I.
THE “BROKEN HEART”
“All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
The short 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 the _Broken 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 the _Broken Heart_ were 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 the _Broken Heart_
was “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 the _Broken Heart_ was 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 the _Broken
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
called _Paradise 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 the _Broken 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 the
_Broken Heart_ at 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.
II.
A FAREWELL
“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.
In a 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.
But he had loved her, he had seen her, he had been filled with her
beauty as a cup with wine. He would carry her memory into the waste
places of the world. Perhaps in the new Athens, over yonder, among the
magnolia bloom, and the smell of logwood blossom, he would make her
memory immortal in some poem, some tragedy, something to be chanted by
many voices, amid the burning of precious gums, and the hush of the
theatre. On the way, he stopped, thinking of her personal tastes. He,
too, would have those tastes. Little things for which she cared should
come with him to the Main. He gave the merchant the impression that he
was dealing with one melancholy mad.
Drums sounded in the street, for troops were marching west, to a
rousing quick-step. They marched well, with their heads held firm in
their stocks. The sergeants strutted by them, handling their halberds.
Captain Margaret paused to watch them, just as a sailor will stop to
watch a ship. “They are like the world,” he thought. “The men drop
out, but the regiment remains. It still follows the rags on the
broomstick, and a fool commands it, and a halberd drills it, and women
and children think it a marvellous fine thing. Well, so be it. I’ve
bought my discharge.” The fifes and drums passed out of hearing.
“They’ll never come back,” he said to himself. “Perhaps twenty years
hence I shall meet one of those men, and be friends with him. Why not
now? And why should I see that regiment now? What does it mean? It is
a symbol. All events are symbols. What does it mean? What is it a
symbol of? Why should that regiment pass to-day, now, after I’ve
bidden my love good-bye? And what ought I to learn from it? What
message has it for me?” He was convinced that it had a message. He
stood still, looking down the road, vacant as a British statue.
He woke up with a start, remembering that he had to buy some materials
for the practice of one of his amusing handicrafts. A little gold,
some silver, and a few stones of small value, together with glass
beads, were all that he needed. He was planning to make jewels for the
Indian princesses. “Beads is what they goes for,” so Cammock had said.
He bought large stores of beads. He also bought materials for a jewel
for Olivia, thinking, as he examined the gems, of the letter he would
send with the gift. “It will be written under palm-thatch,” he
thought, “in the rains.” He was able to plan the jewel in all its
detail. People stared at him with curiosity. He was speaking aloud as
he walked. “Nothing matters very much to me,” he said. “I know the
meaning of life. Life and death are the same to me.” So saying he
arrived upon the jetty, and hailed his boat, which lay at a little
distance, her oarsmen playing dice in the stern-sheets. His purchases
were stowed between the thwarts, a few grocer’s boxes made an obelisk
in the bows. As they shoved off, there came a flash of fire from the
side of the _Broken Heart_. White smoke-rings floated up and away,
over her topgallant-masts. Grey smoke clung and drifted along the sea.
The roar of the cannon made the Salcombe windows rattle. The boat’s
crew grinned. Being boatmen, they had escaped the gun-drill. They knew
what all hands were getting from the stalwart Cammock.
He stepped quickly up the side, acknowledging Cammock’s salute and the
pipe of the boatswain. Perrin met him at the break of the poop. He
noticed that Perrin stared rather hard at him. He grinned at Perrin
cheerfully.
“Yes, I saw her,” he said gaily.
It seemed to Perrin that his gaiety was natural, and that, perhaps,
the sight of Mrs. Stukeley, with her husband, had proved an effective
cure. A gun’s crew swayed the gear out of the boat. The other guns’
crews, heaving the heavy trucks, training the guns forward, wished
that they might help. Captain Cammock resumed his drill.
“Starboard battery, on the bow!” he exclaimed. “Port battery, upon the
beam. Imagine them hulks. Them’s the enemy. Bring aft your train
tackles. No. No. Oh, what are you playing at? Drop them blocks. What
in hell are you thinking of there, number three? I’m not talking to
you, port battery. Now. Wait for the word of command. Take heed.
Silence. Silence there. Now. Cast off the tackles and breechings.
Carry on.”
The figures by the guns became active. Though they carried on “in
silence,” there was a good deal of noise, many muttered oaths, much
angry dropping of rammers. Captain Margaret stood by Cammock, waiting
till the guns were fired. He had learned the practical part of naval
gunnery from a book in Cammock’s cabin, _The Mariner’s Friend, or
Compleat Sea Gunner’s Vade Mecum_. He watched the drill wearily,
knowing how hard and dull a thing it was to the men who swayed the
tackles, and hove the trucks along with crows. In the moment of peace
after the broadsides, he felt a pity for his men, a pity for humanity.
He had hired these men at four shillings a week apiece. He gave them
their food, worth, perhaps, tenpence a day, with their rum worth
twopence more, bought wholesale, out of bond. “For eleven shillings a
week,” he thought, “a man will clog his heavenly soul with gun-drill,
which his soul loathes; and refrain from drabs and drams, which his
soul hungers and thirsts for.” He felt ashamed that he had not thought
more of his men’s comfort.
“You’ve got them into shape already, captain,” he said.
“I’ll get them into trim in time,” answered Cammock. “It takes time.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “it takes time.” He paused a moment, remembered
his kindly feeling, and continued. “I want to ask you about fresh
meat, captain. Shall I get some fresh meat here, to see us well into
the Western Ocean? Or flour, now? I want the hands kept in good trim.
I don’t want to lose any by sickness.”
“Fresh meat is always good at sea,” said Cammock. “But there’s better
things than meat. For keeping a crew in good shape, you can’t beat
sugar and flour. It takes the salt out of their bones.”
Perrin had joined them. “I’ve ordered fresh meat and sugar,” he said.
“And three dozen fowls. They’ll be off in about an hour’s time.”
“You oughtn’t to have done that,” said Margaret.
“I paid for them myself,” he answered. “There they come.”
Captain Cammock secured his guns, returned his powder, and piped the
boat to be cleared. The hen-coop was lashed down for a full due below
the break of the poop. After the meat had been hung in the
harness-room, the hands went forward to loaf and stand-by. The two
friends walked the poop with Cammock, ten paces and a turn, talking of
old times, and of the fortune of the sea.
They were waiting for the ebb-tide to take them out. The wind was
fair, but light; they needed the ebb. Waiting like that is always a
weariness. Captain Margaret wished that he had never put in to
Salcombe. He was a fool, he thought. The thing was over, the wound was
closed. He had begun it anew; reopened it. Now he had to apply the
cautery. If he had held his course, his ship would have been out of
sight of land, going on, under all sail, forty miles south-west from
Scilly, bringing him nearer to content at each wave, each bubble. He
felt also the discontent of the tide-bound sailor. He felt that he was
at liberty wrongfully; that it was wrong for him to be there, doing
nothing, merely because the tide still flowed. Perrin, though he was
eager to talk to his friend about the results of the farewell call,
was bored to death by the inaction, by the sudden stoppage of the
routine. As for Cammock, he smoked his pipe, and looked out to
windward, wondering inwardly at the strangeness of gentlemen. Thinking
that they were hipped, he told them his favourite tale of how the cow
came at him one time, when he was hunting for beef near One Bush Key.
It was an exciting story; but nothing, he said, to what “happened him”
one time when he was loading live steers at Negril, after the cattle
pest at Antigua.
“So I got into one of the shore-boats,” he concluded. “I’d had enough
of them great horns a yard long.”
“Every man to his trade,” said Perrin curtly.
Captain Margaret asked if the long-horns were bred from imported
stock. Cammock had expected them to laugh. The situation was saved by
the entrance of a sixth-rate, under all plain sail, on the last of the
flood. Her blue sides were gay with gold leaf; her colours streamed
out astern; she broke the water to a sparkle. In her main-chains stood
a leadsman crying his melancholy cry of “And a half, three,” which
another voice repeated harshly. Though she came quietly she came
swiftly; for the flood had strength. She was a lovely thing, swaying
in there softly. The _Broken Heart_ saluted her. The friends watched
her as she passed. Cammock saw his opportunity. He turned to his
companions.
“What d’ye make of her?” he asked them.
Perrin called her “a man-of-war”; Margaret “a beautiful thing.”
“I’ll tell you what _I_ make of her,” said Cammock. “She was built in
France, that’s easy seen, and she was bought or taken at least three
years back. She was re-masted at Deptford, and her captain thinks the
masting’s spoiled her. She’s been in the West Indies within a year,
and there she’d a pile of hard times. Lost her topmasts for one of
them. Then she came home, and took a big nob of some sort up the
Mediterranean, for political reasons, and in a hurry, with a scratch
crew. She’s made a quick passage, and the captain’s cabin is taken up
with ladies, probably one big sort of a duchess or that. The
Government is short of funds, and the wind’s going to draw more
westerly. Her lieutenant is a Devonshire man. And I bet I know her
captain’s name and what her hands think of him. That’s what I make of
her.”
“How d’you know all that?” said Perrin.
“Every man to his trade,” said Cammock. He felt that he had retrieved
the honour lost over the cows.
At this moment four bells were made; the cabin steward rang them to
the cabin supper.
They found the table heaped with dainties; for Perrin and Cammock had
foraged ashore together, so that the last night in port might be
merry. Punch, strawberries, and a pigeon-pie. Captain Margaret
proposed the conundrum, why strawberries would be considered flippant
among the bakemeats at a funeral dinner. Captain Cammock gorged the
conundrum, hook and all.
III.
OUTWARDS
“And we are bound to New Barbary
With all our whole ship’s company.”
_Captain Glen._
“I have a vessel riding forth, gentlemen,
And I can tell you she carries a letter of mart.
What say you now to make you all adventurers?
You shall have fair dealing, that I’ll promise you.”
_A Cure for a Cuckold._