The Lovely Ship

by Storm Jameson

  Mary felt about this familiar scene very like a man married to a beautiful woman. Sometimes when she looked at it, a poignant emotion of surprise shot across her habitual complacence. She thought: “Why, it’s beautiful,” and with a warmer thrill: “It’s mine.”

  During the past month she had changed a good deal. The change was apparent as she stood in the bright light at the open window. Her mouth curved more richly, and her beauty had glowed and softened into sudden maturity. John Mempes set down the process to the account of her sinful connection with “that fellow.” Grimly untouched as he was by the moral fervour of an age in which he had the air of a survival, he could yet find no words harsh enough for Mary’s conduct. He groaned over her in secret.

  Nothing could have been more innocent, and from his point of view more incredibly silly, than the relations between the two concerned. They were so much in accord that they felt no impulse to talk about it. There were no more meetings at night. Their glances were as satisfying as kisses would have been. They looked at each other, in the Yard, across Mark Henry’s tulip-wood table, under John Mempes formidable nose, with smiles of understanding. It was so innocent, so full of an idyllic contentment, that Mary would have been shocked to discover that Mempes disapproved of her. She thought of herself as a very experienced woman, because she had had two husbands, one unfaithful. The idea was dangerously misleading. She was one of those women whose simplicity of mind and purpose protects them from all the assaults of life. No young girl—the young girl she had been and still seemed to a grimly ageing Mempes—would have been more unsophisticated in her attitude before her lover. She felt (and forgot she had ever felt it before) that at last she was learning what life is, and the ultimate mystery of marriage. Yes, that was how she thought of Gerry Hardman—as the man to whom she had been married for a long time, long enough to discover that a woman’s sharpest joy in life is to help in the making of a man and her privilege to stand back and admire her handiwork. In no other way could she have reconciled her frank passion for him with the code of morals in which she had been trained and to which she still held fast.

  Nothing warned her that she was at the beginning of an entirely new experience, the discovery and knowledge of spiritual love. Nothing warned her that spirits are united by pain as bodies by pleasure. Knowledge of past griefs endured apart, and prescience of a future darkened by the dread and sorrow of separation sharpened her love to a point where it was a knife in her heart, and gave her the most exquisite pain. She pitied Gerry from the bottom of her heart. And the more she pitied him the more she loved.

  In these first days she felt nothing but an overflowing happiness. Her life went gaily—with the flags out again—a scarlet one flown in either cheek.

  Astounding as it seems, she never reflected that the passion and the code of morals could not for long continue to lie down like the lion and the lamb. That day at Roxborough, half a lifetime away, seemed a complete justification of her present madness. She was quite convinced of the guileless nature of her love. And it was in fact guileless, and simple, as guileless and simple as any love ever was.

  But so insidious is the process by which in the fallible heart of man an innocent weakness becomes a roaring fury that she was already, on this bright morning, planning a means of seeing Gerry with more ease and secrecy. She did not think of it like that. She had no definite end in view, except the satisfaction of her longing to prove how kind and understanding a companion she could be. The thought of Gerry’s need of comfort and her fitness to give it turned the knife in her heart. It was a terrifying and unique sensation.

  Her imagination was so ready with ways and means that she might have been surprised at the extent and ease of her duplicity. Calmly, she selected one of several plans that occurred to her for getting him to herself.

  The Mark Henry, one of the composite-built clippers she had built for the Chinese route, was being used now in the French wine trade. She was due to leave for Tonnay-Charente for a cargo of cognac, and Mary proposed that Gerry should sail on her. The French shipper had been giving considerable trouble which correspondence, between two people imperfectly understanding each other, was complicating to a point where the Mark Henry’s captain had difficulty in dealing with the Frenchman at all.

  It was not Gerry’s job to clear up the inward freight people’s troubles, but he could do it. And there was ample precedent in Danesacre custom for his doing it, since managers and owners in need of a holiday took it more often than not in the form of a business voyage in one of their own ships. Her heart, that clever pander, assured her that Gerry needed a rest, and had needed it since he came to Danesacre and for a long time before that. Mary decided to send him to Tonnay-Charente in the Mark Henry and at the last minute, when all was settled, to announce her intention of making the voyage herself, with Richard. The excuse, a change of air for Richard.

