I did not stay to argue with her but wandered toward the rear of the house and the kitchen, finding myself hungry. As I passed the door, I looked into the library, but the room stood empty, with no fire in the grate. So Ian Pryott was elsewhere this morning.
In the kitchen Mrs. Crawford’s tall, lean figure moved stiffly from stove to table to sink as she went about her work. When I said, “Good morning,” she wiped her hands deliberately on her apron and turned to regard me with open disapproval.
“So you got what you came for, Mrs. Brock,” she said.
Her insolence implied more strongly than anything else had done that I was of no consequence in this house. It told me that she knew very well what had happened and that for her there was only one Mrs. McLean in this household.
“I wonder if I may have some breakfast?” I asked, pointedly ignoring her remark.
“Fix what you like,” she told me and went back to her sinkful of dishes. “If you come to meals with the family, you’ll be served with them. If you come late, you’ll have to make out as you can.”
Her rude assumption that my position in the house was hardly better than that of a scullery maid was clear, but I could think of no way to assert myself. In fact, I had no idea what my position in the family was to be, or what authority, if any, would be allotted to me. I made myself some tea and found bread and butter and a dish of preserves. Then I sat down at the kitchen table to eat.
While Mrs. Crawford might hold me in low regard, she was nevertheless willing to use me as a receptacle for a running stream of talk. In Mrs. McLean’s presence she had been silent, but as I was to learn, she liked the sound of her own voice.
The funeral, I quickly gathered, was to be this afternoon, and there would be many there from the town to mourn a fine, important man like the captain. Afterwards they’d be coming to the house for an early supper, and she’d have her hands full with the baking. How this sudden marriage of Mrs. McLean’s son was to be explained to the townsfolk, Mrs. Crawford could not imagine.
I took a swallow of tea and set my cup down firmly. “I am Captain Nathaniel Heath’s daughter,” I said with some dignity. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him in Scots Harbor?”
She twisted her thin neck to throw me a scathing look. “Half good blood doesn’t make all good blood. I remember your mother—and your grandmother and grandfather before her. Irish trades-people and fisher folk! Not fit to marry with the likes of the McLeans. It’s a disgrace to bring you here and set you down in the company of a lady like Mrs. McLean!”
I choked on a crumb of bread and when I had recovered, I rose from my place at the table. “No matter how long you may have worked here, Mrs. Crawford, you’ve no right to speak to me in such a manner,” I told her heatedly.
Her bony shoulders moved in a shrug that dismissed my words. “I’ll not be here long, I can promise you that. If the captain’s will leaves everything to the Chinese woman—as they say—then I’ll be walking out the minute I can leave.”
I would not listen to her longer, but spread a second piece of bread with butter and took it with me as I went out of the room. Behind me I heard a mutter of “good riddance.”
I knew I must escape the house and get outdoors in order to recover from the heavy atmosphere of hostility. When I had put on my outdoor things I let myself out the front door with no word to anyone, and found myself greeted by a warm, Indian summer morning. It was a beautiful day to explore my surroundings and I felt lightened and more cheerful out of doors.
Avoiding the point itself and the lighthouse, I walked back along the road I had driven down with Laurel when we had arrived in the storm yesterday—so long ago! Now the sky was clear and blue with only a few distant puffs of white cloud. The waters of the protected little cove glistened quiet and serene below the cliff and from where I stood I saw that a path zigzagged downward through scrubby brush toward the lumber-strewn expanse below. There seemed no activity down there at the moment. Undoubtedly the captain’s death had caused all work to stop for a time of mourning.
A stand of pine woods lay between me and the bluff path, with a way winding through the trees. I walked toward it and entered the woods. Here beneath the pines it was shadowy and cool, the air pungently scented and amurmur with the whispering of branches overhead. In a few moments I was in the open again, with the sun on my head. A rocky path dropped away down the bluff.
