“Yees-yes, do.”
“Now this is ‘The Elves’ Concourse.’ Listen! You can hear their little feet pattering on the grass.
Everybody says it is very sweet and pretty.” Her fingers methodically worked at the strings.
Henry thought her hands lovely as they flew about. He forgot about the music in watching her hands.
They were like little white moths, so delicate and restless. One would hesitate in touching them because handling might ruin them, and yet one wanted to stroke them. The piece was ending with loud bass notes.
Now it was finished. When the last string had ceased its vibration, he observed: “You play very-precisely, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, I play the notes as they come,” she said. “I always think the composer knew his business better than I do.”
“I know, and it is a comfort to hear you. It is nice to know that everything is to be in its place-even notes. You have eradicated a certain obnoxious freedom I have noticed in the playing of some young women. That kind is very lovable and spontaneous and human, of course, but given to carelessness in the interest of passion. Yes, as I become older, I grow to be taking satisfaction in seeing the thing I expected come about. Unsure things are distracting. Chance has not the tug on me it once had. I was a fool, Elizabeth. I went sailing and sailing looking for something-well, something that did not exist, perhaps.
And now that I have lost my unnamable desires, I may not be happier, but there is more content on me.”
“That sounds wise and worldly, and a little bit cynical,” she observed.
“But if it is wisdom, then wisdom is experience beating about in an orderly brain, kicking over the files.
And how could I be otherwise than worldly. And cynicism is the moss which collects on a rolling stone.”
“That is clever, anyway,” she agreed. “I suppose you have known a great many of those young women you spoke of.”
“What young women, Elizabeth?”
“The ones who played badly.”
“Oh! Yes, I have met a few.”
“And did you-did you-like them?”
“I tolerated them because they were friends of my friends. “
“Did any of them fall in love with you? I know I am not delicate, but you are my cousin, and almost my-my brother. “
“Oh, some said they did-but I suspect they wanted my money. “
“Surely not! But I shall play for you again. This will be a sad piece-‘God Bears the Weary Soul to Rest.’ I always think it is better to have seriousness with the lighter music. “
“Yes,” he said. “Yes; so it is. “
Again her fingers worked over the strings.
“It is very beautiful, and sad,” said Henry, when it was finished. “I liked it wonderfully well, but don’t you think, Elizabeth-don’t you think that sixth string from the end might be a little-tighter? “
“Oh, I wouldn’t have it touched for the world!” she cried. “Before we came out from England, Papa had a man-a harp man-go over the whole thing thoroughly. I wouldn’t feel just right with Papa if it were tampered with. He hated people who fiddled with things.”
They sat silently after her outburst, but at length she looked pleadingly into his eyes. “You aren’t angry with me about the string, are you, Cousin Henry? I just have deep feelings like that. I can’t help it.”
“No, of course I am not angry.” She was so little and so helpless, he thought.
“Where will you be going, now that you are rich and famous and covered with honors?”
“I don’t know. I want to live in an atmosphere of sure things.”
“Why, that’s just the way I think,” she exclaimed. “We must be somewhat alike. Things come to you if you do not go looking for them, I say. And nearly always I know what is going to happen to me, because I hope for it and then sit still. “
“Yes,” said Henry.
“Papa’s death was a great shock,” she said, and again the tears were in her eyes. “It’s a terrible thing to be left alone and nearly no-no relatives or friends. Of course, the Moddyfords have been lovely to me, but they couldn’t be like my own people. Oh, dear! I have been so lonely. I was glad when you came, Cousin Henry, if only because we are of one blood.” Her eyes were glistening with tears, and her underlip trembled violently.
“But you must not cry, ” Henry said soothingly. “You will not need to worry any more, Elizabeth. I am here to take your trouble from your shoulders. I will help you and care for you, Elizabeth. I wonder how you bore the grief that fell on you. You have been brave to hold your head so high when misery was tugging at your spirit.”
