Last Pages. Oscar Mandel

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СКАЧАТЬ Nicholas yanked the door open; a flood of rain accompanied the boy, who kept yelling “Man overboard! Man overboard!”

      With a sudden foreboding of disaster, the Colonel and Nicholas rushed out, followed by Aimée, the Mayhew’s clerk Abishai Cottle, who had run in from the counting house in the rear, and even Priscilla and Ruth the cook. Nicholas had just had time to find a spyglass. They did not have far to go. At the wharf, a crowd had rushed to see, in the distance, a rowboat with two seamen at the oars struggling against the waves and at the same time trying to save a fellow seaman fallen into the water and flailing helplessly about. From the nearby inn, Madeleine came running. She had been reading Athalie in her room when the clamor had roused her. On her way out, she stumbled against Sergeant Cuff, wiping his moustache after drinking his pint of ale in the tap room. Madeleine ran through the shouting and waving crowd to join her mother. A violent rain was rushing from the black clouds, thunders rolled and fearful lightning zigzagged after the rolling and roiling noise.

      Pushing their way to the edge of the dock, uncle and nephew peered into the darkness of thunder, wind and rain. Young Nick trained the spyglass at the head bobbing about the water. “It’s Wallace! Damn damn damn!” he whispered into the Colonel’s ear, while the crowd shouted “He’s lost! Where is he now? He’s gone for sure! There he bobs again!” and Cuff cried out “Who’ll save him? Dive in! I can’t swim! Cowards all!”

      Nicholas had not needed Cuff’s shouts (which in any case he could not hear across the roaring crowd) to thrust the spyglass, his doublet and his shoes into Cottle’s hands and to dive into the water. A great clamor went up on all sides. Mayhew closed his fists in fear. Madeleine uttered small cries. Aimée was speechless. And Nicholas swam and swam, shoving the waves aside. Fortunately, Wallace—Young Nick had not been mistaken—managed to grasp one of the oars. But the two sailors were unable to lift the exhausted man—more used to handling contracts than fighting the ocean—into the boat. It took Nicholas, when he reached the boat, to give the final push that lifted Wallace to safety. He himself was strong enough, of course, to swing himself, with the sailors’ help, into the boat as well, and presently they were all on land, surrounding the half-unconscious Wallace lying on his back on the wharf.

      A Nantucket constable arrived. He interrogated the two sailors, who informed them that the man’s name was Tom Bates, and that the three of them had orders to purchase a set of barrels for the Enterprise. The rain still pouring, the crowd began to disperse, while Wallace was carried by the two sailors, helped by Cottle, to the entrance-way of the inn, followed by the drenched Mayhew gentlemen, the two Frenchwomen, Priscilla, Ruth, and Sergeant Cuff. Now, lying on the ground on a blanket Mr. Swain had supplied, he was clutching, in his half consciouness, a pouch that was hanging from his neck, held by strong twine. Aimée had never been more attentive. “This fellow is at least fifty years old,” she muttered to herself; “what was he doing in that boat?” (“Que fichait-il dans cette galère?” were the actual words that went through her head.) Madeleine, instead, saw only Nicholas. “You must dry yourself, you must, you must!” she kept crying, though she badly needed drying herself. “I will, my dear, I swear,” he replied, “but first we must take care of this poor seaman.”

      “Why is he holding that pouch so hard?” Aimée wanted to know. “Let us look at it.”

      The Colonel grasped the pouch in an instant, managed to pry it open, gave a quick look and proclaimed, “It’s the picture of a woman. Naturally! Well! We shall move him to my house, which by God’s mercy is next door to that of Dr. Phelps.” And the pouch slipped into his pocket.

      Aimée, who wanted the man to remain at the inn, could think of no objection to raise, though she strongly felt that mischief was in the air. Not so Sergeant Cuff, who quickly lost interest, shrugged his shoulders and returned to his unfinished pint of beer. The two sailors declared that if Tom Bates proved too weak to return to their ship, he could remain on Nantucket island and rejoin them upon their return voyage. And there the episode ended. The Nantucket folk were used to the likes of it. No one had recognized Wallace; he was in fact almost entirely unknown on the island, which he had visited from the mainland but twice in five years. Only Madeleine remained with tears in her eyes at such danger and such bravery, while Mayhew, Cottle, the extremely wet but hale Nicholas, assisted by Ruth, carried the false Tom Bates to the Mayhews’ house, Priscilla carrying the young man’s doublet and shoes.

      8

      THAT EVENING, as Aimée and Madeleine sat at supper in their rooms, and the young woman grew expansive on matters heroic, her mother only muttered, “A strange affair, a strange affair….”

      “Why strange?” Madeleine wanted to know. “The only thing strange was the scene of courage we saw.”

      “Look at you! Dieu me damne! You’ve fallen in love with that American Leander.”

      Madeleine’s tone was playful. “Why do you say that, mother? Didn’t you order me to be friendly with the suspects?”

      “Pooh! I’ve never yet seen you so keen to do your duty.”

      “Don’t scold me, maman! You must admire him too. How brave he was! For the sake of an absolute stranger—no one else so much as removed his coat—and he plunges in—swims like a Neptune—”

      “Swims like a Neptune! A duck can swim as well. Now we’re in love with a fellow because he can swim.”

      “Have it your way.”

      “As for being selfless—”

      “To be sure. This seaman is a pasha in disguise who will leave his millions to Nicholas.”

      “He may leave him something more important. Seaman be hanged! You must be blind, my girl! Thank goodness I know how to snap at details.”

      “What details?”

      “You weren’t struck by that sealskin pouch? How worried he was about it?”

      “It was lovely of him to think of his sweetheart or his wife the moment he came to.”

      “The girl’s determined to be an idiot! To think that I raised you on Plutarch and Tacitus! I don’t suppose you noticed how anxious the Colonel was to dive into that pouch.”

      “You’re right; I didn’t notice.”

      “And you didn’t think it was odd that a common seaman should be wearing a silk shirt with ruffled wrist bands that peeped out under his smock; mind you, got up like a man of condition when he was out rowing a dinghy to take on a barrel of whale oil or whatever. And that a man his age should be put out to sea in a storm to pick up supplies? Silly details, of course. But details, my dear girl, make all the difference between a master and an apprentice. Without details I’d still be Madame Pichot selling keys in Montreal.”

      “I would have been glad to remain plain Mademoiselle Pichot, and run your key shop for you, mother. Such a life!”

      “You have a low mind. Chin up, curls in place, tidy drawers, and an eye that can pick out a flea in the fur of a dog at fifty paces: that’s how a woman makes her way in the world.”

      “I wish I had your fire—but I can’t manage it.”

      “Well, you’re a goose—or a kitten by somebody’s fireplace. But not Nicholas Mayhew’s fireplace—not if he is what I think he is.”

      “Namely?”

      “A rebel СКАЧАТЬ