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Title: The Black Cargo
Author: Marquand, John P. [John Phillips] (1893-1960)
Date of first publication: 1925
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925
Date first posted: 4 October 2011
Date last updated: 4 October 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #864

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






_THE BLACK CARGO_


_BY_

_J. P. MARQUAND_

_Author of "The Unspeakable Gentleman," "Four of a Kind"_




_NEW YORK_

_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_

1925




_Copyright, 1924, 1925, by_

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


_Printed in the United States of America_




_TO MY MOTHER_




THE BLACK CARGO


I

Though forty years have gone, they still say I was one of Eliphalet
Greer's men.  They still look at me and whisper when I walk down the
street, and they've got a right to whisper.  There was only one man
like Eliphalet, and there's still his shadow.

Somehow it's got around that he sent me to a South Pacific island.  The
crew of the _Felicity_ must have told it.  The men in the long boat
must have seen me take a pistol from my pocket when I went ashore
alone.  I should never have gone if I had been older or if I had any
prospects to boast of, and I had to pay for going.  I am paying for it
still, which is why I am going to tell the whole story, right down to
the time when I drew a weapon on Eliphalet himself.

You may say I should have guessed why Eliphalet sent me to that island;
that I should have known he would have a hold on me like the Old Man of
the Sea when I got back.  Perhaps I should, but I did not know
Eliphalet then as well as I knew him later.  I suspected something was
wrong, but not as wrong as that.  I never knew that he wanted me to do
what he was afraid to do himself--not until it was all too late.  Only
when the _Felicity_ got back did I begin to know for certain that
something was wrong.

I am setting down what I know about a disgraceful business, not from
any love of reminiscence, but because my name is mixed up in it.  There
will be something of Eliphalet's past in it, but only what I know.
There is no need of conjecturing what he did off the Guinea coast.  Yet
after all it is his story I am writing more than mine.  It cannot help
but be his story, for he was the strongest of us all.  In all his
weakness he was the strongest, even when the end of everything came.

They still say I was one of Eliphalet Greer's men.  I could not help
myself if I was.  He was far too strong.  When he touched me I grew
still.  I would grow still if he touched me now.  He was strong when he
fought against himself, strong in his remorse.  I think sometimes that
his strength pulled him above everything he did, although he was a bad
old man.  Sometimes I do not care what he did in the Indian ocean, or
what they say of him at Lloyds.  And why should I, when even the man
who hated him worst of all ceased to care, when all the scores were
settled?


Only yesterday I saw the brig _Felicity_ drifting in on the fullness of
the tide.  I could make her out even without her masts and spars which
used to cut the sky above her.  It was she, even though she was
stripped of masts and bulwarks, stripped as ruthlessly as all things
are which are made by man for one use and abandoned to another.  Yes,
it was the _Felicity_, even though her ports were boarded up, though
their frames of black and white were gone along with the scroll work of
the stern windows, though her sides were bleached like driftwood, and
though they ran green from copper.  There was still the old
uncompromising turn of her bow, and the unforgettable steadying breadth
of beam.  It was hard to remember she was beautiful once, as she
scraped against the piling of the coal wharf.  It was hard to look upon
her at all, for age has a hideous humor, surpassing in its cruelty,
with which inanimate things can never cope, and live things only seldom.

Indeed not only the _Felicity_, but almost everything, I think, moves
on towards a farcical decline, and an ending not unmixed with sardonic
mirth, and even these few papers are like the rest.  They should by
rights be tragic enough, for they deal with an old man's weakness.
There should be a silent sadness about them, such as surrounds our
empty warehouses which lie rotting in the sun.  There should be
something in them unnatural and repellent, for they concern the
bitterest and deepest of all human emotions.  But somehow, as I
contemplate what it is I mean to say, and grope back among the shadows
to the time when those events had their beginning, out of the silence
which surrounds me I seem to catch the ring of ghostly laughter.  Like
the brig _Felicity_, I sometimes think that age has given all the roles
we played a similar distorted aspect.

She was one of Eliphalet Greer's ships, one of the six he had built in
the old Morrill yards.  You can still see the warped timbers of the
ways a half a mile up the river.  My father took me with him in his
phaeton when she was launched, with a man behind and a hamper full of
Burgundy, but that was very long ago.  It is odd to look back on it
when I think of the relation Eliphalet Greer and I stood in at a later
time.  The _Felicity_ was one of the best of old Morrill's ships.  He
picked the timbers himself the year before they laid him away in the
West Hill burying ground, and people have told me he would walk around
the hull long after dark, smoking his pipe and running his hand along
the ribs and sheathing.  I have often heard them wonder what old
Morrill would have done if he had been there to see Eliphalet Greer
break a bottle of sweet cider on her bow the day she took the water.

Eliphalet Greer never made a better investment.  Even in the days when
he took over our wharves and lofts in lieu of my father's note, and
when my father shot himself just as the sheriff came to attach his
house, the _Felicity_ was as good as anything in Eliphalet's
fleet--never fast, but staunch and a close sailer.  It was later when
Eliphalet Greer and I came to know each other, but the _Felicity_ was
still carrying her cargo.  In those days almost anyone was glad to know
him.  He had grown as rich as any of our ship owners in Boston or to
the north.  In 1830 he was said to have the fastest carrying vessels
along the coast, which was doing very well for a man who once owned and
sailed a single sloop.  It seems strange of all his houses, his
wharves, his vessels, each as trim as any model in a marine
underwriter's office, only the _Felicity_ is left.

And now she lies at the coal wharf, a poor, slatternly servitor of an
age which has driven her from the sea--a coal barge drawn along the
shore.  She makes a strange final decoration for Eliphalet Greer's
story, like a single bit of wreckage drifting back to the lee shore of
home.  Black dust is over her, and there is a grating of hand-barrows
on her decks, and her bow points up an empty stream.  The gulls are
sitting on the harbor buoy, whose echoes roll uselessly on a land
breeze out toward an empty sea.  They are never quiet for long, those
gulls.  They keep circling about, edging upward until they seem like
bits of cloud drift, and then dropping back to the buoy again.  I
wonder--are they watching for a ship as they used to watch?

They will never see one again.  There are still clouds on the horizon,
but never a ship comes out of them, a live thing, the tangible shape of
a score of aspirations, the embodiment of a score of concerted wills.
It is an effort to remember that the _Felicity_ was once alive.

Yet the sight of her brings back what I have to tell.  For it was on
board the _Felicity_ that I sailed on a certain errand which it still
does my conscience little good to think about, and aboard the
_Felicity_ that I knew once and for all that Eliphalet Greer was not a
simple Puritan walking with soul at rest along the rocky road.  Yes,
shadows are still about her, lurking in the work that dead hands have
left behind, and in the water at her side I seem to see vague shapes.
Even with the coal dust she bears her freight of memories.

I sometimes think it's strange when everything else has gone, that the
spring of 1832, when the _Felicity_ made port from West Africa, was no
different from the weather we are having now.  As the days lengthen and
the water begins coursing down our gutters, it seems incredible that
nothing should remain of the life we once led, and that the river ice
should go to sea past a deserted waterfront with hardly anyone to
watch.  There was a lingering fringe of ice about the wharves that
spring, and a half-melted coating of snow on the marshes which gave an
added clearness to the sky.  They were busy at the shipyards.  They
were moving consignments of goods along the shore.  We could hear their
voices, and the rumble of carts on the cobbles, and as we drew nearer,
we could smell the paint, new wood and tar.

Above the waterfront our town was standing, newly washed by the rains.
Again and again I had pictured it while in many strange roadsteads--the
warm brick of its dwellings with their white wood trimmings, its broad
streets, its squares, its rows of elms.  On many a night when I had
closed my eyes, I could seem to see its cupolas and its steeples, for
our lives were strongly blended with religion, and in the lapping of
the water on our bows I had often seemed to hear the notes of their
bells.  I could hear those bells ringing then, striking out the hour of
four.  I know that there is a sad irony in our longings, for I have
been disappointed by the sight of many things I have most longed to
see, but never by our town.  It has always been as I have looked for
it, quiet in the sunlight, and solid in the storm.

I can recall the inflection of Captain Murdock's soft whistle, as he
examined the network of rigging by the shore after the anchor was down.
After a while he ceased whistling and listened to the noisy wrangling
of the crew, who already were busy with their sea-chests.

"Well," he said at length, "we're home."

Save when taking the name of the Lord in vain, I had found Captain
Murdock a silent man, niggardly of the voice he gave his thoughts.  But
perhaps the prospect of an early termination of his responsibilities
made him unduly communicative.

"Tonight," continued Captain Murdock, cocking his eye up at me and
squaring his shoulders, "I'm going to get drunk."

Not infrequently in our conversations I had heard him make a similar
statement, but I noticed that he said it sadly.

"You don't appear to be looking forward to it," I remarked.

"Look forward to it!" he repeated.  "Why in hell should I look forward
to it?  Mebbe you won't look forward to it when you get as old as me.
What is it, anyway, but just licker--licker--licker?"

"Why not think," I suggested ironically, "of your wife and little ones?"

His answer was cordially frank.

"I ain't got a wife."

"But see here, Captain," I interrupted, "everyone says you've got a
daughter, living away somewhere.  Now why don't you get her to come
home----"

Captain Murdock's voice became sweet with Christian patience.

"Ain't I trying to tell you," he began.  "That's why I'm going to get
drunk.  She is home!  Oh--you ain't got a hell cat for a daughter.
What do you know about wimmen?  By Crickey--she'll kill me yet.  She is
home--and she wouldn't be if I could help it!"

His voice was growing plaintively loud from the weight of his worldly
woes.

"What is there left but licker?  I always have got drunk when I come
ashore--first it was my wife and now my daughter!  Why should she put
on airs with me?  Ain't I good enough for anyone?  Why should I have to
bear it?  Wimmen--wimmen--wimmen!  What else is there for a gentleman
to do but get in his licker!"

He was lost in his own misfortunes.

A boat had drawn alongside, but when I endeavored to call it to his
attention, he only nodded absently and continued to speak the louder.

"What else was there to do, settin' under a piece of sail with the
sweat a-runnin' off you while the niggers ran in and out of the hold,
and the planks were swelling and cracking with the heat.  There was rum
and tea and lemon--that's what there was.  Young man, there's a kind of
licker for every occasion, and ought to be used on every occasion, and
no Bible-hopping hayseed is going to tell me any different.  Here--stop
your pulling at my sleeve!  What's more, I say if it ain't licker a man
lives on, it's something else.  Everybody's got to have something to
carry them through.  It may be love or hate.  I don't love anyone.  I
don't hate anyone, and there's only licker left."

Captain Murdock had drawn closer to me and had thrust his arm through
mine, and not only his words, but his nearness acquainted me with the
unsettling truth that he had already begun on his ritual, and that in
the cabin chest there was less liquor left than a few hours previous.
I seized his arm and tried to pull him aft, but his legs were strong
and his weight was close to the ground.

"Get below," I whispered.  "You're drunk!"

"Young man," said Captain Murdock, louder still, "I've seen life.  I've
seen hell breaking loose time an' again, and when anybody tells you to
stop drinking, just tell them this: There's only three things that make
up living."

Before I could check him, his voice had assumed a nasal, clerical
intonation.

"Love, hate and licker, all three, and the greatest of these is licker!"

In the very midst of his sentence, however, his words began to die
away, and his heavy red face had assumed an expression as near to
consternation as I had ever seen.  He began pulling at his, muffler and
clearing his throat, and he had a very good reason.  When it was too
late, he perceived that old Eliphalet Greer was standing beside us,
tapping his ivory-headed cane softly on the deck, and moving his long
bony fingers restlessly over the handle.

He was a man to remember, and one to think about on an early morning
watch.  He had been standing in the bow of his cutter the last time I
had seen him like some Calvinist portrait as we got under way.  The
water had been rough, so that the cutter tossed restively, but he had
stood easily erect, for he was used to the sea.  He had removed his
tall beaver hat, and his hair, which he wore quite long, had been
disarranged by the wind.  Now that I saw him again I had the curious
fancy that we had not been gone at all, for he was just the same.  Not
even his dress had altered.  Though his hat was stamped hard on his
head, the wind had been at his hair again, and the lines about his
mouth had the same grim curves.  He was still dressed as though he
expected the church bell at any moment to ring its summons, and cause
him to leave his occupation and hasten to his pew.  He had on the same
black clothes and the same freshly starched linen about his wrists.
The great choker which he wore twisted high on his neck, had a familiar
clerical look about it, like a surplice misappropriated.

Yet in spite of his simplicity there was an air of wealth about him.
The cloak of black broadcloth which he wrapped around him in a way
which was reminiscent of some foreign land, was so finely woven that it
had a texture almost like silk.  Though his attire was simple and
venerable, befitting a man the fire of whose life was dying down,
neither his years nor his dress gave him a wholly sober aspect.  Though
his face was lined like weathered wood, not a wrinkle or a crow's foot
of it indicated repose or humor.  His eyes had an unnatural intensity,
all the brightness of youth set in an ancient mask.  I think it was
their restiveness, their very contrast, which gave one a feeling that
his heavily welded body had an unabated power.

For a little while he stood without speaking, still tapping his cane
softly on the deck, but there was nothing reassuring in his silence.
In spite of myself, my heart was beating faster and my breath was
coming more quickly than before.

"Charles," he said, and his words were quiet and almost toneless,
"stand away from Mr. Murdock."

And again he tapped his cane on the planking.

"Mr. Murdock," he continued, "when I employed you as master of this
vessel, you told me that you believed in God and that you were a
God-fearing man."

I had seen Captain Murdock on a number of trying occasions, and I knew
he was a solid man, but I never felt the admiration for him which I
experienced then.  There was a restraint in the old man's words which
made me wish to draw away, but Captain Murdock only tilted his chin
higher.

"Yes," said Captain Murdock, "and what if I did?"

Suddenly Eliphalet's voice altered in a manner that silenced the voices
of the men forward.

"Then," he said, "get down on your knees!"

I saw Captain Murdock give a start.  I saw a rush of blood turn his
cheeks half purple.

"Damn you----" he began hoarsely.

There was a crash from Eliphalet's cane.  For a second I thought he had
brought it on the Captain's back, but instead he had hit the rail
beside him.

"I've been damned by better men than you, Mr. Murdock," he said evenly,
"so I am probably damned already.  Did you hear what I said?  Get down
on your knees and ask forgiveness for blaspheming the Holy Scriptures.
Get down on your knees before I knock you there."

I could not--though I tried--I could not look away.  Captain Murdock
was a small man, but he had not moved.

"Damn you!" he cried.  "Get down on your knees yourself!"

I heard a slight stir forward.  Eliphalet Greer had dropped his cane.
Swiftly and dexterously he had slid his hand inside his broadcloth
cloak, but Captain Murdock only grinned.

"Slack yer line," he said.  "We ain't standing to off Guinea."

I thought that Eliphalet was going to strike him, but he did not.
Only, looking at him then, it was hard to remember that he was an old
man.  His lips writhed in an effort at self-control, which went
strangely with a religious, methodical life, but when he spoke, his
voice, though husky, was gentler than before.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

Captain Murdock bit his lip.

"Well?" Eliphalet demanded.

"You know what I mean," said Captain Murdock indistinctly.

Eliphalet Greer had grown quite calm, even tolerant, as Captain Murdock
ended.  Some hidden balance, something other than speech had exerted a
tranquil influence.

"Murdock," he said in a quieter tone, "I am strong enough to forgive
you.  I have forgiven angry words before, and I am a humble man."

As he spoke, the _Felicity_ swayed at her mooring, and a ray of the
afternoon sun struck clear on Eliphalet's face.  It dazzled him, and
caused him to wrinkle his forehead in a grimace almost like pain.

"All of us here below," he continued more gently still, "have sinned in
the eyes of the Lord.  All of us should ask Divine forgiveness."

It was more than the sunlight which altered the set of his face as he
spoke.  Before our eyes a curious phenomenon was taking place,
incomprehensible to the two of us who had sailed under his orders.
Before he could check himself, or was probably wholly aware what he
did, Eliphalet Greer had given way to an emotion, and had knelt
bareheaded on the deck.  Yes, he had knelt with his gray head bowed,
and the land breeze playing about it.  I wonder what it was that seized
him then.  I wonder what it was that he was praying for.  It was not
dramatically intended, nor could it have been fear that made his lips
move slowly.  Perhaps the uselessness of worldly wealth, the
worthlessness of material possessions was forcibly brought upon him.
If so, the world still pulled tenaciously at his coat-tails, for
suddenly, still kneeling, he snapped back his head, and his right hand,
which had been resting beneath his beaver hat, darted back beneath his
cloak.  At the sight of Captain Murdock, standing stupid and dazed,
Eliphalet Greer ripped forth an oath so unexpected and impious that
even the Captain jumped.

"Get down on your knees!" roared Eliphalet.

And Captain Murdock plumped down beside him with a haste so indecorous
that he spilled forward on his hands.  There they knelt--old Eliphalet,
swayed by some ungovernable instinct, a gaunt, ascetic Puritan, who was
not a Puritan at all; and Captain Murdock, round and squat, breathing
through his nose with a melodious sound which savored of a pitch pipe
in a country church.  There they knelt in a furious parody of devotion,
each casting furtive sidelong glances at the other.

It was common in those days for men to give way to prayer, but never
was there a more impious intercession.  It might be a humorous anecdote
over a tumbler of rum, but though I can see the humor of it now, it is
never of a genial or palatable sort.  Through it all I can always see
Eliphalet's face with its disarrayed gray hair, the face of an old man
to whom the years had brought no peace.  There is the same violence and
passion, a curious malignancy about his very attitude, and something
not to be described, which merits not laughter but pity.

He got to his feet at length, and picked up his hat and cane, and
Captain Murdock scrambled up also.  Now that Captain Murdock was
standing again, any elation he may have labored under previously
appeared to have worn away, leaving him quite white and ill at ease.

"Murdock," said Greer--and of a sudden he seemed as I had always known
him, humorless and precise--"we'll go below now and see your papers,
and you, Charles----"

Instinctively I drew a little backward, for he had laid a hand on my
shoulder.  His hand was heavy and I could feel the firm pressure of his
long fingers.

"We can go over our business at my house in an hour."

He moved away with a step which was singularly quiet for one of his
height, winding past the obstructions on the deck as though he had been
always used to sail.  Indeed, in spite of his sedentary life--for years
he had never sailed--he had a surpassing knowledge of the sea.  He
could gauge the capabilities of a sailing vessel as accurately as a
stable owner might estimate a running horse.  He could read the weather
by a fractional change of the wind, and do both with half an eye while
concerned with other matters.  As he entered the cabin I saw him pause
to glance at the upper rigging.  Then he was gone, with Captain Murdock
following close behind him.

A crowd had collected on the shore by now as crowds will always gather
in any port when a new ship sails in.  Already they were shouting
questions across the water, and our crew, or those of them who could
understand our language, were shouting back and crowding to the
bulwarks.  I felt sorry now that I was to see the last of them, though
I have seldom seen men who could lay a smaller claim to one's
affection.  Eliphalet Greer's crews were always an outlandish
spectacle, pieced together from anything which might cut down sailing
costs, patched like the seats of their sea-breeches from blacks,
whites, yellows and browns.  I wonder where they have gone, those
forsaken men who would flutter for a week or so along our waterfront.
I still can seem to hear their voices, guttural, hissing, liquid sounds
which our Sailors' Mission with its free tracts could never understand,
and their laughter while they spun for themselves a chrysalis of
drunken slumber, to wake again on a new deck, bound for another land.

The bells were ringing the half hour, and the sun's rays had become
soft and genial.  A loose halyard was slapping at the mast.  The blocks
kept creaking.  The tide was running faster, and the _Felicity_ swayed
uneasily.

As I stood by the rail, waiting to go ashore, I felt cold, even in my
sea clothes.  I still seemed to feel the weight of Eliphalet Greer's
hand where it had rested on my shoulder.  I almost wished I was not at
home again that afternoon, and I had my reasons, for I knew only too
well why Eliphalet Greer wished to see me, and the business we had
together was far from a pleasant business.

It was eighteen months since we had spoken of it, but now that I was
back with the land breeze about me again, it seemed like yesterday.




II

It has always seemed a marvelous thing how a man becomes rich.  When I
consider the tribulations that most have merely to get themselves food
and to keep their clothes intact, the accumulation of wealth becomes a
mystery, and the man who accumulates it a Titan.  I cannot help but
admire them for it.  I cannot help but admire my grandfather, nor can I
help but admire Eliphalet Greer.  He was not always rich.  You can
still see the little farm by the marshes where he was born.  In 1808 he
left home with his clothes in a bundle.  He too must have earned his
pittance before he learned the secret of King Midas.  During that
hiatus of years when he was away from home, he too must have lain like
the rest of us, covered by the deep loam of mediocrity, before he
suddenly blossomed forth, inspiring in his golden splendor.  Had he
learned the happy formula by some magic of his own?  Or had he been
born, destined by the stars for the path he had taken?

It was eighteen months before this that Eliphalet Greer and I had last
been face to face.  I was at my room at the Anchor House when he
summoned me to that interview.  I stayed at the Anchor House when I was
off the sea, because it was cheap, and a good walk from the center of
the town.  Old Jim Lowes himself brought Eliphalet's note to my door.
He was out of breath, because his stairs were steep, and his clothes
were still covered with the feathers of a fowl which he had been
plucking for supper.

"Boy," he said, "you better dress up handsome.  I always knew anyone
who has taken things like you would get on in the world."

My best coat was tight on the shoulders, and painful beneath the
armpits, but it still had a smart appearance when I put it on, and I
knotted my best cravat.  It was frayed, but it had come from London.
The feeling of it gave me a sense of defiance as I walked down Water
Street under the elm trees.  The day's work had ended, and there were
few people about, but I knew Eliphalet Greer would be busy in his
counting-room after the clerks had left.  On my right, rising from
their shaded lawns and gardens, were the houses of other rich men.  I
passed them hurriedly, for they always made me bitter.  It was tea
time, and I could picture the thin china and the glasses and the
decanters on the sideboard.  I could almost feel the coolness of the
hallways and the softness of the Turkey carpets.

When I opened the door of the counting-room Eliphalet Greer was alone.
He was bending over a ledger and tapping his long fingers on the page,
but at the sound of my footstep he turned the page over rapidly.

"You're on time, Charles," he said.  He had a grave and kindly way with
men in his employ.

I did not answer, and he began stroking his chin and looking at me as a
shipwright might who judges the soundness of a piece of timber.  I
should have been ill at ease, if I had known him better, but I only
knew then that he was a sharp but honest trader, and he and I had
nothing to trade.

"How old are you?" he asked at length.

"Twenty-four," I answered.

Eliphalet Greer pursed his lips.

"You look strong," he said.  "How long have you been at sea?"

Though he knew well enough, I answered without hesitation.

"Since I was sixteen," I said.

"Look at me when you speak," said Eliphalet Greer.

I looked at him.  We both eyed each other for a while in silence.

"For the last four years," he said at length, "you have been sailing on
vessels that I own."

I nodded, and he smoothed his heavy gold watch-chain.  I continued to
look at him, and thought that he was an eccentric old gentleman.

"I employed you first," he said, "for Christian reasons, because I take
a pleasure in helping my fellow men, and it seemed to me you were
unfortunate."

He spoke in a smooth, deliberate way, which implied a direct
contradiction to what he said.  Something of our snow and winds seemed
always with him, some sombre trait of Puritanism of another generation.

"I am not always hard," he added.  "You are still an object of charity.
It was no fault of yours that your father was not a man of business, no
fault at all."

I cleared my throat, but Eliphalet Greer continued before I could
interrupt.

"Yes, yes," he said; "you are the under dog.  I have seen what your old
friends do because you have no money.  I am glad to be kind in such a
case."

"Damn your kindness," I said, still looking at him.

"Ah!" said Eliphalet Greer, without moving, without altering his voice.
"I thought you had a thin skin.  Everyone has a thin skin who is not
used to being poor."

"And a thick skin when they are used to being rich," I said, eyeing him
squarely.

"Be careful how you talk," said Eliphalet Greer, rubbing his chin.  "Do
you know I can manage so you won't get a berth on any ship out of here
or New York or Boston or Philadelphia!  I am not the man to use such a
tone to."

"Manage and be damned!" I answered.  "Do you think I'm afraid of you?"

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "sit down, and we both can manage
better.  Do you know why I asked you here?"

"No," I answered, and I felt that I had done very well.

"Because," he went on, "you're young.  You have a chest like a bull,
and you're not afraid of anything, except of being poor."

There was a momentary pause.  He was watching me expectantly, as though
he believed that I would answer.  For the first time in our interview I
found myself restless under his steady gaze.  I began remembering
stories about him, vague bits of gossip, such as once floated in the
backwaters of every seaport town, for even then there were stories
about Eliphalet Greer.  Was there a hidden intention, a careful plan in
every aimless thing he said?  A curious restive alertness was in his
glance.  His lips were puckered as though he was testing some wine of a
doubtful vintage,--not that he ever indulged in liquors.

"Yes," he said, "I've watched your face.  You don't enjoy being poor.
I know the look."

"Perhaps," I said, "you wouldn't enjoy it so much yourself."

Eliphalet Greer rubbed his palms together, and they made a dry sound,
almost like ruffled paper.

"No," he replied, "I did not enjoy it either.  I know the way you feel."

He paused again, and though his face was wrinkled and expressionless,
his eyes were very bright, and clear as the polished glass sewn to some
crumbling vestment.

"Twenty years ago," he said, "I left this town, a poor boy with no
prospects; but I found them.  I was not afraid to look, and take
opportunities when they were offered.  And it seems to me--yes, it
seems to me that you are the same way, not afraid to take an
opportunity."

"Not afraid at all," I said.

"Twenty years ago," said Eliphalet Greer, seemingly loath to leave the
subject, "I left with my clothes in a handkerchief, and when I came
back----"

"I know what you did when you came back," I interrupted, for somehow it
hurt me to have him say.

"You don't hold it against me?" he inquired.

"No," I said, "if it had not been you, it would have been someone else."

"I thought you would say so," and again he rubbed his hands.  "Sit
where you are.  It does me good to look at you.  It makes me wish that
I was young again, and going out to sea."

There was an unexpected, unfeigned pathos in his voice.  I felt almost
sorry for him at that moment.  His glance had shifted, and he was
looking at the river mouth through the dusty window.  I felt sorry,
although no one who is young can understand the regrets of age.  But in
another moment He was looking at me again in his former restive fashion.

"There's another reason I asked you here," he said.  "Do you know what
it is?"

"No," I answered.

"Because you're quiet."

Again he seemed anxious for me to make some rejoinder, but I remained
silent.

"I'm not as young as I used to be," said Eliphalet Greer, but still I
did not answer.

"I've been watching you," he continued.  "You're not afraid.  You can
keep quiet.  You want to get on in the world.  How would you like to be
living again across the street?"

He stopped and looked at me so sharply that, involuntarily, I moved
back my chair.

"Are you offering to take me into partnership!" I inquired.  I did my
best to speak ironically, but somehow in the silence of his
counting-room my effort fell quite flat.

Back through my mind again there flashed a dozen bits of gossip.
Something in my question had changed him.  I had often seen him walking
down our streets, a benign and prosperous man, although with a grimly
righteous visage.  I recalled how, only a week before, he had left a
perpetual fund to buy stoves for the poor, and another to supply Bibles
to outgoing vessels, but just then I do not think he would have given
away a Bible.  Just then he had a look which made me half rise from my
chair.  Yet it was the barest loss of self-control.  An instant later
he was slowly playing with his watch-chain.

"No, not that," he answered.  "I am offering you three thousand dollars
and your regular pay as first mate, but I might offer you the other, if
you stand by.  I need someone I can trust."

"And what is the three thousand dollars for?" I asked.

"For doing what I tell you--and being still."

"If what I do is worth three thousand dollars," I told him, "I should
have to be still to save my skin."

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "if you and I were younger, we might
go far together.  You have a trader's eye."

"Well," I said, "what am I to do to earn three thousand dollars'?"

Eliphalet Greer pointed out of the window toward the river.  A brig was
being warped into midstream.  The riggers were still busy on her yards.
Against the sky I could see a web of ropes, stays, shrouds, halyards
and braces ready for bending of sail.

"In three days," he said, "the _Felicity_ is sailing for Java."

"I heard she was," I answered.

"You are going aboard her as first mate.  She is a steady vessel.  It
will be a pleasant voyage--ports in Java, days ashore--a cruise along
the West African coast and home.  I always loved the sea there best.
It will be a pleasant voyage."

"But not worth an extra three thousand dollars," I answered.

Eliphalet Greer paused, and looked at me fixedly before replying.

"When I was younger," he said, "and had fewer responsibilities, I
traded through the island groups once, down to the south of the Indian
Ocean.  Some of them are very lonely.  Some of them are pearl islands.
I want to see one of those islands again."

I nodded.  He gave a latitude and longitude.  I nodded again, but I was
not new to the East Indian trade.  There were no shells or fisheries in
the region which he mentioned.  I could not help wondering if he knew
that I knew it.  If he did, he gave no sign.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "there may be a fortune on that
island.  I am going to send you ashore there alone.  Murdock has the
bearing and my orders to anchor, but I do not want to send Murdock.  He
has orders to lower a boat with you and a crew, and them to stand by.
You are to leave the crew on the beach, and go over the island alone.
It is a small island.  It will not take you long."

He was speaking very slowly, as though he was making a deliberate
choice of his words.  Something in his attitude made me lean forward,
and listen very carefully.

"And you want me to look for shells?" I asked.

"I know about the shells," said Eliphalet Greer.  "I saw them when I
was there.  I wish to know if anyone else has seen them since--if any
white man is on that island."

And quite suddenly I knew that he was not interested in shells at all.

"Charles," he said, "I want to send a man there who will tell me
exactly what he sees, and who knows how to keep quiet.  I cannot afford
to have him talk, because I am interested in that island.  That is why
you and not Murdock are going ashore.  Do you understand?  I have been
talking to you long enough to see that you have common sense and a
penetrating mind.  Do you understand?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Will you go?" he asked with an unexpected sharpness.

"I will," I said, "if you advance me a thousand dollars, give me a
master's pay, and your note for three thousand payable when I return."

"And what makes you think I shall do anything of the sort?" he asked
quickly.

"Because," I replied, "it seems to me like a very confidential matter.
I wouldn't look at any pearl island unless I was poor, Mr. Greer."

"Charles," he said more quietly, "it's a pity your father never had
your sense.  He would have done better investing in pearl islands than
buying town sites in Maine.  You shall have what you ask.  I shall send
you a draft tomorrow."

I rose and walked toward the door.  The air about us seemed close, and
I was tired of feeling the steady, impalpable weight of his glance.  He
raised his hand as a signal that he was not entirely finished.

"Charles," he said, "you have been to sea long enough to know that
violent things may happen, especially out there."

"You don't have to be at sea long to learn that," I answered.

"Then of course," said Eliphalet Greer in a gentler tone, "you will
understand it will be much wiser to be armed when you go ashore--in
case you should meet a white man."

The measured gentleness of his voice must have stirred my curiosity,
his voice more than anything he said.

"And what if any white man is there?" I asked.

Eliphalet Greer cleared his throat.

"In that case," he replied very quietly, "you must use your own
judgment.  All I can say is this----"

And he spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to catch his words.

"You must use your own judgment, and if you judge properly, and
convince me of it, your father's backwoods town sections will be an
excellent investment.  Life is a very different thing out there than it
is back here."

My head swam, and his face half blurred before my eyes, but I knew he
was staring straight at me.  I did not move a muscle.  I did not even
catch my breath.

"Of course," Eliphalet Greer continued, "you'll remember this is very
confidential.  If you should happen to speak of it, Charles, it will be
unpleasant for us both."

"I have no doubt of that at all," I answered quite steadily.

"Ah," said Eliphalet Greer, "I thought we should understand each other.
Good afternoon, Charles."

I closed the door of the counting-house behind me.  The sun, I
remember, had warmed the clapboarding of the wall, for it was hot on my
hand as I steadied myself.  I was dizzy and my knees felt weak.  What I
had heard in the dusty little room must have been a Satanic
interpolation of my own.  Yet his words had been quite clear, and ready
for me to take or leave as I might choose.  They were still with me
binding us together.  Because I had listened to them without an
objection, I felt contaminated and uncleanly.  It was not conceivable
that he could have implied that I suspected.  It was like looking at a
picture and seeing in some unforseen blending of shadows some sinister
and ugly form one's own imagination painted.

A sudden impulse made me turn back to the counting-house door, a sudden
desire to be freed from what was on my conscience.  I opened it without
knocking, and took a step over the threshold.  Eliphalet Greer had not
heard me.  He was seated before his table where he did his reckonings,
staring straight down at its scarred pine surface, although there was
nothing in front of him to look at.  His face had gone white, and his
lips were contracted like a man's in pain.  His hands, which were
grasping the arms of his chair, kept closing and unclosing.  The
counting-room no longer seemed like a counting-room.  The clerks'
stools and the ledgers with their columns of figures seemed like alien
pieces of property.  Without speaking as I intended, without a sound I
tiptoed out again.  Perhaps, after all, Eliphalet Greer and I had
understood each other.  And it was not the way the minister of the
Prince Street Church understood him, nor its deacons, nor the Marine
Society, nor his bankers.

There is, however, one thing that I swear to.  I meant no evil then,
nor guessed where my action would lead me.  I needed the money, and I
was willing to earn it by going on a confidential errand.  He had given
definite reasons for sending me.  It is true he hinted at something
more, but, though it disturbed me, many things made it easy for me to
set my mind at rest.

By the next morning I knew I had misunderstood him.  A man of his
standing could never have meant what I thought.  Surely he had only
intended to tell me to be cautious, and to be armed in my own defense.
Half the night I argued it with my conscience, and perhaps I blinded
myself deliberately, yet I swear I never knew I was doing a wrong.  I
believed, or perhaps I hoped, no wrong was intended, but I swear I
never meant a wrong and never intended to commit one.

Nevertheless, as I waited for the shore boat that spring afternoon, a
weight of dread was on my shoulders.  In an hour, in less than an hour,
Eliphalet Greer and I would be face to face again.  Again I would see
the lines on his face and the glitter in his eyes, and the unceasing
motion of his fingers.  Nor was that all.  I was to see him in the
house he had received as my father's debtor, among our chairs; in the
rooms that had been built for us we were to speak of something
unhallowed, unfit to be mentioned in the daylight beneath the open sky.

I could still see his face as he knelt on the deck while his lips moved
in a silent supplication of his own.  The echo of his cane as he
brought it down on the quarter rail had hardly died away.  I had been
to the island and there was no doubt any longer of why he sent me.




III

These are few works by the hand of man as receptive of impression as a
house.  I have seen statues dug from the ground of Italy with
dismembered limbs and rust-stained torsos, older than the most
venerable vault in all of Rome.  I have seen paintings in the
sepulchres of Egyptian kings whose richest provinces have been hid for
a thousand years beneath the desert sand.  They are venerable remnants,
but, broken as they are, dismembered, scratched, and discolored, they
have a way of defying the scythe and the hour-glass.  They still wear
the guise of eternal novelty, reminiscent of when the marble was fresh
chiseled, and of when the paint was new, for the idea which brought
them into being is as clear and unalterable as the elements.  But a
house is a humbler matter.  Give it a generation or two of existence,
and it is older than the oldest masterpiece of art.  It bears the trace
of all the tragedy and the comedy of the human span.  It has
impalpable, unspoken memories which will never go until its rafters
drop and its walls are levelled.

When Eliphalet Greer first brought his vessels into our harbor, and
opened his counting-room, my father was safe beneath a slab of slate
that bore a verse of Horace.  It was not the epitaph he wished.  For
several years before his demise he had amused himself with constructing
fitting couplets to be cut upon his tomb.  The one which pleased him
most I still have in an old letter, but it lacked the solemnity we
associate with a final resting place.

  DEAR FRIENDS HERE IS WHERE I LIE
  BUT I LIVED FAST AND I LIVED HIGH.


It had been a pleasant house built at a time when they loved carved
cornices and Grecian pillars.  Its windows were wide and generous.  Its
shutters and doors were green.  It was square, built of English brick,
with a picket fence in front of it, and a garden.  There was ivy on the
wall, which rippled in the wind and gave shelter to the sparrows.  Its
hall, running from front to back, as was the custom then, always had
the faint but refreshing odor of tobacco smoke and rum.  Across the
street, visible from the front door, were warehouses, and sail and
rigging lofts, now painted a trim slate gray with Eliphalet's name in
white above the lower windows.  It was a comfortable house for
business, convenient to the shipping.

When Eliphalet Greer purchased the estate, he had the ivy removed, the
garden planted to grass, and the doors and shutters painted the same
shade as the business houses he had first acquired.  In a single week
he had altered it from a hospitable dwelling to a house that knew no
vanity, and it was what he wished, for it satisfied his distaste for
external show and unprofitable refinement.  He had done what he could,
but there were some things he could not accomplish.  There was a
silence in the hall since he had been there, brooding vacancy of sound,
which only old houses have; not the silence of open places, but rather
the stillness which comes in the wake of a voice or a footstep--a
reminiscent, unnatural silence.  Nor was it wholly a lack of sound.
Everywhere there was expectant, vacant space, empty rooms, empty
chairs, and unused passages, built for the rapid and high living of
which my father wrote.  It was never made for solitude nor intended to
be lighted by half a dozen candles.

Eliphalet Greer had evidently been waiting, for he let me in himself.

"The parlor, Charles," he said.  "You know the way."

And as I walked forward I heard him bolt the door behind me.

"It still grows dark early," he added, and the reason for his statement
was plain, for the folding shutters of the parlor had been drawn and
the whale-oil lamps were lighted.  Though he might have added it still
continued cold, he did not, nor did he seem to notice how chill it was,
for not a stick was burning in the fireplace.  Its gaping blackness
against the chimney panelling was almost the first thing I noticed.

It was a room for firelight.  In its best days it needed the warmth and
the gentle illumination of wooden embers.  Without them the sooted
emptiness of the chimney gave forth a chilling emanation which
transcended physical discomfort.  It was rather the lack of heat one
felt than actual cold, and perhaps it was something more subtle and
difficult of normal explanation.  Our old parlor where my father had
sat so often at an evening of cards, like the fireplace and like the
hall, had the same emptiness and chilling vacuity.  Against the low
wainscot with their backs projecting over the lower strip of gray
figured wall-paper a row of carved mahogany chairs with shining
horsehair seats stood in a precise and dustless line, awaiting a
company which would never come.  Their reflections on the polished
floor gave them an unwavering permanence.  The round table in the
center of the room was bare.  There was not a picture on the walls.
There was not an ornament on the mantel, except the two oil lamps with
their wicks pulled low.

