HOW JACK RESOLVED
JACK, missing a full night of young, wholesome sleep, dozed a great
deal of the afternoon, lying stretched out uncomfortably upon a
bench in the kitchen. Dred and Morton talked intermittently, and the
occasional growling tenor of their voices mingled ever with his half
dreams; an occasional expression striking out now and then from the
monotone of words, and rousing him to a fleeting consciousness. Then
there would be long pauses of silent tobacco-smoking, in which he would
fall to dreaming again.
Ever since the day before, his bosom had been growing more and more
full of the thought of the young lady. Now his thoughts recurred to her
again and again in his half-waking dozings, remembering always how he
had found her in the swamp and how he had covered her cold shoulders
with his own coat, how he had lifted her soft swooning body from the
floor, how her black hair fell in a cloud over his arm. He seemed to
sense again the singular fragrance of her presence, and at times of his
half sleeping he would almost feel the touch of her damp chin upon his
hand as he buttoned the coat at her throat. There was a strange, keen
pleasure in thus dreaming about her, and he yielded himself entirely to
it.
Equally present in this half-waking sleep was the fact of the return of
the pirates. Once he fancied very vividly that he was on board of the
French bark, and that he was trying to escape in her with Miss Eleanor
Parker, and that the forecastle was smeared all over with blood. He saw
the scene very vividly—almost as though it stood actually before his
eyes. Two voices were speaking somewhere, and then he awoke to hear
Dred and Morton talking together again.
That evening after supper he rowed Morton up to the town. He himself
had made many acquaintances at Bath Town during the two months or more
of his life at the pirate’s house. Everybody grew to know him very
well—his history, of his family, of his prospects. They used to call
him “Gentleman Jack,” and showed him a sort of consideration they would
not have done had he not had such advantages of birth and breeding.
He used often to go up in the skiff of an evening, to sit and talk at
some gathering-place of the planters and the town’s people, returning
perhaps late at night through the hollow solitude of the watery silence.
This evening he went with Morton from place to place, watching him as
he drank rum, listening to his talk, and sometimes joining in what was
said. The town, as has been said, was full of the news of the pirates’
return and of the rich prize they had made, and Morton was welcomed
everywhere. He was drinking very freely, and, as he went from house
to house, he talked ever more and more openly about the circumstances
of the capture of the prize. It almost seemed to Jack as though he
himself had part and parcel in it all by virtue of being a member of
the pirate’s household. Ordinarily he would have taken great delight in
listening to what was said and in saying his say concerning it, but now
a strong desire for her presence hung continually over him, urging him
almost uncomfortably to get back home again.
So it was that he did not stay very long up in the town, but returned
before the night had altogether fallen, and while a pallid light still
lingered in the western sky, making it faintly luminous. As he rowed
slowly down the smooth stretch of water, solitary and alone, the joy of
that strong yearning to be near her again seemed to fill everything,
and, as he listened absently to the rhythmic chugging jerk of the oars
in the rowlocks, and as he looked out astern at the long, trailing,
oily wake that the boat left behind it along the glassy smoothness of
the water, he thought of her, bearing strongly upon the thought, and
holding it close to him.
He built up incoherent plans for comforting her, for helping her. He
had thought a score of times that day about the possibility of helping
her to escape, and now in the dusk and the solitude the disjointed
thoughts began to assume almost the vividness of reality, and once or
twice he thrilled with a quick, keen, nervous pang as though he were
upon the eve of actually fulfilling some such determination. These
vague plans did not take any definite shape excepting that he said
to himself that he might carry her back home as she had been brought
thither, and maybe that he might take the big yawl-boat that the
pirates had brought back with them in the tow of the sloop, and which
now again lay drawn up on the beach near to the landing wharf. Beyond
this he had not thought of any plan for taking her away, but only dwelt
upon the delight of being with her for such a long time and of taking
care of her.
His mind was full of such thoughts as he ran the skiff upon the half
sandy, half muddy strip of beach beside the landing wharf, driving the
bow of the boat far up on the shore with two or three quick pulls of
the oar, and the desire for her presence was so strong upon him that
when he reached the house he leaned the oars against the side of the
wooden wall, and went around to the further end of the building, where
the window of her room opened out to the westward.
Excepting for this window, that side of the house was not inhabited,
the lower windows of the bleak and naked parlor being nearly always
closed. He had been there before, and as he went thither now, he
remembered, with a kind of sudden joy, how he had brought to her
one evening two or three peaches that he had gathered at Trivett’s
plantation, and how he had thrown them up to her as she leaned out of
the window to catch them, and of how he had lingered a little while to
talk with her.
