The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  She glanced toward him, her head on one side, studying him as though trying to read his thoughts till his eyes turned uneasily away. He wished fretfully that she would not keep talking about Ephraim all the time.

  IV

  Ephraim Poster

  1

  EPHRAIM POSTER was born

  was born in the summer of 1811, on a farm in Cuyahoga County in the new state of Ohio. He was the only child of Isaiah’s second wife, who died when he was born. Isaiah’s children by his first wife, resenting his early remarriage, had disliked their mother’s successor, and they disapproved even more violently of Mrs. Wetzel, whom Isaiah brought into his home as soon as Ephraim’s mother died. The result was an estrangement between them and Isaiah which—coupled with the fact that Isaiah presently sold his farm and went back to Bangor, so that they never saw him again—made Ephraim in effect an only child.

  Mrs. Wetzel, who hid behind a pretended scorn of her neighbors and the barbed-wire fence of a sarcastic tongue a keen loneliness, took charge of Ephraim while he was still a baby; and since in her eyes he could do no wrong, he never underwent any stiffening discipline. If Isaiah barked at him, Mrs. Wetzel was quick with comforting; and if Isaiah threatened punishments, Mrs. Wetzel’s arms were always a sanctuary. To Isaiah himself the woman was no more than a habit; but to Ephraim she was the fountain of all good, and his love for her, selfish though it may have been, was the dominant fact of his boyhood.

  He was when Isaiah came back to Bangor just six years old, and Jenny was his first playmate. She ruled him completely, largely because she always knew exactly what she wished to do; and as long as he was too young to range far from home, he had few acquaintances among boys his own age. Those who knew him jeered because he preferred a girl’s companionship to theirs; and when he grew a little older and began to go abroad, Mrs. Wetzel’s solicitude in such respects as comforters around his neck, mittens, felts and rubbers and the like, marked him as a fair target for derision. He had no defense against the bullying to which as a result he was subjected. To fight back was beyond his wildest dreams. He was not even articulate. When he was accused of anything, whether seriously or in jest, Ephraim could only grin in a watery way and exclaim: ‘Who, me? Gee!’ This habit became so firmly fixed that he acquired a nickname: ‘Me Gee!’ This, still further contracted, became at last simply ‘Gee!’, and he was till he went away to college Gee Poster to every boy on the east side of the Stream.

  His childhood was beset by fears, usually imaginary. For instance, water always had terrors for him, and though he might be shamed into wading knee or waist deep, he never learned to swim. When in summer other youngsters took slabs cast aside by the sawmills and using them as floats paddled out into the Stream to ride the current down to the Point, Ephraim might run along the bank in a breathless excitement to see their adventures on the way; but he never attempted to imitate them.

  In the same way the forests near town seemed to him dark and fearful places; and when others went exploring there, he never joined them. Inevitably his fellows discovered his fears and played upon them. Once, in a curious desire to see what he would do, some of them dragged him—at first in silence—as far as the border of the wood. There, when he began to cry, they smothered his screams and carried him into the thicket and tied him to a birch; but his struggles to escape were so violent that they were alarmed and released him, imposing silence on him by threats to repeat the outrage if he ever told anyone what had happened.

  There was one occasion when the bullying which his youthful cowardice evoked almost led to his death. Three older boys—Nat Barker, young Joe Leavitt and Eddie Patten—were swimming off the Leavitt shipyard. A small raft of logs loosely floored with boards was moored along the wharf; and they persuaded the trembling Ephraim to climb down the ladder nailed to the piling and join them on the raft. He did so, and then because he was so obviously afraid, they began to pretend to push him off the raft. His pleas for mercy excited them to such an extent that they carried the game too far. Ephraim went overboard, and he came up under the raft.

  The logs were sufficiently wide apart so that, while he could not squeeze up through the space between them, his head did appear there. Eddie Patten caught him by the hair and supported him, warning him to keep his mouth shut so that he would swallow no more water; and the three boys, keeping tight hold on his hair, having sometimes to push him under and past an obstacle before pulling him to the surface again, worked him to the end of the raft and hauled him aboard.

  Ephraim was by that time too scared to cry; and all four of them, stark naked, completely forgetting their clothes in the excitement of this rescue, raced up to the Poster home to tell Mrs. Wetzel their great adventure. That good woman had been cleaning house. They found her in the kitchen and, while Ephraim clung to her and sobbed, the other three, all talking at once, told the story. Ephraim’s danger, even though it was past—made her for a moment insane with relief that he was still alive. In a dreadfully calm deliberation she locked the kitchen door, took a birch switch with which she had been beating rugs, and lashed the three rescuers till the birch was frayed and broken and their white bodies were crisscrossed with red streaks, while Ephraim, safe in a comer, looked on in a horrid fascination.

  This did not endear either Mrs. Wetzel to the mothers of the boys, nor Ephraim to them; and from that day, though he was never seriously molested, he was an outcast in the town.

  II

  It was not until Ephraim came into his teens and Jenny was more and more often at the store with her father that the boy began to feel an adolescent interest in her. This manifested itself either in attempts—whenever she was near—to do something remarkable in order to attract her attention, or in a shy and grinning silence. His interest in Jenny was intensified when Mrs. Wetzel died. The woman had always given him a tenderness she never showed to anyone else, not even to Isaiah. When he suffered from the indispositions of youth she took care of him; and long after he emerged from babyhood he still liked to curl in her lap, feeling the warmth of her body, cushioned against the mysterious softness of her bosom. Within himself at such times there were stirrings which he found deeply pleasurable; and to be near her, in physical contact with her, provoked an instinctive reaction in his boy’s body to her lavish womanliness.

  So he missed her when she was gone, missed these puzzling pleasures; but it was not long before he discovered that to touch Jenny’s hand, to come near her, to tussle with her in amiable play gave him that same sense of warm, assuaging comfort. His preoccupation progressed until the simple sight of her was enough to produce in him a glassy-eyed state almost somnambulistic. Isaiah’s announcement—after he became conscious of Ephraim’s infatuation—that the boy must go away to Cambridge, to Harvard College, provoked in Ephraim a dismal grief; but it was a grief for which he found no utterance. He left Bangor on the Boston packet Madawaska in June, to be tutored in Boston in preparation for his admission to Harvard’s classic halls.

  When his father wrote that Tim Hager was dead and that he had married Jenny, Ephraim hated Isaiah for days; and for a longer while his passion for Jenny devoured him like a flame.

  III

  Ephraim by the time he entered Harvard was as big as he would ever be; a slender young man not much taller than his father. Mrs. Wetzel had often told him that he had been a sickly young one, and a trouble to raise. His mother, she said, was puny; and the same adjective might have been applied to him. His color was never good. He was subject to heavy colds, which were slow to cure themselves. His cheeks were pale, although even in winter he had a mask of freckles laid like a veil across his nose; and his eyes were a watery blue, his hair a lifeless, stringy brown.

  If he had stayed in Bangor, the cheerful contempt of his fellows must eventually have crushed out of him any trace of self-confidence; but at college among strangers he could begin afresh. When he realized this, he gained courage and began to seek ways in which he might distinguish himself. He presently discovered—an
d demonstrated—that he could drink incredible quantities of liquor without apparent effects. This gave him standing in some undergraduate circles. Also, as is so often the case with men who are otherwise physically insignificant, he displayed, after his newfound friends had introduced him to Boston brothels, a precocious prowess which added to his fame; and his exploits were the boast and the envy of his intimates.

  Thus, in one way and another, he achieved an unpleasant distinction among his college mates; and he enjoyed it. He forgot Jenny, or if he thought of her at all, it was fleetingly, while he lay in the embrace of other arms; and when Isaiah suggested that he might better use his vacation periods for travel than in coming back to Bangor, Ephraim offered no objection. Except for that one brief occasion when he saw Mr. Hardy’s portrait of his father’s wife, he did not go home at all.

  IV

  Ephraim was saved from complete ruin in these years by the influence of John Evered. With three of his fellows he went into Boston one evening, and they dined at the Bell in Hand. Afterward, they all went out into the street to seek new diversions. Within three blocks, two of the group had accepted feminine companionship. Bill Pease and Ephraim proceeded arm in arm till a girl spoke to them, and Ephraim produced a coin and spun it.