  When she came to tell Gerry, she felt a new diffidence, caused by the fact that she was wishing he had seen the need to arrange something like this himself. His answer devastated her.

  “It doesn’t seem the most politic thing we could do.” He flung her a quizzical glance.

  “I don’t think it matters what people say about my sailing in the same ship as my manager,” Mary said at last. “For every man in the town who talks there’ll be another to tell him to hold his tongue. Danesacre is like that, a little of the decent sea blows into our streets; think of the old walls covered with flowers. Besides, we’ll have the captain’s wife as duenna. But if you’d rather not______”

  She tried to speak indifferently but her face gave away her pathetic mortification. Gerry pondered for a moment the impossibility of explaining himself. Her single-mindedness terrified him. It was ferocious. Really, women were the most amazingly reckless creatures.

  He gave himself up to the luxury of being overruled. “I hate myself when I’ve made you look like that,” he said. “I can’t think what possessed me. Well, I can. But I don’t want anything except to be alone with you.”

  “Is it true?” Mary asked wistfully.

  She looked at him shyly and he smiled at her. Gerry’s smile was as destructive of her strength of will as her simplicity was of his. She saw in it something childish, something delightfully appealing and ingenuous, the same quality, in fact, that she had once found in Hugh. She was one of these women for whom men rediscover the trustful, softly appealing smiles of their first years. Oddly enough, though Gerry’s smile soothed her it destroyed her self-assurance as much as Hugh’s had always done. She felt weak and foolish as she gave him an answering glance.

  The Mark Henry left Danesacre a week later, and had brisk following winds. She was a beautifully-modelled ship, heavily sparred, and carried a main sky sail yard. She never needed driving, would not have stood it, and in light airs passed easily ahead of anything sighted. Mary rejoiced in her with a child’s delight (this voyage was many years overdue), and Richard was allowed, by an agreeable and private arrangement between himself and Captain James to sign on as supernumerary apprentice for the voyage. He was idiotically happy. If there had been an ounce of superfluous flesh on his slender bones it would have been thinned off by his ceaseless activity. He turned the colour of the teak wood fittings and moved about like a flame walking. Just after the Needles were left astern the wind freshened, and the Mark Henry lay over like a swooping bird to the foaming water, Richard went up to the fo’c’sle head and stood there with legs wide apart, bracing his body against the wind. It swept past him as the sea swept past the ship, parting on either side of her with a sliding hissing noise. Richard was thrilled in every part of his body, and when he caught at the weather rail to steady himself an answering thrill rushed through him from the plunging ship. For the first time in his life he felt that he was really living and not merely sharing the life around him, his mother’s, his stepfather’s, his tutor’s, and Mr. Hardman’s. He was Richard Roxby. He was acutely aware of his strong slender body and in this moment he promised himself
to use it to the utmost limit of its strength, to stretch his strength until it rang like thin spun steel. He meant his body to obey him in finding out everything there was to find out about the vaguely intoxicating wonders of the world. He meant to see queer places and bury his face in the aching sweetness of a life he had not thought very much about until this moment of life outside the world, with the Mark Henry plunging and rushing between sea and sky like a live creature, like a creature with a heart beating up through the deck to the ropes that sang about his ears. His own heart plunged and rushed on with her and when her bowsprit came up against a cold white sky his heart leaped up and he pressed his lips together to keep back the shout that would, past all decency, have broken from them.

