Читать книгу The Heart that Knows - Charles George Douglas Roberts - Страница 8

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About two weeks before the G. G. Goodridge was to sail, however, Fate quite came up to Melissa’s expectations, and played most complacently into her hands. Bud Whalley, coming out to the G. G. Goodridge one day when Melissa was on board decorating her cabin, served as fate’s instrument. He had brought a half-barrel of “No. 1 Extra” salt Chignecto shad for the use of the captain’s cabin; and he was in the genial humour of the three-quarters drunk. Stepping backwards to shout to a friend aloft in the rigging, he fell into the open hold, broke his back across the edge of a balk, and died within fifteen minutes.

Time and again had Melissa held Bud Whalley under the scrutiny of her clear, pale eyes, hoping to detect in him some clue by which to solve her main problem. She knew, of course, the wild young fisherman’s devotion to his cousin. And like every one else in Westcock, she was aware of Luella’s affection for him, in spite of all his wildness. But she was a shrewd reader of hearts, this country girl, and she saw that nothing could make Bud Whalley a traitor to the one human being who stood by him through thick and thin. Alive, no one could use this harebrained but chivalrous adventurer of the tides. But dead,—however his impetuous spirit may have raged to see it, he was a tool in Melissa’s little unrelenting hands.

Several times already Melissa had dropped the germs of doubt into Jim’s mind, but so delicately that Jim had never dreamed himself infected. She did not know, at the time, that they would ever spring to life and do her service; but, so long as she was not suspected of planting them, it was well they should be there ready. Now, Luella’s unrestrained sorrow over her cousin’s death gave Melissa another chance to sow her ill seeds. She gratified Jim by calling every one’s attention to Luella’s warmth of heart and cousinly devotion.

From that day on, however, her attitude toward Luella changed subtly. She managed so skilfully as to show the change to Jim more than to Luella herself, and the latter hardly noticed it. But Jim could not help noticing it, and wondering about it, and worrying over it; till at last he openly taxed Melissa with it. The girl gazed at him steadily for some seconds, with deep eyes of compassion, and opened trembling lips to reply. All she could say, however, was only “Oh, Jim!” But her voice made it sound like, “Oh, my poor, poor Jim!” Then, as if words choked her, she threw her hands apart, and turned, and ran from him, leaving him half-sick with a sense of imminent calamity. For the next few days, on ship or ashore, she evaded his persistent efforts to have speech with her, till his vague apprehensions became a torture. Nevertheless, he had no faintest suspicion of anything to Luella’s discredit, but merely could not endure that the woman whom he loved as his own life should be misunderstood by the woman whom he counted his best friend. He simply would not have it. Melissa must “act right” toward Luella, in spite of the fact that Luella, in her innocence of heart and her satisfaction with life and love, was troubling herself not at all as to Melissa Britton’s whims.

At last, the very morning before the day set for the wedding, Melissa cleverly allowed herself to be caught. Jim planted himself squarely before her, in triumph, and lost no time beating about the bush.

“What is it now, Melissy,” he blurted out, “you think you’ve got against Luella?”

Melissa dropped her eyes, and tried to get past him. Jim caught her by both arms and held her fast. She thrilled from head to foot under the hard grip of his hands, and from beneath her drooped lids her eyes feasted on their strength. But she pretended to be angry.

“Let me go, right off, Jim Calder!” she commanded, striving to twist away.

“You’ve got to tell me, Melissy!” he demanded, half-resolute, half-pleading.

“I won’t tell you, so there! You wouldn’t believe me, anyway,” she retorted, sharply. Then her face softened. She lifted to his eager eyes a look of infinite tenderness and pity. Under its influence his grip upon her arms relaxed, and she gently freed herself. Then, in a low voice, she continued:

“I just can’t tell you, Jim! It ain’t my business. I think too much of you to risk losing your friendship. I can’t have you turn against me. No, no, I can’t. Don’t ask me! I can’t! I can’t!” And covering her mouth with both hands she gave a sob and ran away into her father’s cabin. Jim gazed after her in amazed consternation, till presently his anxiety turned to annoyance. He wheeled about on his heel and stalked forward to give some orders, muttering as he went:

“Oh, hell! What’s the use!” Then he proceeded to restore himself to good-humour by thinking about Luella, who never fretted him thus with the tragical-mysterious. When he went ashore a little later, and walked with Luella in the summer-scented twilight, and talked happily with her about the morrow and the future, and what they would do as soon as he could get a ship of his own, he had forgotten all about “Melissa Britton’s whims.”

