.... I take up my tale where I left off yesterday.... Dan and I started
as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee. The old lady was
more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I had ever seen
her. She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood—who “don't slape” don't he,
if snores are any criterion—had called out in the night, “Hark to th'
'arses' 'oofs!” Had we heard them? And where might we be going then?
'Twas very earrly to start, an' no breakfast. Haapgood had said it was
goin' to shaowerr. Miss Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an' Mister
Ford 'e kept 'is room. Was it?—would there be—? “Well, an' therr's an
'arvest bug; 'tis some earrly for they!” Wonderful how she pounces on
all such creatures, when I can't even see them. She pressed it absently
between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another way. Long
before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our coffee, and
departed. But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her skirts
high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious in their
setting of fine wrinkles, and said:
“'Tidden sorrow for her?”
A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got. We rode by the
lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw, and
farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin; past
fields of corn, where larks were singing. Up or down, we didn't draw
rein till we came to Dan's hotel.
There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that
hallowed every shape. There seemed affinity between the earth and the
sky. I've never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon. And every
ship, however black or modern, on those pale waters, had the look of a
dream ship. The tall green woods, the red earth, the white houses, were
all melted into one opal haze. It was raining, but the sun was shining
behind. Gulls swooped by us—ghosts of the old greedy wanderers of the
sea.
We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witch! They
started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.
“The Pied Witch, zurr?” asked one politely; “an' which may her be?”
That's the West countryman all over! Never say you “nay,” never lose
an opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do
anything—independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance. We
mentioned Pearse's name.
“Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!” They exchanged a look half-amused,
half-admiring.
“The Zunflaower, yu mane. That's her. Zunflaower, ahoy!” As we mounted
the steamer's black side I heard one say:
“Pied Witch! A pra-aper name that—a dandy name for her!” They laughed as
they made fast.
The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witch, or whatever she was called,
met us—a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots of
his hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round the
rims from staring at weather.
“The skipper is on board,” he said. “We're rather busy, as you see. Get
on with that, you sea-cooks,” he bawled at two fellows who were doing
nothing. All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and stowing
cargo.
“To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck. Will you come
this way?” He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he called
the saloon. “Names? What! are you Mr. Treffry? Then we're partners!” A
schoolboy's glee came on his face.
“Look here!” he said; “I can show you something,” and he unlocked the
door of a cabin. There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece of
tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk. He pulled it
up. The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was the ugly body
of a dismounted Gatling gun.
“Got six of them,” he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which his
native frankness gaped out. “Worth their weight in gold out there
just now, the skipper says. Got a heap of rifles, too, and lots of
ammunition. He's given me a share. This is better than the P. and
O., and playing deck cricket with the passengers. I'd made up my mind
already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I ran across
the skipper. Wonderful chap, the skipper! I'll go and tell him. He's
been out all night; only came aboard at four bells; having a nap now,
but he won't mind that for you.”
Off he went. I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract a
youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of some
country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for ever
frank and youthful.
He came back with his hands full of bottles.
“What'll you drink? The skipper'll be here in a jiffy. Excuse my goin'
on deck. We're so busy.”
And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come. He made no attempt to shake
hands, for which I respected him. His face looked worn, and more defiant
than usual.
“Well, gentlemen?” he said.
“We've come to ask what you're going to do?” said Dan.
“I don't know,” answered Pearse, “that that's any of your business.”
Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.
“You've got five hundred pounds of mine,” he said; “why do you think I
gave it you?”
Zachary bit his fingers.
“That's no concern of mine,” he said. “I sail on Wednesday. Your money's
safe.”
“Do you know what I think of you?” said Dan.
“No, and you'd better not tell me!” Then, with one of his peculiar
changes, he smiled: “As you like, though.”
Dan's face grew very dark. “Give me a plain answer,” he said: “What are
you going to do about her?”
Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.
“Nothing.”
“Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?”
Zachary looked at him coolly. “Not at all,” he said.
“What in God's name did you do it for?”
“You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr. Treffry.”
“To put a child in that position! Haven't you the heart of a man? What
d' ye come sneaking in at night for? By Gad! Don't you know you've done
a beastly thing?”
Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists. Then he seemed to shut
his anger into himself.
“You wanted me to leave her to you,” he sneered. “I gave her my promise
that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on Wednesday quietly
enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole thing out with your
infernal dog. The fat's in the fire! There's no reason why I should take
her now. I'll come back to her a rich man, or not at all.”
“And in the meantime?” I slipped in.
He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.
“I would have taken her to save the fuss—I really would—it's not my
fault the thing's come out. I'm on a risky job. To have her with me
might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve. It isn't safe for
her.”
“And what's her position to be,” I said, “while you're away? Do you
think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave her
like this? You ought to give up this business.
“You stole her. Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!”
A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
“Give it up!” I urged.
“My last farthing's in it,” he sighed; “the chance of a lifetime.”
He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in his
life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences
which his nature never recognises. I thought he was going to give in.
Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, “Play the man!”
Pearse turned his head. “I don't want your advice anyway,” he said;
“I'll not be dictated to.”
“To your last day,” said Dan, “you shall answer to me for the way you
treat her.”
Zachary smiled.
“Do you see that fly?” he said. “Wel—I care for you as little as this,”
and he flicked the fly off his white trousers. “Good-morning...!”
The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore, but
we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the ship, and
she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the mate waving
his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent down at us,
smiling, keen, and friendly.
.... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each
other; I started sulkily for home.
As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came
down with a thud.
“The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to
fall.”
I made up my mind to pack, and go away. But there's a strangeness,
a sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don't know the
people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn't
the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It's
the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.
The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch
shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good
news. John Ford himself opened the door to me.
He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an intruder;
then he said:
“I have not spoken to my granddaughter—I waited to see Dan Treffry.”
He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on
his shoulders. He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out of
order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think. He isn't a man whom
you can pity. I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the matter at
all. When I told him where we had been, he said:
“It was good of you to take this trouble. That you should have had to!
But since such things have come to pass—” He made a gesture full of
horror. He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was struggling
against a mortal hurt. Presently he asked:
“You saw him, you say? He admitted this marriage? Did he give an
explanation?”
I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear. Before this old man, with
his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for
Zachary, and must try to do him justice.
“Let me understand,” he said at last. “He stole her, you say, to make
sure; and deserts her within a fortnight.”
“He says he meant to take her—”
“Do you believe that?”
Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window. How long
she had been there I don't know.
“Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?” she cried out.