The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCaptain MargaretThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Captain MargaretAuthor: John MasefieldRelease date: March 14, 2024 [eBook #73167]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN MARGARET ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Captain MargaretAuthor: John MasefieldRelease date: March 14, 2024 [eBook #73167]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
Title: Captain Margaret
Author: John Masefield
Author: John Masefield
Release date: March 14, 2024 [eBook #73167]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN MARGARET ***
BYJOHN MASEFIELDAuthor of “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The Widowin the Bye Street,” etc.
New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1916All rights reserved
TOMY WIFE
I. The “Broken Heart”
II. A Farewell
III. Outwards
IV. A Cabin Council
V. Stukeley
VI. A Supper Party
VII. The Tobacco Merchant
VIII. In Port
IX. A Farewell Dinner
X. The Landfall
XI. The Flag of Truce
XII. The End
“All this the world well knows; yet none knows wellTo shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
“All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
Theshort summer night was over; the stars were paling; there was a faint light above the hills. The flame in the ship’s lantern felt the day beginning. A cock in the hen-coop crowed, flapping his wings. The hour was full of mystery. Though it was still, it was full of the suggestion of noise. There was a rustle, a murmur, a sense of preparation. Already, in the farms ashore, the pails went clanking to the byres. Very faintly, from time to time, one heard the lowing of a cow, or the song of some fisherman, as he put out, in the twilight, to his lobster-pots, sculling with one oar.
Dew had fallen during the night. The decks of theBroken Heart, lying at anchor there, with the lantern burning at her peak, were wet with dew. Dew dripped from her running rigging; the gleam of wetness was upon her guns, upon her rails, upon the bell in the poop belfry. She seemed august, lying there in the twilight. Her sailors, asleep on her deck, in the shadow, below the break of the quarter-deck, were unlike earthly sleepers. The old boatswain, in the blue boat-cloak, standing at the gangway watching the dawn, was august, sphinx-like, symbolic. The two men who stood above him on the quarter-deck spoke quietly, in hushed voices, as though the hour awed them. Even the boy by the lantern, far aft, stood silently, moved by the beauty of the time. Over the water, by Salcombe, the fishers’ boats got under way for the sea. The noise of the halliards creaked, voices called in the dusk, blocks piped, coils of rope rattled on the planks. The flower of the day was slowly opening in the east, the rose of the day was bursting. It was the dim time, the holy time, the moment of beauty, which would soon pass, was even now passing, as the sea gleamed, brightening, lighting up into colour.
Slowly the light grew: it came in rosy colour upon the ship; it burned like a flame upon the spire-top. The fishers in their boats, moving over the talking water, watched the fabric as they passed. She loomed large in the growing light; she caught the light and gleamed; the tide went by her with a gurgle. The dim light made her larger than she was, it gave her the beauty of all half-seen things. The dim light was like the veil upon a woman’s face. She was a small ship (only five hundred tons), built of aromatic cedar, and like all wooden ships she would have looked ungainly, had not her great beam, and the height of her after-works, given her a majesty, something of the royal look which all ships have in some proportion. The virtue of man had been busy about her. An artist’s heart, hungry for beauty, had seen the idea of her in dream; she had her counterpart in the kingdom of vision. There was a spirit in her, as there is in all things fashioned by the soul of man; not a spirit of beauty, not a spirit of strength, but the spirit of her builder, a Peruvian Spaniard. She had the impress of her builder in her, a mournful state, a kind of battered grandeur, a likeness to a type of manhood. There was in her a beauty not quite achieved, as though, in the husk of the man, the butterfly’s wings were not quite free. There was in her a strength that was clumsy; almost the strength of one vehement from fear. She came from a man’s soul, stamped with his defects. Standing on her deck, one could see the man laid bare—melancholy, noble, and wanting—till one felt pity for the ship which carried his image about the world. Seamen had lived in her, seamen had died in her; she had housed many wandering spirits. She was, in herself, the house of her maker’s spirit, as all made things are, and wherever her sad beauty voyaged, his image, his living memory voyaged, infinitely mournful, because imperfect, unapprehended. Some of those who had sailed in her had noticed that the caryatides of the rails, the caryatides of the quarter-gallery, and the figurehead which watched over the sea, were all carven portraits of the one woman. But of those who noticed, none knew that they touched the bloody heart of a man, that before them was the builder’s secret, the key to his soul. The men who sailed in theBroken Heartwere not given to thoughts about her builder. When they lay in port, among all the ships of the world, among the flags and clamour, they took no thought of beauty. They would have laughed had a man told them that all that array of ships, so proud, so beautiful, came from the brain of man because a woman’s lips were red. It is a proud thing to be a man, and to feel the stir of beauty; but it is more wonderful to be a woman, and to have, or to be, the touch calling beauty into life.
She had been a week in coming from the Pool to the Start. In the week her crew had settled down from their last drunkenness. The smuts had been washed from the fife-rails; the ropes upon the pins had lost the London grime from the lay of the strands. Now, as the sun rose behind the combes, flooding the land with light, smiting the water with gold, the boy, standing far aft, ran up her colours, and the boatswain, in his blue boat-cloak, bending forward slightly, blowing his smouldering match, fired the sunrise gun, raising his linstock in salute. The sleepers stirred among their blankets; one or two, fully wakened, raised themselves upon their elbows. A block creaked as the peak lantern was hauled down. Then with a shrill wail the pipe sounded the long double call, slowly heightening to piercing sharpness, which bids all hands arise.
The sunshine, now brilliant everywhere, showed that theBroken Heartwas “by the head,” like most of the ships of her century. Her lines led downwards, in a sweep, from the lantern on the taffrail to the bowed, inclining figurehead. A wooden frame thrust outward over the sea; the cutwater swept up to meet it; at the outer end, under the bowsprit, the figurehead gleamed—the white body of a woman, the breasts bared, the eyes abased, the hands clasped, as in prayer, below the breasts. Beyond the cutwater, looking aft, were the bluff bows, swollen outwards, rising to the square wall of the forecastle, from which the catheads thrust. The chains of the fore-rigging, black with deadeyes and thickly tarred matting, stood out against the dingy yellow of the paint. Further aft was the gangway, with its nailed cleats; then the main-chains, and the rising of the cambered side for poop and quarterdeck. Far aft was the outward bulge of the coach, heavy with gold leaf, crowned by the three stern lanterns. The painters had been busy about her after-works. The blue paint among the gilding was bright wherever the twisted loves and leaves left space for it. Standing at the taffrail and looking forward, one could see all over her; one could command her length, the rows of guns upon her main deck, the masts standing up so stately, the forecastle bulkhead, the hammock nettings, the bitts and poop-rails with their carvings, each stanchion a caryatid, the square main-hatch with its shot rack, the scuttle-butt ringed with bright brass, the boats on the booms amidships, the booms themselves, the broken heart painted in scarlet on their heels.
