The abrupt old captain was as gentle as a woman with the child; busied himself to mix milk and water for him, and to spread jam on bread. It was only toward the end of the meal that Comethup suddenly remembered the chief adventure of the afternoon; that he had left the safe line which bounded his daily life, and was with strangers in an altogether different world. Even the possession of the puppy could not wholly console him; his lips began to quiver, and it was with some difficulty that he made the captain understand. The captain assured him, with much earnestness, that he knew the garden where the roses were, and that he knew Comethup’s father, and the little maid, and the church, and everything. Comethup was comforted, and the strange spectacle was presented to the town, about half an hour later, of Captain Garraway-Kyle, as closely buttoned as ever, and with his hat a little more fiercely tilted than usual, holding Comethup by the hand, on the way to David Willis’s house; Comethup, for his part, clutching the puppy with difficulty but with determination.
CHAPTER III.
THE GHOST OF A LITTLE CHILD.
That was but the first of many walks and talks with Captain Garraway-Kyle. Comethup grew to look upon him as something very fine and very splendid; learned from him, too, a very fine and very splendid morality, which his dreamy father, for all the beauty of his character, could scarcely have taught him. In those early days everything had, of necessity, to pass the strong test of the captain’s frown or approving nod; each action was court-martialled, as it were, and approved or utterly rejected, as the case might be. There was no dividing line with the captain; he had lived by stern rules all his life, and a thing was either perfectly right or it was perfectly wrong. Comethup’s friendship with the captain was probably the best thing that ever happened for him; he grew up, under the old man’s guidance, a pure and sweet and wholesome little fellow, with a soul as clear as crystal.
From the captain’s standpoint, also, the friendship was a good thing. The old man bore himself as erectly as he had ever done; only to Comethup he relaxed somewhat the hard and unbending set of laws which hitherto had governed his days. The stern old face broke up into something of tenderness at the sight of the child; he prepared, out of his scanty means, little treats and relishes for the boy’s entertainment. David Willis he never quite understood; saw in him something out of the normal—a creature sent into the world, he sincerely trusted, for some good purpose; only the captain had not been able to make up his mind what that purpose was. The captain liked him, even pitied him a little, as he had pitied him on the first night of their meeting; but the man was beyond his range of vision. When, in church sometimes, he heard the organ pealing out above him, he would glance round at the child (for Comethup came in time to occupy a seat in the captain’s pew), and a little curious look of anxiety would gather on his brow and settle there—anxiety as to what the boy would do in the years that were coming to him, and how his father would help to equip him for the world. But, for the most part, the captain was willing to let the happy present time go on, grateful that, in the last of his years, this little child should have come to sweeten them.
Great excursions were planned in those early days of Comethup’s life. It was a wonderful thing to see Comethup do what no other living creature in the town dared do so boldly—open the gate of the captain’s garden, and march straight up the trim little path which led to the front door of the house. He had been taught, when an expedition was afoot, to be punctual to the minute; and he always found the captain coming out of the cottage as he reached it, glancing generally at his watch with a quick nod of approval. Then would the captain, with hat a-tilt and cane swinging, and with pride in his heart, sally forth with Comethup to make new discoveries on a prearranged plan. For the old town, which had once been a mere resting-place for the captain’s declining years, took on a new aspect, when viewed through the eyes of this child.
It was an old town—a beautiful old town; the captain read up a complete history of it, and proved—to Comethup’s entire satisfaction as well as to his own—that something extraordinary had happened in nearly every house it contained. It had been a town of great deeds; had once touched the sea, and had helped to defend that part of the coast line during some of the country’s stormiest times. The sea had long since retreated, and left the little place lying high and dry, to sleep in peace, and dream about its deeds.
It had been a walled town, too; indeed, the old wall still remained, only that, in the very place and beauty of less stirring times, the wall had become a mere grass-grown bank, with flowers and shrubs growing all about it. But here the captain was in his element; he could point out how the town would be attacked from this direction, or how an invading force would come from there; would draw sketches in the gravel with the point of his cane to illustrate exactly how he would have defended it, had he been alive in those times, and how he would have made it absolutely impregnable. Comethup, gazing at him with delighted eyes, came to believe that he was absolutely the greatest general and master of the art of war that had ever existed, instead of a poor little half-pay captain whose name had never been heard of.
There was a quiet and sleepy little river, too, which ran just outside the town under a stone bridge; and the captain used to lean over the parapet of the bridge, on sunny afternoons, while Comethup sat on the stonework beside him, and they used to fish for the bright, gleaming, darting little creatures in the river below. They very rarely caught anything: it was a great event when they did; but the captain used to explain exactly how various kinds of fishing could be accomplished with the minimum of ease and the maximum of success. The captain always seemed to know how to tell one the best way of doing a variety of clever things, but he never seemed to have accomplished very much in a practical sense; Comethup used to think sadly, in after years, that if the captain had only been able to do half the things he could tell other people how to do, he might have been a general at the very least, with his breast ablaze of medals and orders. But Comethup loved him devotedly, just as he was, and would not have had him changed for the wide world.