Strange Yesterday (9 page)

“But,” thought John Preswick, “by all means, this should rightly be a melodrama, rank or not, and this is surely as broad comedy as I have ever seen. Yet, somehow, I knew he would make that pretty little speech, for this moment was made for it. Does one choose art or life?” For a moment he had forgotten; then he laughed; he threw back his head, laughed long and heartily, and turned upon his heel to walk away.

She called after him: “Come back—for a minute!”

He stopped, faced about again, and looked full into her dark brown eyes. What he saw there, he could not say. He did not know himself. But it was something that crinkled the hairs upon his neck, that sent bits of shivers dancing up and down his spine, that made him feel as he felt in the midst of a mad storm, when the deck tossed like a cork. He forgot Lennox; he forgot that he was upon the brig
Angel
, of which he was the third officer; he forgot that the day before he had told this girl that he would shoot her in the groin if she screamed or called out for help; he forgot all that, seeing only her eyes and the face about them. He might have been held in a hypnotic spell; she might have; for they stood thus almost a full minute without moving or speaking a word. Only—he wondered what it was, and what had come over him that he should feel a knife-like tightening in his chest and a hot tingling over the tips of his fingers.

She shook her head, causing the hair to swirl about her neck; she shook her head and lifted a hand as to brush something away. Her eyes dropped to the deck, swung about, and fixed themselves upon Lennox. She whispered:

“I think I understand. I think I do—now.”

“No, no! You must believe me. I am trying to help you.”

“You are a beastly, low liar. I cannot say to you what I wish, since you are a man and I am a woman. I do not think that I need say it.”

Lennox shook his head angrily. “Get out of here!” he snapped at John Preswick. “And, my dear, if you insist on being a fool—”

“Why,” she wondered, “do men foist their bloated egos upon women? You believe that I fear you. I can read that in your face, Mr. Lennox. You would be surprised if you could see your face now. But, Mr. Lennox, you and this gentleman here underrate a Preswick. I do not suppose there is much more I can do than wait your pleasure until the whim fastens upon you to have me. It is clear now, is it not? But, Mr. Lennox, I do not fear you or any one upon this ship.”

Savagely he nodded: “That is best! We understand each other!” He noticed that John Preswick had not moved. “Get out of here!” he cried again.

Smiling, John Preswick settled himself with his feet apart and his thumbs hooked onto either side of his belt. He said: “Have you ever been aboard ship before, Mr. Lennox?”

Silent, the other glared at him.

“One does address a ship's officer with proper respect. That was one of my first lessons—to my sorrow.”

Lennox was a solid man, a large neck springing from bulging shoulders. Enraged, the blood swam up into his countenance, and his breath came short and rasping. Almost in a whisper, he said: “I'll have you strapped to a mast and whipped for this.”

“Go below,” John Preswick said quietly.

“Why, you common, thieving—”

John Preswick struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “Go below!” he snapped. And, as Lennox lunged at him, he planted a terrific blow upon his neck just beneath and behind his ear. Lennox swayed on his feet; and John Preswick caught the front of his jacket, holding him erect, slapping both sides of his face with all his force, with his open palm upon one side, with his knuckles on the other. For a moment he held him thus, beating his features; then he threw him from him so that Lennox whirled about and sprawled full length upon the deck.

“Go below,” John Preswick said again softly.

Attempting to rise, Lennox twisted his blood-red face.

“Go below,” John Preswick repeated.

Gaining his feet, he stumbled towards the hatchway. John Preswick, recalling the girl, turned toward her.

She was staring at him, supporting herself by the rail. She said: “You are a beast. I did not know there were such men as you in this world.”

He wondered, then, if a moment ago he had seen in her eyes what he had imagined. But, no, he could not have been mistaken. Such things were not meant to be mistaken.

“You hated him, didn't you?” he shot at her.

“I would prefer him—no, a dozen of him, to you.”

“That is a lie.”

