HIS WORD OF HONOR

The old man said nothing at all, as Hal drew near, but only peered at him from under those white-thatched brows of his, with eyes of stern reproach. This still further quickened Hal’s apprehension and blew to a kindling fire the glowing embers of venomous ill-humor.

For all his swagger, Hal could not bring himself to look the captain in the eye. Hands in pockets, cigarette in lips, he came close and stood there; and with defiant surliness on his tanned face managed to say:

“Well, gramp, what now? Getting ready to pan me properly, are you? If so, when ready, Gridley, you can fire!”

“Hal,” answered the old man, “that’s the last impertinence you’re ever going to utter to me! So remember. Sit down and answer my questions.”

“I can take it standing, all right!” said Hal, defiant still.

“I said, sit down, sir!”

Making no answer this time, the boy hulked his surly way toward the ancient, flat-topped tomb, the granite slab of which—supported on six stone pillars—bore the name “Amalfi Briggs.”

“Not there, sir!” exclaimed the captain sternly. “Have you no respect for either dead or living? Here on this bench beside me! Sit down, I tell you!”

Hal slouched down beside his grandfather, his huge shoulders sagging. A strange resemblance grew visible between these two—young man and old; black-haired and white.

“Well, now what is it?” demanded Hal with an oblique glance.

“The first thing, sir, is that I’m going to be obeyed, without question and without any back talk. I never took it aboard my ships, and I’m not going to stand any impertinence. I’m an old man, but I’m still captain of Snug Harbor. As long as there’s a breath of air in my lungs or a drop of blood in my veins, I’m going to give orders there; and those that don’t like them will have to sail with some other skipper. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the boy, more subdued in tone. This new note of his grandfather’s told him real business was up-wind.

“Very well, then. That’s understood,” continued Alpheus, grimly. “You are subordinate to me. That point ought never to have been raised at all, and with a right-minded grandson it never would have been. But since you’ve shown yourself rebellious, it’s got to be. I’m master, and you’re man. Don’t ever forget that, sir. If you do, into the small boat you go, and away; and, once you’ve gone, there’s no Jacob’s-ladder down the side for you ever again!”

“All right, sir. What next?”

“Next, throw away that infernal cigarette, sir. There’ll be no cigarettes smoked here in presence of our dead!”

“But, gramp, you’ve been smoking that rank old pipe here!”

The cigarette, dashed from Hal’s mouth, would have burned a hole in the white flannel trousers had not Hal swiftly brushed its fire away. Hal’s eyes glowered with swift anger, but he held his tongue. The captain began again:

“Where have you been, sir?”

“Been? Why—nowhere—just taking a walk with Laura. That’s all.”

“H-m! Why didn’t you come back with her?”

“She—got mad at something, and—”

Hal’s face grew ugly. With savage eyes he regarded the old man.

“Mad at what? What did you say to her?”

“Nothing, gramp, so help me! She got jealous about another girl in Boston, that’s all.”

“Very well, sir. I hope that is all. If you’ve been lying to me, or if you’ve hurt one hair of that girl’s head, it’ll be a bad day for you, sir! Now then, listen to me! You’ve got me into shoal waters, on a lee shore, with your evil ways. Yes, and you’ve got yourself there, too. I’ve been to see Squire Bean this morning, on account of your assault on Fergus McLaughlin.”

“Assault, nothing! That was a fair fight, and I trimmed him.”

“Legally, it’s assault and battery. Do you know how much it’s going to cost me to keep you out of court and clear the name of Briggs? Cash money, sir. Money that would have been yours later, but that I’ve got to take out of my safe now because of your evil doings?”

“Out of the safe?” asked Hal, his thoughts diverted into a new channel. He was going to add: “I thought you kept your money in the Endicutt National.” But he nipped the words before they could escape him. The captain, too wrought up to notice the gleam in his grandson’s eyes or the evil portent of the question, repeated:

“Do you know how much it’s going to cost me, sir?”

“Search me!”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars, sir.”

“You’re kidding!”

“That will do, sir, for that kind of language in hearing of our family dead!”

“Excuse me, gramp—I forgot myself!” Hal apologized, feigning contrition. “You don’t mean to tell me McLaughlin has the nerve to ask that much—and can collect it?”

“He asked five hundred, but Dr. Filhiol’s help reduced the claim. I’ve agreed to pay. That’s a hard blow to me, Hal, but there’s far worse. I got a letter from the college this morning that carried away all canvas. It brought me heavy, bad news, Hal!”

“I thought so,” said Hal moodily, his eyes fixed on the close-trimmed grass. “It was bound to come! I’m fired from college!”

“And yet you went gallivanting off with Laura, and never even reported it to me!”

“I knew you’d find it out soon enough. Yes, I’m on the shelf with the rest of the canned goods!”

“Dishonorably discharged from the service, sir! And for what cause?”

