Cup of Gold (16 page)

This was the blessed state she dared to hope for. And her body was not enough, she knew. Often it failed in its soft potency. If she fed him full of love, he did not come again to her bower for a time; and when she refused him to make his passion mount, either he went sullenly away or laughed and flung her roughly on the low, palm couch. She must cast about for some compelling force, some very powerful means to make him marry her.

When Henry went away with cocoa for Port Royal, she was scarcely sane. She knew his love for the ship, his passion for the sea, and she was furiously jealous of them. In her mind she saw him fondle the wheel with the strong, dear touch of lover’s fingers. Ah! she could scratch and tear that wheel which robbed her.

She must make him love Paulette more than the ships, more than the sea, or anything on earth, so that he would marry her. Then she could walk haughtily among the huts and spit at the slaves; then she need never think of grubbing in the earth or bearing strong black children; then she would have red cloth to wear, and a silver chain to go about her neck. It was even possible that once in a long while her dinner might be brought to her while she lay in bed, pretending to be ill. She wriggled her toes in delight at such a thought, and made up the insulting things she would say to one fat negress with a spiteful tongue, when only she should be a wife. That old, fat wretch had called Paulette a slut before a gathering. Paulette had pulled out lots of hair before she could be held with her arms to her sides—but still, that black one should see, one day. Paulette would have her whipped on the cross.

While Henry was away a trading ship came into port, and Paulette went to the beach to see the things she brought and to watch the wind-brown sailors come ashore. And one of them, a great, broad Irishman, laden with black rum, pursued and captured her against a pile of boxes. Strong and quick, she struggled to elude him, but he held her tightly, swaying though he was.

“I’ve caught a fairy to mend my shoes,” he laughed, and peered into her face. “Sure enough, ’tis a fairy.” And then he saw that she was small and very beautiful, and he spoke tenderly and low.

“You’re a lovely fairy—lovelier than the eyes of me have ever seen. Could a slim little body like you be thinking anything about a great, ugly hulk like me, I wonder? Come off and marry me, and you shall have anything ’tis in the power of a sailor to give you.”

“No!” she cried. “No!” and slipped under his arm and away. The sailor sat in the sand staring dully before him.

“ ’Twas a dream,” he whispered; “ ’twas only a dream from the spirits. There’s no such thing to be happening to a poor sailor. No; for sailors there be pretty hags with sharp, hard eyes to say, ‘Come! money first, sweetheart mine.’ ”

But now Paulette had found the way to make Henry marry her. She would contrive to get drunkenness on him, would trap him with wine, and there would be a priest nearby to come at her hushed call. Oh, surely, stranger things had been!

She laid her snare for him on his first night back from sea—a large stone flagon filled with Peruvian wine, and a priest, bribed with a stolen coin, waiting in the shadow of a tree. Henry was very tired. He had gone out short-handed and helped to work the ship himself. The little vine-clothed hut was a pleasant, restful place to him. A full white moon cast silver splashes in the sea below and strewed the ground with scarves of purple light. Sweetly there sang a little jungle breeze among the palms.

She brought the wine and filled a cup for him.

“Do you love Paulette?”

“Ah, yes! as God sees me, I love Paulette; dear, sweet Paulette. ” Another cup, and still, persistently—

“Are you so sure you love Paulette?”

“Paulette is a little star hanging to my breast by a silver chain.”

Another cup.

“Do you love none other save only your Paulette?”

“I came longingly to find Paulette; the thought of her sailed on the sea with me.” And his arms locked tightly around her little golden waist.

Another and another and another; then his arms fell away from her and his hands clenched. The girl cried fearfully,

“Oh! do you love Paulette?” for Henry had grown morose and strange and cold.

“I shall tell you of an old time,” he said hoarsely. “I was a little boy, a joyous little boy, yet old enough to love. There was a girl—and she was named Elizabeth—the daughter of a wealthy squire. Ah! she was lovely as this night about us, quiet and lovely as that slender palm tree under the moon. I loved her with that love a man may exercise but once. Even our hearts seemed to go hand in hand. How I remember the brave plans we told—she and I, there, sitting on a hillside in the night. We were to live in a great house and have dear children growing up about us. You can never know such love, Paulette.

