Martha Peake Read Free Page A

some days of this there would come a sudden precipitous collapse into the blackest melancholy, and for a period he would be morose, silent, smoldering, dangerous. Harry’s dirty weather, they called it in Port Jethro, and it was first evident, said my uncle, his tone low and rapid now, and inflected with the darkness that permeated the matter of his narrative, to his companions in the Admiral Byng during a severe winter when the gales howled about the village day and night, and great seas dashed themselves against the cliffs, and no boat went out for weeks on end. There were many nights, that winter, when Harry showed more interest in his drink than he did in the sport of his roistering friends, and it became apparent that he was drinking harder than the others, that he did not want to go home when the landlord called time, and that his mood darkened the more he drank. He lost his temper one night and flung himself on a man who he believed had insulted him, and the two were only with difficulty separated. There were other fights that winter, and there were nights when Harry sat off by himself, staring into the fire, sullen and muttering, brooding on matters he wouldspeak of to nobody. It was said that he often quarrelled with his wife, and that he was not settling well to the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood, indeed voices raised in anger were heard that winter from the slate-roofed house up behind the harbour, where Grace had given him another child, a son called Jonathan.
    Come the spring, and the return of warmer weather, and longer hours of daylight, Harry’s spirits lifted and he was something like his old self again. But a certain gladness, a certain lightness of spirit had gone from him forever, and he now showed signs in his face of anxiety, of conflict, and of pain. Often he drank to excess, and his friends left him to himself at such times. He would sit in the shadows at the back of the inn, and the drink gave him no release from his demons, whoever or whatever they were.

    Seven years passed, and Grace Foy bore Harry three more children. His temper improved, and in time he came to believe that he had shaken it off, the black mood that had dogged his spirit through that terrible winter. He prospered, bought his own boat, and came in time to be regarded as one of the first men of Port Jethro. For Grace and her children these were happy years, and there were times in Martha’s early life that she would never forget. Often she went out with her father on his boat, Harry being that unusual creature, a fisherman who took pleasure in sailing, and the stronger the wind the better he liked it.
    He took her up on his horse with him, when he had business in Bodmin, and together they galloped across the moor, the big laughing man and the little girl gripped between his knees and hanging on to the saddle for dear life—her face to the wind like her father’s, and no more fear in her than he had in him. They tramped the cliffs together, and told endless stories, each one wilder than the one before. Harry loved his wife with a strong and jealous intensity, and if they fought and stormed it was because their passions were at rootthe passions of attachment; but he loved his Martha no less passionately, for she took after her mother, she had her bones, she had her spirit, she had her flaming red hair.

    Then late one night, said my uncle—and here his narration grew dramatic indeed, up came his hand, his fingers seeming to mold the figure of the poet in the glow of the fire—late one night Harry came home from a landing—a ship from the West Indies on her way up to Bristol—with a dozen casks of rum stowed in the back of his wagon—
    Again I interrupted him, but even as I began to ask the question I glimpsed the answer, and my uncle paused to remind me that in those days there was not a man, not a family in Cornwall which was not involved in the free trade, and Harry Peake was no exception; indeed, said my uncle,