by Anya Seton
“Don’t come back—” she said.
The Reverend Allen picked up his round black hat and went out with no further word.
Hesper wadded the corner of her apron and wiped her forehead. She walked through the parlor to the front staircase. Since the war, months went by without foreigners in town. There was nobody in the house, even Roger had gone to the stationer’s.
Hesper mounted the staircase and opened the door to the Yellow Room. It was in here that she and Johnnie had thought to start married life. It received her with the listening stillness peculiar to longshut rooms.
She parted the frayed yellow damask curtains and looked out of the east window, toward Little Harbor. The Harbor was nearly deserted since the war, the fish flakes empty.
Across the shipyard she could see the monument on Burial Hill, and below on Orne Street the brownish roof that was Johnnie’s house.
Hesper let the curtain fall. She walked across the room to the great four-postered bed and threw herself on it. She lay on her back looking up at the frayed golden canopy.
Susan found her there in the dark, hours later, and was frightened. The girl wouldn’t answer or move. She just lay there staring up, and she looked like death, her cheeks fallen in and her eyes sunk back.
But she started when her mother touched her, and allowed Susan to coax her off the bed and downstairs. She ate a little chowder for supper, but she didn’t mention Johnnie’s name, or speak except to ask Susan if she’d had a good trip to the farm, and her voice was tiny and polite like a talking doll.
All over Marblehead they said that poor Hes Honeywood was acting awful strange.
The passing fishermen would see her sitting on the rocks at the tip of Peach’s Point staring out to sea. One day little Snagtooth Foster went over on the Neck to hunt for Indian arrowheads, and he saw her on Castle Rock, hunched up on a big stone right down by high-water mark where the spray blew over her. He said she didn’t hear when he called to her, and she seemed to be writing something in a book she had on her lap. Once she tried to borrow Johnnie’s dory from the Peaches, but Johnnie’s younger brother had taken it out flounder fishing, and the Peaches would never have let her go out alone in it, as she seemed to want to. “ ’Twouldn’t be safe, my pore gur-rl—” said Tamsen Peach. Her own eyes were reddened with weeping for her son, but in them there was a look of patience and resignation. “Go home, Hes,” she added, “and try for rest. Yore lookin’ mighty peaked.”
Hesper nodded to Mrs. Peach, without saying anything more, and walked back down Orne Street. Later that day she borrowed a skiff in the Little Harbor and set to rowing out towards Cat Island.
Fortunately Susan who was cleaning an upstairs room at the Inn saw her go. She came down to Roger and found him out of his study for once and prowling uneasily around the kitchen.
“That girl’s rowing out to sea like the Old Nick was after her,” she said. “I don’t like it. I’ve kept hands off, like you wanted me to with all her pixillated comings and goings, but I think someone should keep an eye on her. Wind’s blowing up.”
“She knows the water roundabouts well as anybody—” said Roger, “let her be, she’s working it out her own way.” But his voice lacked conviction; he went to the window and stared through it.
Susan made a sharp sound, and turned her back. The door bell jangled and she welcomed the customer with relief. “Cap’n Ireson, you got your dory handy? Our girl’s rowing purty far out to be alone, might have trouble getting back ’gainst the tide.”
The old skipper nodded, replaced his tarred canvas hat, and rebuttoned his oilskins.
“Wait—” said Roger, “I’ll go with you.”
His wife’s mouth fell open. “You, what hasn’t set foot in a dory over thirty years!”
Roger’s nostrils indented. He reached to a peg behind the door for his great coat. “I believe I can still row.”
Susan said nothing. She went to the cupboard and bringing out his muffler put it around his neck. Her rough, fat hand lingered for an instant on his shoulder.
The men went out the back through the garden patch and along the weedy path to Little Harbor. .
They found Hesper an eighth of a mile outside of Gerry’s Island fighting her way back. The little skiff bobbed over the mounting waves and disappeared in the troughs, and against the racing ebb tide she was making no headway.
Captain Ireson grunted, came alongside, and both men pulled the girl over the gunnel into the dory. She was trembling with fear and exhaustion, but she had properly shipped the oars and she had the skiff’s painter tight in her hand. Roger made it fast for towing.