  When he went back to the cabin and sat in that warm room watching the firelight wink on the stout brass rail round the cupboard where Captain James kept the Madeira he only drank in port, he had nothing to say. He sat quietly with shining eyes, hugging to himself his glorious certainty of life. His thoughts sang in his head like the wind through the rigging of the Mark Henry. When his mother and Mr. Hardman came in he pretended, to keep them from guessing his secret, to be reading the copy of the Poems and Ballads he carried romantically in his pocket. After a time, he thought that they were not taking much notice of him or of anyone else. What did older people think about? Why were their glances equivocal and troubled? He had only just realised that this was so. Even Captain James had the air sometimes of looking for a thing that he knew was not there but could not yet quite give up hope of finding. Richard gave it up. He knew that he knew more than these other people, more even than his mother and Captain James, the two people who in his eyes were in their differing ways more knowledgeable than anyone else in the world. And seeing that neither of his companions had eyes for him he gave up his pretence of reading and stared out through the closed port on to a black sea made visible by streaks of foam, like the diamond-bright edges of knives. He at least was going to find something in life. And when he had got it he was never going to let it go. Never.

  The captain’s wife spent the days in her cabin, writing up her Household Book. She loved ports, and disliked the sea that divided them from each other; in every port she managed to acquire some new recipe or piece of household wisdom, which was added forthwith to her bulky manuscript book. She wrote a very gentle hand and committed atrocities of spelling.

  So the two who had come to the flattering conclusion that they were the only perfect friends in an imperfect world had the starboard side of the poop to themselves. They were screened from the helmsman, and neither captain nor officer on watch thought it part of his duty to trouble passengers with more than Good-day. The isolation of a ship, a speck swinging in a waste of waters, favoured the illusion that they were alone, a company of two against the world. Mary felt an enormous relief in escaping from the pressure of Garton’s; she laughed, told Gerry stories to amuse him, remembered scraps of verse, and coaxed him to talk to her. The first night out was warm and starless, the sky an immense hoop with black whalebone of cloud. Mary had her chair placed on the poop to leeward of the skylight, and Gerry sat on the skylight seat, bending over her. He began abruptly to talk of marriage.

  “We can’t marry, Mary. You couldn’t endure the scandal, could you? I couldn’t endure it with you, I’d rather have you as my mistress. I’d like you to come away with me for a long time.” He owned to himself that he was behaving badly. Yet he had never had the least intention of saying this when the voyage started. It had leapt at him quite suddenly and now he was completely possessed by it. He must have this woman to himself. He must have her soon, almost at once, as soon as she could bring herself to it. He felt like a very young man again, and like any youngster of sensitive mind and senses he had until now thought of nothing but his astonishing good fortune in being capable of feeling and rousing such a pure exquisite passion as burned within himself and Mary. Alas for the impatient minds of men. That first delicate ecstasy was already past. It had been left somewhere on the wharf when the Mark Henry slipped away. He must be further convinced of his luck, make further, less equivocal advances in experience. Gerry Hardman trembled like a boy before the little body of his mistress. The least sensual-minded of men, he craved for her because in no other way could he find relief for his frightful loneliness. “Forgive me, won’t you?” he said rather desperately. “I don’t want you to come yet, but the time is coming when I shall. Will you contrive to come away then?”

  “I’ll come,” Mary said. In one part of her she was terrified by this acquiescence. But she could not help it. “You asked me once before to come to a gate in a lane. Do you remember?”

  “You came and I failed you. Pray Heaven I shan’t fail you again.” She looked very frail, rolled in her rugs—a child with clear eyes. That she was no child but a woman of great if narrow intelligence and a spirit that occasionally daunted his, he well knew. But the most independent and spirited of women will often seem a child to the man who loves her. Gerry was divided between desire and shame. Yet he felt that whatever he said contented her. He tried stumbingly to explain.

  “I don’t just want your nights, Mary. You understand that, don’t you, and that I’m not asking you to slip out of your house in Danesacre and meet me in some obscure room? I couldn’t stand that. I want you to come right away to live with me for a long time, as long as we can. We must go away often. Do you think you can manage it?”

  “For us both to leave Garton’s together,” Mary began doubtfully. “It’s not easy. John Mempes could take charge, of course.” He was startled by the smile she gave him, with its revelation of complete surrender. “You must have what you want. Tell me when you want me, Gerry, and I’ll think of the way.”

  “You think of everything,” Gerry said, stooping over her until her hair blew against his face. “My dear. Am I making things too difficult for you? It’s not just what I want that matters to you, is it. You want it, too? Mary?”

