The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  Dawson made a step forward, as if he would have overtaken her; but I withheld him, shaking my head, and himself seeing ’twas in vain, he dropped into a chair, and, spreading his arms upon the table, hides his face in them with a groan of despair.

  Moll totters down the dark stairs, and finds her husband standing in the doorway, his figure revealed against the patch of grey light beyond, for the moon was risen, though veiled by a thick pall of cloud. He sees, as she comes to his side, that she has neither cloak nor hood to protect her from the winter wind, and in silence he takes off his own cloak and lays it on her shoulder. At this act of mercy a ray of hope animates Moll’s numbed soul, and she catches at her husband’s hand to press it to her lips, yet can find never a word to express her gratitude. But his hand is cold as ice, and he draws it away from her firmly, with obvious repugnance. There was no love in this little act of giving her his cloak; ’twas but the outcome of that chivalry in gentlemen which doth exact lenience even to an enemy.

  So he goes on his way, she following like a whipped dog at his heels, till they reach the Court gates, and these being fast locked, on a little further, to the wicket gate. And there, as Mr. Godwin is about to enter, there confronts him Peter, that sturdy Puritan hireling of old Simon’s.

  “Thee canst not enter here, friend,” says he, in his canting voice, as he sets his foot against the gate.

  “Know you who I am?” asks Mr. Godwin.

  “Yea, friend; and I know who thy woman is also. I am bidden by friend Simon, the true and faithful steward of Mistress Godwin in Barbary, to defend her house and lands against robbers and evil-doers of every kind, and without respect of their degree; and, with the Lord’s help,” adds he, showing a stout cudgel, “that will I do, friend.”

  “’Tis true, fellow,” returns Mr. Godwin. “I have no right to enter here.”

  And then, turning about, he stands irresolute, as not knowing whither he shall go to find shelter for his wife. For very shame, he does not take her to the village inn, to be questioned by gaping servants and landlord, who, ere long, must catch the flying news of her shameful condition and overthrow. A faint light in the lattice of Anne Fitch’s cottage catches his eye, and he crosses to her door, still humbly followed by poor Moll. There he finds the thumb-piece gone from the latch, to him a well-known sign that Mother Fitch has gone out a-nursing; so, pulling the hidden string he wots of, he lifts the latch within, and the door opens to his hand. A rush is burning in a cup of oil upon the table, casting a feeble glimmer round the empty room. He closes the door when Moll has entered, sets a chair before the hearth, and rakes the embers together to give her warmth.

  “Forgive me, oh, forgive me!” cries Moll, casting herself at his feet as he turns, and clasping his knees to her stricken heart.

  “Forgive you!” says he, bitterly. “Forgive you for dragging me down to the level of rogues and thieves, for making me party to this vile conspiracy of plunder. A conspiracy that, if it bring me not beneath the lash of Justice, must blast my name and fame for ever. You know not what you ask. As well might you bid me take you back to finish the night in drunken riot with those others of our gang.”

  “Oh, no, not now! not now!” cries Moll, in agony. “Do but say that some day long hence, you will forgive me. Give me that hope, for I cannot live without it.”

  “That hope’s my fear!” says he. “I have known men who, by mere contact with depravity, have so dulled their sense of shame that they could make light of sins that once appalled them. Who knows but that one day I may forgive you, chat easily upon this villany, maybe, regret I went no further in it.”

  “Oh, God forbid that shall be of my doing!” cries Moll, springing to her feet. “Broken as I am, I’ll not accept forgiveness on such terms. Think you I’m like those plague-stricken wretches who, of wanton wickedness, ran from their beds to infect the clean with their foul ill? Not I.”

  “I spoke in heat,” says Mr. Godwin, quickly. “I repent even now what I said.”