I could see that the village lay along the curve of land that continued inward beyond the cove occupied by the shipyard. It was the ship-building area that interested me now, however. I started down the path, pulling my skirts free when they caught in the brush, drawing strength and reassurance from the very warmth of the sun. It seemed as though I had been cold ever since I’d arrived at Bascomb’s Point, and bright sunshine was welcome. The northeaster had blown itself out, and even the breezes from the sea blew more gently and warmly today.
The path dipped steeply toward a wide ledge of ground well above the reach of high tide. On the right were various buildings, probably sail-loft, rope walk, and tool shops that serviced the building of ships. On the beach rose a hull in construction, its bare ribs curving upward from the keel, the ways that would eventually launch it running long rails down into the tide. All was quiet here today, the cove empty of activity.
I picked my way across ground strewn with wood chips that carpeted pebbles and sand, finding my way among barrels and lumber piles as I moved toward the dock area that served the cove. The wharves were empty of supply craft today and only one ship rode at her mooring, masts and yards glistening white in the sun above a black hull. While she carried no furled sails in her rigging, she looked shipshape and well-cared-for.
As I came closer the blunt prow told me she was probably an old whaler. Lettered along the hull was the name Pride of New England—a name I would have recognized as belonging to a Bascomb ship, even before I noted the yellow house flag flying from her mainmast. All seemed deserted at the moment, but a gangplank connected the ship with the dock and I walked toward it, suddenly eager to go aboard.
I was still so very young that day, so ready to be distracted from my troubles, not yet fully aware of the implications my situation might hold for me. I still thought stubbornly in terms of escape, in terms of some miraculous solution to my problems.
Wooden steps led to the dock and I climbed them and walked across unevenly spaced boards that let me look through to gurgling water beneath. The wet brown pilings were barnacle-encrusted and the wood in places had the furry look of age. Clearly this dock was little used these days, for all that the ship at its side seemed clean and well kept.
In New York my father had taken me aboard various craft and I was no stranger to ships. I had always counted it a treat as a child to be taken to South Street where the great bowsprits reached out above the street to the second-and third-story windows of the warehouses they faced. The thought that here was a ship that I might have all to myself brought a further quickening of eagerness to my step.
As I walked along the dock I looked up toward Bascomb’s Point where the captain’s house stood out boldly, high above me, its double structure gleaming white in the morning sunlight. No one seemed to move up there, and if anyone watched from those far windows, I did not care. There was no one nearby to stop me from exploring.
It was not until I reached the cleated gangplank that a breeze brought me a snatch of song and I paused in surprise to listen. The voice was thin and light, but the words and the tune were familiar. Someone aboard the Pride was singing an old sea chantey.
The voice was a child’s and as I reached the rail I saw Laurel McLean in the stern of the ship. She stood behind the great wheel, with oversized spokes in her two small hands. I knew she was far from reality at that moment, steering a ship at sea and singing as lustily as her piping voice was able. As I stood at the rail a man’s voice chimed into the song, drowning out Laurel’s thin tones. Had I heard a masculine voice sooner, I might have turned back. Now there was no
time, for I was already in full view. I jumped down to the deck and looked hastily around. The male voice had been silenced by my appearance and though I gazed forward the length of the ship, the owner of it was not in sight.
Laurel behaved as her grandmother had behaved toward me earlier. She went on with her make-believe steering and kept on singing as if in the pretense that I did not exist. Wondering if she had been told of her father’s marriage and would thus be all the more antagonistic toward me, I walked back to the wheel.
“Good morning,” I called. “I like your song. Can you tell me where this ship is bound for?”
My acceptance of her game surprised her into an answer. “We’re bound for Californiay!” she shouted. “Around old Cape Stiff and up the Pacific coast.”
