by Howard Fast
Then the man who was ringing off the form of his address, brisk and neat and businesslike, recognized Inez Preswick. “Miss Preswick,” he muttered. “But, no, it cannot—”
“You are right, Mr. McCord. You will take us aboard ship, please. We are very—tired.” Softly and slowly she spoke, and she leaned more heavily than ever upon the arm of John Preswick.
“Yes,” she said, looking into his face, “that is mine, that ship. I knew when I saw it. We have many like it. You see, we are wealthy—in a way.” Attempting to make it appear natural and obvious, she failed miserably. As the longboat slid back, towing the other behind it, they sat together upon the stern-seat, her hand warm in his.
13
THEY took him to a cabin. Every deference they gave him—and clothes, and food, and hot, spiced drink; and they told him he was free to go about as he pleased, that the length of the ship was his. Nor did they ask him any questions; all of that, it seemed, she had explained—and more. So presently he stood upon the poop, looking down the deck of the clean, trim barque, filled with wind, and hard on her tack. She was a beautiful vessel, and the sight of her warmed his heart. Not far from the helmsman, he stood, alone; though the helmsman stared at John Preswick curiously, he did not speak. It was as though for the first time in long, John Preswick was alone.
In white, he was, white slacks and loose white shirt, his hair combed, his face freshly shaven. Down along the main-deck he could see their boat, lashed to the rail. Only that was there to tell him it had not been a dream, that it was very true, that all he had seen, had thought of, had been. But where was the girl?
Now it was over, and he was able to think of it, and to see how grotesque it all was. Everything was over now.
Looking down the ship, he stood, watching the full sails. In that manner he had stood a few days ago, but then the ship had been another.
He appeared lost in reverie, when she came to him. If he was different she was changed a thousandfold. Her long hair was combed, and it hung to her neck and shoulders, as when he had first seen her. She wore a frock that had been intended for the captain’s wife, which she had hastily altered to fit herself. It was light blue, and charming. Even her face was new and wonderful.
He was afraid of her; the fear was something he could not explain. Tense and stiffs he stood, until she was quite close to him. She held out her hands, and, awkwardly, he took them. She smiled and said, “Hello.”
“I am afraid,” he returned. “I am afraid I cannot find myself. It was all too quick. And now I can hardly realize it.”
“But is it not wonderful? I never knew what life can be until now—until I had tasted death, until I had loved. Only days, and we will be back in New York.”
His brown, solid face clouding, he searched her intently, attempting to pierce through her, attempting to get at what was beneath.
“And are you not happy?” she asked.
“Happy?—I don’t know. I am glad for you. For me it is the end. But I am happy, for you will live.”
Coming close to him, she placed both her hands upon his breast and looked up into his face, a slight, quivering smile upon her lips—one that faded and again appeared. “Listen,” she said to him, “I explained—so well that no one will ever know. And in the same way I shall explain to my mother. I did it because the ship is mine. I have other ships. Don’t you see what that means? You are a sailor—”
The implication drove into his brain, but he shook it off.
“And now you are a coward!” she cried. “Why has it changed? I see that it has changed, but why?—because we live? Do you think I am afraid? No, you believe those things I said—so long ago that it was in another world, in another age!”
He attempted to explain. “It is changed, and now all is different.”
“You are different. Why is the man always a coward?”
Hotly: “Why do you not hate me?”
He saw it in her eyes; he was but a man, and a man of no great perception, but this thing he saw in her eyes, and he could not mistake it. Clasping her in his arms, he kissed her. He said to her: “No one, nothing, can take you from me. I love you.” Simply, he said it, and with intense meaning and purpose. Something had passed between them.
His arm about her, he walked with her to the rail. They stood there, bent over, watching the water swirl away. All poops are the same, in the manner that all ships are. It seemed, though, that the other had been more than three days ago.
“This,” she mused, “is my ship. How strange that sounds! They did not know, for they are from Europe, bound west. They know nothing of what has happened. But is it not strange that this should be my ship?”
“Yes—it is strange.”
“John, some day you will drive these ships before you. John. How I love that name! It was my father’s name. Tell me, what is your other name? I heard them call you Mr. Ridge, but I know, somehow, that it is not your name.”
“No, Ridge is not my name. But you say your father’s name was John?”
“Yes, John Preswick. I must tell you of it.” Pausing, she smiled up into his face, then went on:
“From so far back that no man remembers, it has been that way—the oldest male son of our house has been called that, John Preswick. But my father never had a boy child. He died, my father, and I only was left. So the name of Preswick and John Preswick will go. It means nothing, but still, sometimes, it hurts to think of it. It is like the death of an old and fine thing. I love the name. John Preswick. It rolls from one’s tongue.”
“Your father died?” he said tonelessly.
“Yes. He was a captain in the Revolution. I am telling you this because I feel that you are a part of me, that you must know it. He fought through the whole war, until even after Yorktown. Then he was captured. He escaped and was shot through the arm. For that they had to amputate his arm. He suffered terribly.”
“You say that he lost his arm. But where was he captured?”
