“To-night,” he muttered.
“Well, you talked with her, I suppose?”
“Yes. Oh, forgive me; it didn’t seem to matter so much before, but now——”
“Is she happy?” asked the old woman.
“Yes, she seems very happy.”
“That’s well; that’s better than I expected. Come, boy, I don’t want to preach to you; I am something of a blundering old sinner myself—I’m the last person to preach to any one. But I know something of what life is, and I’ve learned the best way to get through it. I suppose you’ll be bound to meet her sometimes; that’s the sort of devilish game Fate plays with us. The things we most want to see are kept out of our sight, and those we would be glad to avoid are thrust under our very noses. But don’t see her more than you can help, and try to think—it’s a bit hard to do so, I admit—but try to think that the world holds something else than one woman, and something better than dreams and regrets. Face it, boy. Move about and see people and interest yourself in other matters. I won’t do you the injustice to say that you will be able to forget; I’m afraid you won’t do that. But at least you’ll grow to look at the matter in a different way, and to think it wasn’t so bad after all; I’m quite sure you will.”
They paced up and down the room together for a little time longer, Miss Carlaw occasionally drawing his hand up to her lips or against her cheek, and sometimes softly crooning a few bars of an old song, as though to a child in pain or trouble. Presently, quite briskly, she took him by the shoulders, and drew his head down that she might kiss him, and felt her way out of the room. And, after a time, he crept to bed and slept more soundly than he had hoped to do.
A couple of days after that he went down to see the captain. It was his first visit since the night of ’Linda’s flight, and he almost feared on his journey down that the captain might refer to the matter in some way and tear wider the old wound. But he might have known the little gentleman better, for no word was said on the subject during the whole of his stay, which lasted some days. With a melancholy desire, however to reopen the wound himself, Comethup let his feet stray one night, soon after his arrival in the old town, toward the neglected garden of the house in which she had lived—it seemed so much easier to think there, even to think calmly, than in any other place.
There seemed always to be dead and drifting leaves in that garden, at whatever time of the year; a different atmosphere was there from that found anywhere else. He walked all round the house, lingering among the trees, as he had lingered when a boy, almost thinking he saw sometimes the flutter of her childish frock going on before him. The place seemed deserted; not a light gleamed from any window.
At last he became conscious that there really was some one moving before him in the garden, flitting about among the trees, gliding into shadows, and keeping as much as possible out of sight. The place had seemed ghostly enough before, but now a little chill fear crept into his heart and stopped his feet; immediately the movement among the trees ceased also.