Page:Robert Louis Stevenson, the dramatist.pdf/21

19 “Captain Gaunt, if you mean that I am not worthy of her, I’m the first to say so. But, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’m a young man, and young men are no better’n they ought to be; it ’s known; they’re all like that; and what’s their chance? To be married to a girl like this! And would you refuse it to me? Why, sir, you yourself, when you came courting, you were young and rough; and yet I’ll make bold to say that Mrs. Gaunt was a happy woman, and the saving of yourself into the bargain. Well, now, Captain Gaunt, will you deny another man, and that man a sailor, the very salvation that you had yourself?

“Salvation, Christopher French, is from above.

“Well, sir, that is so; but there’s means, too; and what means so strong as the wife a man has to strive and toil for, and that bears the punishment whenever he goes wrong? Now, sir, I’ve spoke with your old shipmates in the Guinea trade. Hard as nails, they said, and true as the compass: as rough as a slaver but as just as a judge. Well, sir, you hear me plead: I ask you for my chance; don’t you deny it to me.

“You speak of me? In the true balances we both weigh nothing. But two things I know: the death of iniquity, how foul it is; and the agony with which a man repents. Not until seven devils were cast out of me did I awake; each rent me as it passed. Ay, that was repentance. Christopher, Christopher, you have sailed before the wind since first you weighed your anchor, and