Part 16

Throughout the meal he studied Widmer cautiously. Thin mouth, cold eyes, an outward politeness itself threatening by the suggestion of what lay behind it. He had known the man’s reputation of old; the ever-present apprehension of the cabin boy, the servility of the mate, the silence of the crew, all went to bear it out.

Yes, each knew; and each knew, unconfessed, that the other knew. All night the thought haunted Hastings. He recalled numerous half-spoken sentences fraught with scarcely concealed meaning, and others, outspoken and direct, that made no pretense of concealment. He had come back to the sea to forget that he ever had loved, but, after all, he could not forget. He even doubted if the girl had forgotten. Such dreams as they had dreamed together do not vanish overnight. He saw her on the porch of the old house, by the slim, white pillars. He remembered her in the garden sweet with honeysuckle. On the wharf, by the church door, here, there, everywhere, among the familiar scenes of the old town, she appeared in the eyes of his memory. Then like a dark cloud came the memory of a certain night—and the strange laughter, the locked door, and the words he had heard her say.

At noon next day Widmer was gay. He laughed and joked, and seemed unaware of Hastings’ silence. At night he gave himself up again to a politeness elaborate and artificial. But through it all Hastings felt a certain threatening undertone. And Widmer, taking no chances, gave secret orders, quite as if he had not fathomed Hastings and found him shallow to the lead.

The sun set in a blaze of fire, shooting great beams of light far into the heavens, and the moon rose in a pale halo. A junk in the offing tossed on the long swell that rolled away into the distance, and the WVinnemere, her braces rattling as they ran, leaned easily before the wind that swept the gray sea. The sky changed from blue to scarlet, from scarlet to flaming gold, and from gold, as the night set in, to sea green and steel blue. The ship’s lanterns twinkled in the dusk; the stars came out thickly overhead; and presently, as the moon climbed above the horizon, its wan light thinly illuminated the decks of the ship and the towering structure of masts and spars and canvas and cordage.

Late at night, when all was quiet, Hastings crept out of his berth. For a time he could hear only the straining of ropes, the creaking of blocks, and the whisper of the sea. Then he heard the sound of some one sobbing. Then the sound changed to that low laugh.

That laugh! He had half expected, half feared, to hear it. He felt within himself the sharp palpitation stimulated by quick, intense emotion, that for want of a better name we call leaping of the heart. With a quick motion he started forward in the darkness, but his feet struck something soft. It was the little cabin boy, asleep on a folded blanket. Uttering a cry, the lad scrambled to his feet and fled up the companionway.

For a moment there was silence, heavy and suspicious, then, out of the dark, came Widmer’s calm challenge. “What does this mean?”

Again silence ensued. The slow opening of a shutter, through which a few rays of light had been struggling feebly, suffused the scene with a dim, yellow glow. Hastings, his knees slightly bent, his hands raised as for attack or defense, his lips parted, was confronted by Amos Widmer, who stood with folded arms, smiling softly.

“What does this mean?” he repeated, in the same low, calm voice.

Taken at an overwhelming disadvantage, Hastings’ mind, groping, could summon no reply.

Down the companionway came only the familiar sounds of a ship at sea, the creaking of blocks and braces, the low voices of the watch, the whisper of the ocean.

“So, sir, you presume upon my hospitality!”

“There are laws—” Hastings’ voice was thick—“that override the laws of ‘hospitality.’”

“I fear, sir, you are little versed in the customs of gentlemen.” And Widmer, measuring the effect of the retort, let the smile creep to his eyes.

Drawing himself erect, Hastings stepped forward until the shadow of the casement fell across his face and masked it, but although he said nothing, Widmer persisted.

“Gentlemen have a code of their own. And when a man fails to meet that code, it is sometimes necessary to teach him a painful lesson.”

Another pause followed, then, clearly and distinctly, a shrill laugh from somewhere beyond the cabin sounded on the night air.

“Gentlemen—” Widmer’s sneering voice began again, but the sentence was not finished.

An outthrust hand flung back the shutter. There was a quick movement in the sudden darkness, a hoarse gasp, a strange sound that frightened the little cabin boy, who had thrown himself, belly down, by the open hatch overhead, then from above came the lookout’s voice, sharp with warning.

“Sail ho!”

“Where away?”

“Dead ahead! Something afloat under the bows!”

“Where—”

“Wear ship—put down your helm!”

A third voice broke into the dialogue: “What’s all this? There’s nothing there.”