I was suspicious as I stood there and looked about me.  His parlor was
too bare and spotless for an ordinary purpose.  Each article of
furniture was far too accurately placed.  I turned uneasily toward him,
and as our eyes met I knew he had been watching me all the while, half
curiously, half nervously, from under his frosted eyebrows.  We were
both constrained and quiet.  If there had been no other reason that
room would have made us so.  He had moved toward the table, and was
standing in the shadow, so that the gray of his hair began to blend
with the wall's dark coloring, but his eyes were still on me.
Sometimes when I lie awake on a dark night I can remember them even now.

I had a restless desire for him to speak, but instead, according to his
habit, he began playing with the heavy gold watch-chain which still
festooned his black waistcoat.  It reminded me of an Arab rug merchant
I had seen once at Algeria who ceaselessly drew through his hands a
string of polished amber.  Grasping the chain with his thumb and
forefinger, Eliphalet Greer moved his hand back and forth, back and
forth, so that his nails made a clicking sound as they passed the heavy
links.  Even his breathing was audible, the deliberate, heavy breathing
which comes of age.

"Sit down, Charles," he said.  "No--over there, where the light plays
on your face."

He had glanced toward a chair as he spoke, but almost at once his eyes
were back on me again.  I sat down, and moved my feet nervously.  He
still stood up, seemingly lost in some mental calculation, still
running his hand back and forth over his watch-chain, moving it faster
and faster.  I began to perceive a suppressed nervousness in that
gesture.  Little as I knew him, it was not hard to tell he was not
wholly himself that evening.  His voice was as even as ever, but his
lips had a way of twitching as though they were busy framing words
forbidden by his will.  Now and then he would throw his head up
nervously, seemingly listening for some expected sound.  Yet there was
nothing to listen to, except the wind outside, which had veered to the
northwest and was blowing steadily through the bare branches of the
elms.

A curious thought had come over me.  I have said his eyes were a young
man's eyes, incongruous in a face like his, yet now they were not.  In
the half light where he stood, they had a depth and lustre, as if the
sights of years were stored behind the curtains of each iris.  They
were like some porcelain tile of the kingdom of the Mings, as bright as
new, shining and unabraided, and yet somehow within itself, the richer
for the passage of time.

"You can move now, if you wish," he said.  "It makes no difference any
longer."

I was quite myself when he spoke that second time.

"What makes no difference?" I asked.

There was a slight change in his expression, but it was hardly a smile,
scarcely a relaxing of his perennial solemnity.

"It makes no difference," he said, "because your face tells everything.
You will never be good at lying."

"I have no intention of lying to you," I replied.

Eliphalet Greer drew a chair opposite mine, and seated himself, a
stiff, forbidding figure.

"And I have no intention of having you," he retorted quietly.  "Sit
down!  Do I look young enough to discuss a point of honor?  Sit down!"

Imperceptibly the quality of his voice had changed, but only enough to
make me conscious of the power that lay behind it.  It was as though
the embers of old passions within him brightened, glowed fitfully and
relapsed among their ashes.

"When you get as old as I am," he said more evenly, "you will take
these matters more quietly.  Everyone is a liar according to his
limits."

The sound of his own voice in that quiet house appeared to arouse in
him a spirit of restiveness.  I could almost fancy that he disliked the
silence and that the weight of words made reassuring company.  I know
if I were he, I should not have cared to be in a silent place.

"Yes," he went on almost hurriedly, "that is one of the things I've
learned.  If you could gain by it, you, anyone, would lie to me--only
you are not the man to do it.  You're not a man like Murdock.  You
could never lie and keep your face stupid, and only a woman can lie
with an honest look.  Keep away from women, Charles; any one of them
could lead you by the nose."

"What have women got to do with you and me?" I asked.

Where was the Eliphalet Greer who carried his Bible through the streets
each Sunday morning?  Surely it was not he sitting opposite in the half
light.  The lamp flames flickered.  Little shadows were dancing across
his face.

"Nothing," he said.  "Perhaps you have not had time to tell your story
to one of them.  Remember, if you do, Charles, I shall know it by your
face."

For a second or so he was silent, watching me, and tapping his
forefinger softly on the table, so that it made a regular sound like
water dripping from a tap.

"Oh, yes," he continued.  "I know about lying and deceit.  Perhaps you
would too if you had a father who used a whip.  It's fifty years since
he last struck me, but the welts are still on my back.  Fifty years
since I have first seen a household of hypocrites, but I've seen a
world of them since then.  I've seen men smile with dirks beneath their
cloaks.  I've seen them swear friendship while venom was reeking in
their souls.  Oh, I know a lie when I see it now.  Remember, I know a
lie when I see it, and God help the man who lies to me!"

Startled by his outburst of words, I could not frame an adequate reply.
We both fell silent, listening to the wind as it whistled in the trees
outside, and I could hear his breathing again, louder and sharper than
it had been before.  His voice had a way of sticking to the memory.
Although we both were silent, its sound was with us still.  Even a
burst of rain tossed sharp against the windows like a handful of sand
did not wholly dispel it.  When he continued to speak, its cadence only
rose again.  It had never wholly gone.

"Remember, Charles," he said, "I have sent you on an errand, and now
it's the truth I want.  I hope you understand."

"You'll get the truth," I answered.  "You paid me enough for it."

Eliphalet Greer leaned back in his chair, but I think it was only by an
effort of will that he did so.  He could be cold as a church bell when
he wished, but he could not wholly conceal the thing which was surging
within him.

"Well," he said, clearing his throat, "Captain Murdock told me he
anchored off the island."

"He anchored in fifteen fathoms," I answered, "a clean coral bottom."

"Ah!" said Eliphalet Greer.  "It's a long while since I put to sea, but
I only have to close my eyes to see that island, as it comes out of the
water."

But he did not close his eyes.  He only half closed them, and I still
could see the glimmer beneath their drooping lids.

"It's like a mirage at first, when the sea is calm.  It comes up
quickly unless you are in the rigging.  You stand on deck and there is
nothing but the waste of sea as our Maker left it, until all at
once--there it is, the white beach, the palm trees, like the first
faint green of spring.  What a place to go and forget the world!  But
why should I describe it when you have seen it all?"

I wonder if it was dread of what I had to say that made his tongue run
free.  I do not think it was, for his face lighted as he spoke, as it
always did when he mentioned ships and the water, as though the clear
air was fresh in his nostrils again and the hissing of the waves
playing to his ears.

"There's no need to trouble yourself describing it," I answered.  "We
were there.  It was the place you meant."

"And you went ashore alone?" he asked, and the beauties of the island
vanished forever in the clouds of our horizon.

"Yes," I said, "I went ashore as you told me to."

"Then," said Eliphalet Greer, still with his eyes half closed, "tell me
about it yourself.  You can do it better than I."

"Very well," I answered.  "I left the crew at the oars.  The tide was
low.  I walked along the beach, looking for shells, but I did not see
one, not anywhere."

Eliphalet Greer opened his eyes slowly.

"Never mind the shells," he said; "the beds were far off-shore.  What
else did you look for?"

"As I walked along the beach," I said, "I kept my eye out on the bushes
and vines that grew among the trees.  I must have walked about a half a
mile when I saw an opening in those bushes, as though it had been
cleared by hand.  I walked toward it, and saw it was a path."

Eliphalet Greer had ceased to lean back in his chair.  I heard him
catch his breath sharply.  His lips twitched upward and remained
immovable.

"As you advised me," I said, "I had brought a pistol with me.  When I
reached the path, and saw it was a path, I took the pistol from my
pocket."

I paused again, curious to see the effect of my words, but he had bent
his head so that his face was half in the shadow.

"I took it from my pocket," I went on, "cocked it, and put on a new
cap.  Then I walked up the path."

Eliphalet Greer drew a rasping breath, and his eyes left mine.  He was
looking over my shoulder, so strangely that I turned and looked also
into the vacant space behind me.  I was not used to shadows then.  Even
though the room was bare, I could feel a presence that my words had
conjured up, as if we two were no longer quite alone.

"Charles," he said very gently, "you did well to draw your pistol.  I
knew you would use your judgment."

"I walked up the path," I continued.  "It was quite open, not a vine
was across it.  Hardly a leaf had fallen.  At the end of a hundred
yards I saw the bushes and the trees had been cleared ahead of me.
There was an open space.  On the opposite side of that space was a
shelter made of woven twigs and thatched with palm leaves.  It was not
like a native house.  It was squarely built, and there was a row of
trees in front of it.  I watched it very carefully from the path.  Then
I walked across the clearing."

Again Eliphalet Greer had leaned forward.  "Yes," he said, "I might
have known.  I might have known someone would be there.  Squarely
built, it was, you said?  It would be.  But go on--where was he?  Was
he waiting for you?"

I had thought my account was simple and prosaic, but it must have held
some magic of its own.  He was rearing his own imaginary edifice out of
my words.  Did he too feel the silence, and hear the faint rustling of
the palm leaves?

And then the thing that I had thought and had put away from me was back
at me again.  What if I had met a man?  Why was Eliphalet Greer leaning
forward as though his life depended on what I answered?  His very
anxiety made me instinctively cautious.  I found myself holding back
almost timidly before replying.  I wanted to be sure.  Before I did
anything I wanted to be sure that what I thought was true.  If it
was--it never occurred to me that if it was there was nothing for me to
do.

"Was he there?" he asked again, and I would not have known his voice.

"No," I answered, "he wasn't there."

"No," said Eliphalet Greer, "he wouldn't be.  It'd be like him to be
hiding in the trees."

I do not believe he ever knew he had forgotten himself.

"He wasn't in the trees," I said.

"Then where was he?" he asked sharply.  "D'you hear me?  Where was he?"

The embers within him were bright again, glowing through the thin veil
of his reserve.  Of a sudden he was an old man shaken by the hot gust
of a passion with which he could no longer cope.  It swayed him, like
wind rushing through a half dead branch whose hardened fibres creaked
and groaned against it.  It was like some potent drug that stirs life's
waning faculties.  His face had grown a dull red.  His body trembled
like a slackened rope suddenly pulled taut.  He spoke again, but a
thickening in his throat made his words scarcely distinguishable.

"Where was he?" he repeated.

"How should I know where he was?" I answered shortly.  "He wasn't
anywhere."

Slowly Eliphalet Greer raised his hand to his chin.

"Nowhere?" he said.  "Now that is very sad."

"Sad?" I echoed.  "I don't think I understand you."

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer with an intonation almost clerical,
"you may not understand, but I have grasped your meaning.  If he was
not there, where would he be unless his soul had gone to a better place
where you and I must follow when our time comes?"

I grew uncomfortable.  Eliphalet Greer was quite placid, and his eyes
were turned upward toward the ceiling.

"I don't know where his soul was----" I began.

"And no more do I," said Eliphalet Greer melodiously, "but there never
was harm in a friendly wish."

I have never seen pleasure portrayed in a more horrible form.  He could
not conceal it.  I doubt if he even tried to.  It had crept into every
phrase he uttered, laughing through its cloak of piety.

"I'm sure I wish, as you do, Charles, that his soul is quite at rest."

"But I tell you," I persisted, "I don't know whether it's at rest or
not.  All I know----"

"Is all any of us know," said Eliphalet Greer with startling geniality.
"There are sad limitations of the flesh.  Whether we pass to the other
shore from a deserted isle or from a pillow smoothed by loving hands,
all we can do is hope."

He paused and sighed in a manner that was far from melancholy, and I
was enabled to say what was on my mind.

"Mr. Greer," I said, "you may think you understand, but you don't.  I
said he wasn't anywhere, and that's exactly what I mean.  He wasn't
anywhere on the island, his soul or his body either."

Until I spoke you could not have told what energy lay within him.  He
sprang up with such alacrity that the lamps flickered, and his voice
had a snap to it like rending wood.

"What?" he shouted.  "Not on the island?  Where could he be if he
wasn't on the island?"

"You know as much as I do," I replied steadily.

"You fool!" snapped Eliphalet Greer, bringing his fist down on the bare
table.  "Why didn't you hunt him out?  He was hiding.  I tell you he
was hiding.  He did as soon as he saw the ship."

There was an odd contagion in his excitement.  Before I was aware of it
I was answering with words as acrid as his own.

"Nonsense," I said, "you know well enough there's no place where a man
could hide on that pocket-handkerchief of land.  There isn't a rock.
There isn't a hole.  I tell you I went over every foot of it.  I looked
at every stick and pebble.  I tell you whoever was ashore there,
whoever built that shelter and planted those trees, was gone."

Eliphalet Greer started to interrupt me, but I raised my voice.

"Yes, gone!  There was nothing left--nothing in the shelter, nothing
anywhere, not a knife, not a shred of clothing.  Whoever had been there
had gone quietly.  He had even thrown dirt over the fire by the door.
The whole place, the whole island was bare as a bone, and there wasn't
a bone in that God-forsaken place except fish-bones.  He had gone and
taken everything with him."

Eliphalet Greer had been standing by the table.  Now he placed his hand
against it.  He was no longer looking at me.  His eyes no longer had
their glint of intelligence.  The light had gone out in them, leaving
them dull and cold.  The blood had ebbed away from his cheeks till they
were as gray as his hair.

"Gone," he repeated in the monotonous tone of someone who walks in his
sleep.  "How long was he gone?"

"Not so very long," I replied.  "I should say not more than six weeks
before we anchored there.  The clearing was quite open.  So was the
path, and vegetation grows quickly after the rains."

For a moment he stood motionless with a glazed eye and livid face.
There was a vague terror in his look, in the tense muscular effort of
his very stillness.

"Damn him!" he cried.  "May God eternally damn him!"

Then I found myself swept away also, trembling and sick with a sudden
revulsion.  I might have closed my eyes before, but the truth was
before me now, bold and indubitable in every line of his face.

"So that's what your money was for!" I cried.  "I know what you wanted
now!"

But he never heard me.  He never moved.  He was still staring vacantly
into space.  Already a change had come over him.  The hollows of his
cheeks and eyes had grown deeper, and a wisp of his long hair had
fallen across his forehead, but he was no longer pale.  Already there
was a concentration in his glance of rapid, orderly thought.  He raised
his hand with fingers distended to the white choker at his throat.

"Damn him!" he cried again, and his voice was no longer wild.  It was
low and vibrant with another passion.




IV

Had he been afraid, or had his blood merely been chilled by the somber
coldness of a stormy evening?  I wonder what thoughts were coursing
through his mind just then.  They must have been strange fancies.  I
could nearly believe I saw them, pressing hard upon him, rending him
with thin wild fingers, catching at his very breath.  He seemed to be
struggling against them almost with physical violence, alone in the
world which his life had fashioned.  What was it, I wonder, that
brought the blood back to his cheeks again and set the light dancing in
his eye?

It was not any outside force, for the room was dark and chill.  It was
some flame within him, leaping up from the dead embers of the years,
pouring life into dead tissues.  It was warming him, imbuing him with
resolution, like some rare and costly stimulant, until his hand no
longer trembled, until his breath came and went with the strength and
regularity of youth.  It was like the fanatic impetus of some old
religious time, such as once brought old men to the battle and gave
them strength to cross the sea.  It was like the fire which still
sometimes lights the weather-seared faces of New England, and yet not
wholly like it.  What was that potent elixir which gave him back his
strength?  Was it some alembic of the soul?  Surely it was not faith or
charity, and the light of hope could never have burned with such a wild
and untrimmed flame.  I wonder after all if that distraught old man may
not have received a stab of truth in the blasphemy which Captain
Murdock uttered when the _Felicity_ came in from the sea.  In the years
which have gone since then I have often felt that faith and hope and
charity have a way of drifting like the wreck above the water, while
love and hate, and possibly even liquor, make the waves.  I wonder
after all whether a philosophic genius did not lurk behind Captain
Murdock's red face and round nose and beady eye.  There have been other
more unlikely phenomena, but surely it was not love that warmed that
heart of Eliphalet Greer, and no liquor could have rid his mind of mist.

No, the force which animated him was an unholy, ungodly thing.  It
dispelled his years and gravity.  It changed him to a being of delicate
sensibility, and caused a smile to flicker over his withered lips.  It
softened him to a pliable and palatable good nature.

"Charles," he said, "you have acted like a determined and brave young
man."

I wonder why I said nothing then.  I wonder why I sat passively by and
let him continue.  I can never give a satisfactory reason unless it was
a morbid curiosity.  I only know it was through no desire of personal
gain or through no sympathy or liking that I remained quiet.

"Yes," said Eliphalet Greer, "I know a man when I see one.  You've
always had a reckless look, like a man who gets ahead.  And you will
get ahead.  You are going to be a rich man, Charles.  Do you know why?"

"No, I don't," I said, "and what's more, you can't tell me."

Eliphalet Greer leaned toward me and placed his hand gently on my knee.

"You're mistaken, Charles," he said, more gently than before.  "I can
tell you.  Do you think our relations are ended now that we have
transacted our piece of business?  They've only begun.  Don't start so.
I was listening when you spoke of that pistol."

"What do you mean by that?" I demanded.

"I mean," he said evenly, "that you would have fired it."

Somehow the world outside seemed very far away.  Only twelve paces off
was the front door and the stone steps and the horse-block.  Only a
hundred yards away was the water where the ships were quiet at anchor
with their well-trimmed riding-lights.  Through the wind I could
distinguish the steady footsteps of our fellow townsmen traveling home
to supper.  Outside the street lamps would be burning.  Soft yellow
light would be gleaming through the fan shutters of a hundred doorways.
Yet it was all very far off.  Eliphalet Greer and I might have been
anywhere at all except in that bare room--Havana, Cartagena, where the
night air stirs the blood--yes, anywhere but there.  In spite of myself
my pulse was running faster and my thoughts ran impossible courses.
Where had he been in other times?  What had he touched with his hard
old hands and seen with his deep-set eyes?  Shadows were dancing behind
him on the opposite wall, shifting, changing in shape as unfelt
draughts played about the lamps.

"Charles," he asked suddenly, "do I look like a quiet man?"

"No," I replied, "not now."

My answer must have pleased him, for he nodded and rubbed his hands.

"And I'm not," he said.  "_He'll_ find I'm not."

"Who do you mean?" I demanded.

Eliphalet Greer moved his head from side to side in a playful, knowing
fashion.

"You know who," he said.  "But if I was only ten years younger, you
wouldn't need to know.  If I was only ten years younger..."

His voice trailed into half a sigh.  He was back among the shadows.
For a fleeting second all dullness and weariness had left him.  Was he
hearing old voices back through the distance of the years?

"But I'm not," he added.  "Somehow it gets harder to stand alone and
see things through when you get old.  I need someone who'll stand by me
now, and you're the man who'll do it."

"What makes you think I am?" I asked.

"I don't think," said Eliphalet Greer testily.  "I know it.  D'you
suppose I'd be going on to you like this if I didn't know it?"

To my surprise, he was speaking rapidly and almost pleadingly.  I tried
to interrupt, but he only went on the faster.

"No family, no friends, not even a woman--the whole world ahead of you
and not a thing behind.  What wouldn't I have done with the chances you
will have!"

"Would you mind telling me," I interjected, "what you are trying to get
me to do?"

I noticed he had a way of being deaf at times, and he did not hear me
now.

"No, not even a woman.  I've seen 'em look at you, but you've never
looked at them.  Never you mind, they'll look at you all the more when
you have your horses and your gardens.  I'll see you are a rich man.
What won't you be able to do, with an education and expensive tastes?
Aha!  I can see your face light up!  What'll you do when you get out of
those sea-clothes, I wonder, and dress like a fine young gentleman?
And you will.  Say the word and you'll be a gentleman tomorrow.  Say
it, and you'll be as rich as your grandfather."

"What's the use of telling me this fairy story?" I asked.

"Every word I tell you is the truth," he answered with hot haste.  "I'm
making enough money out of my cargoes to share with you.  I've had
letters from the stage tonight.  I've got two ships on the way from
Guinea."

"From Guinea?" I echoed.  I started, for I recalled Captain Murdock's
words on the deck of the _Felicity_, and a shiver ran up and down my
spine.  "What are you bringing from the coast of Guinea?"

Eliphalet Greer shook his finger at me in mock admonition.

"Never you mind, my boy," he chuckled hoarsely.  "I guessed it'd give a
thrill to a boy like you.  Never you mind what's coming from Guinea,
but it's as good as a load of King Elephant tusks, if it gets landed
right.  Aha!  I thought that'd fetch you!  We'll go halves, Charles,
when it gets ashore."

"Good God!" I cried.  "Do you know what you're saying?"

Eliphalet Greer made a gleeful sound, and rubbed his hands.

"Aha!" he cried.  "I guess I'm not as quiet as you thought I was!"

And then he lowered his voice to its old staid and even tones.

"I'm a lonely man tonight, Charles.  I need a friend tonight, Charles,
and you're the man."

"What is it you want me to do?" I asked, and my voice was no longer
steady.  The shadow which the lamps had cast upon him seemed to be
about me also, a thing of weight and dread.

Eliphalet Greer rubbed his chin, and his long white fingers were
remarkably steady.

"What I want you to do," he said, "is hardly anything at all.  I want
you to stay here and be quiet.  You have a pistol.  I want you to use
that pistol when I say the word.  That's all."

"You damned old pirate!" I gasped, starting to my feet.

I heard Eliphalet Greer's chair clatter backward to the floor and he
was up beside me.  He was speaking quickly.  Each word was shaking him
like a gust of wind, but I did not listen.

"So that's what you thought I was!" I shouted.  "You thought you could
hire me like a nigger, did you, Mr. Greer?  Well, you know more about
niggers than you do about white men.  Take your hand off me!  Do you
think you can frighten me?  Take away your hand!"

"By God!" snarled Eliphalet Greer, "don't you raise your voice to me."

And I stopped.  Yes, in spite of myself I stopped.  Something in the
repression of his tone constricted my throat.  Eliphalet Greer had
grown as cold as ice.

"Keep your tongue where it belongs," he said.  "I'm a long way from
being deaf."

"And I'm a long way from being a hired murderer!" I retorted.

It was wonderful how quickly he brought himself under control.  He was
quite himself again.  If I had not watched him before I could never
have told that there was violence within him.

"And would you mind," he asked levelly, "telling me who asked you to be
one?"

"There's no use looking at me like that," I returned.  "I know what you
asked."

"If you think over what I said," he returned calmly, "I asked you
nothing except to protect my property, and to help me in a business
enterprise.  Is that what comes of being generous?"

"No," I replied.  "It's what comes of being what you are, and being
mistaken in your judgment."

"I wonder," said Eliphalet Greer musingly, "what other gentlemen in
this town would say if I told them of this outbreak?  It would be
better for you if I did not tell them.  It shows you in a peculiar
light."

"But you won't tell them," I replied.

Eliphalet Greer's teeth clicked together.

"And neither will you, if you value your skin," he said.

I stepped past the table toward the door.

"Perhaps," I answered, "I don't value it."

"Wait!" he cried, and his speech was harsh and choked.  "Do I
understand you're not going to do what I ask?"

I placed my hand on the latch, and half opened the parlor door, so that
the draft from the black hall blew across my cheek.  Eliphalet Greer
had moved to the table, and was tugging at the drawer.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," I said.  "We ain't standing to off
Guinea."

"Wait!" he cried.

He was leaning half across the table.  His shoulders were sagging and
his head was bowed.  In the draft of the hall the flames of the lamps
were flickering, and the fire within him seemed flickering also,
fitfully dying down.  The light had left his eyes again, leaving them
glazed and stupid.  Once more he was an old and weary man.

"You're not going to leave me?" he asked--"not leave me here alone?
Don't be a fool, Charles.  Think what you're doing!"

"I know what I'm doing," I said.

"Wait!" he cried again.  "One of Murrell's ships is leaving tomorrow.
I'll give you five thousand dollars if you go aboard her as a
passenger."

"I thought you'd find you said too much," I answered, and placed my
hand back on the latch.

"Charles," cried Eliphalet Greer in a strangled voice, "I'll give you
ten thousand dollars if you leave this town."

"I've had enough of your money," I answered, and stepped into the hall.

"Wait!" shouted Eliphalet Greer.  "Wait!  D'you hear me?"

His last words were lost in the wind as I closed the front door behind
me.  There was no doubt any longer what Eliphalet Greer had wanted.  He
had hired me to do murder.  He had expected me to do murder--and now he
wished to get rid of me because I knew too much.




V

I should have known better than to suppose that Eliphalet Greer would
have let me pass safely out his door that night.  I should have known I
was drifting then, turning slowly in strange and hostile currents.  I
should have known as soon as I stepped outside his door, for it was a
night when anything might happen, a night that changes the most staid
New England street into a lane of fantasy.  You may remember the heavy
Ionic pillars by my father's house, and the tall lilacs beside them
which sheltered the portico.  I did not realize the full force of the
wind until I had passed those pillars.  It was a northeast gale, such
as sometimes comes from our leaden sky to lay our coast to waste.  Old
Deacon Jesup used to say those winds have the wrath of the armies of
the Lord.  Once you are unsheltered by a friendly roof you can
understand his meaning.

There is a clatter of horsemen riding wild above the trees.  In the
rain is the echo of a myriad of footsteps of a cadence that is never
heard on earth.  There are voices in the wind, each of a different
pitch, the same voices which you hear of a night at sea.  For the sea
itself comes up to land in the arms of a northeast gale.  A port by the
water's edge is a port no longer.  It is in itself a ship whose timbers
creak and groan, whose windows are closed ports, and whose walls are
bulwarks under the waves of rain.

Before I was down our stone steps I was shivering and gripping for the
railing.  The street was a river of sound.  Its lamps were out.  Its
gutters roared like torrents.  A shutter had torn loose above me and
was battering itself to pieces against the bricks.  A limb had snapped
and had hurtled down to the pavement, and now it was rolling over and
over, scraping at the granite curb.  It was still light enough to see,
for the spring days had grown longer.  Through the cloud of rain vague
shapes were visible, the trunks of the elms, the heavy mass of house
walls, steady among the swaying bushes of the gardens.  But all those
objects were unsubstantial.  It was hard even to perceive what they
were with senses deadened by the rush of air.

As I paused at the foot of the steps to catch my breath, I saw another
shape different from the rest.  It had come from under the elms across
the street.  It was halfway over before I saw it was a figure of a man.
He was moving up against the wind with a sidelong motion, planting one
foot carefully in front of the other.  I never guessed that it was I
who brought him wading through the gutter, until he had halted in front
of me, while the rain sprayed off his oilskin coat.

"Hey!" he roared, cupping his hands about his mouth.  "You've been a
hell of a while!"

There was no mistaking those hoarse bovine tones.  His face might be
blurred by the rain, but the voice was Captain Murdock's.

"What----"  My voice was lost in the wind, so that I had to shout my
question.  "What are you out here for?"

Captain Murdock laid his stubby fingers on my arm, and raised his face
to mine like some fair partner in a waltz.  Even with the wind blowing
a gale, I could perceive he was well fortified against the rigors of
spring weather.

"Ain't you got eyes?" he bellowed jovially.  "Do I look like I'm
picking pansies?"

Without waiting for me to reply, Captain Murdock locked his arm
trustfully through mine, and squeezed my hand in spontaneous, joyous
affection, like a gentleman who is a friend of all the world.  He was a
short man, and I had to lean down so that he could hear me.

"You better go home," I shouted.

I had no desire to see Captain Murdock then.  We both had enough of
each other after eighteen months at sea.

"Hey?" roared Captain Murdock.

"I said," I shouted back, "that it's a bad night to be out."

Captain Murdock only stared vaguely up at the swaying elms.

"If your belly's warm," he roared, "everything's warm.  That's my
motter.  Always keep warmth in the stummick!"

"Then why don't you stay at home?" I called.

"Hey?" roared Captain Murdock.

"I said," I shouted desperately, "that you'd better go home!"

My lungs were like leather in those days, but all their power went for
nothing.

"You never said a truer thing," roared back Captain Murdock.  "Always
keep warmth in the stummick!"

"What do you want?" I shouted impatiently.  "Do you think I'm going to
stand out here all night?"

"Right you be!" he roared back amiably.  "What do I want?  Lemme see
... Oh, yes, that's what."

The rain was beating through my woolen coat and coursing down my neck.
I began to lose my patience as I grew wetter, and to remember that
Captain Murdock was not my captain once we were ashore.

"Damnation!" I shouted.  "Have you lost your wits?"

At the best of times I had observed he was a stupid man, but I had
never seen him so unutterably dull as he was then.

"Yep," he bellowed placidly, "seems like I do recollect.
Wasn't--wasn't there somethin' he told you to tell me?"

He made a sweeping, confidential gesture to the bare walls and
unlighted windows of the house behind us.

"When you're in your right mind," I replied, "you'll know he'd send for
you at home if he wanted to tell you anything."

"I dunno," returned Captain Murdock in a voice of undiminished power.
"Seems--like--I was expectin'--he'd tell you--to tell me somethin'.
Didn't he--didn't he tell--you--nothin'?"

I attempted to withdraw my arm from Captain Murdock's grasp.

"No--nothing!" I shouted.

"Now ain't that hell?" roared Captain Murdock plaintively.  "An' you
such a handsome young gent!"

I started down the street, but he clung to me, so that I half dragged
him off his feet, and tears of self-pity cracked his voice.

"You ain't going to leave me?" he cried.  "Now don'tcher leave me!  My
stummick's gettin' cold!"

He took a new and tighter grip on my arm.

"You ain't going to leave your old skipper on his first night ashore
when he has a cold stummick?"

Captain Murdock must have been very drunk.  For over a year we had sat
at the same table, each across from the other, while we ate in stolid
silence.  If I had any respect for Captain Murdock it was not from his
social attainments, and I know he had none for mine.  He had reached a
curious pass, for now he was pleading with me, weeping on my shoulder,
begging me to take him home.

"What you want is something for your stummick!" he roared.  "Your
stummick must be getting cold too."

I tried again to pull my arm away, but Captain Murdock clung to it like
a bulldog.  I pulled again, but not with so much violence.  No matter
how uncongenial one may find another, months of proximity form ties
which are hard to break.

"Go home yourself," I objected.  "I haven't had my supper."

Captain Murdock made a gesture of righteous indignation.

"Hey!" he roared.  "Do I look like a man who wouldn't feed a shipmate?
Like hell I look like that!"

And in the agony of being misunderstood he again burst into tears, and
I made the best of it.  Without the most violent measures, there was
only one way of getting rid of Captain Murdock.

"All right," I said hastily, "I'll take you home."

We must have made an odd sight walking down the streets in that howling
gale.  Now that we were headed home together, Captain Murdock was in
unaccountable high spirits.  He walked along beside me bouncing from
one foot to another like a ball of India rubber, caroling snatches of
sea songs of a doubtful though jovial tenor.  I wonder what they
thought in the dwellings of King Street as we shouldered our way
against the wind.  Did they hear the Captain's voice?  It must have
pulled them from their wing chairs if they did, and many a lady must
have pushed her curls against her ears.  For we were a righteous people
in those days.  Already we had begun draping the legs of our chairs
with concealing flounces, and draping our thoughts with similar genteel
and effective coverings.  Captain Murdock, however, was in open revolt
against prejudice and convention.  Though his words may have lacked the
grace, they were as undraped as the statues of the age of Pericles.
They made shivers of apprehension run up and down my spine.  What would
old Mr. Brown do if he heard him, or old Robert Green who used to own
the corner house?  I half expected to see them come bounding down their
steps, but they did not.  If they heard at all, they must have thought
it was original sin making the most of a violent night.

Captain Murdock lived in the old Dean house on the point.  You can
still see it with its back roof sloping within two feet of the ground,
and its great square chimney breaking through the low ridge pole, and
the weeds growing about its picket fence.  You can even see the stake
by the river where he tied his dory.  There was not a hundred yards of
water from his front door to where they moored the shipping.  The Dean
house looked like Captain Murdock.  It had the same low, squat build
and the same uninteresting exterior.  It was dripping with water, like
his oilskin, and seemed to exude a similar convivial odor.  As we
headed for the door we could see a single light burning in the kitchen
window.  Captain Murdock fumbled for the latch.

"Damn it!" he roared.  "Ain't it never in the same place?"

He found the latch.  The door only creaked, and Captain Murdock kicked
it.

"There, b'gad!" he cried with child-like triumph, and we were in the
kitchen.

I had never been inside his house before, and I found it as unimposing
as himself.  The kitchen was lighted by a sea-lantern which hung from a
rafter.  It was low-studded and filled with an intense genial heat.
The smells of a generation were stored within its dingy walls, but I
remember they were grateful smells that evening, wood-smoke, burned
bacon, tea and lemon peel, drying sea-boots and tarred rope.  There was
an open fire in the broad chimney, red with embers, and cupboards stood
open on either side of the fireplace, with iron pots and china on their
shelves.  It was a one-story house, and to the left of the cupboards
was the door to the back stairs which led to the attic.  Rope and
sailcloth made up most of the furniture, but there was a table in front
of the fire, covered with dirty cups and plates, and there were two
chairs, one of which had fallen to its side.  Yes, it was a dull enough
room, but for many reasons it is stamped deep on my memory, so deep
that I could enter it now and mark the very spot where the table stood
and the very angle of the tongs and fire-irons.  Captain Murdock ambled
over the rough, splintered floor and picked up the fallen chair.

"Damn her!" he grunted.  "Don't she ever do nothing?"

I gathered from his injured tone that he was referring to his daughter.

Our clothes began to steam in the heat-laden air.  Captain Murdock
removed his oilskins and tossed them in a corner.

"Set down and be easy," he said.  "Now we've got here, what you and me
need's a drink."

And he rubbed his sleeve over his face and stared up at me with his
steady bovine eyes.

"What good's a fire," he demanded cordially, "when a man can't swaller
it?  It's licker that puts the heat into you, and what I've always said
was if your stummick's hot----"

"Yes, yes," I said, interrupting him rather rudely, "that's all very
well, but you said you'd give me some supper, and I'm hungry."

And I was.  We had eaten aboard the _Felicity_ at noon, and the
fly-blown clock on the chimney-piece pointed to seven.

For some reason the mention of food aroused Captain Murdock's ire.  He
uttered an impatient expletive beneath his breath, and assumed a
belligerent attitude.

"Eat!" he snorted.  "What's the use in eatin'?  You won't want to eat
after what I give you.  The food will just be wasted."

"I'm not thirsty," I answered pacifically, "just hungry.  I'm not
particular, but you must have some food somewhere."

Captain Murdock rolled his eyes.

"Now, ain't that just like one of these gents?" he demanded.  "He wants
to eat, instead of obliging his skipper with a drink.  Is that the way
for one gentleman to talk to another?"

The clouds of battle were gathering about his brow.  He was puffing his
cheeks in a way he had when he was angry, and I did not want to
quarrel.  Now that I look back on it, it was destiny and not myself
that made me answer as I did.

"Murdock," I said, "you're not the man to send a friend out in the rain
hungry.  Give me some food first, and I'll drink with you all night."

Captain Murdock seemed singularly relieved.  Some piece of humor which
I could not understand made his stomach shake with merriment.

"All night!" he chortled.  "Will you, now, by gad?  Well, it ain't like
me to refuse a hungry man.  Where's the food?  What's she done with it?"

Now that his mind was made up, he seemed most anxious to have the
eating over.  He rummaged hastily through the cupboards, but the food
was evidently elsewhere.  He hastened feverishly from corner to corner,
and as he looked a just irritation mounted within him.  Long ago I had
ceased to wonder at Captain Murdock's powers of profanity, but perhaps
from the stimulus of home life, he burst into a surpassing exhibition.
Whatever gifts of character a parsimonious heredity and an overworked
providence may have withheld, he had been endowed with a dramatic
genius, and he had besides a knowledge of holy things that exceeded
that of the layman.  As he searched for my supper his speech glowed
with Biblical allusions.  I would not have been surprised if the supper
had jumped from its hiding place and hastened out of the door, but it
did not.  Instead the perspiration rolled in rivulets down Captain
Murdock's cheeks, and formed in drops about his nose.

"By the million boils of Egypt!" roared Captain Murdock.  "Where did
she put it?"

He looked about at the end of his exhortation, as though expecting some
benevolent sign from the clouds, but none came.  Finally with a last
desperate burst of energy he strode to the attic stairs and tore at the
door.

"Hey, you!" he bellowed.  "Show a leg!"

There was no answer.

"Damn you!" he shouted, "tumble out, there!"

I heard a creaking of boards above me.  Captain Murdock reached for the
fire-tongs.

"None of your mouth now!" he continued.  "Git down here with you!"

There was a footstep on the attic stairs, and Murdock threw the tongs
back on the hearth.  There was another footstep and another.  I turned
away, feeling both disgusted and sick.  Though the last time I had seen
Captain Murdock's daughter was before his wife had died, and before she
had been sent to board in Boston, I knew what she would be like.  I
could tell from the way Murdock had spoken.  Her face would be pinched,
her shoulders bent, her hair unkempt and lustreless, and her eyes would
be wide with the terror known to women of brutal men.  I could hear her
come through the doorway, and though my back was turned, I could
picture what was going on.  Captain Murdock made a puffing sound like a
porpoise coming up for air.

"Damn you!" he said, "what did you do with the supper?"

Surely it could not be Captain Murdock's daughter who answered.  There
was no tremor of fear in her voice.  It was clear and musical as a bell.

"Damn you yourself," she said, "the supper's where you put it."

I had been looking fixedly at the marks of mould on the opposite wall,
but now I spun about.  Captain Murdock's daughter was standing directly
under the kitchen lantern.  She was in a gingham dress.  She had an
oddly delicate appearance, as she stood opposite Captain Murdock's
squat and burly figure.  She was standing straight and motionless, and
looking at him in a curious way, half dreamily, half fixedly.  I could
tell as much from her gesture as anything else, that she was young.
Though youth is an attribute which one sees every day, it is too
delicate and transient to capture with a word.  Perhaps, even if she
had resembled Captain Murdock, she might have had a certain charm, but
she did not resemble him.  Even in her gingham dress she seemed aloof
from Captain Murdock and his kitchen.  He snorted and shook his fist in
her face, but she did not move.  Instead, she spoke again, as though
his temper were an everyday affair.

"Remember what I told you this afternoon," she said.  "I'll pay you
back.  The first chance I get I'll pay you back."

"None of that now!" thundered Captain Murdock.  "How should I know
where I put the supper?"

"Because you have enough sense to know it," she answered.  "It's in the
bean-pot in the ashes."

"Then go get it!" roared Captain Murdock.

Her face went paler, but she did not move.

"Didn't I tell you that I'd never raise a finger for you again?" she
inquired.  "Go get it yourself."

There was a silence.  Captain Murdock's features took on a familiar
purple hue and I stepped toward the hearth.

"Never mind," I said.  "The supper's for me.  I'll get it, and be glad
to."

Captain Murdock raised his hand to his close-cropped hair.

"Now," he said, "ain't that a hell of a way to treat your old man in
front of company?"

With another snort he turned on his heel and began fumbling under a
piece of sail in the corner.

"Go upstairs," I whispered, for she was still staring at him.  "He'll
be better in the morning."

I hardly think she had noticed me before.  Now she looked at me in
sudden astonishment.

