Wilderness of Spring

by Edgar Pangborn

  _Chapter One_

  Ben Cory searched the bay, his eyes ardent for greater distances. Hereat the wharf the ships relinquished wakefulness and power, becomingboxes of cargo for the calculations of landsmen: the harbor is not thesea.

  "Watch, Ben--he'll take in sail presently." John Kenny was holding hisdwarfish body erect to make the most of it, ancient head slanted so thathe might look down his nose even at Boston Bay. He thrust hisgold-headed cane against a crack in the wharf--his wharf, and smiled atthe boy--his boy. "Luck of the Artemis, this breeze. When she nears thewharf Jenks will haul his tops'l to set her aback. You'll see her reachthe piling a-tiptoe, a lady, all whisper and dignity. Didn't I say she'dbe the lucky thing, when I took thee and Reuben up the Mystic to watchher a-building on the ways?"

  "Yes, Uncle John." The mild westerly breeze fluttered Mr. Kenny's graycoat and the gray owl-tufts above his ears. It woke the dance ofwhitecaps under April sky, and seventeen is a kind of April. "She's afair ship, sir."

  "Hoy, mind your terms! A ship is all square-rigged, commonly athree-master. Two-masted, a ketch, is _Artemis_--well, a loose name,seeing we use it also to mean small harbor craft. But with herfore-and-aft mizzen you mustn't be calling her a ship. I wish Reuben hadcome. He's missing a pretty sight, and all to go strolling in thewoods." Ben winced inwardly, knowing that the old man, for all hisunderstanding, had been hurt by that. He ought to know by this time, Benthought, how when the black mood came over Reuben there was nothing todo but let the boy alone, let him go walk in the woods or whatever elsehe wished. Ben himself did not know whether it was the flame ofDeerfield that attacked Reuben at such times; had not been able tolearn, in all the three years since they came to Roxbury and Uncle Johnhad opened heart and home to them. "_Artemis_ is near three hundred ton,Ben. That's not big, but she could sail anywhere in the world."

  The lonely man, blue-eyed and gaunt, who stood at the outermost end ofKenny's wharf, swung about to gaze at the old merchant. Ben had notuntil now observed the stranger's face, motionless as a boulder in apatch of grass against the raised collar of a shabby green coat. Grave,Irish maybe, handsome in spite of a signature of smallpox from juttingcheekbones to the edge of an angular jaw. Under a battered tricorne hatBen saw coal-black hair and a forehead high and pale. The mouth wasthin, the upper lip compressed. Hands projected immensely from frayedsleeves, a sailor's hands broadened at the knuckles. Others on the wharfhad been watching _Artemis_; discouraged by the chill of the breeze,they had abandoned the airy region to Ben and Mr. Kenny and theblue-eyed man.

  Anchored in the near waters or drawn up to the many docks, an orderlyjungle stirred to the bay's mild motion--stem masts, steep bowsprits,nervous bodies of the drowsing wind-wanderers. To Ben's eyes, Clarke'sWharf over yonder hardly dwarfed Mr. Kenny's single squat warehouse andthree hundred feet of pier. All around Ben spread an apparent confusionof ropes, tackle, mooring-posts, more meaningful than when he had firststumbled through it three years ago, but still a confusion to one whosehand had never yet felt the lurching sting and thrust of a working ropeacross the palm.

  Woolgathering, Ben had missed some remark about _Artemis_' rigging. "Sheowes much to that fore-and-aft mizzen. Fore-and-aft or square, either'llbring you the service of all the winds, but the way of the fore-and-aftis a woman's way, Ben, seeming to yield, winning by yielding. Yoursquares'l is male, standing up to wrestle the sky breast to breast--nay,but he can drive almost as near the wind's eye--point or two less,what's a point or two in a long journey? _Artemis_ don't roll too much.I've been aboard her under sail only the once, when we tried her out.She didn't roll much, for all Mr. Jenks tempted her to it so to learnher paces. Fast she is, Ben. You can feel it even now when she's pickingher way slow as a dream."

  "Sir, if I--supposing I might ship aboard----"

  "You?" Mr. Kenny jabbed his cane at the planking, his crinkled face goneblank. "Ben, boy, you must stick to your studies. You'll have sea enoughwhen Mr. Hibbs brings your Greek far enough on to read the Odyssey.Better to drown in poetry than salt water."

  "Still, Uncle John, the sea----"

  "Now let me tell you a thing: never admit to a sailor that you love thesea, if love is the word. He'd despise you for a landsman. A sailor maylove a ship, if she be fair and not vicious. Not the sea, not the oldblind murdering bitch-mother."

  "No, I think love is not the word, but--nay, I don't know."

  "You think I don't feel it? Didn't I take ship as a common seaman when Iwas twenty? I ran away, Ben. My father's blood was partly coldvinegar--something of that you felt in your day with my good sister. Mybrother George's and mine was red, and hot. Well, I had but a few yearsof it, he too. Not for me with my piddling strength. We went into trade,we prospered, and I'm a landsman--but I know her. Sometimes if my badtoe's a-troubling or I go to bed with too much drink in me, I dream I'mfathoms down in the cold, the green dark. I see their faces, I meanthose of the dead, men I knew who own no grave except the sea. Theyfloat by me orderly, no crowding--hoy, you learn not to crowd a man inthe neighborhood of live ropes! They go by me one by one--Amyas Holtmaybe, that was first officer of the ship _Marigold_ and would neversing except he was stone cold sober, but I _have_ heard him sing, marryhave I. Went down with the _Marigold_ off the Bermudas--all hands....Isn't the land fair, Ben? Full of good things? Good work, women,children, warmth of an earned fireside? And the time of year that'scoming now?--but maybe you suppose an old man don't notice the spring.Is not the land fair?"

