The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘Which one of you was it?’

  The man, instinctively withdrawing at Evered’s advance, cried hotly:

  ‘Come on, boys, let’s kill the bastard!’

  Evered, as though this were enough identification, leaped forward and struck his assailant a crashing blow in the face. He felt a sharp pain as the bones in his hand let go, but he felt too the grate of bone in the man’s shattered jaw. Then others joined the affray, and there was a strangling arm around his neck and he was down, and boots were thumping at his ribs. He pulled one enemy under him, kneeing the writhing body, smashing at the other’s face while blows rained on his own head and shoulders; and the world was lost in a swimming mist and that man with the broken jaw was screaming somewhere, his screams a hollow, dreadful sound that gave John a hungry satisfaction.

  He himself knew only by after report what in these brief moments he accomplished; but the tale of it would be told and retold, and would become such a legend in the town that not again in his lifetime would he have to meet any physical challenge. One man, as a result of his first blow, wore a twisted face and a wry neck as long as he lived. Another had a shattered arm, and a toothless gap in the front of his mouth where John’s fist had landed; and the third, leaping on Evered from behind, was flung over his head and hurled headlong, smashing against the steps of Barker’s store so that he did not walk for six weeks’ time.

  In that confusion in the dark, and before any rescue could come to him or any man could interfere, Evered himself—having beaten the man on the ground to insensibility—arose on wide-braced legs to look for a new antagonist. He himself had not gone scot free. His right ear was torn so that blood curtained his neck on that side; his hand was broken by the weight of the blows he himself had dealt; and there was a cut across his scalp just above the hair line with a skin flap hanging down, so that his face was a crimson mask and blood was in his eyes.

  Yet he came to his feet, and braced his legs, and dared the world; and when helpful hands touched him, at first he fought them all away, till his senses cleared and he yielded to their ministrations.

  They led him into a near-by house where Doctor Mason came to repair his hurts, and John found an old friend in a tall fair woman whom lie had not seen for many years. She helped the doctor with bandages; and then Pat Tierney, who had heard of the affray, came to take John home. The night air brought John back to lucidity again, and he remembered that Jenny must not without warning see him in this state, so he waited outside the house while Pat went in to tell her that he was not as badly hurt as he seemed. At Pat’s word she came swift to the door to meet her husband, and with a bandage on his brow and another on his hand, and limping from that kick which had taken him unawares, he faced her there. She caught him in her arms, crying out in tenderness, and she and Pat led him up the stairs; and when Pat was gone she helped John out of his tom and soiled and muddy clothes and so to bed.

  Yet, though all she did was gentle and assuaging, after the first moment her words were not. She rated him for his folly in going down to the docks at such an hour, scolded him in a petulant indignation, said he should have remembered her and the dear burden she bore and protected her from such a shocking sight as he now presented. He guessed that it was her anxiety for him which prompted her to anger now and tried to reassure her, but she demanded, looking at him in a sudden sharp suspicion:

  ‘Where did this happen, John? Who were the men? Why did they fight you?’

  He could only guess, and he was too fair-minded to accuse any man without certainty, so he said he did not know who they were. She asked: ‘Well, who tied up your hurts?’

  He told her the fight had begun at the corner of Exchange and Washington Streets, by Barker’s store. ‘They took me into a house there,’ he said, ‘and sent for Doctor Mason.’

  She looked at the bandage around his brow. ‘Did Doctor Mason wear petticoats’ she insisted in sharp accusation. ‘For this is a strip torn from one!’

  So he explained: ‘No, a woman in the house there bandaged me.’ And he added: ‘I knew her years ago, up on the Connecticut, when I was driving logs down that river. She used to run a boarding house for lumbermen.’

  Jenny asked, suddenly intent, yet without raising her voice: ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Lena Tempest,’ he said.

  She spoke softly. ‘Is she the one who pretends to do laundry work, to hide her real trade?’

  ‘Why, I don’t know.’

  Her face was suddenly congested with rage. ‘Well, I do! And I wonder you dare come from her bed to mine!’