"Please go," I said.  "I don't want to quarrel with him in his own
kitchen."

"You mean," she said in a low voice, "you mean you wouldn't let him----"

"Of course not," I answered shortly.

"You can't be much of a friend of his," she said.

"I'm not," I replied.  "I'm sorry I ever came."

I must have said a very astonishing thing, for her lips fell half open.
Her face flushed and she trembled.

"Sit down by the table," she said, "and I'll get your supper, as long
as it's not for him."

Captain Murdock in the meanwhile had pulled a jug from under the sail,
and now he was beside the cupboard, fumbling with two crockery cups.
He seemed to be having difficulty, I thought, for he was a long while.
His back was turned toward me, and I could hear the clink of thick
china.  His daughter had placed a plate of beans on the table, and was
cutting a thick slice of bread.

"If I had known there would be so much trouble----" I began awkwardly.

"Nonsense," she answered shortly.  "Who are you?"

"My name is Jervaile," I said.  "Charles Jervaile."

She glanced at Captain Murdock.  He had reached down for the jug.  I
could hear a comfortable gurgling sound, as he lowered it over the cups.

"Not----?" she asked, and hesitated.

"Don't be afraid to ask," I answered.  "Everybody knows."

Yet involuntarily the blood started to my cheeks and I lowered my eyes.

"I didn't mean to be rude," she said, "but I see why you have good
manners now."

It was a strangely courteous reply for a room where a jug of rum was
gurgling out its contents.  I felt myself sitting straighter in my
wooden chair.

"They are all that are left," I said, and to my surprise I found myself
smiling, but she did not smile back.  Instead she caught her breath,
and looked at Captain Murdock's bent shoulders.

"Look!" she said softly, "he has filled the other cup."

Captain Murdock had placed the jug on the floor with a solid thump, and
had turned toward us with a cup in either hand.

"Well," he said, "here's to you!"

With a steadiness that his condition rendered surprising he stepped to
the table and placed a cup beside my plate.  Then he drew the other
chair opposite and seated himself with the other cup raised before him.

"Licker never hurts food," he said suggestively.

Of all the men I might have cared to drink with just then, he was the
last, but I knew there was nothing else for it.  I was just about to
lift up the cup he had given me, when his daughter uttered a low cry.

"Be still--you!" thundered Captain Murdock, half rising from his chair.
"Do you want to spoil the gentleman's good time?  Git upstairs where
you belong!"

But she did not seem to have heard him.  Instead she was pointing over
his shoulder.

"Listen!" she whispered.  "There's someone at the door."

Captain Murdock uttered a low exclamation, and looked sharply at me,
though I could not tell why.  Muttering something, he set his cup down
and walked across the kitchen.  He stopped in front of the door, with
his head cocked to one side, but except for the wind there was no other
sound.  Suddenly I heard a sharp indrawn breath.  Captain Murdock's
daughter had leaned over the table.  The two crockery cups were on it,
one at either end.  Before I had time to utter a word, or understand
what she was doing, she had whisked them around, so that Captain
Murdock's cup was at my end of the table and mine at Captain Murdock's.

"Here----" I began, and then a quick, noiseless motion of her lips made
me stop.

"There ain't anyone there," grunted Captain Murdock, and slumped back
to his chair, and picked up the cup that stood in front of him.

For the first time I noticed that Captain Murdock appeared unnaturally
excited for such a trivial performance.  He was raising his cup with
undue care and solemnity.  The light from the kitchen lantern shone
darkly on its contents.  It was strange how a simple action such as the
changing of those two cups altered the appearance of that whole kitchen
also.  Nothing about it remained commonplace.  It was filled instead
with an ominous sort of magic lurking in the rattle of the
window-sashes and in the hissing of the fire.  I could feel my muscles
draw taut across my shoulders.  Captain Murdock licked his lips
expectantly.

"Drink up," he said.  "Ain't you going to drink?"

My voice when I answered was wonderfully steady.

"Murdock," I said, "nothing will give me more pleasure."

Captain Murdock's eyelids twitched.

"That's it!" he cried heartily.  "Something warm in the stummick!
That's how a young gent should act.  Do like me now, and take it all in
one swaller!"

"Very well," I said.  "Is there anything you'd like to drink to?"

Captain Murdock was in high good humor.  He shook with bubbling, genial
laughter.

"Ain't there someone you love?" he asked.  "Nothing helps it like a
wish in licker."

Captain Murdock was as blank and guileless as a fair sheet of paper,
but he no longer seemed as drunk as he had seemed before.

"Or mebbe there's someone you hate," he continued obligingly.  "It'll
do just as well.  Either way makes the world go round."

But already I had drunk deep of another draught that stands ready to
every hand.  My faculties were never so alert.  I seemed possessed of
an ungovernable, unimagined strength.  I hardly knew my own voice, it
rang so clear and bitter.

"So it's just as well, is it?" I heard my voice saying.  "Then get up!
Get up and drink it on your feet.  Here it goes--every drop of it!
Every drop to Eliphalet Greer."

Captain Murdock's jaw fell open.

"Drink up!" I cried.  "Do you want me to pour it down your throat?"

Captain Murdock broke into a hoarse chuckle.

"B'gad!" he said simply, "here's one to the old man."

Captain Murdock was always adroit with a glass.  He contrived to toss
down the entire contents of his cup in a single gulp, and the cup
itself to the hearth before I placed mine, also empty, back on the
table.  Then he began to laugh in a way that sounded oddly like the
crash of the heavy china.

"Now wasn't that comical?" he inquired, rubbing his eyes.  "You
drinking to him like that?  Many's the time you'll think of it where
you're goin'."

Again Captain Murdock burst out laughing with all the side-splitting
delight which arises from a pointed jest.

"Ha!  Feelin' dizzy, be you?  Well, you'll be dizzier in a minute, and
mebbe you won't be dizzy as hell when you wake up between decks in the
morning."

Captain Murdock's face suddenly became expressive.  His jaw shot
forward, and he half closed his eyes.

"Keep away, you swab!" he roared.  "Unless you want your skin broke.
Feelin' weak on your pins, do you?  Hold tight, my boy--you're as good
as goin' now."

"Going where?" I demanded.

Captain Murdock grinned derisively.

"Where the old man's sendin' you," he said.

"You mean Eliphalet Greer?" I asked, but there was no need for him to
answer my question.

"Ain't you got eyes?" Captain Murdock was still grinning.  "Didn't you
see the _Ruth_ waiting when she might have gone on the tide?  Now who
do you think she was waiting for?  She was waiting for you, waitin' for
you all afternoon."

"And he told you to do this?" I asked.

Captain Murdock puffed out his cheeks and sank back into his chair.

"That's what," he said huskily.  "Down in the cabin he told me--unless
he sent out word by you when you came out of his house tonight."

His voice, I noticed, was getting less distinct, but he was still
laughing.

"And you drank it down to him.  Now isn't that funny?"

"So you were going to crimp me," I said.  "So that's what you were
going to do."

"Was?" cried Captain Murdock with more animation.  "_Am_!  What did you
think was in that cup--water!"

I heard a voice at my shoulder.  Captain Murdock's daughter was
speaking.

"Mr. Jervaile is right," she was saying.  "You were going to do it, but
you're not now."

With an effort Captain Murdock struggled out of his chair.

"Let me hear another peep from you----" he began.  "Hey!  What are you
laughing for?"

"Because I changed the cups," said Captain Murdock's daughter.

Captain Murdock's face grew purple.  He clenched his fist and drew back
his arm, but his eyesight must have been bad then, for she was far out
of reach.

"Damn you!" he roared in his old familiar way, but his voice was vague
and slow, and lacking its old power.

She did not move away.  She only stood watching him in an interested,
impersonal fashion, but her eyes had a curious glitter.

"There are other people who hate," she said.  "Have you forgotten that?"

No, Eliphalet Greer and I were not the only ones who had drunk deep of
the elixir that night.  We were not the only ones who felt its fire run
through our veins.  Even Murdock, wavering on the fringe of a land of
shadows, felt its reviving strength.  Mechanically he raised his fist
again.

"Put down your hand," said his daughter evenly.  "You'll never hit me
again.  Don't you feel a little shaky?  Well, you'll feel shakier in a
minute."

Captain Murdock tried to speak, but his voice only rattled in his
throat.  He staggered, lost his balance, and snatched at the back of
his chair.  His legs were giving way beneath him.  He was sinking to
the floor.

"Good God!" I gasped, "he's poisoned!"

"Only drugged," said Captain Murdock's daughter, raising her hand to
her hair.

But I hardly heard her.  I was staring at Captain Murdock as he settled
to the floor in a round, still heap.  His face, which had assumed an
expression far more vacant than any it had worn in its conscious hours,
was turned upward toward the blackened ceiling, and his stubby fingers
lay open, groping limply at nothing.




VI

I was used to violence, as everyone was then who followed the sea.
More than once I had seen men fall from the royal yards to the deck.
On the _Felicity_ herself I had seen them spread-eagled in the sun
while Captain Murdock stood by and smoked his pipe.  I had seen the
blood run in half a dozen ports during a night ashore.  Nevertheless my
brow grew moist in Captain Murdock's kitchen.  There was a premeditated
swiftness about it which made me faint and sick, but Murdock's daughter
was cool enough.  First she stepped softly over and gave him a little
prod with her toe.  Then she looked thoughtfully at the clock on the
chimney-piece.

"And now," she said, "you might as well finish your supper."

I gave a startled glance at the table.

"Yes," she said, "I should eat something if I were you.  They'll be
coming any minute now."

"Coming?" I asked blankly.  My mind was still full of what had passed.
"Who'll be coming?"

She made an even, impersonal gesture toward Captain Murdock with a hand
that was white and delicate.

"They'll be old acquaintances," she said, "from what I could gather
this afternoon.  He told them he'd have you ready by now."

Without answering, I picked up Captain Murdock's discarded oilskin coat.

"Here," I said, "put this around you."

She only raised her eyebrows.

"Why?" she asked.  "It isn't cold."

"It will be outdoors," I replied grimly.  "And it will be too warm if
we stay here."

Captain Murdock's daughter did not move.  Though browbeaten men on a
night watch, reveling in their days of freedom, had often told me you
never could tell what a woman would do, I never knew how right they
were before.

"Do you think I've finished, now that I've changed the cups?" she asked.

She was staring straight at me, and her lips were twisted in a curious
crooked smile.

"Do you think I'm going to go without seeing it through?"

"But what are you going to do?" I asked.

Her fingers were straying lightly over her hair, patting it gently into
place, in that deft manner which women sometimes have.

"You can stay and see if you like," she said.

"But you don't understand!" I cried.  "You--"

My voice died away.  She had taken the oilskin coat from my hands and
had tossed it back on the floor.

"It's too late for supper now," she said.  "Listen!"

For an instant we both stood perfectly silent.  Then I took off my own
coat and stepped toward the fireplace.

"Yes," I replied.  "It's too late for everything."

Dimly but unmistakably I had heard the sound of voices outside, and the
splashing of heavy feet.  I was strong in those days, and now that it
was too late for anything else, I was almost glad for what was going to
happen.

"Get upstairs!" I whispered, and strode to the center of the room, with
the fire-tongs in my hand.  And then, almost before I had finished, the
silence of the room was broken.  Someone was knocking on the kitchen
door.

"Hurry!" I whispered.  "Don't let them see you!"

But instead she snatched at my arm.

"Put down those tongs and tie him up in that canvas."

"Not--him?" I stammered.

"Do you think I want him here when he wakes up?" she whispered.  "They
won't know who he is when you tie him," and before I could answer she
had raised her voice.

"Just a minute," she called.  "Just a minute and he'll be ready."

It was one of those occasions when the weight of humanity is negligible
in the scales of circumstance.  I had Murdock by the scruff of the
neck, and was dragging him over the floor like a bag of oats.  It
hardly seemed any time before I was standing up and dusting my hands.

"There," I said.

Captain Murdock was a neat canvas bundle, tied about the middle and
open at the ends.

"Open up that door," came a voice outside.  "We've seen what you're
doing!"

Captain Murdock's daughter gave a startled cry which was almost like a
sob.

"Oh!" she moaned, "it's no use.  Why didn't I think?"

It was the first time I had seen her frightened, and she was badly
frightened then.  I know how she must have felt now that her plan had
crumbled like a pillar of sand.  The kitchen was reverberating with a
renewed pounding on the door.

"Why didn't I think?" she sobbed.  "They've been watching us through
the kitchen window, watching all the time!"

The pounding on the door stopped.

"You can't fool us," came a voice.  "Let us in or we'll smash in!"

"I thought they'd think he was you!" sobbed Captain Murdock's daughter.

My thoughts had been whirling in a futile, desperate circle, but now
they stopped and fitted together in a pattern of their own.

"Never mind," I said.  "We're not through yet," and I pulled open the
kitchen door.

There was a rush of wind, and three men stamped into the kitchen and
slammed the door behind them.  They were standing side by side,
breathing loudly and dripping with the rain.  There was only one thing
to do.  I spoke to them with harsh authority.

"Do you want to wake up the town?" I asked.  "There he is.  Take him
away."

Then I stopped.  We were staring at each other in silence.  I had
thought there was something familiar about them.  I could see there was
now, for the wick of the kitchen lantern, which the wind had blown to a
faint blue flame, had kindled again and threw its yellow light on their
faces.  In front of me, clad in their oilskins, were standing three
members of the _Felicity's_ port watch.  A little pool of water was
forming about them, trickling across the floor.  There they were,
standing with their hands half open and their faces shining with the
wet.  I might have known that Murdock would choose them.  Their faces
are before me still, distinct as thought itself, stolid, coarse-grained
features of men who live at sea.

Nearest me was Jim Young, a yellow boy from Mobile whose eyes were wide
open like a cat's.  Next him was Joe Harper, with a mat of red hair
covering his forehead, and nearest the door was Tom Stevens, tall and
meagre, with a hatchet-like face characteristic to New England.  He was
chewing rapidly on a quid of tobacco, and I could see his Adam's apple
dance nervously up and down his throat.

"It's him," muttered Joe Harper, staring at me.  "Yes, it's him, by
thunder!"

"And who'd you think it was?" I demanded harshly.  "Lay hold of that
bundle.  You haven't got all night!"

They were still bound hard by habit.  When I spoke they all three gave
a simultaneous, galvanic start, but a second later they were stock
still again, and Tom Stevens was spitting indecisively.

"There's something wrong, somehow," he said.  "Yes, sumthin's wrong."

I began to wish I had the fire-tongs in my hand again, but I spoke
without hesitation.

"Tom," I said, "you always were a numbskull.  Why should I have let you
in if anything was wrong?"

Tom Stevens and Joe Harper and Jim Young glanced uneasily at each other.

"But we wasn't going to take him, Mr. Jervaile," replied Tom Stevens.
"It was him who gave the orders."

"No," said Joe Harper, moving his left foot forward.  "We was going to
take you."

I have seldom felt less cheerful than I did then, but I looked at them
and contrived to laugh.

"Did you ever hear of Eliphalet Greer?  It's his orders you're minding
now."

All three of them moved uneasily.

"And I'm here to see you mind them," I added.  "Stand quiet now and
listen.  You all saw what happened between them when we came in today.
Well, who do you want to mind now--that roll of canvas there or
Eliphalet Greer?"

There was a gulping sound.  Tom Stevens had swallowed his tobacco.

"Yes," I said.  "He's had enough of Murdock, and he's sent me down to
see him off--sent Murdock out to catch himself.  You know the way he
does."

Without waiting for them to answer, I drew a roll of bills from my
pocket and placed them in Tom Stevens' hand.

"Here," I said.  "This is for you now, and there's more if you do it
right."

Tom Stevens fingered the bills.

"I might of known it," he said.  "I might of known.  He always was a
deep one."

"Lay hold now," I said, "and no noise.  He's going out to the _Ruth_.
Tell them to keep him tied, and tell them to keep him quiet, and if you
do this quick and clean, I'll tell you what I'll do----"

I paused impressively.

"I'll say a good word for you to Mr. Greer himself.  Now lay hold of
him, men."

Tom Stevens grinned.

"Sort of comical, ain't it?" he said.

"Lay hold," I answered.  "We've made enough noise already.  Easy with
him!  I'll close the door."

"Yes, sir," Tom Stevens reiterated.  "It is sort of comical."

As I look back on it through the dim glass of years, I can see it is a
savage jest.  Yet I still think he was right in his observation.
Captain Murdock, having finished one journey that day, was going out of
the door, feet foremost, on another.  He was a heavy man, and they had
to bend their backs to hold him.

I held open the door and followed them out.  It was so near to the
river that in ten seconds they were stumbling and slipping down to the
water's edge.  A long boat was hauled ashore with two men standing by.
Into it went Captain Murdock.  I could hear the plopping noise of water
as he fell between the thwarts.  They were shoving her off.  They were
in the water beside her, turning her nose toward the dark.  The sea was
running high and slapping angrily against the bows.  There was a
thumping of wood on wood, that dull hollow sound which you can hear
only by the water.  The oars were between the tholepins, and Captain
Murdock and his crew were nothing more than a shadow, scarcely darker
than the water itself, as they bobbed from wave to wave toward the
center of the stream toward a light that curved and jumped about a
hidden mast.

In those days when the sea seemed nearer than it ever will again, we
used to speak of our ships as we would of people, and gossip of their
foibles and eccentricities.  We could name a ship in those days from
the cut of her sail, or from the way she stood to the wind.  I knew the
ship beneath those riding-lights.  I could tell her from their very
motion, for the _Ruth_ had an unmistakable way of rolling when the wind
was high, even when she was loaded to her water-line.  Was Eliphalet
Greer watching also?  Though his eyes were dimmer than mine, he knew
the motion of the lights far better.  They were his lights, and the
ship was his ship.  The wind was already moderating.  The tide would be
turning by the early morning.  Before the town was astir, the _Ruth_
would be slipping away, a speck on the horizon curve.




VII

Captain Murdock's kitchen was very still when I entered it again.  Its
stillness was more than a contrast with the noise of the night outside.
When I closed the door, I remember that it seemed to have the same
shocked silence of Eliphalet Greer's own dwelling.  She was at the
window when I came in, looking out at the black, and when she turned to
face me, she looked tired and white.

"Is--is he gone?" she asked.

"He's gone.  I saw him go," I said.

The excitement which had been with me till then seemed to have blown
away with the wind outside.  My feet felt heavy.  My hands were cold
and sodden with the rain.

"I----"  Her voice faltered.  "I never knew it would be like that."

We stood looking at each other in a strange, impassive way.

"Was it true?" she asked.  "Was it true what you told them?  Did he
really send you here?"

I felt my blood running faster.

"No," I said, "he didn't send me.  I was the one he wanted to get rid
of--damn him!"

I stood up straighter.  My breath was hot between my lips.

"And he hasn't got rid of me," I added.  "He'll find out he hasn't!"

"And what are you going to do now?"

She was looking at me curiously, but my thoughts were so black that I
scarcely noticed.

"I'm going to stay here," I said.

I was so immersed in myself then that I was surprised when she
misunderstood me.  She did not move, but she cried out, and the color
came back to her cheeks.

"I might have known you'd be like all the rest of them!" she exclaimed
hotly.  "Do you think that was why I changed the cups?"

"I know you didn't change them on my account," I said more gently.
"That is not why I'm staying.  I'm only going to wait until----"

"Until when?" she interrupted.

"Until Eliphalet Greer arrives," I answered, and sat down before the
fire.  There was a moment of silence, and then I heard a soft footstep
beside me.

"So you weren't thinking of me at all," she said.

It is curious how we can go through the world, and only give half a
glance at the people and things that surround us.  I had never more
than glanced at Captain Murdock's daughter.  I seemed never to have
seen her till then.  Until then she had been nothing but a part of that
indefinable curtain of words and faces which forms the background of
our lives, and now, though I can never explain why, she had moved
forward, and had assumed a definite and tangible shape.  I had never
realized before the striking quality of her beauty, or how oddly it
fitted with the thing that she and I had done.  Her forehead was high.
Her chin and mouth had an even grace and strength of line.  Her hands
were thin and tapering, like the hands in some fine lady's portrait.
Her voice had the modulation of a lady's voice, unlike the heritage of
a Murdock strain.

She drew the other chair to the fire, and sat with her chin resting on
the palm of her left hand.

"I'm sorry----" I began, and stopped.  "I can't leave you here alone,"
I ended.

"I wish you hadn't said that," said Captain Murdock's daughter.  "I was
just beginning to hate you, and I can't hate you now."

"Hate me!" I exclaimed.

"You'll understand some day," she said, and her voice had grown soft
and low.  "Sooner than you think, perhaps.  When you have been hating
someone, it's lonesome when he goes away.  I almost wish he were back,
because there's nothing now."

"If that's the way you feel," I said.  "You couldn't have hated him at
all."

Her eyes flashed, and her lips grew thin and white.

"Only God knows how I hated him!" she cried.  "You don't know what it
is to hate!"

I stretched my hands toward the fire, and listened to the wind.

"But I'm learning," I said.

I remember thinking then that something was the matter with Murdock's
daughter.  I wonder why I was so obtuse as not to see the trace of
affectation in her indifference, but I never did see it.  I never knew
how deeply she had been stirred till then.  There had been something
repellent about her before, an unnatural harshness to her voice, an
unyielding, expressionless hardness about her face, but she seemed
quite different now.  She seemed younger.  Her lip was trembling, and a
pulse was throbbing in her throat.

"Yes," she said, as though she had only half heard me.  "You'll learn.
I know you will, if you wait for Eliphalet Greer."

"What makes you so sure?" I asked.

"Don't you think I know?"  Her hands were playing nervously with a fold
of her dress, and her words were hot and quick, as though they had
broken through some barrier.

"Why--oh, why don't you go before it's too late?  Don't you see what it
does?  Don't you see what it's done to me?  How it's made me forget
everything I should have remembered?  You needn't shake your head!  You
wouldn't be looking at me the way you are now if you didn't know it.
Why don't you go?  Why can't you go before you change too?"

We are used to hiding our emotions in New England.  It was the more
surprising to have her speak so.

"Please," I said, "I don't know why you did it, but please don't think
I blame you."

"But you do," she went on.  "How can you help it?  Oh, why don't you
go?  Why do you sit staring at me like that?"

Then her voice broke, and she buried her face in her hands.  Something
which I could not understand had sapped the strength of her will.

"I couldn't let him do it!" she sobbed.  "It was too hateful a thing to
watch.  I never hated him so until I saw you standing there."

For a moment I could only stare at her without speaking.  Of all the
things I had thought, I had never thought of that.

"Good Lord!" I gasped.  "Do you mean you did it on account of me?"

She looked up at me.  Her face was wet.  Her hair was dishevelled, and
her eyes were wide and brimming with tears.

"Don't try to feel kindly toward me," she replied.  "I never should
have done what I did if I hadn't hated him."

"It's been a long while," I said slowly, "since anyone has thought of
me at all."

I never thought how long it was, until I began to remember with a surge
of bitterness and self-pity.  She was sobbing again, and staring
wretchedly at the fire.

"Yes," I said, "you're the first one who has thought of me kindly since
I came ashore."

She did not answer.  A gust of wind blew against the house, so that the
timbers creaked and groaned, almost like the timbers of a ship at sea.
Though I began to feel how far at sea I was that night, I felt
strangely peaceful.  I was no longer thinking of Eliphalet Greer.  Her
glance was friendly, and her voice was very gentle.

"Will you promise me something?" she asked.

I forgot--I quite forgot that she was Murdock's daughter then.  It
would have been hard to remember, for there was a peculiar dignity in
the way she spoke, quite as some fine lady might in the days when I met
fine ladies.

"Anything you ask," I answered.  "You know I owe you that."

"Then promise me you'll go," she said.  "You mustn't meet him when he
comes, and make things worse than they are."

"But I can't leave you alone," I objected.

"I'm not afraid," she replied.  "I've been alone before.  I've been
here alone so often that I can tell the way the wind is blowing from
the sound of the waves."

"These men may come back," I objected.

"If they were coming," she answered, "they'd have been here before now."

"You'll let me see you in the morning?" I asked.  "You know I haven't
thanked you yet, and I have a good deal to thank you for."

She turned her head away, and her voice sank almost to a whisper.

"You won't want to see me when you wake up tomorrow, not after what I
did tonight."

"I don't forget as quickly as that," I said.  "Believe me, I'll be
here."

"No," she answered.  "It will only be a bad dream tomorrow."

"But still," I replied, "I would rather have dreamed it than not."

I meant what I said.  She was standing beside me.  A window rattled
from the impact of the storm.  The sound made her start, and catch her
breath.

"Don't be afraid," I said.  "It's only the wind."

Suddenly she clutched at my arm.

"No," she said, "it's not the wind," and we both stood still and
listened.

"Promise me," she said suddenly, and she spoke in a low voice, as
though she was afraid someone might hear.  "Promise me you'll leave
this town the first thing in the morning."

"And run away?"  I shook my head.  "Do you really think I'd run away?"

"No," she said, "I might have known you wouldn't.  Only women know when
it's time to run."

I don't know what I was going to answer then.  I only know that I had
just begun to speak when I heard something which cut me short.
Somewhere outside there was a noise louder than the storm, and then a
confusion of noises charging after each other down the wind.  First
there was a rending of wood, which made me think a tree had snapped
until I knew it was not a tree because of a shouting from somewhere on
the river.  Then there was a snapping, booming sound, which made me
start to the door.  Faint as it sounded on the wind, it was still clear
enough for me to tell it.  Only slack canvas could make a noise like
that, only the canvas of a vessel in the wind.  Outside there was a
sudden scurry of footsteps and voices.

"It's on the river," I said, and I opened the door.

The rain was on my face, but the wind was slacking as I thought it
would, and the sky was clearer.  I stared out toward a black, oddly
shaped mass in the center of the stream.  The lights of the _Ruth_ were
there, but the _Ruth_ never bore a hull like that, and there were other
lights, lanterns dancing here and there about the decks.  Not a dozen
yards from the house I could make out a knot of men struggling through
the mud and water-grass.  I ran toward them and seized one by the
shoulder.

"What's wrong?" I shouted.

"Wrong?"  It was the voice of Stephen Wright, the harbor-master, who
answered me.  "A ship's bore in clean over the bar and rammed into
Greer's _Ruth_.  They're afoul of each other now.  Is Murdock inside?
Bear a hand on this boat."

Without answering, I turned and scrambled up the river bank.  Murdock's
daughter had followed me to the door, forgetful of the rain as she
peered out across the water.

"Is it the _Ruth_?" she asked.

I strode into the kitchen and stamped the mud off my shoes.  For the
first time I was shaken by a sense of superstition, a feeling of some
power beyond ourselves.  I had a feeling that it hardly mattered what I
said or what I did just then.

"A ship's run afoul of her," I answered.  "She won't move out tomorrow."

"A ship?"  Her voice sounded strained and unnatural, like the voice of
a sleepwalker almost.  "What ship?  Where did it come from on a night
like this?"

I stared out the open door, fascinated somehow by the mystery of the
dark.

"She came from God knows where," I said.

Faintly out of the blackness I could hear a dull monotonous sound, a
noise which often surges through our streets on a stormy night.  It was
the noise of the surf beating on the outer beach.  I could fancy how it
looked, row after row of waves moving out of the black--swift, endless
and precise--beating down in a dim white sheet of foam, roaring,
hissing against the sand, until another line sped down, another and
another, row upon row out of the black.  That was where the ship had
come from, out of nowhere like the waves, and like all things from the
sea.  I felt that the tumult of the waves was drawing nearer, nearer,
as we all sometimes do who live by the water's edge.

"Then he won't be gone tomorrow?" she asked suddenly.  Her voice became
alive again, filled with new energy.  "He can't be coming back!  He
can't be coming back!"

"When he wakes up in the morning," I answered, "they'll find out
something's wrong.  We've cast our bread upon the waters.  According to
the Scriptures, he will return a thousand-fold."

I can never tell why I spoke so confidently, for I had hardly more than
guessed what had happened on the river, but somehow I knew already that
it was the beginning and not the end.  The ironic order of things was
enough to tell me that it was not Murdock's time to go to sea, not
while the storm waves were making a rumbling sound like the wheels of
fate.

"Yes," I said.  "He'll be back again."

"Yes," she whispered.  "He'll be back."

Then her voice broke.

"Please--you mustn't leave me now!"

She had seized my hand, and hers was as cold as ice.  I had forgotten
about Eliphalet Greer when I answered.

"Don't look that way," I said.  "I'll stay if a thousand of him breaks
through that door."




VIII

Not so long ago my life had seemed cast on simple curves.  Since my
father's death I had followed the sea, obeying orders on ships which
were not my own.  It had taken the lustre from my manners and had
blunted my speech.  Yet there I was in a knightly role, a protector of
Captain Murdock's daughter.  There I sat at Captain Murdock's table,
watching the clock move on.  There I sat among Captain Murdock's
sea-boots in front of Captain Murdock's fire, eating Captain Murdock's
food without a qualm, eating, and talking to Captain Murdock's daughter.

I wonder what made me speak of my life as the night passed by.  I
remember that I was sorry for her, and that I wished to take her mind
off the night and the storm.  I made her sit by the fire and threw on
an armful of driftwood.  I spoke as courteously as I could of many
things.  As I talked the strained, expectant look finally left her face
and gave way to candid interest.  Once she asked me a question, and
then another, and then I remember being glad of someone to talk to who
could understand me and who cared to listen.  It did not seem strange
that I should be saying what I did.  I found myself telling her of my
father's house, and of the horses and of the garden, and of the guests
who came to see him from Boston and New York.  As I went on I began to
recall many things which I had come near to forgetting, how my father
took his wine on the terrace of a spring evening, and would sit until
it was dark enough to see the harbor lights, and how he played at his
cards with gold pieces on the table.  Memories were coming back to me
as they always did when I came home, memories made alluring by the time
which closed them off.  I found myself telling her how he taught me to
ride, and to shoot and to sail a boat, until I checked myself at
length, in sudden embarrassment, as I became aware how strange a time
and place it was to speak of him.

"But what difference does it make?" I said.  "Everyone knows what
happened, and here I am, and there's no use speaking of it, now that
it's all over."

Then I was telling of what we always spoke of then, of the ships and of
the sea.  I told her of the first time I had sailed before the mast,
when the shutters of the house were up, and what clothes I owned were
in a wooden chest, of the forecastle and the tobacco smoke, and the
clothes hanging out to dry, of the grease of the cook's galley, of the
gulls which followed in our wake, like feathers in the air, gliding on
motionless wings with never a need to rest, of all the commonplaces of
a voyage at sea.  I told of a storm in the Indian Ocean, and of the
porpoises that leaped before our bows, and the fight between the port
and starboard watches one evening at Singapore.  It is hard to stop
talking when you are talking of the sea.  I told her of the coral
islands and of the mountain I had seen which rose smoking from the
water.

In those days of sail and shifting winds the world was a stranger place
than it will ever be again.  Yet how near it seemed then, when the
ships sailed in and out, when there was a smell of spices on their
decks, and we filled our houses with dragon-studded vases and our cups
with the best of tea, when there was hardly a man of us but had felt
the sun of the line, and had seen the holds loaded by dull-eyed men
with yellow skins.

"Was your father fond of the sea?" she asked.

"He would have been," I said, "but he never had to know it as well as I
do."

What a little while ago it seemed that the _Felicity_ had plunged her
way through waters as blue as blue, while the sea air was soft with the
land breeze and we had awnings out upon the deck!  It was not so far
away once you crossed the bar.  I had only to close my eyes to see it
again.

"Tell me something more," she said.  "Tell me about some other fine
houses with hedges and lawns.  Sometimes when I was in Boston I used to
pretend what was inside, the way the stairs looked and the carpets and
the chairs and the tables..."

But I only half heard what she was saying.  The wind was veering toward
the east and the sound of the surf was louder.  It made a pleasant,
somnolent sound which was pleasing to the fancy.  It brings me the same
picture as I listen to it now--glimpses of lead-colored water more
desolate than any land I know, all necked with changing lines of white.
Once over the bar, there was a world of that, and what did it matter
what was on land once it lay astern?  I seemed to be sailing out again,
out and out, sailing with a strange company.  Eliphalet Greer was at
the helm, holding the wheel steady with his long hands, his face devoid
of all expression, while the wind played through his long gray hair,
and aft by the rail was Captain Murdock, standing as I had often seen
him with his cheeks puffed out like some god of winds, and his face
turned toward the sails.  There were others aboard whose faces I could
not see, and forward in the bows a girl was standing.  I thought it was
strange a woman should go to sea, until she turned her head, and I saw
it was Murdock's daughter....




IX

I thought I had closed my eyes for a second only, yet when I opened
them again, the sun was coming through the windows.  I was still
sitting in my chair, for I had learned to doze away in such a fashion
when the night was stormy and we might be called on deck.  Murdock's
daughter was still sitting looking at the fire.  Indeed, only the
daylight was there to tell me that I had been asleep at all.  There was
no confused groping in my mind which so often follows sleep, so that I
sometimes think I must have been half awake all the while, according to
the habit we learn at sea.  I only remember being aware that the time
had come for everything I had expected.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" I asked.

"You were very tired," she said.  "You were talking about a ship, and
then I saw your eyes were shut.  There was no reason to wake you."

And then I saw that she was tired also.  Her gray eyes were heavy with
watching, and her slender shoulders drooped with weariness, but her
lips were bent in a smile such as I had seen on the night before, a
mirthless, wistful smile which seemed to make her aloof and sufficient
unto herself.

"I had so many things to think about," she added.  "Yes, a great many."

I rose stiffly, walked over to the window and looked out.  The sun was
higher than I had thought.  I knew he would be coming soon.  I remember
wondering what would happen when we two met, but I only wondered
incuriously, for I was certain of only one thing.  I could not leave
without seeing him, and though I did not know what I was going to say
or do, I was not worried, for somehow it all seemed settled.

The breeze was very light that morning, and the storm was gone like
some vision in the night.  I hardly need to describe it, for you know
the way a seaport town looks after a northeaster in the spring.  There
is never another time when it seems half so clean and bright.  The
water is never so blue as it is then, and the sky is never so clear and
soft.  The sunlight is peculiarly mellow and kindly as it strikes upon
the houses, like the sun of some more genial land.

The grass had taken on that first faint green of spring after that
stormy night.  The branches of the elm trees seemed less bare as they
moved with the breeze.  There were bits of cloud still in the sky, torn
and fragile as down, and as white as sun-bleached linen, and the
white-caps on the harbor waves, which kept jumping up and vanishing
again, were as white as the clouds themselves, and the water sparkled
like tinsel beneath the sun.  I could hardly remember that there had
been a stormy night until I looked out toward the center of the stream.
It was only out there that I could see the aftermath of the evening's
gale.

The _Ruth_ was lying at anchor, but she had the look of one of her crew
after a night's debauch ashore.  Two of her yards had gone and still
lay tangled in her broken shrouds.  Her foretopmast had snapped clean
off, and was still lapping against her side, half out of the water in a
tangle of ropes and lesser wreckage.  Her bowsprit was crushed into
yellow splinters, and her paint was scratched and smeared.  I could
almost think she had been treated to deliberate violence if I had not
been acquainted with the vicissitudes of storm.

Then, about a cable length below her, I saw another vessel which I had
never noticed cross our bar before.  She was a brigantine, painted
black with white ports, with sharp-cut bows and narrow in the beam.
She was one of a class of light, fast trading vessels such as I had
seen building in the Delaware, designed for quick sailing and light
cargoes.  It did not take more than half a glance to see what had
happened, for the paint was clean off her port side and her bulwarks
were in slivers.  Her mainmast was sprung so that it tipped far to the
starboard, and her crew were already at work clearing her decks of
wreckage.  Yes, she was the ship that came from God knows where.  I
almost forgot my own thoughts as I watched her.  Whoever stood aft that
night must have known our bar better than I did to push her through it
in the teeth of a northwest gale without a pilot or a chance to take a
sounding.

I have found that things often happen when you are least alert, and I
have always found it hard to think of other matters when a strange ship
comes to port.  I was still staring out the window, and was just about
to call to Murdock's daughter to come and look also, when I heard a
footstep and the click of the latch on the kitchen door.  I turned
about slowly, and stood very still, but I could feel my hand trembling
and my heart beating in my throat.  The latch had been raised softly
and now the door was opening deliberately and smoothly.  I knew before
I ever saw who was there that Murdock would never open a door like
that.  Then the door opened wider.  Eliphalet Greer was standing on the
threshold.

I cannot tell how I expected him to look, but somehow his appearance
surprised me.  His clothes were newly brushed.  His hair was smoothed
back from his forehead.  His gold watch-chain seemed more solid than
ever as it stretched across his black waistcoat.  He was holding his
tall hat and his cane in his right hand, and his hat was as smooth and
glossy as his broadcloth coat.  Something of the early morning sunlight
seemed to be reflected from his face.  I had never seen him more
tranquil, or more like a man who has slept well and who welcomes what
the day may bring.  The very way his gray hair was parted from his
forehead gave him an air of reposeful dignity.  All the time I knew him
I do not think I ever saw his glance vacillate or waver, and it did not
waver then.  Even if he had seen me, I do not think he would have
looked away, but he did not see me then.  He was looking instead at
Captain Murdock's daughter, except for a second only when his glance
turned to the broken cup on the hearthstone.

"Good morning, Prudence," he said.  "What a morning it is to be alive
in!"

But she did not reply.  She only stood as though turned to stone.

"You look pale, Prudence," he added kindly.  "It must have been the
night, but after all it was the will of God, and we must bear our
burdens."

And still she did not answer, and still he never turned his head toward
the window where I was standing.  Though my body seemed on fire, though
my eyes and head were burning, I continued to stare at him without so
much as moving a muscle.

"Come," said Eliphalet Greer, "it is over now and the sun is out again.
And your father--is he out too?  He cannot have left without waiting
for me."

And then she spoke, but before she did so, she darted a glance toward
the window where I was standing.  She must have read the way I felt,
and if she did, she had a reason for what she said.

"Yes," she replied hastily, "he's gone outdoors.  He wants you to look
for him down at the wharves.  He wants you right away.  Please go!  Oh,
please hurry!"

"Prudence," said Eliphalet Greer, "you look very lovely this
morning--yes, as beautiful as the virgin that filled her lamp with oil.
What makes you so, I wonder?  It makes my mind go back a long, long way
to see you.  So he's gone out!  Well, it makes no difference."

"But it does!" she cried.

He knew there was something wrong then.  I could see his eyelids
flicker, and his lips grow taut.  He turned quickly, and then he saw me
by the window.  It will be a long while before I forget that old man's
face.  There was no surprise upon it, nor was there fear or anger.
Rather it had the look of the face in my dreams as he held the wheel of
that phantom ship.  He seemed to be staring straight through me, as
though I were only a bit of haze obscuring something which lay far
beyond.  So might some prophet of old have looked who saw a vision in
the sky.

