TO-MORROW
What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come to settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious-he used to be very communicative about them at the time-but extremely morbid and unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because he bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages run up very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself and let the other to Josiah Carvil-blind Carvil, the retired boat-builder-a man of evil repute as a domestic tyrant.
These cottages had one wall in common, shared in a line of iron railing dividing their front gardens; a wooden fence separated their back gardens. Miss Bessie Carvil was allowed, as it were of right, to throw over it the tea-cloths, blue rags, or an apron that wanted drying.
"It rots the wood, Bessie my girl," the captain would remark mildly, from his side of the fence, each time he saw her exercising that privilege.
She was a tall girl; the fence was low, and she could spread her elbows on the top. Her hands would be red with the bit of washing she had done, but her forearms were white and shapely, and she would look at her father's landlord in silence-in an informed silence which had an air of knowledge, expectation and desire.
"It rots the wood," repeated Captain Hagberd. "It is the only unthrifty, careless habit I know in you. Why don't you have a clothes line out in your back yard?"
Miss Carvil would say nothing to this-she only shook her head negatively. The tiny back yard on her side had a few stone-bordered little beds of black earth, in which the simple flowers she found time to cultivate appeared somehow extravagantly overgrown, as if belonging to an exotic clime; and Captain Hagberd's upright, hale person, clad in No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared, with the colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in which he chose to clothe himself-"for the time being," would be his mumbled remark to any observation on the subject-like a man roughened out of granite, standing in a wilderness not big enough for a decent billiard-room. A heavy figure of a man of stone, with a red handsome face, a blue wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing to his waist and never trimmed as far as Colebrook knew.
Seven years before, he had seriously answered, "Next month, I think," to the chaffing attempt to secure his custom made by that distinguished local wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sitting insolently in the tap-room of the New Inn near the harbour, where the captain had entered to buy an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his purchase with three half-pence extracted from the corner of a handkerchief which he carried in the cuff of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon as the door was shut the barber laughed. "The old one and the young one will be strolling arm in arm to get shaved in my place presently. The tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the candlestick maker; high old times are coming for Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It used to be 'next week,' now it has come to 'next month,' and so on-soon it will be next spring, for all I know."
Noticing a stranger listening to him with a vacant grin, he explained, stretching out his legs cynically, that this queer old Hagberd, a retired coasting-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of his. The boy had been driven away from home, he shouldn't wonder; had run away to sea and had never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy Jones's locker this many a day, as likely as not. That old man came flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down was a letter-a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny, ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in the London papers for Harry Hagberd, and offering rewards for any sort of likely information. And the barber would go on to describe with sardonic gusto, how that stranger in mourning had been seen exploring the country, in carts, on foot, taking everybody into his confidence, visiting all the inns and alehouses for miles around, stopping people on the road with his questions, looking into the very ditches almost; first in the greatest excitement, then with a plodding sort of perseverance, growing slower and slower; and he could not even tell you plainly how his son looked. The sailor was supposed to be one of two that had left a timber ship, and to have been seen dangling after some girl; but the old man described a boy of fourteen or so-"a clever-looking, high-spirited boy." And when people only smiled at this he would rub his forehead in a confused sort of way before he slunk off, looking offended. He found nobody, of course; not a trace of anybody-never heard of anything worth belief, at any rate; but he had not been able somehow to tear himself away from Colebrook.
"It was the shock of this disappointment, perhaps, coming soon after the loss of his wife, that had driven him crazy on that point," the barber suggested, with an air of great psychological insight. After a time the old man abandoned the active search. His son had evidently gone away; but he settled himself to wait. His son had been once at least in Colebrook in preference to his native place. There must have been some reason for it, he seemed to think, some very powerful inducement, that would bring him back to Colebrook again.
"Ha, ha, ha! Why, of course, Colebrook. Where else? That's the only place in the United Kingdom for your long-lost sons. So he sold up his old home in Colchester, and down he comes here. Well, it's a craze, like any other. Wouldn't catch me going crazy over any of my youngsters clearing out. I've got eight of them at home." The barber was showing off his strength of mind in the midst of a laughter that shook the tap-room.
Strange, though, that sort of thing, he would confess, with the frankness of a superior intelligence, seemed to be catching. His establishment, for instance, was near the harbour, and whenever a sailor-man came in for a hair-cut or a shave-if it was a strange face he couldn't help thinking directly, "Suppose he's the son of old Hagberd!" He laughed at himself for it. It was a strong craze. He could remember the time when the whole town was full of it. But he had his hopes of the old chap yet. He would cure him by a course of judicious chaffing. He was watching the progress of the treatment. Next week-next month-next year! When the old skipper had put off the date of that return till next year, he would be well on his way to not saying any more about it. In other matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was bound to come. Such was the barber's firm opinion.
Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair had gone grey since that time, and Captain Hagberd's beard had turned quite white, and had acquired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, which he had made for himself secretly with tarred twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming out in it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he had been seen going home in his mourning of broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the High Street-shopkeepers coming to their doors, people in the houses snatching up their hats to run out-a stir at which he seemed strangely surprised at first, and then scared; but his only answer to the wondering questions was that startled and evasive, "For the present."
That sensation had been forgotten, long ago; and Captain Hagberd himself, if not forgotten, had come to be disregarded-the penalty of dailiness-as the sun itself is disregarded unless it makes its power felt heavily. Captain Hagberd's movements showed no infirmity: he walked stiffly in his suit of canvas, a quaint and remarkable figure; only his eyes wandered more furtively perhaps than of yore. His manner abroad had lost its excitable watchfulness; it had become puzzled and diffident, as though he had suspected that there was somewhere about him something slightly compromising, some embarrassing oddity; and yet had remained unable to discover what on earth this something wrong could be.
He was unwilling now to talk with the townsfolk. He had earned for himself the reputation of an awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter of living. He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought inferior scraps of meat after long hesitations; and discouraged all allusions to his costume. It was as the barber had foretold. For all one could tell, he had recovered already from the disease of hope; and only Miss Bessie Carvil knew that he said nothing about his son's return because with him it was no longer "next week," "next month," or even "next year." It was "to-morrow."
In their intimacy of back yard and front garden he talked with her paternally, reasonably, and dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness. They met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which was authenticated by an affectionate wink now and then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward rather to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: the poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had learned to laugh at them: there was no harm in him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, pleasurable, incredulous emotion, expressed by a faint blush. He winked not in the least vulgarly; his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, had a sort of distinction-the more so that when he talked to her he looked with a steadier and more intelligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, capable man, with a white beard. You did not think of his age. His son, he affirmed, had resembled him amazingly from his earliest babyhood.
Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he declared. Proper age to get married with a nice, sensible girl that could appreciate a good home. He was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a woman thoroughly miserable. And there was nothing like a home-a fireside-a good roof: no turning out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh, my dear?"
Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors that pursue their calling within sight of land. One of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he had been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper, and had remained on the coast all his sea life. It must have been a hard one at first: he had never taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with its innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered round its firesides. Many sailors feel and profess a rational dislike for the sea, but his was a profound and emotional animosity-as if the love of the stabler element had been bred into him through many generations.
"People did not know what they let their boys in for when they let them go to sea," he expounded to Bessie. "As soon make convicts of them at once." He did not believe you ever got used to it. The weariness of such a life got worse as you got older. What sort of trade was it in which more than half your time you did not put your foot inside your house? Directly you got out to sea you had no means of knowing what went on at home. One might have thought him weary of distant voyages; and the longest he had ever made had lasted a fortnight, of which the most part had been spent at anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as his wife had inherited a house and enough to live on (from a bachelor uncle who had made some money in the coal business) he threw up his command of an East-coast collier with a feeling as though he had escaped from the galleys. After all these years he might have counted on the fingers of his two hands all the days he had been out of sight of England. He had never known what it was to be out of soundings. "I have never been further than eighty fathoms from the land," was one of his boasts.
Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of their cottage grew an under-sized ash; and on summer afternoons she would bring out a chair on the grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain Hagberd, in his canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He dug every day in his front plot. He turned it over and over several times every year, but was not going to plant anything "just at present."
To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly: "Not till our Harry comes home to-morrow." And she had heard this formula of hope so often that it only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for that hopeful old man.
Everything was put off in that way, and everything was being prepared likewise for to-morrow. There was a boxful of packets of various flower-seeds to choose from, for the front garden. "He will doubtless let you have your say about that, my dear," Captain Hagberd intimated to her across the railing.
Miss Bessie's head remained bowed over her work. She had heard all this so many times. But now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing, and come slowly to the fence. There was a charm in these gentle ravings. He was determined that his son should not go away again for the want of a home all ready for him. He had been filling the other cottage with all sorts of furniture. She imagined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled up as in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped up in sacking; rolls of carpets thick and vertical like fragments of columns, the gleam of white marble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Captain Hagberd always described his purchases to her, carefully, as to a person having a legitimate interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cottage could be laid over with concrete... after to-morrow.
"We may just as well do away with the fence. You could have your drying-line out, quite clear of your flowers." He winked, and she would blush faintly.
This madness that had entered her life through the kind impulses of her heart had reasonable details. What if some day his son returned? But she could not even be quite sure that he ever had a son; and if he existed anywhere he had been too long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited in his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little to salve her conscience.
Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope doomed to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her very much. All at once over that man's face there came an expression of horror and incredulity, as though he had seen a crack open out in the firmament.
"You-you-you don't think he's drowned!"
For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit for. On that occasion the violence of the emotion was followed by a most paternal and complacent recovery.
"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a little cunningly: "the sea can't keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned. Moreover, he isn't a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he's bound to come back. There's nothing to prevent him coming back...."
His eyes began to wander.
"To-morrow."
She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in the town; and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face on having secured such a levelheaded wife for his son. The rest of the town, he confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly queer. The way they looked at you-the way they talked to you! He had never got on with any one in the place. Didn't like the people. He would not have left his own country if it had not been clear that his son had taken a fancy to Colebrook.
She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence; crocheting with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opulence of mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was frankly carroty.
She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one's own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years of her life.
A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs window would interrupt their talk. She would begin at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her sewing, without the slightest sign of haste. Meanwhile the howls and roars of her name would go on, making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall on the other side of the road turn their heads towards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the front door, and a moment afterwards there would fall a profound silence. Presently she would reappear, leading by the hand a man, gross and unwieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, surly face.
He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years before in the full flush of business. He behaved to his daughter as if she had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to bellow at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone as though he were cursing.
Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably impressed by his tenant, that once he told Miss Bessie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear."
She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of socks for her father, who expected her to keep up the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her eyes on her needles.
"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly. "Girls, of course, don't require so much-h'm-h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."
"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.
Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of turned-up earth, chuckled. With his maritime rig, his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Neptune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had exchanged the trident for the spade.
"And he must look upon you as already provided for, in a manner. That's the best of it with the girls. The husbands..." He winked. Miss Bessie, absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly.
"Bessie! my hat!" old Carvil bellowed out suddenly. He had been sitting under the tree mute and motionless, like an idol of some remarkably monstrous superstition. He never opened his mouth but to howl for her, at her, sometimes about her; and then he did not moderate the terms of his abuse. Her system was never to answer him at all; and he kept up his shouting till he got attended to-till she shook him by the arm, or thrust the mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was one of the few blind people who smoke. When he felt the hat being put on his head he stopped his noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed together through the gate.
He weighed heavily on her arm. During their slow, toilful walks she appeared to be dragging with her for a penance the burden of that infirm bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the cottages stood in the fields near the harbour, two hundred yards away from the end of the street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled within memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky, walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown nets, like the cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would recognise the two Carvils by the creeping slowness of their gait. Captain Hagberd, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his head to see how they got on in their promenade.
He advertised still in the Sunday papers for Harry Hagberd. These sheets were read in foreign parts to the end of the world, he informed Bessie. At the same time he seemed to think that his son was in England-so near to Colebrook that he would of course turn up "to-morrow." Bessie, without committing herself to that opinion in so many words, argued that in that case the expense of advertising was unnecessary; Captain Hagberd had better spend that weekly half-crown on himself. She declared she did not know what he lived on. Her argumentation would puzzle him and cast him down for a time. "They all do it," he pointed out. There was a whole column devoted to appeals after missing relatives. He would bring the newspaper to show her. He and his wife had advertised for years; only she was an impatient woman. The news from Colebrook had arrived the very day after her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she might have been here now, with no more than one day more to wait. "You are not an impatient woman, my dear."
"I've no patience with you sometimes," she would say.
If he still advertised for his son he did not offer rewards for information any more; for, with the muddled lucidity of a mental derangement he had reasoned himself into a conviction as clear as daylight that he had already attained all that could be expected in that way. What more could he want? Colebrook was the place, and there was no need to ask for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good sense, and he was soothed by the part she took in his hope, which had become his delusion; in that idea which blinded his mind to truth and probability, just as the other old man in the other cottage had been made blind, by another disease, to the light and beauty of the world.
But anything he could interpret as a doubt-any coldness of assent, or even a simple inattention to the development of his projects of a home with his returned son and his son's wife-would irritate him into flings and jerks and wicked side glances. He would dash his spade into the ground and walk to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his tantrums. She shook her finger at him. Then, when she came out again, after he had parted with her in anger, he would watch out of the corner of his eyes for the least sign of encouragement to approach the iron railings and resume his fatherly and patronising relations.
