The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  But the Lieutenant only nodded in an abstracted way.

  They found Captain Barrie on the steps of Mr. Barker’s house, at the corner of Main and Water Streets; and before the Lieutenant could speak, Mr. Barker told Captain Barrie, in an anxious desire to please:

  ‘Captain, there’s some sauce in my garden below the house here. You’re welcome to it!’

  Captain Barrie eyed him mockingly. ‘I want none of your sass!’ he roared. He was a blustering, loud man, forever breathing out threatenings and slaughter, earning by his demeanor a reputation among his country’s enemies for bold and ruthless brutality; but like a barking dog he seemed more dangerous than he was, and his worst threats were seldom followed by performance.

  Mr. Barker, however, did not know this. ‘I mean to say, the vegetables!’ he humbly explained. ‘You can take what you want.’

  ‘To be sure I can. They’re mine already! Be off with you!’ Mr. Barker moved a little aside and lingered uncertainly, and Captain Barrie turned to the Lieutenant. ‘Mr. Carruthers, had you any trouble at your landing or since?’

  ‘Not at all, sir. In fact, I was treated most hospitably. A lady whose husband is absent offered me comfortable quarters—though I fear my night’s sleep may be interrupted!’

  ‘Ho!’ the Captain chuckled. ‘You’ve a gift that way, Mr. Carruthers!’ Mr. Barker still stood by and for his benefit Captain Barrie shouted: ‘But if you’re molested, say the word, Lieutenant, and I’ll act. If a dog on the streets so much as wets a British soldier’s shins, we’ll burn the town over their heads.’

  Mr. Barker at this dreadful threat scuttled away, and the Captain asked Lieutenant Carruthers in a lower tone: ‘Would your prospective hostess by any chance be young and pretty? Or even young? I’ve seen nothing but whiskered beldames in the town!’

  ‘Why, pretty enough,’ the Lieutenant assured him, ‘and young enough.’ He added, as one reports a curious natural phenomenon to an expert: ‘And she has a daughter, a baby that’s forever wanting to be kissed and dandled. There’s something about her that rouses a man more than you’d think possible.’

  ‘Eh? The woman or the baby?’

  ‘Oh, the woman’s well enough, but I meant to say the baby. She’s four years old.’

  Captain Barrie chuckled. ‘Precocious lot, these wilderness wenches; but that would never do for an Englishman! She’ll have to wait till we come again to give her what she wants.’ He became serious again. ‘Now, Mr. Carruthers, between dame and babe, I doubt you’ve had any time for our business here?’

  ‘I await your orders, sir.’

  ‘The town’s submitted,’ the other told him. ‘They’ve surrendered all arms, muskets, guns. A bold tanner by the name of Zadock Davis hid some four-pounders under a bridge down the road, but we soon persuaded him to show us where they were. Every able-bodied man in town’s entered himself as a prisoner of war and given parole. We’ll take what shipping we want, burn the rest where it lies. There’s a schoolhouse somewhere to shelter your men. Make someone guide you to it. I’ve given orders that no liquor is to be served to the men.’

  Mr. Carruthers smiled to himself. Between where they stood and the Stream, along Main Street, there were shouting, drunken groups of soldiers everywhere; and quite obviously Captain Barrie himself had violated the prohibition he now imposed. ‘I’m sure no liquor will be drunk by anyone,’ the Lieutenant said gravely.

  Captain Barrie laughed. ‘Let’s have a look in the tavern yonder and make sure,’ he suggested, and Lieutenant Carruthers followed him across the way. When they came in, Tom Hatch was presiding at the bar and the room was packed with Hessian soldiers who gave way as the officers entered. Tom had just pulled a cork. Captain Barrie took the open bottle from his hand.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded, and drained half the bottle at a gulp. ‘Why, by Gad, it’s rum!’ he cried, in a sudden passion. ‘I said no liquor for the men, and I’ll have my orders obeyed!’ He wrenched out his sword and strode behind the bar and with smashing blows cut off the faucets of the rum barrels there resting on their sides. ‘Orders!’ he repeated thickly. ‘Obedience! See to it!’