For a moment he stood quite rigid, and then there was a clattering
sound.  For the second time since I had known him, Eliphalet Greer had
dropped his cane.  It dropped to the floor, and his high hat dropped
with it, and rolled toward the table, catching up the dust and in a
moment turning old and battered.  For a second longer he stood so,
clasping and unclasping his hands, and then he spoke.  He spoke from
somewhere deep within him, so that his words, though they were clear,
seemed to come from a great distance.

"God's will be done," he said, and that was all.

There was no hypocrisy about that speech.  For the moment I could not
answer.  It was so different from what I had expected that I only
stared at him, for suddenly the lines of his face had deepened, not
with anger, not with hate.  Instead it was lined with pain, as it had
been in his counting-room, as it had been when the sun struck upon him
on the deck of the _Felicity_.  Something had seized again upon him.
Out of the shadows which surrounded him some unseen hand had struck.

"Prudence," he said, "bring me a chair.  I seem to be growing very old."

He sat himself down stiffly, and his chin sank into the folds of his
neckcloth, but his eyes were still upon me, unwavering, as though he
could see somewhere beyond.

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap," he said.  "Yes, God's will be done."

He was still clasping and unclasping his hands, and now he moved his
right hand uncertainly toward his chest.

"Mr. Greer," I said, "put down your hand."

Eliphalet Greer gave a slight start, as though I had aroused him from
some reverie.

My voice had grown louder and had a ring to it which made him look up.

"If you strike at me again, if you set a paid murderer on me, if you
attempt to poison my food or drink, I'll know what to do, no matter how
old you are.  I'd do it now if you were standing on your feet!"

With a quick intake of his breath he pushed himself up from his chair
and stood facing me.

"Well," he asked, "what are you going to do?"

There was no bravado in his action, neither a trace of a sneer nor of
defiance in his voice.  His appearance was almost venerable, in spite
of the restless furrows about his eyes and mouth.

"Strike me if you like," he said.  "I have been struck before.  Strike
me, Charles.  I shall turn the other cheek."

His speech had a theatrical, bombastic sound as I write it now, but I
know he did not intend it then.  I know it, though many people in those
days delighted in using Biblical periods.  I remember wondering if I
could have misjudged him after all, if I had heard him rightly the
night before.  Yet I was not sure he was wholly without guile.  Somehow
I knew intuitively that he was thinking and planning all the while.

"Sit down, Mr. Greer," I said.  "You know very well I cannot strike you
now."

But he only stood looking at me and spoke again very gently.

"Charles," he said, "I am sorry, very sorry."

Then something inside me broke loose.

"Damn your sorrow!" I snapped out.  "I know what you're sorry for.
Only be careful that you don't grow sorrier still."

I stopped in an effort to control the anger in my voice.

"I've said all I'm going to say to you," I went on.  "I know what you
are.  I know so much that you're afraid to stay here while I stay too,
but if this town won't hold us both, Mr. Greer, you're the one who's
going to leave."

Eliphalet Greer raised his hand with a peculiarly gentle dignity.

"There's no need to speak so, Charles, at a time like this," he said
sadly.  "You misunderstand what I was saying.  I'm not sorry for what I
have done.  I'm sorry for what you have done, nothing more.  I'm sorry,
because I never meant it to end the way it has.

"Mr. Greer," I interrupted, "do you think I believe a word you are
saying?"

But Eliphalet Greer disregarded my remark.

"Yes," he went on more loudly, "I know how the shadow will haunt you.
I know how the memory will sting, now that your hand is branded.
You'll see him in the river mist, you'll see him in the waves.  You'll
see him in the candle-flame, and on the pages of your book.  It makes
no difference whether you struck rightly or wrongly.  I know.  I know."

He turned and looked gravely at Murdock's daughter.

"And you'll see him too, Prudence, you'll see him too," he ended.

"What are you talking about?" I asked uncertainly.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer more gravely still, "if you'll only
trust me, I'll be your friend through this.  You must leave at once.
You must get to sea before they find his body."

And then I knew what he thought.  All of a sudden his words fitted
together and flashed before my eyes in a shape that lent logic to
everything which had gone before.

"So you think I killed him?" I asked.

"You and I both killed him, Charles," said Eliphalet Greer very
quietly.  "His blood is on both our hands."

"And now," I inquired, "as long as I don't leave one way, you think I'd
better leave the other?"

"I'll help you," he said.  "Of course you can't stay now."

I watched him very carefully as I spoke, because I knew it was hard to
tell what he might do when I had finished.

"Mr. Greer," I said, "we always seem to misunderstand each other about
death.  Captain Murdock only had an accident.  He drank his liquor from
the wrong cup, and I had him sent aboard the _Ruth_."




X

I don't know what I expected him to do when I sent home that blow, but
he did nothing.  His eyes were still upon me, but again he was not
looking at me but rather at something beyond.  His lips tightened for a
moment and then relaxed, nothing more.  Was it self-control that made
him so, I wonder?  Or was it something else?  I find it hard to tell.

"I'm glad," he said at length.  "I have enough upon me without that."

And he sighed deeply like a man who is very tired.  Sometimes I think
he was tired then and that everything he said was truly spoken.

"Mr. Greer," I continued, "do you know what I'm going to do this
morning?  I'm going to write down everything I know of you.  I'm going
to swear it before a Justice of the Peace.  I'm going to leave it with
him sealed.  If you molest me again, or if I disappear, he will open
that letter.  Though it may not be very definite, it will make
interesting reading.  I wouldn't try to touch me again."

"You wouldn't, huh?" came a voice behind me.  "Now why the hell
wouldn't he?"

I sprang hastily backward.  I don't believe any of us knew that Murdock
was there until he spoke, for we all had been watching each other, and
had forgotten the open door.  But there he was with his cheeks puffed
out and his hands in his pockets.

He was a sickly looking sight.  His clothing was wrinkled and creased,
and covered with patches of dirt as though he had rolled on an unswept
floor.  His hair was wet and matted, and his face generally so red was
of a whitish, greenish hue.

For a second Eliphalet Greer stared at Captain Murdock without
speaking, but any Christian feeling he may have experienced previously
seemed to have passed away.

"So there you are, you bungling fool!" he cried.  "Haven't you made
enough of a mess without coming here and making it worse?"

Eliphalet's speech appeared to jangle discordantly on Captain Murdock's
nerves.

"Fool yourself!" he snorted.  "Didn't I tell you the best thing was to
do it nice and clean, like gentlemen always do it?  A good crack on the
head--didn't I tell you it was the way?"

The wrinkles around Eliphalet's eyes deepened.

"Be quiet," he whispered, "and close that door.  Don't you see I'm
talking with Mr. Jervaile?"

But Captain Murdock was engrossed in his own thoughts.  He had
perceived his daughter, and the sight of her caused him to give way to
a burst of righteous indignation.

"You damned Delilah!" he roared.  "Don't you look at me like that, or
I'll punch in both your eyes!"

"Be quiet!"  Eliphalet Greer was striding toward him.

"Like hell I'll be quiet!" retorted Captain Murdock in righteous wrath.
"I've had enough of this damned prayer-meeting!  Didn't want to hurt
the boy, did you!  Well, stand to one side, and I'll treat him gentle!"

Just then Prudence seized my arm.

"Murdock," said Eliphalet Greer, "lock that door, and send that girl
upstairs!"

His jaw had thrust itself forward and he had half closed his eyes.

"Charles," he began, and then he stopped, for Murdock's daughter had
stepped between us.

"Prudence," he said, "I wish to speak to Mr. Jervaile.  Murdock, take
her out of the room."

Captain Murdock made a gesture of profound irritation.

"Women!" he cried in a terrible voice.  "Ain't I always said she'd be
crawling over everything?  That's what comes of having women around.
Gentlemen can't do anything they want to do."

Eliphalet Greer seemed singularly revived.

"Did you hear me, Murdock?" he said more loudly.

"Miss Murdock," I said, "please don't worry on my account."

But Captain Murdock's mind was always slow, and now it was aflame with
definite resentment.

"Miss Murdock be damned!" he roared, and his face became purple.

I can never tell why, but I became aware of another force in the
confines of that room.  Captain Murdock had made the balance shift.
Eliphalet had turned away and was towering over Captain Murdock.  He
had forgotten me then.  They had both forgotten me.  I could have
walked out the door without either of them giving me a thought.
Eliphalet's voice had a snap to it which would have carried through a
hurricane.

"Will you be quiet!" he thundered.  "Have you forgotten that she's
listening?"

Eliphalet Greer had seized him by the shoulder, but Captain Murdock
wrenched himself away.  For an instant they both eyed each other.
Eliphalet Greer's hand was still in the air, and I could see it was
trembling.  His lips were moving back and forth as though they were
struggling with half-formed words.

"No, I won't be quiet," returned Captain Murdock.  "That's what comes
of having women, and I'm finished--d'you hear?  D'you think I want to
be poisoned again?  I don't care what you do to me.  I'm gettin' too
old to be scared.  I got sins enough of my own without bothering about
yours.  Keep her yourself.  I'm through pretending she's my daughter.
I'm through worrying about what happened fifteen years ago.  I tell you
I'm through.  Wish her on somebody else.  Take her away and keep her
away and----"

They had both forgotten all about me.

It is a long while since we four were in Murdock's kitchen, but I can
see it still.  I can see Murdock rocking on his heels.  I can see
Prudence as she stared at him with her hand half raised to her throat.
In my memory Eliphalet Greer is standing just as he did that morning, a
figure that blocks the trail of years down which he had wandered.  He
had stretched out his hand and was staring at Murdock as though the
captain had dealt him a blow.

Then all at once his whole body lurched forward with the speed and
accuracy of a new-sprung trap.  Eliphalet Greer had seized Captain
Murdock by the throat.  His arms hardly shook when Captain Murdock tore
at his wrists.  Only his breathing showed the force of his exertion,
for as soon as his hands had closed he had become almost tranquil.
There he stood with his black sleeves wrinkled about his elbows and his
watch-chain dangling and beating against his waistcoat, and his gray
hair still smooth and neat.

"So you won't be quiet!" he said.  "Did you think I'd lost my strength?"

Yet even as he spoke it seemed to me that he had lost it, for suddenly
his hands fell away and dropped aimlessly to his side.  Suddenly the
blood ebbed out of his cheeks, leaving them gray and seamed.  Captain
Murdock was taken with a fit of coughing, which left him gasping and
doubled forward, but Eliphalet Greer did not notice.  I thought a fit
of illness was on him at first, for his forehead had grown moist, and
his jaw had dropped until he looked as grotesque as some gray piece of
medival sculpture.  Captain Murdock had finished his coughing.  He was
endowed with a remarkable resilience.  A second before his eyes had
been bulging and his lips half black, but now he seemed none the worse.

He spat sideways on the kitchen floor, like a prize-fighter in the
ring, and examined Eliphalet Greer with frank, unfeeling curiosity.

"So you've caught it, have you?" he said hoarsely.  "I always knew one
of these days your gall-bladder would burst."

Then Eliphalet Greer spoke in a voice that was dim and half audible,
like a voice in a dream.

"Murdock," he said, "look at the door."

"None of your tricks now," Captain Murdock replied sourly.  "What do I
care for the door?"

"Look, Murdock!" cried Eliphalet Greer.  "For God's sake, look!"

Surely it could not be Eliphalet Greer who spoke.  Surely it could not
be his voice.  Captain Murdock shot a hasty glance over his right
shoulder, but he did not turn back his head.  Instead, he turned his
whole body awkwardly around until he stood facing the doorway, and his
mouth fell so far open that it displayed his tobacco-stained teeth, and
he also spoke with difficulty, as though the words stuck in his throat.

"B'gad, it's him!" he said.




XI

A man--a man I had never seen before was leaning against the door
frame.  There was something peculiarly tranquil in the way he stood
there, something elegant and graceful.  Yet it was plain to see that he
was not wholly elegant or tranquil.  He had on a blue coat which might
have been fashionable once, but it was badly spotted then.  He had on a
gray beaver hat which needed brushing, and his nankeen trousers were
rubbed and bagging at the knees.  It may have been only the suddenness
of his appearance which gave him a lightsome air, reminiscent of a
French dancing master.  He had his left toe pointed forward when I
first saw him, and his head was tilted to one side, as if he were
waiting for a note of music which would send him skipping across the
room.  His body was wiry and meagre, like that of a man addicted to
graceful exercise.  His arms were folded across his chest, but I could
see that his hands, though they were chapped and calloused, were
slender and sensitive like the hands of a scholar rather than those of
a man who follows the sea.

But his face was neither a dancing master's nor a scholar's face.
Every muscle of it seemed to stand out, unconcealed by superfluous
flesh.  The sun had burned it to a deep reddish brown, and his hair, I
could see, had also once been red, but now it was a reddish, sandy
gray.  His eyes were bright blue, surrounded by a thin net of crow's
feet which kept expanding and contracting, and the same was true about
the wrinkles of his mouth.  When all the rest of his face was
impassive, those wrinkles still moved, sometimes in the suspicion of a
smile, sometimes in the beginning of a frown.  It was a keen,
intelligent face, but it had no patience in it, just as it had no
dullness.  In spite of its refinement it was not the face of a man who
had spent his days at home.  The wind must have blown often on it.  It
must have twisted often into pain and anger as well as merriment.

"B'gad!" said Captain Murdock hoarsely, "it's him!"

The stranger leaned against the door frame, but though his arms were
folded there was a tenseness in the way he stood which reminded me of
bent whalebone, and a concentration in his glance which reminded me of
a man looking over a rifle-sight.

"Yes," he answered, "a gift cast up from the sea."

He had spoken in an even, modulated voice, but before he had spoken,
even without his speech to guide me, I knew who he was.  I could read
it in the strained silence.  It was a silence reminiscent of many
untold things.  I could read it in his eyes and on his lips.  I could
read it in the way Eliphalet Greer stood there staring, and in the
color of Murdock's face.  Yes, I knew who he was.

Why was it I was trembling?  Why was it I was backing away?  Before I
thought there was an unaccountable panic upon me, but when I thought I
knew.  It was his voice when he spoke of the sea.  The fear I felt of
him was not physical fear.  It was something deeper and closer to the
soul; it was a judgment of myself within myself.  He was the man I had
been sent to kill.  Whether I had known or not that I had been sent to
kill him made no difference then.  There was guilt upon me because I
had not known--because I had touched Greer's money without knowing the
full reason.  There was no justification for what I had done then, and
there he was like retribution, like some fantastic shape conjured up by
conscience.

What would he do when he knew?  When he looked at me, I could almost
guess he knew already--that we both knew each other's thoughts.

I have never seen a meeting such as that.  There was nothing kindly in
glance or thought.  Already Eliphalet's jaw had clamped back into
place, and a gray stubble upon it where his razor had passed too
lightly bristled up in an ominous way.  The stranger seemed pleased by
their attention.

"So here we are," he said.  "I told you I'd come back, if that damned
island didn't sink."

There was something like a knife blade in the way that stranger looked,
not worn and dented, but rubbed smooth by use and whetted to a keener
edge, hardened and not broken by the fire.

"Yes, here we are," the stranger said again.  His voice was changed,
almost friendly.  "Come, come, Eliphalet, don't look away.  It's been a
long time since we've met, and you'll only see me for a little while."

Then Eliphalet Greer spoke for the first time.

"Parton," he said, "if you move, I'll kill you!"

Was it Eliphalet Greer who spoke?  I could not have told his voice as
it died away into the silence which followed, and Mr. Parton had not
moved.  He was still leaning quietly against the door frame, almost as
though he had not heard, but his lips twitched and his face grew redder.

"You fool," he said, "do you think I came here for that?  You used to
know me better when we walked the deck together.  Are you as old and
soft as that, Eliphalet?  I thought we'd done enough dark things and
seen enough men die."

Eliphalet Greer raised his hand and pulled at his neckcloth as though
it was tight and constricted his breathing, but even so his breath was
stertorous and uneven.

"If you don't want--that," he asked hoarsely, "then what do you want?"

"Do you want me to tell?" he inquired.  "Do you want me to tell it
here?"

"Damn you!" cried Eliphalet Greer harshly.  "Do you think I'm afraid of
anything you say?  Do you think anyone will believe the lies you tell?"

Mr. Parton shrugged his shoulders, and his voice was cold and level.

"Eliphalet," he said, "you used to say dead men were always bankrupts.
I want you to pay, Eliphalet--not go into bankruptcy."

For an instant Eliphalet Greer's eyelids flickered.  His shoulders
sagged like the shoulders of a weary man.  What was it he saw in the
other's face?  I think it was something that was hidden from the rest
of us.  Had the dead past come to life?  Was the past itself before him
in that man with the spotted coat?

"Richard," he said, and his voice had grown uncertain, "you've come a
long way for nothing, Richard, because I've paid.  I've paid already."

I can never look upon that scene as a wholly mundane thing.  Eliphalet
Greer was not speaking to that man alone.  And that man himself leaning
against the door frame, I sometimes think was something more than
himself in those few minutes, like some lay figure in a parable.

"You knew I'd come back, Eliphalet," he said.  "Nothing could keep us
apart when a man hates another as I hate you."

"Yes," said Eliphalet Greer, "it's been a long time, Richard, but I
knew you'd come."

And he drew a deep breath like a man who has travelled a weary way.

"Ah," said Mr. Parton, "I knew you'd know it.  I wonder if you know how
often I've prayed you wouldn't die?  You couldn't have known if you
thought I'd kill you now."

Eliphalet Greer did not answer.  His hand was still fumbling with his
neck-cloth.

"I knew you'd be here," said Mr. Parton, "as soon as I crossed the bar
and fouled that ship of yours.  I knew it was your ship, Eliphalet,
ready to leave in the dark.  What were you about, Eliphalet--shipping
another man away?"

Mr. Parton had been speaking in level tones, but suddenly his voice
rose like a gust of storm.

"Don't look at me like that!  Do you think I'm afraid of you?  Haven't
I seen your face night after night?  Haven't I heard your voice in the
wind?"

Eliphalet Greer's fingers clenched convulsively.

"I should have killed you," he said.  "I should have killed you then!"

"It would have been better if you had," said Mr. Parton.  "But you
didn't, Eliphalet.  You were never man enough for that."

Something inside Eliphalet Greer had broken loose, and had flooded his
face with an ugly red.

"Don't you try to judge me," he cried.  "You've got enough on your own
head.  I never left a wife and child to starve while I ran away to sea.
I never sailed with a friend who trusted me, who--by heaven--who loved
me, and then tried to murder him while his back was turned, because we
had a falling out over a parcel of money."

Mr. Parton sprang clear of the door frame.

"Money!" he cried.  "What do I care about money?  You damned old
blood-sucker----"

And then Eliphalet Greer's voice drowned out his words.

"You used to care enough about it once.  You always got your fair
share, piece for piece.  I still have the account."

"Do you think I believe any account of yours?" cried Mr. Parton.
"Didn't you always try to cheat me right and left?"

I expected Eliphalet to burst into a furious denial, but he did not.

"And what about you?" he demanded.  "How many times did I catch you at
it?  Could I ever trust you with a dollar?"

For a moment I almost believed their animosity lost itself in words,
for they both had reached a common level.  Could it be that thievery
had a place among the vices of Eliphalet Greer?  It was hard to doubt
it then, for I have never seen two men less like patterns of probity.
They stood eyeing each other with uncertain, shifting glances, as
though each knew the other's secrets and was anxious to conceal his
own.  Then Mr. Parton threw up his head.

"At least," he said, "I cheated like a gentleman."

I never learned how such a prodigy could be performed.  There was a
sting in Mr. Parton's retort that made Eliphalet Greer wince.  His
anger seemed to have died away, and in its place was an old look which
I had seen before, a look almost of pain.  Evidently Mr. Parton also
was familiar with that expression, for he smiled in a cold, unpleasant
way.

"So the devil still prods you, does he?" he remarked.  "It's like old
times to see you looking so."

"Richard"--Eliphalet's voice was touched with a strange sadness--"why
should you and I speak of morals?  We both are wicked in the eyes of
God and man.  We have sinned together and each against the other, and
we shall surely pay.  There is never a night when it does not sear my
soul.  We have hated each other for a long time now.  It has been
running like poison through my blood, and I can see it in your face.
Tell me what you want, Richard, and let us part in peace."

He stopped, but Mr. Parton never moved.  When Eliphalet had begun to
speak, he had leaned back against the door frame.  He still leaned
there and surveyed Eliphalet coldly.

"You coward!" he said.  "You infernal old coward!  Stand up and take
your medicine, and don't tell lies to me.  I'll tell you what I want.
I want to see you a broken man.  I want to see you hiding with men on
your trail.  I want to see you a fugitive from justice.  I want to see
them drag you back with blood on your face.  Ah! that makes you jump,
does it, you sneaking old hypocrite!"

A change had come over Eliphalet Greer.  The furies themselves were
upon him.

"By God!" he roared, "you will have it then!"  And in a single stride
he cleared the space which separated him from Mr. Parton.  For a second
he was standing motionless.  For a second his face was as blank as a
man's in a dream.

"Be careful, Greer!" cried Mr. Parton.

"You damned Judas!" roared Eliphalet Greer.  "You damned murdering
Judas!"

My next recollection was of holding Eliphalet Greer by the shoulders,
and of Mr. Parton leaning against the wall, with the color gone from
his face, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stared
at Eliphalet Greer with wide unblinking eyes.  I was as tall as
Eliphalet Greer.  I was younger, but it was all I could do to hold him.
Indeed, I could not have managed it if Captain Murdock had not run over
to help me.

"Now--now," he was saying.  "Slack her off.  This ain't the time and
place."

"What do I care?" snarled Eliphalet Greer.  "I've struck him.  Stand
off.  It's his turn to finish it now."

His coat had ripped at the shoulders.  His neckcloth was dangling over
his chest, and his hair had fallen over his forehead.  Mr. Parton had
removed his hand.  I could see his lips were bleeding and his mouth was
twitching at the corners.

"You can let him go, young man," he said.  "He won't strike me again."

"Hey!  Hey!" cried Captain Murdock, stepping between them.  "Slack her
off.  You gentlemen can't do it here."

Mr. Parton's face was still very white, but he never raised his voice.

"No, Murdock," he said, "we won't do it here."

And he glanced at Eliphalet over Captain Murdock's shoulder.

"Do you think I came here to soil my hands with a man like you?" he
asked.  "I told you what I came for."

"Try it!" cried Eliphalet Greer with sudden unlooked-for elation.  "Try
it and be damned!  Do you think I didn't expect you when you blew over
the bar?  I'm glad you've come.  D'you hear me--glad!  By thunder it
makes me feel better just to see you after rotting in a place like
this!  Do what you like, I'll be ready for you!"

"Tell it to your niggers," returned Mr. Parton.  "Don't tell it to me."

But Eliphalet Greer did not appear to hear him.

"You belonged where I put you," he continued.  "I know it now I see you
again.  I'm glad I did it now."

Mr. Parton endeavored to interrupt, but Eliphalet raised his voice.

"Yes," he said, "if I had to do it all over again, I'd do the same.  I
don't regret it, now I hear you speak.  Do what you like.  You can't
frighten honest men."

Though he spoke with fervor and conviction, Eliphalet Greer was hardly
a picture of probity, nor did Mr. Parton look much better.

"Eliphalet," he said, "do you call yourself an honest man?  Oh, I know
what you've been doing.  I know how you've made your money.  Don't you
remember we both did it together once?  Don't you remember Havanna and
the Gulf, and the way they groaned between the decks?"

Eliphalet Greer made a guttural, meaningless sound in his throat.  I
had never seen him afraid before.

"You can't frighten me," he answered hastily.  "You can't frighten me
with old tales like that."

Mr. Parton laughed in sudden exulting triumph.

"Yes," he replied, "you're an honest merchant now.  Why don't you tell
me how you're trading in calico and spices?  Not all the spices in
Araby could take the smell off of you.  If it's an old tale, why are
half your ships at Cape de Verde?  Why are you loading them at night?"

"You lie!" cried Eliphalet Greer.  "They're not my ships."

"They are your ships," said Mr. Parton, "because I've seen them there.
Oh, yes, I know their hulls are painted black, and their names are out,
and Portugese skippers are aboard.  I know they've got on extra spars,
but I know where their keels were laid."

"You lie!" repeated Eliphalet Greer.  "I've sold them long ago."

"Would you like to have them traced back?" asked Mr. Parton.  "I wonder
what would happen if one of them was in the channel now with a hull
that Merrill built, and the customs officers were opening up the
hatches?  I wonder whose ship they'd find she was if an admiralty court
had the papers and they got Murdock on the stand?  Ah, did you ever
think of that?"

"Are you trying to blackmail me?" Eliphalet Greer asked hoarsely.

Mr. Parton shook his head.  Still looking at Eliphalet Greer, he was
backing toward the door.

"No," he said, "you ought to guess what I'm going to do."

And Mr. Parton, nodding pleasantly, backed out the door, closed it and
was gone.

"We are both hardly ourselves.  I knew it would be too much for one or
the other of us, but I'll see you again, Eliphalet.  I'll be staying at
the tavern."

He paused, looked at us all three and smiled genially.

"Until the blackbirds come home to roost," he said.




XII

He was gone and the room seemed very still.  There was no doubt that
Eliphalet Greer understood.  He was staring at the wall like a man who
wakes from a bad dream.  And he was not the only one.  We were all
awaking.  I had been standing near to Prudence Murdock, and all that
while she had never moved, nor taken her eyes off Mr. Parton.  Now she
stirred uneasily, and brushed her hand across her forehead in a way
that made one think she was brushing aside some memory.  As for me, I
had only one desire--to escape from some unseen thing that had entered
Murdock's kitchen.  Of us all the Captain was first to come to himself
and to touch on practical affairs.

"B'gad," said Captain Murdock, "we ought to of done him in!"

But Eliphalet Greer made no response, and the Captain began to glare at
Prudence.

"That's what comes of having a woman," he said.  "You always get to
talking with women around.  If we hadn't been talking we might of done
something.  Now he's going to twist our necks."

Eliphalet Greer still stared at the wall and opened and closed his
hands.  For a little while he said nothing, but stood alone with his
thoughts.  Strangely enough, he seemed singularly revived, but he did
not answer Captain Murdock.  Instead he turned toward me, and his mouth
was closed as tight as a trap.

"Charles," he said in a dry, business-like voice, "you must stand by us
now."

I was so surprised that I found it hard to speak.

"I told you I was through last night," I answered, "and I'm all the
more through this morning."

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "it's the first time you are
intimately concerned."

The thought was so preposterous that I came near laughing.  "Intimately
concerned in what?" I asked.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "Mr. Parton is a very dangerous man.
Have you thought what may happen when I tell him you were in my pay to
murder him?"

A cold mantle seemed to fold itself about me, chilling me like a breath
of wind from the ice.  It was the words--to hear my thoughts in
words--that shook me most.  Curiously enough, Eliphalet seemed
guiltless.  Illogically, but certainly, I seemed to bear the guilt
alone.  I said he was a strong man.  I had begun to feel his strength.

"Good God!" I cried hoarsely.  "Did you think I'd have done that?  How
was I to know what you wanted when you sent me there?"

Eliphalet Greer's voice stopped me.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "go up to the Anchor House and stay
indoors.  I'll send for you in the evening."

He bent down and picked up his hat and cane.

Captain Murdock's cheeks were still of a light and unbecoming hue.  As
he stood staring at the closed door he drew a deep, uncertain breath.

"B'gad!" he murmured hoarsely, "you wouldn't have known he'd been
there.  It hasn't changed him at all."

Eliphalet Greer lifted the latch and the door creaked open.  The wind
had been light and uncertain that morning as it so often is after a day
of storm.  It had veered now and was blowing straight upon his face.
It came from the ocean and bore with it those faint, indescribable
odors of brine and seaweed and the exhalations of sand and mud that
rise when the tide is low.  Eliphalet Greer also breathed deeply and
his fingers wound more tightly about the head of his cane.  I have
never known a breeze laden with the scent of the ocean which does not
bear memories to anyone who has been at sea.  Somehow it has an uncanny
power peculiar to itself to flutter back the pages of the book of life.
I sometimes think Eliphalet Greer's log was before him in that minute,
with its leaves moving fitfully, turned by some power which was not his
own to odd and half-forgotten entries.  He turned and gave Murdock such
a peculiar look that the Captain assumed a defensive attitude.

"I suppose you mean I've changed?" he demanded.  "Well, you'll find out
I haven't, and he will too.  The Lord has dealt with me very gently.
Come, we can't be staying here."

As he turned to close the door, Eliphalet Greer's eyes met mine, and
then they were gone, both of them without another word.  But he had me.
As surely as if I were bound and gagged, he had me.  Though I hated him
for knowing it, he knew I was afraid.




XIII

For a moment I did not move.  Now that they were gone, I seemed to be
possessed of a sense of sane reality and what had passed seemed like a
vision of sleep, and the words I heard were like the words which
sometimes echo in unconscious ears and yet remain in our waking
memories.

It had come like a black cloud out of the sea, heavy with the winds of
venom, and I was a part of it now.  It was a part of other men's hates,
and my pay was a pocket full of banknotes.

I stared blankly across Captain Murdock's kitchen table.  I could
almost feel Eliphalet Greer's fingers on my shoulder with their cold,
steady pressure biting through my coat.  Then I heard a voice beside me.

"I told you if you stayed you'd learn to hate."

I had forgotten I was not alone.  I looked up, and there was Captain
Murdock's daughter.  She was looking at me curiously, but not unkindly,
but I was unable to meet her glance.  I felt a deeper and bitterer
shame than I have ever known.  She had heard every word Eliphalet Greer
had spoken.

"Was it true?" she asked.  "Was it true what he was saying?"

"Yes," I answered.  "Every word was true."

I thought she would turn away, but she did not.  Instead she did
something far worse.

"I don't believe it," she said.  "You would never do a thing like that."

And then the pain and resentment within me welled up into my speech.  I
quite forgot I had never known her before.  I quite forgot all
reticence.

"But I never knew what he wanted," I found myself adding.  "How was I
to suspect him of a thing like that?  How was I to know that landing on
an island would lead me into this?"

But even as I spoke, I felt how my words echoed with futility, and I
stopped, for even then I knew how useless it was to continue.

"What good is there saying anything?" I ended.

She did not speak for a long while after I had finished.  It seemed
strange to me that I should be disturbed by her silence, or that I
should care for what she thought.  She had walked to the window and the
sunlight was playing through her hair.

"I don't believe it," she said.  "No one who knew you would."

At first I could think of nothing to say.  There is little kindness in
a life at sea.  I felt awkward as I tried to express my gratitude,
awkward and very lonely.

"You're kind," I said at length, "kinder than you should be."

I no longer felt ashamed and ill at ease.  Without any will of ours
something had drawn us nearer.  Perhaps it was because we had both been
there when the shadows took stark shape and came to life, but I can
never tell.  I only know that she also felt it.  She was looking up at
me.  Her lips were parted.  There was an added color in her cheeks, and
her eyes were wide and bright.

"Tell me how it happened?" she said gently.  "It will be better if you
talk to someone, and I'll never tell."

I knew that she would not, but even if I had thought she would, I
should have spoken then.  It was all before me again, the counting
room, the window and the river, the _Felicity_ and the parlor with the
lamps.  I could feel the chill of the parlor as I spoke.  Though I had
not intended it at first, I found myself repeating our conversation
almost word for word.

She did not seem surprised.  She was glancing out the window toward the
river mouth where the tide was streaking the water.

"I always knew it would end," she said.  "Poor man!  Poor old man!"

"Do you think I could have lived here," she added, "without hearing
them talk?  Sometimes I could hear their voices all night long.  I
know.  I've always known."

I never asked what she had always known.  She had moved nearer to me,
and her voice was low and trembling.

"You know it can't rest the way it is," she said.  "Something is going
to happen, something terrible.  You must leave.  I know them better
than you.  You must leave right away.  You mustn't ever let him see you
again."

"I can't," I said helplessly, "and leave this story behind me.  It's
worse than anything that could happen.  It would follow me everywhere,
always.  He has his hand in me because I went to that island--because I
took his money."

And she must have known it also, for she did not reply.

"But there's no reason for you to stay," I continued.

She looked up at me quickly.

"The stage will be going in half an hour," I went on.  "You mustn't be
in this place any longer.  Here----"

I thrust my hand awkwardly in my pocket.

"Here's my pay.  It won't do me any good now.  Take it until this is
finished.  If you know what's going to happen, you know you mustn't
stay."

She caught her breath and turned her face away.

"Please," I said, "there isn't much I can do except this.  If you've
heard them talking, you know it can't stay secret.  You can't be mixed
up in a thing like this."

"How do you know I'm not already?" she asked.

I tried to interrupt, but she only spoke more quickly.

"What do you know of me?  You haven't known me for a day.  Do you
suppose I've never guessed?  Do you suppose I thought they were honest?"

"Then don't you see you must go?" I insisted.

For a moment she stood silent, a slender, delicate figure, staring
straight ahead of her with a level, unfaltering glance, as though she
saw some intricate design of the fates which no one else could see.
She never seemed so oddly out of keeping with her surroundings as she
seemed then.  Her skin was never so white.  Her hands were never so
slender.  She seemed almost like a child then, lost in some strange and
lonely place, and I knew I could not leave her so.  Perhaps I
understood her better then, because we were both alone, both in a land
of shadows.

"Don't you see you must go?" I said, and then I saw her lips were
trembling.

"I can't," she answered, "I can't leave him now--now that he's in
trouble."

She paused, glanced at me and then away.

"He's the only one who ever did a kind thing for me," she said, "except
you."

Our relations with one another are a strange and subtle matter.  I
often think there is a magician's touch in the way they change and
shift.  I had forgotten that she was Murdock's daughter.  I had
forgotten the room where I was standing.  I had forgotten the whole
black hour.  I had never heard a voice that sounded as sweet as hers
did then.  Only a minute ago matters were far different, and now,
irrationally, we had changed.  We both had changed in one another's
sight.

But why should I speak of what is life itself, of the one memory I know
that still stays bright through all the uneven years'?  I would not
speak of it at all, except that it played its part in the story I am
trying to tell.  I say we stood there looking at each other, and that
girl who had poisoned Captain Murdock's rum was as fair as song or
story.  There was a startled look in her eyes, half of surprise, and
half of something else.  It was almost as though she had never seen me
till then.

"Except you," she repeated, and her voice was so low that I could
scarcely hear.

"I haven't done anything kind," I said, "not anything at all."

"But you've tried," she answered.  "It makes no difference that it was
no use trying."

"Do you mean," I asked haltingly, "do you mean you won't go on account
of Murdock?"

She started to speak, then paused indecisively, and then shook her head
with a broken little laugh.

"On account of Eliphalet Greer," she said.

"Greer!" I stammered, "on account of Greer?"

She moved a step backward and turned half away.

"I think you'd better be going," she said.  "There's no use in
talking--no!"

"What have you got to do with Greer?" I asked.

"I said," she repeated, "that you'd better be going."

I took a step toward her, and she drew back.  Why was it my hand was
trembling as though I was afraid?

"Miss Murdock----" I began, and her voice broke in on my speech so
harshly that I stopped.

"Don't call me that!" she cried.  "Don't you see I'm not his daughter?"

"Then----"  I stopped, startled by a suspicion that snatched at my
breath.

"Then who are you?" I asked.

And her voice came back to me as though it was a long way off.

"I don't know," she said, "I don't know who I am at all."

Then, before I could speak, her words were on me like a torrent of
rain, so fierce and violent that I could hardly believe it was she who
was speaking.

"Don't you see why you must go?" she cried.  "Are you going to make me
tell you everything?  You know who your father was.  You know who your
mother was.  What use is there for you and me to stand and talk?
Haven't you heard what they've said about me?  Isn't that enough?
Don't--don't try to speak to me again!"

Her voice had choked and tears were running down her cheeks.

"Now go!" she cried.  "I wish--I wish I'd never seen you!"

She had snatched open the door to the attic stairs.  She was on the
lower step.

"Don't," I cried, "don't go!"

She paused to look back at me, and to my sight she seemed vague and
intangible, blending with the black of those creaking stairs.  Her face
as it turned toward me was strained and white as river mist.

"Don't you see," she said softly, "it's only a bad dream," and then she
closed the door....




XIV

The Anchor House is still standing down by the waterfront, a modest
mouldering building, grizzled by the sea.  Its windows have been
boarded up long ago.  Its name has been stripped from it.  Its paint is
seared and cracked, and the weeds are thick on the granite steps that
lead to the old front door.  I should not like to enter that doorway
now, or to hear my footfalls on the bare boards, or to stare into the
dusky taproom and see the empty bar, for it was a pleasant place once,
not a place of ghosts, and I should rather remember it so.

When Jim Lowes had the Anchor House there was always a row of bowsprits
across the way, and the hall always had the odor of ships' cargoes.
You could sit in the taproom with a tumbler of rum and with your coat
off if you wished, for the Anchor House was not fashionable like the
tavern on the main street.  Plain men were always walking in and out,
second and third mates from the deep water, and captains of coasting
and fishing crafts, who seldom washed or shaved.  They would sit in the
dining room in a stolid silent row, conveying their food upward on the
end of their knives, and now and then lunging forward to spear at the
pickled cucumbers which floated in bowls placed upon the table at even
intervals.  They were plain men, but not one of them was mediocre.
There was hardly one who had not seen the kingdoms of Cathay, or who
had not aimed a gun on a privateer when he was a younger man.  There
was not one who would not have left the dining table and sailed to any
port on earth as a matter of dull routine.

And Jim Lowes knew them all.  The sights of many years had passed by
his gimlet eyes, and had given him a bent and studious look.  They used
to say that Jim Lowes knew everyone who had ever stepped ashore in the
township, and could tell enough to hang them if he would ever speak,
but he never gossiped like hosts in other inns.

He would stand at his door on any pleasant morning, when trade was
light.  His left cheek would be bulging with tobacco, and he would spit
benignly into the dust of the road.  He was an old man then, and though
his age had not run to superfluous flesh or to merriment, he had an
equable disposition, such as anyone cultivates who chews tobacco.  He
told me once that he had learned the trick at sea to save him from
thirst, and though he was frequently engaged in quenching his thirst
when he and I were friends, he still used tobacco as a precaution.  His
shovel-shaped beard, which grew in luxuriant contradiction to his
sparse gray hair, would move in even rhythm, and his eyes would half
close and open again in a shrewd fashion as he opened and closed his
jaws.

I had expected to see him at the door of the Anchor House that morning,
but he was not there.  I found him in the taproom--a deserted place at
that time of day, except for Jim Lowes himself, who was filling a
tumbler from a square bottle.  He never gave way to verbal
protestations of hospitality, but upon perceiving me he took down
another glass from the rack behind him.

"Your room's ready," he said.  "And what's more, it's been ready since
I made out the _Felicity_ yesterday.  I ought to charge you, but I
won't."

He coughed, rubbed his hands on his apron and tilted up the bottle.

