"I was walking down the glen--
O my heart!--on a summer's day.
He passed me by, my gentleman--
Would I had never seen the day!
"True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.
And his hair was silk as tasselled corn,
My heart alack--that summer's day!
"Oh, he wore plumes in his broad hat
And jewelled buckles on his shoon,
And O, the sparkle in his eye!
And yet his love could die so soon!"
"H-m. Suggests satin breeches and hair-powder, men who could navigate a
ball-room floor more safely than the Trades, doesn't it? Wherever did
you get such notions?"
I showed her a volume, one of Captain Blaise's, an anthology of the
Elizabethan and Restoration poets. "I was trying to write like one of
'em," I explained. "And I thought it was pretty good."
"I don't--a poor girl believing that Heaven made her kind for the high
people's pleasure. No, I don't like that. And 'hair as silk as tasselled
corn!' Do you like tasselled corn hair?"
"Why, no--in a man. But my own being black--"
"Hush! Black's best. No, you're not intended for that kind of writing."
"But here--listen:
"'True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.'
"Don't you like that?"
"Something like it's been said so often. Why don't you put it in your
own words?" She took up another sheet. "What's this about?"
"That's about a day and night at sea--a fine day in the Trades, such a
day as to-day--and last night."
"It _was_ a beautiful moon last night, wasn't it?" And she read to
herself. Coming to the last stanza, she read aloud, unconsciously I
think:
"The stars gleamed out of a purple light,
The moon trembled wide on the sea;
The Western Ocean smiled that night--
Sweetheart, 'twas a dream of thee!"
She paused. "But the ocean doesn't smile." "But it does. Smiles and
frowns, and roars and coos, and coaxes and threatens, and strikes and
caresses, and leaps and rolls--and so many other things. I've seen it.
And Captain Blaise will tell you the same."
She looked strangely at me. In the deep sea I had seen, at times, that
deep dark blue of her eyes--ultramarine, they call it; but hers softer.
I almost told her so, but I was afraid.
She looked away and repeated softly:
"'The Western Ocean smiled that night--Sweetheart,
'twas a dream of thee!'"
It's pretty, but more like what men who cruise for pleasure would write.
You're a sailor--have taken a sailor's chances. Why don't you write like
a sailor? It is a sad sea, a terrible sea, despite all your beautiful
blue Trades. Why don't you write of the tragic sea?"
"I knew that some time you would say something like that. I've seen it
in your eyes before."
"You have?"
"Why, many times. And so, here." And from between the pages of Captain
Blaise's book of verse I drew another sheet. At that time I would have
been ashamed to let anybody else see these things, but I did not mind
her. "Here," I said, "is one I felt. One night in the Caribbean we were
caught in a tornado, and we thought--Captain Blaise said afterward he
thought so too--that we had stood our last watch. And at the height of
it--we could do nothing but stand by--one of the crew, a young fellow--I
was only sixteen years old myself then--said to me, 'Oh, Master Guy,
what will she say when she hears?' He meant his young wife. He'd been
married just before we put out, and she'd come down to the ship to see
him off. So listen:
"'The spray, most-like, was in my eyes,
He waved his hand to me--
The wind it blew a gale that day
When he sailed out to sea.'"
"Ah-h!" She leaned closer.
"It _was_ a gale the day we put out. We had to get out--in Charleston
Harbor it was--and they were hot after us--gale or no gale, Captain
Blaise put out. I'm trying to imagine what she would think when she
heard.
"'And now no spray is in my eyes,
No hand is waved to me--
But all the gales of time shall blow
Ere he comes back from sea!'"
"And she a bride! Oh-h, the poor girl!" She had leaned over my shoulder
to read it for herself, and her breath was on my cheek.
"That is why, if I had--a wife, I should dread the sea."
"And that is why a woman--But how long have you been writing poetry?"
"Poetry? Or rhyme? Never before the day I saw you."
"But when did such ideas before take hold of you?"
"The other night I was lying here looking up, and after a time the moon
shone through onto my cot, and you crossed its path--you had given me my
night cup and I had pretended to be asleep; and I thought of you looking
out on the moonlit sea and I got to wondering what you were thinking of.
And I remembered a thousand such moonlit nights when you were not there.
And I thought what a difference it would have made had you been there,
and so when I say
"'The Western Ocean smiled that night--Sweetheart,
'twas a dream of thee!'
"you must not smile. I meant it; for if the ocean smiles and whispers and
makes men dream of--"
"Oh-h!" her head had settled and now her cheek was against mine. "Go
on," she said softly.
"It made me dream of her that was never more than a dream-woman until I
saw you. No longer a dream--not after you stepped out onto the veranda
of the Governor's house that night in Momba. I knew it again when,
looking out from the shrubbery in the garden, you looked at me and said,
'And who is this?' And I knew it when with you in the long-boat, when I
wanted to reach out and take your hand--"
"And why didn't you? I knew you were weak from your wound, and it would
have been a charity in me to cheer you up."
"Divine charity--but I was not weak--not from any wound. I had not the
courage. A sailor may shape his course by a star, but that does not mean
that he ever thinks of reaching up and trying to grasp it."
"And you've heard the sea whisper, too, Guy?"
"Many a time. In the night mostly--in the mid-watch, when it's quietest.
I've leant over the rail and heard it whisper up to me. People laugh at
that, but they know nothing of the sea. And the day, or the night, comes
to some men, when she whispers up to him and beckons with her wide arms
and on her deep bosom offers to pillow him, and weary of the
wrong-doing, mostly it's wrong-doing, or despair, when men hear
it--weary, weary to death, they are glad to--"
"No, no--no, Guy--you must never go like that!"
"But when a man's alone?"
She rested her chin on my shoulder, she reached a hand down to mine.
"You will not be alone, dear--never, never again."
A voice from above recalled me. "Guy! O Guy! If you can make shift to
come on deck, you would do well. We are in close quarters and like to
be yet closer."
I looked up, not in full time, but in time to catch a glint of his eyes.
Pain in his voice, suffering in his eyes--never till that moment did it
come to me that this whole cruise had been but a wooing of Shiela
Cunningham. And I, who owed him everything in life, I had stood in his
way. And even with Shiela there my heart ached for him.