The Captain from Connecticut

Chapter XVII

LIEUTENANT HUBBARD clearly had something unpleasant to report, after he had given an account of how the work on the ship had progressed. He held his lanky figure rigid as he stood in the stuffy cabin, and he looked over the top of Peabody's head as he said the words.

"Midshipman Jonathan Peabody, sir. Absent without leave."

"He didn't come back last night?"

"No, sir."

Hubbard was saying no more than the formalities demanded.

"He was with Mr. Atwell. What has Atwell to say about it?"

"Shall I pass the word for Mr. Atwell to report so that you can ask him, sir?"

"Yes."

Atwell's ugly face showed all the signs of anxiety.

"After the — the wedding, sir — "

"Yes, go on."

"We was all invited to another house. . . . Madame Clair's, sir — I don't mean that sort of house, sir."

"I know Madame Clair. Go on."

"I didn't see much of Mr. Peabody while we was there. To tell the truth, sir, there was drinking going on and skylarking."

"Yes."

"But at seven bells I thought I'd leave, sir, and I looked for Mr. Peabody and I had to look a long time. And when I found him — "

"Where was he?"

"He was with Madame Clair. She was very merry, sir. To tell the truth, she had her arms round him."

"Go on."

"I said it was time to go back to the ship. And he said — "

"Go on."

"He said he'd be eternally damned if he'd ever go back to the damned ship again. He said I could go back to hell on water if I wanted to, but he wasn't such a damned fool as me."

"What did you say to that?"

"I said I'd forget his insolence if he'd only come back with me. I'd let bygones be bygones. I could see he'd been drinking, sir."

"And he refused to come?"

"Yes, sir. I tried to make him, sir, but — "

"But what?"

"To tell the truth, sir, Madame Clair called the servants and — and I had to go without him."

"Very good, Mr. Atwell. No blame attaches to you. Thank you, Mr. Hubbard."

This was added bitterness in his strangely mixed cup. Jonathan had deserted in the presence of the enemy, and if Jonathan had his deserts he would be dangling at the yardarm if he could once lay his hands on him. If Jonathan came back voluntarily he would spare his life after the severest punishment he could devise — but he knew Jonathan had no intention whatever of coming back. Nor, in a neutral port, could any attempt be made to recapture him, for Jonathan could stand on the quay and merely laugh at them. Probably that was what he would do. Peabody reached for the log book and wrote in it. "Midshipman Jonathan Peabody deserted." Peabody's expression as he wrote reflected his mood; it was that same mood in which Cato put his sword point to his breast. He did not spare himself any of the agony.

The pain was still there at the end of the day, when his gig carried him over the reddened sunset-lit water to the quay where the carriage with its ridiculous little horses stood waiting in the shade of a warehouse. His shoulders were a little bowed with it as he set foot on shore, and the hard lines from nose to mouth were deeper than ever. "Washington — trust that fool to be there! — was standing by the carriage door and pulled it open the instant Peabody appeared. There was a flutter of bright colors, a whirl of petticoats, as Anne sprang down and ran to him. He made no move to take her in his arms, but she put up her hands to his lapels and drew him to her as close as his rigidity would allow, smiling up at him, and she made herself smile despite the un­relenting hardness of his face. Whether he would have kissed her in the full light of day and in sight of all Fort-de-France if he had not been oppressed with the thought of Jonathan was not to be guessed — public kissing was sinful.

"Where does Madame Clair live?" were his first words.

"Over towards Ducos. Five miles away. Six, perhaps, dear."

"Can we go there?"

"Of course, dear. Dinner can wait."

Peabody was not experienced enough fully to ap­preciate the transcendent loyalty of that speech.

"Let us go there, then," he said.

Washington elaborately guarded Anne's skirts from the wheel; Anne gave her orders to the coachman in a steady voice which forbade any comment — even from Washington, who thirsted to make some. The carriage lurched over the cobbles.

"I know about Jonathan, dear," said Anne, and there was sympathy in her voice. Atwell and Hubbard had not offered sympathy, had perhaps been repelled from offer­ing it; nor, in his drab existence, had Peabody been aware until that moment that he would be grateful for sym­pathy. In his mind Peabody had drawn a sharp dividing line between the familiar realities of his professional life and the delirious unrealities of his dream life. This was the first indication that the line could be crossed: that Anne — a woman, and French, and the leading figure of the dream life — should be able to know instantly what it meant to a United States captain that his brother should be a deserter.