  "Yes, Uncle John," said Ben, and turned his face away.

  "Sometimes I see Danny Roeder too, laughing boy, ready for anything,dead of the scurvy when we stood thirty-four days becalmed south of theLine, a run to Recife in the ship _Providence_--most of his teeth fallenfrom puffed purple gums, not laughing then.... I've but now remembered,Ben, this is the first time you've seen _Artemis_ afloat. When she leftthe ways last August you and Reuben were a trifle indisposed."

  Ben grinned weakly in acknowledgement. Last August he and Reuben had hadthe measles. After a day or so of misery they had grown busily criticalof each other's spots, the despair of Mr. Kenny's housekeeper KateDobson, who tried to make them mind the orders of Mr. Welland the doctorand stay covered up in bed. Plump Kate did not frown on pillow fights inprinciple. She suppressed a few nobly, knowing her massive rear to beprime target, because she believed the boys were in a rarely tendercondition. Kate had heard that measles could become the lapsingfever--whatever that was, and never mind that Mr. Welland rumbled andchuckled and took snuff and said it wa'n't so. Kate had sniffedpointedly and severely about Mr. Welland of Roxbury, asking after hisgentle departure how a head under such a Lord-help-a-sinner wig as hewore could hold knowledge of the healing art or in fact anything else.

  More than a year in building and the pride of Mr. Kenny's ancient years,_Artemis_ took to the water--tide and wind and season won't wait on themeasles--with no help from Ben and his brother. By the time Mr. Wellanddecreed they could leave the house, she was gone, with half a cargo,mostly hardware and woolens from England. She slipped down to Newport tofill her hungry hull with flour and cheese; on to Virginia for a quickturnover; then with tobacco and what remained of the Yankeehardware--anything you like from frying pans to thimbles--she was forJamaica in the warm seas. At Kingston she ran into a bit of trouble;Captain Jenks sent word of it by a homeward-bound. Tropic fever andsmallpox had played hell with his crew, and he was delayed seekingreplacements. He would not put out in late winter even on theKingston-Boston run with nothing better than a passel of louse-gnawedJamaican monkeys who'd die like Caribbee butterflies at the first breathof a northerly and anyway couldn't tell the head from the hawse-holes.Jenks ripped out other comments, cramped by the need of setting quill topaper, concerning Jamaican speed in loading his logwood and molasseswhile the remnants of his good crew were too sick or drunk to lend ahand. "They doe labour a Moment," he wrote, "and falle into a mostsweete bloudie Slummber." Snorting over that letter in the company ofBen and Reuben, John Kenny remarked that h
e couldn't picture man, monkeyor butterfly winning much sweet slumber when Mr. Jenks spoke in hisnatural voice--the which, said Mr. Kenny, was the secret of Mr. Jenks'virtue, for by raising that voice to strong conversational pitch hecould lift you the father and mother of a typhoon out of a flat calm.

  A clop of hoofs, a grind of halting wheels--Ben heard that above themutter of small waves fumbling the piles of the wharf, and turned to seethe coach drawing up near Mr. Kenny's warehouse. A dark woman steppedout, doll-size with distance, helping two others alight. The breezesnatched at full skirts; an arm flew up restraining a blue bonnet; Benheard a ripple of remote laughter, and the women consulted, bonnetsgrouped like the heads of little lively fowl. Plainly not working-womennor dockside sluts, they must have some errand at the warehouse, andwould not be coming out here into the raw smell of tar, fish,sewage-corrupted water and salt air. Mr. Kenny, with slightly dulledhearing, was unaware of them. Ben looked again to _Artemis_.

  "Watch, Ben! Wouldn't you think he was bearing down smack onto the bowof that three-master? She's a New Yorker, by the way. Hoy!" Mr. Kennydanced a stiff caper. "Like an old woman threading a needle! But if thewatchman on that Mannahatta tub pissed his britches, no shame to him atall. Watch!"

  The lonely blue-eyed man was watching too, in the curve of his long backsomething hawk-like.

  Mr. Kenny relaxed, chuckling. "Ben, I recall you've never met Mr. Jenks.When he's ashore he never visits around, damn the dear man, not even toRoxbury. There's a reason--never mind. Had he a contrary wind thisafternoon he'd likely bring her in anyhow. Once I watched him fetch mywallowing old _Hera_ to this wharf. Filthy little northeast blow, andshe about as comfortable to handle as a bull on ice. I thought he'ddrop anchor alee of Bird Island and wait. Not Jenks--brought her in likea homing dove. Knows every inch and instant of the tides as they'llnever be known by your landside chart-makers, noticed it a thousandtimes. I don't mean he'll take foolish risks. With _Hera_ that time--tohim it was a nothing, did it easy as a milkmaid strips a cow. _Hera_went down off the Cape--'d I ever tell you?--seven years ago in a fog.Floating hulk stove in her la'board side. Filled in twenty minutes, nofault of Jenks, and didn't he bring off every man alive in one boat andone damned little dory? Not a soul lost."

  He had told of it before. Ben never found it difficult to hear UncleJohn's repeated tales as if new. In a way they were, since Ben knew hehad probably missed something in the earlier telling.

  Wharf hands slouched from the warehouse, taking command of the spacewhere soon the figurehead under the low-slung bowsprit of _Artemis_would gaze inward toward her homeland, if that grave white face,something less than a woman's and something more, knew any homeland nowbut the one she shared with Mother Carey's chickens. The men busiedthemselves over ropes and fenders, with raucous horseplay. The blue-eyedman certainly noticed them, but never turned from observing _Artemis_with the intentness of a schoolmaster or a lover.

