The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  While they ate supper and afterward during the moonlit homeward drive, when Meg and Jenny, sitting in the cart bed with the younger children, sang softly, he said scarce any word. The moon was bright, so that he could see Jenny’s face as she sang. Her voice was a firm, clear soprano; Meg’s a warm contralto. Their tones blended in a rich perfection, and their two voices played on him, just as a glass may be set vibrating by a fiddle string. He had long since taught himself not to think of Jenny’s beauty; but tonight those lessons were forgotten. There had been a time in his life when he was no anchorite. His thoughts ran like unbridled horses now.

  III

  When they came home, John said Pat would drive Elder Pittridge and Margaret back to town; but Meg protested: ‘Oh, no, John! Line and I will walk. It’s such a fine night.’ And when he would have insisted, she cried laughingly: ‘Be tactful, John! After all, we may prefer to walk home!’ She smiled. ‘We might even be a little sentimental, in the moonlight.’

  John laughed. ‘All right, if you want it so. But I can’t imagine old Line getting sentimental, even with you, Meg!’

  Elder Pittridge bit his lip in angry resentment. He was by almost ten years the oldest of them, a gaunt man, his black hair well streaked with gray, his face deep-lined, but the reminder tonight annoyed him. Even Meg cried: ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say!’ She took his arm and they turned toward the door.

  They were in no hurry. These two, through the friendship for John and Jenny which had drawn them together, had long since arrived on an understanding and comfortable basis; they could be silent together without embarrassment when they chose. It was so tonight. His thoughts, though they led nowhere but simply raced in a ceaseless circle, nevertheless made him forget everything except Jenny with her soft hair loosely shadowing her brow, Jenny with her eyes so wide and open and honest, Jenny whose mouth was like a child’s soft eager mouth, Jenny whose quiet tones could start a deep vibration in a man, Jenny whose flesh bore a bruise John had set there, Jenny who loved John no more. The thought of her filled him tonight as he walked homeward in the soft south wind and the moon.

  Margaret at first showed no desire for speech, quiet beside him, her eyes straight ahead as his were. Only when they came opposite the house Isaiah had built for Jenny, she turned and looked up at him and saw his deep abstraction; and after a moment then she said:

  ‘Line, I think I will tell you my great news.’

  He roused almost with a start. ‘News? Oh, yes, Meg. What news?’

  She asked: ‘Do you know—of course you do—Cap’n Pawl?’

  ‘Yes. Not well, but I know him.’ Captain Chester Pawl was a Searsport man, and his Lucy brig plied in the lumber trade. He was one of those who had been satisfied, during the speculation in timber lands, to make a modest fortune and then turn to less profitable but more substantial activities. He was a few years younger than Elder Pittridge, who knew him only as a bluff individual no different from a dozen or a score of other seamen.

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t know him better,’ Margaret said. ‘Father handles his law business, and he usually has dinner with us when he comes to town. His mother’s a wonderful old lady, and their home in Searsport is delightful. We’ve been down there several times. I know you’ll like her.’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘What is it, Margaret? What’s your news?’ ‘Cap’n Pawl has asked me to marry him.’ Margaret explained. ‘He’s away, won’t be back till next month. He didn’t try to persuade me, didn’t argue or anything. He just told me he wanted to marry me, and said I could take time to think it over and let him know when he comes back. But I’ve decided. I decided today—seeing how happy John and Jenny are together—that I would.’ She made a little mirthful sound. ‘So you’re the first one to know.’

  He was struck by the irony of this; that she should marry Captain Pawl because John and Jenny were so happy, when in fact their life together was shattered now for good and all. ‘Have you told Jenny?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no one but you.’ She added: ‘In fact, I didn’t really decide until a moment ago. I’ve been thinking about it all day.’ They approached her door and paused.

  ‘Tell Jenny,’ he urged. If Meg told Jenny, then Jenny might confess her own unhappiness; might save Meg from this marriage which—since her consent to it was based on a mistake—must be wrong. ‘Tell Jenny. See what she says.’

