The Hearth and Eagle

by Anya Seton

  She lifted her head and tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry. Don’t look so black at me, Amos. The whole thing’s been an awful shock.”

  But his anger did not abate. Making scenes, he thought, sitting up in bed looking wan and tearful and prying into things no wife should want to know—unpleasantly like Lily Rose. Adding to the stupendous humiliation of last night, instead of soothing it. Good God, haven’t I suffered enough for that stupid hour with Leah years ago? Thank God the woman’s dead.

  “Amos—” said Hesper very low. “Don’t shut me out. I’ll never mention the thing again. Except—” She stopped.

  “Except what?” cried Amos violently.

  She did not want to voice it. She was exhausted, drained of emotion, and longing only for the return of their understanding, of the tenderness and content in which she had floated for years.

  “I’m afraid of Nat,” she said. “Afraid for you.”

  “Nonsense!” But her appeal had reached him. He spoke more quietly. “Nat’ll be all right. After he gets over the tragedy, of course, it’ll be a relief to him. Must have been terrible trying to restrain his mother in her bad times. Why, she’d even turn on him—those welts on his cheeks.”

  Yes, thought Hesper, sickened. And perhaps she had cause.

  “Nat’s evil,” she said. “He’s different from other people.”

  “Nonsense,” repeated Amos. “He’s sulky and mean at times, I’ll grant you. But he never really does anything. It’s more of an attitude.”

  “He’s never really done anything bad, because of Leah, or the thought of Leah. But now she’s gone.”

  “Hesper, for God’s sake, stop exaggerating and harping on this thing. Nat’11 be back at his bench in a day or two, doing skilled lasting and grumbling about his pay check as usual.”

  “Oh, my dear—” she whispered, twisting her hands. “Don’t you know he hates you? He’s always hated you. I think it was to watch you he stayed in the factory. And now with Leah doing this thing—he’ll think you responsible. I don’t understand Nat—but—” Her voice dropped.

  But I understand him better than you do, she thought. Her thoughts ran together in confusion like the tossing of a stormy ocean. She heard the menacing pound of rising waves battering on the rocks, as she had not actually heard them in years. It was the town—the good and evil and the violence and the richness—it was a heritage apart—apart from Amos who had blundered in, unknowing. Who had never known.

  “Go wash your face,” he snapped with renewed anger. “It’s a sight. Then may I be permitted to have my lunch in peace? You’re talking rubbish.” He stalked to the shaving stand and ran a comb through his thick fair hair.

  Maybe I am, she thought wearily, pulling herself off the bed. I’m all tuckered out and overwrought. Maybe it’s the baby. Tell him, she thought, tell him now. So he won’t be angry any more.

  She walked up in front of him, reached up her hands to his shoulders. “Amos, I’m going to have another baby.”

  She watched the sullen anger melt from his face, and then the incredulous blaze of delight. Ah, it was good to see the indulgence return to his blue eyes. Good to have him kiss and pet her as she had known he would.

  “So that’s why you’ve been so upset this morning, my poor girl. I’d never have spoken so sharp if I’d known. You should have told me sooner, Pussie.”

  Hesper leaned against his sheltering arm. They descended the stairs together and she let him support her as though she had become too weak to walk alone.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE WINTER MONTHS passed, and the memory of New Year’s night faded from Hesper’s consciousness. It seemed that Amos had been right and her fear of Nat baseless. Though Nat had never returned to the factory. This much Amos had told her, but no more. The topic was closed between them. It was from the milkman that she had heard how Nat had disappeared the day after Leah’s burial. Locked up his house and vanished like smoke, said the milkman, and not a mortal soul knew for sure what had become of him. Though one of the Tucker boys swore he had seen him trudging up the highway to Swampscott. Had recognized him by the way he had of slouching along with his head poked forward. So doubtless he’d left town.

