Sailing Home, page 17
“And when it isn’t?”
“Then you have to decide. You could say for example, that killing someone in certain situations is, ethically, the right thing to do, but morally you find it abhorrent. Or, you may believe that lying is ethically wrong, but you feel it to be a moral imperative in certain situations, say, to spare someone unnecessary grief.”
“So then, everything is situational?” Marin posited.
“Well,” laughed the professor, “we are in dangerous territory there, are we not?”
Both men took a silent journey into their own personal thoughts.
When they arrived at the foot of Washington Street, Marin, appearing quite perplexed, thanked him, and added,
“Perhaps situational is the wrong word.”
“Perhaps,” the professor replied. “But it is my belief that a man of character can stand firm against custom, whereas a man of custom is quite often brittle against character.”
When he arrived back at Bernard’s the clerk anxiously approached him and informed him that Opaline was with the proprietor, Mister Vance. Marin walked back to the office and stood outside, peeping through a small window smudged with the dust of many-a-day. Opaline was sitting with her back to the window, right arm raised, and index finger, armed, aimed and firing across the desk at a battle-weary Mister Vance. Through the thin makeshift walls of the office, Marin heard her exclaim,
“...and we both know I can get every one of these items at Pritchart’s in Newport, cheaper and quicker, so then, what was the point of my coming all the way to Providence?”
“As to that, you would have to inform me, Madam,” he suggested, and advancing his point one more time, he directed her attention to the invoice, and said, “Again Miss, our prices are competitive; the difference is the delivery charge. If you can arrange—” and when he noticed a blurred image outside the window, he stopped short. Hoping it was Marin he leapt to his feet, charged past Opaline and opened the door, eagerly enlisting Marin into the campaign. “I was just explaining to Miss Downing—”
“Yes, I overheard,” Marin interrupted. “Whatever the charges, I am sure they are fair. If you will bill me at the shipping address I have given you, we will be on our way.”
Marin reached out his hand to Opaline, but she did not surrender her hand in kind. She left the establishment unaided.
The walk to the nearest coach for hire was a silent one. Marin wanted her to answer her own question, ‘What was her real motivation forf her coming all the way to Providence?’ She longed to ask Marin the same thing.
Leaving Phillipe alone with Phoebe, Mister Prince left the house early that morning to check on the progress of repairs to the Magister Maris.
Out of Christian courtesy, Phillipe came into MaMa’s bedroom and asked Phoebe if there was anything she needed.
“I think I should like to have a soak in the tub,” she said, as if ‘Her Royal Highness’ were requesting a pillow.
Phillipe’s blank stare could not penetrate her lack of social grace. He cleared his throat in a guttural protestation.
“Not too hot,” she said, smiling appreciatively.
He returned to the kitchen, mumbling a jumble of vowels.
After Jude had fetched Mister Oscar, the two of them arrived at the dry dock and inquired about the ship.
“She should be back in harbor by Friday afternoon,” one of the foremen told them.
“That’s impossible,” Mister Oscar declared, turning a perplexed look toward Jude.
Taking a defensive stance, the man replied, “Come Friday we will have easily performed every item on the work order given us by the Department of the Navy.”
“And can we have a look-see at that order?” Jude more demanded than requested.
“No sir, you may not.” The man stiffened and continued, “That is the property of the United States Navy.”
“And the ship is the property of Captain Marin Carpenter,” Jude shot back.
“Of that, I have no knowledge and even less concern,” he returned dismissively. “I take it you are Captain Carpenter?”
“No sir, I am not. I am his First Mate, Mister Jude Prince; and this is the Magister Maris’s carpenter, Mister Oscar.” With a change of tone Jude appealed to the man, saying, “You look to be a sailin’ man. We are about to take her out into the North Atlantic in the dead of winter, so I’m sure you can understand our concern about the work order.”
The foreman tilted his head as if its contents had shifted to the left, and while flicking his look back and forth between Mister Prince and Mister Oscar, he said, “Look, I don’t know if you gents are drunk or crazy, each of you would have to be both to take this heap of lumber out into the North Atlantic. She’s a shore hugger at best. Good day, gentlemen.”
After a short distance in a long silence, Marin and Opaline both looked up at one another from opposite sides of the coach, and simultaneously said the other’s name.
“You first,” Marin said. Opaline offered only a quick shake of her head. “Very well,” said Marin. “What is the real reason you came to Providence?”
“I think you know the answer to your own question,” she said.
“I want to hear it from you.”
Opaline looked out the coach window at the Providence River. A sailboat was keeping pace with the coach as they each headed south toward Narragansett Bay. “Did you mean what you whispered into my ear back in Providence?” she asked.
Marin waited for her to turn toward him. She didn’t.
“I am still waiting for an answer to my question,” he said, addressing the side of her head.
“I was hoping to keep you from Emily,” she confessed. “Your turn,” she added, turning now to look at him.
A smile bloomed on his face as he looked into her eyes. “Opaline Downing, I am in love with you,” he said.
