His attitude bewildered me. “Why do you say that? You’ve seemed her one friend in this place. You’ve been kind to her.”
“Kind, but a little wary,” he admitted. “Who could help but pity her friendlessness? But I’m not sure that I trust her. It may not be wise for her to stay.”
I recalled his warnings, given not so very long ago. Was it Lien he distrusted as a source of possible danger?
He had begun to work with his chisel again, returning to his rough shaping of the head. I watched him for a time in silence. There was nowhere else I wanted to be. Wherever else I turned there were problems I did not know how to face.
“I hope you will finish the figurehead now,” I said at last.
“So you can set her aboard the Sea Jade?”
His mocking words startled me and as I thought about them an unexpected tingling of excitement went through me. For the first time the significance of all that had happened began to reach me. It now lay fully in my power to bring the Sea Jade home if I chose, and if she was really in Salem I had only to give the order. In fact, it now lay in my power to do a good many things I had never so much as contemplated before. The sudden realization was heady.
“Finish your work!” I pleaded. “Do what you want with her!”
Ian must have heard the elation in my voice. “So it’s gone to your head already? I suppose that’s what money can do in the twinkling of an eye. Very well—I’ll complete the figurehead on one condition. That you’ll pose for me.”
“Of course I’ll pose!” I could not have been more pleased. I whirled about the room in giddy triumph. “We’ll bring Sea Jade home and set her on the seas again! And she’ll wear the figurehead you’ve carved and that I’ve posed for—just as my mother posed for the first one!”
“You’re going a bit fast,” Ian said quietly. “It’s not so easy as all that. You’ll need Brock’s co-operation first. You can’t just snap your fingers and bring her home.”
“Then I’ll get it!” I promised, running before the storm with my sails full and my confidence high.
Ian waved his chisel toward the door. “Then the opportunity awaits you. He’s over there in his office now. Let’s see what your giddy craft will do when it runs aground on New England granite.”
My sails had a tendency to back and slacken at the immediate prospect of facing Brock and I ceased my gay whirling. Ian merely looked at me, waiting, and as suddenly as they had inflated the sails collapsed. I made one more effort in his direction.
“Everything is going to be difficult now. Every hand is against me, as I well know. But not yours, Ian. Please, not yours.”
“My hand has never been against you, Miranda. It won’t be now,” he said more gently.
Yet I knew that he remained aloof from me, no longer so readily my friend. There was a certain independence about Ian. He seldom conformed to the expected—and he did not do so now. Unwillingly I went into the main room of the museum, moving more and more slowly as I neared Brock’s door. Not even Ian Pryott was an anchor to windward now. I had no anchor anywhere, nor any safe port to which I could sail.
From beyond the door came the sound of a dropped book from Brock’s office. He must have fled there to escape the importunities of his mother. And now he must deal with me. But there had been enough of my seeking support from others. As friendless as I had ever been since my father’s death, I raised my hand and knocked on Brock’s door.
When he called to me to enter, I paused for an instant to strengthen my own resolution. Then I stepped into the room. He sat at his desk without turning. I could see his unruly black hair and the hunch of his shoulders as he leaned on his elbows staring at something he had propped against a book. As I drew near I realized that he was studying the painting of the Sea Jade that I had previously seen hanging on a wall in the outer room. The stiff little waves which the Chinese artist had depicted, the neatly billowing sails, the background hills of Whampoa, seemed to absorb him completely. Surely this was a good omen.
“I’d like to speak with you,” I said.
He rose from his place before the desk, picked up a wooden chair nearby and tipped it so that its burden of books and papers slid off onto the floor. With a careless gesture he waved me into the chair, still without looking at me, or speaking a word. Then he returned to his contemplation of the picture as if oblivious to my presence.
I seated myself on the edge of the chair, wondering how to begin. There seemed no simple way of launching into the several matters I must broach—matters more important than bringing back the ship. But I caught at the subject of the picture for an opening.
“Tom Henderson tells me the Sea Jade is in dock in Salem.”
Brock ignored my statement about the ship. “The fellow is still about? I’ve not run into him. What does he want?”
“Money, I suppose.” I watched Brock intently. “He promised me a story worth hearing if I’d come to the Pride and talk to him.”
“You are not to go!” Brock said sharply.
“Why not? Is there something you don’t want me to find out?”
His glowering look told of nothing except his distaste for me. “Don’t be any more of a fool than you can help. The man may be dangerous and he’s come here to make trouble. I’ll deal with him myself if I can lay hands on him. What’s he doing aboard the Pride?”
I wished I had not mentioned the whaler. It would be necessary to see Tom Henderson soon, before Brock could send him packing. In any event, this was not the subject I had come here to discuss. Since there was no way to lead into it gently, I changed the subject, leaping headlong.
“I want to talk to you about the captain’s will.”
“As far as I can see, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“If you will just listen to me and stop snapping my head off, there is a good deal to talk about.”
For the first time his manner toward me softened a little and he looked at me as he had not before. In a sense it was a look of sudden discovery. I could feel my cheeks warm as I faced him without faltering. Now, at least, I could go on.