I knew her imagination had transformed the clumsy whaler into a graceful clipper, and I understood very well the spell that lay upon her. Looking up at bare rigging I could almost see full canvas billowing as we breasted the seas with a fair wind. I could hear the very creaking of timbers and the hum of the rigging as the ship headed on at full speed. All these things my father had given me and sometimes I almost felt that I too had sailed the oceans in a clipper ship.
“Can you use an extra hand before the mast, cap’n?” I asked Laurel.
She almost smiled at me, then pursed her lips and scowled instead. “I want no landlubbers aboard,” she said. “And especially not you.” Then gave up her make-believe. “I thought you were going home today.”
So no one had told her. That was a mistake, I thought, but I was the last person who should have to instruct her in the unhappy news of her father’s marriage.
“Who was singing with you just now?” I asked, postponing the matter of my leaving.
Laurel turned her head to look at me directly. The wind had blown several limp strands of hair into a snarl that whipped across her face. Her dress was as careless and untidy as before and there was a rent in the skirt which seemed to indicate that she dressed as she pleased, with little adult supervision. Hostility was clearly evident in her expression and I thought she would not answer. Then a notion seemed to seize her and a sly smile touched her lips.
“This ship is haunted,” she told me. “There’s an old whaling captain’s ghost who is my good friend. When I come aboard he talks to me and sings with me. He has a fierce black beard and he will frighten you if you meet him. He won’t like your being aboard, you know. If you want to get safely away, you’d better run for it at once.”
I looked at her more soberly, for I well remembered a man with a fierce black beard.
“Is your ghost also bald-headed?”
Again she was taken by surprise and forgot to scowl. “Yes, he is. How did you know?”
I turned and made my way quickly along the slightly slanting deck toward the place where the try works were. Here there was a great brick stove with an iron cauldron set into it, under which a fire could be lighted. It was here that oil was tried out of the huge chunks of whale blubber. My father had shipped on a whaler once as a boy, but while there had been excitement in the chasing of the whales, he had hated the business of getting the whale cut up and aboard. He had been sickened by the smells and the blood and the slippery decks. Sailing a ship at sea meant more to him than such butchery.
Around the structure of the stove I came upon what I expected. The man with the black beard whom I had last seen in the doorway of Captain’s Obadiah’s room, sat crosslegged on the deck, where he must had dropped out of sight when I appeared at the rail. He made no effort to escape me now, but got up with the ease of a born sailor at home on a deck.
I noted the fellow’s skin had a tanned, weather-beaten look—the mark of a man recently aboard a ship. He squinted his eyes as he stared at me and I saw a sudden flicker of surprise cross his face—as if he recognized me, though he could have had no more than a glimpse of me last night. He recovered speedily and regarded me with a jaunty, confident air that had, nevertheless, something furtive about it.
“I don’t seem too able, playing ghost for the little lady,” he said. “You’ve shown me up for certain, miss.”
“Captain Obadiah looked as though he thought you a ghost when he saw you last night,” I reminded him sternly.
“I’m no ghost,” he said, unperturbed by my words. “Who wants me can find me easy enough. Just ask for Tom Henderson.”
I liked neither the man nor his manner. Beneath his easy insolence there lurked an evident threat.
“Do you know that the captain is dead?” I asked. “That is what your sudden appearance accomplished last night. You gave him a shock he did not recover from.”
A blank look seemed to slip like a mask over the fellow’s face and I could not tell whether my news was a surprise or not. He shrugged slightly and did not answer me. It was clear that he would not grieve at the passing of Captain Obadiah Bascomb. Clear too that he’d had enough of my company. He touched a finger to his temple in a salute more mocking than respectful and went around me on the deck.
“I’ll shove off now,” he said. He waved to Laurel, sprang down the gangplank and jogged along the dock. I stood watching and in a few moments saw him take the road that led into town.
When he was out of sight, I turned to Laurel. “What was he doing about this ship?”
For once the child had no objection to giving me an answer. “He said he’d shipped aboard the Pride as a boy. He said he wanted to renew her acquaintance. But he made a face when he said it. Maybe he just wanted a good place to hide. A place where he could watch the captain’s house. That’s what he was doing with a spyglass when I came aboard.”
