_Chapter Four_
Alone outside, dizzy from the rapidly quashed insurrection of CharityJenks, Ben heard a meeting-house bell remote and jangling-sweet,reminder of Lecture Day, and did his best to assume that appearance ofgodly gravity which Reuben sometimes described as the likeness of aboiled onion.
Clarissa had been the superior force employed in putting down therebellion, Ben wasn't quite sure how. The brown girl was just suddenlythere, swift and cool, and Charity was both comforted and outflanked,with no reinforcements, not even from the Whore of Babylon--still itseemed to Ben that the honors of war were mighty close to even. Afterthat, Ben could concentrate on restoring the red comb and, under adiminishing surge of pronouns, make polite excuses for departure,refreshments forgotten. He lingered on the doorstep, a startled youthsaying softly: "Phoo!" Then he weighed anchor, made sail, and stood onat about three knots, close-hauled.
Next time, of course, everything would go smoothly. He might even beallowed to speak with Faith alone. Meanwhile, the memory of her doublewink helped him to repair the fabric of sentiment....
Where to? Uncle John would have left for home; riding, too, and Ben wasafoot, for yesterday his mare had gone slightly lame. Ben tried torecall if he had promised to be home by supper-time; he thought not.With the better part of a generous monthly allowance in his breeches,Ben thought: Why return at once? Soon of course, but....
He accepted casual turnings, coming out unexpectedly on Treamount Streetnear Queen--which led to the Town House, and later became King Street,wandering toward the dock where the lady _Artemis_ lay sleeping. Underthe declining sun the city took on a grayness like antiquity.
Ben knew it was not old. Uncle John once called it new and raw--and tookthe boys into his study to show them a tray of coins, the metalgreenish, almost shapeless. "The antiquary asked but a trifle: few valuethem. This tetradrachm of Athens--you can find the owl of Pallas if youreyes are as good as mine used to be--why, Sophocles could have used itfor wine or bread. Consider though, gentlemen, how many things must bevastly older than coins of the classic age; for example, the hills ofNew England."
The gray city was without silence, as a river cannot be wholly silent.Did true silence ever come to the open sea?--say, in that time when theship _Providence_ in her passage to Recife lay becalmed? No lightestair, Uncle John said, no ripple; sometimes a long heaving rise and fall;sometimes a burst of silver as a flying fish broke the mirror quiet;sometimes a black triangle of fin, cruising. The sharks made nocommotion of haste. Ship sounds, a few--a creaking when a swell raisedthe ship in her dreambound stillness and let her fall. Human sounds,including prayer. Knife brawls, Uncle John said, in the middle period ofthe calm....
Most of the shops near the Town House were closed. Ben lingered at abookstall, his eye caught by a row of titles on the bottom shelf of anoutdoor rack, his mind disturbed by the sudden partial clarification ofa memory. That noon Reuben had certainly been trying to tell himsomething. Not that he was ill--Ru had really been exasperated at thatnotion--but it did have to do with Mr. Welland. Ben importuned hismemory for his brother's words. "He knows so much ... to study ... if Imight...."
A call? All of a sudden Ru wished to study medicine? Ben squatted beforethe books--certainly medical, and mostly Latin--and the guess acquiredconfidence until Ben was fretting at his own stupidity: the boy couldhardly have meant anything else.
"Harvard, sir?" asked the bookseller from the doorway, a squatty man whomust have been nobly redheaded in his prime.
"Not yet. This autumn, probably." (Why did I say that?--no probablyabout it, when Uncle John says I shall, and I can't disappoint him.)
"I know the look, sir. Closing soon, but don't be hurried, lookabout.... Student of medicine?"
"Not I, sir, but my brother is a learned man of divers interests."Intending it as a jest for private enjoyment, Ben felt no impulse tochuckle at the pompous utterance. Not even a lie--oh, not a _man_ maybe,if one must be precise about chronology; but not exactly a boy either.
"Ah!... All sixpence on that shelf except the one from Oxford. For thatI must have two shillings--'t a'n't badly worn, you see."
Immediately desiring it, Ben sniffed. It was in English, notLatin--_Anatomy of Human Bodies_, published in 1698, only nine yearsago. Ben turned the pages. The flayed and dissected subjects in thecopper engravings wore a look both rigidly embarrassed and amused. Howunlike Charity's naked swallows! And yet how like them too, for theseartists, with the coolness of great skill, were certainly trying toconvey----(_"What is truth?" said John Kenny._) Ben sniffed again. "Somepages gone."
"I know. Two shillings is cheap all the same."
"Why, damme, suppose my brother wishes to know the very things told ofin these lost pages?"
"Must even look elsewhere. However, merely because I like your face--oh,what if I do die in the almshouse?--buy it for two shillings and you mayadd a sixpence book for nothing, and I'll tie the both of 'em in a pieceof string dissected, sir, from the very rope that hanged Johnny Quelch."
"Done!" Ben grabbed the next volume at random--_Neurologia Universalis_,by Raymond de Vieussens. It looked fat. "And tie 'em in any string, ordo you take me for a mooncalf?"
"Anything but that, old friend! Can't tempt you with Johnny?"
"Why, man, Quelch swung there till he rotted and the rope too, and whatwould I want of his furniture?"
"Only what they say, you know--bit of hanging rope--wonderful fine tonicfor the vessels of generation."
"They say that, do they now?"
"Ah, they do, but at your age why should you need it?" He winked, andgurgled, and scratched his armpit, and tied the books in a commonstring. "I venture you wouldn't believe the number of old men have goneaway from here, sir, skipping, sir, with a hank of the rope that hangedJohnny. I must have given away a league of it. You don't mind, I hope,if I talk a certain amount of shit?"
"Thrive on it," said Ben, and snapped a finger at his hatbrimaffectionately, and walked away with his parcel, curiously happy.
On King Street the water-front smells thickened. Ben turned into FishStreet where they became a miasma, but dominant always was the saltcleanness of the sea. Here a few sodden faces appraised Ben's goodclothes and youthful slimness, as if debating how much the garmentsmight fetch, supposing he were dragged down an alley, coshed, andstripped. Ben missed his knife, which he seldom wore nowadays, admittingthat it would never have done to wear it for his call at the Jenkshouse. No one offered him any trouble; that might have been different ata later hour, when the widely separated lamps would do no more thanemphasize the blackness.
_Artemis_ rested high in the water, unloading done, her new cargo notyet aboard, her empty rigging lonely against the late sky. Debatingwhether to go up the plank, oppressed by a shyness of inexperience, Benheard some stir of leisured voices below the forward hatch. "...opportunity, for a man like yourself...." The words received somegrumbled answer. Ben wandered away disconsolate to perch on amooring-post and argue that there was no reason at all why he shouldn'tgo aboard. The last of the sunlight dissolved in a thickening ofcloud-wrack on the horizon; a small southerly breeze was shifting to theeastern quarter when an ancient tricorne hat appeared over the side--Mr.Shawn about to step ashore, frowning a moment at sight of Ben, butrelaxing at once and smiling, coming to sink in an easy squat by themooring-post, careless of the old green coat that settled around hisfeet. "I'm after passing the time with the watchman, wishing I couldmake the man talk of something but fish. O to listen to the longGloucester face of him, and he with scarce a sight of Gloucester thetwenty years past by his own telling!" Shawn's knife gouged a splinterfrom the planking and went to whittling under big knowing hands. "Willit be a truce to studies, Mr. Cory?"
