Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша]

by Джон Эрнст Стейнбек

  “Let the court be cleared, but guard the doors! I wish to speak privately with the prisoners.”

  When they were alone he began: “I know well that I am changed, but tell me what is the change you see.”

  The Burgundians looked at each other. “You speak, Emil.”

  “You are changed, sir, in this way. Once you knew what you were doing. You were sure of yourself.”

  “That is so,” broke in the other. “You do not know-you are not sure of yourself any more. Once you were one man. It is possible to trust one man. But now you are several men. If we should trust one of you, we should be in fear of the others.”

  Sir Henry laughed. “That is more or less true. It is not my fault, but it is true. Civilization will split up a character, and he who refuses to split goes under.”

  “We have forgotten about civilization, thanks to our Mother,” Antoine muttered fiercely.

  “What a pity to hang you.”

  “But is it so necessary to hang us, sir? Could we not escape or be pardoned?”

  “No, you must be hanged. I am sorry, but it must be so. Such is my duty.”

  “But duty to your friends, sir-to the men who bore arms with you, who mixed their blood with yours-”

  “Listen, Other Burgundian; there are two kinds of duty, and you would know that if you remembered your France. You mentioned one species, and it is the weaker kind. The other, the giant duty-that which will not be overlooked-might be called the duty of appearances. I do not hang you because you are pirates, but because I am expected to hang pirates. I am sorry for you. I would like to send you to your cells with saws in your pockets, but I cannot. As long as I do what is expected of me, I shall remain the Judge. When I change, for whatever motive, I may myself be hanged.”

  “That is so, sir. I remember.” He turned to his friend who stood shaking in the grip of horror. “You see, such is the case, Emil. He does not like to tell us this thing because it hurts him. Perhaps he punishes himself in this manner for something he had done or failed to do. Perhaps he remembers Chagres, Emil.”

  “Chagres!” Sir Henry bent forward with excitement. “What happened after I sailed away? Tell me!”

  “You were cursed, sir, as it is given to few men to be cursed. You were tortured in men’s minds. They feasted on your heart and sent your soul to hell. I enjoyed the scene rarely, because I knew that every man there envied you while he reviled you. I was proud of you, sir.”

  “And they scattered?”

  “They scattered and died, poor little children.”

  “Anyway, I should have hated to fall in with those poor little children! Tell me,” Sir Henry’s voice had become wistful, “tell me about Panama. We did go there, didn’t we? We really captured Panama, didn’t we, and looted it? It was I who led you, wasn’t it?”

  “It was so. It was a grand fight and an ocean of plunder-but, after all, you know more about that last than we do.”

  “Sometimes I doubt whether this body ever went to Panama. I am sure this brain did not. I would like to stay and talk to you of that old time, but my wife expects me. She is apt to fuss if I am late for luncheon.”

  He spoke jocosely. “When would you like to be hanged?”

  The Burgundians were whispering together.

  “Ah, there is that ‘hanged’ again. When would we like to be hanged? Any time, sir. We do not wish to put you to the trouble, but if you insist-any time there is a man and a rope idle.” Antoine approached the table. “Emil wishes to offer one last compliment. It is a gift for your wife-a gift the history of which alone would make it valuable.

  Emil has treasured this gift to the end, and of this talisman he has reaped a harvest-for talismanic it is, in truth, sir. But Emil thinks its period of duty should end, sir. He believes that by taking this means he can stop the series of events which has flowed out from his treasure. And Emil, unfortunately, will have no further use for it. Emil kisses the hand of Lady Morgan-presents his respects and dignified compliments.” He dropped a rose pearl on the table and turned quickly away.

  After they had been led out, Sir Henry sat at his bench and stared at the pearl. Then he put it in his pocket and walked into the street.

  He came to the squat, white Palace of the Lieutenant-Governor. It was exactly as Sir Edward had left it.

  Lady Morgan would not have felt right if a detail had been changed. She met Henry at the door.

  “We are to have dinner with the Vaughns. And what am I to do about the coachman? He’s drunk. I’ve told you and told you to lock your closet, but you will not pay attention to me. He sneaked into the house and got a bottle off your shelf. He must have done that.”

  “Open your hand, my dear. I have a gift for you.”

  He dropped the rose pearl into her palm.

  For a moment she looked at the rosy sphere and her face flushed with pleasure, but then she searched his face suspiciously.

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Up to? Why, I have been holding court.”

  “I suppose you got this in court!” Her face lighted up. “I know! You suspected my displeasure at your actions last night. You were practically intoxicated, if you must know the truth; and all the people were staring at you and whispering.

  Don’t say a word. I saw them and I saw you. And now you want to bribe my feeling-my decency.”

  “Suspected your displeasure! My dear, I suspected it all the way home with you, and nearly all night after I got here. You are right. I strongly suspected your displeasure. In fact, I was certain of it. But I will tell you the truth about the pearl.”

  “You will tell the truth only because you know you cannot deceive me, Henry. When will you give up the idea that I don’t know every little thought you possess?”

  “But I didn’t try to deceive you. You didn’t give me time.”

  “It takes no more time to tell the truth than-”

  “Listen to me, Elizabeth, please. I tried two pirates this morning and they gave it to me.”

  She smiled a superior smile. “They gave it to you? Why? Did you release them? It would be like you to release them. Sometimes I think you would still be one of them if it weren’t for me. You never seem to realize, Henry, that it is really I who have made you what you are-a knight and a gentleman. You made yourself a buccaneer. But tell me, did you release these pirates?”

  “No; I sentenced them to death.”

  “Ah! Then why did they give you the pearl?”

  “My dear, they gave it to me because they had nothing else to do with it. They might have presented it to the hangman, but one would feel a trifle diffident about giving pearls to the man who put a rope about one’s neck. Friendship isn’t possible with one’s hangman, I should imagine. Thus, they gave it to me, and I-” he smiled broadly and innocently, “I am giving it to you because I love you.”

  “Well, I can easily find out about the pirates, and as to your affection-you love me as long as I have my eye on you, and no longer. I know you thoroughly. But I am glad they are hanged. Lord Vaughn says they are a positive danger even to ourselves. He says they may stop fighting Spain at any moment and start on us. He says they are like vicious dogs, to be exterminated as soon as possible. I feel a little safer every time one of them is out of the way.”

  “But, my dear, Lord Vaughn knows nothing about buccaneers, while I-”

  “Henry, why do you keep me here with your talking, when you know I have a thousand things to attend to. You think, because you have all the time in the world, that I can afford to help you idle. Now do see to the coachman, because I should be terribly embarrassed if he were not fit. His livery will not suit Jacob by any pinching. Did I tell you he is drunk? Get him sober for tonight if you must drown him to do it. Now hurry along. I won’t feel right until I know he can sit up straight.” She turned to reenter the house, then came back and kissed him on the cheek.

  “It’s really a nice pearl. Thank you, dear,” she said. “Of course, I am going to have Monsieur B
anzet value it. After what Lord Vaughn said, I have very little faith in pirates. They might have been trying to bribe you with paste, and you would never know the difference.”

  Sir Henry walked toward the stables. Now, as on other occasions, he was gently moved by uneasiness.

  Now and then there came a vagrant feeling that, in spite of all Elizabeth ‘s declamation to the effect that she knew him thoroughly, perhaps she really did. It was disquieting.

  Sir Henry Morgan lay in an enormous bed; a bed so wide that his body, under the coverlid, seemed a snow-covered mountain range dividing two great plains. From the walls about the room the shiny eyes of his ancestors regarded him. On their faces were smirks which said, “Ah, yes! A knight, to be sure-but we know how you bought your knighthood.” The air in the room was heavy and thick and hot.

  So always the air seems in a room where a man is about to die.

