Next thing Adam knew he had his arms around her and he was kissing her mouth and then kissing her neck, while she pushed herself against him, sobbing gently.
This time it was Elnathan who common-sensed them apart, though her very shove was loving. She moved toward the middle of the room, murmuring for him to follow.
"Anybody passing, they see this light they'd look in."
He nodded. Where they had been standing, near the door, they could not be seen from a window, but every other part of this room could be seen; and why should anybody stand, and keep standing, right up close to the door? Folks would be talking in no time.
Even a passer-by not ordinarily snoopy, and there weren't many such in Newport, assuredly would be set to wondering by the great light from the Evans house. It had smashed against Adam's eyes when he entered.
In a real silver branch on the table were no less than five candles, wax ones, too, and all of them lit.
In his right mind Zephary Evans would never have lit that many candles.
Adam took off his coat and hung it over the back of a chair. He took off his sword and sword-belt and clapped them on the table. He sat in the chair, stretching his legs.
Elnathan opened her eyes a bit wider at the sight of the sword, but she said nothing. She put a log on the fire.
"Knew you was coming."
"Figured you did." He forced a chuckle. "Never saw a door flung open so fast in my life."
She didn't respond with any manner of smile. She was not much of a smiler at best, and there were always those windows to think of.
"Mr. Evans saw you coming up the bay, this morning, from upstairs."
He nodded. He knew that a glass was kept in a rack next to the bedroom window. Like any other merchant, Zeph wanted to know what was coming and going, likewise whether it was worth while to make for the counting house.
"He went to meet you. Later he sent a boy up, tell me you was coming here on business and for me to fix flip."
"Good," said Adam, who had noted that the poker was in the fire. "How 'bout some of that flip right now?"
"Wait'll he comes. Look better."
"Aye."
"That's him now. I know the step."
She went to the door, threw back the bolt. Here was an entrance different from Adam's. Zephary Evans didn't sing out any greeting to his spouse, or even so much as peck at her face, but addressed himself promptly and with unaccustomed geniality to his guest. He apologized for being late. He'd been listening to the story of the duel.
"Brawl," Adam said incisively.
"Tell me about it," begged Elnathan.
"Woman, brew us flip," said Zeph. "I told you to have some ready."
All the same, and while Elnathan fussed with mugs and rum and spices, Zeph did relate what had happened down on Queen's Wharf, and he embellished the tale with touches of an imagination you wouldn't have supposed him to have, making Adam out quite a hero. Elnathan was goggle-eyed now; but she went on working. The poker hissed once, twice. The flip was ready.
Though the telling of the tale embarrassed him, Adam Long was to remember that scene, different from any he had known. The fire, the candles—though Zeph had snuffed out three of these—the steaming mugs of flip, the platter of injun muflins Elnathan had fetched from the kitchen, the low ceiling, rain slashing the windows: these combined to make a deep impression upon him. The Evans house, if comfortable, could hardly have been a cheery place on an average evening; but it was a home, something to which Adam Long was not accustomed.
He stretched his legs, leaning back in the chair; and though he did for form's sake now and then mumble a protest against the overvividness of the narrative—second-hand from Zeph Evans, who had missed the fight itself—for the most part he thoroughly enjoyed himself. The flip was excellent, the injun, too. The story of the fight gave Elnathan an excuse for gazing at him with eyes held wide in admiration instead of holding to her more usual expressionlessness; and when she served him—for her husband had not told her to sit down—she leaned far over, so that he could peek down the neck of her dress. At other times Adam stared at the candle branch.
It was real silver, that branch, and in any Newport household in the year 1702 an article of silver was something mighty special, something to be set out only on extraordinary occasions. Adam wasn't thinking of this, or wondering whose idea it had been to lug the branch out. His mind was on another and far fancier branch, one made of gold adroitly etched. The man who called himself Carse had been wont to fill the seven holes of this bit of booty with candles originally intended no doubt for the altar of some Papist church, and light these, and then set for Adam the task of putting them out one by one, in quick succession, from a goodly distance. Lunging his full length, Adam could barely reach a candle with the tip of his rapier. The trick was to put out each flame without ripping the wick or spilling hot wax. It was not easy. He'd had to come back to full salute position after each lunge, too. Only once, sweating, panting, in that sun-drenched hollow back of the settlement, had Adam put out every candle: but he'd seldom got fewer than four.
Well, he was a long ways from Providence island now. He smiled a mite, listening to the rain, sometimes sneaking a look at Elnathan, only half hearing the story of his own prowess.
The change-over from sociability to business was barbarously abrupt. The flip was extremely strong, but as soon as Zeph Evans saw that Adam was minding it he ordered his wife out of the room, ordered her, too, to close the kitchen door after her, and then turned to Adam and went right to work.
"You'll be sailing again, Captain?"
"Soon's I can catch a cargo. Anything about?"
"Spars and staves for London. But they're not the best cargo for a boat like Goodwill. But there's heaps of coasting."
"England, that's it. Two men there I want to meet."
"Now about my share—"
"Aye."
It was clear at once that Zeph was eager to sell, though Adam couldn't guess why; but it was equally clear that he meant to get a good price. These two knew one another. There were no fancy phrases, yet neither was there any thumping of the table. They went at it harshly but in low voices, not looking at one another. It was a full hour before they settled. Adam was to pay rather more than he'd meant to; Zephary was not getting as much as he'd thought to. It was a sound bargain. The merchant got out writing materials and they wrote an agreement and then made a copy of this, and each man signed each document.
They did not shake hands afterward, for Zeph was not a demonstrative man. Nor did Adam get another glimpse of the lady of the house, or of the flip.
It was still raining. He turned up the collar of his fearnought. He heard the door closed and bolted behind him, and he glanced back to make sure that nobody was watching from a window. Then he crossed the plot of grass to the window of Deborah Selden's bedroom. He couldn't see much, there under the maples—nothing of the girl, scarcely even the sampler on the wall—but he could see the sill.
The lemons were gone.
PART SEVEN. Nobody Lives in London
The wide rolling river he had dreamed of so many times, the Thames, proved to be hardly a creek. The city itself showed at first glance an overgrown, dirty Newport.
Ashore, though, he began to catch a notion of London's bigness. Tarnation, what crowds! And the place stank, a sewer.
"Nobody lives in London," a doleful innkeeper was to tell him. "Nobody, anyway, that can get out into the country."
It seemed to Adam that half the people in the world lived there, all scrounched together as though afraid of the surrounding landscape, wherever that was, the way sheep in a gale huddle with their heads toward the middle, pushing and being pushed. Yet sheep, when bufifeted, at least keep busy; whereas the Londoners stood or sat or sprawled to study with a sardonic eye the activities of others. In Newport this would have been unthinkable. Idleness was taken as a matter of course here; in Newport it would have been esteemed a sin.