The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  McEvoy released his bewildered partner, feigning annoyance and surprise. “Whate’er is thy husband alarmed at, Madame? Can it be he’s ignorant of the Whitehall Salute? Have ye not schooled him in the customs o’ the court?”

  Mrs. Russecks, still taken aback by the sudden embrace, managed to confess the possibility that she herself might be out of touch with the very latest fashions in behavior at Whitehall.

  “I’ll have his lewd head!” the miller threatened, raising the sword.

  “My dear friend,” McEvoy said, serene and patronizing, “at court ’tis the practice for every proper gentleman to embrace a lady thus on first meeting her; only a bumpkin or a cad would insult her with a sniveling bow.” He went on to declare, before Russecks could object, that while he quite appreciated the difficulty provincial gentlemen must have in keeping up with London society, he considered it therefore of the first importance that they maintain an open mind and a humble willingness to be instructed.

  “Now put away your sword, that no gentleman should raise without cause, and be so kind as to present us to your daughter.”

  Russecks hesitated, clearly torn between his desire to keep up with the fashions of the court and his reluctance to deliver Henrietta into the visitors’ embraces. But his wife took the matter out of his hands.

  “Henrietta, bestir thyself!” she scolded through the doorway. “The gentlemen will think thou’rt uncivil!”

  The girl appeared at once from behind the jamb, curtsied to both men, and prettily presented herself to McEvoy for her Whitehall Salute, which the Irishman executed with even more élan than before. At the same time Mrs. Russecks went up to Ebenezer and said, “We’re most delighted to have the privilege, Sir Benjamin,” so that he was obliged to do the same whether he would or no, and again with the eager-eyed, ash-blond daughter who came after, still flushed from McEvoy’s kiss, while the miller looked on in helpless consternation.

  Mary Mungummory beamed. “I’ll just be yonder at the inn if there’s aught ye should want o’ me,” she called.

  “Then ye may stable your horse right now and pay me her day’s keep in advance,” Russecks said crossly.

  Mary did as she was told and left, but not before Ebenezer observed an exchange of glances between her and Mrs. Russecks. At a moment when her husband was boasting to McEvoy that he collected a day’s stabling charge on every horse brought into Church Creek for more than half a day, Mrs. Russecks had looked at Mary as if to ask, “Can it be that this brash young man has actually deceived my husband?” and further, “Do I dare believe his intentions are what they seem?” Mary’s response had been a wink so large and lecherous as to set the poet tingling with apprehension.

  13

  His Majesty’s Provincial Wind- and Water-Mill Commissioners, With Separate Ends in View, Have Recourse on Separate Occasions to Allegory

  MCEVOY NOW EXPRESSED a desire to be shown the operation of the mill, explaining that though Heaven knew he himself had seen enough of them in the past several weeks, his friend Sir Benjamin, who had been raised in London, might find the device amusing.

  “Aye, indeed so, young sirs,” Russecks agreed. “ ’Twill be a pleasure to show ye! Roxanne, you and Henrietta begone, now, whilst I take the gentlemen through my mill.”

  “Oh prithee, Father,” Henrietta protested, “ ’twill be a lark for us to go with ye! We’re not afraid to climb ladders with the gentlemen, are we, Mother?”

  “Nay, dammee!” cried the miller. “Get ye gone, ere I raise a welt athwart thy—”

  “Not another word,” McEvoy said firmly. “ ’Tis the mark of a well-born lady to crave a bit of adventure now and again, don’t ye think? My arm, Miss Henrietta, an it please ye.” The girl took his arm at once, and Mrs. Russecks Ebenezer’s, and any further expostulations from the miller McEvoy prevented by a series of pointed questions about the establishment.

  “How is’t a gentleman stoops to milling?” he wanted to know as they entered the building.

  “Ah, well, sir—” Russecks laughed uncomfortably.

  “ ’Tis as Mary said—Miss Mungummory yonder, what I mean—ye might say I run it purely for the sport of’t, don’t ye know. ’Tis beneath my station, I grant ye, but a man wants something to fill his time, I always say.”

  “Hm.”

  Walking behind them, Ebenezer saw the Irishman reach boldly around Henrietta’s back with the arm opposite Russecks and give the girl a sportive poke in the ribs. He blanched, but Mrs. Russecks, who saw the movement as plainly as had he, only squeezed his arm and smiled. As for Henrietta, she showed surprise but not a trace of indignation at the cavalier advance; when her escort repeated it—simultaneously asking the miller why, if his work was in the nature of an avocation, he charged such wondrously profitable fees for doing it—she was hard put to stifle her mirth. She caught his hand; he promptly and unabashedly scratched her palm, and Mrs. Russecks, instead of unleashing maternal wrath upon the seducer as the poet expected, sighed and dug her nails into the flexor of his arm.

