A snow flurry chased them toward the open sea, and the spruce-clad shores on either hand disappeared behind its curtain. Cap’n Obed held the wheel, and after Willie gave them breakfast—Jenny had not yet appeared—Evered stayed with the Captain in the deck house which offered shelter from the storm. Snow cloaked them all that day, and not till midafternoon did Jenny emerge from her cabin.
Evered, on deck, had gone forward to stand awhile by the foremast. They were on the starboard tack, the wind southwesterly and not severe. When he turned aft at last, he saw Jenny leaning against the mainmast, holding to it with her hands behind her to steady herself, facing the wind; and she had laid aside her veil.
He hesitated, then went on to pass her. As he approached, she met his eyes. Snow crystals lay on her shoulders, and snowflakes had melted on her bright cheeks and hung there in drops like tears. She was rosy and glowing, and she was beautiful; but he was struck again by the extraordinary purity of her expression. Her eyes were wide and friendly and innocent as a child’s; her mouth was like a child’s mouth, delicatc and soft and warm. She smiled when her glance met his; and when she smiled, small crescents like faint curved dimples indented her cheeks just below the cheekbones.
He had meant to pass her and go on, but without his own volition his feet lagged and he stopped in front of her; yet he did not speak, and after a moment she said:
‘It’s a fine wind.’ Her voice was soft and low.
‘Warmer, I think.’
Snow came for a moment more strongly into her face, and she wiped it away with her mittened hands, and then laughed gaily and took off one mitten and rubbed her nose hard with her hand. ‘I always forget,’ she said. ‘The wool off my mittens sticks to my nose and itches sol I never remember till too late.’
She was so lovely and so friendly and charming that he had to force himself to remember Ephraim, and his face set in grim lines; but then Mr. Brock came and spoke to her.
Tm taking the wheel now, Mis’ Poster,’ he said. ‘Come aft and I’ll give you that lesson in steering I promised you.’
She turned at once, looking up at Evered over her shoulder as though in smiling apology for deserting him. He changed his mind about going below, returned to his post by the foremast. The wind in his face was strong and scouring and he filled his lungs with it. There was an extravagant disturbance in him. He forced himself to think clearly, to remember all that Ephraim had said about her; yet he could not forget her eyes and her clean lips and that pure beauty which she wore. Ephraim must be mad! Of such a woman as this, the things he said could not be true.
Yet whether deliberately or not, he reminded himself, she had destroyed Ephraim. So—even though she might conceivably be as pure and innocent as she appeared—nevertheless corruption dwelt in her which could ruin a man. He put himself on guard.
II
Before he was again alone with her—they met at meals in the small cabin, or in the deck house or on deck, but there was always someone near—he had a chance to see how her presence aboard affected the other men. The boy and the halfwit forward watched her with goggling eyes, and he saw her in talk with one and then the other, smiling and nodding, winning them to eager speech. Mr. Brock, when he could persuade her to take the wheel, stood close beside her, sometimes reaching around her with both hands to steady the spokes; and he laughed more and more loudly all the time, like a man who is taking repeated drafts of some strong liquor. At the supper table he monopolized the conversation, telling her long tales in which he was always the hero, laughing at his own words while she listened with a half smile. Old Willie served her like a queen, and even Cap’n Obed fell under her spell, and she won from him a grudging chuckle now and then.
During the night they ran out of the snow into mild weather and light winds, and Mr. Brock next day was more concerned with Jenny than with his duties. He began to deride Cap’n Obed in open ways, winking at Jenny as he did so to make sure she appreciated and relished his words; and the old Captain scowled and muttered to Willie in the cabin. The next night the Mary Ann went creaking on her way, complaining in every seam; and Evered thought the weather had changed again, or was about to do so.
They woke to fog and light winds and slatting sails, and after breakfast Evered returned to his cabin for a while, to spend some time on the papers he carried.
When he came out again an hour later, everyone had gone on deck except Jenny. She sat on the bench beside the table with a book in her hands, and she looked up and met his eyes and smiled; but he would have climbed the companion ladder to the deck if she had not spoken to him.
