"And as for looks—have you any fault to find with him, Jane?"
"No, none."
"Then, in God's name, why—" He checked himself. "Mr. Van Ness asked me to speak with you this afternoon. It's a very solemn matter, Jenny. It's for life. You know what I wish. Don't shove off your life's happiness for a prejudice of no more weight than so much fog. I think I'll lie down and sleep a while. Think the matter over. There he is outside. He wishes to talk to you of it now."
Jane lingered, tucked the cover over his feet again and again. She could not go out and talk to this man in cold blood of marriage. When she told him that it could not be, that she could not love him, what reason could she give? She had no reason. There was none. This husband waiting out on the gravel-path, and smiling in on her, was in every way admirable and lovable. But Bruno and old Dave were better comrades for her—nearer kinsfolk.
The captain opened his eyes drowsily: "You are going to read? That's right, Jenny."
She brought the book gladly, and Mr. Van Ness moved disappointed away. There were certain chapters in St. John which the old man himself had taught Jane. Her mother had little to do with the Bible, which she declared was full of Presbyterian bigotry, but the captain, who was at bottom a devout soul, had anxiously tried to give the child as soon as she could speak what he supposed to be the milk of the Word. Every day now she would hear him muttering to himself these passages from the Sermon on the Mount or in John's Gospel, and he would presently call on her to repeat them, explaining them to her as though she were still a child.
"We got away from the Master as we grew older, Jenny: that was the mistake," he said now, stroking her hair as she kneeled by the bed. "I ought to have kept you close by Him. But you see the patents and the other worries—It's all been so hurried—I've hardly begun fairly. But we'll try and do what's right now. There's plenty of time before us."
"Oh, father!" She buried her head on his breast.
"If I've done wrong to any man, I'd like to have his forgiveness and to make restitution. Restitution"—the captain said, talking into the vague space which widened slowly about him every day. Jane, holding his shaking old hand, groped, as every other human soul in pain does, to find this Master.
She had but little faith then: like all other feelings, it would probably come slowly into her slow nature and abide there. But could He come close as her father said? She was so utterly alone! She would be glad to make restitution, though the money had been her own, if that would please Him. But restitution to whom?