"A short one, sir. Mr. Hibbs gave me the afternoon."
One end of the sliver grew to a delicate fishtail. "Boy--look at thatbowsprit line. Mother of God, will your mind's eye see her under a fairwind?--a following wind, say, to belly that fores'l, to make her leantoward the
faraway like the goddess she is, man? Do you see it?"
"I think I do. I've never been under sail, Mr. Shawn."
"You will, one day."
"It seems not to be my great-uncle's wish."
"Then maybe not till it's you with the full years of a man, but you'llbe going." Shawn frowned at the shape growing under his fingers as if hefaced a strong light but would not turn away. "Maybe it'll destroy you,maybe not, but whatever time you'll be going, and you that young, why,Beneen--may I call you so?--you'll see places I'll never live to see atall, now that's no lie."
"May I ask, have you spoken to Mr. Jenks, about that matter youmentioned to my great-uncle?"
"Faith, I've not had opportunity." Shawn smiled at his sliver, where nowgrew a rounded head and the suggestion of a face, and his knife defineddeep curves of female waist and hips. "Indisposed he hath been, and notreceiving visitors." Shawn drooped an eyelid. "From the little blackwench I understood the condition might continue to prevail."
To Ben that seemed not funny but unkind. "Uncle John told me the Captainnever drinks at sea."
Ben knew he was being studied from under lowered brows. "I meant nodisparagement. May I ask what years you have itself?"
"I am seventeen, sir--last February."
"And I thinking you nearer twenty." Shawn whittled with tiny carefulstrokes. "Parents not living?"
"They were both killed in the French attack on Deerfield."
"Forgive my blundering! I remember hearing about Deerfield, in London.1704 surely, and I navigator of a Dutch brig in the spring of that year,homeward bound out of the Moluccas for Amsterdam, where I left her andso to London, and was the long time cooling my heels waiting a passagefor these colonies, with a thought of settling here--a'n't it thelaughable way of a man never to know himself at all? I'll never settle,nowhere. In less than a month I was hunting another berth, and do bestill hunting. I'll never settle anywhere till I die, and won't that beunder the salt water where nothing marks the place a man's vanityended?... Killed by the savages?"
"My mother was. It was a French officer shot my father."
"And such is war," said Shawn; the mermaid sagged in his hand. "Wars,wars, and all the time the world scarce explored! War was never noprofit to a living soul, Beneen, unless it might be a king or a priest."Mr. Shawn spat off the wharf. Ben was confused, that in the moment whenShawn spoke out against the cruelties of mankind his face should beshowing the color of some kind of hatred.
"Well, sir, we can hardly permit the French Louis to become master ofall Europe, so to harry us and drive us out of this land too, as hisforces in Canada have attempted continually."
The Irishman shrugged, watching the bay. "Canada, the way I hear, is ahandful of frightened papists in a wilderness. As for the Sun KingLouis, I saw him once. Six years past, before the war was renewed--theTreaty of Ryswick accomplished nothing, you'll understand, apatching-up, a pause for the licking of wounds, and so you may say 'tisall one war, and I happening to be in Paris when his solar bloodyMajesty made a gracious appearance unto the multitude, I beheld atrembling dried-up monkey in velvet. That minikin shivering old man,that homunculus, that thing, master of Europe and the West? Don't theytell he's not even master of his own bowels? Faith, when he dies hisempire will be crumbling like a child's mud castle in the rain asothers have done before, and England would do better to wait for it, butnot so, the armies and navies must be employed and good men die to nopurpose, anyway that's the opinion of one mad Irishman," said Shawn, andsmiled with sudden brilliance. A twist of the knife gave the mermaid apretty navel; he held her away for admiration. "O the anatomical enigmasof the mermaid!--hey? I wonder could there be word of her inPhysiologus?... Will you be in haste to return home?"
"No great haste." But with the words, Ben realized he ought to be. Thesun was behind the rooftops, the wind sharp easterly.
"Would you dine with me, Ben?--that is," he asked again, "may I call youso and no offense?"
"Of course, Mr. Shawn."
"That's kind. I dread a lonely evening, now that's no lie."
Ben was startled, having meant only to agree to the use of his firstname, for which Mr. Shawn hardly needed permission. Well--might notUncle John suppose he had been invited to dine at the Jenks house, andso not be troubled? It would mean walking that ugly mile of the Roxburyroad after dark, but there would be a moon later, if the deepeningclouds did not interfere. Mr. Shawn was already speaking of a tavern onShip Street. "The Lion they call it, nothing so fine, but I fear,Beneen, I am not dressed for a finer place. Hi!--that wind's pureeasterly, and will that be meaning rain by morning in this part of theworld?"
"Sometimes," Ben said, and discovered he was cold.
"Let us go...."
The Lion tavern consisted of one long narrow room, filled with the reekof malt, sweat, clay pipes, rummy breath, wood smoke. A line of smalltables on one side was divided by a poorly drawing fireplace; on theother side of the room a bar ran from the kitchen door to a grimywindow, and the smeary glass denied all memory of daylight. Pine knotssputtered above the fireplace; a lantern on the bar added more smoke butno light worth the name. Shawn chose a table within spitting distance ofthe hearth, ignoring two shabby customers who were exchanging an aimlessrambling conversation at the bar.
At the table farthest to the rear, dark as the smoke and like a part ofit, a thin man with a black patch on one eye sat by himself, smiling.Before him stood a dirty trencher with the remains of supper, and apewter mug. He sprawled with elbows hooked on the back of his chair,arms dangling, so quiet he might have been asleep, but the one good eyewas open wide and one does not sleep with a frozen smile. When the eyemoved to examine Ben and Shawn with no sign of interest, the rest of hisface took no part in the act.
An ancient waiter who knew Shawn by name was mumbling a good evening,flicking a rag at the table, his warty face darkened like a ham hung along time on a rafter. Shawn seemed quite at home; after some unease,Ben found his own lungs could adjust to the haze.
Shawn approached the roast beef, which was not bad, like a man with aweek's hunger. Ben finished his first mug of ale quickly, for it helpedhim avoid coughing; the influence of it softened the sordidness of thisplace; as the mug was refilled, Ben wondered why anything here shouldhave troubled him--honest working-man's tavern, and Daniel Shawn theprince of good fellows. As for the one-eyed half-corpse, one needn'tlook....
Shawn's manners, he noticed, were not quite those of Mr. Kenny's house.Holding down the meat with his spoon, Shawn cut it in curiously smallpieces, and often used the knife to carry them to his mouth, instead ofhis fingers. It looked dangerous, for the knife was sharp. AfterwardShawn took pains to clean his fingers on a kerchief from his pocket.Privately consulting his wallet for reassurance, Ben ordered a thirdround of ale. Mr. Shawn was touched and pleased.
