“Troubles will come, you mean? That is what Charles says. But as long as I have him and we have enough to eat — do you know what we are most afraid of? Charles does not hide anything from me.”
“No — what is it, my dear?”
“That Sir Albery will discharge Captain Bligh. But I don’t think he will. He is too good. You know that he was at our wedding?”
Charlotte sat up as if a pin had pricked her. “At your wedding?” she gasped. “Who do you say was at your wedding?”
“Sir Albery.”
“Impossible!”
“But he was, Charlotte. He really was, though T don’t think he wishes it to be spoken of.”
Charlotte stared. “But why? What — what in the world brought him there?”
Peggy’s colour rose. “Well, I suppose, silly man, he came to see that it was all right, you know. And to sign the book. But he need not have troubled himself. Still,” she added, relenting, “it was rather nice of him, wasn’t it?”
“You little beast!” the other girl cried, staring at her. “I could shake you. Oh, child, child, what a miss you have had!”
But Peggy fired up at that. For a moment she looked really angry. “How can you!” she exclaimed. “How can you, Charlotte! A miss indeed! When I have got a—”
“A paragon!” Charlotte replied, her tone dry. “But there, I was wrong, dear.” She laughed, not very merrily. “I forgot that I was speaking to Mrs. Bligh. And, oh, Peggy, how funny you are!” Before the offended wife could answer, the dinner came in and cut short their talk. Charles marched in first, carrying the potatoes, the plates, and the gravy.
The Captain followed humbly, asking only to be ignored, and set down the mutton. There was a little confusion and crowding, until laughing, they had found their seats; then Charles began to carve. At first some restraint hung over the party, but when the novelty had worn off the meal proved to be more pleasant and easy than Charlotte had anticipated. The younger Bligh took the lead and set the talk going, hiding the awkwardness of the occasion under a gaiety that Peggy at least knew to be assumed; for whatever his merits were, he was neither gay nor talkative, and the young wife recognized with gratitude that he was doing this for her. Fortunately their guest had a gift for making herself at home, and, seeing nothing else for it, she played up bravely, while Peggy’s laughter broke in from time to time as joyous as a bird’s trill. The shortcomings of the Cottage equipment only made food for mirth, and when this failed the privateer, its adventures, and its good fortune filled the gap.
The dinner, in a word, was a success. It went off to a marvel. But Charlotte was observant and clearsighted, and as the meal drew to a close she did not fail to notice that the bridegroom’s liveliness flagged and waned, that his attention wandered, and that the talk was left more and more to her and her friend. The effort made, he seemed to sink unconsciously into a silent mood, the mood that was natural to him. He was toying mechanically with a spoon, his face thoughtful.
Nor, Charlotte discerned, was she the only one who noted this. Peggy betrayed her knowledge not only by glances as furtive as they were tender, but by her efforts to fill the gap, while the old man showed an equal sense of it by attempts, at once timid and pathetic, to distract the guest’s attention.
Charlotte saw it all, and was moved by it. She fancied that she discerned in this humble interior, to the secrets of which she had been so abruptly admitted, not only the wisp of trouble slight as a man’s whimsy, that threatened that happiness, but also the wings of love, ever beating, that strove to repel the invader. She saw, and her heart misgave her on her friend’s account. As she climbed the winding path on her return, meeting and passing the knots of people who were streaming to and from the Cove, her thoughts turned not on her mother’s displeasure, though she knew that she would be well scolded, but on the future of those from whom she had parted. Bligh loved his wife, there could be no doubt of that; every conscious action, every look and word bore witness to his solicitude, his affection, his care for her who had sacrificed so much for him. He loved.
But did he love enough? Did he love so unselfishly as to be able to conquer his humour, to overcome his moodiness, to put behind him past wrongs, to forget himself and be happy in her happiness? Or would he, as time went on, suffer the sense of unmerited misfortune and of the weakness which had cost him so much — even if he had overcome that weakness — to cloud her happiness, and to mar the humble home to which she had been content to follow him?
Charlotte had her doubts. And with the other Peggy would have been so safe — so safe, she thought.
