V.

STUKELEY

“Thus can my love excuse the slow offence.” _Sonnet li._

“I can endure All this. Good Gods a blow I can endure. But stay not, lest thou draw a timeless death Upon thyself.” _The Maid’s Tragedy._

One morning, about six weeks later, when the _Broken Heart_ was near her port of call, Captain Margaret sat at the cabin table, with a book of logarithms beside him, a chart before him, and a form for a ship’s day’s work neatly ruled, lying upon the chart. He made a faint pencil-line upon the chart, to show the ship’s position by dead-reckoning. Then, with a pair of compasses, he made a rough measurement of the distance still to run. Stukeley, lying at length upon the locker-top, watched him with contempt.

The _Broken Heart_ had had a fair summer passage, with no severe weather. She had spoken with no ships since leaving Falmouth. Her little company of souls had been thrown upon themselves, and the six weeks of close association had tried their nerves. There were tense nerves among the afterguard, on that sunny morning, just off Soundings.

“Where are we?” Stukeley asked.

“Just off Soundings,” said Margaret.

“Where the blazes is that?”

“About four hundred miles to the east of Accomac.”

“How soon shall we get to Accomac?”

“A week, perhaps. It depends on the wind.”

“And then we’ll get ashore?”

“Yes. If you think it safe.”

“What the devil d’you mean?”

Captain Margaret sat back in his chair and looked at Stukeley as an artist looks at his model. Many small, inconsidered, personal acts are revelations of the entire character; the walk, the smile, the sudden lifting of the head or hand, are enough, to the imaginative person. So, now, was Captain Margaret’s look a revelation. One had but to see him, to know the truth of Perrin’s epigram. Perrin had called him “a Quixote turned critic.” He looked at Stukeley as though he were above human anger; his look was almost wistful, but intense. He summed up the man’s character to himself, weighing each point with a shrewd, bitter clearness. His thought was of himself as a boy, pinning the newly killed moth upon the setting-board.

“Look here,” said Stukeley.

“Do you think it safe?”

Stukeley rose from the locker and advanced across the cabin.

“So little Maggy’s going to preach, is he?” he said lightly. “Let me recommend little Maggy to keep on his own side of the fence.”

Margaret shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him to be the most offensive thing he could do, in the circumstances.

“Supposing that it’s not safe?”

Stukeley laughed, and returned to the locker. He pulled out a pipe and began to fill it.

“Maggy,” he said, “why don’t you get married?”

“My destiny.”

“Marriage goes by destiny. Eh?”

“Marriage. And hanging, Stukeley.”

That brought him from the locker again. “What the hell d’you mean by that?”

“Oh,” said Margaret. “It’s safe in Accomac, I should think.”

“What is?”

“The evil-doer, Stukeley. The cheat, the ravisher, the---- But I don’t think you ever committed a murder. Not what is called murder by a jury.”

“Ah. You cast that at me,” said Stukeley. “Recollect now, Maggy. That’s enough. I’d be sorry to hit you.”

“Would you?” said Margaret. “Well. Perhaps. But if it’s not safe, Stukeley, what are you going to do?”

“Stay here, little Maggy. Oh, ducky, you are so charming. I shall stay on board with my own little Maggy.”

“You’d better remember my name when you speak again, Stukeley. I take no liberties from a forger.”

“Have you been reading my papers? In my cabin?”

“It _was_ forgery, wasn’t it?”

“Is it any business of yours?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Because, Stukeley, I may have to see the Governor about you. I may be asked about you when you land. I may even have to hand you over to--well, disgrace.”

“Rot. How the hell will the Governor know? Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Then it _was_ forgery?”

“Certainly no damn maggot like you’ll call it anything. No man alive.”

“But supposing they try you, my friend. Eh? Suppose, when we land, when we anchor, you are taken and sent home. What would a jury call it?”

“We’re not in Falmouth harbour now. Nor in Salcombe.”

Just at this moment Captain Cammock entered, whistling a tune through his teeth. He glanced at both men, with some suspicion of their occupation. “Come for the deep-sea lead-line,” he explained. “We’ll be in soundings by to-night. Getting on nice, ain’t we?” He opened one of the lockers and took out the lead-line. “You’d ought to come on deck, sir, to-night, to see how this is done. It’s a queer sight,” he said. “I’m off to the cook now, to get a bit of tallow for the arming.”

