Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  “Devil’s spawn! You reek of liquor! What kind of a slut have you turned into?”

  “B-but I only had a glass or so of wine, Father. I was so nervous that Mrs. Poulson gave it to me like, well, like medicine.”

  “Medicine, bah! Go to your room. I’ll be right there. I can see that Satan has got into you and must be routed out.”

  If I had had any idea of what was to happen, I would have bolted the door, but as it was, I sat on the edge of the bed shivering and deathly tired, and not really comprehending what was happening.

  “Whore of Babylon!” my father shouted then from the doorway, where he stood with the buggy whip in his hand.

  From behind him I could hear my mother cry out something, but he slammed the door in her face and bolted it, ignoring her frantic knocking. He turned me face down on the bed and literally tore the dress from my back. Unbelieving, I felt then the sharp hurting cuts of the whip above where my stays protected me. Panicked, I turned over to plead with him, and as he rained blows on my bare shoulders I saw on his face and in his eyes the same look I had seen on Gideon’s face and in Gideon’s eyes as he drew me against him for that dreadful second kiss.

  I screamed and mercifully fainted.

  Chapter II

  “Wilt thou, Gideon Hand, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live? … To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death you do part.”

  If Gideon regretted his rash proposal, he showed no sign of it. He smiled at me with great tenderness as he put the ring on my finger, but as for me, I wanted nothing so much as to shout, “No!” A minister from Boston was doing the honors, not my father, who was standing beside me like some large, ill-omened bird. Throughout the entire three months of our engagement, Gideon had been the soul of solicitude, deferring to my wishes always and never offering to kiss me except chastely, for which I was very thankful. However, now I was in his power, bound to him whether I liked it or not, and in the eyes of my fellow beings at fault should I offer to struggle against my fate. I shivered, as the saying goes, as if someone had walked over my grave.

  Of course I should never have had the courage to stick it out to this point if it hadn’t been for that unfortunate scene with my father. Though none of us ever spoke of it afterward, that dreadful night lay among us like some great ill-favored beast that sat at the table, crouched in front of the summer-dark fireplace at night, and even went to church with us and shared our prayers. My mother naturally thought I had simply been upset by the physical violence, which my father had never shown before — except when I was three or four and he caught me looking beneath my nightgown at that funny crack between my legs.

  However, the physical violence I could have accepted; after all, I had disobeyed one of his most cherished precepts, that spirits should never cross my lips. No, the beast that lay between him and me was not except incidentally born of violence — it was made of darker stuff that I began to think lay beneath the surface in every man alive. If a man like my father could be brought by whatever circumstance to lust after his own daughter, then there lay within every man’s heart an endless potential for lechery and debauchery. He tried, of course, to pretend that nothing had happened, but he knew and I knew that the unspeakable lay between us and henceforth always would.

  The next morning I was a sight, my shoulders and arms crisscrossed by now scabbed raised wheals, one even across one cheek. I did not remember having gotten to bed, but when my mother entered now with a basin of water and cloths, I knew it must have been she who had persuaded him to desist and who then had made me comfortable, or as comfortable as possible.

  “How will I ever explain these marks?” I exclaimed to my mother. “I’ll have to stay in bed for weeks.”

  My mother wasted no time in clucking or cooing or commiserating with me. She was a practical woman and one for whom I felt a new respect, living as she did with that veritable monster. “No, you won’t. Two of your dresses have high necks and long sleeves. As for the mark on your face, it is not unlike the one my sister received when we were children from a stinging nettle.”

  When I artlessly offered this story to Gideon, however, his face changed in a fashion I shall never forget. His mouth went hard, his eyes flat and narrow. The whole of his expression turned brutal.

  “If you want to leave, I’ll take you off now and we’ll be married tomorrow,” he said.

  “I — I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t play the fool with me, Emily.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You’re talking to an expert on whiplashes. There’s not a stinging nettle alive will put a mark like that on your flesh.”