  The roustabouts brought a stench of cheap taverns, rum, tobacco, sweat.Bulky short-worded men, some tattooed and wonderfully scarred, theirnoise slightly restrained by the presence of an important merchant and awell-dressed boy. The boy envied their carelessness. To watch them you'dthink the homecoming of _Artemis_ from her maiden voyage was a trifle,worth no more than a shot of spit off the jetty. Ben saw a leather-hidedgiant twiddle free a length of rope and try it on the legs of acompanion who yelped and grappled with him harmlessly.

  Behind Ben a crystalline voice abruptly asked: "Will she anchor, Mr.Kenny, or come in to moor direct?"

  "Direct, my dear." Mr. Kenny was beaming, a hand on the girl's arm. "Didyour father ever make me pay lighterage if he could help it?"

  "What a pert breeze! I vow I'm brave to be out in it."

  "This little air? Why, Faith, it would scarce raise a kite for a runningboy. Anyway 'twas no breeze put the brier roses in your cheeks, you wasborn with those, well I remember."

  Mr. Kenny's back was turned to Ben. Ben was standing quite alone,hearing yet the long murmuring of the water, as he fought away the deadweight of shyness and discovered the April grace of her, dressed inshining blue, wind-clasped; looked again, and encountered a woundingsweetness of blue eyes.

  * * * * *

  John Kenny's woodland had never been surveyed; somewhere it blended intocrown-grant timberland or unclaimed wilderness. His house stood beyondthe natural limits of Roxbury--he liked that--on a rolling rise ofground south of the road to Cambridge. From his back pasture, ReubenCory had heard him say, you could keep under forest cover all the way toProvidence, and maybe he'd do it some time, the old man said, if everthe Saints came a-snapping too close at his heels. John Kenny might havestarted saying that twenty or thirty years ago when it wasn't entirely ajest.

  From the window of the room upstairs that he shared with Ben, Reubenstared eastward beyond the Dorchester road, across open land and marshand water, to the low hills of Dorchester Neck two miles away, gray andbrown yet alive with a subdued radiance under the afternoon sun ofApril. Beyond those harmless hills moved the sunrises, and the sternAtlantic that seemed to be tugging at his brother's heart and giving himno rest.

  Driven by his own dark unease of spring, by some dread of human voicesand the wrong questions they ask, by shame at the ungracious whim thathad prompted him to stay home--after all, if he was not going in towatch the return of _Artemis_, sighted yesterday playing games off theCape with a contrary wind, then he had no proper excuse for thishalf-holiday from study--driven above all by a need for the April day asit might come to him lonely in a golden calm at the edge of wilderness,Reuben slipped downstairs light as a cat, out past the black wet groundof the kitchen garden and down a long slope into the south pasture, thenon toward soft-spoken hemlocks.

  Reuben had discovered a bodily sureness in these solitary journeys, atrust in his own senses, and a puzzled, reaching love for the life ofthe unhuman world. Sometimes he stole out of the house at night, withowl and fox and whippoorwill, if the moon was shining to help him; Benslept sweetly never knowing that. Ben often came with him into thedaytime woodland, but to stroll out here with Ben belonged to anothercategory of experience. The world of I-am-alone cannot share an orbitwith other planets, as the world and Reuben-self that existed in Ben'spresence could exist nowhere else.

  He would never be tall like Ben, nor quite as strong. At fifteen that nolonger troubled him. His own hard wiry thinness was sufficient; it wouldcarry him, he supposed, wherever he cared to go.

  At the lower end of the pasture he climbed a stile into thespicy-smelling hush. A wood road continued on the other side; Reubensoon abandoned it, following landmarks that brought him to one of hisbetter-loved havens, where Ben had often loafed with him.

  Over a huge flat-topped boulder a spruce towered to sixty feet, thedroop of branches enclosing the rock; one could imagine the hide of agray monster lurking in the green. The boughs slanted steeply, creatinga room with a granite floor and walls of gold-flecked shadow, a gentleand a secret place--old; the spruce must have been already old in thetime of King Philip's War. A midget brook passed here. It had gouged apool at the outer end of the granite block, not deep even in the time ofspring rains, but reflections of the spruce gave it an ocean infinity ofgreen.

  Wander a few yards down the brook and you owned another world, where thewater widened to larger ponds, supporting patches of feather-toppedmarsh grass here and there. Maples on firmer ground bordered this dampclearing, which by itself became many worlds in the flow of theseasons--the world of deep summer, for example, when you could watchmating dances of the small green dragonflies that never come nearhouses.

  Reuben climbed silently into the sanctuary under the spruce and lay outon the rock to stare into the pool refreshed by the rains of April. Heinvited to his ears all least disturbances of the enclosing silence--aweak murmur upstream where the trifling water hurried over pebbles, abreath of motion in the needles of the spruce, a bluejay's complaintsoftened by distance, a cow lowing more than a mile away
; a greatermystery, the beat of his own heart in the rib-cage pressed against rock,not quite pain. He saw the face of himself the stranger in the waterbelow, and shut his eyes. When the flesh is quiet, he thought, the mindis also. Why? I alway knew that. The quiet is brief.

  Why?...

  Because (I think) everything is part of a journey. I am never, I wasnever still. Perhaps there is no stillness except in death.

  Human sounds reached him, a brushing of last year's grass in thatclearing downstream, a vague cough. Reuben sat up, annoyed and puzzled.