  But Margaret shook her head. ‘No. No, I must tell Cap’n Pawl before anyone else knows.’ She added: ‘Yet I had to tell you, Line. I was so happy in my decision, in having made up my mind. Marriage can be a sort of rescue, don’t you think—a safe harbor against so many storms.’

  ‘Will you still live in Bangor?’

  ‘No, in Searsport, with his mother—unless sometimes I go on voyages with him.’

  ‘We’ll miss you—we three, John and Jenny and I. We’ve done so much together.’

  She said: ‘I know. But such pleasant years don’t last, Line. Soon or late there always comes a change.’ She added in a strange, still urgency: ‘I hope you’ll find some fine girl and marry, too, Line. You ought to. You’d be so much happier, and safer, too.’

  After he had said good night to her, walking on to his own home, he puzzled over those astonishing words. It was as though she had said, explicitly: ‘I am marrying to find safety, Line. You had better do the same.’ But—what danger was it from which she sought to escape? What possible danger threatened her—or him?

  3

  SOON after that day at Pushaw

  Lake, and without having seen Jenny again, Elder Pittridge went to Augusta to attend the meeting of the State Temperance Society, and to seek among the legislators converts to the cause. He stayed there several weeks, coming for the first time into personal contact with Neal Dow. Dow, a man of means, born of Quaker parents and reared in a fine tradition of decency and truth, early enlisted in the fight to drive rum-sellers out of Maine. When he was thirty he assisted in organizing the State Temperance Society, but its willingness to compromise and to accept half measures did not satisfy him; and in 1838 he and those who felt as he did founded the Maine Temperance Union, devoted to the cause of total abstinence. The following year in his home city of Portland he secured a referendum on the question of licensing the liquor trade. He lost that fight, but three years later he won a similar referendum.

  Then he plunged into the battle for a state-wide law, appealing not only to the legislators but to the voters, flooding the state—largely at his own expense—with tracts and pamphlets so that he was able to say years later: ‘Maine was made a prohibition state by sowing it knee-deep with Temperance literature.’

  He circulated, too, petitions to the Legislature; and when Elder Pittridge now met him in Augusta he was seeking support for a bill designed to curb the traffic. The measure had passed the House in February, but it had been defeated in the Senate; and taking that defeat as a challenge to greater efforts he now threw all his energies and a considerable part of his fortune into the fight, determined to turn that first defeat into an eventual victory.

  He told Elder Pittridge success was sure. ‘But first we must purge the legislative councils of those who oppose us.’ His utterances rang with such passion that the Elder thought he meant physical violence, but Dow added: ‘We’ll clean these halls as a farmer cleans his tie-up—but with ballots, not with shovels.’ He was at the time about forty years old, of commanding physique and with an eloquent tongue. He wore side whiskers, his brow was high, his hair was parted on the right with a lock usually hanging over his left eye. His eyes had an extraordinary burning quality; and the ferocity of his habitual zealous concentration had carved perpendicular wrinkles between his heavy brows.

  Elder Pittridge was himself set on fire by the flame in this man. He felt himself cleansed and purified by his new loyalty; and Jenny drifted into the background of his thoughts. Here in Neal Dow he found a leader to whom, forsaking all others, he could cleave. But when early in October he returned to Bangor
it was to find that John had gone away up-river for an indefinite stay. The demand for lumber was in these years steadily increasing; and the Bingham lands were being logged on an expanding scale. John went ostensibly to oversee the setting up of camps for the winter’s operations, and his going was thus natural enough; but to Elder Pittridge his departure for what might be a long absence seemed proof that the rupture between him and Jenny remained unhealed, and this realization revived those treacherous thoughts which Neal Dow’s magnetic charm had for a while driven into the background. The Elder wished to see Jenny. He told himself this was because he wanted to tell her about Neal Dow and to report what was happening in Augusta; but he knew in his heart that this was not the only reason, that it was in fact no more than a pretext. Doubts restrained him, doubts of himself. He went instead to Margaret Saladine, and she welcomed him happily.

