The Sea is a Thief (14 page)

Each of Nancy's questions carried a certain amount of risk.  He was supposed to be working on a different section of Chincoteague each day, doing the most good for the reputation of the Union Navy.  Instead, he was spending every day in the blissful company of Anna Daisey.  In the meantime, Ethan was covering his friend's tracks, and every evening Sam reported to the Captain on all the activities in which he allegedly had participated.  

He had no choice but to maintain the charade with Nancy.  He spoke in the vaguest of terms about the work he had done and the people he had met, affecting a poor memory and a difficulty with names and details.  When he had no idea what to say he would chisel some piece of lumber, setting up a noisy rhythm to buy himself a few precious seconds to think.  

His impression was that Nancy was never deceived for a moment.  He was right.  This was the sort of conversation at which she excelled.  She had not figured out what Sam was attempting to avoid, but she was certain he was trying to avoid
something.  
She was delighted.  An inquisitive woman held terrible power over a guilty man, and Nancy relished it.  Sam was a guest in her home and could not refuse her questioning; in time she would find out more about this handsome young sailor.  

The first day's work revealed that door frame was no one-day job.  Undoing bad carpentry was far slower than doing good carpentry to begin with.  As Sam packed up to join his shipmates on their return to the
Louisiana,
he pledged to return promptly the next day to finish.  Alas, the second day revealed even more problems, and it stretched into a third.  Arinthia Bagwell was overjoyed to see all that Sam was accomplishing.  She began to make mention of other things in the house that needed attention.  Sam's heart sank.  Captain Sharpe was quite happy with his reports.  It pleased him very much that the Bagwells were taking advantage if his offer.  For Sam, each day was a test that he feared he might fail.

When it became clear that he could not escape from the Bagwell residence anytime soon, Sam decided to risk sending a note to Anna.  He could not say much; there was every possibility that it might be seen by the wrong eyes.  The note was brief and unsigned:

 

I write to tell you that I am engaged elsewhere, I do not know for how long.  Perhaps we can meet again in a short time.   

 

He wrote in such a way as to conceal the identities of both sender and recipient.  He hoped that a casual reader would not suspect any strong connection between them.  He was sure that Anna would see his purpose and understand his tone.  

Ethan Platt managed to deliver the note, keeping it out of the hands of Beau Daisey, as Sam warned him.  He was supposed to be fetching water, and went a good quarter-mile out of his way to the Daisey home.  He had no time to watch Anna read the letter.  All he could tell Sam was that the note had found its target.  Sam was reassured.  

Had he seen Anna's face as she unfolded the scrap of paper in her bedroom, he would have felt differently.  To Anna's eyes, Sam's letter was brief and cold.  It could only mean that something was very wrong.  The young man who had so recently revealed such warm feelings for her could now express nothing but a cool disdain.  What could he be doing, and where could he be so strictly detained, that he could not find some means to see her for a few moments?  He had managed to spend so many days with her, almost without interruption. Suddenly a mere hour was not possible.  Why were his words so meager, and why did he provide so inadequate an explanation?  He had not even signed his name!  Tears welled in her eyes as she concealed the small folded paper in a drawer.  It was only a little while ago that she had invited him to Assateague, and her heart had leapt at his acceptance.  He would meet Elizabeth, and they would ride.  Now, in a single dark moment, foreboding had pushed aside all other emotion, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud.  She tried to calm herself.  
Foolish girl,
she thought.  
All will be revealed soon
.  
When his meaning becomes clear, you will laugh at your own fears.
 

In just a short span of days, Sam's meaning did become clear, but Anna Daisey did not laugh.    

 

The sound of someone splitting wood struck Anna's ears as she approached her home carrying a basket of eggs.  She walked quickly to the rear of house.  It could surely not be her mother, and the sound, rapid and explosive, did not resemble any that Beau would make splitting wood.  He did work the woodpile in cold weather, but only under duress, usually when only one day's fuel remained.  He was resentful and lethargic about it, too, taking far longer than he needed to, stopping to smoke, coming inside periodically to warm up and stare out the window at the unsplit wood that awaited him.  