  With the bottle in one hand, his sword in the other, he turned to the door. Before Lieutenant Carruthers followed him out, Tom Hatch was already putting buckets under the spouting faucets, while the soldiers mopped up the flood on the floor and squeezed the last drop down thirsty throats. Outside, Captain Barrie finished the bottle and tossed it away.

  ‘I want every drop of liquor in town destroyed, Mr. Carruthers.’ he said. ‘See to it. I’ve shown you what measures to take.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Any other orders?’

  ‘Quarter your men and leave with me someone who will know where to find you. We’ll move out of here tomorrow.’ He hiccoughed loudly. ‘And pleasant dreams, Mr. Carruthers!’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I’m afraid there’ll be little sleep for me tonight. I’m not one to neglect my duty!’

  ‘A soldier’s first duty in an enemy town is to compel submission. See to it, Lieutenant!’ The Captain winked, and hiccoughed again and turned away.

  VII

  Lieutenant Carruthers, when he left Captain Barrie, swung back toward the toll bridge, stopping at half a dozen stores to carry out the orders to destroy whatever liquor he found, bidding his men pour it into the street. The sailors in his command took the opportunity to help themselves to odds and ends which in each establishment attracted their attention; but after he had stopped at half a dozen stores, he met Lieutenant Symms of the Bulwark in the act of opening a pipe of brandy for his men. When the other heard Captain Barrie’s order, he said cheerfully:

  ‘To destroy all liquor? Well, what else are we doing? There’s only one proper way to destroy good liquor. Just give us a little time and it will all be gone!’

  Mr. Carruthers was ready enough to agree. Lieutenant Symms’ procedure in fact accorded well enough with Captain Barrie’s example. He instructed the other to see the men quartered for the night, and crossed the toll bridge and turned down Poplar Street toward Moll Hager’s home, his duty done.

  They were burning the vessels lying at anchor in the river, and the Lieutenant saw rising columns of smoke ahead of him, shot through with the red anger of the flames. On the Point, and across the Stream by the ferry landing, scores of townsfolk were gathered to watch that destruction, the men with shamed and haggard faces, the women with tears of helpless rage, the children with wide enchanted eyes. A brig was a fountain of fire, and the hull of a ship recently launched was burning fiercely, and half a dozen smaller craft were all blazing from stem to stern. The crackling roar of the flames was a ravening and dreadful sound; and the silent folk along the shore, helplessly watching the burning ships, heard behind them in the town the loud tumult of the drunken, looting soldiers.

  VIII

  The Lieutenant dismissed his man on guard at the Hager house, and at his knock the woman opened the door, and Jenny ran to meet him and he swept her up and tossed her high and caught her coming down and kissed her. The woman was near and Jenny cried:

  ‘Kiss mommy too!’

  Lieutenant Carruthers laughed, and dropped his arm around the woman’s waist and obeyed that command.

  ‘That little wretch!’ Moll protested, bridling. ‘She’s at some devilment the day long. She’s too much for me to handle!’ She freed herself from the circle of his arm. ‘Shame on you, Jenny, to say such a thing! You ought to be smacked. What will poppy say?’

  ‘Poppy’s gone to Boston,’ Jenny retorted. Lieutenant Carruthers removed his coat and hat and pulled off his boots and sat comfortably down before the wide hearth, and Jenny climbed on his lap, lying back across his arm, her chin uptilted, smiling at him. He laughed and kissed her under the chin, and she wriggled and squealed in ecstatic protest, and the woman said:

  ‘I thought you’d maybe be hungry when you came.’

  ‘I’m a starving man!’ he agreed.

  ‘Then hold her, while I put a
bite on the table,’ she directed, and presently she bade him sit down to beef roasted on a spit above the coals, and garden sauce and cornbread and sweet butter, and there was a flake of wild honeycomb from a tree Tim Hager had found a month ago, and steaming tea. Jenny stood across the table, on tiptoe to bring her chin above the level of the board, watching his every mouthful; and the woman served him. When she came beside him he circled her waist with his arm, but she pushed his hand almost absently away. Dusk fell, and the glare from the burning vessels was in the windows. The woman lighted a candle on the table, and when he had eaten she cleared away. From across the Stream and up in town they heard remotely the tumult of hoarse voices as full dark came down. She poured hot water in the big wooden bowl to wash the dishes he had used, and she said:

  ‘This will be a bad night for Bangor town, with drunken sailors and soldiers in the streets and everywhere and no one to say nay to them.’