“I tell you, sir, I see it— There it lifts, by heaven!”

All at once came a crash and shock that sent the mizzen-topmast by the board, and hurled men from their feet. For a moment there was silence, then that shrill yell sounded, that wrings hearts:

“Man overboard!”

The trample of feet was broken by the voice of the mate:

“All hands on deck!” Then the voice came down the hatch into the darkness below: “Captain Widmer! Captain Widmer! For God’s sake, come up! We’ve run afoul a derelict!”

But from Amos Widmer there was no reply.

Instead, as the boats were launched by the pale light of the crescent moon, and the Winnemere, listing heavily to port, settled rapidly, the captain of the Helen of Troy appeared by the after port davits, with a woman wrapped in a loose cloak.

And when the boats were in the water Donald Hastings and the woman in the loose cloak sat in the sternsheets of the third to be launched. And the men, as they rowed, heard snatches of the woman’s talk, which was about a child; how some one had cursed it and its father, and how the child was gone now. Sometimes the woman laughed a strange laugh that the men did not like, but they were only sailors, so they rowed on into the night and asked no questions.

By and by they rested on their oars and, looking back, saw an extraordinary sight. Revealed in the faint moonlight, the Winnemere, sinking by the head, set at defiance the natural laws of ships upon the sea. At first it seemed as if her masts were being raked forward, then her stern rose, then, without sound or sign, she went under with all sail set. And from somewhere came a whisper that the derelict with the two upstanding stumps of masts, which went rolling down the wind, was all that was left of the Helen of Troy. All—but victorious.

The first sunrise coming slowly on the track of daylight found the boats, a little group of dark spots in the vast plain of the sea, held together, apparently, by something of that same magnetic power that leads two bits of cork to adhere each to each. When the sun rose again, they were scattered over miles of gray ocean. When the third day broke from a sky banked with clouds, only two boats were to be seen—two boats and a single sail small on the horizon.

The sail grew and took shape. Out of the borderland between sea and sky came a bark flying the flag of England. Presently, as she headed into the wind, the woman, lying in Donald Hastings’ arms, saw dimly the faces lined above the rail, then was lifted on board and carried into the cabin.

“Donald,” she whispered in quiet happiness, “Oh, Donald!” Her voice changed. “But the baby! He was angry about the baby: your baby—our baby.” And she laughed that strange laugh.

The sun, forcing its way through the clouds, touched the dark brown paneling with golden light. In the silence of the cabin the voices on deck were distinctly audible. “He was that cruel to his wife!” some one was saying. “All of us was glad enough to see him left.” But only a fragment of the narrative came to the little group below.

The woman, oblivious to all but Donald Hastings, raised herself on her elbow:

“I waited—oh, so long! And you never came!”

“Don’t! I came—too late.” He dropped on his knees beside the berth in which she had been laid. “I will! I will marry you!”

Again she laughed that strange, low laugh. The captain of the bark, his medicine chest open before him, shook his head. “You’ll not marry her,” he muttered. “It’ll not be allowed. You’ve but to hear her to know that.”

“I will,” Hastings cried, wildly. “There’s little enough a man can do to atone for great wrong.”

“You’re overwrought, sir. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

And Christine Widmer laughed again.

* * * * *

There was indeed no wedding. Not often is the path of atonement made broad and easy. Instead, the story of my old New England town came to pass, the story of a man who provided for his enemy’s wife as if she were his own. For in the years to come there sailed with Donald Hastings a woman who laughed strangely at times, and talked of something other people pretended to have forgotten. And Donald Hastings, the marriage forbidden, gave her the rest of his life, covering her lapses of speech by quick wit and ever-remembering kindness, making her seem almost like other women, and placing out of his own reach forever the fellowship of those who called themselves honest folk.

It all happened a hundred years ago. Stories, good and bad,—mostly bad,—were told of them then, and have been told ever since. Such is the world’s way. And of Amos Widmer it was known only that he was lost at sea when the Winnemere went down. Who of us can say what accountings are to be made on that day when the good and evil are balanced, when things forgotten are remembered, and things unknown are brought to light?

“On this noon,” wrote the village minister in that rare old diary of his, “did Captain Hastings sail in command of the Amaryllis, taking with him, as hitherto, poor Christine Widmer.” Then, in the intimate privacy of the book, he adds—wise, rash, cautious old man: “I am almost of a mind, since things are as they are, that it is for the best,—even so.”

