‘Come, Sarah,’ he said, and leaned forward and took my lax hand in his own, ‘don’t look like that. I didn’t mean to distress you. I was shocked into imagining… After what I’d seen For once he failed in his usual incisive fluency. ‘I was shaken into thinking perhaps you might be pregnant with a child.’
‘Would that have been a sin also?’ I said, wearily. I don’t know where I found the courage to say it; but in fact, it was not a matter of courage, only of that woodenness of the painted woman with no heart to break.
‘A sin?’ he said. ‘A sin to have a child? Your husband’s child!’ He had dropped my hand but he took it again in both his, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Don’t you wish for a child, Sarah? You would like to have children?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I suppose I shall, anyway.’
‘Not care? But every woman wants children.’ His eyes went to the bed again, he said, ‘You’re not ill?’
‘I’m not ill,’ I said, woodenly, ‘and I’m not with child, and in future I’ll sit in a chair.’
He had let go my hands, now he sat back, looking into my face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was too severe with you, I’ve shocked you. It’s true, I’m not used to the feelings of young girls, at sea we men grow rough and unthinking. It’s a hard life and we know nothing else from our childhood.’ And quietly, reasonably, he began to speak of his own childhood on the waterfronts of Massachusetts that I myself knew well enough, where every man jack was connected with the sea and with sailing ships, with no other thought but becoming a seaman; of the bitter hard-working conditions thirty years ago when, a child of eight, he had first gone aboard to run errands for ships in port; of the first great voyage undertaken with such high hopes, ending two years later in the return, half broken by the work and savage treatment, at the age of sixteen a hardened man… Of the squalor and disease, the injury—I myself must, through my father, have heard of the poverty and distress in families where a man through all too frequent accident, lost all ability to work… ‘There was no room in those days for the helpless and useless.’
‘Any more than there is now,’ I said, inward looking. I was ungrateful for not since our courting days had I known him so kindly and agreeable. He could be so; with my parents he had been very friendly, courteous and in conversation informative and interesting. All he knew was the sea, but of the sea he knew everything there was to be known and spoke of it with intelligence, humanity and much insight into the nature, at least of men. He was as I’ve said in fact my cousin, I had known of him all my life, but he was twenty years my senior and almost always away at sea. To my father, however, who knew in what high esteem he was held, for goodness and Godliness, he was a man to whose care I might be entrusted without a qualm. In my presence, alone with me, his manner had changed, but I think now, looking back, that he was sick with the physical side of his desire for me and could not be natural. Why he chose me I shall never understand. He wished for a wife, those physical desires of his must at last have outlet, his life had been one of abstinence, he could bear it no more. And here was my busy, bustling, competent family, and among them one who seemed docile and biddable—and desirable. Above all, I came, to his long knowledge of them, of Godly and virtuous people, I would worship with him—worship those two gods of his, the God above him and the god within him, who was himself. So, alone with me, his passions yet held in rein, he was sick with longing for me, and once those passions had been assuaged, sick with shame for the shock and violence of the assuaging. From the time of our marriage I had seen little of the man my parents knew—whom all the little town of Marion knew, and all the Massachusetts waterfront and the waterfronts of the world. But now that that man for a little while made his reappearance and conversed with me as though I were a friend, a companion, one who might even sit in the daytime on a bed, without rousing the most violent of nameless suspicions—it was too late. The painted lips of the figurehead opened only to spew back a mouthful of the salt sea.
He would not be defeated. He said: ‘God has given you gifts. You have only to learn. You have only to try.’
‘I’ve given up trying,’ I said. ‘No one lets me succeed.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ he said, still kindly. ‘You can’t think that you always fail.’
‘I didn’t say that I failed,’ I said. ‘I said I wasn’t allowed to succeed.’
‘But I wish you to succeed.’
‘Then it was you who failed today,’ I said, ‘when I made my poor attempt to show the boy how to make a few vegetables just eatable.’
‘That’s the cook’s business, Sarah,’ he protested, but gently. I only said drearily, ‘Then in future I’ll mind my own, as you told me to do,’ and added: ‘You see, I can learn, if I’m taught my lessons forcibly enough.’
