The Lively Lady

by Kenneth Lewis Roberts

  The front door opened; a stream of yellow light flooded out, and in the midst of it stood my mother. I had no more than kissed her when my aunt Cynthy, my sister Sarah and my older brother Nathan came at me with their greetings. Nathan’s was brotherly but a little envious; for he had not followed the sea since the embargo, he being color blind and therefore unable to tell one flag from another—a dangerous affliction indeed in days when a mistake of that sort may result in a twelve-pound shot between wind and water.

  We went at once into the large front room, which had changed during my absence. In place of the sanded floor and the trestle table there were braided rugs underfoot, brightly colored, and against the wall the long sofa inlaid with satinwood, and the tall secretary made for us by Benjamin Frothingham in Boston. Not only had my mother enriched the room with her carved chairs in the Chinese taste, bought when she sailed with my father to England, but she had covered the pine walls with wall paper depicting scenes in distant cities to which I had never been, so that to be in the room was as good as traveling to foreign parts.

  “Quick!” said my mother, taking my arm and shaking me, “say how you like it!”

  My mother was small and dark, with a back as flat as a board, though it was a mystery to me how she kept as straight as she did; for when I was young she had gone overboard in a gale to help my father, and had been pounded on a ledge by a heavy surf so that her lower half was somehow weakened. Above she was as strong as ever, and perhaps even stronger; as I was reminded when she thumped me on the chest to emphasize what she was saying.

  I said at once that it was no sort of room for an inn, since Jeddy Tucker would use the sofa to heave at the head of any man who stood up for Paul Jones.

  “Yes,” my mother said, “that’s what would happen if this house should continue to be an inn. Our inn-keeping days are over, however, for I’m fond of my furniture; and things are going to be worse instead of better, with all this talk of war, and our people ready to throw chairs at any man who says a good word for the rights of America.”

  “Well, and why not?” I asked her. “What rights do we have, and what have we got to demand them with?”

  My mother twisted her fingers in the string of cat’s-eyes she had worn at her throat since I was able to remember, and I knew I was on the verge of hearing something that might not please me. Declaring hurriedly, therefore, that I was dying for lack of food, I unwrapped the shawl from my waist. “Look here,” I said, tossing it over her head so she was muffled in it, “I brought this from Spain, and all I ask in return is that I shan’t be talked to of war or anything else till I’ve had supper.”

  It was on my mind, while eating, that I might have been overhasty in speaking to Lady Ransome and her husband about our inn and the food to be had there. After a time I asked my mother whether a traveler could be accommodated as in the old days if there seemed to be some special reason for it. When she was silent, I looked up under my eyebrows at her, and saw her fingers at work again on her cat’s-eyes.

  At length she nodded. “I think so,” she said, “especially since she’s young and pretty and took such a fancy to my shawl.”

  I gave Jeddy Tucker a glance of some severity, but he, with unbuckled belt, was busy on his third helping of corned beef and looked entirely guiltless. Puzzled as to where my mother had her information, “She?” I inquired. “What ‘She’ took any fancy to your shawl? She?”

  My mother, exasperated £t my stupidity, rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “There’s the odor of a fine perfumery on the shawl,” she said. “Would it last all the way from Spain? I think not! It’s been somewhere, my son, and I think the where was young and pretty.”

  Perhaps I got a little red. “Maybe so. Maybe so; I admit it,” I said, “but you might guess too much; for she was traveling with her maid and her husband—”

  “Oh, her husband! And traveling? On foot, perhaps?”

  “No, in their own coach.”

  “Ah! Then you thought the husband an unpleasant fellow, didn’t you, and too old for her?”

  “You’ve seen them!” I exclaimed. “They must have passed through here!”

  My mother shook her head. “You must learn to draw conclusions, or you’ll go through life not seeing half the things that he before you. If the lady’s young and pretty and traveling besides, it’s quite certain she didn’t marry a man younger than herself. And when a young lady marries an older man, he soon learns to be unpleasant toward the younger men who meet his wife; and to them he appears ancient and decrepit.”

  “If you’re trying to accuse me of paying undue attention to the lady,” I said, “you’re making a mistake. There was some talk of the evils of our Arundel inns and our Arundel food, and her husband declared that all travelers invariably pronounced them vile.”

  “I see! And after that you were on such friendly terms that the lady tried on the shawl?”

  “No,” I said, conscious that my sister Sarah was casting sidewise glances at my brother Nathan, “the shawl came up in another way.”

  “Ah,” my mother said, twisting her fingers in the string of cat’s-eyes.

  “The Englishman,” I continued hurriedly, “wouldn’t believe I was a captain, or that our brig was large enough to get out of sight of land; and he wished to buy your shawl for less than I paid for it. I told him it wasn’t mine to sell; and since he had such a fine opinion of himself I added that if he’d visit our inn, it might be you’d trade him for it. I knew if you’d take the matter in hand he’d think twice before trading for Spanish shawls in New England again.”

  My mother lifted an eyebrow. “My son, I’m too old a bee to be caught with that sort of sugared water! Any traveler who wishes hospitality in this house will always have it as long as I’m alive, unless he’s the sort who doesn’t deserve hospitality—and it seems to me our country is producing more and more persons of this sort, thanks to the preachments of that madman, Thomas Jefferson!”

  Now one thing the sea had done for me was to give me relief from the daily cursing of Thomas Jefferson that resounded through all our province from morning until night, even though three years had passed since James Madison had replaced him as president. So great was my abhorrence of Jefferson that I preferred, for the benefit of my digestion and my peace of mind, never to hear him mentioned. Like nearly every other New Englander, I detested him for his petty meannesses, his economies that proved to be dreadful extravagances, his aping of the leaders of the French mob, his supplanting of our fine navy with little gunboats that sank in a capful of wind and could no more stand against a frigate than a jellyfish could fight a shark. I couldn’t endure his hatred of cities and city folk, and his desire to rid the nation of manufacturers and artisans, so there might be nobody to cast votes except farmers; and I was fairly sickened by his strange belief that all people are perfectly equal: not to be called by any title whatever—a belief he could never have held if he had spent less time examining the manners and customs of vegetables and more time on a deep-water brig.

  It was this last belief that most often tinned the stomachs of our seafaring people, who know disaster is bound to overtake any craft on which the captain is not respected and instantly obeyed.

  “What,” I asked her, happy the conversation had at last turned from Lady Ransome, “is this talk of war? Is it anything new, or is it the same old war talk we’ve been hearing since I was knee-high to a duck?”

  My mother rapped her knuckles on the table to emphasize her words. “It’s new, because the crazy fools in Washington who’ve been trying to sell their country’s services to either England or France, whichever would pay them best, haven’t been smart enough to avoid being cheated. They struck a bargain with Bonaparte, who’s as great a thief as a Barbary pirate. Bonaparte swindled them, and England’s in a rage because we trafficked with him; so now there’s nothing to be done but fight England. What wearies me is that if we had anybody in Washington but a pack of sawdust dolls, we’d have fought both of them a d
ozen years ago. We should have fought at once, as soon as they began telling us where we could trade and where we could sail our ships, as if they owned all the oceans of the earth, and taking our seamen from our own vessels as if we were black slaves in Africa.”

  “To be frank,” I said, “I see no sense to this talk of war. We’re making a living out of our brig; but if we fight England, we’ll have no living at all, for we’ll have to lay her up. You’ll never get me into a war with England. England’s the only nation that defends the world’s freedom against Bonaparte.”

  My mother stood up, her hands on her hips and her new shawl clinging to her arms and her flat shoulders as if she had backed her topsail to give us a chance to come up with her.

  “Yes, indeed!” she said ironically. “England’s always been a great hand to defend freedom! She’s as eager to defend freedom as to cut her own throat!” She made a derisive sound in her nose. “Can’t you tell the difference between right and wrong? Can’t you get in a rage when the British and French do things to us that they shouldn’t?”

  “They never did anything to me.”

  “Oh, my Land, Richard! The French never did anything to your grandfather, but he fought them at Louisburg! The English never did anything to your father, but he fought them at Quebec and Saratoga; and a good thing for you and all of us that he did!”

  “There might be two ways of looking at that,” I said. “Not even the English could have sent us worse governors than Jefferson and Madison with their damned embargoes and shilly-shallying. I can’t see how my father gained much by his fighting if you now say we must fight again. How many people in this town want to fight England, anyway?”

  “How many? How many? Probably four out of every four hundred. The other three hundred and ninety-six are making a little money, and it blinds ’em. That’s the way people are down here. You’ve caught it from ’em, Richard.”

  She came around the table to tap me on the chest. “Richard,” she said, “you look a little like a sleepy pirate, with your gray eyes and your black side-whiskers. That’s how your father and grandfather looked; so I have hopes that you, like them, may wake up at last.”

  IV

  FRETTED by this talk of war, it seemed best to me, after a few days of our good Arundel food and feather beds, to get back to Portland and hasten the sale of our Spanish wine and hides, so we might be off to sea once more.

  It was late afternoon when I set out to find Jeddy and let him hear my plans. I knew I would probably come across him at one of the taverns, hobnobbing with the men from the shipyards over their daily four o’clock rum.

  Therefore I went to John Patten’s inn on our own side of the river, but Patten had seen nothing of Jeddy for more than two hours. He had dropped in, Patten said, peaceful and elegant spoken, and taken a few glasses of rum with Job Averill; then left for Ward’s shipyard to look at the new brig Ward was building.

  I crossed the river to Ward’s shipyard, where Dominicus Weeks, the rigger, told me he had seen Jeddy going toward Nathan Wildes’ public house with Pelatiah Ham, Keziah Gooch, and Rowlandson Drown. I was not pleased to hear this. Rowlandson Drown was a chair maker, more quarrelsome than an old bull whale with a sore nose. Once, indeed, he had fallen out with his brother-in-law and tried his best to drown him in the river.

  I hurried to Wildes’ public house, fearful that Rowlandson Drown might take a sudden dislike to Jeddy; and even before I entered I could hear Jeddy and Keziah and several others saying their say against a war with England. I heard Drown whine that if there was a war there wouldn’t be a chair made in Arundel in five years; while Keziah Gooch was bawling that not a man from Arundel would lift a finger against England; and Jeddy was shouting that he could use his time more profitably than in fighting.

  I pushed open the door and went into Wildes’ dark little front room, where you could either sit on kegs or stand up, as suited your convenience. No sooner had I set foot inside than Drown, a bull-necked man with a face all gray and blotched like the sides of a young sculpin, tossed off a glass of rum and complained that if we had a few seamen like Paul Jones there might be some sense in this talk of fighting England, but as it was we’d get nowhere.

  There was a growl of assent from the caulkers and adze-men; but Jeddy came off his keg like a squirrel, peering into Drowns mottled face.

  “Jones!” he exclaimed. “That piece of Scotch pudding! Why, we’ve got ten men that can sail rings around Jones!”

  “Who are they?” growled Keziah Gooch, while Rowlandson Drown’s face darkened as though the rum he had drunk were coming to the surface.

  “Who?” Jeddy shouted. “Why, Bainbridge and Decatur and Hull and Perry and every man jack that helped lick the Pasha of Tripoli! Jones! He was a Scotchman, and there ain’t a Scotchman on earth that can sail with our Yankee captains! Jones! Jones, hell! There’s a dozen men in this town that can outsail Jones! Why, Richard Nason can outsail Jones! Why, my God, I can outsail Jones!”

  Rowlandson Drown made a ripping sound between his tightly closed lips, whereupon Jeddy pushed closer to him, his spine so straight that he seemed to lean backward.

  “Listen,” he said, “I want to tell you about Jones! My uncle, John Burbank—John Burbank of Arundel—was master at arms under Paul Jones! Don’t try to tell me about Paul Jones! I know all there is to know about Paul Jones! He was nothing but a big lucky bag of Scotch porridge, that’s what he was! Master at arms under Jones, my uncle was! Don’t you try to Jones me!”

  Rowlandson Drown made a snarling sound, took Jeddy’s small face suddenly in his tremendous hand, and pushed him backward over the keg. I started forward when I saw this; but before I could reach Rowlandson, Jeddy had slipped from beneath his hand, bounded upward as though shot from a mortar, and seized Drown by the ears. Drown’s huge body seemed to float upward from the keg, and an instant later his head was driven against the top of the barrel with a hollow clang. Seeing that Keziah Gooch was making ready to kick Jeddy from behind, I hit him on the chin, knocking him between two kegs; and then, although Pelatiah Ham had made no move, I drove my fist into his stomach for fear he might take it into his head to leap at Jeddy. Pelatiah went down on top of Keziah and lay quiet, except for a slight choking sound; and Jeddy and I had a little space in which to move.

  It was well we did; for Rowlandson, though his head was still being thumped against the keg top, had recovered from the first surprise of the attack and got his big hands under Jeddy’s arms. I shouted to the little bantam to leave go and come away; but even as I did so Rowlandson heaved hard, and Jeddy turned a slow and majestic somersault over Rowlandson and the keg. Since he kept hold of Rowlandson’s ears the keg was displaced and the two of them fell over on the floor, scuffling and panting.

  By this time the adze-men and caulkers were shouting and milling around. It was plain they hadn’t relished Jeddy’s words about Paul Jones and hoped Jeddy would be killed. I jumped over to pull him away from Rowlandson, and I think we might have got out of it without further difficulty if Nathan Wildes had not come running in from the back of the house, a bung starter in his hand, shouting, “I’ll get the little weasel!” Seeing this would never do, I took the bung starter from Wildes and hit him lightly with it on top of his head. Even as he fell, I saw, out of the tail of my eye, one of the caulkers coming for me. It is bad, in such a case, to wait for an attack; so I felled the caulker with the bung starter: then dropped it, for fear of spattering someone’s brains on the floor, and went after the rest of the caulker’s friends with my fists. I felt two go down before me. Then the room was full of noise and confusion, and over my left shoulder I saw a bottle coming hard at my head. The floor seemed to fall out from under my feet, letting me drop miles into a black pit.

  * * *

  We were lying outside in the dusk when my senses returned. My skull seemed stuffed with sea urchins; and when I opened my eyes they stung and smarted until I said to myself they must have been knocked from their sockets. The smarting, I fo
und, was caused by brandy that had been poured on my head, whence it had run into my eyes and over my clothes, so that I smelled like a distillery. Keziah Gooch was standing over me, a brandy bottle in his hand; and when he saw my eyes were open, he asked what should be done about Jeddy’s ear. “Drown got his teeth in it,” he said, “and kind of frayed it. Mebbe we ought to heat a poker and sear it off.”

  I sat up and looked at Jeddy. His left ear was tom in two or three places, but there was nothing about it that couldn’t be remedied with stout thread and a sail maker’s needle. None the less, he was so still and white that he worried me.

  “What happened to him?” I asked. “Is his back broken?”

  “Not to speak of,” Keziah said. “He was all right when they carried Rowlandson home with his knee out of joint and four teeth missing. Then we saw this ear and started to put brandy on it. He told us an ear was no place for brandy, and before we could stop him he took the bottle and drank the whole of it. That’s his trouble.”

  I paid Keziah for two bottles of brandy, shoving the partly used bottle into my trousers pocket; and after I had tied a handkerchief around my head so no more blood could spatter on my shirt, I picked Jeddy up, slung him over my shoulder, and went hunting for a punt to carry us down river. It was dark by the time I found one, and still darker when the punt grated on the sand at the river end of our farm. I held Jeddy by the feet and dipped his head in the cold river water; but since he seemed to derive no benefit from it I hung him over my shoulder once more and carried him through the potato patch to our house. When I kicked open the back door, there was nobody in the kitchen, which seemed strange to me; so I opened the door into our new big room, the one that was our gathering room in the old days. Every candle around the wall was lit, and as I staggered forward, carrying Jeddy toward my mother’s sofa, there seemed to me to be a hundred people standing in the room, all of them blurred and indistinct in the brilliant light. My mother’s face came out clear from the muddle, and then my sister’s and my aunt Cynthy’s. They were staring at me, and I could see horror in their eyes. With my left coat sleeve I wiped away the blood that was seeping through the bandage round my head; and then I saw, beyond Sir Arthur Ransome and, at the height of his shoulder, looking at me out of a haze, the startled face of his young wife.