Captain Caution (34 page)
In the moonlight he saw three figures leaning against the rail under the swelling main course. Two were women; and to his astonishment the third was Argandeau an Argandeau who gestured with fearless grace toward the far horizon, and murmured with such fervor that his words poured from him with the sweet cadence of an endless lullaby.
"They must have seen me," Marvin sighed; for Argandeau's murmurings were suddenly silent; and after that the female figures, moving to the clack of knitting needles, left Argandeau and vanished down the hatch. Argandeau came to him, then, to stare with painful innocence at the moon.
"Wasn't it you," Marvin asked him, "who begged permission to stay in the hold?"
"Not forever!" Argandeau said reproachfully. "Did you hear me use the word 'forever'? Is it not necessary for a human being to come up at night?"
He moved closer to Marvin. "I must tell youl A strange thing happenedl Strange, yet freighted with relief and consolation. Last night I was yonder, and suddenly she was behind me, full of recognition. Well, I took upon myself the calm of Socrates before the hemlock! A ship is a place where a man cannot run limitlessly with Stromboli in eruption pursuing on felt slippers at his heelsl My friend, you
CAPTAIN CAUTION 491
await my narrative of the crisisl I will not keep you in suspense! My poor captain, Stromboli is extinct!"
Marvin looked at him. "Extinct?"
"Extinct! My once volcano! Flat as a dead fishl It can scarcely be credited, but when she saw me, she laughed; and what do you think she said to your pigeon? She said, 'It's that old Argandeau, an old rascal I used to knowl' That was all she said of me; and we had a nice conversation, the three of us. You heard me, no? We spoke of the ocean and the moon and where is the best cooking in Paris. It's incredible! Even as I talk I must pinch myself and pinch myself!"
He took his cheek between his thumb and forefinger, and wrenched it. When he had released himself, he said carelessly, "Your pigeon does not talk much any more. I think she is sad."
"My pigeon!" Marvin exclaimed. "Don't call her that againl She's hated me a long while."
Argandeau rested his cheek on his hand and stared at the moon. "M'ml I think you have something on your mind. I think so. I think I have had the same thought. In the hold these past two days, sitting in a corner of the carpenter shop and also concealed in the bread locker, I have been able to give more than a little thought to the matter. I have wondered whether that rabbit is Mrs. Slade. I have had the thought also that it is something she will never freely tell you; also that a sure way to find out nothing at all about it is to ask her. The temptation to ask will return and return, stronger one year than another, no doubt; but I would not ask. No, I would not ask."
"No," Marvin said uncertainly. "Well, I won't have - "
"No," Argandeau repeated. "Nol As for hating you, I think so. Yes indeed, I think she hates you; and why not? I ask you why not? For one thing, you have proved yourself right and her to be wrong; but that would not be the chief reason for her hate. No. The chief reason would be that it was not you who took her from the Blue Swan. I tell you there will be times when that hatred will be remembered at moments that will make you leap with surprise, like a fish "
"I did take her from the Blue Swan."
"No, that is not correct. That volcano that extinct volcano she made you take her."
Marvin struck the bulwark with the fiat of his hand. "How the devil did I know? How should I have known what she wanted?"
"And there you arel" Argandeau cried. "That is what she hates you most fort For not knowing! For not knowing she wasn't Mrs.
492 CAPTAIN CAUTION
SladelFor that, and because she had found out she was wrong about everything!"
Argandeau looked at him pityingly. "You think, perhaps, a woman will run to a man and tell him she has been wrong? That would be a fine beginning, eh? for a woman to say she has been wrong, so that forever after he would be able to say to her, 'Hahl You were wrong about that thing, back there fifty years ago; therefore you are wrong about this matter here and nowl' A wonderful affair, that, since it would reappear all the rest of your lives, causing bitter words and bitterer thoughts! No, not It is too much to expect a woman to admit being wrong at the start, when all women know that to make such an admission is like placing a club in the man's hands a club with which he will surely thump her Piff like that, when he is at a loss what else to dol Yes, yes, my good friend; you must expect her to hate you yes, and bitterly! You must understand thisl It's never the pigeon that is wrong; it's you you entirely!"
