Джон Стейнбек - Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша]

"No!" she cried. "No!" and slipped under his arm and away. The sailor sat in the sand staring dully before him.

" 'Twas a dream," he whispered; " 'twas only a dream from the spirits. There's no such thing to be happening to a poor sailor. No; for sailors there be pretty hags with sharp, hard eyes to say, 'Come! money first, sweetheart mine.' "

But now Paulette had found the way to make Henry many her. She would contrive to get drunkenness on him, would trap him with wine, and there would be a priest nearby to come at her hushed call. Oh, surely, stranger things had been!

She laid her snare for him on his first night back from sea-a large stone flagon filled with Peruvian wine, and a priest, bribed with a stolen coin, waiting in the shadow of a tree. Henry was very tired. He had gone out short-handed and helped to work the ship himself. The little vine-clothed hut was a pleasant, restful place to him. A full white moon cast silver splashes in the sea below and strewed the ground with scarves of purple light. Sweetly there sang a little jungle breeze among the palms.

She brought the wine and filled a cup for him. "Do you love Paulette?"

"Ah, yes! as God sees me, I love Paulette; dear, sweet Paulette." Another cup, and still, persistently-"Are you so sure you love Paulette?"

"Paulette is a little star hanging to my breast by a silver chain."

Another cup.

"Do you love none other save only your Paulette?"

"I came longingly to find Paulette; the thought of her sailed on the sea with me." And his arms locked tightly around her little golden waist.

Another and another and another; then his arms fell away from her and his hands clenched. The girl cried fearfully, "Oh! do you love Paulette?" for Henry had grown morose and strange and cold.

"I shall tell you of an old time," he said hoarsely. "I was a little boy, a joyous little boy, yet old enough to love. There was a girl-and she was named Elizabeth-the daughter of a wealthy squire. Ah! she was lovely as this night about us, quiet and lovely as that slender palm tree under the moon. I loved her with that love a man may exercise but once. Even our hearts seemed to go hand in hand. How I remember the brave plans we told-she and I, there, sitting on a hillside in the night. We were to live in a great house and have dear children growing up about us. You can never know such love, Paulette.

"Ah, well! It could not last. The gods slay happiness in jealousy. Nothing good can last. A gang of bastard sailors roved through the land and carried me off-a little boy to be sold for a slave in the Indies.

It was a bitter thing to lose Elizabeth-a bitter thing the years cannot forget." And he was weeping softly by her side.

Paulette was bewildered by the change in him. She stroked his hair and his eyes, until his breath came more calmly. Then she began again, with almost helpless patience, like a teacher questioning a dull child.

"But-do you love Paulette?"

He leaped up and glared at her.

"You? Love you? Why, you are just a little animal! a pretty little golden animal, for sure, but a form of flesh-no more. May one worship a god merely because he is big, or cherish a land which has no virtue save its breadth, or love a woman whose whole realm is her flesh? Ah, Paulette! you have no soul at all! Elizabeth had a white winged soul. I love you-yes-with what you have to be loved-the body.

But Elizabeth-I loved Elizabeth with my soul."

Paulette was puzzled.

"What is this soul?" she asked. "And how may I get one if I have not one already? And where is this soul of yours that I have never seen it or heard it at all? And if they cannot be seen, or heard, or touched, how do you know she had this soul?"

"Hush!" he cried furiously. "Hush! or I box your mouth and have you whipped on the cross. You speak of things beyond you. What can you know of love that lies without your fleshly juggling?"

Christmas came to the Hot Tropics, the fourth Christmas of Henry's servitude. And James Flower brought him a small box done up with colored string.

"It is a gift of the season," he said, and his eyes sparkled with delight while Henry untied the package.

There was a little teakwood box, and in it, lying on the scarlet silk of its lining, the torn fragments of his slavery. Henry took the shreds of paper from the box and stared at them, and then he laughed unsteadily and put his head down on his hands.

"Now you are no longer a servant, but my son," the planter said. "Now you are my son, whom I have taught strange knowledges-and I shall teach you more, far more. We will live here always and talk together in the evenings."

Henry raised his head.

"Oh! but I cannot, cannot stay. I must be off a-buccaneering."

"You-you cannot stay? But, Henry, I have planned our life. You would not leave me here alone."

"Sir," said Henry, "I must be off a-buccaneering. Why, in all my years it has been the one aim. I must go, sir."

"But, Henry, dear Henry, you shall have half my plantation, and all of it when I am dead-if only you will stay with me."

"That may not be," young Henry cried. "I must be off to make me a name. It is not given that I live a planter. Sir, there are plannings in my head that have grown perfect with pondering. And nothing may be allowed to interfere with them."

James Flower slumped forward in his chair.

"It will be very lonely here without you. I don't quite know what I shall do without you."

Henry's mind carried him back to that old time, with Robert smiling into the fire and saying these same words-"It will be so lonely here without you, son." He wondered if his mother still sat coldly upright and silent. Surely she would have got over it. People always got over the things they feared so much. And then he thought of small Paulette who would be crying with terror in her hut when he told her.

"There is a little servant girl," he said; "little Paulette. I have protected her. And if I have ever pleased you, will you do these things for me? Always, always keep her in the house and never let her be sent to the fields, nor whipped, nor bred with any of the blacks. Will you do these things for me surely?"

"Of course I will," James Flower said. "Ah, but it has been good to have you here, Henry-good to hear your voice in the evening. What will I do in the evening now? There is none to take your place, for you have very truly been my son. It will be lonely here without you, boy."

Said Henry, "The toiling I have done in your service has been more than repaid with the knowledge you have poured into my ears these same evenings. And I shall miss you, sir, more than I can say. But can't you understand? I must go a-buccaneering and take a Spanish town, for the thought is on me that if a man planned carefully, and considered his chances and the men he had, the thing might well be done. I have studied the ancient wars, and I must be making a name for myself and a fortune. Then, when I have the admiration of men, perhaps I shall come back to you, sir, and we may sit and talk again in the evenings. You will remember my wish about Paulette?"

"Who is Paulette?" the planter asked.

"Why, the servant girl I mentioned. Never let her go with the slaves, because I am fond of her."

"Ah, yes! I remember! And where do you go now, Henry?"

"To Jamaica. My uncle, Sir Edward, has long been Lieutenant- Governor there in Port Royal. But I have never seen him-well, because I was a bond-servant, and he is a gentleman.

I have a letter to him that my father gave me years past. Perhaps he will help me to buy a ship for my plundering."

"I would help you buy a ship. You have been very good to me," the planter said hopefully.

Now Henry was dipped in a kind of shame, for in the box under his bed there glistened a pile of golden coins-over a thousand pounds.