the sort of thing that would grace his biography, you know.”
She came back slowly from the door and pointed to the letter. “Is that from Brian?” she asked in a whisper.
“Yes,” he replied, still looking at it with a fond smile.
“May I see it? What does he say?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s wise for you to see it all,” replied Mr. Carlaw. “But he sends a message to you which will probably explain matters more clearly than Icould do.” He turned to the letter and presently came upon the passage he wanted. “Ah, here we are. ‘Tell her that I think, under all the circumstances, she will have no great cause to regret me. It is a question which has been discussed on many occasions, and as regards the solution of which I am still in doubt: Whether men of genius should marry? It is, perhaps, a little late in the day to raise the point; but my duty to a world which demands of me my best compels me to gain experience of both sides of every question. I have tried the one with no very definite success, and as I hold that ordinary laws and rules do not govern the man who is beyond all laws, so I feel that I have a perfect right to take my life again into my own hands and to shape it anew. You may tell her, if you think it necessary, that I leave her as free, from my point of view, to contract any other alliance as I shall feel on my part. In a word, I’—I don’t think, on the whole,” added Mr. Carlaw, folding up the letter, “that it is necessary for you to hear any more.”
The face she turned to him almost frightened him; the change in it in the past few minutes was pitiful. “Then there is something else?” she asked. “Haven’t I the right to know that also?”
Mr. Robert Carlaw shrugged his shoulders. “As you will,” he said. “To put it in a few words, my son Brian, with that irresponsibility which has ever characterized him, and which I believe characterizes most men of brilliant parts, has taken this sudden journey—well, not unaccompanied. Do you follow me?”
She nodded and her lips moved, although no sound came from them.
“I felt you would,” responded Mr. Carlaw. “You see, the lady—for she is a lady, in that sense—has long cherished a great admiration for him and for his work; she is extremely wealthy and I am not——”
He stopped suddenly and made a step toward her, for she had cried out and had closed her eyes and had swayed blindly toward a chair. But she waved him offas he came near her, and sat down quietly, staring straight in front of her.
“You see, the question remains,” went on Mr. Robert Carlaw airily, “what areweto do? Personally, I am a Bohemian, a wanderer—some might even say a wastrel; a cup of water and a crust will suffice for me, and I am happy. Frankly, I prefer wine and well-cooked dishes, but in an emergency the simpler fare will do for me. But to be reduced, as we are now, to beggary in a moment—well, it’s trying to a man’s nerves.”
“Are we reduced to beggary?” she asked in a low voice, and in a tone which suggested that that was the smallest part of the matter.
“Of course we are; but for that we should probably still have my erring son among us. The money being gone, and the source from which it was derived gone also, my poor boy lost his head. You see, it has been a maxim of mine throughout life to walk in the softest and shadiest places in search of the brightest flowers, and I rather fear that my poor son has caught the trick of the business from me. Finding that the sun has gone out in one quarter, he naturally turns to another where it is still shining, and where fresh flowers nod to him in a new breeze, as it were. Really, I suppose we ought not to blame him.”
“And he has left—left me nothing in the world?” she asked. “Not that that matters in the least; but I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“Well, my dear child, no man can perform impossible feats; Brian had nothing to leave you, and therefore was helpless in the matter. Oh, I don’t think you should blame Brian for that. Having nothing, he could leave nothing; there’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression; the greater sorrow had slipped away for a moment, while these commonplace things were forced upon her. “But Brian told me we were very rich, or at least that we had a good income; he told me he made a lot of money with his books.”
“Ah, my child, when a man’s in love he’ll say or do anything. After all, Brian’s desire was a laudable one; his wish was to keep you from sorrow or want. His own income was small, decidedly small; the—remainder came from another source.”
“Another source,” she echoed. “I seem indeed to have been living in some world from which I am rudely awakened. What was this mysterious income which has gone on so long and seemed inexhaustible, and yet has suddenly ceased? What was it?”
“Well, I suppose, now that the thing is ended, you may as well know everything; it can not matter very much. My nephew, whom I believe you know—of course you know him—has been generous enough, having a large private income of his own far beyond his wants, to provide Brian with—well, with considerable sums—really, I believe, out of an admiration he possessed for Brian’s work. That’s the whole matter.”
