Never had he seen such clothes, even the time he'd been to Philadelphia: frills, flounces, furbelows—ribbons and laces galore—velvet, chine silk, drugget, sagathy cloth, colebatteen, holland, muslin, drap du Barre— As for colors, there were colors he had not known the existence of: yellow and Nile green or yellow and vermilion were her favorite combinations. She was not narrow in her taste, nor yet timid.
He never saw her wear the same thing twice. He could not imagine how she had managed to stow all those stuffs and accoutrements into the one small cabin. They never showed mussed either, never wilted by the heat. It was an act of magic every time Lady Maisie came topside.
As for her speech, some of her words were strange, maybe French. But not many. And he could always understand her if he listened carefully. Her voice, her intonation, rather than any choice of topics, ringingly proclaimed her station; yet she was anything but high-and-mighty. She had a few tricks of speech, of an exclamatory nature, that Adam reckoned were fashionable—leastways he could see no other sense to them. For instance, she'd cry "La!" or "Oh, la!" or maybe "La, la!" every now and then, almost as if she did not know that she was doing it, as though it were an unconscious uncontrollable physiological act, like a hiccup. She'd talk very fast, in spurts, with silences that came suddenly, as though she were catching her breath in, being frightened to realize how she'd rattled.
This evening she was a touch bitter.
"Home? No. Nor is anybody there thinking of me. They're too happy to be rid of me."
He made no reply, and she stared at the sunset as though she thought it had no right to be as sensational as all that.
"Oh, la! 'tis still dear-Maisie this and Maisie-my-love that, but the truth of the matter is they've been shunting me around like a poor relation—which is just what I am, come to think on it—ever since I lost my fortune. Horace back there"—she jerked her head in the wrong direction but Adam knew that she meant Jamaica—"was just the latest. No, he couldn't do anything for me either. Lacked even the influence to get me permission to leave the island. That's why I had to be smuggled out like a criminal. Unless Horace was willing to settle my debts, which he wasn't.
"Oh," said Adam.
"So now I go to New York, which I take it is a barbarous hovel, and I'll appeal to another cousin, a mighty remote one, I can tell you—a man I've never met and probably wouldn't consent to meet in London."
She turned suddenly to him and put a hand on his arm. She looked right at him, close.
"Forgive me, Captain. La, sir, you'll think me a sniveller. It ain't that I mind losing fifty thousand pounds—never did learn where it went—it ain't that."
"No?"
"It's the way my friends behaved. It's a blow on the head for any infatuated fool like me."
"I can see where it would be."
"There was one was going to marry me. I believed him. I let him do things a lady shouldn't, Captain. And then he changed his mind. He forgot what he'd promised. That was one reason why I went to Jamaica."
She turned back to the taffrail, and was silent a moment, swallowing.
"I— I'm sorry, Captain. I won't do that again. Now let's talk about something else."
"All right," said Adam.
Hours later, after night had come, and Adam chanced to be alone on the afterdeck for a short time, he went to the scuttle and squatted beside it and cocked his head, listening. Yes. He nodded as he came away. Yes, she was sobbing down there in the darkness, the poor lovely woman, the lonesome one. She was sobbing as if her heart would break.
For more than a week they beat up toward or into the Windward Passage, only to be chased back each time. They took chances, doing things Adam Long would not ordinarily have authorized. They sailed close to the shore of Cuba, close to the shore on the other side, near Mole St. Nick, a corsairs' crossroads if ever there was one; and more than once they tried to make it right smackety-blank up the center. The result was the same in every case. They had to run, hard. There was always a sail in the wrong place at the wrong time. The nights were too bright, the seas too rough. Even the winds, which might have been expected to be regular, came and went erratically in short gusty chuffs: it was as though God coughed.
Captain Long, though he gave the necessary commands, was scarcely aware of this luck.
He told Maisie: "It's different where I hail from. There ain't any ladies or gentlemen there—only the men that have property' and the ones that don't, and even the ones that have don't have much. And everybody works, all the time."
He told her: "Sure I quote the Book a lot. That's the best place to find an answer in. But even then you can't always be certain, I know I can't anyway. There's good on one side, there's evil on the other. That much I do know. What I'm not always sure about is, which side is which?"
He told her: "Times I think I'm scared to see England. I've thought so much about it, ever since I can remember. I reckon my mother told me a heap, though I can't recollect much of that. Must've been too little then. But I'm sailing there soon, now that I got my own command. And I'm heading straight for London, and I'm going to seek out this man. Sir Jervis Johnston—you let his name slip last night—the one that, well, that didn't marry you." He all but said "betrayed you," which would have sounded inexcusably dirty and vulgar, applied to such a lovely lady. "And when I find him I'm going to kill him."
" 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord."
"Well, it's going to be mine, too, in this case."
"There are laws against murder in London, Captain."
"I'll do it fair. I'll call him out."
She started to laugh, but she sobered when she saw how much he meant it. She leaned even closer, dropped her voice, touched his arm.
"You must not even think of it. What's done is done. You know what they say—'You can't unscramble scrambled eggs.' You couldn't win me anything back, Captain, though it's a thought full of sweetness. Look at it that way. And besides, Jervis is an experienced swordsman. He's fenced all his life. While you—oh, it isn't your fault, I'm not saying that!—but probably you have never had a real sword in your hand."
"I'll learn," Adam muttered. "I'll take lessons."
They leapt into their acquaintanceship with an avidity that astonished both, as if they had been waiting years to get at one another. There was no reconnoitering, such as might have been expected; nor did either sniff the air, test the wind. They just sat down beside one another and talked —and talked.
He told her about his mother, "the Duchess," and how the townspeople had disliked her and still made fun of her memory.
"I asked you, a while back, if you was homesick. Now, the good Lord help us, I'm asking myself the same question." He waggled his hands. "How can a man that's never had a home be homesick? But I am."
One night he mentioned bundling, and she, piqued, asked for details. Adam had assumed that she didn't bundle, but he was amazed to learn that she had never even heard of the practice.
"It's mostly a matter of saving tallow. Firewood, too. It's for poor folks —but then, we're most all poor folks in Newport."
"But in the summer—"
"Summer's the worst. Ain't much sparking then. Days're so long. Sunup to sundown folks work—men, women, kids. That don't leave much time to sleep. Bundling's for winter. They sit up in front of the fire a while, and then the old folks say good night, and pretty soon the girl she gets up and says she's going to bed, too, and he gives her a little time, the young man that's sparking her, and then he blows out the candle and goes and gets in with her. But he gives her a little time first."
"To let her hair down? To get undressed?"
"Wouldn't know about her hair. I guess that's depending on how she feels. But she don't get undressed. I told you that. And neither does he. They just get under the blankets the way they are."