The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  Her son took mild issue with her. ‘You’ll never stop rum-selling as long as most men want a few drinks every day,’ he argued.

  Jenny commented: ‘Mr. Harlow is right, just as Mrs. Littlefield is right. But literary pursuits, lectures, musical entertainments, if we have enough good ones, will little by little gently win the rum-drinkers away from the taverns. I’m sure of it.’

  Mrs. Harlow said vigorously: ‘Exactly! My dear, you’ve a head on your shoulders. No man ever preferred a tavern to an attractive home. When a married man takes to drink, look to his wife for the reason. If she’s a good, fine woman, then maybe there’s something wrong with his business.’ She laughed with the chirping mirth of merry old women. ‘Oh, I’ve seen my share of men that rum ruined!’ she declared. ‘There was Jim Budge—Captain Budge, he used to be—died the year before you married Mr. Poster, Jenny. He was a militia captain in the Revolution and a man of parts for ten years after, till his business went to pot and he took to drink and went crazy of it finally.’ She added: ‘He got so he’d steal anything he could lay hands on. Tom Bartlett gave him six salted fish one day if he’d promise not to steal anything out of the store for a week; but next day Jim brought ’em back, told Tom: “Here, take your fish. I can do better!” ’ They laughed with her at the familiar tale, and she concluded: ‘Mighty few men take to rum if they can do better. Unless of course the Devil’s in them in the first place!’

  Mrs. Thatcher briskly exclaimed: ‘The Devil’s in the lot of them, if you want my opinion! Besides, I think it does a man good to get drunk once in a while.’ She smiled mockingly at her husband. ‘Not that Mr. Thatcher ever tries it. He knows what would happen to him if he did. But a man who was drunk the night before is always so full of good resolutions next day! In fact, I think men in a fit of remorse make mighty good company.’

  The old woman chuckled, nodding. ‘Mr. Harlow had a drop too much now and then,’ she admitted. ‘Everyone did, when I was a young woman; but the good men outgrew it.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘It’s curious that we women don’t outgrow our vices. A man can be a scapegrace boy and turn out all right in the end; but let a woman get her fingertip in the tar barrel, and soon she’s black all over.’

  Mrs. Thatcher laughed. ‘Perhaps she liked the sample,’ she suggested, ‘and had the courage to want more! Men are always seared, after the fact. They’re all a pack of cowards, if you ask me.’

  IV

  Jenny, when at last they were alone, reminded Ephraim of that remark. The steamboat had touched at Castine, had crossed the Bay to Belfast, now was homeward bound up the river; and the breeze had tossed up enough of a sea, even in these sheltered waters, so that the crowd on deck was thinned. When the Bangor passed Fort Point Cove, Ephraim and Jenny stood in the peak of the bow, elbows on the rail; and there was no one near them. Jenny looked at him sidewise, smiling a little, and said: ‘I think Mrs. Thatcher was right, Ephraim. Men are all cowards.’

  ‘Who is it does the fighting?’ he argued. ‘Who wins the battles?’

  ‘Oh, fighting is just habit! Anybody can be brave with people watching.’ Her eyes left his, turning to the river ahead, and she said wistfully: ‘But you love me, and you know I love you; yet you’re sorry you told me so.’ She added in quiet accusation: ‘For weeks after Isaiah was sick you wouldn’t be alone with me at all. Even since we’ve both known how we feel, you leave the house early, come home late; or you stay all day with Isaiah, avoiding me. Today we’ve never been quite alone till now.’

  ‘We’re not alone now,’ he warned her uneasily, turning to look back along the deck. ‘There’re at least fifty people watching us.’

  ‘Yet not hearing us, Ephraim.’

  He protested in a quiet desperation: ‘We can’t talk like this, Jenny! I’ve hated myself ever since that day I told you I loved you.’

  ‘Was it a lie?’

  ‘No, it was the truth. But I ought not to have said it.’

  ‘What’s the harm in words?’ she urged. ‘Isaiah has only a few days more to live-or a few weeks, or a few months-but you and I have years of life, Ephraim. Can’t we dream of them, plan for them?’

  ‘There’s nothing to plan!’

  She smiled scornfully. ‘I think there’ve been men who loved a woman so much they wouldn’t let anything stand in their way. Not even their father.’

  He urged wretchedly: ‘You’re too fine to talk like that!’

  ‘Isn’t there something fine and sacred about—love like ours?’

  ‘There’s something sacred about being married to a man,’ he countered, 1 clinging hard to the things of which he was sure.

