Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he succeeded,
about all that he was risking, the impossibility of failure, if he kept
his wits about him. “It's only a matter of two months or so,” he went
on; “stay where you are, dear, or go to my Dad. He'll be glad to have
you. There's my mother's room. There's no one to say 'No' to your fiddle
there; you can play it by the sea; and on dark nights you'll have the
stars dancing to you over the water as thick as bees. I've looked at
them often, thinking of you....”
Pasiance had whispered to me, “Don't read that bit,” and afterwards
I left it out.... Then the sensuous side of him shows up: “When I've
brought this off, there's the whole world before us. There are places
I can take you to. There's one I know, not too warm and not too cold,
where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the creepers, and the
cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care about; all the fruits
you can think of; no noise but the parrots and the streams, and a splash
when a nigger dives into a water-hole. Pasiance, we'll go there! With
an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we couldn't know. The world's a fine
place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff'
in it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you
shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home....”
Throughout this letter—for all its real passion—one could feel how
the man was holding to his purpose—the rather sordid purpose of this
venture. He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he must
be furthering his own ends. He is vital—horribly vital! I wonder less
now that she should have yielded.
What visions hasn't he dangled before her. There was physical
attraction, too—I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at Black
Mill. But when all's said and done, she married him, because she's
Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants “to get back.” And she lies
there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her away. It's
pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing that letter to
this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon. “I've wanted money,” he
wrote, “ever since I was a little chap sitting in the fields among the
cows.... I want it for you now, and I mean to have it. I've studied the
thing two years; I know what I know....
“The moment this is in the post I leave for London. There are a hundred
things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach of you
again till the anchor's weighed. When I re-christened her the Pied
Witch, I thought of you—you witch to me....”
There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to the
cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow) when
he would come ashore and bid her good-bye. It was signed, “Your loving
husband, Zachary Pearse....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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