The window of her room was open, but there was no light within, and
all was very silent. After a moment’s hesitation he called softly,
in a tone that was rather a loud whisper than a voice, “Young lady!
Mistress! Miss Eleanor!” and then presently again, “Young lady, are
you there? ’Tis I, Jack—Jack Ballister.” He waited, looking up, but
still there was no reply. By and by he was about to go away, but at
the moment he thought he saw a movement at the window. Then her face
appeared, shadow-like, above the ledge. “Who is it?” she whispered. “Is
that Jack Ballister?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “’tis I. Tell me, mistress, how do you do by now? Do
you feel better?”
“Ay,” she answered. “I’m better now than I was. I’ve been ill all
afternoon, but I’m feeling better now. But why did you call me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jack. “I’ve been up to the town, and I was
thinking about you. I’ve been thinking about you all day. I felt
mightily sorry for you, and I was wondering how you did. I’m glad
you’re better now than you were.”
She did not speak immediately; then she said: “Yes, I’m better now than
I was.”
There was something in the undertone of her voice that seemed to him
to bespeak that she had been crying, and was near crying again. The
thought that she had been crying struck him very sharply. He stood
silent for a moment or two, and then, as though for confirmation, he
asked: “What is it, mistress? Has anything—have they been troubling
you again? Tell me, have you been crying?” She did not reply. “I know
something hath happened,” he whispered. “Tell me what it is,” and then
he knew that she was crying now.
“’Tis not much,” she said after a while, during which he stood there
not knowing just what to say or do. “’Tis only a little thing. They
have taken my clothes away from me, and locked the door so that I
sha’n’t run away again. That is all,” and as she spoke he could see,
but darkly, the flicker of her handkerchief as she wiped her eyes.
“Taken your clothes!” cried Jack. “Who has taken your clothes?”
“Mistress Teach has just been in and taken them away. Captain Teach
went to bed a long while ago, and he sent her to take them away. There,
go away, please; you make me cry again, and I am a fool to cry so and
for such a little thing.” And then, breaking down, she burst out,
almost passionately, “I don’t know why they treat me so!”
Jack stood silent in the presence of her sudden emotion, but still he
did not know how to go away and leave her. “There, there, mistress!”
he said, awkwardly, “don’t you take it so bitterly; it will all come
right in the end, I know that, so don’t cry any more.” Then, feeling
the barren inconsequence of his words, he continued, “Do you know what
I was thinking as I rowed down from the town just now? I was thinking
that I would try to help you to get away from here and back home again,
so don’t cry any more.” Then he added, “If you’ll bid me, I’d take you
away to-night—I would, and carry you back to Virginia again.”
“No,” she said, in a voice stifled with the restraint she was putting
upon herself. “’Tis no use to try to escape. I tried, and I couldn’t
get away. I know I’ll never be able to get away from here. I feel that
I never shall.” Then she suddenly gave way, and her crying became so
vehement that Jack began to be afraid that some one would hear it.
“Hush!” he whispered sibilantly, “they’ll hear you.”
“I can’t help it,” she gasped. “Go away, please.”
At that moment some one opened the door at the further end of the
house, and a light shone out from the kitchen. Jack instantly slipped
away into the darkness around the corner of the building. He waited for
a time, but no one came. After a while he peeped around the further
corner, but whoever it was that had opened the door had gone back into
the house. Then he went around and into the kitchen without trying
again to speak to the young lady; but his heart was full of and heavy
with pity for her.
Betty Teach and Dred were both in the kitchen when Jack came in—Dred
smoking his pipe, the pirate’s wife busied about her work. There was a
bundle of clothes lying upon the table, and Jack, as he stood with his
back to the fireplace, knew that it belonged to the young lady.
“Did Morton come back with you?” asked Dred.
“No,” said Jack, shortly; and then he added, “He said he’d stay up
there all night to-night and be back to-morrow.”
Betty Teach picked up the bundle of clothes and, lifting the lid of the
hutch, flung it in, banged down the lid and turned the key, all in the
same moment. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I’ve been up and on my feet
ever since midnight, and I’m tired to the marrow.”
A sudden anger flamed up within Jack. “’Tis a bleeding shame,” he cried
out, “for you to treat the young lady so and take her clothes from her
that way, and to lock her in her room besides.”
Betty Teach turned quickly on him. “Who told you I’d took her clothes
away from her and locked her in her room?” she asked, sharply.
Jack hesitated for a moment. “Can’t I see for myself?” he said. “Ain’t
those her clothes you’ve locked up in the chest?”
“But who told you I’d locked her in her room?” Betty Teach insisted.
“Come, tell me, who told you?”
Then Jack answered, almost sullenly, “Well, if you must know, I stopped
on my way up from the boat to ask the young lady how she did, and she
told me you’d locked her up and taken her clothes away from her.”
