Dan exulted in the prospect, but his father wrote that there was some question about the others. Will was still bound to become a doctor; and for three or four years he had been almost constantly with Doctor Mason, learning to compound prescriptions, visiting patients, reading every volume the Doctor could put into his hands.
‘So I don’t know about Will.’ John explained. ‘He’s anxious to make a beginning at his doctoring. He’s grown a beard to give himself a properly mature look.’ Dan himself had a mustache, satisfyingly dark and conspicuous, and he touched it lightly as he read. ‘And he imitates Doctor Mason, talks a little ponderously. Be careful not to smile at this when you come home. I’ve assured him that what with accidents and wet and cold and stomachaches, he’ll have patients enough in our woods gang to give him practice if he goes with us; but I’m afraid he’ll go his own gait when the time comes.’
Of Tom, too, there was some doubt. ‘I’d be as well pleased if Tom did go to sea for a year or two,’ John said in another letter. ‘He’s inclined to run wild, a headstrong youngster. He seems to have a remarkable attraction for young ladies, too—even for those somewhat older than himself. Your mother and I see him very little.’ He added, as he often did, a message from Jenny. ‘Your mother sends all her love and counts the days till you come home. You’re the oldest, and mothers always have a special place in their hearts for their oldest sons. She’s dreading next winter, dreading your going away, so it may be just as well if Tom—and Will too—stay here with her; but we’ll see.’
When Dan came home Jenny was forty-seven years old, and time had set its mark on her. Not only was her face increasingly lined, but the life had gone out of the skin on her cheeks and on her hands, so that it was dry and dull, as the skin of an orange or a lemon becomes dull and lifeless when the natural oils have evaporated; and there were blue shadows under her eyes. Under her jawbones on either side the skin sagged, while her throat was deeply lined. Something in her eyes suggested that she had suffered pain; and Dan, seeing this, felt toward her more tenderness than he had felt for years, and during his first days at home he tried in every way to please her and to make her smile.
One day through the dining room window he saw her on the lawn, while she looked off toward the river as though unseeingly. He came out to her and she turned to him with a faint start, and smiled a little and he asked on sudden impulse:
‘Mother, are you all right?’
‘Why, yes, of course, Dan. Why?’
‘You were just sitting here, thinking.’
‘Hardly even thinking,’ she confessed in her patient tones. ‘Just sitting here.’
‘You looked unhappy.’
‘None of us is completely happy, Dan.’
‘Are you well? I mean, really well?’
‘Oh, I suppose so. No woman my age is really well.’ Dan knew only vaguely what she meant, and his ignorance kept him from pushing the question. ‘I’m well enough,’ she said.
‘You’re not sick, are you?’
‘Not in a physical way, no.’
He said in half impatience: ‘What other ways are there?’
‘None, perhaps,’ she assented. ‘Although I sometimes think that one of these days wise doctors will be more concerned with ills of the heart and spirit than of the body.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your heart and spirit,’ he protested, almost angrily, trying to stifle the irritation, the faintly defensive antagonism which she so often aroused in him. ‘Your heart and spirit are fine!’
She smiled. ‘I wonder if people who are dying of a broken heart show it?’ she murmured.
He laughed, conscious of the harsh note in his laughter, trying to mend it. He wished to protest, to say hotly: ‘Why do you talk like that when father and all of us just spend our time trying to keep you happy?’ But he knew that if he did, she would say something critical of his father. He felt baffled and helpless and half-angry.
‘I’ve been worried about you,’ he said, almost curtly, ‘afraid you were sick. I’m glad you’re all right.’
‘Oh, I’m quite all right, I suppose,’ she agreed.
IV
With her he tried to be kind, but one day he confessed explosively to Will: ‘She makes me so damned mad. I can’t do anything with her!’
‘She’s having change of life,’ Will explained. ‘Doctor Mason told me about it. It makes her nervous and short of breath and she has hot flashes, so she feels hot all over, the way your foot feels when you go to sleep.’