“Stop just a moment, captain,” said Margaret. “I want to ask you something. How often do letters go to Virginia, from London?”

“I suppose about twice a week, now there’s no war. Almost every day, in the summer, you might say. Yes. They’re always going.”

“Have we made a good passage?”

“Nothing extra. It’s been done in five weeks by the baccalao schooners. Less.”

“The baccalao schooners. They’re the cod-boats? Are they very fast?”

“Oh, beauties. But ain’t they wet.”

“Then we might find letters waiting when we arrive?”

“Very likely, sir. I was going to speak to you about that.” He looked with meaning at Stukeley.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” said Stukeley.

“You might have letters waiting, too,” said Cammock. “Society invitations and that.” He glanced up at the skylight as he spoke, and then watched Stukeley’s face to note the effect of his words. Stukeley turned pale.

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, “don’t you think you ought to tell your wife?”

“Will you please mind your own business, Maggy. She’s my wife, not yours.”

“Then I shall tell her. Shall I?”

“Tell her what?”

“I’m going on deck,” said Cammock. “You come on deck, sir, too.” He passed out of the cabin, carrying his heavy lead. He paused at the door for a moment to ask his friend again. “Come and see how it’s done, sir,” he said. He got no instant answer, so he passed out, wondering how it would end. “It’s none of my job,” he said sadly. “But I’d give a deal just to hit him once. Once. He’d have a thick ear to show.”

“Tell her what?” repeated Stukeley, as the door closed.

“That you may be arrested as soon as we arrive. That the case may go against you.”

“You would tell her, would you?”

“She ought to know. Surely you can see that. Shall I tell her?”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve go---- You lowsy. You’d like to, wouldn’t you?”

“I should very much like to, Stukeley.”

“I don’t doubt. And you’re the one---- That’s like you poets. You’re a mangy lot, Maggy. I see you so plainly, Maggy, telling my wife. Like a cat making love. In the twilight. Oh, I’ve seen you.”

“Go on, Stukeley.”

“You come crawling round my wife. I’ve seen you look at her. I’ve seen you shake hands with her. I’ve seen your eyes. Doesn’t she make your mouth water? Wouldn’t you like that hair all over your face? Eh? Eh? And her arms round you. Eh?”

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, “I’d advise you to stop. Stop now.”

“Wouldn’t you like to----?”

“Stop.”

“I know you would. Poems, eh? I’ve read a lot of your poems to her, Maggy.”

“Were you looking for my purse?”

“No, Maggy. But I thought you needed watching. I don’t want any mangy poet crawling round my wife. So I just watched you, Maggy.”

“Yes?”

“Oh yes. I don’t think you’ve succeeded yet, Maggy. Even in spite of your poems.”

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, rising from his chair, “when we get to Accomac you will come ashore with me. I’ll do my best, when we’re ashore, to put my sword”--he advanced to Stukeley, bent swiftly over him, and touched him sharply on the Adam’s apple--“just there, Stukeley. Right through. To save the hangman the trouble.”

Stukeley watched him with amused contempt; he laughed. “Maggy’s in a paddy,” he said. “No, Maggy. I’m a married man, now, ducky. What would my wife do if she woke up one fine morning and found me gone? Eh?”

“Are you afraid to fight?”

“Afraid of a little crawling maggot who comes whining out some measly poems?”

Margaret took a quick step forward, and shot out a hand to seize Stukeley by the throat. Stukeley caught him by the wrist.

“Look here, Maggy,” he said.

“Drop my wrist. Drop it.”

“Take your dirty wrist.”

“Take back what you said.”

“You do amuse me, Maggy.”

“Take it back.”

“You ought to have been a woman. Then you could have married that damned fool Perrin. And you could have----”

“You----”

“Ah no, ah no. No blows, Maggy.”

“Take back what you said.”

“That I was afraid?”

“You’d better, Stukeley.”

“Did I say that I was afraid? I’m not, you know. It’s you who are afraid.”

“You’ll see.”

“I shall see. You are afraid. You’re in love with Olivia, ducky. D’ye think you’re going to fight me? Not Maggy. You’d like me away, wouldn’t you, Maggy. Then perhaps she’d. She’s an awful fool when you come to know her, Maggy. To know her as I know her. She might be fool enough to. And then. Oh. Bliss, eh? Bliss. Morning, noon, and night. Eh?”