Marvin shook his head, puzzled. "If she hates me, she hates me. How can I help it if she hates me? You don't think, do you, that I want her to hate me? I'm not anxious to have anyone hate me, least of all that least of all well, I don't like to have her hate me. I never hated her. The fact is well, the fact is I never could help liking her. Even when we were children in Arundel."
He looked astern, over the dark waters, as though he hoped to see, far off, the little town beside the narrow river.
"I'm glad for her sake," he went on, "she didn't marry Slade. I never thought she would. But I don't know what to do what to do about it, or about her I don't know at all. I can't help having been right; I don't feel like taking any blame for that. She has been wrong all this time, and there's no other way to look at it."
Argandeau gazed long and steadily at the moon. "No," he said dreamily. "Nol Of course there is no other way to look at it. No other way at all. Nor can you ever change her hate for you; of course notl Still, that pigeon is a guest on your vessel. She is in your charge, even; so you might, perhaps it is a small thought, this one, and of no value, doubtless you might do what you could to make her feel better."
"Why," Marvin said simply, "I would! I'd be glad to! But I don't know howl She takes no pleasure in anything I do or sayl"
Argandeau raised his eyebrows, a moon-struck picture of exasperation. "But there is nothing easierl Go to her and tell herl"
"Tell her what?" Marvin demanded, equally exasperated.
"Tell her you've been wrong."
CAPTAIN CAUTION 493
Marvin just looked at him; and from his look, it was clear to Argandeau that Marvin thought him off his head.
Yet Argandeau's words recurred to Marvin in his bed that night, and he thought about them. Indeed, he lay awake, turning them this way and that in his mind; and at last he struck upon a matter concerning which he might have been at least a little wrong. He had, as he recalled it, told Corunna she would never make a proper captain of a ship. That, he admitted, might have been an overstatement; for certainly she could come as near being a proper captain as any woman could. His words, perhaps, had been a little rough, tinged with incaution. Hazily, before he slept, he knew he owed it to Corunna to explain those words.
Thus it happened that at noon the following day it was the captain himself, instead of Newton, who came to the cabin for the log book. He hesitated before the cabin door, and almost turned away; but at length he cleared his throat and knocked; then dropped his hat and fumbled for it on the floor, and was still groping for it when Victorine's voice called, "Entrez!" When he had found his hat, he coughed and knocked again and immediately entered.
They were at the table, both of them, engaged in unraveling the last product of Victorine's needles, and at the sight of him they stopped and stared.
"I wanted to see that is you know, the log book," he said with an air of choosing his words carefully.
The two women looked at each other and then back at Marvin; and it was Victorine who took the log book from the rack beside the door and placed it in his hands.
He took it gratefully. "I didn't want to disturb you," he said. "I only thought I'd get the log book." He coughed, examined the cover of the book with apparent surprise; and then, with a sudden desperation, he said to Corunna, "I've been thinking things over, and I thought I'd tell you I believe I've been wrong about about - "
She looked at him strangely. "Wrong?" she asked. "About what?"
Unexpectedly to himself, as if by a God-given inspiration, he said the right thing. He heard himself saying, "About everything!"
At that she seemed to change before his eyes. No sailor woman stood there, hard and hating him, but a soft-eyed girl, drooping, gentle and on the point of tears.
