"You've got her, then, Arthur?" said the old man, as he reached the deck and stood looking about him.

"Yes, I've got her," answered his son. "That your kit, father? Sewell (to the chief mate), send a couple of hands to get that dunnage aboard. Come along below, father."

He tucked his arm into his father's and led him down. Mildly taking stock of the well-remembered surroundings, the old man noticed he was being taken to the Captain's state-room, and an impulse of gratitude moved him. But he was glad he did not speak of it when his son put aside the curtains at the door for him, and he saw that this was not to be his room. New chintzes took the place of his old leather cushions; a big photograph of Minnie stood on the lid of the chronometer case, and the broken-backed Admiralty guides, ocean directories and the rest were reinforced by a brigade of smartly bound novels.

"Sit down," said Arthur, "and make yourself at home till they get your dunnage in. I've put you in the spare cabin in the port alleyway; you'll find it nice and quiet there. How are you feeling, father? Would you care for a drink?"

"Yes, I'd like a tot," replied the old man. "Shall I ring for your steward?"

"Don't you trouble," said Arthur. "I've got it here." It was in the cupboard under the chronometer, a whole case of whisky. "I carry my own," explained the mate; "I don't believe in old Davis's taste in whisky. Help yourself, father."

"How is Minnie?" asked the old man as he set down his glass.

"She's all right," was the reply. "I wanted to tell you about that. We go into dry dock when we get back from this trip, and Minnie and I'll get married before I take her out again. Quick work, isn't it?"

The old Captain nodded; the young Captain smiled.

"You'll be bringing Minnie out for the trip, I suppose?" asked the elder.

"That's my idea," agreed Arthur.

"You're a lucky chap," said the old man slowly. He hesitated. "You've got your ship in hand, eh, Arthur?"

"I've got her down to a fine point," said Arthur emphatically. "You needn't bother about me, father. I know my job, and I don't need more teaching. I wish you'd get to understand that. You know Davis has bought the Stormberg?"

"I didn't know," said the old man with a sigh. "It don't matter to me, anyhow. I'd be reaching for the engine telegraph with my right hand as like as not. No, Arthur, I've done. I'll bother young officers no more."

The run home was an easy one, but it confirmed old Captain Price in his resolution to have done with the sea. Two or three times he fell about decks; a small roll, the commonplace movement of a well-driven steamship in a seaway shook him from his balance, and that missing arm, which always seemed to be there, let him down. He would reach for a stanchion with it to steady himself, and none of his falls served to cure him of the persistent delusion that he was not a cripple. He tried to pick things up with it, and let glasses and the like fall every day. The officers and engineers, men who had sailed with him at his ablest, saw his weakness quickly, and, with the ready tact that comes to efficient seafarers, never showed by increased deference or any sign that they were conscious of the change. It was only Arthur who went aside to make things easy for him, to cut his food for him at table, and so forth.

From Swansea he went home by train; Minnie and her kindly old father met him and made much of him. Old Davis was a man who had built up his own fortune, scraping tonnage together bit by bit, from the time when, as a captain, he had salved a crazy derelict and had her turned over to him by the underwriters in quittance of his claims. Now he owned a little fleet of good steamships of respectable burthen, and was an esteemed owner. He did not press the Stormberg on Captain Price. The two old men understood each other.

"I don't want her," Captain Price told him. "There's a time for nursin' tender engines and a time for scrappin' them. I'm for the scrap heap, David. I'm not the man I was. I don't put faith in myself no more. It's Arthur's turn now."

David Davis nodded. "Yes, then. Well, well, now! It's a pity, too, John. But you know what's best, to be sure. I don't want you to go without a ship while I've got a bottom afloat, but I don't want you to put the Stormberg to roost on the rocks of Lundy neither. So you wouldn't put faith in yourself no more!"