“Ah, well! It could not last. The gods slay happiness in jealousy. Nothing good can last. A gang of bastard sailors roved through the land and carried me off—a little boy to be sold for a slave in the Indies. It was a bitter thing to lose Elizabeth— a bitter thing the years cannot forget.” And he was weeping softly by her side.

Paulette was bewildered by the change in him. She stroked his hair and his eyes, until his breath came more calmly. Then she began again, with almost hopeless patience, like a teacher questioning a dull child.

“But—do you love Paulette?”

He leaped up and glared at her.

“You? Love you? Why, you are just a little animal! a pretty little golden animal, for sure, but a form of flesh—no more. May one worship a god merely because he is big, or cherish a land which has no virtue save its breadth, or love a woman whose whole realm is her flesh? Ah, Paulette! you have no soul at all! Elizabeth had a white winged soul. I love you—yes— with what you have to be loved—the body. But Elizabeth—I loved Elizabeth with my soul.”

Paulette was puzzled.

“What is this soul?” she asked. “And how may I get one if I have not one already? And where is this soul of yours that I have never seen it or heard it at all? And if they cannot be seen, or heard, or touched, how do you know she had this soul?”

“Hush!” he cried furiously. “Hush! or I box your mouth and have you whipped on the cross. You speak of things beyond you. What can you know of love that lies without your fleshly juggling?”

Christmas came to the Hot Tropics, the fourth Christmas of Henry’s servitude. And James Flower brought him a small box done up with colored string.

“It is a gift of the season,” he said, and his eyes sparkled with delight while Henry untied the package. There was a little teakwood box, and in it, lying on the scarlet silk of its lining, the torn fragments of his slavery. Henry took the shreds of paper from the box and stared at them, and then he laughed unsteadily and put his head down on his hands.

“Now you are no longer a servant, but my son,” the planter said. “Now you are my son, whom I have taught strange knowledges—and I shall teach you more, far more. We will live here always and talk together in the evenings.”

Henry raised his head.

“Oh! but I cannot, cannot stay. I must be off a-buccaneering.”

“You—you cannot stay? But, Henry, I have planned our life. You would not leave me here alone.”

“Sir,” said Henry, “I
must
be off a-buccaneering. Why, in all my years it has been the one aim. I must go, sir.”

“But, Henry, dear Henry, you shall have half my plantation, and all of it when I am dead—if only you will stay with me.”

“That may not be,” young Henry cried. “I must be off to make me a name. It is not given that I live a planter. Sir, there are plannings in my head that have grown perfect with pondering. And nothing may be allowed to interfere with them.”

James Flower slumped forward in his chair.

“It will be very lonely here without you. I don’t quite know what I shall do without you.”

Henry’s mind carried him back to that old time, with Robert smiling into the fire and saying these same words—“It will be so lonely here without you, son.” He wondered if his mother still sat coldly upright and silent. Surely she would have got over it. People always got over the things they feared so much. And then he thought of small Paulette who would be crying with terror in her hut when he told her.

“There is a little servant girl,” he said; “little Paulette. I have protected her. And if I have ever pleased you, will you do these things for me? Always, always keep her in the house and never let her be sent to the fields, nor whipped, nor bred with any of the blacks. Will you do these things for me surely?”

“Of course I will,” James Flower said. “Ah, but it has been good to have you here, Henry—good to hear your voice in the evening. What will I do in the evening now? There is none to take your place, for you have very truly been my son. It will be lonely here without you, boy.”

Said Henry, “The toiling I have done in your service has been more than repaid with the knowledge you have poured into my ears these same evenings. And I shall miss you, sir, more than I can say. But can’t you understand? I must go a-buccaneering and take a Spanish town, for the thought is on me that if a man planned carefully, and considered his chances and the men he had, the thing might well be done. I have studied the ancient wars, and I must be making a name for myself and a fortune. Then, when I have the admiration of men, perhaps I shall come back to you, sir, and we may sit and talk again in the evenings. You will remember my wish about Paulette?”