  “Am I so steeped in infamy,” continues she, “that I am past all cure? Think,” adds she, piteously, “I am not eighteen yet. I was but a child a year ago, with no more judgment of right and wrong than a savage creature. Until I loved you, I think I scarcely knew the meaning of conscience. The knowledge came when I yearned to keep no secret from you. I do remember the first struggle to do right. ’Twas on the little bridge; and there I balanced awhile, ’twixt cheating you and robbing myself. And then, for fear you would not marry me, I dared not own the truth. Oh, had I thought you’d only keep me for your mistress, I’d have told you I was not your cousin. Little as this is, there’s surely hope in’t. Is it more impossible that you, a strong man, should lift me, than that I, a weak girl—no more than that—should drag you down?”

  “I did not weigh my words.”

  “Yet, they were true,” says she. “’Tis bred in my body—part of my nature, this spirit of evil, and ’twill exist as long as I. For, even now, I do feel that I would do this wickedness again, and worse, to win you once more.”

  “My poor wife,” says he, touched with pity; and holding forth his arms, she goes to them and lays her cheek against his breast, and there stands crying very silently with mingled thoughts—now of the room she had prepared with such delight against his return, of her little table in the corner, with the chiney image atop, and other trifles with which she had dreamed to give him pleasure—all lost! No more would she sit by his side there watching, with wonder and pride, the growth of beauty ’neath his dexterous hand; and then she feels that ’tis compassion, not love, that hath opened his arms to her, that she hath killed his respect for her, and with it his love. And so, stifling the sobs that rise in her throat, she weeps on, till her tears trickling from her cheek fall upon his hand.

  The icy barrier of resentment is melted by the first warm tear—this silent testimony of her smothered grief—and bursting from the bonds of reason, he yields to the passionate impulse of his heart, and clasping this poor sorrowing wife to his breast, he seeks to kiss away the tears from her cheek, and soothe her with gentle words. She responds to his passion, kiss for kiss, as she clasps her hands about his head; but still her tears flow on, for with her readier wit she perceives that this is but the transport of passion on his side, and not the untaxed outcome of enduring love, proving again the truth of his unmeditated prophecy; for how can he stand who yields so quickly to the first assault, and if he cannot stand, how can he raise her? Surely and more surely, little by little, they must sink together to some lower depth, and one day, thinks she, repeating his words, “We may chat easily upon this villany and regret we went no further in it.”

  Mr. Godwin leads her to the adjoining chamber, which had been his, and says:

  “Lie down, love. Tomorrow we shall see things clearer, and think more reasonably.”

  “Yes,” says she, in return, “more reasonably,” and with that she does his bidding; and he returns to sit before the embers and meditate. And here he stays, striving in vain to bring the tumult of his thoughts to some coherent shape, until from sheer exhaustion he falls into a kind of lethargy of sleep.

  Meanwhile, Moll, lying in the dark, had been thinking also, but (as women will at such times) with clearer perception, so that her ideas forming in logical sequence, and growing more clear and decisive (as an argument becomes more lively and conclusive by successful reasoning) served to stimulate her intellect and excite her activity. And the end of it was that she rose quickly from her bed and looked into the next room, where she saw her husband sitting, with his chin upon his breast and his hands folded upon his knee before the dead fire. Then wrapping his cloak about her, she steals toward the outer door; but passing him she must needs pause at his back to staunch her tears a moment, and look down upon him for the last time. The light shines in his brown hair, and she bending down till her lips touch a stray curl, they part silently, and she breathes upon him from her very soul, a mute “Fare thee well, dear love.”

  But she
will wait no longer, fearing her courage may give way, and the next minute she is out in the night, softly drawing the door to that separates these two for ever.

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  How we fought a most bloody battle with Simon, the constable, and others.

  For some time we spoke never a word, Dawson and I—he with his head lying on his arm, I seated in a chair with my hands hanging down by my side, quite stunned by the blow that had fallen upon us. At length, raising his head, his eyes puffed, and his face bedaubed with tears, he says:

  “Han’t you a word of comfort, Kit, for a broken-hearted man?”

  I stammered a few words that had more sound than sense; but indeed I needed consolation myself, seeing my own responsibility for bringing this misfortune upon Moll, and being most heartily ashamed of my roguery now ’twas discovered.

  “You don’t think he’ll be too hard on poor Moll, tell me that, Kit?”

  “Aye, he’ll forgive her,” says I, “sooner than us, or we ourselves.”

  “And you don’t think he’ll be for ever a-casting it in her teeth that her father’s a—a drunken vagabond, eh?”

  “Nay; I believe he is too good a man for that.”

  “Then,” says he, standing up, “I’ll go and tell him the whole story, and you shall come with me to bear me out.”

  “Tomorrow will be time enough,” says I, flinching from this office; “’tis late now.”

  “No matter for that. Time enough to sleep when we’ve settled this business. We’ll not leave poor Moll to bear all the punishment of our getting. Mr. Godwin shall know what an innocent, simple child she was when we pushed her into this knavery, and how we dared not tell her of our purpose lest she should draw back. He shall know how she was ever an obedient, docile, artless girl, yielding always to my guidance; and you can stretch a point, Kit, to say you have ever known me for a headstrong, masterful sort of a fellow, who would take denial from none, but must have my own way in all things. I’ll take all the blame on my own shoulders, as I should have done at first, but I was so staggered by this fall.”

  “Well,” says I, “if you will have it so—”

  “I will,” says he, stoutly. “And now give me a bucket of water that I may souse my head, and wear a brave look. I would have him think the worst of me that he may feel the kinder to poor Moll. And I’ll make what atonement I can,” adds he, as I led him into my bed-chamber. “If he desire it, I will promise never to see Moll again; nay, I will offer to take the king’s bounty, and go a-sailoring; and so, betwixt sickness and the Dutch, there’ll be an end of Jack Dawson in a very short space.”

  When he had ducked his head in a bowl of water, and got our cloaks from the room below, we went to the door, and there, to my dismay, I found the lock fast and the key which I had left in its socket gone.

  “What’s amiss, Kit?” asks Dawson, perceiving my consternation.

  “The key, the key!” says I, holding the candle here and there to seek it on the floor, then, giving up my search as it struck me that Mr. Godwin and Moll could not have left the house had the door been locked on the inside; “I do believe we are locked in and made prisoners,” says I.

  “Why, sure, this is not Mr. Godwin’s doing!” cries he.

  “’Tis Simon,” says I, with conviction, seeing him again in my mind, standing behind Mr. Godwin, with wicked triumph in his face.

  “Is there no other door but this one?” asks Dawson.

  “There is one at the back, but I have never yet opened that, for lack of a key.” And now setting one thing against another, and recalling how I had before found the door open, when I felt sure I had locked it fast, the truth appeared to me; namely, that Simon had that key and did get in the back way, going out by the front on that former occasion in haste upon some sudden alarm.

  “Is there never a window we can slip through?” asks Jack.

  “Only those above stairs; the lower are all barred.”

  “A fig for his bars. Does he think we have neither hands nor wits to be hindered by this silly woman’s trick?”

  “’Tis no silly trick. He’s not the man to do an idle thing. There’s mischief in this.”

  “What mischief can he do us more than he has done?—for I see his hand in our misfortune. What mischief, I say?—out with it, man, for your looks betray a fear of something worse.”

  “Faith, Jack, I dread he has gone to fetch help and will lodge us in gaol for this business.”

  “Gaol!” cries he, in a passion of desperation. “Why, this will undo Moll for ever. Her husband can never forgive her putting such shame upon him. Rouse yourself, man, from your stupor. Get me something in the shape of a hammer, for God’s sake, that we may burst our way from this accursed trap.”

  I bethought me of an axe for splitting wood, that lay in the kitchen, and fetching it quickly, I put it in his hand. Bidding me stand aside, he let fly at the door like a madman. The splinters flew, but the door held good; and when he stayed a moment to take a new grip on his axe, I heard a clamour of voices outside—Simon’s, higher than the rest, crying, “My new door, that cost me seven and eightpence!”

  “The lock, the lock!” says I. “Strike that off.”