  It could not be anyone with the privilege of bidding him to ceaseidling. Uncle John was in Boston with Ben. The tutor was sulking in hisroom--it hurt Mr. Hibbs that a boy granted a half-holiday should electto spend it as he pleased, and anyway Mr. Gideon Hibbs was not at homein any forest outside the _Eclogues_ of Virgil. Uncle John's gardenerand handy man Rob Grimes was accounted for too--Reuben had heard his axein the woodshed.

  If some poacher or Indian were fooling about the back land, Uncle Johnwould wish to know. Reuben slipped from the rock with no sound, andwormed a gradual way through the brush. Someone sneezed. Poachers trynot to sneeze; prowling Indians just don't; still Reuben maintained hiscaution because of a wild-animal pleasure in it. Having stolen bydegrees to the edge of the clearing, he observed the stout bowed backand lightly fringed bald head of a man kneeling by a shallow pond,parting the dead grass to stare down into the water. Surely not apoacher examining a trap; the man was familiar somehow.

  Reuben identified him, but doubtfully. Acting on an impulse of gentlewickedness, he slid out from the bushes and sat cross-legged with hischin in his hands, all as quietly as a mouse crossing a heap of flour.

  Rising at last from his peculiar inspection of the pond water, the mansneezed again. He turned unknowing, and jumped delightfully. He said"God bless me!" and closed his large mouth two or three times while aslow chuckle shook him from fringed head to dingy shoes--a memorablyugly man pitted with smallpox scars from a button chin to a bulgingforehead. His clothes were snuff-stained; respectable once, now a secondbest suited to the woods. His little dark eyes gleamed mirthful and sad,intent. A ribbony nose ended in a flared tip with a double knob. Reubenmarveled that having known this face at his bedside, and that not longago, he could have been confused in remembering it.

  "I'm sorry, sir--didn't go for to startle you, Mr. Welland." "Oh, didn'tyou!"

  "It was the wig."

  "The wig, sir? Oh, you mean the absence of my wig. I'm in a mannerdisguised. I understand your synecdoche, or do I mean hypallage?"

  "Metonymy," said Reuben.

  "Brrr!" said Amadeus Welland. "Mm-yas, of course, 'tis the spottedchild, the younger one. How's your brother, Mr. Cory?" "Well," saidReuben, and laughed happily for no plain reason.

  Sighing and grunting as the elderly do, the little man sat on theground, not too ungracefully in spite of stooped plumpness and a modestmelon of potbelly. His darkened snuff-stained hands were firm, not verywrinkled; he might be less ancient than he seemed. "Ah, the wig! Thestructure! I employ it, you understand, for medical purposes. Wondroustherapeutic--I dare venture you and your brother were so frightened byit that you were forced to recover in spite of the worst my simplescould do. Yet plainly no one in his right mind could dwell in such athing, let alone go for a walk in the woods."

  "I can see that, sir."

  "You can, ha? I bought it in Newport," said Mr. Welland dreamily. "Tenyears ago. The moths have been at it a little since then; at that timethere were more ribbons in it, and I was younger myself. It doth own oneother function beside the medical. Not exactly duplicity norartifice--let us say, concealment. As a scholar, Mr. Cory, you'lldiscover how a man of learning must often hide in the bushes, not onlyfrom the ignorant, sir, but even more from the almost-wise. Now a man ofmedicine, if he hath also some pretension to scholarship, is muchexposed, sir, much exposed to the winds of mischance, and so must evencarry his own dem'd shrubbery about with him, and that's what I do.Honestly, Reuben, a'n't it a _hell_ of a wig?"

  * * * * *

  "Oh, Mr. Kenny!" said Faith Jenks. "Brier roses? I'll rest content withthat till you say a prettier." She studied Ben with silent laughter.

  Laughing of course at the pimples. For a year Ben's face had beenlightly tormented. Huge wrists jutted; his nose was too small, his mouthtoo big, the devil with all of it. Since she chose to laugh, Ben hatedher; thus occupied, he discovered as one caught in the embrace of oceanthat he was in love.

  Maybe she had not been laughing. Her own small dainty mouth showed noobvious quirk. Not brier roses. Damask roses, remembered--remembered----

  In a dooryard garden at Deerfield.

  Why, they would be blooming still! The village burned, and many died,but not the secret life under the snow. _She planted them...._ At thefirst urgency of summer sun they would have waked, spreading overscorched fallen timbers in the desolate ground to spill the sweetnessfrom their clear June faces. For the first time Ben thought: I must goback--some day. I must learn whether that is true.

  The blue of Faith's coat and dress conspired with the bay and the blueof heaven to make her eyes deeper than any sky of April. She stoodtaller than Mr. Kenny, a woman grown, full-breasted, poised, maybe noolder than Ben in years but in command of all she said and did. Hisquick glance told him she was in the habit of biting her rightthumbnail, and he rebuked himself for noticing it--merely such a flaw asa goddess needs if she's to wear the semblance of common clay.

  "Your mother's well, my dear?"

  "Ay, Mr. Kenny, but not well enough to be out in this changeableweather. She wished to come but I prevailed on her. Poor Mother is soreadily distracted!"

  "I know. Ah, forgive me!--Mistress Faith Jenks, Mr. Benjamin Cory, mygrand-nephew, more a son. Hoy, and Charity--how's my lady Charity?" Thisto a brief, blunt block of child who made some breathy noise. Faith washolding out her hand. Ben knew he could not kiss it (as Ru could havedone) nor speak at all without sounding like a crow.

