The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  IV

  The first house beyond John Barker’s store was Timothy Hager’s, and the head of the column, when the men marched up from the landing and halted, almost reached it. Moll Hager, Jenny’s mother, stood in her open door to look at them. The sailors were a nondescript lot, most of them in round blue jackets, white trousers and tarpaulin hats; but there was variety in their bright waistcoats, checked shirts and neckerchiefs. A fair half of them were barefooted. Moll, still a young woman, in a snug tow dress buttoned down the front over many petticoats, with her hair disordered and her cheeks flushed from the fire where she had just put kettle bread to bake, inspected them with a grim detachment, ignoring the fact that they were as interested in her as she was in them.

  Then Jenny wriggled past her mother and ran toward the head of the column in laughing excitement and with outstretched arms. The little girl had a strange and haunting beauty, with dark hair and blue eyes and a skin like ivory, at once pale and warm; and on each cheekbone there was a delicate line like an elongated and extremely faint dimple, which appeared when she smiled and made her seem about to burst into tears. She was delighted now at having escaped from her mother, and when Moll darted after her in dismayed pursuit, she threw herself for sanctuary into the arms of the tall sailor at the head of the line. He laughed and swung her high, her petticoats flying; and she clasped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his ear and cried in a wriggling triumph:

  ‘Jenny run’d away from mommy!’

  Moll tried to recover her baby, tugging at the sailor’s arms. ‘Give her to me!’ she pleaded breathlessly. ‘Jenny, you little wretch, come here to mommy!’

  But Jenny clung fast to her sailor, and he laughed and passed her to the man behind him, good-humoredly blocking Moll, pushing her away.

  ‘Sure, ma’am, she’s the friendly one!’ he said amiably. ‘Let the men be having a look at her. It’s long since they’ve handled a baby—and some of them might have left one or two of their own at home, and that might be many a year ago.’

  He was a handsome youngster, and his smile was friendly enough, and Moll Hager was no older than he, and smiled as readily. So Jenny was passed down the line from man to man, and she had a kiss for those who pleased her and a frown for the others; while Moll moved watchfully beside her.

  V

  When Lieutenant Carruthers came out of John Barker’s store it was to see his force already thus disorganized by feminine friendliness. He inspected the woman with an expert eye. She seemed to him not particularly attractive, and he judged she was older than he. The Lieutenant had found that in itself no demerit, if there were compensations; but she was flushed and flustered and rather untidy, and he might have waited to look farther but for the striking beauty of that baby the men were dandling. The woman was obviously the baby’s mother, so he stepped forward and rescued Jenny from the men; and she came to his arms as readily as to any other, patting his cheek approvingly, fingering his single epaulette, looking to see whether he had a pigtail like the sailors. She was a bewitching youngster, and more for her sake than for the woman’s he doffed his cocked hat with a sweeping gesture.

  ‘Madame, I trust you have been put to no alarm,’ he protested in a grave solicitude.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The men wanted to see the baby, and she likes men. But she’d best be indoors.’

  Tray accept my escort,’ he said with elaborate courtesy, and he delivered Jenny to her and walked with her to her threshold. She would have dismissed him then, but he asked:

  ‘Is your husband home?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No. He’s gone . . .’ She hesitated, said only: ‘He’s not here now.’

  ‘I need to find quarters for myself and for my men,’ Lieutenant Carruthers explained. ‘May I come in and discuss the point with you?’

  She hesitated, then nodded her consent; and the Lieutenant followed her across the threshold into a compact warm room with a wide fireplace where a bake-kettle was buried in the ashes and a steaming pot hung on the crane. A teakettle was set on the hob, and a spider and a warming pan leaned at one side.

  Moll, once they were indoors, set Jenny down. ‘There, you little imp!’ she said harshly. ‘Now mind you stay where you belong!’ She gave the baby a cuff in the petticoats, and Jenny cried delightedly.

  ‘Mommy spank Jenny?’