“Glad to see you’ve sense enough not to lose Davie’s skiff for him anyhow,” said Captain Ireson severely. “Fool gur-rl, puttin’ out so far. Women don’t belong on water—”
Hesper did not hear him. She lay flat on the floor boards. “Pa—?” she said wondering—“you came—”
“Worried about you—”
Neither Honeywood spoke again until they rounded the island and came to calm water in the harbor. By then Hesper had recovered, and she helped her father from the boat, for his muscles, long unused, were trembling, and his face grown moist and green from nausea.
“I’m sorry—Pa—” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to—” But she didn’t know what she had meant in that frantic escape toward Cat Island. A groping, a yearning for that other night so long ago.... Johnnie, where are you—ah, it had been easy gliding out, easy as the ride out had been hard that night. Easy to go on, on and on past the island to the open sea, and forget, find Johnnie there. And then halfway across the channel her dreamy apathy had been shattered by a bolt of terror, I must get back. Oh, you fool, you fool—Johnnie isn’t out there. He isn’t any place. Turn back. She had struggled, panting, with the light oars, and the tiny skiff that twisted and trembled in the wind’s clutch.
She clung to her father as they entered the house.
Susan’s worry, and relief at seeing them, resulted naturally in anger. She seized Hesper’s shoulders and administered a good shaking. “You crazy loon, what do you mean by such daft behavior! Troubling Cap’n Ireson here to go out for you, and look what you’ve done to your pa, his death o’ chill most likely, and him green with the seasickness. You know he could never abide a boat.”
Hesper bowed her head and said nothing. Susan poured a glass of grog for the two men and whipped up an eggnog for Hesper. Captain Ireson said “Thankee mum” and withdrew to the taproom where Susan followed him.
Hesper and Roger were left in the kitchen. He sat down in the Windsor armchair, before the fireplace. “You want to rest, Hesper?” She shook her head. “Then I want to talk to you.”
She fetched a log from the back porch and threw it across the andirons, above the smoldering embers. “You don’t feel crimmy, Pa?”
“No, not now—Sit down child.”
She sank to the little stool which had been the favorite seat of her childhood. Just within the great ten-foot fireplace. She leaned her head against the bricks and watched the new log catch.
“I want you to stop fretting for Johnnie, Hesper.”
She lifted her hand and let it fall to her lap. “I can’t.”
He leaned forward and spoke with a sharpness she had never heard from him. “Do you think you’re the first to feel sorrow? Right here in this house, how many times do you think sorrow’s been met, and bravely.”
“I don’t know—” she said and there was sharpness in her tone too. “Thinking of the past’s no good to me. All the Honeywoods that were killed or drowned. What good’s that?”
“You’re to think of those that were left and lived and went on; that’s why we’re here.”
She was silent, turning her head from him so that he saw only the fire reflected on the fire of her hair.
“Perhaps—” he said slowly, “you think I’m not one to talk. I’ve been a failure. Yes—I have. I’ve not met life fair and square. But I want you to. The rest of them d
id.”
The rest of them, she thought, and a sullen resistence rose in her. All the memories of Honeywoods imprisoned in this house. They were gone, but their possessions were not. Phebe’s andirons, Isaac’s table, Gran’s hooked rug, and in the new part, Moses’ staircase, Moses’ foreign wallpaper. The new part—a hundred years old. And what did they ever do anyway? Those dead Honeywoods. Fishing, innkeeping, making a little money, losing it again. Racing off to war if there was one, getting killed. Going off to the Banks and getting drowned. In either case the women staying home and suffering. No sense to it. Nothing to be proud of.
Roger got up and came over to the fire so that he could see her face. He sighed, went back to his chair and sat down.
“You’ve been writing some poetry, lately, Hesper?”
She moved her shoulders. “A little, it helps some.”
“Of course it helps,” he said. “Let me see some of it, won’t you?”
“Maybe, Pa. Sometime.”