"Say when," he said.  "I hate to drink by myself, and I've gotter have
one now.  It won't cost you anything.  Say when!  I can't stay pouring
all day."

Jim Lowes came of New England stock, and I knew that there must be
something to explain his unexpected generosity.

"Say when," he repeated in an agonized manner.  "Say when, or I'll
stop."

"Jim," I asked, "is anything the matter?"

"Yes," he answered sadly, "I should say there was.  I've swallowed my
quid, and I'm not used to it.  It sets heavy on you when you're not
used to things like that."

"That's queer," I said, taking the glass he offered me.  "You're the
second man I've known to do that since I've landed," but he was not
consoled.

"It may come easy for some folks," he answered, "but it don't for me."

I never stopped to think that small things may seem great to others.
Such is our natural selfishness that I grew impatient at Jim Lowes and
his quid of tobacco.

"I haven't done it," he added, "since I followed the sea and the Old
Man ran the house, and that was twenty years ago."

"Then what did you do it for now?" I asked unkindly.

Jim Lowes set his glass on the bar, and said a curious thing, in a tone
so natural that it seemed like an event of every hour.

"Because I saw a ghost," he said.

"A ghost?" I repeated.  I know I should have smiled at it at another
time, but somehow his statement was so unexpectedly like my own
thoughts that I set my tumbler down also.

"It won't mean anything to you," sighed Jim Lowes.  "When you're young
you don't believe in things like that.  You don't have any memories.
You don't see memories in things around you, and he was before your
time.  But you can believe me or not--I saw him."

"You used to know him?" I asked.  I was not thinking of Jim Lowes, but
of another man who had seen a ghost that morning who was no ghost at
all.  It is only now when the twilight falls that I can feel a sympathy
for Jim Lowes' words, only now when our whole town seems full of
ghosts.  Jim Lowes sighed again.

"Just you wait till you get on," he said, "and your eyes aren't what
they used to be, and then you'll know.  Wait till you set by the door
the way I set, and begin chewing and wondering.  Then you'll see 'em
fast enough.  You'll see 'em just the way an old dog sees 'em lying in
the sun.  Why, sometimes I can see the sloop I first put to sea in just
as plain as plain, though she went down off Spain.  Oh, yes, I've seen
other ghosts, but never one as plain as him."

"Did he live here?" I asked.

I saw that he was inspecting the empty taproom.  His glance was roving
over the empty tables and past the crude paintings of ships that
adorned the walls.  His lips were curiously puckered.  His nostrils
were expanding and contracting as though he was sniffing the wind and
looking for a change of weather.  In the pause which followed I had
forgotten about the tobacco.  I had forgotten that I was listening to
idle talk.

"No," he said, "he was a visitor from down state, but he used to be
here right enough.  Charles, you'd better close that door.  The air is
blowing on my neck."

"Are you afraid he may come in?" I inquired.  "What's the good of
shutting the door if he's a ghost?"

Jim Lowes squinted at me over the rim of his glass.

"There's ghosts and ghosts," he replied.  "You close that door."

He was looking at me curiously when I turned back from obeying his
request.

"I have a motto which I always keep," he remarked.  "What may not be a
ghost for some folks always is a ghost for me.  It never does anyone
any hurt to remember that."

He paused to take another swallow of rum.

"There I was," he continued, "standing right by the door by the road,
and then I looked in front of me and there he was walking along like he
used to walk, all springy like a cat, only more so, with his eyes
winking and blinking--like that!"

"'Jim,' he says, just like he used to say it, 'give me a glass of rum.'
And I looked at him hard, but he didn't fade away.  'Christmas!' I
says, 'if it ain't Mr. Parton!'"

Jim Lowes must have seen me start, but he gave no sign.  He watched me
reach hastily for my glass.

"And then he laughed just like he always laughed," he went on smoothly,
"like he saw something funny that we didn't see.

"'Yes,' he says, 'a ghost come out of the waves.  Give me a mug of rum.'

"And then he walked right by me through the door, springy like a cat,
and he sat right down at the table, right where you are sitting.

"Yes," said Jim Lowes, "right where you are sitting, right on the very
chair.  There ain't no cause for you to jump.  You're not in his lap.

"'Gimme a mug of rum,' he said, just like he always said it, and I gave
it to him.

"'It's damn rotten rum,' he says, just like he always said it.
'Where'd you get it?'

"'It's the best in town,' I says.  'I got it off of Eliphalet Greer.'

"Then he set down his glass and spat on the floor like it made him
sick, and then what do you guess he said?  What do you guess he said
then?"

I knew my voice would be too unsteady to reply, and I only shook my
head.  Jim Lowes had squinted up his gimlet eyes again.

"'Jim,' he says, 'where is George Jervaile?'"

"He asked for my father?" I cried.

Jim Lowes nodded gravely.

"I thought mebbe you'd like to know," he answered.  "I guessed it might
make it int'restin' for you.

"'You ought to know what's happened,' I says.  And then I told him.

"'And why,' he says, looking at me queer, 'ought I to know that?'

"'Because he's a sperit like you,' I says."

Jim Lowes leaned toward me, so that his voice sounded close to my ear.

"And then what do you guess he did?" he asked.  "Why, he grabbed me by
the sleeve.  He hooked on to me just like that."

Jim Lowes' fingers had closed about my arm and his voice had sunk lower.

"'Jim,' he says, 'you be damn sure you remember I'm a spirit.  Save me
a room,' he says.  'I'll be back tonight,' and then he stood up and
walked out so light I couldn't hear, and there I was standing by with
the sweat running off of me."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, and Jim Lowes tightened his
grip on my arm, and I shall never know just why he told me or just how
much he knew, for his answer was vague as an oracle's.

"Because you're sailing for Eliphalet," he said, "and folks ought to
look to wind'ard when they're sailing with him.  Mebbe you wouldn't of
known he was a ghost if I hadn't told you in a friendly way."

"What do you mean by calling him a ghost?" I inquired.

In the pause which followed I could hear the noises out in the street,
vague and faint through the closed door and windows.

"He's a ghost," said Jim Lowes, "because he's been dead well on to
fifteen years."

"Dead!" I echoed.

"Yes, dead," Jim Lowes replied.  "I should admire it if I don't know
when a man's dead and when he isn't.  I guess I remember all right.  He
was Eliphalet Greer's partner back then.  I don't know where he found
him.  Some say they signed together in New York and some say
Portsmouth.  I always guessed he wouldn't come to a good end."

"But what happened?" I asked.  "What happened?"

"There's never telling what happens," he replied.  "A boy like you
wouldn't remember.  They went out half-owners in a sloop they bought in
eighteen ten.  She was a good one, yes she was, and then they sold her,
and bought another, and shipped a foreign crew, and then----"

He paused doubtfully the way others paused when Eliphalet's name was
mentioned.

"Then some say one thing and others others.  You know what they say.
How'd he get rich?  I don't know.  It's a long time back, and he was
gone a long time, and it's none of my business, and he always acted
handsome.  All I know is when he came back, him and a man named Murdock
came as passengers on another ship, and Parton----"

Jim Lowes paused and began pulling a black braid of tobacco from his
trousers' pocket.  He seemed in no hurry to continue.

"What about Parton?" I asked.

"Parton," said Jim Lowes, "was lost at sea.  Haven't I said he was a
dead one?  When Greer got home, he built him a vault up in the West
Hill ground.  Why should Greer do that if he wasn't dead?"

"You said he was Eliphalet Greer's partner?"

Jim Lowes was rubbing his tobacco between his palms.

"They used to be as thick as thieves."

"And when," I asked, clearing my throat, "when did he put up that
stone?"

"Nigh fifteen years ago," Jim Lowes replied, inserting an oblong mass
of tobacco into his left cheek.

"What'll you have to eat, Charles?  There's bacon and eggs and pork
scraps."

The dining room of the Anchor House was a simple place with a single
long table covered with a red-checkered cloth.  The sawlike weapons of
three swordfish and a painting of a sloop tacking by a white lighthouse
were its only decorations.  The inmates of the Anchor House had
finished their breakfasts long ago, for we all were early risers, and
white crockery plates and gaping cups marked where they had been seated.

But I only saw it with half an eye as I drew up to the festive board.
The cloth was like a red blurr.  The ship in the picture before me,
which was breasting a series of waves as even as the furrows of a
field, appeared to be bobbing and drifting to leeward.  It was all like
a bad dream.  All the familiar surroundings were filled with an
enormity beyond my scope.  No wonder Eliphalet Greer had turned gray
when Mr. Parton had walked in uninvited.

That island was like a mirage at first, faint as the reflection in some
dim old mirror, rising up suddenly as you stood on deck, with its beach
as white as white, and its palms green and fair as foliage always is
after a week at sea.  The hissing of the bacon in the frying-pan out in
the kitchen made a sound like the tide as it rippled against that
beach.  I could almost see the clearing again with the thatched hut and
the trees in front of it.  It was mingling with the red of the
tablecloth and the food Jim Lowes had placed before me.

Had he been there for fifteen years?  Had he watched the tides flow
their steady courses through all that time?  Had he paced, a solitary
figure, on that white clean beach?

"Say," said Jim Lowes, "where's your appetite?"

"Are you sure," I heard myself saying, "are you sure he built that
vault?"

"And why shouldn't I be sure?" he replied.  "It's right there, up by
the Nickerson's lot, right up there on the hill, right where we all
will be before we git much older."

No wonder Eliphalet Greer never had the look of peace, no wonder his
eyes searched in the shadows.  He said he had paid, and I knew that it
was so.  He had paid in the coin of sleepless nights, in the dread of
every footfall that he heard, in the fear of each new face that he saw.
No wonder his cheeks were seared like weathered wood and his eyes had a
sombre light.

"Jim," I said, pushing back my chair, "you know everyone.  You know
about everyone.  Will you tell me something, Jim?"

Jim Lowes thrust his head forward and chewed pensively at his quid of
tobacco.

"Jim," I said--now that I had come to the point I found it hard to
speak--"who is Captain Murdock's daughter?"

Jim Lowes glanced hastily about the deserted dining room.

"Christmas," he replied vaguely, "now who'd have thought of that?  Who
is she?  Why, Murdock's daughter.  That's who."

"She isn't," I answered quickly, "and you know she isn't.  She's a
lady.  You know that.  No one--no one who looks like her could be
Murdock's daughter."

"You've seen her?" asked Jim Lowes in a hushed voice.

"Of course I've seen her," I replied.

Jim Lowes leaned nearer.

"Then keep away," he said, "keep away from the whole crew of them.
Keep away from Greer.  Keep away from Murdock.  Keep away from her.
There's rocks on the weather beam."

Did he know it too?  As he looked at me his lips and jaws had ceased to
move.  Did he know all the dark lines of that story?

"Who is she?" I repeated.  "You might tell me that."

"I might, but I won't," said Jim Lowes with sudden excitement.  "I've
always been a friend to you, Charles, and a friend of your father's
too, though he didn't leave many behind.  If I wanted to, I could tell
you enough to turn your blood to poison.  I know what was done to him,
but it's better you don't.  Take an old man's word and sheer off.  I
tell you it's time to come about.  Don't you meddle into folks'
affairs.  You stay here quiet.  Here--where are you going?"

"I'm going," I answered, "to look at that grave."




XV

I often think the dead in our town lie in a fairer place than the
living.  It is often so along our coast.  They are on a high bit of
ground close to the harbor, so that you can see their resting places
from the decks as soon as you pass the first buoy, and when you climb
from the street the dunes and the ocean catch your eye, and there is
hardly a tombstone that does not stare blindly out to sea.  Even in
midsummer the grass is brown about them, for it is a sandy place and
swept by the wind.  It was quiet as I climbed up the West Hill that
morning.  The sun was already high and I was quite alone.  It was
beating down on the rows of slate headstones, making their inscriptions
as clear as the letters of the judgment book, terse and austere
summaries of vanished endeavors.  In the days those stones were reared
few people cared for pretense, and seldom strove to hide the grimness
of the end of man.  As I walked through the gate at West Street, life
lay before me like a page to read as I liked between the lines.  Up and
up the hill they stood in silent rows, the last memorial of names
already forgotten, of frail humanity that had vanished in the air,
leaving nothing but a few letters surmounted by a skull and wings.
Deep as their names were carved, hardly one was more than a vague myth.
Nothing they had done in their years of life remained to tax the memory.

I picked my way past their stones.  The Nickersons I knew lay buried
just over the rise of the hill.  I had just come to the first of the
family, old Jacob Nickerson, who once had a mill on the marshes, when I
heard a sound which made me stop.  It came to me on the wind, the sharp
ringing sound of a hammer.  I moved forward more quietly until I could
see further down the slope.

Not thirty feet in front of me, where the hill inclined more gradually,
was an imposing tomb of brick with a marble top.  A man was leaning
over it, a man with a spotted blue coat.  It was Mr. Richard Parton.
He was bending over the tomb with a hammer and chisel in his hand.  As
I looked, he dealt the chisel a series of deft blows, and then bent
closer to blow off the marble dust.  I could see the wind blow a touch
of it back in his face, so that he coughed and half closed his eyes,
but immediately he was at it again.  I could see his profile contorted
and intent.  Something in the hasty pecking of his chisel, something in
the way he was smiling, warned me it was better not to interrupt him
then.  I wished to move back, but I was afraid he might hear, so
instead I crouched down beside old Jacob Nickerson's stone, and
continued to watch.

If Mr. Parton was not used to the stone-cutter's art, he was an adept
with his hands.  Every motion he made was quick and sure, as though he
had often rehearsed it.  He must have been at work for some time, for
the marble dust was heavy on his sleeves.  As I watched him, I could
hear him whistling a little tune between his teeth, a tune which rose
clearly every time he poised his hammer.  Once when his work seemed to
strike him as peculiarly satisfactory, he even sang the words softly
through his nose.  I still remember them.

  "Three dozen niggers stowed safe in the hold,
  Three dozen diggers--the rest was stiff and cold."


I must have watched him for ten minutes before he finished.  Still
whistling, he stood up straight and dusted at his sleeves.  Then he
carefully dusted the tombstone itself.  Then he turned and threw the
hammer down the hill and the chisel after it.  He seemed content with
the message he had left for posterity, for he picked up his hat and set
it jauntily on his head.

I watched him make his way carefully among the graves until he had
disappeared.  Even after that it was some time before I moved.  I had
never seen before, and I doubt if I shall ever see again, a man come
back to examine his own tomb.

It was his tomb.  There on the top in neat, deep capitals was his name.


          Sacred to the Memory of
            RICHARD PARTON, ESQ.
  A Gentleman of Portsmouth Beloved by his wife
                and child
  A Trader in the Pacific and Indian Oceans
        Lost at Sea April 18th, 1817
        In the 37th Year of His Age
             By his Former
     Associate in Ventures of Trading
            Eliphalet Greer
       This monument is erected.


It was clear to see where his chisel had cut.  There were rough, hasty
gashes, and wavering lettering between the original lines, the result
of an hour's or two hours' hasty work, scrawling uneven tyro's letters,
but legible enough, and permanent.  Words had been crossed out, and
others added with little thought of evenness or space.  Nevertheless,
though the memory of other sleepers beneath the sod was permanently
gone, Mr. Parton had added enough to make his personality vivid as long
as that marble slab lay face upward toward the sky.


          Sacred to the Memory of
            RICHARD PARTON, ESQ.
  A Gentleman of Portsmouth Beloved by his Wife
                 and Child
  A Trader in the Pacific and Indian Oceans
          Marooned April 18th, 1817
         In the 37th year of his age
         By his former marooner and
  Associate in Ventures of Nigger Trading
              Eliphalet Greer
         This monument is erected
  RETURNED TO THIS LIFE APRIL 18, 1832, IN THE
            52d YEAR OF HIS AGE




XVI

It is not my own story I am telling, and if it were I should not be
telling it.  What there is of myself in these pages relate entirely to
other men.  I wish I could draw back altogether, but I cannot.  For
somehow passages in my own life are parts of the story itself.  I
wonder if my father ever thought when he threw down his hand and left
for other spheres, ruined and discredited, of the part that he was yet
to play?

I wonder what he would have written on his tomb if he could have
returned as Mr. Parton had?

I must have been staring at Mr. Parton's tomb for some time, when I
became aware that I was not alone on West Hill.  Though Mr. Parton had
hurried down the hill and out of sight, I knew I was not the only one
watching by his grave.  Quiet places possess peculiar properties
unknown to frequented ways.  They are unused to the sound of footsteps.
The slightest variance of common sounds creates a discord which I
cannot explain.  Perhaps the discord is not even sound itself.  It may
only be a difference in the quality of silence.  I knew I was not alone.

There was no difference in the noise of the wind.  No shadow was
cutting off the light.  Yet I knew that things were different.  Someone
was behind me--not a ghost, not a memory, but someone as alive as I.
For a moment I stood quite motionless.  I stood quiet, but I could feel
that I was trembling, and then I heard a sound, as though a garment had
rubbed carelessly against a stone, but I did not turn around.  I
pretended not to hear, and put my hand in my pocket.  My hand was over
the pistol, the pistol I had taken to the island.  It made my hand cold
as I touched it.  I moved my fingers over the lock.  My thumb was on
the hammer.  The cap was in place.  Slowly, very slowly, I drew the
hammer back.  I bent closer over the tombstone as though I could not
decipher the inscription, and my fingers had closed over the trigger.

It was all the matter of an instant, but I could think quickly then.
Eliphalet Greer had set someone to follow me, or Mr. Parton had learned
about me already, had seen me, and had rounded the hill himself.  I
bent closer, drew in my breath, and leaned my left hand on the marble.
Then I turned, and drew my pistol as I did so.  I was quick, very quick
in those days.  I had been aloft too often for my mind and body not to
work together.  By the time I was around, my pistol was level, pointing
straight to where I had heard the sound.

"Put up your hands!" I said, and then I stopped.

I had been right.  Someone had been behind me, but it was not one of
Eliphalet's men, nor was it Mr. Parton.  I lowered my pistol and let
the hammer gently down.  Not four feet from where I was standing was
Prudence Murdock.

Her head was bare.  Her hair was blown back from her forehead.  A long
gray cloak was wrapped about her, and she was holding it with both her
hands.  I remember I forgot in my surprise how strange it was that she
should be there then.  She had not started back.  She was still as the
stones themselves, still as some apparition.  Her eyes were fixed
steadily upon me.  Her lips were closed in a tranquil line.  She had
not faltered back a step.  She was pointing at the pistol.

"Put it back," she said, and smiled very faintly.  "I can't put up my
hands and keep my cloak on too."

As she stood with the wind blowing past, it did not seem strange that
she and I should meet again, or that she should find me so.  It was
different in Captain Murdock's kitchen, but in the clear sea air she
seemed a part of the day itself, as bright and as clear as the sunlight.

"You were a long way off," she said, "but I knew it was you walking up
the hill."

Somehow, now that I saw her again, I felt strangely at rest.  My dark
thoughts grew clear, and somehow I felt that where she was, nothing
could be wrong.  Though she was a part of it, though I knew she was a
part of it, she seemed far removed from the whole drab story, something
distinct and beyond.

"Why were you looking at that stone?" she asked.

And then I told her what I had seen, but she hardly seemed to listen.
When I finished, she still stood quietly looking out at the sea,
unmoved and not surprised.

"Let me see," was all she said, and she moved nearer, and the wind blew
a fold of her cloak against me, and the touch of her cloak was like the
touch of a friendly hand.

"Yes, it's true," she said, "though he needn't have carved it here."

She spoke quietly as she always spoke, wearily almost, as though the
matter was of small importance.

"How do you know it's true?" I asked.  "What have you to do with a
thing like that?"

She was still examining the altered lettering of the stone, and did not
look up at my question.

"More to do with it than you," she answered listlessly.  "He told me.
He told me long ago.  He had to tell someone."

"Eliphalet Greer told you!"

She nodded, and before I could speak again, before I could say what was
on my mind to say, she turned and looked up at me, and I saw she had
grown very pale.

"I couldn't stay down there," she said, "when I saw you weren't going.
Aren't you going to go?  Oh, aren't you going before it's too late?"

She had raised her hand to my arm and her voice was low and pleading.

"You see where it's going to end.  What have you to do with a quarrel
like that?  He never meant what he said to you this morning.  I won't
let him say a word against you.  He won't.  I promise you he won't.
Only you must go.  Please, please tell me you're going."

"Did you come here," I asked, "to tell me that?"

She turned away, and in that moment's silence I felt a strange elation.
I could not see her face, only her hands groping at the folds of her
cloak.  She did not speak, and yet I knew.  I seemed to know everything
then.  All knowledge seemed close to me, very close.  Sometimes I think
even now that I knew more then than all the lessons the world has
taught me since.  I have wondered since at the futility of life, but
once I knew its secret.  Once on that wind-swept hill I knew the reason
of being and of death, and it was clearer, far clearer than any
conclusion that philosophers have reached by their logic of points and
lines.  They were all in their right relations then, what had been and
what had ceased to be.  They all had some unity and direct relation
which is vague and contradictory now, but I knew it then.  I knew it in
the way she turned her head.  It was written in the sunlight on her
hair, in the whiteness of her hands.  Perhaps she never knew it, but
once she held the secret in her slender fingers.

"Prudence," I heard myself saying, "Prudence."

But I hardly knew my voice.  It had changed.  There was a music in it
which it had never possessed before, and when she answered her voice
was different too, but why it was different I shall never know.  I
shall never know what there was in a night and a morning to change us
both.

"Won't you leave me?" she said.  "Won't you please?"

What was it I saw in that slender girl with the frightened eyes and the
pale, drawn face?  I see it now, but it is more than I can tell.  I see
it now in all its old radiance, just as I saw it then, when she asked
me please to go.

"I won't.  You know I won't," I said.

"Won't you go?"  Her voice faltered.  "If I ask you, not because of
you, but for me?  Won't you go because I ask you?"


I wonder what my father would have thought if he was hovering about his
headstone?  Up in the West Hill burying ground I was holding Captain
Murdock's daughter in my arms.  I could feel her body slender and
yielding.  I could feel her hair against my face, and her breath on my
cheek, and all the world seemed very far away and yet very close about
us both.  Yes, before I knew what I had done I was holding her in my
arms, speaking strangely, incoherently, words which I never dreamed
were in my power to speak.

"Yes, I'll go," I was saying.  "Anywhere you say, I'll go--anywhere the
rivers run, anywhere there's tide.  I'll go to Java.  I'll go up to the
ice--anywhere you say, if you'll go too."

She was smiling, though her eyes were wet and though her lips were
trembling, and for a moment she did not speak or move.

"It shouldn't be, but I'm glad," she said.  "Now let me go.  I
shouldn't have seen you.  I shouldn't ever have come, but I'm glad I
did.  Nothing matters so much now.  Please let me go..."

We were standing face to face beside Mr. Parton's tomb.  Her cloak had
fallen from one shoulder and her hand was against her throat.

"I'm glad you never thought," she said.

"Dear ... dear," I was saying, and still my voice did not seem mine.
"What difference does it make if you tell me that you'll go?"

As I spoke, I seemed to be out of the dark, and my way seemed very
clear.  I knew that I had always wished it so.  I thought it was
destiny then.  I knew the reason for my being, the reason of all
loneliness and discontent.  There was a radiance about her then like
the radiance of some vision in a dream, a brightness like the sun upon
the water, like the sun upon the new leaves of the spring.  The cloak
she wore was no longer a cloak made by the hand of man.  She was not
wrapped in mortal raiment then.  Now that the light is waning, now that
I have lived through a drab span of even years, I know there is a time
when all of us touch the robe of immortality, when love and hate and
fear are melted in some crucible into an alloy which is life and more
than life.  Yet it can never be framed in words.  It is slight and
beyond all thought.  We touch, and it vanishes beneath our fingers.

Even then it was going, faster, much faster than the sand in the glass.
Even then it was going, and love and hate and fear were back.  The
light was going.  I could see it dying from her eyes.  She was
trembling.  I put my arm around her, and she drew away.  It was gone,
and we were back in the world again.  She had turned her head away.
She had covered her face with her hands.

"Don't!" she cried.  "Don't ask me again!  I mustn't!  I mustn't, and
if you ask me, you'll make me go."

"Make you----" I began.

She looked at me, and her face was wet, and her eyes were gentle and
deep and soft, like the water in the early morning just as the mist
clears before the sun.

"Oh," she said, "I never meant to hurt you.  I know I should never have
come.  Don't you understand?  We're both a part of something else.  How
could I come with you--how could I, without even a name, and a life
like mine?"

"You know it makes no difference," I began.  "What about my own
name----"

"But it will," she said.  "It will.  You'll know it will tomorrow.
Don't!  Ah, please don't look so.  You can't throw everything away.
Don't you see--oh, don't you see it's all because I care?"

She was pointing down the slope past the wall where the land of the
dead ended and the town of the living began, toward the square brick
houses and the elms.

"Don't you see," she said again, "there's where you belong?"

I was looking beyond the houses down toward the wharves.  They were far
away, but I could see the men at work on them, like the distant figures
in a picture.  I could see Eliphalet Greer's wharf with its white
pilings and the roofs of his gray slate warehouses.

"I can't leave him," she said, "when it's all like this."

And then I knew why she held back.  He was back again.  He was never
far away.

"You can't leave Eliphalet Greer?" I cried hoarsely.

"I knew you'd take it so," she answered wearily.  "You'll never
understand.  No men ever know that other men have different sides.
Ever since I can remember he's been kind to me, the only one who ever
has.  Ever since I was a little girl he came to watch me by the garden
fence.  And when I was older he gave the money to send me away to
school in Boston, because he said he wanted me to be a lady, and
sometimes he would come to see me there, and talk to me about all sorts
of things.  He was very gentle.  He always is when he speaks to me.
You know his face, the way he looks sometimes, as though something is
hurting him?  I can't explain it to you.  I said you wouldn't
understand, but someone's got to stay."

Eliphalet's wharf was nearly half a mile away, but nevertheless
Eliphalet Greer was close beside us then.  It was not the first time I
had that illusion.  His shadow seemed to fall between us.  I could
almost feel his hand resting upon me, and then I saw something,
something like the answer to a prayer.

"Look at his wharf!" I said.  "Look at it!"

My voice was strained and hoarse in my excitement, and I moved a pace
further down the hill.

"Look at the _Felicity_!  They're bringing water-casks aboard.  Look at
them on the yards.  They're bending new sail.  He's leaving.  I tell
you he's leaving!"

It was the _Felicity_.  I knew the angle of every rope and spar, though
her hull was hidden in the shadow of the wharf.  They had warped her
alongside, but they were not unloading.  Instead they were rolling
barrels and boxes aboard.  I could see the men about her gangplank.  I
could almost tell who they were.  Someone had stepped from the door of
one of the warehouses, a man in black, and upon his appearance the men
alongside were imbued with a new activity.  I knew him.  I knew him
even from the graves of West Hill.  It was Eliphalet Greer.

"He's going!  Look at them throw the boxes on!  Look at that!  Look at
that!  He's going!  He's going out tonight."

He was going.  The whole dark phantasy was going.  Suspicion, lies,
fears, dread were being piled aboard, locked away like the dread things
in Pandora's box, bound for some other place.  He had brought them with
him out of the sea.  He was taking them away.  The air seemed full of a
new vitality.  It was as though I had awakened from a restless night to
find the day clear and the sun shining.  She was looking at the wharf
with her lips half parted, and her cloak drawn tight about her.

"Don't you see, dear," I was saying, "everything's over now.  We're out
of it.  We'll hardly remember him tomorrow.  I'm going down.  I'm going
down to see."

But she did not seem glad.  She was looking at me as though she was
afraid.  I wonder if she saw something I did not see.  I wonder if she
saw the road before the end.

"And what if it ain't so?" she asked.  "If he isn't running away?"

I bent toward her, but she still looked at the wharf.  I kissed her,
but she never turned her head.

"If he isn't," I answered, "we'll both stay on together.  Don't you see
I'll never leave you now?"

She was looking up at me.

"No matter what happens?" she asked.

"No matter what happens," I answered.

"I can't," she whispered.  "Oh ... I can't ask you to go again."




XVII

I still wonder what it is about a wharf that sets the blood to run.
They are still along our river, but their planking has rotted, and the
weeds grow between the cracks.  They were the sea, and more than the
sea.  They were trade and venture and memory and regret.  For the dust
of a dozen seaports was stamped into their planking.  They were steeped
in coral and Carribean sand, and spice and sandalwood and fish and rum
and oak.  They were the south and east and west, those wharves, the sea
and all beside it that partakes of the restiveness of the sea.

Even when they were still they were full of change and hallowed by vain
desire, even when the men were gone, and the orders and the creaking of
the blocks had gone out with the evening tide.  I can still remember
how they thrilled with life when a ship was lashed along them ready for
the sea.  Their restiveness became a turbulence then.  The confusion of
sounds was a rythmic symphony like the chant of some old song, wordless
but full of meaning, some song as old as sail.

I could hear it.  I could hear it before I saw the _Felicity_, before I
saw the men.  It was rising above Eliphalet Greer's warehouses.  Its
refrain was taken up by the harbor gulls.  It was quivering through the
_Felicity's_ spars like some wild benediction.  She was lashed against
the piling with planking over her bulwarks and her loading tackle
rigging out.  Eliphalet Greer was watching while they rolled the
barrels of salt meat aboard and stored them in the after hatch.  He was
tapping with his cane on the planks while he listened to that medley of
sound.

Murdock himself was standing aft, shouting directions and encouragement
to a dozen perspiring men, who were grouped about the after hatch, and
the spirit of it was stirring him also, giving rude poetry to his
exhortations and lending his voice the blare of a trumpet.

"Git up in there!" he was shouting.  "Step to it, you swabs!  Ain't we
going to clear tonight?  Ain't you getting ten extra dollars apiece?
Ten dollars!  Ten dollars to get drunk on!  Ten dollars and a wash in
licker!  Ain't that enough to make the sweat run off of you?  Crack 'em
down, then!  Crack 'em down!"

But Eliphalet Greer never spoke.  Every now and then he would look up
at the rigging and then glance out at the channel markers in the
stream, and then fall to tapping with his cane.

He was staring at the _Felicity_ in a fascinated way, quite as though
he had not seen her a thousand times before, as though he had not stood
by himself while they selected her timbers.  But he saw me.  He saw me
almost before I had picked my way through the gear that was still to go
aboard, and turned his back on the _Felicity_ and strode toward me.

"Charles," he said, "what are you doing here?"

"I came to see you go," I said.

As he looked at me, I felt that part of him had gone already.  His
eyes, his face were not the same.

"Why didn't you stay where I told you?" he asked harshly.  "I've sent
after you three times.  Come into the counting-room.  I've sent them
all away.  How can I think with this noise?  Can't they be quiet?
Can't those fools be still?"

Then he was walking down the wharf, hastily, noisily, not with his old
firm step.  He was hurrying like the man in the Bible possessed of some
evil spirit.  The counting-room was at the foot of the wharf, but even
there I could hear Murdock's voice, and the calling of the men.
Eliphalet Greer moved faster.  He seemed to be hurrying from the noise,
as though it was a voice of doom.  He wrenched open the door of the
counting-room, and I followed him, and he slammed it behind us.  There
it was, just as I remembered it with its bare, unplastered walls, the
high stools and the desks with the ledgers, and the pine table and the
chair where Eliphalet Greer had sat, long ago, very long ago.  I
remembered how quiet he had been.  I remembered the smoothness of his
voice, and the careful balance of his words.  I remembered, and I was
startled by the difference between then and now.

Eliphalet Greer did not sit down.  He was breathing fast.  His lips
were dry and his eyes were feverishly brilliant.

"So you think I'm running away?" he said.  "It's like you to come and
see the old man go."

"Aren't you?" I asked.  "You can't tell me the _Felicity_ isn't going
out tonight."

Eliphalet Greer's voice shook.

"You fool!" he burst out.  "You muddle-headed fool!  Do you think I'm
going to run away when the knives are out?  Do I look as though I was
afraid?  Do you think you're going to see the last of me because I'm
putting water aboard a brig?  Look at me!  Look at me, and tell me if
you think I'm going now!"

But he never waited for me to reply.  His next words seemed to burst
from him, hoarse and half coherent.  I hardly think he ever knew what
he said just then.  It was his mind, not his will, that was speaking.

"I'll show him!  By gad, I'll show him that he can't play loose, not
any more than he could when he tried it last!  Damn him!  Does he think
he can frighten me?  Damn him!  Damn his eyes!  What right has he to
come back and look me in the face?  Haven't I seen him enough?  Hasn't
he been with me every day, every night, without his coming here?"

He stopped.  His breathing had grown loud and stertorous.  In those
days, when the cold of winter was hard to stave off and the forests
still lay thick and dark not far to the west, good and evil were more
definite and personal than they will ever be again.  I wish I could be
as sure of the devil's presence now as I was in Eliphalet Greer's
counting-room.  He was there in all his glory.  He was gripping and
goading Eliphalet like Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea, and Eliphalet was
lost to himself in the force which was uppermost within him.

"Damn him!" began Eliphalet again, and I stepped forward and seized his
arm.  It was as rigid as the arm of a man in a trance.

"Be quiet, sir," I said, "or they'll hear you in the street."

When I touched him, he looked at me so queerly that I let him go again.

"Damn him!" he reiterated, but he did so with less force.  His voice
was halting, like a clock that is running down.

"Be quiet," I repeated, and he stopped.  It surprised me how suddenly
he stopped.  He looked blank and almost startled, and then he drew a
handkerchief from his pocket, and drew it across his forehead.

"Charles," he said, "I'm sorry.  I'm not myself today.  You'll know
when you have something on your soul, and God knows I have enough."

"Why are you loading the _Felicity_?" I asked him.

I thought he was quite himself again, for before he replied he stuffed
his handkerchief back in his pocket, and pulled back the armchair that
stood by the pine table.  Then he laid his cane on the table before
him, and seated himself, as though he was very tired.

"You ought to know, Charles," he said.  "Can't you guess?"

I shook my head, and the counting-room was still.  I wished it was not.
For some reason I felt a dread of its silence.

"Yes, Charles," he said at length, "the _Felicity's_ going out, and
Richard Parton's going with her."

"You mean," I asked incredulously, "that he's willing to do that?"

He looked fixedly at me before he replied, and though his face had
never changed, I had a strange fancy that he was amused.

"No, that isn't what I mean," he said.  "That's why I want you here."

Then a strange thing happened.  Suddenly I saw his mouth twitch into a
grimace that was far from amusement.  He leaned forward, and seized my
coat sleeve.  His will had given way again.  Its barriers were down.
He was not looking at me.  He was looking beyond me as I had seen him
look before.

"Don't, Charles," he was saying.  "Don't leave me alone here--all alone
in here."

His plea was so unexpected that I started back, but he rose and slapped
his other hand against my shoulder, and suddenly I felt as cold as
stone.  His face was not a foot from mine, and it seemed to me that
everything he had striven to hide was there, every passion, every lust
and pain.

"You heard me," he groaned.  "I asked him to go in peace.  I can't turn
back from it now.  Must I always go on ... always on and on..."

Then I felt his hand slipping from my shoulder.  His face was gray.
His whole body was sagging back.

"The chair," he said.  "In a minute ... I'll be all right in a
minute..."

He was beside the chair, clutching blindly at the arms.  He pitched
into it, and his face drooped toward the table, and his hands groped
forward across the bare wood.

"Stay where you are," he said.  "I'll be all right in a minute."

And there I stood, shocked and motionless.  I can never wholly
understand what happened then.  Perhaps it was physical weakness which
seized upon him, but I think it was more than that, now that I have
seen other men, partly good and partly bad.  He was not himself.  There
was nothing familiar in the man who was sitting there.  He was more
than a single individual.

"Why was he just the same!" he groaned.  "Why did he smile like that,
just as he used to smile?  He knows, oh, yes, he knows I used to love
him once, even when he was steeped to the eyes in sin.  Hasn't he done
enough by putting the cup to my lips?  He knew I'd be too weak ever to
set it down."

"You say you loved him?"

Eliphalet Greer started at my voice.  I have never known what it was
that prompted me to speak, for I had made up my mind to be still.

"Then why," I asked, "did you leave him on that island?"

Eliphalet Greer drew himself straight up in his chair.

"I'll tell you," he said, "but there isn't any use.  You'll never
understand men like him and me, not until you're like us, and I hope
you'll never be.  You'll never know what makes us go on and why we
can't stop.  You don't know about the devil and his works.  You've
never had him whispering in your ear, whispering until everything
inside you goes, just the way a sail tears off the yards.  You've never
had him beside you while you lie awake looking at the dark."

"Was that why," I asked, "you put him on the island?"

Eliphalet Greer turned in his chair to face me.

"I put him there," he said, "because he tried to kill me.  Be quiet,
boy.  What makes you jump?  You've heard of killing before."

"And why," I asked, "did he try to kill you?"

"Wait till the blood gets in your own eyes," answered Eliphalet Greer.
"It will some day.  I've always known it will.  Wait till you see a
man's face in your sleep, and his words begin to stick and scratch.  He
tried to kill me because we quarreled."

"You quarreled?" I asked.

I wonder now that he did not resent my questions.  They seemed quite
natural then.  Only later I thought it was strange that he should
answer me as though I was a sergeant of police.

"Why does anyone quarrel?" he said.  "They're only two reasons, carnal
reasons, either money or a woman.  We quarreled over money."

Eliphalet Greer leaned toward me across the table, and some of his
former violence was back in his voice again.

"Don't look at me like a preacher's son!  Don't try to tell me what's
right and wrong.  I know it better than you do.  You've never felt
remorse.  You can't feel it till you've been a man like me."

I had thought that he was afraid, but I knew he was not then.  It was
not fear which had broken him, but remorse itself.  He was struggling
with it like Sisyphus with his rock.

"You'd have done it if you'd been there.  Don't tell me you wouldn't.
You'd be no better than anyone else if Satan came down beside you..."

But he never told me what I would have done.  He seemed to have
forgotten.  His voice trailed away, and when he spoke again his words
were in another key.

"Yes, Charles, I've been a wicked man, but it's not for you to judge.
Only the wicked can judge the wicked, Charles--only the wicked know.  I
was born wicked.  I was a sinner before I carried blacks, before I
heard the chains clank in the hold.  Yes, I was a sinner before I ever
sinned.  It was all marked out.  I had to go on and on.  I've always
known every wrong I've done, but I could never stop.  Every sinner is
always damned.  I've always been damned.  God had me damned before I
ever pulled a rope."

He had stretched his arms before him.  They were poised in front of
him, lank and ungainly in their black broadcloth, and his voice had
soared out of his control.  I started away from him.  I was ashamed to
stay and see him so, but I could not go.  I could not, though no living
man should see another as I saw Eliphalet then.  There in his
counting-room Eliphalet Greer was calling on his God.  A torrent of
wild words was surging to his lips.