"No," said Captain Price, frowning reflectively "I wouldn't, and that's the truth." He was seated in a plush-covered arm-chair in Davis's parlour, and now he leaned forward. "It's this arm of mine. It isn't there, but I can't get rid of the feeling of it. I'm always reachin' for things with it. I'd be reachin' for the telegraph in a hurry, I make no doubt."

"That's funny," said Davis, in sympathy. "Well, then, you just stop visiting with me. I've no mind to be alone in the house when your Arthur's gone off with my Minnie. He'll push the Burdock back an' fore for us, and we'll sit ashore like gentlemen. He makes a good figure of a skipper, don't he, John?"

Old Captain Price sighed. "Aye, he looks well on the bridge," he said. "I hope he'll watch the ship, though; she's a big old tub to handle."

He saw the Burdock into dry dock and strolled down each day to look at her. Minnie and Arthur were busy with preparations for the wedding. But the girl found time to go down once with the old man, and he took her into the dock under the steamship.

"A big thing she looks from here," he said, half to himself.

The girl looked forward. Over them the bottom plates of the Burdock made a great sloping roof; her rolling chocks stood out like galleries. Her lines bulged heavily out, and the girl saw the immensity of the great fabric, the power of the tool her husband should wield.

"She's big, indeed," she answered. "Five thousand tons and forty lives in one man's hands. It's splendid, uncle. And Arthur," her voice softened pleasantly, "is the man."

The old Captain wheeled on her sharply. "Tons and lives!" he cried. "Tons and lives be damned! It's not for them she's been run to a thumb-span and tended like a sick baby. It's for the clean honesty of it, to do a captain's work like a wise captain and not soil a record. D'ye think I stump my bridge for forty-eight hours on end because of the underwriters and the deck hands? Not me, my girl, not me! It's my trade to lay her sweetly in Barcelona bay, and it's my honor to know my work and do it."

He seemed to shrug his shoulder. The girl could not know it was his right hand he flung up to the scarred steel plates above him.

"There's your Burdock," he said. "She's your dividend-grinder; she's my ship. And if I'd thought of no more than your five thousand tons and your forty lives, she'd not be where she is."

He held out his left hand, palm uppermost, and started and blinked when there came no smack of the right fist descending into it.

"There's me talking again," he said. "Never mind, Minnie dear, it's only your old uncle. Let's be back up town."

The wedding day was a Thursday. The ceremony was to take place in the chapel of which David Davis was a member; the subsequent festivities were arranged for at an hotel. It wag to be a notable affair, an epochmaker in the local shipping world, and when all was over there would be time for the newly-wedded to go aboard the Burdock and take her out on the tide. Old Captain Price, decorous in stiff black, drove to the church with his son in a two-horse brougham. Neither spoke a word till they were close to the chapel door. Then the old man burst out suddenly.

"For God's sake, Arthur boy, do the right thing by your ship."

Arthur Price was a little moved. "I will, father," he said. "Here's my hand on it." There was a pause. "Why don't you take my hand, father?" he asked.

"Eh?" The old man started. "I thought I'd took it, Arthur. I'll be going soft next. Here's the other hand for you."

The reception at the hotel and the breakfast there were notable affairs. Everybody who counted for anything with the hosts were there, and after a little preliminary formality and awkwardness the function grew to animation. The shipping folk of Cardiff know champagne less as a beverage than as a symbol, and there was plenty of it. Serious men became frivolous; David Davis made a speech in Welsh; Minnie glowed and blossomed; Arthur was everybody's friend. The old Captain, seated at the bottom of the table with an iron-clad matron on one side and a bored reporter on the other, watched him with a groan. The man who was to take the Burdock out of dock was drinking. Even one glass at such a time would have breached the old man's code; it was a crime against shipmastership. But Arthur, with his bride beside him, her brown eyes alight, her shoulder against his shoulder, had gone much further than the one glass. The exhilaration of the day dazzled him; a waiter with a bottle to refill his glass was ever at his shoulder. His voice rattled on untiringly; already the old man saw how the muscles or the jaw were slack and the eyes moved loosely. The young Captain hid a toast to respond to; he swayed as he stood up to speak, and his tongue stumbled on his consonants. The reporter on Captain Price's left offered him champagne at the moment.