CHAPTER XIII
THE Keppel Head formed one of the comers at the seaward end of the street, with the water-side before it and the cliff overhanging its rear. From the wall of the Rectory garden, high above, a child could toss a biscuit on the roof. Its windows looked upon the cobbled quay, made home-like to Beremouth eyes by the raffle of nets and pots that, except at spring-tides or in stormy weather, cumbered the slippery stones. Of winter nights the Keppel’s red-curtained windows, wide and low, promised a warm welcome, and as far as sound ale and wholesome rum went — with a tot of smuggled brandy for skippers — they made their promise good. No doubt men went in sober and came out drunk, but the same might be said of places of higher standing; and, after all, what were men’s heads made for if not to be overcome? Few in those days found fault with this law of nature, provided the liquor was sound and not hocussed: and if the talk at the bar was sometimes stormy, and not rarely brutal, so was the life it reflected. Both smacked of the sea, its savour and breeziness, its sudden shifts from calm to tempest, its callous indifference.
But this Sunday evening at the Keppel Head was an evening in a thousand. Beremouth kept high festival and the house hummed from threshold to attic. Four-fifths of the crew of the lucky brig were there, in various stages of enjoyment, and the greater part well advanced on their road. Laughter and raucous voices poured in gusts from the windows, and, for once, the door between the privileged snug and the kitchen stood open that the humblest might pay his court to Captain Ozias, or at the worst catch a glimpse of the hero in his glory.
For, at any rate, for Copestake it was a night of nights. He loomed, red-faced and expansive, through the misty aureole of smoke and spirits that surrounded him. Yet even at the stage that he had reached — and the value of the Belle Dame had trebled itself since he had entered the house — he remained true to himself and enjoyed his triumph after his own fashion. Three times he had told his story, but new hearers, steaming rummers in their hands, still clamoured for the tale, and Copestake was nothing loth to repeat his Mea Culpa.
“To be sure, on the weather quarter we was,” he said for the fourth time, “with the helm hard up, and kep’ her so till the after-guns come to bearing, and then no more but let her have it as we passed her stern-post. Then boxed about, lads, and under her stern again, raking her fore and aft, and they not able to fire more than the long swivel! Oh, ’twas rare! Three times we raked her, but the last tack they sheered and come up abeam of us, and shots came aboard from such guns as they had, and terrible ’twas for Christian men! So, ‘Barney Toll,’ says I, pitying the poor souls as was being sent to their account unprepared, ‘ it’s sinful work,’ says I, ‘and the burden more than I can bear. Carry on, if so it must be, and if a mast goes, run under her quarter while they are in the raffle and give her the full of it!’” Ozias paused, shook his head and groaned, his hearers hanging breathless on his next words, though three-fourths of them had heard the story and knew precisely what was coming. “The full of it!” he repeated, sighing. He shook his head dolefully. “And the words no more than out o’ my sinful mouth, than a ball passed by my head — crouching at the break of the poop I was — and lodged in the mam, and there was I, Cap’n Copestake, within one foot of everlasting damnation, and naught but convenanted mercy ‘tween me and it. ’Twas terrible, I tell ‘ee, lads. I didn’t ask no second sign, but down I tumbled quick as you please, in a
sweat to think o’ what I had escaped, and hid myself ‘twixt two tubs in the after-hold till the trouble be over-past. And every minute, thinks I, as I lay there all of a shake, there’s poor ignorant seamen as never gives a thought to their immortal souls being swept to perdition, cursing and swearing, and all by the act of me, Cap’n Ozias Copestake, as knows better and should ha’ taught them, instead o’ bringing their poor bodies into danger. ’Twas a terrible thought, I tell ‘ee,” he repeated solemnly, his gaze glued to the floor at his feet, while a sympathetic thrill ran through the magnetized circle. “‘But never again! Never again, Ozias,’ says I. ‘Your sinful body will never lead you into this trouble again!’”
He was silent so long that an outsider, a stranger who had listened with feelings that may be imagined, could bear it no longer. “But I hear you gave her a broadside at the last, Cap’n,” he said.