The two men on the poop turned as the boatswain piped. They turned to walk aft, on the weather side, along the wet planks, so trimly parquetted. They walked quietly, the one from a natural timidity, the other from custom, following the old tradition of the sea, which bids all men respect the sleeper. The timid one, never a great talker, spoke little; but his wandering eyes were busy taking in the view, noting all things, even when his fellow thought him least alive. He was the friend of Captain Margaret, the ship’s owner. His name was Edward Perrin. He was not yet thirty-five, but wild living had aged him, and his hair was fast turning grey. He was wrinkled, and his drawn face and drooping carriage told of a sapped vitality, hardly worth the doctoring. It was only now and then, when the eyes lifted and the face flushed with animation, that the soul showed that it still lived within, driving the body (all broken as it was) as furiously as it had ever driven. He suffered much from ill-health, for he was ever careless; and when he was ill, his feeble brains were numbed, so that he talked with difficulty. When he was well he had brilliant but exhausting flashes, touches of genius, sallies of gaiety, of tenderness, which gave him singular charm, not abiding, but enough to win him the friends whom he irritated when ill-health returned. In his youth he had run through his little fortune in evil living. Now that he was too weak for further folly, he lived upon a small pittance which he had been unable to spend owing to the forethought of a bequeathing aunt. He had only two interests in life: Captain Margaret, whom he worshipped with touching loyalty; and the memories of his wild youth, so soon spoiled, so soon ended. Among those memories was the memory of a woman who had once refused his offer of marriage. He had not loved the woman, for he was incapable of love; he was only capable of affection; but the memory of this woman was sweet to him because she seemed to give some note of splendour, almost of honour, to his vicious courses.
He felt, poor wastrel, poor burnt moth, that his life had touched romance, that it was a part of all high beauty, that some little tongue of flame had sealed him. He had loved unavailingly, he thought, but with all the lovely part of him. Now that he was broken by excess he felt like the king in the tale, who, wanting one thing, had given up all things, that the grass might be the sooner over him. Vice and poverty had given him a wide knowledge of life; but of life in its hardness and cynicism, stripped of its flowers. His one fond memory, his one hopeless passion, as he called it, the one time in his life when he had lived emotionally, had given him, strangely enough, an odd understanding of women, which made him sympathetic to them. His ill-health gave him a distaste for life, particularly for society. He avoided people, and sought for individuals; he hated men, and loved his master; he despised women, in spite of his memory of a woman; but he found individual women more attractive than they would have liked to think. Intellectually, he was nothing; for he had never grown up; he had never come to manhood. As a boy he had had the vices of a man; as a man he had, in consequence, the defects of a woman. He was a broken, emotional creature, attractive and pathetic, the stick of a rocket which had blazed across heaven. He was at once empty and full of tenderness, cruel and full of sympathy, capable of rising, on his feelings, to heroic self-sacrifice; but likely, perhaps on the same day, to sink to depths of baseness. He was tall and weedy-looking, very wretched and haggard. He delighted in brilliant clothes, and spent much of his little store in mercers’ shops. He wore a suit of dark blue silk, heavily laced at the throat and wrists. The sleeves of his coat were slashed, so as to show a bright green satin lining; for, like most vicious men, he loved the colour green, and delighted in green clothes. He drooped forward as he walked, with his head a little on one side. His clumsy, ineffectual hands hung limply from thin wrists in front of him. But always, as he walked, the tired brain, too tired to give out, took in unceasingly, behind the mask of the face. He had little memory for events, for words spoken to him, for the characters of those he met; but he had instead a memory for places which troubled his peace, it was so perfect. As he walked softly up and down the poop with Captain Cammock that lovely morning, he took into his brain a memory of Salcombe harbour, so quiet below its combes, which lasted till he died. Often afterwards, when he was in the strange places of the world, the memory of the ships came back to him, he heard the murmur of the tide, the noise of the gulls quarrelling, the crying out of sailors at work. A dog on one combe chased an old sheep to the hedge above the beach of the estuary.
“I am like that sheep,” thought Perrin, not unjustly, “and the hound of desire drives me where it will.” He did not mention his thought to Captain Cammock, for he had that fear of being laughed at which is only strong in those who know that they are objects of mirth to others.
“I’ll soon show you,” he cried aloud, continuing his thought to a rupture with an imaginary mocker.
“What’ll you show me?” said Captain Cammock.
“Nothing. Nothing,” said Perrin hastily. He blushed and turned to look at the town, so that the captain should not see his face.
Captain Cammock was a large, surly-looking man, with long black hair which fell over his shoulders. His face, ruddy originally, was of a deep copper colour; handsome enough, in spite of the surly look, which, at first glance, passed for sternness. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, from long gazing through heat haze and to windward. He wore heavy gold ear-rings, of a strange pattern, in his ears; and they became him; though nothing angered him more than to be told so. “I wear them for my sight,” he would say. “I ain’t no town pimp, like you.” The rest of his gear was also strange and rich, down to the stockings and the buckled shoes, not because he was a town pimp like others, but because, in his last voyage, he had made free with the wardrobe of the Governor of Valdivia. A jewel of gold, acquired at the same time, clasped at his throat a piece of scarlet stuff, richly embroidered, which, covering his chest, might have been anything, from a shirt to a handkerchief. The Spanish lady who had once worn it as a petticoat would have said that it became him. His answer to the Spanish lady would have been, “Well, I ain’t one of your dressy ducks; but I have my points.” Those who had seen him in ragged linen drawers, pulling a canoa off the Main, between Tolu and the Headlands, with his chest, and bare arms, and naked knees, all smeared with fat, to keep away the mosquitoes, would have agreed with him.
“There’s one thing I wish you’d show me,” said Captain Cammock, glancing at the schooners at anchor.
“What’s that?” said Perrin.
“Well,” said Captain Cammock, turning towards the harbour entrance, “why has Captain Margaret put into Salcombe? Wasting a fair wind I call it. We could a-drove her out of soundings if we’d held our course.”
“I don’t think I ought to tell you that, Captain Cammock. I know, of course. It has to do with the whole cruise. Personal reasons.”
Captain Cammock snorted.
“A lop-eared job the cruise is, if you ask me,” he growled.
“I thought you approved of it.”
“I’ll approve of it when we’re safe home again, and the ship’s accounts passed. Now, Mr. Perrin, I’m a man of peace, I am. I don’t uphold going in for trouble. There’s trouble enough on all men’s tallies. But what you’re going to do beats me.”
Perrin murmured a mild assent. The pirate’s vehemence generally frightened him.
“Look here, now, Mr. Perrin,” the captain went on. “One gentleman to another, now. Here am I sailing-master. I’m to navigate this ship to Virginia, and then to another port to be named when we leave England. I don’t know what you want me to do, do I, James? Well, then, can’t you give me a quiet hint, like, so I’ll know when to shoot? If you don’t like that, well, you’re my employers, you needn’t. But don’t blame me if trouble comes. You’re going to the Main. Oh, don’t start; I’ve got eyes, sir. Now I know the Main; you don’t. Nor you don’t know seamen. All you know is a lot of town pimps skipping around like burnt cats. Here now, Mr. Perrin, fair and square. Are you going on the account?”
“As pirates?”
“As privateers.”
