Cip shot a covert glance at Hal and then hid his smile in his tankard.
“Ah!” said Anny again, turning the paper over.
Hal became impatient.
“Well, lass?” he said, rising.
Anny blushed, and then thrust the paper in his hand.
“Thou knowest I cannot read, Hal?” she said. “Wilt decipher it for me?”
Hal took it willingly although with some show of indifference and, holding the paper at arm’s length, read it carefully through to himself.
“Plague upon it all!” he exclaimed.
Anny looked at him anxiously.
“What does it say?” she said, looking over his shoulder.
Hal flushed.
“I’ll not tell thee,” he said angrily.
“Oh!” Anny’s tone expressed disappointment, and old Cip de Musset, who had been preparing himself to hear another man’s letter, looked up.
“Oh! nay, lad, nay,” he said solemnly, “tell the lass her own letter. Ay, marry, now you must to be honest.”
Hal frowned.
“To be honest?” he said, puzzled.
“Ay, to be honest,” Cip was emphatic. “For if you don’t, lad, you alone will know the matter in the letter, which, look you, is not yours but the lass’s. Taking is taking whether it be goods or fine phrases,” he concluded, wagging his head sagely.
Hal shrugged his shoulders.
“Well then, harken,” he said, and began to read sulkily and at a great pace.
“Into the lap of the fair lady who holdeth the whole heart of a great sailor in her sweet keeping, these fineries and divers other useful objects are munificently poured.
“Prithee deck thyself, wench, for the delight of thy noble and honourable admirer—DICK DELFAZIO, Captain of the Coldlight.”
“Did ever you hear such sithering foolishness?” he concluded.
But neither Anny nor Cip were looking at him; at the last words of the letter they had turned to each other in mutual surprise and admiration.
“Ah!” said old Cip, leaning back on his bench. “Wonderful way he has wi’ words and wenches. Damn me if they too don’t go pretty well together,” he added thoughtfully.
Anny sighed with delight and turned to Hal.
“Oh! isn’t it a fine letter,” she exclaimed happily. “Will I have to write one back?”
Hal looked up and the expression on his boyish face made her pause in her happiness, and turn to him anxiously.
“Anny Farran, what are you making of yourself?” he began slowly, his young imagination magnifying the occasion until he felt himself the injured lover leading his frail betrothed away from the pretty walks of folly.
Anny looked at him in wonderment and he went on:
“Anny, are you ’tending to accept these—these fripperies, like a common serving-wench, and worse?”
Anny blushed and started; then she looked from her lover to the table and back again.
“Not take them?” she said, her mouth drooping a little at the corners and her eyes growing larger and very bright.
“Of course not!”
Wrapped in the blanket of his youthful virtue the boy felt no sympathy for the despairing glance which the pathetic little girl in front of him cast at her shabby, much-stained kirtle and well-mended bodice.
Anny swallowed something in her throat and blinked her eyes once or twice, her long, dark lashes becoming spiky and blacker than before. Then she laughed a little unnaturally and rubbed her hand awkwardly down the sides of her skirt.
“Oh, of course not,” she said, laughing still on a strange high pitch, as she gathered up the finery and put it carefully back into the sail-cloth covering. “Of course not,” she repeated mechanically, never allowing her fingers to stray over the smooth soft surface of the silk or to play amongst the amber beads or ivory ornaments. “There,” she said at last, as the last trinket was slipped into the little box, and she looked round, still the bright colour in her cheeks and the forced smile on her lips. “Oh! and the little beast?” she said half-questioningly, half-agreeing, as she picked up the little carved elephant and looked at it wistfully.
“And the little beast,” said Hal firmly.
Anny sighed and slipped it in with the others, then tied up the sail-cloth with a firm hand.
“Master de Musset,” she said a little unsteadily, “would you be kind enough to—to take this back to the Captain and say I can’t accept it? Say—say of course not,” she added.
Cip de Musset rose to his feet, bewilderment on his face as he looked from one to the other of the two young people.