“In Georgia. Then they took him to a prison-ship near Charleston. He escaped and wandered inland, suffering all the while. Then an innkeeper found him and nursed him back to health. Sam, an old negro of ours—he is dead now, God rest him—used to tell me the story, which he knew from end to end. My mother never spoke of it.”
“You say an innkeeper cared for him! And he was a captain! But no, that is impossible; that is too mad, too horrible! Tell me, which arm was it?”
She noticed how strained, how full of deadened pain, his voice was. The blood had drained from his face, and his lips were tight and thin. “But why?” she asked, afraid. “It was his left arm.”
“And his name was John Preswick?”
“Why, yes—”
His great shoulders were bowed, his neck bent beneath the weight of his head; with wide, pain-stricken eyes, he stared out to sea. He was like a man condemned.
“But what is it?” she begged. “What have I said?”
He did not look at her; he stared out to sea, and his eyes were fixed and glazed. His heart was burning, but he could not speak of it, for here even his bluntness was of no avail. He was thinking: “So Peter did know; and Peter lied to me. It would have been better had he told me. But I was a fool, as I am now, to think that a man travels with no name to either his clothing or his luggage. So Peter lied—”
When she laid a hesitating hand upon his arm, he drew away.
Still staring out over the ocean, he said: “My name is—John Preswick.”
“But I don’t understand,” she pleaded, tears in her eyes.
“How did your father die?” he inquired quickly, a single ray of hope cutting in.
“How?—but it was so long ago! My mother knew, I think, but I never did. He simply disappeared. My mother would not speak of it. Even Sam did not know. But he died; I remember the funeral services when I was very young.”
“I will tell you,” said John Preswick. “I killed him. I killed your father! Yes, it was years ago—many years ago. Even then my life was de
dicated to murder! But I tell you this! He was my father too!” His voice was rising; suddenly he whirled and faced her.
“He was my father, and may God be damned, but you are my sister! I killed him, not knowing who he was, or where he had come from, never realizing, never thinking—when the entire business was so clear! I killed my father—! I love you!—Inez, I love you!” His voice had broken; heavily, inertly, he leaned against the rail.
“I love you—but you are my sister. It is droll! It is whimsical! It is something to laugh over. That is what he bequeathed to me, may his soul be damned! That is what Lennox bequeathed to me! That is why Lennox lay there and grinned!—after I had killed him. It’s a joke! It is all a joke! We should laugh. But this you must believe, that I loved you from the moment I saw you—yes, even at the table. You must believe me—because I cannot love you now. God help me, you are my sister—”
Her eyes were wet. Her small face, upturned to him, was wrinkled, worried, and puzzled. “Please,” she whispered. “I do not understand. If you will only tell me—”
Taking a hold upon himself, he strove to control his voice, to speak calmly and at length, for he realized that much must yet be told. He began:
“Inez, my name is John Preswick—”
And then, bit by bit, he told her the tale, making it fit together like a clever puzzle, drawing in all the small pieces and cutting himself with each. With the Inn of the Steer’s Horn he began; he told of the man killed by the rifle held in his hands. He told of the inn and of the hill called Steer’s Head; he told of the innkeeper Kwalkee and of the rat-infested hold of the brig Angel; he told—trying not to hurt—the few scattered things he had heard’ of his mother, whom he had never seen, of the man she had loved and named him for, of the man she had nursed back to health and who had lost his left arm. And he told how there was neither name nor address upon the body, and how they had buried it at the foot of the hill called Steer’s Head, in a little old graveyard. Much more, he told her, his voice limp and expressionless.
And when he was through, she looked at him, and he looked at her—until he was forced to take her in his arms, to stroke her hair, to whisper into her ear again and again that he loved her, that always he would love her, that their love was something imperishable that might not be taken, that fate could not play with. It was good to feel her slim form in his arms and pressing to his body—but that could not remove the other. They knew—oh, so surely, they knew—it could never again be as before. He might tell her that he loved her; he might speak the truth; but it was changed.
“So long as we love,” she protested desperately, “how can—”
But she knew.
They stared out over the sea, the blue and green and white sea that was curling away behind them, to a horizon that drifted with a few, small, cotton clouds. Soon those clouds would be blown away like balls of so much smoke—as they were—but others would come, and still others—
“So long as I love her,” he thought to himself desperately.
And then, almost imperceptibly, he shrugged; for it had come to him that he was struggling against something he did not understand, could not understand, never would understand—something that was beyond him, as now she was beyond him.
They stood there, motionless, for hours, for they were both thinking, both wondering. There was such a great deal to think of, to wonder about! At last his hand crept about her shoulder.
“Inez—” he said hesitantly, thrilling to the simple beauty a name might have—“Inez, I will kiss you once again—so that you may know, Inez—”
“That you love me?”
“That I love you as I have loved no other thing. That I shall always love you, Inez.”
He took her in his arms; gently he kissed her upon her lips. But already all was of the past. Yet he was thankful for what had been. It does not matter, he thought to himself, whether one has lived an hour or years, so long as one has lived at all.