  ‘Jenny!’ he cried. ‘You know better than that!’

  Her toneless voice made her fury the more dreadful. ‘I know that since, I, because I must bear your child, am now all misshapen and hideous so that I mean nothing to you, you go to this woman’s house, and involve yourself there in some bestial brawl, probably fighting for her favors, and come home pretending to be hurt, seeking my sympathy!’

  He saw the unreasoning passion of jealousy in her, urged wretchedly: ‘Jenny, please!’

  ‘Please! Please! Please!’ she mocked. ‘You can’t lie to me! You’re like all men, like the fool in his folly, forever seeking after the strange woman. Her lips drop honey, John, but her end is bitter as wormwood! Oh, men are all animals—and when one of us women, because she loved him, becomes ugly and swollen like a blister ready to burst—why, then you go looking for another!’

  ‘You know that’s nonsense, darling!’ He sat up weakly in bed, trying to catch her hand; but she drew back, evading him. ‘You never were so beautiful to me as now!’ he told her warmly. She laughed in bitter scorn, and he said: ‘Of course you can’t understand a woman like her. No good woman can. But she’s not so bad as most of them.’

  ‘I understood her well enough, long ago! She did our washing here, till I sent her away because she tried to debauch Ephraim! I let her rent my house, not knowing what she was, till she gave it such a reputation that no decent person would buy it, and Isaiah made her a deed to it to be rid of its contaminations forever. And now my own husband comes to boast to me how fine she is!’ Her voice was full of an acid scorn. She demanded in mock humility: ‘Will you set her up as an example for me, John? Do you wish me to fill my house with wanton girls so that I can entertain a pack of brawling, whoring men? Is that what you want your wife to do?’

  ‘Jenny please be reasonable!’

  ‘Reasonable?’ She laughed in a dry, chilling way. ‘Am I to be as reasonable as your fine Lena? Is that what you mean?’ The room moved dizzily around him, and he fell wearily back upon the pillow. ‘Do you want me to invite every passer-by to my bed, as she does?’ she insisted. ‘Is that it? Have I not given you all the money a man could want? Are you so greedy that you wish me to earn more for you, even in that way, John?’

  Lying with his eyes closed, unable to speak, he heard her come near him; and he opened his eyes and looked up at her and then drew his arm defensively across his eyes again, unable to face the haggard rage in hers. Till suddenly, all melting in a shamed contrition, she threw herself upon him, catching his head in her arms, close against her breast, sobbing piteously, small and helpless.

  ‘Oh, John, John,’ she sobbed, ‘what makes me do it? Why am I so mean to you, my darling? John, John, John, I love you so! Please, darling, I didn’t mean it! Please, I love you, I love you, I love you!’

  In quick, grateful forgiveness his arms encircled her, soothing and assuring her; and the wounds her words had left were healed by their mutual tears.

  V

  There were no more of these storms. As though all the venom in her had by that explosion been released, Jenny was thereafter always gentle and serene, looking happily forward to their baby’s coming; and as a man will, clinging to peace, John forgot that bitter hour, just as he had forgotten the dark things Ephraim told him about her long ago. They were happy together as autumn choked the last springs of life out of the world, and the river closed and Bangor entered its qui
et winter months, and the days and nights were coldly still across the snow-muffled land where the horses’ hooves made only a thumping rhythm, and sleighbells sang on every passing vehicle.

  The baby was born in January, a boy, hearty and fine. For John’s father and his older brother they named him Dan; and watching his wife as she gave the child her breast, Evered was filled with such pride and love as he had never known. Looking from the baby to him with smiling, eager eyes, she might demand: ‘Isn’t he sweet, John? Isn’t he wonderful?’ And when they stood by the small crib at night before turning to their own bed, she whispered: ‘I want another, many others, John. Soon, darling. Soon!’

  8

  JENNY nursed her baby for

  only two months, weeping when her milk began to fail; but Ruth’s older sister, though she had a baby of her own, was bountifully able to provide for Dan too, and she came to live awhile with them. Spring surged strongly up the river. The ice unlocked its barriers, the last drifts dwindled and were gone, the sun woke buds on every bough to greening life again.

  As soon as the frost was well out of the ground, the new house was begun; the huge timbers were sized and fitted and the frame raised. John and Jenny savored every passing day, going often to watch the work or to admire what had been done. Sometimes they rode, Jenny in a fine new riding dress of ribbed gambroon, which he thought made her more beautiful than ever; and when they had inspected the new house they might go on along the farm roads, cantering side by side, a singing happiness in them. Sometimes they took the carriage, and then Dan went with them in Jenny’s arms. His cheerful company accented their happiness together, and John found Jenny more lovely day by day, ripely ardent as the tide of summer rose.

  II

  Jenny with a group of her friends, Mrs. Thatcher, old Mrs. Harlow and twenty others, had for years been accustomed to meet regularly as a sewing circle, gathering at the various homes in turn, sewing and talking for a while, with cakes and tea and even a glass of wine if they met at Mrs. Thatcher’s or at some other house, where Jenny’s own rigorous principles did not prevail, to end the afternoon. Jenny never served wine except to old Mrs. Harlow, who used to say that Doctor Rich told her a little was good for her.

  ‘You may have it, of course,’ Jenny told her. ‘But I never trust a man who lets his doctor persuade him to drink. He’s so anxious to find a reason why the same doctor should prescribe for him again.’

  The old woman laughed with her familiar little mirthful chirp. ‘Don’t try to reform me, my dear,’ she advised. ‘I’m a lost woman, much too old to be saved.’

  This conversation suggested to Jenny the idea which at a meeting at her home she eventually proposed. Before doing so she sought the advice of Elder Pittridge, who had already demonstrated his capacity for organization and leadership, and whose earnestness in the temperance cause had brought him and Jenny together.

  ‘It just seems to me a pity,’ she told him, ‘that a group of women like us, intelligent and thoughtful and well intentioned, should waste our time and energy in many little ways when, if we were organized, there are so many things we could hope to accomplish.’

  He agreed with her, and it was his suggestions which took concrete form when under Jenny’s leadership the sewing circle adopted a formal name. They called themselves ‘The Union Female Education Society’ and adopted a statement of purposes, determining to concentrate upon ‘the elevation and amelioration of the condition of destitute and degraded women in this city and vicinity.’ They began at the same time to aspire to found some day an institution ‘to educate the poor and ignorant and to reclaim fallen ones.’ For this, funds would be necessary, and Jenny was active in arranging a concert at which Mrs. Lemon sang, a lecture by Mr. Asa Walker of California, and finally a fair at the Bangor House in March after Dan was born which raised twelve hundred dollars.

  Their first successcs encouragcd them to organize the Bangor Female Moral Society, for ‘the prevention of licentiousness by showing in every proper way its fearfully universal and soul-destroying influence.’ Margaret Saladine had returned to Bangor in May, and when she came to call on Jenny, she was easily persuaded to join this group.

  ‘Of course, Paris has made me see that morals are largely a matter of geography,’ she smilingly confessed. ‘Certainly some of the things they do over there we would never do here; but all the same, it’s worthwhile to have standards of some sort and to live by them. Any standard is better than none.’

  There began this summer to be a real friendship between her and Jenny which John saw with pleasure. Margaret was a merry young woman, but she had too a steady strength. ‘She sees the fun even in serious things,’ Jenny told John one day. ‘At first that startled me, but after you know her, she’s fine.’

  She liked to ask Margaret questions about Paris, and these two spent long hours together. John might come home and find them either upstairs admiring small Dan or waiting in the big living room for his own appearance.

  ‘I should have gone long ago,’ Meg sometimes said. ‘But I wanted to see you, John!’ She made no secret of her liking for him, said Jenny was lucky to have won him; but she was so open in this that Jenny was amused and pleased rather than in any least degree disturbed.

  Meg described one day, to both of them, her efforts to teach John to dance at Ellsworth the summer before; and they laughed wholeheartedly at the picture she drew. ‘It would have been quite as easy to train a bear!’ she declared. ‘He touched me as though he were handling live coals, and he seemed to have as many feet as a lobster—and no idea how to use them.’ She tried to persuade John to help her show Jenny how that dancing lesson had proceeded; but he would not, so she played his part, holding an imaginary partner in her gingerly extended arms, stumbling around the room while they rocked with mirth.

  After she had gone, Jenny said: ‘She’s so nice! I wonder why she hasn’t married before now?’

  ‘She will soon,’ John predicted.

  There were, in fact, young men enough in eager attendance on her, but none whom she preferred; and the friendship between these three continued and drew closer. The very differences between her and Jenny appeared to make them the more congenial. Jenny was much the smaller of the two, with dark hair and an ivory skin, quiet, speaking always softly. Meg was fair and tall and slender, and she laughed easily, and her voice had a warm, husky tone. John, proudly secure in his estate as husband and father, was no longer afraid of her; and he liked her well.

  II

  The winter Dan was born had been a quiet one, so far as business was concerned. John had only routine to attend. Colonel Black wrote from Boston that signs of a coming financial panic multiplied, and in Bangor men were uneasy, resenting the law which Congress had passed to prohibit the circulation of bills of a denomination less than five dollars. There was talk of defying that law, and risking the penalties attached. The secret anxiety which many began to feel provoked a restless eagerness to see active business once more resumed, and early in April some individuals, anxious to reopen water communication with the outside world, tried to shatter the ice in the river with gunpowder—and had trouble for their pains. When Congress voted to spend seventy-five thousand dollars a year for two years on the building of Fort Knox, opposite Bucksport, some thought the sums involved would give a fillip to business; but the temporary closing of the fine new Bangor House after a dispute between the proprietors and the landlord depressed the town. The river opened, and in June a hundred vessels were waiting at one time to load lumber, and the sailors combined with men just out of the woods or off the drive to make the lower part of town a roistering bedlam day by day; but the market for timber lands lagged, potential buyers and sellers no longer crowded the Coffee House, and there was little speculation done.

  When the Stillwater Company advertised a ‘great sale of permits, mill privileges, lands and lots,’ at Lower Stillwater, seven miles above Bangor, the auction to be held late in June, Colonel Black and Judge Saladine and Mr. Richardson of th
e Commercial Bank and every sober citizen predicted that the sale would be a dismal failure. A careful map of the property to be sold, with every lot indicated and projected improvements drawn in, had been prepared, and the legend said largely:

  The advantages of this place for the location of Mills and Factories are not surpassed by those of any other place in New England. There is an abundant and never-failing supply of water. The advantages of the ground for factory sites are very superior, furnishing at a slight expense a solid stone foundation. Inexhaustible supplies of the finest pine timber are furnished by the Penobscot and its tributaries, the margins of which and the country beyond are thickly covered for between two and three hundred miles with timber which must pass these mills to arrive at market.

  The map was circulated weeks in advance, and the coming sale was discussed everywhere; but even Sam Smith, the boldest speculator of them all, said warily that the demand for land had lagged. He was sure it would revive again; but he counselled caution in the current lull. Such men as Ned Richardson, with his banker’s point of view, were sure the sale would fall completely flat, and Colonel Black and John agreed.

  So the event confounded pessimists and optimists alike. In advance of the day set, private sales proved so encouraging that the organizers of the company decided to back their hopes to the uttermost, and before the auction a banquet was spread for everyone who cared to attend. John and Colonel Black, with no intention to purchase, nevertheless joined the throng, and the banquet and its preliminaries were so prodigal—and so riotous—that the Colonel said cheerfully:

  ‘My God, John, if they just sell enough lots to pay for the champagne they’ll do well. Look yonder!’ He pointed to where half a dozen waiters were hard at work opening bottles and emptying them into wide tubs out of which the encircling crowd—speculators, business men, brokers come from Boston for the occasion, sailors and seamen, lumbermen fresh from their winter in the woods or from the drive, and every rag-tag and bobtail in town—dipped the sparkling wine in mugs and drank it like water.