Джон Стейнбек - Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша]

"'Why, certainly, I will, my Captain, and had I known of such a thing in your mind, I would have been for long. How may I serve you, Sir?"

"Oh, just by talking with me now and then, and by trusting me a little. I have no motive save my loneliness. But you speak and act like a gentleman, Coeur de Gris. May I ask of your family? or do you draw this name about you like a cape, as so many do here on the Main?"

"It is very simple to tell you of my family. It is said that my father was the great Bras de Fer, and who he was no one ever knew. The people gave me my name, remembering his. My mother is one of the free women of Goaves. She was sixteen when I was born. Hers was a very ancient family, but Huguenot in worship. Their holdings were destroyed in the murders of St. Bartholomew. Thus it came about that they were penniless when my mother was born. And she was picked up by the watch in Paris streets one day and sent to Goaves with a shipload of women vagrants. Bras de Fer found her soon afterwards."

"But you say she is a free woman," said Henry Morgan, scandalized at this young man's apparent lack of shame. "Surely she has given up this-this practice, now you are successful on the sea. You are taking home enough for both of you, and more."

"I know I am, but she continues. I do not mention it, for why should I interfere with what she considers a serious work. She is proud of her position, proud that her callers are the best people in the port. And it pleases her that, although she is nearly forty, she can more than compete with the young, unseasoned squabs who come in every year. Why should I change the gentle course of her ways, even if I could?

No, she is a dear, lovely woman, and she has been a good mother to me. Her only fault is that she is filled with over-many little scruples. She nags at me when I am at home, and cries so when I leave. She is dreadfully afraid that I may find some woman who may do me harm."

"That is strange, is it not? — considering her life," said Henry Morgan.

"Why is it strange? Must they have a different brain in that ancient profession? No, sir; I assure you that her life is immaculate-prayers thrice a day, and there is no finer house in all Goaves than hers. Why, sir, when last I went there, I took with me a scarf which fell to my lot in the division, a glorious thing of gossamer and gold. She would not have it. It belonged about the neck of some woman who put her faith in the Romish church, she said, and it would not be decent for a good Huguenot to wear it. Ah! she worries so about me when I am off to sea. She is terribly afraid I may be hurt, but far more afraid of the tainting of my soul. Such is all my knowledge of my family, sir."

Captain Morgan had stepped to a cupboard and brought out some queer little jugs with wine of Peru.

There were two necks on each jug, and when the wine was poured out from one, a sweet, whistling sound came from the other.

"I took these from a Spanish ship," he said. "Will you drink with me, Coeur de Gris?"

"I should be very much honored, sir."

They sat a long time sipping the wine, then Captain Morgan spoke dreamily.

"I suppose, Coeur de Gris, that you will one day be stricken with the Red Saint, and then we shall have the bees of Panama buzzing out upon us. I have no doubt she is as jealously guarded as was Helen. You have heard of the Red Saint, have you not?"

The young man's eyes were glowing with the wine.

"Heard of her!" he said softly. "Sir, I have dreamed of her and called to her in my sleep. Who has not?

Who in all this quarter of the world has not heard of her, and yet who knows any single thing about her?

It is a strange thing, the magic of this woman's name. La Santa Roja! La Santa Roja! It conjures up desire in the heart of every man-not active, possible desire, but the 'if I were handsome, if I were a prince' kind of desire. The young men make wild plans; some to go disguised to Panama, others to blow it up with quantities of powder. They daydream of carrying the Red Saint off with them. Sir, I have heard a seaman all rotten with disease whispering to himself in the night, 'If this thing were not on me, I would go adventuring for La Santa Roja.'

"My mother frets and frets there in Goaves, lest I go mad and run to her. She is terrified by this strange woman. 'Go not near to her, my son,' she says. 'This woman is wicked; she is a devil; besides, she is without doubt a Catholic.'

And no one has ever seen her that we know of. We do not know certainly that there exists such a woman as the Red Saint in the Cup of Gold. Ah! she has spread the sea with dreams-with longing dreams. I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps, sometime, the Cup of Gold may go the way of Troy town on account of her."

Henry Morgan had filled the glasses again and again. He was slumped forward in his chair, and a little crooked smile was on his mouth.

"Yes," he said rather thickly, "she is a danger to the peace of nations and to the peace of men's minds.

The matter is wholly ridiculous, of course. She is probably a shrewish bitch who takes her bright features from the legend. But how might such a legend be started? Your health, Coeur de Gris. You will be a good friend to me and true?"

"I will, my Captain."

And again they sat silently, drinking the rich wine.

"But there is much suffering bound up in women," Henry Morgan began, as though he had just finished speaking. "They seem to carry pain about with them in a leaking package. You have loved often, they say, Coeur de Gris. Have you not felt the pain they carry?"

"No, sir, I do not think I have. Surely I have been assailed by regrets and little sorrows-everyone has; but mostly I have found only pleasure among women."

"Ah, you are lucky," the captain said. "You are filled with luck not to have known the pain. My own life was poisoned by love. This life I lead was forced on me by lost love."

"Why, how was that, sir? Surely, I had not thought that you-"

"I know; I know how I must have changed so that even you laugh a little at the thought of my being in love. I could not now command the affection of the daughter of an Earl."

"The daughter of an Earl, sir?"

"Yes, an Earl's daughter. We loved too perfectly-too passionately. Once she came to me in a rose garden and lay in my arms until the dark was gone. I thought to run away with her to some new, lovely country, and sink her title in the sea behind us. Perhaps even now I might be living safe in Virginia, with little joys crowding my footstool."

"It is a great pity, sir." Coeur de Gris was truly sorry for this man.

"Ah, well; her father was informed. On one dark night my arms were pinned to my sides, and she-oh, dear Elizabeth! — was torn away from me. They placed me, still bound, in a ship, and sold me in Barbados. Can you not see, Coeur de Gris, the bitterness that lies restlessly in my heart? During these years, her face has followed me in all my wanderings. Somehow I feel that I might have made some later move-but her father was a powerful lord."

"And did you never go back for her, after your imprisonment was done?"

Henry Morgan looked down at the floor.

"No, my friend-I never did."

The legend of the Red Saint grew in his brain like a powerful vine, and a voice came out of the west to coax and mock, to jeer and cozen Henry Morgan. He forgot the sea and his idling ships. The buccaneers were penniless from their long inactivity. They lay about the decks and cursed their captain for a dreaming fool. He struggled madly against the folding meshes of his dream and argued with the voice.

"May God damn La Santa Roja for sowing the world with an insanity. She has made cutthroats bay the moon like lovesick dogs. She is making me crazy with this vain desire. I must do something-anything-to lay the insistent haunting of this woman I have never seen. I must destroy the ghost. Ah, it is a foolish thing to dream of capturing the Cup of Gold. It would seem that my desire is death."