That night in the double bunk he merely kissed my forehead and turned away from me and for once I might have slept; but the life-blood was ebbing back into my petrified heart and my mind a turmoil of dread at what must come. For still no word had been spoken of Honey Mary’s presence aboard the Mary Celeste.
CHAPTER VI
I WAS YOUNG, RESILIENT, I suppose—a night of peace brought me refreshment and a new hope. I look back and think that with all my frailties, there was within me always this rather touching courage, this squaring of the shoulders, putting aside of my insecurities and stepping forward again with a new optimism into the path of life—knowing in my heart that it would turn like the way of Hans Andersen’s mermaid to knives beneath my tender feet. My husband was dressed and gone—for once without awakening me; and I rose and washed and dressed, all the time thinking what I had best do next. I had had made, especially for shipboard, a dress of a deep blue cloth, not navy, but a sort of deep moonlight blue, with a white frill at the neck and two bands of white braid running across the bosom and over the tops of the sleeves; the sleeves full, caught into narrow wrist-bands, the waist small and belted, the skirt very full. I had fitted myself with soft deck shoes and my mother’s wedding gift had been a great shawl of softly woven wool, not brilliantly coloured as Mary’s was, but with a sort of warm all-over sheen of silvery grey. I wrapped it now about me and went up on deck.
Now we were three full days out and well into the ocean, and the ship had begun her habitual gentle roll in seas more heavily rolling than those we had so far known. I staggered a little, holding on to the rail of the steep steps up to the deck, lifting my skirts to step over the high sill, almost lurching into a run as I made for the deck rail. Living in the state of Massachusetts, I was not unfamiliar with the ocean, I had as a child found my sea legs and learned that the movement of a ship did not upset my stomach as it does with so many. If I now and again felt a little queasy, two or three deep breaths of the salty breeze restored me to normality. I remember that morning I wondered if the same would apply to Mary, whether all our troubles might not yet be saved by her being confined throughout a rough voyage to her bunk—some bunk, at any rate—with seasickness. I need not have troubled myself with hope: trust Mary to ride any storm as proudly as the ship itself, glorying in the lashing waves of high seas breaking over the decks, surging against the bare feet of the toiling men, crashing up against the sides of the deckhouse, soughing back again into the body of the ocean; rearing their white crests to dash themselves again against the vessel’s sides. I too loved a storm, there was something in it that thrilled me to the soul: but Mary—she was a storm in herself, a storm within a storm, she rode with it, gloried in it as she gloried in all that was dangerous and wild. There can never have been any creature, so utterly without fear. I would have liked to go up into the forepeak—the expressions come back to me as I think over the long-ago days, but I daresay I get most of them wrong—and stand in the very prow where the great bowsprit thrust its length ahead of the body of the ship, over the curl of the water as the clean edge of the bows cleft its way through. Had we carried a figurehead, she would have lain along just beneath the bowsprit, chin thrust forward to mee
t the spray of those curling waters, but we carried none: I was the only figurehead aboard that ship, with my heart of bleeding wood. But my husband had said that I should remain aft; only, to stay there was to be under the scrutiny all the time of whichever of the men was taking his trick at the wheel, that’s what they called it ‘taking their trick’—or ‘standing their trick’, I never got these terms right. It was Boz Lorenzen’s brother, Volkert, this morning—Volk, they called him. Another of ‘The Breughels’. He sketched me a vague salute and called, ‘Morning, Ma’am!’ I think that their original hostility had lain in their guilty knowledge that Honey Mary was aboard, that they had done me a wrong in bringing her there. Now that I knew the secret, they shrugged off the guilt, perhaps were even inclined to make up to me for it. At any rate, he touched the peak of his shabby black cap and called a greeting.
I picked up my skirts and stepped up the little ladder to the poop deck and remarked to him that now there was more of a swell than there had been so far. He said: ‘You keep pretty gutt your legs.’
‘I was brought up on the seaboard,’ I said.