  Sir Henry was staring at the ceiling. For an hour he had been puzzled with this mysterious ceiling.

  Nothing supported it in the middle. Why did it not fall? It was late. Every one about him was silent, they went sneaking about pretending to be ghosts, he thought. They were trying to convince him that he was dead already. He closed his eyes. He was too tired or too indifferent to keep them open. He heard the doctor come in, and felt him reading the pulse. Then the big confident voice boomed: “I am sorry, Lady Morgan. There is nothing to do now. I do not even know what is the matter with him.

  Some old jungle fever, perhaps. I could bleed him again, I suppose, but we have taken a great deal of blood already, and it seems to do no good. However, if he begins to sink, I shall try it again.”

  “Then he will die?” Lady Morgan asked. Henry thought she showed more curiosity than sorrow.

  “Yes, he will die unless God intervenes. Only God can be sure of his patients.”

  And then the room was cleared of people. Henry knew that his wife was sitting near the bed. He could hear her crying softly beside him. “What a pity it is,” he thought, “that I cannot go to death in a ship so she might pack my bag for me. It would give her so much satisfaction to know that I was entering heaven with a decent supply of clean linen.”

  “Oh, my husband-Oh, Henry, my husband.”

  He turned his head and looked at her curiously, and his gaze went deep into her eyes. Suddenly he was seized with despair.

  “This woman loves me,” he said to himself. “This woman loves me, and I have never known it. I cannot know this kind of love. Her eyes-her eyes-this is something far beyond my comprehension. Can she have loved me always?” He looked again. “She is very near to God. I think women are nearer to God than men. They cannot talk about it, but, Christ! how it shines in their eyes. And she loves me. During all her hectoring and badgering and browbeating, she has loved me-and I have never known it. But what would I have done if I had known it?” He turned away. This sorrow was too great, too burning and awful to regard. It is terrifying to see a woman’s soul shining through her eyes.

  So he was to die. It was rather pleasant if death was like this. He was warm and very tired. Presently he would fall asleep, and that would be death-Brother Death.

  He knew that some other person had come into the room. His wife leaned over until she came within his up-staring vision. She would be annoyed if she knew he could turn his head if he wished.

  “The Vicar, dear,” his wife said. “Do be nice to him. Oh, do listen to him! It may help you-afterwards.”

  Ah, she was practical! She was going to see that some compact was made with the Almighty if she could. Her affection was an efficient thing, but her love-that which glittered in her wet eyes-was frightful.

  Henry felt a warm, soft hand take his. A soothing voice was talking to him. But it was difficult to listen.

  The ceiling was swaying dangerously.

  “God is Love,” the voice was saying. “You must put your faith in God.”

  “God is Love,” Henry repeated mechanically.

  “Let us pray,” said the voice.

  Suddenly Henry remembered a moment of his childhood.

  He was being tortured with an earache, and his mother was holding him in her arms. She stroked his wrist with her finger tips. “This is all nonsense,” she was saying. He remembered how she said it. “This is all nonsense. God is Love. He will not let little boys suffer. Now repeat after me-‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.’ ” It was as though she administered a medicine. In the same tone she would have commanded, “Come, take this oil!”

  Henry felt the warm fingers of the Vicar creep to his wrist and begin a stroking movement.

  ” ‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want,’ ” Henry droned sleepily. ” ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures-‘

  ” The stroking continued, but more harshly. The Vicar’s voice became more loud and authoritative. It was as though, after years of patient waiting, the Church had at last got Henry Morgan within its power. There was something almost gloating about the voice.

  “Have you repented your sins, Sir Henry?”

  “My Sins? No, I had not thought of them. Shall I repent Panama?”

  The Vicar was embarrassed. “Well, Panama was a patriotic conquest. The King approved. Besides, the people were Papists.”