"O Maker of all living things!" he cried, "Maker of the Heavens and the
Earth, when wilt Thou set me free, O God!  Wilt Thou never free Thy
servant from the lusts of the flesh?  Wilt Thou never send the Devil
from me?  Save me from the clutches of the Old Man, and let me sin no
more!  Now that my sins are as scarlet, I pray Thee make them white as
snow."

Was he crying the cry of all sinners then?  Was it the prayer of all
lost men?  For a moment I thought he had lost his reason, and it was
only later I thought of it in the light of pathos.

"Be quiet," I said hastily, "or they'll hear you in the street."

I was not aware of the irony of my reply.  His voice had been so loud
that I was in genuine dread, and he may have felt my dread also, for he
stopped hastily and lowered his arms.

"Charles," he said, "listen to me, Charles."

"I am listening," I said.  "But you needn't tell me this.  I know
enough already.  You don't know what you're saying.  Why should I hear
you so?"

"Because," he said, "I want you to pity me, Charles.  I want you to
know how I repent my sin, for I sin in spite of myself.  I tell you it
hurts me to do wrong."

"Then why do you keep on?" I began.  "Why do you?"

Eliphalet Greer turned to me almost in anger.

"Because I must," he said.  "Because it lies inside me--here.  Won't
you pity me?  Won't you pity me when I've bartered away ten thousand
lives, when my ships are bringing over more?  Parton and I began it,
and I've kept it on alone."

"But why," I asked, "have you kept on?"

"Because I couldn't stop," he said.  "God knows I couldn't stop.  I
tell you it's in my blood.  It runs through me like drink.  I can't
stop.  Oh, Lord!  O Maker of all living----"

"Don't!" I interrupted hastily.  "Say your prayers when I'm gone."

The way he intoned his words had set my nerves on edge, but he did not
appear to hear.

"Save me, O Lord," he cried.  "How can I sell calicoes when I've sold
men?  I've tried, O Lord, I've tried!  How can Your servant add figures
when he's seen topsails up in a gale, and they sell for four hundred
dollars a head?  How can any man do right when he's done wrong, when
he's heard the grappling-irons go down, and heard the shouting forward?
Oh, why hast Thou made it so sweet, O Lord, so that every moment is
like wine until the shouting dies?  Oh, why does it seem sweet now when
I can hear it again, and the deck shakes, and I take another throw?
Oh, when wilt Thou make it bitter, O Lord, and set Thy servant free?"

"Stop, Mr. Greer!" I cried.  "You don't know what you're saying!"

But he hardly stopped for breath.

"And neither do you," he rejoined.  "How can you know till you've sunk
a ship?  I've dealt in slaves and I've seen piracy, but he needn't
throw it in my face.  Damn him!  He needn't sneer at me now.  He was up
to it as much as I was.  He shipped the crew at Singapore.  Damn him!
He touched off the first gun."

It was curious to see how the flames sprang up again within him, how
the very memory of it had set him off again, and had sent contrition
flying.  It was like the wine of which he spoke, and the distorted
shapes which were rising before him were like the echoes of the
trumpets and the shouting of the captains.  If he was confessing his
sins it was a grotesque way to do it.  They had ceased to be sins as
his imagination felt the heat.  There was a contagion in the way he
spoke, an ungodly thrill in what he was saying.  I could guess his
story as clearly as I know it now.  The shadows were shadows no longer.

"Yes," cried Eliphalet Greer, "how can I sell dead fish when I've been
around Good Hope, when I've seen the channels behind the islands, and
the water streaked out in the sun?  How can I be honest when I've seen
a crew driven below?  I can't stop it now!"

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed dizzily, "do you know you're as good as
telling me you used to be a pirate?  You're telling enough to hang
yourself twice over!"

"And what if I have been?" demanded Eliphalet Greer.  "Parton put me up
to it, I tell you.  He was the devil himself, the devil and all his
works.  He told me about the gold.  He knew how it was loaded.  He'd
been there his first trip out of Boston, and he remembered it ever
since.  He knew the way they hove to at night.  How could I stop after
what he told me?

"Ask Murdock.  Murdock knows.  He boarded with us when we drove down
the watch.  He saw what we took off of her.  He helped us row it back.
He was there when we poured it on the cabin table, and all sail was up
and we were running out of sight.  There was enough to make us all
rich.  Oh, yes, Murdock was there.  He was standing with his mouth
hanging open.

"'Mr. Greer,' he said, 'it's better than niggers,' and I said: 'Lord
stay Thy hand.  Thy servant hath enough.'  And Parton was there too,
right under the light.  Oh, yes, he was there, and he only laughed, and
I answered him.

"'Richard,' I said, 'we have sinned in the eyes of God and man,' and he
laughed again, and then I saw what I had done, and I knelt on the floor
and prayed."

It must have been a strange and unbelievable sight, but I believed it
then.  Even at a time like that his conscience bore him down.  I think
it was always with that strange old man, the conscience of a minister
enshrined where a conscience should never be, a lonely battered
attribute alone in the Indian Ocean.

"You say you robbed a ship," I heard myself saying hoarsely.  "I
thought you were running slaves."

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "it's the way of sin.  We started with
the slaves, and things were very well.  We ran them in and came back
for more until Parton grew tired.  We ended in the Indian Ocean,
robbing an Indiaman.  It was sin upon sin, ever since I met him.  He
showed me the way to go.  I was very weak, Charles, but I tried--God
knows I tried.  When I was young like you, I left this port an honest
man.  You see how I've ended now.  Go back to the _Gazette_, and read
how the _Daphne_ was attacked in 1817."

I stared at the old man sitting before me.  I was dazed by what I had
heard.  They were stupendous and terrible, his incoherent words, and
the fleeting glimpses into the life that lay behind him.  It was
incredible that he should be there with his gold watch-chain, sitting
in his counting-room, when he was walking iniquity.  It was like some
story in the forecastle when the sea is running high.

"Yes," he was saying, "I knew what I had done, after it was finished.
Don't say I never tried to put my sins behind me.  I knew the horror of
it then.  It was like too much drink, and all the while he was goading
me on.  You've seen him.  You've heard his voice.

"'Get up, Eliphalet,' he said.  'You'll be all right in the morning.'

"'Richard,' I said, 'I'll never be so again,' and he only kept on
laughing.

"'You old fool,' he said, 'we've been through all this before.  Get up
off the floor.  We've only just begun.'

"I pulled myself up to my feet, and it made me sick to see him.  He
could always hold himself just so.  He was like a picture, but I knew
what he was then.  It made me strong.

"'Richard,' I said, 'we've finished.  We've both of us done enough.'

"And he just stood there with the lamp swaying back and forth above his
head, and his handkerchief over his wrist where he had been slashed,
and his hair over his eyes.  I can hear him now.

"'You damned old Methodist,' he said, 'look over there at the table.
We've got enough to buy three brigs, and enough to load 'em full.  Not
one little sloop, but three brigs, three brigs full of niggers.  In a
year we'll have enough to be rich for life--you know how.  Do you think
I'm going to stop when we've just begun?'

"Oh, I knew what he said was true.  The dealers were paying high, and
we'd learned how to run them.  We'd sold slaves at Rio and Havanna, but
the Lord had given me strength.

"'Get thee behind me, Satan,' I said.  'No, Richard, we've sinned
enough.  Think of the wife you have ashore.'"

There was a moment's silence before Eliphalet went on.

"Yes, he had a wife--in Portsmouth it was.  She was timid and played
the spinnet, and thought he was a hero.  She called him her knight.  He
had a way with women I could never understand.  She thought he was the
world, and he let her think so.  He never told her a word of what he
was up to.  She was glad he was in partnership with a sober man like
me.  She's been dead a long while now, but she never knew.  There was a
child, not two years old when we left.  Wouldn't you have thought he
would have come to his senses when I reminded him he was a family man?
He was fond of them both.  I've often seen them together.

"'Richard,' I said, 'think of the wife you have ashore!'

"But it did no good.  She was too far away.

"'Damn you!' he cried out at me, 'will you ever stop referring to that?
I am thinking of her.  I'm providing for her by the sweat of my brow.'

"I still was gentle with him.

"'Oh, Richard,' I said, 'can I not lead you to repent your sins, as I
am repenting mine?'

"'Are you going to drop it?' he shouted.  'Are you going to sheer off
just when things are coming our way?'

"And I was angry too, righteously angry with the anger of a just man.

"'Richard,' I cried back at him, 'I'm finished.  I'll not go on.  I'm
sick.  I'm sick of everything.  I wasn't made for a life like this, and
I'm finished.  I'll not do it, and you'll not--not while I'm alive.'"

Eliphalet Greer wiped the perspiration from his forehead.  I had never
heard him speak for so long a time.  As I set them down, his words do
not seem much.  I can remember better what he left unsaid, and what he
did not say was probably truer than what he spoke, though the years
already were thick about it.  I know the story now.  Everyone knows it
who has sailed, but I wonder what it was that smote his conscience
then, and sent him to his knees on the cabin floor.  As I think of it,
the circumstances which surround it do not matter.  The name of the
ship, the bearings, how they came aboard, and the amount of money that
was sealed in the cabin are only a part of a hundred stories warped and
exaggerated until they have lost all semblance of truth.  Eliphalet
Greer himself is the only fact that makes the story strange.  He was an
element as out of place in that narrative as a pulpit in a
gambling-house.  Was he always swaying back and forth, like some
ill-weighted pendulum between right and wrong?

Eliphalet Greer paused.  He seemed to be wrestling with some thought,
some memory that was keener and more poignant than the rest.

"And what do you guess he did then?" he asked, staring at the wall.
"How did he pay me for my kindness?  How did he pay me for my
forbearance and for the years I stood beside him?  Because I wanted to
do right he tried to murder me!  He offered the crew a hundred dollars
apiece above their shares to have me thrown overboard!  He tried to
throw me to the fishes like Jonah to the whale!"

Eliphalet's voice had risen to a weird crescendo.

"That's what came of my kindness.  That's what came of my loving him
like a brother!  He tried to murder me when I raised my hand to save
him from the eternal fire!"

I sometimes wonder if Eliphalet Greer had the same gaunt figure then as
when I first knew him, and whether his arms had the same ungainly
swing?  He was probably not much different, for time has little effect
on a certain New England build, and it is as awkward in youth as it is
in age.  He must always have been more like a school-teacher than a
sailor, a humorous sight when he pulled at a rope, an Ichabod Crane
when he was out on the yards.  I can see why Mr. Parton laughed when
Eliphalet knelt on the cabin floor.  It must have been deeply and
ironically amusing aboard a dirty little trading sloop that night, when
he pleaded for right after assiduously devoting himself to wrong.  I
can understand why Mr. Parton laughed, but time had sapped that
interview of its humor.  Time had made it black when Eliphalet Greer
told it in his counting-room.  The wrong and the right were strangely
intermingled when it came back to life.

"Why did he turn on me?" cried Eliphalet Greer.  "He knew it would
drive me mad!  Why didn't he throw me in?  Why did I have to know?"

"What did you do?" I asked.  "How did you find it out?"

I was afraid, I am ashamed to say it--I was afraid he would start
praying again, and that I should never know how it ended.  But when I
spoke, he stopped and looked at me in a startled way, as though he had
forgotten I was there.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "I'm not the man I used to be.  Open
the locker by the window and bring me a glass of rum.  Murdock told me
that Parton was going to have me killed."

The rum was in a square brown bottle with a tumbler beside it.
Eliphalet Greer picked up the bottle in an unaccustomed way, and tilted
it over the glass.  He coughed when he put the spirits to his lips.  He
was still coughing when he set the glass down before him.

"You've sailed with him," he said.  "Did you ever know a time when
Murdock didn't know where his bread was buttered?  Yes, he told me, and
I knew what to do.  I offered the crew five hundred apiece to put
Richard Parton in irons."

Eliphalet Greer had half risen from his chair.

"And they did it!  They knew me!  They knew I'd keep my word better
than he'd keep his.  They grabbed him out of his bunk that very night.
He swore at them.  He begged them to let him go.  Oh, Lord, I can hear
him now.  I've heard him often since.  He thought it was turn about,
but I knew what to do.  I knew what he was.  He was Satan--Satan
himself.  He was the spirit of darkness, and I sent him back to hell.
The Lord was guiding me then.  It came to me like a dream.  I was
justice and I was fulfillment.  I sat with him in the stern-sheets when
we rowed him ashore, and he offered to fight me on the beach.  I gave
him his clothes.  I gave him his prize money.  I gave him everything
that was his.  He was standing on the beach when we backed the sails
... but he never called back.  Why didn't he call?  If he only had, I'd
have set him aboard again.  If he'd only called, no matter what he'd
have threatened, I'd have set him on board.  But he only kept standing
there.  He never moved a hand."

There was one thing which I could not understand.

"But why did you do that?  You had no scruples.  Why did you leave him
there?" I demanded as though I was a judge.  "When he tried to have you
killed, why didn't you kill when your turn came?"

His answer was too quick and unconsidered not to be the truth.

"I did not dare," he said.  "It wasn't in me."

And I could understand.  It was his conscience clinging to him like a
gyve, the conscience that held him still, that had always held him.

"I should have!  I should have!  Don't think I don't know that--but I
couldn't.  It was fate.  It was where I always fail.  When I hated him
most, I couldn't raise my hand.  I did what I did to save my soul, but
I couldn't raise my hand."

"And yet----" I began.

"Yes," he said.  "I sent you, but you'll never know how often I wished
I'd called you back."

It was only a short while before that I had stood looking back at that
lonely narrow land, watching the same beach Eliphalet Greer had
watched, watching while it disappeared forever, watching until that
whole island became as fragile as some island in the clouds.  The beach
was of ancient coral and was very white.  A man standing upon it would
be visible as long as the beach itself, a black speck on that white
sand, a speck until he and the island became a memory, and even then he
would be a speck, a disturbing speck against the white, like the blot
of some old wrong.

Eliphalet Greer had fallen silent, and I knew I was not the only one
who was thinking of the beach.

"Hasn't he done enough?" he cried shrilly.  "Why does he come back to
laugh at me after he's damned my soul?"

"I thought you marooned him to save your soul," I said.

Eliphalet Greer brought his fist down on the table.

"It didn't save my soul," he snapped.  "When I got to Cape de Verde I
couldn't stop--not when I saw the boats there and the money."

"And you started in again?" I asked incredulously.  His story had
changed from a moral tale.  Eliphalet Greer bowed his head.

"God help me, I couldn't stop," he said.  "Not any more than Murdock
could stop drinking.  It's in me.  It's in me still."

He did not see the irony, or its uselessness.  He seemed to have
forgotten that he had marooned a man in a revulsion against sin only to
sin again.

"Then there was no reason to leave him at all," I said.

His head was up again, and his face had grown as uncompromising as
stone.  I had a feeling that he had been reading from a book, reading
of the tribulations of some imaginary man, and that he had finally
snapped the covers shut.

"Charles," he said, "when you grow as old as I am, you'll find your
ways are set.  I will not say what I might do if I was younger.  I have
been speaking in heat and pain, but I will not any more.  If I regret
what I have done, it's too late.  Now do you know why the _Felicity's_
against the wharf?"

Before I could reply, he had moved beside me.

"Because Richard Parton's going back to the island," he said.

I started away, but he seized me by the shoulder.

"You can't be thinking of that!" I cried.  "Haven't you any mercy in
you?"

"I'd have let him be if he hadn't threatened me," said Eliphalet Greer.
"Oh, yes, I'd have let him be, but it's too late now.  He's going as
soon as it gets dark.  He's going like a drunken sailor.  They're
watching him.  His time is going to come."

As he spoke his hand on my shoulder tightened.

"You know how it's done.  A crack on the head and down they go.
Murdock was right.  The old way is the best way.  He'll find it won't
do to play loose with me, not any more than it ever did."

It was no longer the past.  He had closed the book, and I knew he would
never open it again.  By a single shift of speech he had skipped across
the bridge of time, skipped to an act more horrible still, to a reality
worse than any reminiscence.

"You can't mean you're going to leave him again!" I cried.  "Think what
you've done already.  Isn't it enough to have ruined his life?"

And then I stopped.  His face made me stop.  I knew it was useless to
try to hold him back.

"It's too late," he said evenly.  "There's no good of speaking of
things you'll never understand.  I said you'd never understand a man
like me.  Let him leave me, and I'll leave him alone, but if he's in
town tonight, he's going out for good.  Be quiet, Charles.  Don't begin
again.  Be quiet.  Do you know why I've asked you here?"

"If you think," I began, "that I'm going to be mixed up in this--if you
think----"

"You fool!" interrupted Eliphalet Greer, "why have I been talking to
you?  Answer me that?"

"God help you, I don't know," I said.

Eliphalet Greer folded his arms and every trace of kindness had gone
out of him.

"Because you've sold your soul," he said.  "Have you forgotten that?
Because your life depends on your standing by.  Because you and I are
going up tonight to help Richard Parton on board."

I stepped toward him, but he stood still.  For a second there was
blackness around me.  Everything seemed black.  A wave of black was
enveloping me.  I was struggling against it.

"Be damned to you!" I gasped.  "Get someone else to do your dirty work!"

Eliphalet Greer stood still with folded arms.

"There's no one else," he said.  "Murdock's too old, and he's afraid.
I want someone young with his back to the wall.  That's why you're
coming with me, Charles."

I saw the devil then.  The devil was Eliphalet Greer himself in his
black coat.

"That's right," he was saying.  "I know how you feel.  Twist if you
want, but you won't get away.  I've got the steel in you.  Twist and be
damned!  I've got the hooks in.  If you don't stand by me, we all go
together--you, Murdock, all of us.  Listen to me!  I'll pull you
tighter yet.  I'm too old to stop at anything now.  If you don't lend a
hand tonight, so help me, I'll let him stay!  He'll tell a pretty
story, and I'll let him tell it.  He'll tell 'em what I am--but I swear
if I go down, you'll go down with me.  You've been in my pay.  That'll
be enough to damn you when the time comes, and I'll swear the rest on
the Book.  I'll tell 'em a story they won't forget.  I know how to do
it.  I've broken men before.  When I get through you'll be better dead,
the whole damned crew of you.  I'm not going down alone.  I'll pull the
whole temple down like Samson.  Do you think you can take my money and
not pay me back?  Put down your arm.  Don't raise your hand to me, you
paid murderer!"

The stillness of the counting-room must have brought me back.  I was
standing close to Eliphalet Greer with my arm half raised, and he had
not moved.  He had not taken his eyes from mine, but the room seemed
brighter and I could see other things beside his face.  I heard the
noises on the wharf again.  I saw the sun on the water and the spars of
the _Felicity_.

"Do what you like," I said.  "I'll take my chances against anything you
say.  Do what you like.  I've listened to you before."

And then I stopped.  He must have seen my expression change, but he
never knew what I was thinking.  He said we would all go, and I knew we
would....  Only a little while ago she had been standing with her cloak
around her watching me go down the hill, and he had said we would all
go, and I knew we would, and I knew we would not be the only ones.  She
seemed to be standing close beside me again, and I knew I could not
leave her so.  I knew what they would say.  I could hear the gossip go
already....

"Ah," said Eliphalet Greer, "I thought you would understand."

But he never knew what I understood.

"Making up your mind is always the hardest part," he said.  "It will be
as easy as easy now.  I knew you would see the truth."

"I see it," I answered, but he never knew what I saw.

Eliphalet Greer sat himself back in his chair, and pulled out his heavy
gold repeater.

"Charles," he said, "you'll be a man before we're through.  I wish we
both were young.  Sit down now, and listen."




XVIII

Why should I tell what I did that day, when I did nothing through my
own volition?  I was only waiting, waiting to play a part in Eliphalet
Greer's own story, and while I was waiting it still went on along the
lines the stars had set, and I do not believe that any living man could
have stopped it then.

The noon meal had been cleared long ago when I entered the Anchor
House.  The tables had been laid for supper, and the taproom was filled
with an increasing number of men whose work at the wharves was over.  I
had been walking, though I cannot remember where.  My head was aching,
and my shoes were covered with mud.  It seemed strange that no one
knew, that everything had been going on just as it had before, just as
it had for a hundred other days.  I was young then, too young to know
how pitifully little we ever see of others' lives.  There must have
been a dozen men in the taproom, seated comfortably about the open
fire, and I knew them all.  My entrance did not disturb them, however.
It hardly caused a ripple.  They greeted me as though I had never been
away to sea, for in those days when everyone came and went, exits and
entrances meant less than they do now, and in a place as transient as
the Anchor House almost nothing.  Jim Lowes was almost the only one who
looked at me a second time.  He had been standing behind the bar, but
when he saw me he walked hastily around it.

"Where've you been?" he asked.

"Walking," I answered.

"Where?"

"I don't know," I said, and I didn't know.  I hardly heard him.  I only
half saw the taproom and the fire.

"Charles," he said regretfully, "you look like you've seen a ghost.  I
might have known you'd see too much.  Why didn't you leave ghosts to
old folks who know what's best?"

I did not answer, and Jim Lowes had moved closer beside me, and waved
his thumb toward the fire.

"Bend down," he said suddenly, "I can't be hollering up at you.  Bend
down.  I want to tell you something."

And then he lowered his voice to an undertone.

"I'm not the only one who's seeing things," he whispered.  "When the
day's queer, the night's queer, Charles.  Listen.  Where's your ears?
Listen."

Jim Lowes was pointing toward the guests about the fire.  I became
aware of something I had not noticed before, of an unusual interest, of
excitement almost in the way they spoke and listened that was different
from other afternoons.  Old Ephraim Hoopes was bending forward,
pounding the arm of his chair.

There was nothing strange about Ephraim Hoopes being there.  Everyone
in town knew his habits.  He was in the taproom any afternoon.  Any
morning, when the weather was fit, his fishing sloop would put out of
harbor before it was light, and he always went alone.  He knew the
ledges like the palm of his hand.  He fished, not because he had to,
for he had enough means to avoid work.  Though he was old, he was still
an active man, and he always said that he disliked sitting still until
his clock struck.  I do not believe he was ever happy unless he was out
of sight of land, for he had spent his life on deep water.  He was
always restless.  He was always anxious to be out to see how it looked
off shore, and it was plain to see that he had taken his trip that
morning.  His beard was jutting forth aggressively from his chin and
moving like a white-cap on a wave.  He had thrown out his chest as he
always did after his third glass, and was glancing indignantly about
him.

"I tell you I saw it," he was saying.  "Ain't it enough to tell you I
saw it?"

Jacob Rice, who ran the store across the street, was sitting beside
him, smoking his clay pipe.  He tapped the ashes out on the palm of his
hand as Ephraim Hoopes finished speaking.  I still remember Jacob
Rice's sharp nasal voice.

"Ephraim," he said, "won't you never stay ashore where you belong?
Won't you ever stop gallavanting about in that little nutshell when
there isn't any need?  You've told a lot about what you've seen, but
ain't you getting too old, Ephraim, to go on jeopardizing your immortal
soul?"

Ephraim Hoopes whirled indignantly toward him.

"What about you, you old skinflint?" he demanded.  "Don't you talk to
God-fearing folks, when I saw you putting sand in your sugar yesterday."

"Stuff!" said Jacob Rice, unmoved.  "You saw me like you saw that ship,
and you saw that ship because you like to talk, and folks are tired of
your old yarns and you like to have folks listen."

Ephraim Hoopes made an indignant gesture.

"By Godfrey!" he demanded, "don't any of you believe me--not when I saw
with my own eyes--not when I saw her lines?  I know what I see and what
I don't.  My eyes are good enough for that, and they've seen a sight
more than anybody's here.  She was coming down right on top of me,
before she put about.  I was as near as over the street.  I saw 'em on
the deck.  I saw every eternal line of her.  I know every ship that's
come out of the Morrill yard.  I know how young Morrill cuts the bows.
I know what he builds as well as I know myself.  She was one of
Merrill's ships--I'll swear it on the Judgment Book.  She was launched
in twenty-five.  Her name's different.  Her paint's different.  Her
rigging's not the same, but I know her."

"And she's out there now?" someone asked.

"She's out there, standing off and on, like she's waiting a time to
come in," Ephraim Hoopes answered.

"If she's out there, what's she waiting for?" asked Jacob Rice.  "Who
ever heard of a skipper in his senses standing on and off on a quiet
day with everything clear?"

Before replying, Ephraim Hoopes glanced around him, and the semi-circle
of chairs scraped forward.

"Ask Eliphalet Greer," he said.  "Mebbe he knows if anybody does."

The chairs scraped nearer.

"But she's no ship of his," someone said.

Ephraim Hoopes shook his head dejectedly.

"It's like you," he said, "never to remember.  She was a ship of his.
She left here in his name.  She left here seven years ago.  He sold
her--he sold her in Baltimore, if I remember right.  You ask him.
Mebbe he's bought her back again."

I heard Jim Lowes catch his breath, as sharply as though he had been
plunged into cold water.

"You say she's out there still," he asked, "standing off and on?"

"That's where she is," said Ephraim Hoopes.  "You can't fool me.  I
know her.  I know the hull of every vessel I've ever clapped an eye on.
She's one that Morrill built for Eliphalet Greer, and which sailed out
in twenty-five, and now she's painted black as pitch, and all her ports
are open, and when the lookout saw me, he sang out, and they put over
just like that.  They sheered off as if they were afraid.  I tell you
there's wickedness aboard her.  She ain't an honest ship.  I know what
she looked like to me, but I won't say."

"Stuff," said Jacob Rice.  "If she's out there, she was blown in last
night, and she's lost her bearings."

"Well, well," said Ephraim Hoopes more pleasantly, "I'm only telling
what I saw.  Go out and look for yourself."

Jim Lowes was wiping his hands hastily on his apron, though there
seemed to be no need.

"Charles," he said, "you'll be wanting to see your bed-chamber,
Charles."

"I want to hear what he's saying," I objected, but Jim Lowes was
pulling me away.

"Haven't you heard enough?" he answered tartly.

He kept pulling at my sleeve.  I followed him from the taproom up the
creaking stairs.  There was a musty smell in the passageway, and I knew
that my room would smell the same.  It was before the time of
machine-made carpets and the halls were bare, so that our feet sounded
heavily.  A row of doors stood on either side, but Jim Lowes passed
them all, and turned to a side passage at his left, toward the ell
above the kitchen.

"Here you be, Charles," he said.

He spoke without much pride and there was a reason.  There was never
much cause to be proud of the accommodations which the Anchor House
afforded.  It was a narrow room with a single window open toward the
harbor.  There was a bed close to the wall, a rush-bottom chair with a
candle upon it, and a jug and a pitcher.  I remember it seemed like a
very small room to hold both of us.  Jim Lowes was breathing rapidly,
and his breath sounded unusually loud in those close quarters.

"You heard what he said," Jim Lowes whispered.  "He saw a ship out
there."

"Jim," I said, "I'm not feeling well.  I want to be alone."

"He said he saw a ship," Jim Lowes answered, "a ship standing on and
off."

"What if he did?" I replied.  "I've got other things to think about."

"Doesn't it mean nothing to you at all?" he asked.

"Jim," I said, "I want to be alone."

Jim Lowes sighed and stuffed a handful of tobacco in his cheek.

"Don't it mean nothing," he said, "when first _he_ comes blowing in,
and then there comes a ship?  I guess I'm a superstitious man, because
it means something to me.  First a dead man walking in the door and now
a ship that left in twenty-five--a ship that's never been home since--a
ship that hasn't come in sight of land.  Is she another ghost?  That's
what I want to know.  Is she another ghost heading back for home?"

The little room seemed very chill.  My hands were cold, and I rubbed
them hastily together.

"It can't have anything to do with him," I said.  "You can't think
that."

Jim Lowes was staring out the window.

"If she's a ghost, Lord help us all!" he said.  "Not you and me or all
of us could lay a ghost like that."

"You're not afraid," I demanded incredulously, "because Ephraim Hoopes
saw a ship?"

Jim Lowes turned toward me, and his face seemed unnaturally sharp, and
there was a penetrating quality about his glance that set my nerves on
edge.

"And why shouldn't I be afraid?" he said.  "I'm not the only one--oh,
no.  Two ghosts aren't natural.  One is enough in a single day for a
quiet man like me.  I don't feel easy about what's going on tonight."

"So you know about it already?" I asked.

Jim Lowes glanced about him nervously.

"You needn't speak so loud," he remonstrated.  "Ain't it hard enough
without talking, I should admire to know?  How can I keep respectable
without I keep things quiet?  Ain't it bad enough to have him four
doors down the hall, just settin' on a chair with his legs cocked up on
the bed, reading a book, just like he was a teacher at the college,
reading a book?  And Jim Young and West down in the street watching if
he goes out, and there he's just settin' as if everything was peaceful.
What makes him so quiet for, that's what I'd like to know?"

"Richard Parton's in here now?" I stammered.

"Charles," said Jim Lowes, "since I've been keeping tavern I've always
satisfied my customers, and I don't call to interfere in gentlemen's
quarrels.  If Mr. Greer wants the house quiet, I'll keep it quiet, and
no questions asked, provided he pays enough.  I know when a man's dead
and when he isn't--but what's he reading a book for?  It isn't like him
just to be settin' still."

Jim Lowes moved toward the door.

"I never have liked it, and now there comes a ship," he said.

Then I was alone in my room.  The walls were blank, and painted a dingy
yellow.  The floors bare except for a thin strip of carpet by the bed.
The single window was an uncompromising square of light.  The bed
covering was white, unrelieved by a single spot or shadow.  There were
not more than three paces from the door to the window.  I remember the
number well, for I walked back and forth for a little while.  I was
quite alone, and yet I was never less alone than I was then.  Faces
kept leaping up in my memory, faces and disjointed words.  I had been
ashamed to be seen in the streets, but it was worse there by myself.
The thing I was going to do kept running through my mind.  Eliphalet
Greer's voice kept ringing in my ears.

Once I thought of going to her, of seeking out Murdock's cottage again,
of telling her everything, but I did not go.  Something held me back,
something like diffidence, something almost like shame.  I could save
her from sitting in a courtroom.  I could save her from being known as
the daughter of a felon.  Eliphalet Greer and I could end it all that
night, and yet I was ashamed.  I was ashamed as though I knew that my
determination was a weakness, and even now when the night is still I am
sometimes shaken by doubts.  I wonder--did I truly act that night on
account of her, or was it from fear for myself, or fear for both of us?
I wonder if I was juggling with my conscience then, if I have been all
these years?  I wonder if, after all, Eliphalet Greer is not the better
man?

I know I was afraid in my room in the Anchor House.  I had not felt it
out of doors, but between those narrow walls I was filled with a
curious sickly fear.  Mr. Parton was reading in his room, four doors
away, Jim Lowes had said.  He was waiting and I was waiting, but I was
not afraid of him.  My fear was of something greater than Mr. Parton
would ever be.  The walls of that room seemed to press upon me.  They
seemed to be moving nearer like the walls in some cell of the
Inquisition, until the air itself seemed possessed of an intolerable
weight.  The room itself was like a cell.  It was shutting me from
life.  It was like the island where he was going.  I wanted to look at
the water again, at the water and the sky.

I could see it from my window, just above the elm trees in the street
beneath.  The sun was upon it so that it moved and shone like blades of
bluish steel.  The river was like a road, widening at its mouth into a
great plain that vanished in the sky behind a bank of clouds, which
already were growing vague and soft as clouds do when the sun falls
low.  It was hard to see where the water ended and the sky began.  Now
and then the sun's rays would strike on a wave which seemed to lap
against the clouds themselves, but then the wave would sink again, and
I could see the ocean swell beyond.  At first I thought there was
nothing upon that stretch of water.  It seemed as lonely as it had in
the beginning, and then I saw a sail.

It was like light on the water at first, it was so far away.  It
appeared and vanished at first like the rising of the water, but as I
watched, it became a constant, definite thing, a speck of white
distinct from sea and cloud.  It was only a speck of white, but I knew
it was a sail, a sail standing in toward shore.

I remember I felt tired, deathly tired.  I recall that I stretched
myself on my bed, and that the mud from my shoes smeared the white
coverlet.  I remember staring up at the ceiling, but the sea was still
before me.  I shut my eyes, but the sun was still upon the water.
Voices were calling across it.  I could hear the creaking of blocks and
the straining of wood.  And then my mind had gone to strange places,
airy, fantastic places, filled with sights I had seen before and sights
I had never seen.  Eliphalet Greer was with me.  He kept darting out
from chaos, and even when everything grew still, and blacker than
night, Eliphalet Greer was there.  His hand was on my shoulder, and I
could hear a voice soaring feebly into the dark.

"O Lord," it was saying, "my sins are as scarlet.  I pray Thee make
them white as snow."

But I could not tell whether he was calling or whether it was I.




XIX

I had an indefinable knowledge of the lateness of the hour when I was
called from blackness into something blacker still, a knowledge which
comes only of a restless life, a life of unexpected wakings.  I knew it
was late, very late.  It was the period of the whole day's cycle which
marks the very depths of time, when everything is quiet with that
strange stillness which only comes when time lapses into some unknown
dimension, when dreams and death and wakings seem strangely
intermingled, so that each is like the other.

I remember a tapping on the door, and the chill darkness of the room as
I listened, but I had no sensation of being awake.  My head was light.
My hands were devoid of any sense of touch.  I heard the latch raised.
I heard the door creak open, but I had no feeling of apprehension.  I
was not even stirred by curiosity.  I heard Jim Lowes' hoarse whisper
in the dark, but it might have been the whisper of my thoughts.

"Charles, are you there, Charles?"

As I told him that I was, he seized my wrist.

"Speak low," he whispered, "or you'll wake him up.  Speak low and come
downstairs.  It's time now.  The old man's in the kitchen."

There was the same musty smell in the hall outside, but I did not feel
awake.  The darkness seemed too thick, and our footsteps too soft and
vague.  The hall was black.  Everything was black.  There was no
relieving lightness from any window, not a crack of light beneath a
door to steady us, to show us we were in the Anchor House and not
floating through the air.  I was glad it was so still, for I had a
tense desire for silence.  I was glad of the dark, because he could not
see me.  I was afraid.  I was still afraid as he led me along the
passage.  We were going down the kitchen stairs.

I remembered the kitchen.  I had often sat there with Jim Lowes when
the hour was late and his guests had gone to bed.  There were two
candles and a lantern on the table that held the serving dishes.  Their
flames were soft and yellow and far from bright, but they gave me a
sensation of unholy brilliance as I came in from the dark.  At first I
could not take my eyes away from those lights on the table.  Then I saw
the fireplace still glowing warm with coals, and the rows of kettles
hung on nails along the wall.  But I still felt only half awake.

A man was standing beside the fire.  I watched him as the blindness
from the candles left my eyes, and I saw it was Captain Murdock.  He
appeared to me unnatural, only a travesty of himself.  His face was as
puckered as an apple on the ground when the wind has seared it and its
juice begins to go.  It bore only a trace of its old complacent
rotundity.  He saw me, but he seemed to have forgotten that any
unpleasantness had passed between us.  He was fidgeting and blowing on
his fingers.  He was like a man awakened from a bad dream.  His eyes
kept narrowing and widening again, as though the sights of the dream
were still about him.  He was like some fantastic recollection, but not
the Murdock I had known.  He was like all the rest, a part of fantasy.
Jim Lowes was different, too.  He was imbued with a new alertness, with
a heightened intensity that placed him on a level with the night.  I
had never seen him look so sharp, so unbelievably sharp.

And then quite suddenly I knew I was awake, wider awake than I had ever
been before.  It was not the light, nor Murdock, nor Jim Lowes.
Someone had been standing behind Murdock.  As I came into the kitchen
he had moved forward.  It was Eliphalet Greer.  Beside Murdock he
looked very tall and thin.  He was wrapped in his black cloak, just as
I had seen him on the day when the _Felicity_ set sail.  It was thrown
over his shoulder in folds, like the folds of cloaks I had seen where
the air is soft and the sun is bright.  His hat was off.  His hair was
back from his forehead, leaving it high and white.  Except for his
cloak, I might have thought he was some divine called into the night to
minister at the bedside of the dying.  He gave me the same detached
greeting, the same look of a man whose mind is on greater things.

"Charles," he said, "you're cold.  Step over by the fire.  You'll be
better warm before we start."

I was cold.  As I spoke a shiver ran through me, which seemed to
communicate itself to Captain Murdock also.

"What he needs is a drink," said Captain Murdock suggestively.  "It
isn't the outside of him that's cold.  It's his insides--all our
insides.  Now how about it--a little something all around?  It never
hurt nobody."

Eliphalet Greer did not so much as look at him.

"Is he up there?" he asked.  "Are you sure he's up there now?"

"Mr. Greer," said Jim Lowes, "he couldn't have sneaked out without I
heard him.  I've been listening all night long."

Eliphalet Greer was no longer like a preacher or a prophet, in spite of
all his black.

"Then he'll get it!" he choked.  "He'll get it!  Why in God's name
didn't he go?  Why didn't he go and leave me?  Why did he bring it on
himself?  He only had to go.  He only had to leave, and I'd have never
touched a hair of him.  He only had to leave me here in peace."

It was unpleasant to watch him standing with his head upraised, lost in
the maze of his own thoughts while we stood still and waited.  It set
my nerves on edge, and the vagueness, the uncertainty of it disturbed
Captain Murdock also, for he stepped toward Eliphalet Greer and jogged
him familiarly and irreverently with his elbow.

"Hey!" he said uneasily.  "Now don't go gettin' like that!  Ain't we
all waiting here?  Ain't we all ready to put him on board?  You ain't
going to stop when everything's all ready?"

Eliphalet Greer's shoulders wrenched forward as though someone was
pulling them.

"Keep quiet!" he said hoarsely, "or by God!  I'll break your neck!"

I thought he was going to do it.  I could almost hear the place ring
with its noise.  I saw Jim Lowes draw a deep breath as though he was
about to cry out.  I saw Captain Murdock jump backward and snatch up an
empty bottle.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Jim Lowes whispered, "for the love of the Lord,
be quiet!  Do you want him to wake up?"

Captain Murdock moved away, and I wanted to follow him.  I could hardly
repress my desire.  The fear I had felt alone in my room was back upon
me.  Eliphalet Greer was looking at me now.  He was moving toward me,
and I understood my fear.  I was afraid of him.  I had been afraid of
him all the while.  I was afraid as I tried to meet his glance.  I felt
a loathing of the darkness in his eyes.  I loathed the weakness and the
strength that drew the wrinkles of his mouth.  I hated his black coat.
I hated the loose skin on his hands.

"Charles," he said, "you're not giving way?"

If my limbs had not refused me, I think I should have run away.
Instead, I only stood dazedly, trying to face him squarely, and then I
started away until my back came against the wall.  Eliphalet Greer had
reached forward.  His hand had come down on my shoulder.

"Charles," he said, "are you coming?"

I found my voice.  It rose in me as my revulsion rose--into an
unreasoning crisis that was beyond my mind to fathom or suspect.

"Take off your hand," I said chokingly.  "Why should I be afraid?  Take
off your hand!"

I remember I was pulling at his wrist, clawing at it, as though his
hand was on my throat.

