“I try to. But I—I can’t even read decently, and it takes the dickens of a long time.”
“Can’t read!” cried Carl.
“Well, not enough to boast of. I never went to school in my life. A long time ago my mother or somebody must have taught me something, and then I picked up what I could here and there. There was an old fellow I knew years ago,—he was a passenger on a little coast trading vessel—we were going from Marseilles down to the south of Italy, and on the voyage, which was pretty slow,—because we sometimes stayed for two or three days at different ports,—he taught me a few things. And then I learned to read French pretty well, and a little Italian, and a young Englishman—a college fellow, who’d given up studying for the ministry and run away to sea—even taught me some Latin, though what under Heaven he thought I’d do with it I don’t know. He was a funny one,” said Paul, chuckling reminiscently, “a thin little chap, with a long nose. He used to say that every gentleman should have a knowledge of the classics, and you’d see him washing the deck, with copy of some old Latin fellow’s poetry sticking out of his back pocket.”
“What did he go to sea for?” inquired Carl; for the first time he had deigned to listen to some of Paul’s adventures, and he found himself getting very much interested.
“I don’t know. His uncle was a lord or something—at least he told me so, and I daresay it was true. He said he was a younger son, though what that had to do with it I don’t know. Anyway it seemed to be an awfully important thing for me to remember. He wanted to make something of himself, he said. I told him he’d do better as—well, anything but a cabin boy, or deck hand or whatever he was. But he said he loved the sea—though he was just about the worst sailor I ever saw.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t remember. Oh, yes, I do. The poor little cuss died—got typhus or something and off he went. Bill Tyler told me about it. They buried him at sea.”
“Who was Bill Tyler?”
“Bill was—everything! He was an old bird—older than father. He’d done everything, seen everything—you never knew such a man! He couldn’t write his own name, but he was the canniest, drollest—and talk about strength! Next to father, I guess I liked him better than anyone on earth!” Paul’s face glowed, and he launched forth into an animated account of his friend’s virtues and exploits, urged on eagerly by Carl, who made him go on every time he stopped. There were no absurd exaggerations, a la Munchausen, in his tales that day. He was thinking only of amusing the sick, feeble boy, and making him forget his own dreary thoughts. Nor did he once reflect that it was this same boy who had told him so passionately that he “hated him, and always would.”
Elise appearing at the door with Carl’s tray stopped short at the sound of his laugh—the first spontaneous laugh she had heard from him in many a day.