“I don’t want this money, or control of the company,” I told him with all the dignity I could muster. “It is ridiculous that either should be in my hands. I’ve assured Mr. Osgood that I want to renounce it all and sign everything over to you. I want nothing for myself. Or at least very little.”
He stared in apparent disbelief. “You’ve decided on such a course? After due and considered thought, you’ve decided?”
“You sound like Mr. Osgood,” I said. “I don’t need to indulge in long and sober thinking about this. All I want is my freedom. If you will let me go quietly back to New York, I will sign all the captain has left me into your hands.”
“You are willing to pay a high price for what you call your freedom,” he said coldly.
“Don’t let’s argue about this,” I beseeched him. “Just let me go. You don’t want me for a wife any more than I want you for a husband. And you do want all that the captain has so absurdly left to me. We both know he never intended this as a permanent arrangement. We both know …” but in the face of his silent staring I could not go on.
While the echo of my words still rang in my ears, Brock reached out and clasped my wrist as he had done once before. This time I tried to snatch my hand away, but he only held me the more tightly.
“Be quiet,” he said, and I was quiet, trembling inwardly before a force that frightened me, that both repelled and attracted at the same time.
“There is something you will have to understand,” he went on. “Whether I have any use for you or not—and considering who your parents were, I could scarcely develop much liking for you—nevertheless, the captain placed you in my care. He felt a responsibility because he once loved your mother, and perhaps for other reasons as well. From that responsibility I cannot be bought off. If you choose to follow the captain’s wishes and place the company in my hands, I will accept what the captain intended me to have.
But you will not buy the dissolving of this marriage. I am not, in that sense, for sale. I will do as the captain wished me to do.”
He had made my fate clear. Under no circumstances would I escape from Scots Harbor and Bascomb’s Point with his consent. I sat where I was for a few moments without moving. He had released my hand and turned back to his desk.
I could almost hear the echo of the captain’s voice in my mind. I could hear him warning me that there would be reefs ahead, but that I was a good little craft and I could weather them if I tried. While I no longer had any hope of changing Brock McLean’s mind about what he stubbornly considered his duty, nevertheless, I had not yet foundered. At least there was relief in knowing exactly where I stood. I need waste no more time hurling myself upon the reefs. I would not give up my intention to escape, but in the meantime there were other things I might do. I recalled the burgeoning sense of excitement, the dawning of realization I had felt in Ian’s workroom. Why shouldn’t I accept that feeling, let it come, let it command me? But before I could speak Brock looked around at me.
“Well? Is there anything else? I’m sure there must be work waiting for you at the house. My mother has placed everything in your hands and I fancy you’ll need to give Mrs. Crawford her orders. You are in full charge now.”
He meant to mock and confound me, and this I would not permit. “My aunt brought me up well,” I told him quietly. “The running of a household is not an unknown skill to me. I will speak to Mrs. Crawford shortly, though I should think it best for accustomed management to remain in your hands. First, however—” I leaned past him to touch the painting of Sea Jade, “—first let us speak of the ship. Why not bring her home to Scots Harbor, refit and repair her, set her upon the seas again?”
“That ship? Are you mad?” Brock reached out and turned the picture face down. “She’s an evil craft. She brought nothing but tragedy to us all.”
“Is that why you were sitting here alone studying her picture?”
“She was my father’s finest creation,” he said. “I can admire beauty and grace, and renounce evil at the same time.”
“It is only men who are evil,” I objected. “The ship is innocent enough. Perhaps if we bring her back, we can exorcise the legend of wickedness that haunts her.”
Perhaps, though I did not speak the words, if we brought her back there would be those who would come forward and say what they knew of her, those who might tell what they knew.
“There’s blood on her decks,” said Brock. “My father’s blood. Shed by Nathaniel Heath.”
I leaned toward him eagerly, burying my resentment. “Decks can be sanded. Old wrongs can be righted. Old lies can be exposed.”
For a long, silent moment we sat there, locked in a contest of wills so intense it left me shaken. When I could bear the strain no longer I went on. “Not everyone could sail her. You are your father’s son and you’ve sailed the China run. Go to Salem and buy her back! Bring her home—and when she’s ready put her on the seas as a Yankee merchantman, with yourself as captain!”
In a sudden violent gesture he brought his fist crashing down on the back of the picture. I heard the crack of breaking glass. Then he stood up and strode from the room without another word or glance in my direction.
I did not understand his violence or his anger, but I sensed that his outburst was directed more against himself than against me. Somehow I had managed to touch a sensitive nerve.
Carefully I turned the picture over and tapped broken glass from the frame. The Sea Jade still sailed her corrugated waves and jagged splinters had left no scar upon the painting. I studied it soberly. Somehow I would find a way to bring her back. The idea was taking on the force of an obsession in my mind. To bring her back might be to resurrect the past, to learn what had really happened. The conviction, I knew, had little that was rational behind it. It was a thing of the emotions, as impossible to touch with the finger of reason as it would be impossible to touch the wind that billowed those sails. Yet the wind existed and so did my feeling about what must be done.