Next morning, Jim’s duties on shipboard were many and troublesome. As he hurried hither and thither, a little exultant in his new authority, Melissa suddenly presented herself before him, with a bit of folded paper in her hands. The expression in her face drove the cheer from his. It seemed to freeze his veins with foreboding.

“What—what is it, Melissy?” he stammered.

“Come here, Jim!” she said, in a voice that trembled so that it was hardly articulate.

She led him into the cabin, and faced him, steadying herself with one hand on the cabin table. Her eyes met his directly, and with that same look of pity which had so disturbed him before.

“You are a strong man, Jim!” she said, speaking half in a whisper.

“Yes! yes! what is it? Tell me quick, Melissy.” And he half-reached out his hand to take the scrap of paper she held.

She put her hands behind her back, and spoke very sadly.

“I’m going to tell you, Jim! You’ll hate me, I know you’ll hate me. But I’m your friend, and I’ve seen I must tell you, whatever it costs me.”

Jim said nothing, but stared at her in bewilderment.

“There,” she went on, suddenly. “Read that, Jim! It was in Bud Whalley’s pocket. You’ll know now why I was different to—her!”

She thrust the paper into Jim’s hand, and retreated to the other side of the table, as if she feared him.

Cool, sagacious, merciless with the simplicity of primeval instinct, Melissa had done her work with skilled completeness. An expert might have been deceived in the handwriting. Hours and hours she had spent in copying Luella’s rather simple hand, from letters written to her about the garden. She had got the paper Luella always used. She had no faintest flicker of compunction, of pity for the girl whose life she was destroying. She despised Luella for her candour and her trustfulness. In fact, she despised every one a little, except Jim, and her father, and the rector—and him she would have despised also, for his unconquerable faith in humanity, but for her perception of his mental power. She watched Jim now with half-uplifted eyes, feigning herself to shrink from the blow which she had been compelled to deal him. But as she watched the change that came slowly over his face, her feigned fear grew real enough. She did not know what might happen. She feared for him, not at all for herself,—and drew a little nearer. She had never guessed that a face like Jim’s, boyish, and sunny, and brave, could change so. It had gone gray, and old, and harder than stone, as she was looking. And because she was in love with him, the sight pierced her heart with such a pang that she cried out under her breath for pity, she who was incapable of pity for any one else.

Well, indeed, had she done her work. When Jim looked at the bit of paper which she thrust convulsively into his hands, he recognized at once the thin, bluish, faint-lined paper, with the ill-formed dove stamped at the top of the sheet. It was part of a bankrupt stock which Abner Baisley had purchased in quantity, at a great bargain. He recognized, too, the careful handwriting which was so unspeakably dear to him. Hitherto he had never seen it without a thrill of joy. Now, before he could even begin to gather the drift of what was written, he trembled with a sick terror. He straightened out the creased page,—but the words swam before his eyes. He thought of hurling the thing from him, unread; but the sardonic humour of fate made his loyalty his undoing. His love for Luella, his faith in her, were too great. He would not insult her by fearing to read what she had written. He read, therefore. And again he read. And yet again,—till the words had burned themselves like vitriol into his astounded brain.

“How can you be so hard on me, Bud dear? How can you be so cruel—when you think of all that’s been between us—when you know what is between us. How could I marry you, no matter how I love you? You know you’d break any girl’s heart, that was married to you, in a month, Bud dear. You know we’d hate each other in a month. And maybe I’d kill you then,—or kill myself, Bud. I must marry Jim,—because he’s as good and kind as you are bad and cruel. But I’m yours, all yours, always, always, Bud, remember that—just because I can’t help it. And I’ll be back with you in just a few days. And think how long he’ll be away. And oh, Bud, forgive me, and don’t be so hard, and love me, love me, Bud dear, always. You must, for more sakes than just my sake, Bud.

“Your own

“Luella.”

As Jim read the letter over and over the whole meaning of it grew clear moment by moment—clear, eternally immutable, indisputable as naked Truth herself. What had been on Melissa’s part but a random shot in the dark proved to Jim the most conclusive and deadly point of all. The very vagueness of the letter, arising from Melissa’s ignorance, testified to Luella’s guilty caution. Jim knew well what it was that the letter so dimly hinted at. He would have sworn before all the angels and all the saints of heaven to Luella’s unshakable fidelity,—but in the face of these her own deliberate words there was no least room for doubt. His whole world fell in ruin about his ears. His brain was yet too bewildered to fully apprehend what had befallen him—though his body, more instantly understanding, was betraying its anguish in the clenching of fingers, the contraction of eyeballs, the blanching of cheek and lip, the crowding back of the blood into the shocked and reluctant heart. In a far-off way he heard himself asking, “Where did you git this, Melissy?” And vaguely, as if from very far away, he heard her answer, tremulously, “In Bud Whalley’s pocket!” Then, as he stared at her without replying, his brain recovered its use, and he knew that life and hope were dead within him. He wished that he could drop dead, then, at that monstrous moment. But he could not. And there was work to do. Slowly his locked fingers relaxed; the letter fell to the cabin floor; and he turned, climbed the steep companionway and hurried “up forrard” blindly.

