A Whaleman's Wife

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Trembling in every fibre, Eddy hastily made for the house, coming into the well-lighted living-room with his message in his face. The family, consisting of Mrs. Fish, her two grown-up sons, and Priscilla, were all seated there, eagerly discussing a knotty point in some book Priscilla had been reading aloud, but the entry of the old man and their first glance at his face froze them into silence. Going straight up to the mother, Eddy laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder, and said, ‘Hepziber, the Lord be good t’ye. He’s taken away yew’re husband.’

There was no outcry. Priscilla came swiftly to her mother’s side and tried to soothe the heavily stricken woman, whose silent suffering was pitiful to see; while the two sons and the old man, bearing lights, returned to the barn and reverently carried in the body. The usual sad offices were soon rendered to the remains, and with slow, uncertain steps Eddy returned home to tell his sorrowful story and warn Reuben that, for the present at any rate, a prior claim to attention had been made upon their neighbour’s family.

Some months, therefore, elapsed before anything of the matter that lay so close to his heart passed Reuben’s lips. But he was by no means impetuous, and besides, he had always been trained to subordinate his wishes to those of others, so that while his love was undoubtedly rooting and grounding itself more firmly every day, he was able to abstain from all mention of it to its object. Summer came, and with it an opportunity during a long Sunday afternoon’s ramble with Priscilla to broach the important matter to her. She listened—somewhat listlessly, it is true, but still she listened; while Rube, growing bolder as he went on, and marvelling at his own powers of speech, poured out to her his hopes and plans. But no enthusiasm could hold out long under the unconcealed air of indifference with which his fervent speech was received, and he soon sobered down to wonder quietly how it was she took his vehemence so coolly. Being ready, however, to supply all deficiencies from his own abundant stock, he was not unduly depressed. And as the days went by his sweet sunny temperament asserted itself, and hope, almost amounting to certainty, arose within him that she would presently, as he had done, find all things changed under the new light of love. Yet in spite of his hopefulness, a weary sense of the hilly road he was travelling would occasionally give him serious pause, and he grew hungry for some return, however slight, of his lavish affection. And it was with one of these moods that this chapter and the story open.

CHAPTER II

‘VENI, VIDI, VICI’

After the death of Ezekiel Fish the care of the farm devolved upon the two brothers, both of them typical Yankee farmers, but without a trace of the kindliness so characteristic of the Eddys. Rube had never been a favourite with them. They dared not despise him openly—he was too big and strong for that; but they spoke of him behind his back in terms of disparagement, and did all in their power to discourage the slightest feeling of affection for him that they imagined their sister to have. Jake, the elder brother, a man some three years older than Rube, had by virtue of his seniority assumed full charge of affairs, and already had begun to launch out in various speculative ways that troubled the old lady sorely. His visits to Boston ‘on business’ were frequent and prolonged, and already he was becoming known to a few of his less reputable associates as a ’feller thet wuz makin’ things hum a bit.’

In these altered circumstances it was no wonder that Rube pressed his suit more earnestly than ever. His unselfish nature was fully alarmed for Priscilla’s immediate future, and his anxiety on her behalf gave his love an added lustre which it had lacked before. But to his distress and chagrin, the steady growth of his affection did not awaken in her the slightest responsiveness. To a stranger it would have been at once manifest that she merely tolerated the young man; even to his love-blinded perceptions the fact stubbornly persisted in revealing itself. Rube endured this coldness patiently for months, until on the evening of the commencement of our story he had drifted almost unconsciously into a protest against this treatment of himself by Priscilla who, if she had never given him any encouragement worth speaking of, had at least tacitly accepted him as a lover. She had received his complaint in the manner already specified, speaking the exact truth about the state of her feelings towards him as far as she knew them. The trouble was that she had not quite realised the strength of a feeling of unrest and discontent with her surroundings which had been steadily eating into her mind for months past. It was largely due to her brother Jake, who, in the elated condition generally noticeable on his return from Boston, was wont to launch into extravagant praise of city life with its light and bustle and abundant enjoyments. Naturally he was correspondingly contemptuous of the well-ordered procession of days characteristic of the country. The majestic harmonies and sweet confidences of Nature, the changeful orchestra of each day, and the placid stillness of the nights, had become to his disorganised ideas like the stagnation of death. His was that subtle malaise that stealthily undermines the natural order of things, and, leaving the countryside to go out of cultivation, herds men and women together in vast feverish crowds to stew and fret and die, but never to return to the quiet of the country again.

