“I wasn’t born in these parts—it doesn’t matter where I came from; some might call me a rough and common man, working at a dirty trade. Yet time was when I read and talked and held my own with men who’d been to school and college. Many and many a night I’ve laid awake reading and thinking and working—trying, as men say, to better myself. And what has it all brought me?” He threw out his arms with a passionate gesture and without raising his head, and let them fall at his sides again.
The captain was silent, wondering what was coming, seeing in the man’s attitude and in his voice some long, pent-up story, and wondering, in his simple fashion, why the man should have chosen him to hear the tale.
“My life was not all work and book-learning. I married. Looking at me now, any man might say I am a hard and bitter creature; but I was the happiest in the world then. We had a child—a baby girl—the fairest, sweetest thing that ever came straight out of God’s arms.”
He sprang up with a cry and waved his arms fiercely above his head. “Straight out of God’s arms!” he cried, in a loud voice. “Let any man deny that she has gone straight back into them!”
“She is dead, then?” said the captain softly.
The man dropped his arms and stared about him for a moment helplessly. “Yes, but that happened long after. I can remember her now, as a tiny child, coming into the room where I worked and climbing on the bench beside me, and prattling to me in her baby fashion—music sweeter than any other that a man hears. I wish”—he had begun to roam restlessly up and down the place, swinging his arms as he went—“I wish it might have been possible for her to remain like that forever. But, of course, that wasn’t to be. She grew up, and I was proud of her and proud to think that she belonged to me and held me dearer than any one else. Then into our paradise came the man—as the man always comes. I think he must have loved her—at first, at least; she was so good and beautiful and pure that no man could pass her by and look into her eyes without loving her. And then—oh, ages ago; I’ve forgotten when it was—she went away, and wrote me a letter saying that she had gone with him and that she would never forget me, and that some day she would come back with him, and that we were all to be happy together.”
The captain’s elbow was resting on his knee and his head was propped on his hand, so that the hand shaded his eyes. The shoemaker went on, in a dull, heavy voice. He had clearly forgotten that he had a listener.
“I tried to find him, tried everywhere. I watched for her, night after night, until they said that want of sleep and care and sorrow had driven me ill. It was then I first began to dream; I have dreamed ever since. And when at last I was better, and was able to get again to my work, her mother was gone; they did not tell me where at first, but afterward I learned that she had died, and I was completely alone. I came here then; it was a place where no one knew me, and none could ask questions. And here, two years ago, a letter followed me, written by the man, and saying that she was dead. That is the hardest thing of all—that she died in some strange land, far over the seas; and I can not even know where she lies buried, or where she sleeps, or whether the sun shines on her grave. It doesn’t matter—it doesn’t matter.”
The captain raised his head and looked at him. “Perhaps she was happy in her new life; perhaps——”
The man broke in upon the words fiercely. “She died in shame and want and misery. The man had tired of his plaything; in his cold and brutal letter he told me that they had not agreed, and that he had deemed it wiser to part from her. He begged of me to believe”—the scorn in the old man’s voice as he flung out his arm passionately was terrible—“that he would have married her had it been possible; he was sorry for her death.”