Her eyes clearly gave way to his words ...but she said nothing. When the silence could no longer hold, she confessed, “I am so cautious of you.”
Marin fell to his knees before her, placed his arms in her lap and asked, “Opaline Downing, will you marry me?”
She bent in toward him, but without saying anything, kissed him on the lips. When their lips parted, she reached out and pulled him up beside her. As the coach rocked rhythmically on the road back to Newport, Opaline placed her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“Your bath is prepared,” Phillipe announced, and he briefly closed his eyes and shook his head at the sight of Phoebe lying in his MaMa’s bed, gnawing on a raw potato. She placed the uneaten portion on the bedside table and reached out her hand to Phillipe. He looked, first at the potato, then back at Phoebe. “Are you in need my assistance?” he asked.
She nodded in the affirmative.
“Do you think you could gather the manners to ask?”
“Phillipe, will you assist me?” she replied.
After a mock bow, he came to the bedside and helped her to her feet. Having escorted her to the little back room off of the kitchen, he turned to leave her to her privacy.
“Will you help me into the tub?” she asked. Phillipe froze in place without turning around to face her.
“Please?” she pleaded.
When he turned to face her, she was standing completely naked with her arms draped straight down at her side. She began to shiver. Phillipe’s eyes roamed her naked, pregnant body. To his surprise, he didn’t feel quite as squeamish as he had upon seeing Opaline - ‘in the flesh’. His eyes came to rest on her extended stomach, and his thoughts turned to his mother - how she had at one time carried him inside of her. He marveled at the round firm contours of her torso, and found himself wishing he could see through her stretched, pale white skin.
“Would you like to touch it?” she asked.
Too shy to answer, he took two gradual steps toward her, reached out his right hand and placed the tips of his fingers on her pregnant belly. At first, they shook, but slowly they came to a calm rest.
Phoebe placed her hand on top of Phillipe’s and nudged his hand full across her stomach. She noticed a pronounced glistening of his eyes and, looking a little closer, she wondered if he was about cry.
“Will you stay and wash my back?” she asked.
Coming back from the dry dock, Mister Oscar asked Jude, “When is Captain Carpenter returning from Providence?”
“Should be back this evenin’,” Mister Prince replied.
“We need to have a long chat about things with the Captain,” Ozzy said.
Jude gave a slow, agnostic nod.
“What’s turnin’ ‘round in that head of yours, Mister Prince?” he asked.
“I agree, there are some things the Captain needs to know ...but there may be others...”
Ozzy slowed his pace as if to aid his hearing.
“What if...” Jude continued, pausing in his tracks, as well as his thought.
“What if ...what?”
“What if the Magister Maris were to sink in the harbor?”
Arriving in Warwick, Marin woke Opaline from a deep sleep.
“Where are we?” she asked, closing her eyes again while remaining fixed at his shoulder.
Marin paused for a moment before answering. The question was both literal and figurative; she had yet to respond to his proposal. “We’re halfway there,” he said, answering both questions. “It will take a little while for them to change out the horses. Are you hungry?”
She sat upright, straightened her attire and said, “At the moment, I simply need to get out of this coach and stretch.”
There was a quaint little tavern squeezed between a chandlery and an apothecary along the Post Road, and they decided to stop in and get some lunch and a glass of wine. Opaline was quite taken by the cozy confines and the simple décor of this cuddlesome pub. As they dined, Marin picked at his food while Opaline ate hers at a hearty pace. When she had finished, she asked him,
“I would have thought you ravenous. When was it you last ate?”
Marin looked as if he were trying to recall.
“Did Emily...?” she began, but paused and took a sip of her wine.
“Did Emily, what?” Marin asked.
“No, I mean, did you and Emily ...eat?”
Marin reached out for his glass of wine, and in one smooth move brought it to his lips and drank the entire contents. Without setting the glass down he hoisted it into the air, catching the eye of a passing waitress.
“We had tea,” he said, after wiping the residue of red wine from his lips. “And the leaves were quite revealing.” Opaline tilted her head inquisitively.
As the waitress placed another glass of wine in front of Marin, he continued, “We discussed the possibility of her father, Senator Wallace, being of assistance in this matter between the United States Navy and the Magister Maris. Unlikely, it turns out. And then there was this.” He pulled out Emily’s hand-written copy of Aunt Belle’s letter from the United States Revenue Marine and handed it to Opaline.
She read the letter, and then, she read it again. She could not help but wonder about the ornate handwriting, but she left that at bay. She took another sip of her wine and handed the letter back to Marin.
“This must be quite a shock,” she said, as Marin folded the letter and put it back into his vest pocket. “Do you wish to talk about it?” she asked.
“Not at the moment, no.”
Opaline released herself from the moment. “I feel terrible for questioning Emily’s motives,” she allowed.
Marin swallowed his second glass of wine, turned to find the waitress, and said to Opaline, “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“Oh?” she reacted.