He drank Ben's health. He told two or three bawdy anecdotes, large voiceintimately lowered; Ben laughed in delight and forgot them at once,which annoyed him. He discovered he was lifting his mug and drinking tothe hope that Mr. Shawn would secure a berth with _Artemis_.
"O the warm heart of youth!" said Shawn, and looked away. "But Beneen,you must not feel obliged to speak of that to your great-uncle."
"But of course I will!" Softness, Ben thought--he is without it. Evennow, when Mr. Shawn was manifestly touched and pleased, the brillianceof his look, his friendship, made Ben think of the spurting of lightfrom the diamond thumb-ring Uncle John occasionally wore, or the starkgleam of sun on snow. Wondering whether the sea took all softness from aman, wondering also as he drank whether such an event ought to be calledgood or bad, Ben understood that Shawn was saying something more heought to hear and remember.
"Isn't it the strange thing how from all the ruck, all the thousands,millions of humankind, explorers are so few? Why, you may name all thegreat ones on the fingers of one hand."
"So few as that?"
"Cabot, Columbus, Magellan, maybe Drake, maybe the both hands. And allthe South Pacific lies there
unseen, untraveled--nothing but a waste ofwater? I'll not believe that, when there's room for a continent greaterthan this one, or a thousand islands larger than mine own motherland."
It was music, and what little music he had heard had always troubledBen, as a voice whose words could never be wholly translated. For allthe pure pleasure, that had been so in those distant hours with UncleZebina Pownal. "I suppose, Mr. Shawn, some day every least corner of theworld will be explored."
"Ha?... Not in my time nor yours. Now that troubles me, Beneen. It's theclear plain thing what you say, but d'you know I never had the thoughtmyself? No more horizons--O the sad earth!... Man dear, I'm wishingyou'd not said that."
"I suppose they who live in that day will be otherwise concerned."
"Most are now, the way explorers are few...."
The dirty trencher had been removed from in front of the one-eyed man,and his mug refilled. He must have drunk from it, for a bit of foamclung near his bleak smile and was drying there, as if someone had spaton a statue. Ben hitched his chair sideways, the better to avoid lookingat him, and glanced at the bar, knowing the ale had made him foolishlydrowsy.
Two newcomers had arrived. Ben was obliged to stare, then understood heshould have recognized them in an instant without need of thought.("_'Tis a matter of being your own man...._") That was Jan Dyckman overthere, big and blond and mild, drinking rum with the round-headed greasybosun Tom Ball. Ben leaned across the table in a generous glow. "Do youknow Mr. Dyckman?"
Shawn shook his head, deep in revery. "By sight only."
"I could present you. Maybe a word from him would be of use?"
Shawn shook his head again and murmured: "The thought is kind, but lookagain, the way the time's inauspicious. Mr. Dyckman is the worse fordrink, Beneen. Some other time."
Ben looked again, astonished, to find Jan Dyckman gazing directly at himwithout recognition, eyes rigid and damp. The eyes moved jerkily awayand with dignity viewed a coin that Mr. Dyckman would have liked toraise from a wet spot on the bar. He must have been drinking elsewhere,to be so far gone. Abruptly Shawn was asking: "Have you ever had awoman?"
"Why, no, I--no, Mr. Shawn."
"And don't I remember that time of life, the ache of it? Ah, steady asshe goes!--the fear too, boy, but devil any need of that. I'll take youto a house, and you agreeing."
"I--don't know. I suppose I ought to start soon for home."
Shawn seemed not to hear. "It's orderly is the place I'm thinking of,above a cordwainer's on Fish Street and next door to a grog shop, thewhich is convenient. Four girls and the madam--O the fine flow ofconversation in her cups! She's that rambling you wouldn't know thething she'd say. I'd have you hear how she was betrayed by an earl inLondon town, the way I'm thinking she was never no closer to Englandthan a comfortable pile of sacking, maybe forninst a warehouse on one ofthe wharfs out yonder, but it's the fair fine tale." Ben fidgeted. "Asfor the rest, Beneen, a stallion will need but a moment to cover awilling mare, and in such a house they are willing. I recall a half-uglywench who would be doing anything you like at all." Shawn laid a fingeralong his old-ivory pockmarked nose and smiled diamond-like. "I had heronce--wasn't it like sinking into a warm dumpling fresh from the oven?One of the others is handsome but cowlike--I'm a-mind to try her, thoughI fear she'll be watching a spot on the ceiling and do no more for aman's entertainment than if he was a wind at the door."
Ben pressed damp hands on the table to check a shaking in them, knowingwith exasperation that Shawn must have seen it. Vague sounds at the bargave him an excuse to turn away. Tom Ball and Jan Dyckman were leaving,Dyckman moving like a giant wooden doll, every step a separateachievement. When at length Ben turned back it seemed to him--buteverything now was confused, the ale in him mumblingI-will-I-will-not--it seemed to him that Daniel Shawn was settling inhis chair as if he too had just swung about, or risen perhaps, resuminghis former position in the same moment when the one-eyed scarecrow stoodup (not drunk at all) and stalked in the wake of Ball and Dyckman out ofthe tavern.
As he passed Ben's table the thin man shot one downward glance. To Benin the cold-hot worry of I-will-I-will-not it was like being jabbed byan icicle, and he could not even summon his wits to think about it, forShawn was saying kindly: "It's the fresh air you need, Beneen, and I'mthinking of the old saying, a man's not quite a man till he's tried thatbit of a doorway. So shall we go?"
* * * * *
Reuben left the cottage with the green shutters before the sun hadentered the smudge of horizon clouds. He took the path across the backfields, his muscles lazy with the spring, his mind blazing.
Mr. Welland had not appeared surprised that Reuben should wish to studyhis art. He had not probed for motives; had not even inquired whethersuch ambition harmonized with Mr. Kenny's plans; had offered no largegeneralities of grave counsel. Alertness was the word: as though thedoctor had caught something more than Reuben's words, and must listensharply within his own universe to interpret the message.
Reuben had lived through a heavy time while Mr. Welland gazed at thecompleted chess game, his monkey face a stillness. Then--"Yes," said Mr.Welland, "you and I must be friends. Yet I have never taught...."
The doctor spent much time laying the chessmen away in their plain box,the stillness remaining, his lips pursed, a dim frown coming and going.He carried the box to a drawer of a battered cabinet, then stood beforethe single bookcase in his surgery, stoop-shouldered, elderly, pinchinghis small chin with thumb and forefinger. "Mm-yas--Vesalius. Not themost recent but still the best." He spread the tall book open on hisdesk. With the appearance of impatience he nodded for Reuben to come tohim.
"This is a man," said Amadeus Welland. "You've glimpsed him, clad ingarments, and in a skin--itself an organ of first importance, but forgetit for the moment and look on him here, flayed. You can imagine, Isuppose, what these are--these flowing, overlapping bands?"
"Muscles, surely?"
"Yes. Place your left hand by your right armpit, here, now draw yourright arm leftward; what bunches under your fingers is this, here in thedrawing, and the name of it is _Pectoralis major_, and you may find somelittle trouble in remembering it."
"I will try to remember it."
