The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘Look a-here, Major!’ he said huskily. ‘This God damned musket’s no good! Give me a gun that will shoot. I want to get me a couple of Britishers for breakfast!’

  The Major took the gun and tried it, twisting the screw end of the ramrod into the obstruction, tugging. He pulled out a lead ball and its patch, and turned the gun with its muzzle down and a little stream of powder ran out.

  ‘Why, you drunken fool!’ he said harshly. ‘This gun’s already loaded.’ Then in sudden recollection: ‘I’ve seen you load it twice, myself I’ He measured the depth to which the ramrod would go. ‘Man, there must be six or seven charges in it! How many Englishmen did you expect to kill with one shot?’ The men around were grinning at Tim’s discomfiture, and the Major passed the musket back to him. ‘Here, draw the charges and make your piece ready,’ he said, more gently. ‘You’ll have a chance to use it damned soon now.’

  He turned away. Down the hill beyond the brook, from men hidden in the fog, more shots sounded. Tim, with a hooting and derisive audience, began to try to clear the barrel of his musket, but it was a tedious and trying business. An acorn, loosened by a squirrel, dropped off the oak tree under which he stood and rapped him sharply on the shoulder, and he barked in hoarse panic and clapped his hand to the spot and looked for blood, and the men around him laughed aloud, and Tim grinned sheepishly and then mustered his courage again.

  ‘By God, that’s more like it!’ he cried. ‘I knew if I could get you boys to laughing you’d forget to be scared. Let ’em come now! We’ll give it to ‘em!’

  He was still fumbling with the musket when the great guns down on Crosby’s Wharf began to thunder. The musket fire beyond Pitcher’s Brook had been disquieting, but at this loud clangor the raw militiamen huddled in uneasy groups, showing the whites of their eyes.

  And then suddenly the fog thinned, and looking down toward the brook they caught a glimpse of the British columns approaching the bridge. Up to the right by the meeting house the eighteen-pounder bellowed, and the lesser guns let go, jarring the ground with their detonations. Major Chamberlain came smartly along the line.

  ‘Wait till they’re handy, boys,’ he said over and over. ‘Don’t shoot till they’re close. Wait till you can’t miss, and pick your man and drop him.’

  The fog shut in again, and when it thinned once more, the British were filing across the bridge, deploying into orderly ranks, moving firmly forward. Guns were going, down there, too; and the smoke from them, carried toward the militiamen by the light, southerly breeze, became a curtain which hid the advancing enemy completely. This curtain of fog and smoke rolled up the slope, concealing everything behind it. It drew nearer. There was something dreadful in the advance of that cloud which hid no one knew what terrors. Before it, the American line insensibly sagged backward. To face flesh and blood would have been easier than to face that screening fog from which hideous death might at any moment emerge.

  When the men near him sagged back, Tim threw away his still useless weapon and sagged with them. To stand unarmed before so many enemies was too much to expect of any man! Major Chamberlain raced along the line, commanding, laughing, pleading; and he checked them for a moment, but Colonel Grant’s company on their flank was sagging too. When the line bent back too far and stretched too thin, it tore apart and broke into huddling groups; but even these groups did not stand. Each one, finding itself for a moment left to face that creeping fog and smoke behind which the enemy was advancing, sought to overtake the others; and as though in a game of leap-frog, the groups left behind raced after those which were gone. The withdrawal gained speed, and suddenly, most of them without having fired a shot, four or five hundred American militiamen were trampling the officers who tried to stop them, bolting in headlong flight for the bridge across the Sowadabscook and the Bangor road.

  Tim ran with them, but he was slow of foot and lesser men outstripped him. When he reached the first house of the village and saw an open cellar way, he plunged into it like a rabbit into its hole. The potato bin was full. Tim leaped in among the potatoes and began to burrow, seeking any hiding place. Outside the house, the rout swept on.

  VII

  The bridge was a bottleneck through which the fugitives must pass. When Major Chamberlain reached it, he hoped to make a stand there, and he tried to rally the bolder spirits. He had perhaps a dozen doubtful men in hand when he saw Tim Hager plunging toward him, tearing his way through the pack of those who were trying to cross the bridge all at once. Tim had lost faith in potatoes as a hiding place when he remembered that the British soldiers might prod among them with their bayonets. He had no wish to be spitted, with a potato on the same bayonet for garnishing, so he took to flight again; and the congestion at the bridge enabled him to overtake there the other fugitives.

