The Lady of the Aroostook

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"Gibraltar wouldn't be a bad place to put up at for a while," he said.
"Lots of good fellows among the officers, they say, and fun going all
the while. First-class gunning in the Cork Woods at St. Roque. If it
hadn't been for the _res angusta domi_,--you know what I mean,
captain,--I should have let you get along with your old dug-out, as
the gentleman in the water said to Noah." His hilarity had something
alarmingly knowing in it; there was a wildness in the pleasure with
which he bearded the captain, like that of a man in his first cups;
yet he had not been drinking. He played round the captain's knowledge
of the sanative destitution in which he was making the voyage with
mocking recurrence; but he took himself off to bed early, and the
captain came through his trials with unimpaired temper. Dunham
disappeared not long afterwards; and Staniford's vague hope that Lydia
might be going on deck to watch the lights of the town die out behind
the ship as they sailed away was disappointed. The second mate made
a point of lounging near him where he sat alone in their wonted place.

"Well," he said, "he did come back sober."

"Yes," said Staniford.

"Next to not comin' back at all," the mate continued, "I suppose it
was the best thing he could do." He lounged away. Neither his voice
nor his manner had that quality of disappointment which characterizes
those who have mistakenly prophesied evil. Staniford had a mind to
call him back, and ask him what he meant; but he refrained, and he
went to bed at last resolved to unburden himself of the whole Hicks
business once for all. He felt that he had had quite enough of it,
both in the abstract and in its relation to Lydia.

XVI.

Hicks did not join the others at breakfast. They talked of what Lydia
had seen at Gibraltar, where Staniford had been on a former voyage.
Dunham had made it a matter of conscience to know all about it
beforehand from his guide-books, and had risen early that morning to
correct his science by his experience in a long entry in the diary
which he was keeping for Miss Hibbard. The captain had the true
sea-farer's ignorance, and was amused at the things reported by his
passengers of a place where he had been ashore so often; Hicks's
absence doubtless relieved him, but he did not comment on the
cabin-boy's announcement that he was still asleep, except to order
him let alone.

They were seated at their one o'clock dinner before the recluse made
any sign. Then he gave note of his continued existence by bumping and
thumping sounds within his state-room, as if some one were dressing
there in a heavy sea.

"Mr. Hicks seems to be taking his rough weather retrospectively,"
said Staniford, with rather tremulous humor.

The door was flung open, and Hicks reeled out, staying himself by
the door-knob. Even before he appeared, a reek of strong waters had
preceded him. He must have been drinking all night. His face was
flushed, and his eyes were bloodshot. He had no collar on; but he
wove a cravat and otherwise he was accurately and even fastidiously
dressed. He balanced himself by the door-knob, and measured the
distance he had to make before reaching his place at the table,
smiling, and waving a delicate handkerchief, which he held in his
hand: "Spilt c'logne, tryin' to scent my hic--handkerchief. Makes
deuced bad smell--too much c'logne; smells--alcoholic. Thom's, bear
a hand, 's good f'low. No? All right, go on with your waitin'.
B-ic--business b'fore pleasure, 's feller says. Play it alone,
I guess."

The boy had shrunk back in dismay, and Hicks contrived to reach his
place by one of those precipitate dashes with which drunken men attain
a point, when the luck is with them. He looked smilingly round the
circle of faces. Staniford and the captain exchanged threatening looks
of intelligence, while Mr. Watterson and Dunham subordinately waited
their motion. But the advantage, as in such cases, was on the side of
Hicks. He knew it, with a drunkard's subtlety, and was at his ease.

"No app'tite, friends; but thought I'd come out, keep you from feeling
lonesome." He laughed and hiccuped, and smiled upon them all. "Well,
cap'n," he continued, "'covered from 'tigues day, sterday? You look
blooming's usual. Thom's, pass the--pass the--victuals lively, my son,
and fetch along coffee soon. Some the friends up late, and want their
coffee. Nothing like coffee, carry off'fee's." He winked to the men,
all round; and then added, to Lydia: "Sorry see you in this state--I
mean, sorry see me--Can't make it that way either; up stump on both
routes. What I mean is, sorry hadn't coffee first. But _you're_
all right--all right! Like see anybody offer you disrespec', 'n I'm
around. Tha's all."

