Neither spoke for awhile.She sobbing inwardly, with tearless eyes, he standing firm and cheerful, with his great arms clasped around her.
"Mother!" he said at last, "I am come home, you see, because Ineeds must come.Will you take me in, and look after this useless carcase? I shall not be so very troublesome, mother,--shall I?"and he looked down, and smiled upon her, and kissed her brow.
She answered not a word, but passed her arm gently round his waist, and led him in.
"Take care of your head, dear child, the doors are low." And they went in together.
"Will! Jack!" called Amyas, turning round: but the two good fellows had walked briskly off.
"I'm glad we are away," said Cary; "I should have made a baby of myself in another minute, watching that angel of a woman.How her face worked and how she kept it in!""Ah, well!" said Jack, "there goes a brave servant of the queen's cut off before his work was a quarter done.Heigho! I must home now, and see my old father, and then--""And then home with me," said Cary."You and I never part again!
We have pulled in the same boat too long, Jack; and you must not go spending your prize-money in riotous living.I must see after you, old Jack ashore, or we shall have you treating half the town in taverns for a week to come.""Oh, Mr.Cary!" said Jack, scandalized.
"Come home with me, and we'll poison the parson, and my father shall give you the rectory.""Oh, Mr.Cary!" said Jack.
So the two went off to Clovelly together that very day.
And Amyas was sitting all alone.His mother had gone out for a few minutes to speak to the seamen who had brought up Amyas's luggage, and set them down to eat and drink; and Amyas sat in the old bay-window, where he had sat when he was a little tiny boy, and read "King Arthur," and "Fox's Martyrs," and "The Cruelties of the Spaniards." He put out his hand and felt for them; there they lay side by side, just as they had lain twenty years before.The window was open; and a cool air brought in as of old the scents of the four-season roses, and rosemary, and autumn gilliflowers.And there was a dish of apples on the table: he knew it by their smell;the very same old apples which he used to gather when he was a boy.
He put out his hand, and took them, and felt them over, and played with them, just as if the twenty years had never been: and as he fingered them, the whole of his past life rose up before him, as in that strange dream which is said to flash across the imagination of a drowning man; and he saw all the places which he had ever seen, and heard all the words which had ever been spoken to him--till he came to that fairy island on the Meta; and he heard the roar of the cataract once more, and saw the green tops of the palm-trees sleeping in the sunlight far above the spray, and stept amid the smooth palm-trunks across the flower-fringed boulders, and leaped down to the gravel beach beside the pool: and then again rose from the fern-grown rocks the beautiful vision of Ayacanora--Where was she? He had not thought of her till now.How he had wronged her!