“Pray pardon me,” said that gentleman in a curiously subdued tone. “I have taken the liberty of following you for some distance; I was not quite sure as to your identity, and one does not care to accost a stranger in the street and meet with a rebuff.”
“You wish to see me?” asked the captain coldly.
“My dear sir,” replied the other, “I am in such a state of mind at the present moment that I really don’t know what I am doing or what I am saying. I have a dim notion that duty has brought me here, and the thought of duty has always been paramount with me. Sir”—he struck an attitude and slapped himself with one hand on the breast—“I am in a state verging on distraction!”
The captain looked at him critically; he almost thought for a moment that the man had been drinking. But he was still more astonished when he caught the gleam of tears in his faded eyes. “I fear you are in trouble,” said the captain gently.
“Trouble!” echoed the other. “I want a new word to describe my feelings, an entirely new word. My son could have found the word or the phrase, and my son is dead!”
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PLEADING OF THE CAPTAIN.
For a moment or two the captain stared at Robert Carlaw in astonishment. A hundred thoughts went dancing through his brain; he wondered if the death of Brian might have something to do with ’Linda’s flight back to the old place. While he was framing some question in his mind Mr. Carlaw broke out into a tempestuous explanation.
“Cut off—cut off—in what the world would term the midst of his sin; robbed of life in the very flower of his manhood and his strength! Yet what a life—and ye gods!—what a death! Even in that he was splendid; even in that he fills the public eye. It was the very death that the public would expect him to die; they’ll catch their breath when they read of it. Drowned—drowned on a moonlight night and with his arms about a woman! Drowned—and with twenty thousand a year in his arms! It’s magnificent!”