"Shoes, too?"
"Well, I wouldn't know. I reckon if they're finical they might take their shoes off. Can't see's it makes much difference."
"It might to the servant who has to wash the sheets."
"Don't have sheets."
"The blankets then."
"That'd be the girl herself anyway. If she don't squawk, no reason why anybody else should."
"And how long does he stay? All night?"
"If she lets him and he wants to."
"If she lets him what?"
"Lets him stay all night. But most likely he gets out around midnight. Depending on how far away he lives. If it's eight-ten miles, and he's got to walk, and get to work at sunup, he leaves earlier."
"That's real love!"
"Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it ain't."
"How does the swain keep his hands to himself?"
"He don't. But all the same, he's got to be careful where he puts 'em. Lots of girls tie their skirt and petticoat down at the bottom, over their shoes."
" 'Tis said love laughs at locksmiths."
"Course, she knows how to hold him off. She won't let him get in with her again, he don't behave."
"But what do they do, then?"
"Oh, hug and kiss. All like that."
"And what if it gets too much for both of them?"
"Well, likely enough, it begins to work up to that, the mother or father will call out and tell 'em to stop."
"From the next room, you mean?"
"If they're in the next room."
"If they're—"
"Might be in the same room, of course. We don't have so many rooms in our houses as an English earl, ma'am. Tarnation, they might even be in the same bed! Lots of times they are."
He could feel her scan his face then, and he knew what she was thinking. She feared she was being gulled. Of all matters not pertaining to fashionable London she was singularly ignorant; and being young, and alone, a woman, she hesitated. Indeed Lady Maisie often, even in the course of these little chats on the afterdeck, seemed tense as though to repel laughter—or to counterattack with it. The folks she was brought up among, the way Adam figured it, must have been forever trying to find some excuse for jeering at other folks. She did not have to worry about that with him, as she was learning. It could be that here was one reason she liked so much to talk with him. For she did like it. He knew that.
"I, uh, I don't want to sound libidinous. Captain."
"No."
"And I know this ain't maidenly. But—d'ye mind telling me if it ever happens that the mother and father are asleep, and that cord around the feet, the one that holds the skirt down, breaks?"
"It's been known to. But not so often as you might think."
This was night, which was just as well. The moon hadn't come up yet. They sat close together on the bench Adam had constructed under the awning, backs to the taffrail, and spoke in whispers, so that the man at the tiller couldn't hear: it was John Bond. The day had been a scorcher, and the deck still glowed, throwing up heat like something made of metal.
"Then what do they do?"
"Well, just what you'd expect."
"Yes?"
"And then they wait and see if she's going to have a baby, and if she is, they get married."
"Always?"
"Pretty near. If they don't get married before she has the baby, they do right afterward. And the way folks figure, it's no sin."
"Provided they get married, you mean?"
"Oh, sure. They got to do that."
She studied this a moment, her head down, staring at the tar that still bubbled, if sluggishly, in the deck seams.
"Have you ever—bundled?"
It caught him off guard, though there's no reason why it should have. He gulped. He gave a short laugh.
"Me? Who'd want me?"
She said almost coldly: "I'm sure I don't know why not?" And it came to him that she didn't believe him.
"No money," he said, trying to make it sound light. "No property. I'll have it some day, but not yet."
"Lord ha' mercy! Must you shove your accounting books ahead of you, to prove you're solvent, every time you climb into bed with a wench?"
He came near to snapping at her then. He felt like shouting that it was all very well for her—that could talk about losing fifty thousand pounds—to make light of the need for money. Why, there wasn't as much as fifty thousand pounds in cash and property, he didn't reckon, in the whole Colony of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations. And she could just mislay it, and yet-But he didn't snap. He swallowed furtively, and even produced a laugh.
"Well, anyway. I never did bundle," he said.
"You certainly seem to know a might about it."
"We talk about it, back there. All sorts of folks. It ain't thought any sin or shame, not any more'n the way you and I're talking now."
"No," softer. "No, I see nothing wrong with the way we're talking now."
"Neither'n I do, ma'am."
He did not make any mention of Deborah Selden, not any more than he did of Elnathan Evans. Matter of fact, he scarcely thought of them these days.
Adam did not do all the talking. For long spells, for hours, she would run on about London. He had a heap of curiosity about London, and prodded her with questions; but he had to admit that though he listened to her carefully he couldn't make a great deal of sense out of what she said. She made more mention of people than of places, and she supposed, it'd seem, that he knew them well or at least had always heard of them. She caught herself up, apologetically, sometimes; and she would under-breathe of "Archie" that he was the Marquis of This, or of "Polly" that she was the Countess of That, rattling on self-consciously afterward as if she feared that he might think her condescending.
She seemed to know some pretty exalted folks, but she never mentioned the Earl of Tillinghast. Neither did he.
Though he tried, he did not truly learn much about the fifty thousand pounds. It, or property of about that value, had been left to her by her father, the late Earl of Ellison. She had no brother, no sister. The title, together with the seat, were held now by a cousin she didn't like—and who didn't like her. This cousin and certain others, a handful of dishonest lawyers, too, had somehow held back or grabbed the entire sum. "My fortune," she sometimes called it—glibly, immediately, too, as though it were a snuffbox or some similar small article, something that, having been misplaced, might at any moment be found again.
Adam pondered this, as he pondered many matters in those days and nights of trying to get up through the Windward Passage; but he noticed little else, so that late in the afternoon of the ninth day out of Jamaica when he saw the delegation coming aft to talk with him, he was rocked on his heels and not ready.
As soon as he saw them he knew what the trouble was.
Not only was there no manner of quarterdeck or poop, but the traditional "boundary line" of the mainmast was not respected aboard Goodwill to Men. Anyone who wanted to go aft for any reason at all, even if it was only to stretch his legs, was free to do so. Because their quarters were back there—or until recently had been—and also because the after end of the deck was the best place from which to give orders, it was thought of as primarily the domain of Captain Long, Mate Forbes, and to a lesser extent the bosun, Jethro Gardner.
However, there was usually a seaman at the tiller, and like as not he'd have another hand perched on the taffrail nearby in order to carry on a gam with him. This wasn't sacred, this territory.
All the same, when he saw the whole crew coming toward him, Adam knew that it was a deputation, not a coincidence. There was a purpose-fulness about the party that couldn't be mistaken. They might have been marching to music.