Читать книгу A Whaleman's Wife - Frank Thomas Bullen - Страница 4

Table of Contents

‘VENI, VIDI, VICI’

After the death of Ezekiel Fish the care of the farm devolved upon the two brothers, both of them typical Yankee farmers, but without a trace of the kindliness so characteristic of the Eddys. Rube had never been a favourite with them. They dared not despise him openly—he was too big and strong for that; but they spoke of him behind his back in terms of disparagement, and did all in their power to discourage the slightest feeling of affection for him that they imagined their sister to have. Jake, the elder brother, a man some three years older than Rube, had by virtue of his seniority assumed full charge of affairs, and already had begun to launch out in various speculative ways that troubled the old lady sorely. His visits to Boston ‘on business’ were frequent and prolonged, and already he was becoming known to a few of his less reputable associates as a ’feller thet wuz makin’ things hum a bit.’

In these altered circumstances it was no wonder that Rube pressed his suit more earnestly than ever. His unselfish nature was fully alarmed for Priscilla’s immediate future, and his anxiety on her behalf gave his love an added lustre which it had lacked before. But to his distress and chagrin, the steady growth of his affection did not awaken in her the slightest responsiveness. To a stranger it would have been at once manifest that she merely tolerated the young man; even to his love-blinded perceptions the fact stubbornly persisted in revealing itself. Rube endured this coldness patiently for months, until on the evening of the commencement of our story he had drifted almost unconsciously into a protest against this treatment of himself by Priscilla who, if she had never given him any encouragement worth speaking of, had at least tacitly accepted him as a lover. She had received his complaint in the manner already specified, speaking the exact truth about the state of her feelings towards him as far as she knew them. The trouble was that she had not quite realised the strength of a feeling of unrest and discontent with her surroundings which had been steadily eating into her mind for months past. It was largely due to her brother Jake, who, in the elated condition generally noticeable on his return from Boston, was wont to launch into extravagant praise of city life with its light and bustle and abundant enjoyments. Naturally he was correspondingly contemptuous of the well-ordered procession of days characteristic of the country. The majestic harmonies and sweet confidences of Nature, the changeful orchestra of each day, and the placid stillness of the nights, had become to his disorganised ideas like the stagnation of death. His was that subtle malaise that stealthily undermines the natural order of things, and, leaving the countryside to go out of cultivation, herds men and women together in vast feverish crowds to stew and fret and die, but never to return to the quiet of the country again.

This miserable change had, without her knowledge, infected Priscilla also in such a manner that now every task was irksome, the stillness of the evenings almost unbearable. Irritability, which had never before disfigured her character, became increasingly noticeable. Even Rube saw the change, but could not dream of its cause, and innocently added to it by his dog-like untiring affection. Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when one evening the sound of wheels through the crisp air warned the inmates of the Fish place that Jake was returning from one of his Boston jaunts. Priscilla dropped her knitting and went to the door which looked across the wide paddock down the road. To her surprise she saw in the fast approaching buggy two forms. Jake was bringing a visitor! The prospect of any break in what had now become almost an intolerable monotony so affected her that she felt nearly intoxicated, her face flushed rosily, and a tingling thrill that was almost pain rushed all over her. Yet she could not move, but stood there framed in the portal like a graceful , while the buggy drew up at the roadside and the men alighted. As they came across the paddock towards her she saw that the stranger was tall and stalwart, walking with the easy loose-jointed swing of the smart sailor. He was dressed in the garb of an ordinary well-clothed townsman, but a wide sombrero, of brown velvet apparently, shaded his face. Whether by accident or design on his part, this hat completed his resemblance to one of the old conquistadores or grandees of Spain painted by Velasquez. For his visage was swarthy and oval, his eyes large, black, and brilliant, and the lower half of his face was covered by a pointed beard and immense moustache so black and thick and silky that it hardly seemed of natural growth. To Priscilla’s eyes he looked as if he had just stepped across the years out of Prescott’s living page, and, like so many others of her sex, in that moment she gave him her whole heart, offered herself up to the husk of a man, unknowing and uncaring what it contained.

Her mind in a confused whirl of thought, she stood as if petrified until the travellers reached her, and made no sign, even when Jake said, ‘Thishyer’s my sister Priscilla, Cap’n. Pris, Cap’n Da Silva.’ The Captain bowed, gracefully enough because naturally, but with evident signs that the movement was unusual, and held out his small and well-shaped brown hand to meet Priscilla’s white and plump one. The contact of their hands acted upon her like a vigorous restorative, and the blood fled back again from her face and neck, leaving them for the moment unnaturally pale as she found her voice and bade the stranger welcome. Even Jake’s dull eyes could not fail to see how powerfully his sister was impressed by the Captain, and it pleased him well. Selfish and grasping, he was by no means sorry to get rid of his sister, nor did the thought of his mother’s loneliness affect him in the slightest degree. So that it was with a chuckle of satisfaction he turned away to put up his horse and buggy, saying carelessly as he did so, ‘’Scuse me, Cap. My sister’ll look after you in shape, won’t ye, Pris?’