“Oh, my God!” She had risen suddenly to her feet and was covering her face with her hands; the man stood still, somewhat amazed, watching her. Presently she took her hands away, and he saw with more amazement that her face was wet. She came toward him quickly, and had a difficulty at first in getting out her words; some of the phrases were broken into by little hysterical laughs. “Of course, all this comes—comes as something of a surprise—almost a shock—to me. You’ve told it all—all so suddenly that I haven’t been able to think of it—to get it clearly. Tell me one thing: how long has this robbery been going on?”
“Robbery! Really, my dear child, you use the wrong term. There has been no question of robbery; all the payments that have been made have been made freely and willingly.”
“Yes, I can believe that,” she said softly, and covered her face again. “But how long has it been going on?”
“Well, I believe we were in temporary difficulties soon after my young nephew left school. My eccentric sister—generous soul—had placed large sums of money in theboy’s hands, while we were actually on the verge of starvation. Comethup came to our rescue; he has been coming to our rescue periodically ever since.”
“Then this house, these pictures, the carriage in which I ride, this dress”—she struck herself fiercely on the breast—“all were bought with—with his money? Is that so?”
“Practically, thatisso. You see, poetry, however good and however conducive to fame, is practically a drug in the market; there is no great income to be made from it. Consequently, other means of support became necessary and were fortunately at hand. I don’t suppose Brian’s personal income has been a tenth part of what we have been spending. That’s the melancholy fact. And now everything has gone from us.”
“Then I understand that we—these payments have ceased?” she said slowly.
“Entirely ceased. My poor nephew is no longer in a position to assist us; he has lost his aunt’s favour, and like ourselves has been cast upon an unsympathetic world.”
“Do you know how that happened?” she asked drearily.
Mr. Robert Carlaw decided under the delicate circumstances to lie. “No,” he replied, “I do not know. My worthy sister is, as I have suggested, eccentric, and one never knows from hour to hour what whim or fancy may seize her. No, I am not aware of the circumstances.”
“So what I’m to understand is this: that the man who has helped us so long being now himself a beggar, we are reduced to beggary; and Brian”—her voice broke and she turned her head away—“Brian seeks some one else who can support him. Are those the facts?”
“Crudely, those are the facts,” replied Mr. Carlaw. “I have been told that it is useless to attempt to govern genius by the ordinary laws to which smaller humanity is subject, and so we must take my misguided son as we find him and make the best of him. From the world’spoint of view he has, like his unfortunate parent, gone to the devil—but the world in his case will not, I think, judge him hardly. The question that remains for us is, What shall we do?”
“What shall we do?” she echoed, starting up and facing him scornfully. “What shall we do? Hide ourselves—hide ourselves from the sight of every honest man and every honest woman! Creep through desert places where no one can see us; keep out of the sight of those who might glean the faintest idea of our story. What shall we do? You have carried a brave face to the world while your hands were filled with money wrung from a generous-hearted boy, who did it—God help us all!—from a motive you wouldn’t understand if you knew it. And you ask me what we shall do! You are an old man, and I a woman suddenly grown old; you have but few years before you—I, unfortunately, may have a long lifetime. Yet, if I could live through all the ages, and could get that best gift that man or woman may claim, the loss of memory, I could not wash out the stain of this thing. That is absolutely unforgivable. That I should have been kept in ignorance of it; that I should have taken the hand of this good fellow in friendship and smiled into his eyes while he fed and clothed me! Have you sunk so low that you can’t feel that—can’t understand it? Can you stand there and smile at me, knowing that you’ve stripped from me everything that made my life—my love—my self-respect—my very honour? And then you ask me what I shall do!”
Mr. Robert Carlaw was somewhat abashed. He had expected to meet tears and lamentations; he had not thought that she would look upon the matter in this light, or that she could find it in her heart to address such words to him. “I beg, whatever you do,” he said somewhat nervously, “I beg that you will do nothing rash; that you will think seriously of the position and review it with calm deliberation. Frankly, I am in that position that it is impossible for me to assist you; if I obtain thecup of water and the crust to which I have referred I shall consider myself fortunate.”