  She had pity, letting his fingers know the electric softness and takingher hand away. Ben confronted the glare of my lady Charity. Aboutthirteen, grim with crippling shyness, Charity tilted her square faceback in a blue bonnet that reflected her sister's in everything butgrace. A freckled paw jerked out and dropped before Ben could grasp it,clenching its tiny companion. "'D do," she said, and examined hershoe-tips in a cold quiet of despair.

  A third strange face watched Ben--still, brown, impersonal; a Negrogirl, therefore a servant, probably a slave, but with no beaten,cringing air such as Ben had noticed in the slaves of Pastor Williams atDeerfield or in the few he had glimpsed in Boston and Roxbury. Herslenderness was clad Puritan-fashion in white and gray, somehow notsubdued by the radiance of Faith. She stood apart, unconcerned as thelady _Artemis_. Charity had taken a few awkward backward steps until thebrown girl's long-fingered hand dropped on her shoulder and thereremained. Dark eyes moved on to contemplate the open daylight and bluewater, disturbing Ben with the sense of a quiet alien and strong.

  "Indeed," Faith was saying, "I've heard of you, Mr. Cory, and hoped wemight meet sooner. We don't go about much, with my father so much awayat sea. You was of Deerfield, I think?"

  "Yes." Why, that was no croak! "I feel it to be long ago."

  She smiled compassionately; everyone knew the story of Deerfield. "'Deedyou and your brother are men of mystery. I fear your noses are buried inbig old long books from a day's end to the next."

  Mr. Kenny sighed and intervened. "True, Faith, their tutor and I, wemake 'em toil like galley slaves. Harvard in the autumn--the both of'em, I'm proud to say. Might have entered last year, but I wished 'embetter prepared, Mr. Leverett of Harvard concurring, seeing they had noclassics in childhood." Ben squirmed; it sounded as though having noclassics in childhood was rather like being born with one leg.

  "Your brother isn't in Boston today to see the _Artemis_?"

  "No, Mistress Faith, he--well...."

  "Mr. Reu
ben," said Uncle John too lightly, "was of a mind to go walkingin the woods."

  "Ah, the _pretty_ thing!" Faith exclaimed, and Ben gave her credit fordivine tactfulness. "Mr. Kenny, why is the bowsprit slanted so low tothe water? I never saw the like on another vessel, no never."

  "A whim of mine, my dear. I meddled with the builders. But your fatherhath told me the thought's good--larger spread of jib, and a strongerangle against the tension of the stays. Yet when I wanted it so I merelythought 'twould make a handsomer line to the eye. Mph!--so peradventureart is good for something?"

  "Sir...." The lonely blue-eyed man had come lightly from the end of thewharf, his hat held to his breast with no attempt to hide itsshabbiness. His shoes were cracked and stained. A rip in the green coatwas mended with large seaman's stitches, evidence that no woman tendedhim, that his feline neatness was his own achievement. He bowed, as Mr.Kenny's wizened mask watched courteously down the nose. "I fear Iintrude--is it I'm addressing the owner of the ketch?"

  "I am her owner, sir."

  "I've not seen a fairer craft in my seafaring years, and they sometwenty or more in all manner of vessels, all manner of places toobetwixt here and the Indies, that'll be the eastern Indies--Molucca,Ceylon...."

  His voice was baritone, resonant and sweet, a power stirring in it likea drumbeat felt in the marrow. A plangent overtone rang in every word. Alifting inflection suggested the speaker loved his words, reluctant toput a period to them. Ben had never heard that in New Englandspeech--once, maybe, in that lost time when Uncle Zebina Pownal came outof nowhere to sing for them.

  "Ay, she's fair," said Mr. Kenny, admitting the obvious.

  "And if it's you that oversaw the designing, as (forgive my rudeness) Ithought I overheard you say, then may I be shaking your hand?"

  Mr. Kenny held it out impulsively, defenses down. Ben saw in hisgreat-uncle what he thought of as the "_Artemis_ look"--love me, love myketch. Pushing aside a transient alarm, Ben himself gave way to one ofhis gusty moments of allegiance. This blue-eyed man must be admirableand wise. His pale quiet, the odd way his face took little share in theardor of his voice--why, merely the reasonable caution of a man who musthave voyaged everywhere and seen everything on the everlasting seas. Onewould do well to listen when he spoke, and remember.

  "I am John Kenny of Roxbury, sir. The ketch is the _Artemis_, PeterJenks captain, her maiden voyage now ending."

  "_Artemis!_ O the fair true name for such a lady! Daniel Shawn, sir,your humble servant." No man's servant, and Ben knew it. Presented tothe elder daughter of Peter Jenks, captain, Mr. Shawn kissed herfingers, and Ben writhed, not in jealousy but at his own incompetence:that was how it ought to be done, and Faith was clearly pleased."_Artemis!_--what other name would be possible?" said Mr. Shawn, andgrew intent on brushing his coat lapel, asking casually in the samebreath: "Doth she carry letters of marque, Mr. Kenny?"

  "That she don't," said John Kenny rather blankly. "Armed she is--you cansee the la'board falconet from here--but no letters of marque, sir. I'venot a word to say against the privateersmen, in these years of war whenthe French do beset us so, but for my ships I'll have no part of it,having made mine own small fortune in the hard way, Mr.Shawn--refraining, let us say, from the thought of easy prizes because Iknow mine own share of human frailty, and proposing so to continue."

  "For which I honor you, sir," said Mr. Shawn, and having brushed thelapel to his satisfaction and smiled with wonderful sweetness, hechanged the subject. "I've heard of your father, Mistress Jenks, the wayI suppose most seaman have in this part of the world, and he noble asany captain under sail, now that's no lie."

