Captain has answered.
III
Attendants carry the body to an adjoining room. Mr. Wriford follows it and stays by it. He is permitted to stay and stays while darkness gathers. What now? for now a change again. To push the wheeled-chair had been a habit, not a pleasure. Was that sure? Why is it pain to think to-morrow will not bring that lighting of those eyes, that chatter of those lips? Why in his heart that bursting swell a while ago? Why swells it now as darkness shrouds that poor old form? Had he without knowing it been happy in that task? without knowing it, come near then to something in life that he had missed? What now? Well, now he would go away. What here? Ah, in the dusk that masses all about the room, bend close and peer and ask again. What here? Look, those stiff fingers clutch that portograph. Look, those stained lips are smiling, smiling. He is happy. He was always happy when Matey came. Has he taken happiness with him? Was it within grasp and not recognised and now missed again—gone?
IV
Mr. Wriford takes his discharge. Guardians, holding to their word, take him his railway ticket. The Master is genuinely sorry. When at last, on the night of the oldest sea-captain's death, he finds Mr. Wriford determined, "Well, the Guardians will be sitting to-morrow," he says. "I'll tell 'em. They'll take your ticket for you. Where to?"
He has to repeat the question. Fresh from the death-bed and its new turn to the old thoughts, Mr. Wriford is even more than commonly absent and bemused. "Where to?" repeats Mr. Master. "Where's your friends you want to go to?"
Mr. Wriford takes the first place that comes into his head. Very naturally it is the name that has edged a place in his mind by repeated reiteration during perambulation of the wheeled-chair.
"Ipswich," says Mr. Wriford.
Guardians think it a devil of a big fare to pay and grumble a bit. On the one hand, however, this inmate has saved a boy-"clurk's" wages now for some considerable period: on the other, Ipswich will take him hundreds of miles beyond danger of starving and falling back on their hands and making a general nuisance of himself.
"Very well, Ipswich," says Mr. Chairman. "Agreed, gentlemen?" Agreed. "Take the ticket yourself, Mr. Master," says Mr. Chairman, "and see him into the train. None of his larks, you know!"