"I am glad you said 'try.' I have spent fifty-three years striving toovercome that vanity wherewith all men are born. You'll also try, andsucceed, in remembering the names of all the other muscles in thisdrawing, and in this one where the fella turns you his flayed back, andin all these other drawings further on. You will reflect that muscles,while of major importance, are not more important than all the organsthat live below them in their manifold occasions--since these also youmust remember, all of them, their names, their functions so far as weknow them, the many changes that will affect them in youth and age,sickness and health. Here, for example, is the diagram of the bony framethat bears us. When my own studies began I had first to learn thesebones--all of them, naturally, their names, position, function whetherin action or repose--mm-yas, as you will. I do recall my teacher oncestruck me across the face with a dry bone called the radius--thisone--because I called it the ulna, for the which I later praisedhim--with reservations."
"Reservations, sir?"
"It was possible for him," said Mr. Welland lightly, and took snuff. "Itwould not be possible for me to strike--a student. Fi-_choo_-shoo! Andhere, sir, is a representation of the human heart...."
When Reuben next glanced at the clock in Mr. Welland's surgery, anotherhour had passed. "There will be times," said Mr. Welland, removing agray cat from a cushion on a three-legged stool by the western window,where she had slept through the lesson, so that he might sit on thestool himself with the late sun behind his shoulder--"times, I guess,when your eyes grow tired in candlelight; other times when you'd muchprefer to go outside and play--as you must do fairly often, but not ofcourse at times when you're unable to remember, for example, _all_ theoccasions when laudanum may be given and those when it may not. And soon, Reuben, and so
on and so on--I've merely mentioned a few things thatcome first to mind," said Mr. Welland, and rubbed his eyes. Reuben couldnot see his face very clearly against the light....
Crossing the back fields, Reuben passed through a clump of trees, andfrom the other side could look across a better-known field to the roofof Mr. Kenny's house. He leaned against a beech, discovering that he washungry, that it would be enjoyable to pester Kate for somethingunauthorized in advance of supper. The wind had shifted behind him, noweasterly; the broad hard body of the beech was a friend.
There was too much: Reuben knew he could not immediately bring order toany such welter of new impressions and discoveries. Hungry, yes, but letthat wait; and the questions about himself that he had timorouslyhalf-intended to ask Mr. Welland--let them wait too. Too much fornow--like a runner exhausted, he must rest, and was even reluctant to goon to the house. Better for the moment only to stand here in thefailing daylight, friendly with the beech and needing (for the moment!)no other friend.
Rising from that stool, disturbing the cat again and taking pencil andpaper at his desk, Mr. Welland had made a few light loving strokes.
"You draw with great skill, sir."
"Thank you--practice. And this woman's breast I have drawn--beautiful,you would say?"
"Yes, it is."
"Yes, I should think so, to anyone, although I fear my poor sketchclaims only accuracy and not art. But 'tis beautiful, as you say, thething itself--maketh one to think of the lover's kiss, or of a child'smouth here drinking life." He began another drawing. "This is what Ihave seen not once but too many times, when this organ is afflicted withcertain kinds of destroying tumor." Reuben watched, shaken and sickenedbut refusing to turn away until the doctor sat back from his desk,murmuring: "You understand, Mr. Cory, I am merely trying to frighten anddemoralize you with selected scraps of truth."
"I killed a wolf once," said Reuben Cory, refusing to look away.
"Tell me of that."
Reuben told of it, reluctant to meet the doctor's look because of whatthe man had said a while ago about vanity, but finding no greatdifficulty in the telling. After all it was not brag. It had happened.
"I shall speak to Mr. Kenny," said Amadeus Welland. "Perhaps anapprenticeship? Or better a year or so of preparation, to determine foryourself if this be really what you wish, in such time as may be allowedfrom your other studies--which are not to be neglected, Reuben, notever, you understand? Show me a man of medicine who hath found himselftoo busy for other fields of learning, and you will have shown me aneducated damned fool."
"I can't----"
"Reuben, if thanks be appropriate, let them wait. I may have done theeno service. I have only pointed out one or two signposts on a mostheartbreaking journey. But if that is the way you will go--I amfifty-three, Reuben, not very successful and not at all loved here inRoxbury--if that is the way you will go, I'll go with you as far as Imay."
* * * * *
Ben Cory ducked his head to clear the doorframe, unused even yet tobeing rather tall, following Daniel Shawn with the precarious poise of aman of the world. The room in many ways resembled a cavern, its airstale-scented and much used, with bat-rustlings from other chambers. Theshriveled woman squeezed his damp hands, twittering, her pink cheekslike summer apples as they look after a winter in the cellar, powderyand dull within but retaining a characteristic cloying sweetness. "Anyfriend of yours, Mr. Shawn--ooh, look at the great gray eyes of him!"Mistress Gundy patted the pleat of her lips every moment or two, maybeenjoying a silent burp. "What do I call you, dearie?" She trotted awaywith small bobbing steps, to plump into an armchair and smile and sigh."Cat's got his tongue, la. So he loseth nothing else, no harm done, ha,Mr. Shawn? What do I call the pretty young gentleman that's lost hispretty tongue, Mr. Shawn? Won't have anything lost in _my_ place, and metrying so hard to keep everything agreeable, ha, Mr. Shawn?"
"Just Benjamin," said Shawn, and straddled a chair, watching the oldwoman with somber upturned eyes, a darkness in him. Ben thought, withalcoholic irrelevance, that if Shawn were to reach out and squash poorMistress Gundy with a twist of a sailor's thumb, she would pop like anydefenseless bug, but none of them need be astonished, Mistress Gundyleast of all. But at one time she had been a child, a growing maid...."Just Benjamin will do," said Shawn, and spat in the fireplace.
"Oh, marry will he, I'm sure." Mistress Gundy giggled and remainedgenteel.
"Anything new here, Nanny?"
"A'n't it alway new, Mr. Shawn?"
"That it is not, and never was unless maybe for Adam, the poor sod, andfor a boy the first time but not the second. Nanny, I'm wanting Laurafor the boy. For meself I don't care--anything that'll bear me weight amoment."
"_Mister_ Shawn, such a manner of conversation! Will you not mend, sir?"He only looked at her. "Well, Master Just Benjamin, dearie, Laura itshall be, and she so fresh and lovely, I'm sure, you'll be most content,I'm sure."
Ben cleared his throat, mindful of Shawn's rambling advice in theevening street. "Would you wish something to drink, Mistress Gundy, thatwe might have sent up from next door?"
"Nay, I knew he'd find it, and with pleasant speech!" She cut her eyesat Shawn to make that a reproach, but he was remote, observing only theembers, or the South Pacific. "Well, dearie, 'tis early on in theevening for it, but since you speak of it and so pleasantly, a trifle towet the whistle would not go amiss." She patted her lips. "For my part,sir, ever since I resided in London I have been partial to a bit of hotbuttered rum of a chilly evening, to settle the rifting-up and keep outthe cold. It's the Boston air, sir. Never do I grow accustomed to it,that I never."
"Yes," said Ben.
"I'll send the servant," said Mistress Gundy, and rose, about to potteraway.