For all their intimacy, which had lasted some years now, they had never talked without a fence or a railing between them. He described to her all the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, but had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold them till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been inside his cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son's privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden under his canvas coat. Then, coming out, he would remark apologetically, "It was only a small kettle, my dear."
And, if not too tired with her drudgery, or worried beyond endurance by her father, she would laugh at him with a blush, and say: "That's all right, Captain Hagberd; I am not impatient."
"Well, my dear, you haven't long to wait now," he would answer with a sudden bashfulness, and looking uneasily, as though he had suspected that there was something wrong somewhere.
Every Monday she paid him his rent over the railings. He clutched the shillings greedily. He grudged every penny he had to spend on his maintenance, and when he left her to make his purchases his bearing changed as soon as he got into the street. Away from the sanction of her pity, he felt himself exposed without defence. He brushed the walls with his shoulder. He mistrusted the queerness of the people; yet, by then, even the town children had left off calling after him, and the tradesmen served him without a word. The slightest allusion to his clothing had the power to puzzle and frighten especially, as if it were something utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible.
In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his sailcloth suit saturated almost to the stiffness of sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with water. When the weather was too bad, he retreated under the tiny porch, and, standing close against the door, looked at his spade left planted in the middle of the yard. The ground was so much dug up all over, that as the season advanced it turned to a quagmire. When it froze hard, he was disconsolate. What would Harry say? And as he could not have so much of Bessie's company at that time of the year, the roars of old Carvil, that came muffled through the closed windows, calling her indoors, exasperated him greatly.
"Why don't that extravagant fellow get you a servant?" he asked impatiently one mild afternoon. She had thrown something over her head to run out for a while.
"I don't know," said the pale Bessie, wearily, staring away with her heavy-lidded, grey, and unexpectant glance. There were always smudgy shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able to see any change or any end to her life.
"You wait till you get married, my dear," said her only friend, drawing closer to the fence. "Harry will get you one."
His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want of hope with so bitter an aptness that in her nervous irritation she could have screamed at him outright. But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as though he had been sane, "Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even want to look at me."
He flung his head back and laughed his throaty affected cackle of anger.
"What! That boy? Not want to look at the only sensible girl for miles around? What do you think I am here for, my dear-my dear-my dear?... What? You wait. You just wait. You'll see to-morrow. I'll soon-"
"Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!" howled old Carvil inside. "Bessie!-my pipe!" That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. He would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave at his very elbow. He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where he knew his way as well as if he had his sight), without calling her to his side and hanging all his atrocious weight on her shoulder. He would not eat one single mouthful of food without her close attendance. He had made himself helpless beyond his affliction, to enslave her better. She stood still for a moment, setting her teeth in the dusk, then turned and walked slowly indoors.
Captain Hagberd went back to his spade. The shouting in Carvil's cottage stopped, and after a while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit up. A man coming from the end of the street with a firm leisurely step passed on, but seemed to have caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because he turned back a pace or two. A cold white light lingered in the western sky. The man leaned over the gate in an interested manner.
"You must be Captain Hagberd," he said, with easy assurance.
The old man spun round, pulling out his spade, startled by the strange voice.
"Yes, I am," he answered nervously.
The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very slowly: "You've been advertising for your son, I believe?"
"My son Harry," mumbled Captain Hagberd, off his guard for once. "He's coming home tomorrow."
"The devil he is!" The stranger marvelled greatly, and then went on, with only a slight change of tone: "You've grown a beard like Father Christmas himself."
Captain Hagberd drew a little nearer, and leaned forward over his spade. "Go your way," he said, resentfully and timidly at the same time, because he was always afraid of being laughed at. Every mental state, even madness, has its equilibrium based upon self-esteem. Its disturbance causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a scheme of settled notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by people's grins. Yes, people's grins were awful. They hinted at something wrong: but what? He could not tell; and that stranger was obviously grinning-had come on purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, but he had never before been outraged like this.
The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a spade, said seriously: "I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I fancy there's something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come in."
"You come in!" murmured old Hagberd, with inexpressible horror.
"I could give you some real information about your son-the very latest tip, if you care to hear."
"No," shouted Hagberd. He began to pace wildly to and fro, he shouldered his spade, he gesticulated with his other arm. "Here's a fellow-a grinning fellow, who says there's something wrong. I've got more information than you're aware of. I've all the information I want. I've had it for years-for years-for years-enough to last me till to-morrow. Let you come in, indeed! What would Harry say?"
Bessie Carvil's figure appeared in black silhouette on the parlour window; then, with the sound of an opening door, flitted out before the other cottage, all black, but with something white over her head. These two voices beginning to talk suddenly outside (she had heard them indoors) had given her such an emotion that she could not utter a sound.
Captain Hagberd seemed to be trying to find his way out of a cage. His feet squelched in the puddles left by his industry. He stumbled in the holes of the ruined grass-plot. He ran blindly against the fence.
"Here, steady a bit!" said the man at the gate, gravely stretching his arm over and catching him by the sleeve. "Somebody's been trying to get at you. Hallo! what's this rig you've got on? Storm canvas, by George!" He had a big laugh. "Well, you are a character!"
Captain Hagberd jerked himself free, and began to back away shrinkingly. "For the present," he muttered, in a crestfallen tone.
"What's the matter with him?" The stranger addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want to startle the old man." He lowered his voice as though he had known her for years. "I dropped into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a character all his life."
Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his clothing, had retreated inside, taking his spade with him; and the two at the gate, startled by the unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts being shot, the snapping of the lock, and the echo of an affected gurgling laugh within.
"I didn't want to upset him," the man said, after a short silence. "What's the meaning of all this? He isn't quite crazy."
"He has been worrying a long time about his lost son," said Bessie, in a low, apologetic tone.
"Well, I am his son."
"Harry!" she cried-and was profoundly silent.
"Know my name? Friends with the old man, eh?"
"He's our landlord," Bessie faltered out, catching hold of the iron railing.
"Owns both them rabbit-hutches, does he?" commented young Hagberd, scornfully; "just the thing he would be proud of. Can you tell me who's that chap coming to-morrow? You must know something of it. I tell you, it's a swindle on the old man-nothing else."
She did not answer, helpless before an insurmountable difficulty, appalled before the necessity, the impossibility and the dread of an explanation in which she and madness seemed involved together.
"Oh-I am so sorry," she murmured.
"What's the matter?" he said, with serenity. "You needn't be afraid of upsetting me. It's the other fellow that'll be upset when he least expects it. I don't care a hang; but there will be some fun when he shows his mug to-morrow. I don't care that for the old man's pieces, but right is right. You shall see me put a head on that coon-whoever he is!"