"Take it away," rumbled the old man. "Swill it yourself."

The pressman nodded. "It is pretty shocking stuff," he agreed. "I'm going nap on the coffee myself."

It came to a finish at last. The bride went up to change, and old Captain Price took a cab to the docks. The Burdock was smart in new paint, and even the deck hands had been washed for the occasion.

"I'll go down with you a bit," he explained to Sewell, the chief mate. "The pilot'll bring me back. I suppose I can go up to the chart-house?"

"Of course, sir," said Sewell. "If you can't go where you like aboard of us, who can?"

The old man smiled. "That'll be for the Captain to say," he answered, and went up the ladder.

She was very smart, the old Burdock, and Arthur had made changes in the chart-house, but she had the same feel for her old Captain. Under her paint and frills, the steel of her structure was unaltered; the old engines would heave her along; the old seas conspire against her. Shift and bedeck and bedrape her as they might, she was yet the Burdock; her lights would run down the Channel with no new consciousness in their stare, and there was work and peril for men aboard of her as of old.

"Ah, father," said Arthur Price, as he came on the bridge. "Come to shee me chase her roun' the d-dock, eh?" Even as he spoke he tottered. "Damn shiip-pery deck, eh!" he said. "Well, you'll shee shome shteering, 'tanyrate."

He wiped his forehead and his cap fell off. The old man stooped hurriedly and picked it up for him.

"Brace up, Arthur," he said, in an urgent whisper, "an' let the pilot take her down the dock. For God's sake, don't run any risks."

"I'm Captain," said the younger man. "Aren't I Capt'n? Well, then, 'nough said!" He went to the bridge rail.

"All ready, Mish' Mate?" he demanded, and proceeded to get his moorings in.

The mud pilot came to the old Captain's side.

"Captain," he said, "that man's drunk."

The old man shuddered a little. "Don't make a noise," he said. "He— he was married to-day."

"Aye." The pilot shook his head. "You know me, Captain; it's not me that would give a son of yours away. But I can't let him bump her about. He isn't you at handling a steamship, and he's drunk."

The old Captain turned to him. "Help me out," he said. "Pilot, give me a help in this. I'll stand by him and handy to the telegraph. We'll get her through all right. There's that crowd on the dock"—he signed to the festive guests—"waiting to see him off, and we mustn't make a show of him. And his wife's aboard."

The pilot nodded shortly. "I'm willing."

Arthur, leaning on the rail, was cursing the dock boat at the buoy. The lock was waiting for them, and he lurched to the telegraph, slammed the handle over with a clatter and rang for steam. The pilot and the old man leaned quickly to the indicator; he had ordered full speed ahead.

"Stop her!" snapped the pilot as the decks beneath them pulsed to the awakening engines. Arthur's hand was yet on the handle, but the old man's grip on his wrist was firm, and the bell below clanged again. The young Captain wheeled on them furiously.

"Get off my brish," he shouted. "Down with you, th' pair of you." He made to advance on them, those two square old shipmen; he projected a general ruin; but his feet were not his own. He reeled against the rail.

"Port your helm!" commanded the pilot calmly. "Slow ahead!" Old Captain Price rang for him and they began to draw out. Ashore the wedding guests were a flutter of waving handkerchiefs and hats. They thanked God Minnie was not on the bridge. At the rail, Arthur lolled stupidly and seemed to be fighting down a nausea.

"Steady!" came the sure voice of the pilot. "Steady as you go! Stop her!"

Arthur Price slipped then and came to his knees. Ashore, the party was cheering.

"Up with you, Arthur," cried the old man in an agony. "Them people's looking. Stiffen up, my boy."

"Half speed ahead!" droned the pilot, never turning his head.

The old man rattled the handle over and stooped to his son.