  Bill won, so Ephraim was alone when John Evered touched his arm. Ephraim looked up at the other man in surprise. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Evered,’ the stranger explained. ‘John Evered. I’ve seen you at college, and I was in the Bell in Hand just now. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Who, me?’ Ephraim protested. His youthful habit of reacting to anything like an accusation with this ejaculation had persisted; but now he remembered to be sophisticated. ‘Good evening, Mr. Evered,’ he said with punctilious dignity. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Evered hesitated. He was a head taller than Ephraim, with broad shoulders and strong hands. ‘Come back to Cambridge with me,’ he said, and he added: ‘You’re making a damned fool of yourself, Poster. I’ve seen you in classes. You haven’t noticed me, but I’ve seen you. You’ve got brains, if you want to use them. This sort of thing is foolishness.’

  Ephraim laughed. ‘You talk like a parson,’ he said loftily. ‘Perhaps you are. Now suppose you take the next turning, and I’ll go my own way. I’ve business with a friend.’

  Evered shook his head. ‘No, I’m taking you back to Cambridge,’ he said.

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘I’m taking you,’ Evered told him calmly, ‘if I have to knock you down and haul you home in a cart.’

  Ephraim, to his own surprise, was pleased by this threat. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘What do you want?’

  “I want to talk some sense into you.’

  The smaller man shook his head. ‘Really, I’m much too drunk to talk sense.’

  ‘You’ll be sober by the time we get to Cambridge,’ Evered promised him. ‘We’ll walk.’

  ‘Who, me? Walk?’ Ephraim laughed again. ‘Not me, my friend!’

  But Evered insisted, and he laid a great hand on Ephraim’s arm. ‘You’ll come if I have to carry you,’ he said.

  Ephraim had never any stomach for physical violence, so they walked to Cambridge; and when they came to Ephraim’s room, Evered stayed with him, talking insistently about the folly of dissipation. Evered managed to be wise without being righteous. He said nothing at all about morality, but he said a great deal about health, not only physical but mental; and he spoke of capacities and their use and abuse, and of the responsibilities they entailed. Something about Ephraim had attracted him, months before, when in the course of their college work their paths crossed; but had not found any way to make Ephraim’s acquaintance till tonight his own distaste for what he saw gave him courage. There was strength in him which somehow imposed itself upon the other, arousing in Ephraim dreams and ideals long forgotten. They talked till dawn.

  After that first encounter they were friends, and they presently arranged to room together for the rest of Evered’s college career. When on his visit to Bangor, Ephraim saw the portrait of Jenny which Mr. Hardy had painted, he came back and told John Evered about her.

  ‘I’ve known her ever since I was six years old,’ he said. ‘Her father was a drunken giant who worked for my father in the store. Her mother was no good, ran away with one of the British officers who came to Bangor in 1814. She and I used to play together. When we grew up, I realized of course that she was pretty; but my God, John, she’s lovely now!’

  ‘How old is your father?’

  ‘Sixty-five or so. She’s about my age, a little older.’ Ephraim added: ‘She’s had her likeness painted, by a man named Hardy. The picture’s beautiful, but it scared me. It’s no more beautiful than she is, but there’s something about it—I don’t know what it is, maybe the eyes—that makes her look like . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I started to say like a damned whore, but it’s worse than that. She looks like one of the women that run houses.’

  Evered smiled. ‘I shouldn’t think your father would like such a picture.’

  ‘Oh, I guess he doesn’t see what I see in it. He thinks the picture’s wonderful—and so does everyone else.’ He added seriously: ‘I went to see Mr. Hardy. He’s quite a man. I wanted to find out whether he knew what he’d done. I told him the picture seemed to me to be like her, but I said there was something about it I couldn’t quite understand. Know what he said?’ John shook his head and Ephraim went on: ‘He told me that a painter tries to put on canvas what he sees, but that each person who looks at the picture afterward may see in it something different. He said: “The painter and his subject make the picture together. I sometimes think there’s a mystical communion between them, with all barriers removed. In the same way the spectator and the painting collaborate, the spectator putting some of himself into what he sees.” ’

  John laughed. ‘That was rough 011 you, if you had seen in it what you say!’

  Ephraim nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe that’s true. I’m apt to see a wanton in every woman I meet.’ He laughed grimly. ‘If I try, I usually find one, too!’

  ‘You have dangerous capacities, Eph.’ John Evered told him soberly. ‘You can drink a lot without showing it. Unless you watch yourself, that will betray you in the end. And you can seduce almost any woman who seems to you worth the trouble. That’s even more dangerous.’

  ‘By God, I think you’re right!’ the other agreed; and he said, almost wistfully; ‘I wish one drink made me drunk, and I wish there was only one woman in the world whom I could win—providing I could find her. I need women, John. I always have.’

  V

  When Ephraim was ready to leave Cambridge, Isaiah wrote suggesting that he travel and see something of the world; but Ephraim, remembering Jenny, decided to go home. He had no chance to discuss this with Evered, who had left college a few weeks before. The other might have advised Eph to adopt his father’s suggestion, might have made the young man realize the danger in a return to Bangor. But Ephraim persuaded himself that he went home to take his place by Isaiah’s side, to begin to learn the management of his father’s large affairs. Without answering Isaiah’s letter, he boarded the Albion, Bangor packet. In spite of his fearful anticipations of the journey—terror of the water still obsessed him—the prospect of seeing Jenny awoke a strong excitement like hunger in his veins.

  2

  THE Albion packet with Ephraim

  aboard caught a fair southeaster to help her up the Bay; but at dusk the breeze failed and at full dark the packet anchored in Fort Point Cove. A dozen brigs and schooners were waiting there to make up to Bangor to load lumber, or already loaded they were praying for a good slant to beat down the Bay; and Ephraim was astonished at their number. On his single visit home he had seen that Bangor had grown, but now to find so many craft waiting to move up the river was visual evidence that the lumber trade had tremendously increased.

  He stayed late on deck that night, hearing an occasional shout of laughter from th
e near-by vessels, or the creak of oars as some visiting captain returned to his own craft; and he was early awake and on deck. The southerly came to life again with the dawn, and they filled away with the flood tide just beginning to run.

  The breeze, except for the eccentricities caused by high lands on either side, helped them all the way. On this tide and wind they met no vessels outward bound; but they saw craft at anchor in every sheltered cove, loaded deep with sawed lumber and shingles, waiting to go out with the tide if the wind would let them. Off Bucksport a dozen vessels, large and small, were sheering to their cables in the currents that eddied across the anchorage ground abreast of the turn; and a few miles above, the Albion’s master took his speaking trumpet and let loose a cascade of profanity fit to blister the paint on the sides of a ship anchored fair in the narrow channel, while they crept closely by.

  The Albion’s master knew every quirk of the tides and every foot of the channel; and Ephraim, standing in the bow, watched with a fearful interest his bold manoeuvring, shivering with apprehension every time they passed near exposed ledges. The river was well sprinkled with slabs and bark and edgings, refuse from the mills above; and once or twice they broke through solid rafts of this drift, floating in a loose assembly acres in extent. Sawdust filled the water everywhere, changing its color. Some of it was on the surface, while the rest, saturated and waterlogged, was carried in solution as it slowly settled toward the bottom. In the narrow shoal channel above Hampden the water was full of it, constantly churned up by passing bottoms and by the racing tides. The master, alert to his marks, brought them past the Three Fingers; and a tide-walker thumped the packet’s bottom so that Ephraim’s heart pounded in his throat, and then they began to see the vessels massed in the river off Bangor town.

  Ephraim stared ahead with a quickening astonishment. There seemed to be hundreds of craft of every description, from stately ships to simple sloops, at anchor or tied up side by side along the wharves. Everywhere along the shores he saw the bright lumber of new buildings under construction. A group of other passengers had joined him in the packet’s bow; and he saw something feverish in every countenance, as though they looked upon the promised land. He had heard enthusiastic reports, even in Cambridge, removed as collegiate circles are apt to be from contact with the world, of the coming boom in Bangor and in timber lands; but now his eyes—and the greedy countenances of the men about him-for the first time made those rumors real.