‘Mr. Evered,’ she said; and when he paused, she asked straightforwardly: ‘Were you not a friend of Ephraim’s at Harvard College?’
He colored slightly. ‘I am his friend, yes,’ he said, emphasizing the second word, angry at her use of the past tense.
‘He often spoke of a Mr. Evered,’ she agreed. She said gravely: ‘Will you sit down? I want to ask your help.’ And she explained: ‘You see, I am going to New York to find him now.’
So that was the explanation of her presence here aboard. She must have learned Ephraim’s address from Mr. Richardson and was bound to find him and to finish the havoc she had begun. John asked sternly: ‘Why don’t you leave him alone?’
She looked at him with puzzled eyes. ‘Alone? When he needs friendliness?’ She said reproachfully: ‘He told me that in college he was—behaving badly till you set him on the right path, so I know you are his friend. Now he has gone back to those old, ugly ways and needs help again. I want to help him, and I want you—for his sake—to help me help him.’ He stood above her, steadying himself against the lurching of the vessel, his feet apart, his legs braced; but for a moment he was uncertain what to say. She explained with a gentle gravity: ‘I might not have the courage—or even the will—to try to save him for his own sake; but Mr. Evered, there’s a girl, a nice girl named Ruth Green, who works in my house. I’ve learned since Ephraim went away that he betrayed her. There’s still time for him to come home and marry her—if we can persuade him.’ She added: ‘She’s a good girl. Her mistake was only that she loved and trusted him. Will you help me, Mr. Evered?’
He sat down then, facing her, his hands pressed hard upon the table, his lips dry. Because he felt himself weakly believing her, weakly finding her true and gentle and good, he fortified himself with anger. He wetted his lips and spoke, spoke in a rush of words.
‘He’s beyond help,’ he said. ‘You know that! It’s your doing! You’ve—worse than killed him!’
For a moment she sat with no trace of expression in her eyes, as though her thoughts were far away. The Mary Ann tipped drunkenly in a long swell, and the yards—the sails empty of wind—came over with a creak and then with a shock as they brought up short. She said at last quietly:
‘Go on, please, Mr. Evered. You—confuse me. What have I done to him? What is in your mind?’
‘You made him love you!’ he said, his voice thick, hating his own words, hating her.
Her eyes widened in perplexity. ‘Love me? Pie was Isaiah’s son, and I was fond of him on that account; but I think that is not what you mean?’
‘It isn’t!’ His voice was blunt as a blow, but she did not wince.
‘Then—what is it that you do mean, Mr. Evered?’
He chose his words to hurt her, to cut and bite like a lash, wishing to provoke her to tears, or to defensive protests, or to a passion of anger like his own. ‘You made him want you!’ he blurted. ‘You drove him crazy with wanting you, fondling him, kissing him! But he tried to fight it. You were his father’s wife, and he was decent enough to blame himself for the thing you woke in him. You stole his self-respect!’ He waited for denials; but she did not speak and he went on: ‘And you tricked him into stealing money from his father, and you tricked him into—worse than that. And finally you tried to drive him—with promises and then with threats—to kill his father. When he did it, it was an accident, but so many have blamed h
im that he is himself no longer sure it was an accident.’ He finished in a sudden woeful grief: ‘So he is lost! There is no hope for him at all.’
Her eyes were wide and steady, searching his countenance. She said at last in a gentle sympathy: ‘You’re devoted to him, aren’t you?’
‘I never liked a man so well.’
‘What was this—this worse trick I played on him?’
His cheek flamed angrily. ‘You know as well as I do!’
‘Perhaps I do,’ she assented. ‘But—tell me what it was, this terrible thing I did.’
He hated her for driving him to put the thing in words. He hated her enough to do so. ‘You took the girl’s place,’ he said harshly. ‘You lay in her bed, let him find you there in the dark, not knowing—and then threatened to tell Isaiah what he had done to you unless he killed his father.’
She whispered in a sort of wonder: ‘He told you all this?’
‘Yes!’ And when she did not speak, he challenged: ‘Isn’t it true?’