Till he addressed her, Lydia had remained motionless, first with
bewilderment, and then with open abhorrence. She could hardly have
seen in South Bradfield a man who had been drinking. Even in haying,
or other sharpest stress of farmwork, our farmer and his men stay
themselves with nothing stronger than molasses-water, or, in extreme
cases, cider with a little corn soaked in it; and the Mill Village,
where she had taught school, was under the iron rule of a local vote
for prohibition. She stared in stupefaction at Hicks's heated, foolish
face; she started at his wild movements, and listened with dawning
intelligence to his hiccup-broken speech, with its thickened sibilants
and its wandering emphasis. When he turned to her, and accompanied
his words with a reassuring gesture, she recoiled, and as if breaking
an ugly fascination she gave a low, shuddering cry, and looked at
Staniford.

"Thomas," he said, "Miss Blood was going to take her dessert on deck
to-day. Dunham?"

Dunham sprang to his feet, and led her out of the cabin.

The movement met Hicks's approval. "Tha's right; 'sert on deck, 'joy
landscape and pudding together,--Rhine steamer style. All right. Be
up there m'self soon's I get my coffee." He winked again with drunken
sharpness. "I know wha's what. Be up there m'self, 'n a minute."

"If you offer to go up," said Staniford, in a low voice, as soon as
Lydia was out of the way, "I'll knock you down!"

"Captain," said Mr. Watterson, venturing, perhaps for the first time
in his whole maritime history, upon a suggestion to his superior
officer, "shall I clap him in irons?"

"Clap him in irons!" roared Captain Jenness. "Clap him in bed! Look
here, you!" He turned to Hicks, but the latter, who had been bristling
at Staniford's threat, now relaxed in a crowing laugh:--

"Tha's right, captain. Irons no go, 'cept in case mutiny; bed
perfectly legal 't all times. Bed is good. But trouble is t' enforce
it."

"Where's your bottle?" demanded the captain, rising from the seat in
which a paralysis of fury had kept him hitherto. "I want your bottle."

"Oh, bottle's all right! Bottle's under pillow. Empty,--empty's
Jonah's gourd; 'nother sea-faring party,--Jonah. S'cure the shadow
ere the substance fade. Drunk all the brandy, old boy. Bottle's a
canteen; 'vantage of military port to houseless stranger. Brought the
brandy on board under my coat; nobody noticed,--so glad get me back.
Prodigal son's return,--fatted calf under his coat."

The reprobate ended his boastful confession with another burst of
hiccuping, and Staniford helplessly laughed.

"Do me proud," said Hicks. "Proud, I 'sure you. Gentleman, every time,
Stanny. Know good thing when you see it--hear it, I mean."

"Look here, Hicks," said Staniford, choosing to make friends with
the mammon of unrighteousness, if any good end might be gained by it.
"You know you're drunk, and you're not fit to be about. Go back to
bed, that's a good fellow; and come out again, when you're all right.
You don't want to do anything you'll be sorry for."

"No, no! No, you don't, Stanny. Coffee'll make me all right. Coffee
always does. Coffee--Heaven's lash besh gift to man. 'Scovered
subse-subs'quently to grape. See? Comes after claret in course of
nature. Captain doesn't understand the 'lusion. All right, captain.
Little learning dangerous thing." He turned sharply on Mr. Watterson,
who had remained inertly in his place. "Put me in irons, heh!
_You_ put me in irons, you old Triton. Put _me_ in irons,
will you?" His amiable mood was passing; before one could say so, it
was past. He was meditating means of active offense. He gathered up
the carving-knife and fork, and held them close under Mr. Watterson's
nose. "Smell that!" he said, and frowned as darkly as a man of so
little eyebrow could.

