HOURS THAT GROW DARK.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM PHIPPS was as eager as a boy, now that he had definitely
settled on the purpose which had for its object the quest of the sunken
treasure. Therefore he and Adam and the beef-eaters worked unceasingly
to prepare the brig, “Captain Spencer,” for the cruise to the Bahamas.
What with provisioning the craft, enlisting more trustworthy men for the
voyage and refitting a somewhat depleted and inefficient arsenal, Phipps
waxed brusque and impatient. He had desired to get away from Boston not
later than Saturday afternoon, but as the tasks before them had been
tackled by Adam and the rest of them on Friday morning, the worthy
Captain’s ambition to be on the sea on the Sabbath—a day for which he
had little liking—was vain. Saturday night therefore approached and
Phipps fumed, for he could not so outrage the Puritans’ sense of things
Godly as to sail on Sunday, wherefore the departure had perforce to be
postponed till Monday morning.
Adam, with an exaggerated sense of honor, had resisted the longing to go
by night to that same alley in which he had rescued Garde’s cat and met
that young lady with Mistress Prudence Soam. He spent the time with his
beef-eaters and with Wainsworth, making merry for these music-hungering
friends on the violin, which now seemed to him more than ever the one
thing left him on which to concentrate the love of his affectionate
nature.
On Sunday morning Captain Phipps betook himself to his brig, as she lay
in mid-stream, to pother about by himself, while Adam dutifully escorted
Goodwife Phipps to meeting, at South Church, which was nearer than the
old church and more popular as well.
It was a solemn, black procession of Puritans that walked decorously to
meeting in the sunlight. The day was one of almost unseemly beauty, for
Nature was fairly barbarous in the colors which she wore like jewels.
There was riotous gladness in the breeze that tipped back the bonnets
from many a pretty face, to let the sun have a look at peach-bloom
cheeks; there was a deviltry in the warmth that the girls felt first at
their ankles, where thin stockings only protected them; and there was a
twitter and chirrup of birds in the air.
In their homely black and their stiff white collars, the men were as
solemn as posts. No bells sounded, either from afar, with mellowed
pealings, nor nearer with persistent nagging. Men, women and children
alike walked with their eyes steadfastly fixed on the ground.
However, there were two pairs of eyes less meek. They were Adam’s and
Garde’s. It therefore came to pass that each discovered the other,
before the church portals were reached. Garde’s heart began to beat as
if it were knocking to call Adam’s attention. Adam’s hammered as if it
were forging more fetters to bind him tighter in his love.
Garde, with her grandfather and Wainsworth, preceded Rust and Mrs.
Phipps into the sanctuary. Adam followed eagerly, and yet as one about
to enter a prison. He had seen Wainsworth, but Henry, in his ecstasy,
had contented himself with looking devotedly at Garde’s little shoes.
Inside the church, Garde sat somewhat toward the back, while Adam, with
the men, occupied a bench at the side of the building from which he
could see Mistress Merrill’s profile perfectly, as often as he dared to
look in her direction.
Garde, with much resolution, permitted herself not so much as one tiny
flicker of a glance toward Adam, all during the time of service. She
felt him looking at her, however, from time to time, and rejoiced that
her little ruse to make him stirred up and mayhap jealous was
succeeding. The flush of maidenhood’s beauty which had mounted to her
cheek, the moment she found that Adam was near, remained throughout the
morning.
Later to church than any other, a man, alone, and none too reverent,
entered the door and took a seat on the side, from which he could scan
many of the faces in the place. It was Randolph. He had come there for
the sole purpose of looking about him, his reasons being various, but
none of them Godly. He shut his mouth grimly at beholding Adam present,
but when his gaze finally rested on Garde, all the more radiantly
beautiful for the simplicity of her dress, it became fixed, first, then
covetous, and finally passionate.
It was not until the meeting was finished that Garde ventured to take a
sly glance at Adam. Her gaze met his. She saw and comprehended, then,
such a fathomless sadness in his look, before he could drop his gaze,
that she was instantly most penitent over what she had done.
It was the same look she had seen in his eyes that day when he had
marched as a captive, at the end of King Philip’s war—a look she never
had, and never could, forget.
As for Rust, he had confirmed to his satisfaction, all that Wainsworth
had told him. If he had not been convinced before and ready to renounce
his own hopes, he was quite persuaded and determined now. He thought how
fortunate it was that Phipps had the brig all ready to sail on the
morrow. It was very much better to end the matter with the smallest
possible delay.
