“Why, Brian is our great friend—my cousin, you know. He’s known ’Linda a long time.”
The shoemaker did not reply for some minutes; he sat, with his arm drawn round the child and his head bent, muttering to himself. Then presently, with a sigh, he withdrew his arm and took up his work, and began hammering again steadily, as though no one were near him. After waiting for a few moments, Comethup drew nearer to the bench; and ’Linda scrambled down and put her hand in his, and prepared to go with them. Comethup politely wished the shoemaker “Good-day”; but he kept on steadily at his work, and did not appear to hear. The three children went out together, and down the little narrow street. Comethup, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment, saw that the shoemaker had come to the door of his shop, and was standing there, with one hand shading his eyes, looking after them.
Nor did his distrust of Brian appear to leave him. Absurd as it may seem, when the object of that dislike was so young a boy, the old man’s feelings were not to be mistaken. He maintained a rigid silence whenever Brian came near him, even watched him suspiciously; and although the boy, conscious of it, tried every art and charm he possessed to ingratiate himself with the shoemaker, he signally failed. His boisterousness and high spirits were useless here. Medmer Theed, like most distorted characters, was evidently as strong in his dislikes as in his likes, however unreasonable the former might be.
Nearly a year had slipped by since the sudden journey of Brian and his father to London—a year of uneventful things, during which Comethup plodded steadily on with his elementary studies with the captain, and made, according to that gentleman’s glowing accounts to David Willis, considerable progress. David Willis, in his talks with the captain, was full of vague schemes for the boy’s future—schools he should attend, and the prizes he should gain, and the brilliant things he should do generally. The two men nodded heads over him on winter evenings long after he was asleep, the captain taking as much as, if not more, personal pride in his achievements than the father. David Willis had, of course, made up his mind that the boy must be a musician; it was the one profession in the world, and there were great prizes in it—prizes which David himself had never been able to clutch, but which would lie easily within the reach of his son. The captain said nothing on that point, but shook his head in secret as he walked home through the frosty streets; there was but one profession in his mind for Comethup, and he—the captain—had already sown the seeds which should make for an abundant harvest in it. Comethup Willis should yet shine in the annals of his country as a greater soldier than the captain had ever been, and should be able to point with pride to the man who had first given him a lesson in military tactics. The captain did not see quite clearly how it was all to be managed; but Fate is good in the case of such a wonderful boy as Comethup, and things could be done somehow. At all events, there was plenty of time yet.
So another summer came round again, with its promise of a renewal of all the old delights, and Comethup was eight years old. Not a great age, certainly, save to the mind of a little child; but Comethup was older than his years, and looked on life, perhaps, with graver eyes than most. Nothing seemed to have changed in his small world; the captain looked exactly the same as of old, and carried himself as stiffly erect as ever. ’Linda had grown, but not to an extent to be marked by one who saw her almost daily. Then suddenly into Comethup’s quiet life came a great and terrible change.
One summer Sunday morning he was waiting as usual for the captain at the door of his father’s cottage. The bells above him were ringing for church, and he was expecting every moment that his father would pass him, as usual, with his books under his arm, and a kindly word for the child on his lips, on his way into the church. But this morning, although he could see at the far end of the sunlit street the figure of the captain marching toward him, he had seen nothing of his father; and the bell above him had started that slow, dull tolling which gave warning that it would stop in a few moments. Fearing that something might have delayed his father, or that he might—although that seemed impossible—have forgotten the time, he turned, and ran up the stairs to his father’s room. It was a small room near his own; the big best bedroom in which he had been born and in which his mother had died, was never used, and was always kept scrupulously clean and neat behind its closed door.
But David Willis was not in his room, and Comethup, a little vaguely frightened, was coming down again, when he saw that the door of the unused room stood slightly open. He paused, and then drew near and peeped in. In the semi-darkness—for the blinds were always drawn there—he saw his father kneeling beside the great bed, with his arms stretched out upon it, and his head buried between them; he seemed to be praying. Ashamed even at the thought of prying at such a moment, Comethup stole gently down the stairs, turned at the foot of them, and called loudly to his father, for the bell had stopped ringing now, and the captain was standing, watch in hand, in the cottage doorway.
He heard a movement above him, and his father came hurriedly down the stairs. He looked dazed, and something glistened about his eyes like tears; but Comethup had never seen a man cry, and did not believe that they could, and therefore dismissed that suggestion as impossible.
“I—I had quite forgotten,” said David Willis, glancing with a smile at the captain. “And the bell has stopped. I must hurry.” He went past them at a run, and Comethup and the captain quickly followed.
Late though he was, he paused for a moment at the church door and looked away across the little graveyard to the mound which Comethup had seen him decorate so often with flowers from his dead wife’s garden; then, remembering himself, he hurried into the church. The captain and Comethup crept in noiselessly by their own door and got into their places. They heard the first wheezy sounds of the organ above them, and then the first notes of the voluntary; then, even while the congregation were rising to their feet, the organ stopped abruptly, dying away on a long, thin note like a wail.