At this senseless defiance Staniford, in spite of himself, broke
into another laugh, and even Captain Jenness grinned. Mr. Watterson
sat with his head drawn as far back as possible, and with his nose
wrinkled at the affront offered it. "Captain," he screamed, appealing
even in this extremity to his superior, "shall I fetch him
_one?_"

"No, no!" cried Staniford, springing from his chair; "don't hit him!
He isn't responsible. Let's get him into his room."

"Fetch me _one_, heh?" said Hicks, rising, with dignity, and
beginning to turn up his cuffs. "_One_! It'll take more than one,
fetch _me_. Stan' up, 'f you're man enough." He was squaring
at Mr. Watterson, when he detected signs of strategic approach in
Staniford and Captain Jenness. He gave a wild laugh, and shrank into
a corner. "No! No, you don't, boys," he said.

They continued their advance, one on either side, and reinforced by
Mr. Watterson hemmed him in. The drunken man has the advantage of his
sober brother in never seeming to be on the alert. Hicks apparently
entered into the humor of the affair. "Sur-hic-surrender!" he said,
with a smile in his heavy eyes. He darted under the extended arms of
Captain Jenness, who was leading the centre of the advance, and before
either wing could touch him he was up the gangway and on the deck.

Captain Jenness indulged one of those expressions, very rare with him,
which are supposed to be forgiven to good men in moments of extreme
perplexity, and Mr. Watterson profited by the precedent to unburden
his heart in a paraphrase of the captain's language. Staniford's laugh
had as much cursing in it as their profanity.

He mechanically followed Hicks to the deck, prepared to renew the
attempt for his capture there. But Hicks had not stopped near Dunham
and Lydia. He had gone forward on the other side of the ship, and
was leaning quietly on the rail, and looking into the sea. Staniford
paused irresolute for a moment, and then sat down beside Lydia, and
they all tried to feign that nothing unpleasant had happened, or was
still impending. But their talk had the wandering inconclusiveness
which was inevitable, and the eyes of each from time to time furtively
turned toward Hicks.

For half an hour he hardly changed his position. At the end of that
time, they found him looking intently at them; and presently he began
to work slowly back to the waist of the ship, but kept to his own
side. He was met on the way by the second mate, when nearly opposite
where they sat.

"Ain't you pretty comfortable where you are?" they heard the mate
asking. "Guess I wouldn't go aft any further just yet."

"_You're_ all right, Mason," Hicks answered. "Going below--down
cellar, 's feller says; go to bed."

"Well, that's a pious idea," said the mate. "You couldn't do better
than that. I'll lend you a hand."

"Don't care 'f I do," responded Hicks, taking the mate's proffered
arm. But he really seemed to need it very little; he walked perfectly
well, and he did not look across at the others again.

At the head of the gangway he encountered Captain Jenness and Mr.
Watterson, who had completed the perquisition they had remained
to make in his state-room. Mr. Watterson came up empty-handed;
but the captain bore the canteen in which the common enemy had been
so artfully conveyed on board. He walked, darkly scowling, to the
rail, and flung the canteen into the sea. Hicks, who had saluted his
appearance with a glare as savage as his own, yielded to his whimsical
sense of the futility of this vengeance. He gave his fleeting, drunken
laugh: "Good old boy, Captain Jenness. Means well--means well. But
lacks--lacks--forecast. Pounds of cure, but no prevention. Not much
on bite, but death on bark. Heh?" He waggled his hand offensively
at the captain, and disappeared, loosely floundering down the cabin
stairs, holding hard by the hand-rail, and fumbling round with his
foot for the steps before he put it down.

"As soon as he's in his room, Mr. Watterson, you lock him in." The
captain handed his officer a key, and walked away forward, with a
hang-dog look on his kindly face, which he kept averted from his
passengers.

