The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

say,” answers he, dropping into a familiar, confidential tone after casting his eye over me to be sure I was no great person. “He ails nothing, to be sure, for I hear he is ever afoot from morn till even a-searching hither and thither; but a more downhearted, rueful looking gentleman for his age I never see. ’Twixt you and me, sir, I think he hath lost his sweetheart, seeing I am charged, with Sir Peter’s permission, to follow and not lose sight of any lady who may chance to call here for him.”

      I walked back to Greenwich across the fields, debating in my mind whether I should tell Moll of her husband’s distress or not, so perplexed with conflicting arguments that I had come to no decision when I reached home.

      Moll spying me coming, from her window in the front of the house, met me at the door, in her cloak and hood, and begged I would take her a little turn over the heath.

      “What have you to tell me?” asks she, pressing my arm as we walked on.

      “I have given your letter to Sir Peter Lely’s servant, who promises to deliver it faithfully to your husband.”

      “Well,” says she, after a little pause of silence, “that is not all.”

      “You will be glad to know that he is well in health,” says I, and then I stop again, all hanging in a hedge for not knowing whether it were wiser to speak or hold my tongue.

      “There is something else. I see it in your face. Hide nothing from me for love’s sake,” says she, piteously. Whereupon, my heart getting the better of my head (which, to be sure, was no great achievement), I told all as I have set it down here.

      “My dear, dear love! my darling Dick!” says she, in the end. And then she would have it told all over again, with a thousand questions, to draw forth more; and these being exhausted, she asks why I would have concealed so much from her, and if I did fear she would seek him.

      “Nay, my dear,” says I; “’tis t’other way about. For if your husband does forgive you, and yearns but to take you back into his arms, it would be an unnatural, cruel thing to keep you apart. Therefore, to confess the whole truth, I did meditate going to him and showing how we and not you are to blame in this matter, and then telling him where he might find you, if on reflection he felt that he could honestly hold you guiltless. But ere I do that (as I see now), I must know if you are willing to this accommodation; for if you are not, then are our wounds all opened afresh to no purpose, but to retard their healing.”

      She made no reply nor any comment for a long time, nor did I seek to bias her judgment by a single word (doubting my wisdom). But I perceived by the quivering of her arm within mine that a terrible conflict ’twixt passion and principle was convulsing every fibre of her being. At the top of the hill above Greenwich she stopped, and, throwing back her hood, let the keen wind blow upon her face, as she gazed over the grey flats beyond the river. And the air seeming to give her strength and a clearer perception, she says, presently:

      “Accommodation!” (And she repeats this unlucky word of mine twice or thrice, as if she liked it less each time.) “That means we shall agree to let bygones be bygones, and do our best to get along together for the rest of our lives as easily as we may.”

      “That’s it, my dear,” says I, cheerfully.

      “Hush up the past,” continues she, in the same calculating tone; “conceal it from the world, if possible. Invent some new lie to deceive the curious, and hoodwink our decent friends. Chuckle at our success, and come in time” (here she paused a moment) “to ‘chat so lightly of our past knavery, that we could wish we had gone farther in the business.’” Then turning about to me, she asks: “If you were writing the story of my life for a play, would you end it thus?”

      “My dear,” says I, “a play’s one thing, real life’s another; and believe me, as far as my experience goes of real life, the less heroics there are in it the better parts are those for the actors in’t.”

      She shook her head fiercely in the wind, and, turning about with a brusque vigour, cries, “Come on. I’ll have no accommodation. And yet,” says she, stopping short after a couple of hasty steps, and with a fervent earnestness in her voice, “and yet, if I could wipe out this stain, if by any act I could redeem my fault, God knows, I’d do it, cost what it might, to be honoured once again by my dear Dick.”

      “This comes of living in a theatre all her life,” thinks I. And indeed, in this, as in other matters yet to be told, the teaching of the stage was but too evident.

      CHAPTER XXXIV.

      All agree to go out to Spain again in search of our old jollity.

      Another week passed by, and then Dawson, shortsighted as he was in his selfishness, began to perceive that things were not coming all right, as he had expected. Once or twice when I went into his shop, I caught him sitting idle before his lathe, with a most woe-begone look in his face.

      “What’s amiss, Jack?” asks I, one day when I found him thus.

      He looked to see that the door was shut, and then says he, gloomily:

      “She don’t sing as she used to, Kit; she don’t laugh hearty.”

      I hunched my shoulders.

      “She doesn’t play us any of her old pranks,” continues he. “She don’t say one thing and go and do t’other the next moment, as she used to do. She’s too good.”

      What could I say to one who was fond enough to think that the summer would come back at his wish and last for ever?

      “She’s not the same, Kit,” he goes on. “No, not by twenty years. One would say she is older than I am, yet she’s scarce the age of woman. And I do see she gets more pale and thin each day. D’ye think she’s fretting for him?”

      “Like enough, Jack,” says I. “What would you? He’s her husband, and ’tis as if he was dead to her. She cannot be a maid again. ’Tis young to be a widow, and no hope of being wife ever more.”

      “God forgive me,” says he, hanging his head.

      “We did it for the best,” says I. “We could not foresee this.”

      “’Twas so natural to think we should be happy again being all together. Howsoever,” adds he, straightening himself with a more manful vigour, “we will do something to chase these black dogs hence.”

      On his lathe was the egg cup he had been turning for Moll; he snapped it off from the chuck and flung it in the litter of chips and shavings, as if ’twere the emblem of his past folly.

      It so happened that night that Moll could eat no supper, pleading for her excuse that she felt sick.

      “What is it, chuck?” says Jack, setting down his knife and drawing his chair beside Moll’s.

      “The vapours, I think,” says she, with a faint smile.

      “Nay,” says he, slipping his arm about her waist and drawing her to him. “My Moll hath no such modish humours. ’Tis something else. I have watched ye, and do perceive you eat less and less. Tell us what ails you.”

      “Well, dear,” says she, “I do believe ’tis idleness is the root of my disorder.”

      “Idleness was never wont to have this effect on you.”

      “But it does now that I am grown older. There’s not enough to do. If I could find some occupation for my thoughts, I should not be so silly.”

      “Why, that’s a good thought. What say you, dear, shall we go a-play-acting again?”

      Moll shook her head.

      “To be sure,” says he, scratching his jaw, “we come out of that business with no great encouragement to go further in it. But times are mended since then, and I do hear the world is more mad for diversion now than ever they were before the Plague.”

      “No, dear,” says Moll, “’tis of no use to think of that I couldn’t play now.”

      After