He had come nearer, and towered above her on the other side of the railings. He glanced at her hands. He fancied she was trembling, and it occurred to him that she had her part perhaps in that little game that was to be sprung on his old man to-morrow. He had come just in time to spoil their sport. He was entertained by the idea-scornful of the baffled plot. But all his life he had been full of indulgence for all sorts of women's tricks. She really was trembling very much; her wrap had slipped off her head. "Poor devil!" he thought. "Never mind about that chap. I daresay he'll change his mind before to-morrow. But what about me? I can't loaf about the gate til the morning."
She burst out: "It is you-you yourself that he's waiting for. It is you who come to-morrow."
He murmured. "Oh! It's me!" blankly, and they seemed to become breathless together. Apparently he was pondering over what he had heard; then, without irritation, but evidently perplexed, he said: "I don't understand. I hadn't written or anything. It's my chum who saw the paper and told me-this very morning.... Eh? what?"
He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he listened for a while, muttering the words "yes" and "I see" at times. Then, "But why won't today do?" he queried at last.
"You didn't understand me!" she exclaimed, impatiently. The clear streak of light under the clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the whispering woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress.
He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat cavalierly on his head. "Awkward this, eh?" he appealed to her. "To-morrow? Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this. It's all to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day, as far as I can see."
She remained still and mute.
"And you have been encouraging this funny notion," he said.
"I never contradicted him."
"Why didn't you?"
"What for should I?" she defended herself. "It would only have made him miserable. He would have gone out of his mind."
"His mind!" he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her.
"Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with the poor old man? It was easier to half believe it myself."
"Aye, aye," he meditated, intelligently. "I suppose the old chap got around you somehow with his soft talk. You are good-hearted."
Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. "And it might have been true. It was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we have been waiting for."
She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly: "Aye, with the door shut. I wouldn't care if... And you think he could be brought round to recognise me... Eh? What?... You could do it? In a week you say? H'm, I daresay you could-but do you think I could hold out a week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more space than there is in the whole of England. I have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week. The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did not come off, though. We had to clear out-and none too soon. But this time I've a chum waiting for me in London, and besides..."
Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly.
"What if I tried a knock at the door?" he suggested.
"Try," she said.
Captain Hagberd's gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father's, only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman's heart, awakening to her ears.
"He isn't frisky-is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The chaps are always telling me I don't know my own strength."
"He's the most harmless creature that ever lived," she interrupted.
"You wouldn't say so if you had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard leather strap," he said; "I haven't forgotten it in sixteen years."
She got warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth.
"Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. Straight! Come back home a day too soon."
One of the windows upstairs ran up.
"A grinning, information fellow," said the voice of old Hagberd, up in the darkness. "Don't you have anything to do with him. It will spoil everything."
She heard Harry Hagberd say, "Hallo, dad," then a clanging clatter. The window rumbled down, and he stood before her again.
"It's just like old times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder."
She shuddered.
"I wouldn't care," he began, "only I spent my last shillings on the railway fare and my last twopence on a shave-out of respect for the old man."
"Are you really Harry Hagberd?" she asked. "Can you prove it?"
"Can I prove it? Can any one else prove it?" he said jovially. "Prove with what? What do I want to prove? There isn't a single corner in the world, barring England, perhaps, where you could not find some man, or more likely woman, that would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am more like Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and I can prove it to you in a minute, if you will let me step inside your gate."
"Come in," she said.
He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, facing the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from side to side, laughing softly to himself.
"Just fancy, for a minute, the old man's beard stuck on to my chin. Hey? Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy."
"It's true," she murmured to herself.
"And that's about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick for three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gas-works. You would think he was off on a whaling cruise-three years and a tail. Ha, ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas was a smart craft. Fine name, wasn't it? Mother's uncle owned her...."
He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, "Did he ever tell you what mother died of?" he asked.
"Yes," said Miss Bessie, bitterly; "from impatience."
He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: "They were so afraid I would turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my body rather than let me go to sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it too-so I went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been born to them by a mistake-in that other hutch of a house."
"Where ought you to have been born by rights?" Bessie Carvil interrupted him, defiantly.
"In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night," he said, quick as lightning. Then he mused slowly. "They were characters, both of them, by George; and the old man keeps it up well-don't he? A damned shovel on the-Hark! who's that making that row? 'Bessie, Bessie.' It's in your house."
"It's for me," she said, with indifference.
He stepped aside, out of the streak of light. "Your husband?" he inquired, with the tone of a man accustomed to unlawful trysts. "Fine voice for a ship's deck in a thundering squall."
"No; my father. I am not married."
"You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear," he said at once.
She turned her face away.
"Oh, I say,-what's up? Who's murdering him?"
"He wants his tea." She faced him, still and tall, with averted head, with her hands hanging clasped before her.
"Hadn't you better go in?" he suggested, after watching for a while the nape of her neck, a patch of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above the sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped down to her elbows. "You'll have all the town coming out presently. I'll wait here a bit."
Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up; she had vanished. He threw it over his arm, and approaching the window squarely he saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an armchair, an unshaded lamp, the yawning of an enormous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a ragged halo of hair-Miss Bessie's head and bust. The shouting stopped; the blind ran down. He lost himself in thinking how awkward it was. Father mad; no getting into the house. No money to get back; a hungry chum in London who would begin to think he had been given the go-by. "Damn!" he muttered. He could break the door in, certainly; but they would perhaps bundle him into chokey for that without asking questions-no great matter, only he was confoundedly afraid of being locked up, even in mistake. He turned cold at the thought. He stamped his feet on the sodden grass.
"What are you?-a sailor?" said an agitated voice.
She had flitted out, a shadow herself, attracted by the reckless shadow waiting under the wall of her home.
"Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth my salt before the mast. Came home that way this time."
"Where do you come from?" she asked.
"Right away from a jolly good spree," he said, "by the London train-see? Ough! I hate being shut up in a train. I don't mind a house so much."
"Ah," she said; "that's lucky."
"Because in a house you can at any time open the blamed door and walk away straight before you."
"And never come back?"
"Not for sixteen years at least," he laughed. "To a rabbit hutch, and get a confounded old shovel..."
"A ship is not so very big," she taunted.
"No, but the sea is great."
She dropped her head, and as if her ears had been opened to the voices of the world, she heard, beyond the rampart of sea-wall, the swell of yesterday's gale breaking on the beach with monotonous and solemn vibrations, as if all the earth had been a tolling bell.
"And then, why, a ship's a ship. You love her and leave her; and a voyage isn't a marriage." He quoted..................
JUTRO
To co wiedziano o kapitanie Hagberdzie w małym porcie morskim Colebrook niekoniecznie przemawiało na jego korzyść. Nie pochodził z Colebrook. Osiedlił się tam wśród okoliczności bynajmniej nie tajemniczych - swego czasu opowiadał o nich bardzo często - lecz niezmiernie dziwacznych i bezsensownych. Miał widać trochę pieniędzy, gdyż kupił kawał gruntu i kazał sklecić bardzo tanim kosztem parę brzydkich, żółtych domków z cegły. Jeden z nich zajmował sam a drugi wynajął Jozuemu Carvilowi - ślepemu Carvilowi, który był dawniej przedsiębiorcą okrętowym i zażywał złej reputacji domowego tyrana.