  ‘The men will soon be asleep,’ he predicted. ‘They’re full of rum, and that will quiet them. They stood to in the rain half the night, and fought a skirmish this morning, so they’re ready now to rest a while.’

  She said scornfully: ‘It was nought to tire them out to send that lot of ours scrabbling! They’re puling fools, with their musters and their marching and their bragging what they’ll do!’ She looked at him sidewise. ‘Will you be staying here for long?’

  ‘No. We’ll leave tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll be going back to Castine.’

  ‘We’ll be there a while,’ he agreed. Jenny was warm in his arms, half asleep, now and then wriggling a little to settle herself more comfortably into the hollows of his body. He looked down at her, touched her dark hair, and still watching Jenny, he said indolently: ‘This is a sweet armful. Tell me about that husband of yours, off in Boston town. Is she like him more than you?’

  The woman for a moment did not speak, and when she did there was no expression in her tones. ‘Tim’s a big man with a roaring voice,’ she Said. ‘The backs of his hands, even his fingers, are covered with stiff black hair like pig bristles, thick as reeds in a swamp, stiff enough to scratch me when he touches me.’ She had turned away, did not look toward the Lieutenant. ‘He’s a hasty man,’ she said, in that flat voice so curiously free from bitterness to match her words. ‘A hasty, hard, violent man with no gentleness in him; and he’ll laugh to split your ears.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Old enough so he was a man before I was Jenny’s age.’

  ‘Handsome?’

  ‘I might have thought so, once; but mostly it was his talk that beat me down till I had no more strength to say no to him,’ She repeated bitterly: ‘He’s a hairy man, with more whiskers in his nose and his ears than a boy like you will ever have on your chin, and all as stiff as bristles on a pig.’

  The Lieutenant chuckled comfortably. ‘A woman would as soon sleep with a hedgehog!’

  She said, as though he had not spoken: ‘He married me in Norridgcwock and brought me here. That was my mother’s doing, making him bring me away so Norridgewock would not know when Jenny was born.’ She faced him slowly. ‘I’d have left him before, if there was a place to go. I’m a woman now, not a girl that he can scare into a shivering jelly in his arms.’

  ‘You have it in mind to leave him?’

  She said grimly: ‘Aye, if anyone asked me.’ Her eyes were a challenge to him, straight and bold. He realized suddenly, his throat full, that she was by candlelight pretty enough. Put her in the right gown, with her hair more seemly dressed, and there would be some beauty in her. That damned husband of hers had given her a weary time. She was entitled to be gay and merry for a while; and if there was in her any of that quality he discovered in her daughter, in this baby in his arms, she would know how to please a man. He looked down at Jenny, wondering whether this was true, thinking that Jenny moved him more than her mother ever could. The baby’s eyes were tight closed.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ he said.

  The woman nodded. ‘Fetch her,’ she directed. ‘I’ll pull out her bed and tuck her in.’

  Jenny did not seem to wake while he carried her to the bedroom, nor when presently at Moll’s bidding he laid her down on the low trundle bed. The woman stooped to arrange the coverlet, and he waited till she was done, standing so close to her that her skirts brushed his knee. She stood up at last, close to him, speaking in low tones.

  ‘There, she’ll sleep till day,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing could wake her now.’ And she added slowly: ‘Try the bed, see if it suits Your Honor.’

  ‘It will suit,’ he said, waiting no longer. The room was dark cxcept for the light that came through the doorway from the fire burning bright in the other room. In that darkness after a moment the woman whispered breathlessly:

  ‘Your cheek’s as—smooth as Jenny’s!’

  The Lieutenant chuckled, and Jenny, where she lay on the trundle bed beside them, murmured drowsily: ‘Kiss Jenny too.’

