richard hand the elder had come to own all blue port with the exception of keturah smiley when the balance of power, if you could call it that, was altered, imperceptibly at first, by the advent of captain vanton.
“buel vanton, buel vanton,” said dick hand, fretfully, to his wife one morning some months after the studding-sail whiskers became a familiar sight in blue port. “should like you to tell me who this buel vanton is.”
mrs. hand, whose frequent tattling of village gossip made her more valuable to her husband than he ever admitted, repeated such news as was current. she described, not quite accurately, the mahogany and teakwood parlour, expatiated on the invalid wife, who[106] was never seen outdoors, referred to the small boy. it had got about that the boy was older than he looked, and the father more brutal than he spoke, and the wife as mysterious as she was invisible. the town figured that captain vanton flogged the boy, or had flogged him when he was little, thus arresting his growth; probably he had made his wife an invalid by his cruelty. mrs. hand repeated and worked speculative embroidery on the meagre facts and unsatisfying conjectures.
“humph!” sneered richard hand, his eyes fixed on his plate. “how much money has he got?”
mrs. hand didn’t know. and what made things worse, there seemed absolutely no way of finding out. captain vanton didn’t own property in blue port, except a lot and the house he had built on it. he didn’t even have an account at a patchogue bank. he sometimes made trips to the city, but they lived very simply. the only evidence of wealth, after all, was the costly fittings of that front parlour which no one in blue port had ever entered since the vantons moved in. mrs. hand did not know of cap’n smiley’s short call. keturah smiley never met “with the ladies” and never talked any one else’s business unless it was her business, too.
her husband meditated aloud:
“’f he has money,” he observed, “we might make some effort to get acquainted with them. you could[107] call on his wife. and dick,” with a glance at his son, “could make friends with his boy. i might stop the captain on the street some day and ask him how he’s fixed to ’nvest a little money in shares of the blue port bivalve comp’ny.”
dick junior looked at his father rebelliously.
“say, pop,” he remarked, “i’m not a-going to have anything to do with that guy vanton for you nor nobody else. he’s—he’s a big softy!”
his father looked at the boy with his nearest approach to good nature.
“maybe that girl that lives with keturah smiley—what’s her name?—some kind of fish—might tell you something about him.”
young mr. hand choked on the coffee he was swallowing and rose from the table, though there were three steaming pancakes left of the morning’s pile.
“i don’t see why you insult mermaid,” he said with a comical boyish rage in his voice. “she’s a—a—nice girl, even if that softy does get around her. why—why, i wouldn’t think of asking her anything about that fellow. she might think i was jealous.”
young mr. hand went out and wandered disconsolately down the street, thinking miserably of mermaid and the three untouched pancakes. it was, however, incompatible with his wounded dignity to make overtures to either.
old richard hand, shuffling down the street, looking[108] at the sidewalk, perhaps to see where he was going, perhaps to see where someone else had been, did not observe a large, heavy craft also outward bound but in the opposite direction and on the other side of the thoroughfare. no signals were exchanged and captain vanton, studding-sails set, went careering on his way. it was some time later when he showed up at the bare little room which was richard hand’s place of business and (except for judge hollaby’s office) the blue port bivalve company’s headquarters.
captain vanton was under all plain sail to royals. he was making ten knots or better when he entered the shabby room. he towered over the puny form of richard hand as might a great clipper, crowding her white canvas, tower above a fishing smack under her bows. and for a moment he appeared quite likely to run down the village miser. richard hand could feel himself cut in half and his wits drowning. he came to his senses with an effort. after all, it was merely the sea captain’s physical presence, aided by those expansive whiskers. stage stuff! with an inward sneer mr. hand got hold of himself. he had always despised whiskers and was clean shaven because he had never been able to grow a beard. a beard would have covered that nasty chin and those cruelly tight lips, and would have softened the look in those eyes. with the benevolent aid of a beard richard might have been a deacon, as his father had been before him; and he knew it. in a[109] business way, it would have been an advantage to him, now and then, to have been deacon hand. though it gave him the greatest possible satisfaction to collect interest six days a week there was something painful about the fact that none could be collected sundays. deacon hand, passing the plate, would have felt a vicarious joy. the seventh day would not have been entirely wasted.
rising hastily, the thwarted deacon managed a familiar but far from warming smile. “this is—er—captain vanton?” he asked, in a suave tone very few persons in blue port had ever heard.
the visitor did not say whether it was or was not. he looked around, as he might have on coming on deck, to see whether the mate was doing his work properly. richard hand lugged a chair forward, but captain vanton gave no sign that he noticed this. he spoke a few words in his best quarterdeck voice:
“when did you last hear from captain king?”
the effect on richard hand was curious. for a moment his weak and vicious jaw dropped. a look of immense distrust invaded his crafty eyes. then he seemed to recover himself. rubbing his hands, as if they were cold, as they doubtless were, mr. hand eyed his questioner up and down a moment and then gave question for question:
“have you a letter from him?”
captain vanton, who had not hitherto looked at the[110] village miser at all, now turned and gazed squarely at him, and with so cold and glittering and truculent an eye that mr. hand seemed to become more shrunken than ever.
