PART NINE. Said a Spider to a Fly
A sailor gets used to long separations, though it does not follow that he likes them. No matter what the poets may sing about absence making the heart grow fonder, any man whose skin is more sensitive than pasteboard knows that it's better to have your darling lying alongside of you, preferably with all her clothes off, than to dream about her from a distance. Well, the waiting was over now. Adam had claimed a cavalier's reward—and would claim it again. He should have been happy. He wasn't.
He could no longer tell himself that this was a real home he had established in the house on the hill just outside of ICingston. He had been overeager, trying to delude himself. He knew this now. Jamaica was no place for an orphan like him to roost. He didn't belong here.
He resented Jamaica. He had never liked the place, now he hated it. From the veranda, while Maisie mixed him a drink, he looked over the garden wall, over the town of Kingston, to the harbor, which was crowded. The fleet was back—seven warships, fourth- and fifth-raters, together with their attendant vessels of supply. A great deal had happened in these parts since Adam's previous visit. Admiral Benbow had caught up with du Casse oJEf Santa Marta—ten vessels, only four of them warships, loaded to the gunwales with treasure. Benbow himself had sailed in with all guns blazing, but he'd not been followed by his captains, who despite orders had lingered in the background, making excuses. Eventually these captains had even presented the admiral with a round robin begging him to break off the chase. By that time Benbow, semi-conscious from wounds, was barely able to curse them. The English Navy was indelibly disgraced; while the luckiest man in the world, du Casse, escaped.
Benbow was still laid up—one of his legs had been smashed by chain shot—but he was going right ahead with his plans to bring charges of cowardice against the captains, two of whom had already been sentenced to death. Benbow's was not a forgiving nature. His rage made itself felt throughout the colony. There was no shore leave. He'd hear no complaints from civilians. Bumboatmen were roughly handled. More marines than ever tramped the streets of Kingston and Port Royal. The press gang and the requisition squads had never been so busy.
Nearer, the prospect was more pleasant, consisting as it did of a garden all stippled with sunspots, of zigzagging flagstones set in the bright green grass, and gardenia and hibiscus, roses, jasmine, cereus, and, pert and pretty, and startlingly simple amid those lush tropical blooms, great masses of periwinkle.
Nearer still, in fact in his lap, lay the real causes of Adam's perturbation. For he wasn't just emotionally upset. There were touchable, material reasons why he was in the dumps.
"Pish, my darling! Adam chick, you're not going to stew over tradesmen's bills at a time like this, sure?"
She gave him his punch and knelt by his chair, and put her hands over his left hand, her cheek against his left arm.
He smiled at her, but only from a distance. He shook his head. The husband who comes home to find himself inundated by evidences of his wife's extravagance was, he knew, a comic character. He didn't care. If, as some folks said, it showed a mean nature to worry about money matters, well then he had a mean nature. These papers in his lap were not funny, they were real. They might even prove tragic. Where was his Tillinghast blood? A true aristocrat would have swept them aside with a sneer. Adam couldn't. He was a mercantile man, a trader, and he took such things seriously.
He did not blame Maisie. In the circumstances she had behaved with a commendable moderation. It was his own fault, a result of his dereliction of duty, that they had been captured by the pirates and kept for a time on Providence, where of necessity all Maisie's clothes had been left. As she herself had pointed out, she had to have something to wear. And prices had gone 'way up, partly because the war had made for a shortage of fine clothes, partly because Maisie, already deeply in debt here, was a marked woman when she asked for more credit. Poor girl! Alone, with no one to guide her, spied on, tittered at, resented, she had consoled herself with change after change of costume here in their own house. She had pirouetted before a mirror, oh, yes! Adam was a lucky man that this was all she'd done. Kingston had not been kind to her. He didn't like the way she looked. When she smiled it was the same, warming his heart; but sometimes, when she didn't know that he was watching her, lines of worriment and of harshness crimped the corners of her mouth. She was paler than she'd been. Even the glory of her hair, it could be, was a touch dimmed.
More than ever it was advisable that she get away, that they both get out. But—how? Adam, who had maybe overstrained himself in order to buy Zeph Evans' share of the schooner, had precious httle ready cash. Mr. Cartwright, "the jew who wasn't a Jew," was pressing for his money, with twelve per cent interest. Nothing had been done about the Tread-way plantation case. Nothing had been done about the Quatre Moulins.
Even if they had been willing to let both these suits go by default, they couldn't have sneaked away. Adam had not told her this, but Goodwill to Men, careened for a scraping over at Port Royal before Adam had learned how serious was his financial situation, was in no condition to sneak anywhere. What was worse, Adam's seven-sixteenths of the schooner, defenseless now, might at any hour be attached. Even to think of it was a poniard into his heart.
"We've got to take desperate measures, my dear," he said mildly. "I mentioned a plan I had, some time ago. We've got to get to Benbow."
"I've tried! I told you how I tried! He won't see anybody!"
"Desperate measures," he repeated thoughtfully. He finished his punch, put the mug on the floor, and rose. "Bring me my sword," he said.
The frosty blue eyes swerved as though in slots, but no other part of the old man moved, when Adam climbed through the window.
"What in Hell do you want?"
"Just to talk to you, sir."
"Going to kill me?"
"No, sir."
"Sure?"
But there was no glint of fear in the blue eyes.
"I'm sure," Adam replied.
"If you came from those captains, it won't do 'em any good. They're guilty. The sentence stands."
"I didn't come from the captains," Adam said. "And I wouldn't have climbed in this way except that I didn't know any other way to get here."
"You bribed one of the guards, I take it?"
"I did, yes, sir. But not the way you think. I took a look at the man who paces before the side door and underneath this window, and it struck me that he was likely to prove honest."
"Eh?"
"Some folks are, you know, sir."
"But you said you bribed him?"
"Yes, sir. I got up close to him this afternoon and whispered that I wanted very much to speak to the admiral for a few minutes and I'd be back tonight at nine. I whispered that here was a yellow boy for him, a gold guinea, provided he'd look the other way while I slipped in through the side door and upstairs."
"And he took it?"
"He wasn't going to. He was going to arrest me. But then he fell to figuring just the way I'd figured he would figure. He figured that as matters stood it would be his word against mine, and in that case, too— if he turned me in, that is—he'd have to give up the yellow boy. But if he could nap me when I tried to sneak up those stairs at nine o'clock, if he could catch me red-handed—d'ye see, sir?—"
"I see. Goon."
"—then he'd not only be able to keep his coin but he'd get credit for being vigilant and so-forth."
"Yes."
"So he did this. And I guess right now he's down there watching that side door like a chicken hawk. I couldn't have climbed up here if he hadn't been."