“I had my music,” she said. “I could retire into my music when the grief was too bitter.”
“But now, Elizabeth, you need not even do that. You will come with me to England when I go, and you will be comfortable and safe with me for always.”
She had sprung away from him.
“But what are you suggesting? What is this thing you are proposing to me?” she cried. “Isn’t it some sin-some crime-for cousins to marry?”
“Marry?”
“Oh!” She blushed, and her eyes glittered again with her quick tears. “Oh! I am ashamed. You did mean marry, didn’t you? I am ashamed.” Her agitation was pitiful.
“After all, why not?” thought Henry. “She is pretty; I am sure of her family; and besides, she is rather a symbol of this security I have been preaching. I could be sure of never doing anything very radical if she were my wife. I really think I do want security. And besides,” his thought finished, “I really cannot let her suffer so.”
“Oh, surely I meant marry. What else could you have thought I meant? I am only clumsy and crude about it. I have startled you and hurt you. But, dear Elizabeth, there is no crime or sin about it. Many cousins marry. And we know all about each other, and our family is one. You must marry me, Elizabeth.
Truly I love you, Elizabeth.”
“Oh!” she stammered. “O-oh! I cannot think of it. I mean, I am-ill; I mean-my head whirls. You act so suddenly, Henry-so unexpectedly. Oh, please let me go. I must talk about it to Lady Moddyford.
She will know what to say.”
King Charles the Second and John Evelyn were sitting in a tiny library. A bright fire crackled on the hearth, throwing its flickerings on the books which lined the walls. On a table beside the two men were bottles and glasses.
“I knighted him this afternoon,” the King was saying. “He got pardon and a knighthood for two thousand pounds.”
“Well, two thousand pounds-” murmured John Evelyn. “Certain tradesmen will, perhaps, bless his knighthood.”
“But that’s not it, John. I could have got twenty. He took about a million out of Panama.”
“Ah, well; two thousand pounds-”
“I ordered him to come in here tonight,” said the King. “These sailors and pirates sometimes have a tale or two worth repeating. You’ll be disappointed in him. He is-lumpish, I think is the word. You get the impression that a great mass is planted before you; and he moves as though he pushed this own invisible cage ahead of him.”
“You might create a title,” John Evelyn suggested. “It seems wasteful to let a million get away without even trying.”
Sir Henry Morgan was announced.
“Step in, sir. Step in!” The King saw that he had a glass of wine in his hands. Henry seemed frightened.
He gulped the wine.
“Good job of yours in Panama,” the King observed. “It was better to burn it now than later, and I have no doubt we should have had to do it later.”
“I thought of that when I set the torch, Sire. These hoggish Spaniards want to overrun the world.”
“You know, Captain, piracy-or, to be delicate, freebooting-has been a good thing for us, and a bad thing for Spain. But the institution grows to be a nuisance. I spend half of my time making excuses to the Spanish Ambassador.
I am going to commission you Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica
.”
“Sire! “
“No thanks! I am acting on the advice of an adage. Piracy must be stopped now. These men have played at little wars long enough. “
“But, Sire, I myself was a buccaneer. Do you want me to hang my own men? “
“That is what I inferred, sir. Who can track them down better than you who know all their haunts? “
“They fought with me, Sire. “
“Ah; conscience? I had heard that you were able to do about as you pleased with your conscience. “
“Not conscience, Sire, but pity. “
“Pity is misplaced in a public servant or a robber. A man may do what it is profitable to do. You yourself have demonstrated two of these premises. Let us see you labor with the third,” the King said acidly.
“I wonder if I can. “
“If you wonder, then you can,” John Evelyn put in.
The King’s manner changed.
“Come! drink!” he said. “We must have life, and perhaps later, song. Tell us a tale, Captain, and drink while you tell it. Wine adds capitals and asterisks to a good tale-a true story. “
“A tale, Sire?”