"Do you send him," said Shawn to the embers, "but bring in the wenchesbefore he returns, Nanny, else you'll be rambling on from here tohereafter and we biting the curbing of the stall, God damn it, withnothing to mount."
"Mr. Shawn, sir, one day your tongue'll turn and bite you, sir."
"Then I'll have thee kiss the place, old woman." She sidled for thedoorway, out of reach of his lazy hand. "But wait till I bleed."
"I marvel the sweet young gentleman ever took up with you, sir, you thatcome in with a smile and stay with a curse."
"Took up with me to see a bit of the world, Nanny, the way the world's atroublesome thing for a boy to see at all and I'm part of it. Come giveus a kiss!"
"You leave me tell you this: you mark one of my poor girls on the facejust once, just once, Mr. Shawn----"
"And you'll have law on me belike?"
"Though it be the ruin o' me I'll say it: I think you're a wicked man,Mr. Shawn."
"But not on the face is well enough?"
"Mr. Shawn!"
"Come now, give us a kiss and be friends!"
Ben said involuntarily: "Don't, Mr. Shawn! Leave her alone!"
Shawn locked stares with him a moment, smiling, then spread his handsand folded them again on the chair back and dropped his jaw on them,watching the embers, alone on an island. Behind his back Mistress Gundywas beckoning, and Shawn paid no heed as Ben stepped into the hallwaywith her. "I don't suppose he means too much by his talk, MistressGundy."
"Eh? Known him long?"
"Not long, not very well.... I was astonished he should speak so."
She was sniffling, patting her lips. "Let it go." In spite of the smallgust of tears she was alert and brisk. "Be you paying or him?"
"I am. How--how much?"
"Ho, and if he's not, how comes he to lay about him so?" She broke off,laughing indulgently. "Never thee mind, Master Just Benjamin. Two suchlovely girls! Well now, if you're a-mind to buy us a wee trifle ofrum--so pleasant with a dab of butter, don't you think?--and thegirls...."
Ben re-entered the parlor with enlarged wisdom and a shrunken wallet.The books for Reuben, lying in a chair, comforted him: at least some ofhis money had been well spent.
"Don't allow h
er to rob you, a devil's name," said Shawn drowsily. "Nohighwayman liveth but could learn jolly tricks of a bawd."
Glancing down at the alien profile, wondering in passing whether he evenliked Daniel Shawn, Ben felt disinclined to mention that the robbery, ifthat was the name for it, had already taken place. He jingled the fewpence and farthings remaining, and waited, himself alone on an islandwithin a cavern.
She entered abruptly with good-natured bounce and giggle, plump andmoon-faced, smelling of rose-water and sweat. As she paused in thedoorway her transparent smock offered Ben a silhouette of cushionythighs, by her intent maybe, and then she was coming to him directlywith nothing for Shawn but a glance that might or might not have heldrecognition. "There's the sweet cod," she said, and cupped Ben's chin inher hands, and was on his lap, heavy and squirming, elastic, moist andwarm.
In Deerfield, "whore" was only a word, seldom used except inback-of-the-barn profanity or Bible readings. It had never occurred toBen, but did now as Laura twitched his shirt open and rubbed a knowingsilky hand over his nipples, that a whore might be a human being, andfriendly.
Another girl, stately and yellow-haired, sat in dignity across the roomfrom Shawn--surely not cowlike as he had said but quite beautiful in herstillness, conveying an impression that she was not really present. Awoman on an island. Shawn had remained in his idle sprawl, studying thequeenly repose of her like a man who might yawn any moment. "Be youpleased with me?" Laura whispered, and nibbled Ben's ear.
"Of course." With some enterprise he found a smooth kneecap and sent hishand exploring, since she seemed to expect it; and then he thought: Toomuch of that damned ale--or maybe I'm ill--and now we must even havebuttered rum!
All the same, it was unmistakable relief when Mistress Gundy potteredback, ahead of a gangling servant with the drinks. "Well, I'm sure,"said the little madam--"to the Queen, God bless her!"
Laura bounced off Ben's lap at the call of patriotism. The tall quietgirl was on her feet, and Shawn too. But as Ben staggered, finding hisleg half asleep, and drank dutifully, he was aware of a sudden annoyancein Daniel Shawn, and saw how with the mug at his lips the man was hardlytilting it at all. To Ben it was obscure, a thing he might tell himselfhe had not seen. This stifling moment, with fat Laura's arm hugging hisloins, held no fair opportunity to think about it. But surely for allhis strange, sometimes cruel speech and wild ways, Mr. Shawn was notdisloyal--surely nobody ever refused to drink the health of Queen Anne!
Ben coughed as the cheap rum bored down his gullet. He saw Shawn grabthe wrist of the tall girl and stride out of the room with her, not aword for courtesy. She had not even finished her drink.
"A hard man," said Mistress Gundy, comfortably stirring her mug. "Well,I told him. Just let him mark one of my girls, just once...."
"He won't, Mother," said Laura. "Why, that time----" A sharp glance fromthe old woman checked her. It held more than sharpness; they wereexchanging some wry understanding, and Ben was oppressed at feelinghimself a patronized, tiresome child. Laura tugged amiably at his arm."Come to my room, love?" He followed her jiggling rear down a whisperinghallway to a smaller cavern of stale roses. She had brought along theremains of his buttered rum. "Old bawd'd finish it, did you leave itthere. A'n't she a caution, love?"
"Mm." Ben gulped a little more of it, finding it not so bad. Here thebed was virtually everything, but Laura was fond of dolls; a dozen ofthem sat about in comical attitudes, and Ben would have liked to saysomething about them. "Help me drink it, won't you? I had enough."
"Nay, I had too, and too much." She patted her stomach and yawned. Withthe casualness of habit, she pulled her smock up to her middle anddropped on the bed, fat thighs comfortably wide.
Ben shoved his drink aside. In daydream, yes--he had pictured suchmindless complaisance in a woman who never quite owned a face. Thereality was no more voluptuous than a belch or a kick under the ribs.Yet Laura was neither gross nor unclean--indeed, pretty in her overblownway, and certainly friendly. Repelled and hypnotized, he stumbled towardher, meeting, across the bulk of her pink flesh, a drowsy smile thatsuppressed another yawn. "What's the matter, love? Be you afeared ofme?"
"Of course not."
"Ah--sweet cod--my little goat--whatever's the matter, love?" Her voicewas thick and slow, the noise of a wave, her giggle the idle foam on areaching wave. "Don't you know nothing, little goat?"
Ben fought with his clothes. For an instant in the candlelight the hairwas golden, not dark, the pallid skin a damask rose. Then it was fatLaura again, nobody else--writhing, arching her heaviness, moaning, bigarms reaching for him in practised simulation of hunger as Ben groped,struggled, and spent at the instant of contact with no pleasure, noexcitement but that of fear and no relief but that of exhaustion.
Laura cursed casually under her breath, but as she sat up she was notnoticeably angry--more amused, maybe a little concerned. "First time,dearie?" Ben nodded in misery. "Ho, never mind! You're very young."
"God damn, I'm seventeen."