As she stepped forward and slapped his face, he laughed—a low, rippling laugh. Then he caught her in his arms, plunged a hand into the mass of her hair and kissed her—kissed her first upon her neck, and then upon her face. She struggled against him, but she might as well have struggled against steel bands. After that, she relaxed, lying inert.

When he released her, she fell back to the rail, clutching it for support. There was disgust in her face, and fear too. “Go away,” she whispered.

He left her and climbed to the poop-deck.

8

No
ONE
had seen what had occurred. They had been covered by the upper deck and the spread of canvas slipping down from the spanker gaff. But he thought to himself that he would not have cared, one way or another, had they been observed by the whole of the ship's company. Her skin still burned upon his mouth.

Walking to the stern, he leaned over the rail, stared down at the locked ports of the two long stern-chasers, at the white, soapy, churning wake. He strained his eyes over the ocean in the direction of the land they had left. New York—it had sudden and quick meaning for him.

He was thinking of many things; thinking, strangely, that if he had the last two days to live over, he would not have wished for them to be different. Nothing he regretted, but he thought much upon the future. He devised a plan, setting aside one difficulty after another. As with most of his plans, it depended, for the most part, upon little premeditation and much action, all of the latter unprecedented. He was not the type of man who is given to deliberation; he preferred to allow things their course, and to meet them as they came. He depended, not upon his ability to prepare the situation or to change it, but to meet it as it appeared. He depended upon the respect which the officers and the crew held for him.

The day wore through. Twice again he saw Lennox, although the girl did not reappear upon the deck. Once Lennox was alone; the second time he was in deep conversation with Captain Cortlandt. But, though through the afternoon Mr. Cortlandt looked curiously upon John Preswick, he spoke to him only upon the normal business of sailing the ship. Night fell. The weather was clear and brisk. They had sighted no sail.

It was past midnight when John Preswick's last watch was over. Going to his cabin, he opened the lid of his chest. There was a removable compartment on top, which he lifted out. Underneath lay something bulky wrapped in oilskin. He placed it on his bunk and closed the chest. Carefully he unfolded the oilskin, revealing three long, heavy pistols: one single-barreled, gilded, and beautifully embossed, the two remaining, double-barreled, thick of muzzle, with high, curling hammers, carved fox-mouths clutching bits of white flint. One of the double-barreled guns he chose, loading it with round shot after seeing that the bore was clear and the flints clean. Then he thrust it into his belt under his jacket.

Closing the door of his cabin softly, he went out. Going up the companionway, he glanced over the deck. The watch were dim figures, the sky a basin of stars. He descended the stairs and walked quickly to Lennox's cabin. Trying the door, he found it locked. He knocked, and he heard the hesitating steps of Lennox as he came to answer. The door opened slowly; he entered.

Apparently Lennox had been about to disrobe for bed, for his shirt was unbuttoned and open. An oil lamp burnt upon the table in the center of the cabin; it was turned low, and its light hardly penetrated to the corners. Lennox's face was still puffed from the beating of the morning. When he saw who it was—and he did not until John Preswick had come entirely into the room—he gasped in surprise; then his face hardened, and his eyes caught the gleam of the lamp.

“You wish to see me?” he inquired coldly.

John Preswick nodded, motioning him to the table. “Sit down. I'll have a chair myself. There is a small matter to discuss. It will not take long.”

When they were both seated, one on either side the table, John Preswick drew the pistol from beneath his belt and laid it, his finger around the triggers, upon the board. “I have come to kill you,” he said easily:

Lennox stared at him; then he laughed short and hard. “Are you mad, or is this your manner of jesting?”

“I am a little mad, and it is also my manner of jesting. Have you anything you would care to say before I shoot?”

“But it is ridiculous! it is impossible! They will hang you. Captain Cortlandt's cabin is not a dozen paces away. You will never leave the room!” He was blustering, but the blood slowly drained from his face. His hand fumbled at his open shirt; his eyes darted about, back and forth, from one side of the cabin to the other, but always returning to the pistol in the hand of John Preswick. He licked his lips. From the chimney of the lamp, a wisp of smoke found its way up, curling, bending, lacing this way and that, clouding his face and giving a gray tinge to his features. His fingers found the hair on his chest and roved over it.

