The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  Afterward she gave up the reins to him and they came more slowly homeward, letting the horse cool down, talking quietly together; and they laughed together at John’s massive gravity which she alone had been able to break through.

  ‘I had to,’ she confessed. ‘You were so big and forbidding-looking that I was scared—as scared as yoy, really! I had to persuade you to smile a little, just so I wouldn’t be scared. I declare, you frightened me so I’d wake up of nights just shaking, thinking of you!’ And then she laughed gleefully and touched his arm. There! I didn’t, really,’ she confessed. ‘I just said that to see if you’d blush to think you’d disturbed my maidenly dreams. Your ears are so pink, John! Even in the moonlight!’

  He laughed with her. ‘Why does a woman always want to make a man feel foolish?’ he wondered.

  ‘She only does it if she likes him very much,’ she said, and he was warmly happy at her word. When she and her father went back to Bangor, he dreamed that after he was established there they would come to be good friends.

  VII

  John worked with Colonel Black day by day, till in mid-September the Colonel dispatched him to Boston on a business mission. George drove him up from Ellsworth and saw him aboard the steamboat, and John went to see his luggage safe bestowed. He came on deck again as the Bangor cast off her lines to depart.

  When he did so, two men were helping a third up the gangplank, and John watched them. The man in the middle was clearly drunk. He was not only drunk, but he was soiled and dirty; and his legs would not support him, and he wept loudly as the two men half-carried him aboard. They dropped him on the deck and returned ashore again, and the drunk man rolled on his back and lay there, gurgling and choking with retching sobs.

  Evered recognized him. The drunken man was Ephraim Poster.

  2

  WHEN Evered recognized in

  this shamelessly drunken man his friend of college days, he stepped forward where Ephraim lay. As he did so, two deck hands lifted the man to his feet.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Evered asked.

  ‘Cap’n’s orders, to put him in the hold.’

  John did not attempt to interfere when Ephraim was dragged away; but he went to find the Captain. Captain Barker had just been succeeded by Captain Sam Howes—a change which provoked Captain Barker’s friends to lively protests. They gave him credit for arranging to have the steamboat built and put upon this run, and a committee, self-appointed to investigate his removal, resolved that he had been discharged without good cause, and as a protest recommended patronizing the packets. But in spite of this feeling, the Bangor got an increasing share of the Boston business.

  Evered waited till she was on her course down-river before speaking to Captain Howes; but when the other was no longer busy getting his ship under way, John approached him and introduced himself.

  ‘I saw a friend of mine brought aboard,’ he explained. ‘Young Mr. Poster. Your men said he was to be put in the hold. Would it be possible for me to make some other arrangement for him?’

  ‘Friend of yours, is he?’ the Captain echoed. He made a snorting sound suggestive of laughter. ‘Reminds me of the time old Joe Patten got drunk up’t Old Town. Couple of his friends as bad off as him tried to take him home across the river and he fell out of the boat. One of them started to dive in after him—Joe had sunk out of sight—but the other says: “Hold on there, Bill. Wait till he stops bubbling!”’ He laughed at his own tale. ‘Maybe you’d better let your friend stop bubbling before you make any arrangements.’ But then he realized that John was not amused; and as Colonel Black’s representative the young man commanded a respectful deference, so he said: I’d be glad to oblige, but every bunk’s taken. The hold’s the place for him, the state he’s in.’ He added contemptuously: Td not think you’d want to bother with him, after what he’s done!’

  ‘What has he done?’

  ‘You’ve not heard?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  The Captain’s eyes were watchful on the channel. He said with a certain relish, glad of a new listener for this tale which he had thought everyone must know: ‘Why, he’s done a-plenty if you ask me—or anyone in Bangor will say the same.’ And he explained: ‘First off, he stole twenty thousand dollars off of his father, and lost it gambling on timber lands—and that’s a trick that takes some doing, with land prices going up five-ten cents an acre between dark and dawn, one day after another. But then when the old man found it out—they’d gone off up-river to look at some pine—young Poster drowned him!’

  Evered said in an expressionless tone: ‘Drowned his father?’

  ‘Yup,’ the Captain assured him. ‘Or just the same as, anyway.’ He added confidentially: ‘Mis’ Poster claims it was an accident and that he’s not to blame; but that’s just because she’s trying to stand up for him.’ And he explained: ‘What happened, they was coming down-river in a canoe with two Indians paddling, and they hit a little quick water, and young Poster let on to be seared. He give out a whoop and jumped up and oversot the canoe. Then, as if that wa’n’t enough, when the old man come up, young Poster pounded him over the head till he went down again. He claims he was so scared he did it not knowing.’ He touched Evered’s arm in a strong affirmation. ‘But there ain’t anybody reely as scared of water as all that, if you ask me—and any man, woman or child in Bangor’ll say the same.’

  ‘Except Mrs. Poster,’ Evered reminded him. ‘It’s her husband who was drowned—but you say she believes it was an accident.’

  ‘That’s just the goodness in her,’ Captain Howes insisted. ‘She’s as fine a woman as you’ll find in a month of Sundays, always going to see sick folks and doing good, one way and another.’ He drew John aside so that the wheelman might not hear. ‘It’s her that talked me into taking him to Boston,’ he explained. ‘There ain’t a man in Bangor has got a good word for him. First off, she blamed him too; but then when she saw how he took on—he’s been drunk as he is now ever sence it happened—she tried to get him home to sober him off. He wouldn’t come, so she bought his ticket to Boston and gave me a thousand dollars in bills on Boston banks to give him when he gets there, and a letter to go with it. I say it’s a good thing she got him out of Bangor. There was some talk of having him arrested for murdering the old man, first off; but they never did find Isaiah’s body, not yet anyway; and you can’t hang a man for murder without a corpus. So it’s just as well to see the last of him, if you ask me-and anyone else will say the same.’

  II

  Despite the Captain’s ill report, and despite the crowded condition of the boat, Evered was able to arrange for a proper bed for his friend; and he himself stripped off Ephraim’s soiled clothes and sent them to be washed and cleaned and hung in the boiler room to dry. Ephraim slept till late the next day, and woke still unsteady from the stale fumes of brandy in him. They had run by that time into rough weather, a rising northeaster with rain and fog and driven, tumbling seas; and the tossing of the vessel and the clamor of the half-gale filled Ephraim with remembered terror and renewed the sickness in him. When he recognized Evered, he closed his eyes and refused to speak; so it was not till they reached Boston that these two had any talk together.

  Evered had assumed responsibility for the younger man, and Captain Howes before he landed delivered to John the money and the letter which Jenny had put in his hands. When they docked in Boston, Evered took his friend in charge. He was shocked and pitiful to see how Ephraim had wasted since their last meeting. The other had always been small and frail, but now he was almost emaciated, with hollow cheeks and blackly shadowed eyes. John judged that Ephraim was at the end of a long debauch; and when—the other submitting in a stupid docility to his guidance—they were lodged in the hotel Evered chose, he saw that Ephraim’s hands were shaking, his lips parched. He had till this moment offered neither sympathy nor chiding; but he said now, in a forced cheerfulness: ‘What you need, Eph, is a good dinner under your ribs. You’ve eaten nothing that stayed w
ith you since we left Bangor. We’ll eat, and then we’ll go out and get you some decent clothes.’ He urged good humoredly: ‘Nothing like a new suit to cure a sick man.’

  Ephraim was shivering with nausea. ‘I don’t want food,’ he said. His voice was hoarse and broken. ‘It’s brandy I need, John.’

  ‘A drink won’t hurt us,’ Evered agreed after a doubtful moment, watching the other’s shaking hands. ‘Stay here and I’ll fetch a bottle.’

  He went down the stairs, but when he came back to the room Ephraim was gone. Evered turned without hesitation and ran down the stairs again, sure that his friend had not had time to leave the hotel; and at hazard he entered the bar. He was in time to see Ephraim toss down a quick glass there. He came to the younger man’s side and laid his hand on the other’s arm.

  ‘Couldn’t you wait for me?’ he protested cheerfully. ‘Now I’ll have to drink alone.’

  Ephraim’s face twisted. ‘Damn it, John, let me go!’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t want to stay with you.’

  Evered laughed in strong reassurance. ‘You’re staying, all the same, Eph,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since we’ve seen each other, and I’m not going to let you get away so easily.’ He added: ‘Besides, I’ve a thousand dollars of your money the Captain gave me to hand you.’

  ‘My money?’

  ‘Yes. Mrs. Poster gave it to the Captain, and a letter for you. I have them in my pocket.’ He said in a friendly tone: ‘But I won’t give them to you till we’ve had a visit together.’

  ‘Money—and a letter,’ Ephraim muttered. Then he laughed, and Evered saw in a sharp astonishment that Ephraim—whose capacity for liquor had been the wonder of his college mates—was already again a little drunk. ‘From her, eh?’

  ‘We’ll have dinner,’ John insisted. Food was Ephraim’s need. ‘We’ll have a good dinner and you’ll feel better.’

  ‘Better?’ Ephraim echoed, and he chuckled in ironic mirth. ‘Better? Why, John, I feel fine! If I felt any better, I couldn’t bear it.’

  Nevertheless he submitted when Evered led him away; but when food was set before them—the chowder Evered suggested, as best for an empty and tormented stomach—Ephraim looked at it with loathing and barely tasted it. John, instead of pressing him to eat, began to talk, thinking to distract the other’s mind. He talked not of Ephraim but of himself; of his winter up the Kennebec, his meeting with Colonel Black, his weeks at Ellsworth. ‘You’d have had a time there,’ he said. ‘Lots of company, and more pretty girls than you could shake a stick at. I was a bull in a china shop, didn’t know which hand was which; but you’d have had them around you like flies.’ He had a cheerful ability to appreciate a humorous situation, even though the joke might be at his own expense; and he painted a ludicrous picture of himself, big and silent and ill at ease in a laughing company. ‘I was like an ox with a bunch of spring lambs cutting didos all around him, not knowing which way to move for fear of stepping on one of them.’ But Ephraim did not smile so he went back to his days of logging on the Connecticut, describing the hilarious rioting when one of the driving crews hit a river town; and he spoke of their years together in Cambridge. He returned at last to Colonel Black again, talking enthusiastically and eagerly, trying to win the other to forgetfulness.

  ‘It’s like managing a kingdom,’ he said. ‘Colonel Black thinks of townships as other men think of acres. I’ve found the work I want to do in the world.’ He added: ‘You’d better eat something, Eph. You’ll feel a lot better.’

  Ephraim grinned. ‘Why, I feel fine, John!’ he repeated. Then he said, with a dry twist to the words: ‘I’ve been in the land business myself. Made one deal that’s worth a twenty-thousand-dollar profit any time.’

  ‘Good man!’ Evered exclaimed. ‘You know, Eph, I always thought you had fine capacities.’

  The other’s lips writhed, and he wetted them. ‘Capacities?’ He laughed. ‘Capacities for rum and women!’ There was a sudden flame of anguish in his eyes. ‘Why in hell do women fall in love with me, John? I’m just a rat; a slimy, stinking, useless little rat—but they do, God damn their souls to hell!’

  Evered saw in the other now a need for speech that outweighed all other appetites. ‘Had all you want to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘All I want?’ Ephraim laughed, and then leaned forward tensely. ‘I’ve had all I want of the whole damned world!’ he said.

  Evered nodded. ‘We’ll go upstairs,’ he decided, and paid their charge and rose. Ephraim at his elbow said:

  ‘Bring the brandy along.’ He chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Lend me your cars, John; and I will a tale unfold.’

  III

  The two young men talked together for long hours that night, or rather Ephraim talked and John listened; and though John drank little, the level in the brandy bottle steadily sank lower. At first Evered tried to check Ephraim’s steady guzzling; but the other shook his head.

  ‘It’s no use, John,’ he said. ‘I’m finished. You can’t help me now. If you try to stop me, sooner or later I’ll get away from you. Be reasonable and I’ll let you watch me go on over the edge.’

  So Evered did not again interfere; and Ephraim told his friend the story of the year just gone, alternating between wretched bewailing of his own weakness and fierce accusations of Jenny.

  ‘It was my own fault for going home at all,’ he said. ‘Father didn’t want me to. He must have known all the time what she’d do to me. You remember I told you, John, about that likeness Mr. Hardy made of her, and how it seared me? I was right to be scared, John; but I wasn’t scared enough—or wise enough. And I remembered how beautiful she was, so I went home.’

  He looked at John keenly. ‘But you’ve probably heard the whole story?’ he said suspiciously. ‘How I killed my father? Have you?’

  John gravely shook his head. This wreck of a man needed the ease of speech, the mercy of confession.

  ‘God damn you, don’t lie to me!’ Ephraim cried. ‘Somebody’s sure to have told you.’

  But John said steadily: ‘Go on and tell me, Eph. If you want to.’

  ‘Oh, I want to, all right,’ Ephraim assured him. ‘One reason, I just want to show you what a damned fool you are to think there’s any good in me.’ He began, absurdly, to cry, wringing his hands, tears streaming down his face, a small, emaciated, twisting wreck of a man like a worm on a hook.

  ‘I’ll always think there’s good in you,’ John insisted. ‘Tell me, Eph.’

  So Ephraim told him. He tried in floundering ways to describe how little by little Jenny had provoked in him a passion beyond controlling. ‘And she did it on purpose!’ he cried. ‘God damn her whore’s soul to hell—she meant to do it, whispering that if I hadn’t gone away to college she would have married me, kissing me!’ He leaned forward tautly, speaking in a low tone, and he told the tale of that night when the mob tore down Ma Hogan’s house, and how Jenny kissed him at the end. ‘Maybe that doesn’t sound like much to you,’ he confessed. ‘Maybe you think I was crazy to think so much about it. I’ve had plenty of kisses—yes, and liked them too; but I didn’t like that one! No sir!’ He filled his glass again, swallowed a burning draft. ‘It was awful, John. It was like drinking hellfire!’

  And he said: ‘After that I decided to go away, but she wouldn’t let me go.’ He hesitated, as though for the first time ashamed of his own words. ‘There was a hired girl worked for us, slept in the attic. Her name was Ruth Green. I used to go up to her room at night when Jenny’d left me crazy. Ruth was a nice girl. I hoped I’d get her in a family way so I’d have to many her; but I never did.’ He said abjectedly: ‘Maybe I’m not man enough. I wasn’t man enough to marry her without being made to, anyway.’

  Evered offered no comment, wondering how he could help this lost man he loved.

  ‘Then father got sick,’ Ephraim explained. ‘And I hoped he’d die—and so did she. She told me one night she’d marry me if he died.’ He shuddered helplessly. ‘She kissed me again and told me so, and when she kissed me I
felt as if someone had hit me across the mouth with a red-hot poker.

  But father got well, and after that for a long time I kept away from her.’ He said shrewdly: ‘Up to then, John, she was in love with me. I know that. You can’t fool me about that. But after that, I can see now, she hated me. She tried to get me to sleep with her, tried every way she knew; but she hated me all the same.

  ‘And she fixed it so I had the handling of some of father’s money, and she talked me into buying a bond with it, on a township way up in the woods. When father found that out, he called me a thief; but the way he found it out, someone wanted to buy it, offered him a profit on it. So he went up-river to look it over, and he took me along.’

  He stared blankly at the big man, lost for a moment in his own thoughts. ‘You might as well know the whole of it,’ he said then. ‘The night before we were due to start, she made love to me till I was crazy, trying to get me to take her. I didn’t. I never did, John; not when I knew it. I’m no good. There’s no backbone in me. But I wouldn’t sleep with my father’s wife! Not if I knew it!

  ‘But that night I went up to Ruth’s room, in the dark. She was Jenny’s size, like her in a lot of ways. And we didn’t talk at all. And when it came daylight, Jenny was there in bed with me. She’d sent Ruth home and taken her place, in the dark, before I went up there.’

  Evered said no word, but he thought grimly that Ephraim must be lying; for the word he said was incredible—or seemed to be. Such a woman as this drunk man described was outside the range of Evered’s experience. She had no relation to reality.

  Ephraim saw the doubt in the other’s eyes; for he said quickly: ‘You think I’m drunk. Well, I’m drunk all right, and I’ll be drunker soon, and I hope I’ll be drunk till I die and I hope that won’t be long. But she was there, John. She was there when I woke up, there in bed with me.