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 troubled her 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 at him, 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. She turned 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’s done 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 lonely child. 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 sense of 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.

“I have done so much harm in my life,” she said, “although I hoped only to do good! If you think—if you really think that I may do any good—that I may make any atonement—I will do as you wish. I have trodden my own wilful path so long, I will tread any other you point out to me.”

“I think this is best,” said the captain gently.

Miss Charlotte Carlaw came down the next day and the captain conducted her to Medmer Theed’s shop. The carriage in which she had arrived was left standing in the street outside the old archway, and the captain, without a word, guided her through the shop and opened the inner door and led her through. Then he came out and closed the door, and left the two women alone. He had previously prepared the shoemaker for what was to happen, and the old man had accepted it without question and appeared satisfied that she should go. As the captain stood waiting in the little shop, Medmer Theed sat on his bench, hammering softly at the leather, as of old.

In the room within Miss Charlotte Carlaw had paused for a moment with her hands stretched out gropingly. ’Linda came timidly toward her. “Where are you, child?” asked the old woman; and then their hands met and they drew close together. Perhaps it was the touch of a woman’s hand that ’Linda needed just then; she suddenly found herself drawing close to the strange old figure, and for the first time her tears began to flow.

“Let’s make a new beginning, child,” said Miss Carlaw softly. “And, for both our sakes, will you promise me never to speak of what is past and ended, never to refer to any one we both knew? Will you promise that?”

“Yes, I promise,” whispered the girl.

They came out together presently into the shop; the captain stood waiting to conduct them to the carriage. Medmer Theed still hammered softly on his leather. The girl went up to the shoemaker and put an arm about his neck and whispered his name; he looked up at her with a vacant expression, and she kissed him and murmured some broken words of thanks. He nodded his head slowly and went on with his work. He was still hammering when the carriage drove away, the captain standing bareheaded in the street, looking after them.