Captain Adam (27 page)

Adam had six of them now, and he put three on the window silL He even considered a plan to put four there, giving Elnathan only two; but after all, he was on his way to the Evans house right now, and old Zeph hadn't signed that agreement to sell his share of the schooner yet, so it was best to play safe.

From the lane he looked back at them. They looked bright in the darkness, and firm, and hard. They were good lemons.

He had knocked once on the door of the Evans house but hadn't had a chance to knock a second time, when it was flung open and he was jerked inside and the door was slammed shut and Elnathan had both her arms around him and was kissing and kissing him.

O O Now here—it looked as if—was to be an evening of shocks. tl/ O Adam, not without difficulty disengaging himself, was horrified; and also he was scared. For the room was a blaze of light, and he and Elnathan had not been in the habit of embracing in illuminated places. Theirs had been a sneaky affair—an affair of violent, hastily snatched squeezes, their hearts thudding harshly together, or fluttering in panic like newly caged birds, in closets or dim corners, and of the more nearly satisfying but still by no means leisurely pawings in her bedroom when Zeph was abroad on business. Furtiveness was of the marrow of their relationship. Except when they spoke to one another in public, Elnathan a touch condescending toward him, Adam a shade deferential toward her, their talk was in whispers. To tell the truth, though the whole sum of reasons for their getting together was the enjoyment of what is sometimes called the Ultimate Intimacy, they didn't actually know one another well. Their interest in one another could be, at times, intense: it was never informed. The beloved should be studied as well as adored. Adam, had he words, could have described in detail every far, tiny, tucked-away corner of Maisie Treadway's body; but put masks over their faces and he wouldn't have known the naked Elnathan from a naked any-other-woman.

He darted glances right and left. No, they couldn't be seen here, close up to the door, from outside. And surely Zeph wasn't home, though Adam already had run beyond the agreed-upon hour.

Nevertheless Adam had been affrighted. He swallowed, trying to smile. Elnathan, beaming before, now fairly glowered. She was a handsome rather than lovely woman, who ordinarily held herself in; who, if she seldom smiled, seldom really frowned either. It must have been that she

saved most of her tempests, of one sort or another, for her lover. It was pretty safe Zeph Evans didn't get many.

"La, 'tis a fine way to greet the lady of your heart!"

Now where in Tophet had she picked up that silly little Frenchy "La!"? This was the first time he'd ever heard it out of her mouth, and it flustered him.

He achieved a smile. It could have been that the effort showed. Anyway Elnathan disapproved.

"Took the breath out of me, just seeing you again."

"You sure hurried here!"

"Ain't been ashore an hour and a half. Come rushing up here, what'll folks think? Ain't even reported to the owners yet. Look—"

He handed her the three remaining lemons, which softened her, though she failed to utter any cries of delight.

"Elnathan—"

"Yes?"

All the voyage home he had been dreading this moment. He didn't want to dirty Maisie, even in his thoughts. She was too clean and good a woman to be treated that way. Yet that Elnathan Evans would expect him back in her bed soon after his return seemed certain. Elnathan might be a wicked woman, and indeed she was, as by the same token he was a wicked man, but nobody could say of her that she wavered. As far as Adam knew, she'd never bedded another man, always excepting of course her husband. Their affair had not been of long duration, and it was hardly likely that one voyage to the Windwards would do anything to decrease her hunger and thirst for him.

"There's, uh, something I want to tell you—"

It was only decent and right. Far as that went, 'twas only common sense; for she'd soon find out anyway.

"What is it, chick?" She still was looking right at him, and standing close, but her eyes had gentled. Oh, she was fond of him! "You want to tell me you missed me?" She was not quite his height, and now as she lifted her face to him her eyelids drooped. "What's the best way to tell me that?"

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 168

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 teUing 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. 170

"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

O f\ The wide rolling river he had dreamed of so many times,

t-^ «—' 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.

There was no lack of laughter, but a lot of this was derisive. Newport folks, Adam reckoned, might well be thought solemn alongside these English; yet he didn't sense any large measure of happiness here, much less contentment. It must have been more than a frame of mind, it must have been a physical misalignment, that made Londoners look so sour. Even their smiles had acid in them. Even their grins canted. Two out of three persons you passed might have been suffering from some mild but persistent stomach trouble, a disorder encasing all their thoughts and impulses in a thin fibrous film of suffering.

And the noise! Men tramped on his feet, jogged his elbows, or pushed their faces into his, thrusting things at him, the while they shrieked "What d'ye lack?" Folks dropped things on him from windows, rolled things in front of him. Twice, jostled against a wall, he lost his footing and slipped to hands and knees; but nobody paid him any mind.

Here was the oddest part of it all: the attitude of these Londoners, who could loaf in the midst of turmoil and wouldn't trouble to turn head for anything less loud than a scream for help, if then. Had Adam been

caught up in a mob clamoring for the blood of some miscreant he might have caught from his fellows some touch of their hysteria. Yet no common cause united the members of this teeming world, no purpose inspired them. It took Adam a good while to accept the all-but-unbelievable truth that these folks weren't flying around in any frenzy, that this was the way they acted all the time.

You were given no chance to take offense. You were bumped from behind, or butted, or shoved, and before you could whirl around and demand an apology the offender had bared off, leaving you to confront some totally different person, who had no interest in you. But then, nobody had any interest in you. Adam had known lonesomeness most of his life; but he had never before been as lonesome as this.