"My name is Garraway-Kyle--Captain Garraway-Kyle--late of her Majesty's
service. You are in trouble, sir, your wife"--he stopped abruptly and
coughed and frowned, and tugged at one end of his white mustache with
his disengaged hand--"your wife, sir, was good enough to admire my
flowers; used to stop sometimes to look at them. I thought perhaps----"
His sunburned face took on a deeper tinge, and he brought his hand from
behind him and showed a carefully arranged bunch of flowers.
David Willis came out into the little path, and closed the door behind
him; his voice was rather unsteady when he spoke. "Thank you, sir," he
said. "Would you like me to go with you and point out the--the grave?"
"I know it. I was there this afternoon," replied the captain, shortly.
"But I should like you to come with me." So the two men went in silence
out of the garden, and by the little gate into the churchyard, David
Willis having no hat, and the captain carrying his in his hand.
At the grave the captain knelt stiffly, as though it were an effort
for him to do so, and put the flowers at the head of the new mound. He
remained for nearly half a minute kneeling, and then drew himself up
and faced the other. "She was a sweet and gentle woman, sir; I have
seen her often; I have ventured to peep over the wall when she was in
her own garden. She was very fond of flowers."
"Yes," replied David, "very."
"I wished sometimes that I might have offered her some of mine, the
finest garden in the town, sir. But, of course, I did not know her. I
am sorry to have had to give them to her like this."
"You are very good," said David, softly.
Captain Garraway-Kyle turned away and looked up for a moment at the
sombre church which rose above them. "You had not been married long, I
think, Mr. Willis?"
"Not quite a year," replied David.
"Ah! The child lives, I think?"
"Yes."
They walked back together to the gate which led to the cottage; and
there the captain held out his hand. "Thank you," he said, stiffly; and
then, "I am very sorry. By the way--boy or girl?"
"Oh, it's a boy," replied David.
The captain had gone a few paces down the street when he turned on his
heel and came back again. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Willis, but what will
you call him?"
It was almost an idle question, prompted in the captain's mind for
want of something better to say; but it set the old train of thought
running in David Willis's mind as it had run all that afternoon. The
words he had heard at the grave-side seemed to sound in his ears again;
the sudden thought struck him to give the boy some name that should
keep in memory his mother, and the purpose for which he came into
the world, and all that he meant to his father. He faced about, and
looked at his visitor with a new light in his eyes. "I shall call him
'Comethup,'" he said, slowly.
"I beg your pardon----" The captain looked a little startled.
"'Comethup,'" said David again, half to himself. "Yes, that's the name."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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