_Charles Boardman Hawes_.

THE CASK ASHORE

At the head of a diminutive creek of the Tamar River, a little above Saltash on the Cornish shore, stands the village of Botusfleming, or Bloflemy, and in early summer, when the cherry orchards come into bloom, you will search far before finding a prettier.

The years have dealt gently with Botusfleming. As it is today, so, or nearly so, it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807, when the Rev. Edward Spettigew, curate in charge, sat in the garden before his cottage and smoked his pipe while he meditated a sermon. That is to say, he intended to meditate a sermon. But the afternoon was warm; bumblebees hummed drowsily among his wallflowers and tulips. From his bench the eye followed the vale’s descent between overlapping billows of cherry blossom to a gap wherein shone the silver Tamar: not, be it understood, the part called Hamoaze, where lay the warships and the hulks containing the French prisoners, but an upper reach seldom troubled by shipping.

Parson Spettigew laid the book face downward on his knee while his lips murmured a part of the text he had chosen: “A place of broad rivers and streams . . . wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. . . .” His pipe went out. The book slipped from his knee to the ground. He slumbered . . .

The garden gate rattled, and he awoke with a start. In the pathway below him stood a sailor, a middle-sized, middle-aged man, rigged out in best shore-going clothes: shiny tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, shirt open at the throat, and white duck trousers with broad-buckled waistbelt.

“Beggin’ your reverence’s pardon,” began the visitor, touching the brim of his hat, and then upon second thought uncovering, “but my name’s Jope, Ben Jope—”

“Eh? What can I do for you?” asked Parson Spettigew, a trifle flustered at being caught napping.

“—of the Vesoovious bomb, bos’n,” pursued Mr. Jope, with a smile that disarmed annoyance: so ingenuous it was, so friendly, and withal so respectful; “but paid off at eight this morning. Maybe your reverence can tell me whereabouts to find an embalmer in these parts?”

“A—a what?”

“Embalmer.” Mr. Jope chewed for a moment or two upon a quid of tobacco, and began a thoughtful explanation. “Sort of party you’d go to supposin’ your reverence had a corpse by you and wanted to keep it for a permanency. You take a lot of gums and spices, and first of all you lays out the deceased, and next—”

“Yes, yes,” the parson interrupted, hurriedly; “I know the process, of course.”

“What—to practice it?” Hope illumined Mr. Jope’s countenance.

“No, most certainly not. . . . But, my good man, an embalmer!—and at Botusfleming, of all places!”

The sailor’s face fell. He sighed patiently. “That’s what they said at Saltash, more or less. I got a sister living there—Sarah Treleaven her name is—a widow woman, and sells fish. When I called on her this morning, ‘Embalmer?’ she said; ‘go and embalm your grandmother!’ Those were her words, and the rest of the population wasn’t scarcely more helpful. But as luck would have it, while I was searchin’, Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside o’ the barber’s shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass case. Bill began to admire it, careless like, and it turned out the barber had stuffed the thing. Maybe your reverence knows the man? ‘A. Grigg and Son’ he calls his-self.”

“Grigg? Yes, to be sure; he stuffed a trout for me last summer.”

“What weight?—making so bold.”

“Seven pounds.”

Mr. Jope’s face fell again. “Well-a-well,” he suggested, recovering himself, “I daresay the size don’t matter, once you’ve got the knack. We’ve brought him along, anyway; an’ what’s more, we’ve made him bring all his tools. By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin’ job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him.”

“But—you’ll excuse me—I don’t quite follow—”

Mr. Jope pressed a forefinger mysterious to his lip, then jerked a thumb in the direction of the river. “If your reverence wouldn’ mind steppin’ down to the creek with me?” he suggested, respectfully.

Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry. At the foot of it they came to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and almost overbrimmed. Hard by the water’s edge, backed by tall elms, stood a dilapidated fish store, and below it lay a boat with nose aground on a beach of flat stones. Two men were in the boat. The barber, a slip of a fellow in rusty top hat and suit of rusty black, sat in the stern sheets face to face with a large cask: a cask so ample that, to find room for his knees, he was forced to crook them at a high, uncomfortable angle. In the bows, boathook in hand, stood a tall sailor, arrayed in shore-going clothes, similar to Mr. Jope’s. His face was long, sallow, and expressive of taciturnity, and he wore a beard, not where beards are usually worn, but as a fringe beneath his clean-shaven chin and lantern jaw.