For an instant the bitter yearning lifted. She saw herself sitting with the ladies of the Arbutus Club, saw them look up from their sewing and bandage-making, eyeing her respectfully, whispering—“Hes Honeywood has had a poem printed. Of course talent runs in the family, her father...”
The banjo clock whirred and jangled out the first of six notes. Hesper released her breath. She got off the stool, and went to the peg behind the back door for her apron. She dumped water off peeled potatoes, and began to chop them on the sink board with vicious little jabs. She knew what they said at the Arbutus Club. “That Roger Honeywood—never did a lick of honest work in his life ... and that queer gawk of a girl, never could see what poor Johnnie saw in her....”
Roger shambled across the kitchen. “You’ve cut your finger, Hesper.” She nodded impatiently, pumped cold water from the spigot over the welling blood.
He touched her shoulder. She gave him a quick, blind smile and moved away. She shook down the little pot-bellied stove, set a greased frying pan and a battered coffeepot on top of it. She went to the great fireplace, swung the crane and its dangling iron pot over the fire.
Roger cleared his throat. “What are we having for supper, my dear?”
She turned, startled for a moment. Pa never cared what he ate, then she saw his anxious eyes trying to reach through to her, pleading with her, and she answered.
“Fried potatoes and fish brew, same as dinner, same as yesterday, Ma can’t seem to get anything else.” She took an iron ladle and stirred up the mixture of salty codfish, beets, and dried peas.
“Guess I’ll do a little work, till supper’s ready.”
“Yes, do—Pa. I’ll call you.” She scooped the sliced potatoes from the drainboard into the frying pan, set them back on the stove. He took a step towards his study door and paused. “Hesper, you won’t go off like that alone again—on the water?”
She stiffened, bending over the stove. He saw her hand with Johnnie’s ring, clench on the handle of the frying pan. “No, Pa.” She bent lower, and added in a whisper, “Thank you for coming out there to me.”
When Susan came into the kitchen twenty minutes later, she found it deserted. She frowned. An acrid smoke rose from the potatoes, and the boiling coffee water made great hissing spats on the stove. “That girl”—she muttered snatching off the potatoes—“With all I have to do—and the worry...” She swung the crane and its bubbling load of fish brew back from the fire, threw an angry look at Roger’s shut door, and called “Hesper-r-!”
She opened the back door, and called again into the damp windy twilight. The branches were creaking on the old chestnut, and the nor-’easter swirled past her as she stood on the step. Behind in the Great Harbor the breakers pounded.
Susan drew back and shut the door. “She’ll not be out in this. She has some sense. She’s mine too, despite all you hear is of Honeywoods.”
Susan thrust a spill into the fire and lit a candle. Her fat hands shook and the freckles on them stood out like brown flies. She mounted the narrow stairs meaning to go through the second landing to the new part. The girl often shut herself into the Yellow Room. But outside Hesper’s own door, she stopped. The scowl cleared from her face, and she listened to the sound from within.
She nodded slowly. “Thank God, she’s broke down at last. She’ll stop fighting it now.” Susan rested the candle on the square hand-hewn newel post, leaned against the wall, looking at Hesper’s door with a tenderness the girl had never seen. “You get noplace by fighting it, Hes. The Good Lord knows I’ve had to learn that.”
She picked up the candle and descended the stairs.
CHAPTER 6
THROUGHOUT the war years Marblehead seethed with patriotism. In July of 1862, President Lincoln issued a call for additional volunteers, and sixty-nine men responded. The Marblehead band played, the church bells rang, fourteen of the town’s prettiest young ladies dressed themselves in red, white, and blue bunting and waved flags.
Fort Sewall on the south point of Little Harbor had been in ruins since the War of 1812 and the town voted four thousand dollars to add to the Government appropriation for its repair. The Government also built two new forts, one at Rivershead Beach, the other on Naugus Head, the promontory towards Salem where two hundred years before, the first settlers had had their Derby Fort and the memory of a similar promontory in England.
All three forts were garrisoned by foreigners from other parts of Massachusetts, and the Marbleheaders curbed their normal antipathy toward the outlanders and endured them as patiently as possible. This was not easy. These companies were mostly composed of homesick farm boys, distrustful of the water which surrounded them, and bored by inactive duty.
They brawled in the narrow streets, tried to seduce Marblehead girls, and made constant fun of the Marblehead speech. There were therefore reprisals.
One night in the Hearth and Eagle taproom there was a bloody fight between two old Barnegat fishermen and two Pittsfield boys who were stationed at Fort Sewall.
It began because one of the Pittsfield boys was suddenly inspired to recite Whittier’s “Skipper Ireson’s Ride”—sure spark to any Marbleheader’s tinder.
“ ‘Here’s Flud Oirson, fur his hor-rd hor-rt’ ” cried the young corporal, striking an attitude and declaiming in a taunting voice:
Torr’d and furtherr’d an’ corr’d in a corrt
By the women o’ Morble’ead!
“That’s a Gawd-dom lie!” shouted one of the fishermen, jumping up.
The corporal was delighted; things were mighty dull around this God-forsaken place, and it was seldom you could get a rise out of any of these fishy men.
Small pity for him! He sailed
away From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay—
Sailed away from a sinking wreck
With his own townspeople on her deck—
continued the corporal, encouraged by the applause of his friend.
“I tell ye—” cried the fisherman, shaking his fist, “that’s a stinkin’ whoreson lie!”
“Have done—Ned—” said Susan emerging from behind the counter, “I’ll deal with him. Look, my young cockerel—” she turned to the elocutionist. “There may be some that think that Whittier’s a poet, but I’m not one. Years ago he courted a Marblehead girl; her parents had sense enough not to let her take him, by-the-bye—because it’s evident he’d no regard for fact. Benjamin Ireson was a fine man, his trouble no fault of his own, and his family much respected here. I’ll thank ye to shut your mouth.”
But the young corporal was exhilarated by Susan’s rum, and barely waited for her voice to stop before he began to chant—
“ ‘Here’s Flud Oirson fur his hor-r-rd hor-rt—’ ” The old fisherman promptly knocked him down. The other fisherman and the remaining Pittsfield boy jumped forward, and Susan stood by grimly until they had battered and knocked each other into quiet, and broken four of her earthenware mugs as well.
After that she denied the use of her taproom to any of the garris
on, and times for the Honeywoods grew hard. Prices were rocketing and with the decline of fishing the business center of town moved back from the waterfront. Only the shoe manufacturers were prosperous.
By the fall of 1864, Susan was frightened and she showed it by sharper temper and hours of glum silence. The larder was empty, her credit had run out, the last keg of beer was nearly dry. If they were not to starve there was but one thing to do. For days she had been mulling it over, but had said nothing to Roger or Hesper.
Roger had been bed-ridden, with a grippy cold and it was hopeless to talk to him anyway; there’d be nothing of help from him but a spate of poetry, and a reminder that the Honeywoods had never done such a thing.
She had not wanted to worry Hesper until it was imperative. The girl was slowly recovering, her figure had filled out a little, and she had begun to take an interest in war work. She went regularly to sew with the ladies of the Soldiers Aid Society, and she had recently been over on the Neck to a husking bee with other young people. She had unfortunately no special admirers, but then Hes had never been the type for beaux, and anyway there were mighty few young men left in town.
On the crisp October afternoon when Susan made her decision Hesper had been to the druggist’s to buy cough medicine for her father. She came into the kitchen, took off her bonnet and shawl, and counted out the change, four pennies, into Susan’s hand.
“How’s Pa?”
“Not coughing so much. Give a look in the bean pot, Hes.”
Hesper opened the brick oven at the side of the fireplace. “They’re browning but I don’t see the salt pork.”
“Isn’t any. That’s the end of the m’lasses too.”
Hesper threw a puzzled look at her mother’s back. “Didn’t you order more?”
Susan did not answer. She took a pot of thin gruel off the cookstove and poured some of it into a pewter bowl for Roger. “When I popped over to see how poor Nellie’s doing this afternoon, I ran into Amos Porterman on State Street,” she said.