"You can lie down when you turn her over to the mate," he said grimly. "Till then you'll stand up and show yourself, if your feet perish under you. I'll hold you."

They were drawing round a tier of big vessels, going cautiously, not with the speed and knife-edge accuracy with which the old man had been wont to take her out, but groping safely through the craft about them. Arthur swayed and smiled and slackened, his head nodding as though in response to the friends on the dock who never abated their farewell clamor. The grip on his arm held him up, for he had weakened on his drink, as excitable men will.

"Starboard!" ordered the pilot, and Captain Price half turned to pass the word. It was then that it happened. The drunken man pivoted where he stood and stumbled sideways, catching himself on the telegraph. The old man snatched him upright, for his knees were melting under him, and from below there came the clang of the bell. Arthur Price had pulled the handle over. Forthwith she quickened; she drove ahead for the stern of the ship she was being conned to clear; her prow was aimed at it, like a descending sword.

"Hard a-port!" roared the pilot, jumping back to bellow to the wheel. "Spin her round, sheer over with her!" The wheel engine set up its clatter; with a savage wrench the old Captain shook his son to steadiness for an instant and lifted his eyes to see the Burdock charging to disaster.

"Stop her!" cried the pilot. "Full astern!" Captain Price tightened his grip on his son's arm and reached for the handle with his other hand.

Clang! clang! went the deep-toned bell below, and swoosh went the reversed propeller. The pilot's orders rattled like hail on a roof; she came round, and old Captain Price had a glimpse of a knot of frantic men at the taff-rail of the ship they barely cleared. Then, slowly they wedged her into the lock-mouth and hauled in.

"Close thing!" said the pilot, panting a little.

The old man let his son lean against the rail, and turned-to him.

"P'raps not," he said. "Pilot, what did I ring them engines with?" The other stared. "I had a hold of him with this hand of mine; I reached for the handle with my—other—hand."

"But," the pilot was perplexed—"but, Captain, you ain't got no other hand.."

"No!" Captain Price shook his head. "But I rang the engines with it all the same. I rang the Burdock out of a bump with it; and—" he hesitated a moment and nodded his head sideways at the limp, lolling body of his son—"I rang his honor off the mud with it."

The pilot cleared his brow; he simply gave the matter up. "And what about now?" he asked. "He ain't fit to be trusted with her?"

"No," said Captain Price firmly. "He's going to retire from the sea; and till he does I'll sail as a passenger. And then I'll take the Burdock again. She don't care about that old spar of mine, the Burdock don't."



XV

THE WIDOWER

In the evening they sat together, John Morrison and his mother, with the curtains drawn, and the clear fire glowing on the red bricks of the fireplace. The old lady, after her custom, was prone to silence. Since Hilda's death she had said little, sparing the occasion the triviality of useless words. That afternoon she had ridden with her son to the funeral, holding him up with her strength, fortifying him with her courage. But now that his wife was gone for ever, and the pleasant house was overcast with its haunting emptiness, it seemed that her power was gone.

She had a piece of knitting to occupy her fingers, and over it she watched her son. He had been stunned when Hilda died, bewildered and uncomprehending; for no young man fully grasps the meaning of death. Now, as he sat, he seemed to be convincing himself. He had brought down his dead wife's work-basket and a drawer from her dressing- table. He sat in a low arm-chair, and had them beside him on the floor, and fingered deliberately among their contents for definite things, little landmarks of lost days that stabbed him with their associations. But what stirred his mother was not the sorrow of his loss so much as the uncertainty of parted lips and knitted brows that softened his thin, aquiline face, so strongly in contrast with his habit of brisk assurance.

She spoke at last. "John, dear, you should go to bed now," she said. "It's past eleven, my boy; and I'm afraid you'll wear yourself out."

He had a small silver-backed hand-mirror in his hands. He had been staring into the glass of it for ten minutes. He looked up now and shook his head. "I couldn't," he answered. "I couldn't, mother. There's no sleep in me."