“How do I know what that sour old pill, Travers, has framed up on me?” demanded Hal angrily. “He’s the kind of guy that would make murder out of killing a mosquito. If a fellow takes a single drink, or looks at a skirt—a girl, I mean—he’s ready to chop his head off!”

“Is, eh?” demanded the old captain sternly. “So you deny having been drunk and disorderly, having committed an assault on a proctor, having stolen the money I sent you for your bill, and having cheated in examinations? Here in this place of solemn memories you deny all that?”

“I—I—” Hal began, but the tale of his misdemeanors was too circumstantial for even his brazen effrontery.

“You deny it, sir?”

“Oh, what’s the use, gramp?” Hal angrily flung at him. “Everything’s framed up against me! I’m sick of the whole thing, anyhow. College is a frost. I never fell for it at all. You tried to wish it on me, when everything I wanted in the world was to go to sea. It’s all true. Let it go at that!”

“So then, sir, I still have a heavy bill at college to pay, besides the disgrace of your discharge?”

“Oh, I suppose so! I’m fired. Glad I am! Glad I’m done with the whole damned business!”

“Sir! Mind your tongue!”

“I’m glad, I tell you!” The boy’s face seemed burning with interior fires, suddenly enkindled. “I quit everything. Give me a boat, gramp—anything that’ll sail—a twenty-five footer, and let me go! I don’t ask you for a dollar. All I ask is a boat. Give me that, and I swear to God I’ll never trouble you again!”

“A boat, Hal? What do you mean, sir?” Startled, the captain peered at him.

“Oh, God!” Hal cried with sudden passion. “A boat—that’s all I want now! I’m dying here! I was dying in college, choking to death by inches!” He stood up, raised his head, and flung his arms towards the sea. He cried from his black heart’s depths:

“Let me go! Oh, let me go, let me go!”

“Go? Go where?”

“Lord, how do I know? All I want is to go somewhere, away from here. This place is cursed! I’m cursed here, and so are you, as long as I’m around!”

“Cursed, Hal?” whispered the captain, tensely. “What gives you that idea?”

“I know it! This village bounded on one side by nothing and on the other by a graveyard—I can’t stand it, and I won’t! Let me go somewhere, anywhere, out to sea, where it’s calling me out over beyond there!” He gestured mightily at the lure of the horizon. “Let me go out past the Silken Sea, beyond the Back of the Wind!”

Panting a little he grew silent, with clenched fists, face flushed and veins swollen on neck and brow. The old man, staring, shivered at sound of the strange Malay words, now suddenly spoken again after half a century—words that echoed ghostlike in the empty chambers of the past. He peered at Hal, as at an apparition. His face, pale under its weather-beaten tan, drew into lines of anguish.

“Let me go!” the boy flung at him again. “You’ve got to let me go!”

“Sit down, sir!” the captain made shift to answer. “This is sheer lunacy. What, sir? You want to give up your career, your family, everything? You want to take a small boat and go sailing off into nowhere? Why, sir, Danvers Asylum is the place for you. No more such talk, sir; not another word!”

“I don’t care what you say, I’m going, anyhow,” Hal defied him. “I’m not going to rot in this dump. It’s no place for a live man, and you know it!”

“You’ve got no money to be buying boats, Hal! No, nor no skipper’s papers, either. By the Judas priest, sir, but you’re crazy! You’ll be talking piracy next, or some such nonsense.”

“I don’t care what I talk,” the boy retorted. “I’m sick of this! I’m through! I’m going to live, and be myself, and be—”

“You’ll be a corpse or a jail-bird, if that’s the course you’re sailing!” the captain cut in. “This is a civilized world you’re living in now.”

“Civilized! My God, civilized! That’s all I hear—civilized! When you were my age were you always civilized? Were you kept on dry land instead of going to sea? Were you buried in college, learning damned, dry rubbish?”

“Dry rubbish? Your Oriental studies dry rubbish?”

“I don’t have to go to college for those! What you know of the East, did you learn it out of books? You did not! You learned it out of life! Learned it yourself, ‘somewhere east of Suez.’ Well, the temple-bells are calling me, too; and yet you pen me up in this crabbed little New England village, where they don’t even know there are temple-bells! It’s choking me to death, I tell you!” He caught at his throat, as if striving for air. “But you don’t understand. You’re old now, and you’ve ‘put it all behind you, long ago and far away,’ and now you ask me to be civilized!”

“You mean to tell me, sir,” the captain asked, his voice trembling, “that you’d abandon me, after the way I’ve worked for you? You’d abandon the family and the home? You’d leave that good, pure girl, Laura, just for a whim like this? I appeal to you, my boy, in the name of the family—”

“It’s no use, grandfather. You’ve got to let me go!” Unmoved he heard the old man plead:

“Have you no love for me, then? I’m in my declining years. Without you what would be left? I’ve lived for you, Hal, and in the hope of what you’d be some day. I’ve hoped you’d marry Laura—I’ve dreamed of grandchildren, of new light in the sunset that’s guiding me to the western harbor. I’ve wanted nothing but to give the end of my life to you and for you, Hal—nothing but that!” In the captain’s eyes gleamed a tear. Hal, noting it, felt secret scorn and mockery. “I’m willing to overlook everything that’s past and give you a fresh start. God knows, I’d gladly lay down my life for you! Because, Hal—you know I love you, boy!”

