He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat cavalierly on his head. “Awkward this, eh?” he appealed to her. “Tomorrow? Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this. It’s all tomorrow, then, without any sort of today, as far as I can see.”
She remained still and mute.
“And you have been encouraging this funny notion,” he said.
“I never contradicted him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“What for should I?” she defended herself. “It would only have made him miserable. He would have gone out of his mind.”
“His mind!” he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her.
“Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with the poor old man? It was easier to half believe it myself.”
“Aye, aye,” he meditated, intelligently. “I suppose the old chap got around you somehow with his soft talk. You are good-hearted.”
Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. “And it might have been true. It was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the tomorrow we have been waiting for.”
She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly: “Aye, with the door shut. I wouldn’t care if … And you think he could be brought round to recognise me … Eh? What? … You could do it? In a week you say? H’m, I daresay you could—but do you think I could hold out a week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more space than there is in the whole of England. I have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week. The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did not come off, though. We had to clear out—and none too soon. But this time I’ve a chum waiting for me in London, and besides …”
Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly.
“What if I tried a knock at the door?” he suggested.
“Try,” she said.
Captain Hagberd’s gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father’s, only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman’s heart, awakening to her ears.
“He isn’t frisky—is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The chaps are always telling me I don’t know my own strength.”
“He’s the most harmless creature that ever lived,” she interrupted.
“You wouldn’t say so if you had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard leather strap,” he said; “I haven’t forgotten it in sixteen years.”
She got warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth.
“Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. Straight! Come back home a day too soon.”
One of the windows upstairs ran up.
“A grinning, information fellow,” said the voice of old Hagberd, up in the darkness. “Don’t you have anything to do with him. It will spoil everything.”
She heard Harry Hagberd say, “Hallo, dad,” then a clanging clatter. The window rumbled down, and he stood before her again.
“It’s just like old times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder.”
She shuddered.
“I wouldn’t care,” he began, “only I spent my last shillings on the railway fare and my last twopence on a shave—out of respect for the old man.”
“Are you really Harry Hagberd?” she asked. “Can you prove it?”
“Can I prove it? Can anyone else prove it?” he said jovially. “Prove with what? What do I want to prove? There isn’t a single corner in the world, barring England, perhaps, where you could not find some man, or more likely woman, that would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am more like Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and I can prove it to you in a minute, if you will let me step inside your gate.”
“Come in,” she said.
He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, facing the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from side to side, laughing softly to himself.
“Just fancy, for a minute, the old man’s beard stuck on to my chin. Hey? Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy.”
“It’s true,” she murmured to herself.
“And that’s about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick for three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gasworks. You would think he was off on a whaling cruise—three years and a tail. Ha, ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas was a smart craft. Fine name, wasn’t it? Mother’s uncle owned her. …”
He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, “Did he ever tell you what mother died of?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Miss Bessie, bitterly; “from impatience.”
He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: “They were so afraid I would turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my body rather than let me go to sea.
