The Sea Bride Part 20

XVI

Faith and Brander had not, in this time, spoken a word together since they met Mr. Ham upon the beach after Brander joined Faith by the island pool. In the beginning, Brander was forward, and a gulf separated them.... Not to mention forty feet of deck. Faith stayed aft; Brander stayed forward. Afterward, when Brander came into the cabin, there was still a gulf.... They met at table; they encountered each other, now and then, in the cabin or on deck. But Brander had his work to do, and did it; and Faith was much with Noll.

In the bush, by the pool, Faith had forgotten Noll Wing for a little s.p.a.ce; and in the forgetting, she and Brander had become friends very quickly.... His question, as they reached the beach, made her remember Noll; and her answer to that question, when she told him she was Noll's wife, had reared a wall between them. Brander was a man; too much of a man to forget that she was Noll's wife.... He did not forget.

In the _Sally_, after Brander came aft, Faith was toward him as she was toward the other mates.... With this difference. She had known them since the beginning of the voyage; she had known two of them--Dan'l and Willis c.o.x--since they were boys. They were ticketed in her thoughts; they were old friends, but they could never be anything more. Therefore she talked often with them, as she did with Tichel, and as she had done with Mr. Ham. She forgot they were men, remembering only that they were friends....

Brander, on the other hand, was a newcomer, a stranger.... When a woman meets a strange man, or when a man meets a strange woman, there is an instant and usually unconscious testing and questioning. This is more lively in the woman than in the man; she is more apt to put it into words in her thoughts, more apt to ask herself: "Could I love him?" For a man does not ask this question at all until he has begun to love; a woman, consciously or unconsciously, asks it at once.... And until this question is answered; until the inner thing that is s.e.x has made decision, a woman is reticent and slow to accept the communion of even casual conversation....

Faith, almost unconsciously, avoided Brander. She spoke with him; but there was a bar in her words. She saw him; but her eyes put a wall between them. She thought of him; but she hid her thoughts from herself.

And Brander felt this, and respected it.... There was between them an unspoken conspiracy of silence; an unspoken agreement that held them apart....

This agreement was broken, and broken by Faith, on an afternoon some ten days after the finding of the ambergris. The day was fair; the wind was no more than normal.... No whales had yet been sighted by the _Sally_, and her decks were clear of oil. Mr. Tichel's watch had the s.h.i.+p; but Tichel himself, old man that he was, had stayed below and was asleep in his cabin. Dan'l was asleep there, also; and Noll Wing dozed in the after cabin. Willis c.o.x was reading, under the boathouse; and two of the harpooners played idly at some game of cards in the lee of the rail beside him. Brander and the man at the wheel had the after deck to themselves when Faith came up from the cabin....

Roy was with her; but the boy went forward at once and climbed the rigging to the masthead, to stand watch with the men there. He loved to perch high above the decks, with the sea spread out like a blue saucer below him. He teased Faith to go with him; but Faith shook her head.

There was always a certain physical indolence about Faith that contrasted with the vigor of her habits of thought and speech; she liked to sit quietly and read, or sew, or think, and she cared nothing at all for such riotous exertion as Roy liked.

"No, Roy," she told her brother. "You go if you like. I'll stay down here."

"Come on, Sis," he teased. "I guess you're afraid.... You never could even climb a tree without squealing.... Come on."

She laughed softly. "No. I don't like to do hard things--like that."

"I won't let you fall," he promised.

"Some day, maybe.... Run along, Roy."

The boy went away resentfully; a little more resentfully because Brander had heard her refusal. He looked back from the fore rigging, and saw Faith standing near Brander.... And for a moment he was minded to go back and join them; but the dwindling line of the ropes above him lured him on. He climbed, lost himself among the great bosoms of the sails, stopped to ride a yard like a horse and exult when it pitched and rolled.... Climbed, at last, to the masthead perch where the lookouts stood in their hoops with their eyes sweeping the wide circle of the seas....

And Faith and Brander were together. Save for the man at the wheel, whom neither of them heeded, they were alone. Brander was at the after rail when she appeared; he nodded to her, and smiled. She stood near him, hands on the rail, looking out across the sea astern. The wind tugged at her, played with the soft hair about her brow, whipped her cheeks to fire....

She did not look at Brander, but Brander looked at her. The man liked what he saw; he liked not so much the beauty of her, as the strength and poise that lay in her face. Her broad, low brow.... Her straight, fine nose.... Her sweetly molded lips, and rounding chin.... Strength there, and calm, and power.... Beauty, too; more than one woman's measure of beauty, perhaps. But above all, strength. That was what Brander saw.

It was no new thing for the man to study Faith's countenance. It was firm-fastened in his thoughts; he could conjure it up at will, and it appeared before him, many times, without his volition. Faith's eyes were blue, and they were large, and Brander could never forget them. The eye of a man or of a woman is a thing almost alive; it seems to have a soul of its own. Stand at one side, un.o.bserved, and watch the eyes of your friend; you will feel that you are watching some living personality apart from the friend you know. It is like watching a wild thing which is hiding in the forest. The eye is so alert, so infinitely alert, so quick to swing to right or left at any sound....

Women's eyes differ as much as women themselves. Faith's eyes were like Faith herself; there was no fear or uncertainty in them; and there was no coquettishness, no seduction. They were level and calm and perfectly a.s.sured; and Brander thought that to look into them was like taking a strong man's hand. He thought Faith as fine a thing as woman can be....