  ‘I will if you go out again,’ Moll declared, and Jenny gleefully bolted for the door, as eager to earn that punishment as though it were a reward. Moll darted after her and caught her. ‘She’s a limb!’ she told the Lieutenant. ‘She’ll bedevil me all day long to get a spanking! It’s the game she likes best.’ She swept Jenny up again, turned her over her arm and paddled her affectionately, while Jenny squalled in pretended pain. ‘There, Miss!’ she exclaimed in mock ferocity. ‘That’ll teach you!’ And to the Lieutenant: ‘Will Your Honor sit down?’

  The Lieutenant laid his hat aside. Tm wet from this morning’s rain,’ he confessed. ‘May I dry myself while we discuss my business?’ he unbuttoned his long cloth coat, edged with white; and she took it to hang near the fire. He pulled off his boots and set them on the hearth and drew a chair near, and Jenny went to pluck at the crown-and-anchor buttons on his coat admiringly. Moll irritably slapped her small hand.

  ‘There now, leave be!’ she said sharply; and Jenny ran to the Lieutenant and climbed on his lap, and he laughed and kissed her. She accepted the kiss so greedily that the Lieutenant was conscious of a surprising pleasure. There was in this child in his arms a sort of flame, and her lips were firm as a woman’s, with none of the softness like rose petals and the lavish moistness of a baby’s kiss. He looked at her in a wondering interest while the woman cleared the kettle top of ashes to see how her bread did. It was finely browned and she lifted it out and carried it to the table, passing it from hand to hand when it became too hot to hold. Jenny sat erect on the Lieutenant’s lap, facing him, her small hands touching his cheeks and nose and eyelids teasingly, laughing when he shut his eyes tight; and he forgot the woman in his pleasuring with the child till Moll, returning to sweep clean the hearth again, asked sullenly:

  ‘Was the fighting bad at Hampden?’

  He chuckled. ‘Fighting? That rabble militia ran so fast our soldiers never saw them!’

  ‘They came galloping into town like sheep with a dog after them,’ she agreed in a dry scorn. ‘Stripping off their uniforms and throwing away their muskets—them that had held on to them till then!’ She laughed without mirth. ‘A fine sight to see! Did they stand up to you at all?’

  ‘They made some pactice at us with the great guns, but did no harm. I heard we lost one rank and file, and Captain Gell of the Twenty-Ninth Grenadiers was wounded.’

  ‘Was there many killed?’

  He shook his head, dandling Jenny amiably. ‘I told you, they outran us!’ Then he remembered the girl at Marm Grant’s. ‘Only there was one of your farmers down-river, a man named Oakman. They made him guide our troops and he tried to get away and they shot him.’

  ‘Fighting’s an old story, like as not, to you?’

  ‘Aye, I’ve seen my share of it, these ten years.’

  She looked at him incredulously. ‘Ten years? You’re no more than a boy now!’

  ‘I’m twenty-three,’ he assured her. ‘We’re blooded young, so we grow up with a stomach for it.’ She was busy, moving to and fro about the neat small room, and his eyes returned to Jenny, curled in his arms. When thus he looked down at her now she was lying quietly, watching the way his lips moved, searching all his countenance. She met his glance and Smiled and her smile was as composed and serene as a woman’s, with mystery in her eyes. Then in a quick movement she buried her face against his shirt, and he laughed and hugged her close. ‘This little one has no misliking for an enemy,’ he said, amused and pleased. How old is she?’

  ‘Just gone four.’

  ‘Our English children are still babies at her age.’

  ‘She’s baby enough,’ t
he woman agreed. ‘But she’ll go to any man, any time, and always would from the time she could squeal.’ She eyed him narrowly. ‘After you had the Adams, what did you come on to Bangor for?’

  ‘Why, your damned privateers have made us trouble, and half the rivers and bays along this coast are nests for them. We came to root them out.’

  ‘Joe Leavitt fitted out a privateer last year,’ she told him, ‘and my Tim has a piece of a sloop building in Joe’s yard that he says he’ll take privateering.’

  ‘That sloop will be burnt on the ways when I report her purpose.’

  Her back was turned to him. ‘Burn it, then!’ she said shortly.

  He smiled quizzically. ‘You’ve no great love for your neighbors—or your husband?’

  ‘I hate the lot of them!’ she said, and with a slow violence she added: ‘I hate the place and the people in it and all about them, and everything they think and do and say. I wouldn’t care if you burned the town and all in it.’