She made a curious gesture with both hands, a gesture that dismissed the question. ‘It is what you believe.’ she said. ‘He has been your friend for a long time, and—you do not know me, so naturally you believe him.’
She rose with a serene dignity. ‘I will not ask your help again,’ she said. ‘I will just do what I can do alone.’
She picked up her book and went to her cabin. Evered was left staring at his own hands, clenched there on the table edge. If she had protested, had denied, had raged at Ephraim or at him, his conviction of her guilt would have been stiffened by her very denials. But she had denied nothing. She had said he must think what he chose; and by her refusal to defend herself he was left shamed, as though he had kicked an unresisting child.
III
A northeaster blew the fog into rain and the wind freshened. At dinner time—they were all at table, the boy called Squid at the wheel—Cap’n Obed told Mr. Brock to shape a new course, close-hauled as she would go, almost due easterly.
Brock laughed at him. ‘Where you heading? Spain?’ he demanded, and looked to Jenny for approval of his jest.
‘I’ll give the Cape plenty of room,’ Cap’n Obed told him. He added: ‘And you’d better have Squid and Arthur try the pumps.’
‘We sucked her dry this morning,’ Brock argued.
‘We’ll keep her dry,’ Cap’n Obed warned him. ‘If water gets to the lime, we’ll have her decks hot in no time.’
Brock went grudgingly to see these orders obeyed; but when later Cap’n Obed decided to reef her, the mate again protested. ‘You’re too damned careful,’ he declared. This won’t hurt her!’
‘Mebbe not,’ Cap’n Obed told him. ‘But I’d ruther be keerful than dead.’
So reefed she was; and their course was presently more southerly. In the relatively shallow waters under the Cape, great seas formed and broke in a piling roar; and the Mary Ann overtook them and climbed them and pitched into the trough beyond their peaks. Cap’n Obed at the wheel humored her, and Jenny in the deck house liked the drive of the wind and the climb—slow and slower—up each long swell, and the moment when they paused before tipping on and down. Evered, even from below, could hear her laughter, clear and happy and fine. She was untouched by that scene between them in the cabin, ignoring it as though it had never occurred; and he thought her laughter brave and valorous, and could not face her now.
In the late afternoon Brock took the wheel and Cap’n Obed came below; but Jenny stayed in the deck house. Brock did not humor the Mary Ann. Because Jenny liked those laborious ascents, those abrupt dives into the trough between the waves, he drove the schooner hard. Cap’n Obed went to his bunk to catch some sleep against the night that was coming; but Evered thought the schooner was taking a pounding. Then at last she fell off a great wave and came down with a smashing shock and a sound of splintering; and before Evered could move, Cap’n Obed had leaped to the companion ladder, John on his heels.
Evered was in time to hear the old man shout: ‘Gol dam you, Brock, what you trying to do, break her back? Give me that wheel!’ He pushed the other aside. ‘Go hit the pumps, see if she’s making any water.’
Brock was sobered by the heavy blow the old schooner had taken; and he put the men to the pumps, and himself spelled them. At the end of an hour, the mate came to the wheel house.
‘She don’t suck air yet,’ he confessed.
Cap’n Obed spat. ‘Lump till she does,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the feel of her.’ The wind had backed into the north and the rain began to turn to snow. He brought her to and took soundings. ‘I’d haul off,’ he told Evered, ‘but she feels to me heavier all the time. We’ll go ahead as we are. We’ll be making into Nantucket Sound by morning, have a chance to head for somewheres if we have to.’
He said no further word of reproof to Brock; and Evered thought bitterly that the mate could not be blamed. It was Mrs. Poster, arousing in him a reckless madness, making him forget good seamanship, who had brought them to these straits. Evered had enough wit to appreciate their danger in a leaking old tub of a schooner and a rising gale.
The men were still pumping, Evered taking his turn with the others, when night came down. That night was a long one, and except for Jenny no one stayed below. The pumps spouted steadily, but even Evered thought the schooner was more sluggish all the time.
Just before daylight Jenny climbed the companion ladder to tell them that she could smell smoke in her cabin. Cap’n Obed went hastily below to investigate. She was right. The water had reached the lime. The cargo was afire.