No doubt they were all in some anxiety as to what was to happen next. He wasted no more time. He said: ‘Vot is mit Mary, Missis? You are not yet tellink de Master?’ It must be obvious to him that the Captain knew nothing so far.
‘I’m lost to know what to do about it, Volkert,’ I said.
‘He got to know.’
‘He’ll find out,’ I said.
‘Big troubles!’
‘Why did you do such a foolish thing? You knew he’d find out and that there would be trouble.’
‘Dronk!’ he said, succinctly. I guessed that coming aboard such a ship as the Mary Celeste, they would all get drunk enough the night before she sailed, to last them for a few days at least, into the long grog-less voyage.
‘And she tempted you?’
‘Dis vicked von, she tempt de Archanchel Gabriel himself.’
‘But why does she want to come?’
He shrugged. ‘For angry de Captain?’
‘Why should she want to make him angry?’
‘He make big preachings,’ he suggested, shrugging again. ‘Doing harm for Mary. De men is going off on long voyages, may be dangers, in spring Boz and I was in big dangers, big storm and wreck. Cap’n preaching they lose their souls if they going with such like Mary, they maybe going to their death this very voyage, don’t going aboard with sin on the soul. So instead, they getting dronk, too dronk for woman, Cap’n Briggs is turning blind eye to this if it keep them from woman.’ He laughed. ‘Som is paying friends keep sober and keep them from going with woman when they dronk, save their soul in case shipwreck and dangers. So Mary losing business.’ But he looked at me, sharply. ‘Not gutt talk for ladies like Mrs Briggs. I married, not gutt talk for mine vife.’
‘I know about Mary now,’ I said, ‘and it must be spoken of. I must protect my husband.’
He laughed again, and at least I saw that he had no suspicion that the kind of protection he supposed me to mean was too late. ‘Cap’n Briggs don’t need no protection, Ma’am, from Honey Mary. Very gutt man, very Got-fearing, big preaching, very strong. Besides…’ he added, with a little gesture. Besides, he meant, Captain Briggs had his own woman aboard. I could have told him: Yes, indeed!
‘I mean that this woman’s presence aboard his ship… She says she will spread it abroad that he brought her here.’
‘She iss a devil woman,’ he said, laughing. ‘Much mischief.’
I stood with my shawl hugged about me, the wind whipping my pale hair from its shining bands about my head, rocking a little, riding the movement of the ship as she sped with a following wind through the rolling grey-green waters. How vast it all was and how limitless! For a moment the affairs of men seemed very petty and sordid against that expanse of glittering deep green.
They all moved so quietly about the ship, barefooted or in soft deck shoes except when the weather drove them to their heavy sea-boots, that often, with the sound in one’s ears of the eternal swish and drag of the waves, the flapping of the sails, the creaking and groaning in the rigging, one did not hear their approach. I did not hear my husband now, only his voice calling to me sharply. I went down the steps, followed him along the deck to a place by the rail mid-way between the two upstanding roofs of the cabin quarters. He stopped there and faced me, almost hissing out at me: ‘What are you doing, up there on the poop?’
‘I was passing the time of day with Lorenzen,’ I said; but recalling the subject of our conversation, I daresay that tell-tale colour of mine that came up so easily under my delicate skin, betrayed my unease.
‘Are you to spend your whole time aboard, in vulgar gossip with my crew?’
‘Gossip?—how could I gossip with them, what have I to gossip about?’ Yet, exactly what had I been doing? ‘I like to find out about the ship,’ I said. ‘I like to ask questions.’
‘The person to answer questions about the ship is the Master,’ he said. ‘In future, confine your curiosity to my care.’ His dark eye kindled, I think he would have spoken more angrily but that he remembered the violent scolding of yesterday; he had himself always under an iron control. I said: ‘Am I never to speak to the men? I must converse with someone.’
‘You can converse with your husband.’
It was on my tongue to reply that he never conversed with me, but I also must recall the previous afternoon and his efforts to make himself agreeable. I said, ‘You are often occupied
‘So are the men occupied,’ he said, ‘or would be if you wouldn’t keep interfering with their work. They should be keeping their minds on what they ‘re doing.’