“I want help from no one,” she replied. “I only want to go away and hide myself.”
“As you will,” he replied, and shrugged his shoulders and left her. He reflected, as he went to his own room, on the ingratitude of all created beings, and of women in particular, and decided after much thought that his best plan for his own future self-preservation would be to follow Brian and endeavour to get again into his good graces. He saw with some penetration that Brian was the only man now left who had any money at his command.
She sat for a long time after he had left her, trying to get the whole terrible business into an ordinary compass in order that she might understand it. It was a thing so gigantic and so terrible and so unexpected that it was difficult for her to realize it completely. All that she had ever hoped and prayed for—all her world, in fact—had been swept away in an instant; she wanted, as she had said, to go and hide herself and strive to forget it. Left alone with all her dreams shattered, with the man in whom her faith had been centred standing before her in a mental picture, debased and fallen and degraded, she dared not look upon the world—scarcely dared to think about the matter.
It was quite late in the evening when, taking nothing with her, and glancing to right and left like a guilty thing that fears to be seen, she crept out of the house and away into the streets. In the hours that had passed since she had heard the story she had prayed once or twice for death; had hoped that some sudden madness might come upon her which should cut off the years as by a magician’s knife, and leave her, a little lonely child again, in the garden of her father’s house. And with that prayer came a new thought—a sudden wish to see the place again.
It was impossible that her mind could be left entirely blank or her heart quite vacant; with everything that shehad believed in and trusted stripped away from her, her thoughts went back to Comethup, and raised him a silent, splendid figure blessing and helping her through all these years during which she had flouted him and set him aside. Beside that splendid figure the man she had dreamed she loved faded into nothingness; she felt that, if only for an hour, she must get back to the old place, where she had broken his heart and left him; must get back, if only to cry her own heart out.
She had a little money with her, and was fortunate in catching the last train, which would take her to within a few miles of the old town. Fatigue meant nothing to her; she alighted at Deal and set out to walk, hurrying along the road and whispering his name as she ran, and crying incoherently to him to forgive her.
The town was dark and silent when she reached it. She was in a mood to sit down and cry—half from weariness, half from delight at being in the old familiar streets again. She hastened on toward the garden and went in, swaying a little from weakness as she passed over the fallen gate and up the dreary avenue. There, under the balcony where she had parted from him, she stood still, looking up at the deserted house and weeping bitterly. And suddenly from among the shadows of the trees there stole out the figure of a man.
He came forward slowly with his arm stretched out; as the moonlight fell upon his face she saw that it was the old shoemaker, Medmer Theed, and that he was smiling upon her. The sight of one friendly face in that dark and desolate garden struck a chord in her that had not been wakened before; she caught his hands and burst into a sudden passion of tears.
The old man drew her gently to his breast, and laid her head there and whispered soothingly to her. “My child, my baby!” he said. “They shall not harm you. I knew you would come back; I have waited here so long—so long! Yet the nights have been full of dreams of you; the wind has whispered your name among the trees; the birds seeking their nests have cried to me, ’She willcome back; when all else desert her, she will come back to you.’ And see, they were right, and all the waiting is ended. Just as I dreamed that she came back to me—she who died—so the child I loved has returned, and all my watching is over.”
“Take me away! Take me away, and hide me,” she cried, clinging to him.
“Yes, yes, they shall not find you, child. The dreams have come true at last, or almost true. They shall not find you; we will hide you safely in the old place you knew as a child, and I will watch over you. Come—they shall not find you.”
Unresisting, she submitted to be half led, half carried from the garden and along the deserted streets to the old man’s house. There, with his arm still fast about her, he unlocked the door and led her in and took her to an inner room; with the gentleness of a woman he laid her down there and covered her up. In a few moments, from sheer weariness, she was fast asleep.