"Hush!" Jim Lowes was pleading.  "Hush!  Or you'll wake him up."

"Why should I stop now?" I was saying wildly.  "Doesn't it mean I'll
see the last of you?  I'd go upstairs and cut his throat, as long as I
never see your face again!  Take off your hand!"

I had wrenched his fingers free of my shoulder.  I had flung them back,
and his lips moved convulsively, but he stood quite still.

"So that's the way it blows?" he said, and then he paused, and his
voice sank very low.

"It's better," he said, and his voice was an old man's voice.  "After
all, it's better," and he turned away.

"Come here," he said, nodding at Jim Lowes, and Jim Lowes moved nearer.

"What room is he in?" he asked.

"As you go upstairs, the second on your left," Jim Lowes answered.

Eliphalet Greer nodded.

"Who else is in the ell?" he asked.

"Mr. Jervaile's the only one," Jim Lowes replied.  "Yes, sir, he's the
only one.  I'm doing what I set out to do.  It's quiet like I promised
it would be, all locked off from the rest of the house, all locked like
a family vault.  No one can come out or in without they use these
stairs."

Eliphalet Greer rubbed his chin.

"It won't disturb anyone," he said, "if there's a noise?"

"Everyone's asleep in front," Jim Lowes said.  "They wouldn't be like
to hear, and if they did, it wouldn't mean nothing."

I heard Eliphalet Greer draw in his breath in a deep, quavering way, as
though something had hurt him.

"Then take off your coat, Charles," he said.  "You'll be better without
it.  You say he's asleep?"

"I've been listening," said Jim Lowes, "and he hasn't made a sound."

"Give me that rope on the table," said Eliphalet Greer, "and the
lantern."

Then he leaned toward me so close that I could feel his breath, and
though he was whispering, his words seemed to echo through me.

"Listen!" he said.  "Are you listening?  Then look at me.  What's the
matter?  You're not afraid to look?"

I looked at him.  Except for his mouth, the muscles of his face were
motionless as stone.

"He's quick.  I know him.  He's like a cat.  There won't be any time.
He mustn't know, till it's too late.  Don't try the latch.  When we're
up at the door, smash it in.  You're strong enough to do it.  Smash it
in and get him by the throat.  I'll hold the light."

Eliphalet Greer drew another sobbing breath.

"He's strong!  I tell you he's strong, and he's like a snake.  Get him
by the throat, I say, and let him have your fist in his face.  I want
him still.  That's all I want--to have him still.  Don't let me hear
him call.  Hold him still.  I'll do the rest."

Every motion he made was suddenly smooth and accurate.  There was
nothing ungainly about him any longer.  His feet made no sound on the
floor.  He was folding his cloak about the lantern.

"Open the door to the stairs," he said.

It is curious how values change when thought becomes an act.  I had
sickened at the thought of it, but it was different now that we were
moving up the stairs.  I wonder whether the old man was right when he
said that I was unfitted for the pursuit of peace?  I wonder if he knew
more about me than I have ever known?  The lantern was under his cloak.
The light was almost entirely hidden, but as we moved up into the dark,
an occasional ray from the oil frame would dart from under his cloak,
and would cover him with a dull light and disappear again, like the
light of some fire within him that he was striving to conceal.  My eyes
were on his back, always on his back, and I was moving up after him.
As I went up those stairs, as I tiptoed along the hall, I felt a
strange elation.  It had nothing to do with conscience.  It was apart
from right and wrong.  It was a joy in my own strength, in the sureness
of my step.  Life was strong within me.  I was curiously light and
free.  I knew it was wrong.  I remember thinking I was lost to
everything I knew and hoped as I followed him, but it did not cast me
down.  I drew a breath of the musty air, and it set my blood tingling.
It gave me a desire to laugh.  I wanted to feel the door against my
shoulder.  I wanted to hear it crash....

That night has never seemed like life.  It has never been a rational
memory.  I could hardly hear his tread upon the stairs.  His cloak made
a rustling sound, but even in the dark, where hearing is unnaturally
acute, it was hard to hear.  I wanted something to break the silence.
I wanted it to end, no matter how it ended.  I wanted it to end, though
I seemed lost to all time and space.

Eliphalet Greer had stopped.  I could see his dark cloak ahead of me,
an unearthly garment with the rays of the lantern shining through it.
He was whispering to me.  It sounded like the rustling of half-dead
leaves.

"There's the door," he whispered.  "Stand back and smash it in!"

He had moved his cloak.  The hall grew brighter.  I could see it before
me, a dim panel of white with a black old hand-wrought latch.  As I
hesitated, the rays of the lantern had ceased to be steady.
Eliphalet's arm was swaying back and forth like a bit of seaweed in a
rip of tide.

"D'you hear me?" he shouted.  "Smash down that door!"

It was his voice that made me do it, his voice as it burst out of him.
It sent me off my feet.  It sent my body hurtling forward, and I
remember that the hall was light.  Eliphalet Greer had dropped his
cloak.

The door went down like paper.  I carried it off its latch and hinges,
and it crashed into the room ahead of me.  I stumbled over it and then
regained my balance.  The room was small.  There was not a corner but
was clear under Eliphalet Greer's lantern, and it was no different from
mine--a bed, a chair, a table, a bowl, a pitcher, and that was all.
The window was half open.  The door with two shivered panels was lying
across the carpet, and there was no one there, no one but Eliphalet
Greer and me.

I turned toward him.  He was glancing wildly, uncomprehendingly, at the
bare walls.  I thought he would drop the lantern, and I snatched it
from his hand.

"He's not here!" he cried hoarsely.  "He's not here!"

But I hardly heard him.  The crash of the door was still in my ears.
It seemed to have blotted out all other sound.  I saw Jim Lowes.  He
must have followed behind us, for he scurried in as Eliphalet spoke,
and stared at us vacantly.  Then he pulled some tobacco from his pocket.

"He's gone!" he said, cramming it into his cheek.  "Right out through
the window.  I always knew that something queer would happen, but who'd
of thought that he would get away?  Who'd of thought it, and me
listening all the time?"

Eliphalet Greer snatched roughly at his shoulder.

"Spit out that tobacco," he cried, "and tell me the truth!  Is he
hiding in some other room?  Give me the lantern!"

"He couldn't be anywhere else," Jim Lowes protested.  "The ell is
locked and every chamber in the ell is locked, excepting his and Mr.
Jervaile's."

"He can't be gone!" cried Eliphalet Greer.  "He can't!  Show me the
other rooms.  West and Young would have seen him go."

"I tell you," said Jim Lowes, "the other rooms are locked."

"Unlock them," said Eliphalet Greer, "unlock them, every one."

I wish it would not stay by me still, but I can see it all.  Yes, I can
still see it, that long, narrow hall growing large and growing small as
the lantern swayed back and forth, while our shadows loomed up like
spectres and dwindled back to nothing with each swing of the light, and
Eliphalet Greer, who was black as any shadow but who never changed.  As
each door opened he darted in with his lantern as though the secret of
life lay just inside.  As each door opened, I could almost feel his
excitement mounting like a wave, and the sound of our footsteps rose
and fell in our hearing as though they were part of some invisible sea,
and I was following, not through any will of mine, but because I was in
some current beyond myself.

There were eight rooms in all.  We entered them every one.  They were
so much alike that they might have been the same rooms, and each was
empty, stark and empty.

Eliphalet Greer strode back into the hall.  His mouth had fallen open.
His eyes were glazed and blank with incredulity.  He was hurrying
toward the stairs that led to the inn kitchen.  As I followed him, I
heard him catch his breath.  He stumbled down the stairs.  He strode
across the kitchen and placed his lantern on the table.  He was
curiously changed.  I thought he would be angry.  I thought he would be
restless and apprehensive.  If Mr. Parton was not in the Anchor House,
he could not be far away.  I wondered why he waited if Mr. Parton was
not there.  Even in the yellow light of the candles his face was gray.
It was like the face of a man who has passed through a spasm of some
disease, as wan as though it had been touched by the fingers of death.
But it was calm, calm as I had never seen it.  His eyes were wide and
incredulous, and his voice was incredulous as he spoke.

"He's gone."  He said it very softly, more gently than I ever guessed
he could speak.  "He's gone.  I don't have to send him there.  He's
gone."

He said it like some prayer, some prayer of thanksgiving.

"He ain't gone far," Jim Lowes objected.

But he did not seem to hear.

"He's gone," he said.  "Gone like a watch in the night.  I'll never
have to send him there--never now."

Had he halted in the road at last, the road he had trod so long?  Had
the burden grown too heavy?  Had he finally set it down?

"Maybe," said Jim Lowes suggestively, "I ain't saying, but mebbe I
could help you find him."

Had the fire within him died at last, never to burn again?  I thought
it had at first, and then I understood.  He had heard Jim Lowes the
second time.  He was pointing toward the stairs.

"What difference does it make," he said, "as long as he isn't there?
What difference does it make?  I've done enough tonight.  He's gone.
Thank God--he's gone!"

He opened the kitchen door.  He was out in the night.

"Murdock," he was saying, "he's gone.  Thank God--he's gone!"

Jim Lowes was staring after him and whistling softly.

"I wouldn't believe it," he said.  "Not if you'd told me, I wouldn't
believe it.  He didn't want to do it.  He didn't want to at all."




XX

But I was beyond thinking of Eliphalet Greer.  The sins that bowed his
head meant nothing; I had no curiosity for any emotion which shook him,
now that he was gone, now that I felt the damp night air through the
open door.  My own thoughts were all about me.  I was alone again with
that part of myself which sits in judgment, alone as we always are
whether we are in the city street or on the sea.  Nothing beyond myself
had any meaning, except the thing I had almost done.

It was strange how it had changed now that it lay behind me.  Its
wickedness was still growing within me.  It was taking root in my
being.  It was filling me with such a sickness that it seemed like an
act accomplished.  I must have looked as wild and as strange as
Eliphalet Greer.  I saw that Jim Lowes was startled, and he was used to
curious sights.  I heard myself breathing deeply, almost as a swimmer
might who is struggling against a current, and then I was saying
Eliphalet Greer's last words just as he had said them.

"Thank God--thank God he's gone!"

But whether I was giving thanks for Eliphalet Greer's or for Richard
Parton's absence, I was never sure.

Jim Lowes had helped me on with my coat, and, hardly giving a thought
to what I was doing, I picked up a candle and started for the stairs.
Jim Lowes never spoke.  As I passed through the kitchen, however, he
moved toward me, as though to urge me to stay, but he stopped almost as
soon as he had started, and stood looking at me as I began to climb the
stairs.  He made very little effort, but I like to think he tried to
make me stop.  I heard him call me once when I was halfway up, or I
thought I heard him call me, but I did not reply.  Just then the bells
outside began striking at the hour.  I think it was three they were
striking, but I am not sure, for the bells in the different church
towers began together, and I did not bother to distinguish one from the
other.  Nevertheless it did me good to hear them, for it gave me a
sense of time and space.  I have said that night is always a fantastic
memory, but I gained a sense of reality from those bells transient but
strong.  It was the first time that I fully realized that Richard
Parton had gone.  When I remember the excitement I was laboring under,
it does not seem so strange that it took me a minute to be filled with
the knowledge.  I was almost at my door when I was struck with the
certainty of it, and it made me pause in the passage.  I had never
known how Eliphalet Greer had twisted and turned me until then.  As I
opened the door of my room, I was still dazed by the relief that had
come over me, but as I opened the door the bells had stopped ringing
and everything was very quiet.

At first I was not surprised at what I saw.  It was like a part of the
night again.  As I recall it, it is still like another fancy taking
shape, another vision on the border line between sleep and waking.  I
only looked ahead of me and stood quite still.  My room was just as I
had seen it a few minutes back when Jim Lowes and Eliphalet Greer and I
had entered it.  The bare yellow walls were the same.  The bed was
disordered.  I could see the marks of mud that my boots had made when I
last lay upon it.  I looked away.  I looked away on purpose, and then
back at the bed again.  I had thought it would be changed, but it was
not.  It gave me a curious feeling that my mind and not my body was
there.  I had no consciousness of holding the candle or of drawing my
breath.  Everything within me was centered on what I saw.

Sitting on the bed with his feet crossed in front of him, and leaning
slightly back, was Richard Parton.  He was there in the life.  He was
not a part of my imagination.  I could see his blue coat move as he
breathed, and his eyes shift as he stared me up and down.  He reminded
me of the time I had first seen him.  He had the same appearance of
lightness and wiry muscular grace.  He was sitting on the bed and
looking up at me, but he did not move when he saw me, as an ordinary
man would move.  He must have known what had happened, but he did not
move.

If he had done so, it would have made me much easier.  His quietness
startled me more than the unexpectedness of seeing him.  Richard Parton
was a man, like all the rest of us, but he still seems something more.
When I saw him then his stillness made him as fantastic and visionary
as some shape that troubles conscience.  He had a confidence and
certainty that made him like a part of destiny.  I could have only
stood looking at him for a second, but it still seems a long time.  At
first I stood without any sensation, but suddenly I became horribly
afraid.  I can never analyze my fear.  It was more than Richard Parton
I was afraid of.  I wanted to cry out, but I did not dare, and I did
not dare be still.

He must have seen what was passing through me, for he smiled faintly,
but he did not move, not so much as to unclasp his hands, which were
folded across his knee.

"Don't," he said, "don't be a damned fool."

And then my terror came into my voice.

"Jim!" I shouted suddenly.  "Jim Lowes!"

But I could not keep my eyes from him even when I called, and he did
not move or try to interrupt me.

"So you are a damned fool," he said.  "The world hasn't changed since
I've been away.  People are still damned fools, especially when you
tell them not to be."

I was going to call again, but I stopped with the words half formed.
Richard Parton had twisted himself to his feet.  He was wonderfully
quick.

"Be still," he said.  "He knows I'm here.  I've paid him enough to keep
my neck safe.  Be still, and set down that candle.  Ah ... don't move
your hand like that!  You're not good enough to joke with me."

I stopped.  His voice was even and modulated without a trace of
excitement, but it was not his voice that made me stop.

"Ah," said Richard Parton, "that is better.  It's easier to do things
in an orderly way, but I don't much care how I do them.  Mind that--I
don't much care."

I could not look away from him, but I had no desire to call.  Richard
Parton was balancing a pistol in the palm of his hand.  He smiled, but
his muscles were tense as springs.

"Set down the candle," he said.  "And don't try to put it out.  It's my
lucky night tonight, and I can see in the dark.  There, that's better
now, and there's a chair over by the window."

He bowed and pointed toward it.

"I'm sure," he said, "you're tired of standing."

And then I found my voice.

"How did you get here?" I asked him.  "You weren't up here before."

His voice was as smooth as a gentleman's at tea, but there was nothing
easy in his look.  His eyes were blue and hard as a winter sky.

"No," he said, "I wasn't here.  I still have some respect for my body.
I still like to see the world moving, and it's a long time since I've
seen it.  I'm not likely to lie asleep when I've been watched all day.
I remember what he's like.  It was like old times to hear him storming
through the hall and groaning in the kitchen.  Yes, it was always that,
always storming and groaning."

"Where were you," I asked him, "if you heard him downstairs?"

"Where I could hear the fun," said Richard Parton, and he made a
gesture with the pistol, and all that Eliphalet Greer had said about
him came back to me.

"I'm an old dog," he said.  "I know what to do.  It's been a long
while, but I can still look out for myself.  I've made 'em jump in the
good old days, and I'll make 'em jump again."

I never knew what he referred to, but I had no doubt that he could.  He
was as different from Eliphalet Greer as I could well imagine, and yet
they had a curious similarity.  They both seemed consumed by the same
thing, an ungovernable restlessness.  It made Richard Parton's eyes
snap, and made him take little steps backward and forward.  It was
blazing out in his speech as it had in Eliphalet Greer's.

"Blast me!" he exclaimed, "but it's good to be alive again.  It's good
to hear the wood cracking, even if it's been smashed by bungling fools.
Damn me, if it isn't good to feel a thing like this in my hands.  I've
a good mind to hear it crack and smell the smoke again."

It was a pocket pistol he was holding, very nicely made and balanced.
He moved the fingers of his left hand softly over the barrel as he
spoke and the pupils of his eyes grew wider.

"Yes," he said, "I came near killing him to-night."

I was sitting in the straight-backed wooden chair, but I had my courage
with me again, now that he was talking.

"Well," I asked, "what are you going to do?  Are you proposing to kill
me, now that you've missed him?"

"Do you think," said Richard Parton, "if I had cared for that, I'd have
bribed Jim Lowes to keep me safe?"

He stopped and rubbed the pistol barrel.

"He was always a clever man," he said.  "I knew Jim Lowes could take
two bribes at once.  I paid him to give me the key to the main
building.  That was all.  When you came upstairs, I opened the door at
the end of the ell, and walked into the front passage.  You never
looked there.  You only tried the passage door.  I had locked it from
the other side.  Do you think I'd have paid for a safe way out if I had
wanted to shoot?  No, no, I don't want to see it finished by a snap
shot in the dark.  I won't kill you this time.  I knew your father well
enough for that."

He paused again, but I could only sit and watch him without speaking.
Had he been on that island fifteen years?  Did he know I had been there
too?

"Yes," Richard Parton was saying, "money is a wonderful thing when put
into circulation.  He made a mistake to leave me money, all good,
negotiable money.  It was a long time before I could spend it, but I'm
spending it now.  I've paid Jim Lowes twice what Eliphalet paid him.  I
paid the skipper to run me in last night enough to keep him in liquor
all his life.  The whaling captain who sighted my shirt on a palm tree
has enough to buy a house and farm, and they're not the only ones I've
paid.  Yes, Eliphalet made a mistake to leave me my prize money.  He
should have thought what money could do when there's a will behind it."

He was poisoned with restlessness, and he could not be still for long.
He had been standing, but now he sat back on my bed.  He had taken a
black cheroot such as they smoke in Havana from the breast pocket of
his coat.  Still watching me, he placed it between his lips and bit off
the end.

It was incongruous.  It was the only homely thing I ever saw him do,
the only thing that hinted at enjoyment of tranquillity and peace.  Yet
even when he reached out for the candle and lighted his cigar, he was
not like other men I knew.  He is always a part of that evening, light,
inhuman and fay.  There is so much I can never know, so much I can only
guess.

He was sitting on my bed.  He had stopped talking, and was tapping the
floor with his toe, and I could see him peering at me through the blue
cigar smoke.

"You didn't," I suggested, "come here to smoke a cigar!"

"No," he said, "not entirely for that."

My nerves were badly strung.  I was growing frightened again, although
there was no reason.

"Then what are you here for?" I asked.

Richard Parton seemed in no hurry to tell.  He flicked the ash off his
cigar and what he said reminded me of another speech I had heard not
long before.

"What do you know of why a man like me does anything?  You'll never
understand.  I'm damned if I know why I came myself, except that you're
your father's son."

I remembered what Jim Lowes had told me.  Parton had asked for my
father that morning.

"Oh, yes," he said.  "I used to know him.  We've often sat playing
cards before my luck got twisted.  Yes, I know what you think.  I've
often told him to be more careful of the company he kept, but he was
like you--he was a damned fool too."

"Mr. Parton----" I began.

"Sit down," said Mr. Parton wearily.  "Lord knows why I don't kill you.
If you've got a temper like his, it would save a lot of trouble.
Wouldn't he blow up if he could see you now, a man who sat in the
General Court, a man who was a friend of the President?  What would he
do if he knew his son--his son--was starting the way I started--his son
taking money like a pirate to do Eliphalet's dirty work?  Why didn't
you come to me?  I'd have paid you more."

I had rather, much rather, he had struck me then.  I was going out in
the tide again.  Everything I had done was behind me and around me, and
I seemed to be moving before it.

"So you're a slaver, are you?" said Mr. Parton.  "Fancy that--George
Jervaile's son in the nigger trade!  Why, if he could have guessed it,
he'd have shot you when he shot himself."

Before I knew what I was doing I was out of my chair.

"Mr. Parton," I began, "before God, Mr. Parton----"

And he was standing before me with his hand raised in a deprecating way.

"Good Lord," he said, "don't think I'm reproving you!  Why, I admire
you for it.  I'd have done it myself if there was enough in it!  Surely
you can't think I have any hard feelings!"

And he tapped his forehead sympathetically.

"I know the way you feel," he said.  "I know how it keeps burning in
you.  It's burning in me still.  When once you're going, you must keep
going on, if only to forget where you're going----"

A curious glitter had come into Mr. Parton's eyes and his face had
grown redder.

"Oh, yes, I understand.  If I had it all to do again, I'd play it just
the same.  I'd go right back with old Eliphalet again, damn his eyes,
and we'd do it all together.  He knew the way it felt when he wasn't
saying his prayers."

He paused, moved uneasily and tapped at his cigar.

"I wonder what's the matter with me?" he said suddenly.  "I didn't come
here to tell you this.  It must be thinking of Eliphalet that does it,
but it's a long time since I've had anyone to talk to who might know
what was what.  It was a week before I got my voice after they took me
on that whaler.  Lazarus must have known how it felt to talk again."

Now that he spoke the name, I knew why I was afraid, and why he seemed
unreal.  He was like Lazarus.  He alone knew what lay behind him in
those years when he stared at the sky and the horizon rim.  No one
could ever share his knowledge, for the vacancy of it must have been
almost as deep as death--the days of self, the years of self, which had
made his voice fade out like a candle in the wind.

"And when you see a friend," he said, "it's queer how it pulls at you.
I almost forgot everything when I saw old Eliphalet again."

And then I spoke in spite of myself, urged by an interest which was not
my own.

"You call him your friend," I exclaimed, "after you tried to kill him!"

Richard Parton sighed and blew a cloud of smoke between his lips.

"Of course," he said, "you wouldn't understand.  What do you know about
friendship?  But I'll stop.  I came to do you a kindness, not to talk
philosophy."

"A kindness?" I echoed.

"Yes, a kindness."  His voice had not risen, but his words were slower
and more distinct.  "I've come to tell you to leave Eliphalet and me
alone.  Keep out of it, Jervaile."

I felt a deep relief, for I had expected more than that.  To keep out
of it was all I wished.  I was about to tell him so, to tell him
everything, when he spoke again, and stopped me.

"You've lived on the docks.  Did you ever hear them tell the stories of
the black ghosts, the earth-bound ghosts, that aren't allowed to go
because there's something they've left undone?  That's why I'm here.
I'd have been dead long ago if there wasn't something left I had to do,
but you don't have to do it.  It's no affair of yours.  You don't have
to pay, because it's his time."

"Mr. Parton," I said, "I swear I'm not guilty of anything I----"

"Rubbish!" snapped Mr. Parton.  "What's the use in saying that when
you've been sailing out with Murdock?  All I say is keep away from
Eliphalet Greer, if you value your neck.  He's done for.  If there's a
hangman's noose inside fifty miles of here, his head's as good as in
it.  The ship's as good as in the harbor.  The old man's good as sunk,
and I'm not going to have you run and tell him."

"A ship?" I asked.  "What ship?"

Richard Parton's face twisted as though the sun was in his eyes.

"Never mind what ship," he said.  "You'll find out soon enough."

I knew what he wanted at last.  He was afraid I would go to Eliphalet
Greer, and he was there to stop me.  The sight of him, the nervous
twitching of his lips, the slight unconscious motions of his hands
filled me with his own restiveness.  I found myself wishing he would
go.  He was becoming like a thought one tries to dismiss and which
grows more vivid from the trying.

"Yes," he was saying, "you'll know soon enough.  Gad!  How your father
would be clawing at his tomb if he knew what you'd done tonight!"

"Confound you!" I burst out.  "Will you leave my father out of it?  If
that's all you've got to say, why don't you go?  Leave my father out of
it and go."

"And let you trot off to Eliphalet Greer and tell him what I've said?"
laughed Mr. Parton.  "I'm not ready yet for a knife in my back.  Before
I go, I'll tell you something that'll make you stand by and let me
finish him--that'll make you beg me to do it."

"But I'm no friend of his----" I began.

"That's a likely yarn," sneered Mr. Parton.  "Sit down in that chair
and listen."

"Then leave my father out of it," I said.

"Ah!" said Richard Parton, "so his name means something to you still.
After everything, you call yourself his son."

"Will you----" I began.  Richard Parton snatched up his pistol.

"Take your hand away from your pocket," he said.  "Why do you see red
when you hear me speak?  I'm not the man to kill.  Try your hand on
Eliphalet Greer if you call yourself George Jervaile's son."

I was still on my feet.  We both were facing each other.

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to control my voice.

Richard Parton looked at me curiously.  He did not tell me to sit down
again.

"I mean," he said, "you're the hired servant of the man who as good as
killed your father.  Do you understand me now?"

For a moment the room was still as still, and the air was lifeless and
leaden.  I seemed to be in a hiatus of time, midway between fact and
fact.  His words seemed as loud in the passing seconds as they had been
at the start.  Yet somehow they were beyond my grasp.

"So that hits you, does it?" asked Richard Parton.  "I thought it would
throw you in the wind."

"How do you know?" I asked.

I thought the hardness went out of his face.  It was almost kindly for
a moment and his voice itself was different.

"Because I know Eliphalet Greer," he said.  "I guess because it takes a
thief to know him."

"Will you answer me?" I asked more loudly.  "Will you tell me how you
know?"

"He's always wanted your father's wharf," said Richard Parton, "ever
since he first put out to sea.  He told me he'd get his fingers on it."

I wanted him to be wrong.  There was something terrifying in the
possibility that he might be right.  I was caught in the tide again.
It was sweeping me out of myself, but I still struggled against it.

"He came by it honestly," I said.  "If he didn't, do you think I'd have
stood still!  My father had friends.  Do you think they wouldn't have
told me?  He lent my father money, but that had nothing to do----"

I stopped with the sentence half finished.  It had happened long ago,
but it was coming back--stray words and faces, the muffled sounds in
the quiet rooms...

"Good God!" I exclaimed.  "He couldn't--not here----"

"Couldn't he?"  Richard Parton's voice interrupted me.  "Couldn't he?
Why should anyone have told you, when it was better you shouldn't know?
You have no legal redress.  Go and ask your father's friends.  Ask them
if Greer didn't hold all your father's notes.  Ask 'em why he held
them."

I reached my hand toward the wall behind me, but I did not answer.
Richard Parton was speaking on, and his voice seemed to strike upon me
like a blow from his hand.

"Oh, yes," he was saying, "it was honest enough, but I wonder if you'll
call it honest?  That's what I want to know."

I felt a hundred memories stirring in me that I had striven to put
away.  I shall not tell them here, for they have nothing to do with
what I am setting down.  I could see our house and the garden.  The
veil that we all strive to draw across the things which give us pain
was going, going like the mist from the sea as Richard Parton spoke.

"Every one knows how he lost his money," I said.  "He lost it buying
land."

"And who did he buy the land of?"  Richard Parton's voice made me
start.  "Who sold it to him the way a gold brick's sold to a farmer at
a fair?"

"He bought it from agents," I said.

"Yes," said Richard Parton, "and who helped George Jervaile buy it?
Who advised him?  Has anyone told you that?  Who loaned him ready money
to buy more land when the price was going down?  Do you suppose your
father would do that without advice?  Who got into his confidence and
urged him to buy and buy--yes, urged him to ruin himself?  You know who
came to see your father most, if you were living in the house."

"You were never there," I cried.  "How do you know all this?"

"No man knows," admitted Richard Parton mildly.  "No man knows for
sure, and no one here dares make a guess aloud, but ask Jim Lowes if
you don't believe me.  Ask Deacon Green who he thinks brought down
George Jervaile.  Ask the _Record_ office what they think.  Ask the
pastor of his church.  They'll tell you what Jim Lowes told me this
morning, if they dare to tell at all."

"Then why didn't he tell me before?" I demanded hotly.

My temper never stayed down for long.  It was stirring inside me.  It
was shaking my voice as a gust of wind shakes a sail.

"Because he was afraid of Greer like all the rest of them," said
Richard Parton.  "But he isn't afraid now.  Ask him, and he'll tell
you."

He was more than a man that night.  He was a part of the inevitable
balance of things as he stood there in his spotted coat.  As I looked
at him, I knew he was right.  I wondered that I had not known it long
ago.  I would have known, if I had known Eliphalet Greer.  But that
others knew it was what hurt me most, that others knew it and had let
me take his pay.

"I told you I was fond of your father," Richard Parton was saying.
"Are you going to be a dupe like him?"

"Don't!" I said.  "You've told me enough.  There's no use going on."

I moved my hand from the wall behind me, for suddenly I felt quite able
to stand alone.

"Are you going to let him play the same game with you he played with
George Jervaile?" demanded Richard Parton as though he had not heard.
"That's what I want to know.  Are you going to let me finish him, or
are you going to stay by him until you're finished too, because of an
old thief's promise and because of a pretty face?"

I should have known it was coming.  I should have been ready, but
instead my own face grew red.  Richard Parton was grinning at me and
pulling at his coat.

"Yes, a pretty face.  What makes you color up over a little affair like
that?  Eliphalet still knows how to play the game.  He knew you
wouldn't be up to snuff unless there was a woman.  Oh, I saw you up on
West Hill!  I suppose you still think it's romance.  Can't you see he's
limed you like a bird on a twig, and leaded your eyes like an Italian
goldfinch?  Do you think she ran after you because she loved you?  Why
can't a man ever keep his senses when he sees a petticoat?  Greer sent
her there, you fool!  _He sent her so he could send you here tonight!_"

For a second I stared at him vacantly.  My mind, my body, both seemed
still as death, unable to act or resolve.  I could hear the wind in the
trees outside, and the branches shaking with a noise that was like
faint laughter, and then there was a roaring in my ears.  It was my own
voice sinking back inside myself.

"You lie!"

The floor swayed beneath me like a cabin floor, and then I had a
strange feeling that everything was falling.  Everything I had hoped
for was falling, crushing me with its weight.  Each minute I had lived
seemed falling upon me like a house of rotted timbers, and then my head
cleared and I saw the room again.  Yet it was changed, as subtly
altered to my sight as a familiar place after a journey's end.  Richard
Parton had moved back to the wall, and was watching me intently with
his head tilted to one side.

"Back your sails," he said.  "Don't run in too close."

"You lie!" I repeated.

But he still was speaking.

"Why should she care for you?" he asked.  "Use your brains, Jervaile.
Forget she's damned good looking."

He must have seen what was in me, but he still went on.  If he had
stopped--I wonder what would have happened if he had stopped?

"Stand still and think," he said.  "Don't let your temper go.  Will you
let a woman draw you any further?  Come, come.  You know too much of
the world for that.  Who is she?  Have you ever thought?  She's not
Murdock's daughter.  He's never had a child.  It's Greer who's paying
for her keep.  The whole town's been talking of it, if you only had
sense to listen.  There're some things he can't keep still.  He's paid
for her schooling.  He's paying to teach her music.  He's paying for
her clothes.  Is he doing that for charity?  Is he dressing her like a
lady to please his sthetic taste.  Come, come, Jervaile, why does any
old man do that for a girl of nineteen?"

For a moment I did not speak, but I was cool again, quite cool.  I even
felt a curious sort of strength which made me feel quite steady.

"That's better," said Mr. Parton.  "Now you're taking it right.  I knew
you'd understand."

And before I could answer, he turned to the door and raised his voice.

"Jim," he called.

Jim Lowes must have been listening in the hall, for he opened the door
at once.

"God help me, Charles," he said, "it's so.  It's all the Bible truth
that he's been telling.  Now don't look so.  There's other men been
caught before.  Look at Antony and Julius Csar.  What you need's a
drink, and you'll have it on the house."

Richard Parton sighed and put his pistol in his pocket.

"Never you mind, my boy," he said.  "I'll finish him up for fair.  Just
sit here quiet.  That's all I ask.  I know you'll leave him, now that
you know it all."

I was not myself.  My reason had been thrust somewhere out of reach,
but I did not mind.  I was looking at Richard Parton, but it was not
his face I saw.  It had changed.  The sunburn had gone off it.  It was
longer and more wrinkled.  It was not Richard Parton's face.  It was
Eliphalet Greer's.  I remembered what he had said in Murdock's house.
I remembered what she had said.  A half a dozen incidents were passing
before me in a mocking line, clear in the light of my anger, so clear
that I forgot the rest.

"Now will you keep away from him?" asked Richard Parton.

"No," I said, "I won't," and my voice sounded very loud.

"Damnation!" cried Mr. Parton.  "Damn me if he isn't mad!"

I laughed, and my laughter rang out strangely, but I did not mind.

"I won't leave him," I said, "till I've finished with him."

It was the only time I ever saw Richard Parton surprised.  His face
changed color, and suddenly he became very grave.

"Lord!" he said very softly, "I hadn't thought of that," and he looked
away from me and drew his hand across his forehead.  "Would you mind
telling me what you propose doing?"

My answer when I spoke it did not seem strange, nor was I startled by
my speech when I heard it.

"I intend to kill him," I said.

"To kill old Eliphalet?" Richard Parton looked me slowly up and down,
and continued very quietly, "Now who'd have thought the cat would jump
like that?  But it has its points....  Yes, it has its points."

And suddenly he made a deprecating gesture like a very courteous
gentleman.

"You're sure?" he asked.  "You really want to kill him?  I assure you
there's no need for it, but if you insist----  Be quiet, Lowes.  Let
Mr. Jervaile speak."

I was out in the tide by then, far out in the middle of the stream.
Suddenly I was caught in my own self pity and my wretchedness choked my
voice.

"What else," I asked, "is there left for me to do?"

Richard Parton nodded politely and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, well," he said resignedly.  "It will mean I've been to a lot of
trouble for nothing ... but still it has its points."

And then his face brightened.

"Gad!" he exclaimed.  "It's like the ending of a play.  First he sends
you to kill me, and now I send you to kill him.  If you're really set
on it, I don't know as I shall mind.  Here--you're not as impulsive as
that!  You're not going already?"

I had shouldered my way by Jim Lowes and out into the hall, and then I
felt Mr. Parton's hand on my arm.

"Perhaps it's better so," he said.  "You won't mind my coming too?
Surely you won't refuse me that.  If one of us should miss, there'll
always be the other."




XXI

I know there is no past.  No matter how the leaves are turned, I know
the book is never closed.  As long as I think and am, I know there is
no past; as long as there comes no blackness that makes me cease to
think and cease to be.  The past is no memory.  I know better, far
better than that.  I know it, because the past is in me now.  It moves
and turns.  It's still as living as nerve and flesh.  It is the present
and the future too.  It is what I am, whatever I may be.  I know it,
and I'm not the only one who knows.  Ask the others in that restless,
wide-eyed army who have touched the brand of Cain.

Now that I'm nearly finished and I try to tell the end, I know that
nothing has gone, no, nothing.  Once in the angle of a wall that
surrounded a Roman garden a thousand years ago, I saw finger-marks in
the mortar, made when the wall first stood out against the sun.  The
hand had gone, but it is different with living things.  Those unseen
hands that plucked us up, and grasped us like drunkards in a tavern,
and turned us out into the darkness of ourselves, those hands are still
upon us.  Ask those others who have drunk the cup whether the draught
passed with another morning....  No, the fumes of hate are in us still,
and the hands that seized us when they mounted to our brains still
close upon us.  The invisible Publican and the light-fingered waiters
at the bar have never left our elbows.

I have come to it now, the Thing that will never go.  I have come to
it, and I feel their hands.  They are setting me atremble, pulling at
me in their old perverted way, setting my eyes to staring, and pulling
at the corners of my mouth.  The past is not the past.  It is the
present still.  I am staring stupidly.  I still see Eliphalet's face,
and only that sly Publican knows why.  He alone knows why he twists the
soul of every man who steps inside his door.

"Are you drunk?  What makes you hurry so?"

It's Richard Parton's voice, so plain he might have spoken this minute
instead of forty years ago.  And there is the street, black and
waiting, and the stark shadows of the elm trees and the breath of the
tide and the roar on the outer beach.  And I am walking fast, very
fast.  I can hear the ring of my sea-boots on the bricks in a sharp,
stacatto time, yet dim and unobtrusive like a constantly recurring
noise in a medley of other sounds....  And my mind and body seem very
far apart, each lost to the other in the night.

"What makes you hurry so?"

I hear his voice again....  But I hardly saw the street or felt his
hand upon my arm....

It is strange that I never knew I had loved her so until I had learned
to hate.  My memory was very clear.  She was with me then, now sad, now
smiling and bright as sunshine in the black.  Her voice was in the
heartbeat that echoed in my throat, and whispering in the blood surge
that was singing in my ears--clear, so clear that it made my heart beat
faster, until my mind went black as the night itself and stormy as the
water....  And it would pass, just as it passes now ...  and there she
would be again, but why should I go on?  It is not what I have set
myself to tell.  I have said it is not my story.  What I have to tell
is something stranger than that, or so it seems to me....  And still it
all is black.  The things that passed my mind and sight are curiously
unrelated.  They remind me of flames that spring from the embers of a
fireplace in a darkened room, lighting first one corner and then
another.  If I had only watched him then, I wonder what I should have
seen?  I could tell it much more clearly if I had only watched, but I
only have a glimpse of him.  I see it still.

We were passing a street lamp.  Its light was flung out into the
darkness in a hazy yellow sphere, like the light of a lonely world.
The light was on his face and mine, and I think that he was changed.
It may have been a trick my eyes played me, but the lines of his face
seemed to waver like some image beneath the water, as though there was
some new element between us, different from the air.  His eyes seemed
curiously wide and innocent, like a child's eyes.

"Perhaps," he was saying, "it's better so."

And then it all grows black again, but still she is with me, a part of
my very mind.  My memory of it and my memory of her are confused and
indivisible, and with it I hear my footsteps going on.  He is there
also in that aching maze of thought, for I can pick out his voice again
before we reached the doorway.  But perhaps it was not his voice.  I
wish I could be sure, for I might use it as the answer of a riddle.  It
was low, like the noises of the night.  Perhaps it was not his voice
but my own thoughts speaking, it lodged so readily in my mind.

"He'll be finished in a minute....  He'll be gone ... and then there'll
be nothing left ... nothing left when once he's gone."

I wonder if I could have heard him, and as I wonder his face comes
back, as I saw it beneath the light with his eyes wide and puzzled, and
softened by a strange incomprehension.  But how can I be sure he spoke,
when he is only a wild shape in the end of that black night?  Yet there
is still the voice faint as the dying wind and distant as the harbor
bell....

"There'll be nothing left when once he's gone..."

It's strange how clear everything becomes when once I reach the door.
My drunkenness must have left me then.  There was a light in the street
in front of it, and the wick was badly trimmed, so that the rays
flickered over the columns of the portico and on the fan shutters
above.  The house was clear even without the light.  It was darker than
the sky, for the sky was growing gray.  The night must have gone weary
half an hour before.  Though I never thought of the dawn, I felt it.
Its chill was biting through my coat.  It was coming with the falling
of the wind, and I could see its faint gray on the river where the
ships' lights already were growing dull....