“no,” captain vanton told him. then he asked, “have you?”
the village miser shuffled and cleared his throat. he mumbled something, a negative apparently. there was a moment’s silence which was broken by the captain, whose tone had a chilled steel edge.
“why don’t you answer my question, sir?”
it was not the polite “sir” of the land but the formal, and often positively insulting, “sir” of the sea. mr. hand had never been so set down in his life. there was never much starch in him, and what there was went out completely.
“i—i heard from him—why, quite recently, less than a month ago, in fact,” he explained not very readily. “but you—you have later news of him, i can see that.” the uriah heep in the man came to the surface and old mr. hand exhibited his favourite brand of cordiality—the oily voice and the skimped smile. “yes-yes. i hope he is well!”
“he is,” affirmed captain vanton and added non-committally: “he is dead.”
an expression of shocked surprise appeared on the face of the village miser. he made curious, clucking noises.
[111]“dear me. dear me,” he managed to say, finally, as an inadequate expression of his regret that captain king was well—and dead.
captain vanton glared at the opposite wall, resolutely taking no notice of this contemptible land creature.
“how did he die?” pursued the much-affected hand.
“violently,” barked captain vanton. the mortgage miser recoiled. when he spoke again his voice was feeble:
“i suppose you knew him very well?”
the captain paid no attention to this. suddenly he turned and looked through mr. hand about two inches to the left of the breastbone and in the latitude of the third rib, where mr. hand’s heart should have been sighted by the experienced mariner, if the miser had had any. mr. hand could not have been more disconcerted if captain vanton had pulled a sextant from his pocket and taken an observation with that.
“why do you lie to me?” asked captain vanton at length, and the tone which had made men perspire off cape horn induced a cold kind of sweat on the body of hand, the miser. it really was the tone more than the words, and surely the words were unpleasant enough.
“i don’t know what you mean. i lie to you?” the land crab got out.
“certainly. why, damn your eyes, you know you haven’t heard from captain king in a month, nor six months, not a year!”
[112]mr. hand stuttered in a process of recollection. captain vanton muttered something about “chronometer error” and seemed to swell up with a slow inflation of wrath. he might have expanded with this until the pinprick of the miser’s speech punctured the envelope of his maritime self-command, but, as if some thought arrested him, he stood still, and regarded mr. hand attentively for the first time. captain vanton’s regard was neither favourable nor unfavourable, and it took no account of what mr. hand seemed to be trying to say. “a month?” of course he had been mistaken. it must have been longer than that; much longer, come to think it over. several months and by gracious! it might be a full year. time slips by so fast, and he was a busy man with the affairs of the blue port bivalve company on his hands as well as personal business. investments. couldn’t be neglected. must be watched night and day....
mr. hand trailed off easily into an account of the operations of the blue port bivalve company. he painted its bivalvular prospects. aided by his descriptive faculty blue port ceased to be blue port and became another golden gate.
at the name of that entrance—and exit—to and from el dorado captain vanton’s large bulk quivered slightly about the back and shoulders.
with fixed eyes he listened to all that mr. hand poured forth, saying nothing, storing in his brain,[113] perhaps, some of these wonderful adjectives. along with the adjectives mr. hand delivered a well-assorted general lading of information, in fragments and pieces which captain vanton seemed to be carefully ticketing for ready reassembling on some distant pier.
at length mr. hand’s discourse dwindled. would captain vanton care to invest in the blue port bivalve company’s shares? more capital was needed and substantial men, men of affairs. but the man of affairs, after drinking in all that mr. hand had to say, shut up as tightly as one of mr. hand’s own bivalves. he had nothing to say and said it. mr. hand, concealing his disappointment, expressed the hope that captain vanton would consider. the captain, who perhaps thought no answer necessary in view of his very obvious consideration of something, turned to go. and then it was that the same stray thought that had struck keturah smiley struck richard hand. how did he know of captain king’s death?
captain vanton explained in not more than three words. they were, in fact, the same three words with which he had answered miss smiley.
richard hand was left all of a tremble. “killed him myself!” a self-confessed murderer! good god, what was the world coming to that such men stalked about in it!
