It doesn't pay to be a pirate, folks said. Maybe it doesn't pay to be a fornicator either? He was too happy to care.
From here, too, Adam could see the breastworks and redoubt they were building on the island; they planned to call it Fort Anne after the new monarch. He could see the guns there. For everything these days was war. It would come any day. The world waited for it, fascinated. Nobody could have told you why it was coming—something to do with who should be King of Spain—but coming, for whatever reason, it assuredly was.
He put his arms around Elnathan, held her close and kissed her a long while.
"Good-bye, good-bye," he said and was off down the street.
It was a comfortable down-sloping street which led direct to the bay, not such a street as they'd have at Home, from what Adam had heard, but a good street, or lane, lined with trees. It was cool now, for this was getting close to ten o'clock, and darkish, the ruts and dust all dappled with egg-shaped moon spots. There was no sort of pavement. On either side, though Adam couldn't see them well, were firm rectangular houses, shakes-roofed, clapboard-walled, some of them even painted, set near together and near the street, houses that respected themselves and expected to be respected. In the making of more than one of these the apprentice Adam Long had had a hand.
He drew a deep tremulous breath. He thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets. He was about to start for the tavern—when he remembered that he had another appointment.
"Seems like it's my night for meeting women," he marveled.
Deborah Selden, who lived right across the way, was, however, no Elnathan. Nor was she by anybody's description saucy. It had startled Adam Long no little to receive a note from her this afternoon. The note had been noncommittal, only asking him to meet her at her house at nine that night and to treat this appointment as confidential. He assumed that it was something to do with the schooner, her father, Obadiah Selden, being a quarter owner. It could be a message to somebody down in the islands or a request for some certain fruit or for dress goods. Women were always asking sea captains such favors. But why the secrecy? It was not like Deborah Selden, what he knew of her.
Admittedly he didn't know much of her. Nobody did. She had heaps of handsomeness and a bosom that was unsettling, yet already she was nineteen and not wed. That could have been her father's fault. A widower, Obadiah Selden guarded his only chick with an assiduity virtually fanatical. You could almost hear him cluck as he fussed around her. He forbade her to bundle, which in itself was enough to keep many of the lads away. You never did meet up with her at the raisings and huskings and bees, the weddings and funerals and christenings; and if she went to some distant place, like say the Providence fair, it was in the company of her father, who hated to let her out of sight and acted to be afraid she might fall down and get broken like a set of false teeth you couldn't replace. So nobody knew Deborah well.
The Selden house, which Adam faced now, was half in darkness, half alight. It was a one-story house, as firmly foundationed as Obadiah's own fortune. On the right, as Adam knew—though he had never been in the house—were the parlor and kitchen, and here tonight there was light, where no doubt Obadiah was poring over papers in preparation for the sailing. The left side contained two bedrooms. They were dark.
"Mister Long!"
It caused him to jump. He had never before been so addressed. True, he rated the "Mister" now; but he was not yet used to it.
The voice, a woman's, had come from the Selden house, the unlighted side. Squinting, peering, Adam stepped across a patch of grass.
"It's me, over here."
"Oh, it's you?"
Deborah stood in a nightrail, and she had her dark hair in two braids hanging down front, which made her look a whit like a Narragansett, only of course not anywhere near as dirty.
"Can't sleep?" he asked politely. "But there's no pinkletinks."
For this was April.
Her smile, though shy, disconcerted. She was looking directly at him. It wasn't right, her standing there in such a garb. He sure hoped that she was blushing. She ought to be.
"I—I just thought I'd say good-bye, Mr. Long. Or maybe I ought to call you 'Captain' now?"
"Aye."
"You're sailing tomorrow, isn't that right?"
"Aye. Sunup."
"For the islands?"
"Aye."
He could be chattier than this; but he was wary, alert. After all, this was Obadiah Selden's daughter; and it had been Obadiah, won over by his neighbor Zephary Evans, who in turn had been won over by Elnathan his wife, whose vote had given Adam the captaincy over Obadiah's own brother, Seth, incidentally himself a one-eighth owner of the schooner of which Adam Long owned but a sixteenth.
Adam did not aim to buss anybody's behind, but at the same time it never did any harm to have manners.
"You—you love that vessel, don't you. Captain?"
"Aye," soberly. And he added: "I helped build her."
"I know."
"Yes, I reckon I love her all right."
"Like she was a woman?"
"More."
Had she seen him come out of the Evans house? He smelled trouble. She kept smiling at him, but it was a small smile.
"No doubt you're wondering why I sent for you, Captain? Well, I'll tell you. I want to ask you a question. A very important question."
"Aye?"
She leaned close, her hands white on the sill, and her eyes, dark brown, all but black, were enormous in the darkness. She swallowed carefully, deliberately, then said:
"Will you marry me?"
A Man is a vain animal. Adam Long's first feeling, aside from the shock itself, was one of joy. He was pleased, he tingled.
This only for an instant. Immediately afterward anger flooded him, so that his temples throbbed and pounded, his eyeballs ached, the very hair of his head seemed to crickle; and he lowered his face to hide the tears of rage, the dark flush of fury.
So he came cheap, did he? If a husband had to be had, and that in a hurry, why not Adam Long, the son of an indentured servant long dead? How could he resist? What friends did he have, what patron, or property? Why, the fool owned nothing in this world save the clothes on his back— and a one sixteenth interest in the schooner Goodwill. Your own father owned a quarter of that schooner, and his friend Zephary Evans owned another quarter, while your uncle Seth, who had dearly wanted the captaincy, owned an eighth. The captain, then lucky to be a captain, was perforce a man who'd do as he was told.
It was plain to Adam too why she had written him on the very eve of the sailing. Oh, she was no fool! Just before he had the final meeting with the owners, a matter merely of hours before sailing time, he would be likelier to panic. A week earlier, even a few days earlier, and he might have been able to wriggle out of it, argue himself clear, or even uncover her true lover. But now, tonight, truly he was trapped. He could take her—she must have planned it this way—or he could lose his command.
Adam kept his head down. He must wait until he could speak clearly, without any chokiness.
He did not, of course, even consider this unexpected offer. Aside from the rage into which it threw him, the insult it constituted, there were plain hard realities to be considered. Adam was much too young to think of marrying. Marriage was marriage, something that once done you couldn't change; and when he took unto himself a bride it would be on his own terms. Deborah Selden, even though pregnant, could be esteemed the coziest catch in Newport, indeed anywhere in the colony, but the ambitions of Adam Long went a long way beyond Rhode Island. Colonials, even the very best of them, were not for him. He would rather be the second man in Rome, or the third or fourth or fifth, than the first man in a little Roman village.