Since then at an uncertain hour
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
The heart within me burns.
* * * *
That moment that his face I see
I know the man that must hear me;
To him my tale I teach."
"I am the man," said she, "with a woman's curiosity. How can I help but listen?"
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The mariner hath his will.
The wedding-guest sat on a stone,
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
That bright-eyed mariner.
"Do you remember how we read and re-read it on the Arrow years ago? Somehow it has rung in my ears ever since, Honora. My life had a horror like it. Had it not passed I could not speak of it even to you. Long ago I was an innocent fool whom men knew in the neighborhood of Cambridge as Horace Endicott. I was an orphan, without guides, or real friends. I felt no need of them, for was I not rich, and happily married? Good nature and luck had carried me along lazily like that pine-stick floating down there. What a banging it would get on this rocky shore if a good south wind sprang up. For a long time I escaped the winds. When they came.... I'll tell you who I was and what she was. Do you remember on the Arrow Captain Curran's story of Tom Jones?"
He looked up at her interested face, and saw the violet eyes widen with sudden horror.
"I remember," she cried with astonishment and pain. "You, Arthur, you the victim of that shameful story?"
"Do you remember what you said then, Honora, when Curran declared he would one day find Tom Jones?"
She knew by the softness of his speech that her saying had penetrated the lad's heart, and had been treasured till this day, would be treasured forever.
"And you were sitting there, in the cabin, not ten feet off, listening to him and me?" she said with a gasp of pleasure.
"'You will never find him, Captain Curran ... that fearful woman shattered his very soul ... I know the sort of man he was ... he will never go back ... if he can bear to live, it will be because in his obscurity God gave him new faith and hope in human nature, and in the woman's part of it.' Those are your words, Honora."