Owe domki miały wspólną ścianę i wspólną żelazną barjerę, dzielącą frontowe ogródki; drewniany płot przegradzał ogród od tyłu. Pannie Bessie Carvil wolno było, jak gdyby według przysługującego jej prawa, wieszać na płocie serwety - niebieskie gałgany - lub jakiś fartuch, który chciała wysuszyć.
- Drzewo gnije od tego, moja duszko - rzucał kapitan łagodną uwagę, stojąc po drugiej stronie płotu, za każdym razem gdy widział że Bessie korzysta ze swego przywileju.
Była wysokiego wzrostu; płot natomiast był niski i mogła oprzeć się na nim łokciami. Ręce miewała czerwone od dopiero co skończonej przepierki, ale ramiona jej były białe i kształtne. Patrzyła na gospodarza w porozumiewawczem milczeniu, pełnem jak gdyby przenikliwości, wyczekiwania i pragnienia.
- Drzewo od tego gnije - powtarzał kapitan Hagberd. - To jedyne z twoich przyzwyczajeń, które nie godzi się z porządkiem i oszczędnością. Dlaczego nie przeciągniesz sobie liny w ogródku za domem?
Panna Carvil nic na to nie mówiła, potrząsała tylko przecząco głową. W malutkim ogródku od tyłu znajdowało się po stronie Carvilów kilka małych grządek z czarnoziemu, obłożonych kamieniami; pospolite kwiaty, które Bessie hodowała tam w wolnych chwilach, robiły wrażenie dziwacznie wybujałych, jakby wyrosłych w jakimś egzotycznym klimacie. Z drugiej strony płotu wyprostowana, czerstwa postać kapitana Hagberda, odziana od stóp do głów w żaglowe płótno nr. 1, nurzała się po kolana w bujnej trawie i wysokich chwastach. Ze względu na kolor i sztywność niezwykłego, szorstkiego materjału, który sobie wybrał na ubranie, - "tylko na tymczasem", pomrukiwał, gdy mu ktoś na ten temat zrobił jakąś uwagę - kapitan Hagberd wyglądał jak człowiek wyciosany z granitu i tkwiący w pustkowiu, nie nadającem się z powodu małych rozmiarów nawet na przyzwoitą salę bilardową. Przypominał kamienny, niezdarny posąg człowieka o ogorzałej twarzy, niebieskich, błędnych oczach i wielkiej, białej brodzie, spływającej po pas a zawsze zaniedbanej, odkąd tylko pamiętano go w Colebrook.
- Przyjdę do pana już pewnie na przyszły miesiąc - odpowiedział raz poważnie przed siedmiu laty na żartobliwą przymówkę wybitnego miejscowego dowcipnisia, golarza, który usiłował zjednać sobie w nim klijenta. Ów golarz siedział rozparty arogancko w barze Nowej Gospody koło portu; kapitan wszedł był tam właśnie aby kupić sobie uncję tytoniu. Zapłaciwszy za sprawunek trzema monetami po pół pensa, wysupłanemi z rogu chustki do nosa, którą nosił w rękawie, kapitan Hagberd wyszedł. Gdy tylko drzwi się za nim zamknęły, golibroda wybuchnął śmiechem:
- I stary, i młody przyprowadzą się tu wkrótce pod rękę, żeby się u mnie ogolić. Trzeba będzie zaprząc do roboty i krawca, i golarza, i fabrykanta świec; dobre czasy nadejdą dla miasta Colebrook, oj nadejdą, żebym tak zdrów był. Z początku nazywało się to "na przyszły tydzień", teraz zjechało na "w przyszłym miesiącu", niedługo będzie już mówił "na przyszłą wiosnę", tak mi się coś zdaje.
Zauważywszy jakiegoś nieznajomego, który przysłuchiwał się z roztargnionym uśmiechem, golarz objaśnił, wyciągając cynicznie nogi, że mówi o tym dziwaku, starym Hagberdzie, emerytowanym szyprze nadbrzeżnym, który czeka na powrót syna. Chłopak został wypędzony z domu, co golarza wcale nie dziwiło; podobno uciekł na jakiś statek, i tyle go widzieli. Z pewnością oddawna już leży na dnie morza. Przed trzema laty stary przyjechał na gwałt do Colebrook, w czarnem ubraniu - (niedawno przedtem stracił żonę); wypadł z wagonu trzeciej klasy dla palących, jakby mu djabeł następował na pięty; a jedynym powodem, jaki go sprowadził, był list - prawdopodobnie zmyślony. Jakiś kawalarz donosił kapitanowi o marynarzu noszącym jego nazwisko, który jakoby włóczył się za dziewczynami czy to w Colebrook czy w okolicy. "Dobry kawał, co?" - dodał golarz. - Staruszek ogłosił był w londyńskich gazetach, że szuka Harry'ego Hagberda, ofiarowując nagrodę za wszelkiego rodzaju informacje. I golarz rozpowiadał dalej z szyderczą werwą, jak to ów nieznajomy w żałobie zwiedzał okolicę, na wózku lub piechotą, wywnętrzając się każdemu, zachodząc do wszystkich gospód i szynków na całe mile wokoło, zatrzymując ludzi po drogach aby ich rozpytywać, omal nie zaglądając do rowów; z początku w wielkiem podnieceniu, potem z pewnego rodzaju cierpliwą wytrwałością, tracąc coraz bardziej animusz; a nie umiał nawet dokładnie opisać jak jego syn wygląda. Przypuszczano że marynarz poszukiwany przez Hagberda był jednym z dwóch majtków, którzy porzucili statek naładowany drzewem i których widziano jak się przystawiali do jakiejś dziewczyny; lecz stary rozpytywał o chłopca lat około czternastu - "sprytnego, dziarskiego wyrostka". A kiedy ludzie tylko uśmiechali się w odpowiedzi, pocierał czoło ze zmieszaniem, poczem odchodził chyłkiem z obrażoną miną. Naturalnie że nie znalazł nikogo - nie trafił nawet na najmniejszy ślad - nie dosięgła go żadna wiarogodna pogłoska; ale jakoś nie umiał się już oderwać od Colebrook.
- Pewnie go ten zawód tak złamał; było to wkrótce po stracie żony, i stary dostał bzika na punkcie powrotu syna - wywodził golibroda z miną świadczącą o wielkiej wnikliwości psychologicznej. Po jakimś czasie staruszek zaprzestał poszukiwań. Syn jego najwidoczniej odjechał; postanowił więc na niego czekać. Wierzył że syn był conajmniej raz w Colebrook, które przekładał widać nad swe rodzinne miejsce. Musiał mieć potemu jakąś przyczynę - zdawał się kapitan rozumować - jakąś bardzo ważną przyczynę, która sprowadzi go z powrotem do Colebrook.