It happened that night that Captain Garraway-Kyle, feeling restless and lonely, had thrown his old-fashioned military cloak about him and had gone for a long walk. Coming back very late he paused for a moment near the old archway through which the shop of the shoemaker was reached, and after a moment’s hesitation passed through and stopped before the shop. The captain was a man of few friends, and had been in the habit, since his first conversation with old Medmer Theed, of going to the place sometimes in the evening for the sake of company. On this occasion, feeling for some indefinite reason more lonely even than usual, and seeing a light gleaming through the shutters, he knocked softly at the door. In a moment it was opened, and he saw the old man, bearing a candle, standing within the doorway. The captain civilly wished him good-evening and made as if to enter in the ordinary way. For the moment, however, the old shoemaker barred his entrance; then, stepping aside, with a grunt, he somewhat churlishly admitted him.
“It’s very late, I’m afraid,” said the captain, “but I saw a light, and guessed you were not in bed. Are you alone?”
“Of course,” replied Theed. “What did you expect? Am I not always alone?”
“Why, of course,” replied the captain somewhat surprised at his tone. “Like yourself, I am a lonely man, and am glad sometimes to find a fellow-creature to whom I can talk.” He had entered the little low-roofed shop by this time and had seated himself upon a bench. “Why, it’s quite cold to-night, isn’t it?” he added.
He had spoken in his usual quick, rather highly pitched voice, and suddenly the shoemaker raised a warning forefinger, and glanced toward the door at the back of the shop. “Hush!” he whispered softly.
The captain looked at him in amazement. “I—I’m very sorry,” he said, lowering his voice. “I had no idea that there was any one in here.”
“Yes, sleeping,” whispered the old man eagerly. “When the winds sang of her in the trees, and the trees bent to each other to whisper of her coming, she came suddenly to me in the old place where I had waited so long; she came weeping, as I had dreamed she would come, and crying to me to take her away and hide her. And so I brought her here, that none may find her.”
“I don’t understand,” said the captain in a startled whisper. “Who is it?”
“She came to me as a little child; was sent to me by God for my comfort. Often and often she has sat where you sit now while I worked, and has made the dreams I dreamed about her more real than my waking life. But they shall not find her—they shall not find her.”
“’Linda!” whispered the captain, and caught the other’s arm. “What brings her here; what is the meaning of it?”
“I do not know; I have not asked,” replied the shoemaker. “I know only that she came weeping, as I had dreamed she would come; weeping as that other child who grew to be a woman must have wept, as all womenare born to weep. But she is safe now; they shall not find her again.”
“Let me see her,” whispered the captain, rising from the bench on which he sat and approaching the door of the inner room. “Remember, I loved her too; let me see her.”
For a moment old Medmer Theed stood jealously before the door; then drew aside somewhat reluctantly, and pushed it open and signed to the captain to follow him. Treading cautiously, they went in and stood beside the little rough bed on which she lay. She was still sleeping soundly, and as the captain bent over her he saw that there were traces of tears still on her face. After a few moments they came out again into the shop.
The captain felt that nothing could be done that night; he knew nothing of what story she had to tell or of what had happened. Perplexed and troubled, he bade the old shoemaker good-night, and set off for his cottage. Medmer Theed barred the door and then, after glancing in again for a moment to see that his charge was safely sleeping, laid himself down across the threshold of the room and rested there all night, although he scarcely slept at all. Every slightest noise in the street seemed to his excited imagination the sound of pursuit, and he half sprang up more than once, watchful and eager to defend her. When day came at last he did not unfasten the shop as usual, but left the shutters still closed, so that the only lights in the place were two long streams of sunlight which poured through certain round holes in them. His work was left untouched, and he hovered about between the inner room and the shop, pressing food upon ’Linda and treating her in every way with more than a woman’s tenderness.
’Linda for her part sat throughout the day with her chin propped in her palms, thinking. How much she reviewed in those hours it would be impossible to say; in what new and better light she saw many events she had not fully understood before. Everything had been torn from her; she had to start her life again, to build upnew hopes and new dreams and new beliefs; but she could not do that yet. Years seemed to have passed since the previous day; she had for the first time in her life taken great strides within a few hours—been shaken suddenly to an understanding of what her life had been as she had never understood it at any other time.
