CHAPTER VII.

THE CAPTAINS MAKE A FALSE START.

It was past midnight when Captain Runacles left his friend's pavilion and let himself through the little blue door to his own garden. The heavens were clear and starry, and he paused for a moment on the gra.s.s-plot, his hands clasped behind him, his head tilted back and his eyes fixed on the Great Bear that hung directly overhead.

"Poor Jack!" he muttered, shaking his head at the constellation, as if gently accusing Fate. His nature had been considerably softened by the little man's distress, and he had come away with a generous trouble in his heart.

"I shan't sleep a wink to-night," he decided; and went on inconsequently, "After all, a girl is less anxiety than a boy. People don't find it worth their while to kidnap a girl and flog her with a cat-o'-nine-tails. A turn of a die, and I'd have been in Jack's shoes to-night; while, as it is-"

As it was, however, he seemed hardly to enjoy his good fortune, for he added, still looking up:

"Plague seize it! I shan't sleep a wink-I know I shan't. What a magnificent show of stars! Let me see, how long is it before daybreak? One-two-three-five hours only. I won't go to bed at all- I'll have a turn at the telescope."

He stole into the house softly and climbed up the spiral staircase. A faint light shone out on the first landing from the half-open door of his workroom. He entered and turned up the lamp.

Its light revealed a scene of amazing disorder. The walls were covered with books and charts; the floor was littered with ma.n.u.scripts, mathematical instruments, huge folios, piled higgledy-piggledy, carpenter's tools, retorts, bottles of chemicals. In one corner, beside a door leading to his bedroom, stood a turning-lathe three inches deep in sawdust and shavings; in another, a human skeleton hung against the wall, its feet concealed by the model of a pumping-engine. Hard by was nailed a rack containing a couple of antique swords, a walking-cane and a large telescope.

Captain Runacles took down this telescope and tucked it under his arm. Then, unhitching a dressing-gown of faded purple from a peg behind the door, he turned the lamp low again and stepped out upon the landing. Here he paused for a minute and listened. The house was still. From the floor below ascended the sound of breathing, regular and stertorous, which proved that Simeon was asleep.

He put his hand on the stair-rail and ascended to the next floor, pa.s.sing his daughter's room on tiptoe. Above this, a flight of steps that was little more than a ladder led up into the obscurity of the attics. He climbed these steps, and, entering a lumber-room, where he had to duck his head to avoid striking the sloping roof, felt his way to a shuttered window, with the bolt of which he fumbled for a moment. When at length he drew the shutter open, a whiff of cold air streamed into the room and a parallelogram of purple sky was visible, studded with stars and crossed by the bars of a little balcony.

Captain Runacles stepped out upon this balcony. He had constructed it two years before, and it ran completely round the roof. Under his feet he heard the pigeons murmuring in their cote. Below were spread the dim gra.s.s-plots and flower-beds of the two gardens; and, far upon his right, the misty leagues of the North Sea. Full in front of him, over Harwich town, hung the dainty constellation of Ca.s.siopeia's chair, and all around the vast army of heaven moved, silent and radiant. One seemed to hear its breathing up there, across the deep calm of the firmament.

He turned to the western horizon, to the spot where the Pleiades had just set for the summer months, and lifting his gla.s.s moved it slowly up towards Capella and the Kids, thence on to Perseus, and that most gorgeous tract of the Milky Way which lies thereby. Now, in the sword-handle of Perseus, as it is called, are set two cl.u.s.ters of gems, by trying to count which the Captain had, before now, amused himself for hours together. He was about to make another attempt, and in fact had reached fifty-six, when he felt a light touch on his elbow.

He faced quickly round. Behind him, on the balcony, stood his daughter.

"Don't be angry," she entreated in a whisper. "I heard you come up. I couldn't sleep until I saw you."

He looked at her sternly. Her feet were bare, and she wore but a dark cloak over her night-rail. In the years since we last saw her she had grown from an awkward girl into a lovely woman. Thick waves of dark hair, disarranged with much tossing on her pillow, fell upon her shoulders and straggled over the lace upon her bosom. The face they framed was pale in the starlight, but the lips were red, and the black eyes feverishly bright.

"Father," she went on, "I have something I must tell you."

Then, as he continued to regard her with displeasure, she broke off, and put the question that of all her trouble was uppermost.

