And to-morrow was to end it; to-morrow the last farewells must be said, and he would go away, appropriately enough, with the captain. It had been arranged that he was to stay for a week with the captain in the place of his birth before going on to London to join his aunt; after that the plans for him were indefinite.
Curiously enough, during all the years of his school life he had never once visited the old town; something had always occurred to prevent his doing so. It was but a few miles distant from the sea; but the captain had visited him so frequently, and was always to be expected on half-holidays; and his own holidays were spent, from start to finish, with his aunt in London, so that he really had had no opportunity of going back to the old place. But now the captain had begged him to spend a week at his cottage, and Comethup, after consulting Miss Carlaw, had gladly accepted.
The boy had heard frequently, through the captain, of the welfare of those in whom he was interested. Not having seen them since he had been a child himself, it was difficult to realize that changes could have taken place, or that others, as well as himself, must have grown older. He thought of ’Linda still as a little child wandering in the garden among the drifting leaves and under the whispering trees; saw Medmer Theed, the shoemaker, hammering away at his work, without an additional wrinkle; was forced to believe, in a vague fashion, that Brian must have grown, because he himself had grown, and Brian was certainly older. The captain had shaken his head more than once at the mention of Brian’s name, and hinted that father and son did not pull well together.
“Not the lad’s fault, you know, Comethup,” he had said, “although I never liked the boy. But Robert Carlaw ought never to have been a father—ought never to have been anything, for the matter of that. And yet the boy’s clever, I’m told; but it’s a cleverness, an infernal smartness, I don’t like.”
The afternoon wore away, and Comethup was roused from his reverie by the clanging of the bell summoning the boys to roll-call. He got up lazily and stretched himself, and suddenly saw a small boy standing before him, panting and eager.
“Willis, there’s some one to see you.”
“See me? Where?” He thought at first that it might be the captain, who had not been able to wait longer, in his eagerness for the morrow.
“Out by the gate there,” said the small boy, pointing behind him. “A man—a young man. Asked me to find you.”
“All right,” cried Comethup, and went leaping and striding toward the gate. There seemed to be no one there at first, until he went out a pace or two into the road; and there, leaning easily with his back against the wall, was a young man smoking a cigarette. “Did you want to see——” began Comethup; and then, as the young man turned quickly, the boy stopped, and looked at him with a puzzled expression for a moment; as the other smiled and threw back his head, Comethup gasped out, “Why—it’s Brian!”
Brian nodded, and stepped forward and shook Comethup by the hand. It was the first time they had met since Comethup had left the old place with his aunt; yet there were things about this tall, handsome fellow of eighteen that were the things he had known in the Brian who had been a child. It was the same smile that broke over his face suddenly, like light; the dark eyes, that seemed to see so much farther and so much more than any other eyes; the brown hair, waving back from his forehead, and worn rather long; the slightly swaggering fashion of carrying himself—the fashion which his father had carried to an excess. There were, besides all this, a carelessness of dress and a recklessness of manner that seemed to be a part of his natural growth, too.