The Captain from Connecticut

Chapter XIX

MRS.JOSIAH PEABODY was at work with her needle in the candlelit drawing room of the little house on the hill. Beside her stood her empty coffeecup, and opposite sat her husband. For once in a way his usually clear-thinking mind was in an extraordinary muddle. He had thought about the string of events which had helped to change the unpronounceable Mademoiselle Anne de Villebois into Mrs. Josiah Peabody. He had thought about the coincidence that those same events enabled him to sit here watching her, under the mo­notonous swaying of the fan, secure in the knowledge that the British squadron, restrained by its senior officer's pledged word, would make no attempt to steal a march on him for two more days. Naturally he had thought about the Delaware, for he was never awake five min­utes consecutively without thinking about her. She was fully stored with provisions and water again, her crew rested, her rigging newly set-up — ready for a six months' campaign. The gold which he had taken from the Princess Augusta had paid for everything — the fresh provisions, the fruit which had got his men back into health, the shore leave which had utterly reconciled them to a fresh voyage. He was a lucky man, and what he could see of Anne's cheek and neck as she bent over her needlework was lovelier than the set of the Dela­ware's foretopsail. And Lerouge was hanging about off Cape St. Martin, paralyzing shipping, and what his duty really was regarding him . . .

Anne looked up as Peabody stirred in his chair.

"Father told me about the pirate," she said. Already it had ceased to be a surprise to Peabody when Anne's remarks exactly chimed in with his own thoughts.

"Yes, dear," he said. There was still a pleasant novelty about using the endearment.

"And Aunt Sophie told me about what Captain Davenant wants to do," went on Anne.

"Oh, did she?" said Peabody.

He felt a slight shrinking of the flesh at the words. This was a hint of something he had feared, deep down within him. Women were interfering in man's business, and that meant trouble. The phrase "petticoat govern­ment" drifted into his mind; much as he loved his wife he would never give her the smallest opportunity of discussing — which meant diverting him from — his duty.

"Captain Davenant and Aunt Sophie are growing very friendly," went on Anne.

And Davenant is trying to get the women to do his dirty work for him, thought Peabody, but aloud he only said, "I suspected as much myself."

"He's quite furious about the pirate. And the people here are distressed as well. I suppose you've seen the ships in the bay which daren't go out. They're the first ships to leave Martinique for France for eleven years and it's going to cause a lot of trouble to everyone. Monsieur Godron was telling me that he's afraid he'll lose the market in France and it'll ruin him."

"Wars often ruin people," said Peabody unhelpfully. He felt all the irritation of a fighting man, whose life is in peril from day to day, against the man of peace whose worries about his money merely complicate the issue.

"But I can't help feeling sorry for Monsieur Godron all the same," said Anne.

"Now look here," said Peabody. "I can't do any­thing about it, dear. That's as precise as I can make it. I've got to — "

He restrained himself. He had almost allowed himself to tell his wife of his intention to hang on in Fort-de-France, watching for an opportunity to escape, keeping the British squadron eating their heads off there, and hoping for some shift in the circumstances of which he could take advantage. But he shut his mouth tight; he was not going to allow even a hint of his military in­tentions to escape him. He had not told Hubbard, and he would not tell Anne.

"It's very difficult for you, dear, and I know it," said Anne.

Peabody saw the softness in her eyes. He had the sud­den fresh realization that his problems were as impor­tant to her as to him; that the peril in which he stood was far more of a strain upon her than upon him. The knowledge was liable to lose its reality with the passage of time. He spent necessarily so many hours thinking about the inevitable eventual end to the adventures of the Delaware; he had to calculate upon the destruction of the Delaware, upon the extreme likelihood of his own death, upon the probable termination of his own pro­fessional career. Long thinking about his approaching ruin and death made them loom even larger in his emo­tion than they deserved, and made it hard to realize — what was undoubtedly true — that they meant to Anne as much as, or more than, they meant to him. And it was hard, when he allowed childish resentment against Providence to master him, not to be resentful at the same time against Anne, who had only to sit back and have no worries about the proper employment of the Delaware, no insidious inward thoughts about the round shot which would one day dash him in red ruin on his own quarter-deck — smash him into pulp as he remem­bered Crane the master smashed into pulp beside the wheel.

But Peabody knew again now that thoughts like that were not nearly as painful to him as Anne's thoughts were to her, and that she shut her mouth as firmly over them as he did over his military plans. He bent forward towards her and touched the hand with the long slender fingers.

"I love you so much, dear," said Anne.

Peabody did not say "I love you" in return, as he well might have done. He gave instead the most positive proof of it, by allowing the inertia of his previous train of thought to carry him on into a technical discussion with a mere woman whose knowledge of ships was of course negligible.

"Davenant couldn't do anything even if I let him go," he said. "That schooner of Lerouge's is Baltimore-built and as fast as anything that sails. He'd never catch her with that tub of a Calypso — not even the Racer would do it. I chased the Susanna myself, a week back — By God!"

He had broken off what he was saying and was staring at her. It was odd that, even at this moment, when a fresh plan was forming in his mind with a rapidity and a completeness which startled him, he should still be able to note simultaneously with a thrill of pleasure how straight her brows were and how steady were the blue eyes below them. They smiled at him now.

"You've thought of something interesting," said Anne.

"Yes," said Peabody.

He got to his feet and walked back and forward across the room. Davenant would agree, he was sure. Peabody's logical and essentially matter-of-fact mind brushed aside the fact that the plan he had in mind was probably unprecedented. That was no argument against it. On the surface the plan was ludicrous, too — and that was an argument in favor of it. And — there were new aspects, new developments, revealing themselves as he thought about it. He smacked his right fist into his left hand to clinch the argument with himself, and stopped short in his pacing of the room to look down at Anne, who was looking up at him.

"I beg your pardon, dear," he said.

"I like it," said Anne, simply.

Peabody caught her up to him and kissed her, and she kissed him back, her lips moving against his. This was stranger and more delightful than ever. It had never occurred to Peabody that plans for war and pas­sion for his wife could coexist. He would have said earlier that it was as impossible that two masses should occupy the same space at the same time. The one thing was perfectly possible, as the present moment proved, and everything was so delirious that he would not be surprised if the other were possible despite what Euclid might say to the contrary. The excitement of caution gave an edge to his passion. Because he had thought of a method of dealing with Lerouge he could kiss Anne with added fervor; conceivably the prospect of im­mediate action in place of possible weeks of inactivity played its part as well. Anne saw the light dancing in his eyes and was glad. To Peabody it was all mad — mad — mad. It was mad that he should have thought of his plan while Anne's hand was actually in his. It was mad that at the same moment that his brain was seething with suggestions for the destruction of Lerouge it should be seething with warm images of Anne. It was mad that he could kiss thus, and that he should have his passions sweep him away and yet that he should feel no sense of sin. The white throat on which he set his lips was sweeter than the sweetest honey he had known in his hard child­hood. The soft sleep which came at last in Anne's scented arms was something life had never given him before. The drugged, swinish oblivion that drink had given him in his youth, and which had sometimes seemed so alluring, was not to be compared with this sleep, hope­ful and yet with desire all burned away. And the obliv­ion of death, of which he had sometimes allowed him­self to think longingly, blank and loveless like his life until now, could no longer be thought of. Anne, in the darkness, his face against her breast, knew that he smiled in his sleep. She loved him enough to be happy on that account, whether he was smiling because he was in her arms or because in his sleep his mind was still at work upon the details of plans to deal with Lerouge the pirate.