  ‘I began to think you wouldn’t be here for my wedding,’ she declared. ‘Cap’n Pawl and I will be married on the fourteenth, you know.’

  He asked smilingly: ‘So it’s not a secret now?’

  ‘He’s coming, he and his mother, tomorrow, to stay with us two or three days,’ she explained. ‘Will you have dinner with us one day? I do want you to know him, Line.’

  ‘Of course.’ He hesitated. ‘Meg, they tell me John is gone up-river.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her tone was shadowed. ‘He’ll be away all winter, Jenny says.’

  ‘All winter?’ Their eyes met, and she nodded; and he said lamely: ‘She’ll miss him.’

  ‘She’ll keep busy. She does so much.’

  He tried to laugh, changed the subject. ‘Well, so you’re really going to be married, and our good times together, the four of us, you and me and Jenny and John, are done.’

  ‘I told you, such things have to end after a while.’ And she said again, gravely watching him: ‘Line, you ought to marry too.’

  He laughed the suggestion aside, but he faced the fact, during the days that followed, that with John away for weeks or months he could no longer easily see Jenny, could not without provoking the clatter of loose tongues go freely to the house. He tried to persuade himself that as John’s closest friend he had certain privileges; but his guilty certainty that it was not friendliness for John which made him want to see Jenny prevented his accepting his own arguments.

  He saw her first at Judge Saladine’s house when they and others of Meg’s friends gathered to dine and to greet Captain Pawl. Jenny was there before him, and she met him easily and without restraint; and when he said: ‘How are the boys? I’ve been meaning to get out to see them as soon as I could find the time,’ she smiled in full understanding.

  ‘Don’t apologize for not coming, Line,’ she said. ‘There never need be any explanations between you and me.’

  She wore during the few moments before they went in to dinner a gaiety he had never seen in her before, her lively tongue keeping not only him but others laughing; and this provoked in him a quicker wit to respond to hers. Her beauty moved him too. Her dark gown with snug bodice and full skirt was cut low in a deep curve from shoulder to shoulder, and he wondered as a man will what feminine magic kept it in position. Her hair was dressed smoothly, with soft curls on the left side. Her cheek was bright, and a warmer hue tinted the ivory of her throat and bosom, exquisitely fleshed. To look at her left him breathless. There was about her something ethereal and remote, as though she were a goddess to be worshipped from a distance; but when they went in to dinner, she said a word that brought her suddenly within a man’s reach. Margaret had asked him to take her in; and they followed Judge Saladine, who bore Captain Pawl’s mother on his arm. Jenny whispered in delicious amusement that the switch which old Mrs. Pawl wore was slipping.

  ‘It will be down around her ear before long,’ she predicted, and she added: ‘And did you ever see such an impressive bustle?’ She looked up at him, her eyes twinkling mischievously. ‘You know, Line, if I’d been trying to find a name for a bustle I’d have called it a rump-us!’

  He was by the indelicacy of this jest at once startled and excited. She who had seemed so far beyond his reach was suddenly a flesh-and- blood woman—and therefore attainable. Until woman herself—in generous love or in light wantonness—descends to earth, man by habit sets her on a pedestal. Jenny had always seemed to him so completely and perfectly decorous that not even his thoughts could touch her; but now she had put herself within his reach, and his thoughts ran a hot race. He talked for a while only to her, his eyes devouring her, till he saw Margaret’s troubled glance upon him and turned to old Mrs. Pawl on his other side.

  Afterward, when the ladies withdrew, he cultivated Captain Pawl. The man Margaret would marry was heavy without being fat, with powerful physical force in his every line; but in Margaret’s presence or when he spoke of her to Elder Pittridge now, he became altogether gentle, even his voice subtly changing, so that he testified in a thousand ways his tender and devoted reverence for the lovely woman who was to be his bride.