- Ha, ha, ha! Naturalnie że do Colebrook. A gdzieżby? To jedyne miejsce w Zjednoczonem Królestwie, odpowiednie dla dawno przepadłych synów. Więc też stary sprzedał swój dom w Colchester i raz, dwa osiedlił się tutaj. Cóż, bzik jak każdy inny. Nie dostałbym bzika, oj nie, gdyby tak który z moich chłopców dał drapaka. Mam tego osiem sztuk w domu. - I golibroda popisywał się niezłomnością swego ducha wśród śmiechu, który wstrząsał barem.
To jednak dziwne, zwierzał się dalej ze szczerością właściwą wyższym umysłom, ale tego rodzaju rzeczy są jak gdyby zaraźliwe. Naprzykład - jego zakład znajduje się blisko portu; i niech tylko jaki majtek wejdzie, żeby się ostrzyc albo ogolić - golarz, zobaczywszy nieznajomą twarz, nie może się nigdy powstrzymać od myśli: "A nuż to syn starego Hagberda?" Sam się z tego wyśmiewa. To bzik potężny. Golarz pamięta czasy, kiedy ulegało mu całe miasto. Ale nie stracił jeszcze nadziei co do starego. Leczy go mądrze obmyślanemi żartami. Śledzi stale postępy swojej kuracji. Za tydzień - za miesiąc - za rok. Gdy stary kapitan odłoży do następnego roku datę powrotu syna, będzie już na drodze do tego, aby przestać o nim mówić zupełnie. Pod innemi względami stary jest zupełnie rozsądny, więc i to też musi nastąpić. Takie było niewzruszone zdanie golarza.
Nikt mu nigdy nie przeczył; jego włosy posiwiały od owego czasu, a broda kapitana Hagberda zrobiła się bielusieńka i spływała majestatycznie na ubranie z żaglowego płótna nr. 1, które to ubranie uszył był sobie pokryjomu, używając zamiast nici szpagatu nasyconego smołą. Pewnego pięknego poranku przywdział je nagle i wyszedł, w przeddzień zaś widziano go wracającego do domu, jak zwykle, w żałobnem ubraniu. Wywołało to sensację na High Street - sklepikarze ukazywali się we drzwiach, ludzie po domach chwytali kapelusze i wypadali na ulicę; ogólne poruszenie z początku bardzo dziwiło kapitana a potem go przestraszyło; ale na wszystkie pytania zdumionych sąsiadów odpowiadał lękliwie i wymijająco: "To tylko na tymczasem".
O tem zdarzeniu oddawna już zapomniano; co się zaś tyczy kapitana Hagberda, z czasem nietyle zapomniano o nim, co zaczęto go lekceważyć - przykry skutek spowszednienia - tak jak niekiedy lekceważy się nawet słońce, jeśli nie da nam odczuć dotkliwie swojej potęgi. Z ruchów kapitana nie przebijało wcale niedołęstwo; chodził sztywno w swojem żaglowem ubraniu, figura dziwaczna i zwracająca uwagę; tylko jego oczy błądziły może bardziej nieuchwytnie niż ongi. W jego zachowaniu poza domem nie było już tej pobudliwej czujności; stał się zakłopotany i niepewny, jak gdyby podejrzewał że jest w nim coś zlekka kompromitującego, jakaś kłopotliwa dziwaczność; a jednak nie był w stanie zdać sobie sprawy, na czem właściwie polega ten jego feler.
Rozmawiał już teraz niechętnie z mieszkańcami miasteczka. Zażywał opinji okropnego sknery skąpiącego sobie na pożywienie. W sklepach pomrukiwał coś żałośnie pod nosem, kupując skrawki mięsa po długich namysłach, i odpierał wszelkie aluzje do swego kostjumu. Stało się tak jak przepowiedział golibroda. O ile można było wymiarkować, kapitan wyleczył się już z choroby nadziei, i tylko panna Bessie Carvil wiedziała, że nie mówił nic o powrocie syna, ponieważ już go nie oczekiwał "w przyszłym tygodniu", "w przyszłym miesiącu" lub "na przyszły rok". Oczekiwał go "jutro".
Ze spotkań tych dwojga na dziedzińcu za domem i we frontowym ogródku wywiązała się zażyłość; kapitan rozmawiał z Bessie po ojcowsku, rozsądnie i apodyktycznie, z odcieniem despotyzmu. Łączyło ich nieograniczone zaufanie, które kapitan stwierdzał od czasu do czasu serdecznem mrugnięciem. Doszło do tego, że panna Carvil poniekąd tych mrugnięć wyczekiwała. Z początku niepokoiły ją: biedak miał źle w głowie. Potem nauczyła się z nich śmiać; nie było w tem przecież nic złego. A teraz Bessie zdawała sobie sprawę z podświadomego, przyjemnego, niewiarogodnego wzruszenia, które się ujawniało przez słaby rumieniec. Kapitan mrugał na nią bynajmniej nie ordynarnie; jego szczupła, ogorzała twarz o kształtnym, orlim nosie miała pewien rodzaj dystynkcji - i to tem bardziej że, rozmawiając, spoglądał na nią wzrokiem spokojniejszym i bardziej inteligentnym. Taki piękny mężczyzna o białej brodzie, czerstwy, prosto się trzymający, zaradny. Zapominało się o jego wieku. Twierdził iż jego syn zdumiewająco był do niego podobny już od najwcześniejszego dzieciństwa.
Kapitan oświadczył Bessie, że Harry skończy trzydzieści jeden lat w lipcu. W sam raz wiek do ożenku z zacną, rozsądną dziewczyną, która potrafi ocenić miłe domowe ognisko. Harry był dzielnym chłopcem. Dzielnym mężem zawsze najłatwiej żonie kierować. Taki małoduszny niedołęga, co to wszystko mu się w rękach rozłazi, ten dopiero potrafi kobietę unieszczęśliwić. A przytem niema nic ponad dom - domowe ognisko - spokojny dach nad głową: człowiek nie potrzebuje wyłazić z ciepłego łóżka bez względu na pogodę. "I co ty na to, kochanie?"
Kapitan Hagberd należał ongi do marynarzy uprawiających swój zawód w pobliżu lądu. Był jednem z licznych dzieci zbankrutowanego farmera, który natychmiast po utracie majątku oddał syna do terminu u nadbrzeżnego szypra; kapitan pozostał też u wybrzeży w ciągu całego swego marynarskiego żywota. Z początku żywot ten musiał być ciężki; Hagberd nigdy go nie polubił; przywiązanie swoje oddał lądowi z niezliczonemi jego domami i spokojnem życiem, skupiającem się dokoła domowego ogniska. Wielu marynarzy odczuwa i głosi uzasadnioną niechęć do morza, ale w tym wypadku była to głęboka, silnie odczuta wrogość, jak gdyby ukochanie stalszego żywiołu zostało wpojone Hagberdowi przez wiele pokoleń.
