There was a long silence in the room when that quick answer had been given to Priscilla’s quick question.
Captain Lyman looked first at Priscilla, then at Jack, and lastly at Mr. Liscomb. He seemed not to understand quite why he had been asked that question, but as it had been asked, he was ready to reply to any other that might be put to him. But no one seemed to have a question ready.
It was Mr. Liscomb who broke the silence. He looked up from the newspaper which he had been reading and said:
“Captain Lyman, I should like to ask you how it came that you allowed that report of the man’s being drowned to be published in the papers when you were aware of his being alive, and why you allowed him to be written about as a hero when you knew from the first that he had cast off the line, leaving you and your shipmates to your fate, as you say in this letter? That’s a question which people will be pretty sure to ask, and you may as well be prepared for it.”
“I’m quite prepared for it, sir,” replied Lyman. “I cooked the report for the benefit of my sister, who was—but it’s a long story, sir, and there’s not much in it that you haven’t heard before, of a woman without wisdom and a man without a conscience.”
“It’s the oldest story in the world—and the newest; but every variation of it is interesting—in fact, nobody cares about any other sort of story,” said Mr. Liscomb.
“I’ll cut this particular variation as short as I can,” said the mariner. “I have a sister, and she fell in love with Blaydon, it must be six years ago. There was no reason why they should not have married, for he had a good billet and she had a trifle of her own; but the marriage didn’t come off, and the man behaved badly—she told me so when I returned after a voyage—if I had been at home I’d ha’ taken damgood care that the marriage did come off. But it didn’t, and the next I hear is that he has borrowed money from her and cleared off. It was near about three years before I got wind of him, for you see I’d been knocking about the world, first in one ship and then in another. I had put into Sunderland in the barque Kingsdale, and there I found a letter waiting for me from my sister, telling me that the man was in gaol but would be out in a week or two, and that I was to write to him and then wait for him at the prison gate, and not lose sight of him until I brought him to her. I was able to do what she told me, for the barque was in the graving-dock for a month. I met him the moment he got his freedom, and we sailed the next day. He wasn’t very willing to come with me, but he never said a word about having been married the year before until we were pretty far out of soundings, and then he showed me the paper with accounts of his arrest outside the church, and of his trial, when he was let off light by reason of the jawing of the lawyer about the poor young wife that was waiting for him to turn his erring feet into the straight path, et cetera—you know the sort of stuff lawyers talk, sir!”
“I do—I do; I do it myself,” said Mr. Liscomb. “Never mind the lawyers and their tricks; go on with your story.”
“I ask your pardon, sir. Well, of course, when I saw that he was married already I had no further use for him. All I could do was to give him a sound hiding with a rope’s end; and a sounder one man never got, though I say it that shouldn’t.”
“We’ll pardon your boast, Captain,” said Mr. Liscomb.