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Pieces of Eight, a novel by Richard Le Gallienne |
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Book 3 - Chapter 6 |
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_ BOOK III CHAPTER VI Doubloons.
The time had come, after the Homeric formula which my host had whimsically applied to the situation, for the far-travelled guest to declare himself, and I saw in my host's eye a courteous invitation to begin. While his fantastic tongue had gone a-wagging from China to Peru, I had been pondering what account to give of myself, and I had decided, for various reasons--of which the Lady Calypso was, of course, first, but the open-hearted charm of her father a close second--to tell him the whole of my story. Whatever his and her particular secret was, it was evident to me that it was an innocent and honourable one; and, besides, I may have had a notion that before long I was to have a family interest in it. So I began--starting in with a little prelude in the manner of my host, just to enter into the spirit of the game: "My Lord Alcinoues; your guest, the far wanderer, having partaken of your golden hospitality, is now fain to open his heart to you, and tell you of himself and his race, his home and his loved ones across the wine-dark sea, and such of his adventures as may give pleasure to your ears" ... though, having no talents in that direction, I was glad enough to abandon my lame attempt at his Homeric style for a plain straightforward narrative of the events of the past three months. I had not, however, proceeded very far, when, with a courteous raising of his hand, King Alcinoues suggested a pause. "If you would not mind," he said, "I would like my daughter to hear this too, for it is of the very stuff of romantic adventure in which she delights. She is a brave girl, and, as I often tell her, would have made a very spirited dare-devil boy, if she hadn't happened to be born a girl." This phrase seemed to flash a light upon the questionings that had stirred at the back of my mind since I had first heard that voice in Sweeney's store. "By the way, dear King," I said, assuming a casual manner, "do you happen to have a son?" "No!" he answered, "Calypso is my only child." "Very strange!" I said, "we met a whimsical lad in our travels whom I would have sworn was her brother." "That's odd!" said the "King" imperturbably, "but no! I have no son"; and he seemed to say it with a certain sadness. Then Calypso came in to join my audience, having, meanwhile, taken the opportunity of twining a scarlet hibiscus among her luxuriant dark curls. I should certainly have told the story better without her, yet I was glad--how glad!--to have her seated there, an attentive presence in a simple gown, white as the seafoam--from which, there was no further doubt in my mind, she had magically sprung. I gave them the whole story, much as I had told it in John Saunders's snuggery--John P. Tobias, Jr.; dear old Tom and his sucking fish, his ghosts, sharks, skeletons, and all; and when I had finished, I found that the interest of my story was once more chiefly centred in my pock-marked friend of "The wonderful works of God." "I should like to meet your pock-marked friend," said King Alcinoues, "and I have a notion that, with you as a bait, I shall not long be denied the pleasure." "I am inclined to think that I have seen him already," said Calypso, using her honey-golden voice for the base purpose of mentioning him. "Impossible!" I cried, "he is long since safe in Nassau gaol." "O! not lately," she answered to our interrogative surprise, and giving a swift embarrassed look at her father, which I at once connected with the secret of the doubloons. "Seriously, Calypso?" asked her father, with a certain stern affection, as thinking of her safety. "On one of your errands to town?" And then, turning to me, he said: "Sir Ulysses, you have spoken well, and your speech has been that free, open-hearted speech that wins its way alike among the Hyperboreans that dwell in frozen twilight near the northern star, and those dwarfed and swarthy intelligences that blacken in the fierce sunlight of that fearful axle we call the equator. Therefore, I will make return to you of speech no less frank and true ..." He took a puff at his cigar, and then continued: "I should not risk this confession, but that it is easy to see that you belong to the race of Eternal Children, to which, you may have realised, my daughter and I also belong. This adventure of yours after buried treasure has not seriously been for the doubloons and pieces of eight, the million dollars, and the million and a half dollars themselves, but for the fun of going after them, sailing the unknown seas, coral islands, and all that sort of blessed moonshine. Well, Calypso and I are just like that, and I am going to tell you something