“Surely. Some story of the colonial wenches; some little interlude in piracy-for I am sure you did not steal only gold.” He motioned a servant to keep Henry’s glass filled. “I have heard of a certain woman in Panama. Tell us about her.”
Henry drained his glass. His face was becoming flushed. “There is a tale about her,” he said. “She was pretty, but also she was an heiress. I confess, I favored her. She would inherit silver mines. Her husband offered one hundred thousand pieces of eight for her. He wanted to get his hands on the mines. Here was the question, Sire, and I wonder how many men have been confronted with one like it? Should I get the woman or the hundred thousand?”
The King leaned forward in his chair. “Which did you take? Tell me quickly.”
“I remained in Panama for a while,” said Henry. “What would Your Majesty have done in my place? I got both. Perhaps I got even more than that. Who knows but my son will inherit the silver mines eventually.”
“I would have done that,” cried the King. “You are right. I would have done just that. It was clever, sir.
A toast, Captain-to foresight. Your generalship, sir, runs to other matters than warfare, I see. You have never been defeated in battle, they say; but tell me, Captain, were you ever defeated in love? It is a good scene-an unusual scene-when a man admits himself bested in love. The admission is so utterly contrary to every masculine instinct. Another glass, sir, and tell us about your defeat.”
“Not by a woman, Sire-But once I was defeated by Death. There are things which so sear the soul that the pain of it follows through life. You asked for the story. Your health, Sire.
“I was born in Wales, among the mountains. My father was a gentleman. One summer, while I was a lad, a little princess of France came to our mountains for the air. She had a small retinue, and being lively and restless and clever, she achieved some freedom. One morning I came upon her where she bathed alone in the river. She was naked and unashamed. In an hour-such is the passionate blood of her race-she was lying in my arms. Sire, in all my wanderings, in the lovely women I have seen and the towns I have taken, there has been no pleasure like the days of that joyous summer. When she could escape, we played together in the hills like little gods. But this was not enough. We wanted to be married. She would give up her rank and we would go to live somewhere in America.
“Then the Autumn came. One day she said, ‘They are ready to take me away, but I will not go.’ The next day she did not come to me. In the night I went to her window and she threw a little note to me, ‘I am imprisoned. They have whipped me.’
“I went home. What else could I do? I could not fight them, the stout soldiers who guarded her. Very late that night there was a pounding on the door and cries, ‘Where is a doctor to be had? Quick! The little princess has poisoned herself.’ “
Henry lifted his eyes. The King was smiling ironically. John Evelyn drummed the table with his fingers.
“Yes?” said the King. “Yes?” He chuckled.
“Ah, I am old-old,” Henry moaned. “It is a lie. She was a pleasant child, the daughter of a cottager.”
He staggered to his feet and moved toward the door. Shame was burning in his face.
“Captain Morgan, you forget yourself. “
“I-forget-myself? “
“There are certain little courtesies. Custom demands that you render them to our person. “
“I plead pardon, Sire. I plead your permission to leave. I–I am ill.” He bowed himself from the room.
The King was smiling through his wine.
“How is it, John, that such a great soldier can be such a great fool? “
Said John Evelyn, “How could it be otherwise? If great men were not fools, the world would have been destroyed long ago. How could it be otherwise? Folly and distorted vision are the foundations of greatness. “
“You mean that my vision is distorted? “
“No, I do not mean that. “
“Then you imply-”
“I wish to go on with Henry Morgan. He has a knack for piracy which makes him great. Immediately you imagine him as a great ruler. You make him Lieutenant-Governor. In this you are like the multitude.
You believe that if a man do one thing magnificently, he should be able to do all things equally well. If a man be eminently successful in creating an endless line of mechanical doodads of some excellence, you conceive him capable of leading armies or maintaining governments. You think that because you are a good king you should be as good a lover-or vice-versa.”