The sound of Hicks's descent had hardly ceased when clapping and
knocking noises were heard again, and the face of the troublesome
little wretch reappeared. He waved Mr. Watterson aside with his left
hand, and in default of specific orders the latter allowed him to
mount to the deck again. Hicks stayed himself a moment, and lurched
to where Staniford and Dunham sat with Lydia.

"What I wish say Miss Blood is," he began,--"what I wish say is,
peculiar circumstances make no difference with man if man's gentleman.
What I say is, everybody 'spec's--What I say is, circumstances don't
alter cases; lady's a lady--What I want do is beg you fellows'
pardon--beg _her_ pardon--if anything I said that firs'
morning--"

"Go away!" cried Staniford, beginning to whiten round the nostrils.
"Hold your tongue!"

Hicks fell back a pace, and looked at him with the odd effect of now
seeing him for the first time. "What _you_ want?" he asked. "What
you mean? Slingin' criticism ever since you came on this ship! What
you mean by it? Heh? What you mean?"

Staniford rose, and Lydia gave a start. He cast an angry look at her.
"Do you think I'd hurt him?" he demanded.

Hicks went on: "Sorry, very sorry, 'larm a lady,--specially lady we
all respec'. But this particular affair. Touch--touches my honor.
You said," he continued, "'f I came on deck, you'd knock me down. Why
don't you do it? Wha's the matter with you? Sling criticism ever since
you been on ship, and 'fraid do it! 'Fraid, you hear? 'F-ic--'fraid,
I say." Staniford slowly walked away forward, and Hicks followed him,
threatening him with word and gesture. Now and then Staniford thrust
him aside, and addressed him some expostulation, and Hicks laughed
and submitted. Then, after a silent excursion to the other side of
the ship, he would return and renew his one-sided quarrel. Staniford
seemed to forbid the interference of the crew, and alternately soothed
and baffled his tedious adversary, who could still be heard accusing
him of slinging criticism, and challenging him to combat. He leaned
with his back to the rail, and now looked quietly into Hicks's crazy
face, when the latter paused in front of him, and now looked down
with a worried, wearied air. At last he crossed to the other side,
and began to come aft again.

"Mr. Dunham!" cried Lydia, starting up. "I know what Mr. Staniford
wants to do. He wants to keep him away from me. Let me go down to the
cabin. I can't walk; _please_ help me!" Her eyes were full of
tears, and the hand trembled that she laid on Dunham's arm, but she
controlled her voice.

He softly repressed her, while he intently watched Staniford.
"No, no!"

"But he can't bear it much longer," she pleaded. "And if he should--"

"Staniford would never strike him," said Dunham, calmly. "Don't be
afraid. Look! He's coming back with him; he's trying to get him below;
they'll shut him up there. That's the only chance. Sit down, please."
She dropped into her seat, hid her eyes for an instant, and then fixed
them again on the two young men.

Hicks had got between Staniford and the rail. He seized him by the
arm, and, pulling him round, suddenly struck at him. It was too much
for his wavering balance: his feet shot from under him, and he went
backwards in a crooked whirl and tumble, over the vessel's side.

Staniford uttered a cry of disgust and rage. "Oh, you little brute!"
he shouted, and with what seemed a single gesture he flung off his
coat and the low shoes he wore, and leaped the railing after him.

The cry of "Man overboard!" rang round the ship, and Captain Jenness's
order, "Down with your helm! Lower a boat, Mr. Mason!" came, quick as
it was, after the second mate had prepared to let go; and he and two
of the men were in the boat, and she was sliding from her davits,
while the Aroostook was coming up to the light wind and losing
headway.

When the boat touched the water, two heads had appeared above the
surface terribly far away. "Hold on, for God's sake! We'll be there
in a second."

"All right!" Staniford's voice called back. "Be quick." The heads rose
and sank with the undulation of the water. The swift boat appeared to
crawl.

By the time it reached the place where they had been seen, the heads
disappeared, and the men in the boat seemed to be rowing blindly
about. The mate stood upright. Suddenly he dropped and clutched at
something over the boat's side. The people on the ship could see three
hands on her gunwale; a figure was pulled up into the boat, and proved
to be Hicks; then Staniford, seizing the gunwale with both hands,
swung himself in.