  II

  Tim Hager

  1

  BIG Tim Hager, Jenny’s

  father, was a giant of a man, nearer seven feet tall than six, with a massive frame, and tremendously strong. His size commanded respect; but like most very big men, Tim was more conscious of his bulk than of his strength, always uneasily suspecting that other men were secretly laughing at him, and desperately afraid their mockery would come out into the open where he must deal with it. As a defense against that contingency, he went shouting truculently through the world, trying—with a surprising secret humility of spirit—to measure up to the opinion of himself which he attributed to others. He might have been as easily daunted as an elephant in the presence of a mouse, but he was so big and so powerful that no one had ever ventured to stand up to him; and he had not since his boyhood struck a blow or given one. In any argument he beat his opponents down by voice alone, and though they might wish to resort to violence none did so.

  In the presence of women, an overpowering shyness confused his movements and tangled his tongue; and he avoided them whenever it was possible. Until he met Moll Cornish—and he was by that time well into his thirties—he was as helplessly tongue-tied in the presence of a pretty little serving maid as of a deacon’s wife, and except for some embarrassing adolescent experiments, he was when he met Moll still ignorant of the mysteries into which she initiated him.

  He came to Norridgewock from a farm near Canaan where he had lived with his mother till she died, and his great size and strength immediately made him conspicuous, while his obvious terror of all womankind was like a challenge to every girl in town. Moll, playing a skilful game, broke down his defenses; but Tim thought himself the victor, and he was as gleefully greedy as a colt first loosed to pasture in the spring, till the day when Moll and her mother told him that he must marry her.

  Tim submitted without protest. He was as much afraid of Moll as he was intoxicated by her kindnesses, and the thought of marriage terrified him; but it was also instinctive with him to try to do what he was expected to do, to try to measure up to his obligations. Not even after they were married and had removed to Bangor did Tim cease to be afraid of Moll, but he hid his fear as though it were a crime. Like most big men he was by instinct tender and gentle; but he stifled these instincts, thinking them weaknesses. Ribald masculine assurances that women liked to be mastered and that his size made him in such matters the envy of lesser men formed the pattern of his conduct toward his wife; and his habitual ardent violence broke down little by little any affection Moll may once have felt for him.

  But he did not suspect this. He thought that he was the pattern of what a husband should be, and that Moll during his absences lived only for his return. The half-dozen men who, having flattered their vanity by taking the place which he occasionally left vacant, could have told him otherwise, took care not to do so; and Moll, though she sometimes dreamed of a moment when she would tell him to his face how she hated and betrayed him, had never found the couragc to risk the destructive rage
of which his size made him appear capable.

  II

  In the four years since he came from Norridgewock to Bangor, Tim had prospered. He had a gift for handling animals, and he could get more work out of a yoke of oxen than most men. He worked as a teamster, saved money, built himself a small house, accumulated four yokes of oxen and hired men to drive them, and when the war and the British blockade rendered sea transport dangerous and risky, he entered the business of freighting goods to Boston. All honest imports from England had ended when the war began; but there was a heavy demand for British goods, and birch canoes brought smuggled wares from Fredericton to be hauled on to Boston at seven dollars the hundredweight.

  Tim was not satisfied with this fair profit, and in the summer just past he and half a dozen others whom he persuaded to the venture bought in Fredericton silks and laces, sewing silk, needles and other wares to the value of several thousand dollars, but of small and convenient bulk. Some careful carpentry contrived well-concealed hiding places on his ox carts; and on this trip to the westward Tim took along the whole consignment. He stood to net himself and his associates, after these goods were sold in Boston, a handsome sum.

  Tim had no scruples against smuggling. He was by politics a Federalist, with the most profound contempt for the Democratic Party and all its works, and especially for customs officers who might seek to interfere with his activities. Before his departure, after a cheerful evening at Tom Hatch’s tavern, he boasted of his plans; and John Barker, one of his partners in the current venture, led him outside and chided him for talking too much.

  ‘First thing you know,’ he warned the big man, ‘you’ll have the customs men after you and lose our goods and our profit too!’

  ‘Them?’ Tim echoed, in his blaring voice. ‘Why, if they open their mouths to me, I’ll grab them by the ears and stick my heel down their throats and pull them on like an old boot! They’re nought but a lot of lousy pimps and spies, looking for a chance to make a good grab for themselves, like hungry wolves looking for a lamb to eat up! That’s what you get from the Democrats!’ But then, since he liked to be thought a man of character as well as parts, he added vigorously: ‘But I’ll say this, John. I don’t rightly favor smuggling! It’s all politics with me.’