Captain Adam (37 page)

It graveled Adam to hear that old charge. There'd never been an ounce of truth in it. He knew who had been Thomas Hart's agent here! If he ever fetched out that deposition— But he said nothing.

Deborah, skirt rustling, eyes dowTicast, came in with some needlework and sat at the other end of the bench before the fire. Obadiah picked up the brandy bottle and went to the back of the house. Soon Obadiah returned—in nightrail, nightcap, dressing robe.

"Bed's turned over but it's cold."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Father!"

She put down the needlework and sped out, to return with a v.'arm-ing pan into which she scraped embers. She went out with this.

Obadiah came into the room, walking with that peculiar widespread walk of his. He looked mighty silly in the nightcap, but that robe, Adam reckoned, must have cost sixteen shillings.

"We must talk about this some other time. Captain. This—and other matters. Good night now."

"Good night, sir."

Deborah came back and picked up her needlework and sat down on the bench, the same bench Adam sat on. The needlework was something fancy, Adam reckoned. Anyway the needle made a hollow bouncy "pong!" each time it went through. Now and then a flurry of leaves would click against the window, or a piece would fall off a burning log, to sink sheepishly among the deeper embers, and a shower of sparks would go spitting up the chimney. These were the only sounds.

jiT r? Adam stared at the fire. The logs were mostly red cedar, well «^ yj dried. Each was bottomed by small pink flames that strove to reach its top; and now and then a flame, stretching, would get up there, and expand, waxing blue, and leap in glee, and waver, then abruptly, as if spat at, die. But the flames underneath kept licking away.

"Pong!" went the needle. "Pong!"

Adam stared at the backs of his hands, but they looked pretty much the same as they always had, so, after a while, he stared at the fire again.

Deborah asked him about the voyage. What had the weather been like? He answered a shade impatiently. You didn't talk about sea weather except to sailors. If there was a lot of it, then there was a lot of work; or if not, not. And in any case the weather Deborah Selden asked about was gone now.

She asked also about London, though cautiously; and it was with caution that Adam answered. The truth is, he did not care to admit even to himself how disappointed he had been in what he used to call Home. What good things about it he could find in his heart to say, he said; but those weren't many. And he finished—remembering his mother, though not mentioning her—with the bitter observation that it was hard to see why folks had to be dragged out of jails or made drunk or hit on the head in order to persuade them to quit a place like that for a place like this.

"But I thought you didn't like Newport, Captain?"

"Never said that. I just figured Newport didn't like me."

"Do they really do those things to enlist people?"

"Worse. They steal 'em."

Without making any mention of his own exploits, he told her about the kidnappers. She was horrified.

"Why, there ought to be a law against that!"

"Probably is. There's laws against pretty nigh everything."

Their voices trailed off; and soon there was again only the sound of her sewing and the spit of sparks in the fireplace.

Some time passed in this way.

Then Adam rose. He waggled his hands. When he did succeed in speaking, his voice was louder than it had any reason to be.

"So you still want a husband, even though you don't have to have one, is that it?"

She did not look up from her needlework, and indeed she bent over it a little lower.

"Captain, I don't think that's very kind of you. I never said I just wanted a husband. I wanted you. So when I got a chance I asked you. And when you said no, I still wanted you. So I tried to trick you."

"You sure did."

"Any other girl would have done the same. Only she'd get a better chance. She'd let you walk out with her, and if she could, she'd bundle with you. Then you'd get all fussed up, and you'd beg her to marry you, and you'd think you was lucky when she said she would, not knowdng she'd planned it that way. With me it wasn't the same. I had to ask straight-out."

He looked at the fire, and then he looked at the top of her head and down the back of her neck, where her dress stood out a bit.

"You never wanted anybody else, the same way?"

"No, Adam. I can honestly say I never did."

"But you did want me—like that?"

She had ceased to do the needlework. She dropped her hands to her lap, it could be to control them. Otherwise she didn't stir.

"I did, and I still do."

The voice was tiny. Slowly her head was lowered even more. Downy black hairs clustered at the nape of her neck just beneath the bun. Her shoulders were hunched up a bit.