“Well, you see, captain,” said Perrin, “it’s like this. Captain Margaret. I don’t know. You know that, in Darien, the Spaniards—they—they—they drove out the Indians very brutally.”
Captain Cammock smiled, as though pleased with a distant memory.
“Oh, them,” he said lightly.
“Well,” continued Perrin. “You’d have been told to-day, anyhow; so it doesn’t much matter my telling you now. What he wants to do is this. He wants to get in with the Indians there, and open up a trade; keeping back the Spaniards till the English are thoroughly settled. Then, when we are strong enough, to cut in on the Spanish treasure-trains, like Sir Francis Drake did. But first of all, our aim is to open up a trade. Gold dust.”
Captain Cammock’s face grew serious. He gazed, with unseeing eyes, at the swans in the reach.
“Oh,” he said. “What give you that idea?”
“Do you think it possible?”
“I’ll think it over,” he said curtly. “I’m obliged to you for telling me.” He made one or two quick turns about the deck. “Here you, boy,” he cried, “coil them ropes up on the pins.” He glanced down at the quarter-deck guns to see if the leaden aprons were secured over the touch-holes. “Mr. Perrin,” he continued, “about Captain Margaret. Has he got anything on his mind?”
“Yes, captain. He’s had a lot of trouble. A woman.”
“I thought it was something of that sort. Rum or women, I say. Them and lawyers. They get us all into trouble sooner or later.”
“He was in love with a girl,” said Perrin. “He was in love with her for four years. Now she’s gone and married some one else.”
“I suppose she was a society lady,” said Cammock, investing that class with the idea of vices practised by his own.
“She was very beautiful,” said Perrin.
“And now she’s married,” said Cammock.
“Yes. Married a blackguard.”
“Yes?” said the captain. “And now she’ll learn her error. Women aren’t rational beings, not like men are. What would a beautiful woman want more, with Captain Margaret?”
“It’s about done for him,” said Perrin. “He’ll never be the man he was. And as for her. The man she married cheated a lad out of all his money at cards, and then shot him in a duel.”
“I’ve heard of that being done,” said the captain.
“Oh, but he did a worse thing than that,” said Perrin. “He’d a child by his cousin; and when the girl’s mother turned her out of doors, he told her she might apply to the parish.”
“Bah!” said the captain, with disgust. “I’d like to know the name of that duck. He’s a masterpiece.”
“Tom Stukeley, his name is,” said Perrin. “His wife’s Olivia Stukeley. They are stopping in Salcombe here. They are still wandering about on their honeymoon. They were married two or three months back.”
“Ah,” said Cammock, “so that’s why the captain put in here. He’ll be going ashore, I reckon.” He walked to the break of the poop and blew his whistle. “Bosun,” he cried. “Get the dinghy over the side, ’n clean her out.” He walked back to Perrin. “Much better get him away to sea, sir. No good’ll come of it.”
“What makes you think that?” said Perrin.
“He’ll only see her with this Stukeley fellow. It’ll only make him sick. Very likely make her sick, too.”
“I can’t stop him,” said Perrin. “He’ll eat his heart out if he doesn’t go. It’s better for him to go, and get a real sickener, than to stay away and brood. Don’t you think that?”
“As you please,” said Cammock. “But he ain’t going to do much on the Main, if he’s going to worry all the time about a young lady. The crowd you get on the Main don’t break their hearts about ladies, not as a general act.”
“No?” said Perrin.
The conversation lapsed. The captain walked to the poop-rail, to watch the men cleaning up the main-deck. He called a boy, to clean the brass-work on the poop.
“Not much of that on the Main, sir, you won’t have,” he said.
“No?” said Perrin.
“No, sir,” said the captain. “On the Main, you lays your ship on her side on the softest mud anywheres handy. And you gets Indian ducks to build little houses for you. Fine little houses. And there you lays ashore, nine months of the year, listening to the rain. Swish. Your skin gets all soft on you, like wet paper. And you’ll see the cabin below here, all full of great yellow funguses. And all this brass will be as green as tulips. It will. And if you don’t watch out, you could grow them pink water-lilies all over her. It’s happy days when you’ve a kind of a pine-apple tree sprouting through your bunk-boards.” He paused a moment, noted the effect on Perrin, and resolved to try an even finer effort. “I remember a new Jamaica sloop as come to One Bush Key once. I was logwood-cutting in them times. She was one of these pine-built things; she come from Negrill. They laid her on her side in the lagoon, while the hands was cutting logwood. And you know, sir, she sprouted. The ground was that rich she sprouted. Them planks took root. She was a tidy little clump of pines before I left the trade.”
“Eight bells, sir,” said the boy, touching his cap.
“Thank you,” said Cammock. “Make it. Who’s watchman, bosun? Let him call me at once if any boat comes off.”
“Ay, ay, Captain Cammock,” said the boatswain.
The steward, an old negro, dressed in the worn red uniform of a foot-soldier, came with his bell to the break of the poop, to announce the cabin breakfast. The men, with their feet bare from washing down, were passing forward to the forecastle. Their shirts, of red, and blue, and green, were as gay as flags. The wet decks gleamed; the banner blew out bravely from the peak. As the bell struck its four couplets, the bosun ran up to the main-truck the house-flag, of Captain Margaret’s arms, upon a ground of white. The watchman, in his best clothes, passed aft rapidly to the gangway, swallowing the last of his breakfast.
“After you, sir,” said Cammock to Perrin, as they made politeness at the cabin door.
“Thank you,” said Perrin, with a little bow.
They passed in to the alley-way, to the cabin table.
The cabin of theBroken Heartwas large and airy. The stern-windows, a skylight amidships, and the white paint upon the beams and bulkheads, made it lighter than the cabins of most vessels. A locker, heaped with green cushions, so that it made a seat for a dozen persons, ran below the windows. Under the skylight was the table, with revolving chairs about it, clamped to the deck. At both sides of the cabin were lesser cabins opening into it. On the port side, the perpetual wonder of Captain Cammock (who, though, like all seamen, a scrupulously clean man, never dreamed of desecrating it by use), was a bath-room. To starboard was a large, double state-room, with a standing bed in it, where Captain Margaret slept. Forward of the cabin bulkhead (which fitted in a groove, so that it might be unshipped in time of battle) were other quarters, to which one passed from the cabin by an alley-way leading to the deck below the break of the poop. To port, in these quarters, was Perrin’s cabin, with Cammock’s room beyond. To starboard was the steward’s pantry and sleeping-place, with the sail-room just forward of it. The bulkheads were all painted white, and each cabin was lighted by scuttles from above, as well as by the heavy gun-ports in the ship’s side, each port-lid with a glass bull’s-eye in it. The cabins were therefore light and bright, having always an air of cleanly freshness. The great cabin would have passed for the chamber of a house ashore, but for the stands of arms, bright with polished metal, on each side of the book-case. Over the book-case was a small white shield, on which, in red brilliants, was theBroken Heart. When the light failed, at the coming of the dusk, the crimson of the brilliants gleamed; there was a burning eye above the book-case, searching those at meat, weighing them, judging them.
