The Idol of the Blind: A Novel

by Tom Gallon

The captain had a delightful new pupil that day. The three went out to the marshes beyond the town, and there, at Comethup’s modest suggestion, the captain assisted in the building of the forts and instructed ’Linda in the first principles of military tactics. She proved an apt and eager pupil, overleaping obstacles which appeared to present themselves to the slower mind of the captain, and showing a delightful sense of the fine art of strategy and a quickness of resource in a difficult situation, which elicited that gentleman’s warm approval. In the most natural and fearless fashion she walked back with them to the captain’s cottage and partook of the captain’s simple dinner, unconsciously and quickly taking a position in the small household which no one had dared to occupy before. She showed unbounded delight at the salute given by Homer, the captain’s man, and actually called him back into the room again and insisted on his repeating the performance in order that she might see exactly how it was done, making the blushing man do it very slowly indeed, that she might take in every turn and twist of his arm.

Comethup trembled a little, lest the captain should take offence; but the captain’s heart had been taken by storm, and he allowed the mite to rule him as completely as she appeared to rule others with whom she came in contact outside her father’s house. Finally, Comethup received instructions to take her back home in safety; and the two children set off hand in hand, the captain standing at the garden gate of his cottage to watch their departure. She had completed her conquest of that gallant warrior by seizing him by the lapels of his coat and drawing his head down in the most unexpected fashion and kissing him before she dashed out of the cottage with Comethup, whose salute to the captain was a mere undignified flying wave of the arm, in consequence of her haste.

At the big iron gates which led to her father’s house they saw the woman standing who had been in the garden on the previous day; she drew the child swiftly within the gates, and went down on her knees and held her close to her breast without a word. Comethup, embarrassed, stood looking on, not knowing whether to go or to stay; he felt, however, that the necessity of the situation compelled him to explain the child’s absence.

“We met ’Linda quite by accident,” he said, “the captain and I, and she has had dinner with the captain. I do assure you, ma’am”—he had got that phrase from the captain—“that she has been perfectly safe.”

“Oh, I am quite sure she has,” replied the woman, looking round at him with a smile. “And I am very grateful to the captain and to you.—Say ‘Good-night,’ ’Linda,” she added to the child.

Comethup was getting quite used to that rapturous hug with which ’Linda favoured her friends—was getting rather to like it. He lingered for a moment outside the gate, until the two figures had disappeared, and then sped away homeward, planning for to-morrow, and for many other morrows, in which the captain and ’Linda explored again with him the wonders of the old town and of the buried ramparts, and renewed acquaintance, for ’Linda’s sake, with all the strange things he had learned under the captain’s tuition.

It happened that night that the captain was restless and ill at ease. A man of simple tastes and simple habits, he had lived for some years in the old town, scarcely seeing any one but his man Homer before Comethup came into his life. It had cost him not a little to shake himself free from the stiff and rigid rules of life into which he had grown; but, led by Comethup’s persuasive hand, he had done so, and had, in a sense, renewed his lost youth in the child’s company. He was frightened a little now sometimes when he thought of what it would mean to him if, by any chance or change of circumstance, he lost the boy; he dared not contemplate the barren life he had been content to live for so long, nor think how empty it would be if he had to return to it.

And now, in the strangest fashion, this child had led him to another—had brought even a softer element into his life, and increased his responsibilities. The captain, in a gentle, foolish fashion, was proud of those responsibilities, and would not willingly have let them go. He might have argued with himself that the children had natural guardians who could look after them, and whose rights were greater than any he possessed; but he plumed himself with the idea that the children had turned to him, and relied upon him more completely than on any one else. As he paced about his little room in the dark, he seemed to feel again that baby’s arm round his neck and her soft, rounded face pressed to his hollow one; he thought of her sitting in the strange company of the old shoemaker; remembered, with a pang, the forlorn little figure he had first seen in the garden.

It all ended in a determination to see the shoemaker and to learn something more of him. He had visited him on one or two occasions when a specially delicate matter of repairing had to be explained and when the man Homer could scarcely have been intrusted with it, but beyond that he knew nothing of the man. The captain weighed the pros and cons of the matter carefully, and finally put on his hat and set out for the shoemaker’s house.