“Say you sent it back?” he said at last, turning to the girl. “Nay, say he sent it back,” he added, jerking his thumb in Hal’s direction.
Anny stepped forward quickly and laid her hand on his arm, anxiety written in her very posture.
“Oh, nay! I pray you, Master de Musset, say I sent it back,” she said eagerly. “I beg of you to tell my message rightly.”
Cip looked into her earnest little face and smiled.
“All right, lassie,” he said, “but,” he added, his voice and face becoming suddenly grave, “you have a care how you anger Blackkerchief Dick. You young ones—you’re sweethearts, too, ain’t you?”
“Yes, but you won’t say,” Anny spoke quickly and Cip shook his head.
“Oh, no!” he said grinning. “I won’t say. I be going.”
He moved over to the window and looked out.
“Here be Ezekiel French just drove up,” he remarked.
Anny looked up at the clock.
“Mother o’ Grace!” she ejaculated, “I have forgot to call Mistress Sue,” and she ran out of the door and up the stairs to the little room which she and Sue shared.
Hal picked up the sail-cloth bundle and handed it to Cip, who took it without a word and went out into the yard. He stood talking to French some minutes and then walked over to his cart.
“Poor little lassie,” he muttered as he climbed into the tumbril and turned the piebald gelding out of the gate. “Poor little lassie,” he repeated. “Lord, ain’t we particular when we’re young.” He looked at the bundle on the floor behind him and shrugged his shoulders. “This here Blackkerchief Dick and all,” he concluded sighing and whipping up his horse.
Big French stood in the Ship yard talking to Hal and old John Patten, the ostler. He leaned lazily against the shaft of his waggon, an arm stretched out over the back of one of the horses. The waggon was half-full of mysterious sacking-covered bales and little round casks, the first containing silk and the other tobacco.
“Have ye got them ten trusses straw I bespoke, Hal?” French was saying, the barley stalk he was chewing moving up and down in his mouth.
“Ay, in the barn; that on the right is yourn,” Hal replied readily.
Big French looked at John Patten enquiringly. The old man grinned. “That’ll be all right, sir,” he said, pocketing the coin which the big man had given him.
“You’ll cover the stuff well up?” French continued. “Undo the first five truss and spread it over the stuff and then put the rest, bound up, atop, you know how.”
The man nodded.
“Ain’t been on the Island for sixty-seven years for nothing,” he said, winking one bright blue eye.
French laughed.
Maybe,” he said, “but you never can tell when the roads will get dangerous again. What with footpads whom I fear not and excise folk whom I do—you never know,” and he shrugged his shoulders, and soon added, a smile breaking over his handsome face, “but, Lord, it’s all in the trade so what’s the use of talking?”
He turned away with Hal, and John, touching his cap, went off to the barn—a long, low building on the left of the Ship.
“I’m taking that dog Blueneck and his mate Coot along wi’ me,” French remarked, as he and Hal neared the kitchen door. “You ain’t seen them up here yet, I suppose?”
Hal shook his head as he lifted the latch.
“No,” he said, “but they’ll come, don’t you fear, the sniffling Spanish rats.”
French laughed and was about to reply, but as his eyes fell upon Mistress Sue who had stepped to the door to meet them, the words died on his lips, and he grinned sheepishly.
In the kitchen the dips had been lighted, the fire had got up, and all round the hearth was bright and cheerful.
Sue followed and stood in front of him.
Anny sat in her usual place at the window. She was sewing the buttons on an old coat of Gilbot’s, and several times she pricked her fingers, and then hastily dashed the back of her hand across her eyes, but otherwise she was very still and no one else in the room noticed her.
Hal went to draw a noggin of rum for French, and while he was away, the door opened, and Blueneck and Habakkuk Coot came in.
