THE TENTS OF SHEM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 113, 25 February 1950, Page 7

THE TENTS OF SHEM

By Grace Jones Morgan

5 Serial Story 5

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CHAPTER XXXYI A VISIT TO THE “H. E. SUNDERSEN” “Mariette, if you say a word I’ll never speak to you again . . Fanchee hurried them downstairs, said good-bye to Marie, and followed Mariette to the waiting taxi. “Drop me at my flat. Mart will be breezing up, maybe, and weep salt tears if I’m not there to grind the gramophone.” Alone in the taxi, Fanchee’s hands were held to Sundersen’s lips. , “When I think of the time I’ve wasted,’” he began. “I was afraid to dare a kiss those other days. But there’s something different about you, something blazed in your eyes when I .came “into the room. Fanchee, you’ll see about that divorce?” “Hervey, wait till you come back to talk about those things. They hurt. I don’t want' to think of them. I’ve paid Dick a little. _ But lie’s here . . “Fanchee, if you’d get yourself free I wouldn’t leave you now. I’d take you along. Skipper’s wife.” “Well, I’m not free, and you can’t . .” She had so much to tell him, of leaving the corset department and modelling in the dress department, of the reason she moved to Rotofsky House, of seeing Dick that afternoon. “But, Fanchee, you say you’ve lived with the Russian people two months and you didn’t see your husband until this aftrnoon . . .” What a poor liar she was. What would Sundersen think now? “Herveyd I may as well tell you, it was Nina if ran away from. Oh, she’s terrible, dreadful, and my own mother . . . Now, what will you think of me? Running away from my mother and telling lies about it?” Her hands covered her face. Her ears were burning. “I think it’s time somebody looked after you. I think you’ve had some frightful thing happen, of which I don’t know, that has made you afraid.' You’re caught between wind and tide, Fanchee. Be careful, little girl. Don’t get on a lee shore. Don’t lose steerage way If storms come, run for the open sea. Ride through. Take it head-on. Don’t get foul of rocks.” She laughed. ■ She was laughing when they alighted from the taxi and '

the wind-carried smell of tide-water assaulted their nostrils. Riding alongside the wharf, lifting a little, straining at her hawsers was his ship, the H. E. Sundersen, tall masts among the stars, bowsprit rising and sinking, white rolls of canvas along the spars. And men on the deck touching their caps, with: “Good evening, Captain . . .” “Oh, why did you choose a windjammer?’’ she asked. ‘Aren’t steam vessels safer?” He laughed.

“What was it your Daddy said about, ‘gallant ships’? Well, he understood. A sailing vessel has wings. She’s a bird instead of a fish.” He led her to the cabin, commodious, airy, lined with birdseye maple, dark blue cushions, and, standing beside the table, ne caught her hands. “Ever read Kipling? Well, do read his verse.” And with his strong fingers warming her cold ones he began: “ ‘King Solomon drew merchantmen because of his desire '

For peacocks, apes, and ivory, from Tarshish unto Tyre.’ “I must not forget that ivory elephant, Fanchee. . “ ‘We’ve floundered off the Texel, awash with sodden deals, We’ve slipped from Valparaiso with the Norther at our heels.’ “No sodderi deal in this ship, Fanchee. She’s solid and sound. “ Strange consorts rode beside us and 1 brought us evil luck, The witchfire climbed our channels and flared 1 on vane and truck, Till through the red tornado that lashed us nigh to blind, We saw the Dutchman plunging, full canvas, head to wind . . .’ “You’ve heard of the Flying Dutchman, Fanchee, a ghost ship that sails the seas for ever. “ ‘You’ve heard of the Flying Dutchman, the story they says is true, How his wife with a stick for a mouth made him sick, Well, no wonder the Dutchman flew!’ ” Sundersen laughted again, boomin, thrumming laughter deep in his throat. “ ‘Let go, let go the anchors now shamed at heart are weTo bring so poor a cargo home that for gift the Sea. > . Let go the great bow anchors, Ah, fools, we were, and blind, We stored the worst with utter toil, and left the best behind . . .’ “Fanchee, I wonder if that is what is happening to-night. I wonder if I’m leaving the best, behind . . . FanChee, would you, could you, come this time, come with me . „ . I’d be so good to you, I’d be so kind. Fanchee, I’d ask only to have you near me, a chum, a companion. Could you, would you . .?” "Ilervey, are you asking me to run awry with you . . . like any common

“Don’t!” His cry was harsh. “Things are only as common as we make them. If you don’t trust me wholly it’s too soon to ask . . . When you come with me, Fanchee, you must come as I’d como to you, as I came to-night, as fast as I could travel. If you were free I’d up anchor now and trust to luck to carry your heart along. Or if you’d come . . . Oh, well, T’ll be back. You’ll have time to be free, time to think of me and know .'. . know, Fanchee. But I wish you cared like T do . . .” On deck she stood beside him, her hand through his arm, his lingers playing with her fingers, A broken moon rose late, orange-tinted, turning to silver.