  “Oh no, you’re mistaken. I —” I was panicky.

  For answer he squeezed my shoulder with his good hand, and I flinched, fearful even of his touch.

  “Since you’re so determined to deny it,” he said then, “I guess I can’t follow my instincts and beat the tar out of the old bastard. But if he ever offers to do anything of the kind again, you’d best tell him I won’t wait another time for your permission. A man who beats a woman is nothing more than an animal and should be treated as such.”

  I stopped pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about. “I very much doubt the occasion will arise,” I said dryly.

  Those three months passed in a kind of dream of time flowing inexorably like some great river that took me in the clutch of its current and bore me powerfully toward a dangerous waterfall. Gideon’s gentleness and forbearance only terrified me the more to wonder what would happen and how he would change when we were man and wife. On his side he treated me after the beating as if I were one of those delicate, fragile little figures made of spun glass that shatters almost at a touch.

  Though she never by word or action let on, I don’t think Gideon’s mother liked me — at least I sensed that she didn’t approve of me for him. When I hesitantly said something of the sort to my mother, she laughed.

  “The mothers of boys never think the girls they marry are good enough for them,” she told me. “Give her time and she’ll come around, see if she doesn’t.”

  One afternoon Gideon arrived bursting with a secret he said he couldn’t tell me before he showed me. It was so unusual for him to take an afternoon off from work that I knew it had to be something earthshaking. He turned Dasher toward the part of town where stood the big houses like those of the Culps and the Trelawneys, the one whose iron deer Sally had so admired.

  “Who are we going to see, Gideon? You know I feel easier when I know something of the people with whom I’ll have to be conversing.”

  “Not who, what.” He grinned and waggled his finger. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, now would it?”

  For some reason I had a feeling of dread about the whole affair. I don’t like surprises; they too often have a way of snapping back at one. Like the time I was seven and fell in love at a friend’s house with one of those glass paperweights with a scene inside that you can shake up to make snow fall. I was utterly entranced and talked of nothing else for months. When my birthday came and I saw the little round package by my plate, I was ecstatic. My hands actually trembled as I unwrapped it. For a full minute I sat looking uncomprehendingly at the rather pretty glass darning egg, purchased no doubt to assist me in the constant mending I was forced to do on my ugly long cotton stockings. I’m afraid I burst into tears and threw it down. I went to bed supperless and of course was subsequently made to use the darning egg almost daily, a hideous reminder of the magical enchantment I had been forever denied.

  When I told Gideon the story, he looked at me tenderly. “Poor little duck,” he said. “They did their best to maim you, didn’t they? Never mind, things will be different now, you’ll see.”

  We were passing through the shopping district when he suddenly pulled up Dasher and handed the reins to me with no apology for this breach of etiquette. “Don’t go a
way,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He ran up half a block and into a store. Not five minutes later he emerged with a parcel in his hand and ran back to where I was waiting. Without a word of explanation he clucked Dasher on his way once more and before long we were on a residential street lined with large elm trees. We passed Sally’s house then and not a block farther on pulled up in front of the Trelawney house. After old Mrs. Trelawney’s death the house had stood vacant for a year while the will was being probated. I wondered now if one of the Trelawney relatives had taken up residence, for the lawn was now once again smooth and green, the iron deer sanded of his rust and repainted. I could see two workmen doing something to the roof.

  Gideon handed me down from the buggy, hitched Dasher to the metal boy’s obligingly outstretched hand, and pushed open the wrought-iron gate. We walked up the newly graveled drive and onto the broad porch. Without so much as touching the shining brass knocker on the heavy front door, he opened it and drew me inside to an entrance hall paved in marble.

  “Welcome home, love,” he said then.

  “You’re joking, Gideon, surely. You don’t have the kind of money for a house like this.”