“Like enough, like enough they did!” the Captain answered, sunk in gloom. “Like enough Barney Toll did, the Lord forgive him. He’s a hardened sinner is Barney and knows no better. He’s one as I’d ought to be afraid to go to sea with in an Indiaman, let alone that shell of a brig! And to hear the men cursing at the guns, and no more thought o’ their souls than so many Bristol niggers, ’twas too much for me! Let alone that sign that come to me and said, as plain as plain, ‘Go below, Ozias, and get between the tubs, and leave it to them as thinks nothing o’ their latter end to carry on!’ It was humble and thankful I was to do it.”
“Well, I’m hanged!” the outsider muttered. He looked about him with goggling eyes. If anything could have astonished him more than the tale, it was the breathless admiration that the men about him paid to it. “Well, I am hanged!” he repeated in a mazed voice.
But he was a landsman who had dropped in by chance, and he knew nothing of Ozias and his ways. He did not know that if Ozias was to be believed, he had taken refuge between the tubs — if the tubs had not figured in each repetition his hearers would have been sorely disappointed — in the heat of every action in which he had taken part. He did not know that than Ozias, croak as he might ashore, there was no more desperate fighter, and that three parts in four of the charm which the company found in his narration lay in a mystifying uncertainty how far it was real to Ozias himself. Hence the bated breath, the rapt attention, the awed faces that even the foreseen reappearance of the tubs failed to provoke to a smile.
Some held the story to be pure delusion. Others believed it to be an invention, framed in the first place to afford spiritual comfort to Ozias’s conscience, and persisted in so long that Ozias himself now believed in it. But the majority regarded it as a mystery, a parting of body and spirit, as it were, that shed about Copestake an awful light. They discussed it in corners, in low voices, thinking slowly and speaking seldom. They remarked with admiration that even in his cups Ozias never departed from it, nor did the boldest venture to contradict it in his presence — not even Barney Toll, though Barney was the roughest of mates.
By this time both rooms were full of noise, for by some odd accident an anker of Nantz had sprung a leak and been brought ashore, and the crew were standing treat to the privileged. The noise of the revel could be heard as far as the Privateersman, where a like scene was staged, and it is possible that a similar anker had met with an accident. Between the two houses men reeled to and fro, brushing aside the half-hearted efforts of the women to lead them home.
Of those who bragged and staggered, among the tipsiest was Joe Fewster. He had had his share of the brandy — was he not Budgen’s nephew? — and his head was not of the strongest. He viewed the wealth accruing to his uncle as already his own, and was loud in his denunciation of Budgen’s stinginess. “The old skinflint!” he boasted, addressing any who would listen to him. “He’ll ha’ to do me rich now! He’ll ha’ to gi’ me a share, or sure as I’m alive I’ll ‘list! I’ll skelp him now or I’ll cost him more than his whole cargo, so help me, I will!”
His hearers winked. “And how’ll ‘ee do it, Joe?” they asked slyly, though Joe’s hold on Budgen was no secret.
“You’ll see!” Joe replied, with drunken gravity. “And he’ll see too, th’ old curmudgeon! I ha’ got him in the hollow of this hand! There’s a good time coming, and I do invite ‘ee all to drink wi’ me to-morrow, the day after, and day after that and — —”
A man cut him short. “Lord,” he said, with a wink, “wi’ trating and drinking you’ll drink the prize dry — if so be as you are as good as your word! But there, lads, I’m fearing Joe, brave as he be now, when he’s facing Budgen to-morrow he’ll sing another tune! You’ll be hiding between the tubs, Joe, I’m fearing!”
“Ay,” a third put in, struck by a happy thought. “I fear that be so. But there’s a way out o’ that, Joe, lad. Face the old chap while the drink’s in ‘ee, that’s what I say! No time like now — if ye bean’t afeared of him?”
“Show him me!” Joe bawled, staggering to his feet, and striking out wildly. “Show me the old badger! And I’ll strip his skin off him! Show him me!”
“Fine words! Fine words, lad, for sure! But the Cove’s far and—”
“I’ll go there, right now. I’ll go there!” Joe shouted. “Sink me, but I will!” He waggled his silly head, and reeled towards the door, fell against the table, brought up short and cursed it. “Wha’ you getting in my way for?” he maundered.
