“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 accurately3, the mahogany and teakwood parlour, expatiated4 on the invalid5 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 brutal6 than he spoke7, 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 speculative8 embroidery9 on the meagre facts and unsatisfying conjectures10.
“Humph!” sneered11 Richard Hand, his eyes fixed13 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 costly14 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 meditated15 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 rebelliously16.
“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 Mermaid17,” 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 disconsolately18 down the street, thinking miserably19 of Mermaid and the three untouched pancakes. It was, however, incompatible21 with his wounded dignity to make overtures22 to either.
Old Richard Hand, shuffling23 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 puny24 form of Richard Hand as might a great clipper, crowding her white canvas, tower above a fishing smack25 under her bows. And for a moment he appeared quite likely to run down the village miser20. 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 sneer12 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 softened26 the look in those eyes. With the benevolent27 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 entirely28 wasted.
Rising hastily, the thwarted29 deacon managed a familiar but far from warming smile. “This is—er—Captain Vanton?” he asked, in a suave30 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 lugged31 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 jaw32 dropped. A look of immense distrust invaded his crafty33 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 truculent34 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 shuffled35 and cleared his throat. He mumbled36 something, a negative apparently37. 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 positively38 insulting, “sir” of the sea. Mr. Hand had never been so set down in his life. There was never much starch39 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 skimped40 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 inadequate41 expression of his regret that Captain King was well—and dead.
Captain Vanton glared at the opposite wall, resolutely42 taking no notice of this contemptible43 land creature.
“How did he die?” pursued the much-affected Hand.
“Violently,” barked Captain Vanton. The mortgage miser recoiled44. 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 latitude45 of the third rib2, where Mr. Hand’s heart should have been sighted by the experienced mariner46, 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 perspire47 off Cape48 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 crab49 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 swell50 up with a slow inflation of wrath51. He might have expanded with this until the pinprick of the miser’s speech punctured52 the envelope of his maritime53 self-command, but, as if some thought arrested him, he stood still, and regarded Mr. Hand attentively54 for the first time. Captain Vanton’s regard was neither favourable55 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 prospects56. Aided by his descriptive faculty57 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 forth58, 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 pier59.
At length Mr. Hand’s discourse60 dwindled61. 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, concealing62 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!
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1
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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rib
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| n.肋骨，肋状物 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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expatiated
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| v.详述，细说( expatiate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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11
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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15
meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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rebelliously
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| adv.造反地，难以控制地 | |
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mermaid
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| n.美人鱼 | |
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disconsolately
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| adv.悲伤地，愁闷地；哭丧着脸 | |
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miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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overtures
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| n.主动的表示，提议；（向某人做出的）友好表示、姿态或提议( overture的名词复数 )；（歌剧、芭蕾舞、音乐剧等的）序曲，前奏曲 | |
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23
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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puny
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| adj.微不足道的，弱小的 | |
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smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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suave
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| adj.温和的；柔和的；文雅的 | |
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lugged
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| vt.用力拖拉（lug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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truculent
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| adj.野蛮的，粗野的 | |
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35
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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starch
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| n.淀粉；vt.给...上浆 | |
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40
skimped
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| v.少用( skimp的过去式和过去分词 )；少给；克扣；节省 | |
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41
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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42
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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43
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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44
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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45
latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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46
mariner
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| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
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47
perspire
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| vi.出汗，流汗 | |
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48
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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49
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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50
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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51
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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52
punctured
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| v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气 | |
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53
maritime
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| adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的 | |
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54
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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55
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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56
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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57
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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60
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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61
dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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