“Stukeley, I’ve stood a good deal----”

“Yes, ducky. But don’t be so excited. You won’t fight me. You’ll be afraid. You’ll lick my boots, like you’ve done all the time, so as to get a sweet smile from her. Doesn’t she smile sweetly, my little Maggy? You’ll lick my boots, Maggy. And hers. Lick, lick, lick, like a little crawling cat. Wouldn’t you like to lick her hand, Maggy? Her fingers? Don’t go, Maggy. I’m just beginning to love you.”

“We’ll go on with this at Accomac, Stukeley.”

“We shan’t fight, Maggy. If you killed me, she’d never marry you. Besides, it would kill her, Maggy. She loves me. She wants a man, not a little licking cat. You’re content to spend your days licking. My God; you’d die, I believe, if you couldn’t come crawling round her, sighing, and longing to kiss her. That’s your life. Well. Kill me. You’ll never see her again. Then what would the little crawler do? Go and put his arms round Perrin? But d’you know what I should tell Olivia before going out with you?”

“What would you tell her?”

“I’d tell her that I suspected you of making love to her. Eh? That you admitted it, and that I gave you this chance of satisfaction out of consideration, instead of thrashing you. So any way I’ve the whip hand, Maggy. She’d never look at you again, and you can’t live without her. Can you?”

“Anything else?”

“Just this. You’ll never see her again if--if anything happens at Accomac. Through the Governor, you know. We should go home together. And the shock, eh? Loving husband hanged, eh? So take it from one who loves little Maggy, that you aren’t going to fight me, and that for all your gush you’ll help me in Accomac in case there’s trouble. And Olivia shall let you kiss her hand, shall she. Or no, you shall have a shoe of hers to slobber over, or a glove. Now go on deck, Maggy, and cool your angry little brow. A little of you goes a long way, Maggy. That’s what Olivia told me one night.”

He stopped speaking; for Margaret had left the cabin. “I wonder where he’s gone,” Stukeley muttered, smiling. Through the half-shut door he could see Margaret entering the cabin which he shared with Perrin. “What a rotter he is,” he thought. “I suppose now he’ll have a good cry. Or tell it all to that dead frog, Perrin.” For a moment, he thought that he would go on deck to walk with Perrin, not because he wanted to see the man, but because, by going on deck, he would keep both Perrin and the captain from talking to Olivia, who was mat-making on the poop, amid a litter of coloured silks. He thought with some disgust of Olivia. So that he might not be reminded of her, he drew the sun-screen across the skylight, shutting out the day. “Oh Lord,” he said, yawning, “I wish I was back in the inn with that girl, Jessie. She was some fun. Olivia gets on my nerves. Why the devil doesn’t she get some blood in her? These pious women are only good to ravish. Why the devil don’t they enter nunneries? I wish that one of these three sprightly lads would have a try at Olivia. One never knows, though. Even Olivia might take it as a compliment.” For a moment he wondered if there were any chance of trouble at Accomac. Very little, he concluded. He laughed to think of the strength of his position. It was a pleasure to him to think that three men hated him, perhaps longed to kill him, and that one refrained because of Olivia, while the other two refrained because of the first. “Lord, Lord,” he murmured, with a smile. “And they’ll all three die to save me. I’d go to Accomac if there were a dozen governors. I wonder if the Indian girls are any fun.” He was hardly built for marriage, he thought. Those old days had been sweet in the mouth. There was that sleepy-looking girl--Dick Sadler’s wife. She was some fun. How wild she used to get when she---- He wished that Perrin would come below as a butt for some of his ill-temper.

It was only four bells; there were at least two hours to wait till dinner-time. He was sick of sleeping; he was sick of most of his shipmates; he could not dice “one hand against the other.” Reading bored him, writing worried him, sketch he could not. He stretched himself down on the locker-top, and lit his pipe. Tobacco was forbidden in the cabin for Olivia’s sake; but he argued that he was the real commander of the ship, the practical owner, since he ruled her material destiny by ruling Olivia. As he smoked, it occurred to him that perhaps he had done wrong to anger Captain Margaret. That Maggy was a sullen devil. He might turn sullen, and give him up in spite of Olivia. He smoked quietly for a little time, till a scheme came to him, a scheme which gave him pleasure, so good it seemed.