  “But what are my sins, then?” Henry went on. “I remember only the most pleasant and the most painful among them. Somehow I do not wish to repent the pleasant ones. It would be like breaking faith with them; they were charming. And the painful sins carried atonement with them like concealed knives. How may I repent, sir? I might go over my whole life, naming and repenting every act from the shattering of my first teething ring to my last visit to a brothel. I might repent everything I could remember, but if I forgot one single sin, the whole process would be wasted.”

  “Have you repented your sins, Sir Henry?”

  He realized, then, that he had not been talking at all. It was difficult to talk. His tongue had become lazy and sluggish. “No,” he said. “I can’t remember them very well.”

  “You must search in your heart for greed and lust and spite. You must drive wickedness from your heart.”

  “But, sir, I don’t remember ever having been consciously wicked. I have done things which seemed wicked afterwards, but while I was doing them I always had some rather good end in view.” Again he was conscious that he wasn’t really speaking.

  “Let us pray,” the voice said.

  Henry made a violent effort with his tongue. “No!” he cried.

  “But you prayed before.”

  “Yes, I prayed before-because my mother would have liked it. She would have wanted me to pray at least once, more as a proof of her training than for any other reason, a reassurance to her that she had done her duty by me.”

  “Would you die heretic, Sir Henry? Aren’t you afraid of death?”

  “I am too tired, sir, or too lazy, to consider problems of heresy. And I am not afraid of death. I have seen much violence, and no man whom I have admired was afraid of death, but only of dying. You see, sir, death is an intellectual matter, but dying is pure pain. And this death of mine is very pleasant so far.

  No, sir; I am not afraid even of dying.

  It is comfortable, and it would be quiet if I could only be left alone. It is as though I were about to sleep after a great effort.”

  He heard the Vicar’s voice again; but, though the warm hand still stroked his wrist, the voice came from a mighty distance.

  “He will not answer me,” the Vicar was saying. “I am perplexed for his soul.”

  Then he heard his wife speaking to him. “You must pray, dear. Every one does. How can you get to heaven if you do not pray?”

  There she was again, intent on making a contract with God. But Henry did not want to look at her.

  Naпve though her philosophy was, her eyes were as deep and as sad as the limitless sky. He wanted to say, “I won’t want to get to heaven once I am dead. I won’t want them to disturb me.” They made such a c
ommotion about this death.

  The doctor had come back into the room. “He is unconscious,” the booming voice proclaimed. “I think I will bleed him again.”

  Henry felt the scalpel cut into his arm. It was pleasant. He hoped they would cut him again and again.

  But the illusion was contradictory. Rather than feeling the blood leaving him, he sensed a curious warmth slipping through his body. His breast and arms tingled as though some robust, ancient wine were singing in his veins.

  Now a queer change began to take place. He found that he could see through his eyelids, could see all about him without moving his head. The doctor and his wife and the Vicar and even the room were sliding away from him.

  “They are moving,” he thought. “I am not moving. I am fixed. I am the center of all things and cannot move. I am as heavy as the universe. Perhaps I am the universe.”

  A low, sweet tone was flowing into his consciousness; a vibrant, rich organ tone, which filled him, seemed to emanate from his brain, to flood his body, and from it to surge out over the world. He saw with a little surprise that the room had gone. He was lying in an immeasurable dark grotto along the sides of which were rows of thick, squat columns made of some green, glittering crystal. He was still in a reclining position, and the long grotto was sliding past him. Of a sudden, the movement stopped. He was surrounded by strange beings, having the bodies of children, and bulbous, heavy heads, but no faces.

  The flesh where their faces should have been was solid and unbroken. These beings were talking and chattering in dry, raucous voices. Henry was puzzled that they could talk without mouths.

  Slowly the knowledge grew in him that these were his deeds and his thoughts which were living with Brother Death. Each one had gone immediately to live with Brother Death as soon as it was born. When he knew their identity, the faceless little creatures turned on him and clustered thickly about his couch.

  “Why did you do me?” one cried.