The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini. Rafael Sabatini
Merchant at Bridgetown, Miss Arabella Bishop rode out from her uncle’s fine house on the heights to the northwest of the city. She was attended by two negroes who trotted after her at a respectful distance, and her destination was Government House, whither she went to visit the Governor’s lady, who had lately been ailing. Reaching the summit of a gentle, grassy slope, she met a tall, lean man dressed in a sober, gentlemanly fashion, who was walking in the opposite direction. He was a stranger to her, and strangers were rare enough in the island. And yet in some vague way he did not seem quite a stranger.
Miss Arabella drew rein, affecting to pause that she might admire the prospect, which was fair enough to warrant it. Yet out of the corner of those hazel eyes she scanned this fellow very attentively as he came nearer. She corrected her first impression of his dress. It was sober enough, but hardly gentlemanly. Coat and breeches were of plain homespun; and if the former sat so well upon him it was more by virtue of his natural grace than by that of tailoring. His stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man’s own lustrous coiling black hair.
Out of a brown, shaven, saturnine face two eyes that were startlingly blue considered her gravely. The man would have passed on but that she detained him.
“I think I know you, sir,” said she.
Her voice was crisp and boyish, and there was something of boyishness in her manner—if one can apply the term to so dainty a lady. It arose perhaps from an ease, a directness, which disdained the artifices of her sex, and set her on good terms with all the world. To this it may be due that Miss Arabella had reached the age of five and twenty not merely unmarried but unwooed. She used with all men a sisterly frankness which in itself contains a quality of aloofness, rendering it difficult for any man to become her lover.
Her negroes had halted at some distance in the rear, and they squatted now upon the short grass until it should be her pleasure to proceed upon her way.
The stranger came to a standstill upon being addressed.
“A lady should know her own property,” said he.
“My property?”
“Your uncle’s, leastways. Let me present myself. I am called Peter Blood, and I am worth precisely ten pounds. I know it because that is the sum your uncle paid for me. It is not every man has the same opportunities of ascertaining his real value.”
She recognized him then. She had not seen him since that day upon the mole a month ago, and that she should not instantly have known him again despite the interest he had then aroused in her is not surprising, considering the change he had wrought in his appearance, which now was hardly that of a slave.
“My God!” said she. “And you can laugh!”
“It’s an achievement,” he admitted. “But then, I have not fared as ill as I might.”
“I have heard of that,” said she.
What she had heard was that this rebel-convict had been discovered to be a physician. The thing had come to the ears of Governor Steed, who suffered damnably from the gout, and Governor Steed had borrowed the fellow from his purchaser. Whether by skill or good fortune, Peter Blood had afforded the Governor that relief which his excellency had failed to obtain from the ministrations of either of the two physicians practising in Bridgetown. Then the Governor’s lady had desired him to attend her for the megrims. Mr. Blood had found her suffering from nothing worse than peevishness—the result of a natural petulance aggravated by the dulness of life in Barbados to a lady of her social aspirations. But he had prescribed for her none the less, and she had conceived herself the better for his prescription. After that the fame of him had gone through Bridgetown, and Colonel Bishop had found that there was more profit to be made out of this new slave by leaving him to pursue his profession than by setting him to work on the plantations, for which purpose he had been originally acquired.
“It is yourself, madam, I have to thank for my comparatively easy and clean condition,” said Mr. Blood, “and I am glad to take this opportunity of doing so.”
The gratitude was in his words rather than in his tone. Was he mocking, she wondered, and looked at him with the searching frankness that another might have found disconcerting. He took the glance for a question, and answered it.
“If some other planter had bought me,” he explained, “it is odds that the facts of my shining abilities might never have been brought to light, and I should be hewing and hoeing at this moment like the poor wretches who were landed with me.”
“And why do you thank me for that? It was my uncle who bought you.”
“But he would not have done so had you not urged him. I perceived your interest. At the time I resented it.”
“You resented it?” There was a challenge in her boyish voice.
“I have had no lack of experiences of this mortal life; but to be bought and sold was a new one, and I was hardly in the mood to love my purchaser.”
“If I urged you upon my uncle, sir, it was that I commiserated you.” There was a slight severity in her tone, as if to reprove the mixture of mockery and flippancy in which he seemed to be speaking.
She proceeded to explain herself. “My uncle may appear to you a hard man. No doubt he is. They are all hard men, these planters. It is the life, I suppose. But there are others here who are worse. There is Mr. Crabston, for instance, up at Speightstown. He was there on the mole, waiting to buy my uncle’s leavings, and if you had fallen into his hands... A dreadful man. That is why.”
He was a little bewildered.
“This interest in a stranger...” he began. Then changed the direction of his probe. “But there were others as deserving of commiseration.”
“You did not seem quite like the others.”
“I am not,” said he.
“Oh!” She stared at him, bridling a little. “You have a good opinion of yourself.”
“On the contrary. The others are all worthy rebels. I am not. That is the difference. I was one who had not the wit to see that England requires purifying. I was content to pursue a doctor’s trade in Bridgewater whilst my betters were shedding their blood to drive out an unclean tyrant and his rascally crew.”
“Sir!” she checked him. “I think you are talking treason.”
“I hope I am not obscure,” said he.
“There are those here who would have you flogged if they heard you.”
“The Governor would never allow it. He has the gout, and his lady has the megrims.”
“Do you depend upon that?” She was frankly scornful.
“You have certainly never had the gout; probably not even the megrims,” said he.
She made a little impatient movement with her hand, and looked away from him a moment, out to sea. Quite suddenly she looked at him again; and now her brows were knit.
“But if you are not a rebel, how come you here?”
He saw the thing she apprehended, and he laughed. “Faith, now, it’s a long story,” said he.
“And one perhaps that you would prefer not to tell?”
Briefly on that he told it her.
“My God! What an infamy!” she cried, when he had done.
“Oh, it’s a sweet country England under King James! There’s no need to commiserate me further. All things considered I prefer Barbados. Here at least one can believe in God.”
He looked first to right, then to left as he spoke, from the distant shadowy bulk of Mount Hillbay to the limitless ocean ruffled by the winds of heaven. Then, as if the fair prospect rendered him conscious of his own littleness and