The sun was setting, a spray of fire straining to the sea. There are so many sunsets, and each is the same, and each is different. A sailor came to call them to the evening meal, but they shook their heads and remained there—until the sun was gone and the sea was dark. Before he told her good-night, he lifted her face and held his lips to hers.
14
THEY had good weather and fair winds; three days after saw them working their way through the Narrows and up the bay. They came into the shore together, and on the pier they clasped hands; and while she, the captain and the first officer by her side, went slowly through the city to Cherry Street, John Preswick turned away and walked in the direction of the Jersey ferry.
He did not look back. They were severing bonds with a tactful, swift agreement, without words, each realizing what was in the other’s heart, what must be done. Words might have made it worse, and for that reason they avoided words; words could not have made it any better. And to himself, John Preswick thought: “Surely, it could not have been any better, for, had I not been a fool, I would have seen that the other was impossible, and I would not have considered it, even for a moment. But now I have lived for a little while, and I have loved—I shall always love—and I have held the woman I love in my arms, and I have slept with her by my side, and I have seen in her eyes as much as any man could desire to see in the eyes of a woman. And I have pressed her hair to my face, and her lips to mine, and her breasts to me. And for her I have fought, and killed, and murdered—and for her I have dared death. And I have seen that she would have died for the love of me. If I were to ask more, I would be very much of a fool—and if I were to desire more, I would be very much of a fool. And though I may be a fool, regardless, I am becoming a contemplative one. I will live—because it is in me to live, because my body cries out for me to live. But my living will not be life. I am twenty-eight years of age, and my life is behind those twenty-eight years. Now I shall simply exist.” He was most satisfyingly morbid. He felt that it was very good and martyr-like to be suffering for love; but, withal, he could not drown the choking in his heart.
His journey southward was not without incident, but, to him, all incident was in the past. Those few days he had lived through were short, but they were days to leave their mark upon him. In a dulled, half-absorbed manner, he would live those days over and over again.
He went through the states to the east of the foothills, proceeding by coach, by horse, and even by foot. A little money he had—in the money-pouch attached to his belt; the girl could not find it in her to offer him any. But it was enough to last him. Through Jersey he passed, and then Delaware, and then Maryland, and then Virginia and the Carolinas. It was a long and arduous journey, which he might have made much more profitably by sea. But, somehow, he could not bear the thought of going back to the sea. The sea he avoided and desired to avoid so long as he should live. So he went by land, and in time he arrived at the place called the Inn of the Steer’s Horn.
Now he came by foot, for he had left the stage at a point further back; a small bundle he carried under his arm; otherwise he had nothing. He had made no change of clothes; his breeches were stained and worn; his shirt was grime-covered and torn and wet with his sweat. He was stockingless, and his heavy, black shoes were through at the soles and toes. His hair was long and shaggy; he was unshaven; he was lean; and his large frame was almost spare.
The road was dusty; the day was warm, as days in the late fall are wont to be in that part of the southland. Being tired, and knowing that his destination was near, he walked slowly, the dust curling up in ocher puff-balls about his feet. The road was long, and it stretched away through a lane of trees, through high hedges and broad fields that were scattered with shade trees. Ripe and coloring were the trees, and the fields were ripe and with color too. There was a rise and fall to the land, like a sea when no wind moves it; the hills were smooth and not high—except far ahead of him where, like a lone, expectant sentinel, the hill called Steer’s Head thrust itself up above the surrounding country, covered sp
arsely with bush, underbrush, and thin trees of new and feeble growth.
When he saw the hill called Steer’s Head—and only then—he wondered what had caused him to return to this place, and what it held for him, and why his steps were instinctive in seeking this direction. Feeling woefully tired and bruised, he fastened his eyes upon the thrust-up clump of earth and rock, and plodded on. Soon he was near it. Around its foot the road wound, and he passed with the road; the inn lay before him.
It was a lovely house, that Inn of the Steer’s Horn, and John Preswick thought to himself that he had not known its loveliness until now—coming back. But those who built it had never intended it for an inn. It was old as Carolina itself, of good red brick, such as they have lost the skill or desire to make, with two wings, as in an H, and with a small, columned portico directly between the short, forward arms. Vines and creepers clawed over it to the shingled roof, not pausing even at the tiny, white-railed platform above the pillars. It was old—so old that it blended into the landscape, as an old, moss-covered stone wall will; and it was not large. But it was stately; such a stateliness it had as no inn should rightly possess. Already it was of another age, with a dignity of another time, with a courtliness that loomed over its capacity as an inn. It was a gentleman come to dire straits; but it was ever a gentleman.
It was a lovely house, and when one comes back to a lovely house that has once been one’s very own, one cannot help feeling a thrill of restfulness—calm and easy restfulness.
There was never much of a bustle to the Inn of the Steer’s Horn. A post came by on that road, but it was not the post to Charleston. Nor did any coach to or from Charleston come that way. If one wanted that, one must walk to a crossing, wait there, flag the coach, and swing on. The little road that wound around the Steer’s Head was a lonesome one. And it was only an occasional and dusty traveler who dropped onto one of the benches that stood before the portico, and called for ale.