Dan said wonderingly: ‘Hot? Her hands are cold when you touch them, and her lips are cold and dry when she kisses you. They always used to be warm and moist.’ He shivered faintly, with a sense of repulsion he could not down. ‘I used to like to kiss her, but I don’t any more.’ Will told him that women slept ill at these times; that their nerves were forever on edge; that sometimes they actually became insane; and Dan asked: ‘Do they get over it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Will said. ‘They’re fine again, after a while; but she’s really sick now. She can’t help herself.’
‘I hate the way she talks about father. It’s so damned hard on him.’
Will said wisely: ‘He understands about it. I’ve told him.’ Will, a year younger than Dan, nevertheless wore with that fine beard of his a sober manner and a maturity of bearing which prevented Dan’s finding anything ludicrous in the thought of Will’s telling their father anything. As a result of Will’s explanation, Dan was thereafter even more gentle toward Jenny; but Tom, always inclined to be hot-headed, had no patience with her.
‘What if she does feel bad, some of the time?’ he protested. ‘I guess everyone does, as far as that goes; but the rest of us don’t go around making everyone miserable. I’ve had about all of it I’m going to stand!’ Nevertheless he kept his temper and held his tongue, until a day in late July. They were all together that evening at the supper table. Jenny’s rose garden had been for many years her particular pride; and tonight she said resentfully: ‘John, someone stole a lot of my buds last night, deliberately cut them, at least a dozen! I counted eleven stems that had been snipped off.’
‘Why, that’s too bad, Jenny,’ he said sympathetically. Then—Dan recognized the attempt to please her—he added: ‘You’ve the best roses in Bangor. Probably some young man wanted to offer a particularly lovely gift to his fair.’
‘I think I’ll put a set gun loaded with rock salt to surprise the next thief,’ Jenny declared; and John chuckled and said:
‘That’s always dangerous. Maybe it was one of the boys!’ They laughed at that presumably absurd suggestion—all except Jenny—and John added: ‘Reminds me of the time Doc Webster up at Old Town set out to catch the men who were stealing his potatoes. He asked John Rollins to help him, and John agreed to do it. John had an old Queen’s arm, and that night Doc came to his house and they loaded it up with four fingers of powder and four fingers of rock salt. The Doc’s potato field was opposite the Temple place, and it backed down on a big patch of bog along the river. Doc and John sat down in the middle of the field to wait, and along about midnight they heard the rails rattle as someone climbed the fence.’
Dan saw that his father was trying to make her forget her grievance; but Jenny paid no attention. She sat looking at her plate, her head bowed, as though enduring an unwelcome interruption, and Dan watched her resentfully as John went on.
‘They could tell there was a crowd of the thieves,’ he said. ‘They were making a lot of noise, talking—some of them like Germans, and Irish, and so on—and Doc whispered: “’Y Godfrey, John, there’s more here than we can handle! We better lay low!”
‘But Rollins told him not to worry. “They’ll scatter when we give the word,” he said; and when the crowd came near them he sung out: “Now I’ve got you. I’ll salt your tail!” And he hauled up the old fusil and let her go.’
John laughed, and Dan and the others began to grin, and John explained: ‘Well, sir, it missed fire. Rollins had tipped off some of h
is friends, so they could have some fun with Doc Webster; and he saw to it that the gun didn’t go off. But when the lock snapped, the other crowd had guns too and they began to shoot, and Rollins yelled: “We’re licked, Doc! Run for your life!”
‘So Doc ran, and the only way for him to go was into the swamp. That was a bog hole of a place, all hoop-pole stuff and cat-tails. Rollins, telling the story, used to say: “He like to never did get out; and when he did, there wa’n’t enough left of his britches to call ’em such. It was broad daylight by then and he had to hide till dark before he dast come home!” ‘ Dan and the others found this extravagantly funny, partly because of their father’s zest in the telling, but Jenny did not even smile. The sun, low in the west, had begun to shine through the windows directly into her eyes, and while they still laughed she rose and went to draw the curtain there. Dan, too late to do it for her, protested:
‘Mother, why didn’t you ask me to do that?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said patiently. ‘I’m used to looking out for myself.’ She returned to the table and said in her low tones which had an icy, controlled frigidity about them: Tom—what your father said made me think it possible—did you cut my roses?’ Dan looked at her in astonishment. Since they were children they had known that her flowers must never be touched, so the question surprised him; but he was the more surprised by the fact that Tom did not instantly deny it. Jenny explained: ‘I remember you asked me the other day if you could have a bouquet to take to one of your little friends.’
‘Yes, and you said I couldn’t,’ Tom told her resentfully.
‘Exactly. Tom—did you go against my word?’
The moment suddenly was dreadful. Tom rose, standing very tall, his cheek red with guilty anger; and at the same time John came to his feet and moved as though protectingly to Tom’s side. Then Tom spoke, almost as quietly as she.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I cut the roses.’
‘You stole them,’ said his mother.
Tom nodded, a sort of resignation in his tones. ‘I stole them if you like,’ he agreed. ‘I cut them yesterday afternoon, took them to Betsy Thatcher.’ And he asked defiantly: ‘Why shouldn’t someone enjoy them, instead of just leaving them to fade and die?’
Jenny looked up at her son—and at her husband standing by Tom’s shoulder. ‘You’re like your father, Tom,’ she said evenly. ‘A liar and a thief.’ Her voice was icy cold. ‘But I suppose there is no escape for me, from either one of you.’
Tom did not speak, his eyes as bleak as her tones; and she rose with no other word and left the room.
When she was gone, for a moment no one moved. Then John very gently touched Tom’s shoulder, and then he followed her. They heard his steps go up the stairs, and Tom’s rigid posture relaxed. He looked around at them all, and suddenly they were all on their feet; coming close to him, pressing together in this troubled moment with an instinct that went back to their earliest days, cleaving one to another.
Tom said thickly: ‘She’ll never say that to me again!’
Dan put his arm around the other’s shoulder; and Mat urged: ‘Don’t feel bad, Tom! She gets upset all the time about something.’
Will nodded wisely. ‘Remember how Ruth always use to be, with Pat, Tom?’ he suggested. ‘Always raising Cain about any little old thing?’
Tom seemed to hesitate, as though warily. ‘I know. Yes,’ he assented. Dan at the other’s tone felt a chill like terror. He said warmly: ‘Come on, Tom, let’s walk it off, talk it off.’
Tom accepted readily enough, and they turned out of doors, the others following. They swung at random along the road to Old Town, and at first they went in silence. Tom was the first to speak.
‘The thing that makes me so damned mad,’ he confessed, ‘is that we just have to grin and take it, anything she wants to say or do. We’re like dogs with a man. The man can kick the dog around all he wants to, but the dog keeps hoping the man will treat him better after a while. She’s sarcastic and cold and horrible most of the time, and we roll over on our backs like puppies begging to be forgiven, but the minute she’s good- natured we bounce up and start wagging our tails and loving her again.’ Will said gently: ‘That’s the whole trouble, Tom. We do love her.’ ‘Don’t I know it!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘She knows it too, takes advantage of it all the time.’
Mat echoed Tom. ‘She uses the fact that we love her to bully us and to bully father! I can stand it myself, but I hate to see the way she treats him—and I hate the way she talks about him to us.’
‘I guess women all bully their menfolks,’ Will pointed out. ‘Maybe it gives them a sense of power, makes them forget how weak they are, to know they can treat us like dirt and then smile, and we’ll thank them for the smile and forget the meanness.’ He grinned. ‘They keep reminding men how helpless and abused they are—so they can get their own way. They’re really stronger than men—or cleverer, anyway.’
Tom said harshly: ‘I don’t believe it’s just because they want to be boss. I think they like to make a man miserable! I think mother likes seeing us unhappy, just the way she used to like to whip us. I think she gets some sort of satisfaction out of being just as mean to us as she can! And of course she knows how we all feel about father, so she hurts us through him.’