  When awhile after they joined the others the evening ended, Jenny was one of the first to leave. Pat Tierney called for her, and Elder Pittridge, though he wished to offer her his escort, stood silent and watched her depart. She made smiling good-byes to them all, but when her eyes met his he thought he read a personal message in them. He stayed till most of the others were gone, and Margaret, bidding him good night, asked smilingly:

  ‘Do you like my Captain, Line?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, honestly and gladly. ‘Yes, Meg, I do.’

  She pressed his hand and let him go.

  II

  He and Jenny met again at Margaret’s wedding. After the Captain and his bride had driven away, they drew together, and he spoke regretfully of the fact that John could not be here.

  ‘I don’t think he wanted to be,’ Jenny admitted. ‘He and Meg were fond of each other, you know.’ She smiled. ‘I think he even thought she was in love with him. Men are so ready to believe that of a woman.’

  He wondered whether she meant to warn him against such a presumption. ‘We used to joke about that, all of us,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I know, but I don’t think it was quite a joke to John,’ she insisted. ‘The day she told us she was to be married, after she was gone he fairly raged, said she was throwing herself away, till I showed him how absurd he was. He was sure she would never be happy.’

  ‘She certainly looked happy today, and—peaceful, as though she were finding something she had always wanted!’

  ‘She found refuge,’ Jenny said, and he remembered that Meg had said the same thing. Then she added frankly: ‘She has always loved John, you know. He’s quite right about that—though I wouldn’t tell him so. And her feeling for John—since he was my husband—made her unhappy. Now when she has taken this definite and final step, she is at least at peace in her own mind.’

  The many voices around them merged in one general note of which now and then a word or two were audible. ‘Lovely bride’ ‘Able man’ ‘Should have married long ago.’ ‘At Searsport’ ‘A dear old lady, but a tyrant!’ With a remote part of his mind, he heard these words and phrases; but they seemed to come from a long way off. What Jenny had said made many things clear to him, just as when a lightning flash momentarily illuminates the scene at night, trees, buildings, hills and rivers are for an instant fixed upon the retina in their mutual relations, persisting for seconds after darkness comes again. In the light of Jenny’s word he saw with an extraordinary clarity not only that Meg had long loved John, but also that Meg must somehow have known that John and Jenny were no longer one. While they were united, Meg could love John safely enough, knowing him altogether another’s; but if he were not altogether Jenny’s—then there were dangers for Meg in loving him. From those dangers she had fled to marriage with Captain Pawl.

  For a moment he saw thus clearly; and then Jenny said: The boys have missed you. You haven’t been out to the house for so long.’

  ‘I spent some time in Augusta.’

/>   ‘I know.’

  He told her, almost absently: ‘I met a great man, over there, Jenny. Neal Dow, of Portland. He’s a living, walking inspiration. You know of him.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him, of course.’

  ‘He’ll come here to speak, some day. You’ll see then what I mean. Jenny, he’s sure the law can be passed, next time, in another year or two.’ She said wisely: ‘It will have to be such a law that the legislators can still get rum to drink! You know, everyone thinks liquor is bad for the other man, but not for himself.’

  He nodded. ‘He knows that, so this first law will be a mild one, chiefly planned to put the principle of the control of rum-selling on the statute books. He proposes a law to license dealers, and to provide that they can sell only by the barrel. Poor men can’t afford to buy more than a few drinks at a time, so that will protect them against themselves—and still let those who can afford it buy liquor.’ He added: ‘And the penalties will be light, almost negligible. But once this law is passed and the principle established, the next law will be stronger.’

  Because in this discussion they were on safely impersonal grounds—so that he could have the happiness of being with her and of talking to her without any sense of guilt—he talked for long, earnestly and eloquently, trying to blind himself to her beauty and to the softness in her eyes, till she said at last, interrupting him in mid-flight, forcing him back to more personal things:

  ‘John was sorry not to see you before he went up-river.’