‘Volk was just standing at the wheel,’ I protested. ‘It took no great effort of concentration.’
He glared at me, bright-eyed, fierce and frightening, with his black, jutting beard. ‘Get down to your quarters,’ he said, and would have turned and gone about his own duties but a flare of hot temper blazed up in me suddenly. I caught at him by the rough serge sleeve of his jacket. ‘Get to my quarters!—like a dog to its kennel? Am I to spend four weeks or more, cooped up down there?—you’ll put me on a chain, perhaps, with a heap of straw—but no, for I might lie down upon the straw and you not there to take advantage of it…’ I think that the colour flared up in his face, I know that it did in mine but I was lost suddenly to all but the injustice of it, the inhumanity of it. ‘I must breathe, I’m a living creature, I must sometimes breathe a little fresh air. If I go forward for it, you tell me to go back to the stern, if I go to the stern the men are there, am I to stand like a dumb fool if they wish me good morning—?’
‘Forrard,’ he said, coldly correcting me. ‘And you go aft or astern, not “to the stern”.’
I don’t know what anger had got into me that I blazed up again at the cold sarcasm of his voice. ‘So I fail again! I don’t know forrard from forward or stern from aft, and why?—because I’m not allowed to learn, because I can’t so much as exchange a greeting with those whose conversation would teach me these things. I shall go through a life of nothing but shipboard and at the end still not know forrard from forward because I must be chained in my kennel and have no chance to discover. And not having discovered, I’ll be a fool, I’ll have failed. And I shall have failed—because as usual no one will allow me to succeed…’ He in turn caught at my arm, with a rough gesture commanding my silence lest his precious crew hear me raise my voice to him, I suppose, as none of them ever would have dared to do; but I tore myself from his grasp and ran, catching at the rail to steady myself, and climbed the tilting deck to the companion that led down to the main deckhouse, and half tumbled down the steps. Richardson was coming out of his cabin into the saloon and put out a hand to stop me from falling. I knew that my husband followed me and was within ear-shot. I said loud enough for him to hear: ‘Don’t touch me, you might find yourself bitten! I’m a half mad dog not safe to be let out of my kennel.’
My husband came down th
e companion-way after me. He said sharply to Richardson, ‘Out!’ and as the mate went off, looking back doubtfully, put a hand to my shoulder and I stumbled ahead of him into the cabin. I stood with my shoulders hunched, my back to him; his hand was raised, if I had turned to him, I think he could not have controlled himself from hitting me. But he only stood, rigid, and at last simply leaving me standing there, went out of the cabin. I heard his crisp step across the saloon and up the companion and the swish and bang of the door as it slid-to behind him. I knew better now than to fling myself across the bed, but I fell on my knees before one of the swivel chairs and put my head down on my arms and burst into a heartbreak of tears: and behind me a voice said, ‘Poor little Sarah!’ A woman’s voice.
And she stood there, Honey Mary, in her scarlet dress, with her wild hair all about her beautiful face. I remained kneeling, staring up at her and jerked out at last, ‘Go away, he’ll find you!’
She stood with her hands on her hips. ‘What do I care for that?’
‘If he finds you here with me—’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That’s different. Poor little Sarah!’ And she stooped and took my arm and raised me up and almost tenderly, taking the handkerchief from my waistband, patted away the wet tears, with a gentle hand pushed aside the strands of my hair. ‘There, my honey,’ she said. ‘No more tears!’ And she shushed me like a child. ‘Hush, now. Hush, now. Poor, frightened, bullied little girl
‘I lost my temper,’ I said.
‘And magnificently! Though why should the mad dog bite poor Albert Richardson, he does you no harm, he thinks the whole world of you.’
‘You heard me?’ I stammered.
She gestured with her head to the saloon and the door of the chief mate’s cabin. ‘I lay very snug last night; poor Bert for very terror of discovery, dossing elsewhere, however—such a night of peace I haven’t enjoyed for a long time.’
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