- Ludzie nie wiedzą na co narażają swych chłopców, kiedy pozwalają im puścić się na morze - wykładał kapitan Bessie. - Lepiejby ich odrazu oddali do więzienia.
Nie wierzył aby wogóle można było się przyzwyczaić do tego zawodu. Uciążliwość życia na morzu wzrasta jeszcze z wiekiem. Cóż to jest za rzemiosło, które przez większą część roku nie pozwala człowiekowi przestąpić progu swego domostwa? Z chwilą wyjazdu na morze niepodobna już wiedzieć, co się dzieje w domu. Można było wnioskować że Hagberda znużyły dalekie podróże; tymczasem najdłuższa, jaką kiedykolwiek odbył, trwała dwa tygodnie, które spędził przeważnie na zakotwiczonym statku, szukając schronienia przed niepogodą. Gdy tylko jego żona odziedziczyła dom i kapitał mogący ich wyżywić (po nieżonatym stryju, który zrobił trochę pieniędzy na węglu), kapitan rzucił dowództwo węglarki obsługującej wschodnie wybrzeże, mając uczucie, że ucieka z galer. Po wszystkich tych latach służby byłby mógł zliczyć na palcach u rąk dni, które spędził, nie sięgając wzrokiem brzegów Anglji. Nie wiedział jak to bywa, kiedy dna zgruntować nie można. "Nie zajechałem nigdy dalej niż osiemdziesiąt sążni od brzegu" - brzmiała jedna z jego przechwałek.
Bessie Carvil wysłuchiwała tego wszystkiego. Przed domkiem rósł karłowaty jesion; w letnie popołudnia Bessie wynosiła krzesło na trawnik i zasiadała na niem z robotą. Kapitan Hagberd, odziany w płótno żaglowe, opierał się na szpadlu. Kopał dzień w dzień w swoim ogródku przed domem. Rok rocznie przekopywał cały grunt po kilka razy, ale "tymczasem" nic tam sadzić nie zamierzał.
Bessie Carvil wyłuszczał to jaśniej: "Nic nie posadzę do jutra, póki nasz Harry nie wróci". A ona słyszała już tylekroć ową formułę pełną nadziei, że budziło to tylko w jej sercu mglistą litość dla starca nie tracącego otuchy.
Wszystko się odkładało w ten sposób i wszystko tak samo przygotowywało się na jutro. Kapitan miał pudełko pełne paczuszek z nasionami kwiatów, aby było w czem wybierać przy obsadzaniu ogródka. "Harry z pewnością będzie się liczył z twojem zdaniem, moja droga" - nadmieniał kapitan Hagberd, stojąc z drugiej strony ogrodzenia.
Panna Bessie nie podnosiła głowy z nad szycia. Słyszała to wszystko już tyle razy. Ale niekiedy wstawała, odkładała robotę i podchodziła zwolna do płotu. Te łagodne majaczenia miały jakiś urok. Kapitan zadecydował, że jego syn nie będzie zmuszony ruszyć z powrotem w świat ze względu na brak gotowego mieszkania. Przez długi czas zapełniał domek najprzeróżniejszemi meblami. Bessie wyobrażała sobie że są nowe, błyszczące od politury, ułożone stosami jak w jakim składzie. Są tam z pewnością stoły poobwijane w płótno workowe; zwoje dywanów, grube i prostopadłe jak części kolumn; białe marmurowe gzymsy, połyskujące wśród mroku spuszczonych rolet. Kapitan Hagberd opisywał jej zawsze dokładnie swoje zakupy, jako osobie, która ma prawo się niemi interesować. Zarośnięte podwórze będzie można pokryć betonem... pojutrze.
- Płot moglibyśmy usunąć. Sznur do suszenia bielizny będziesz mogła powiesić dalej, za grządkami kwiatów.
Mrugał porozumiewawczo, a Bessie zlekka się czerwieniła.
W tej manji, której ulegała dzięki swemu dobremu sercu, było jednak trochę rozsądku. A jeśli jego syn kiedy wróci? Lecz nie mogła mieć nawet pewności, że ów syn istniał naprawdę; a jeśli rzeczywiście gdzieś istniał, za długo już był nieobecny. Gdy kapitan Hagberd podniecał się swemi opowiadaniami, uspakajała go, udając że mu wierzy, i śmiała się zlekka aby uspokoić swoje sumienie.
Raz tylko usiłowała z litości zamącić tę nadzieję skazaną na zawód, ale skutek owej próby bardzo ją przestraszył. Twarz kapitana przybrała w jednej chwili wyraz zgrozy i niedowierzania, jakby ujrzał niebiosa pękające na dwoje.
- Ty - ty - ty przecież nie myślisz, że on utonął!
Bała się przez chwilę żeby nie stracił zmysłów, bo gdy był w zwykłem usposobieniu, wydawał jej się bardziej normalny niż innym ludziom. Tym razem po swem gwałtownem wzruszeniu wrócił do równowagi i serdecznego, ojcowskiego tonu.
- Nie niepokój się, moja duszko - rzekł z pewną przebiegłością: - morze nie zdoła go zatrzymać. On do morza nie należy. Żaden z nas, Hagberdów, nigdy do morza nie należał. Popatrz na mnie; przecież nie utonąłem. Zresztą on nie jest wcale marynarzem; a jeśli nie jest marynarzem, będzie musiał wrócić. Nic nie może powstrzymać go od powrotu...
Oczy jego zaczęły się błąkać:
- Jutro.
Nigdy już więcej nie dotknęła tej kwestji, z obawy aby kapitan odrazu zmysłów nie stracił. Polegał na niej. Zdawała się być jedyną rozsądną osobą w całem mieście; i Hagberd nieraz winszował sobie głośno w jej obecności, że zdobył tak zrównoważoną żonę dla swego syna. Reszta miasta - wyznał jej to raz w przystępie irytacji - jest stanowczo dziwaczna. Jak ci ludzie patrzą na człowieka, jak się odzywają! Nigdy z nikim nie mógł się zżyć w tem mieście. Nie lubi tutejszych ludzi. Nie opuściłby nigdy swych stron, gdyby się nie było okazało, że jego syn upodobał sobie Colebrook.
Potakiwała mu w milczeniu, przysłuchując się cierpliwie u płotu i migając szydełkiem ze spuszczonemi oczami. Rumieńce wybijały się z trudnością na jej matowo białą cerę, pod niedbale zwiniętemi, obfitemi włosami barwy mahoniu. Ojciec jej był rudy jak marchewka.
