“All right, Charles. I’m going on deck now. I think you’re very foolish. Your going to see her will do no good. So I tell you. Remember me to her.” He picked up his hat, and walked out of the cabin to the deck.
Captain Margaret rose from his chair, glanced through the stern-port at the harbour, and sighed a little.
“Well,” he said abruptly, shrugging his shoulders, “what must be, must be. Perhaps they’ll be out when I get there. Perhaps she’ll refuse to see me.”
His mind, which now made none save romantic images, imaged for him the Broken Heart at sea, under her colours, going over the water, her owner looking astern at land he would never again tread. It imaged for him a garden ashore, full of roses and tall white campanulas. A lady walked there, looking seaward, regretting that she had not seen him, that she had not bidden him good-bye. Oh, very sweet, very tender, were the images which rose up in him, for the ten thousandth time, as he stared out over Salcombe harbour. And each image, each romantic symbol imagined or created, was a heavy nail, a heavy copper bolt, nailing him within the coffin of his past, among the skeletons of starved hopes and strangled passions.
II.
A FAREWELL
“Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing.”
Sonnet lxxxvii.
“Here take my picture; though I bid farewell,
Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.”
John Donne.
In a little room ashore, in a private suite of a big inn near the church, Tom Stukeley sat alone at breakfast, staring down the garden, across the sea, to the moored ships. He was a tall, powerful, well-made man, of a physical type more common in Ireland than in England, but not rare here. He was, above all things, a creature of the body. One had but to look at him to realize that when he died there would be little for Rhadamanthus. One could not like the man; for though his body had a kind of large splendour, it was the splendour of the prize cabbage, of the prize pig, a splendour really horrible. It is horrible to see any large thing without intelligence. The sight is an acquiescence in an offence against nature. Tom Stukeley was designed by nature for the position of publican. He had the vulgarity and the insolence of a choice English bagman, in the liquor line, together with this handsome body, red face, and thick black hair. By the accident of birth he was a gentleman. In seeing him one realized the tragedy of life’s apportionments. One realized that to build up this, this mass of mucous membrane, boorishly informed, lit only by the marsh-lights of indulged sense, the many toiled in poverty, in enforced though hated ignorance, in life without ease, without joy.
His coarsely coloured face passed for beauty, his insolence for strength of character, even for wit, among those men and women with whom he consorted. His outward manner had something of the off-handed ease of the inferior actor, who drinks, and tells tales, and remarks upon the passing women. But he had little of the actor’s good humour. He had, instead, that air of insolent superiority which makes the inferior soul, arrogant always, like the dunghill cock, clamorous of the glory of dung. In company he was rude to all whom he did not fear. He was more rude to women than to men, partly because he feared them less; but partly because his physical tastes were gross, so that he found pleasure in all horse-play—such as the snatching of handkerchiefs or trinkets, or even of kisses—in gaining which he had to touch or maul his victims, whether protesting or acquiescent. Women were attracted by him, perhaps because he frightened them physically. His love affairs were not unlike the love affairs of python and gazelle. “They like it,” he would say. “They like it.”
To men whom he did not fear, to those of them, that is, who had no advantage of fortune or position from which he could hope to profit, he acted with studied rudeness, with the unintellectual unvaried rudeness of a school bully, particularly if they displayed any little sally of wit, any fondness for art, any fineness of intelligence beyond him. It is possible to think of him with pity, as of one born out of his due time and out of his right circle. He was a cad, born a gentleman.
He sat alone at breakfast, with the breakfast dishes pushed far away from him; for he had risen late, and had sat late at wine the night before. The thought of food was nauseous to him; he drank small beer thirstily; and damned his wife under his breath for being risen from table, as he would, perhaps, have damned her aloud had she been present. He had been married for some three months and had begun to find the simulation of virtue tedious. His head ached; and he was very angry with his wife. He had married her for her money, and he now found that the money was so tied that her husband had no power over it; but that the trustees of her father’s estate, who viewed him with no favour, had powers which he had not suspected. Much as he had ever hated the law, he had never—— He rose up from his seat with an oath, believing for a wild moment that the marriage might be set aside. She had misled him; she must have known that all he wanted was her money. The marriage had been a secret one. But that belief only lasted for a moment; he was “married and done for,” and here was the lawyer’s letter refusing supplies. He had run through their ready money at cards the night before. All that remained to him was a handful of small change, and a handful of tradesmen’s bills. All through breakfast the bills had been arriving, for the word had spread abroad that the Stukeleys were leaving Salcombe at the end of their third week’s stay. He had been in awkward corners before; but never in the country, and never before had he been involved with a wife. He could not think what to do, for his head ached furiously. He had made too free with the common purse in the certainty of receiving money that morning. “Your obedient servants,” ran the letter. He stamped up and down the room, swearing and biting his nails. He could not return to London without money; nor did he dare to return; for he had many debts, and feared arrest. He wondered whether Olivia had any friends in those parts from whom he or she might borrow money. “It’s time Olivia got broken in,” he thought.