CHAPTER XXI

THE GOING OF THE GOOD COMRADE

The cottage was very quiet.  Although it was not late, both Captain Polkington and Johnny had gone to bed, the one to suit himself, the other to oblige Julia; she was in the kitchen now, as completely alone as she could wish.  And certainly she did wish it; by the hard light in her eyes and the grim look about her mouth it was clear she was in no mood for company.  She had got at the truth that evening, or most of it; the whole affair, with the exception of one point only, was quite plain to her; not by her father’s wish or intention, but plain none the less.  Subterfuge was an art the Polkingtons understood so well that it was exceedingly difficult to deceive them; Julia was the most difficult of them all to deceive, and the Captain was least clever at subterfuge; it was not wonderful, therefore, that she knew nearly all there was to know.  Her heart was bitter within her, but against herself as well as against her father—­after all he had but done what she had once thought to do.  She had stayed her hand because the one who owned the daffodil was a child to her.  Her father had had no such reason for staying his; the one who owned this daffodil was as cunning as he.  He had done what he had, badly of course he could not do otherwise—­a foredained failure such as he—­bungled it hopelessly; but the idea was the same—­a bad travesty of a bad idea, badly worked out.  For a moment her mind glanced aside from the main issue in disgust and contempt for the method.  It was sin without genius, a puerile theft without adequate return, a miserable fall, and for such a purpose!  To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an outhouse!  To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on creature comforts!  It is hard to say which of the three was the worst.  The really good have little idea how such fool’s knavery looks to the shadily clever; it brings home to them the wrongness of wrong, disgusting them with it and with themselves, as no preaching in the world can.

The moon had risen by this time; its first beams shone in at the unshuttered window.  Julia went to the door and, opening it, looked out.  There was a little mist about and the moon, quite a young one, was struggling through it, shining with a soft, diffused light that made the landscape very unearthly.

It was wonderfully still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space and silence.  Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell of the earth and felt the nearness of it.  But it did not comfort her; she was not in tune with the night; she had neither part nor lot with these things.  “Thief, and daughter of a thief;” the words kept coming to her—­and he, the man whom she never named to herself, had called her his good comrade!  She bowed her face to her knees and sat motionless.