“Who is Paulette?” the planter asked.

“Why, the servant girl I mentioned. Never let her go with the slaves, because I am fond of her.”

“Ah, yes! I remember. And where do you go now, Henry?”

“To Jamaica. My uncle, Sir Edward, has long been Lieutenant-Governor there in Port Royal. But I have never seen him—well, because I was a bond-servant, and he is a gentleman. I have a letter to him that my father gave me years past. Perhaps he will help me to buy a ship for my plundering.”

“I would help you buy a ship. You have been very good to me,” the planter said hopefully.

Now Henry was dipped in a kind of shame, for in the box under his bed there glistened a pile of golden coins—over a thousand pounds.

“No,” he said, “no; I have more payment in your teaching and in the father you have been to me than money could ever equal.” Now he was going, Henry knew that he had grown to love this red-faced, wistful man.

Strong, glistening blacks pulled at the oars of the canoe, and it went skimming toward an anchored ship, a ship commissioned by the States-General to carry black slaves from Guinea to the islands. James Flower, sitting in the canoe’s stern, was very red and very silent. But as they neared the ship’s side, he lifted up his head and spoke pleadingly to Henry.

“There are books on the shelves that you have never read.”

“I shall come back, one day, and read them.”

“There are things in my mind I have never told you, boy.”

“When I have the admiration of men, I shall come to you and you shall tell them to me.”

“You swear it?”

“Well—yes, I swear.”

“And how long will it take you to do these things, Henry?”

“I cannot tell; one year—or ten—or twenty. I must make a very admirable name.” Henry was climbing over the ship’s side.

“I shall be lonely in the evenings, son.”

“And I, too, sir. Look! we cast off! Good-by, sir. You will remember Paulette?”

“Paulette?—Paulette?—Ah, yes; I remember.”

Henry Morgan came to the English town of Port Royal and left his baggage on the beach while he went looking for his uncle.

“Do you know where I may find the Lieutenant-Governor?” he asked in the streets.

“His palace is yonder, young man, and who knows he may be in it.”

His palace—it was like a British gentleman become an official far from home. It was like the man Robert Morgan had described. His letters dated from the Palace of the Lieutenant-Governor. Henry found the Palace, a low, grubby house with walls of whitewashed mud and a roof of red tiles badly molded. There was a gaudy halberdier standing at the door, holding his great, ineffectual weapon rigidly before him, the while he maintained a tortured decorum in the face of a swarm of enemy flies.

The halberd lowered across the pathway as Henry approached.

“I am looking for Sir Edward Morgan.”

“What do you wish with His Excellency?”

“Why, you see, sir, he is my uncle, and I wish to speak with him.”

The soldier scowled suspiciously and stiffened his hold on the halberd. Then Henry remembered his lessons of the plantation. Perhaps this man, for all his red coat, might be something of a slave.

“Get out of my way, you damned pup,” he cried. “Get out of my way or I’ll see you hanged.”

The man cowered and almost dropped his weapon. “Yes, sir. I’ll send your word, sir.” He blew a little silver call, and when a servant in green lace came to the door, he said:

“A young gentleman to see His Excellency.”

Henry was led into a little room made dark with thick, gray hangings edged with dull gold. There were three dim portraits on the walls, in black frames; two cavaliers in plumed hats, holding their swords horizontally so they looked like stiff, slender tails, and a pretty lady with powdered hair and a silken gown which left her shoulders and half her breasts uncovered.

From some place beyond the curtained doorway there came the thin twanging of a harp slow struck. The servant took Henry’s letter and left him alone.

And he felt very much alone. It was a house of cold, precise hair-splitting. One was aware of a polite contempt even in the pictured faces on the wall. The British arms were embroidered on the curtains of the door, the lion on one side, holding half the shield, and the unicorn, with his half, on the other. When the curtains hung straight the design was complete. In this room, Henry began to fear his uncle.