"I know very well who you are, Captain Morgan: a distinguished officer, though people have not found it out here. If you can lend Miss Vernon substantial help I advise you to do it at once."
Captain Morgan drew back a little: he gave Hester a pathetic glance. They retired slowly with lingering steps from the vicinity of Vernon's. They understood all without knowing anything.
"There is the bitterness of having nothing," said the old captain, "and that man knew it, Hester. I would coin myself if I could, for her, and yet I cannot help her." Neither of them knew about business, nor how men like Mr. Merridew, who had been listening all day long to Catherine's explanations and arguments without being moved, could save the bank still if they would. But they felt in their hearts the dull opposition of his face, the shake of his head, the nature of his advice to one whom he knew to be a poor man, to help her now. "Money is a wonderful thing," said Captain Morgan; "it can do so much and yet so little. If you or I were rich as we are poor, we could make Catherine think for half an hour that she had surmounted everything."
"Why for half an hour, Captain Morgan?" said Hester.
"Because, my dear, at the end of that time Vernon's being safe, there would come back upon her that from which neither heaven nor earth can deliver her."
"Oh, Captain Morgan, do not say so. Cannot Heaven, cannot God, deliver from everything?" cried Hester, with a sense of horror.
"Ay, in a way that He uses always at the end—by death. At least we think death will do that for us; but it is only a guess even then. How otherwise?" said the old man, raising his dim old eyes beneath their heavy lids. "What is done cannot be undone. If the boy were to be touched with compunction too late and come back, even that would not restore the past."
"Why not?" she said, "why not? We could forgive him." It was the first acknowledgment she had made of any share in the catastrophe.
"Forgive him! You speak as if that could change anything! What is your forgiveness? You seem to think it is a thing, not so many words." Then after they had gone a little while in silence the old man burst forth again. "You could forgive him! A man wants not forgiveness, but to make up for his sins. You think it is like giving him a fortune to give him your pardon, as if he could set up again, and make a new beginning upon that. Forgiveness may save a man's soul, but it does not save his honour or his life. You could have him back and let him live upon you, and eat out your hearts with his baseness trying to make it show like virtue. But Catherine is too noble a creature for that," cried the old captain. "Thank God she has never been broken down to that."