  Jenny, on his knee, snug in the curl of his arm, watched her mother and she watched the Lieutenant, puzzled by their tones. ‘Mommy mad?’ she asked uneasily.

  He held her closer, reassuringly. ‘Your mother’s much too pretty to be mad at anyone,’ he assured her.

  The woman tossed her head. ‘That’s as may be. My prettiness never got me anything.’

  They heard shouting in the street and loud voices raised and some drunken singing, and Lieutenant Carruthers remembered that he should report his men to Captain Barrie; but he was comfortable here and Jenny pleased him and he was reluctant to leave. Also, with Jenny in his arms, he thought her mother had a sullen beauty, with her heavy hair and her angry eyes; and there was a way she had of moving, and her tow gown fitted snugly about her pleasant bosom.

  ‘It might buy you many pretty things to match it, if you put it up in the right market!’ he said.

  ‘I’m not likely to have a chance. Another year or two here, and another brat or two, and I’ll be as wore out as the rest of them.’

  ‘You’re lonesome and lorn,’ he said, and his tone was full of understanding. ‘I know well the feeling. My mother died when I was not much older than this baby, and a boy needs a mother—just as a man needs a woman. But a sailor’s never long enough in one place to find one to love him.’

  She laughed shortly. ‘You’d not belong in finding one, if you had a mind, wherever you might be, with that boy’s face of yours.’ Her eyes were angry; but when he smiled she softened, and he said gently:

  ‘Is that why you’ve treated me thus kindly?’

  ‘It might be,’ she confessed, smiling invitingly; but an unaccustomed reluctance kept him from pushing his advantage.

  ‘You’ve a fine town here,’ he suggested, ‘to be so far in the wilderness. How many people?’

  ‘Too many!’ she said shortly. ‘They’re an idle, lying, rum-drinking, thieving lot! The distillery across the way just up the street is kept busy making rum as fast as they can drink it.’

  ‘I didn’t see any church steeple from the river?’

  ‘There’s no church,’ she assured him. ‘And if there was, the ministers are as bad as any. Elder Noble, him that named the town after a hymn tune he liked, used to buy four and five gallons of rum a month at Treat’s. My Tim says he’s seen the charges on the books against him. He used to claim he gave it to sick folks when he visited them, but if he did, the sick folks drank a-plenty! And Elder Boyd was worse than him, making a hussy out of every woman in the town till the council put him out. That was before my time, but they say he was so bad Amos Patten wouldn’t even write down the things he did, in the book!’

  Lieutenant Carruthers chuckled. ‘Perhaps he believed in the laying on of hands—in the wrong places.’

  ‘He believed in bedding wherever he could,’ the woman assured him, and added grudgingly: ‘But Mr. Loomis that’s just lately come to preach here is a good enough man.’

  ‘It’s clear you don’t like the town?’

  ‘They’re a lazy, drunken, worthless lot, every man of them. They farm and fish and cut a few trees and saw them into boards, and the rest of the time they drink rum and brag. There’s not twenty decent, hard-working men in the place.’

  ‘What kind of fish?’ he asked. There was a trout stream in England where he had spent five days.

  ‘Salmon and shad and alewives, mostly. They spear salmon up at Treat’s Falls. You can fill a boat with them any time; and they’ll kill maybe five hundred in a day. Then my Tim drifts a net sometimes. That’s quickest, unless a sturgeon gets into it. They’re all full of fish, the river and the Stream.’

  ‘What’s the name of the river that runs through the town?’

  ‘Kenduskeag Stream. The plantation used to be called after it till Elder Noble named the town Bangor.’ Jenny squirmed on his lap, and she said sharply: ‘Jenny, don’t plague the Lieutenant! Get you down!’

  Lieutenant Carruthers protested: ‘Leave her as she is. It’s a long time since as pretty a girl has perched on my knee!’ And he asked: ‘Was your husband one of that rag-tailed lot that ran so fast this morning?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s not a running man. If he’d been there, you might have had a warmer time.’

  ‘A pity he wasn’t. We hadn’t enough to do to work up an appetite! Is he from home?’