A shout went up from the ship, and Staniford waved his hand. Lydia
waited where she hung upon the rail, clutching it hard with her hands,
till the boat was along-side. Then from white she turned fire-red,
and ran below and locked herself in her room.

XVII.

Dunham followed Staniford to their room, and helped him off with his
wet clothes. He tried to say something ideally fit in recognition
of his heroic act, and he articulated some bald commonplaces of
praise, and shook Staniford's clammy hand. "Yes," said the latter,
submitting; "but the difficulty about a thing of this sort is that
you don't know whether you haven't been an ass. It has been pawed
over so much by the romancers that you don't feel like a hero in
real life, but a hero of fiction. I've a notion that Hicks and I
looked rather ridiculous going over the ship's side; I know we did,
coming back. No man can reveal his greatness of soul in wet clothes.
Did Miss Blood laugh?"

"Staniford!" said Dunham, in an accent of reproach. "You do her great
injustice. She felt what you had done in the way you would wish,--if
you cared."

"What did she say?" asked Staniford, quickly.

"Nothing. But--"

"That's an easy way of expressing one's admiration of heroic behavior.
I hope she'll stick to that line. I hope she won't feel it at all
necessary to say anything in recognition of my prowess; it would be
extremely embarrassing. I've got Hicks back again, but I couldn't
stand any gratitude for it. Not that I'm ashamed of the performance.
Perhaps if it had been anybody but Hicks, I should have waited for
them to lower a boat. But Hicks had peculiar claims. You couldn't let
a man you disliked so much welter round a great while. Where is the
poor old fellow? Is he clothed and in his right mind again?"

"He seemed to be sober enough," said Dunham, "when he came on board;
but I don't think he's out yet."

"We must let Thomas in to gather up this bathing-suit," observed
Staniford. "What a Newportish flavor it gives the place!" He was
excited, and in great gayety of spirits.

He and Dunham went out into the cabin, where they found Captain
Jenness pacing to and fro. "Well, sir," he said, taking Staniford's
hand, and crossing his right with his left, so as to include Dunham
in his congratulations, "you ought to have been a sailor!" Then he
added, as if the unqualified praise might seem fulsome, "But if you'd
been a sailor, you wouldn't have tried a thing like that. You'd have
had more sense. The chances were ten to one against you."

Staniford laughed. "Was it so bad as that? I shall begin to respect
myself."

The captain did not answer, but his iron grip closed hard upon
Staniford's hand, and he frowned in keen inspection of Hicks, who
at that moment came out of his state-room, looking pale and quite
sobered. Captain Jenness surveyed him from head to foot, and then
from foot to head, and pausing at the level of his eyes he said, still
holding Staniford by the hand: "The trouble with a man aboard ship
is that he can't turn a blackguard out-of-doors just when he likes.
The Aroostook puts in at Messina. You'll be treated well till we get
there, and then if I find you on my vessel five minutes after she
comes to anchor, I'll heave you overboard, and I'll take care that
nobody jumps after you. Do you hear? And you won't find me doing any
such fool kindness as I did when I took you on board, soon again."

"Oh, I say, Captain Jenness," began Staniford.

"He's all right," interrupted Hicks. "I'm a blackguard; I know it;
and I don't think I was worth fishing up. But you've done it, and
I mustn't go back on you, I suppose." He lifted his poor, weak, bad
little face, and looked Staniford in the eyes with a pathos that
belied the slang of his speech. The latter released his hand from
Captain Jenness and gave it to Hicks, who wrung it, as he kept looking
him in the eyes, while his lips twitched pitifully, like a child's.
The captain gave a quick snort either of disgust or of sympathy, and
turned abruptly about and bundled himself up out of the cabin.