Now there was all the more urgency for seeking out Tom Henderson, for finding out what he knew. I would wait no longer. I would do this now. I slipped from the room and past the door of Ian’s workroom. If he knew what I was about he would stop me, and I did not mean to have that happen. I was glad to escape without his discovering me.
ELEVEN
As I climbed down the bluff path to the shipyard below, I saw that work was again in progress on the skeleton hull. The scene was brisk with activity. There were the incessant sounds of hammering, the heavy, hoarse wheeze of cross-cut saws and clank of calking irons. The air was pungent with the acrid smoke of wood fires beneath tar pots, and the not unpleasant odor of tar. There were gulls everywhere—in the air and on land and water.
As I picked my way through the yard, a man would glance in my direction now and then, and turn impassively away, curious perhaps, but hiding any interest behind a guarded look. As I walked past the rising timbers of the vessel, I saw that Brock had come down ahead of me. He stood a little apart watching the work with an alert eye. His interest was upon men on a scaffold and his back was toward me. I hurried by, knowing well that he would stop me if he guessed my errand. It was fortunate that he had not yet had time to seek out Tom Henderson himself.
Not until I reached the wooden steps to the dock where the whaler was moored did I glance behind. His attention was still upon the work before him. He had not seen me.
I hurried across the rough, splintery boards of the dock and ran up the gangplank that gave in a faint bounce beneath my feet as I trod upon it. The decks of the Pride lay empty to my eye. The hatch nearest the stern of the boat stood open, but for the moment I ignored it to make a quick round of the deck. Tom Henderson was nowhere in sight. It was possible that he was below and though I did not relish a search for him, necessity drove me. If I waited another day—another hour—he might be gone from Scots Harbor.
Once more, half shielded from sight in the prow, I looked over the ledge of beach and found no one staring my way. Brock was no longer in view. He must have moved around to the far side of the growing ship. The din of the work went on without cease.
I went aft to the open hatch and down steep, ladderlike steps. Storm lanterns hung from hooks set in a beam and I reached for one and took it down. Enough light fell through the opening to enable me to light the lantern. Its illumination seemed altogether feeble in the gloom below. As before, I had a sense of timbers leaning in upon me in these stale-smelling depths. Outside pressed the water—enemy to this derelict.
Once the echoes of my descent had died away, I realized that it was far from silent below decks. Somewhere I heard a skittering of sound, and held the lantern high, calling Tom’s name aloud. Again echoes crashed disturbingly about me and afterward the silence seemed intense. No one answered me. Apparently my quest was fruitless.
The passageway in which I stood ended in what must be the captain’s cabin in the stern and I regarded the closed door thoughtfully, recalling words Laurel had spoken the first time I had come aboard the ship. She had said the captain had kept “secrets” in his desk down here—“away from landlubbers.” He had told her he might some day show her the hidden drawers in the desk. It occurred to me that the mysterious letter the captain had mentioned to Mr. Osgood, and which had not so far been found in his effects, might have been hidden here. The captain had been, as Ian too had said, a secretive man. This sort of whimsical hiding place might have appealed to him.
For a moment longer I stared at the cabin’s closed door with growing uneasiness. The very fact that every instinct urged me to flee to the sunny air above, was something to be conquered. Curiosity was greater than my fear of this place. I forced myself to walk in the direction of the captain’s cabin.
The ship moved faintly with the lapping of the tide—enough to make me know she was alive and afloat, but there were creakings and whisperings and rustlings all about me as well. I cl
osed my ears and mind to them and held my lantern firmly.
The narrow door of the cabin was closed and it uttered a frightful squealing as I opened it. But the shadows did not mind and the old ship never ceased her normal whisperings. The stale, closed-in smell of the cabin was stifling and behind me the door swung shut of its own weight over the high sill. I did not turn to open it at once, for the sight of the cabin held my attention.
Everything in it had been built for the most compact use of space possible. Overhead the ceiling beams hung close. The captain’s bunk was a narrow ledge, his table bolted to the floor. Only a single wooden chair stood free. A high ledge reached beneath the very beams of the stern, offering storage space, and above it were two portholes. I climbed to the ledge in an effort to loosen the fastenings and let in a little air, but they had not been moved for a long while, and I could not open them.
In any event, it was the captain’s desk that held my attention. I found a hook on which to hang my lantern and left the door closed despite the stuffy air, feeling somehow more comfortable with a strong oaken panel between me and the dark reaches of the ship.
This desk was surely not one that had belonged to the captain of the whaler. It must have been brought here at a later day by Captain Obadiah. It was a delicate thing, made in the curious Chinese Chippendale style that had been so popular. I knew such furniture was often made in England and then shipped to China where the carving and decoration were done, so that often it took years for a piece to reach the buyer.
The curved front legs had been carved into dragon scales, with dragon heads forming the feet on which the desk rested. The front was a maze of oriental scenes and symbols. A drop-leaf panel came open at my touch and numerous drawers and compartments within were revealed. Some came open easily and were empty. Others resisted my touch. Eventually this desk must be made to give up its secrets. But I did not want to stay here too long today.
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