Turning the corner, she was surprised to see that is was her older brother at work.  He stood with his back to her, sleeves rolled past his elbows, poised over the chopping block.  His ropey forearms gripped a heavy splitting maul.  He raised it over his head in a smooth arc and brought it to bear on the iron wedge that he had set in the thick log in front of him.  He drove the wedge in one blow, and the stout cylinder of oak fell to the ground in two clean semicircles.  In an instant he had cast them aside and plucked another log from the jumbled pile beside him, planting it on the block in a single swift motion.  He tapped the wedge into place, swung, and connected again, with the same violent result.  The two halves of the log flew left and right.  He moved like a man possessed; certainly he was not the brother Anna knew.  

Knowing he could not hear her approach, she stepped very widely around the circle of logs where he worked, well outside the sweep of the maul.  As she came into view he lowered the heavy hammer, his chest heaving, small beads of sweat glistening on his face.  He scowled.  She stepped closer.  

“What is it, brother?”  He scowled again, shaking his head.

“What has happened?”  She set down her basket of eggs.

Though she was younger, she knew him too well.  He didn't like it.  He would rather not be known by anyone.

“Something has happened to put you in this temper.”

He wished he could pretend otherwise.  He picked up the splitting wedge and banged it firmly into the block.  

“I shouldn't care.  I don't care!  But she makes me angry nonetheless!”

“Who makes you angry, brother?”

He paused, eyes downcast.  His chest still rose and fell deeply with each breath. He was settling now, becoming calm.  Anna had no idea how long he had worked at this furious pace.  She looked about her at the pile of split wood.  It rose to Beau's waist.  Two weeks' worth, easily.  

He wiped away the sweat with his sleeve, leaving little flakes of bark in the curls that hung over his forehead. He spat onto the ground.  

“Nancy Bagwell.”

Anna had to suppress a smile. She knew that Beau did not take the matter lightly, but this was nothing new.  Nancy and Beau had sparred for more than a year.  Anna knew all the details of Nancy's pursuit of her brother.  It wasn't too long ago that the girl had given up the chase.  Nancy was unaccustomed to being denied anything she really wanted; it had taken her quite a while to admit the possibility that Beau simply would not be cooperating.

“Has she renewed her courtship?”  She was careful to tread lightly.  Whatever had occurred, it had him terribly wrought up.

“Not me.  No, the damned Union Navy, is all.  Listen, I know they've been a help to some of us, and I know Mother likes them, but when there's fighting going on we ought to be siding with Virginia.   And now for her to be prancing all about the town with one of them!”

His words struck her as though someone had hit her hard on the ears with their open hands.  One at a time she replayed them. Beau was oblivious to her reaction.  Anger was beginning to consume him again.
Union navy.  Prancing all about town.  
Even as she told herself that he could be speaking about any one of the sailors, she knew who it was.  In an instant she understood the meaning of the note and the reason for his absence.  She knew what would happen next, as it always happened when a Bagwell wanted something.  She was certain that Beau was still unaware of all that had taken place between her and Sam.  She needed to keep it that way; if he knew, his reaction would be all too predictable.  Her question was measured and quiet.

“Which one?”

“That carpenter, who was here.  That one.”

She was certain that he was not referring to Ethan, but she had to ask.

“Mr. Platt?”  

An eternity passed.  

“No, the other one.  Dreher.”

Her face went numb.  She looked away from her brother, fighting to control her expression.  He could not be allowed to see what she felt.  Her feet were frozen to the ground.
 I am engaged elsewhere...I do not know for how long...perhaps...  
His intent was clear now; how simple it was.  Would she ever see him again?  

Momentarily, her calmer nature prevailed.  Beau had not described the incident that put him into such a state.  Like someone about to be struck, she held her breath and braced herself for the pain.  “What did you see in town, Beau?”

Beau was angry, to be sure.  By his nature he was not a man to care about his effect on others, but had he known how he was about to hurt his sister he would have refused to speak a word.  

He did not know.  So he told her what he had seen, and heard, about Nancy Bagwell and Sam Dreher.

 

Beau fished from time to time on a single-masted buckeye called the
Jenny.
  She was a broken-down old thing owned by an even older fisherman named Elijah Bunting.  Bunting knew the channel well.  He was always able to find flounder, which moved far offshore in the fall.  Edmund Bagwell liked to serve flounder at home; he also kept it on the menu at his Atlantic Hotel.  In autumn, when the fish grew scarce, he would buy any flounder the
Jenny
brought in.

Beau had crewed for Bunting that week, returning in late afternoon with decent catches, including big flounder.  Bunting would deliver some of the catch to the Bagwell home personally.  The crew would carry the remainder to the kitchen door of the Atlantic.  

Each morning Bunting would entertain his crew with a new story about what was going on in the Bagwell residence.  It seemed that one of the young sailors from the
Louisiana
was working there, doing some carpentry, but also keeping company with Nancy, the daughter.  Every time Bunting would go to the house the two of them were together, chatting away.  The carpenter was working, all right, but talking up a storm with the young lady as well, or so it seemed to Bunting.  He didn't hear the actual conversation; his hearing wasn't what it used to be, but it was his strong impression that the two were getting along quite well.  They conversed, Nancy Bagwell would laugh, and they would talk some more.  

They looked pretty comfortable, it seemed to him, and they were usually alone as well.  Someone ought to be keeping a better watch over the girl.  Bunting was amused by it all.  Beau was not.  

Towards the end of the week it was Beau's job to deliver part of the catch to the Atlantic Hotel.  He carried the basket of fish to the kitchen door and asked for the cook, who was out on an errand.  He set his basket on the counter to wait.  The door that led out of the kitchen was propped open, allowing a good view of the dining room. Beau wasn't trying to look, but he could not help but see.

There, at a private table, sat Nancy Bagwell and Sam Dreher.

Though he could easily identify the two of them, framed in the open doorway like a painting in a museum, there was much that Beau could not see.  It was not obvious, for example, that the table had been set for three people, not two.  Beau didn't notice that neither food nor drink had yet been served.   He did not realize that the couple had just arrived.  

Other things were also impossible for him to see.  He could not see Edmund and Arinthia Bagwell in the office of the hotel manager as he told them about the worsening condition of his wife, who lay gravely ill at that moment.  He could not hear Arinthia request that Nancy wait in the dining room.  He also could not hear Edmund Bagwell ask Sam Dreher to remain with his daughter for a few moments until her parents could join her.  He could not feel Sam's discomfort at finding himself alone with Nancy in the dining room of a hotel, nor could he feel Nancy's odd sense of delight.  He could only feel his own rising anger.

When Nancy Bagwell turned her head and caught his eye, a tiny and familiar smile came to her lips.  It was a smile he had learned to dislike.  She did not acknowledge Beau, but made certain that he knew she had seen him before directing her attention back to her companion.  For the moment at least, Nancy was overjoyed at the turn of events.  

Nancy knew that even Beau had the good sense not to make a scene in the hotel.  She also calculated that he would not be able to stand for very long in the doorway staring at her and Sam.  By the time her father and mother arrived, just a short time afterwards, Beau Daisey had vanished.  Edmund Bagwell shook Sam Dreher's hand, thanked him for his attentiveness to his daughter, and sent him on his way.  The little family sat down to their meal, two-thirds of it entirely unaware that any damage had been done, and the other third already eager to see how the ripples she had created might spread.  

 

Beau finished his story, to the extent that he knew it.  In his mind, the tale was told.  He had reached his own conclusion about the loyalties of Nancy Bagwell and the character of Union sailors. For a while, his tirade continued, though Anna heard only disjointed snippets.  
Right there in public!  In a time of war....her family's hotel....his Captain should be informed...    
At the last, she jerked forward as if startled out of sleep.  “No, Beau, stop,” she shouted.  “Let the Bagwell family deal with their own business.  What is Nancy Bagwell to you?”