"He will have time for me." The voice was dry. The man entered the office without knocking, his dour face reminding Reuben of that portrait seen long ago in Grandmother Cory's parlor: no specific likeness to Grandfather Matthew in the lean sadness of Mr. Simon Eames, except for the tight closing of the gash below the nose, the mouth of a man who expected life to taste bitter and could not allow his expectation to be wrong.
The wealth of Mr. Eames was all ocean-born; he could have bought out Mr. Kenny twice over. Unfortunately he hated water and was said by the naughty-minded to turn seasick at the touch of a washrag. He might have sat quiet in his countinghouse and let the pounds and shillings come to him; he need not even have turned his pale eyes on the sometimes lively water of the Bay. But human nature is consistent as a lost puppy in a typhoon: whenever one of his ships came in, Mr. Eames invariably gritted his large teeth and had himself rowed out across the demoniac element. He must have this moment returned from such an ordeal. He was quite green. "Mr. Kenny, sir, if you have a moment?"
"Certainly, Mr. Eames. I saw your Regina was in on the tide this morning. Had she a fair passage?"
"Middling, they tell me. The Lord maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters. No, I thank you, I never drink," he said as Mr. Kenny fumbled at a drawer of his desk. Mr. Eames sniffed, glancing in distaste at the bowed head of Captain Jenks, which had not lifted to acknowledge his presence. "I regret, Mr. Kenny, it is my grievous Christian duty to be the bearer of ill news, in the which one must seek to discover the infinite wisdom of Providence, the Dispenser of all mercies." Reuben sickened with understanding: the ship Regina was in the Virginia trade, and so was Uncle John's ship Iris; any moment now this pious carrion crow would come to the end of the preliminaries he was enjoying so much, and declare a disaster in plain words. Meanwhile the man was talking, and talking, and had not yet begun, and Daniel Shawn had swung away from the window to thrust his hands in the pockets of his green coat and gaze down at the sad speaker as one might watch a yapping dog. Reuben thought: What's it to Shawn? Why should he step forward so, where Uncle John must be aware of him, and put on a plain show of anger at the bringer of bad news? "... as in all mischances and vicissitudes it is necessary to submit, Mr. Kenny, even to offer up gracious supplications...."
"Mr. Eames," said John Kenny, and the noise ended. Simon Eames was not accustomed to interruptions; he probably found them ill-bred. He stood patiently, expecting blasphemy. "Mr. Eames, I have not much time, not here at my warehouse this morning and perhaps not in the world. As for God's providence and disposition of the burdens men bear, may I leave such questions to God himself, rather than have them expounded unto me by men who, I suppose, share my humility as well as my mortality?"
"John Kenny, you had ever a somewhat naughty spirit."
"That may be so. Will you speak your news?"
Flushed, Mr. Eames drew a few deep breaths. Reuben sickly, inconsequently remembered another face, nothing at all like the face of Mr. Eames, a bronze painted face in a darkly reddened room. He had spat on it. In spite of the observations anyone must make, it had never become fully credible to Reuben that a human creature could find pleasure in the pain of others. His mind acknowledged the evidence, his heart refused it, and he wished weakly that magic could lift him out of this chilly crowded room into some place—the spring woods, for choice—where Mr. Welland would answer questions with mirth and kindness. "Mr. Kenny, your ship Iris, Captain Samuel Foster commanding, put out of Norfolk a fortnight before the departure thence of my ship Regina. I have this intelligence from Captain Bart of the Regina, with whom I was but now speaking. The Iris sailed on the third day of April to be precise, for Barbados, at least that was the destination announced by Captain Foster."
"Yes, it was Captain Foster's intention to make Barbados."
"The Regina sailed on the sixteenth day of April, arriving here this morning after a slow passage, having encountered contrary winds as the Lord willed. On her second day out of Norfolk, the seventeenth day of April, the weather being overcast and a dirty sea running, my Captain Bart hath told me, the Regina overtook the longboat of the ship Iris."