“And so you’ve been around back of the house speaking to her, have you?
I thought I heard some one talking outside. And so ’twas you, was it?”
“Well,” said Jack, “and what if it was? What harm was there in my
talking to her?”
“Harm!” said Betty Teach. “You’ll see what harm there’s in it if Ned
catches you at it, after what happened yesterday. He’ll harm you, I
promise you that. ’Tis good for you he’s so dead asleep as not to hear
you. He’d harm you with a bullet in your head if he caught you or
anybody else hanging around her window out there at night after her
trying to run away.”
“No he wouldn’t, neither,” said Jack, stoutly.
“Wouldn’t he?” said Betty. “Well, you just try it again some fine day
when he’s about, and you’ll see quicker than you like,” and then she
went out of the room and up-stairs to bed.
Jack still stood, and Dred still smoked his pipe in silence for a long
while after the pirate’s wife had gone. At last Dred spoke. “It be
true enough what she said, lad,” he said. “If you go meddling in this
matter you’ll be getting yourself into sore trouble, as sure as you’re
born. ’Tis none of your business to be meddling in it.”
“Who said I was meddling?” said Jack. “What have I been doing to
meddle?”
Dred shrugged his shoulders and then smoked on for a long time in
silence, during which Jack still stood sullenly in front of the
fireplace. “Not that I blame you,” Dred suddenly said, as though
following out some train of his own thoughts. “If I was a young lad
like you be, I wouldn’t sit still to see a pretty young creature like
this here young lady put upon as she’s put upon, neither. It ben’t my
business no more than it’s yours—except I went up to Marlborough to
help fetch her away. But sometimes I can’t abide it to see her sit
there moping for day after day, getting sicker and sicker all the
while, until some fine day she’ll just fall away and die under our very
noses.”
“Die!” cried out Jack with a start, and then, after a moment’s pause,
“What do you mean by that, Dred?”
“You’d better not talk so loud,” said Dred, “unless you want ‘em to
hear you up-stairs.”
“But what did you mean by saying she was going to die?” said Jack, in a
lowered voice.
“I didn’t say she was going to die,” said Dred. “I said she was getting
sicker all the time, and anybody as is that way stands a chance to die
unless they gets better. And how’s she to get any better if she’s kept
penned up here, moping for her own home? That’s what I meant when I
said I didn’t blame you for making it your business.” Then, after a
long while of silence, in which he puffed at his pipe, he continued,
abruptly, “Ay, she’s growin’ more and more peaked all the time. She
lies abed half the day, nowadays, and afore long, ’tis my belief,
she’ll lie in bed all the time and never get up out of it again.”
Jack stood perfectly still, his hands thrust deep into his breeches
pockets. He could not trust himself to speak. He did not know how long
he stood there, but it must have been for a great while. Then Dred
began again: “To my mind, ’twas an ill day when the captain undertook
this business of kidnapping. Here he is now, with this young gell on
his hands. He’s afraid to let her go, and if he keeps her cooped up
she’s as like as not to die on his hands. He don’t know how to treat
her, and he can’t contain hisself when she crosses him. Look at the
way he talked to her to-day. A few more talks o’ that kind, and, he’ll
kill her for sartin’. By blood! I wish I was well out of it all—I do.
If she dies on our hands down here ’twill be the worst day’s happening
that ever fell on Bath Town. I’ve been thinking a deal about it lately,
and sometimes ’twouldn’t take much to make me cut it all and get away
from here.” And then presently he added, “I don’t see as there’s over
much profit in staying, as ’tis.” Again he smoked away at his pipe,
puffing quickly to get it alight once more. Then by and by he began
once more: “’Tis my belief the captain feels he’s being tricked by Mr.
Parker, and that for some reason or other our gentleman hath no notion
of ever having her fetched back again. Well, if he thinks that, ’tis my
belief, too. Hotchkiss was saying this morning that there be news about
that Colonel Parker’s fallen sick and’ll maybe die. And if he dies, and
this young lady dies, your Mr. Parker’ll be a mightily rich man. Now
you put two and two together, and how many does it make? If she dies,
and her father dies, Mr. Parker’ll deny all blame in this matter, and
more’n likely’ll come down and roast out the whole lot on us, just to
show that he had naught to do in the business. Well, well, ’tis none
of my business, but I only hope and pray that we sha’n’t all hang for
doing what’ll profit him everything and won’t profit us anything. The
captain might ha’ knowed he’d get naught out o’ this business to play
ag’in such a sharp blade as Mr. Parker.”
