The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  Yet day by day they came nearer home. In Old Town they saw Bill Hale and heard from him how Joe Peavey, watching men breaking a jam on the Stillwater with swing dogs, had figured out a new tool for the work. Bill, himself a boss driver, had one to show them. The hook was fixed, so that it would swing up and down but not sidewise, and there was a spike in the end of the shaft.

  ‘It’s the handiest God damned rig I ever did see,’ he told them in a rare enthusiasm. ‘Take a rig like that and a couple men with the heft to him of these boys of yours and I’d like to see the log they couldn’t move!’

  They admired the new tool, and John agreed that it would make a overman’s work easier; and then they hired a team for the last reach of their homeward journey. Dan, as familiar scenes began to come into view, thought there was a change in his father. He was quieter, no longer so ebullient and gay; and Dan himself, thinking of his mother, wondered whether she were happier now, whether she would be glad to see them, whether she were well. She must be, of course. Will would have made her take care of herself. Yet it was almost eight months since he had seen her. So many things might have happened in that time.

  They turned aside at last along the familiar road and saw the house ahead. Mat was the first to discover her. ‘There’s mother!’ he cried. ‘Working in her garden!’ He shouted a greeting as they turned into the drive, and Dan leaped to the ground to run toward her.

  She waited, not moving. He thought she seemed smaller, pitifully withered and shrunken; and the shadows under her eyes were deep blue. Nevertheless he swept her into his arms and swung her high, and kissed her before he set her down.

  She said: ‘Mercy, Dan, you need to bathe!’ Mat kissed her boisterously; John put his arms around her, but Dan saw that she turned her face away. ‘You all need to bathe,’ she said, in her low, unmoved tones.

  For a moment none of them spoke, and Dan was heartsick with disappointment at this unmoved welcome; but he said determinedly: ‘My, it’s fine to see you again, mother! You look so well. Doesn’t she, father? Where’s Will?’

  ‘Will?’ she echoed, as though the word were only faintly familiar. ‘Will? Oh, Will’s gone away.’ They stared at her in a flat surprise and dismay; and she explained that Will had said he was going West to be a doctor. She said he had announced his intention without warning, had left within the hour. ‘He did not consult me,’ she told them in her level tones. ‘He just packed his things and took the Boston steamer.’ She added quietly: ‘That was a month ago. I’ve had no word from him since.’

  So the happiness of this homecoming, to which Dan had looked forward with an unadmitted hope that things might now be different, was ended. Not only was Will gone—with all his departure implied of long patience worn to shreds—but also in Jenny’s demeanor there was more strongly marked than ever a hard and bitter anger, all cruelty and pain.

  Of Will there was no more to say. The level finality of Jenny’s tone put an end to questions. But after a moment Dan asked: ‘What’s the news from Tom?’

  She said, her words like icy drops: ‘He married that young woman.’ Her lip twisted in a faint grimace. ‘He has become a Southern planter, raising rice and cotton, with a whip in his hand to cut the backs of his slaves.’

  This called for a thousand questions, but the implacable anger in her eyes warned them to silence. Only John ventured to say:

  ‘Where are Tom’s letters? We’d like to read them.’

  ‘I burned them,’ Jenny said simply. ‘The last one I did not even open. They are gone.’

  Her tone said that Tom, too, was gone, was no longer a part of their lives; and it said that her decision in this matter was final, and binding upon them all, and that if they opposed her they too would be thrown into the outer darkness of her anger. She repeated now, standing quietly beside the rose bed where they had found her:

  ‘You had all best go and bathe. You smell of smoke, and animals, and dirty men.’

  VIII

  During that summer Dan found that Will’s departure and Tom’s marriage had the effect of erecting an invisible wall in their home. Jenny was alone on one side of that wall, Dan and Mat and his father were together on the other. Jenny herself erected this barrier. They had spoken of Will at supper, a day or two after their return, wondering how soon a letter from him would reach them; and Jenny said:

  ‘Oblige me, please, by not mentioning either Will or Tom in my hearing. They have left my house and my life. I wish to hear no more of them.’ Dan urged in tender teasing: ‘Pshaw, mother, you know you love them as much as we do! When they come back, think how glad you’ll be to see them.’

  She did not deny this, simply looked at him; but under her eyes he flushed and was silent, and afterward John told him and Mat: ‘Best not speak of the boys before her. She loves them so much that she’s brokenhearted at their going, that’s all. Every word reopens the wound.’

  So they were careful thereafter to keep silent as he suggested. When a letter came from Tom they read it together—it was gay and happy, full of amusing detail, contrasting plantation ways with what his life in Bangor had been—but they did not speak of that letter to Jenny; for in it Tom said:

  And father, don’t let Bangor people think that they can ever make Southerners give up slavery. The people around here are kind to their slaves. Mr. McPherson is a good friend of Thomas Spaulding of Sapeloe-that’s a wonderful island outside the marshes, facing the ocean, ten or fifteen miles long—and he believes as Mr. Spaulding docs that slaves should never be sold, and never bought except fresh from Africa. Our slaves are better off than if they were free. As far as slavery is concerned, I’m beginning to see some sense and justice in their point of view down here.

  The people around here don’t believe in all this talk of secession, either; but their loyalty is to the State of Georgia, not to the National Government. And they’re hot-tempered, ready to fight for little or no excuse, with each other or with outsiders. They even fight duels, and they think they can whip the North if they have to.

  Such words, they were sure, would anger Jenny beyond bearing; but Mat declared that the life Tom described sounded attractive to him. ‘I’d like to go down and visit him,’ he said. He was an indolent young giant, now in his later ’teens; and he added with a grin: T wouldn’t mind having five or six slaves to wait on me! Remember old Atticus? He didn’t mind being a slave, and I liked him.’

  They had letters too from Will. The first, from Philadelphia, was addressed to Dan.

  Dear Dan

  I expect you are all at home again now and surprised to find me gone. I wanted to stay till you came, and I stood it as long as I could. I’ll tell you about it, but don’t tell father. It would just make him more unhappy than he is.

  Mother started complaining as soon as you went away. She pretended to think that you weren’t going up-river right away.

  She said father was in love with a woman in Old Town and that he had gone to see her; and I thought I could persuade her that wasn’t true, so we drove up to Old Town next day and asked around and found out you’d gone straight on. But then she said he probably had women waiting for you somewhere up beyond.

  She kept it up all winter, Dan. You know how she is, always hinting; but sometimes she’d come right out with it. I knew she was really sick and didn’t mean anything she said, and I kept trying to talk her out of it, till she got mad and sometimes she wouldn’t speak to me at all for two or three days at a time. I was almost crazy myself, trying to find some way to make her happier.

  When she wasn’t talking about father, it was about Tom; and after he married down South she was terrible for a while, pinching herself black and blue, grinding her teeth, saying she wished she was dead. She never told anyone where Tom was and wouldn’t let me tell. She just said, if people asked her, that he was at sea, on a ship somewhere halfway around the world.

  When I tried to stand up for him she got mad at me, so I kept quiet; but she said I was against her, and finally she ordere
d me out of the house. She said it was her house, built with her money, and she wouldn’t have any enemies in it. I told her I wasn’t her enemy, but I couldn’t make her believe anything. She said I had to go.

  The only ones she has any use for are you and Mat, and she thinks father is trying to turn you two against her. I told her how wonderful father was, and how lovingly he always spoke of her, but she said he was a hypocrite, in love with a lot of other women.

  I’m sorry I had to come away. I did the best I could. I’m going to Cincinnati and then maybe settle somewhere in Ohio.

  I’ll write you again as soon as I know where I’ll be. I mean I’ll write father. Probably you’d better not tell him any of these things. He has it hard enough without.