Thenceforward Priscilla and the Captain were constant companions, their intimacy tacitly encouraged by Jake, who was in a high state of satisfaction at the prospect of getting rid of his sister finally. The mother made many attempts to gain her daughter’s confidence, for she felt an innate distrust of the handsome stranger. But Priscilla, forgetting all her mother’s claims, avoided with intuitive diplomacy any approach to the subject on her part, showing at times an irritability of manner that sorely troubled the old lady, who, having no one to turn to in her distress of mind, was lonely indeed. At last, one day when Pris, the Captain, and Jake had driven off upon some excursion of pleasure, she felt that she could bear the trouble alone no longer, and taking advantage of her younger son’s absence at a neighbouring farm, she made a pilgrimage over to the Eddy farmhouse, intent upon pouring out her heart to Mrs. Eddy. The meeting between the two old dames was full of pathetic interest, for Mrs. Eddy loved her boy so fondly that, although she had never felt drawn to Priscilla, it was enough for her that Rube loved the girl. His happiness was the consideration that overtopped all others in her heart. So that when Mrs. Fish unburdened herself, her hearer was torn by maternal solicitude for her boy, and for the time her anxiety as to the effect this news would have upon him was too great to allow her to reply. And when she did speak, her words sounded hollow and unmeaning—so much so that her visitor stared at her wonderingly. For Mrs. Eddy’s powers of consolation and wisdom of counsel were matters of common knowledge over a wide extent of country—she was looked up to as infallible. The look in her visitor’s eyes recalled her to herself somewhat, and choking down her feelings by a great effort, she said:

‘Wall, Hepziber, yewrs ’s surely a hard case, ’n’ I kain’t fur th’ life of me see wut yew’re to do. Ef Pris is ’tarmined tu go her own way ’n’ wun’t listen to yew on the matter ’t all, ’n’ ef, ’s yew say, Jake’s doin’ his best t’ encourage her, yew’re jest brought face to face with th’ wall, ’s yew may say. My Rube w’d hev made her a good husband, an’ one ’bout whose record there couldn’t be any doubt; but I’ve seen fur a long time that she wuz jest puttin’ up with him like—she didn’t love him more ’n she did me, ’n’ you know she never took ter me, ner dad eyther. Go home ’n’ pray about it, Hepziber; it’s all we kin do. As fur myself, I’ve got ter wrassle with th’ Lord for my boy, fur how he’ll b’ar this I kain’t begin ter think.’

And with this cold comfort (to her), Widow Fish had to depart for the home she was beginning to feel a stranger in, after all these years, leaving Mrs. Eddy with a heart overflowing with sorrowful love for her only son. With a natural dread of the effect the news would have upon him, she put in practice all the simple arts she knew to keep him in ignorance of what was brewing, and finally succeeded, by the aid of her husband, in despatching him to Boston on business without his calling at the Fish place first. He was absent from home for a fortnight, and when he returned, after an hour or two spent with his father and mother, he rose and said, with a transparent attempt to conceal his eagerness:

‘I guess I’ll jest stroll over an’ see Pris. I’d like to tell her ’bout some o’ the Boston sights. ’N’ I’ve brought her a cunning little watch for a birthday present.’

The mother looked appealingly at her husband, who, answering her gaze with eyes full of fondness, rose, and laying his hand upon Rube’s shoulder, said:

‘My son, yew’re a man in years an’ strength, ’n’ I’ve brung ye up to be the good man I b’lieve y’ are. Y’ haven’t hed enny big trouble yet, but y’ know ther’ ain’t nothin’ in th’ world yew kin ’pend on till it’s tested. Yew’re goin’ ter be tested now. Priscilla’s married.’

The watch dropped from the young man’s fingers on to the stone floor and was broken. Except for that sound there was absolute silence: none of the three seemed to breathe. Presently Rube spoke:

‘Thank ye, father, fur tellin’ me plain ’n’ prompt. Now I think I’ll go upstairs ’n’ rest.’

And with heavy uncertain steps Rube left the kitchen, mounted to the little room he had occupied since he was a child, and shut himself in.

It was true. With a haste that was explained by the Captain as absolutely necessary on account of his ship being ordered to sea at a very short notice, he had pressed his suit when once he found how willing Priscilla was to take him at his own valuation. Mrs. Fish, thoroughly bewildered by the whole hasty proceeding, wandered about the house like an unquiet ghost, doing nothing either to help or hinder the preparations. Jake was unwontedly lavish with the funds necessary, and indefatigable in giving assistance, so that two days before Rube returned from Boston the newly married pair had departed for New Bedford with the intention of spending their honeymoon on board Captain Da Silva’s ship as she journeyed southward on the commencement of her long voyage. She was called the Grampus, and was one of the fine fleet of South Sea whaleships then sailing from New Bedford, although so ignorant were the farm-folk of Vermont of maritime matters that even Jake, smart as he fancied himself, had but the dimmest, vaguest idea of what the life was that his sister was going to be shut up to for the next three or four years. Still less did he care. As for Priscilla, she would have accepted unquestioningly any situation into which she might be brought so long as she was by the side of the man she worshipped with a fierce unreasoning intensity. Of Rube she never thought for more than a minute at a time, and then it was only with a sense of relief at the knowledge that he would trouble her no more. From her mother she parted without regret: there seemed to be no room in her mind for anything else but intense satisfaction in the prize she believed herself to have won. Even the prospect of seeing the great world which had once claimed all her desires was but a feeble unit now in the vast sum of her delight in the possession of Ramon Da Silva. Nor was her joy in the least damped by the masterful way in which he accepted all the affection she lavished upon him. To do him justice, he was hardly to blame for this. His career, from the time he had enlisted as a green hand on board of an American whaler at Fayal, in his sixteenth year, had been one long series of successes, due to the great force of his character, his utter unscrupulousness, and entire absence of fear. Step by step he had risen in his dangerous profession until he had become master of a whaleship, while his name was a household word among the fleet for smartness, courage, and—brutality.