  Down came the axe, striking a spark of fire from the lock, which fell with a clatter at the next blow; but ere we had time to open the door, Simon and his party, entering by the back door, forced us to turn for our defence. Perceiving Dawson armed with an axe, however, these fellows paused, and the leader, whom I recognised for the constable of our parish, carrying a staff in one hand and a lanthorn in t’other, cried to us in the king’s name to surrender ourselves.

  “Take us, if you can,” cries Dawson; “and the Lord have mercy on the first who comes within my reach!”

  Deftly enough, old Simon, snatching the fellow’s cap who stood next him, flings it at the candle that stands flaring on the floor, and justles the constable’s lanthorn from his hand, so that in a moment we were all in darkness. Taking us at this disadvantage (for Dawson dared not lay about him with his axe, for fear of hitting me by misadventure), the rascals closed at once; and a most bloody, desperate fight ensued. For, after the first onslaught, in which Dawson (dropping his axe, as being useless at such close quarters) and I grappled each our man, the rest, knowing not friend from foe in the obscurity, and urged on by fear, fell upon each other—this one striking out at the first he met, and that giving as good as he had taken—and so all fell a-mauling and belabouring with such lust of vengeance that presently the whole place was of an uproar with the din of cursing, howling, and hard blows. For my own lot I had old Simon to deal with, as I knew at once by the cold, greasy feel of his leathern jerkin, he being enraged to make me his prisoner for the ill I had done him. Hooking his horny fingers about my throat, he clung to me like any wildcat; but stumbling, shortly, over two who were rolling on the floor, we went down both with a crack, and with such violence that he, being undermost, was stunned by the fall. Then, my blood boiling at this treatment, I got astride of him, and roasted his ribs royally, and with more force than ever I had conceived myself to be possessed of. And, growing beside myself with this passion of war, I do think I should have pounded him into a pulp, but that two other combatants, falling across me with their whole weight, knocked all the wind out of my body, oppressing me so grievously, that ’twas as much as I could do to draw myself out of the fray, and get a gasp of breath again.

  About this time the uproar began to subside, for those who had got the worst of the battle thought it advisable to sneak out of the house for safety, and those who had fared better, fearing a reverse of fortune, counted they had done enough for this bout, and so also withdrew.

  “Are you living, Kit?” asks Dawson, then.

  “Aye,” says I, as valiantly as you please, “and ready to fight another half-dozen such rascals,” but pulling the broken door open, all the same, to get out the easier, in case they returned.

  “Why, then, let’s go,” says he, “unless any is minded
to have us stay.”

  No one responding to this challenge, we made ado to find a couple of hats and cloaks for our use and sallied out.

  “Which way do we turn?” asks Dawson, as we come into the road.

  “Whither would you go, Jack?”

  “Why, to warn Moll of her danger, to be sure.”

  I apprehended no danger to her, and believed her husband would defend her in any case better than we could, but Dawson would have it we should warn them, and so we turned towards the Court. And now upon examination we found we had come very well out of this fight; for save that the wound in Dawson’s hand had been opened afresh, we were neither much the worse.

  “But let us set our best foot foremost, Jack,” says I, “for I do think we have done more mischief tonight than any we have before, and I shall not be greatly surprised if we are called to account for the death of old Simon or some of his hirelings.”

  “I know not how that may be,” says he, “but I must answer for knocking of somebody’s teeth out.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  We take Moll to Greenwich; but no great happiness for her there.

  In the midst of our heroics I was greatly scared by perceiving a cloaked figure coming hurriedly towards us in the dim light.

  “’Tis another, come to succour his friends,” whispers I. “Let us step into this hedge.”

  “Too late,” returns he. “Put on a bold face, ’tis only one.”

  With a swaggering gait and looking straight before us, we had passed the figure, when a voice calls “Father!” and there turning, we find that ’tis poor Moll in her husband’s cloak.

  “Where is thy husband, child?” asks Dawson, as he recovers from his astonishment, taking Moll by the hand.

  “I have no husband, father,” answers she, piteously.

  “Why, sure he hath not turned you out of doors?”

  “No, he’d not do that,” says she, “were I ten times more wicked than I am.”

  “What folly then is this?” asks her father.