He lay lazily on the locker-top, looking out over the sea, through the stern-windows. The sun was shining, making the track of the ship gleam. Just below Stukeley, sometimes almost within a sword’s thrust, when the counter squattered down, slapping the sea, were the rudder eddies, the little twirling threads, the twisted water which spun in the pale clear green, shot through with bubbles. They rose and whirled continually, creaming up and bursting, streaking aft in whiteness. Over them wavered some mewing sea-birds, dipping down with greedy plunges, anon rising, hovering, swaying up. Stukeley watched them with the vacant stare of one bored. For a few minutes he amused himself by spitting at those which came within range; then, proving a poor marksman, he rummaged for a biscuit, thinking that he would fish for them. He found a hank of white-line, and tied a bit of biscuit to the end. He was about to make his first cast when Mrs. Inigo entered, bearing a buck-basket containing her week’s washing, now ready to be dried.

When the _Broken Heart_ left Falmouth, Captain Margaret made certain orders to ensure Olivia’s comfort. He had tried to put himself in her place, to see with her eyes, to feel with her nerves, knowing that her position on board, without another lady to bear her company, would not be a pleasant one. The whole of the ship abaft the forward cabin bulkhead had been given up to her. The three members of the afterguard took their meals in the cabin, but seldom entered it at other times, unless they wished to use the table for chess, cards, or chart-work. The negro steward, who had once ruled in the cabin, was now little more than a cabin-cook. Mrs. Inigo did much of his work. She cleaned the cabin, laid the breakfast, served Olivia’s early chocolate, letting the negro cook wash up. Cammock and Perrin agreed with Captain Margaret that the after part of the ship should be left as much as possible to the two Stukeleys, so that Olivia might feel that she was living in a private house. After the cabin supper, at the end of the first dog-watch, no man of the three entered the cabin unless Olivia invited him. Margaret felt that Olivia was touched by this thought for her. She was very gracious to him during her first evening party. It was sweet to hear her thanks, sweet to see her, flushed and laughing, radiant from the sea air, sitting there at the table, as Cammock dealt the cards for Pope Joan. That evening had been very dear to him, even though, across the cabin, on the heaped green cushions, lay Stukeley, greedy for his wife’s beauty, whetting his swine’s tusk as the colour came upon her cheek. It would all be for him, he thought, and the thought, now and then, was almost joyful, that she should be happy. It was not in his nature to be jealous. The greatest bitterness for him was to see the desired prize neglected, unappreciated, never really known; and to apprehend, in a gesture, in a few words, the thought implied, which the accepted lover failed to catch, or else ignored. He had tested Stukeley’s imaginative sympathy by the framing of another rule. In a small ship like the _Broken Heart_ there is little privacy. To prevent a possible shock to her, he arranged that on washing-days the clothes of the women should be hung to dry from the cabin windows (from lines rigged up below the port-sills, where they were out of view of the crew). Olivia was pleased by this arrangement, without quite knowing why. Stukeley saw no sense in it. On this particular morning the arrangement bore peculiar fruit, very grateful to Stukeley, who had long hungered for a change.

Mrs. Inigo entered with the buck-basket, closing the door behind her. She dropped the basket on the deck below the window-seat, seized the clothes-line, and began to stop the linen to it, in the sea-fashion, with rope-yarns. She was a little flushed with the exertion of washing, and she was a comely woman at all times.

“I’m going to help you,” said Stukeley.

She smiled, and looked down, as he helped her to tie some clothes to the line. She blushed and smiled; he took her hand.

“Let go my hand,” she whispered.

He pressed the hand, and though she drew back, a little frightened, he managed to catch the other. He kissed the hands. They were rough but warm.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, Mr. Stukeley.”

“Ah, Bess,” he said, taking her into his arms and kissing her, “why didn’t you give me a chance before?”

Half an hour later Bessy Inigo went forward to peel potatoes for dinner, while Stukeley slept upon the locker-top till the steward roused him at one bell.

He went on deck, when he was called, to get a breath of air before dinner. He found Olivia at work with her little balls of silk, while Perrin, on the lee side of the skylight, was drawing for her a ship upon canvas. Perrin was talking to Olivia, asking her questions about her work. At the break of the poop Captain Cammock stood, waiting with his quadrant to take the height of the sun.