  Mary’s upturned face was under his, and they kissed long and tranquilly, her hands holding tightly to his wrists.

  “You know I want it,” Mary said under her bream.

  “I know. My dearest, I know. Poor Mary. You love me too much.”

  “You never speak of that,” Mary said. “Have I more love for you than you for me? Tell me the truth. I don’t mind.”

  Gerry was silent for so long with his arm protectively round her shoulders that Mary grew very afraid.

  “All there is of me,” he said slowly, “is yours and for you, but therè isn’t much left of the boy you knew. I gave my wife so much, everything. Ah, you’re hurt. Forgive me, I’d rather die than hurt you, you’re everything to me now, all I have.” He had not wanted to say this to her. He said it in spite of himself, forced to it by the strain of cruelty that lies dormant in every sensitive nature. It was as if he must hurt her to make sure that she was wholly his. And he was telling her the truth. He was tired. He was almost finished, un huomo finito, infinitely far from the overweening confidence of early love.

  Mary did not answer him. She was hurt, but she rejoiced in it. “Most women of my age,” she thought quaintly, “would be pleased to feel as I am feeling now. My life is very strange. After all these years, so crowded with events, I am learning how full and rich life can be.” Compared with her, Gerry was a child, a hurt child afraid of the fire. She was surprised to find her lips trembling.

  “Are you sorry you had to tell me that?” she said wisely. “Never mind, my dear.” Part of her mind was telling her that he ought to have kept it to himself. She was glad that he had not. Not for worlds would she have foregone the bliss of this moment, and the delight of feeling herself completely necessary to him. Why, without her, he would have nothing.

  Gerry seated himself on the deck and pressed his forehead against her wrist. With the unreasonableness of a man, he would have preferred her to show a little less composure. He caught sight of her lips and was shaken himself.

  “Don’t you want
me?” he asked. “I couldn’t bear to lose you, but I have to tell you the truth.”

  “Of course.”

  “I told you that for five years I was completely in love with my wife. When she left me I thought that side of life was finished for me. I crushed it out in myself, I’m only part of a man. Oh God, I need you so. I’m all yours, what there is of me. Do you believe that?” He paused, unable because of the wretched inadequacy of words, to explain to her that finding her again had been like finding God, the peace, the love of God. He recalled the many occasions on which he had quarrelled with his wife; he had always had a sense of her as a person separate from himself, sometimes hostile to him. Mysteriously, he had no feeling of separation from Mary, she was part of him. “If this voyage could only go on forever,” he exclaimed. “I’d like to stay like this with you for the rest of my life. I’m so happy with you.”

  “That,” said Mary, “is all that matters.” She sat perfectly still, thinking that Gerry had given his wife the finest flame of his devotion and young selfless desire, so that he could give her everything but that, admiration, tenderness, but not the protective passion that asks nothing except to be allowed to serve and worship. It did not seem to her to matter very much. A good deal too much fuss was made about these things. She wanted nothing except to comfort Gerry. For herself, she asked nothing, not even comfort. Vaguely she knew that she had not always been capable of this devotion, and an obscure voice—it was a Garton voice—warned her that it was extravagant. “I can’t help it,” she thought. “I feel like that. What a detestable woman his wife must have been. It’s very queer that a woman whose name I don’t know, should be making so much difference to me.”

  “What is your wife’s name, Gerry?”

  “Mercy. She wasn’t very merciful.”

  Conceive, if you can, the simplicity with which Mary Hervey faced a course of action for which nothing in her experience or training had prepared her. She was quite assured that what Gerry demanded was nothing less than a sin against God. Miss Flora’s pupil had no escape from the conviction of sin. She never wavered from the simplest straightest belief in the punishment of sinners in Hell, she who could override every tradition in her shipbuilding remained all her life the slave of the narrowest traditions of her religion. She thought: “You are a wicked woman. There is no excuse for you. None.” It made no difference. This really virtuous woman accepted the certainty of private damnation without a quiver of her eyelashes or a tremor of her thin little body. What Gerry wanted he must have; she gave him her eternity without turning a hair.