"I don't know whether you've heard everything, dear," went on Anne, gently. "The island's full of the news."

"What news?"

"They were married today. Jonathan and Madame Clair."

"No," said Peabody. "I hadn't heard that."

It did not seem likely in that case that a personal appeal would have any effect in persuading Jonathan to return to duty, then. Jonathan must have found a new career for himself.

"She's the richest landowner in the whole island," said Anne. "There's another estate on the windward side, near Vauclin, which came to her from her second hus­band. Jonathan will be a rich man — there are four hundred slaves."

It was quite certain that Jonathan would not return to duty. Peabody was suddenly left without a doubt about it; he was able now to see his brother's character perfectly clearly. He could understand his passionate re­sentment against any kind of discipline, and the slyness which had enabled him to evade it. But that a Peabody should have deserted, that his own brother should have disgraced him like this, was almost more than he could bear. He did not know how he could face the world. He was tempted to turn and go back again, but it was not in him to give up any enterprise, however hopeless, once he had begun upon it. The stuffy interior of the carriage, the stifling heat, and the irregularity of the motion as the carriage rolled unsteadily over the in­equalities of the surface, were all depressing. Then the rain came to make matters worse, and the little horses labored in the mud of the road; more than once they had to be checked as the wheels verged upon the ditch in the darkness.

The meeting with Jonathan was a shameful thing — Jonathan red-faced with wine, his arm round his new wife on whose cheeks the rouge was smeared and striped with sweat, the two of them laughing and jeering at him like obscene animals at the entrance to their inaccessible cave. Peabody was conscious of the sword at his side and was tempted to slash and carve at this loathsome brother of his, but the colored servants closed round him and he was forced to break off the hideous interview.

It was still raining when they reached the carriage door.

"We'll go straight home, Washington," said Peabody.

"Yessir, cert'nly sir, whatever you — "

"Shut your mouth and get on the box."

The carriage lurched and squelched back through the mud. In the darkness Anne spoke. There was in her speech the faint French flavor combined with the Lon­don accent which Peabody found so irritating in every voice except Anne's.

"I hate him," said Anne. "He's your brother and I hate him."

"So do I," said Peabody bitterly.

"Dearest," said Anne, "what can I say? What can I do? It breaks my heart that you are unhappy." There was a catch in her throat as she spoke and Peabody knew she was crying in the darkness, and it was more than he could bear.

"Don't — don't," he said.

"I hate him more than anyone on earth," said Anne. "But — but I love you more, ever so much more. I couldn't hate as much as I love you."

Her soft hand touched his horny one, and that changed the mood of both of them.

Peabody in the darkness knew that all this was mad­ness. To snatch at a moment's happiness like this, when all the world was against him, was as foolish as to heave a sigh of relief during the ten seconds' calm in the center of a hurricane. It was not merely foolish, it savored of the sinful. And yet — and yet — there was no help for it. He could not control himself, and the minority party in his mind was vociferously informing him that the very briefness of his happiness was a further argument in favor of snatching at it. There was an ad­ditional fearful pleasure in comparing his own actions with those of the sinful men who said, "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Logic on the one hand and unwonted recklessness on the other combined with his own wild passion to force him into forgetting for a space the Delaware and the Calypso, his brother's defection and his own approaching end, even the history of the world in which he was playing a major part, and even the peril of his own country. Anne's lips were sweet.

The torch which lit them from the carriage to the little house was hardly as bright as the white fireflies which winked on and off in hundreds all about them; the whine of the fan in the ceiling did nothing to mask the song of the frogs and the crickets in the wet under­growth outside the dark windows. Across the table Anne's sweet face swam in a mist; the glass of wine which was before him stood untouched and unthought of. It might be madness; it might even be sin, but it was happiness, and the first he had ever known.

The colored maid, who was wise only in the ways of Martinique, brought him rum to drink in the dark morning of thunderous rain; and her white teeth accented her amused surprise when it was refused. The dawn which burst upon him as he rowed out to the Delaware was the dividing line between the two worlds — their world, where happiness was so acute as to be distrusted, and the other world where there were hard facts to be clung to — comforting as soon as the mind had grown accustomed to them again, as eyes to light.