"Hey! No cursing and swearing, boy!--I can't abide it.... Did somethinghappen maybe? You know--spill salt at supper? Something?" She wasserious, lightly worried. Ben shook his head. "Why, there!" She pointedat his jacket tossed on a chair, a bit of his kerchief dangling from apocket. "Swoonds, that's bad luck as ever was," she said, and rolled offthe bed to push the kerchief out of sight. "No bloody wonder!"
Ben knew she would take great offense if he laughed. Anyway the darknessof a new fear was killing laughter. She sat by a little square ofwall-mirror to put her hair to rights. Ben ordered his clothes, findinghis legs too large, blurred, disobedient. Maybe the last of thatbuttered rum would steady him. He gulped it down. "I'm sorry," said Ben.
"Hoo, it's a nothing, boy, happens all the time. Come again some day,"she said, and could not resist a small parting cruelty: "When you're oldenough."
The darkness of the new fear followed him out of the room, and the nameof it was Pox.
Mistress Gundy sat as before with her rum, or somebody's rum, and noddedto Ben, waving her puckered hand in some cryptic courtesy. Her eyes wereswimming--sad or hilarious or both. Somewhere down the hallway a womanwas whimpering rhythmically. "Top of the evening, young man. I'm bloodymellow." Mistress Gundy patted her lips. "Going so soon? Parcel'syonder, needn't make out I'm keeping a den of thieves."
"Thank you. Had no such thought."
"No dallying with Venus? Up and off like a little bull? I'm bloodymellow or I wouldn't speak so free, but I say a bit of broad speechnever hurt no one, la, besides, I lived on a farm when I was a littlemaid. Lord, the Surrey countryside, and I'll never see it again!" Shewept comfortably, and burped. "A'n't you waiting for your friend?"
"I must be going. Tell him I couldn't wait."
"Tsha!" She drank, her little finger thrust out for gentility. "Comeagain, do. I feel sorry for you. My weakness." She held up her free handearnestly to detain him. "Understand? I feel like a mother to you, butyou--you--you----"
"I must be going."
"That's right, boy, turn away from an old whore.You--you--have--not--got the least notion wha's like to be old and lornand forsaken, every man's bloo' hand raised against you. Have you?Colonial. _You_ never saw no earl, not in this Godforsaken land, marryyou never. Why, one of the particular maids to 'is lady I was, and hegot it in a linen-closet, now that's no lie as your nasty-spoken Irishfriend would say. Understand?--the very self-same sheets 'er ladyshipslep' on, the mere smell of lavender can still set me a-thinking of it,and her playing cards only two rooms away, if I'd so much as whimperedhe might've been caught what they call flagrant delicious, and you thinkI'd do any such of a thing, loyal as I was? It shows your God-damnedbloody ignorance, all the same there was a time you wouldn't've turnedaway."
Ben fled downstairs. The smells in the blackness of Fish Street werefresher. He thought, as in prayer: No harm done. None at all, unless hehad caught the pox. Probably you couldn't, just from that much.
He dropped Reuben's books, his clumsine
ss a warning that he was drunk,his head grown to a foggy region of rising and roaring waves. Hesearched patiently for the parcel, since nothing could be done orconsidered till he found it. Stooping caused a rush of blood to hishead, a tenor of collapse. He squatted, groping with clawed fingers,found the blessed hardness of the books and gathered them up. He knew ashrewd way to deal with this problem: he unfastened his belt, slid theend of it under the string of the parcel, and buckled it fast. Now thebooks bit his hipbone, but all was well--he would not lose them, andthe not unwelcome discomfort would keep him sober on the long journey.The moon had not risen, or was covered by cloud. He supposed it wasstill early in the evening, but something had happened to his timesense.
Maybe, he thought, I have grown old and am too stupid to know it. Maybethe sun will discover me with white hair. Dried like a summer apple andno teeth. Bent on a stick, poor old Ben Cory. "Yaphoo!"
Yes, I heard that. That was me--old Cory, old Ben Cory, know him? Apublic shame in the middle of the street, but who'll notice old Ben Coryin the dark?
He advanced with precision on a street-lantern that showed him dingyhouse-fronts and the filthy gutter in the middle of the road, where astray dog watched him sullenly, then slunk away, demoniac and lonely.Ben observed quietly that there were no pigs: his excellent judgment hadchosen a time to walk on Fish Street when no pigs wallowed in it:alleluia. Of course only a fool would go to shouting "Yaphoo!" in such aplace as if he were drunk, and he quite unarmed, carrying no money nowto be sure, but dressed like one who had it. "I notice here," he said,"a fortuitous yet welcome opportunity." Stepping to the channel in themiddle of the street, he relieved himself, with embarrassment. Untidy,but evidently in this part of town everyone did it. Startled, hethought: Oh, fine! Oh, wonderful!--now I could, while back there...."Yaphoo!" _There we go again!_ The rest of his comment came out as aharmlessly soft muttering: "... 'sn't anybody remember poor old BenCoree, late of Deerfield?"
Someone, somewhere, not long ago, had pronounced his name in that oddforeign way. It would be pleasant to remember about that, for it hadsomething to do with sunlight. Meanwhile, his breeches decentlybuttoned, he was making excellent progress toward another lamp, Reuben'sbooks were safe, and he was utterly sober, gruesomely sober, sober asMr. Cotton Mather. "Sober as _all_ the mamn Dathers," said Ben, andstumbled on something soft and screamed a little. Just a dead cat. Nowif he might walk on in this patient way, past the grim windows andtheir occasional furtive gleam, he would arrive at another wholly darksection where a man, offending no one, might run a finger down histhroat, lighten ship, and proceed.
He made it.
His stomach empty, he noted that in spite of perfect sobriety he wasstill tremendously drunk, whereat he laughed, but wriggling companionshadows to left and right of him did not. No: they were heavy-cold,banishing all warmth of amusement; imaginary but nasty, having thecreeping urgency of sick dreams. He knew them to be imaginary in thelight of that pale flame of reason which stayed alive in him under along rising and subsidence of the waves, and here he asked himselfacutely: how may one diminish the force of an imaginary creation, whennaming it imaginary availeth not? Shall we assert, brethren, withoverweening impudicity, that the imagination, by its own act ofcreation, hath given unto the shadow a substance akin to that whichoccupieth the carnal, corporeal yaphoo?
Cannily they remained behind him, receding, if he dared turn his head,with contemptuous ease. He knew them, though: open-eyed but dead,trivial heads with nothing left of the body but a flabby band of hidesuch as might be left by the sliding drag of an axe. DoubleIndians--why? Why, because the body happens to possess a right side anda left. "Mother, I have but to remember the look of Union Street andDock Square and Cornhill, and shall unquestionably know the Town Housewhen I arrive at it, being in no sense too foxed for such, but delivermy mind from that page of Cicero, seeing I hurt him, heedless, heedlesscontinually...."
The lump in his stomach swallowed that speech, bloating. How can youcancel a hurt when there's no way to turn back the clock?
You can't.
It happened. It's over.