She did not stir. He put out a hand and placed it on her shoulder, and at the touch she fairly jumped. She was quiet after that, but rigid. Her hands were pressed down white in her lap. Her feet shoved the floor.

"If I'd known that was the way you felt—well, things might have been different."

"You always seemed to be afraid of me."

"Maybe I was. I was afraid of most folks then. After all, I don't know who my father was, for sure. And my mother I don't remember well. Mr. and Mrs. Sedgewick weren't much help, though they didn't beat me much—I guess not as much as they should've."

"You— You used to jeer at everybody."

"I reckon that's because I was scared. Then the better work I did, the smarter I got, the more it seemed folks disliked me. I guess I just imagined that. But naturally I never even dreamed that you—well, I never even gave myself a loose to think about that, that's all. And now it's too late."

Her shoulder leapt under his hand and her head went back, so that he retreated, truly thinking for an instant that she was about to spring at him and claw his face with her fingernails.

"You didn't marry that red-head down there?"

She looked lovely. Her eyes were flashing. Her chin was up, and the way her head was lifted it showed the lines of her neck. Her hands were at her sides on the bench now, and her feet were drawn underneath her, as though she was all readied to spring.

Fascinated, he moved toward her.

"Don't you touch me, Adam Long!"

He stopped.

"Are you married to her?"

He shook his head.

"No," he said.

Her head went down, and the muscles in her shoulders and arms slacked off. She slumped.

"I'm sorr)'," she whispered. "I didn't think even you would be fool enough to do that. But I had to ask."

He just stood there looking at her; and he was the one who was doing the trembling now.

Color rose in her neck, in her face.

"You can touch me now, if you want, Adam," she whispered.

Eager leaves tinked and scraped at the window, then turned out of sight, sinldng.

Adam did not touch her. He was afraid to.

"No, I'm not married— But it's sort of the same, in a way."

"How do you mean? No, I'd rather you didn't tell me! But you—you're not really married?"

"Not really, no. But I got certain obligations. I've done certain things and I reckon I can't back out of 'em now. I reckon that in the eyes of God I am married. God's got it all wrote down, in the Book. You know that."

She rose. Head averted, she stood right close to him. He could smell her hair.

"Reckon I'd better get back to the schooner," he muttered.

"You don't have to go, Adam."

"Reckon I'd better."

The air outside, unexpectedly cold, grabbed him like so many hands. He realized that he was all drenched w^ith sweat.

A shadow sprang from behind a maple. Arms went around Adam's neck. He forgot his sword, and brought up a knee, hopping back.

"Ow! Adam, you hurt me!"

"Thunderation! How'd I know it was you, out in the dark like this?"

"You take me for a footpad? We don't have 'em here."

"I've just come from England, and they sure have 'em there."

"Just come from England, yes, and where do you go?"

"Selden's the only other owner now. I had to make a report."

Elnathan came closer. She had a long woolen shawl over head and shoulders, a shawl the size of a comforter, and when she let this fall partly open, Adam saw that she wasn't wearing a great deal more. She must be cold, he thought.

"Forgive me, my chick." She slid an arm around his neck, pressing close to him. "It's been so long—"

"We're in a public street, woman!"

"Yes. Let's go inside. That's what I was waiting to ask you."

"Zeph—"

"He's asleep. Won't wake up for another hour, we can be quiet."

She laid her cheek on his chest, turning her lips up. Her eyes were closed. Her breath came fast.

"Come on, Adam. He won't hear anything. Come on."

He wrenched himself free, choky noises in his throat. He didn't say anything at all, just ran on down the hill.

It was as well for him that he did not see Elnathan Evans' face, the way she looked after him.

PART NINE

Said a Spider to a Fly

hr ^^ A sailor gets used to long separations, though it does not

«_/ / follow that he likes them. No matter what the poets may

sing about absence making the heart grow fonder, any man whose skin is more sensitive than pasteboard knows that it's better to have your darling lying alongside of you, preferably with all her clothes off, than to dream about her from a distance. Well, the waiting was over now. Adam had claimed a cavalier's reward—and would claim it again. He should have been happy. He wasn't.