"What has become of Tristram?"

"He has gone to make the campaign against the French. He was enlisted to-day. It was-unexpected," her father answered slowly, with his eyes fixed on hers.

"He went unwillingly," she said, speaking in a quick whisper; "he was dragged off-trepanned! Simeon told me about it, and besides, I know-"

"What do you know?"

"I know he never went willingly. Oh, father, listen"-with a swift and pretty impulse she stepped forward, and reaching up her clasped hands laid them on his shoulder-"Tristram-Tristram is very fond of me."

"Good Lord!"

Captain Jemmy raised a hand to disengage her grasp from his shoulder, but let it fall again.

"He told me so this morning at sunrise," she went on rapidly. "You see, it was May morning, and I went out to gather the dew, and he was there, in the garden already, and he said-well, he said what I told you; and being so masterful-"

"I can't say I've observed that quality in the young man; but no doubt you've had better opportunities of judging."

"You shan't talk like that!" she broke out almost fiercely. It was curious that this girl, who until this moment had always trembled before her father, now began to dominate him by force of her pa.s.sion.

"Oh, I mustn't, eh? Devil take the fellow! He tumbles out of one mess into another, and plays skittles with my peace of mind, and in return I'm not allowed a word!"

"Father, you will fetch him back?"

"Now, how the-"

"But you must."

"Indeed!"

"Because I love him dearly-there! I have n.o.body left but you, father." She knelt and caught his hand, exchanging audacity for entreaty in a second.

"Little maid," said her father, with a tenderness as sudden, "get up-your feet must be as cold as ice, on these slates. Go in, and go to bed."

"Let me stay a little. I can't sleep indoors. It was so happy this morning, and to-night the trouble is so heavy!"

Captain Jemmy vanished into the lumber-room for a moment, and reappeared, tugging an old mattress after him and bearing a tattered window-curtain under his left arm. He spread the mattress on the balcony, motioned his daughter to sit, and wrapped her feet warmly in his purple dressing-gown. Then, as she lay back, he spread the curtain over her, tucking it close round her young body. She thanked him with dim eyes.

"Sophia," he began, with much severity, "you say you have only your old father in the world, and I'm bound to say you seem to find it little enough. My dear, are you aware that you've just been disappointing my dearest hopes?"

"Don't say that!"

"I begin to think I mustn't say anything. I have brought you up carefully, instructing you in all polite learning, and even in some of the abstruser sciences. I have meant you, all along, to be the ornament of your s.e.x, and now-the devil take it!-you prefer, after all, to be an ornament of the other! I intended you, by your accomplishments, to make that young man look foolish."

"And I a.s.sure you, father dear, he did look foolish this morning, and again this afternoon in the summer-house."

"Now, upon my soul, Sophia! I call your attention to the fact I've been suspecting ever since you began to speak, that you're at the bottom of all to-day's mischief. If that unfortunate youth hadn't been making love to you when he should have been attending to the bees, the chances are they would never have taken it into their heads to swarm upon that accursed arch, and consequently..."

There was nothing which Captain Runacles enjoyed so thoroughly as to discover the connection between effects and their causes. When such a chance offered, it was a common experience with him to be drawn into prolixity. But he was pained and surprised, nevertheless, after twenty minutes' discourse (in which he proved Sophia, and Sophia alone, to be responsible for the disasters of the day), to find that she had dropped asleep. He looked down for a minute or so upon her closed lids, then moved to the rail of the balcony and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed under his breath:

"O woman-woman! Wise art thou as the dove, and about as harmless as the serpent!"

He considered the heavens for some moments, and added with some tartness but with a far-off look at the stars, as though aiming the remark at the late Mrs. Runacles:

"Her charm, at any rate, is not derived from her mother!"

He turned abruptly and considered her as she slept under the stars. Stooping after a minute or two, and lifting her very gently, he bore her into the house and down to her own room. As they descended the ladder from the attic, she stirred and opened her eyes drowsily:

"You will bring Tristram back?" she murmured, but so softly that he had to bend his head to catch the syllables.

Her eyes closed again before he could answer. He carried her to her bed and laid her upon it; then, after waiting a while to a.s.sure himself that she was fast asleep, retraced his steps softly to the little balcony.