The stern-windows were open, letting in the sunlight. The table was laid for breakfast. The steward in his uniform stood bare-headed, waiting for the company. The door of the state-room opened smartly, and Captain Margaret entered. He advanced with a smile, shook hands with the two men, bidding them good morning. Perrin, ever sensitive to his friend, glanced at him for a moment to note if he had slept ill, through brooding on his love; but the mask upon his friend’s face was drawn close, the inner man was hidden; a sufficient sign to Perrin that his friend was troubled. Captain Cammock looked at his employer with interest, as he would have looked at a man who had been at the North Pole. “So he’s in love with a girl, hey?” he thought. “Gone half crazed about a girl. In love. And the lady give him the foresheet, hey?” He even peered out of the stern-window over Salcombe, with the thought that somewhere among those houses, or walking in one of those gardens, went the lady Olivia, wonderfully beautiful, squired by the unspeakable Stukeley.
“Hope we didn’t wake you, sir,” he said politely. “One can’t carry on without noise, coming to anchor.”
“I thought I heard your voice once,” said Captain Margaret. “You were talking about grilling the blood of some one.”
“They don’t understand no other language,” said the captain, with a grin. Then, rapping the table with his knife, at his place as captain, he mumbled out a blessing. “Bless this food, O Lord, for the support of our bodies.” The rest of the blessing he always omitted; for a jocular shipmate had once parodied it, in a scandalous manner, much appreciated by himself. “He’d had a wonderful education, that man,” he always maintained. “He must have had a brain, to think of a real wit like that was.”
Captain Cammock helped the fresh salmon (bought that morning from a fisherman) with the story of the duff. Until the tale was ended, the company hungered.
“Did y’ever hear of the captain and the passenger?” he asked. “They was at dinner on Sunday; and they’d a roll of duff. So the captain asks the passenger, like I’d ask you about this salmon. He asks him, ‘Do you like ends?’ No, he didn’t like no ends, the passenger didn’t. ‘Well, me and my mate does,’ says the captain; so he cuts the duff in two, and gives the mate one half and eats the other himself.”
“Strange things happen at sea,” said Perrin.
“I believe Captain Cammock makes these stories up,” said Margaret. “In the night-watches, when he isn’t grilling seamen’s bloods.”
“Yes,” said Perrin, “yes.”
“Is that right, captain?” asked Margaret. “Do you make these stories up yourself?”
“No, sir,” said Cammock, “I’ve not got the education, and I’ve something else to think about. These writer fellows—beg pardon, Captain Margaret, I don’t mean you, sir—they’re often very unpractical. They’d let a ship fall overboard.”
“So you think them very unpractical, do you, captain?” said Margaret. “What makes you think that?”
“Because they are, sir,” he replied. “They’re always reading poetry and that. From all I can make out of it, poetry’s a lot of slush.”
“Have you ever read any?” said Perrin.
“Who? Me?” said Cammock. “Bless yer, yes. Reams of it. A book of it calledParadise Lost. Very religious, some of it. I had enough of poetry with that inside me. I can’t say as I ever read much since.”
“Well, captain,” said Margaret, “it hasn’t made you unpractical.”
“No, sir,” said the captain. “But then I never give it a chance to. I’ve always had my work to see to.”
“And what has been your work? Always with ships?”
“No, sir, I was a logwood-cutter one time.”
“And what is logwood-cutting like?”
“Oh, it’s hard work, sir. Don’t you forget it. You’re chopping all the forenoon, and splitting what you chopped all afternoon, and rolling the pieces to the lagoon all evening. And all night you drink rum and sings. Then up again next morning. Your arms get all bright red from logwood, and you get a taste for sucking the chips. A queer taste.”
“And who buys your logwood?” said Margaret. “Who uses it? What’s it used for?”
“I don’t rightly know about that, except for dyeing,” said Cammock. “A Captain Brown bought all we cut. But we’d great times along the banks of the lagoon.”
“When you say great times,” said Margaret, “what do you mean exactly? What was it, in logwood-cutting, which seems great to you? And was it great to you then, or only now, when you look back on it?”
“Did y’ever hear tell of the ‘last ship,’ sir?” said Cammock. With another man he might have resented the continual questioning; but Captain Margaret always made him feel that he, old pirate as he was, had yet, even in spite of, perhaps by reason of, his piracies, a claim upon, an interest for, the man of intellect and the man of culture. “Did y’ever hear tell of the ‘last ship,’ sir?” said Cammock.
“No,” said Margaret. “Tell us about the last ship.”
“Do you mean Noah’s ark?” said Perrin.
“The public-house?” asked the captain.
“No. A ship. I’ll tell you of the last ship.”
“What has the last ship got to do with the great times on the lagoon?” asked Margaret.
“Just this, Captain Margaret. When a growler. A pug, you understand; one of the hands forward there. When a seaman comes aboard a new ship, he always blows at the rate of knots about his last. You’ll never hear of the ship he’s in. No, sir. She’s hungry. Or wet. Or her old man’s a bad one. But so soon as he leaves her. Oh, my love, what a ship she was, my love. Bacon for breakfast; fires to dry your clothes at; prayers and rum of a Sunday forenoon. Everything. That’s what I mean by a last ship. So when I says we’d great times on the lagoon, why, it’s only a way of speaking. I mean as it seems just beautiful, now it’s over. I’ll just trouble you, Mr. Perrin, if there’s any more beer in the jug.”
“So that’s the last ship, Captain Cammock,” said Margaret. “Well, and now tell us what seems great to you, when you think of—of your last ship, in the lagoon, as you call it.”
Captain Cammock looked at Perrin, who seldom spoke at meals, perhaps because his intellect was too feeble to allow him to do more than one thing at a time. Perrin, who hated to be looked at when he was eating, from some shy belief that no one looked at him save with a desire to laugh, gulped what he had in his mouth at the moment, choked, and hid his confusion in his tankard. Captain Cammock did the same, lest he should appear rude.
“Now that’s no easy question, Captain Margaret,” he said. “It wasn’t great, now I come to think of it. It was hard work. As hard as shovelling coal. And hot. Oh, it’s hot in them lagoons. Sometimes our shirts would be wringing wet with perspiration. And often we were up to our knees in mud, where we worked, and little red devils biting us, besides mosquitoes. And there were thorns on the logwood; spikes as sharp as stings.”
“What were your amusements?” said Margaret.
“Oh, as to them,” replied the captain. “We’d go hunt a wild cow on Saturdays. Or perhaps fish. Or sometimes we’d go a lot of us among the Indians, to a paw-waw. And then ships come. We’d great times when ships come. In the moonlight. We’d sing and drink rum. And firing off pistols and cheering. Oh, we’d great times.”
“Why don’t you go back to it?” asked Captain Margaret. “You don’t go back to it. Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” said Cammock, as he prepared his morning’s pipe. “The men I knowed are gone. They’d have new ways, the new lot. Besides, that sort of thing only goes when you’re young. When you get the salt in your bones, you find the young devils don’t like having you around. And the girls get particular. You can’t get a wife no longer for a yard of blue baize and a stick of sealing-wax. Excuse me, captain. I’m a sailor. I sometimes talk rough. But there it is. All a sailor has at the end is just what he can remember. What I can mind of logwood-cutting is the same as a trader’s money-bags is to him. I must be off forward, to have my morning draw.” He spun his chair round, and rose, pressing the tobacco into his clay pipe. “Give me my hat, stooard.” He bowed to the two friends, walking slowly to the cabin door. “By the way, sir,” he called back. “I forgot to ask. I suppose you’ll be going ashore this fine morning?”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “I am going ashore. I shall want the boat, captain.”
