When the _Broken Heart_ left Falmouth, Captain Margaret made certain
orders to ensure Olivia’s comfort. He had tried to put himself in her
place, to see with her eyes, to feel with her nerves, knowing that her
position on board, without another lady to bear her company, would not
be a pleasant one. The whole of the ship abaft the forward cabin
bulkhead had been given up to her. The three members of the afterguard
took their meals in the cabin, but seldom entered it at other times,
unless they wished to use the table for chess, cards, or chart-work.
The negro steward, who had once ruled in the cabin, was now little
more than a cabin-cook. Mrs. Inigo did much of his work. She cleaned
the cabin, laid the breakfast, served Olivia’s early chocolate,
letting the negro cook wash up. Cammock and Perrin agreed with Captain
Margaret that the after part of the ship should be left as much as
possible to the two Stukeleys, so that Olivia might feel that she was
living in a private house. After the cabin supper, at the end of the
first dog-watch, no man of the three entered the cabin unless Olivia
invited him. Margaret felt that Olivia was touched by this thought for
her. She was very gracious to him during her first evening party. It
was sweet to hear her thanks, sweet to see her, flushed and laughing,
radiant from the sea air, sitting there at the table, as Cammock dealt
the cards for Pope Joan. That evening had been very dear to him, even
though, across the cabin, on the heaped green cushions, lay Stukeley,
greedy for his wife’s beauty, whetting his swine’s tusk as the colour
came upon her cheek. It would all be for him, he thought, and the
thought, now and then, was almost joyful, that she should be happy. It
was not in his nature to be jealous. The greatest bitterness for him
was to see the desired prize neglected, unappreciated, never really
known; and to apprehend, in a gesture, in a few words, the thought
implied, which the accepted lover failed to catch, or else ignored. He
had tested Stukeley’s imaginative sympathy by the framing of another
rule. In a small ship like the _Broken Heart_ there is little privacy.
To prevent a possible shock to her, he arranged that on washing-days
the clothes of the women should be hung to dry from the cabin windows
(from lines rigged up below the port-sills, where they were out of
view of the crew). Olivia was pleased by this arrangement, without
quite knowing why. Stukeley saw no sense in it. On this particular
morning the arrangement bore peculiar fruit, very grateful to
Stukeley, who had long hungered for a change.
Mrs. Inigo entered with the buck-basket, closing the door behind her.
She dropped the basket on the deck below the window-seat, seized the
clothes-line, and began to stop the linen to it, in the sea-fashion,
with rope-yarns. She was a little flushed with the exertion of
washing, and she was a comely woman at all times.
“I’m going to help you,” said Stukeley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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