  When the Major saw him coming, he recognized in Tim a potentially valuable ally. ‘You, Hager!’ he cried. ‘Help me hold these men!’ Tim paid no heed, rushing across the bridge, and the Major shouted: ‘Halt, Hager! Halt, I say!’

  Tim, without checking his lumbering run, bawled at him: ‘Halt be God damned! Why, Major, this is dangerous! You’ll get us all killed!’

  And when the Major would have stopped him by brute force, he brushed the smaller man aside and so was gone.

  VIII

  Behind him in the town, and from Crosby’s Wharf, there was still some firing; and the Bangor road was choked with fugitives, looking fearfully over their shoulders as they ran. Tim decided that the road was no place for him. He was so big that he offered more than a fair target for British bullets. He turned blindly upstream and made for the nearest woods, seeking to conceal his mighty frame. Probably the soldiers would chase the militia clear to Bangor and hang the lot of them. Tim did not want to be hanged. He pushed on up the Sowadabscook, at first with no goal in mind; but then he remembered that the womenfolk and the children were at Josh Lane’s house. If they were safe there, a man ought to be.

  By the time he reached the house, Tim’s wits were working again. If the British did happen to come here and found him, his mud-stained clothing would prove he had fought against them and they would hang him after all. When he came to the house, everyone was out in the yard, staring off toward the village, and questions poured on him.

  ‘Why, we’d have whopped them easy,’ he announced. ‘But Colonel Grant’s men took and run, and what was left of us couldn’t handle them alone, so they’re chasing everyone to Bangor, hanging every man they catch!’ He pushed through the weeping, trembling women and took Josh Lane’s arm and led him indoors. ‘They’ll hang me, too, Josli,’ he cried, ‘if they see the mud on my clothes! You’ve got to give me something to put on.’

  ‘Why, I ain’t got a thing,’ Josh protested. ‘Only my wedding suit, and no two of my suits would make a coat for you.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Tim insisted. ‘I can wedge into it.’

  ‘No, and you can’t,’ Josh insisted, but Tim gripped his arm with an overruling violence and Josh ruefully submitted.

  When Tim began to fight his way into the suit, and Josh heard the first seam go, he groaned, but Tim said reproachfully:

  ‘Godamighty, Josh, wouldn’t you rather see a seam ripped than see me hung? Well, I would! Be sensible, man!’ His great legs were compressed into skin-tight breeches, and the coat was so small that his arms were drawn backward by it, his wrists projecting halfway to the elbows. ‘Now, where’s a place to hide?’

  IX

  Tim was in the darkest corner of the cellar an hour or so later, when a British patrol came and dug him out and marched him back to Hampden with a bayonet pricking his hams. He and seventy-five or eighty other prisoners were crowded into the cabin of the Decatur, which had made port at Hampden weeks before with a cargo from Bordeaux, and which had been held there since then by the British blockade. The prisoners had scant room even to stand, and none to sit or to lie down; and they were kept with neither food nor water, and with very little air, all night.

  But nex
t day before the Decatur was burned they were ferried ashore to be paroled. Tim, a ludicrous figure in Josh Lane’s best broadcloth suit, of which half the seams were irreparably ripped, was among a group still under guard on the wharf, when the flotilla of boats which Lieutenant Carruthers had taken up to Bangor came down-river.

  Tim saw Moll and Jenny in the stem sheets of the Lieutenant’s boat. His first reaction was a hopeless despair at discovering these two whom he loved thus prisoners of the invaders; but then he realized that Moll did not look like a wretched prisoner. She was glowing with some inner happiness, dressed in her best, close by the Lieutenant’s side.

  The boat touched just below where Tim stood, and the Lieutenant landed on the wharf to report to Captain Barrie for orders. Tim’s size made him conspicuous, and Moll saw him and began to laugh at his ridiculous costume; but when Jenny recognized him she held out her arms and called delightedly:

  ‘Mommy, there’s poppy!’

