Sea Jade

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I ran toward her at once. “The letter is mine! If you’ve found it, give it to me!”

  “Do you think I would?” she cast the words at me angrily. “Do you think I’ll have my son read the lies that creature wrote?”

  “Lies? Lies about what?” I demanded.

  “About me! Vicious lies that my son shall not read. If the letter is here I will have it before he comes home!”

  She continued to tug furiously at drawers and compartments, opening those that could be opened, trying to force the others.

  Ian stood back and did not interfere.

  “You might as well stop,” I said. “I’ve told you the letter belongs to me.”

  She whirled to face me, and saw Ian standing behind me. At once her face came alight with a look more malevolent than I had ever seen in it before. It was as if all the hostility and hatred that so consumed this woman had flared up to find a living outlet.

  “So!” she cried. “It’s you! I suppose you’ve come back to the scene of your crime!”

  I knew the woman had stepped over the borderline of sanity at last. She was completely mad and I plucked at Ian’s arm to draw him away, but she came toward him furiously.

  “Wait,” Ian said to me, “let’s hear this out. Suppose you explain what you mean, Mrs. McLean.”

  “I talked to the Chinese woman this morning,” she told him scornfully. “I said I wanted Carrie’s letter. When she claimed she didn’t have it, I threw something else in her face. I asked her why she had left the door unlocked so Tom Henderson could come upstairs that night he frightened the captain and caused his death. She had the gall to laugh at me and deny that she’d had anything to do with the door. She said it was you who planned this, Ian Pryott. You who unlocked the door and told Henderson to watch his chance to get upstairs to the captain.”

  I flung myself back from the hateful stream of her words and pulled again at Ian’s arm. “Don’t listen to her! You can see that she is mad. No one will believe anything she says.”

  Ian smiled at me wryly. “They will believe easily enough. People leap at this sort of thing. Just as they were ready to suspect that you might have pushed Tom Henderson off the ladder.”

  “It wasn’t Miranda who did that. And I’m not in the least mad!” Sybil cried. “It was you—you! Because Tom was going to tell his story—that you’d let him into the house deliberately, knowing the captain’s heart was weak, hoping for his death before there could be any changing of his will to Brock. You would have paid the fellow when Lien inherited, I suppose. But you didn’t know, as Lien did, that the captain had already changed his will over to Miranda. You thought Lien would get all the money and then you would marry her and have everything you’ve always thought was due so clever a scoundrel as yourself.”

  Her words touched me with horror. “Tell her it’s not true, Ian!”

  He answered me dully, without denial. “Everything would have been simple enough if you hadn’t come into the picture, Miranda. I never meant to love you. My plans seemed sound enough at first. But one desperate step led to another, and each forced me into the next. There was never any turning back. And now I’m done for.”

  He caught up the lantern and ran up the stairs. Mrs. McLean returned frantically to her search in the captain’s cabin and I started up the steps in bewilderment to follow Ian.

  At once he shouted down at me. “Stand back, Miranda!”

  There was a ringing in his voice that made me obey. I sprang off the steps toward the center of the ship and a moment later Ian’s lighted lantern came hurtling down, smashing as it landed, bursting into oily flame that spattered the old dry wood of the stairs and began at once to burn furiously. I stood horrified, listening to the wild, immediate crackling of dry tinder. Beyond, Sybil slammed the door of the captain’s cabin in terror, shutting herself in.

  “Come out!” I called to her. “Come out at once. You’ll burn to death if you stay in there.”

  Beyond the door she began to scream, but she did not open it, and I remembered that it could stick. Ian’s voice reached me above the sound of spreading flames.

  “Go to the forward stairs, Miranda. Come up them at once and you’ll be safe. I’ll get you off the ship.”

  I paid no attention, my entire focus upon the frightened woman shut in the cabin, with the flames reaching surely toward the door. There was still an open space behind the burning stairs. I stared at it for a terrified moment, all my old fear of flaming light upon me. But I could leave no one to so hideous a death and this was Brock’s mother.

  I fled toward the open space, slipped through beneath the slanting steps and reached the cabin door. The heat was already intense as I put my shoulder to the door and burst it open. The woman cowered in helpless terror on the captain’s bunk, and did not move or answer when I called to her. I slapped her across one cheek sharply, and when she roused I caught her arm and pulled her bodily toward the door. At the wall of flame that faced us, she tried to shrink back, but I clung to her as Laurel had clung to Lucifer. The space was still clear beneath the stairs and I found a strength I had not known I possessed and pushed her toward it.

  Her mantle was on fire and my bonnet was burning by the time we stumbled through. I tore them off, scarcely feeling the pain, and flung them toward the flames, beating out the sparks that would have kindled the rest of our clothes.

  Air—we had to have air to breathe! Smoke was choking me and Sybil was coughing. I tugged at the woman desperately and now she found strength enough to come with me as I pulled her toward the forward ladder.

  Scattered oil had done its work and already the entire stern was ablaze. Flames were making a chimney of the after stairway. I managed to drag her forward. Our one escapeway lay through the open forward hatch.

  As we reached the steps, the breath of air was momentarily welcome. I looked up and saw the light of a blue and sunny sky, saw Ian kneeling on the deck looking down at us. As had happened to me twice before, since I had come to Bascomb’s Point, I had the sudden intense feeling that all this had been ordained from the first, that somehow I knew what was to come. Yet I held up my hand to him in desperate pleading.

  “Help me! I can’t get her up the stairs alone. You must help me!”

  But though he bent toward me, he did not extend his hand. “I’m sorry, Miranda. Remember that I loved you. That I could have loved you. But never as much as I love my own life.”

  The hatch slammed down above. I shouted Ian’s name in disbelief, but my only answer was the sound of something heavy like a barrel being rolled upon the door over my head.

  I ran up to where I could put my shoulder against the hatch cover, but whatever blocked it was heavy and would not budge. Above on the deck I heard footsteps running—running away, just as I had heard them that other time. It had been Ian then—easily able to hide himself aboard the ship because I so foolishly kept from Brock the fact that I had heard someone running.

  Mrs. McLean had crumpled to the floor at the foot of the steps and I went down to crouch beside her. Here near the floor, the air was better than it was on the ladder close to the ceiling. In the stern of the ship the fire burned furiously, fed on every hand by ancient timbers, spreading even as we watched. Worse than the flames was the thickening smoke, more immediately dangerous than the fire itself. Already it was filling the ship below decks with a choking blanket. The very taste of it was acrid and bitter in my mouth, burning to my lungs.

  Yet it seemed that death could take a long and painful time in coming. We clung to each other, coughing and fighting for breath, when a sound—a sound from the world of air and sunlight overhead!—came down to us. It was the barking of a dog. No dog but Lucifer would bark like that, and I roused myself to call to him as if he could understand my words.

  “Good dog!” I shouted. “Go get help, Lucifer! Go get help!”

  But even as I cried out to him I knew my voice was too faint, knew that his barking could not bring us aid in time. Then, abruptly, a str
ong foot kicked the barrel away from the hatch. The door was yanked open and I looked up to see Brock above us. Fire and smoke roared toward this new vent, but Brock came down, caught up the unconscious figure of his mother and carried her up the stairs, shouting to me to come after him. I scrambled and fought my way up the steps.

  In the cold sharp air of the deck I gasped painfully till I could breathe again. But we could not linger there. The whole after part of the ship was ablaze, with a great column of smoke rising to the sky, and cinders raining about us. Lucifer leaped and bounded frantically, his chain clattering. I caught up the end of it as we hastened from the burning ship.

  Now there were ready hands to aid us. Mrs. McLean was taken from Brock’s arms and carried ashore. But Brock stayed with me. Until this moment, he had not spoken, except to command, but now he drew me roughly to him, held me hard and hurtfully, murmuring over me the while. He touched my hair, my shoulders, my dress, seeking for any harm that had come to me.

  “I’m all right,” I told him. “Oh, Brock, Brock!” And I clung to him knowing not only that my husband had come home, but that I had come home, too.

  I tried to tell him a little then, through my shock and my horror of what had happened. “It was Ian—it was Ian all the time! He rolled that barrel over the hatch to keep us down there. He would have sacrificed us both because your mother knew what he had done!”

  “Hush,” Brock said. “Don’t fash yourself, lassie. He had a way with him, Ian. But this time he hasn’t got off with it. Look, my darling.”

  I raised my head as we started along the dock together. At the far end stood a figure in a long black cape. The hood was flung back from her head and the pale ivory of her face was turned toward the water. Both hands were revealed now and in one of them she held the pirate blade. I stared at her for a moment of further shock and then followed the direction of her gaze.

  From a small boat men were lifting something from the harbor water and my hand tightened on Brock’s arm. I could not speak my question, but he answered it.

  “Lien was at the end of the dock when he tried to escape, and barred his way. She had the sword in her hands and I think she would have killed him with it. So he chose the water. I saw it happen as I came along.”

  Ian, who so feared the sea, and could scarcely swim! Again there was fitting irony, but I could take no pleasure in it. I did not want him dead. I wanted him alive and good and trustworthy. All that he had never been, save when it served him well or cost him nothing.

  “How did you know?” I asked Brock. “How did you get to us in time?”

  He took Lucifer’s chain from my hand. “The dog came down to the docks and I knew someone must have loosed him, knew something must be wrong. I hurried for the shortcut path toward home and that’s when I saw the fire aboard the Pride. Lien was on the dock and she told me where you were.”

  We had reached the ledge of slanting ground that was the shipyard, and I halted in sudden understanding to stare up at the lighthouse, high on the cliff. Laurel must have seen the fire and she had done the only thing possible. She had loosed the dog, knowing he would go to the place where he always waited for Brock.

  But Laurel was no longer there in the tower. A small figure came hurtling down the bluff path to hurl herself into my arms, to cling to me breathlessly, and look with shy eagerness at her father.

  On the beach women had come from the village to assist Mrs. McLean back to the house. Brock and Laurel and I climbed the bluff together, and my husband’s arm was about me all the way. No longer did the things I had to tell him seem to matter very much. No longer did it concern me that I was Obadiah’s daughter. For if I had changed, Brock had changed too. Clearly he had come alive, and surely he had left old hopelessness behind. There would be much to work out, but we could manage it together now.

  We had nearly reached the house before I remembered my mother’s letter. It was gone in the burning ship. I would never read what Carrie Heath had written, and sadness touched me. Her words might have been something of my mother to possess. But at least I knew now where my true love lay and never again would I give my life to futile dreaming.

  Nearly a year has passed since the burning of the Pride. These final words are being written aboard that gallant ship, the Sea Jade. The taste of smoke no longer seems constantly on my tongue, or the smell of it in my nostrils.

  I am the captain’s wife aboard this ship, sailing with my husband as so many wives of clipper captains have sailed before me. Though there have been storms and vicissitudes, we have weathered them well. Sea Jade is no longer a strong young ship, for ships that are worked too hard must age, as men must age. But she is still a beautiful lady, and if she carried any memory of blood upon her cleanly sanded decks, she gives no sign. I think there is no man aboard that believes her a vessel of ill-omen today.

  With what love were her wounds and scars repaired in the Bascomb shipyard! And with what pride she flies the yellow flag! Only her scarred and battered figurehead has not been retouched. Weathered and brown, with cracks showing in the wood, it nevertheless breasts the seas proudly—the strange figure of an eastern maiden, wearing the face of a western girl. A face no longer beautiful, perhaps, but one, I think, that is wholly brave.

  It has been a long voyage, this trip to China. During its course my husband has given me a priceless gift. He has given my father back to me. He has made me know that it is not always blood and birth that count for everything. Nathaniel Heath was the father who chose to keep and love me as his daughter, and it is he who will always be my true father. Captain Obadiah seems more like a grandfather—someone exotic and distant in my life, related, it is true, but not bound to me by love as Nathaniel Heath will always be.

  Only at such times as stubborn determination to have my own way rises to take precedence in me, do I recognize Captain Obadiah’s blood in my veins. But at least I live in reality now. For one thing, I know that a husband does not live his life in the role of romantic lover—except on occasion. And since love is so much more than I had thought for both of us, I am content.

  Lien is aboard our ship. With her portion of the captain’s fortune she will return to her homeland a rich woman. Perhaps she will even find a suitable husband there. I have Lien to thank for a great deal. If Brock has given my father back to me, Lien has given me something of my mother. With Ian’s villainy exposed and Ian gone, she no longer holds his love against me. One day during this voyage she came to me and spoke of my mother’s letter. She remembered it well. Not word for word, perhaps, but much of its meaning. In it Carrie had told Obadiah that Sybil had admitted encouraging Obadiah’s interest in Carrie. She had actually urged him to seduce Carrie with the sole purpose of stopping Andrew McLean’s infatuation for her. It was these words Sybil could not bear to have Brock read. And though it can hardly matter now, I will never tell him.

  But there was more in the letter, for Carrie spoke of her love for Nathaniel Heath, once the madness in her blood had quieted. And she spoke with loving tenderness of her babe who must have every chance to grow to womanhood free of ugly shadows. Through Lien’s repeating of these words, the warmth of my mother’s love has touched me over the years.

  Brock’s mother has been very ill and is still weak. Yet I think there has been a change in her since those terrible moments in the hold of the Pride. Perhaps when we return home she will be better able to accept me as Brock’s wife.

  For the present Laurel is away at a young ladies’ seminary in Boston, associating with girls of her own age for the first time. She has gentled and no longer hides her love for her father as once she did, and he is learning the ways of a more understanding parent. Laurel and I are loving friends and when Sea Jade sails home we will have her with us for good. My husband has found himself in his own eyes on this voyage and he will not need to sail again. We both know that his work for the company lies at home. He is more a builder than a sailor, and he is not afraid of the change to steam and iron, as Captain Obadiah alwa
ys was.

  During the hot nights when the Southern Cross swings low behind the Sea Jade’s rigging, I have sometimes entertained thoughts that are long and sad. Thoughts of Ian Pryott, who destroyed himself and his fine talent. I know more about Ian now, and about his unhappy younger days in Scots Harbor. I can better understand the path upon which his feet were early set by those around him, and even in turn by Captain Obadiah. Yet a man must, in the long run, take responsibility for his deeds, and we cannot set our own blame upon others. That there was good in Ian as well as evil, I know full well, and I grieve for good so hideously wasted.

  Tomorrow we should make landfall in Hong Kong and I will see the places of my youthful dreams. Perhaps it is there my baby will be born. Brock says that if it is a girl, it must be called Carrie, because he knows I would like that. There is no point in arguing. I know the babe will be a son and there is only one person I want to name him after—Captain Brock McLean, of course. I wonder if our son will grow up with a love for the sea? And will he listen raptly to tales of the days when the Sea Jade sailed on the China run? Days when the world was young and very different from that world in which he will grow up—a world in which the thrum of steam engines is heard on every hand, and the great white wings are gone from the seas.

  A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney

  Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”

  Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.