Madge Morton's Victory

by Amy D. V. Chalmers

Madge gripped both arms of her chair to control herself. She was trembling so that she felt that she must be having a chill, though it was a warm summer day, for the stranger had risen and was coming toward her, his face white and haggard. Then, as he advanced into the brighter light of the room, Madge saw that his eyes were very blue.

“Your father isn’t dead,” the man replied quietly. “He is here in this very house, and he cares for you more than all the world in spite of his long silence!”

The little captain sprang to her feet, her face flaming. “Captain Jules! He is my father? He seemed so old that I didn’t realize it. Yet he has said so many things to me that might have made me guess he knew everything in the world about me. Oh, where is he? My own, own Captain Jules?”

The stranger, whose arms had been outstretched toward Madge, let them fall at his sides, but Madge had no eyes for him. Captain Jules had entered the room and she had flung herself straight into his kindly arms.

So, after all, it was Captain Jules Fontaine who had to make it clear to Madge that he was not her father, but her father’s lifelong and devoted friend. The captain told Madge the story while he held both her cold hands in his big, rough ones, and the man who was her own father sat watching and waiting for her verdict.

Jules Fontaine had never been captain of anything but a sailing schooner, but he had been a gunner’s mate on Captain Robert Morton’s ship. He alone knew that Captain Morton had been forced into the fault that he had committed by order of his admiral. When Captain Morton was dismissed from the United States Naval Service Jules Fontaine, gunner’s mate, had procured his discharge and followed the fortunes of his captain. The two men drifted south to the tropics. Every American vessel is equipped with a diving outfit, and some of the men are taught to go down under the water to examine the bottoms of the boats. Jules Fontaine liked the business of diving. When the two men found themselves in a strange land, without any occupations, Captain Jules joined his fortunes with the pearl divers and for many years followed their perilous trade.

Captain Morton had a harder time to get along, but after a while he studied foreign languages and began to translate books. Five years before the two men had come back to the United States. Since that time Captain Morton had tried to follow every movement of his daughter. Captain Jules wanted his friend to make himself known to his own people, but Robert Morton feared that they would never forgive his long silence or his early disgrace. He believed that Madge would be happier without knowledge of him. It was her own longing for her father, reported by Captain Jules, that had impelled Robert Morton at last to reveal himself to her.

Madge could not comprehend all of this at once. She did not even try to do so. She realized only that, after being without any parents, she had suddenly come into two fathers at the same time, her own father and Captain Jules, who was her more than foster father.

With a low, glad cry she went swiftly across the room. She did not try to think or to ask questions at that moment about the past, she only flung her young arms about her father’s neck in a long embrace, feeling that at last she had some one in the world who was her very own.

While Madge, her father, and Captain Jules were trying to see how they could bear the miracle and shock of their great happiness, a small, dark object darted into the room and planted its claws in Madge’s hair. It pulled and chattered with all its might.