He could no longer tell himself that this was a real home he had established in the house on the hill just outside of ICingston. He had been overeager, trying to delude himself. He knew this now. Jamaica was no place for an orphan like him to roost. He didn't belong here.

He resented Jamaica. He had never liked the place, now he hated it. From the veranda, while Maisie mixed him a drink, he looked over the garden wall, over the town of Kingston, to the harbor, which was crowded. The fleet was back—seven warships, fourth- and fifth-raters, together with their attendant vessels of supply. A great deal had happened in these parts since Adam's previous visit. Admiral Benbow had caught up with du Casse oJEf Santa Marta—ten vessels, only four of them warships, loaded to the gunwales with treasure. Benbow himself had sailed in with all guns blazing, but he'd not been followed by his captains, who despite orders had lingered in the background, making excuses. Eventually these captains had even presented the admiral with a round robin begging him to break off the chase. By that time Benbow, semi-conscious from wounds, was barely able to curse them. The English Navy was indelibly disgraced; while the luckiest man in the world, du Casse, escaped.

Benbow was still laid up—one of his legs had been smashed by chain shot—but he was going right ahead with his plans to bring charges of cowardice against the captains, two of whom had already been sentenced to death. Benbow's was not a forgiving nature. His rage made itself felt throughout the colony. There was no shore leave. He'd hear no com-

plaints from civilians. Bumboatmen were roughly handled. More marines than ever tramped the streets of Kingston and Port Royal. The press gang and the requisition squads had never been so busy.

Nearer, the prospect was more pleasant, consisting as it did of a garden all stippled with sunspots, of zigzagging flagstones set in the bright green grass, and gardenia and hibiscus, roses, jasmine, cereus, and, pert and pretty, and startlingly simple amid those lush tropical blooms, great masses of periwinkle.

Nearer still, in fact in his lap, lay the real causes of Adam's perturbation. For he wasn't just emotionally upset. There were touchable, material reasons why he was in the dumps.

"Pish, my darling! Adam chick, you're not going to stew over tradesmen's bills at a time like this, sure?"

She gave him his punch and knelt by his chair, and put her hands over his left hand, her cheek against his left arm.

He smiled at her, but only from a distance. He shook his head. The husband who comes home to find himself inundated by evidences of his wife's extravagance was, he knew, a comic character. He didn't care. If, as some folks said, it showed a mean nature to worry about money matters, well then he had a mean nature. These papers in his lap were not funny, they were real. They might even prove tragic. Where was his Tillinghast blood? A true aristocrat would have swept them aside with a sneer. Adam couldn't. He was a mercantile man, a trader, and he took such things seriously.

He did not blame Maisie. In the circumstances she had behaved with a commendable moderation. It was his own fault, a result of his dereliction of duty, that they had been captured by the pirates and kept for a time on Providence, where of necessity all Maisie's clothes had been left. As she herself had pointed out, she had to have something to wear. And prices had gone 'way up, partly because the war had made for a shortage of fine clothes, partly because Maisie, already deeply in debt here, was a marked woman when she asked for more credit. Poor girl! Alone, with no one to guide her, spied on, tittered at, resented, she had consoled herself with change after change of costume here in their own house. She had pirouetted before a mirror, oh, yes! Adam was a lucky man that this was all she'd done. Kingston had not been kind to her. He didn't like the way she looked. When she smiled it was the same, warming his heart; but sometimes, when she didn't know that he was watching her, lines of worriment and of harshness crimped the corners of her mouth. She was paler than she'd been. Even the glory of her hair, it could be, was a touch dimmed.

More than ever it was advisable that she get away, that they both get out. But—how? Adam, who had maybe overstrained himself in order to

buy Zeph Evans' share of the schooner, had precious httle ready cash. Mr. Cartwright, "the jew who wasn't a Jew," was pressing for his money, with twelve per cent interest. Nothing had been done about the Tread-way plantation case. Nothing had been done about the Quatre Moulins.