  So Tim could not escape attention. He asked hoarsely: ‘Moll, what you a-doing in that boat?’

  Moll did not answer. The Lieutenant and Captain Barrie were at one side with Colonel John, and the Lieutenant turned to see what was going on. Colonel John asked him crisply:

  ‘What is this affair, Mr. Carruthers?’

  ‘Why, the lady has asked our protection, sir,’ the Lieutenant told him. ‘She begged to be given transportation to Castine, where she has relations.’

  ‘Relations?’ Tim echoed, perplexed and yet indignant too. ‘She ain’t got any more relations in Castine than a sturgeon has wingsl Moll, you get out of there and come along home with me.’

  Colonel John smiled in amused understanding. He spoke to the woman. ‘Is the Lieutenant correct?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ she told him stoutly. ‘I want to go to Castine, and to Halifax too! My uncle lives in Halifax!’

  ‘Is this clown who has outgrown his garments your husband?’

  ‘Yes, he is, but I want nothing to do with him.’

  Jenny cried plaintively: ‘I want my poppy!’ She sought to escape from her mother’s grasp, to climb up on the wharf; and Colonel John spoke to Captain Barrie.

  ‘We’re asked for a judgment of Solomon, Captain,’ he remarked. ‘If the woman wants sanctuary with us, I think we ought to grant it, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m sure Mr. Carruthers would say so,’ Captain Barrie agreed with a chuckle. Tim tried to speak, and Captain Barrie said harshly: ‘Silence, you, before we stretch that thick neck of yours!’

  ‘But the baby seems to prefer the father,’ Colonel John pointed out. ‘Suppose we let her go to him for a minute?’

  So Jenny was passed up to Tim, and she clung to him; and Moll called persuasively: ‘There, Jenny, now you come back to mommy.’

  Jenny cried: ‘No! I hate you!’ She buried her face in Tim’s shoulder, wailing wretchedly: ‘I want my poppy!’

  Colonel John nodded. ‘All right, we’ll let him have the baby, since she decides it so. I suppose the woman must do as she likes.’ He spoke to Moll. ‘Madame, do you wish to stay behind with your baby?’

  Moll Hager hesitated, looking at Tim and then at the Lieutenant; but her hesitation was not long. ‘I wouldn’t stay with that hairy bull for twenty babies,’ she said lightly. ‘But Jenny’d rather go with me, only she’s a little scared of the boats. Jenny, you come here to mommy.’

  But Jenny clung to Tim, her arms around his neck, her face buried under his ear, shaking her head. ‘No! No!’ she insisted. ‘I hate you! I love my poppy!’

  Moll flushed angrily. ‘Let him keep the brat,’ she said. ‘She’ll make him sorry he ever fathered her!’

  The Colonel nodded. ‘I wish you joy of your conquest, Lieutenant,’ he said in a dry distaste. ‘You’re doing this giant a favor, ridding him of her.’ He turned to Tim. ‘Have you made your parole?’ he asked shortly.

  ‘Yes, Your Honor.’

  ‘Then take the little girl and be off with you!’

  Tim appealed hopelessly to his wife. ‘Moll, you’d ought to come along home,’ he urged.

  But Moll only laughed, and Captain Barrie told Tim: ‘Go while you can, man!’

  So Tim turned away, Jenny close in his arms. He crossed the bridge and took the Bangor road and left the town behind. Jenny’s sobs slowed and she hiccoughed in his car and whispered softly:

  ‘I love you, poppy.’

  Tim strained her close in a wakened hunger and longing. His cheek was white and hard. Behind him smoke from burning ships rose in black billows to the sky. With Jenny in his arms, he trudged home to Bangor to face mirth and shame.

  2

  IT WAS dusk when Tim came

  tramping into town with Jenny, now asleep, in his arms; and he was glad to avoid notice, wretchedly conscious of the sorry appearance he must make in Josh Lane’s best broadcloth, so much too small for him, and sadly split and wrinkled now. He thought the town must know by this time the story of his cowardice, and of that musket which he had loaded so often but never fired; and he shivered with shame at the memory. He had tried so hard to stifle his fears, to play the leader and the strong man, till flat panic overcame him. When he passed Hatch’s tavern, he heard loud drunken voices within as men boasted what they would do to the British if they came another time; and he listened and heard this one say that General Blake was to blame for the panic, and another damned Major Chamberlain, and a third said Colonel Grant had run faster than any of them.