This miserable change had, without her knowledge, infected Priscilla also in such a manner that now every task was irksome, the stillness of the evenings almost unbearable. Irritability, which had never before disfigured her character, became increasingly noticeable. Even Rube saw the change, but could not dream of its cause, and innocently added to it by his dog-like untiring affection. Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when one evening the sound of wheels through the crisp air warned the inmates of the Fish place that Jake was returning from one of his Boston jaunts. Priscilla dropped her knitting and went to the door which looked across the wide paddock down the road. To her surprise she saw in the fast approaching buggy two forms. Jake was bringing a visitor! The prospect of any break in what had now become almost an intolerable monotony so affected her that she felt nearly intoxicated, her face flushed rosily, and a tingling thrill that was almost pain rushed all over her. Yet she could not move, but stood there framed in the portal like a graceful [picture], while the buggy drew up at the roadside and the men alighted. As they came across the paddock towards her she saw that the stranger was tall and stalwart, walking with the easy loose-jointed swing of the smart sailor. He was dressed in the garb of an ordinary well-clothed townsman, but a wide sombrero, of brown velvet apparently, shaded his face. Whether by accident or design on his part, this hat completed his resemblance to one of the old conquistadores or grandees of Spain painted by Velasquez. For his visage was swarthy and oval, his eyes large, black, and brilliant, and the lower half of his face was covered by a pointed beard and immense moustache so black and thick and silky that it hardly seemed of natural growth. To Priscilla’s eyes he looked as if he had just stepped across the years out of Prescott’s living page, and, like so many others of her sex, in that moment she gave him her whole heart, offered herself up to the husk of a man, unknowing and uncaring what it contained.

Her mind in a confused whirl of thought, she stood as if petrified until the travellers reached her, and made no sign, even when Jake said, ‘Thishyer’s my sister Priscilla, Cap’n. Pris, Cap’n Da Silva.’ The Captain bowed, gracefully enough because naturally, but with evident signs that the movement was unusual, and held out his small and well-shaped brown hand to meet Priscilla’s white and plump one. The contact of their hands acted upon her like a vigorous restorative, and the blood fled back again from her face and neck, leaving them for the moment unnaturally pale as she found her voice and bade the stranger welcome. Even Jake’s dull eyes could not fail to see how powerfully his sister was impressed by the Captain, and it pleased him well. Selfish and grasping, he was by no means sorry to get rid of his sister, nor did the thought of his mother’s loneliness affect him in the slightest degree. So that it was with a chuckle of satisfaction he turned away to put up his horse and buggy, saying carelessly as he did so, ‘’Scuse me, Cap. My sister’ll look after you in shape, won’t ye, Pris?’

Thenceforward Priscilla and the Captain were constant companions, their intimacy tacitly encouraged by Jake, who was in a high state of satisfaction at the prospect of getting rid of his sister finally. The mother made many attempts to gain her daughter’s confidence, for she felt an innate distrust of the handsome stranger. But Priscilla, forgetting all her mother’s claims, avoided with intuitive diplomacy any approach to the subject on her part, showing at times an irritability of manner that sorely troubled the old lady, who, having no one to turn to in her distress of mind, was lonely indeed. At last, one day when Pris, the Captain, and Jake had driven off upon some excursion of pleasure, she felt that she could bear the trouble alone no longer, and taking advantage of her younger son’s absence at a neighbouring farm, she made a pilgrimage over to the Eddy farmhouse, intent upon pouring out her heart to Mrs. Eddy. The meeting between the two old dames was full of pathetic interest, for Mrs. Eddy loved her boy so fondly that, although she had never felt drawn to Priscilla, it was enough for her that Rube loved the girl. His happiness was the consideration that overtopped all others in her heart. So that when Mrs. Fish unburdened herself, her hearer was torn by maternal solicitude for her boy, and for the time her anxiety as to the effect this news would have upon him was too great to allow her to reply. And when she did speak, her words sounded hollow and unmeaning—so much so that her visitor stared at her wonderingly. For Mrs. Eddy’s powers of consolation and wisdom of counsel were matters of common knowledge over a wide extent of country—she was looked up to as infallible. The look in her visitor’s eyes recalled her to herself somewhat, and choking down her feelings by a great effort, she said: