The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

him every farthing left of the rents paid yesterday, and shall be most hearty glad to be rid of it, for this money do seem to scar my hands every time I touch it; nor can I look at it but my heart is wrung with pity for those poor tenants who paid so gleefully yesterday, for surely their quittances will hold good for no more than spoilt paper if ever our roguery is discovered.

      December 28. This day Moll and Mr. Godwin set out for London, all smiles and gladness, and Moll did make me promise to visit them there, and share their pleasures. But if I have no more appetite for gaiety than I feel at this moment, I shall do better to stay here and mind my business; though I do expect to find little pleasure in that, and must abide by a month of very dull, gloomy days.

      CHAPTER XXVII.

      Of the great change in Moll, and the likely explanation thereof.

      A week before the promised month was up, Moll and her husband came back to the Court, and lest I should imagine that her pleasures had been curtailed by his caprice, she was at great pains to convince me that he had yielded to her insistence in this matter, declaring she was sick of theatres, ridottos, masquerades, and sight-seeing, and had sighed to be home ere she had been in London a week. This surprised me exceedingly, knowing how passionate fond she had ever been of the playhouse and diversions of any kind, and remembering how eager she was to go to town with her husband; and I perceived there was more significance in the present distaste for diversion than she would have known. And I observed further (when the joy of return and ordering her household subsided) that she herself had changed in these past three weeks, more than was to be expected in so short a time. For, though she seemed to love her husband more than ever she had loved him as her lover, and could not be happy two minutes out of his company, ’twas not that glad, joyous love of the earlier days, but a yearning, clinging passion, that made me sad to see, for I could not look upon the strained, anxious tenderness in her young face without bethinking me of my poor sister, as she knelt praying by her babe’s cot for God to spare its frail life.

      Yet her husband never looked more hearty and strong, and every look and word of his bespoke increasing love. The change in her was not unperceived by him, and often he would look down into her wistful, craving eyes as if he would ask of her, “What is it, love? tell me all.” And she, as understanding this appeal, would answer nothing, but only shake her head, still gazing into his kind eyes as if she would have him believe she had nought to tell.

      These things made me very thoughtful and urgent to find some satisfactory explanation. To be sure, thinks I, marriage is but the beginning of a woman’s real life, and so one may not reasonably expect her to be what she was as a thoughtless child. And ’tis no less natural that a young wife should love to be alone with her husband, rather than in the midst of people who must distract his thoughts from her; as also it is right and proper she should wish to be in her own home, directing her domestic affairs and tending to her husband—showing him withal she is a good and thoughtful housewife. But why these pensive tristful looks, now she hath her heart’s desire? Then, finding I must seek some better explanation of her case, I bethought me she must have had a very hard, difficult task in London to conceal from one, who was now a part of herself, her knowledge of so many things it was unbefitting she should reveal. At the playhouse she must feign astonishment at all she saw, as having never visited one before, and keep constant guard upon herself lest some word slipped her lips to reveal her acquaintance with the players and their art. At the ridotto she must equally feign ignorance of modish dancing—she whose nimble feet had tripped to every measure since she could stand alone. There was scarcely a subject on which she would dare to speak without deliberation, and she must check her old habit of singing and be silent, lest she fall by hazard to humming some known tune. Truly, under such continuous strain (which none but such a trained actress could maintain for a single day) her spirit must have wearied. And if this part was hard to play in public, where we are all, I take it, actors of some sort and on the alert to sustain the character we would have our own, how much more difficult must it be in private when we drop our disguise and lay our hearts open to those we love! And here, as it seemed to me, I did hit rightly at the true cause of her present secret distress; for at home as abroad she must still be acting a part, weighing her words, guarding her acts—for ever to be hiding of something from her dearest friend—ever denying him that confidence he appealed for—ever keeping a cruel, biting bond upon the most generous impulse of her heart, closing that heart when it was bursting to open to her dear mate.

      Soon after their return Mr. Godwin set to work painting the head of a Sybil, which the Lord of Hatfield House had commanded, on the recommendation of Sir Peter Lely, taking Anne Fitch for his model, and she sitting in that room of the Court house he had prepared for his workshop. Here he would be at it every day, as long as there was light for his purpose, Moll, near at hand, watching him, ready to chat or hold her peace, according to his inclination—just as she had done when he was a-painting of the ceiling, only that now her regard was more intent upon him than his work, and when he turned to look at her, ’twas with interchange of undisguised love in their fond eyes. She ever had a piece of work or a book in her lap, but she made not half a dozen stitches or turned a single page in the whole day, for he was the sole occupation of her mind; the living book, ever yielding her sweet thoughts.

      This persevering, patient toil on his part did at first engender in my mind suspicion that some doubting thoughts urged him to assume his independence against any accident that might befall the estate; but now I believe ’twas nothing but a love of work and of his art, and that his mind was free from any taint of misgiving, as regards his wife’s honesty. ’Tis likely enough, that spite her caution, many a word and sign escaped Moll, which an enemy would have quickly seized on to prove her culpable; but we do never see the faults of those we love (or, seeing them, have ready at a moment excuse to prove them no faults at all), and at this time Mr. Godwin’s heart was so full of love, there was no place for other feeling. Venom from a rose had seemed to him more possible than evil, from one so natural, sweet, and beautiful as Moll.

      CHAPTER XXVIII.

      Moll plays us a mad prank for the last time in her life.

      About once in a fortnight I contrived to go to London for a couple of days on some pretext of business, and best part of this time I spent with Dawson. And the first visit I paid him after the return of Moll and her husband, telling him of their complete happiness, Moll’s increasing womanly beauty, and the prosperous aspect of our affairs (for I had that day positive assurance our seal would be obtained within a month), I concluded by asking if his mast might not now be stepped, and he be in a position to come to Chislehurst and see her as he had before.

      “No, Kit, thanking ye kindly,” says he, after fighting it out with himself in silence a minute or two, “better not. I am getting in a manner used to this solitude, and bar two or three days a week when I feel a bit hangdog and hipped a-thinking there’s not much in this world for an old fellow to live for when he’s lost his child, I am pretty well content. It would only undo me. If you had a child—your own flesh and blood—part of your life—a child that had been to you what my sweet Moll hath been to me, you would comprehend better how I feel. To pretend indifference when you’re longing to hug her to your heart, to talk of fair weather and foul when you’re thinking of old times, and then to bow and scrape and go away without a single desire of your aching heart satisfied—’tis more than a man with a spark of warmth in his soul can bear.” And then he proceeded to give a dozen other reasons for declining the tempting bait—the sum of all proving to my conviction that he was dying to see Moll, and I feared he would soon be doing by stealth that which it were much safer he should do openly.

      About a week after this I got a letter from him, asking me to come again as soon as I might, he having cut his hand with a chisel, “so that I cannot work my lathe, and having nothing to occupy my mind, do plague myself beyond endurance.”

      Much concerned for my old friend, I lose no time in repairing to Greenwich, where I find him sitting idle before his lathe, with an arm hanging in a handkerchief, and his face very yellow; but this, I think, was of drinking too much ale. And here he fell speedily discoursing of Moll, saying he could not sleep of nights for thinking of the pranks she used to play us, our merry vagabond life together in Spain ere we got to Elche, etc., and how he missed her now more than ever he did before. After that, as I