  Tim dreaded to hear his name mentioned, but in the days to come he would find that his own cowardice at Hampden was forgotten in the poltroonery of so many others. Those who like him had fled occupied themselves in seeking to make a scapegoat of their officers. Also, Moll’s departure had won for Tim the sympathy of the town. Others had lost their goods and their ships, but he had lost his wife; and this gave him a certain distinction in the public mind. A dozen good women offered to undertake Jenny’s care, to give her a home; but he refused, for already Jenny began in many ways to take Moll’s place in his life, winning him to smiles, making him forget her mother.

  He and Jenny stayed on in the little house, and Tim hired Mrs. Hollis to keep house for him and Jenny. She was a widow woman with grown sons and daughters of her own, and she lived with one of her sons on Hancock Street not far from Tim’s home. She came to cook his meals, to clean and tend for him; but Jenny from the first insisted that Tim should put her to bed at night and dress her in the morning. Mrs. Hollis was scandalized by this.

  ‘It ain’t fitten for you to see that young one naked!’ she protested. ‘It ain’t right and proper, Tim, and I won’t be under the same roof with such goings on.’

  But Tim was unwilling to lose any part of this increasingly sweet communion, and Jenny, seeming not to miss her mother at all, was devoted to him. If she woke before he did, she was apt to leave her small bed and climb into his, pressing against him in his sleep, touching with one small finger the stiff hairs in his nostrils, drawing her finger along his lips till he began to stir uneasily and to puff and snort and lick his lips and brush at them with his hand, and so woke at last. When he found her thus happily tormenting him, and becausc it pleased her to the point of ecstasy, he might assume a ferocious anger, and spank her with awkward gentleness till she pretended to weep and he could comfort her.

  He liked best of all the Saturday nights when he bathed her, in a great tub before a blazing fire; and when he was inadequate she instructed him to do thus and so, and Tim obeyed. When the bath was done he wrapped her in a rough towel and dried her small body, delicate and soft yet wiry strong; and when she was dry she might wriggle away from him and run to and fro about the firelit room, her white skin bright in the radiance of the flames, while he laughingly pursued her, afraid of hurting her if he caught her too abruptly, till he penned her at last in some comer, or under the great bed in the other room, or perhaps in the bed itself where she had dived for sanctuary.

  Mrs. Hollis, witnessing these occasions while she washed
the supper dishes, said they were two heathens. ‘She’s every bit as bad as you are, Tim Hager!’ she declared. ‘And it ain’t decent! I’ll stand about so much of such goings on, and then I’ll walk out on you and there you’ll be. Bringing up that child as if she didn’t know the meaning of clothes! If I don’t keep my eye on her every minute all day, as like as not she’ll get away from me and wriggle out of every stitch and go running around as naked as the day she was born.’

  But she never carried out her threat to leave them to their own devices. Tim’s helplessness awoke her protective, maternal instinct; and Jenny won her completely.

  II

  Moll had never been a church-goer, but Tim, facing the task of bringing up Jenny in the way she should go, thought it his duty for her sake to become a member of Mr. Loomis’ congregation. He took Jenny with him to the meetings in the Court House. Also, Martha Allen had commenced a few months before to conduct the first Sunday School in Bangor, and she welcomed Jenny into her class. It was through his church attendance that Tim first had news of Moll. One Sunday in mid-October, an early cold spell made it necessary to build fires in the portable stoves which heated the courtroom where the meetings were held, and the hall outside. During meeting, Tim, in the rearmost seats, heard movements in the hall; and a few moments later his nostrils caught the unmistakable odor of sausages Cooking.

  To stimulate Tim’s new interest in right and godly living, Elder Loomis had persuaded him to join the recently organized Bangor Moral Society and Tythingmen, whose responsibility it was to try to enforce a seemly observance of the Sabbath; and to cook sausages in the portals of the church was surely not a fit way to behave, so Tim slipped out into the hall to admonish the individual guilty of this profanation.