  ‘He’s gone off to Boston.’ She sighed, a little too loudly. ‘So I’m left lone in a town full of murdering soldiers and none to protect me.’

  The invitation was clear enough, too clear. The Lieutenant preferred more difficult game. A sportsman does not shoot a sitting bird. He might have taken a polite departure but for Jenny. The child on his lap was warm and vibrant and lavish, pressing close to him, magnetic and possessive, drawing him to her, holding him fast. Perhaps there was in the woman, waiting to be aroused, some of Jenny’s quality. He said strongly:

  ‘No protection? Why, damme, you have my protection, ma’am! My word on’t, none shall touch you—except in kindness.’ And he asked: ‘That good man of yours, d’ye think he will be back this day—or may I quarter here?’

  ‘If I said you could not, you’d still have your way,’ she reminded him. ‘There’s none here to stand against you.’

  ‘I’d take nothing by violence from a lady, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, there’s no knowing when he’ll be back, to be sure,’ she confessed. ‘But we’ve poor quarters here, a small house as you see, and just the one bedroom and a trundle bed for Jenny. Yet I suppose I must give up my bed to you, if you want it so.’

  ‘We can speak of beds when it is time for them,’ he said reassuringly. Moll smiled, and Jenny, looking intently at her mother, suddenly pulled herself up to kiss him, pressed her cheek to his. ‘Jenny likes you, and mommy likes you,’ she announced.

  The Lieutenant chuckled. ‘Gad, I’m glad to hear that!’ he declared. ‘For I like the two of you. I’m not sure which I like the better!’ He remembered again that he must report for orders, and he put Jenny from his lap. ‘But now, Miss, I’ve my duties to do.’ he knocked the dried mud off his boots and pulled them on and rose, and Moll Hager brought his coat for him. ‘My compliments, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and my gratitude for your hospitality. D’ye know that gratitude is said to be a lively anticipation of future favors?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be welcome when you come back, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘That will be soon,’ he promised her. ‘But—duty first, devotion afterward.’ He swung his hat to his head, bent to kiss Jenny good-bye, and turned away.

  VI

  When Lieutenant Carruthers left the Hager door, he saw that his sailors had crowded into John Barker’s store; and they were helping themselves to the stock of boots and shoes there when the Lieutenant entered to bid them fall in. John Barker met him in a trembling good nature. The Lieutenant said, with an amused eye on these proceedings:

  ‘I trust my men have made no trouble, sir?’

  ‘Oh no, no, to be sure!’ Barker
protested. ‘Very good customers! I’ve done a month’s business in an hour.’ His voice became confidential. ‘They’ve no money, they say; but I’m keeping a careful memorandum of all their purchases, to charge them to the King.’

  The Lieutenant said gravely: ‘Excellent! It’s a pleasure to deal with a man of business.’ He spoke to a master’s mate at the door. ‘Fall in the men,’ he said. ‘Leave a guard on the boats, and a man in front of the house yonder to see it’s not disturbed. I’ll make my quarters there.’

  Mr. Barker touched the Lieutenant’s elbow. ‘Colonel John and Captain Barrie are quartered at my home.’ he explained. ‘Tire Court House and the school buildings have been put at the disposal of the men.’

  ‘Nevertheless I’ll quarter here.’ the Lieutenant assured him. ‘But I must report to my superior—if you’ll be so kind as to guide me to your residence.’

  Mr. Barker eagerly agreed; and he and Mr. Carruthers started up Poplar Street, splashing through the mud, the column of sailors following. Mr. Barker was voluble at the Lieutenant’s side, pointing out Trafton’s store, and the distillery below the road beside the Stream where a pack of soldiers were trooping in and out, as exuberant as schoolboys in an unguarded orchard. After they crossed the toll bridge, Main Street ahead of them, well lined with stores and with a tavern or two, was filled with men.

  John Barker said with a placating tolerance: ‘The men are good- natured, Lieutenant; no harm in them, full of fun. They sampled Mr. Trafton’s goods, but said his prices were too high and left him!’ He laughed in a hollow fashion at this jest. ‘You understand, Lieutenant, we’re good Federalists here, most of us, with no love for the war, and no hatred for the British.’