“Well, here we are!” asserted Mr. Jope, cheerfully. “Your reverence knows A. Grigg and Son, and the others you can trust in all weathers, bein’ William Adams, otherwise Bill, and Eli Tonkin: friends o’ mine an’ shipmates both.”

The parson, perplexed, stared at the tall seaman, who touched his hat by way of acknowledging the introduction.

“But—but I only see one!” he protested.

“This here’s Bill Adams,” said Mr. Jope, and again the tall seaman touched his hat. “Is it Eli you’re missin’? Eli’s in the cask.”

“Oh!”

“We’ll hoick him up to the store, Bill, if you’re ready. It looks a nice cool place. And while you’re prizin’ him open, I’d best explain to his reverence and the barber. Here, ship out the shore plank; and you, A. Grigg and Son, lend a hand to heave. . . . Aye, you’re right; it weighs more’n a trifle—bein’ a quarter-puncheon, an’ the best proof sperrits. Tilt her _this_ way. . . . Ready? . . . Then w’y-ho! and away she goes!”

With a heave and a lurch that canted the boat until the water poured over her gunwale, the huge tub was rolled overside into shallow water. With a run and a tremendous lift they hoisted it up to the turfy plat, whence Bill Adams steered it with ease through the ruinated doorway of the store, while Mr. Jope returned, smiling and mopping his brow.

“It’s this-a-way,” he said, addressing the parson. “Eli Tonkin his name is, or was; and, as he said, of this parish.”

Here Mr. Jope paused, apparently for confirmation.

“Tonkin?” queried the parson. “There are no Tonkins surviving in Botusfleming parish. The last of them was a poor old widow I laid to rest the week after Christmas.”

“Belay there! . . . Dead, is she?” Mr. Jope’s face exhibited the liveliest disappointment. “And after the surprise we’d planned for her!” he murmured ruefully. “Hi, Bill!” he called to his shipmate, who, having stored the cask, was returning to the boat.

“Wot is it?” asked Bill Adams, inattentively. “Look ’ere, where did we stow the hammer an’ chisel?”

“Take your head out o’ the boat an’ listen. The old woman’s dead!”

The tall man absorbed the news slowly. “That’s a facer,” he said at length. “But maybe we can fix her up, too? I’ll stand my share.”

“She was buried the week after Christmas.”

“Oh!” Bill scratched his head. “Then we can’t—not very well.”

“Times an’ again I’ve heard Eli talk of his poor old mother,” said Mr. Jope, turning to the parson. “W’ch you’ll hardly believe it, but though I knowed him for a West-country man, ’twas not till the last I learned what parish he hailed from. It happened very curiously—Bill, rout up A. Grigg and Son, an’ fetch him forra’d here to listen; you’ll find the tools underneath him in the stern sheets.”

Bill obeyed, and, possessing himself of a hammer and chisel, returned to the shore. The little barber drew near and stood at Mr. Jope’s elbow; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and he smelt potently of strong drink.

“Brandy it is,” apologized Mr. Jope, observing a slight contraction of the parson’s nostril. “I reckoned ’twould tauten him a bit for what’s ahead. . . . Well, as I was sayin’, it happened very curiously. This day fortnight we were beatin’ up an’ across the Bay o’ Biscay, after a four months’ to-an’-fro game in front of Toolon Harbor. Blowin’ fresh it was, an’ we makin’ pretty poor weather of it—the Vesoovious bein’ a powerful wet tub in anything of a sea, an’ a slug at the best o’ times. Aboard a bombship everything’s got to be heavy.

“Well, sir, for a couple of days she’d been carryin’ canvas that fairly smothered us, an’ Cap’n Crang not a man to care how we fared forra’d, so long’s the water didn’ reach aft to his own quarters. But at last the first mate, Mr. Wapshott, took pity on us an’—the Cap’n bein’ below, a-takin’ a nap after dinner—sends the crew o’ the maintop aloft to take a reef in the tops’l. Poor Eli was one. Whereby the men had scarcely reached the top afore Cap’n Crang comes up from his cabin an’ along the deck, not troublin’ to cast an eye aloft. Whereby he missed what was happenin’. Whereby he had just come abreast o’ the mainmast, when—sock at his very feet there drops a man! ’Twas Eli, that had missed his hold an’ dropped clean on his skull. ‘Hallo!’ says the cap’n, ‘an’ where the deuce might you come from?’ Eli heard it—poor fellow—an’ says he, as I lifted him, answerin’ very respectful, ‘If you please, sir, from Botusfleming, three miles t’other side of Saltash.’

