Strange Yesterday

by Howard Fast

  “Ralph!—but you are not going to leave us, Ralph!”

  Lennox shrugged his shoulders. The doors closed behind him, and he was gone.

  When John Preswick turned again to the girl, he saw that her head was thrown back, and that her dark eyes blazed with light. And for the first time he noticed how heavy her hair was, and how it spread, and lay upon her bare neck.

  Replying to the contempt in her gaze, he nodded. “Yes,” he agreed, “he is something of a pig,” moving his head just a bit in the direction of the doors.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you mean by breaking in like this?—and what do you want?”

  “My name is John Ridge. I do what I please, and I account for my actions to no man—or woman. I want certain things in this house—and you.”

  “That,” the girl said coolly, “is rather melodramatic. You are an unusual thief. I believe that I have seen you somewhere before.”

  And with a sudden flash of light, John Preswick knew that she had, and he thought that he would see her again, and she him. But then, as quickly, the light faded, and what for an instant he had grasped fell through his fingers.

  “If you had,” John Preswick smiled, “you would remember me. But enough of that! Will you come in the manner of a lady, or will you scream and be objectionable? In the latter case, I shall throttle you.”

  “You are a pleasant person,” the girl remarked, seeming not at all disturbed. Staring into her wide, dark eyes, John Preswick could not help but admire her. She might have been in the stars, looking down upon him condescendingly.

  The older woman spoke—slowly, in a half-hesitating, broken manner, with no defiance, with no fear: “Tell me who you are.”

  “I have told you. My name is John Ridge, and I don’t care if the world knows it!”

  “That is your name?”

  “Yes. And now—”

  “But you cannot take her! She is my daughter. She is the only thing I have that I value. Oh, there is money a-plenty in this house, and jewels—to such a sum as you would never dream of. Have it all, only—”

  “Mother,” the girl interrupted her.

  Still in the chair, without the strength to rise, she said: “Inez, if they take you—”

  “If it is ransom,” said the girl, “we can pay well.”

  “It is not ransom.”

  “You are a fool. You cannot leave this house. There are the servants.”

  “The servants have been taken care of.”

  “The crime is death in New York.”

  “Do you imagine, my lady, that I am impressed unduly by such rewards?”

  “Oh, what do you want?”

  Wearily he shrugged. “My lady, you are making the worse of an already poor situation.” But she was damnably, unreasonably beautiful!

  Her mother said, with slow emphasis: “I thought, at first, that you were another. It is still in your eyes, the same look, the same expression, the same unfeeling, lifeless voice. For that I can love you. Whoever you are, you must not do this.”

  He exclaimed, shaking his head: “This is all a mad-house! I do not want you, old woman.” And to the girl: “Will you come, or must I call for my men and bind and gag you and roll you up in a bundle like that nigger servant of yours?”

  “I will come,” she replied calmly. She went about the table, bent and kissed her mother. The gray-haired woman held to her, but she drew herself away.

  “Inez—”

  “But you can do nothing, Mother. It is better this way.”

  “After all,” he said to himself, “she is nothing but a Jewess, which should allow much,” and aloud: “I have no scruples towards shooting either of you. If your mother makes a sound, I shall shoot you, not her. I shall shoot very low—”

  Then she laughed at him, exclaiming: “What a child you are! What a little boy! Do you imagine that you frighten me? Do you think that for myself I would be afraid of that pretty pistol of yours! My father laughed in the face of a thousand such pistols. My father was a man—but you would not understand. Come, let us go!”

  Her mother would have risen, but the expression upon her face quelled her. The older woman was broken. When John Preswick had entered the room, there was a regalness in her manner, in her bearing, unequaled even by her daughter. But something had occurred, something that passed by him. In a heap, she huddled in a chair, sobbed into her hands.

  As they went through the doors into the chamber with the staircase, he said: “I should not care to bind you or to gag you. If you will give me your word—?”