Marin turned back to Opaline and gave himself enough time to find the words. The waitress brought another glass of wine. After she had departed, Marin disclosed, “Emily also wanted to tell me, in fact it was the news she was most eager to tell me, that she had turned down a standing proposal of marriage.”
“In the hopes that...” Opaline said, as an attempt to prime further comment.
Marin let the obvious do its job in silence.
“And how did you respond?” she asked at length.
“I changed the subject,” Marin said.
Introducing her reply with a scoffing snicker, she said,
“So, she broke some poor boy’s heart on the gamble that you would become her suitor?”
“Well ...at least,” Marin said, poising the glass of wine before his lips, “the poor boy’ got an answer to his proposal,” and he downed the third glass of wine.
Jude Prince and Mister Oscar, convinced that the Magister Maris would not be worthy of the voyage that lay before her, agreed to meet later that day to brew a plan wherein she would take on enough water to sink in the bay. Jude then returned to the house to check on Phoebe. Finding her bed empty, he went to the kitchen and heard her voice through the door of the small adjoining room.
“Oh, that feels so good,” she said.
He opened the door to find a startled Phillipe, arms deep in the water, washing Phoebe’s back.
“Hi Jude,” Phoebe said, with a giggle.
“What have we here?” Jude asked, addressing Phillipe.
“I was only washing her back,” Phillipe said, timidly.
“Well,” Jude huffed in a faux bellow, “see that ya get it properly clean, then,” and he closed the door before laughing to himself.
Marin and Opaline sat across from one another in a still pool of darkness, as the coach continued on through the cloud covered, ink-black night. They were still a few chilly hours shy of Newport.
Marin stared into deep void concealing Opaline, and but for the occasional hint of her perfume, and a wraith-like sense of her presence, he may as well have been left to his own company. The silence pained him. Several times she had started to say something, but couldn’t find the sentence for the words.
“I asked Phoebe if she is keeping the baby,” Opaline said at last. Then, in a voice weakening with each word, she added, “She said, ‘I hope to, no mother wants to give up her baby’.” After a pause, she cleared her throat, sniffled twice, and cleared her throat again. Marin turned his ear toward her trying to discern if she was crying. “I told her...” and she paused again, this time to gather the strength it takes to surrender the truth, “I doubt my mother gave it a second thought.”
Marin reached out to find her, and placing his hands upon her knees, he asked, “What are you saying, Opaline?”
The wounded child replied, “Marin, it is past time I tell you ...my mother was whore. She abandoned me. I have no idea who my father is, and I have told myself my entire life that I simply do not care ...but that is a lie.” She paused once more in a failed attempt to regain her composure. “I have hated men most of my life and prided myself in my ability to play cat to their mouse ...and then I met my match.” If Marin smiled at the thought that he might be her match, she could not have seen it. “How could I have been so stupid as to believe he actually loved me?” she continued. Marin’s smile had dissolved by the end of the sentence. “I have sworn to never let someone abandon me again. I simply...” and without concluding, she fell forward into her own lap, and the cradle of Marin’s hands.
Marin’s leaned in and pressed his lips into her torrent of hair, kissing the crown of her head. “I will never abandon you,” he whispered.
When Marin and Opaline arrived back in Newport, the night was made darker by the new moon and a dome of snow clouds hovering overhead. A scattering of large flakes had begun to fall, dancing in a swirling wind as they wound their way to the ground.
An ever so faint gold glow peeking through the stairwell window whispered a ‘welcome home’. Once inside the house they followed the glimmering light into the kitchen where the hearth glowed through the ashes with patches of deep orange embers. The two chilled and weary travelers huddled around the dormant smoking remnants, gathering what little warmth was available to them.
Marin stirred the cinders and a brief flame appeared. He grabbed a handful of kindling and wove it into the hot belly of the flame’s source. There was a crackling sound as the kindling released the moisture that had been locked inside. Marin bent down and blew into the heart of the matter as if he were whispering encouragement; a flame gushed forth and the kindling caught fire.
Opaline handed him a couple of the smaller pieces of wood and he placed them on top of the tinder. They stood witness, as the fire grew confident and began to hunger for a more sustainable and enduring source of nourishment, capable of warming a home.
They each put a log on the fire and positioned themselves comfortably before the hearth, watching as the flames enveloped the two logs in a patient dance that would soon join them together to form a single flame. The radiating waves of heat melted Marin and Opaline together, and they drifted off in the embrace one another’s warmth.
December 19, 1811
“Wouldn’t you two be more comfortable, each in your own bed?” Phillipe said, waking the cuddled twosome at sunrise.
“Perhaps we should retire to the barn,” Marin said, winking at Opaline.
Opaline gave him a playful, soft slap on the face, stood up, gathered her things and went to her room. Marin re-stoked the fire and rebuilt it into a healthy flame, while Phillipe put the kettle on and began to prepare breakfast.
“What are we having,” Marin asked.