“‘Then you’ve had a mighty quick passage, that’s all I can say,’ answers Cap’n Crang, an’ turns on his heel.

“Well, sir, we all agreed the cap’n might ha’ showed more feelin’, specially as poor Eli’d broke the base of his skull an’ by eight bells handed in the number of his mess. Five or six of us talked it over, agreein’ as how ’twasn’ hardly human, an’ Eli such a good fellow, too, let alone bein’ a decent seaman. Whereby the notion came to me that as he’d come from Botusfleming—those bein’ his last words—back to Botusfleming he should go; an’ on that we cooked up a plot. Bill Adams bein’ on duty in the sick bay, there wasn’ no difficulty in sewin’ up a dummy in Eli’s place; an’ the dummy, sir, nex’ day we dooly committed to the deep,—as the sayin’ goes,—Cap’n Crang hisself readin’ the service. The real question was what to do with Eli. Whereby, the purser an’ me bein’ friends, I goes to him an’ says, ‘Look here,’ I says, ‘we’ll be paid off in ten days or so, an’ there’s a trifle o’ prize money, too. What price’ll you sell us a cask o’ the ship’s rum?—say a quarter-puncheon for choice?’ ‘What for?’ says he. ‘For shore-going purposes,’ says I; ‘Bill Adams an’ me got a use for it.’ ‘Well,’ says the purser,—a decent chap, an’ by name Wilkins,—’I’m an honest man,’ says he, ‘an’ to oblige a friend you shall have it at store valuation rate. An’ what’s more,’ says he, ‘I got the wind o’ your little game, an’ll do what I can to help it along, for I al’ays liked the deceased, an’ in my opinion Cap’n Crang behaved most unfeelin’. You tell Bill to bring the body to me, an’ there’ll be no more trouble about it till I hands you over the cask at Plymouth.’ Well, sir, the man was as good as his word. We smuggled the cask ashore last evenin’, an’ hid it in the woods this side o’ Mount Edgcumbe. This mornin’ we reshipped it, as you see. First along we intended no more than just to break the news to Eli’s mother an’ hand him over to her; but Bill reckoned that to hand him over, cask an’ all, would look careless; for, as he said, ‘’Twasn’t as if you could bury ’im in a cask.’ We allowed your reverence would draw the line at that, though we hadn’ the pleasure o’ knowin’ you then.”

“Yes,” agreed the parson, as Mr. Jope paused; “I fear it could not be done without scandal.”

“That’s just how Bill put it. ‘Well, then,’ says I, thinkin’ it over, ‘why not do the handsome while we’re about it? You an’ me ain’t the sort of men,’ I says, ‘to spoil the ship for a ha’porth o’ tar.’ ‘Certainly we ain’t,’ says Bill, ‘and we’ve done a lot for Eli,’ says I. ‘We have,’ says Bill. ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘let’s put a coat o’ paint on the whole business an’ have him embalmed!’ Bill was enchanted.”

“I—I beg your pardon?” put in the barber, edging away a pace.

“Bill was enchanted. Hark to him in the store, there—knockin’ away at the chisel.”

“But there’s some misunderstanding,” the little man protested, earnestly. “I understood it was to be a shave.”

“You can shave him, too, if you like.”

“If I th-thought you were s-serious—”

“Have some more brandy.” Mr. Jope pulled out and proffered a flask. “Only don’t overdo it, or it’ll make your head shaky. Serious? You may lay to it that Bill’s serious. He’s that set on the idea, it don’t make no difference to him—as you may have noticed—Eli’s mother not bein’ alive to take pleasure in it. Why, he wanted to embalm her, too! He’s doin’ this now for his own gratification, is Bill; an’ you may take it from me when Bill sets his heart on a thing he sees it through. Don’t you cross him—that’s my advice.”

“But, but—”

“No, you don’t!”—as the little man made a wild spring to flee up the beach Mr. Jope shot out a hand and gripped him by the coat collar. “Now, look here,” he said very quietly, as the poor wretch would have groveled at the parson’s feet, “you was boastin’ to Bill, not an hour agone, as you could stuff anything.”

“Don’t hurt him,” Parson Spettigew interposed, touching Mr. Jope’s arm.

“I’m not hurtin’ him, your reverence, only—Eli? What’s that?”

All turned their faces toward the store.

“Your friend is calling to you,” said the parson.