  “I shall not scream or attempt to flee, although that should be customary and even absolute in the second act. But is it the second act?” There was a very short, thin smile upon her lips.

  “Very well then.” He wondered to himself whether, had he been she, he would have been able to smile. He knew that smile—how, he could not say.

  One of the men was awaiting him; the other was gone. John Preswick asked of the money as they went out. It was safe. And of Lennox, he asked. He would already be aboard the ship. John Preswick nodded, and they left the house. If it had not been so dark, he might have noticed a small bronze plate set into the molding beside the door, upon which was inscribed: JOHN PRESWICK: SILKS AND TOBACCO.

  But the night was dark and the plate was small and John Preswick had other things upon his mind, divers business, as kidnaping (rape, one might say), robbery, assault; so it happened that the inscription remained unnoticed by him.

  In his place at the rear of the sedan chair, the second seaman was waiting; the one with John Preswick took his position at the front. Drawing the curtains, John Preswick motioned to the girl. “The seat is soft,” he told her. “It was the best chair I could find.” After she stepped in, he closed the curtains, and as the men set off, he walked at her side.

  “Inez Preswick,” he mused to himself. “That is her name, and for a Jewess it is rather strange.” But it was something of a common name. The same name was his—here in a three-storied house in Cherry Street, and there at the Steer’s Horn. Shrugging again, he demissed the thought and trudged along beside the chair. It occurred to him, a bit later, that Lennox was an extraordinary man—not only had he timed the thing beautifully, but it had worked itself without any hitch. That such a business could have been done without a sound in the very heart of New York was almost beyond belief. Even now he expected to hear the guns of the watch whip through the night.

  But it did not come until they were almost at the docks, and then they quickened their pace to a run, springing towards the waiting boat. Behind them, the relayed calls of the watch echoed past the darkness, nearer and yet nearer. As they put down the chair, John Preswick drawing her rudely out, she said: “I shall scream now.” He laughed in her face.

  Once she cried out; then he clapped a hand over her mouth and sprang with her down to the longboat. Two men were at the oars, and the two who had been with him, joined them; the four pairs of arms sent the boat flashing through the water. The cries were almost upon them as they passed Castle William, sliding out into the bay. Lanterns flashed. If a boat was following, it would soon be lost in the night. The bay was wide.

  At the prow there was a bundle which he thought might well be Lennox, who had disappeared with great dispatch. John Preswick grinned.

  “Where are you taking me?” she demanded, afraid for the first time.

  Without replying, he laughed. One hand was upon the tiller, the other clenched about her arm. The breath of the four men straining at the oars hissed; the shouting upon the docks grew fainter; at last it died away completely.

  “You are hurting me,” she said to him.

  Apologizing brusquely, he released her arm. Expertly he steered, the sea catching hold of the boat, lifting it first, and then dropping it into the hollow of each succeeding swell. Silent, she sat beside him upon the stern seat.

  It seemed that hours had gone past before they overhauled the Angel, past the Narrows, with all sail set. The
West End barely discernible through the night, they took the boat aboard, beating in a circle towards Sandy Hook. In all that time, the pursuit, if there had been one, had never gained enough to be heard. Sandy Hook blurred further, and then fell away as they wore out to sea. The open east was before them.

  The woman was taken below to a cabin that had been prepared for her; the boat was lashed to the davits; and with a broad, rippling spread of canvas, the brig Angel stood to sea. John Preswick walked to the poop-deck and remained there for a while, leaning against the rail. Near to him, a seaman pressed against the wheel; above the sails whispered; the shrouds hummed to the breeze.

  The night was dark and just a bit moist; with a soft, wavering swish, the yellow-green water curled away from the prow.

