The clothes I had bought from Mate Tyler needed only laying out and putting on. By virtue of New England thrift and the habits learned on a tidy ship, I had kept them spotless and well-brushed, and their silver buttons bright. At no great outlay I bought a new stock and a linen shirt with lace cuffs. When I had dressed, I would not be ashamed to sit down at the table with Captain Phillips, Captain Starbuck, or Captain John Paul Jones if he were still alive; and that settled it. In due course I rode in a carrozza to Notabile, through a gate in a high wall guarded by sentries, and up to the arched door under stone towers. I found the iron knocker in the gloom and an ancient liveried servant admitted me to a dim hall.
"Your name and titles, please, Your Honor," he murmured in my ear.
"Homer Whitman, second officer of the United States ship Vindictive."
He tottered forward and repeated the words to a burly fellow standing near a wide, high, intricately carved door. He too wore wig and livery, but these could not conceal a positive personality. Seeing better now, I knew the cut of his jib. Unless he was an old man-of-war's man, probably a petty officer handy with the lash, I missed my guess. He opened the door wide and called in a queer mixture of salty and Cockney.
"'Omer Wittman, second orcifer of the Unity States Indicative."
I felt grateful for my small interior smile. It lightened my load a little as I walked into the room. I could call it a room—in fact I did not know what else to call it—although it must have been the main chamber of an ancient palace of the Knights of Malta. White marble lined the high walls, the floor and domed ceiling were mosaics of animals and birds and trees in rich color, the chimney piece was rose-colored marble with blue veins, reaching to the ceiling. Above the pillared mantle, griffons as big as wolves supported a huge sculptured square, surrounded by nymphs standing or lying down, and bearing heraldic devices. The doors were intricately carved black wood fastened with chains, the windows had many small leaded panes. The chairs were massively carved, not as cold-looking as the room, but too thronelike for comfort. The tables and cabinets had beautiful inlay of ivory and shell. A chandelier of a hundred candles, each in a crystal holder, gave forth clear but not brilliant light.
At first I got only an impression of all this, to grasp in detail later. Seen far more sharply, briefly arresting my attention, was the central feature of the splendid room—a stately teakwood table bearing a glass case that contained the most perfectly wrought ship model I had ever seen. It was about four feet long and in exact proportions, and its building must have taken a year's labor by a superb artisan. It was a sloop of war with all her canvas spread.
The main search of my mind was toward the four people seated at the far end of the room. One of them I knew well. She had not changed by being in this setting or by wearing a low-cut silvery dress and a necklace of pearls and a pearl wreath in her hair. She looked straight at me and smiled a smile I loved. One other I had seen before—Harvey Alford, Captain Sir Godwine's aide. He wore a brocaded waistcoat, pearl-buttoned coat, breeches of dark red plush, blue hose, and decorated slippers.
Another man near Harvey's and my own age I had not seen before, although I never doubted he was Dick Tarlton, Sir Godwine's bastard son. I had time only to notice the perfect proportions of his small form and his somewhat careless dress and catch a glimpse of his intense, dark face when I became busied with Sir Godwine himself. He had sat in the biggest chair and was the first of the four people to gain his feet. He came toward me, walking a little like an eagle, more—as Sophia had told me—like a phoenix. I could recognize him by that and by his dandyism and his walking stick; still, if I had seen him on the street, I would have felt confused. Sophia had said her father was forty-four. This man looked thirty-four or twenty-four, whichever figure you had heard. There was no age anywhere on him. His skin was perfectly smooth, his small hands white and elegant as any young lady's, his movements as young as Sophia's.
"Why, Sophia, 'tis the young American you've made so thick with, damn me if it ain't," he exclaimed, the hearty words spoken in a queerly rattling voice. "Mr. Whitman, I'm Godwine Tarlton, your happy host." With that he gave me a graceful bow.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," I answered in Maine parlance, bowing in return as my ma had taught me.
"And the same to you, Mate, and welcome to Lepanto Palace."
"It has a famous name, Sir Godwine."
"Why, blast me, have you heard of that set-to?" he asked in evident surprise as Sophia held her breath. "But wait a bit before you tell me. I'm keeping you from greeting the pretty lass. By God, I'd give her a kiss while about it if I were in your boots. 'Twon't be the first one, or you can blow me down."
As I came toward her, she raised her face and breast. Neither of us stinted the caress or prolonged it either, and my arms were about her the while. I looked up to find Dick's black eyes fixed on my face, his lips curled in a small gray smile as close to evil as any human expression I could remember.
"Twas a good job!" Sir Godwine cried. "Now to finish the formalities—you've met my aide, Lieutenant the Honorable Harvey Alford"—he paused while we bowed to each other—"but not my son, Dick."
"Your humble servant," Dick mouthed with a fine bow.
"Sophia spoke of you, sir," I answered, not knowing what else to say.
"Did she indeed! My half sister—on the right side of the blanket, you understand—rarely honors me so. But perhaps an American doesn't know that expression."
"Yes, I do."
"So all you have to do now, Dick, is recite, 'Thou, Nature, art my goddess'!" Sophia said quietly.
"Perhaps you're acquainted with that, too," Dick suggested, his lips smiling, but his eyes cold and intent.
"I read it only recently. It was in one of Shakespeare's plays, which I've made acquaintance with only since coming to Malta. I believe it was the bastard's speech in King Lear—"
As I spoke, I was comparing the two small-sized men standing on either side of me. Dick's countenance was sallow; Sir Godwine's very fair. But the latter was much more delicate, its bones finer molded, the nose more than Roman, so high its bridge.
"Why, sink me, he's right again," he cried. "Now all of you sit, for I've years on my back, and they call for an easy chair." Then when he had appointed us our places: "Young Whitman, how did you hear of the battle of Lepanto?"
"Our cap'n told us when we came by the Strait of Messina."
"Now, dash it all, who do you mean by 'us'? You and the other mate while you sat at table?"
Perhaps it was his rattling voice that seemed to lend undue emphasis to the question; yet I thought I saw tension in his posture, and his eyes gleamed.
"No, sir, the whole crew. It was on Sunday after prayers. He told how the Christian fleet assembled at Messina and set sail, and the reasons for the battle, and its outcome. I guess he spoke an hour."
"Is it the custom of Yankee skippers to be schoolmasters for a pack of lubbers? How did the cap'n know of it himself? Why, damn me, it was fought two centuries before John Paul Jones fired his first broadside at his king's ship." But Sir Godwine did not speak emphatically now. His voice had dropped very low, the rattle had gone out of it, and its tone was soft.
"Captain Phillips is the most learned man I ever knew." "I'm glad to hear it. The Yankees that I knew could do better with account books than with history books."