"I say!" exclaimed Staniford, "a cup of coffee wouldn't be bad, would
it? Let's have some coffee, Thomas, about as quick as the cook can
make it," he added, as the boy came out from his stateroom with a lump
of wet clothes in his hands. "You wanted some coffee a little while
ago," he said to Hicks, who hung his head at the joke.

For the rest of the day Staniford was the hero of the ship. The
men looked at him from a distance, and talked of him together. Mr.
Watterson hung about whenever Captain Jenness drew near him, as if
in the hope of overhearing some acceptable expression in which he
could second his superior officer. Failing this, and being driven
to despair, "Find the water pretty cold, sir?" he asked at last;
and after that seemed to feel that he had discharged his duty as
well as might be under the extraordinary circumstances.

The second mate, during the course of the afternoon, contrived to
pass near Staniford. "Why, there wa'n't no _need_ of your doing
it," he said, in a bated tone. "I could ha' had him out with the boat,
_soon enough_."

Staniford treasured up these meagre expressions of the general
approbation, and would not have had them different. From this time,
within the narrow bounds that brought them all necessarily together
in some sort, Hicks abolished himself as nearly as possible. He chose
often to join the second mate at meals, which Mr. Mason, in accordance
with the discipline of the ship, took apart both from the crew and his
superior officers. Mason treated the voluntary outcast with a sort of
sarcastic compassion, as a man whose fallen state was not without its
points as a joke to the indifferent observer, and yet might appeal to
the pity of one who knew such cases through the misery they inflicted.
Staniford heard him telling Hicks about his brother-in-law, and
dwelling upon the peculiar relief which the appearance of his name
in the mortality list gave all concerned in him. Hicks listened in
apathetic patience and acquiescence; but Staniford thought that he
enjoyed, as much as he could enjoy anything, the second officer's
frankness. For his own part, he found that having made bold to
keep this man in the world he had assumed a curious responsibility
towards him. It became his business to show him that he was not
shunned by his fellow-creatures, to hearten and cheer him up. It was
heavy work. Hicks with his joke was sometimes odious company, but
he was also sometimes amusing; without it, he was of a terribly dull
conversation. He accepted Staniford's friendliness too meekly for
good comradery; he let it add, apparently, to his burden of gratitude,
rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him
stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading
their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower.
"Deuce take him!" mused his benefactor; "he's in love with her!" But
he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was
in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her
abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There seemed no
scorn in her condemnation, but neither was there any mercy. In her
simple life she had kept unsophisticated the severe morality of a
child, and it was this that judged him, that found him unpardonable
and outlawed him. He had never ventured to speak to her since that
day, and Staniford never saw her look at him except when Hicks was not
looking, and then with a repulsion which was very curious. Staniford
could have pitied him, and might have interceded so far as to set
him nearer right in her eyes; but he felt that she avoided him, too;
there were no more walks on the deck, no more readings in the cabin;
the checker-board, which professed to be the History of England, In
2 Vols., remained a closed book. The good companionship of a former
time, in which they had so often seemed like brothers and sister, was
gone. "Hicks has smashed our Happy Family," Staniford said to Dunham,
with little pleasure in his joke. "Upon my word, I think I had better
have left him in the water." Lydia kept a great deal in her own room;
sometimes when Staniford came down into the cabin he found her there,
talking with Thomas of little things that amuse children; sometimes
when he went on deck in the evening she would be there in her
accustomed seat, and the second mate, with face and figure half
averted, and staying himself by one hand on the shrouds, would be
telling her something to which she listened with lifted chin and
attentive eyes. The mate would go away when Staniford appeared, but
that did not help matters, for then Lydia went too. At table she said
very little; she had the effect of placing herself more and more under
the protection of the captain. The golden age, when they had all
laughed and jested so freely and fearlessly together, under her pretty
sovereignty, was past, and they seemed far dispersed in a common
exile. Staniford imagined she grew pale and thin; he asked Dunham if
he did not see it, but Dunham had not observed. "I think matters have
taken a very desirable shape, socially," he said. "Miss Blood will
reach her friends as fancy-free as she left home."

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