  “Ah, but that’s the other part of my surprise. You know we’ve been working on the Melinda, and on the basis of the Andromeda and the Melinda I started negotiations for this place with the proviso that the owners put it back into some sort of shape.”

  “But this house must cost a fortune!” I protested. I had in my mind’s eye visualized a house somewhat larger than his mother’s, it’s true, but cozy and small enough for me to manage on my own. So here I was faced with a great sprawling place even larger by some little bit than the ugly duckling that had been foisted off on my father. I felt like crying.

  “I’ve bought into a small share of every voyage Dick Poulson has made since we started the Andromeda, and I’ve done right well by it,” Gideon said.

  “Oh, Gideon, I’m so glad for you!” I was, too. He had worked harder than any three men, and he deserved success. “But do you really think you should spend so much money right now?”

  He gave an exultant laugh. “What better time? When we’re old and gray we won’t appreciate it.”

  He handed me then the package he had purchased in town, a round object all done up in gilt paper. I unwrapped it and saw it was a snow scene in a glass ball, just like the one at Hetty’s house, except that instead of a sleigh full of children there were three merry elves dancing and holding hands. I felt like crying again, and for the first time I threw my arms around his neck. Unexpectedly he picked me up in his arms and carried me into the drawing room, which was very elegantly finished in gold and blue and white. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He was irrepressible, and as we wandered hand in hand through the other rooms, I hadn’t the heart to tell him how I felt.

  The morning of the wedding my mother dressed me in her wedding gown, let out at the bust and hips, for I was more ample in both those places than she had been as a girl. As she fussed and fluttered around me, I noticed that she was growing increasingly worried and nervous. I couldn’t think why she should be nervous, since it was I who was being consigned to this terrifying fate, and my stomach felt as if I had swallowed a heavy lead ball.

  “Emily,” she ventured at last, having ceased her dithering and looking me full in the eye, “I know that I should give you some words of comfort and advice, but to tell the truth I really don’t know how. When your father and I were married, I had a very pretty ruffled nightgown given me by Aunt Charlotte especially for my honeymoon. When your father saw it, he ordered me to change into something decent, as he put it. So you see, I am hardly equipped to advise anyone. My comfort is that Gideon is not at all like your father, and if you allow him, he will give you better advice than ever I could. Trust him, Emily. Trust him and be a good wife to him, and your marriage bed will become a place of joy rather than sorrow.”

  She took me by the hand and led me downstairs, and that was the only advice I received before my wedding concerning conjugal relations.

  At the reception, given in the Palm Hotel, there were, of course, all kinds of spirits, but though my father refused to cross the threshold, my mother defied him and came anyway. There were people from our congregation, for far from all of them were as dead set against liquor as my father, and men from the yard like Elam Bridger, Billy Foreman, and that funny old man they all called Uncle Bounty. There were also a number of Captain Poulson’s business associates, for he had insisted on arranging the reception himself, and we were greeted by a really sumptuous buffet that included smoked fish, lobster, ham, roast beef, turkey, and oysters, along with all kinds of salads and vegetables and fancy desserts. It might as well have been made of sawdust as far as I went. All the men dutifully kissed me, all of them except Captain Poulson giving me a peck on the cheek. He clapped me to him and kissed me full on the mouth, as thorough going a kiss as I’d ever had except for Gideon’s that time in the woods.

  “There, my lass!” He laughed; he was so short his eyes were on a level with mine. “Now you can finally consider yourself truly married.” He handed me a glass of champagne. “To both of you, Emily,” he said soberly. “Your Gideon’s as good a man as walks the earth. I don’t care if you obey him or not, but cherish him well and the rest will come.” He tossed back his glassful and snapped his fingers at a waiter for more.

  “Hear, hear!” Elam shouted. “To the bride and groom!”

  Everyone cheered, and when the music began, Gideon grabbed his mother and waltzed out on the floor with her, while Captain Poulson took me over my protests that I didn’t know how to dance. He was amazingly light on his feet and so deft in leading me that I almost forgot that I had never danced before.