  Hesper was reassured. Her life settled back into effortless routine, hazed by the discomforts and the lethargy of advancing pregnancy. The veins in the back of her left leg swelled a little, and vagrant pains attacked her body. With Amos’s hearty approval she took to having Annie serve her breakfast in bed. Gradually she spent more and more time in bed, arising only to have supper with Amos. There was no need to get up. The two Irish women ran the house well enough, and Bridget was a good cook. Once a week, Tim drove to Salem and brought back a laundress. Annie did most of the mending. Only Henry really required his mother’s time and attention. The nearest grammar school was in town near Amos’s factory and to it Henry would eventually have to go—if they remained in Marblehead—but in the meantime Hesper preferred to teach him herself.

  Henry was an apt if unenthusiastic pupil; he did as he was told and in arithmetic he progressed so fast that it was only by anxious pre-study of the arithmetic book that Hesper could keep ahead of him.

  Sometimes she worried because Henry had no companions of his own age. Then she bundled him up and sent him out to go skating on the ice pond near their home. Many children walked out from town or the near-by village of Devereux to skate there, but amongst them Henry made no friends. But Hesper’s solicitous questions elicited no pathetic picture of ostracism, nor of the rough bullying which she well knew to be characteristic of Marblehead youth.

  Henry skated so proficiently that he commanded respect even from his elders. He participated in snow fights, and had an unerring aim. When tripped up by an outstretched foot, or hit by a snowball, he picked himself up again and proceeded calmly with whatever he had been doing. He evoked neither friendship nor hostility, and the other boys soon let him alone. But Henry was not colorless. Now and again, Hesper was conscious of strength and purpose in her son’s burgeoning personality.

  One morning after lessons, Hesper lay propped up in bed, and Henry sat beside her on a stool, sponging his slate. She looked at him with a sudden surge of warmth, seeing the down-bent flaxen head, the straight nose and firm little chin. He’ll be a handsome man like his father, she thought.

  “I wonder what you’ll be when you grow up—” she murmured fondly half to herself.

  Henry raised his head. “I’ll be rich,” he said. “Very rich.”

  “Why, Henry!” she laughed. “You mean like Papa?” she added indulgently.

  Henry shook his head. “I don’t mean rich in Marblehead. I mean rich in the whole world.” He gave her a kindly smile, and resumed sponging his slate.

  Now how in the name of heaven did he get an idea like that—she wondered, a little shocked at Henry’s cavalier estimate of Amos’s means. “Papa’s very well off. He keeps us very comfortable,” she said crisply.

  Henry piled his spelling and arithmetic books on the cleansed slate. “I guess so. But he isn’t real rich. Gramma said so. I ast her.”

  “Gramma said so!” Hesper sat up straight, staring at her son with annoyance. How like Ma to say a thing like that. No business of hers, and she didn’t know anything about it anyway. Things were looking up again at the factory, Amos said. Oh, he’d had strike trouble—in the middle of January the lasters had walked out, and the cutters too. But he’d soon handled that, brought in a trainload of workers from Danvers. There’d been a lot of fuss and threats and grumblings. She’d read about it in the Marblehead Messenger, but Amos hadn’t seemed much perturbed. And all the other shoemen had trouble too. Anyway, the Marbleheaders hadn’t held out long. Couldn’t bear to see Danvers men swiping jobs from them, and had slunk back one by one with their tails between their legs, Amos said. Hesper thought he’d been mighty decent to take them back, after the trouble they’d made. He fired the Danvers substitutes right away and let bygones be bygones. And Amos had managed withou
t Hay-Botts’s money. “Arrangement with the bank—” he had told her briefly, “not the slightest cause for worry.” Nor did she dream of insisting that he talk of matters he didn’t wish to. Never that again.

  “Where did you see Gramma?” she asked, frowning.

  “In Dorch’s drugstore, when I went down-town with Annie, Friday,” replied Henry, edging toward the door. “She was buying peppermint oil for Grandpa’s cough.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Hesper snapped. “No, come back here. What did Gramma say—is Grandpa really sick?”

  Henry sighed but returned to the bedside. “I forgot. I guess he’s not so sick. I dunno. She ast how you were feeling. She said you might as well be living in China for all she ever saw you.”

  Quick color ran up Hesper’s face. She sank back on the massed pillows. “She knows I’m not well enough to go out. And she won’t come here on account of that dratted Inn. If she’d let your papa help her, she could close the Inn and she wouldn’t have to work so hard.”

