The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “May it be, that state wherein flesh and spirit (the two indivisible, I think) are free to act as fully as the condition of a social being will allow?”

  “Reuben.…” The doctor was leaning forward in his chair, frowning intently, hands clasped before him. “Reuben, you did not give me that on the spur of the moment.”

  “Why, no, sir. I was fretting at that question the other night—only I came to it from the other side, wondering, what is disease? I wished a broader definition than any I found in the books, and so searched a little, but I don’t know that it satisfies me altogether.”

  “I think—mm-yas—I think I will accept it until such time as you give me a better.… It takes no account of theology of course. But then, I cannot entertain the thought of a punishing God. Nor even a personal God perhaps. If personal, then in some way well beyond man’s imagination. It often amazes me, that others can find such great comfort in the notion of a punishing God. Yet they do.”

  “It saves them from thought.”

  “Eh? How’s that?”

  “I think it saves them, sir, from the pains and trials of thought.”

  “Keep thy sharpness, Reuben. Thou hast already a summer heart and will not lose it. Keep that thorn in the tongue. Hide it almost always, but use it at need, never mind if others wince or even hate thee for it. Sir William Harvey was an angry man, too much perhaps, yet without the thorn in his tongue I dare say no one would ever have heeded him. I have none myself.” Mr. Welland bent down, short of breath, to fumble at his shoes. “In anger I am—mm-yas—most ineffectual, a poor thing. I flush and mumble, lose all command of my thoughts. Anger requires a coolness I do not possess.” He groped for the shoes Reuben had cleaned, and slipped his feet into them, and sighed. “Ah, that’s better—my most comfortable pair. Thou art both cool and warm.” Mr. Welland’s fingers fussed awkwardly at the shoelaces; Reuben would have helped him, but had been unreasonably shaken by the words and did not trust his face. “I suppose that is one reason why I love thee.”

  Reuben thought: He is speaking only as convention allows; I must not make it mean what it cannot. He said rather clumsily: “Mr. Welland, if I’m to be a doctor, some time I shall be obliged to attend smallpox cases, whether or not I have the disease and the immunity it brings.”

  “But not now!” said Mr. Welland sharply. “Well—they say it’s worse for the young—and mine own observation—thou art still growing. I will not see—I will not allow—no, not now!” he said, and having laced the shoes after a fashion, he rose and went to the door. “I must go.”

  Still at the hearth, watching the fire because his vision needed a refuge, Reuben asked: “Sir, may I detain you for one question more?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mr. Welland, I am fifteen. I have a man’s body—came to the change two years ago, nor am I ignorant of its meaning. Why have I never desired women?”

  The fire murmured in peace; Reuben held out his hand to it, watching the aureole of light around the fingers cleanly defined. Eventually Mr. Welland spoke. “Never ask that of anyone else. I am glad, I suppose, that you asked me. Never ask it of anyone else.”

  “I never could,” said Reuben to the fire. “It would never occur to me.”

  “Especially not of a priest.”

  “I have no need for any sort of priest,” said Reuben Cory.

  “I know. I say that because a priest is commonly the most earnest in nourishing and supporting men’s hate for whatever is unlike themselves. I have never understood why it should be so—Jesus, if I rightly remember, did not assert that there was only one path of virtue. Well—the desire of women may come to thee at a later time.”

  “It came to Ben before he was fourteen.”

  “And in France, I believe, they still burn at the stake the ones who—never mind—my wits are wandering. Thou may’st have wondered too, why I live so like a monk? Why I have never married?”

  “Mr. Welland, I don’t think I’ve ever wondered much, about your life, because—oh, because you’re as you are, because I don’t seem to have any wish that you should be in any way different.”

  “What art thou saying now?”

  “Is that strange?” Reuben was able then to rise and go to him, seeing his crinkled hands hanging motionless, his face that most would have found supremely ugly, lowered, eyes downcast, hidden. “Is it strange?”