“Vice-versa? “
“That is a humorous alternative, Sire. It is a conversational trick to gain a smile-no more. “
“I see. But Morgan and his folly- “
“Of course he is a fool, Sire, else he would be turning soil in Wales or burrowing in the mines. He wanted something, and he was idiot enough to think he could get it. Because of his idiocy he did get it-part of it. You remember the princess. “
The King was smiling again.
“I have never known any man to tell the truth to or about a woman. Why is that, John? “
“Perhaps, Sire, if you would explain the tiny scratch I see under your right eye, you could understand.
Now the scratch was not there last night, and it has the distinct look of- “
“Yes-yes-a clumsy servant. Let us speak of Morgan. You have a way, John, of being secretly insulting. Sometimes you are not even conscious of your insults. It is a thing to put down if you are to be around courts for any length of time.”
Sir Henry Morgan sat on the Judge’s Bench at Port Royal. Before him, on the floor, lay a slab of white sunlight like a blinding tomb. Throughout the room an orchestra of flies sang their symphony of boredom. The droning voices of counsel were only louder instruments against the humming obbligato.
Court officials went about sleepily, and the cases moved on.
“It was the fifteenth of the month, my lord. Williamson went to the Cartwright property for the purpose of determining-determining to his own satisfaction, my lord, whether the tree stood as described. It was while he was there-”
The case sang to its monotonous conclusion. Sir Henry, behind his broad table, stirred sleepily. Now the guards brought in a sullen vagrant, clothed in rags of old sail.
“Charged with stealing four biscuits and a mirror from So-and-So, my lord.”
“The proof?”
“He was detected, my lord.”
“Did you, or did you not, steal four biscuits and a mirror?”
The prisoner’s face became even more sullen.
“I told ‘em.”
“My lord,” the guard prompted.
“My lord.”
“Why did you steal these articles?”
“I wan’ed ‘em.”
“Say my lord.”
“My lord.”
“What did you want with them?”
“I wan’ed the biscuits for to eat.”
“My lord.”
“My lord.”
“And the mirror?”
“I wan’ed the mirror for to look at myself in.”
“My lord.”
“My lord. “
They led the man to his imprisonment. Now the guards brought in a thin, pasty woman.
“Charged with harlotry and incontinence, my lord. “
“Incontinence is illegal,” said Sir Henry irritatedly, “but since when have we been punishing people for harlotry? “
“My lord, the nature of this woman-The public health demands-We thought the case would be understood. “
“Ah! I see. She must be locked up. Take her away quickly. “
The woman began to cry sulkily.
Sir Henry rested his forehead on his hands. He did not look up at the next prisoners.
“Charged with piracy on the high seas, my lord; with disturbing the King’s peace; with an act of war against a friendly nation. “
Sir Henry glanced quickly at the prisoners. One was a rotund little man with eyes of terror, and the other a lean, grizzled fellow whose one arm was gone.
“What is the proof against the prisoners? “
“Five witnesses, my lord. “
“So? Make your plea! “
The tall man had put his good arm about the shoulders of his companion.
“We plead guilty, my lord. “
“You plead guilty?” Sir Henry cried in amazement. “But no pirate pleads guilty. It is a case unprecedented. “
“We plead guilty, my lord. “
“But why? “
“Fifty people saw us in action, my lord. Why should we take up your time in denying what fifty people will swear to? No, we are resigned, my lord. We are content, both with the recent action and with our lives.” The wiry arm squeezed about the small round tub of a buccaneer.
Henry sat very silently for a time. But finally he raised his tired eyes. “I sentence you to be hanged. “
“Hanged, my lord? “
“Hanged by the neck until you are dead. “
“You are changed, sir.”
Sir Henry started forward and closely scrutinized the prisoners. Then his lips smiled. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I am changed. The Henry Morgan you knew is not the Sir Henry Morgan who sentences you to death. I do not kill ferociously any more, but coldly, and because I have to.” Sir Henry raised his voice.
Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша] Page 19