  Henry looked bored, perfectly aware that Mama was talking at rather than to him. “Can I go now ?”

  As his mother said nothing, but seemed to be staring at the footboard, he departed, shutting the door carefully behind him.

  Hesper lay quiet, and forced herself to a few minutes of uncomfortable analysis. But there was no reason for the stab of guilt. She sent Tim to the Hearth and Eagle to inquire for her parents, whenever he drove to town, and he never went empty-handed; he took gifts from the Porterman larder, or sometimes a dress length for Susan, socks or handkerchiefs for Roger. Gifts, it might be added, accepted matter-of-factly, without enthusiasm. He also bore little notes from Hesper, inviting her parents to come and see her. Susan had come once since New Year’s, and the visit had not been a success. There was nothing to talk about.

  “I ant at ease here, Hes, and that’s a fact,” Susan said. “There’s a heap to do at home, and it’s not as if you needed me. Why’nt you come and see us ? Do you good to get out—quiddling around all day in one room, or are you ashamed of your old home?”

  “No, Ma—of course not,” Hesper had cried indignantly. “But Doctor Flagg won’t let me go carriage riding, just now, and you know I couldn’t walk with this leg, even if it wasn’t so far.”

  No, she wasn’t exactly ashamed of the old Inn by the sea, no emotion so simple. It was more of an intensification of the hostility she had felt to it and from it, on New Year’s Day. When she thought of the town she knew a painful repugnance, not unmixed with fear. Buried too deep for complete recognition lay the feeling that it had struck at her in revenge through Leah, on New Year’s night—but revenge for what nebulous betrayal? There was none. Morbid, she thought—rubbish. She rang for Annie, directed her to tell Tim to set off down-town at once, to ask after Mr. Honeywood’s health, and take some of those hothouse peaches Mr. Porterman had had sent in from Boston.

  While Annie was still in the room, Hesper made a sudden effort, throwing back the bedclothes, and sliding to her feet on the carpet beside the bed. At once her head grew giddy, the room swam in sickening coils. Her left leg began to ache. She clutched the bedpost and let Annie help her back into bed. “I guess I’ve got to be careful—” she said with an apologetic little laugh.

  “Yessum,” agreed Annie, who enjoyed running the house to suit herself. “The master he’s give orders you’re not to strain yerself in any way. You jest lay quiet till I fetch up your dinner.”

  It’s funny—thought Hesper, lying back on the pillows, I had no trouble at all carrying Henry. Felt fine and of course we traveled quite a bit. But—what about the first time—what about Evan’s baby? Everything went wrong then. That’s why I’ve got to coddle myself, no matter what Ma thinks.

  Ah, I wish we could leave this place, leave it for good. If Amos could only get a good price for the factory—I’d live anywhere, anywhere else. In August after the baby’s born and I’m all right again, we can begin to look around. She picked up the novel she had been reading, The Maiden Widow, by E. D. E. N. Southworth, closing her mind to everything but its romantic story.

  Spring came with a flurry. There were no trees near the Porterman mansion, which had been erected on a bare and stony slope. But the carefully tended lawn flushed green, and the forsythia hedge, which protected the house from observation by passers-by on the Salem road, became tipped with yellow buds, and then burst into flower.

  A pair of foolhardy robins started to built a nest at the base of the cast-iron stag’s antlers, and were summarily dispossessed by Amos, who directed the daily gardener to freshen up the stag with a coat of lifelike brown paint.

  Amos made, however, no other spring improvements this year. The repainting of the mustard-colored trim around the windows, the renewal of gravel on the drive, the addition of a cupola on the stables to match the new one on the house—these must wait a bit. Money was very tight, tighter than it ever had been in January when he had hoped for Hay-Botts’s investment. Well, he’d weathered that storm, and he’d weather this one.

  There was but one person to whom he sometimes exposed some of his fears, hopes, and maneuverings. This was Sam Johnson, his foreman and faithful employee of twenty years.

  On Friday morning, the twenty-second of June, Amos called Johnson into his office at the factory. More than ever Johnson had grown to resemble a grizzled old watch dog. His Airedale face was alert as he cocked his head and stood in the doorway, waiting for his chief to stop reading a letter and recognize him.

