Part 50 (1/2)

Chapter LXV.

At home.

Clare followed, wondering, but nowise anxious. He saw nothing to make him anxious. The captain looked a good man, and a good man was a friend to Clare! But when he entered the state-room, and saw himself from head to foot in a mirror let into a bulkhead, he was both startled and ashamed: how could the captain take such a scarecrow into his room! he thought. He did not reflect that it was just the sort of thing he did himself. He had indeed felt dirty and disreputable, and been aware of the dry, rasping tongue of the panther on many patches of bare skin, but he had had no idea what a wretched creature he looked. Not one of the garments he saw in the mirror was his own, and they were disgracefully torn. His hair was sticking out every way, and his face smeared with blood. His feet were bare, and one trouser-leg rent to the knee. His enemies had done their best to ensure prejudice, and frustrate belief. They did not see in his look what no honest man could misread. Innocent as he knew himself, he could not help feeling for a moment disconcerted. But his faithfulness threw him on the mercy of the man before him.

The captain turned and sat down. The boy stood in the doorway, staring at his reflex self in the mirror. The captain understood his consternation.

”Come along, my poor boy,” he said. ”How did you get into this mess?”

”I think I know,” answered Clare, ”but I'm not sure.”

”You must have been drunk,” sighed the captain.

”Oh, no, sir!” returned Clare, with one of his radiant smiles. ”I've had but one gla.s.s of beer in my life, and I didn't like it.”

The captain smiled too, and gazed at him for several moments without speaking.

”It seems to me,” he said at last, but as if he were thinking of something quite different, ”you must be in want of food.”

”Oh, no, sir!” answered Clare again, ”I'm used to going without.”

Like a child the sport of an evil fairy, he was again the boy of the old wanderings, in the old, hungry times. But did he ever look so lost as in the mirror before him? he wondered.

”You haven't told me----” said the captain, and stopped short, as if he dreaded going further.

”I will tell you anything you want to know, sir. Please ask me.”

”You say you did not come on board the frigate: what am I to understand by that?”

”That I was brought, sir, in my sleep. It wouldn't be fair, would it, sir, to mention names, when I don't know for certain who they were that brought me? I never knew anything till I opened my eyes, and thought I was in----”

He paused.

”_Where_ did you think you were?” asked the captain eagerly.

”In the dome of the angels, sir,” answered Clare.

The captain's face fell. He thought him an innocent, on whom rascals had been playing a practical joke. But that made no difference! If he were a simpleton, he might none the less be----! Was _her_ boy left to----?

He shuddered visibly, and again was silent.

”Tell me,” he said at length, ”what you remember.”

He meant--of the circ.u.mstances that immediately preceded his coming to himself on board the Panther; but Clare began with the first thing his memory presented him with. Perhaps he was yet a little dazed. He had not got through a single sentence, when he saw that something earlier wanted telling first; and the same thing happening again and again within the first five minutes of his narration, sir Harry saw he had before him a boy either of fertile imagination, or of ”strange, eventful history.” But either supposition had its difficulty. If, on the one hand, he had had the tenth part of the experiences hinted at; if, for one thing, he had been but a single month on the tramp, how had he kept such an innocent face, such an angelic smile? If, on the other hand, he was making up these tales, why did he not look sharper?

and whence the angelic smile? Did the seeming innocence indicate only such a lack of intellect as occasionally accompanies a remarkable individual gift? He must make him begin at the beginning, and tell everything he knew, or might pretend to know about himself!

”Stop,” he said. ”You told me you did not quite know your name: what did they call you as far back as you can remember?”

”Clare Porson,” answered the boy.