“Very good, sir,” said Cammock. “Will you want to fill our water, sir?”
“No,” said Margaret. “I shall sail before sunset, if the wind holds. We shall fill no more water till we make Virginia.”
“Very good, Captain Margaret,” said Cammock. “If you don’t want the hands, I’ll try them at the guns. It’s time they got into the way of doing things.”
He spun upon his heel, leaving the two friends together. The steward, gathering up the gear, retired to the pantry to wash up.
Captain Charles Margaret, the owner of theBroken Heart, sitting there in his chair, in the quiet cabin, was not yet forty; but his brown hair was grizzled, and his handsome face, so grave, so full of dignity, was marked austerely with lines. He gave one, at first, the impression of a man who had lived fully, grandly, upon many sides of life; with a nobility inherent, not to be imitated. It was only after long months of friendship that the observer could learn the man’s real nature. He would see then that the real nature, ripened, as it was, on so many sides, ready, as it was, to blossom wonderfully, had never come to flower, still less to fruit. It was a great nature, checked by some hunger of the soul, which (this is the sorrow of all beautiful desire) would perhaps have destroyed the soul, had it been satisfied. He was one who had loved for many years. He had paid away all the gold of his life, for a sorrow and a few copper memories. He had loved nobly, like a man of the heroic time, letting life go by him with a smile, so long as the woman whom he loved might be spared one little moment’s annoyance, one little wrinkling of the beautiful brow. He had said to himself that he had worn this woman’s glove, and that he would wear no other woman’s petticoat. And from long brooding on this wayward beauty who had spoiled his life, he had learned much of women. He understood them emotionally with a clearness which sometimes frightened him. He felt that he took a base advantage of them in allowing them to talk to him. Their hearts were open books to him. Though the woman said, “Look on this page, or on this,” his instinct, never wrong, revealed to him the page she tried to hide; and his indulgence of this sense made him, at times, of little use in conversation; for the revealed truth amused him more than its polite screen. At times its possession saddened him, for he knew that he would never exercise that sense in the tenderness of the accepted lover, reading the unspoken thought in the beloved eyes. In his person he was tall and finely built, but a certain clumsiness in his walk made his appearance ungraceful when he left his chair. His hands were singularly beautiful. His eyes were grey and deep-set. His face was pale, inclining to sallow, but bronzed by the wind and sun. He was careful, but quiet in his dress. He wore a black suit, precisely cut, like the clothes of a Puritan, but for its fine lace collar and elaborately carved buttons of scarlet ivory.
He had, as he felt, failed in life, because he had failed in love; a point of view common among women, in a man a confession of self-praise, selfishness, almost of vanity. He had allowed his passion to keep him from action; by which, alone, growth or worth can be determined. He, as a lover, having, as he thought, created a life for himself, more beautiful, because intenser, than the lives of others, even of artists, had lived retired, judging, as all retired men will, all actions, all life, all things, by an arbitrary standard, his own standard, the value of which he was incapable of judging. He had been certain, led away, as he had been, by wild love, that his way was the way of self-perfection, to which all ways assisted, rightly used. In so far as his passion had fitted him for the affairs of the world, by adding graces, or accomplishments to a nature rich already, he had profited. He had studied arts, some half a dozen different kinds, so that his mind might have the more facets to twinkle agreeably for his mistress’s pleasure. But with the confidence of various skill had come, also, intellectual pride; for to the man who knew a little of many things, many things seemed little, since none, save a hopeless passion, seemed great. With this had come a shrinking from the world, a tolerance of it that was half contempt, a distrust of it that was half sorrow for it. He lived away from the world, in a fanciful chamber, where the kings of his imagination offered precious balms for ever to the aloof lady, queen and saint. It was his fancy, in the latter years of his passion, to sublime all human experience, to reduce all action to intellectual essence, as an offering to her. This had begun from a desire to amuse her in conversation. Later, as his aloofness from the world drove him still more upon his folly, he had one day trembled lest she should ask him something that he did not know, or could not resolve. It had given to him a new interest in the world; but a fantastic interest; he saw it only for her, to some extent through her. He searched the measure of his friends’ experience, trying to find, as he had tried that morning with Captain Cammock, some purpose or delight, some glory or dignity in the various tale, which might, in his own hands, become beauteous to her, and to himself sweet, being, as he never doubted it would prove, less glorious, less grand, than his daily experience of high emotion.
Now that the two friends were together in the cabin, there was a silence. Throughout the meal Margaret had kept the old pirate talking, in order to divert Perrin from the protests which he knew would come. Now that they were alone, the protests were long in coming. Perrin fidgeted between the table and the book-case, biting his thumbs, evidently waiting for his friend to speak. At last, feeling that he could wait no longer, and speaking crudely because he spoke from his own initiative, he began—
“Look here, Charles, you ought not to go ashore to-day.”
“Why not?” said his friend. “It’s the end of everything.”
“Her marriage was the end of everything,” said Perrin. “Look here, man, you’re coming this cruise to get rid of your sorrow. Don’t go ashore and begin it all over again. You’ll only upset yourself, and very likely give her pain.”
“You don’t understand, Edward,” said Margaret. “She has been my whole life for four years. If I could. I don’t know. If I could, it might be wiser to go away without a word. Ah, no, no. I can’t. You can’t cut off a part of your life like that. I must go.”
“Well, then,” said Perrin, “I insist on coming with you. You’ll just see her, and come away. I’m weak, I know, and all that; but I will save you from making ducks and drakes of your life. If you see her, you’ll see her with me. But I think you’re very unwise, Charles. If you weren’t owner, I’d clap you in irons and put to sea. I know one thing. If you see her, no good’ll come of it. Look here, man; do drop her, and let’s get away while the wind holds.”
“No. I must see her,” said Margaret stubbornly. “And I couldn’t have you with me. That’s impossible.”
“Why impossible?”
“Because. Well, we won’t talk of that. My mind is made up. By the way, Edward, you were up very early, weren’t you?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see the sunrise. I’ve heard so much about sunrise at sea. And I got into talk with the captain. I told him a little about our plans. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. I’m glad. We shall have to go into that to-night. By the way, Edward, I want you, after this, to stand two watches a day. I shall do the same. We must learn what stuff our men are made of before we reach Virginia; for in Virginia we shall have to weed out our crew. We can have no skulkers where we are going.”
“All right, Charles. I’m going on deck now. I think you’re very foolish. Your going to see her will do no good. So I tell you. Remember me to her.” He picked up his hat, and walked out of the cabin to the deck.
Captain Margaret rose from his chair, glanced through the stern-port at the harbour, and sighed a little.
