The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  There was a small table in the hall on which rested a candle stand. This held seven candles; but Isaiah’s frugality had long made it the rule that unless for special reasons only three of these should be burning at one time. On the table, night candles were placed every evening by Ruth as her last duty before she went to finish in the kitchen and then climbed to her attic room. Ephraim, standing by the mantel, could see through the open door the candles burning there; and then two of them were blotted Out by Jenny’s small figure as she appeared in the doorway.

  When she saw him, she too stood still; but this was only for a moment. Then she came toward him. He was at the end of the hearth farthest from the door, his hand resting on the mantel shelf where he had just put out the lamp. She stopped by the lamp that was still burning, and raised her hand to it, and the flame died.

  Except for the light of the candles in the hall, shining on them where they stood, this room was left in darkness. Beyond the candle beams, there were deep shadows. She turned that way, toward a curious article of furniture which was capable of being arranged as an armchair of spacious proportions, or as a couch with a sloping end to support the shoulders and head of the user. Until Isaiah’s illness it had always been used as a chair, but when he began to come downstairs, Mrs. Hollis insisted that he have a place to lie down; and he had spent several days on this makeshift couch. It pleased him, and since then he sometimes used it to take a nap after meals.

  Jenny now went to this couch and sat down upon it. She said quietly: ‘Come near me, Ephraim.’

  He followed her, trembling. He brought a chair to sit facing her. The night was cooler after a warm, humid day; but here in this closed room the cool of evening had not yet penetrated, and Ephraim’s brow was wet. He mopped it uneasily. He was so close to her, his knee almost touching hers, that he caught the faint fragrance which whether natural or artificial she always wore, a heady and delicious perfume profoundly moving. She sat a little sidewise, supporting herself with one hand, the other in her lap.

  When his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he could see her white hand moving a little as she thoughtfully smoothed the stuff of her dress along her knee.

  He waited for her to speak. The candles threw some light into the end of the room where the fireplace was; and he could see the doorway and one of the candles reflected in the glass above the pier table that stood between the windows. She rose suddenly and went away from him, walking in a way that was like beautiful and sensuous music, walking in a way he had never seen before, nor imagined. Merely to watch her as she moved away from him filled him with a suffocating longing. She crossed to the pier glass and looked at herself for a moment in it, lifting her hands at last with a slow movement to press them on her breasts, pressing hard. She extended her arms slowly to full reach above her head, rising on tiptoes, stretching every muscle in her body; and he saw her waist draw slim, her shoulders narrow. Then her hands came down to her sides again and she returned toward him, still with that quality in her walk which he had never seen before. He thought of a cat. A cat might stretch itself so, might walk so.

  She came to stand close to him, her back to the light as she looked down at him. He forced himself to speak, wetting his lips, shaping the words carefully.

  ‘Is father asleep?’ he asked. His voice croaked in his throat.

  She nodded slowly. Her hand moved to rest on his shoulder, and her finger touched his throat under the jawbone at one side. He caught his breath, and she traced the line of his jawbone, touched his ear, pressed her hand against his cheek, cupped his chin in her palm. Her hand was cold.

  ‘I’m glad of it,’ he said hoarsely. ‘He needs all the rest he can get. This is going to be a hard trip.’

  She laughed without a sound. He could not have explained how he knew she was laughing. Her laughter was no more than a sort of casing of the tension in her. She sat down again upon the couch beside him, then leaned back, her body and shoulders and head supported by the inclined part of the couch. Every muscle in her body was relaxed. He thought that if he touched her, no matter where, she would be soft and warm. In that close and stifling room she gave off warmth as though she were a smouldering fire. Yet her hand had been cold as ice.

  He mopped his brow again. She said: ‘You’re hot?’

  ‘It’s a hot night.’

  ‘I think it must be growing cooler outside.’

  He wished to escape into the dark, shaded streets; to walk quietly through their silences till the coolness of the night could enter into him and comfort him. Yet he did not move. She asked slowly:

  ‘How long will you be gone, Ephraim?’

  ‘I don’t know. A month, father says; or a little less, or a little more.’

  ‘Are you taking everything you will need?’

  ‘The men will have everything, when we meet them.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  She knew as well as he every detail of their plans; but if they spoke of such harmless matters, they need not speak of other things. ‘Tuesday night,’ he said.

  ‘Then you start up the river on Wednesday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In boats?’

  He licked his lips, remembering how he dreaded the terrors of that long journey. ‘In canoes,’ he said. ‘Indian canoes, made out of birch bark.’ He had seen the frail things, so light that one man could swing them to his shoulders and carry them over a long portage without a pause for rest, so fragile that any wound would pierce their sides.

  ‘How many men of you?’

  ‘Eight. Four Indians to paddle, and father and me, and Mr. Duncan and Mr. Irish, the men father is taking along to cruise the land.’

  ‘Will you go with them into the wilderness?’ She lay completely without movement. In the half darkness he could sec only the white blur of her face, her white hand. Her dark gown lost itself in the shadows.

  ‘Wherever father can go. I’ll stay with him.’

  ‘Why will you be so long?’

  ‘It may be less or more.’

  She said without expression: ‘Every hour you’re away will seem to me too long to bear, Ephraim.’

  His fist knotted on his knee, and her cold fingertip touched his wrist. Then her hand cupped his wrist and her fingertips pressed where his pulse beat. She spoke softly.

  ‘Your heart is pounding, Ephraim. I think you too are sorry we must be apart awhile.’

  ‘Father’s dead set to go,’ he said. He tried to speak in matter-of-fact tones. ‘I think it’s been good for him; the planning. I think the trip may do him good. He’ll come home a new man.’

  She withdrew her hand. ‘I will tell you about your father, Ephraim,’ she said in still, controlled tones. ‘I will tell you about your father, and about my father too. I think you will understand my father. Twice he beat me. I think I knew even then why he beat me. I have always known things like that. I remember the English Lieutenant who took my mother away. I was only four years old then, but I remember him. It was twenty years ago, but I remember it. He stayed at our house that night with my mother, and we all slept in the same room, they in the big bed and I in my small one; and I remember her voice in the night, laughing.’

  After a moment she went on: ‘My father beat me because he wanted me, and because he hated himself for that. You are like him, Ephraim.

  He was ashamed of loving me, because I was his daughter, and you are ashamed of loving me because I am your father’s wife. So you would like to beat me, too.’ She laughed a little. ‘I think sometimes you would like to kill me.’

  He said hoarsely, in a shaking horror: ‘What kind of woman are you?’ ‘You have always been afraid of me.’ she told him. ‘You were afraid when you saw Mr. Hardy’s likeness of me. Some day, perhaps, you will kill me, Ephraim; but it will be because you are afraid.’ She said dispassionately: ‘You’re afraid of so many things, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

  ‘I was afraid, once.’ she confessed, in a differe
nt tone. ‘I was afraid the night my father died. I was afraid he would kill me. When Isaiah and Deacon Adams and Amos Patten came to talk to me, I was still afraid. I thought they might send me back to my father, so I told them lies about him; and I showed them the marks on my body where he had hit me. I knew that if they saw me covered with bruises, they would do anything for me.’

  ‘How old were you?’ he was fascinated as a bird is fascinated by a snake. She said, laughter deep in her tones: ‘Perhaps I did not know all these things then, but I do now. I have a friend named Lena Tempest. She is a very wise woman, and she knows the reasons men do things. Do you know her pretty little laundresses, Ephraim?’

  ‘I know where she lives, in your father’s old house.’

  ‘Have you never been there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yet you sometimes boast to me that you have known such women?’ She went on easily: ‘That is my house, since my father died. Lena used to work here for me; and sometimes when I am alone she comes here to see me now—and sometimes I go to see her.’

  ‘You oughtn’t to do that! Father would . . .’

  ‘Oh, no one knows, except Lena, and now you. You see, I like to talk to her, to ask her questions. There are so many things I want to know, things she can tell me, about men.’

  ‘You can’t go to a place like that. What would folks say?’

  She stirred as though in a deep amusement. ‘No one would believe that I go there, not even if they saw me. I am a very respectable woman, Ephraim; the wife of Isaiah Poster, active in all good works, devout in church. Did you see on the steamboat how even old Mrs. Harlow thinks well of me? If you told them what I have told you, they would not believe it; and Lena and I would both say you were telling lies.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘Perhaps I am telling you a lie now. Perhaps there is more than one of me, Ephraim. Perhaps it is not I who likes to hear Lena Tempest talk about men. Or perhaps it is not I who goes sedately to church, and to the Lyceum, and to musical entertainments, and who is thought to be so respectable. Or perhaps it is not I who will be so wretched while you are away. Or perhaps it is not I who lies here now wishing you were not so much afraid of me.’

  He repeated, defiantly: ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

  ‘There is nothing to be afraid of, Ephraim.’

  He rose suddenly and turned away from her, his muscles twitching, walking with uncertain stumbling steps till behind him she spoke his name. He stopped, his back toward her, and she said softly:

  ‘Come to me.’

  He retraced his steps, slowly, as though under some unseen compulsion. She lay with her hand under her head, looking up at him. The light was behind him, but he could see her face, her eyes; and he saw that she was smiling. She lifted one hand to him.

  Yet he knew suddenly that if he touched her hand it would be cold. He felt the cruel calculation in her; and hunger and terror fought in him and left him desolate as a corpse on a battlefield. He stammered hoarsely; ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want your hand,’ she whispered. ‘I want to press it here against my heart, so you can feel how my heart pounds.’

  He put his hands behind him, shaking his head in a stubborn desperation. ‘No, I won’t, Jenny! I won’t touch you!’ Then a sudden rage at her was in him. ‘You persuaded me to steal father’s money. It was just luck- just because everyone is land crazy—that you didn’t make a plain thief out of me. But I won’t do this! I’ve got to hold on to something. Let me go.’ His voice was like a prayer. ‘Jenny, let me go!’

  The light behind him flickered. She said: ‘The candles in the hall are burning down, burning out. It will be dark in a moment now.’ He did not move and she sat up, extending her hand to seize his.

  He backed away, two steps and then another. He turned then, surrendering to panic flight. Not stopping to find his hat, he bolted out of doors. The door behind him stood open. He strode away along the street, looking back at that open door as though afraid she would appear there to pursue him. The lighted rectangle of the doorway, seen at a narrowing angle, was visible for some distance. He was eight or ten rods away when the light disappeared, and he knew that she had closed the door.

  V

  Ephraim lurched through the dark streets like a man blind drunk. Until he came to Exchange Street he saw no lighted windows anywhere. There were lights in the Coffee House but he did not go in. Without purpose he walked down toward the river, past the store which still bore his father’s name, till he came to the house where Tim Hager and Jenny had lived and where Lena Tempest and her pretty laundresses now entertained the bachelors of the city.

  He stopped there irresolute, half-minded to go in to quench the consuming fires Jenny had known how to light; but there was no ease for him in any woman but her. His muscles twitched and quivered, and his throat was swollen and congested, as though all the blood in his body stood still and multiplied itself, as though his flesh might be shattered by its bursting pressure. He stumbled on, shouldering through the loud and drunken sailors and raftsmen and woodsmen who with hoarse, hilarious voices made their way to this door and to that one, from behind which came the tinkle of music and loud cries and shrill feminine laughter, to end their night’s carouse in casual arms; and he envied them the easy solace they knew how to find.

  At Washington Street he turned, following the river; and the crowds thinned till at last he walked alone. When he came opposite Boyd’s Cove, the river came close to the street and the air was cooler. He stayed awhile there, staring at the dark and silent water, before moving on. He came by Newbury Street to Main a block or two beyond his father’s house; but he could not yet bear to go home, so he swung away toward Old Town, heedless of time. Dust rose in puffs under his feet, and twice and thrice he met carriages, their lanterns visible a long way off, returning late toward Bangor. He walked on for a mile or two before at last his steps lagged and he moved slower and more slowly.

  When he turned homeward again, he was drugged with weariness, and it was hours since he had left Jenny, and dawn was not far away; but the hot wind which she had roused in him still blew. He came back to his father’s house and saw the windows of her room above him and stood a moment looking up at them. It was so dark that they were no more than shadowy rectangles; so dark that he could not see whether or not they were open to let in the cooler outer air. He knew she was long since abed, and Isaiah would be snoring in his little room next hers, huddled under blankets, his windows closed; and in her room in the attic Ruth would be. Perhaps, he thought, Ruth had stayed awake awhile, hoping he would come to her before his departure in the morning; but she too must be sleeping now.

  He opened the door and stepped into the hall, black as the pit with no light anywhere. He closed the door behind him and moved softly toward the foot of the stair.

  Then he stopped still, his heart suddenly leaping in affright, for there was someone near him. He had heard no sound in the silence, had seen nothing in the darkness; but he felt a presence here before him by the foot of the stair, and he caught the faint, intoxicating fragrance he could never mistake.

  He waited for Jenny to speak, waited seconds that seemed eternities, till he heard a sound, heard the creaking of that tread halfway up the stair; so he knew she had retreated to her room, withdrawing before him as though in silent invitation.

  After a moment, his breath pent, moving as silently as she, he followed her. Her door was open. When he came to it he could see the pale rectangles of the windows. There was no sound within, but he had not heard any straining of cords to suggest that she had climbed into the high canopy bed. She must be standing in the warm and fragrant darkness, waiting for him to come to her.

  He took two steps into the room and saw her, a white figure dimly visible there by the bed; but then, despite the pounding in his ears, he heard Isaiah’s snores from the other room. At that sound he turned instantly away, out into the hall again and—blindly groping—he made his way to his own door, feeling for it along the wall, finding it,
going in.

  He stood for a while in the darkness there, his back braced against the door panels, shaking and suffocated. Once his senses tightened when he thought he heard a sound in the hall outside the door, but the sound was not repeated. Still in darkness he removed his outer garments, and now he began to make haste. A grotesque terror possessed him. He could not endure the thought of lying here, feeling her nearness there at the outer end of the hall. She might come seeking him.

  But there was a sanctuary to which he could escape. He thought of Ruth, in her room above, as a refuge and as assuagement too. In a breathless haste, he opened presently his door, and listened and heard no sound, and moved on tiptoe to the foot of the attic stair.

  Ruth’s door was open. On hot nights she often left it so, for her room was small and could be stifling. He came softly beside her bed, yearning toward her; but when he leaned over her where she lay she smelled like Jenny, and as though that familiar fragrance was a detonator, his cautious movements gave way in a sudden explosion of all the pent forces in him to an abrupt and unquestioning and unresisted violence.

  VI

  When an hour later Ephraim woke from the spent stupor of heavy sleep, there was gray dawn in the window. Ruth lay between him and the light, her dark hair loose upon the pillow under his cheek, her face turned away from him. He thought her still asleep; but since he and Isaiah were to make an early start, he rose on one elbow, ready to depart. At his movement she turned her head to look at him. He saw then, even in that faint light, that this was not Ruth but Jenny. A paralyzing astonishment for a moment held him motionless; but then he thrust away, sprang to his feet, recoiling as though from some dreadful vision, crying out the first question that came to his lips.

  ‘Where’s Ruth?’

  Jenny said calmly: ‘Her mother wasn’t well yesterday. After you left me, I told her she could go home to spend the night.’ She added: Then when you came home, I came to wait for you here. I was sure you would come.’ She did not move, watching him quietly. He shook his head, groping, completely bewildered and helpless; and she explained in even tones: ‘I have known for weeks that you were coming to Ruth’s room, so I sent her home and took her place to wait for you.’