Olivia looked up with a smile as Stukeley stepped on deck. She was still in that rapturous first stage of marriage in which all men, save the husband, are regarded as hardly living, as being, at best, but necessary cumberers of the earth, mere lifeless interruptions. In the early days of the voyage she had learned, from one of Captain Cammock’s stories, that people shut up in ships together cannot always bear the strain, but become irritable, quarrelsome, apt to suspect and slander. She had determined that her married love should not decay thus, and so, for some weeks past, she had contrived to avoid her husband for several hours each day, greatly to the delight of Perrin. On this particular day she felt that Providence had rewarded her but meanly for her loving self-sacrifice. All men, save Tom, were nothing to her, but Perrin, in the morning, in one of his dull moods, when unrelieved by Margaret, was less than nothing. She had always been a little shy of Perrin, perhaps because Perrin’s shyness was a bar to equal intercourse. Her own nature was full of shy refinements. She could give nothing of herself to one who could not win upon her by some grace or gallantry. Perrin meant well; he was even her devoted slave; but he was heavy in the hand with ladies, until their sympathy had raised his spirit. Olivia was not in the mood to give him even that simulated sympathy by which women extract their knowledge of men. Her own fine instincts told her, or rather suggested to her, all that could be known of Perrin. In a vague way she had the idea of Perrin in her mind, the true idea; but vague, without detail, an instinctive comprehension. He was a blunted soul to her, broken somehow. She felt that he had been through something, some vice perhaps, or sickness, with the result that he was blunted. He was quite harmless, she thought, even sometimes pleasant, always well-meaning, and yet dwarfed, made blunt, like his shapeless hands. She never could bring herself to treat him as a human being. Yet he interested her; he had the fascination of all mysterious persons; she could never accept her husband’s contemptuous estimate. Possibly she felt the need for the society of another lady, and hesitated to condemn Perrin, as being the nearest thing to a lady in the ship. Thus Robinson Crusoe on his island unduly valued a parrot.

About half an hour before her husband came on deck, Olivia had seen Perrin coming down from aloft, where he had been engaged with a seaman in fitting new spunyarn gaskets to all the yards on the mainmast, so that the furls might look neat when they made Virginia. He enjoyed his work aloft until he grew hot, when he soon found a pretext for leaving it. On reaching the deck, he went aft to Olivia (who smiled her recognition), and sat down at her side, content to stay still, to cool. The sight of Olivia’s beauty so near to him filled him with a kind of awe. Like a schoolboy impressed by some beautiful woman who is gracious to him, perhaps merely from that love of youth which all women have, so did Perrin imagine heroisms, rescuing that dear head, now bent with a shy sweetness over her mat.

“Olivia,” he said at length, about a minute after the proper time for the request, “will you show me what you have done?”

She looked up from her work with a smile that was half amusement at his serious tone.

“I’ve not done very much,” she said, showing her canvas, with its roses, surrounded by a garland of verbena leaves, still little more than outlined. “Did you ever try to make mats?” she added.

“I can make daisy-mats with wool, on a frame with pins,” he answered. “Can you make those? You cut them, and they show like a lot of daisies.”

“I used to make them,” she said, “when I went to stay with my aunt Pile, at Eltons. You were at Eltons, too, were you not? I think you stayed there?”

“Yes. I stayed there. What a beautiful old place it is. Have you been there lately?”

“No. Not for two or three years now. I was very gay the last time I was there. I think I went to a dance every night. My poor brothers were alive then. We used to drive off together. I’ve never been there since.”

“Ah,” said Perrin. He paused for a moment, so that his brain might make the picture of the woman before him sitting in the gloom of the carriage, with all her delicate beauty warmly wrapped by the two young men now dead. “Furs,” he muttered to himself. “Furs, and the lamps shining on the snow.” Then he looked at Olivia, noting the grey and black dress, the one gold bracelet round her wrist, and the old pearl ear-rings against the mass of hair.

“What jolly clothes women wear,” he said, meaning (like most men who use such phrases) “How beautiful you look there.”

“This?” she asked. “This is my oldest frock.”

“Is it? I didn’t remember it. How do you get your clothes?”

“I tell my dressmaker.”