Hal glanced appraisingly at the entreating old figure on the bench, at the white head, the tear-blurred eyes, the trembling outstretched hands. To what point, he wondered with sinister calculation, could he turn this blind affection to his own uses? He kept a moment’s silence, then said in a tone that skilfully simulated humilitude:

“I suppose I am a fool to have such thoughts, after all. What is it you want me to do?”

“First, I want you to get off the lee shore. I’ll pay your debts, Hal, and clear you. There are other colleges, and as for McLaughlin, the money and apology will satisfy him.”

“Apology? What apology?”

“Oh, he demands an apology from you, you understand?”

“He does, eh? Like—h-m! Well, I suppose I can do that.” Hal kept his lying tongue to the deception now essential to the success of his plans.

“Finely spoken, sir, and like a man!” exclaimed Captain Briggs, with sudden joy and hope. “I knew you’d come to it. You’re sound at heart, boy—sound as old oak. You’re a Briggs, after all!”

“When do I have to make this apology?” asked Hal, with a searching look. “Not right away?”

“No. I’m going to pay the money this afternoon. In a day or two you can go aboard the schooner—”

“The schooner? You mean I’ve got to see him there?”

“Well, yes. You see, he insists on the apology where the assault was done. You’re to give it in front of all the crew. I know that’ll be hard sailing, against stiff winds of pride, but you’ll come through. You’ll prove yourself a man, for your own sake as well as Laura’s and mine, won’t you?”

Hal’s fists were clenched tight as he answered:

“Yes, of course. I’ll go through.” His eyes were the eyes of murder, but the old captain saw only his boy coming back to him again, dutiful and ready for a new start in life. “I’ll do it, sir. Count on me!”

“Your hand, sir!”

The captain’s hand met his grandson’s in a grip that, on one side, was all confidence and love; on the other, abysmal treachery and wickedness. Hal said as the grasp loosened:

“I’m asking only one little favor of you.”

“What’s that, boy?”

“Till this thing is all settled, let’s not talk about it any more. No more than is strictly necessary. Please don’t discuss it with the doctor, or with Ezra!”

“Ezra knows nothing. The doctor may talk a little, but I’ll discourage it. From now on, Hal, there’ll be very little said.”

“If you see Laura—”

“Not a word to her. And from now on, Hal, you’re going to make amends for what you’ve done, and live it down, and prove yourself a man?”

“Why, sure!”

“You mean that, boy?”

“Of course I mean it! What shall I swear it on? The blue-throated Mahadeo of the Hindus, or Vishnu the Destroyer, or Ratna Mutnu Manikam, the Malay Great God of Death? All three, if you say so!”

The captain shivered again, as if the cold breath of ghosts from far, terrible graves had suddenly blown upon him.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way, Hal,” said he tremulously. “Just give me your word of honor. Will you?”

“Yes, sir!”

“As a gentleman?”

“As a ‘gentleman—unafraid!’”

Captain Briggs got up from the bench among the tombs and put his tired old arm through the strong, vigorous one of Hal, with a patriarchal affection of great nobility.

“Come, boy!” said he, happy with new hopes. “Come, we must be getting under way for Snug Haven—for the little home you’re going to be so worthy of and make so happy. The home where, some of these fine days, I know you’ll bring Laura to comfort and rejoice me. Come, boy, now let’s be going down the hill!”

Together he and Hal made their way toward the gate in the old stone wall, warm in the sunlight of June.

A smile was on the captain’s time-worn face, a smile of joy and peace. Hal was smiling, too, but with mockery and craft and scorn.

“That’s the time I handed it out right and stalled him proper!” he was thinking as they started down the winding path amid the sumacs and wild roses. “He’s easy, gramp is—a cinch! Getting moldy in the attic. He’ll fall for anything. Now, if Laura’d only been as easy! If she had—”

Heavily, but still smiling, the old man leaned upon Hal’s arm, finding comfort in the strength of the lusty young scion of the family which, save for this one hope, must perish.

“God has been very good to me, after all!” the captain thought as they went down the hill. “I feared God was going to punish me; but, after all, He has been kind! ‘My cup runneth over—He leadeth me beside the still waters,’ at last, after so many stormy seas! Sunset of life is bringing peace—and somewhere my Pilot’s waiting to tell me I have paid my debt and that I’m entering port with a clean log!”

And Hal? What was Hal thinking now?

“Cinch is no name for it! The old man’s called off all rough-house for a day or two. One day’s enough. Just twenty-four hours. That’s all—that’s all I need!”