The captain came down to the shop during the day, but finding it closed he hesitated to knock and went away again. In truth, the captain was puzzled what to do: to leave her alone with the strange old creature Medmer Theed, to leave her to face and fight against the desperate trouble which had driven her there, seemed impossible; and yet as the captain had never seen her since the day of her flight with Brian, he hesitated now to intrude upon her sorrow. However, when night again came on, he set out for the shoemaker’s shop, determined at least to gain some tidings of her or to learn that she was well.
He had a curious feeling as he walked along that some one was following him, even trying, in a half-hesitating fashion, to overtake him. As he turned in at the old archway the one who followed had evidently made up his mind, for the steps drew nearer, and before the captain could turn his head a hand was laid on his shoulder. He stopped and looked round, and recognized by the dim light of the lamp above them the features of Mr. Robert Carlaw.
“Pray pardon me,” said that gentleman in a curiously subdued tone. “I have taken the liberty of following you for some distance; I was not quite sure as to your identity, and one does not care to accost a stranger in the street and meet with a rebuff.”
“You wish to see me?” asked the captain coldly.
“My dear sir,” replied the other, “I am in such a state of mind at the present moment that I really don’t know what I am doing or what I am saying. I have a dim notion that duty has brought me here, and the thought of duty has always been paramount with me. Sir”—he struck an attitude and slapped himself with onehand on the breast—“I am in a state verging on distraction!”
The captain looked at him critically; he almost thought for a moment that the man had been drinking. But he was still more astonished when he caught the gleam of tears in his faded eyes. “I fear you are in trouble,” said the captain gently.
“Trouble!” echoed the other. “I want a new word to describe my feelings, an entirely new word. My son could have found the word or the phrase, and my son is dead!”
THE PLEADING OF THE CAPTAIN.
For a moment or two the captain stared at Robert Carlaw in astonishment. A hundred thoughts went dancing through his brain; he wondered if the death of Brian might have something to do with ’Linda’s flight back to the old place. While he was framing some question in his mind Mr. Carlaw broke out into a tempestuous explanation.
“Cut off—cut off—in what the world would term the midst of his sin; robbed of life in the very flower of his manhood and his strength! Yet what a life—and ye gods!—what a death! Even in that he was splendid; even in that he fills the public eye. It was the very death that the public would expect him to die; they’ll catch their breath when they read of it. Drowned—drowned on a moonlight night and with his arms about a woman! Drowned—and with twenty thousand a year in his arms! It’s magnificent!”
He was weeping still, but his face literally shone with the joy and pride of the thought; he dashed the tears away, and with the same gesture waved his arms in triumph toward the sky.
“But when did this happen?” asked the captain. “And who was the woman?”
“It was all so like him,” exclaimed Mr. Robert Carlaw, scarcely heeding the other’s question. “He worked on impulse; he lived his life on impulse; he died on impulse. This last thing alone should make him immortal. What other man would have had the courage? What other man would have had the frank and splendid audacity? To desert his wife when he felt that she was no longer what he needed; to——”
“So he deserted her, did he?” said the captain slowly.
“Yes; such minds do not stick at any conventional things. He deserted her; he fled with another. The other was rich and—so I understand—beautiful. She had a yacht waiting to carry her and her poet away—think of the romance of it, think of the romance of it! They reached the yacht, it appears, and set sail for their paradise under a moonlit sky. Imagine the scene! Then, in the midst of it all comes grim Fate in the shape of a lumbering coasting steamer and cuts them in two. A survivor has already declared that he saw Brian Carlaw and the woman go down locked in each other’s arms. My poor boy—he has carried himself well before the world to the last!”
“Do you know,” asked the captain with some sternness, “that his wife is here, within a few yards of us?”
“I was not aware of it,” replied Mr. Carlaw, glancing about him. “My sole reason for coming here—to this place of his birth—and at so early a moment is because I feel that something should be done for him; that they should understand the loss they and the world have sustained, and should fitly mark their grief. From whom could the news come so appropriately as from the father who loved him and sacrificed so much for him? That is my real errand. But you say that she is here?”