  “To me, yes. Since no one ever said the like to me. Reuben, thou art still growing—many more changes—let them come to pass—heavens, what else can anyone do? But remember: whatever thou art, that is good. I have no fantastic heart’s image of thee, Reuben. I love thy self, whatever it is and will become. Now let me only kiss thy forehead, once, and I must go.”

  * * * *

  The garden was empty but for the daffodils, and the violets by the fence, and, near the empty stone seat, a hyacinth that had opened blue eyes for the sacrament of May. In the house itself Ben imagined too much quiet.

  His uneasiness had not lessened but grown. His hands had been shaking when he hitched Molly; now they wobbled again when it was necessary to lift the knocker, but they lifted it, and let it fall, and Ben winced at the outrageous clamor his ears made of it in the silent street. Foolish of course, a green boy’s idiocy, to stand here shivering and hoping everyone had gone away. No sound of footsteps within. Ben made vague resolves to try the knocker once more and then hurry for the warehouse. He was not late, however; it was still short of four o’clock, so Uncle John would not have left. No sound of steps, but the door opened, and Clarissa at sight of him looked unmistakably astonished.

  “May I have a word with Mistress Faith, or”—Ben gulped, and applied finishing touches to half a dozen plans in the time it took Clarissa to glance down in slight embarrassment at the soft slippers she was wearing, and up to his face again—“or with Captain Jenks, if he.…”

  “Why, I’m sorry, sir. They’re all away. They left within the half-hour.”

  “All away?” Ben thought: This is—relief? Relief?

  “Yes, sir. Madam Jenks and the girls might be returning within an hour or two—or, I think, you might find them at the docks. They all left in the coach.”

  “Oh.… The—docks?” I must stop this parrot-babbling.

  “Yes, sir.” That answer had been slow in coming; when it did her voice had subtly changed, softened. “The Captain is sailing today, Mr. Coree. Did you not know it?”

  “The—Artemis—is sailing?”

  Not relief. Something dull, heavy, unreal, as if friendly trustworthy Molly had swung her rump about and let him have her heels; presently, when he could scramble up from the ground, the pain would start. He felt prepared—maybe this was the pain beginning—quite prepared to be savagely angry with the little brown slave if he discovered that she was amused at his ignorance of the sailing. Let her laugh, just once, or merely smile, with that cool superior wisdom—

  She did not. He had known all along that she would do nothing of the sort; had known also that he would not have been angry if she had, seeing it was no fault of hers that part of the world had fallen down.

  The look in her brown face—widening of brown eyes, slight parting of friendly lips—not pity, surely? Why should the slave pity him? Yet Ben’s mother had worn that look at times—when Ru cut his finger trying to prove he could whittle with the knife in his left hand; when, on a certain evening, Father had spoken of the French butchery at Schenectady.… “Sir, you must have ridden hard—I see your horse is a-sweat. Will you not come in and rest a moment?”

  “Artemis, sailing today.… I dare say I have no occasion now to—to go—”

  “Sir, come inside. I’ll fetch you a drop of brandy, isn’t it? I think you rode too hard, and the day that warm it might be June.” She touched his arm lightly, almost commandingly. Ben stepped into the cool entry
, and she closed the door. “Come into the parlor. I won’t be a moment. Do sit down, sir, and be at ease.”

  Ben sat down, his eyes avoiding the stern, badly stitched sampler on the wall, seeking instead the graceful model of a full-rigged ship on the mantel. He had been about to get up for a better look at that model, he recalled, when Charity and Sultan ambushed him. Clarissa spread open the drapes at the window, startling him; he had thought that in her noiseless slippers she had already left the room. He said clumsily: “I remember you did that when I was here before.”

  On her way out of the room she looked down at him—not smiling, he was sure, though the light shone strong behind her face and he could not see her very well. “Yes,” she said thoughtfully, and was gone, and Ben turned to the model, finding in this better light the name painted on the side: HERA. Then this was she that went down off the Cape in a fog, seven years ago—not a man lost.

  Uncle John’s telling of the story had never given Ben much realizing sense of the smothering terror of fog at sea. He had it now, in the delicate presence of the Hera’s image. Wet smoke pressing on the eyeballs of men seeking to live; no guide, no refuge, no gleam of direction anywhere, only merciless whiteness concealing fangs. A whiteness like snow, a silence like the silence of snow that muffles footsteps in a winter night.