  Faith blushed, overwhelmed; her right hand wandered to her mouth. Mr.Kenny was visibly wondering whether to steer Charity into another socialordeal. Charity leaned against the brown girl, observing _Artemis_ tothe exclusion of all else on earth, particularly Benjamin Cory. Faithturned to Ben, astoundingly, swaying so near that her face under theribboned calash must tilt up to look at him. She clutched the bonnet,though it was well tied. "Pray allow me to tack into the lee of you, Mr.Cory, to shelter my silly bonnet--your shoulders are broad enough."

  Later in white nights Ben thought: _She said that, and to me...._

  Later also Ben found it hard to recall anything else said by Faith orhimself--small talk, surely--in those moments of nearness while_Artemis_, clear of the harbor shipping, moved down on them tranquilly,a great wind-begotten dream realizing herself in the here-and-now.

  A round bulky man held a rope at the bow of _Artemis_. Below him a facecruelly pure and calm, carved from apple-wood a year ago by an oldartist of Dorchester who was nearly blind, stared into a world of manyhomelands. In the momentary enclosing silence, Ben saw a flash ofstartled recognition between that stout man in the bow and Daniel Shawn;since both looked away immediately, Ben dismissed it as a vagary of hisown imagination, or none of his business. The stout man was unknown toBen, perhaps one of the replacements signed on at Kingston; a greasy,unrevealing face. Ben heard a flurry of shouts from men aboard and menon the dock who knew each other. He also found a face he knew, andwaved--the mate, yellow-haired Jan Dyckman, who had visited at Roxbury,brick-solid and big, a shy and gentle soul ashore, moving with a warmconfidence in all the ways of his Lutheran God. But Jan did not seeBen's wave or had no time for it, taut at the starboard rail andwatching simultaneously every inch of remaining canvas, every ripplebetween _Artemis_ and the wharf.

  "Ahoy, Mistress Faith!" That was a north-wind voice overriding all othercommotion, from the bald giant looming aft near the helmsman. _Artemis_was yet some thirty yards away, gliding, barely disturbing the filthydockside water. Ben's glance took in the giant--it could only be PeterJenks--with a wonder that such an iron mountain could have begotten theloveliness of Faith. Even that far away Captain Jenks was more thanlife-size, and surely knew it. His nose was flattened like a board, setin deep leather creases between small eyes icy blue in thesunlight--courageous arctic eyes without compassion.

  Faith jumped at her father's shout, clutching her skirt prettily."Clarissa! My kerchief--quickly!" Her hand behind her snapped a fingerimpatiently before the Negro girl gave her a white kerchief; then Faithwas running, waving the cloth, expertly careless of ropes and tackle andthe roustabouts who lurched out of her path. She knew her way; she wasnot impeding them, and stepped back properly when it was time for thatrope in the bow to leap ashore.

  Another snaked from the pier to be caught amidships. The lady _Artemis_needed no restraining thrust of the fenders. She nudged wet timbers asone arranging a pillow for her head, and fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  "I would not," said Reuben, "utter any gratuitous multiloquence whichcould be construed as a detraction, libel or impudicitous derogation ofanother man's periwig."

  "I yield. You know bigger and sillier words than I do."

  "Then will you tell me, sir, what on earth you were looking for overthere by the pond?"

  "Mm-yas," said Mr. Welland, "the pond. Why, I've been longing for yearsto learn how peeper frogs peep. Don't have much time toramble--difficult for a doctor to break away, but now and then I do,with the excuse of hunting for herbs. I heard 'em peeping hereabouts,thought at last I might catch 'em at it. No such thing. They hide when Ipeep at 'em, and devil a peep will they peep. Why's that?"

  "Too near them, sir, and not still enough. You should have sat wellaway from the water, with no motion for at least a quarter-hour."

  Deliberately Mr. Welland took snuff from an enameled box, and sneezed, alight explosion with a double after-echo. "Fi-_choo_-shoo!... Mr. Cory,I take it they have peeped in your presence?"

  "Oh yes. The little throats swell up enormous and they shake all over."To soften the blow Reuben added: "I'm sure they would for you, Mr.Welland. Merely a matter of making yourself look like a rock."

  "At my age I'm to imitate a boulder--boulder and yet more bold."

  "Paronomasia," said Reuben. "The ultimate in wit."

 
; "Boo! You imitated a rock rather well yourself. I never heard a sound.When I first saw you I thought I had to do with one of the LittlePeople."

  "Ah! The invisible world!" Daringly Reuben made horns of his fingers andwaggled them. He was very happy, no longer much concerned to wonder why.

  "Might I ask further, why you don't find it strange that I should spendmy declining years endeavoring to watch frogs peep?"

  Reuben considered. "I think everything is interesting."

  "Oh!" That was a startled sound, without laughter. Mr. Welland lookedaway from him so long that Reuben's pleasure clouded over. He could havegone too far; said something wrong; happiness and friendship couldtumble, an air-castle in ruins. Mr. Welland was holding out thesnuffbox, closed. "Try if you can discover the catch. If you can I'lltell you who gave it me."

  Reuben studied it, aware he was being tested in some way that went farbeyond the trifling problem. The box was of ebony, the sides coveredwith intricate carving of grape leaves. The enameled picture inset inthe cover displayed a naked goat-leg fellow plucking a cluster from avine. Since pressure on the carving brought no result, Reubenmethodically tried lifting the leaves With a thumbnail until one yieldedand the box was open.