French, who had just formed a complete sentence to open conversation with Sue, scowled at the intruders, turned his back on the astonished girl, and stared into the fire. Perhaps it was the wisest thing he could have done, for Sue as she bustled off to attend to the two sailors, began to think about him, a thing she had not done seriously since that evening when Blackkerchief Dick first came to the Ship.
It was strange, she thought. Usually Big French seemed so pleased to see her, so ready to laugh with her, so childishly shy when she spoke directly to him, and she found herself thinking with pleasure of that evening when Gilbot had interrupted him in a most important question. She laughed to herself. Ah! that was before the advent of the Spaniard. Ah! the Spaniard! she sighed, and then flushed hotly at her own thoughts. What was the Spaniard to her? A man who was not even interested in her. She tossed her head, but all the same she sighed again before she put the tankards down before the two shipmates of the Coldlight, and returned once more to the young giant at the fireside.
“Master French,” she said, planting herself before him, “would you get me a thing or two at the market?”
French beamed at her.
“Anything,” he said jerkily, as though the word had been released from captivity, “or everything,” he added suddenly and earnestly.
Sue did not understand him and she looked down in surprise.
“Everything?” she repeated.
French blushed, opened his mouth, shut it again, then he cleared his throat noisily. “Everything you wish, Mistress,” he said finally, inwardly cursing his shyness.
Sue perched herself on the table in front of him and enumerated the odds and ends that the Ship required.
Anny looked at the pair shyly from out her corner.
“Ah! but how much of the flannel, Mistress?” French was saying.
“Six ells an’ it pleases you,” Sue replied.
Anny gulped and applied herself industriously to her sewing.
Just then the door opened and John Patten put in his smiling head.
“Master French,” he called.
French, who had just begun to enjoy himself, looked up with another scowl.
“All’s ready,” said John, “and, if you’s going to get to Tiptree afore eleven, ye better start.”
“Right!” French rose to his feet with a sigh and walked to the door. “Come on,” he said to the two sailors who were looking round anxiously.
Habakkuk sniffed noisily and happily, his pale bilious little face positively shining with excitement as he got up hastily and trotted to the door, Blueneck following.
The rest of the company followed out into the yard to see the adventurers safely off the premises.
It was a sharply cold, clear frosty night, with a mist hanging low over the marshes. There was no wind and the place was very silent. The sky was clear and thickly sprinkled with stars, and the moon, nearly full, shed a white ghostly glow over the countryside.
Old John Patten, a large box lantern in his hand, hovered hither and thither like some old and bluff Will o’ the Wisp.
French walked round the waggon to make sure that everything was in order. Then he climbed up on to the shaft and perched himself on the driving-seat, which consisted of a board nailed flat on the front of the waggon.
“Come on if you are coming at all,” he called to Blueneck, who scrambled into the one remaining seat beside him.
“Hi, where shall I go?” said Habakkuk, sniffing and hopping about in his anxiety.
French shrugged his shoulders.
“Best get up on to the straw atop,” he said.
Habakkuk climbed on to the hub of the wheel and with Hal’s help got safely on to the straw where he lay quite still.
“Ready?” said French, and then turned the horses about without waiting for an answer, and drove out of the gate amidst the jests and farewells of the onlookers.
“You won’t forget the flannel?” Sue called after him.
French’s deep, pleasant voice rang back through the thin, cold air. “Rather would I forget the waggon, Mistress.”
Sue laughed.
“There’s a new gown on the way,” she said with a sigh of satisfaction as she went back to the kitchen.
Anny gulped, and Hal, turning at that moment, saw her disappointed little face in the moonlight. She looked at him so sorrowfully without speaking, and then went into the inn.
He was about to follow her but checked himself; he began to realise a little how much she cared for pretty things, and what she had given up with the sail-cloth bundle. Pushing his hands into his pockets he walked out of the gate and down the road to the sea, his chin on his breast. He had not gone very far before he met old Gilbot stumping along alone.
The old man hailed him cheerily and bade him go down to fetch little Red who he averred was scooning stones on the clear sea. “No one obeys me,” he concluded with a chuckle. “I can’t make the young one come. Go fetch him, Hal.”