The jokers saw their chance. They egged him on, grinning at one another. One smacked him on the back, another pushed him towards the door. With shouts of laughter they handed him across the quay, calling to others and passing on the jest. The notion of rousing old Budgen from his bed tickled them hugely, and with drunken jokes they hauled in a boat, and at no small risk of a ducking Joe, still hiccoughing threats of what he would do, was bundled into it. The cool air did anything but sober him, and he would have set off without oars. But someone fetched them and set them on the thole-pins, and amid a volley of “Off you go, Joe! Bully for you, Joe! Bolt the badger, Joe!” they gave the boat a powerful thrust and sent it out.
One, more sober than his fellows, opined that the man might be drowned. But “Not he!” the others scoffed. “He’s a fool, but he’s a waterman! And the wind’s off shore. ‘Twill be quiet under the point. He’ll not drown!”
Joe so far justified their opinions that, becoming aware that he was holding oars, he began to pull away more steadily than might have been expected. He rowed, indeed, after a fashion that promised to make his voyage a long one, and the oars rattled on the thole-pins in no seaman-like manner. And once or twice he fell over the thwart. But he recovered himself each time, gave way again, and the ebb that was running carried him out. The men listened awhile to the sound of the oars, then reeled back to their drink and speedily forgot him.
Fortunately for him, Joe knew every rock and streak of creaming water that fringed the beach, and drunk or sober, he had the longshoreman’s instinct. But by the time he found himself abreast of the point towards which he had been headed, his notion of his destination and his errand had grown hazy. When he opened the Cove — or would have opened it had he been able to see — the offshore wind that blew out of the Cove and put a chop on the water, helped the ebb-tide to carry him seawards. For some minutes he did not notice this, or that he was drifting at a fair rate towards the coast of France. Then his obfuscated senses grew clearer, and he became aware of what he was doing. He paused, swore tipsily, looked about him and wondered in his muddled way what had brought him there. Presently feeling the breeze on his left hand, he pulled the bow of the boat round and set it for the land again, but his progress was now slow. Both wind and tide were against him, and he was in no condition to make a steady effort. He made little way.
The moon had not risen, and a landsman in his plight, with nothing about him but the dark sea, rippling invisibly against the bow, and breaking here and there into pale gleams, would have, likely enough, been panic-stricken. But Joe was not a landsman, and though muddled and vexed, he persisted, and made
some way. The notion of visiting Budgen had passed from his mind, and why he was afloat he could not say; but when, pausing to take breath and to look over his shoulder, he saw a dark mass before him, he had the sense to know that it was the French prize, and he supposed that it was the object that he had set out to reach. He pulled on, drove his boat under the quarter, got hold of the chains, and swaying perilously on his feet, he pulled himself along until he found the ladder.
He climbed aboard without mishap, but was still so fuddled that he let his boat go adrift, and when he reached the deck he did not think it strange that a man should clutch him by the throat. Probably he took the act for a friendly move, to save him from falling, for as the man relaxed his grasp, Joe laughed foolishly. “Stacks o’ brandy!” he hiccoughed. “Fair stacks o’ brandy!” He added something about “Ozias’s nevy! Much right as anyone,” and he reeled aft, a little more drunk now that his anxiety was relieved. He had been aboard in the afternoon, he knew his way, and he staggered aft and tumbled down to the skipper’s cabin. No light there — nor above, for that matter! But all that he now wanted was to sleep, and he felt for the bunk. He did not find it, but that did not matter, he slipped to the floor, his back against a bulkhead. Almost before he had touched the wood he was asleep and snoring; nor did he know any more than the planks under him that he had been within as little of his death as was hardly worth naming. For once the drink had saved a man’s life.
Unluckily for him, he was one of those who never become seasoned vessels, but pay for every bout the penalty of an aching head and a queasy stomach. How long he slept he did not know, but he awoke to a dreadful sense of nausea and giddiness. The grey light, stealing in through the round port-hole, disclosed the squalor of a cabin hastily abandoned. Overalls that had slid into comers lay mixed up with sea-boots and empty bottles, frowsy blankets hung from dingy bunks, and the smell of spirits poisoned the air. The brig floated on an even keel, but Joe’s brain reeled, and the floor heaved with it. With a groan he closed his eyes and sought relief in sleep.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 754