He spent the afternoon with Phipps and the beef-eaters on the ship. To
his credit, he made himself an agreeable and cheerful companion. Indeed,
what with the songs he had sung for Wainsworth and the others, and the
spirit of his raillery, boasting and readiness to fight or to fiddle, he
had succeeded in deceiving them all as to the nature under his
waistcoat.
Yet when the night was come and the magnet which had been drawing and
drawing him to that alley, sacred to the memory of Garde’s cat, once
more exercised its influence, more powerfully than ever, he became a
restless creature.
It has been said that man justifies himself in whatsoever he does. Adam
thought he needed justification for desiring to go once, just once, into
that alley, wherefore he prepared his mind with several excuses. Armed
with these he at length slipped away from the Crow and Arrow and found
his way to the rear of that house into which he had seen Garde and
Prudence disappear, on that memorable first night in Boston.
Had Rust come to this trysting-place at the same hour on the two
previous evenings, he would have met Mistress Merrill face to face.
Garde, in her impulsive eagerness to see him again, had waited for
little debating before she slipped from the house, to see if he might
not have come to deliver that certain trinket from Hispaniola. Her
cousin Prudence, more diffident, had desired to come forth also, but she
had lacked Garde’s readiness of execution and courage. However she had
not lacked the incentive, and as no maiden is utterly awed, in the
presence of a tender passion, Mistress Prudence had at length steeled
her heart, and to-night she came tripping diffidently forth, not long
after Adam’s arrival on the scene.
So silently had Prudence come that Adam, who might have arranged
otherwise, suddenly found himself confronted, before he had made up his
mind whether he wished any one might appear or not.
“Why, good evening, Mr. Rust,” said Prudence, with a little gasp at her
own daring, “why, I was just walking in the garden and couldn’t think
who it might be, here by the gate. Why, how strange we should meet!”
Adam had said good evening, waving a salute grandly with his hat, the
moment Prudence had spoken, for he had realized instantly that she was
not Garde and his presence of mind had risen to the occasion without
delay.
“I—wandered up here looking, for—for distressed cats,” said Adam.
“Oh, did you?” said Prudence, innocently. “That was real noble.”
Adam hated to have anything he did called noble. He therefore hastened
to do penance, in a measure, for his slightly inaccurate statement.
“I am bound to confess,” he added, “that I did have a faint hope that I
might see either you or Mistress Merrill—or both—to say good-by, for
to-morrow I am off again, for a jaunt on the sea.”
“Going away?” echoed Prudence. “Oh, why, Garde might be disappointed,
not to see you and say good-by.”
Adam thought this was sweet of Prudence, as indeed it was. He could have
mentioned some disappointments himself, but he refrained from doing so.
He thought, in a somewhat bitterly philosophical vein, that perhaps it
was better as it was, better that he should not see Garde again, under
the circumstances.
“You are very kind,” he said. “Perhaps it would not be asking too much
of you to get you to take a small packet—in fact, I have presumed to
provide myself with two little packages, which I trust you and Mistress
Merrill will receive, merely as tokens of a rover’s amusement in the
little event of a few evenings ago, and of a pleasant memory which the
episode will furnish for otherwise lonely moments.”
He had indeed made up two small parcels, intending behind the ruse of
making a small gift to both Garde and Prudence, to bestow thus the
present to Garde brought from Hispaniola and long delayed as to
delivery. He therefore took these carefully wrapped trinkets from his
pocket and held them forth.
“If I might prevail upon your good nature,” he said, “to accept this one
and to give this other into the hands of Mistress Merrill, I should be
grateful to you for the favor.”
Fate takes obvious delight in making her weavings complete. It was
inevitable that Garde should come out to that garden gate, while Adam
and Prudence were talking there together, and that she should therefore
see Adam, presenting something to her cousin, and should at once proceed
to place an erroneous construction on the situation. Angered, humiliated
and hurt, she fled back to the house, as Prudence was accepting the
proffered trinkets and regretfully bidding Adam Rust good-by.
It was hardly feasible so to conceal herself in the house that Prudence
would be long in searching her out, when at length that quiet and
pleased young lady came back to the house, hence Garde accepted Adam’s
present before she exactly comprehended what she was doing.
Prudence, having performed her duty, when the gift had passed to its
rightful owner, hastened away to open her own packet, in privacy. She
found an old Spanish doubloon in the bit of paper, and though a trifle
disappointed that she did not discover an accompanying inscription, was
nevertheless gladdened to the very core of her being.
