Part 2

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.