The room in which they found themselves was so very dark that for a moment those unused to it would not have noticed that it had any light in it at all, or any occupant. But, far away in one corner of it, Comethup saw a little round gleam of light, which reminded him of the gleam of lanterns he had seen men carry on country roads on winter nights, and, close beside the gleam, watching them intently and frowningly, a face. Even before the lips parted, and the harsh voice spoke, Comethup had that face indelibly impressed upon his mind, to haunt him long afterward, in its curious detached circle of light, while he lay in his bed under his father’s roof.
It was a stern, strong, forbidding face—a face of hard lines and straight firmnesses, without a single tender curve or hollow about it, to proclaim that there was any softness in the man to whom it belonged. The patch of light showed a great, high forehead, from which the hair had long been pushed back and pushed off by impatient hands; beneath this, straight black eyebrows almost meeting, and, under them, eyes as cold and piercing as steel in moonlight. The man, as he sat, was literally hemmed in by books; as the light of the candle carried by Mrs. Blissett penetrated farther through the shadows, Comethup saw that there were piles of books all about his feet, and about the legs of the desk at which he sat; the desk itself was loaded with them, and staggering heaps of them leaned against the wall and perched perilously on chairs and other articles of furniture. In the silence which followed their entry, while the man looked at them from beside his little shaded reading-lamp, Comethup could distinctly hear the heavy, agitated breathing of Mrs. Blissett.
“Well, what’s this, what’s this? What has happened? What do you all want? Can’t you speak? Is the house on fire?” All these questions were rapidly jerked out in harsh, impatient tones, with a little querulous note at the end of each, like the fretful tones of a child.
Mrs. Blissett was eagerly commencing a voluble reply which should excuse her own delinquencies, when the captain stepped forward, with the child still easily resting on his arm, bent his head stiffly and spoke.
“Sir, I ask your pardon for intruding at such an hour, but I am a blunt man, trained all my life to prompt action. I found this mite—this baby—wandering in the grounds outside this house, drenched to the skin, and crying as it hurts a man to hear a child cry. I understood that she lived here, and had been shut out in the rain by this woman” (the captain indicated the trembling Mrs. Blissett with a jerk of his head). “So I brought her in.” The captain stepped forward a little, and uncovered the face of the child; she was sleeping peacefully, with her head against his breast.
The man did not reply; he got up abruptly from his desk, kicking over some of the piles of books about his feet as he moved, and began striding up and down that end of the room, with something of the appearance of a hunted animal, turning his face furtively toward them as he turned in his walk, yet keeping always at the greatest possible distance away. As he came to the desk once or twice, and fumbled nervously among the papers and books upon it, Comethup was able to see that his dress was very unkempt and shabby, and stained as a man might stain it who read during hurriedly snatched meals, and was careless how he ate. He spoke at last, in the same querulous voice; he spoke like a man labouring under the lash of some secret trouble, and yet desirous of putting himself right with the world. These people might have been sternly arrayed against him, so strongly and petulantly did he offer his excuses.
“I don’t know you, sir; I have no desire to know you. There is an old adage which says something about fools stepping in where angels fear to tread. What if the child was in the rain? What if every living creature that bears the brand of her sex wandered homeless and outcast to-night? Would the world be the poorer? Would any single thing that affects its progress, or its virtue, or its beauty, if you will have it so, be changed or stand still? This woman”—he fiercely indicated Mrs. Blissett—“was given a certain duty, and, like all of her class, having received payment for it, she neglects to perform it. Don’t you know enough of the world yet, or where have you been living all your days, that you don’t know that?” Then, with a certain sudden jealousy, he made a movement toward the captain, and asked, “What do you want with the child? How does she concern you?”
The captain’s arm tightened a little round the sleeping child. “I do you the justice to suppose, sir, that, in spite of what you have said, even you would not leave a baby out of doors on such a night as this,” he said.
“Well, well, who said I should? But there are more important things in the world than children; I have work to do here, and have no time to give to the guardianship of babies.”
“She is your child?” said the captain. “I have already heard how the mite wanders round this place at night, lonely and neglected. Is there no one to care for her?”