“I wish you’d let me design you a dress.”

“I should be very pleased. What sort of dress would you design for me?”

“I would have you in a sort of white satin bodice, all embroidered with tiny scarlet roses. And then a little black velvet coat over it, with very full sleeves, slashed, to show an inner sleeve of dark blue silk. And the lining of the velvet would be dark green; so you would have green, blue, white, and red all contrasted against the black of the velvet.”

“That would be costly. And what skirt? A black skirt, I suppose?”

“A very full black skirt. What do you think about a belt? Would you wear that belt of yours? The one with the Venetian silver-work?”

“I don’t know about a belt. I thought you were going to design everything?”

“Not a belt, then. And black shoes, with small, oval, cut-steel buckles.”

“I should think that would be very pretty.” Her thoughts were wandering in England, down a lane of beech trees within sound of the sea, to a hillock of short grass, cropped by the sheep, where sea-pinks and sea-holly sprouted.

“What are the sailors like?” she asked. “I saw you working up aloft with them. What are they like to talk to?”

“Oh. They’re all right.”

“I think they’re dreadful people.”

“Why?” said Perrin. “What makes you think they’re dreadful?”

“No nice man would take such a life. Oh. It must be dreadful. I shudder when I see them. What do they talk of, among themselves?”

“They’re not very refined, of course. That man up on the yard there was once a slave in Virginia. You see he was transported for theft. He says he used to cry, sometimes, half through the night. He was so homesick.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. But what home had he to be sick for?”

“The ash-heap near a glass-house furnace. Somewhere in Chelsea, I think he said.”

“And are the others all thieves, do you suppose?”

“That ugly-looking dark fellow with the crooked eyes was once in a pirate’s crew, so the man on the yard said.”

“Was he really? I don’t think that man is quite sane. He seems to glare so. Oh, ships are dreadful, dreadful.”

“They’re beautiful, though. All---- Yes. Don’t you think all beautiful things seem to gather vileness about them?”

“No, I don’t think so. Vileness? In what way, vileness?”

“I think they do. You see ships with sailors, and pictures with picture-dealers, and tragedies---- Well. Tragedies with all sorts of people.” He ran on glibly, though with some confusion. The thought had occurred to him first in a moment of jealous anger that Olivia, so beautiful and sweet, should be a prey to the vile Stukeley. He blushed and stopped, thinking that she would read his thought.

“Oh. But I don’t think that at all,” she said. “You ought to say that vileness gathers about beautiful things. A beautiful thing is a vigorous form of life, and all forms of life have parasites. The parasites don’t attach themselves to the things you speak of because the things are beautiful.”

“No. I suppose not. Of course not,” he answered, rather puzzled, still thinking of Stukeley.

“And you wouldn’t say that the really beautiful things, such as love is, say, to a woman like myself. No vileness gathers about that?”

“N-no,” he answered, with some hesitation, wishing that he had never started his mild little rabbit of an epigram. He looked away, at the sky-line, for a moment. Then, with sudden desperation, he charged her to change the subject, his face still red from his former rout.

“Olivia,” he said. “If I drew you a ship, would you embroider it, or make a mat of it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Draw the _Broken Heart_. I could work it for Tom’s birthday. I should be very glad of it, after I’ve finished this.”

Perrin helped her to cut a square of canvas from a little roll she had obtained from the sailmaker. He settled himself down to draw. Olivia stitched with her silks.

“It is so curious,” she said at last, “that you should have known my husband--that you knew him years ago, when we stayed at Eltons together. Before I knew him.”

“Yes. I’ve thought that, too. And now we’re all here together. And Eltons is still going on, behind us there. Rooks in the elms. And your aunt Pile in her chair.”

She seemed to reflect for a moment, as though thinking of the beautiful house, where life moved so nobly, like a strain of music. Perrin knew that she was thinking of Stukeley. “Oh, you women,” he said to himself. “You give everything for a pennyweight of love, and even that is never paid to you.” He would have given much, poor moth, to be back at Eltons, young and handsome, with the shy, gauche girl who had since become Olivia. “I didn’t know then,” he said to himself, “and you couldn’t guess. And now we’re driving to it. Shipwreck. Shipwreck. And I should have been so happy with you.”

“What was Tom like then?” said Olivia.