“Well,” he said abruptly, shrugging his shoulders, “what must be, must be. Perhaps they’ll be out when I get there. Perhaps she’ll refuse to see me.”
His mind, which now made none save romantic images, imaged for him theBroken Heartat sea, under her colours, going over the water, her owner looking astern at land he would never again tread. It imaged for him a garden ashore, full of roses and tall white campanulas. A lady walked there, looking seaward, regretting that she had not seen him, that she had not bidden him good-bye. Oh, very sweet, very tender, were the images which rose up in him, for the ten thousandth time, as he stared out over Salcombe harbour. And each image, each romantic symbol imagined or created, was a heavy nail, a heavy copper bolt, nailing him within the coffin of his past, among the skeletons of starved hopes and strangled passions.
“Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing.”Sonnet lxxxvii.“Here take my picture; though I bid farewell,Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.”John Donne.
“Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing.”
Sonnet lxxxvii.
“Here take my picture; though I bid farewell,
Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.”
John Donne.
Ina little room ashore, in a private suite of a big inn near the church, Tom Stukeley sat alone at breakfast, staring down the garden, across the sea, to the moored ships. He was a tall, powerful, well-made man, of a physical type more common in Ireland than in England, but not rare here. He was, above all things, a creature of the body. One had but to look at him to realize that when he died there would be little for Rhadamanthus. One could not like the man; for though his body had a kind of large splendour, it was the splendour of the prize cabbage, of the prize pig, a splendour really horrible. It is horrible to see any large thing without intelligence. The sight is an acquiescence in an offence against nature. Tom Stukeley was designed by nature for the position of publican. He had the vulgarity and the insolence of a choice English bagman, in the liquor line, together with this handsome body, red face, and thick black hair. By the accident of birth he was a gentleman. In seeing him one realized the tragedy of life’s apportionments. One realized that to build up this, this mass of mucous membrane, boorishly informed, lit only by the marsh-lights of indulged sense, the many toiled in poverty, in enforced though hated ignorance, in life without ease, without joy.
His coarsely coloured face passed for beauty, his insolence for strength of character, even for wit, among those men and women with whom he consorted. His outward manner had something of the off-handed ease of the inferior actor, who drinks, and tells tales, and remarks upon the passing women. But he had little of the actor’s good humour. He had, instead, that air of insolent superiority which makes the inferior soul, arrogant always, like the dunghill cock, clamorous of the glory of dung. In company he was rude to all whom he did not fear. He was more rude to women than to men, partly because he feared them less; but partly because his physical tastes were gross, so that he found pleasure in all horse-play—such as the snatching of handkerchiefs or trinkets, or even of kisses—in gaining which he had to touch or maul his victims, whether protesting or acquiescent. Women were attracted by him, perhaps because he frightened them physically. His love affairs were not unlike the love affairs of python and gazelle. “They like it,” he would say. “They like it.”
To men whom he did not fear, to those of them, that is, who had no advantage of fortune or position from which he could hope to profit, he acted with studied rudeness, with the unintellectual unvaried rudeness of a school bully, particularly if they displayed any little sally of wit, any fondness for art, any fineness of intelligence beyond him. It is possible to think of him with pity, as of one born out of his due time and out of his right circle. He was a cad, born a gentleman.
He sat alone at breakfast, with the breakfast dishes pushed far away from him; for he had risen late, and had sat late at wine the night before. The thought of food was nauseous to him; he drank small beer thirstily; and damned his wife under his breath for being risen from table, as he would, perhaps, have damned her aloud had she been present. He had been married for some three months and had begun to find the simulation of virtue tedious. His head ached; and he was very angry with his wife. He had married her for her money, and he now found that the money was so tied that her husband had no power over it; but that the trustees of her father’s estate, who viewed him with no favour, had powers which he had not suspected. Much as he had ever hated the law, he had never—— He rose up from his seat with an oath, believing for a wild moment that the marriage might be set aside. She had misled him; she must have known that all he wanted was her money. The marriage had been a secret one. But that belief only lasted for a moment; he was “married and done for,” and here was the lawyer’s letter refusing supplies. He had run through their ready money at cards the night before. All that remained to him was a handful of small change, and a handful of tradesmen’s bills. All through breakfast the bills had been arriving, for the word had spread abroad that the Stukeleys were leaving Salcombe at the end of their third week’s stay. He had been in awkward corners before; but never in the country, and never before had he been involved with a wife. He could not think what to do, for his head ached furiously. He had made too free with the common purse in the certainty of receiving money that morning. “Your obedient servants,” ran the letter. He stamped up and down the room, swearing and biting his nails. He could not return to London without money; nor did he dare to return; for he had many debts, and feared arrest. He wondered whether Olivia had any friends in those parts from whom he or she might borrow money. “It’s time Olivia got broken in,” he thought.
A servant entered with a letter. He took it from her, staring at her with the hard insolence of his class. The girl dropped her eyes, looked confused, and then smiled at him.
“Aha,” he said lightly. He caught her hand and pressed it, still looking into her eyes.
“No,” said the girl hurriedly. “There’s some one coming.”
“You’re my little duckling, aren’t you?” he said softly, catching her round the waist.
“Be quiet,” she answered, frightened. “I’m sure I hear some one coming.”
He listened for a second, maintaining his hold. “Nonsense,” he said. “Nonsense, Amy.”
“My name’s Jessie,” she said pertly.
He bent and kissed her lips; the girl made some show of virtue by calling him a bad man.
“Oh law,” said Jessie, breaking from him hastily. “There’s some one——” She seized two plates upon the table, and made a bustling pretence at clearing away. On learning that it was a false alarm, she looked at him with a sort of slinking grace.
“You’ve made my hair untidy,” she said reproachfully.
He walked up to her, laughing. She backed from him with a grin.
“Jess-ie,” came a cry from without.
“It’s missus,” she said, terrified, going to the door.
“Yes, mum.”
“The man wants an answer for that letter he brought.”
“Yes, mum,” she cried. “In a minute, mum. There’s an answer, sir. What’s the answer, sir?”
Stukeley tore the paper open. A bill fell out.
“Oh damn,” he exclaimed. “Tell him I’ll look in in the morning.”
Jessie carried the message to the bearer; and returned with another.
“Please, sir, the man says he won’t go unless he has his money, sir.”
“Won’t he?” said Stukeley angrily. “I’ll see whether he won’t.”
He picked up his cane and walked out swiftly. The servant listened at the door for the details of the quarrel.
“Hark-ee,” came Stukeley’s voice. “Here’s your bill. D’ye see it? There!”—there came a sound of tearing paper—“Now take that back to your master. Next time you disturb me at breakfast I’ll break your head. Get out of this.”
The haberdasher’s clerk withdrew. The landlady aided his retreat with a few words about not having her guests disturbed.
Stukeley returned to his breakfast-room. Jessie looked at him admiringly.
“Aha, Jessie,” he said. “What nice arms you’ve got. Eh? Haven’t you? Eh? Beautiful arms.” He pinched them, following her about as she backed to avoid him.
“You’ve got a wife,” said Jessie. “What do you want with arms? Don’t! Don’t! You’ll make me scream out.”