  Your loving Bro

  WILL

  IX

  Dan sometimes thought that summer at home, and the others which followed it, would have been unbearable if he had not been able to turn often to Aunt Meg and Beth. Since Judge Saladine’s death they lived alone in the big house on Essex Street, and they were always glad to see him. Beth was twelve years old, and her devotion to Dan, which had begun in her early babyhood, not only persisted but grew stronger. She liked to stand beside his chair, pressing against him while his arm lay around her small waist; and after she discovered that it delighted him when she rubbed his head, twining her slender fingers in his hair, she might do this, laughing when he pushed his head against her hand as a dog does when its ears are rubbed. There was a warm sweetness about her which made her dear to him. He and Meg sometimes laughed together—when she was not with them—at her love for him.

  ‘It’s natural for little girls her age to fall in love with tall young men,’ Meg said.

  He smiled, remembering. ‘I was in love with you in the same way,’ he reminded her. ‘When I knew you were going to marry Cap’n Pawl, it seemed to me like the end of the world. And you didn’t even invite me to your wedding! I hid outside the church and cried.’

  They laughed together at that. ‘I knew how you felt,’ she admitted. ‘You looked at me so accusingly, as though I had betrayed you. That’s the reason I didn’t ask you to the wedding. I was afraid to face you!’

  ‘I’d probably have bawled or something!’

  She asked smilingly: ‘Who has taken my place, Dan?’

  ‘No one.’ He laughed. ‘Oh, of course I don’t mean I still feel the same way about you! Not quite.’

  ‘You’ve outgrown that. But isn’t there someone else about whom you’re beginning to be just a little serious?’ Her eyes were shining as she teased him. ‘I know at least a dozen young ladies who are sighing over you!’ He chuckled, reddening. ‘They haven’t let me hear them.’ He considered himself in a sudden surprised appraisal, no longer joking. ‘I don’t know why I’m not—thinking about someone,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve seen a lot of pretty girls, nice ones too, in Cambridge and here; and I always got along fine with them, but I’ve never even thought about being serious with any of them. I’d a lot rather be here with you and Beth than with any of them.’

  She smiled affectionately. ‘You’re like your father,’ she said, and he saw her eyes softly fill with old memories. ‘Did you know he and I knew each other before he married your mother? Down at Colonel Black’s in Ellsworth? Your father was so big and nice and shy. I’m afraid I set my cap for him, shamelessly. I taught him to dance—or tried to—but he was so miserable that I took pity on him. I don’t think he ever looked at anyone but your mother.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No, I guess not,’ He saw her cheeks bright at her own thoughts. ‘I expect you were lovely,’ he said, watching her. ‘You must have been. You always have been, since I can remember. I used to think you were more beautiful than anyone except mother.’ And he added honestly: ‘She’s changed a lot, lately, but you haven’t. I suppose you have, really; but it’s in good ways. You always look so happy and—at peace.’

  ‘I am,’ she assented. ‘I’ve had some griefs, Dan, but they’ve been tender and beautiful too.’ She asked: ‘Is Jenny well? Sometimes I think she looks ill. I’m worried about her. She’s not strong, but she gives herself so unsparingly whenever she can do good, wears out her strength.’

  ‘I guess she’s well,’ he said. ‘She has a lame back sometimes, but that’s all.’

  X

  Dan spent much time that summer in his father’s office. Tire lumber business was still in a period of steady growth; and Bangor grew with it. The population of the city had doubled in Dan’s lifetime, and some enthusiasts predicted that the next census, two years hence, would tally twenty thousand people in the city. Andrew Lebbeus, who had published that libel against John years before, came back to Bangor and revived his old paper, calling it again the Star. He and Marcellus Emery, the editor of the Democrat, set themselves against the rising strength of the Republican Party and took the Southern side of the slave question which began to be the only issue in the public mind. Mr. Emery was a lawyer, a graduate of Bowdoin and a man of ability, and he kept his partisan editorials on a respectable plane; but Lebbeus wrote with a scornful and derisive pen, escaping reprisals by confining his attacks to national figures whose Bangor supporters were not sufficiently moved to seek to silence him.

  Dan took no public part in the political discussions of the day. Under Senator Hamlin’s influence he had long ago decided that he was against the extension of slavery, but the issue of union against disunion was not yet clearly formed; and he was in any case too busy with the beginnings of his business career to become engrossed in politics.

  For another reason, too, he avoided expressing any fixed opinions. His mother had a single mind, hating slavery and all its works and all who countenanced it. He could not, remembering Tom, agree with her; but neither could he argue with her. Mat tried it sometimes, and Mat alone among them sometimes spoke to her of Tom; but when he did so, she was driven to such a stony anger that Dan—or his father—again and again had to intervene.

  It was perhaps her unforgiving hatred for Tom which made her relent toward Will; and before the summer ended she was glad to hear his letters read aloud. He had pushed on from Ohio to Wisconsin and settled in a small town there, buying books and medicines and a horse and saddle and beginning a practice which grew rapidly; and he wrote much about the cases he handled. In one letter he said:

  Write me as soon as you get this. I wish mother were here to tell me what to do sometimes. I hope she will write to me.

  I love her and all of you.

  Jenny did write to him; and Dan thought she was happier for having done so.

  That winter and the next, though his father stayed in Bangor, Dan spent in the woods; and he was happy in the hard toil there. But he learned to dread his homecomings, to dread his mother’s increasing malevolence. On his return in the spring of 1859, she seemed to him to have shrunk and contracted within herself; and although his father assured him that things went well, Mat told him the truth.

  ‘She’s been terrible,’ he said rebelliously. ‘Specially this spring.’

  In February, Congressman Sickles of New York had shot and killed Philip Key, the son of the author of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ on the streets of Washington, because Key had seduced his wife. The Congressman’s trial was broadcast in every newspaper in the country, and the proceedings were recorded at length in the Bangor Jeffersonian. Mat spoke of this, reciting the facts for Dan. ‘And mother kept talking about it,’ he said, ‘and when Congressman Sickles was acquitted she said a woman ought to have the same right to shoot her husband if he went with other women. She said it in such a way that I knew it was father she meant. Then there was a man named Potter in Lee, and his wife was carrying on with two or three men, and he killed five people and set fire to the houses to bum up the bodies, and she talked about that too, and said he did the right thing.’ Mat’s voice fell almost to a whisper. ‘I think she’s crazy, Dan! I can’t hardly stand being at home, the way she is all the time.’

  Dan tried to rea
ssure his brother; but that was an ugly summer, and he was glad to start up-river again. When he returned in mid-May of i860, his father met him at Old Town; and his first news was that Mat had left home the previous fall, going to Georgia to join Tom there. Dan saw that even his father was shaken by this, and he himself had a helpless sense of irreparable loss, prompted not alone by Mat’s going. That was only the capstone to the structure of his grief. Tom and Will and Mat were all gone now; and Dan, lonely for them, missing them always, recognized the fact that it was his mother who had driven them away.

  4

  DAN and his father drove

  home from Old Town together, and the older man warned Dan not to mention Mat’s name to his mother. ‘There’s sure trouble coming between us and the Southern States,’ he said, ‘and mother feels that Tom and Mat have gone over to the enemy. Will’s really her only comfort. She reads his letters over and over, so proudly.’ He added: ‘She’s not well, Dan. She’s losing weight all the time, and her back bothers her more and more.’

  ‘Why did Mat leave finally?’ Dan asked. ‘Was there any special trouble at the end?’

  John nodded. ‘Yes, one day at dinner he was bound to read Tom’s last letter aloud to her. She tried to leave the room, but he teased her, laughing at her, daring her to stay, and she did. But when he finished she said if he was so fond of his nigger-loving brother he’d better go to Georgia himself. That made Mat mad, and he said: “By God I will!” And he did.’

  ‘I wish she could be happy.’

  ‘She’ll be happy seeing you again,’ John reminded him. ‘You’ve always had a special place with her, you know.’