“Yes,” replied the captain; “she came here yesterday—I suppose when she learned that he had deserted her. She must be told of this.”
“Yes, I suppose she must,” replied Mr. Carlaw hurriedly.“Of course, she takes no real or great place in this sorrowful business; my son stands alone, and the name of the lady with whom he died will naturally and inevitably be linked with his. A few will be shocked; to the majority, I trust, the position will appear appropriate. Personally, I am sorry for the wife—but she does not touch the story.”
“Thank God for that!” muttered the captain to himself. Aloud he said, “I must tell her, and must see what is to be done for her, poor child!”
“Ah, I remember you as a man of a tender nature, my dear captain,” said Mr. Robert Carlaw, gazing at the sky. “For the present I have other work on hand; it happens, on occasion, that the dead are more important than the living. And in the glory of my dead son, I—his unfortunate father—may chance to cut a figure at last.” He started to whistle as he turned away, but remembered himself in time, and walked with a drooping head and a less jaunty step than usual. The captain looked after him for a moment and then went toward the shoemaker’s shop. He knocked, and after some little delay was admitted by old Theed. The captain stepped into the shop and jerked his head in the direction of the inner room. “Is she sleeping?” he asked.
The old man nodded. “All day long,” he said, “she has sat like one in a dream, scarcely seeing me; a little time since she fell asleep, but even now her dreams are troubled and she cries out strange things.”
The captain paced up and down the little shop nervously for a minute or two and then turned to the shoemaker. “I should like to see her,” he said. “I have something to say that must be told her at once—something that should be told by a friend, lest she should hear it from any other lips. I should like to see her.”
Medmer Theed looked at him keenly; came nearer and laid a hand on his arm. “Are they seeking her?” he asked in a whisper. “Will they trouble her again?”
The captain looked at him, doubtful what to say or how much to leave unsaid. “The man who has troubledher so long,” he replied at last, “is dead, and will trouble her no more. But she must be told.”
There were a dignity and a firmness in his tones which mastered the more ignorant man; without a word he pushed open the inner door and motioned to the captain to enter. As the captain stepped through, the old shoemaker would have followed, but the captain gently signed to him to keep back, and closed the door and was left in the room alone with ’Linda. She was still sleeping, and he set the light he carried on a little table near the bed, and quite simply and noiselessly went upon his knees and bowed his head in his hands and muttered a little prayer to himself.
“God of the little children,” he breathed, “who hast sent back to me this child whom I loved in my old age, teach me, in thy infinite mercy, how best to tell her, out of a heart that loves her, what her sorrow is; teach me how best to comfort her.”
He rose from his knees and seated himself beside the bed, and laid a lean old hand on the white one which lay near it. She stirred softly in her sleep and opened her eyes and looked at him—looked at him for some moments without recognition. Then, slowly and without turning her gaze from him, she drew nearer until she had crept quite into his arms, until her face was hidden on his breast. And so for a long time they remained in silence.
“Little one,” he said at last, “you have not forgotten your old friend, you have not forgotten the old days. A long, long time has passed between, but in your hour of need you have crept back quite naturally to us to find a haven here. There, don’t tremble; nothing shall harm you; nothing shall come near you. You were a child when I knew you before; dream that you are a child again.”
She clung to him, weeping. “Oh, that I might!” she whispered. “If I might go back and see with the clearer eyes I have now; if I might know what I know now and make atonement!”
“The time must come when we all cry that, child,”he said. “The time must surely come when the bravest and the best of us would be glad if we might begin again, seeing the way before us with clearer eyes. Listen: are you strong enough lying here in your old friend’s arms—are you strong enough to hear what I shall say to you?”
She looked up at him wonderingly and grasped his hand more closely, but he dared not look at her.
“There was a man whom you loved, a man you called husband—ah, don’t shudder; don’t weep like that, or you’ll break my heart, child! Because you loved him he holds a better place in my thoughts than he could ever otherwise have done; because you loved him I must bear him kindly in my remembrance.”
“Oh, if I might atone, if I might atone!” she whispered, and hid her face again.