He waddled off smiling and talking to himself.
Hal walked on in deep thought, kicking the stones in the road with his clogs.
Anny was fond of pretty fripperies and ornaments; she liked to be admired and looked at, and would have kept the sail-cloth bundle for its own worth, without a thought for the giver.
Hal kicked at a stone savagely, and swore loudly. He was eighteen and as bitter against the world as it is possible to be at that age. He remembered Anny’s little white face in the moonlight as Big French drove off, Sue’s request in his ears, and her disappointed, sorrowful glance at him before she returned to the kitchen. He had reached the sea by this time and he stood for a moment peering out over the mist-ridden water. “If only I had money,” he thought. “Lord!”
Staring out into the white moonlit vapour he saw Anny in her honey-coloured silk, her eyes bright and her lips a little parted, just as he had seen her that afternoon. Then he saw himself beside her, no longer a deputy landlord and everybody’s errand boy, but a man of importance in a new blue cloth coat with silver buttons and a ruffle in the sleeves. He was holding her hand and they were married.
“Oh! if only I had money!” the words escaped from his mouth like a groan, and he shivered involuntarily, almost afraid of his own voice; everything around him was so shadowy and unreal.
“Hal Grame, is that you? Oh! how you frightened me,” the voice seemed to start from the pebbles at his feet and he sprang back in alarm, crossing himself.
“Who’s there?” he said sharply.
“Only me and Win,” Red Farran got up from the bank of seaweed where he had been sitting and put a little wet hand into Hal’s.
“Why do you want money?” he said. “Win an’ me want money, too.”
Hal looked down at the fantastic little figure before he answered.
“Why do I want money——?” he began, his voice rising with silly, sweet, half-theatrical boyish passion; then he checked himself and shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, nothing,” he said.
Red looked at the sea.
“It’s too dark to scoon stones,” he remarked. “How many times can you make one hop? I made one go nine times once—in smooth water,” he added
modestly.
Hal vouchsafed no answer, and Red sat down again on a bank of seaweed.
“Here’s Win,” he said softly, as he fumbled in his ragged clothes and brought out the kitten, now quite dry but very sleepy, and hugged it up to his neck. “If we had money wouldn’t we eat a lot and be happy?” He squeezed the kitten a little harder and the unhappy animal squealed sleepily. Red laughed. “Yes,” he said, “I think so, too.”
There was silence for a few minutes save for the gentle lapping of the water, and the scrape of moving pebbles as the waves rolled them up and down on the shore.
“Money’s very useful, isn’t it?” said Red at last.
“Ay,” Hal replied fervently.
“Master Gilbot said that, too,” went on the child as he pitched a stone and waited to hear the gentle “plop “which it made as it reached the water.
Hal looked up.
“What did he say?” he asked.
Red screwed up his face in thought.
“I forget,” he said, “it was something about leaving the Ship to a man who had money.” He tossed another stone, then turned his attention to the kitten.
“A man with money?” said Hal. “What man?”
“Oh! any man I suppose,” said Red vaguely, stroking the cat’s fur up the wrong way.
“Any man with money,” repeated Hal to himself; then he began to laugh loudly, unnaturally, and very high.
Red clapped his hands over his ears and the kitten snuggled into his chest.
“Don’t do that, Hal,” he said imploringly, “it’s just like Nan when she sees Pet Salt.”
Hal stopped and pulled himself together.
“Best be getting back,” he said, and started off along the lane.
The child got up without a word and trotted after him, the kitten wrapped safely in the folds of his kirtle-cloak.
Hal did not think about the boy; he strode along, his eyes on the ground.
“I will get money,” he whispered to himself. “I’ve never had any. I’ve never had aught to give her, and women be capricious and whimsical. They care for that foolery. Before God I swear someday I’ll own the Ship, and, oh, you holy Saints, let me keep her till then.”
Blackkerchief Dick Page 8
