A Whaleman's Wife

by Frank Thomas Bullen

A SUDDEN RESOLVE

When Rube came down the next morning and composedly met his father’s and mother’s anxious looks, he had the listless air of a man whose spirit had been broken. There was a droop in his shoulders, a dulness in his eyes that contrasted painfully with the bright alertness of his glance and carriage of the day before. But he said nothing of his blow, and his parents wisely forbore to say anything either, trusting that his young and healthy body would come to the assistance of his mind, and that the wound would soon skin over. Unfortunately for their hopes, his love had been the pivot of his life. While a good farmer, a good son, and a good business man, he had no hobbies, he read little, and, being much alone, he had allowed his passion for Priscilla to become so interwoven with his every thought and action that the knowledge of her loss had been like a rending of soul from body. So he went about his duties like a somnambulist, seeking no comfort, making no confidences, and apparently as insensible to externals as a hypnotised man would be.

In this dull round of daily tasks several weeks passed away, until it happened that he found himself at the village grocery on some trivial errand. There was the usual knot of loungers ready to talk, and absurdly grateful for the coming of any stranger with something fresh to say. As he passed through them with a brief nod of recognition to one and another, and entered the store, he saw standing erect in their midst a tall wiry-looking man, whose face was unfamiliar to him. Pausing for an instant, with the first symptom of interest he had manifested for many days, he heard the stranger say:

‘Yas, ’n’ if enny ov yew fellers hed th’ grit ov a chipmunk, yew wouldn’t take twicet t’ think over yer anser. Wut man’d go on grindin’ mud all his life in a dead-’n’-alive God-fergotten corner like this when he’s got ’n opportoonity of seein’ the world—all th’ world, mind ye, east, west, north, and south—an’ makin’ a small forchin ’s well? I dunno wuts come over the yewth ov Amurica to-day. Sims t’ me they’ve lost their old vim ’n’ push altogether. Well, s’ long, boys; if I kain’t persuade ye I kain’t, ’n’ there’s an eend on ’t, ’n’ I mus’ be gittin’ ’long. But ef enny ov ye wants time t’ make up yer minds, I sh’l be back this way ag’in ter-morrer ev’nin’, ’n’ that’ll be the las’ chance you’ll git, enny ov ye.’

Although he had not heard any of the stranger’s preliminary discourse, and shrank from making inquiries, Rube’s interest was aroused to the highest pitch. He returned to his home with the few words he had heard seething and bubbling in his mind. For he felt that at last here was a way of escape from the almost insupportable deadness of his life. He could not realise that ‘the mind is its own place,’ and so, like a caged animal, seeing a door of hope open to him, he felt an unconquerable longing to flee. He said not a word throughout the evening meal, but that was so much his habit now that it passed unnoticed. Mechanically he bowed his head at ‘worship,’ but his father’s reading of a chapter from the Bible might have been in the original Hebrew for all he understood of it. After gaining the solitude of his room, he sat on the bed, his head on his hands, trying hard to reduce the whirlpool of his thoughts to some definite shape until far into the night, but in vain. Only one idea seemed to stand out sharply and distinctly against the misty tumult: he must go. At last, wearied with mental conflict, he fell backward, dressed as he was, and went to sleep.

He rose unrefreshed, with a racking headache for the first time in his life, and went about his usual round of duties automatically. But his face bore such evident traces of his last night’s conflict that they could not escape his mother’s keen eye. She anxiously inquired after his health, but was met with the careless reply that he was ‘all right.’ She knew better, of course, but it had never been her way to force confidence, and so she manifested no more curiosity. She only looked wistfully at her boy when unobserved by him, and hovered about him as if more than ordinarily solicitous for his comfort. All day long he moved and looked like a man in a dream, every thought, every feeling merged in one idea—escape. Strange, that it never occurred to him how impossible it is for a man to flee from himself.

Without waiting for supper, and as if dreading to be questioned, no sooner was the day’s work done than he strode off to the village grocery, assuming, as he approached it, a most elaborate air of unconcern, and lounging into the midst of the little knot of listless men hanging about the door as if nothing mattered—an attitude common to all of them. He had not long to wait. In about ten minutes after his arrival a brisk footfall was heard, and turning the corner sharply the lean, keen-looking stranger of the previous evening strode into the midst of the group.

‘Evenin’, boys,’ he jerked out, diving into the pockets of his pants at the same time and producing a formidable plug of hard tobacco and a knife. Having provided himself with a fresh cud and passed on the materials to his next neighbour, he proceeded:

‘Wall, boys, hev ye made up yer minds yet? This, as the paestor sez, is the last time ov askin’. Ye’ve got ter speak up now, ’relse stay right whar y’ are f’rever ’n’ ever. ’N’ that, I sh’d say, ’d be ’nough t’ decide fr’anny young man. Veg’tables don’ count anyhaow.’

This short harangue ended, he looked slily at his hearers to see whether he had made any impression upon them, but with the exception of a vacant half laugh or two, accompanied by an uneasy shuffle on the part of the utterers thereof, they might as well all have been deaf for any notice they took of him. But suddenly, to his astonishment (although he was careful not to show it), Rube, who was a stranger to him, stepped forward and said: