The Proud and the Free

by Howard Fast

  Jamie, he roared, have you become a damned theological pettifogger? Do my words mean nothing to you?

  He was half serious, half humorous. Jamie, he said, there is not that much obscurity concerning the works of God.

  Molly joined us now. Across the village, they could hear you, said she.

  And with reason.

  That I doubt, she answered him, drawing a chair up to the fire, so that the three of us sat in front of it now, and in this all my dreams were realized. Yet the rum I held was without taste, and Molly Bracken was a stranger to me.

  Jamie, said the Pastor, surrender not grace that easily.

  But I had surrendered, and staring at the flames, I held my rum untasted and tasteless.

  Outside, said Molly Bracken, a great storm is making. And it will snow and snow.

  Said the Pastor, Jamie, when you made the uprising, you and your comrades, what was in your minds?

  Not God, I said sourly, not anything like that – but only that it was unbearable.

  Yet there must have been a thought of what would be afterwards.

  How do I know what the others were thinking?

  I will not lose my temper with you, Jamie Stuart, said Jacob Bracken. You are under my roof, and under my roof you shall stay.

  Molly said, Leave him be. Leave him be. Look how tired he is.

  This I was thinking, I said suddenly. I was thinking that we would strike a flame that would ignite everywhere, and everywhere plain folk like myself would join us. And that we would sweep the British into the sea and make a place here of justice and decency.

  That’s a grand thought, Jamie, said Jacob Bracken.

  And look what it came to. Where are the foreign brigades now …?

  Consider, Jamie, said Jacob Bracken, that you have given five years, and how many have given nothing!

  I have given nothing! I cried. How can I tell you?

  But there was no way in which I could tell them, and they were more gentle and good to me than I deserved; and presently Jacob Bracken led me up to the little attic room where my bed was, and I crawled in between the clean sheets and lay there, looking out at the big flakes of snow that drifted past the window.…

  So it was that I came back to York village and to my friends and to what life had been before I went away, and I picked up this thread and that thread, and presently the numbness in my heart, which had been there ever since Jack Maloney left me that cold and rainy night in Philadelphia, eased out, and I began to forget the whole violent wash of war that had surged up and down and through the Jerseys for so long. Here, we were a long way from Jersey; life went on here, and in the wintertime, when the roads were closed with snow, this was a world to itself.

  The town made no fuss over me; Jamie Stuart had gone, and now Jamie Stuart was back, and it mattered very little indeed. The war was something they had long since become used to; and like most Pennsylvania people in good circumstances, they were only nominally in favor of it. Perhaps a little more in this town than in others, since the war had brought business and money, but the fact that the Pennsylvania Line was no more – a piece of news that came to the village from this direction and that – gave them no great concern. This was a war that had gone on too long. If Jamie Stuart washed his hands of it, that was sound sense from where it was least expected; for what real good could come from a miserable Scottish lad born from parents who had been bondslaves?

  I stayed with Jacob Bracken because I had no other place to stay; but often enough I thought to myself that it was time for me to be moving on, and I decided that when the snows began to melt, I would take the road for Philadelphia, perhaps to sign onto one of the sailing vessels, or to get a job in the ropeworks, or even to find a place there as a cobbler. York village was not for me, and Molly Bracken was a stranger, as if she had never kissed me upon the lips, as if we had never exchanged words of love; but she was a grown woman now with the need to think seriously of the future, and what was the future of a soldier out of the army? In no way did I hold this against her, but I tried as much as I could to avoid her; and when they took me on as a hand at the sawmill at half a guinea a week, I saw her almost not at all – for it was up at the dawn and back with the night, and only at the table did we exchange a word or two.

  Once or twice I said to Pastor Bracken, I have no right to stay on here like this, and suppose I found a room and board elsewhere?

  But his response was always something to the effect of my wanting to drive home a disagreement; and indeed I did not take too much persuasion, for there was nothing in York for me now but the sight of Molly Bracken, if even for a little and without hope. And when, here and there, one of the long-tongued gossips in the village let it drop that they did not approve of the wild and wicked Jamie Stuart living under the same roof as the poor, motherless Bracken girl, Jacob Bracken’s spine stiffened like a ramrod.

  Now you stay here, Jamie, he said firmly, and from his pulpit he thundered at those, who carry false witness.… Aye, we have a militia, he told his congregation, but a militia waits for the war to come to it, and the good Lord has seen fit to keep the war far distant – for His own purposes – although one gunshot in freedom’s name might be a better sermon than all my words. But who else is there except one orphan lad among you who has ventured his life in what we discuss so glibly?…

  And I squirmed and avoided the eyes of those around me; but Molly Bracken sat with her head up and smiling, and that made me wonder.

  But themselves, the townsfolk were a little afraid of me; I was not only different from them now, but the distorted tales they had of the rising made them think of me as a wild and lawless person, and when finally I came face to face with Fritz Tumbrill, he was a meek and a chastened man.

  It was when I had my first half-guinea in my pocket that I went to his shop to order a pair of boots, which was my greatest need at the moment. Believe me, it was a strange thing to be back there now, to see how small the shop had become in its insignificant frame building, all covered with snow, so insignificant a reality in comparison with my memories – and I often think now that there is the best sign of maturity, the reality of things instead of the unreal threat of them. My world had been a world of spirits and demons and witches and ogres, but I had faced real fears and found them not so awful as they might be, and death itself is not the worst thing in the world if you can face it with your eyes open. And here was this man I had feared so, all shrunken and old and small, and now he was afraid of me.

  But let me tell you how I came in, how I pulled at the latch and how the little bell tinkled, and how a child’s voice told me to come in, even as I had once told people to enter. Inside, nothing at all was different; a boy at one bench and Fritz Tumbrill at the other, but when he looked up and saw me, his face became pale; his big jowls shook; and he said to me, almost pleadingly:

  Why, welcome home, Jamie Stuart.

  Good evening to you, Fritz, I nodded. I have come to have a pair of boots made.

  And glad I am to see you, Jamie. I tell you now, they will be the best boots I ever turned out of my shop, and not a penny will they cost you. All the time when you were off to the war I said to myself, There is Jamie Stuart gone with never time to give him a little gift. So this will be a gift in a way of speaking, Jamie.

  I want no gifts from you, Fritz Tumbrill, I said. I will pay you what the shoes are worth.

  Are you holding old scores agin me, Jamie? he asked, cocking his head and looking up at me.

  Well, I had been, I had been; but looking at him now and from him to the thin, pale-faced boy who sat on the other bench, his head down, his skinny little hand frozen in midair, clenching the hammer, his mouth full of tacks – looking from one to the other, my hatred for this fat, gross man who was now part owner of a mill went away, and I asked myself, What are you doing here, Jamie Stuart? What are you doing here with this fat shopkeeper, in this fat and contented town, living with a pastor who will patiently convert you to God again? What are you do
ing here, Jamie Stuart? I asked myself, remembering the worst of times I had known – and the worst of them were not like this, not like this in this place, where the Roman was hated and the Jew maligned and the black man considered an ape from dark Africa. Yes, standing there in the cobbler’s house, I felt that my soul was shriveling up within me, and all the goodness and greatness that had been mine once when I marched in the companionship of Revolution was plain to me now and made plain too late; and as my heart had never hungered for anything, so did it hunger for the ugly little men of the brigades who were my comrades.

  Old scores? I questioned. No, cobbler – no; there are no old scores left. Make me my shoes and be done with it.…

  So I had new boots and work at the mill and a home with Jacob Bracken, who spoke to me gently of God and of humility and of my future. The month passed and March came, and with March the warm sunshine to shrink the snow – so that by the middle of the month it already appeared that spring was at hand. There was one fair Sunday when I took Molly to church to hear her father preach, and I sat as I always did in the church, stiffly and uncomfortably, counting the minutes until it was over, filled with a turmoil of doubt and unsatisfied longing and hesitation and the brooding wonder that attempted to extract some meaning from my life and from my deeds. When the service was finished, I rose to leave, and Molly Bracken said:

  Look at the day, Jamie, with the sun shining like in summertime. Will you walk with me a little?

  If you wish, and if you are not ashamed to walk down the street alongside of Jamie Stuart.

  What a thing to say! Now I am not ashamed but proud.

  And after we had walked a little way, she said to me, Why should I be ashamed, Jamie Stuart?

  Because I am not like the others in this place.

  Maybe you are more like them than you think, Jamie Stuart.

  No, less like them than you would think, Molly.

  We passed out of the village and along the road, walking slowly, side by side, and saying nothing until we had gone quite a way. And then it was Molly Bracken who asked what gnawed inside of me, the way I was.

  What way?

  Like a stranger, Jamie Stuart, like I had never known you before and there was nothing at all between us of any worth or meaning or reason for remembering. Sometimes, you frighten me.

  As I frighten other people, Molly?

  Yes …

  Tell me why, I said, as gently as I could, for now I realized clearly enough that it was not the difference in herself but in me; and here was a beautiful and womanly person who wanted myself who was nothing and less than nothing, an orphan and a penniless soldier out of the Line; and the bitter sorrow of it was that he did not want her.

  I can only tell you part of it, she answered, but you never made to kiss me or to touch me or even to look at me full in the eyes. When you came home that evening, and my father came down and put a kettle onto the fire, and I said to him Why? and he told me that Jamie Stuart was upstairs and would wash off the dirt of marching and fighting before he would come before me – and when I heard that, I thought I would faint from gladness, and there was a song in my bosom that said over and over and over again, Jamie Stuart is back – he is back to stay, and he will never go away again. See how shameless I am to tell you all of this —

  Not shameless at all, Molly Bracken, but tell it to me only if you desire to.

  Why am I telling it to you then, and you ask me how are you strange? The winter is gone, Jamie Stuart, but the cold clings to you – do you know that?

  I didn’t know that, I said unhappily, and if it is true, then God help me.

  How can He help you when you don’t believe in Him, Jamie Stuart?

  You hold that against me?

  Oh, I don’t hold that against you, Jamie Stuart, but you hold it against yourself, and you have no belief in the people here or in the war or in me either – but only a terrible hatred that makes me afraid when I look at you. What do you hate so?

  Many things, I answered her, many things, walking step by step and so slowly, my eyes on the road, kicking stones out of the soft mud as I went along – and wondering what I could tell her, but wanting underneath not to tell her anything, for what was the use of cataloguing hatred when nothing I hated could withstand the scrutiny of my thoughts? It was less the gentry and the village and the pinch-souled cobbler, and the narrow self-concern of these people here and the hypocrisy of their lives, and the limit of their vision and the complacent relationship they had in each of their churches to their God, than the fact that I knew of nothing better than their way. When my comrades and myself took into our own hands the strength of the army, we marched into nowhere; and that was the way my hatred went – into nowhere.

  So I said many things, but I could not tell her what the singular of it was. I hated in its wholeness a life that twisted the souls of men, but I knew of no living that did not; and thereby it had come about that I was a stranger wherever I went; but that I could not tell her, and I could not tell her that the only men who were my kind were those men who had marched with me in the brigades – and less could I tell her that I felt a closer bond and a purer sympathy to those poor damned women who had cast in their lot with us, whores though they were by any of her standards, than I did to herself, so young and fine and lovely. None of that could I tell her, but only that I hated many things.

  Then God help you, Jamie Stuart, if you do not even know what you hate.

  I have never known Him to help me or any other man.

  Because you close your heart to Him.

  About that I don’t know, I said sadly. It may be.

  Then we turned around to walk back, and walked on for a time in silence. We were almost back at the village, when she took my hand and held it tightly for a moment.

  Jamie Stuart —

  Yes?

  Jamie Stuart, were you thinking of going away?

  I was thinking of that, I answered.

  Will you tarry a little while?

  If you want me to, I will, I said, but I was afraid it would only make it painful for you and for me both. In some ways now, I am only half a man – and I am no good for myself or for you.

  For me, Jamie Stuart, you are good.

  But even though I answered her that way, the thought of going never left my mind. As Danny Connell had said, a bird pecked in me, and I tired of the work at the mill, the sameness of it, the boys off the farms who worked alongside of me, with their talk of this girl or that one and never a thought of anything else in their heads – and no curiosity either about the boundless world that stretched away in every direction and only contempt for me who was the child of bondslaves and was five years a soldier with never a penny of hard money to show for it. But when I began to think that they were truly like animals, I would remember that I had been very like them before I went away; but I never ceased to wonder that, at one and the same time, a great war could be going on in the same land where these people lived from day to day, with never a thought of the war in their heads or a care for it either.

  Sometimes, I went into Jacob Bracken’s study and looked at his books; but there were few among them that could interest me. Most of them were heavy and dry theological tomes, written by serious and outstanding Protestant authorities, and there were various editions of the Bible and commentaries upon them. There was all of Shakespeare, but little enough of it could I understand. And in a book of seven poets, such men as Wilmot and Prior and Pope, I found once these few lines by William Collins, which I said to myself until they lodged in my memory and remain there still:

  How sleep the brave, who sink to rest

  By all their country’s wishes bless’d!

  When Spring with dewy fingers cold

  Returns to deck their hallowed mould,

  She there shall dress a sweeter sod

  Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.

  It made me dream of what a fine, rich thing it would be to write some poetry of a sort about our own Pennsylvan
ia men and what we had done, but not like this, but rather proud and angry; and this thought, I knew, struck only a cord of lament for my own bereftness. But once, I recall, I was looking through a book of sermons that had been published in Philadelphia, for the use and convenience of men of the cloth, as it said; and therein, written by a Yankee called Jonathan Mayhew, I found something that beat on my mind like a brief flash of light, so that my groping almost found something to hew onto out of these words:

  Tyranny brings ignorance and brutality along with it. It degrades men from their just rank into the class of brutes. It damps their spirits. It suppresses arts. It extinguishes every spark of noble ardor and generosity in the breasts of those who are enslaved by it. It makes naturally strong and great minds feeble and little; and triumphs over the ruins of virtue and humanity. This is true of tyranny in every shape. There can be nothing great or good where its influence reaches.…

  This above, I read with great excitement, like the key to a door that might open and admit me; and my excitement was such that later I interrupted Jacob Bracken in his work and begged him to listen while I read it aloud.

  Yes, he said, that is part of a preachment of Mayhew, and I know it well. It is from a sermon he preached some twenty or thirty years ago. I should have liked to hear him preach. He is said to have been a man with a rich color of speech, but there is nothing new or particularly original in what he says, Jamie.

  But there is, I protested. Tyranny in every shape, he says. Not one tyranny, not another or this one or that one, but in every shape. Then it means to destroy all tyranny – not only the tyranny of Britain and George III –

  It is not to be taken literally, Jamie, he said patiently, for Mayhew himself distinguishes between what is a just and what an unjust tyranny.

  How can there be a just tyranny? I demanded. If all men are created free and equal …

  Created, Jamie; yes, indeed, created, Pastor Bracken said, his long, sober face expressing a mixture of concern and annoyance, but after the creation there is a natural order of things. One must be master and one must be servant. One must be rich and one must be poor. This is not matter of equality but of the order of life, which is another thing entirely, and man was conceived in sin not in perfection, and it is idle to dream that it could have been any other way or ever will be different. Here are you who have learned to read and to write, and as an educated man, Jamie, you can have a future in something better than running sticks through a watermill. And if you should find grace, Jamie, the ministry is open to you, and I will do all in my power to help you – and indeed I know of no better calling for a man who believes in justice and right. On the other hand, when this unhappy war is over, this will be a country of boundless opportunity, and many a lad like yourself has started in a Philadelphia countinghouse with no more than the coat on his back and found himself a rich and respected merchant. Such men as these are a mighty bulwark in our struggle against the corrupt and insidious Church of England and the decadent and monstrous King who keeps it in power. And sooner or later —