"_Nempe quod hic alte demissius ille volabat----_" Ben retched, but thelump would not come up, and he lost interest in weeping. He supposed heought to consider this plaguy longing to talk like a drunken man, aboveall to explain, thwarted by the absence of anyone who might listen. Butwasn't that someone lounging by the faint lantern which ought to markthe opening of Union Street? Two in fact, two women, not imaginary. Heobserved them with great intelligence, their shawls and full skirts--onetall, one short; alone in this region at night, certainly whores insearch of business, but never mind. They were animated, and as heapproached, Ben found he could explain things in an undertone which neednot disturb them.
"Hoy!" Ben thought that was the tall girl; certainly she was the one whodelivered that birdy whistle. "Looking for something?"
"Regret," said Ben. "Spent ball, just had some. Otherwise pleased andproud, my word on it."
Both laughed obligingly. The tall girl said: "Phew! Drunk as a lord andhim na' but a boy. Feel sorry for 'm, I do."
"Someone else said that a while ago." Ben spoke stiffly, wounded. "Nooccasion for it. Not worthy of sorrow in sight of God or man."
"Drunk as a lord and running on like a canting parson. It wants 'a wipeits little nose. How they hangin', m' lud?"
But the small plump girl had stepped into Ben's path, and Ben could seeher smile was amiable, swimming and shifting in the cold light. She wasyoung, he thought, and pretty. "Sorry. Another time."
"Ay, but sha'n't I walk a bit way with you? You're rotten drunk, boy,and dressed so fine, someone'll rob you."
"No money. Few farthings left."
"A stoodent, Lottie. Look at them books. Oh, do fetch 'em out, m' lud.Read a girl bloody something, do!"
But plump Lottie said: "Leave me walk on a way with you, if you be goingby Cornhill." Not waiting for consent, she had his arm, ignoring someunder-the-breath comment from her companion, which Ben also preferred tooverlook. "That's my way too. Come on--I won't bite you, boy."
"He can read the books," said the tall girl--"between times, like."
"You're kind," Ben said. "I've often marveled how kind people can be, Imean when one's not expecting it. My mother and father were killed atDeerfield. I am, as you say, drunk and not speaking plain."
Lottie was keeping step somehow with his long rambling legs, the othergirl forgotten though she had sent after them a little miauling cry. Bentried to shorten his pace; the legs were riotously disobedient; he couldno longer think of them as trustworthy comrades; this was sad. "Drunk asa pig," she said, and giggled warmly. "But you got a sweet face."
"It's merely a kind of good nature," said Ben judicially, disturbed bythe sin of vanity. "One can be too good-natured, now that's no lie."
"I'm good-natured too."
"You think a man and woman ought to marry if they have serious 'ligiousdifferences?"
"Ha? I don't know. Walk easy-don't give in to it, boy.... You're to bemarried?"
"Not fitting. Do you believe in God?"
"Hoy, don't talk so loud! You're drunk."
"Yes.... Can you make up for a hurt when there's no way to turn back theclock?"
"Now it don't do no good to cry. Come on. You can walk."
"Of course I can walk. You don't understand. It can't be done, that'sthe answer. It happened. It happened in the wilderness. It's over. Goesaway from you the way the spring goes and the summer too. You think Icould cry when I saw my people killed? God damn it, if we wept for everysufficient reason we'd've all drowned long ago. What did you say,Lottie?"
"Nothing, boy. Come on."
"No, you said something about marrying. Did you not?" He lurched againsther and gasped an apology for clumsiness. "That's not even been spokeof, I suppose I'm too young, but she--now pray understand, what _I_don't understand is this: how a man could love a woman so much andnevertheless go and--go and----"
He stopped, embarrassed, rea
lizing that she was undoubtedly a whore, andtherefore he could not, without unkindness--through intricate labor ofthought he heard her remark: "You'll learn...." The street was a forest,a wilderness where Ben could feel the power of snow on branchessuffering for the coming of spring, and in this jungle he was nowmarvelously ready for the act of love, and had no money. "Come along,love, come along. You live here in Boston?"
"Nay, Roxbury." He watched the pale flame of reason surviving theonslaught of another wave. Was this forest under the sea? A wildernessnot of snow-burdened hemlock but of oozing weed, monstrous, ancient.Here monsters lazily glided above dead ships and men unburied, awilderness where no spring had ever dawned since the beginning of theworld. "I don't know where he is, Lottie. The men from Hatfield buriedall the dead they could find--later in the day, you understand, afterthe French were driven out, but I don't know where he lieth or mymother. I'll go back some day, but only if my brother wishes to go withme. Thou hast dove's eyes."
"What?"
"Thou art fair, my love."
"You _are_ drunk. I'll see you to Newbury Street if you like--that'syour way to Roxbury."
"Most kind. Oh, I wish----"
"You're drunk, and no money--remember? I'm good-natured too, but notthat good-natured. Now see can you walk without my hand."
"Of course I can," said Ben with resentment. "Was I not doing so when wemet?"
"Not too bloody well," she said, and laughed so cheerfully that he wasobliged to join in it, knowing that for a while she still walked onbeside him. At a later time, in the sedate quiet of Newbury Street, shewas gone. Ben looked back and could still see her, turning a corner,more clearly visible than when she had been near to him. In gentlewonder Ben observed she was slightly hunchbacked, and not young, perhapsnot much like the image his mind had drawn of her, that image no moresubstantial than the shadow of a bird in passage above the leaves in awilderness of spring.
John Kenny said: "You might as well, Mr. Hibbs. I dare say he wasinvited to dine at the Jenks', but he'll have no lantern, and I don'tlike it. Take Rob Grimes with you. Of course, Reuben, you may go withthem." Mr. Kenny winced at the pain in his foot which was his commonevening companion. "He won't have been invited to stay the night--ahouse guest would set poor Madam Jenks all of a doodah."
"It's my fault," said Gideon Hibbs.
Mr. Kenny grunted in pain and impatience. "Do you also take that braceof pistols, mine and the one that was George's, they're in my bedroomcabinet. Won't need them, but no harm in carrying them."
Reuben turned from the window, the brightness of the dining room beatingdown on his mask. "I'll fetch them, sir, and I think I'll wear Ben'sknife, seeing he left it behind."
Mr. Kenny relaxed enough to chuckle. "Heh, a small army!--I pity anymalefactors in your path. Nay, 'tis only sensible. Well, go as far asthe fort anyway. The road's lighted well enough on the Boston side, butI pray you take care passing the Neck. If my God-damned foot wasn't sohorrid bad tonight--well, get along, gentlemen! Must you stay for mysenile chattering?"
Gnarled, small, ancient and unexcited, Rob Grimes marched in front withthe lantern, a pistol jammed in his belt absurd and piratical. Mr. Hibbscarried the other under his flapping great-coat. Eased by physicalactivity, Reuben's own anxiety lessened: Ben was probably in no trouble,Ben with his wilderness eyes and other senses, and would be sure torelish the comic value of this escort. Presently Reuben was dubiouslyenjoying the gaunt majesty of Gideon Hibbs in a three-cornered hat, andelaborating comments for Ben's later entertainment.
Mr. Hibbs was not amused. Reuben could feel in him the intense mirthlesszeal of a sedentary soul obliged to take the responsibility forsomething athletic. Maybe, Reuben speculated, a walk in the dark on theRoxbury road did approach the borders of philosophy. He sniffed the eastwind, its wild smell of sea-wrack and approaching rain. His hand touchedBen's beloved knife and fell away.