"But John——" began the mother again.

"Please don't bother about me," he interrupted. "I couldn't sleep, really. And I couldn't bear to lie awake—alone." His eyes dropped toward the mirror again. "You know," he said, "it's only now, mother, that I realize that Hilda is really gone. I can't explain it very well, but before this evening it seemed—well, it seemed idiotic to think that my wife was dead. It felt impossible, somehow."

"My poor boy!" said the old lady gently.

"And even now," he went on, with bowed head, "I have fancies."

"What fancies, John?" asked Mrs. Morrison.

He laid the mirror down on the floor, and glanced over his shoulder toward the door of the room before he answered. Then he looked at his mother squarely.

"I'll tell you," he said. And then he sat for some seconds in thought. "You know, mother, how close together we lived—Hilda and I. I suppose it's the same with all husbands and wives who are young and love one another. We had a world of familiar little household jokes and tricks of our own. There was one in particular. Whenever I was in here, and Hilda came in, she'd tiptoe through the door and try to get close and surprise me before I heard her. Does it sound foolish to you, mother? If it does, you don't understand at all."

Mrs. Morrison picked up her knitting and worked a dozen quick stitches. "No; it doesn't seem foolish. I understand it all, my dear," she replied.

He nodded. "Well," he said, "that's what my fancies are about. There are moments when I seem to hear something; and I feel quite sure— absolutely, utterly certain—that if I turn round I shall see her there, coming up behind me, all sparkling with laughter. But I've looked, and——"

He dropped his head into his hands, and his shoulders heaved.

Mrs. Morrison laid her knitting down and went over to him. "John, dear," she said, laying a hand lightly on his arm—"John, dear, this won't do at all. I want to help you, my boy. You know that, don't you? But I can't let you comfort yourself with these dreams, dear. They're bad—very bad for you. It's not that way that we shall see our Hilda again, John."

"Oh, I know," he answered. "I know, mother." He sat up again, and put her hand away with a warm pressure of thanks.

The old lady went back to her chair with a grave face, and for a while they sat again in silence. The fire was burning now a little dull, and about the room were sober shadows. John fell again to handling trifles from the work-basket and the drawer, lifting each to look at it carefully, and laying it aside again.

"Are you looking for something, dear?" asked Mrs. Morrison at last.

"Eh? Oh no," he answered absently. "But I was thinking."

"Don't think too much, my boy," she said.

"It was nothing much," he said, frowning. "But, mother, what horrible things these are!" He pointed with a sharp thrust of his finger to the trinkets on the floor. "She used them, mother. She had them about her every day. She handled them, and used them for her momentary purposes and necessities and there is no trace of her on any one of them."

"John, John!" Mrs. Morrison appealed to him with an outstretched hand, for he spoke with a kind of passion that hurt her like an impropriety.

He went on as though he had heard nothing. "Look at this thing," he said. "It was the silver mirror. She used it a dozen times a day. Her face was bright in it a thousand times—when she put up her hair, and when she let it down in a cascade over her shoulders. She was beautiful, and it was the companion of her beauty. And—yet it's empty now, as empty as her bed, as empty as all this stricken house. As though she had never lived, mother—as though there had been no Hilda."

He dropped the mirror beside him, and rose from his chair, to pace up and down the room with quick, nervous strides.

Mrs. Morrison rose too. "John, dear," she said, stopping him with outstretched hands, "don't talk like that. We know better—you and I. The mirror can tell us nothing, nor any of those things you are torturing yourself with. She gave them nothing, my boy; it was for us she lived, not them. Our love, dear, and the pain of our loss, and all our memories; these are Hilda's witnesses. They remain to prove her to us and fulfil the beauty and goodness of her life. Don't speak as though Hilda had been wasted on us, dear."

"Wasted!" He started at the word. "Wasted! Oh God!"

She took him by the arm and drew him back to his chair by the fire. But even as he sat down he glanced again over his shoulder at the door. To all her entreaties to go to bed he remained obdurate.