“Why?” he wanted to know. “What have I done to you that you should murder me?”

“You do not deserve to live. But that is beside the point. You are in my way. You are an obstacle. I remove obstacles.”

He leaned forward, a cunning expression creeping over his face, his hand sliding slowly over the surface of the table. “I see now. You want the girl.”

John Preswick said: “Don't move your hand. Yes, that is as good a reason as any.”

“But cannot we strike a bargain?” Lennox murmured.

“Death is longer-lasting, safer, and cheaper than any bargain. I shall shoot in just a moment.”

Lennox laughed shrilly, and then surged up with his knees and the hand that was beneath the table. The square base of the table was fastened to the floor, but the rimmed board on top burst from its bolts and flew up into the air and over John Preswick. He chanced a barrel of his pistol, and, as the gun roared, leaped back and aside. The lamp fell over with a crash, flared for a moment and went out. But in that moment, through the smoke, in the quick blaze of light, he saw that Lennox still lived.

The place was black, so black that furnishings and floor and walls blended into a shapeless blot. Only the partly open door was a piece of milder darkness. John Preswick moved quietly backwards to the wall behind him, reaching out a hand to direct his way. It came in contact with something bulky that evolved into a chest of drawers. Slipping into the corner it made with the walls, he crouched there, covering the open door space with his pistol. First the cabin was deathly quiet; then there was a movement. All this had occupied no more than a few seconds. In seconds more seamen and officers would come running to investigate the shot.

But even as his elbow touched the wall, there was a rush of steps. Lennox had crossed the room, and, as his figure filled for an instant the doorway, John Preswick fired the last barrel, aiming squarely for the center of his back. A wild, anguish-riven scream wavered up, mingling itself with a crash; his hurtling body struck the other wall of the passageway. With a softer thud, he slid to the floor.

Pistol smoking in his hand, John Preswick advanced cautiously to the doorway and peered out into the dark passage. Now it was full of voices and movement. It was Mr. Mitchell who had come down the companionway. Evidently he had taken time to procure a torch, for he held above his head a bottle with a lighted candle thrust into its neck.

“Eh?—what's this?” he cried, standing over Lennox's body. He had just come off watch.

Then the captain appeared in his nightshirt, holding a pistol before him, and then Mr. Brooker with a bayoneted musket, and then the cook with a hatchet, and, after them, seamen who came slowly down the companionway; and they all formed in a circle about the still, grotesquely twisted body which had once been the dapper Mr. Lennox. He lay face down, and in the small of his back, where his spine would be, there was a patch of red, growing larger even now as his white shirt absorbed the blood.

Mr. Mitchell turned him over with his toe, bent, and laid a hand upon his bare breast. When he rose, he shook his head. All of them stared fascinated at the body, for upon the features there was a smile—such a smile as the devil might own. There was not one among them who had not seen death before—violent death—but there was not one among them who had seen such a smile. They shuddered, from Mr. Cortlandt to the hatchet-armed cook.

And, in the doorway, John Preswick looked at that smile, animated in the thin, wavering light of the candle; it was a knowing smile, a triumphant smile, as though now the face behind it was aware of all that puzzled John Preswick, of that which he caught only in brief glimpses; it seemed to say: “Wait—only wait, John Preswick.”

With common impulse, the group about the body turned and saw him standing there in the doorway, the pistol hanging from his hand. They saw his dark, contained face, his pale blue eyes; and they almost shrank from him.

He said: “Mr. Cortlandt, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Brooker—I should like to see you in here. If you will send them away—”

“Take him on deck and cover him,” Mr. Cortlandt said to two of the seamen. “The rest of you—clear out!”

Mr. Mitchell set down the candle upon the floor of the passageway, and the four ship's officers filed into the cabin. John Preswick fumbled around for the lamp, found it, and set it upon the table, which Mr. Brooker had laid together. First closing the door, they drew up chairs and stools, seating themselves on the four sides of the board. Then the three looked to John Preswick, waiting for him to speak.