"I could have gone with you—but I didn't."
"Does Eliza know?"
"Evil? No. But she dreams of it sometimes."
"You won't tell her about the guns?"
"No. What would be the good?"
"You said her going with me lies with him, Godwine, Lord Tarlton, and with me."
"You may not take her. Perhaps you've never even wanted her. How do I know what you've become in these eighteen years? What have I got to judge you by? Not a sailor who walked with me down a long beach—who swam with me to Calypso's cave—who took me to his ship. Your saying you want her may be just a trick, and what you really want is death."
"That doesn't stand to my reason."
"Why should it? It's quite possible you want to die, if you can take Papa with you or have him follow you soon. Many people ache to die, not all of them insane. Do you think I've forgotten the Eagle of Maine striking the rock?"
"There's many a day—many a night—that Homer Whitman would have liked to know you remembered it and sometimes thought of it."
"How could you doubt me so? But I know—you needn't tell me."
"His shipmates made up a great part of his loss. A girl he loved at Malta healed the wound."
Saying that, I went back to the time and place. I saw the harbor lights as Sophia and I came down from the town and went out to the ship. From thence we went into my little cabin and found beauty and wonder and healing. The spell of that hour was on me.
"How many shipmates were there on the Vindictive?" Sophia asked.
"The marine records give the company as sixteen."
"How many are left alive?"
"There may be two."
"You and one more. Do you long to join the rest? Who else have you loved who went away and left you here? Holgar Blackburn was one. You can hardly bring yourself to admit he's gone. No, that isn't like you, not to face truth—it must be for some other reason you make him live on in you." Suddenly her eyes grew very wide and dark. "Did you kill him?"
"If I did, it's a secret between him and me." But I did not know what I was saying.
"I think you did. You did it to save him from something awful beyond words. Either you loved him beyond the power of ordinary people or you owed him a tremendous debt. It wouldn't be otherwise. Were there any more besides your family, and your shipmates, and Holgar?"
"Among those who died, there could have been one more. His name was Kerry, and he was Homer Whitman's workmate. They shook hands at the brink of the cliff. Kerry's hand was cold and wet with sweat, but his face was wet with tears. The chains rattled loudly as he jumped."
"Did you want to follow him?"
"That was unthinkable, since it was Homer's watch."
"What do you mean by that?"
"He'd been given the duty."
"Has the time come for him to go off watch?"
"It may be very near."
"Now let me say something very important. Suppose Pike is rigging the guns, as I said. Papa's the one who told him to, but would Papa pull the trigger? You know he wouldn't. He's never got blood on his little white hand, I doubt if he's had the stain of gunpowder. He remains on the quarter-deck and others do what he tells them. He lost his head when he seized the iron poker the night at Elveshurst—the same when he tried to hit you with his little stick; but he's over all that. He's very calm. He's either resigned to something—it might be to losing Eliza—or has great confidence in something. And the one whom you'd least fear—the most likely to catch you with your guard down—would be Harvey."
"I'll look out for him. For your sake I'll stay out of the way."
"Why not for your own sake? Isn't that the part of wisdom?"
"It might be. I can't tell what's wise or foolish. I know that my staying out of his way can't deliver him from evil—only God can do that—and it can't fight evil. If victory falls to me, I'll spare him all I can. And I think that completes the business you had with me."
She did not go out. Instead she walked to the end of the room and looked through the window. Then she returned to me and gazed out the window by which I stood.
"That's the garden—but how bare it looks," she said.
"It must be beautiful in summertime."
"Summer stays such a little while. Look at the gaunt trees with the mists blowing through them and the dark sky."
"I'd like to see it as a little boy saw it thirty years ago. It was so beautiful he had to break in and steal flowers."
"That little boy's gone, and those years are dead. Now the other window gives a view of the paddock and a glimpse of Bodmin moor. It's a rather bleak view even in summer. But there's someone standing by the paddock gate—there was a minute ago—and that brightens it up."
She led me there by the hand. I saw some dark yew trees lining a driveway and, dimmed by mist, the gray moor beyond. But by the paddock gate, giving sugar to a magnificent black stallion, stood a tall girl dressed in a green riding habit, her hair shining as though the sun were out. It was like a shore light, I thought, in storm.
"If Papa will give her to you, will you take her and go your way?" Sophia's low voice came, charging me to answer.
"I can't go my way until the debt's paid."
"Maybe you'll be sent on your way with empty hands into the cold and dark."
"That's quite true."
"If the debt's paid, and she'll still go with you, will you take her in lieu of me?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"I can't tell you what I mean, but I'll tell you this. I love her more than anyone in the world."
"I believe that."
"And next to her, I love you."
After looking long into my face, she turned slowly, drew her hand through her dark hair, opened the heavy door, and went out. For a moment the evil dream that I was living had grown thin, but in the solitude and silence it thickened and ran on.
CHAPTER 31
The Answer
Coming up to Eliza was like walking in the dusk toward a light. The bright green of her costume and the wind-blown gold of her hair and the almost scarlet flush on snow-white skin had an effulgent effect on this dark day. Her first warning of my approach was the stallion's scenting me and dashing off across the paddock. Eliza turned her gray eyes on me, and I thought she tried to smile, but gave up the attempt and faced me gravely. The way she stood, an upspring in her feet and her head high, made me think of Isabel Gazelle.
"I'm sorry I scared off your good friend," I said.
"He's just being skittish. I can hardly claim he's my friend, but he acts more friendly with me than with anyone else in the family. I think he admires Dick—they go together with such dash. All horses are mortally afraid of Papa—there's no harm in telling you—almost everyone knows it. Even Donald Dhu sweats and trembles when he comes near."
Sophia had told me this same remarkable thing. "Yet he ran well that day, with your father up."
"He obeys him, as we all do."
"Even a black proud chieftain has to obey someone."
"How did you know what his name meant?"
"A well-educated Irishman told me. He could speak Gaelic."
"A willful girl has to obey someone, too."
"Is that so?"
"Donald Dhu is much more gentle than when I first began to make up to him. But stallions can hardly ever be gentled like mares and geldings."
"I doubt if that's true, Eliza. It takes more time and effort, though. The Arabs make pets of their mares—a hand-raised mare tags her master about and tries to sleep with him and often will fight for him— while they dislike stallions and the beasts seem to know it. Yet El Stedoro responded to my affection for him and is as gentle as any old plug."