"Do you know that I am very tired, John?" she said at last.

He looked up quickly. "Then you go to bed, mother," he urged. "I—I wish you would. I'd like to be alone for a little.

"If I leave you, will you promise you will not stay long?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "All right. I'll promise, mother."

When she had left him he stood for a while in the centre of the floor, hands in pockets, his head drooping, in deep thought. He was a spare man, lean and tall, bred to composure, and serenity. Thus when there came a tragedy to overwhelm his training, he had few reserves; his propriety of demeanor lost, his soul was raw. His very attitude, as he stood, was eloquent of pain and helplessness. He had been married a little more than a year, and it seemed now as though that year stood vignetted on a broad border of sadness.

The fire rustled and clicked as the coals spent themselves. He had a feeling of chill and faintness, and he went back slowly to his chair. Seated there again, the silver toys were all round him, gleaming slyly at him with a sort of suggestiveness. He packed up the mirror, once more, and looked into the oval glass at it. He was feeling a little dizzy, these last days had burdened him heavily, and the afternoon had been a long stress of emotion. Thus, for a space of minutes he sat, the glass before him, his eyes half closed.

It seemed to him that he must have dozed, for he sat up with the start of a man who arrests himself on the brink of sleep. The mirror was in his hand. He stared at it with wide eyes, thrusting it at arm's length before him. For in it he saw—not a flicker of the firelight swaying on the wall, but a face that moved across from the door—the face of his dead wife.

He saw it cross the field of the little mirror, reflected in profile, and pass beyond it. He sat yet a moment, enthralled in senseless amazement, then let the glass fall from his outstretched hand, and turned where he sat.

He sprang to his feet. "Hilda!" he cried. "Hilda!"

Her face welcomed him with a little smile, sober and kind.

"Yes, dear," she said gently; "it is Hilda!"

He did not go to her, but stood staring, and groping for the key to his understanding. She was about five paces from him—Hilda undeniably, to the soft contour of her cheek and the shaded gold of her hair.

He found words: "Are you here with me, Hilda? Or have I gone mad? Or perhaps I've been mad all along!"

She smiled again, and through the fog of his bewilderment and wonder he recognized the smile.

"Not mad, dear," she was saying. "Not mad. But it is very strange and wonderful at first, isn't it?"

"Strange and wonderful?" He put an uncertain hand to his face and passed it over his eyes. "Something has happened to me," he said. "To my eyes, I think. Things look strange. And—and there is Hilda!" He paused. "I'd been longing for Hilda."

She came a step nearer to him then. "I know," she murmured softly. "I know, dear. But that is past now."

There was an infinite tenderness in her tone, the tenderness of a mother who uplifts her child through a season of pain. He felt it, and it seemed to help him to clear away some of the dimness that besieged his senses.

"Then——" he began, but stayed himself. "You know," he said haltingly, "you died. Hilda died. I saw it: my arms were round her."

"Yes, dear," she answered. "Hilda died. But don't you understand?"

"No," he replied, but none the less understanding was dawning upon him. "How—how did you come here?" he asked.

"I came by the same way as you, John, dear," she said. As again she seemed to take one step toward him. "There is no other way."

"No other way!" He repeated the words twice.

"Hilda," he said, and went to her.

"Yes, dear?"

He took her hand; it lay close and familiarly in his palm.

"Everything seems to be far away from me—except you," he said. "I see you; I hear you speak. What does it mean, my darling?"

Her eyes were full of love. "Don't you know yet, John?" she asked.

"No," he answered slowly; "unless—unless——Hilda, am I dead?"

She did not speak to answer him, but nodded thrice, very slowly.

They found him in his chair before the ashes of the fire. At his feet the mirror was broken across, where it had dropped from his hand. And the lips were parted in a sort of uncertainty.



Cahill & Co., Ltd., London, Dublin and Drogheda.

THE END