  “Stay,” McEvoy said, cutting into the miller’s explanation that what revenue came from the mill was turned to community improvements such as his inn and the tobacco storehouse he was constructing farther down the creek. “I’ve an urgent private question, if ye please.”

  With a mischievous expression he whispered loudly into Russecks’s ear that he sorely needed to know whether the improvements of the place included a jakes, and if so, where a man might find it in a hurry.

  “Why, marry, out in the back, sir,” the astonished miller answered, “or thou’rt free to piss in the millrace, e’en as I do. What I mean—”

  “Enough: ye quite overwhelm me with hospitality. I’ll use your millrace and fore’er be in your debt. Adieu, all; on with the tour! I’ll o’ertake ye presently.”

  Thus abruptly he left them, followed by the ladies’ marveling eyes; when he returned a few minutes later he clapped Russecks on the back, called him a poet and philosopher for having hit on that wondrous virtue in a millrace, and with the other hand treated Henrietta to a surreptitious carnival of tweaks, pats, pokes, and pinches, so that she seemed ever on the verge of swooning from mirth, titillation, and the effort it required to betray nothing to her father.

  “Isn’t he the bold one?” Mrs. Russecks whispered to Ebenezer. The poet was mortified to observe the lady’s respiration quicken, and guessed she envied her daughter’s having drawn the more adventurous partner. But for all his desire to question Mrs. Russecks closely on the matter of Miss Bromly, he had no taste for adulterous flirtation, nor would have even had the circumstances been less perilous and less remote from their pressing business with Billy Rumbly. His body stiffened, and when Mrs. Russecks, aping Henrietta’s behavior with McEvoy, slipped a playful hand into his breeches pocket as they moved single file along a catwalk near the grain hopper, his blood ran cold. He was immensely relieved when they came out at the rear of the mill, facing the stable.

  “There now, sirs,” Harry Russecks said, “ye’ll agree there’s not a better-kept mill in the Province, will ye not, nor a better run?”

  “As to the first, ye may not be far wide o’ the mark,” McEvoy allowed. “As to the second—but stay, I vowed I’d have none o’ business till my papers reach me. I will say, ’twas fine sport to poke about in there; I have toured many a Maryland mill, but none so pleasurably.”

  The miller spat proudly. “D’ye hear that, Roxie? Ha’n’t I always held ’twas no disgrace for a gentleman to know his way around a mill?”

  McEvoy went on, turning his eyes brazenly to Henrietta. “I was taken in particular by a handsome hopper I spied whilst we were climbing to the loft. From what I could see, ’twas scarce broke in.”

  Ebenezer’s heart sank, and even Henrietta blushed at the figure, but the miller seemed not to grasp it, for he cried, “Now there’s a sharp-eyed fellow, ’pon my word! I made that hopper myself, sir, not long since, and I’m passing proud of’t. ’Tis a pity ye didn’t just run
a hand in, to get the beauty of the lap-joints.”

  “A pity in sooth,” McEvoy agreed. “Ye may bank on’t I’ll not miss the chance again.”

  Emboldened by the possibilities of the metaphor, Henrietta insisted that no mere stroke of the hand could disclose the real excellence of the device, which lay in the way it performed its intended function; only by running his own grist through would Mr. McEvoy ever truly appreciate it. The Irishman joyfully replied that nothing would please him more, although he’d heard complaints from local planters about the fee.

  “They’re liars, all!” cried Russecks. “Let ’em try to find the likes o’ that machinery in the county ere they grouse and tattle!”

  Here Mrs. Russecks joined the conversation in support of her husband. “That little hopper’s not the only marvel o’ the place. Haply you were too distracted to remark them, Mr. McEvoy, but the millstones themselves are most unusual.”

  “Aye, that’s a fact, sir,” Russecks said eagerly. “Ye might have seen ’em plainly from the ladderway. They’ve been in daily use for near two-score years, have those millstone’s, and they’re better every year.”

  Mrs. Russecks declared that Sir Benjamin had been better situated than Mr. McEvoy to view these marvels, and added that their ever-increasing excellence only demonstrated the truth of an axiom in the trade: The older the millstones, the finer the grind.

  “To be sure,” Henrietta put in tartly, “it wants an uncommon shaft to fit such stones; the one Father’s using is nigh worn out.”

  Ebenezer set his teeth. He looked about for a means of ending the double-entendre, and noticed that the stall where Mary had put Aphrodite was empty.

  “I say, Miss Mungummory’s mare is gone; can it be she drove on without us?”

  “Nay, she’d never leave so soon,” Mrs. Russecks said. “We’d not had time to talk yet.”

  The miller declared there was nothing to be concerned about, but McEvoy insisted on seeking out Mary at the inn to make certain the mare had not strayed. Very soon he returned with Mary in tow, making a great show of anger and alarm.

  “Really, Sir Harry!” he cried. “Is’t your practice to let folks’ horses wander loose, after you’ve extorted your gouging fee from ’em?”

  For a moment the miller forgot his role: his face darkened, and his hand went to his sword. “Gently there, young pup, or I’ll soon—”

  “Where is that horse, sir?” McEvoy pressed. “Sir Benjamin and I owe this lady our lives for bringing us out o’ the marsh in her wagon, as I’ve already apprised Governor Nicholson. D’ye think well stand by and see her lose her mare from your negligence?”

  “Ah, my poor Aphrodite!” Mary lamented.

  “My negligence!” the miller shouted.

  “Aye, thine, as proprietor of the stables. Draw your sword, fellow, if ye dare! ’Twill be no cowering planter ye face, but one o’ King William’s deadliest.”

  “Nay, go to, gentlemen, go to!” the miller pleaded. “D’ye think I turned the mare loose a-purpose? Ye were in plain sight o’ me all the while!”

  Ebenezer suddenly understood what had happened, and his heart sank.

  “I made no such charge,” McEvoy said. “Nonetheless, thou’rt answerable for the horse. A true gentleman would ne’er permit the thing to happen, much less weasel out of’t. Am I right, Mrs. Russecks?”

  Though she seemed not quite to understand the Irishman’s motives, Mrs. Russecks agreed that caring for the property of his guests is a first concern of the proper gentleman. For a moment Russecks seemed about to strike her.

  “Dammee, sirs, nobody’s more a gentleman than I am! I’m the biggest bloody gentleman in Church Creek!”

  “Then find Aphrodite,” McEvoy snapped, “or ye’ll answer to the Governor himself.”

  “Find her! Marry, lad, that nag could be halfway to Cambridge by now!”

  “ ’Tis a consideration as would ne’er deter your honest gentleman, I believe.”

  “Please, sir!” Mrs. Russecks took McEvoy’s arm. “Don’t be hard on my husband in St. Mary’s! Do but take a pot of tea with us, you and Sir Benjamin, and I’m sure he’ll have the mare back ere sunset.”

  “Ere sunset!” Russecks cried. “I’ve not said I’d go chasing after the beast to begin with! What I mean—God’s blood, then, I’ll find the cursed animal! But I must have help.”

  “I’ll search with ye,” Mary volunteered at once. “I know Aphrodite’s ways, and I’ll ne’er rest easy till we track her down.”

  Now the miller was by no means pleased by this arrangement, but though his face plainly registered reluctance, he permitted Mary to lead him off towards a woods behind the stable. Ebenezer watched them go with fainting spirit.

  “Methinks I’ll help them search,” he ventured.

  McEvoy laughed. “Nay, ladies, tell me truly: is Sir Benjamin England’s greatest coward or her greatest tease? I know for a fact he hath fathered a regiment o’ bastards, but to hear the scoundrel ye’d take him for a virgin.”

  “Stay, John; ’tis time to end disguises.”

  “Time enough,” McEvoy agreed quickly, but instead of revealing their true identities and stations, he confessed that he himself had set Miss Mungummory’s mare a-wandering, what time he’d feigned a visit to the millrace; he’d already freely said as much to Mary, who, by no means disturbed at the news, had told him Aphrodite would go at once to a certain farm not far away, where she’d often been stabled, and had offered to lead Harry Russecks on a two-hour chase before they found her.

  “There’s a queen among women,” Mrs. Russecks declared. “So, then, gentlemen: let us go to our tea, since my husband hath such nice feeling for responsibility.” She took Ebenezer’s arm; McEvoy had already encircled Henrietta’s waist and drawn her to his side.

  “Really, Mrs. Russecks,” the poet said desperately, “there is a pressing business I wish to discuss with you—”

  “There, now, Mr. McEvoy!” the miller’s wife teased. “Your friend is as importunate as yourself! Marry, in my youth men were more subtle—for better or worse.”

  “Nay, you refuse to understand!” Ebenezer protested. “I’m not what you think I am at all!”

  “So I begin to grasp, young rascal!”

  “Pray, hear me—”

  “Peace, Sir Benjamin,” McEvoy laughed, but Ebenezer saw alarm in his eyes. “Thou’rt embarrassing Henrietta with your forwardness. Out on’t, Madame Russecks, methinks we’d best forego the tea, to spare your lovely daughter farther blushes; by’r leave, I’ll ask her to take me once again through the mill, to inspect more closely what I only glimpsed before.”

  To this bald proposition Mrs. Russecks only replied, “I’m not disposed to keep a man from His Majesty’s business, sir; yet if on the grounds of your commission you decide to try the machinery as well as inspect it, I ask you to bear in mind two things…”

  “Anything, madame: ’tis thine to command.”

  “First, then, albeit we have your statement for’t that you’ve inspected many a mill before, you must remember that this one is unaccustomed to inspection. ’Tis very dear to me, e’en precious, sir; for all my husband claims it as his own, ’tis not o’ his making at all, but came to him with my dowry, as’t were. Moreover, we’ve our reputation to think of, and albeit ’tis a perfectly harmless thing thou’rt commissioned to, if ’twere generally known what thou’rt about, certain ill-minded gossips would make a scandal of’t. In sum, inspect and try what ye will, Mr. McEvoy, but be gentle and discreet as becomes an officer of the King.”

  McEvoy bowed, “I pledge my life on’t, lady.”

  “And you, Henrietta,” Mrs. Russecks said more sternly. “Bear in mind that the mill is a perilous place for novices.”

  “Methinks I know my way around it well enough, Mother!”

  “Very well, but mind your step and stay alert for trouble.” With this advice the couple left, and Mrs. Russecks turned to Ebenezer with a proud smile.

  “Fetch me into th
e house, Sir Benjamin, and we’ll attend to the pressing business that so distracts you.”

  Ebenezer sighed; it was chilly outside, and he was blind neither to Mrs. Russecks’s beauty nor to her flattering invitation. Nevertheless, as soon as they were seated in her parlor he declared that he was not Sir Benjamin Oliver nor any other knight, and that neither he nor his companion were traveling in any official capacity.

  “As for my actual identity, I am ashamed of’t, but I’ll tell it readily—”

  “Indeed you shan’t!” Mrs. Russecks commanded, with some heat. “Methinks thou’rt younger in the ways of the world than becomes thy years! Do you take me for a whore, sir, that swives all comers in the stews?”

  “Prithee, nay, ma’am!”

  “You’ve seen what a gross, unmannered bully is my husband,” she went on sharply. “Once in my youth I grew to despise the race of men, and to loathe in myself those things that aroused their lust and mine: ’twas in contempt of life I married Harry Russecks, so that every time he forced me like a slavering brute of the woods, he’d strengthen twice over my opinion of his sex.”

  “Mercy, ma’am! I scarce know what to think! Many’s the time I’ve pitied woman’s lot, and reviled men’s coarseness; yet a man is nine parts nature’s slave in such matters, methinks, and in any case I assure you not all men are so coarse as your husband.” He stopped, covered with confusion by the unintended insult. “What I mean to say—”

  “No matter.” Mrs. Russecks’s face softened; she smiled and laid her hand upon Ebenezer’s. “What you just told me, I knew in my heart all along, and soon saw the folly of my marriage. Yet I was and still am victim of another folly, that I got like a family illness from my father: I was too proud to renounce a grand course once I’d embarked on’t, e’en though I saw ’twould lead to naught but pain and revulsion. In lieu of admitting my blunder and leaving the Province, I resolved to make the best of’t; I vowed I’d lose no opportunity to redeem myself for scorning good men along with bad. That, sir, explains your presence here, and what you no doubt took to be immodest encouragement on our part—I feel more pity for Henrietta than for myself, inasmuch as ’twas none of her choice to live with such a jealous and vigilant despot. Yet albeit I own we’ve behaved like tarts, sir, I beg you remember that we’re not: ’twas to a knight I opened my door and e’en good Guinevere played harlot for a knight! To tell me now thou’rt only Ben the factor’s son, or Slim Bill Bones the sailor—’twere less than delicate, Sir Benjamin, were it not?”