  No wind: fog flows in where the wind is not. Under the fog, no weakening of the rolling invisible currents that could drag man’s creation into the snag teeth of a reef or against the crushing mass of a dead hulk. “Stove in her la’board side, filled in twenty minutes.…”

  Fog.…

  They would have prayed, the men of the Hera, and perhaps Captain Jenks with them if he had time for it. When they came safe ashore, not a man lost—but first the long blind groping, in one boat and one damned little dory, never knowing what might answer the next weary thrust of the oars—why, safe ashore they would have praised God for hearing them—the same God who strangely failed to hear a myriad others praying in extremity—and with some leftover gratitude to Peter Jenks as God’s instrument. “Ben, hear me. I say God is far away, no whit concerned with man.…”

  “Sir, will you not look up?” There was a trace of most gentle laughter in that. Ben wondered when she had come in her silence, how long she had been standing there with the brandy glass on a little tray.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was far off indeed.”

  “I know.”

  “Thank you—this is very kind.… You are from one of the French islands, are you not?”

  “Guadeloupe.”

  A sip of the brandy warmed him a little. It was old, and smooth, the glass fantastically lovely—probably the best in the house, and probably English or continental, since nothing of the kind was made in the colonies; Uncle John’s house had nothing to match it. “This must seem a cold foreign place to you.”

  “Oh, I have been more than eight years in Boston, sir. It used to be, I must think in French and translate before I spoke—I do not do that now. Perhaps I do not look as old as I am.”

  “I had thought you was near my age.”

  “I am twenty-seven, Mr. Coree. I know it to the very day, because Monsieur Lafourche—of Lyons, who later settled at Guadeloupe—used often to say that I was born but two days after his other—after his daughter. He wished me bred up as maid and companion to her. I had lessons with the same teachers when we were little girls, even the reading and writing. I cannot read English with any comfort. She, the little Mademoiselle, she died at sixteen of a consumption. I think my presence hurt him with reminders of her.” Clarissa’s voice was passionless, cool and distant; Ben noticed his hands were no longer shaking. “Monsieur Lafourche his fortune was much impaired in the war of—of your King William’s time. Then in ’ninety-eight, between the wars, he sold his plantation at Guadeloupe and returned to France, and so was obliged to let me go, to a merchant of Boston, who later sold me here. Where,” she said mildly and remotely, “I have received much kindness.”

  Anger moved in Ben, severe but directionless, formless, thwarted, without an object and seeking one. One could not be angry with Uncle John. He must have meant it for the best—somehow, somehow. “Where—do you know where Artemis is bound for?”

  “Barbados, sir.”

  “I see.… Clarissa, I cannot think of you as a slave.”

  She moved into the light at the window, looking out; presently said with neutral calm: “But I am a slave.”

  The anger moved blindly, a flooded river seeking any low spot, any outlet at all. “Don’t you know there’s talk in these times that slavery itself is wrong? Why, Judge Samuel Sewall hath said it, written it too, and maybe not many will agree with him, but—but before God, I do,” Ben said, wondering at the wiry clang of his own voice.

  “One hears of it,” she said gently, “but I think there will alway be slavery.”

  “Oh, why?”

  “Perhaps because no one is ever wholly free.”

  “Oh, don’t put me off with philosophy! I understand you, but—that was not—well, my brother, and my Uncle John too—I have heard my Uncle John say he would never own a slave, for that the thing itself is wrong. And later I talked of it with my brother, he was most passionate, he said it was vile and contemptible that any man should pretend to possess the life of another, or be privileged to command it and drive it where he may please. My brother is strangely wise—younger but a better scholar than I, much wiser. Somehow I can’t ever do anything without first wondering, how would he do it, what would he think of it? I lean on him too much—well, I suppose it’s because we went through much together, and I love him so, and we—I don’t know—I’m confused.”

  “I am not so sure,” she said, speaking into the light. “I think you have your own wisdom, Mr. Cory. Perhaps, if he be the quicker scholar, it is only that your brother can speak his thoughts more easily.”

  “No,” said Ben, and sighed shortly. “No, he’s truly wise. I have alway known it, am even pleased it should be so. He hath chosen a most difficult life work, medicine. I have alway known he would go where I cannot.”

  “You wished to sail with Artemis, did you not?”

  “I did so.”

  “Mistress Faith spoke of it a few days ago, when I was dressing her hair, and charged me hold it in confidence because, she said, she was not sure you were ready to discuss it with the Captain.”

  It never occurred to Ben that there might be something strange in his lack of interest as to what else Faith Jenks had said about him. “Yes, I wished to sail, and it seems to me—I don’t know why I never saw it before—it seems to me the best reason I could have for learning my great-uncle’s trade and making myself of some account in it, would be that then I could aid my brother. It must be difficult to be a doctor. No one seems to grant them much respect. Mr. Welland of Roxbury is a very learned man, Reuben tells me, and yet I never heard of anyone deferring to him. He lives more or less in poverty.”

  “And still,” said Clarissa, to the light—“and still, perhaps even wisdom is not everything.”

  “Nay, I’m sure it’s not,” Ben said, and wondered whether it was wisdom he was searching for in the brandy glass, where half of the beautiful amber sparkled as yet untouched. He saw her then, with a more naked vision, as she stood in the light and shadow slight as a child and wholly a woman, in her feminine grace no longer alien. He rose with no thought for the action and entered the same sunlight. “Clarissa, there is more here than I should drink. Will you not share it?”

  Her eyes held him, not once lowering to look at the glass, her hand not moving to take or reject it. She was not shocked, he saw; not afraid of him, perhaps not afraid of the brandy glass. It might be that she was only considering what to do, like Reuben considering a position on the chessboard; but then he understood it was nothing like that. Nudged by his own heart, Ben said: “I assure you,
no red comb will pop.”

  She stepped back, staring rather wildly. Her hand flew up to her mouth, but that was no defense, for mischief and delight were brimming over, uncontrollable. As Ben himself began to chuckle, she gave way to it completely, throwing back her head, pointing at him helplessly, the laugh going up and up in a golden rocket. “Oh, le peigne, le peigne, le bon Dieu me garde! Whoo!” Clarissa wailed, and slapped her thigh, and swayed toward him—sobering completely as Ben’s arm went around her waist, but not drawing away, studying him a while with a dark and new sweet gravity, then at last taking the brandy glass, turning it about so that when she raised it the small mark left by his lips was covered by her own as she drained it. The glass dropped to the floor from her drooping hand; Ben felt she would not have cared if the lovely thing had broken, or perhaps she wished it to break, but it did not. “Une heure, fugitive et immortelle, une heure et alors—”

  “I have no French.” Ben’s fingers lost themselves in her dark sweet-smelling hair. “My dear, what art thou saying?—tell me.”

  “Ah, little or nothing,” Clarissa mumbled. She unfastened his shirt, her fingers swift and petulant, until she could rub her cheek over his bare skin; her mouth groped for his nipple and clung lightly a second with soft pressure of her teeth. “One hour, I think I said, one hour and then nothing more, because you will go away, because one hour given by chance is all we may have, mais ton sourire—but your smile I shall yet see, as I saw it first when you gave it to my little Charity there at the wharf, and I could look into you and know you, and my loins hurt me and my empty flesh, and my silly heart cried out I love you, I love you.” Her hand sought for his wrist and clutched it hard. She spoke in a breathless tone like anger: “Come to my room!”

  It was small, and bleak, and very clean, a room under the eaves with not even a bed but a pallet on the floor, a chair, a few hooks on the wall for her few garments. As he followed her half blindly, Ben had received a dim impression of passing, on the second floor, the open doorway of some luxurious room. It didn’t matter. In her room she turned to him, suddenly grave but no less urgent. A small laugh came and passed like a breeze, impatient, as she helped him with his clothes and her own, her hands a bridge of warmth between them.