“Who? Oh, your husband. You see I didn’t know him well,” said Perrin in confusion. “He was--I think he was a lot thinner than he is now.”

“How did he look in his uniform?”

“His uniform?” said Perrin. “You see. I didn’t see him in his uniform. You see it was after he’d been kicked---- After he’d---- You know what. What is the word? After he’d been----”

Stammering and blushing, he managed to get out of his difficulty. Olivia thought that he had been afflicted by that impediment in his speech, or partial aphasia, which sometimes checked his conversation. She pitied him, while feeling that his companionship was painful. He himself turned very red, and bit his tongue. He thought that the six weeks at sea should have taught him the guard for all such sudden thrusts.

“After he’d left the army?” she said kindly.

“Yes. Yes. It was,” he answered. He turned again to draw the image of the _Broken Heart_, as he had seen her from without, some seven long weeks before. Olivia gave him a moment’s grace to recover his natural colour. Captain Cammock caught her eye, and saluted as he took his stand with his quadrant. She was smiling back at him when her husband’s head appeared on the poop ladder. Perrin looked up quickly.

“I’d better hide this, Olivia,” he said. “If it’s for your husband’s birthday. Shall I hide it?”

As she nodded a swift answer her husband stepped on to the poop.

Stukeley advanced rapidly and kissed his wife, with some show of fervour, for policy’s sake. Then with a quick snatch he caught Perrin’s drawing, lying half hidden upon the skylight seat under one of Olivia’s wraps.

“Look at little Pilly’s cow,” he said. “Look, Olivia. Did you draw this, little Pilly?”

“He was drawing it for me,” said Olivia.

“Were you going to teach him to embroider it? Little Pilly, was he going to have his little needle, then? And his red and blue silk. Eh? You know, Olivia, I saw little Pilly here, down in the cabin one hit me, playing with some red and blue silk spools. Ah, little Pilly; it’s a shame to tease him. He must have his little dollies, then?”

“You put down that drawing,” said Perrin, snatching at it.

Stukeley held him aside with one hand, dangling the drawing from the other.

“No, no, little Pilly,” he said. “Manners, little boy. Manners before ladies.”

“Don’t, Tom dear,” said Olivia. “Don’t spoil the drawing.”

“That would be a shame,” he answered. “Little Pilly draws so beautifully. Which is the tail, Pilly?” he asked. “Which of these prongy things is the tail?”

Perrin did not answer; but again attempted to snatch the canvas.

“Why don’t you take it, little Pilly?” said Stukeley.

“Damn you, give it,” said Perrin, white with passion. He snatched the canvas from him, smote him a sharp slash across the eyes with it, and flung it overboard.

Stukeley made a rush at him, but became involved with one of Olivia’s wraps. Cammock stepped between the disputants with his quadrant at his eye.

“Woa, blood,” he said. “Don’t knock my ship overboard. Make eight bells there, will you, Mr. Perrin? Mr. Stukeley, will you please step and tell the steward to set the clock right?”

“Do your own dirty work,” said Stukeley.

The helmsman sniggered audibly. Cammock raised his hat about an inch from his head.

“Quite right, sir,” he said, as Perrin made eight bells. “Quite right to remind me, sir. I forgot you was only a passenger.”

“Steward,” shouted Perrin. “Oh. Mrs. Inigo. Just tell the steward to set the clock right.”

“De clock am set, seh,” said the steward, coming to the break of the poop to ring the bell for dinner.

“Tom dear,” said Olivia, conscious that the man she loved had made but a poor show. “Tom dear. You weren’t very kind. I mean. I think you hurt Captain Cammock. And you made Edward angry. He can’t bear to be teased. He’s not easy-tempered like you, dear. I think sometimes you forget that, don’t you, Tom? You won’t be cross, Tom?”

“Oh, nonsense, Polly,” he said, as he took her arm to lead her below. “Nonsense, you old pretty-eyes. I can’t resist teasing Pilly; he’s such an old hen. As for Cammock, he’s only an old pirate. I’m not going to be ordered about by a man like that. He’s no right to be at liberty.”

Olivia was pleased by the reference to her eyes, so she said no more. She wondered, during dinner, why Captain Margaret ate so little and so silently, and why Perrin never spoke until addressed. Cammock was affable and polite. His attention to Stukeley’s needs was almost oily.