exciting--we too have our buried treasure. It is nothing like so magnificent in amount as yours, or your Henry P. Tobias's--and where it is at this particular moment I know as little as yourself. In fact it is Calypso's secret...." I looked across at Calypso, but her eyes were far beyond capture, in un-plummeted seas. "I will show you presently where I found it, among the rocks near by--now a haunt of wild bees. "Can you ever forget that passage in the Georgics? It makes the honey taste sweeter to me every time I taste it. We must have some of it for dinner, by the way, Calypso." I could not help laughing, and so, for a moment, breaking up the story. The dear fellow! Was there any business of human importance from which he could not be diverted by a quotation from Homer or Virgil or Shakespeare? But he was soon in the saddle again. "Well," he resumed, "one day, some seven years ago, in a little cave below the orange trees, grubbing about as I am fond of doing, I came upon a beautiful old box of beaten copper, sunk deep among the roots of a fig tree. It was strong, but it seemed too dainty for a pirate--some great lady's jewel box more likely--Calypso shall show it to us presently. On opening it--what do you think? It spilled over with golden doubloons--among which were submerged some fine jewels, such as this tie ring you see me wearing. Actually, it was no great treasure, at a monetary calculation--certainly no fortune--but from our romantic point of view, as belonging to the race of Eternal Children, it was El Dorado, Aladdin's lamp, the mines of Peru, the whole sunken Spanish Main, glimmering fifty fathoms deep in mother-of-pearl and the moon. It was the very Secret Rose of Romance; and, also, mark you, it was some money--O! perhaps, all told, it might be some five thousand guineas, or--what would you say?--twenty-five odd thousand dollars; Calypso knows better than I, and she, as I said, alone knows where it is now hid, and how much of it now remains." He paused to relight his cigar, while Calypso and I--Well, he began again: "Now my daughter and I," and he paused to look at her fondly, "though of the race of Eternal Children, are not without some of the innocent wisdom which Holy Writ countenances as the self-protection of the innocent--Calypso, I may say, is particularly endowed with this quality, needing it as she does especially for the guardianship for her foolish talkative old father, who, by the way, is almost at the end of his tale. So, when this old chest flashed its bewildering dazzle upon us, we, being poor folk, were not more dazzled than afraid. For--like the poor man in the fable--such good fortune was all too likely to be our undoing, should it come to the ears of the great, or the indigent criminal. The 'great' in our thought was, I am ashamed to say, the sacred British Treasury, by an ancient law of which, forty per cent. of all 'treasure-trove' belongs to His Majesty the King. The 'indigent criminal' was represented by--well, our coloured (and not so very much coloured) neighbours. Of course, we ought to have sent the whole treasure to your friend, John Saunders, of His Britannic Majesty's Government at Nassau, but--Well, we didn't. Some day, perhaps, you will put in a word for us with him, as you drink his old port, in the snuggery. Meanwhile, we had an idea, Calypso and I--" He paused--for Calypso had involuntarily made a gesture, as though pleading to be spared the whole revelation--and then with a smile, continued: "We determined to hide away our little hoard where it would be safe from our neighbours, and dispose of it according to our needs with a certain tradesman in the town whom we thought we could trust--a tradesman, who, by the way, quite naturally levies a little tax upon us for his security. No blame to him! I have lived far too long to be hard on human nature." "John Sweeney?" I asked, looking over at Calypso, with eyes that dared at last to smile. "The very same, my Lord Ulysses," answered my friend. And so I came to understand that Mr. Sweeney's reluctance in selling me that doubloon was not so sinister as it had, at the moment, appeared; that it had in fact come of a loyalty which was already for me the most precious of all loyalties. "Then," said I, "as a fitting conclusion to the confidence you have reposed in me, my Lord Alcinoues; if Miss Calypso would have the kindness to let us have a sight of that chest of beaten copper of which you spoke, I would like to restore this, that was once a part of its contents, wherever the rest of them" (and I confess that I paused a moment) "may be in hiding." And I took from my pocket the sacred doubloon that I had bought from John Sweeney--may Heaven have mercy upon his soul!--for sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents, on that immortal evening. _ |
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