All this time Jack had been standing dumbly, with his hands thrust deep
into his pockets. Every word that Dred said impelled him more and more
strongly to say what was in his mind, and every moment he was resolving
more and more nearly to a culmination to say his say and to take Dred
into his confidence. At last he did speak—it seemed to him almost
before he had finally decided to do so. “Dred,” he said, and then,
beginning again, “Dred, you told me a while ago that you didn’t blame
me for making this my business. Well, I’m going to tell you something,
Dred. I’ve been thinking that maybe I’d undertake to help the young
lady to get away home again to Virginia.” He waited an instant, and
then added, “When I spoke with her just now, outside yonder, I told her
that if she called on me to do it, I’d help her to go away, even if it
was this very night.”
Dred sat for a while in perfectly dead silence, looking at Jack through
his half-shut eyes, and Jack, his heart beating quickly at having
spoken, wondered what he would say. “Well,” he said, at last, “you be
a mighty bold fool, to be sure, to talk that way to me. You’ve got a
great heart in you, for sartin. But now you tell me; how would you set
about to do such a thing as that? You don’t know what you talk about
doing. How d’ye suppose a boy like you could get her away from such a
man as the captain, and safe up to Virginny? A man like me might maybe
do such a thing as that, but how would you set about it?”
“I hadn’t any real plan,” Jack acknowledged, “but I thought I might
maybe get her away in the yawl—some time, perhaps, when the captain
was away from home. Why not?”
Dred shook his head. “No, no, my hearty,” he said, “you’d never be able
to do it. You’d be overhauled afore you got half way to Ocracock—and
what d’ye suppose would happen then?”
“I suppose I’d be fetched back again,” said Jack.
“Do you?” said Dred, grimly. “Well, then, I don’t suppose you’d be
fetched back again, unless you was fetched back feet foremost.”
“Do you mean they’d harm me?” said Jack.
“That’s just what I do mean,” said Dred. “If the captain caught you
trying to get this young lady away, he’d put a bullet into your head as
quick as wink, and as sure as you’re a born Christian. You don’t know
the captain like I do.”
Jack stood thinking, and Dred sat still, watching him keenly. Presently
he heaved a profound breath that was almost more than a sigh. “Well,
Dred,” he said, “if she wanted me to do it, I believe I would do it.”
Dred continued to regard him for a while, then his thin lips widened
into a grin. “You’ve got a big heart in you, Jack Ballister,” he
said, “and there’s no doubt about that.” Then suddenly he knocked the
ashes out of his pipe and arose from where he sat. He came up to Jack
and thrust his face close into Jack’s face. “Well, my lad,” he said,
“you’ve said your say to me, and now I’m a-going to say my say to you.”
Jack drew back involuntarily, wondering with some apprehension what was
coming next. “Well, then, this is my say: How’d you like me to go along
with you?”
For the moment Jack did not understand. “What did you say?” he said.
“I said, how would you like me to go along with you, that’s what I
said—to go along and help take the young lady back to Virginny again?”
Then Dred reached out suddenly and caught Jack by the collar, giving
him a shake. “Why, ye young fool,” he said, “d’ye think I’d let ye go
on such a venture as that all alone, and have the head blowed off of ye
for your pains? Not I! I knowed what ye was at, the very first word ye
said, and if I’d chose to do so I’d ‘a’ stopped your talk quick enough.”
Even yet Jack did not know whether he really understood aright. “Dred,”
he said, whispering intensely, “what do you mean? Do you mean that
you’re willing to help the young lady to get away?” Then, as it came
upon him to know that that was what Dred did mean and that he was
earnest in meaning it, he reached out, hardly knowing what he did, and
caught at the other as though to hug him. “O Dred!” he cried.
“Get away!” whispered Dred, pushing him off with his elbow. “What d’ ye
mean, ye young fool—hugging at me that way?” Then he began laughing.
“D’ye think I’m your sweetheart to try to hug me like that? ’Tis my
belief the young lady up-stairs is your sweetheart, else you wouldn’t
be so anxious to have your head blowed off for her sake.”
Jack knew that he was blushing fiery red. He struck at Dred, and burst
out laughing. “You’re a fool, Chris Dred, to talk that way. Why, I
hav’n’t spoken fifty words to her this week.”
Dred struck back at Jack and laughed. “All the same, ’tis my belief
she’s your sweetheart,” he said. “Well, let’s go and have a look at the
yawl, and then we’ll ax her if she’s willing to trust us to help her
away from here?”
“What!” cried Jack, “you don’t mean to go to-night, do you?”
“Why not?” said Dred. “If we makes up our mind to go at all, ’tis no
use to put it off. To-night’s as good a night as we’re like to have,
and the longer we leave it to think about, the harder ’twill be to do.”