The captain did not understand; he went on in the same gentle tones: “There comes a time for every man and every woman when all blame and all praise are as nothing to them, and pass them over; when their little lives fade out and are judged by the standard of something we do not understand; a time when they pass beyond our censure and we can afford to think lightly of their mistakes. ’Linda, do you understand?”
She looked up at him; her brows wrinkled a little as she watched his face, but she did not speak.
“He left you without thinking what might happen, careless of what sorrow the world held for you. But you can afford to forgive that now; in time you may even learn to forget it. Your prayers or your tears can not reach him any more.”
“I understand,” she whispered. “You mean that he—he is dead?”
“Yes. He is dead. He died quite suddenly and painlessly.”
She was silent for a long time; he had expected that she would cry out—had fully anticipated a painful scene; but this apathy was more disconcerting than anything could have been. After a time, without looking up athim, she asked softly: “And Comethup? What of Comethup?”
“He is well, I believe,” said the captain, trying to hide his astonishment. “I have not heard from him for some time.” The worthy gentleman was at a loss to understand the strangeness of her demeanour; he cast about in his mind for a clew to guide him, but could find none.
“You know that he has left his home—that he has been cast out into the world?” she asked.
The captain forgot everything in his new astonishment. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I had heard nothing about this. I don’t understand.”
“Not now—not now,” she whispered. “Some other time you will know all about it and will judge me as you should. Leave me alone now; I want to think. Kiss me”—she turned up her face to his—“and don’t think hardly of me, dear old friend, if you can help it.”
He kissed her and softly patted her cheek, lingered a moment, and then, as he saw her lying with closed eyes, stole out of the room, shutting the door behind him. With scarcely a word to Medmer Theed he went out of the shop and into the street, and walked back to his own place. There, pacing up and down the little parlour, he turned over many things in his mind, and wondered again and again in a vague fashion what he should do; above all things, what he should do in regard to ’Linda.
To leave her with the old shoemaker was obviously out of the question, and yet what else was to be done? The captain felt here at once the helplessness of his mere manhood; saw that, whatever delicacy he might possess, it was quite unequal to such an occasion as this. “It wants a woman,” muttered the captain to himself; and so started on a new train of thought.
The result of that particular train of thought was that the captain, after passing a sleepless night, set off early the next morning for London, and presented himself within a few hours at the door of Miss Charlotte Carlaw’s house. He sent up his card and was at once admitted and taken into the old woman’s presence. Sheturned her head toward him as he entered the room, and smiled a welcome and held out her hand. The captain took the hand in his courtly fashion and hoped that she was well.
“Oh, in better health than I ought to be, I’ve no doubt,” replied the old woman. “And what brings you to town? Have you come like all the rest to upbraid me for my harshness—to cry out his virtues to me? have you come for that? Because, if you have, you will be wiser to save your breath and say nothing.”
“Let me begin by saying that I know nothing of the matter,” replied the captain, “and that that is not my errand. I have certainly learned in an accidental manner that Comethup no longer lives here; but I have heard so much within the past few days that my poor old brain is in a whirl, and I can think of nothing coherently.”
“Well, while you collect your thoughts,” replied Miss Carlaw, “I can tell you in a few words what has happened. You were fond of the boy just as I was; believed in him, I think, just as I did—which shows we were both fools in that sense at least. In a word, he has been steadily—or unsteadily—spending my money for years past in riotous living—ever since he was a boy, in fact; and now, to crown it all, has borrowed a large sum of money on the understanding that he is my heir and can pay it back when I am dead. When I’m dead—you hear that? That’s the bitterest part of all; I’d have forgiven anything but that.”
“There’s been some horrible blunder,” said the captain, shaking his head sturdily. “I know Comethup, have seen him grow up since he was a little child, and I can’t believe that it’s possible. There’s some mistake.”
“I wish I could think so,” replied Miss Carlaw. “But there’s no doubt about it; he has admitted it. However, we won’t talk about it any more; I swore never to talk about it again. What do you want with me?”