Again came the voice of the mistress.
“Jessie! Jessie! Drat the girl.”
The amorous by-play ceased; Jessie went swiftly.
She soon returned, bringing a visitor, a coarse fair-haired man, with a face not unlike a horse’s face, but without the beauty. His cheeks were rather puffy; his eyelids drooped down over his eyes, so that he gave one the impression of extreme short sight, or of some eye-disease. He peered out under his eyelids. One felt that the house so lit was a dark, narrow, mean little thieves’ house.
“Mr. Haly to see you, sir,” said Jessie.
Mr. Haly entered, to find his friend Stukeley retiring through the other door. He turned back in the doorway on hearing the name.
“Oh, it’s you, Monty,” he said. “What brings you to Salcombe?”
“You took me for a dun,” said Mr. Haly, with a jocular whine peculiar to him. “You took me for a dun. I’ll sit down, if this pretty charmer here”—he ogled Jenny, with a look which would have made a wanton chaste—“will give me a chair. Thank you, my dear.” He sat down; Jessie left the room.
“I’ve come down with young Killigrew,” he said. “He offered to pay my expenses. So I thought I’d look you up, to see how married bliss looks. Hey, Tom? How’s the wife? Hey, Tom? How’s Cupid’s dove? Hey? I suppose she’s making little clothes already? Hey?”
He laughed pursily; helped himself, unbidden, to the beer, cut himself a snack from his friend’s untasted breakfast, buttered it thickly, and began to eat. His friendships were selfish always. “Give nothing, but take all you can get,” would have been his motto, had he had sufficient intellect to think it out. It had helped him in the world; but his greed, never sated, had perhaps helped him less than his power of flattering those who were richer, but no more intelligent than himself. Stukeley ignored his friend’s questions, not because he objected to them, but because he expected something more from Mr. Haly.
“There was another reason why I called,” said Haly, after a pause. “I travelled down from town with old Bent, your landlord that was.”
“With old Bent?” said Stukeley, becoming more attentive.
“Yes,” continued Haly. “He’d heard you were in Salcombe. I believe he wants to see you.”
“Damn it. He does,” said Stukeley.
“Well,” said Haly, “then I hope it’s not a large sum. But still, now you’re married to an heiress, you lucky dog, why, you can laugh at old Bent, I should think.”
“Yes,” said Stukeley quietly. “What time is old Bent coming here?”
Haly shrugged his shoulders. “We’re not in town now,” he said. “He might come any time.”
Stukeley offered his friend some more beer.
“By the way, Tom,” said Haly, “I don’t want to rob you, but could you lend me a fiver, just to go on with?”
“I’m sorry, Monty,” said his friend; “I never lend money.”
“Oh, come, Tom,” said Haly. “Don’t be a swine, man. I’d lend it to you fast enough. I’d not see a friend in want.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said Tom. “But I never lend money.”
“Damn it,” said Haly, lowering his voice to a whining reproachful tone. “Well, I wouldn’t be a mean swine. Lord, man! I gave you the office about Bent. You might have a little gratitude. What’s a fiver to you? Don’t be a swine, man. I wouldn’t refuse you, I know.”
Stukeley stared insolently at Haly’s blinking eyes. He seemed to relish the man’s disappointment.
“No! Can’t be done, Monty,” he said. “Have some more buttered toast, instead—with sugar on it.”
Haly had already eaten plenteously of this dainty; he was not to be comforted with flagons.
“You are a swine,” he said angrily. “Now you’re married, I suppose you’re going back on your pals. You dirty swine. My God! I wouldn’t be mean like that. Well, keep your fiver. But old Bent shall hear something. Yes, and my new wife shall hear something. My wife Olivia, Olivia.”
Stukeley watched his friend with careless tolerance, ringing the bell meanwhile, with a hand stretched idly behind him. He laughed lightly, bidding Haly to be of good cheer. When Jessie came, in answer to the bell, he bade his friend good morning, and bowed him out. Haly disappeared, cursing.
When he had gone, Stukeley wondered if he had done wisely in choking off Haly so soon. He had made up his mind, during the months of his honeymoon, to break with his old circle; for his wife’s friends were rich and powerful, and his own friends, being men about town, had never been more to him than flash companions. Besides, he realized that a man like Haly was hardly likely to bring him credit with his new acquaintances. And anyhow his headache made him devilish, and he had had pleasure in seeing the horse-face flush, and the little mean eyes blink with anger. He did not set much store by the man’s threats. If old Bent had come to Salcombe after him, he would see his victim, whether Haly helped or refused to help. He did not rightly know what he could say to old Bent, and his head was throbbing and in pain; he could not think. Jessie returned to clear away; but even Jessie would not comfort him, for missus was in the next room and could hear every word.
“Perhaps after dinner,” said Jessie.
Something in the girl’s coyness stirred his lust. He caught hold of her, shutting the door with his disengaged hand.
“You are a naughty man,” said Jessie reprovingly.
He drew her head back and kissed her lips and throat. Something in the girl amused him and excited him. He was conscious of a sudden anger against Olivia. She needed some devil of wantonness, he thought. She never moved him as this tavern trollop moved him.
“Do you love me?” said Jessie.
“Yes,” he said passionately.
“I seen you look at me,” said Jessie.
It had been love at first sight. While they kissed, Olivia’s voice sounded clearly in the passage. “I’ll see him in the breakfast-room, with Mr. Stukeley.”
“Oh law!” said Jessie, wrenching herself free. “Go inside, Mr. Stukeley. Don’t let’s be seen together.”
“Bent already,” said Stukeley, slipping into the inner room.
He went so quickly that Jessie’s question, “Is my hair tidy?” was unanswered. As Jessie dabbed at her hair before the mirror, Olivia entered. She thought that Jessie’s heightened colour and nervous manner were signs that she was ashamed of being caught at a glass. She smiled at the girl, who smiled back at her as she hurried to remove her tray. Had Olivia looked at Jessie as she left the room with the table-cloth, the trollop’s gaze of confident contempt would have puzzled her; she might, perhaps, have found it disquieting.
She had only been married a few weeks; and she loved her husband so dearly that to speak of him to any one, to an inn-servant, for example, seemed sacrilegious to her. She felt this very strongly at this moment, though she longed to ask Jessie where her husband might be found. She felt some slight displeasure at her husband’s absence, for he had never before left her for so long. This breakfast had been the first meal eaten apart since the day of their marriage. When Jessie had left the room, she looked at her image in the mirror, straightening the laces at her throat and smoothing the heavy hair, one of her chief beauties. She loved her husband. All other men were mere creatures to her—creatures with no splendour of circling memory, creatures of dust. But the announcement that Captain Margaret was even then without, waiting to be admitted, was somehow affecting. She felt touched, perhaps a little piqued. He had loved her, still loved her, she felt. She had never much cared for him, though she had found a sort of dreadful pleasure in the contemplation of her power over him. At the moment, she felt a little pity for him, and then a little pity for herself. Now that she was married, she thought, she would be unattractive to him; her power would be gone; and as that was the first time the thought had come to her, it made her almost sad, as though she were parting with a beautiful memory, with a part of her youth, with a part of her youthful beauty. Her look into the glass was anxious. She was eager to look her best, to make the most of her pale beauty; for (like less intelligent women) she believed that it was her beauty which most appealed to him. As a matter of fact it was the refinement of her voice which swayed him, her low voice, full of music, full of intensity, of which each note told of an inner grace, of some beauty of mind unattainable by men, but sometimes worshipped by them. She was not a clever talker. Her power lay in sympathy, in creating talk in others, for when she was of a company it was as though music were being played; the talk showed fine feeling; at least, the talkers went away delighted. She had a little beauty. Her eyes were beautiful; her hair was beautiful; but beautiful beyond all physical beauty was the beauty of her earnest voice, so unspeakably refined and pure, coming holy from the inner shrine.