  “Oh, hello—Sam—sit down—I want to talk to you,” said Amos, looking up.

  Sam sat down, grumbling a little from habit. “That new channel turner ain’t workin’ so good. Got to go upstairs and put the fear of God in all them sole cutters. They’re slowin’ up the whole line.”

  “Yes, I know. But wouldn’t you say things are going smoother now, since the strike?”

  “If you ain’t sensitive to black looks, and unsigned cards full o’ dirty name-callin’ bein’ shoved under your door, I’d say things was goin’ pretty smooth,” answered Johnson with a wintry smile. “They’re all back at work anyways. You sure scared hell out of ’em when you brought in them Danvers boys. Took the wind right out of their sails, that did. Didn’t take ’em long to see they’d have to eat humble pie, or starve.” Johnson gave a mordant chuckle.

  Amos nodded. “Well, I had to. Don’t mind telling you now. I’d have been wiped out if we’d shut down. I’ve had to do a tightrope walk as it is. Credit’s run out. Got all the extension from the bank I could possibly hope for. You know what a time I’ve had to meet the pay roll. I’ve had to sell most everything I own, except my house and this factory, and they’re both mortgaged to the hilt.”

  Johnson expressed his dismay in a long whistle. “I didn’t know it was as bad as that.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you now, except here’s a piece of mighty good news for a change. Thing I’ve been hoping for.”

  He shoved the contract he had been reading across the table to Johnson, who picked it up and holding it at arm’s length squinted at it painfully. “Jesus—” he whispered. “Hunt and Slocombe of Cincinnati? Ain’t they the biggest jobbers in the West?” Amos grunted, and Johnson read on to the end, when he emitted another whistle this time of ungrudging elation.

  “Ten thousand pair of Ladies three-button Morocco, as a starter! Holy mackerel, that’s far and away the best order we’ve ever had, nor anybody else around here, I reckon. Top price too. How in the name of God did you do it, sir?”

  Amos smiled. “Bit of luck, I guess, at last. Ran into their man in Boston last month, showed him samples, talked him around.” He certainly was not going to tell Johnson, nor did he wish to remember, the frantic machinations of those two days in Boston with Hunt and Slocombe’s buyer. He had haunted the Worcester station until the fellow’s train came in from the West. He had virtually kidnaped him, carrying him off to the American House where Amos had already engaged rooms, plied him with liquor, provided a little
dancer, blandished him, bullied him, told the most outrageous lies about competitors from both Marblehead and Lynn, none of whom got to see the fellow at all. Yes, it was almost funny now, that the plan had worked, but it hadn’t been so easy to hide the desperation under it all, to keep from showing by the flicker of an eye that the order from Hunt and Slocombe’s was the last hope.

  “We’ll get going tomorrow,” said Amos. “Carload of fancy Morocco hides ’11 be in from the tanneries on the morning train.”

  “They’ll wait to be paid?” asked Johnson, quickly.

  Amos nodded. “I showed ’em the contract when I was in Salem yesterday. I guess I better talk to the hands, when I go around the factory tomorrow, stir ’em up, and promise ’em a bonus.”

  “Yeah—” said Johnson, grinning. “You can forget it later, when the order’s gone out.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Amos reluctantly. “I try to play fair with them, but I’ve got to ease things off at the bank first, and then of course my personal expenses are very heavy, with Mrs. Porterman’s condition and all. Monthly nurse coming next week—and she’s not been so well, poor girl. I’m thinking of calling in that special woman’s doctor in Boston.”

  “Too bad,” Johnson clucked sympathetically. Had hard luck with his wives, the chief did. The first Mrs. P. had certainly been as wishy-washy a piece of ailing womanhood as you could find. But this one—a big strapping girl and had done the work of two in the stitching room, way back that time when she worked there. You’d never think she’d turn out sickly. But the chief, he lilies to coddle her—thought Johnson with a flash of insight. Maybe he got in the habit in his first marriage. And then he’s so grateful to have kids. Always was crazy for kids of his own.