I never thought of knocking.  When we reached the top of the broad
stone steps, I lifted the latch.  There was no need to knock.  The door
gave, and the hinges hardly creaked.  Eliphalet Greer had forgotten to
place the bar or to draw a single bolt.  He must have been in a strange
way to have forgotten that, but it seemed very natural then.  I was
about to open the door further when Richard Parton pushed past me and
peered inside.  For a moment his head was half inside the hall, and
then he turned and drew me a step back.  His fingers closed on my arm
so sharply that I caught my breath, and his face was so close to mine
that I could see the wrinkles move about his eyes.

"He's there!" he whispered, and his hand shook on my arm.  "God help us
both, he's there!  There's a light at the end of the hall, the very
end.  The door's closed, but I can see it on the floor."

He seemed strangely moved and shaken, but I never gave it a thought,
for my blood was running hot.

"Then let me go," I whispered back.  "I knew I'd find him here."

I was not sure, but I thought his grasp grew tighter.

"You'll give him a chance?" he whispered.  "You won't just snuff him
out?"

If I had only looked, I wonder what I should have seen?  If I had only
stopped to wonder why he asked me that----  But instead I snatched his
hand away.  Those other hands were on me, and the door was like a
gateway to desire.

"Why not?" I whispered back.  "What difference does it make?"

My hand was in the pocket of my coat.  It had closed over the pistol,
the pistol I had taken to the island.  I could feel the hammer and the
lock.  My fingers moved over it.  I could feel the cap in place, but
Richard Parton was not watching me.  He was looking out toward the
river in that same puzzled way, looking vaguely out at nothing.

"God knows," he said, "I don't know anything I thought I knew."

I can see him standing there, and it puzzles me, as it always has, for
I find myself faced with something I can only tell and not explain.  I
am sorry it is so, for it is the strangest thing of all.  It is
stranger than Prudence weeping when they carried Murdock out into the
rain.  It is stranger than Eliphalet Greer hurrying out into the night
away from the thing he had tried to do.  Was Richard Parton also weary
of the road?  If I had only known him better, perhaps it might be
clear--if only he was something more than a figure who travelled by my
side for an hour or so before he stepped back among the shadows and out
of my path forever.  But I can only tell it as it happened.  I can only
guess his meaning when he said he knew nothing that he thought he knew.

He was looking out toward the river.  He seemed to have forgotten we
were on Eliphalet Greer's doorstep, or why we had come, but I had not.

"Are you coming in?" I asked.

He turned toward me, and his eyes met mine.  They still were vague.
Though he spoke, he hardly appeared to notice me, and he made no answer
to my question.

"Good Lord!" he whispered in an awestruck tone.  "Everything that's
kept me up is going.  Think of it!  Once you go inside, there'll be
nothing left at all."

To look at him one would have thought he had made a great discovery.
He had reached some hill-top of his own and was surveying some vista of
thought which had been closed out from his sight....  Yes, what I am
telling is the strangest thing of all.  Just as I was about to answer
him his hand fell on my arm.

"Don't," he whispered, "don't go in just yet.  I know I'm a fool to say
it.  I know you won't understand, but everything will go, once you step
inside."

Was he trying to hold me back?  For a moment I was so astonished that I
stood stock still.  I could not believe it, and it still seems hard to
understand that he was weakening right before my eyes.  Surely he could
not be feeling pity or remorse.  Surely he must have wished for the
thing I was about to do.  Yet there he was standing on Eliphalet
Greer's doorstep and pulling at my arm.

"Don't," he whispered again, "don't go in just yet."

I did not ask him why.  I did not care to know.  My temper was surging
over me and my sense of my own outrage was shutting out my thought and
sight.

"You infernal coward!" I hissed back at him.  "Get out, if you're
afraid."

I caught him squarely then.  I felt him quiver like a tautened rope,
and he snatched his hand away.

"Afraid, you fool?" he whispered fiercely.  "Go in and kill him--and be
damned to you--but don't call me afraid, when I hate him a thousand
times more than you ever can."

There is the strange part of it.  He did hate Eliphalet Greer, and
yet--could anything be stranger?--there he was holding me back.  I said
I could not explain.

"What has he done to you, but hurt your pride?  Has he ever killed you?
Has he ever put you alive into a tomb?  That's what he did to me.
Don't call me afraid, when there's nothing left inside me!  Go in--I
won't stop you now."

"Are you coming?" I asked.

He did not answer me.  He was staring at the gray shapes on the river,
and pulling at his coat, when I turned my back upon him and pushed open
Eliphalet Greer's front door.  If I had been myself, I should not have
left him, but I was thinking of other things.  Indeed, it was only
afterwards that I thought of him at all, or remembered what he said,
and only later that what he said seemed strange.

... I stepped into the hallway with a marvelously gentle tread.  I
seemed to be a part of the dark.  There was a certainty within me that
made me like an element in some abstruse calculation.  The darkness
closed about me like hands that pushed me back inside myself, and for a
second I stood staring at the dark.  And then I saw the light that
Richard Parton had seen.  It was the only light in that dark house, a
faint yellow ray creeping beneath the parlor door where feet had worn
the threshold.  And then, before I knew it, I was in front of the door,
and pressing up the latch.  I knew Eliphalet Greer was there.

The parlor lamps were lighted just as I had seen them last.  He had
been sitting at the table.  I heard the scraping of his chair before I
saw him.  When I entered, he was standing with his back to the lamps on
the chimney-piece.  His cloak and hat and cane were flung across a
chair by the wall, and the room was warm from the lamps and the air was
thin and close.  His ledger and a pen and ink were on the table.  He
had been writing, for his quill was on the page where he dropped it,
and a great blot of ink had fallen from the point.

Though my heart was pounding inside me like a piece of loose ballast, I
can remember those little things.  It's strange, but I can even recall
the shape of that blot of ink.  It was still spreading out across the
page, making little arms and rivulets on the rough paper, a little sea
of black among the fine drawn figures.  I could hardly have seen the
room, and yet I might as well be in it now.  Every piece of furniture,
every light and shade seem to have one purpose.  They are like the
parts of an ingeniously composed picture, each in a logical relation to
the other, leading the eye to the central figure there, toward the old
man by the chimney-piece.

His head was thrust forward.  His hair was falling over his forehead.
His coat and waistcoat were unbuttoned, and he was pulling at his
neck-cloth.  He was pale, and though his eyes were wide with
sleeplessness, he was staring at me confusedly, like someone suddenly
awakened.  We stood there with half the room between us, and everything
seemed to stop, while he looked at me with his half-awakened glance.

"So it's you," he said.  "It's only you.  I thought----"

His eyes grew brighter, and his words trailed off to nothing.  He must
have seen.  He must have known at once.  My hand was deep in my pocket.
I saw him glance at it, but he never moved a finger.

"Don't you know better than disturb me to-night?" he demanded suddenly.
"Why are you here?  Why----"

My own voice sounded like a voice in a dream.

"You know why," I said.

He knew.  He started and his head went up, and a sort of understanding
passed between us that was more than words.  He knew, but he gave no
other sign.

"So they've told you," he said.  "I knew you'd find out sometime."

And there we stood with half the room between us, and I knew it could
not end so, and he knew it.

"Is that all you have to say?" I asked.

He was silent for a moment, and then he answered me with a curious
dignity.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "if you know what I think you know, is
there any good of saying more?  Is there any use of saying I am sorry?
You know there's no use.  You would never believe me, and there's
nothing else to say."

"No," I answered.  "There's no use saying that."

There was always something in him I could never understand.  Just as I
finished speaking his whole expression altered.

"Then leave me!" he cried out so loudly that I started.  "In God's name
get out of my sight!  Haven't I enough to bear without your standing
here looking at me with his face?  How can I help what I've done now?
It's a stone around my neck.  It's sending me to hell--isn't that
enough?"

He must have seen it was not enough, for his glance darted down toward
my hand, and he was like himself right to the end.  He only stopped to
catch his breath.  The world was still clinging to his coat-tails.

"So that's the way the wind lies!" he cried.  "Do you think I'll stand
and let you shoot me like a dog, because your father was fool enough to
shoot himself--because he was such a fool that I am in the house you
ought to own?  I'll kill you first! ... Stop--will you stop?  You can't
match your hand with mine!"

As he moved, I also moved by instinct.  As he thrust his hand inside
his coat, my pistol was half out of my pocket.  There was a noise in my
ears like the sea.  My whole life was in that instant.

"I'll try," I said.

I could see his face.  It was reddened and contorted as I knew it in my
dreams.

"Stop!" he was shouting.  "Will you stop before I sin again?"

All my life was in my eyes.  I was quicker, much quicker.  My weapon
was at his breast as his hand flashed out of his coat.  I knew I had
him and he must have known, for I saw his face change.  My hand had
just gone steady.  My eyes were on the barrel.  My whole life ran out
on that straight line of metal and shut the room out of my sight.

I never saw, I only felt what happened.  It came so quickly that I
hardly felt it.  A blow fell on my wrist that sent my arm dropping
downward and made my grasp relax, and then all feeling went out of my
arm and hand, and my weapon clattered on the floor.

It threw me off my balance.  It made me step forward to save myself
from falling, and my motion brought my head around.  Richard Parton was
standing a pace away with Eliphalet's cane in his hand.




XXII

No one spoke.  Eliphalet Greer must have stopped dead just after the
blow had fallen; he was as motionless as the carved columns that stood
on either side of the fireplace.  That blow was like some stroke of
magic, for it cast the madness out of me.  It cast the devils out.
Something, some force of spirit outside of me or in me, something which
held me up and urged me on was broken and was gone.  Without it I felt
very weak.  My knees seemed giving way beneath me.  And I was not the
only one that blow served, or the only one who staggered beneath its
impact.

Richard Parton was speaking, and his voice was quite weary and slow.

"Eliphalet," he said, "you're getting old.  Who'd have thought anyone
could come over you like that?"

Then there was another pause.  There they stood, face to face, though
each seemed only half conscious of the other.  Each of them seemed lost
within himself in thoughts which no one else could share, and both
their faces were set with a sort of wonder, vague and almost stupid.
They had forgotten me.  They had forgotten everything else but each
other.  Some bond of their own making had shut them out from every
other living thing.

Eliphalet Greer still held his pistol half drawn from his coat, but he
had forgotten he was holding it.  I think I could have taken it out of
his hand and he would have never known.  His lips moved, and though no
sound came from them at first, I knew they were framing Richard
Parton's name.

"Richard..." he said at length.  "Richard..."

He spoke the name mechanically, but its sound seemed to give life to
the surprise which had held him silent.

"Whatever made you?"

At first I thought that Richard Parton did not hear, he paused so long
before replying.  Then I saw him shake his head.  That simple question
seemed too much to answer.  A dull weariness had settled over him,
something more than bodily fatigue.

"God knows--I don't know why," he said.  "Unless----"

He stopped and bit his lip.

"Unless I've thought too long," he ended.

But Eliphalet Greer still looked at him with blank incomprehension.

"Richard," he said, "I still don't understand."

And Richard Parton made a strange response, as strange as any I have
ever heard.  It seemed to come from somewhere deep within him, without
his own volition.  It seemed torn from him, though his will rebelled
against it, and it choked his voice.

"You've done too much," he said.  "I've hated you too long to see you
die."

His words sank into the silence of the room, but they are with me
still, just as he spoke them, slurred and shaking with an emotion that
was something more than hate.  Sometimes they seem as bombastic and
crude as the speech of a villain in an ill-starred play.  I can nearly
laugh at them sometimes, for I know they are like a part of a story to
tell when the decanter is on the table.  It is very near to the
ridiculous.  Indeed, it is so near that the line is hardly there which
draws ridicule from pain.

I say I can almost laugh, but it would be hollow laughter.  I should be
laughing at the agony of a soul that knew no rest, and at a pain I
never felt, but still can comprehend.  I can guess the void of
wretchedness that made him speak, for those words always come to me
from a depth of agony and over a distorted path of broken things.

For a while they both were silent, yet I think there was a tacit
understanding.  Perhaps they even recognized the humor that had drawn
them both together.  Wearily, dispassionately Eliphalet Greer stared
before him, like a man who has been moved too much and whom the world
can move no more.

"Yes," he said very gently, "I know what you mean."

It stands now as I saw it.  I can only guess what it was he knew, and
what it was that happened in that bare lamp-lit room, and sometimes I
think its walls know as much of it as I.  For are we not all like
walls, reared and balanced by hands beyond ourselves, and standing in
our own selfishness for some purpose that is more than self, and
limited and blinded by the frame of our own dimensions?  I often think
we are, even in our most enlightened and exalted moments.  Even then we
still trip and run, the humble little servants of our passions, jumping
and jigging like ingenious toys until our passions leave us for a time.

Was that what Eliphalet Greer knew?  When he spoke, was he thinking of
the long, dead years, and the shadows that were preying on his mind,
and the island and the sky and the figure walking, walking on the sand?
There are such things as thoughts that become part of us and as vital
as our lives.  Was it a thought that held them there, I wonder, staring
half-bemused each at the other?  It is strange what I am going to say,
for there is nothing stranger and less tangible than the freaks and
twists of mind that make us move.  It is only there the powers outside
ourselves can touch us, if there are such powers.  I wonder if it could
be that each of those restless, pain-swept men, who had sinned together
so long ago, who had clashed together in their hate--I wonder if it
could be that each had held the other in his mind so long that each had
somehow grown dependent on the other, and their hate had become a part
of themselves and changed to more than hate?

I know I am not clear, for I can hardly make it clear even to myself.
Yet when I think of that meeting and what came afterward, it seems the
answer to many things.

Eliphalet Greer's surprise had left him, and a sort of hopeless
lassitude had come to take its place, a weariness that accepted what
there was and what there would be.

"Yes," he said again, but he hardly seemed conscious that he spoke at
all.  "I know what you mean."

Then I felt his eyes upon me.  They were dark and very tired.  A veil
had come across them like the first trace of ashes on the coals of a
dying fire.  He had not finished speaking.

"Charles," he said, "God help us both!  It's better as it is.  I know
what you're feeling, Charles, but it's nothing to what lies in me, to
all the burned dead things....  You'll know ... You'll know ... Shall
we part in peace, Charles?  It's always better so.  It's what your
father would tell you if he were standing here."

I said that something had gone from me, some hysteria, or folly, or
sense, which had held me up.  I could not look at him.  His face and
his voice filled me with a bitterness of degradation and wretchedness.
He had placed his hand gently on my shoulder, and I could not bear its
touch.

"Don't!" I said hoarsely.  "Don't you see I'd rather be dead?"

My voice broke from my humiliation at my weakness.  I could not go on,
and Richard Parton saved me from it.  He spoke, and his voice had its
old ring.

"You damned old hypocrite!" he snapped.  "Will you be still and leave
him be, or do you want him at you again?  You know it's not the father.
It's the girl--the girl!  Haven't you any decency?  Don't you see he
loves her?"

Eliphalet Greer stepped away from me, and looked toward Richard Parton
with a curious dignity.  I could almost believe he had never known.

"The girl----" he said.  "What girl?"

"Can you never tell the truth?" cried Richard Parton.  "Where's the
good in lying now, when everyone will know everything, yes, everything
when the sun goes up?  What girl?  Have you got a half a dozen of 'em?
The girl you've made Murdock call his daughter.  You can't always be
skulking in the dark.  The shadowy, slender girl with the white hands
and the brown-gold hair that you set after Charles Jervaile.  Your
mistress, you sly-faced, lying sinner--that's the girl I mean!  Who
else do you think would have brought him here tonight?"

Surely it was not acting that made him catch his breath and made him
wince again.

"You mustn't!" Eliphalet Greer cried out as though he was in pain.
"You mustn't think that, Richard!  I swear it isn't so!"

Richard Parton had been holding Eliphalet's cane.  Now he sent it
slamming to the floor.

"Mustn't I?" he sneered.  "Now why the hell mustn't I?  Since when have
you joined the Holy Choir?  It only makes it truer if you say it isn't
so.  What about the white girl at Rio and the brown girl at Singapore
and the yellow one----"

"Don't!" Eliphalet Greer interrupted him.  "I say you mustn't think a
thing like that.  I've done my best for her.  I swear I have.  I----"

"I'll lay ten to one you have!" said Richard Parton bitingly.

"Don't!" cried Eliphalet Greer.  "In God's name, don't!  I've always
given her shelter.  I was going to do more.  She would have had a place
in the world when everything was ready.  Don't you see?  You would
have, if you'd only looked.  She's got your eyes.  She----"

Richard Parton's face must have made him pause.  There was no reason
for him to finish, but he did in a hushed and breathless way.

"She's your daughter, Richard," said Eliphalet Greer.

For a little time Richard Parton stood without replying, staring at
Eliphalet with that same vacant stare.  Eliphalet was silent also, but
I think they understood each other, although I cannot tell what was
passing in their minds.  They both were back somewhere along the path
of years, and their faces were blank and weary.  When Richard Parton
finally spoke, it was in such a toneless way that I knew he had
rehearsed his answer, and had curbed his tongue against any sudden
stumble.

"I believe you," he said.  "You're fool enough for that.  You never had
the strength to keep on as you started."

He paused, and drew his hand across his eyes, but his voice was steady
when he continued.

"You may as well tell me the rest," he said.  "It's hurt me enough when
I've thought of it.  My wife, man--what became of her?  Did you let her
starve?  There was no money but what I left her when we sailed.  Her
family cut her off when we married.  They knew me well enough for that.
What happened?  You couldn't have hurt her."

"No," Eliphalet cleared his throat.  "There are things I've never done.
I swear it, Richard.  I went to her as soon as I landed.  It was the
hardest thing of all."

"Why?" Richard Parton raised his eyebrows.

"Because she believed me," answered Eliphalet harshly.  "She believed
every lie I told her.  I told her you were lost at sea.  I did my best,
Richard--don't think I didn't.  I gave her money.  I told her it was
yours.  She wilted like a flower.  She never cared for life after you
were gone.  I----"

"You fool," Richard Parton's voice broke, "I knew you loved her all the
time, though I bet you never told her so.  Why don't you say you loved
her?"

"Richard," said Eliphalet steadily, "it is more than you ever did."

He stopped and that was all we ever knew.

"Go on," said Richard Parton.  "I'm waiting."

"She died," Eliphalet did not shift his glance, "and I took your
daughter.  She had nowhere else to go.  I would have taken her to my
own house, but don't you understand?  I could not bear to look at her.
It was too much.  It was too hard."

Richard Parton laughed.

"Well," he said, and his voice was no longer steady, "why don't you say
something else?  You always did take the taste out of my mouth.  It's
like you to do it now."

And still Eliphalet Greer did not reply.

"Do you think," demanded Richard Parton, "you can end it by telling me
that?  Do you think I'm grateful for it?  I'd rather see her dead."

Eliphalet Greer moistened his lips.

"I know," he said, in a curiously mechanical way.  "I know."

Somehow I had it in me to be sorry for him then, for his spirit had
gone out of him and he was wearily abject.

"Does she know?" asked Richard Parton.  "Have you told her?"

And Eliphalet Greer said no.

"Then what made you tell me?" Richard Parton asked.

Eliphalet's voice was very low.

"How should I know?" he said.  "Oh, Lord, how should I know?"

I think that he intended to speak further.  I wish he had.  I wish I
had heard either of them speak so again.  If they had only spoken,
there would be so much I might explain.  I might know what it was that
had dulled and tamed them both and what it was that brought them
haltingly together, but I shall never know.  I only had a glimpse of
them when their time was near the ending.  Their story would not stop
for curiosity such as mine.  It was moving then.  All the while it had
been moving.  I had been in the vortex of it, and now I was cast aside,
but their story was moving still.

It was a noise that made Eliphalet Greer stop, a noise of the rattling
of the latch on the front door.  The metal gave a sharp, incisive sound
that made him look up.  It made me turn hastily about, and I saw
Richard Parton turn also.  Then there was a sound of running feet in
the hall.  The parlor door was open, a rectangle of black.  We all must
have seen at once when the black changed.  We all must have started at
the suddenness of it.  But it was as though what we all were thinking
of had become an embodied fact.  There in the lamplight, with her face
flushed and her breath coming fast, was Prudence Murdock.

Sometimes I think it's strange that I never knew.  There was no
doubting the resemblance.  It was clear as day as she stood there
struggling to quiet her breath.  Her forehead was the same as his.  The
arch of her brow was the same, and the way she held her head, and the
airiness of the way she stood.  Her head was fair.  She had on her same
gray cloak.  She was clutching it across her breast with her right
hand.  As she saw us she snatched at the folds convulsively, and gave a
low, frightened cry.

"You're not----" she gasped.  "You're not----"

It was Richard Parton who answered her.  He was standing to my left and
in front of me, so that I could see him clearly.  His shoulders gave a
slight shrug.  I saw him draw a deep breath and clench his hands, but
he gave no other sign that anything had stirred him.

"No, indeed," he said very courteously.  "We're not.  We were.  We may,
but we're not."

Then I heard Eliphalet Greer's voice from somewhere behind me.

"Has something happened to Prudence?" he asked.  "Tell me if it has?
Don't be afraid."

"No," said Richard Parton.  "You mustn't be afraid.  It all
seems--under the circumstances--to be quite in the family.  You mustn't
be afraid."

Perhaps she understood through some intuition of her own, for she
looked at him as he spoke, and continued looking.  Did she know, I
wonder?  If she did, she never asked.  She never spoke of him again.
And though I might have told her, I never did, because I knew it was as
he wished it.  It was for him to speak and he did not.  Was it pride
that kept him silent, or shame, or kindness, I wonder?  Perhaps it was
all three.  I only know he never spoke.  He stood with his fingers
biting at his palms, and I heard him catch his breath again, but that
was all.  Yet I knew he was hurt, for at last he turned away.

"Don't be afraid," he said again, and his raillery had left him.
"There's nothing--nothing will hurt you here."

And that was all he said.  He never addressed her another word.

"Prudence," said Eliphalet Greer, "has something happened?"

I think she had half forgotten why she came, for she looked toward him
in quick confusion.

"Yes," she said.  "There's a ship just outside the harbor, drifting.
He sent me here to tell you....  It's light enough to see....  He said
it's your ship ... and it's drifting ... drifting in."

She stopped and looked about her, pulling aimlessly at her cloak.

"Won't you look?" she cried suddenly.  "I can't tell any more--not
here."

I knew there was something wrong.  It must have been the silence of the
room that told me, for there are varying sorts of silences.  Her voice
had pulled us taut.  I saw Eliphalet Greer grow rigid, and glance
hastily at Richard Parton, and Richard Parton looked at him, not dully,
but with the concentration of a student faced with a rarity of
knowledge.  I knew there was something wrong.  The world outside was
coming to us again through the open door.  We had been halted for a
little while, but now we were moving again in our courses.

"Eliphalet," said Richard Parton, "I'd look if I were you.  Don't you
see--we all want to have you look."

And he nodded toward the closed shutters of a window that faced out to
sea, but Eliphalet still looked at Richard Parton.

"Won't you look?" inquired Richard Parton more loudly.  "Didn't you
hear her tell you?  Your ship is coming in."

Though Eliphalet did not answer, I saw his eyes light up and his lips
draw tight together.

"Yes, Eliphalet," said Richard Parton, and the tension in his voice
relaxed.  As he continued, I could almost believe it was a friend who
spoke.  "Your ship is coming in.  It's out of our hands now."

"Out of our hands?"

Perhaps Eliphalet guessed what was coming upon him.  He moved his own
hand to the chimney-piece, and closed it tight over the white wood.

"Yes," said Richard Parton, "you'll see what I mean."

Eliphalet Greer drew his hand from the chimney-piece and stood very
straight.  "We were near him, but he seemed solitary and drawn away
from us, very far.  In some strange way he had become inanimate, as
motionless as a tree beside the marshes.

"Won't you look?" cried Prudence.  "You can't wait!  You mustn't stand
like this."

Eliphalet Greer moved forward uncertainly, and halted and looked toward
the hall, and again I remember how lonely he seemed.  He was the only
one of us facing the thing outside, and perhaps he craved some sort of
companionship, for he glanced at us all, one after another.

"Where's Murdock?" he asked suddenly.  "Why didn't he come himself?"

"He's down on the wharf," said Prudence.  "He's waiting for you there."

Eliphalet threw back his head.  I remember how his gray hair waved back
as he did so.

"He's not," he said.  "He's coming now."

He had been listening all the while, and I heard the sound, a scuffling
on the stone steps, a slamming of the door.

"Greer!" a voice was shouting.  "Greer!"

There was no mistaking.  It was Captain Murdock.  As he stamped into
the room, he seemed to fill it with his presence, and his voice hurried
from him like the stamping of his feet.

"One of the slave ships--she's off the bar and drifting in.  Her crew
is gone.  The watch on the _Felicity_ saw 'em put off in the boats.  I
tell you--she's drifting in."

Eliphalet took a step toward him.  Something in him that had glowed
fitfully, that I half suspected but only guessed at, gave him an
unnatural vitality.

"You've been drinking," he said.  "Drinking all night.  I smell it on
your breath.  You've got the horrors.  What should a slaver be doing in
here?  Take care how you lie to me!"

"Look out the window," said Richard Parton.  "He's not lying."

But I was the only one who heard him.

"Didn't I see her with my two eyes?" cried Captain Murdock.  "Ask the
girl.  She saw her, and we ain't the only ones.  She's the _Seal_--the
one you sent out orders to three months back--the one you've been
waiting to hear from since she cleared off Guinea.  Mebbe I'm drunk,
but there she is--drifting in with her cargo right aboard.  I could
hear the noise they make.  She's yours, I tell you, and we're not the
only ones who know it.  There's not a man in town who won't remember
Morrill built her.  What'll you do if the papers are aboard?  What are
you standing still for?  Didn't I say she's coming in?  The customs
boat will be going out to her.  They'll be alongside her any time."

Captain Murdock was afraid, and his fear lent him an unnatural
excitement.  He was shifting from one foot to the other, and making
futile little motions with his hands.  I knew if such a ship was there,
it was the end, or very near the end.  Eliphalet Greer could never live
it down if a ship of his was there, bearing his sins to land.  There
was an unreality about the news, and that unreality was terrible, for
it made it like a dream and gave it the doubt of dreams.

Had they really seen a ship out in the morning mist, or was it the mist
itself that made a ship, a ghostly shape of retribution bearing down on
that old man's head?  Was there a ship outside, stamped and sullied
with an unmentionable trade, foul as every ship was foul that bore the
cargo, fouled so that every man of the sea could tell her?  Was there
such a ship outside, lost to her harbor, lost from her seas, a piece of
filth and refuse, drifting in unworldly currents to the land, or was it
a shape of the night that had outlived the dark and stayed into the
dawn?  It was too strange to be true.  I saw his incredulity rise over
him as he listened.

But it was not all I saw.  Eliphalet Greer was changing again, as I had
seen him change before.  I could almost fancy invisible hands were
changing him.  Again he was looking younger, unhealthily, unnaturally
young.  Again his mouth was a mouth of violence.  A new light had
sprung into his eyes, unregenerate and wild.  I wish some man of God
could have seen him then, for he was a curious sight.  If there was
latent evil, if there was original sin, it had risen up within him.  He
raised his right arm.  It was gaunt.  His hand was old, but it still
seemed very strong.

"Open the shutters," he said to Captain Murdock.  "Open them up and let
me see!"

Captain Murdock's fingers were fumbling clumsily with the bolts.  I
remember the yellow glare of the lamps on Eliphalet's face, and then he
was beside Murdock at the window, and we were behind him as though we
had been drawn there by wires.

"You clumsy swab!" cried Eliphalet Greer.  "Take your hands away!"

And he flung back the shutters himself and the whole room changed, and
we all changed with it.  The yellow light was gone with its softness
and its warmth, and the gray light of early morning took its place.  It
seemed to turn us all to gray, shadowy and cold.  It made Eliphalet
Greer's face gray and old again, and only his eyes seemed unchanged as
he stared into the dawn.

The whole world was gray outside, dreary and harsh from its struggle
with the dark, and silent with the reality of early light.  His wharf,
his warehouses were standing out from the thin mist of the river.  The
water itself was hidden, but the ships were there, strange airy shapes,
riding in the clouds of mist, as they always rode at dawn.  Yes, it all
comes back to me, the damp planking of the wharf, and the white piles
and the dripping roofs and the trees by the street on the waterfront.
At the head of the wharf was a group of men looking out to sea, but it
is all only a part of a memory formed from a hasty glance, for I was
looking, we all were looking, out beyond the sand spits that guard the
river mouth.

Perhaps a mile out toward the dawn where the sky was growing bright was
a ship stark against the sky.  She was a brig, but her masts were raked
far back, and her bow was like a sea-bird's beak, sharp and trim.  Her
hull was black and her sails, even her topsails, were set, but not a
sail was drawing.  Yet as we watched, they drew.  For an instant she
bent under the cloud of canvas, delicate and beautiful.  Every rope of
her went taut, but almost as soon as she went in motion her head moved
to the wind.  She trembled, stopped, and her sails began to shake
again.  I could almost fancy I could hear the noise they made.

"There!" cried Captain Murdock.  "Do you believe me now?  And look at
her water-line.  She's filled clear full."

"Yes," said Eliphalet, "I believe you now."

But he did not move from the window.  He continued to look at the ship.
The tide was taking her in and she seemed to struggle against it,
catching at the wind and losing it again.  There she was, a fast ship
such as Eliphalet liked to buy, but I knew what she was.  Her speed
betrayed her, and the rake of her masts that gave her speed.  If I had
not known I might have thought she was a pretty sight, but now the
thought of her turned me sick, for I seemed to hear the sound that was
coming from her hatches and to smell the stench that filled her deck.

She was coming ashore.  She would be beached in half an hour.  If there
was ever retribution, it was there.  Everything Eliphalet Greer had
striven to hide was coming ashore.  All the talk and whispers about him
were coming true.  His sin itself was coming to meet him under those
untrimmed sails.

And Eliphalet was at the window watching.

"There's no one at the helm," he said.

"Didn't I say her crew has left her!" cried Captain Murdock
impatiently.  "They all went out in boats.  But what does that all
matter?  There's the ship you ordered built.  There she's coming home.
What'll we do if her papers are aboard?  What'll we do anyway?  Won't
you say something?  Won't you do something but look?"

Eliphalet still stared out at the ship that was drifting in, leaning
his head forward, drawing his brows together the better to see, and I
knew that everything around him was going.  His money would mean
nothing once that ship came in.  His name would mean nothing, or his
reputation at the banks.  I knew he could never escape the evidence she
brought and he must have known it too.  Everything was going.
Everything he owned was going.

Then he asked a question, though I think he knew the answer.

"It's MacDonald's ship," he said.  "He knew his orders.  What brought
him in like this?  Why should he want to ruin me?  He was paid enough."

In the silence that followed Eliphalet turned from the window toward
Richard Parton.

"You ought to know, Eliphalet," he said.  "Why have I been here
waiting?"

I expected anything to happen then from the look on Eliphalet's face,
but though his lips moved he did not speak and he stood where he had
turned.

"Did you think I came back here for nothing?" demanded Richard Parton.
"I said I'd see you done for.  Do you remember the money you left when
you left me behind?  It took half of it to turn the trick.  What made
you keep on men I used to know?  MacDonald cared for me as much as you,
and he'd do anything for money."

Richard Parton's voice grew louder.

"They'll know your writing, Eliphalet.  He's left every scrap of it
right on the cabin table.  It cost five thousand extra dollars to make
him do that, every letter you told him to burn, every order.  Everyone
will know why you sent Murdock to Africa twice a year.  Everyone will
know what your drafts are for on London.  Oh, yes, we're even now.  How
does it feel to be high and dry!  How does it feel to see your world
break down?  How does it feel to hear it going the way you smashed down
mine?"

I only understood half of what he said.  Though many have thought
differently, I never knew the devious ways Eliphalet once trod.  I was
only there to see the climax of something that had been growing through
the years.  The rest of it lay between them both, and neither of them
told.

But Eliphalet knew.  It was all spread before him.  The walls were
written with it.  He knew he was ruined then.  I saw him change with
the knowledge.  Yet I never expected he would take it as he did.  It
has always seemed to me that somewhere, mixed with all his roguery and
his wickedness, there was a certain greatness that surmounted all the
rest and a greatness that belonged with a better man.

"Richard," he said, "we're even now.  You couldn't have done less."

There was no anger in him when he said it.  Rather he spoke with a sort
of sympathy, which Richard Parton seemed to understand.

"Yes," he said, "we're even now."

There was a pause and Eliphalet turned to the window again and looked
out at the sea--and that was all there was of Richard Parton's strange
revenge.  Perhaps they had both of them seen too much to have it move
them.  Perhaps it had the irony of all accomplishment.  They both
seemed to accept it without triumph or without rancor.

It was Prudence who broke the silence.  She had stood looking on with
Murdock and with me.  Somehow something in Eliphalet and Parton made us
all diffident and loath to speak, for the time seemed only theirs, to
be disturbed by no one else.  But Prudence stepped beside Eliphalet and
took his hand in hers.

"I'm sorry," she said.  "You know I'm sorry."

Eliphalet cleared his throat.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," he said.

"What's sorrow got to do with it?" Captain Murdock blurted out
suddenly.  "To hell with sorrow!  What are we going to do?  The revenue
man will be aboard her.  We can't be staying here."

Captain Murdock's words awoke Eliphalet from his reverie.

"Who are those men on the wharf?" he asked.

"For the _Felicity_," said Captain Murdock.  "Waiting to go aboard."

Eliphalet Greer nodded, and once more glanced quickly out the window.

"Take this key," he said, fingering his gold watch-chain.  "Open the
desk in the room across the hall.  Take the money out of it and bring
it here.  And you'll find a pair of pistols in the second drawer."

Richard Parton started.  Eliphalet was tossing his cloak over his
shoulders.

"Charles," said Eliphalet Greer, "you came once to see me go.  I'm
going now.  You came to see me pay.  You're seeing me pay."

"Eliphalet," said Richard Parton, "what are you going to do?"

And neither seemed to think the question odd or out of place.

"Do you think I'll stay here," replied Eliphalet Greer, "when there's
seaway and a ship to get aboard of?  There's the _Felicity_, dropped in
mid-stream.  I'll put her crew to rights once I get aboard, and the
wind's fair to tack against the tide."

Richard Parton gave a low exclamation.  If I had not known, I might
have thought they were friends.  Every trace of bitterness seemed to
fall from them with Eliphalet's answer.  Another feeling had taken its
place.  They both were gazing out the window, both their faces were
tense like gamblers' faces with some new excitement.  It was a strange
thing, but they did not think it strange.  Unconsciously each seemed to
accept it.

"Not out again," cried Richard Parton, "out where we used to sail?"

"Where's there another place," replied Eliphalet Greer, "that will hold
me now?  I know the old harbors and the bearings still."

And then Captain Murdock's footsteps interrupted him.

"Get down to the wharf," said Eliphalet.  "Get the men in the longboat."

"You ain't----" exclaimed Captain Murdock.  "B'gad!  We ain't going to
sail?"

"Of course we are, you fool!" snapped Eliphalet Greer.  "Haven't we run
before?  We'll take her out and see what it's like again.  We'll sell
her in Havana, and get a ship, and a crew that is a crew."

Captain Murdock's mouth was open.  His eyes were round and glassy.

"B'gad!" he muttered softly, and with a reverential wonder.  "B'gad!
You're still a man!"

"Get out the boat and get the men in it," replied Eliphalet Greer.  "We
haven't time to talk!"

He was going, and I think he was glad to go.  He surely showed no
sorrow now that his hour was there.  He picked up the ledger from the
table and tucked it beneath his arm.  He picked up his beaver hat and
set it on his head.  It was hard to believe that he was going, going
forever, for he hardly looked about him.  He might as well have been
going out to his counting house instead of out of our lives.  It was
hard to remember that he was a ruined man, fleeing like a thief in the
night.  For always, always as I think of him then, he has a strange
sort of magnificence and something of the greatness of a greater man.
At least he took his fortune quietly without a word or without a
struggle, and I know of no harder thing to do.

He was paying, and he knew how it would end.  He was going down a road
that had no turning.  He was going to meet the end which all men of
violence meet, toward the inevitable end which he had often seen,
friendless, hated, without a shred of honor.

Did his sorrow come later, I wonder?  At some time later, on the deck
beneath the stars, did his face grow taut with pain?  Sometimes I hope
it did not, for he had unhappiness enough.  Little as I have to thank
him for, I like to think of him looking out to sea without remorse and
without regret.

Yes, he was going.  He had turned toward us.

"Prudence," he said, "there's no cause for you to feel so."

And I saw that she was crying, and then he bent toward her, very tall
and gaunt.  I had often thought his black clothes had a sinister
aspect, but they had not then.

"Good-bye, Charles," he said.  "You'll forget me sometime."

But he was wrong.  I have never forgotten him.  He is always behind my
thoughts.

He said nothing more.  There could not have been a quieter parting.  He
walked into the hall, and the three of us were staring out.  The room
had grown very still.  We heard him open the front door.

And then a strange thing happened, the last I have to tell, and I
cannot explain it any more than the rest.  We all three stood watching,
but it was only for a moment.  And then Richard Parton left us, and I
heard him in the hall, and then I heard his voice.

"Eliphalet!" he was calling.  "Eliphalet Greer!"

His voice was discordant, and Eliphalet did not answer.

And then I remember I was at the window looking out at the wharf, and
Prudence was standing beside me, and she still was crying, but I only
remembered it afterward.  For I was filled with a single desire then.
I wanted to see him go.  Then I saw him.  Both the wharf and the street
were playing before me.  I saw him as he turned the corner.

"Look!"

It was Prudence.  Her hand was on my arm, and she was pointing out at
the street.  And then I saw why she had cried out.  Eliphalet Greer was
not alone.  Richard Parton was walking at his side.

"They're going out together."

They were.  They were walking side by side.  I could not believe it at
first.  They were talking.  I wish I knew what they were saying, for
they were not speaking in anger.  They were walking down the wharf, a
tall, gaunt figure in black and a slighter one in a faded blue coat.

I could not believe they were going, but they were.  They both were
going together.  They were walking together to the ladder where the
small boats were tied.  I saw Eliphalet go down it, and Richard Parton
follow.  Yes, they had gone down one after the other.  How can I tell
what brought them there?  How can anyone tell?  They are only shadows
in my life.  They came like shadows and they went like shadows.

I never saw them again.  The _Felicity_ is back, but no one has ever
heard where those two went, or where they finally came to rest.

A boat had slipped out from the wharf, out toward the open sea, and for
the last time I saw them.  For me, they went out then into something
vaster than the sea.  But I could see them.  And Eliphalet Greer was
steering and Richard Parton was beside him.

"Yes."  It was her voice again, very clear and quiet, and I felt her
hand in mine.  "They're going out together."

Yes, they were together, and we were together.




[End of The Black Cargo, by J. P. Marquand]