Bessie miała okrągłe kształty i zmęczoną, wyblakłą twarz. Gdy kapitan Hagberd rozwodził się nad tem, jak niezbędnem jest posiadanie własnego domu, gdy wychwalał rozkosze domowego ogniska, uśmiechała się zlekka samemi wargami. Domowe rozkosze ograniczały się dla niej do pielęgnowania ojca przez dziesięć najlepszych lat jej życia.
Zwierzęcy ryk, wydostający się z górnego okna, przerywał ich rozmowę. Bessie zaczynała natychmiast zwijać szydełkową robótkę albo składać szycie bez najlżejszej oznaki pośpiechu. Tymczasem głos wyjący i ryczący jej imię nie zamilkał, tak że rybacy, wałęsający się po tamie z drugiej strony drogi, odwracali głowy ku domkom. Bessie wracała powoli przez frontowe drzwi, i w chwilę potem zapadało głębokie milczenie. Niebawem ukazywała się znów, prowadząc za rękę człowieka niezgrabnego i nieobrotnego jak hipopotam, o twarzy złej i skwaszonej.
Był to wdowiec, dawniej przedsiębiorca okrętowy, którego przed laty zaskoczyła ślepota w pełni pracy. Zachowywał się wobec córki, jakby była odpowiedzialna za nieuleczalność tego kalectwa. Słyszano nieraz gdy ryczał w niebogłosy - jakby rzucając wyzwanie niebu - że teraz już go nic nie obchodzi: zarobił dosyć pieniędzy, żeby dzień w dzień mieć jaja z szynką na śniadanie. Dziękował za to Bogu szatańskim tonem, jak gdyby Mu urągał.
Kapitan Hagberd miał tak niekorzystne wyobrażenie o swoim lokatorze, że powiedział raz pannie Bessie:
- To bardzo dziwaczny człowiek, moja duszko.
Bessie robiła tego dnia na drutach, kończąc parę skarpetek dla ojca, gdyż należało to do jej obowiązków. Nienawidziła roboty na drutach, i ponieważ była właśnie przy pięcie, musiała trzymać oczy na skarpetce.
- Naturalnie że byłoby zupełnie inaczej, gdyby musiał się troszczyć o przyszłość syna - ciągnął kapitan z pewnem roztargnieniem. - Dziewczyny, oczywiście, tyle nie potrzebują - hm - hm. Nie uciekają z domu, moja duszko.
- Nie - odrzekła spokojnie panna Bessie.
Kapitan Hagberd zachichotał wśród kopców porytej ziemi. W swym marynarskim stroju, z twarzą schłostaną przez wichry i brodą jak u ojca Neptuna, przypominał zdetronizowanego bożka, który trójząb na szpadel zamienił.
- On pewnie uważa, że cię już do pewnego stopnia zabezpieczył. To jest właśnie dobra strona córek. A jeśli chodzi o mężów dla nich... - Tu mrugnął znacząco. Panna Bessie, zatopiona w robocie, zaczerwieniła się lekko.
- Bessie! Kapelusz! - wrzasnął nagle stary Carvil.
Siedział pod drzewem niemy, bez ruchu, jak jakie bóstwo, przedmiot szczególnie potwornego bałwochwalstwa. Nie otwierał wcale ust, chyba tylko po to aby wrzeszczeć na nią, do niej, czasami także i o niej, a wówczas nie znał miary w wymyślaniu. System Bessie polegał na tem, że nigdy mu nie odpowiadała; wrzeszczał póki mu nie usłużyła - póki go nie potrząsnęła za ramię lub nie włożyła mu cybucha fajki między zęby. Należał do nielicznych ślepców, którzy palą.
Gdy poczuł że Bessie wkłada mu na głowę kapelusz, zamilkł natychmiast. Potem wstał i wyszli razem przez furtkę. Opierał się ciężko na jej ramieniu. Podczas tych powolnych, uciążliwych spacerów miało się wrażenie, że Bessie wlecze za pokutę brzemię tej bezkształtnej, wielkiej postaci. Zwykle przechodzili odrazu przez drogę (domki stały w polu blisko portu, jakieś dwieście yardów od końca ulicy) i przez długi, długi czas było ich widać, jak wstępowali nieznacznie po drewnianych schodach, wiodących na szczyt grobli. A grobla ciągnęła się ze wschodu na zachód, zasłaniając Kanał, podobna do zaniedbanego kolejowego nasypu, po którym żaden wagon nie toczył się nigdy za ludzkiej pamięci. Gromadki krzepkich rybaków wyłaniały się na tle nieba, szły jakiś czas wzdłuż wału i zapadały się niespiesznie. Brunatne ich sieci, jak pajęczyny olbrzymich pająków, leżały na lichej trawie zbocza; a ludzie z miasta, stojąc u końca ulicy, rozpoznawali oboje Carvilów po ich pełznącym, wolnym chodzie. Hagberd kręcił się bez celu naokoło swych domków i podnosił głowę od czasu do czasu, aby się przekonać jak tych dwoje radzi sobie na spacerze.
Kapitan umieszczał wciąż ogłoszenia w niedzielnych dziennikach, poszukując Harry'ego Hagberda. Objaśniał Bessie, że "te płachty" czytane są wszędzie zagranicą, aż po krańce świata. A jednocześnie zdawał się myśleć iż jego syn jest w Anglji - tak blisko Colebrook, że oczywiście zjawi się "jutro". Bessie, nie przytakując mu wyraźnie, tłumaczyła, że w takim razie wydatki na ogłoszenia są zbyteczne; kapitan Hagberd postąpiłby lepiej, obracając te pół korony tygodniowo na własne potrzeby. Dodawała, że nie ma pojęcia, z czego kapitan żyje. Jej argumenty wprawiały go w zakłopotanie i przygnębiały na jakiś czas. "Wszyscy tak robią" - podnosił. Cała kolumna poświęcona jest zawsze poszukiwaniu zaginionych krewnych. Przyniesie gazetę i pokaże jej. I on i jego żona zamieszczali ogłoszenia latami, ale żona była kobietą niecierpliwą. Wieści z Colebrook przyszły akurat na drugi dzień po jej pogrzebie; gdyby nie wielka jej niecierpliwość, byłaby tu z nimi i wiedziałaby, że ma przed sobą już tylko dzień czekania.
- Ty, kochanie, nie jesteś wcale niecierpliwa.
- Czasem to brakuje mi z panem cierpliwości - odpowiadała.
Choć poszukiwał jeszcze syna przez gazety, nie obiecywał już nagrody za informacje; z mętną świadomością spaczonego mózgu wpoił sobie niewzruszone przekonanie, że osiągnął na tej drodze już wszystko czego można się było spodziewać. Nic więcej nie mógł sobie życzyć. Chodziło właśnie o Colebrook, pocóż dowiadywać się jeszcze? Panna Carvil chwaliła kapitana za rozsądek i oddziaływała na niego kojąco, podzielając jego........................