‘Maybe she sees we like him best and is jealous,’ Mat suggested.
‘Then why doesn’t she try to make us like her?’ Tom exclaimed. ‘We’re all ready to, if she’d give us a chance.’
The talk went on, arriving nowhere; but Dan took no part in their discussion. He listened, and weighed what they said; but he thought, with a deeper understanding than theirs, that his mother herself suffered more than they in these moments when she lashed them with her stinging, quiet tongue.
When they came home, Tom seemed no longer angry; but four days later he failed to appear for supper. Dan was concerned, and his father and the others too; but Jenny took Tom’s absence calmly.
‘He’s probably stayed at Betsy’s,’ she suggested. ‘It wouldn’t occur to him to send word, or to think of the concern—and the inconvenience—he might cause us.’
They ate without him, and Dan persuaded himself that his mother was right, that Tom would spend the evening with Betsy and come late home; but when he went up to the room he and Tom shared, there was a note under his comb on the lowboy.
Dear Dan—I’m sailing on the Lucy B, Captain Morse, for Norfolk, Savannah, Galveston and the West Indies. You can tell the others. I guess you know I haven’t been happy at home for quite a while; and the other day when mother called me a liar and a thief finished it for me. I’ve always wanted to go to sea; so I’m going to try it.
Tell mother I love her, but I think we’ll get along a lot better apart than together. You and Mat could always get along with her. You’re both sort of slow and easygoing; but I get mad—and so does Will, only he doesn’t show it so much. Maybe I ought to grow a beard, the way he did, so people couldn’t tell what I was thinking. Maybe I will before I come home.
I’ll be home some day, all right, but I probably won’t have a chance to write you, so you won’t know I’m coming till I just walk in.
Don’t blame mother. It’s not her fault. I just had to get away for a while. Tell father I wish I was going up-river with you all, this winter, but I couldn’t wait. Will had better stay home and take care of mother while you and Mat and father are gone. She’ll need someone to bully!
Your Brother,
TOM
Dan read this letter by candlelight—the house was outside the part of the city into which the new illuminating gas had thus far been piped—and after a moment he went along the hall to his father’s door. The older man read the letter slowly, and Dan, watching him, saw small beads of moisture form upon his brow. He finished and Dan said:
‘I thought you might want to tell mother, so she won’t worry.’
His father looked at him thoughtfully. ‘The Lucy B-your mother owns her, Dan,’ he said in an absent
tone. ‘I used to manage mother’s affairs; but for several years now she’s been handling them herself. Cap’n Morse wouldn’t have shipped Tom without letting mother know. So she knew he was gone.’
Dan protested in surprise: ‘But she pretended to think he’d gone to see Betsy Thatcher or someone!’
His father did not reply. “It’s the first break in our family,’ he said, half to himself. ‘My mother used to say that a family was like a ring, strong as long as it clung together, weak when it was broken.’
‘He’ll be back,’ Dan urged; and the older man smiled and said quietly:
‘Yes, of course. He’ll be back, to be sure.’
But Tom did not come back. He wrote, saying that he had left the schooner at Savannah. The sea, he admitted, had proved a disappointment. He was sick all the time, with a sickness from which there seemed to be no recovery; and he said:
If I have to come home by sea, I may never come at all. I’m going to visit a lady and her daughter who took passage with us when we stopped at Norfolk; a Mrs. McPherson and Miss Bunty McPherson. They live at a place called Midway, and we’re going down there this afternoon, to their plantation. I’m hurrying this off while I can.
Jenny, when she heard this, said in a quiet fury: ‘So—my son is to be waited on by slaves; to be the guest of slave-owners.’
Dan tried to reassure her. ‘You know how Tom is, mother. Probably Miss McPherson is a lovely young lady, and they say Southern girls are all coquettes, and Tom always had a lively eye. But you’ll never have to worry about Tom in the end.’
‘I never thought any son of mine would make friends with slave-owners,’ she insisted. ‘But then, of course, he’s John’s son too.’
The Strange Woman Page 53