She had not waited a minute, before Captain Margaret entered. She had expected to see him troubled, and to hear the ring of emotion in his voice as he greeted her. She had half expected to be surprised by some rush of frantic passion. But he entered smiling, greeting her with a laugh. She felt at once, from his manner, from his obvious dislike for her hand, which he scarcely touched and then dropped, an implied shrinking from her husband. It gave her firmness. He looked at her eyes a moment, wondering with what love they had looked at Stukeley during the night-watches. The thought came to him that she was a beautiful soiled thing, to be pitied and tenderly reproved. The image of Stukeley cast too dark a shadow for any brighter thought of her. When she began to speak she had him bound and helpless.
“Well, Olivia,” he said gaily, “I’m glad I came in time to catch you.”
“Yes,” she answered, “we were just going. We have been—— And how did you come here?” She found it harder to talk to him than she had expected.
“I came here in my ship,” he answered. “I wanted to see you, to wish you, to hope—to wish you all happiness. Before I leave England.”
She smiled.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “Are you leaving England for long?”
“It may be a long time. If all goes well, it will be a very long time.”
“I had not heard that you were going abroad. To what part are you going? Italy again?”
“No. I’m going to Darien.” It seemed to him to be almost tragical that she really did not know where Darien lay. “The Spanish Main,” he added.
“Ah, yes,” she said.
He covered her retreat by saying that he was going to Virginia first. She looked at him with quickened interest.
“Going in your ship,” she said. “That sounds very grand. Is she in Salcombe here? Which is she among all those schooners?”
“That one,” he answered, pointing through the window. “The ship with the flag.”
“And you’re leaving England at once?”
“Yes. This afternoon’s tide.”
“But what are you going to do when you get there?”
“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that,” he answered. “Tell me about yourself, and your plans. What are you going to do, now you’re leaving Salcombe? Will you go home to Flaxley?”
“No,” she answered, colouring slightly. “Uncle Nestor was rather rude to Tom, to my husband.”
The captain bit his lip, and gazed out absently over the sea. He had heard why Uncle Nestor had been rude. The knowledge made him doubtful of Olivia’s future happiness.
“So I suppose you’ll go back to town,” he answered, “and settle down. What do married people do, when they settle down?”
“Oh,” she said, “I’ve great schemes for Tom. He’s going to stand for Parliament. But I want to know what you’re going to do in Darien. What is your scheme?”
“Just to help the Indians,” he answered. “The Spaniards have robbed them and ill-treated them, and I thought that if some Englishmen settled on the Isthmus, and opened up a trade with them. For you see, we could trade with both Jamaica and Virginia. And if we opened up a trade there, we could check the Spanish power there, making the Indians our allies.”
“And what would you trade for, or with? It sounds very romantic.”
“The country is very rich in gold. Gold is found in all the rivers. But of course the gold is not to be our aim. I want, really, to found an English colony; or a colony of workers, at any rate. The Spanish colony is just a press, which squeezes the land. Now the land ought, in a sense, to squeeze the colonists. It ought to bring out all their virtues. That is what I want. The country will have to be cleared. And then we shall plant cacao, or whatever the land is fit for, and—— The scheme is thought out, in detail. I’m confident; but I won’t talk about it.”
“And the Indians will be your allies?” repeated Olivia; “and the Spaniards will probably fight you?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And you will be in a townhouse in London, going to the play, or dancing at a ball, in grey silk.”
“Blue, or grey.”
“And you will give sprigs of verbena to those who see over your garden in the country.”
“And when will you come for some?”
“Ah! I shan’t see that garden again, for a long, long time.”
“We’re going to plant all sorts of things, when we get home. You must send some roots from Darien.”
“I should like to do that. We have been such—such friends.”
“In the old days.”
“Yes,” he said, rising. “Now I must be off.”
“Oh, but you ought not to go yet.”
“I only just came ashore to see you.”
“Oh, you must stay to see my husband. He wants to see you. He’ll be so disappointed if you don’t stay to see him.”
“You must make my apologies. Good-bye, Olivia.”
She held out her hand without emotion of any kind. She would have shaken hands with any other acquaintance with just so little feeling. Margaret wondered what it was that would get within her guard. He took her hand. He tried hard to say no more, but failed, being sorely tempted.
“God bless you,” he said. “I hope you will be very, very happy. God bless you, dear. I wonder if I shall hear of you ever. Or see you again.”
“If you want to, you will,” she said simply, glad that it had gone no further.
“Yes, I shall see you again,” he said.
“Of course you will,” she answered. “I hope your colony will be a success.”
Something in her voice made the conventional words beautiful. Captain Stukeley, on the other side of the door, hearing that quality in his wife’s voice, wished that the keyhole were bigger. With an effort, Captain Margaret rewarded that moving tone.
“When I come back,” he said, “I hope that I shall get to know your husband. Make my apologies to him.”
“Good-bye again,” she said.
Her voice seemed to come from her whole nature. All that her lover could remember afterwards was the timbre of the voice; he had no memory of her face. Her eyes he remembered, and her heavy antique ear-rings. “Eyes, ear-rings, and a voice,” he repeated, walking down to the jetty. He wondered what she was. “What is she? What is she? Oh Lord, what is she?” He could not answer it. She was beautiful. Most beautiful. Beautiful enough to drive him mad. Her beauty was not a bodily accident; but a quality of soul, the quality of her nature, her soul made visible. But what was she? She had talked commonly, conventionally. She had said no wise thing, no moving thing. Never once had she revealed herself; she was only kind, fond of flowers, fond of music, a lover of little children. But oh, she was beyond all beauty, that dark, graceful lady with the antique ear-rings. It was her voice. Any conventional, common word her voice made beautiful. He wondered if she were, after all, divine; for if she were not divine, how came it that her voice had that effect, that power? He felt that human beings were all manifestations of a divine purpose. Perhaps that lovely woman was an idea, an idea of refinement, of delicate, exquisite, right grace, clothed in fitting flesh, walking the world with heavenly intention. But if that were so, how the devil came Stukeley there, that was the puzzle? The blood came into that pale face sometimes; and oh, the way she turned, the way she looked, the way of that voice, so thrilling, so infinitely beautiful. Ah well; he had played and lost, and there was his ship with her flag flying; he was bound down and away
Along the coast of New Barbary.
Along the coast of New Barbary.