  Then he was called below to Mr. Cortlandt’s cabin. Mr. Lennox was there, and Mr. Mitchell, and the captain. There was rum on the table, and a bottle of chartreuse, and a pot of tea. There was also a chest full of gold, jewels, and paper money. Abruptly, it brought back the century past, when British and American vessels preyed cheerfully and openly upon the Spanish Main; but there was something else about it that prompted him to laugh, why, he knew not. Somehow, it all seemed ridiculous—no, not ridiculous, but whimsical; and he recalled the face of the girl when she had called him a child. But why must he always think of her as a girl, when she was so palpably a woman, as old, perhaps, as he was.

  They motioned him to the table, and he sat down. Mr. Lennox smiled broadly and contentedly, saying to Mr. Cortlandt: “You have not disappointed me. He is such a man as you said.”

  “I usually judge my men right. A splendid night, Mr. Ridge.”

  “Thank you.” This was all very well, thought John Preswick, but why could he not forget the face of the girl? Damn all Jewesses, with their black eyes!

  “We are making for Lisbon,” Mr. Cortlandt went on. “Mr. Lennox has suggested that you see to the comfort of Miss Preswick. She will be given all possible courtesy and freedom.”

  Apropos of nothing, Mr. Lennox remarked: “They were fools. They should not have had either gold or money in the house; but they were women.”

  Mr. Mitchell laughed.

  “If you will excuse me,” John Preswick said. “I have had a hard evening.”

  They nodded profusely, and he left the cabin and went up on deck taking in the cool air in great gulps. The girl stood just beneath the poop, her dark gown blending in with the shadows, only her bare arms and her face distinguishable enough to startle him. He stepped back.

  She turned then, and she looked full at him, her eyes inscrutable wells. And he faced her, seeking for words. Feeling that she had an unfair advantage of him in every way, he was curiously at a loss.

  “How did you come on deck?” he inquired.

  “They did not lock me into my cabin. Evidently they were satisfied that I could not run off—now.”

  Coming a little closer, he fumbled awkwardly at the buttons of his waist-coat. He still wore the dapper clothes of earlier in the evening, but he was no longer at ease in them. “If you should want anything, I will take care of it. You need only ask for me—Mr. Ridge.”

  “I shan’t desire anything,” she said coldly.

  Hastily, he interposed: “But you needn’t fear me now. The other was a part of my trade—a matter of course.”

  She began to laugh; her laugh was a tangible ripple, but her face was ice. Then her face became sober and dark, and she looked at him from beneath her long, heavy lashes, saying: “You are a fool. You have neither the sense nor the perception to be wicked. You are not wicked; you are only a fool, and, in all probability, an instrument of some one else. As though I feared you! As though any Preswick could fear such scum as you! There were Preswicks fighting and dying for the King when your progenitors were wallowing in the filth of some slum; the Preswicks are part of the country; it grew out of their hands. My grandfather gave his fortune to the Revolution; he was a colonel upon the Plains of Abraham before that; my father gave his soul and his body to the Revolution. Always, we have given our blood freely and without hesitation. What happened to-night is no insult; the insult is that you—you of all things—should have the effrontery to suggest that I fear you!” She was angry now, but also pathetic, small, and her voice much of a sob. And the manner of her calling off her lineage only brought out the hopelessness of her situation. She held her hands to her breast; and he felt a sudden, mad impulse to crush her, hands and breast, to him.

  Shaking his head uncomprehendingly, he gave back before her; he wondered that there should be ice and fire in so futile a voice. But where, before, had he heard some one speak in the same manner: enraged, futile,, hopeless, but yet arrogant? The very tone was familiar. Yes, it was when they had taken him out of the black hold, sick, weak, and bleeding. Though he could not understand it, it was the same.

  “I am sorry,” he said, puzzled at his words, even as: he mouthed them.

  “I desire neither your sorrow nor your sympathy.” With that, she turned her back upon him and walked away. But he sprang after her, passing her, and placing himself before her.

  “Please wait one moment,” he begged.

  “Well—what is it?”

  “I meant that. It is all I can say.”

  “What?”

  “That I am sorry.”

  “You are a fool.”

