IN A MANNER particularly upright, with a careful humanity, Starbuck said, “Ye ought not sit in the wind, Mrs. Sparrow. Move to the lee. I’d not let my Mary take so much wind.”
“Have you and Mary children, Mr. Starbuck?” I asked.
He patted his shirt, and I heard the crinkle of paper.
“I durst not take it out lest the thieving wind make off with it,” he said. He smoothed his chest with the palm of his hand.
“She writes you of your children, then?”
“My boy.”
“When did you see them last?”
“Two years ago I waved good-bye to Mary. Him, I see him only through her words, first and last.”
I was shocked to think of the young mother so long without her husband. “Have many letters found you?”
“This is the second, in as many years.”
No wonder he treasured it next to his skin!
“All at once, I have a son, and he is one year, four months of age.”
“What’s his name?”
Here he laughed. “She does not tell his name but calls him ‘Baby,’ and ‘Beloved Child,’ and ‘Puck,’ but she would not name him Puck—there’s nothing of Quaker in that, or Christian even.”
“There’s Shakespeare in it, or it is in Shakespeare.”
“Sometimes she writes ‘our son.’ He recited: ‘I bought our son a little boat, and yesterday we sailed it on a puddle before the door, the puddle-water was all crimson with the setting sun, and I sent the boat, about the size of my flat iron, across to him and he to me till the sun was down and a star shone in our puddle.’ ”
“Not for naught, then, is your name Starbuck.”
“Eh? But she doesn’t say that.”
All of Mistress Mary’s words in the letter had been memorized by her husband. Sacred writ to him, and he would not have added one jot or tittle.
“It’s strange,” I said, “that she doesn’t give the child’s name.”
“Sometimes my Mary will tease a bit. But I’d rather have the babe himself with no name than a name and no dear babe.”
I wondered what kind of woman Mary was who could tease so upright a man as Mr. Starbuck. He seemed to have no fun in him, but was filled to the brim with a sweet seriousness.
“In what part of Nantucket do you live, Mr. Starbuck, if I may ask?”
“Ah, Mary will not have any place but ’Sconset.”
“And what is particular to ’Sconset?”
“It’s against the open water. It’s as close to coming to sea with me as she can get. Our house is almost of the beach. It’s a hard, lonely, eastern end of the island, where the waves from the open sea pound the land.”
“Kit’s mother—she was a baker—used to send buns to ’Sconset, by the coach.”
“You must come out to see us when you get Mr. Sparrow settled.”
Mr. Starbuck’s eyes gazed into mine, and I saw there sadness for us, and pity, that our landfall would be far less joyous than his.
“Where do you suppose Mr. Sparrow and I might best live on the island?” I asked.
His blue gaze held mine steadily, but he shifted his feet though the ship had not rolled under us. He hesitated and then spoke calmly. “I expect Mr. Sparrow will have to stay in the madhouse.”