Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  “I’ll stop in at lunchtime and after work to see how you are and if you need anything,” he said. “Bring you calf’s-foot jelly and all that. If you let me” — he gave her a sly smile — “I’ll even comfort you with apples.”

  She laughed a little hoarsely and went home, much to Pericles’ delight. She didn’t talk to him as usual as she entered the bedroom, because by now her throat hurt as well. She undressed and went thankfully to bed. Only then did she really become aware of what she had been hearing all along but had paid no attention to. There was a kind of heavy chunking sound followed by a scraping as of metal on concrete. She lay there confused for a few minutes until it occurred to her that the sound might have something to do with the bars on the window.

  Without even thinking of consequences, she leaped up, ran to the window in her bare feet, and threw open the curtain. There facing her, with a crowbar in his upraised hands, was Mr. Moss and another man behind him who looked familiar enough to be probably another neighbor. Far from the mild, ordinary-looking little man who had so diffidently asked her advice about the sloop, on Moss’s face now was a look of blind and helpless rage, though whether it was rage against her or rage that the bars were thwarting him she could not at the moment decide.

  Wordlessly they faced each other, both frozen into immobility. They could not seem to take their eyes off each other, and she realized that he hadn’t the faintest notion that she had come home. The spell, which couldn’t have lasted more than moments, was broken when the other man said something she could not hear through the closed window. Moss’s face registered panic then, and with what was obviously an oath, he threw down the crowbar and took to his heels, closely followed by his companion.

  By the time Malcolm showed up, she could talk only in a hoarse whisper. She told him what had happened and conjectured that Moss had been behind the vandalism.

  “I wonder what he intended to do this time,” Malcolm mused aloud.

  “I collected what he left and put them in the kitchen,” she whispered. “Besides the crowbar, there was a small keg of gunpowder and some fuse.”

  Malcolm looked shocked, but she was all but beyond caring. She let go, and for the next few days was very ill indeed. Malcolm stayed with her at night and borrowed a girl from Jim Hart to stay with her during the day. Most of the time she slept. At last she woke on the third day bathed in perspiration, for the fever had finally broken. She thought she was seeing visions when she realized that it was Gideon, not Malcolm or Bob, holding her hand.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked weakly.

  “Malcolm sent word to me at the shipyard by way of a train conductor.”

  “He didn’t! Won’t everyone know now?”

  “No, my sweet.” Gideon laughed. “He said that the Lizzie B had gone on the rocks and was foundering.”

  She giggled weakly. “Did he tell you about Mr. Moss?”

  Gideon stopped laughing. “It’s a good thing he let Jim Hart have his wish first about meeting whoever did that to Horatio. I would have killed the little bastard. As it is, Malcolm assures me that there will be nothing more heard from Mr. Moss. Your Malcolm is an interesting man. If I had been in his place, I never would have sent for your lover.”

  “He cares more for me than for himself,” she said.

  “And I don’t? Well, maybe I don’t. Maybe lovers never can. After all, you are myself.” He gathered her to him. “Ah, Elisabeth, you frightened us so.”

  Once she started mending, she gained strength quickly. It was only a little over a week later that she decided that in place of the daily walks she had been taking she would go on a short sail. Over Malcolm’s protests she had already resumed her mornings at the library. Gideon would be returning at the end of the week, she thought joyously as she changed into her sailing clothes. Wouldn’t he be surprised that she was already as good as new? The several days that he had bathed her and waited on her had forged a new bond between them; never had she felt so close to him.

  She grabbed up the keys and had started for the door when she heard the bell ringing. She opened the front door to find a rather handsome woman with fine brown eyes but a heavy mouth and jaw regarding her with rapt attention. Elisabeth realized suddenly that though her visitor was dressed very fashionably indeed, she herself must present a curious appearance, which would account for the other woman’s stare. It flashed through her mind that the woman must be collecting for some charity, though this neighborhood was not one where sizable contributions could be expected.

  “I know I’m hardly dressed for receiving, but I was going sailing, you see, and it’s simply impossible to move quickly in skirts. How may I help you?” Elisabeth asked.

  The woman looked at her steadily. “I am Mrs. Gideon Hand,” she replied, and for Elisabeth the sun went dark.

  Chapter IV

  “You can’t mean it,” Gideon said quietly. “I won’t have it.”

  “Yes, you will. You’ve known all along just as I’ve known all along that what has been between us couldn’t last forever. It’s — it’s just that I’ve paid and paid until I can’t pay any more.”

  They were sitting on a bench at the edge of the Common looking out over the bay toward the Charles River. The summer sun sparkled on the water where some boys were fishing with handlines from an ancient rowboat. Farther out, a sloop came about on another tack as she worked her way north toward Charlestown and the ship channels. Elisabeth felt the painted planks of the bench warm beneath her hand as she quietly went about demolishing the relationship that seemed as essential to her existence as the beat of her heart Afterward that sparkling bay imprinted itself often on her dreams, a gay, sprightly, yet so foreboding scene that the very sight of it would bring her into wakefulness with a cry.

  “Of course you’ve paid. I’ve paid too. But for me there hasn’t existed a price too high for what we’ve had. Don’t you think I’ve suffered, too, wandering about that loveless house thinking of you and breaking my head on ways to be with you always?”

  “Don’t make it any harder than it is,” she begged. “I finally had to realize when I got so ill just how alone I was. If it hadn’t been for Malcolm, I could have lain there for days too weak to get up or take care of myself. You weren’t there then and you weren’t there when they did those unspeakable things to Horatio, and you weren’t there when Moss tried to break in again, or when he tried to make love to me in the boathouse —”

  “He what?” Gideon demanded.

  “He had some story about a boat his sister had given him and asking my advice about getting her in shape,” she said wearily. “He tried to kiss me, and when I slapped him he said as long as I was giving it to everyone else, as he put it, why wouldn’t I give him some.” Now she had to drag out every last incident that before she had been at such pains to protect him from in order to save him the final humiliation, that his own wife had come to her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t kill him.”

  “Don’t you see? That’s why we can’t go on like this. There will be more Mr. Mosses and more Mrs. McFalls, and one day you will kill someone. Meanwhile they will have dirtied and belittled our love until there is nothing left.”

  “If only I could leave Emily. We could go off —”

  “No, we couldn’t. Sneaking off from your responsibility and your work would eat at you until you came to hate me. There wouldn’t be a day when you didn’t think of Emily and feel guilty. There are some things you simply can’t run away from, my dear.”

  He picked at a splinter on the bench, not looking at her now. “You wouldn’t reconsider? I have no right to ask you, I know that, but I can’t help it.”

  Her voice softened and shook a little. “You have every right to ask, but I still have to say no, for both our sakes. If it’s this difficult now, what would it be six months from now, a year from now? The longer it went on, the harder it would be. I never believed it before, but I now see that it is true that wrongdoing always exacts its price, even wh
en you don’t really think it’s wrong.” She got up and stood before him. “I’m going, Gideon. I can’t play at this scene any further. God keep you, my love.” Her voice broke and she turned and ran across the Common.

  Distraught and unseeing, she walked the streets for hours, afraid that if she went to the library or went home he would find her there and she would have it to do all over again. She really didn’t think she could do it a second time, though she knew she must. The summer sun shone as brightly as ever, but to her it had no warmth. She felt cold all over, and she found herself wringing her hands endlessly as she walked. If I can just get through today, she thought, tomorrow must be better and the day after that better still, and the day after —

  She thought of the endless march of empty days that lay ahead of her and shook her head in dumb misery. Not even Tom’s death had prepared her for pain like this. The impossibly quick hours of loving were finished, and time now engulfed her, threatening to smother her.

  Twilight came at last and then dark, and wearily she dragged herself homeward, praying that he wouldn’t be waiting for her and praying that he would. Just one more night, she thought. Surely that wouldn’t hurt anything, and then tomorrow they would part. In her mind she could feel the smoothness of his skin lying over the long bands of muscle, the touch of his hand, the feel of his mouth … No, it mustn’t be. As she let herself in the low front gate, however, a figure rose from the porch and came toward her.

  “Oh God no!” she cried, yet at the same time running forward.

  Then she saw it was Malcolm and burst into tears, part of relief, part of sorrow. He put his arms around her and held her.

  “Gideon came to me in the library today,” he said at last. “He asked me to take care of you.”

  Through her tears she couldn’t see to find the key, and he took her bag from her and finally unlocked the door. “Where have you been? I looked everywhere. I could hear Pericles inside yowling for his dinner, but I couldn’t get in to feed him.”

  “Poor thing,” she replied automatically, but it was as if there were a pane of glass between her and the world around her. She was in a glass box filled with pain, doomed to hang there suspended for all eternity like a specimen in a bottle. She looked down at Pericles winding about her legs and felt nothing except pain. She peered then at Malcolm but still felt nothing but pain.

  He handed her a glass full of brandy. “Here. This should do something.”

  She felt the liquor burn all the way down, and the glass of the box around her retreated a bit but remained in place. “Where did you get that? We didn’t have any in the house, I remember, because I was going to —” She broke off.

  “I bought it. I thought you might need it.”

  “Oh, Malcolm, this isn’t easy for you either, is it? I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

  He smiled a small wry smile. “You’d have survived. We all do.”

  *

  A day ground slowly by, then another and another. It got so that sometimes the glass box was there and sometimes it wasn’t. She and Gideon had had a year, not quite a year, of scattered days like a shower of sparks that flamed momentarily and went out. Increasingly she turned to Malcolm for companionship, for she found that alone she could not concentrate on anything. She would read a few pages, then put down the book because she found that she hadn’t taken in one word of what she had been reading. The weeks turned into a month, the month into two months as the beginning of September came and went.

  One night she and Malcolm walked home from a dinner that Jim Hart had put on in the kitchen of the great house. Hart had turned out to be a tall, lean man whose beaky nose and long cleft upper lip gave him a naturally supercilious face that could break unexpectedly into a marvelous wide engaging grin. He had a droll sense of humor and a grand collection of ribald light verse that left them all gasping with laughter.

  “Don’t you ever mind it, being at someone’s beck and call all the time?” Malcolm asked him.

  “No, why should I?” He held up his hands. “You see these? They look just like anybody else’s hands, don’t they? Well, they’re not. All I have to do is to pick up a tool of any kind, and right away something breaks or I hurt myself. Children don’t like me nor I them, which lets out teaching, and I write too poor a hand for a clerk. I was made to be a butler. I have the build for it, the face for it, everything.” He laughed. “You should see me stare down some old dowager who makes the mistake of trying to order me about. Even Mrs. Tibbet, bless her, is a bit afraid of me. So in return for her letting me go my own way, I see to it that she sets the best table in town and gets the best service, too. You might say we use each other, she and I. It’s not a bad life, and I’m thrown among some very pretty girls.” He winked, and the girls in question — the parlor maid, the scullery maid, and the downstairs maid — giggled delightedly.

  “I’m sorry that Mrs. Tibbet will be taking up her winter residence again so soon.” Elisabeth laughed reminiscently as they walked home. “Those verses of Jim’s are a treat.”

  Malcolm squeezed her arm. “You know, that’s the first I’ve seen you laugh since — well, in a long time,” he finished lamely.

  “I know,” she said, staring straight ahead. “You think that the end of the world has come and then you discover unromantically that you go right on living, that you continue preferring peas to turnips, that you go right on not being able to sleep on your stomach — in short, that nothing really has changed all that much. That’s the hardest part to reconcile, Malcolm, that it’s all so — so unimportant, and yet with this terrible power to lacerate so unmercifully whenever you’re not looking.”