Brander made sure that Faith did not see him studying her thus; nevertheless, Faith must have felt his scrutiny. She was conscious of an unaccountable diffidence; and when she spoke to him at last, without looking toward him, her voice was so low he scarcely heard at all. She said some idle thing about the beauty of the sea....

Brander smiled. The sky was so clear, and the heavens were so blue that sky and heaven seemed to be cousins or sisters, hands clasping at the far horizon. He said amiably: "Always think--looking off into the blue on a day like this is like looking deep into blue eyes.... There seems to be a soul off there, something hidden, out of sight.... But you can feel it looking back at you."

Faith was so surprised that she looked up at him quickly, sidewise; and she smiled, her cheeks a little flushed. "I never felt--just that," she said. "But--did you ever look at a hill, so far away it is just a deep blue shape against the sky? Blue's a beautiful color to look at, I think."

He nodded. "From my hill," he said, "I used to be able to see an island northwest of the one where I was.... Barely see it. Just a line laid down along the sea.... A line of blue."

She said nothing in reply to this; and he said no more. They were thus silent for a little before Faith asked: "Tell me.... You've never had a chance.... How did you live, there? Wasn't it lonely? Or ... were there others?..."

He laughed. "I wasn't lonely, in the least," he explained. "The old devil-devil doctor of the village struck up an acquaintance with me....

He knew whites; and I was the only one there at the time. He used to come and talk to me, and say charms over my garden.... I had a little compa.s.s on my watch chain, and I gave it to him, and the old heathen was my slave for life. So I arranged with him to have my path taboo--you remember I told you.... And he was the only company I ever had."

"You had a--garden?"

"Yes. Good one. I put up a house, about six feet square--big enough for me, and no more--and I trimmed down some trees around there; and there was a little brook, and a shallow basin in the side of the hill where rich soil had been collecting for a good many centuries, I suppose. I think if I had planted pebbles there, it would have grown bowlders for me. It did grow all I wanted."

She was thoughtful for a little, looked at him once. "Why did you ever s.h.i.+p as a whaler?" she asked. "You don't look like the men that s.h.i.+p in the fo'c's'le."

He laughed. "I know it. Maybe because I like the sea. My home was in sight of it; a high old farm up in Maine, five miles inland. I used to sit out on the hill there and watch the night come up from the east and blanket the water; and when there was a surf I could hear it; and when I could, I went down and got acquainted with the water, swimming, or poking around in an old dory.... It was bound to get me in the end. My father sent me to school.... He wanted me to be a doctor. But after two years of it, I begged off.... And he let me go."

She nodded. "I know--a little--how you feel. I've always loved the smell of the sea at home, and the sight of it.... But...." She grimaced harshly. "I'm getting a bit tired of salt water, all the time.... I want to get ash.o.r.e."

"Sure," Brander chuckled. "And when you've been a month ash.o.r.e, you'll be hungry for the sea again. It's like a drug; you get used to it, and you can't do without it."

She looked at him. "Do you think so?"

"I know it. Wait and see."

After a little, she spoke of the ill luck that had pursued the _Sally_.

"Isn't it unusual to go almost six weeks without getting a whale?"

"No, not necessarily," he told her. "You may kill every other day for a year, and not see a fish for three months after. The whale seems to come and go, in some waters...."

"These?" she asked.

He nodded. "It's uncertain, here. We're working over now into better hunting grounds. The _Sally's_ done well, thus far, anyway. Almost a thousand barrels, and not out a year. I've heard of s.h.i.+ps that came home with empty casks."

She looked at him curiously. "I think you know more about the work than most men aboard," she said. "Yet you've not had the experience...."

"I've picked it up at games, read it, guessed it," he said pleasantly.

"They know more about the practical end than I. I haven't been tried out yet, you know."

She smiled. "Mr. Tichel says you're a Jonah," she told him. "I think he would be in favor of throwing you overboard."

He laughed cheerfully. She added: "I hope you're not one. I'm anxious that Cap'n Wing should make a big record on this cruise. It's my first with him, you know...."

His eyes were sober; but he said: "We'll fill the casks, all right. I wouldn't worry."

She looked toward him and said: "Yes, we will." There was an immense amount of quiet certainty and determination in her voice. Brander looked at her for an instant, then turned to give some direction to the man at the wheel. The _Sally_ heeled awkwardly to the thrust of the wind, and battered at the sea with her blunt bows. The rigging creaked and tugged.

Willis c.o.x, under the boathouse, had dropped his book in his lap and was dozing in his chair; the two harpooners had gone below. Forward, Faith could see two or three men sprawled on the deck, asleep.... The warm, afternoon wind seemed slumber laden; the _Sally Sims_ herself was like a s.h.i.+p that walked in her sleep. A hush hung over them all, so that Faith and Brander unconsciously lowered their voices.

Faith asked casually: "Why is it that you and Mr. Tobey do not like each other?"

If he was surprised at the question, Brander did not show it. He said frankly: "I've no dislike for Mr. Tobey. He's an able officer. He knows his business."

"He does not like you," Faith said. "Why not?"

Brander smiled. "It may be," he admitted, "that Mr. Tobey is lacking in a sense of humor. I've a way of laughing at things.... Mr. Trant, on the _Thomas Morgan_, used to curse me for grinning so much of the time.

Perhaps Mr. Tobey...."