Garde, rebellious and ready to weep with conflicting emotions, which had
not been assuaged by hearing Prudence tell how innocently she had
happened to meet Mr. Rust, felt like flinging Adam’s gift upon the floor
and stamping it flat with her lively little foot. But the tenderness of
the love she had fostered so long, and the slight hope to which she
still clung, combined with her natural curiosity, proved too strong for
resistance. She opened the neatly tied and folded paper.
Inside was a golden brooch of exquisite workmanship, a treasure
absolutely irresistible to any beauty-loving young woman. But her gaze
flew to a secondary little wad of paper, folded as a note. This she tore
open with nerveless fingers.
“From Hispaniola,” Adam had written, simply.
Under this he had penned a quatrain of rather obscure meaning and weakly
versification:
“It always haps, when there are three,
But two can bide in unity;
That two may long their gladness keep,
The third should bury sorrow deep.”
Garde read these lines and then read them again, more puzzled by the
second perusal than she had been by the first. She began then to feel
wounded. She was ready to cry. The brooch had made her heart bound with
joy. Then she remembered that Adam had procured it for her years before,
since when his affections might have been transferred, his ideals might
have been altered and the sense in which he gave it her might have been
reduced to something utterly unromantic. He might indeed have given it
to her only because of his desire to keep a foolish promise made in his
boyhood.
The lines were not an explanation of his conduct. If they meant that she
was a third party, interfering with the happiness of himself and
Prudence, then the unkindness of it all was not the full depth of its
possibilities—it was impudent, arrogant and fairly hateful, in that
light.
On the other hand, could it be possible that Adam did not mean that she
was such a third party as the lines indicated, and if so, what did he
mean? Was he himself such a third party? This appeared impossible on the
very face of it, for not only was Garde not interested in, and happy
with, some other person, but if she had been, Adam could not possibly
have known it, and certainly, in the two times they had met, she had
given him no reason for supposing that anything of the sort could exist.
It was too much for her wearied brain to cope with. She had puzzled over
Adam’s conduct every moment since their meeting in the woods, till she
could think no more. There was the beautiful brooch, and here were these
ominous, enigmatical lines. All she knew was that she was very unhappy.
Adam, in the meantime, made progress back to the tavern as if he were
all but becalmed and had no more than steerage way at the best. He had
only one thing to be glad about, and that was that his beef-eaters would
not be at the Crow and Arrow to meet him. They had already taken up
quarters on the brig. There Adam expected to join them, with the last of
his worldly goods, when he should have taken final leave of Wainsworth.
When he reached his solitary apartments, however, he was sorry the
faithful old beef-eaters were not there to give him welcome, for the
place was dark and cheerless. He lighted his candle and looked about the
room with melancholy interest.
Presently his attention was attracted to a number of bright spots on the
floor, irregular patches, from which the light was reflected somewhat
dully. Candle in hand he walked toward the corner where these glittering
objects were strewn about. With a sudden misgiving he noted that his
violin case had been brought out from the place of concealment in which
he had carefully kept it.
Bending forward, with one hand poised in an attitude of arrested action,
he stared at the litter on the floor, his face becoming colorless as he
stood there, numbed. A low moan came from between his lips—such a sound
as he had made in his sleep, as he once lay curled up at the foot of the
stake on which King Philip’s head was impaled.
The fragments on the floor were the scraps and litter of his violin.
There was not one piece as large as three of his fingers. Isaiah
Pinchbecker and Psalms Higgler had taken their revenge.
Slowly Adam knelt down and gathered the bits of wood in a little heap,
lovingly. He was not enraged. A lover who finds his sweetheart murdered
cannot at first be filled with anger. Adam gathered every little scrap
and splinter. He tried to fit little fragments together; he tried to
efface heel-marks and bits of boot-grime from some of the pieces, as if
he searched for features which he loved.
It seemed as if he could not realize that the violin was actually
destroyed. He looked away from it and then back at the small heap
beneath his hands, like one half expecting to wake from a dream and find
everything as it had been before something unthinkable occurred.
Perhaps a woman who had given to her child, willingly and absolutely,
the mastery over her every emotion, thought and hope, and who had come
upon the body of that child, slain and mutilated, could have understood
what lonely Adam Rust underwent.
For like such a woman, conceiving a fear that the despoilers might
return and rob her even of the body of her child, the man presently, in
a fever of excitement, took every patch, shred and chip of the red wood
and hiding it carefully inside his waistcoat, dropped himself down from
the window to the earth and went away in the darkness, like a wild thing
pursued.
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