“Then we’d better report him to your father,” I said.
“Why should we? I don’t tell my father anything,” Laurel said darkly. “This is the captain’s ship—”
She paused as though suddenly realizing that she could no longer speak of the captain in the present tense.
“Captain Obadiah’s grandfather built her,” she went on. “She’s not working now, but Captain Obadiah had her kept shipshape and he wouldn’t sell her. He liked a deck under his feet, he always said, and he liked a captain’s cabin so he could get away from landlubbers. He used to keep secrets in his desk down here. He told me so. Some day he was going to show me how to open the secret drawers.”
Laurel took her hands from the wheel and turned to look out across the quiet cove toward the waters of the harbor. I knew with a pang that she had turned to hide a grief I had not suspected.
“I’m sorry about the captain,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“We were good friends.” She spoke fiercely over her shoulder. “My grandmother says it was your coming here that killed him. You made him suffer so much that it broke his heart and he died of it. Why don’t you just go away and let us all alone?”
I stared in dismay at her quickly averted head. How was I to combat so wicked a falsehood? If the captain had been disturbed by my coming, it was no fault of mine. Under the circumstances it seemed doubly unfair and unwise for Sybil McLean to further prejudice this child against me.
“Sometime I’d like to talk to you about all this,” I said. “I’d like to tell you about my being here.”
She hunched her shoulders, rejecting me, and I knew this was no time for persuasion, I left her alone and retraced my steps along the deck, moving forward into the blunted curve of the prow that was so unlike the sharp cut of a clipper ship. There I stood leaning upon the rail, reaching out along the bowsprit with one arm, trying to forget the land before me and feel myself at sea. I must have been lost in my own effort at make-believe, as Laurel had been lost in hers, for I did not notice the man who stood amid the scattered timbers of the shipyard looking up at me, until he hailed me across the ribbon of water.
“Ahoy up there, Mrs. McLean.”
I looked down with a start and saw Ian Pryott on the shore below. The sun shone on his bare head, glinting it with gold as he looked up at me with a strange exciteme
nt.
“Stay right where you are for a moment!” he cried. “You’ve just given me a tremendous idea. How would you like to pose for a figurehead?”
I had no idea what he meant, but the notion delighted me. “I’d love to,” I said readily, with never a thought for the difficulties such a promise might involve. “Come aboard and tell me about it.”
He shook his head. “Not now. You’ve set the house in a stir by disappearing. Mrs. McLean wants to be sure you’re fitted with proper mourning clothes for the funeral, and she could find you nowhere. Brock has been sent to search for you, so I thought I’d come and warn you.”
My small adventure had given me a brief respite, but now all my troubles surged back redoubled, and the fact must have betrayed itself in my expression.
“There—I’ve done it!” Ian said in regret. “You’ve lost the exhilaration I saw in you just now. Don’t let them do that to you, Miranda. Fight them for the right to be happy!”
I was surprised at his vehemence, but there was little fighting spirit in me at the moment. “How did you know where to find me?” I asked despondently.
“I happened to see you go down the bluff and I watched until you disappeared aboard the Pride. Then I followed to warn you.”
Apparently he had not seen Tom Henderson talking to me. I would have told him about the incident, but Ian glanced over his shoulder toward the bluff above the shipyard.
“Here comes your husband now. He’s probably spotted you from above, just as I did. I’ll see you later, Mrs. McLean.” The way he spoke the name I now bore carried a sting of mockery, for all that he had seemed friendly a moment before.
Already Brock was plunging down the path, the severity of his limp hardly evident on steeply pitched ground. Ian gave me a quick salute before he strode off in the direction of town. I did not want to be found here in the prow watching Brock’s approach and I turned away, wishing there were some place where I could hide and never be found at all.
Sea Jade Page 8