“Stay a moment,” urged the captain. “Won’t you tell me what has become of him or where he is?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, turning away. “He’sdone with so far as I am concerned; in fact, he never really lived. We’ll speak of him no more, please.” Then in a moment she lost that gentler tone and swung round upon him fiercely. “In God’s name, man, have some mercy! If my face tells you nothing of what I have suffered, the agony of loneliness that has been mine during these past weeks, then at least let my lips tell you. I always liked you; I believe you to be a good and honourable gentleman. Perhaps I can say to you what I might not to another. He has spoiled my life, old though I am, just as he has spoiled his own; can’t you see that I couldn’t take him to my heart again? He refused all explanations of what had been done with the money; stubbornly refused to say a word about it.—There, let’s have done with it. Tell me what you came here for.”
The captain saw that it was useless to pursue the subject; he sighed and turned to that newer matter. “I must speak of him again for a moment, although indirectly. Do you remember a most unhappy occasion, when you came to visit me in the hope of meeting a girl to whom the boy was to be married?”
“Yes, I remember. What of it?”
“Whatever his after sins may have been, he behaved, as regards that matter, with a delicacy and a consideration for the woman who had betrayed him which was, to my simple thought, wonderful. Even if, as you say, he is worthless, he had that one merit of loving her sincerely and strongly through everything; of that I am convinced. She fled with his cousin Brian and they were married. At the present moment she is destitute.”
The captain paused and looked at her intently to see the effect of his words; she merely nodded to him to proceed.
“Her husband—a worthless fellow, I fear—appears to have deserted her for another woman, and within a few hours of his desertion to have been drowned at sea. She has come back to her old home and is living under the protection of a strange old creature, a shoemaker, who loved her and cared for her when she was a little lonelychild. Beyond that man and myself she hasn’t a friend in the world; there is no one to whom she can turn. She is hallowed forever in my sight because poor Comethup loved her; she is set apart from all other women on that account. She is very young and, as I have said, helpless and hopeless. Dear old friend”—the captain made a movement toward her—“I want you to help me.”
Miss Charlotte Carlaw, whose face was working strangely, turned her head away from him and beat one foot restlessly on the floor. “Why should I do that?” she asked at last in a low voice.
“Because you’re a woman,” replied the captain eagerly; “because—deny it if you will—you can’t shut out the thought of this boy we both love from your heart; because this girl in her loneliness may appeal to you in your loneliness, may give in time a kinder thought of him. You must not try to persuade me that you are so hard as you would have me believe. If you will not let me plead for the boy himself, let me plead for the woman he loved and lost—the woman who is friendless.”
She was silent for a long time and presently sat down in her old attitude with her hands resting on her stick and her forehead on her hands. And the captain watched her.
“You are a good man,” she said at last, without raising her head. “There’s never a day, never an hour when I do not think of him, and yet I can not call him back to me. But if you think—and you know so much better than I can hope to do—that it would be right and just for me to take this girl—that it would be better for her and better for me—then I’ll do it. And don’t boast of your feelings, sir,” she added, raising her head with something of a return of her old manner, “because I have my feelings too; perhaps I’ll even take her more warmly to my heart because he loved her. Lord! captain, what a blundering set of people we all are from the time we blunder into life till the time we blunder into the grave! I suppose I can leave all the arrangements in your hands; I seem somehow to have lost something of my old senseof power, something of my old strength lately; I want some one on whom I can rely. You will tell me what to do, won’t you?”
“If I might suggest,” said the captain, “I think the best thing for you to do would be to come down to her; to see her and take her away with you. Will you do that?”
“I will do whatever you think best,” she replied. And so the matter was settled.
The captain felt that the hardest part of his mission had yet to be performed; but he went home that very night and presented himself without delay before ’Linda. To his surprise, however, he found that she was perfectly passive, and willing to fall in with any suggestions he made. He told her that this old lady was quite blind and very lonely; that she had loved Comethup very dearly; that she wanted the girl’s companionship and help. At the same time the captain delicately suggested that it would be wiser for ’Linda to say nothing about Comethup in any way; he hinted that the point was a sore one with Miss Carlaw. ’Linda was silent for some time, and then she looked up at him quietly.