It was an unkind remark, but it only brought a puzzled look into his pathetic green eyes. It made Edmund writhe, however, but then Edmund deserved it.
“Between you and I, sir, I thought I was giving you a fair chance to find us out. I thought you must see through them books. You would have if you’d have looked through them. But you never did.”
“Captain Welfare, I might just as well give you a Greek testament to read. I told you so.”
“Well, I don’t know!”
“I know you don’t,” I snapped, for this meaningless exclamation always irritated me.
Captain Welfare looked so pained that I was sorry I had snapped. There was a real innocence about the man that made it almost impossible to keep him focussed in the mind as the old schemer he undoubtedly was. I was able to believe that in showing me his abominable faked accounts, he had actually been offering me a sporting opportunity of finding him out!
“Well, sir, I’ve told you the story now. I’ve acted bad and mean. I’ve not had the chance to know many real gentlemen in my life until I come to know your brother, and afterwards yourself. When I was a younger man, and come to understand what a gentleman was, and that I wasn’t one, and never could be, it was a distress to me. I always wanted to be with gentlemen, to work with them and for them. Well, I got my chance, and this is what I’ve made of it. I’ve brought your brother into all this here. I’ve brought him down, and I’ve treated you—well, the way I’ve told you. I know now I’m not fit to have dealings with gentlemen. I don’t mind admitting, sir, it’s a disappointment.”
There was a depth of sincerity in his crude confession that I think touched even Edmund. He continued to stare moodily out to sea. But it was evident he had been listening, and he made no gesture or sound of impatience.
“Captain Welfare,” I said, “I told my brother this morning I believed you were an honest man.”
“Sir, I thank you for it, though if you’ll pardon my saying so, I think you’d believe any mortal thing, as long as it wasn’t in the line of ordinary religion. Well, you know now I’m not an honest man, leastways I haven’t been, but since you have said that, sir, by God, I am! and will be, if I end my days in the fo’c’sle.”