  "Mph!--most persons spend half an hour and give it up. Well, it wasgiven me--worthless keepsake, he said--by Sir Thomas Sydenham, when as ayoung man stuffed with mine own importance I called upon him at London.He was most kind. Corrected my quantities, I recall, when I ventured aLatin tag in what he tolerantly called my vile colonial accent. He died,I believe, in the year of the revolution, 1689--so you see, Reuben, timeand change, and we grow old somehow." Reuben thought: But he is notspeaking to himself in the far-off way of the old; he is speaking to_me_, and for _my_ sake.... "Perhaps you never heard of Sir Thomas?"

  "No, sir, I never did."

  "He hath been called the English Hippocrates--an exaggeration, but agreat man certainly, I think the greatest in medicine since Harvey."

  "Harvey?"

  "There are gaps in your learning after all. I'll be happy to tell youabout Harvey if you like. About Signor Malpighi too, who as it happensdiscovered the presence of the capillaries by dissecting the lung of afrog. Not one of your frogs of course. Some Swiss or Italian frog,unknown benefactor of science."

  "Did you think, sir, I was all vain because I like to make comicalnoises with big words?"

  "No, sir. On reflection--no; I did not think that."

  "I've been called--oh, flippant or the like, because it seems I do nowand then laugh at the wrong time."

  "Who calls you that?"

  "Oh!... My tutor for one, but meaneth no harm by it. Actually he's verykind, and I suppose I try him badly, but then by chance I'll pronouncesome Latin quantity correctly or come unscathed through the horridjungle of some Greek verb, and he forgiveth all."

  "M. Cory, I have been sitting here fearing that perhaps _I_ had laughedat the wrong times, and that you might regard me as--mm-yas, flippant orthe like."

  "I do not."

  "In that view of the case, perhaps you and I ought to be friends."

  "As a matter of fact," said Reuben, "I thought we already were."

  * * * * *

  South of Boston Neck the road to Roxbury entered a desolate mile betweenthe waters of Gallows Bay on the east and a waste of salt marsh. Herethe smell of the sea was all about you; above, a meager crying of gullsin the windy daytime. Near Roxbury the salt flats and Gallows Bay werepartly hidden by woods and rocky knolls. Lights were said to wander thismile of road at night, not fireflies nor lanterns of vessels on GallowsBay, which had honestly earned its name.

  Efforts had been made to pave the road during the last sixty or seventyyears. Stones rose up and walked. Hence derived grave democraticdiscussion and heartburning: if you have all the rocks of New England todraw upon, there's still nothing so pleasing as a paving block tosupport the sills of a barn, especially if it be cut as God might haveleft it in a state of nature, so that no town father can lay his hand onhis heart and swear it came from the particular hole where his horsebroke a leg.

  Ben Cory watched a soaring of white wings tipped with black as a gulldrifted out of sight over the marshes. Out here the white-headed eaglescame at times, lesser life falling quiet. Lordly, Uncle John calledthem, but said they were cowardly pirates too, and told once how he hadwatched them circle about till other birds rose with hard-won fish, andthen torment them into yielding it. Ben wondered as the gull vanished,why he should think of the man Daniel Shawn. He had missed somethingUncle John was saying, and clucked to his mare. "Your pardon, sir?"

  "I was saying Mr. Jenks had three daughters, Faith, Hope and Charity.Hope died as an infant. Charity's but a young thing...."

  "Faith is--charming, I thought."

  "She is," said Uncle John with total dryness. "Ben, I wish your opinionof that fat man, that new bosun Tom Ball."

  "My opinion?" Flattered and flustered, Ben drew his wits away from thedream of Faith. "He's short of words certainly, Uncle John. He onlyshowed me about the deck while you was engaged with Mr. Dyckman, and Idon't recall he said more than half a dozen words, and that in so thicka talk--Devon, isn't it?--I missed much of it. That's not fat, UncleJohn, that's mostly brawn, I believe.... I don't like it, sir, when aman stares at me long without winking. They say it's the candid way, butI feel more as if he was defying me to call him a liar."

  "Eh, Benjamin, you're somewhat sharp. I don't like him either, but Mr.Jenks calls him a good sailor. Ay, Devon, where my father wasborn--within sound of the Channel, he used to say, and could speak ofthe old country pleasantly when he was not laying about him as theLord's own interpreter and flail...."

  "You said Mr. Jenks never visits about ashore?"

  "Mph!... Ben, when you're a man grown, should you find yourself a littletoo fond of drink, I suggest you resist it, even sometimes at cost ofbeing named a poor thing, canting killjoy or whatever. 'Tis a matter ofbeing your own man. Should you find--by your own judgment, boy--thatdrinking interferes with that, don't drink. Did you like Mr. Shawn?"

  "Yes, sir, I did like him, very much. Are you telling me indirectly,Uncle John, that Captain Jenks----?"

  "I am." Mr. Kenny halted his gray gelding on a rise of ground. "I liketo pause here, Ben, where you see only the roofs and little threads ofsmoke.... Yes, he's something a slave to it, though never aboard ship.At sea he allows his men the ration and not a drop for himself. Butashore he must fall into another sea, of liquor--drifting, helpless, Idon't know what stops him from sinking altogether. Blameth it on themoon and tides--his fancy. He told me once how in the dark times of themoon at sea he goes near mad with need of it but won't yield--then Idare say it'll go hard with every man aboard. The moon's his friend insome manner--he's well enough when she's waxing full, sad and bitten byhis need when she waneth, noticed it a thousand times. I told him whoArtemis was in the legends of the Greeks, virgin huntress and goddess ofthe moon. He was pleased, and turned on my ketch a newly loving eye. Atroubled man, Benjamin. Knoweth well what is right, but no one evertells him, no preacher or any other. Having shaken hands with him atlast, I dare say you can imagine why few would undertake it."

