Bennydeck answered, earnestly and eagerly: “Do it at once!”
They left the house together—one to go to Sydney’s lodgings, the other on his way to Mr. Sarrazin’s office.
Chapter LIV. Let Bygones Be Bygones.
When the servant at the lodgings announced a visitor, and mentioned his name, Sydney’s memory (instead of dwelling on the recollection of the Captain’s kindness) perversely recalled the letter that she had addressed to him, and reminded her that she stood in need of indulgence, which even so good a man might hesitate to grant. Bennydeck’s first words told the friendless girl that her fears had wronged him.
“My dear, how like your father you are! You have his eyes and his smile; I can’t tell you how pleasantly you remind me of my dear old friend.” He took her hand, and kissed her as he might have kissed a daughter of his own. “Do you remember me at home, Sydney, when you were a child? No: you must have been too young for that.”
She was deeply touched. In faint trembling tones she said; “I remember your name; my poor father often spoke of you.”
A man who feels true sympathy is never in danger of mistaking his way to a woman’s heart, when that woman has suffered. Bennydeck consoled, interested, charmed Sydney, by still speaking of the bygone days at home.
“I well remember how fond your father was of you, and what a bright little girl you were,” the Captain went on. “You have forgotten, I dare say, the old-fashioned sea-songs that he used to be so fond of teaching you. It was the strangest and prettiest contrast, to hear your small piping child’s voice singing of storms and shipwrecks, and thunder and lightning, and reefing sails in cold and darkness, without the least idea of what it all meant. Your mother was strict in those days; you never amused her as you used to amuse your father and me. When she caught you searching my pockets for sweetmeats, she accused me of destroying your digestion before you were five years old. I went on spoiling it, for all that. The last time I saw you, my child, your father was singing ‘The Mariners of England,’ and you were on his knee trying to sing with him. You must have often wondered why you never saw anything more of me. Did you think I had forgotten you?”
“I am quite sure I never thought that!”