"Said nothing to you, Reuben, about remaining late?"
Mr. Hibbs had asked that twice already. "No, sir."
"'F I may make so bold"--the thick voice of Rob Grimes floated back on abeery chuckle--"some doxy be a-bouncing under him this 'ere moment.Boy's had the look of a stud colt come a year now--blarst it to Jesus,you can't 'old 'em beyant a certain age."
"None of that!" said Mr. Hibbs, who for courtesy would never have spokenso to Grimes in the presence of Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury. Rob grunted,uncrushed. "Reuben, hath Benjamin spoke any word to you lately tosuggest a disturbance or over-concern with--hm--with----"
"With the mounting of smocks? No, sir."
"Reuben, I await your apology. I remind you that your favored positiondoth neither protect nor justify you in assuming the conversation of aroustabout. From evil speech evil conduct. I am waiting."
"I'm sorry, sir," said Reuben, and discovered distractedly that he was,a little. Shocking Mr. Hibbs was too cheap a victory. "I'm truly sorry,Mr. Hibbs. I do speak heedless, and will try to mend."
The great shadow of Gideon Hibbs grunted forgiveness. It almost alwaysdid. Uncle John, Reuben thought, is another who forgives much, and whydid I never think of _that_ before? It seemed to him that Uncle John,frail and gouty and gray, was somehow closely with them here in thedark. Some day, he thought, I shall be old--well, the devil with that!Why think now of poor old Reuben Cory?
Because Ben will go where I cannot? Because an old man must regret theflowers he never touched, mornings when he never saw the sun?
But if it is to be medicine--why, then I shall be going where he willnot. "_If I said, however, that living is a journey_"--oh, Mr. Welland,what else could it be, and every morning a misty crossroads?
"Reuben--could Benjamin by chance have overindulged in liquor?"
"I doubt it, sir. Last Monday he did and so did I, but away from home Ibelieve Ben would be careful."
Rob Grimes snorted. Clearing his pug nose, maybe.
"You do reassure me somewhat."
Rob Grimes was calling back: "Mind a puddle here! Och--too bad! Best goabout, gentlemen!"
Reuben had already seen what lay under the glow of Rob's lantern, thehorrible bulge of the puffed belly, the straightened legs, the obscenepool of blood at the nostrils. "Still warm," said Rob, kneeling, runninga hand down the miserable neck, in pity or perhaps only regret at thewaste of something useful. "Not of Roxbury," he said. "Know every-eachnag in the village. A chapman's likely, some louse-eaten chapman boundhe'd drag the last half-mile out of the poor old fart. Shit, look atthem ribs! A'n't had a fair meal in months."
"Reuben! What ails thee, boy?"
"Nothing," said Reuben, vomiting.
"Well"--Rob Grimes was ignoring the commotion--"well, the knackers'll bealong for 'm in the morning." The old man strode on a short way to wait,his squat back shutting the lantern light from the corpse as he studiedthe windy night.
"Let me be!" said Reuben, wincing at the sympathy of Mr. Hibbs' arm. "Ican't help it. It's the blood, that's all."
"So? Why, only the other day you cut your hand, and bound it upyourself, no-way troubled."
"That was my blood."
"Mm. But----"
"Let me be! _Will_ you go on, Rob?"
Grimes walked on, maintaining silence for which Reuben loved him. Reubenhurried, wanting to draw nearer that moving island of light.
"Sometimes," said Mr. Hibbs gently, "I imagine I can sense it, when youhave fallen to thinking of Deerfield."
"I try not to think of it overmuch."
"That's best of course." Mr. Hibbs sighed, as one whose overture ofkindness has been rejected, and Reuben was ashamed. "As you know, I callmyself a Seeker, the name I borrow from Mr. Roger Williams whose memoryI revere; many would not even call me a good Christian. But I wouldventure to suggest, Reuben, that God is with you, his ways past findingout."
"You are very kind, sir." And Reuben thought in a continuingastonishment: As a matter of fact, he is.... He wished Rob Grimes wouldset a stronger pace, but his best intelligence told him that the oldman's sturdy plodding wa
s actually not slow, considering the darkness,the need for sheltering the lantern and sending its light from side toside so that they might watch both the right and the left of the road.Maybe they were lost, the three of them, and always had been lost, lostbut following some difficult thread of purpose in this windy dark. In akindlier night they could have found the Great Bear slanting toward theNorth Star. In a kindlier night there would have been no cause to fear,as in this wilderness Reuben knew he was afraid.
"In my own life," said Hibbs, "I have not seen much of violence. Icannot pretend to know how it was for you three years ago, except I knowit to be a thing beyond words of comfort. Nevertheless allow me to say,Reuben, that your life, yours and Benjamin's, is yet at the spring."
Rob Grimes called: "Something ahead! I heard----"
The noise floated to them faintly, puzzling in the wind, a hallooingwith an insane note of cheerfulness. Reuben felt a scattering coldnessacross his cheek--rain, or sea-scud torn by the east wind from thesurface of Gallows Bay. Grimes mumbled: "Can't hear it now----"
"Hush!" said Reuben savagely. Then: "It's to the left."
"You mean the marshes, boy?"
"Yes. Give me the light, old man!" Grimes yielded it without a murmur,and Reuben ran, unthinking, sure-footed, avoiding the hummocks and themarshy hollows, shouting: "Where are you? Where are you?" Then he couldsee his brother fifty feet away, upright in grotesque dignity on a smallsodden peninsula of land not much broader than the spread of his feet.Between him and Reuben was a muttering of wind-tormented marsh water,and a smooth patch of featureless gray unaffected by the wind. Ben tooka wavering step. "Don't move, you damn fool! Look down!"
"'M a damn fool," said Ben agreeably, and swayed back from thequicksand, grinning at Reuben's light. "Fact 'm drunk."
Reuben laughed. "That I know. Don't move your feet. Stay as you are tillI come to you." Laughing still, he picked his way along the edge of thewater and the foulness, to the narrow strip of solid ground that Ben'sluck had found for him in the dark. "Pee-yew!" said Reuben, and clutcheda handful of Ben's shirt. "With such a breath why walk? Why not float,friend?"
* * * * *
"Was trying to. Was trying to find Polaris. Too dark. Besides I'm in a'culiar condition."
"Lean on me. Firm ground here."
"Wherever thou art."
"I shall remember that, and thou wilt forget it."
"I forget nothing, Reuben. I _was_ trying to find Polaris."
"Well, a'n't it the nature of the children of Adam to hunt for the NorthStar on a cloudy night?"
"Very sound. One of thine evenings. Yaphoo!"
"All evenings are mine. But don't weep."
"I'm laughing, boy. A'n't I? Oh, Ru, I was so confused. I thought--Icertainly thought----"
"What, Ben?"
"I thought it was wilderness."
"That wouldn't make thee afeared. That wouldn't make thee weep."
"I thought everything was wilderness."
"Well, what if it is?"
Wilderness of Spring Page 8