  "My hand still aches.... Sir, do you think that if I--I mean when I goto Harvard, I shall know what I wish to do, that is for a life's work?"So it was spoken, the doubt that had been nagging his days.

  "I trust so, Ben." And was that all? Ben wondered--was that all the oldman would say? A gust of wind full of the sea smell blew across Ben'sshoulder and sent a last year's oak leaf scurrying down the road. Thewind's embrace was cold, the leaf a reminder of autumn in the flood ofspring. "You know I concur in the wish your father expressed in his lastmoments: you and Reuben must acquire learning. But then the decisionmust be with you. If you should decide to take up my affairs when I'mdone with 'em, why, I'll be pleased, more perhaps I shouldn't say.Trade, commerce--it's not dull, Ben, so long as one keeps the wit alivewith a private philosophy. Our holy friends make
great show of despisingit, the while it keeps them and the rest of us fed and clothed. It mightnot suit Reuben--well well, let time work a little on it, boy.... If youshould come to see it that way, remember ships are the thing, and thereour dirty Boston's got 'em all by the nose. Never be a port in theAmericas to match her, never."

  Daringly Ben murmured: "What about Newport?"

  "Pretty little harbor. I hear they never let anybody piss off thedocks--afraid of flooding it, you know. Now New York might come tosomething one day, if they ever find the wit to use what nature gave'em. Like you to see New York some time, maybe after the war, the waythe river comes down wide and grand past miles of cliffs on the west.Nothing like it in New England nor Old England neither. Clean, wondrousblue--Jenks told me once 'tis good as well water above the tides. Hetook a sloop of mine up to Albany once, years ago. Well, poor Jenks!He'll be into the second or third tankard by now, scarce giving thatslave wench time to lift off his boots. Yes, the troubled men--seekersand dreamers and friends of the moon, a little mad, and minds grown wisebefore their time like your sweet brother's--I don't pretend tounderstand 'em, Ben, the way I think you and I understand each other. Isuppose they engender a great share of the sorrow in the world. What aplace it might be without 'em! In a world without 'em I swear I'd die ofboredom before I was hanged."

  * * * * *

  "She is fair. When we saw her a-building up the river and climbed abouton her naked ribs, that was different, Ru. Now she's alive, even at thewharf you feel it. She's only waiting to meet the winds again."

  "You'd marry the sea if you could. Come here to the window and lookdown. Something else is fair. Still light enough if you look sharp. Theapple--nay, I mean the little new one, that Rob set out the first yearwe came here. It's budded, for the first time."

  "So it is. Will Rob let 'em ripen this year, I wonder?"

  "I dare say not.... So you've met the great Jenks at last."

  "Never shake hands with him. Remember the bosun Joe Day? Died at theIndies--smallpox, Mr. Dyckman said. I was fond of Joe Day--made me thinkof Jesse Plum, the tales he could tell.... What's Kate contriving thatsmells so good all over the house?"

  "Roast goose, O wanderer."

  "And what's up with Hibbs? Ha'n't seen him since I got home."

  "Sulking. Benjamin, stand forth! You ask me, what of Gideon Hibbs; youask, oh, where is he? Hibbs Pontifex hath gone to roost, with a bookupon his knee."

  "Upstairs?"

  "Next door."

  "All lank and lean?"

  "Ay--dreaming of roast goose."

  "What planneth he for the morrow's morn, the evil old--uh--papoose?"

  "Ovid, my lord."

  "Not Ovid still!"

  "Ovid, my lord."

  "Oh, no!"

  "_Multum in parvo, fiat lux, pro bono publico._ Balls, we've donebetter, but for a Monday evening it'll pass. Throw me a clean pair ofdrawers, will you, like a fair angel, Ben? Was Jenks' daughter there?"

  "Yes. Both, I mean. The younger's a child. And a stranger introducedhimself, a Mr. Daniel Shawn. Excited by _Artemis_ and won Uncle John'sheart praising her. A seaman, silver-tongued--honest, I thought."

  "What was he after?"

  "I don't know that he was after anything, Ru. From his talk he must havebeen everywhere and seen everything."

  "Maybe not everything."

  "Oh, Muttonhead!--a manner of speaking."

  "A goaty eye for Jenks' fair daughter belike?"

  "No. Merely polite to her, like any gentleman."

  "An old man then."

  "Forty perhaps."

  "Ah, Ben, these ancient cods! They're the worst, didn't you know?Consider our Pontifex, how we sometimes hear him moaning in the night. Itell you, he hath a private succubus. Down the chimney cometh she, mostpunctually, Wednesdays and Saturdays, to grind him all night longbetween hot ivory legs, grind him even unto the very last gerunds andaorists and ablatives and first person plural of the verb_contorquere_."

  "Ha?"

  "Alas, poor Ben!--no Latin? It means to wriggle."

  "Well, shame on you!"

  "Button your long lip. You can't say that when I've made you laugh."

  "No, blast you, I can't. As for Shawn, I think he only wished to knowmore about _Artemis_."

  "Ay-yah. Still everyone wants for something."

  "Granted, O Grandfather! And thou?"

  "Trifles. Most of the ocean and the empire of Cathay. The spring moon.The Northwest Passage, the Fountain of Youth, a few acres of Eden.Trifles, but still you see it's true--everyone wants for something, evenI."