With a wild thought that he might be going to jump overboard, Melissa followed close at his heels—after picking up the letter. It was a foolish fear, however. She saw Jim stopped by the first mate, Ezra Boltenhouse, who eyed him curiously, and said:

“Jim, the captain’s jest sent word he wants to sail this afternoon’s tide, ’stead er to-morrow. Owners has got wind o’ some more freight we kin pick up in St. John, fer Matanzas, if we’re in time. This ’ere wind’s just what we’ve been a-wishin’ fer! Couldn’t you pull off the weddin’ this mornin’, ’stead er to-night, an’ git Mrs. Calder aboard in time so’s we could go out with the tide? It means dollars an’ dollars to the ship—an’ this her first trip, too!”

“Ther’ ain’t a-goin’ to be no weddin’, Ezra,” answered Jim, in a strange voice. “I’m a’ready, right now!”

Mr. Boltenhouse looked deeply troubled. He had a faith that anything could be remedied.

“Now, Jim—” he began.

But Jim cut him short, gave him one terrible look, and strode forward among the men, leaving him astounded. He turned to Melissa for enlightenment.

“Jim Calder ain’t the man to leave a nice girl like Luelly in the lurch, surely?” he suggested.

“I reckon he must have good reason, Mr. Boltenhouse!” replied Melissa, gravely. “One don’t have to ask. To look at his face is enough.”

“But what does it mean? What’s it all about? It’s nothin’ but a pair of young fools they be! Why don’t somebody bring ’em to their senses, afore it’s too late? I won’t never believe a word agin Luelly Warden, anyhow. If Jim lets her slip, he’ll lose the finest girl in Westcock.”

His sunburnt forehead and sun-bleached, shaggy eyebrows were knotted with solicitude, as he gaped after Jim’s retreating form.

A fierce wave of jealousy surged up from Melissa’s heart, flooding face and neck; and the note which she clutched in her pocket burned at her fingers. She would show it to this fool who thought the perfection of all womanhood centred in Luella Warden; and it would open his eyes for him. But her wary brain crushed down the rage within her; and amazement at her own madness cooled her with a shock.

“That’s just what I’d have thought myself, Mr. Boltenhouse,” she answered, sadly. “But from all I can make out, it must be something terrible come between them. I tried to talk to him, till I dasn’t say another word, the look in his face was that awful. Oh, I’m glad we’re going to sail to-day. I hope he won’t go ashore. I’d be afraid something even more dreadful might happen.”

“An’ couldn’t you git any kind of a clue as to what it’s all about?” persisted the mate, eying Jim’s distant form with resentful bewilderment.

Melissa shook her head hopelessly.

“Well, ’tain’t no business of our’n, I suppose!” snapped the mate, turning away.

Jim went about his work like a machine, giving his orders in a voice of iron so unlike his usual brisk and cheerful tones that the men kept watching him furtively. His face, with eyes sunken, yet burning, the mouth gray and dead, effectually prevented questions. When, some four hours later, Captain Britton came hurrying aboard, to find the ship almost ready to sail and no Luella there, he fell into a rage at once.

“What does this mean, Mr. Calder?” he demanded, his face reddening up hotly. “Damn it, man, I sent you word time enough. Do you think I’m goin’ to wait over till the nex’ tide to suit your convenience?”

“No occasion to wait on my account, captain! I’m ready,” answered Jim, in a level voice.

“No occasion? What?—Where’s the girl? What d’you mean? What in hell—” stammered the captain, staring about as if he expected to see Luella come over the bulwarks. Getting no reply, he stared angrily into Jim’s face. As he did so, his anger paled away. Without repeating his demands for enlightenment he began roaring orders in his great fog-horn voice till he had every man aboard on the run. Then he hurried off to the cabin to look for Melissa, who was his resort in any trouble, and make another vain effort to find out what had happened.

An hour later, the anchor came up, to the rhythm of the swinging chantey; and the G. G. Goodridge, under full sail, went out from Tantramar with wind and tide.