  Then he stood aside, looking after her, as she went to the hatchway. Turning slowly, he walked back to the poop, climbing the short ladder to the upper deck. He went over to the man at the wheel, telling him to go forward; then he set himself with the spokes in his hands. Until the flush of a gray day crept out of the east, he stood, motionless, except when he had to move himself to keep with the course. When Mr. Mitchell, coming to take the watch, remarked upon his weariness earlier in the evening, he glanced up at him with an inquiring, almost blank expression.

  7

  THE following day, the sun rose early and clear, and it climbed to a sky that was an inverted blue bowl; the sea was a lake; as gracefully as a woman powders her face, the breeze filled the sails.

  John Preswick, crossing to the poop, saw the girl for the first that morning. Lennox had provided her cabin with a wardrobe, and now she wore a light frock of blue beneath a short leather jacket. Had he not known who she was, he would not have recognized her here in the clear light of day, so changed was she from the night before. Everything about her seemed lighter, softer: her skin, her eyes; in her dark brown hair, he saw a touch of red-gold. Her hair fell in a thick cluster to her shoulders, its very weight holding it in a mass, a strand now and then lifting to the breeze. For the first time, he saw how thin and how delicately formed were her features, how slim she was, how very much younger than Lennox had described her. He wondered where were the defiance and the ice of the night.

  Half hesitantly, he went towards her, hoping that she might look at him before he was quite at her side. But she did not move. She stood at the rail staring out over the sea, her profile to him. Surely she must have seen him from the corner of her eye. If she had, she gave no sign of it. He said:

  “Good morning. I trust you rested well last night.”

  Slowly she faced to him, and after she had looked into his eyes she turned back to the water. “Yes,” she replied.

  In silence he remained by her side, trying desperately to think of something he might say to her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked him suddenly.

  “Where?—why—to Lisbon.”

  “That is in Portugal?”

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged. Even while speaking, she had not turned to face him. There was silence again, but he remained at her side, something preventing his moving away. For many minutes he was there, while she appeared unaware of his presence. He occupied himself with her profile: her nose was short, her forehead curved, her chin small and round. Her mouth was good; it was well shaped and strong; indeed, it was the strongest part of her face. And about her face there was th
at same tantalizing suggestion of familiarity he had remarked in her voice. Knowing he had never seen her before, he could have sworn that he had. He could have sworn that he had looked upon her every day of his life, so suggestive was her poise, her attitude, her coldness. For what he had done the night past, he did not feel regret; but he felt a hatred towards Lennox such as he had never before directed upon any man, even Kwalkee. He felt that Lennox was rotten to his very soul, that he would have given much to have Lennox’s bulky throat between his fingers; and that was curious, since he knew that both in his thoughts and in his expression of them, Lennox was no different from himself, from Mr. Cortlandt, from Mr. Mitchell.

  The girl turned to him and said: “I should like to be alone for a while, if you do not mind.” Her tone was quietly commanding.

  As he nodded, he saw her jaw drop and her eyes widen; following her gaze, tie found Lennox, a dozen feet away, to one side. He bowed slightly.

  “You!” she cried. “You too! Why? Tell me what all this means.”

  Spreading his hands, he smiled slightly. “My dear, it means that I am in the same position as you.”

  She stared at him intently, swung her gaze for an instant to John Preswick, and then back to Lennox. Her eyes dropped to his feet and climbed with a calculated movement to his face. She moved back until she was in a position to face them both, her head tilted up, her eyes shadowed by the lids. Then she spoke quickly, lashing the words at Lennox:

  “I don’t believe you. You are mixed up in this miserable, childish business. I don’t know what it all is, but you do.”

  Suave and considerate of her tautness, Lennox slowly shook his head; he was all sympathy. “My dear, you have been under a terrible strain, and I do not blame you for what you believe. Nevertheless, it hurts. Perhaps I am not in a position to offer you a great deal of hope. But when I saw you a moment ago, shocked as I was—for I thought that in giving myself up, I should spare you—I determined that my all should be laid at your feet.”