In her new position, she was clearly visible in the light. He looked at her attentively. "I have seen you somewhere," he said, "before now."
She had not noticed him when they had passed each other at Sandyseal. "I think you must be mistaken," she answered. "May I thank you for your kindness? and may I hope to be excused if I say good-night?"
He detained her. "Are you sure that you are well enough to go away by yourself?" he asked anxiously.
"I am quite sure!"
He still detained her. His memory of that first meeting at the seaside hotel reminded him that he had seen her in the company of a man. At their second meeting, she was alone, and in tears. Sad experience led him to form his own conclusions. "If you won't let me take care of you," he said, "will you consider if I can be of any use to you, and will you call at that address?" He gave her his card. She took it without looking at it; she was confused; she hardly knew what to say. "Do you doubt me?" he asked--sadly, not angrily.
"Oh, how can I do that! I doubt myself; I am not worthy of the interest you feel in me."
"That is a sad thing to say," he answered. "Let me try to give you confidence in yourself. Do you go to London when you leave this place?"
"Yes."
"To-morrow," he resumed, "I am going to see another poor girl who is alone in the world like you. If l tell you where she lives, will you ask her if I am a person to be trusted?"
He had taken a letter from his pocket, while he was speaking; and he now tore off a part of the second leaf, and gave it to her. "I have only lately," he said, "received the address from a friend."
As he offered that explanation, the shrill sound of a child' s voice, raised in anger and entreaty, reached their ears from the neighborhood of the hotel. Faithful little Kitty had made her escape, determined to return to Sydney had been overtaken by the maid--and had been carried back in Susan's arms to the house. Sydney imagined that she was not perhaps alone in recognizing the voice. The stranger who had been so kind to her did certainly start and look round.
The stillness of the night was disturbed no more. The man turned again to the person who had so strongly interested him. The person was gone.
In fear of being followed, Sydney hurried to the railway station. By the light in the carriage she looked for the first time at the fragment of the letter and the card.
The stranger had presented her with her own address! And, when she looked at the card, the name was Bennydeck!
Chapter XLVII.
Better Do It Than Wish It Done.
More than once, on one and the same day, the Captain had been guilty of a weakness which would have taken his oldest friends by surprise, if they had seen him at the moment. He hesitated.
A man who has commanded ships and has risked his life in the regions of the frozen deep, is a man formed by nature and taught by habit to meet emergency face to face, to see his course straight before him, and to take it, lead him where it may. But nature and habit, formidable forces as they are, find their master when they encounter the passion of Love.
At once perplexed and distressed by that startling change in Catherine which he had observed when her child approached her, Bennydeck's customary firmness failed him, when the course of conduct toward his betrothed wife which it might be most becoming to follow presented itself to him as a problem to be solved. When Kitty asked him to accompany her nursemaid and herself on their return to the hotel, he had refused because he felt reluctant to intrude himself on Catherine's notice, until she was ready to admit him to her confidence of her own free will. Left alone, he began to doubt whether delicacy did really require him to make the sacrifice which he had contemplated not five minutes since. It was surely possible that Catherine might be waiting to see him, and might then offer the explanation which would prove to be equally a relief on both sides. He was on his way to the hotel when he met with Sydney Westerfield.
To see a woman in the sorest need of all that kindness and consideration could offer, and to leave her as helpless as he had found her, would have been an act of brutal indifference revolting to any man possessed of even ordinary sensibility. The Captain had only followed his natural impulses, and had only said and done what, in nearly similar cases, he had said and done on other occasions.
Left by himself, he advanced a few steps mechanically on the way by which Sydney had escaped him--and then stopped. Was there any sufficient reason for his following her, and intruding himself on her notice? She had recovered, she was in possession of his address, she had been referred to a person who could answer for his good intentions; all that it was his duty to do, had been done already. He turned back again, in the direction of the hotel.
Hesitating once more, he paused half-way along the corridor which led to Catherine's sitting-room. Voices reached him from persons who had entered the house by the front door. He recognized Mrs. Presty's loud confident tones. She was taking leave of friends, and was standing with her back toward him. Bennydeck waited, unobserved, until he saw her enter the sitting-room. No such explanation as he was in search of could possibly take place in the presence of Catherine's mother. He returned to the garden.
Mrs. Presty was in high spirits. She had enjoyed the Festival; she had taken the lead among the friends who accompanied her to the Palace; she had ordered everything, and paid for nothing, at that worst of all bad public dinners in England, the dinner which pretends to be French. In a buoyant frame of mind, ready for more enjoyment if she could only find it, what did she see on opening the sitting-room door? To use the expressive language of the stage, Catherine was "discovered alone"--with her elbows on the table, and her face hidden in her hands--the picture of despair.
Mrs. Presty surveyed the spectacle before her with righteous indignation visible in every line of her face. The arrangement which bound her daughter to give Bennydeck his final reply on that day had been well known to her when she left the hotel in the morning. The conclusion at which she arrived, on returning at night, was expressed with Roman brevity and Roman eloquence in four words:
"Oh, the poor Captain!"
Catherine suddenly looked up.
"I knew it," Mrs. Presty continued, with her sternest emphasis; "I see what you have done, in your face. You have refused Bennydeck."
"God forgive me, I have been wicked enough to accept him!"
Hearing this, some mothers might have made apologies; and other mothers might have asked what that penitential reply could possibly mean. Mrs. Presty was no matron of the ordinary type. She welcomed the good news, without taking the smallest notice of the expression of self-reproach which had accompanied it.
"My dear child, accept the congratulations of your fond old mother. I have never been one of the kissing sort (I mean of course where women are concerned); but this is an occasion which justifies something quite out of the common way. Come and kiss me."
Catherine took no notice of that outburst of maternal love.
"I have forgotten everything that I ought to have remembered," she said. "In my vanity, in my weakness, in my selfish enjoyment of the passing moment, I have been too supremely happy even to think of the trials of my past life, and of the false position in which they have placed me toward a man, whom I ought to be ashamed to deceive. I have only been recalled to a sense of duty, I might almost say to a sense of decency, by my poor little child. If Kitty had not reminded me of her father--"
Mrs. Presty dropped into a chair: she was really frightened. Her fat cheeks trembled like a jelly on a dish that is suddenly moved.
"Has that man been here?" she asked.
"What man?"
"The man who may break off your marriage if he meets with the Captain. Has Herbert Linley been here?"
"Certainly not.