“Time to go, Fanchee? But isn’t she handsome, dear? You and my own ship! “ ‘We’ve seen our little cupids all ashore.. “Hervey, am I the first woman,” she whispered, face touching his shoulder, lifted as he turned his head to look “The first woman for me? What does that matter. Was I the first with you? No, you aren’t, and that’s a truth you’ll get from few damned men. But I love you. Isn’t that enough? I feel that you and I could be as happy as children, happy as man and woman. Isn’t that enough? I know I could give, you a life that won’t get ashore, comradeship, adventures, voyaging; you wouldn’t have to soil your pretty, white hands. And I’d keep you from tide-pulls that are catching you now. Fanchee, you’ve

seen life, you know men, don’t you understand there’s something greater than first love? That’s only instinct. But there’s happiness of greater things than that. There’s storms '■to weather, there’s the pull and haul of adjusting ourselves, like a ship finding herself. There’s the years to face, growing nearer, growing dearer until two people are so close knit in mind and heart and soul and flesh that if one dies the other is half dead. No, you’re not the first woman I’ve looked

at.a'nd kissed. But I want you with me always. Are you satisfied?”

“O, Sailor, Sailor,” she whispered. At that moment she was satisfied, body, heart and soul, with Sundersen. At that moment she was ready to- go with him, but he gave her no second chance.

“To-morrow, read ‘The First Chantey’ in the Kipling book. “Then you’ll know what I feel about you, Fanchee. I haven’t told you that you are lovely. You know that. I haven’t told you the thousands things I think, because you know what men do think and say. It’s bigger, better than that . . . Oh, Girl! Woman of mine . . .”

Pie caught her close, lips on her lips in the dark of the morning, and just before the dawn he left her. She could not see his bared head, golden in the darkness. Suddenly she was lonely. Her lips shaped and her heart cried: “O, Sailor, Sailor!”

There was no time for sleep, barely time to bathe, to soak in heated, scented water, then allow the cold to run until she shuddered at its silver chill and felt the blood leaping, pounding in her flesh. There was only time for coffee and butterhorns and the morning paper. The tide was turning in the dark of that November morning. She meant to watch his ship go through the Colden Gate. News. A train accident, somewhere a murder. Politics. An election in Canada, and a name leaping at her. Straith Kirk! Straith had struck his stride. Straith Kirk was elected in the Province. The Conservatives had won. His mother had been right, he could do anything he set his heart upon. Well, she had not hindered him. But the coffee was hitter, the butterhorns were tasteless. She was angry, hurt.

What is .it to her that Straith Kirk was climbing the ladder of success? What difference did far-away Canada make to her? She did not belong. She was out of it. A millstone around his neck, his mother said, a rag on every-, man’s hush! Oh!. Her own windows looked down on the Gate. The sea wind came in sweeping gusts, chilling her to the heart, but she sat in the window watching steamers trailing long funnels of rolling, woolly smoke, arid sailing ships hobbling and dipping, not sure which one was the-'H. E. Sundersen, bewailing her own stupidity. Having been on the decks of that vessel she should know how it looked on the sea. He would be looking at the hill through his glasses. Fanchee waved her handkerchief until her arm ached, wondering which of the ships was the PI. E. Sundersen. Until it was time she started down the hill for work. One more ship was coming. Lest she fail Hervey she waited, waving her handkerchief, watching the heave and roll, the rise and fall of the vessel, then a signal. An ensign dipped., “Good-bye and good luck, Hervey,” she cried, her voice whipped by the wind from her lips. She was a half hour late and got a seat on the street car, an opportunity to again read the news of Straith Kirk. He was young to have mounted his high place. Had he married . . . noyoung, lawyer, still single, living at Kirklands, the place where he was born . . . likely to be a leader in the Government. . . festivities .. . opening of Parliament . . . gay times . . .gowns, names • And she was working to pay for her blunder of loving Straith Kirk. She wondered if he thought of her, if he recalled their love-time in the woods, and what he thought when he knew she had run away with Dick.

(To be continued).