“Well, come and dine with me to-night—all alone.” And Tom did.
CHAPTER XVII.
IN A FOOL’S PARADISE.
“The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows fu’ weel;
And mickle lighter is the boat
When love bears up the creel.”—Old Song.
the interests of truth, I have now to record that my hero, Captain Jack Mackenzie, formed one of the most ridiculous resolutions any young man could have been guilty of making. It is all very well building castles in the air—indeed, it is rather a pretty pastime than otherwise, and may at times be productive of good; but when it comes to building for one’s self, willingly and with wide-open eyes, a whole paradise—fool’s, of course—and quietly taking up one’s abode therein, the absurdity of the speculation must be apparent to every one.
But this is just what our Jack now set about doing. For many a long month back he had worked and slaved, and fought battles, and sailed his ship, and did all he could, it must be confessed, to make everybody around him happy, while a load of sorrow, which felt as big as a bag of shrapnel or a kedge anchor, lay at his own heart. He now determined to get rid of this incubus, to leave it, or creep out from under it somehow. During all these months he had tried, and tried hard, to forget his lost love Gerty, but all in vain. Trying to forget her made matters infinitely worse, so now he meant to indulge himself in the sweet belief that she still was his, still loved him; that there was no such individual in the world as silly old Sir Digby; and that he, Jack, had only to go home, if it pleased Heaven to spare him, and claim the dear girl as his wife.
He certainly did not mean to force himself to think about her, only he would do nothing to impede the flow of happy thoughts whenever they showed a tendency to come stealing over his soul. These are his own words, spoken to himself in the privacy of his state-room. And between you and me and the binnacle, reader, not to let it go any further, I believe it was poor Mary’s letter, with its “dear luv” and its “sweet kisses,” that was at the bottom of Jack’s resolve. For had she not written, as plain as quill can write, the magical sentence, “Yes, missus misses you; so do I”? It didn’t matter a spoonful of tar about the “so do I,” but there was the “missus misses you.” Ah! it was around these simple, euphonious words that hope hung like a garland of forget-me-not. Why did missus miss him? Mary wouldn’t have said that missus missed him if missus didn’t. So ran Jack’s thoughts as he walked up and down the floor of his cabin. No, Mary wasn’t a girl of that sort. Missus missed him, and there was an end of it. Missus missed him, ergo missus must sometimes think about him, and upon this belief he meant to hinge his happiness. Missus must—