IV
At daylight the wind was north by west, and it rose in force while they worked into Nantucket Sound. They kept the pumps going, and Willie during his respites from that toil went down into the galley and—choking in the smoke there—made coffee and heated beans. The deck forward was hot from the fire below, and all around the butt of the foremast the snow melted as fast as it fell. Their progress was slow and slower all the time. Evered, taking his turn at the pumps, did two men’s work, glad of the hard labor and the deadly weariness which followed it. When the smoke below became so thick that no one could breathe in the cabin, Jenny stayed in the deck house where Cap’n Obed and Willie, too old and weary for the steady labor at the pumps, stood to the wheel. Brock thought they could point well enough to make Holmes’ Hole. He said there was no harbor to leeward except Nantucket where the bar might trap them; and Cap’n Obed took his advice and kept her up to it as well as he could.
Evered was at the pumps when a little after noon the foremast suddenly tilted sidewise at a drunken angle, snapping stays like thread. The butt had burned through at the step; the mast leaned out over the rail. Brock leaped to fetch an axe and begin to cut the mast away, since if it went further overside, the leverage of the butt would rip open the decks and let air in to feed the fire; but he was clumsy at it, and Evered took the axe from him and with shrewd and violent strokes cut the butt through till the stick fell.
But it was still held alongside by the rigging, dragging there; and the Mary Ann lay helpless in the trough. One of the great seas that came solidly aboard her swept the halfwit away and they saw Arthur no more. Evered hacked at the tangle that still held the mast, and the wind thrust at him, and the seas battered him, and even through his soles he could feel the decks hot under his feet. They had been close-reefed, and when the wreck of the foremast was dear, the rag of mainsail took hold and began to drive her, but it seemed to Evered she went to leeward more than she went ahead. He turned into the deck house for a moment’s respite.
‘Can’t you do better, Cap’n?’ he shouted, over the roar of the gale. ‘We’re going down wind fast!’
‘I don’t dast sheet the mains’l home,’ Cap’n Obed told him. Evered saw Jenny watching them both, and her eyes were serene and unafraid, meeting his steadily. ‘I’d rip the mast out. If that happens, the old Mary Ann will look like a flower basket, fire pouring up out of her.’ He added: ‘She’s deeper all the t
ime, but if she’ll float through the night, water in her might drown out the fire.’
Evered could not take his eyes away from Jenny. He knew well enough their danger, from the fire, from the gale, from the raging storm; and he was not afraid. But it was strangely frightening to think that she too might be lost, that that exquisite flesh might be scorched or battered or washed white and pulpy by the pitilessly pounding seas. He forgot her crimes, remembering only how she had faced his accusations, with an unpretending dignity, without protests or denials, without even anger, as though it were natural and to be expected that he should take his friend’s word for her sins. She said to him in a low tone that nevertheless came clearly above the clamor of the storm:
‘You’ve worked so hard! You’re worth all the others together.’
He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry you’re in this,’ he told her then, reluctantly. She nodded in calm understanding, taking his word at its surface meaning, seeming to see in it nothing more.
V
Dark came early, and soon afterward they saw a lighter line to leeward and knew it for the breakers and the snow-clad shore; but there was no way to claw off. The Mary Ann struck once, rose on a wave, came down a second time hard enough to bilge her, rose sluggishly once more and struck again and rolled wearily over on her side as though glad to rest awhile. Pounding seas drove her ever harder 011 the sand, coming sometimes in sheets of solid water pouring down her decks. The shock or the seas carried the boy named Squid overside as Arthur had gone; and he was lost in darkness on the instant, beyond any help at all.
They had one chance. A dory trailed astern, and Cap’n Obed and Brock worked it into their Ice. The mate vaulted into it to bail out what water it had shipped; and into it they piled. Cap’n Obed was the last. He hated to leave the Mary Ann. She had brought him through some hard times, but now he was abandoning her helpless to her enemies, and tomorrow she would be no more than a litter of charred timbers scattered along the beach.
The Strange Woman Page 29