The Lively Lady

by Kenneth Lewis Roberts

  “You’ll give Tate in charge?” Emily asked. There was no huskiness now to her voice, but a peculiar soft clearness that made it seem louder than it was. “Might that not involve your wife if Tate should tell the truth and say he did it for her?”

  Sir Arthur looked at her; there was a spark in his eye, not a hot one—it was the gleam of the icicle. “You should have thought of that yourself, I fear, Lady Ransome. There might indeed be some such embarrassment for you.”

  “I see,” she said, “and Captain Nason goes back to Dartmoor?”

  He shook his head with an amused ruefulness. “Captain! Captain! Captain! Don’t you think we’ve had a little too much of captaining for a species of hybrid, half inn-yard hostler, half petty pirate? It seems to me high time we had done with all your captaining, Lady Ransome!”

  She stared at her hands, front and back, as though she found something strange about them. “So you’ll send him back to Dartmoor!” she said. “What did he do for us when he had us at his mercy, as you have him now?”

  “Oh, dear me!” Ransome said. “Do you expect me to argue? I confess I’m surprised, for I pay you the compliment of saying you’ve seldom lacked intelligence. I think, my lady, you understand very well that your present position doesn’t entitle you to the grace of argument from me.”

  At that she seemed to become quickly a little paler. “My present position? My present position? What do you call it, Sir Arthur?”

  “Precarious,” he replied lighdy. “At least precarious. I put it to you: what’s the position of an imprudent lady with whom an enemy of her country finds a patently agreeable refuge? And doesn’t the question present itself: by what means and by whose encouragement does this enemy of her country reach the lady’s presence? I take it she must have connived. Ah, yes, indeed! ‘Precarious’ appears to be the accurate word.”

  She raised her hand to her throat. “That is, you put your wife in the precarious position!”

  “I! I put her? Tut, tut, my child! How can I put a lady where she has most deliberately and carefully put herself?”

  Emily had begun to breathe fast and audibly. “So you’ll do it!” she said. “This is what we’ve come to! You’ll do it because I’ve been merciful and grateful!”

  He uttered a sound like the sour echo of an indulgent laugh. “I do it because you’ve been ‘grateful’? It would be too much to suggest that our language contains such words as ‘duty’ or “honor’ or law’? But I fear it’s discourteous to remind you of what you yourself have so long forgotten!”

  At this I took a step toward him in spite of the fowling piece which he shifted to a readier position as I moved. “You might remind yourself of the word “honor,”’ I said. “You can’t speak to her like that!”

  Emily turned to me, and suddenly she was weeping. “I don’t care!” she cried. “I’m thinking of your going back to that horrible place, the mud, the cold, those terrible men in yellow clothes—”

  Sir Arthur interrupted shrilly. “How well you describe it, Lady Ransome! Now we have it indeed! So you’ve been there!”

  She turned to him. “Yes, I went!” she sobbed. “I did go, Arthur! I wanted to help him. I want to help him now. There’s no harm in that! There’s no harm in that and none to you. There’s never been any harm to you in anything I did; and there never will be in anything I do. Couldn’t you just let him go now? I’ll never see him again. Couldn’t you—”

  “Disgusting!” He threw the word in her face with the most fierceness I ever saw from him. For the moment it seemed that something like a real passion mastered the man. “Disgusting! You make this show of yourself before me! Do you think I’ve been blind? Do you think I was blind in America? You little fool—you shameless little fool! Falling in love with an inn-yard lout; throwing yourself at him! And then, when he turns pirate, letting him make calf’s eyes at you before my face! Sneaking off to coddle him when he’s in jail for his thieveries! And now, when he’s skulked out of his cell to you, begging for him! Begging for a damned dirty Yankee runaway thief! My God! What a paramour for Lady Ransome of Ransome Hall!”

  I had heard as much from him as I could endure. “Open that door!” I said to him. “Open that door!”

  Then, as I moved toward him, he poked the muzzle of the fowling piece at me, but I was quick, slapped it aside and took it away from him.

  I opened the door myself. There were three workmen grouped around it, listening, all of them with guns. I smashed the muzzle of the weapon against the floor, so that the barrels were bent, and threw it into a corner.

  “This man is an escaped prisoner from Dartmoor,” Sir Arthur said. “If he makes a move, kill him!”

  Then he spoke quietly over his shoulder to Emily. “Go to the house and remove everything that is yours,” he said. “Pray be careful to take only what belongs to you!”

  XXVII

  THEY put me in Exeter jail; and I had been there three days before I got a word out of the man who brought me my hard bread, thin soup, and water—tepid water that must have been standing in the June sun. When he did speak in answer to my questions, I found his lingo difficult to understand.

  “Noa, noa,” he said. “Us bant agoin’ vur tew zend ee backalong tew Dartymoor dreckly minit: not till us cotches tha body as wuz wi’ ee. Zir Arthur hiszel, ’e yerd at tha Hall fra Dartymoor az they wuz tew or ee. Tuther must be a urnin’ tha moor. When us cotches tha body an’ ast tha tew or ee lockit up yere, than’ll be time tew zend vur sojers as tew such bad bodies can be trustit wi’.”

  I had a gleam of hope for Jeddy, since he was still at large, having had the good sense to lie hid in the back room of the cottage until they had taken me away.

  “Well,” I said to the warder, “you may not catch the other bad body; he’s not so bad, by the way, and neither am I.”

  “ ’Ess shur that ee is!” the man said, and shook his head mournfully at me. “A bad, bad, bad body thee’rt! Zim they do zay in Exeter town az how they’m a purty bobbery an’ stirridge at tha Hall, an’ her leddyship put oot, an’ banned fra’ a’ the gert vokes, an’ gude vokes tew, an’ a’ on account ov a bad, bad body fra Dartymoor. ’Ess fay, thee’rt a bad, bad body, man!”

  That was all I got from him; he called me a bad, bad body a thousand times, I think; for I lay in Exeter jail two months, until mid-August, before they took me back to Dartmoor.

  Dun-colored clouds were caught against the barren face of North Hessary as we made the final ascent from Princetown to the depot gates; and the wisps of fog that drifted across the top of the seven crouching, staring prison buildings seemed less like fog than like the prison smells rising perpetually from the yawning, never-shuttered windows.

  In his office Captain Shortland, with his crinkly brown hair and his ruddy, jovial face, beamed at me in a manner to make me think again of the grinning, big-nosed Punches I had so often watched on the streets of Nantes, strutting on little shut-in stages and blithely whacking friends and enemies alike with great clubs.

  “Hah!” he said, moving his head forward and back and lifting his shoulders at the same time, as vain men so often do to improve the set of their coats, “so you’ve come back to us! Good! Good! I almost like to have my boys try it, out in the great world; for they all come back—ah, most of them: hah, hah!—to more permanent quarters!”

  “Do you mean the Cachot?” I asked, knowing only too well the Black Hole was the penalty for those caught in serious crimes and attempts to escape.

  He smiled, a pleasant, regretful smile. “Yes,” he said, “the Cachot.” He picked up some papers from his desk. “This is a rather serious business, you know. Not the usual case! No, indeed: not the usual case! One thing on top of another!”

  I waited for him to say what he had to say, thinking helplessly, as I had thought from dawn to dark during the past weeks in Exeter jail, of Emily Bansome.

  “At all events,” he went on, “you’ll have company. Four other Americans. They tried to bum a prize; so we were forced
to give them duration.”

  “You were forced to what?’

  “Duration. Serious offenses, you know! Not as serious as yours, but serious enough.”

  “Do you mean you’re putting me in the Cachot for the duration of this war?”

  “That’s it! I knew you’d be sensible about it.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. My brain was in a muddle. There was no escaping from the Cachot, I knew. It was a stone coffin. There would be no way in which I could get word from Emily; no way in which I could get word to her; and God alone knew when the war would be over.

  “This Sir Arthur Bansome—” I said.

  “You’ve got it!” Shortland smiled. “There was the burning of the Lively Lady, and the escape by impersonating a Frenchman—of course, you’d only get ten days in the Cachot for attempting to escape; but you see there was also breaking and entering and the destruction of property at Bansome Hall. Ransome’s laid information against you for the whole affair. Nothing else to do, you know.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll send you in.”

  “Just a minute,” I begged him. “Give me a hearing on this. I haven’t had a trial.”

  “Why should you have a trial?” he asked. “We have Ransome’s word—and Ransome’s a gentleman, you see.”

  “Oh, my God!” I said, “there isn’t a Negro in Number Four whose word wouldn’t be honester! The man’s working out a personal spite on me! I claim a right to be heard!”

  “I’ve heard enough!” he said, and the geniality vanished from his face.

  “No,” I said. “Wait! There was no breaking or entering at Ransome Hall. And since when has it been a crime to escape from a war prison? I gave you no parole! Nobody asked me for a parole! I was captain of a privateer of eighteen guns and entitled to parole, but I asked for none. Why shouldn’t I try to escape if I get the chance? Wouldn’t you?”

  He stuck out his jaw and blinked his eyes, and all at once the dangerous temper of the man was on his face. Captain Shortland had the record of an officer brave to rashness, a hot fighter; but his nature was brittle, and never was more than a thin cracking lacquer over the anger that seemed always smoldering underneath. “Look here,” he said, “your second officer escaped with you—Tucker. Where is he?”

  “How should I know where he is?”

  “Well, somebody helped you get away, and when you went, Tucker went too. Now you tell us where you last saw Tucker, and who helped you, and I’ll see what can be done.”

  “Why, then, you can see what can be done, can’t you! My God, Captain, get me a hearing, will you? You can’t put me in the Cachot like this!”

  Shortland’s face turned wine color. “You damned Yankees,” he said, lowering his head like a bull and half whispering the words, “you think you own the whole damned earth! You keep this place in a mess with your damned screaming and complaining and bellowing for your rights, until ten of you are worse than a million Frenchmen. Let me tell you, you haven’t got any rights here! And you’re no judge of what I can do and what I cant do! I’ve got orders from the Transport Office to put you in the Cachot for duration, and that’s where you go!” He raised his voice to a bellow. “Mitchell! Mitchell!”

  The chief clerk popped in at the doorway.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I said. “Let me write Pellew! Let me write the American agent again—Reuben Beasley! I wrote him twice from Exeter, but he may have been away. Let me try once more!”

  Shortland shouted with mirthless laughter. “Beasley! If you wait for an answer from Beasley you’ll stay in the Cachot forever! He never answers letters! Not from Americans! Wouldn’t you like to write the prince regent? Take him out, Mitchell!”

  He left the room, slamming the door behind him. Mitchell gave me a blanket and a truss of straw, and turned me over to a sentry, who led me down across the empty market place, dismal in the light of flickering lanterns. The dim, ogre-like face of Number Four glowered at us as we came to the barred gate that cut off its yard from the market. The sentry drew his bayonet along the bars with a clatter and turned to look appraisingly at me.

  “We’m a-gettin’ all the ’Merricans this side o’ hell,” he said. “Won’t be none o’ ’ee left to foight, soon, I’m a-thinkin’.”

  A turnkey came in answer to the racket of the bayonet against the bars, and the two of them led me to the left, along the covered walk, and finally out into the space between the circular inner wall and the high fence of iron bars. The Cachot stood snugly between the inner wall and the iron fence, looking, because of its granite sides and arched roof, unpleasantly like a tomb. As we approached, a squat figure came out from behind it and peered inquiringly at us.

  “Here’s another, Carley,” the turnkey said. “Duration for this one, too.”

  The squat man came close up to me. “Duration, hey? Holy bones, you must be bad! You must ’a’ spit on an admiral!”

  The sentry and the turnkey laughed and left us. Carley took a key from his pocket: a huge key fastened to him by a chain. “Anyways, ’twon’t be as if yez were alone, with four in for duration a’ready, and ivery wan av ye’er four thousand felly citizens fixin’ to git throwed in with yez for attimptin’ to brek out av the dippo. Mary help us all if thim four thousand divvies iver gits over the fince!”

  A hoarse voice hailed us from the Cachot. “Mike!” the voice said, “let that poor boy come to bed! He’ll be gettin’ his death o’ cold, standin’ on that damp grass!”