"Ah, not" she said in a shaking voice. "You were never wrong about anything, nor ever will bet"
Beneath the noonday sun the True-Hearted Yankee sliced, close
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For the aid so freely given him in the writing of this book and the obtaining of information on seamanship, gunnery, ship-design and the Gangway Pendulum, the author is profoundly grateful to
Anna Mosser Roberts Booth Tarkington R. E. Gould, Anson, Maine W. H. Stone, Patton, California Howard Irving Chapelle, Assistant Editor, "The Mariner" Harry A. McBride, Department of State
P. V. H. Weems, Lt. Commander, U. S. N.
Holden C. Richardson, Capt., U. S. N. (Retired) Marion Cobb Fuller, Maine State Library The Library of Congress
ARUNDEL
"When I think of the thin, tinny novels which tumble from the press today, to be forgotten within a few months, I feel that Arundel is a permanent contribution to the literature of this country. I go around telling people to read it; but I despair until they have read it of making them realize its quality. It seems to me like a perfectly splendid plum pudding! No, I think it is more than that; I think it is brown bread, and roast beef, and beerl It is the real stud, and while I congratulate the author upon having written it, I congratulate all of us novel-reading folk even more heartily. How anybody can lap up whipped cream when he can get Arundel, I don't understand!"
MARGARET DEEAND PRINTINGS
First published..... ........ November 18, 1929
Revised, replated end reprinted .... . June, 1933, October, 1956 U.S., 1931 twice; 1933 twice; 1934 four times; 1935; 1936 three times; 1937 three times; 1938 three times; 1939; 1940; 1941; 1942; 1943; 1944; 1945 twice; 1946; 1947; 1949; 1953; 1955; 1956
Braille, Library of Congress..........January, 1934
Family Reading Club. .... . November, 1956
Doubleday Dollar Book Club................December, 1956 International Collectors LibraryApril, 1958 England (Bodley Head) .September, 1936 Germany (Holle & Co.) ..October, 1936 Germany (Buchgemeinschaft). January, 1937 England (Readers Union)December, 1938
Sweden ( Bonniers ) ......... .... . March, 1939 Denmark (Aschehoug) . November, 1939 Italy ( Mondadori ) .. September, 1940 Armed Services Edition May, 1945
Spain ( Janes ) ....................... . . May, 1946
France (Editions de la Paix) Details unobtainable Czechoslovakia (Borovy) . October, 1947
Arundel 300th Anniversary.... .... June, 1953
German Book Society ( Koch, Darmstadt )January, 1955 England (Collins Fontana)September, 1956
RABBLE IN ARMS
"Rabble In Arms is magnificent. In both the beauty and the horror of his story, Kenneth Roberts reaches supreme heights and can defy comparison with any author that ever lived and wrote in any language I ever read in the original or in translation. They talk big talk of Tolstoi, Victor Hugo, Stephen Crane and a few others, but I put Kenneth Roberts up with the best of them. He is a great author who has actually written great novels."
RUPE:RT HUGRES PRINTINGS
First published ........November 2, 1933
U.S., 1933 twice; 1935; 1936; 1937 three times; 1938 twice; 1939 twice; 1940;194~;1943;1944;1945;1948;1950;1953;1956
Braille, Library of CongressJanuary, 1934 Talking Books, Library of Congress1945 Illustrated Edition October, 1947 International Collectors LibraryNovember, 1955 Family Reading Club June, 1957 Doubleday Dollar Book ClubApril, 1958 Reprinted September, 1958 Germany (Hone) October, 1936 Germany (Book Society)January, 1937 England (Collins) January, 1939
Australia ( Collins ) ........................ January, 1939
England ( National Library for Blind) March, 1939 England ( World Books ) . April, 1940
Italy ( Mondadori ) .........................June, 194 Czechoslovakia (Borovy) July, 1941
Sweden (Bonniers) February, 1945
Spain ( Janes ) . ....................... September, 1946
Republished Czechoslovakia ( Odeon )January, 1949 Republished Sweden ( Bonniers, Folkbibliotek)May, 1955
NORTHWEST PASSAGE
"Towering above all else in the swirling 700 pages of North west Passage is that indestructible giant, Robert Rogers, a prodigious creation, a character bristling and sounding with life, a vivid portrait for your literary gallery. Northwest Passage will give you three novels' worth of entertainment."