“Why don’t you go back to it?” asked Captain Margaret. “You don’t go back to it. Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” said Cammock, as he prepared his morning’s pipe. “The men I knowed are gone. They’d have new ways, the new lot. Besides, that sort of thing only goes when you’re young. When you get the salt in your bones, you find the young devils don’t like having you around. And the girls get particular. You can’t get a wife no longer for a yard of blue baize and a stick of sealing-wax. Excuse me, captain. I’m a sailor. I sometimes talk rough. But there it is. All a sailor has at the end is just what he can remember. What I can mind of logwood-cutting is the same as a trader’s money-bags is to him. I must be off forward, to have my morning draw.” He spun his chair round, and rose, pressing the tobacco into his clay pipe. “Give me my hat, stooard.” He bowed to the two friends, walking slowly to the cabin door. “By the way, sir,” he called back. “I forgot to ask. I suppose you’ll be going ashore this fine morning?”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “I am going ashore. I shall want the boat, captain.”
“Very good, sir,” said Cammock. “Will you want to fill our water, sir?”
“No,” said Margaret. “I shall sail before sunset, if the wind holds. We shall fill no more water till we make Virginia.”
“Very good, Captain Margaret,” said Cammock. “If you don’t want the hands, I’ll try them at the guns. It’s time they got into the way of doing things.”
He spun upon his heel, leaving the two friends together. The steward, gathering up the gear, retired to the pantry to wash up.
Captain Charles Margaret, the owner of the Broken Heart, sitting there in his chair, in the quiet cabin, was not yet forty; but his brown hair was grizzled, and his handsome face, so grave, so full of dignity, was marked austerely with lines. He gave one, at first, the impression of a man who had lived fully, grandly, upon many sides of life; with a nobility inherent, not to be imitated. It was only after long months of friendship that the observer could learn the man’s real nature. He would see then that the real nature, ripened, as it was, on so many sides, ready, as it was, to blossom wonderfully, had never come to flower, still less to fruit. It was a great nature, checked by some hunger of the soul, which (this is the sorrow of all beautiful desire) would perhaps have destroyed the soul, had it been satisfied. He was one who had loved for many years. He had paid away all the gold of his life, for a sorrow and a few copper memories. He had loved nobly, like a man of the heroic time, letting life go by him with a smile, so long as the woman whom he loved might be spared one little moment’s annoyance, one little wrinkling of the beautiful brow. He had said to himself that he had worn this woman’s glove, and that he would wear no other woman’s petticoat. And from long brooding on this wayward beauty who had spoiled his life, he had learned much of women. He understood them emotionally with a clearness which sometimes frightened him. He felt that he took a base advantage of them in allowing them to talk to him. Their hearts were open books to him. Though the woman said, “Look on this page, or on this,” his instinct, never wrong, revealed to him the page she tried to hide; and his indulgence of this sense made him, at times, of little use in conversation; for the revealed truth amused him more than its polite screen. At times its possession saddened him, for he knew that he would never exercise that sense in the tenderness of the accepted lover, reading the unspoken thought in the beloved eyes. In his person he was tall and finely built, but a certain clumsiness in his walk made his appearance ungraceful when he left his chair. His hands were singularly beautiful. His eyes were grey and deep-set. His face was pale, inclining to sallow, but bronzed by the wind and sun. He was careful, but quiet in his dress. He wore a black suit, precisely cut, like the clothes of a Puritan, but for its fine lace collar and elaborately carved buttons of scarlet ivory.
He had, as he felt, failed in life, because he had failed in love; a point of view common among women, in a man a confession of self-praise, selfishness, almost of vanity. He had allowed his passion to keep him from action; by which, alone, growth or worth can be determined. He, as a lover, having, as he thought, created a life for himself, more beautiful, because intenser, than the lives of others, even of artists, had lived retired, judging, as all retired men will, all actions, all life, all things, by an arbitrary standard, his own standard, the value of which he was incapable of judging. He had been certain, led away, as he had been, by wild love, that his way was the way of self-perfection, to which all ways assisted, rightly used. In so far as his passion had fitted him for the affairs of the world, by adding graces, or accomplishments to a nature rich already, he had profited. He had studied arts, some half a dozen different kinds, so that his mind might have the more facets to twinkle agreeably for his mistress’s pleasure. But with the confidence of various skill had come, also, intellectual pride; for to the man who knew a little of many things, many things seemed little, since none, save a hopeless passion, seemed great. With this had come a shrinking from the world, a tolerance of it that was half contempt, a distrust of it that was half sorrow for it. He lived away from the world, in a fanciful chamber, where the kings of his imagination offered precious balms for ever to the aloof lady, queen and saint. It was his fancy, in the latter years of his passion, to sublime all human experience, to reduce all action to intellectual essence, as an offering to her. This had begun from a desire to amuse her in conversation. Later, as his aloofness from the world drove him still more upon his folly, he had one day trembled lest she should ask him something that he did not know, or could not resolve. It had given to him a new interest in the world; but a fantastic interest; he saw it only for her, to some extent through her. He searched the measure of his friends’ experience, trying to find, as he had tried that morning with Captain Cammock, some purpose or delight, some glory or dignity in the various tale, which might, in his own hands, become beauteous to her, and to himself sweet, being, as he never doubted it would prove, less glorious, less grand, than his daily experience of high emotion.
Now that the two friends were together in the cabin, there was a silence. Throughout the meal Margaret had kept the old pirate talking, in order to divert Perrin from the protests which he knew would come. Now that they were alone, the protests were long in coming. Perrin fidgeted between the table and the book-case, biting his thumbs, evidently waiting for his friend to speak. At last, feeling that he could wait no longer, and speaking crudely because he spoke from his own initiative, he began—