  Carley turned the key in the lock, dragged the iron door outward, pushed me in with a sweep of his arm, and swung the door shut with a clang.

  I was in a dark room, smelling powerfully of damp straw, latrines and dirty bodies. There was a slit of dim twilight in the door, where the wicket was half open; and high up, on opposite sides of the room, were two other small openings into the dusk of that August day: openings smaller than my hand. There was no other light in the room, and the darkness was like dark wool against the eyes.

  The hoarse voice spoke up. “I don’t seem to recall your face, though you have a kind of familiar look.”

  There was a spatter of laughter from the interior of the room.

  “Jesse Smith of Stonington, Connecticut,” the hoarse voice went on. “That’s me! A reformed Federalist that’s seen the error of his ways. Who might you be?”

  “Richard Nason,” I told him. “Arundel.”

  When Smith spoke again his voice seemed almost respectful. “Got your straw with you?”

  I said I had, and immediately felt him take me by the arm.

  “We got a few choice positions vacant,” he told me, urging me forward. “Being last in, I took the one farthest away from the door. That’s the nicest when you’re last in, because it’s the only one you’ll get. How’d you like a nice empty space next to me, only a little further removed from the door?”

  “Fine!” I told him, heartened by his folly.

  He pulled the truss of straw from my shoulder, and I could hear him breaking it open. “You want to take your bearings damned careful if you have to get out of bed in the dark,” he warned me, “because this is an awful easy place to get turned around in. If you get lost, you might be five or six months finding your bed again.”

  The other men snickered. It seemed strange to hear their laughter coming up from the floor. Being unseen and unidentified, they were unreal, like ghosts.

  “Wasn’t you in command of the Lively Lady when she sunk the Gorgon?” Smith asked.

  “It was the Chasseurs fight,” I told him. “We only got there at the end.”

  Smith rustled my straw. “There you go!” he said at length. “All smooth and soft, like com stubble after a frost. Lay down a minute before supper and let these other jailbirds do some warbling for you.”

  I followed his advice, grateful to him for his flow of talk. One of the other men coughed and cleared his throat.

  “Simeon Hays: Baltimoe,” he said softly. “Privateer Surprise of Baltimoe. We-all heard about the Gorgon. That mus
t ’a’ been a right amusing lobster-boiling. Jim Rickor, of ’Nappolis, he’s over beside the doe. Next him is ’Lisha Whitten of Newburyport, and across from Jim is John Miller. All Surprises. John, he used to be an Englishman, but he don’t like ’em no moe, so he’s an American.”

  “Strange he don’t like ’em!” a new voice said.

  Smith spoke up again. “Meet Obed Hussey,” he said. “Another of them Maine Federalists.”

  “Jesse,” the new voice protested, “that ain’t right, not even in fun. I’d rather you called me what you call the lobster-backs than be called a snivelin’, English-lovin’ Federalist!”

  “Well,” Smith said to me, “you prob’ly get the general idee.”

  “Supper!” a voice near the door said suddenly. The wicket slid wide open.

  Smith took me by the arm and led me to the door, where each of us received a tin cup of cocoa and a quarter loaf apiece.

  “Drink it where you are,” Smith said. “If you try to walk round with it you might drop it, and you wouldn’t get no more.”

  When we had given our cups to Carley and gone back to our straw again, I knew I could have eaten five loaves of bread instead of a quarter loaf, and topped off with something substantial like a sizeable platter of salt fish and pork scraps and one of my aunt Cynthy’s lemon pies as a sort of stopper on it.

  “Can’t we get more than that?” I asked.

  “That’s more’n we’re supposed to get,” Hays said. “The bread, that’s fixed up for us by the prison committees. They give the money to Carley, and he buys the bread. We ain’t supposed to have that much to eat. You get kind of used to it, though. Your stomach shrinks.”

  “Your brain don’t shrink, that’s the hell of it!” Jesse Smith said. “You get to thinking about baked beans and brown bread, or a nice clam chowder with sliced potatoes and onions in it and pork scraps floating around on top.” I could hear him swallow hard.