  A street lamp up at the comer gave just enough dim light for her to see to put the key in the lock. As she did so, her peripheral vision registered some unknown yet changed aspect of the house. She backed off, bumping into a startled Malcolm, and went off the porch onto the walk again where she could get an uninterrupted view of the side of the house.

  “Oh dear God, it’s started again,” she moaned despairingly, sinking to her knees.

  Malcolm ran to her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Then he too saw it, WHORE painted this time in white on the bright-blue wall. She burst into tears and rocked back and forth on her knees there on the walk. “I can’t stand it now, it’s too much to bear. I mutilated myself and gave him to them. What more do they want? Will they never be satisfied? Take me away, Malcolm. Please God take me away!”

  He raised her to her feet and supported her unresistingly up the steps and to the front door, which still held the key in the lock. He left her leaning against the porch pillar while he opened the door and felt his way through the dark to a lamp on the hall table. In its light he saw that nothing seemed disturbed, and he breathed a sigh of relief. When Pericles twisted about his feet, he nearly kissed the little creature he was so glad to see him unharmed.

  He helped Elisabeth in and finally sat her down on her own bed. “You’ll be all right now, Beth. Get undressed and get into bed. I’m leaving now, but I’ll be back in the morning with some paint. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Please, Malcolm,” she managed then. “Please don’t leave me. I’m afraid. I didn’t use to be afraid of anything, but I’m afraid now. Don’t go. Please don’t go.” She was pleading with him. Once breached, her defenses had crumbled utterly.

  He stood for a moment looking down at her, then his face softened. “All right, Beth, I won’t go.” He hesitated. “You know what you’re asking, don’t you?”

  She looked up at him, eyes steady. “Yes, I know.”

  Without flinching, she slowly took off her clothes and got into bed. He took off his own, fumbling and swearing at his lack of dexterity. He blew out the lamp and slipped into bed beside her. She felt him warm and smooth and completely unfamiliar along her side. Then she could feel him trembling, and she reached over and gently pulled his head onto her breast.

  “There, there, my dear, it’s all r
ight. I need you, truly I do.”

  In two weeks, just time enough to call the bans, they were married and went to Marblehead on their honeymoon.

  *

  “Oh, Malcolm, look! What a pity it’s broken.” She picked up the piece of delicately mottled shell and showed it to him.

  They were standing on a jut of the mile-long rocky promontory that gave Marblehead its name. Below them the green water ran foaming along the black rocks beaded with bright-green sea moss. Gulls shrieked and dived around the end of the peninsula, and it was hard to imagine that right across the rocky spine lay a town, a busy harbor, and shipyards. Shipyards. She gave a small reflexive shiver.

  Malcolm looked at her somberly. “I should never have married you so soon, should I?” he said.

  “What can I tell you? We all have to compromise with life in some fashion, and I’ve made my compromise. You see, I’m being painfully honest with you. However, my compromise isn’t nearly as great as yours. I do love you, my dear, in a very full sense of the word, and I don’t feel cheated, if that’s what you mean. As I’ve looked around me, I’ve seen that it seems to be a lot more important to like your spouse than to love him romantically, because the romance wears off. Bob and Evvie are fun to be around because they like and enjoy each other so, not because they’re besotted with each other.”

  “Why do you say that your compromise isn’t nearly as great as mine?”

  She smiled sadly. “It will always bother you that you were a kind of second choice, won’t it? You’ve even compromised with your work. You want to write poetry but instead you’re a librarian. You could do both, you know.”

  He stared down at the foaming green water. “Yes, I think sometimes I want to be a poet,” he said bitterly, “and then I read Donne and Blake and Shakespeare and Chaucer and I wonder how I ever even thought of it.”

  “Well, they had to start somewhere, too, didn’t they?” she asked, relieved that they had left the discussion of love and compromise. “I wasn’t born knowing how to sail, either. There were hours and days and years of practice and hard work that came first.”