  Finally my mother led me upstairs to the room where my traveling clothes had been placed. I couldn’t help it, I began to shake. She took one look at me and disappeared, returning with a brown pint bottle with an elaborately scrolled label that read fulsomely: “Elixir of Life.”

  “Here.” She poured out a tablespoonful.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a medicine for monthly cramps, mainly, but I’ve found it wonderfully effective for nerves, too.”

  “But what’s in it?” I insisted, not wanting to swallow something I knew nothing about.

  “I don’t know, it doesn’t say. They carry it in our apothecary shop, though, and Mr. Sneed says it’s very popular with the ladies. Do you want to show everyone you’re shaking like a leaf?”

  That convinced me, and I took it without further demur. My mother was right, for by the time I was ready to go, I had indeed stopped shaking and found myself viewing the remaining waking hours with equanimity.

  “I’ll put the bottle in your valise along with the ruffled nightgown Aunt Charlotte gave me. Someone should get some use out of such a pretty thing.” She stopped and looked at me. “Take two more tablespoons, child, before you go to bed. Gideon Hand is a nice man. He’ll be gentle with you.”

  I tossed the bridal bouquet, which was caught by Billy Foreman’s sister, a plain-looking girl with prominent teeth. I hoped it would get her what she wanted. I would have changed places with her in a minute. I wondered how many of the young women below me would put their pieces of wedding cake beneath their pillows and dream of some young man. What was the matter with me? Why couldn’t I be like the rest of them?

  The rice they threw stung, and Dasher nearly had a fit as we dragged a long string of noisy scrap metal from the yard after us when we set out. We would be going the better part of ten miles to an old resort hotel on the other side of Ipswich.

  It never occurred to me to ask Gideon why he hadn’t sought my opinion as to where we would go. After all, he had bought a house without consulting me. By the time we reached the Hotel Oceanic we were both out of sorts: tired, let down, and hungry. The hotel turned out to be a rambling, marvelously turreted wooden building with labyrinthine corridors wandering off on different levels.
In the large, drafty dining room we discovered that we had the place to ourselves except for a retired doctor and his wife. When the doctor discovered that Gideon could play chess, he was ecstatic, and I was relieved to leave them engrossed in a game, for I had wondered desperately how we were going to manage the business of getting ready for bed.

  I had the maid draw a bath for me, and I put on the famous nightgown over which my mother had made so much. Though somewhat old-fashioned, it was indeed charming, a pale yellow with ruffles around the high neck and down the front and around the bottom. I realized that I had forgotten to ask the maid if there was a bathroom with a commode nearby, but decided that one of the flowered chamberpots beneath the bed would do. It seemed, though, that every time I sat down, I would hear a creaking outside the door that might have been Gideon coming up to bed. No matter how I struggled, I didn’t seem to be able to release that relieving stream. At last I heard footsteps that were unmistakably headed for our door, and I leaped hastily into the large bed and pulled the bedclothes up around my neck.

  There was a light knock on the door, and it was quite an anticlimax to discover that it was the maid, who had been sent up to draw Gideon’s bath. Next a waiter appeared with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and an enormous bouquet of yellow roses. By the time Gideon himself appeared, simultaneously with another waiter bearing toast and caviar, I was somewhat inured to the seemingly constant stream of people through the room. It was a little like having gone to bed in the middle of a busy train station.

  “Be right with you, love,” Gideon said as he disappeared into the bathroom bearing his nightclothes and a rather splendid full-length quilted maroon robe.

  I debated daring to get out of bed to take the medicine my mother had advised, but I was afraid that Gideon would pick that very moment to emerge from the bathroom and see me clad only in my nightgown, so I stayed where I was and began to shake again. When he at last in truth issued forth, I realized that I could have gotten out of bed a dozen times. He pushed the little wheeled table with the champagne and the caviar over to the bed and sat down beside me.