  Her low tones hardened. ‘There’s nothing sacred about a marriage that brings a toothless, cold old man to mumble over me with dry lips and to scratch at me with his cold and creaky hands.’ Her eyes met his hotly. ‘If you weren’t afraid of what Isaiah would do to you, you wouldn’t wait for me to tell you this.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Take what is yours,’ she whispered.

  He said after a moment, almost pleadingly: ‘Listen, Jenny! We’re young. We can wait! Father won’t live very long.’

  ‘A minute is long. An hour is long. A day is long.’ Her bleak voice was so low he scarce heard her words. ‘Ephraim, Ephraim, there’s so little life in him. A touch would end it. Why must he live longer?’

  He shivered, suddenly cold; and when Mr. and Mrs. Thatcher came forward to join them he welcomed them as rescuers.

  V

  The Bangor tied up at her dock at six o’clock, and the passengers flocked to congratulate the Captain, to praise the new boat, to exclaim about the pleasures of the day. When they left the wharf, and for a part of the way home, Ephraim and Jenny had the company of other passengers going in their direction. Only for the last few rods did they walk alone, and then they did not speak. When Jenny said good-bye to Mrs. Harlow and the others her voice had been gentle and serene. It seemed to him impossible that she could have said to him what she had said, and still speak in such seemly fashion to these others now.

  Yet she had said the same thing to him before. Lieutenant Carruthers twenty years ago had glimpsed in Jenny the woman she would come to be, at once wanton and cruel and yet calculating too. Tim Hager, less perceptive, had attributed to his own depravity the emotions she provoked in him; and shame, and terror of himself—and of her—had broken him and destroyed him. Isaiah had desired her, and had found peace in possessing her and in receiving the passive submission of this child who became his wife. But Ephraim was the first to whom she had revealed herself deliberately and completely, to whom she showed herself naked and shameless and more merciless than death itself.

  Yet he could not believe his own senses now. He tried to tell himself that he must be mistaken, that his ears had heard amiss. Jenny was in the eyes of everyone except himself a considerate and wise and devoted young wife, a woman of whom people like old Mrs. Harlow approved. It was impossible that such a woman could invite him to foul his father’s bed, to take his father’s life.

  He walked beside her haltingly, and they came to the door together and he lifted the latch and she went in. Isaiah’s office opened into the hall. His door stood wide when they entered. Jenny turned at once that way, going in to lean down to the old man and speak into his ear.

  ‘It’s been a wonderful day, Isaiah!’ she said happily.

  Ephraim in the hall heard his father’s rasping voice, shrill with rage. ‘Where’s Eph? Eph, come in here!’ When Ephraim entered the study, he saw that Isaiah was in a towering fury. Then the old man cried in a harsh wrath: ‘You damned thief! Come here to me!’

  7

  WHAT had happened was sim-

  ple enough, but it was a long time before they had from Isaiah the whole story. He began by berating Ephraim for stealing his money, and by haranguing Jenny for persuading him to lay himself open to such a loss. Since he could hear nothing that Ephraim said, and since Jenny herself for a while said no word at all,
they did not interrupt him; and the deaf old man, so full of fury that he looked like a malignant mummy in a skull cap, talked on and on.

  Not till he had talked himself out did Jenny attempt to question him. He told them then what had happened. ‘Man name of Eaton came to see me this morning,’ he said. ‘Wanted to dicker with me for a township of timber land he said I owned, way the hell and gone up the West Branch! I told him he was crazy, told him I didn’t own any pine up there, and he said I did; said Eph here had bought it from a man named Holbrook, bought a bond for the deed for five thousand dollars’.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, Ephraim did,’ she agreed. ‘But he bought it for you, Isaiah.’

  ‘Where’d he get the money?’ the old man demanded. ‘Eph ain’t got a cent to his name.’ And before she could reply, he shouted in his shrill, crackling tones: ‘Don’t lie to me! It won’t do you a mite of good to lie to me, Eph! I knew damned well, minute I heard, what you’d done; so I went to see Ned Richardson. Sure enough, you took my money to do it with! That’s plain thieving!’

  Ephraim said defensively: ‘You can make a profit on it, father. That deed calls for a price of fifty cents an acre; and worse land is selling for a dollar and better now.’

  But Isaiah of course did not hear him, and shouted his son down. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he repeated. Thieving, I call it!’ He turned on Jenny again. ‘And you helped him!’ he cried. ‘Keeping at me till you talked me into letting him handle my money! Can’t you wait till I’m dead and gone, before trying to get your hands on my prop’ty?’ He looked from one to the other in a jealous suspicion. ‘Conniving together to rob an old man! You’d ought to be ashamed of yourself, the both of you. I’d like to know what’s been going on behind my back, anyway!’ His wrath rose again, his old eyes flashing. ‘I know you, Eph. You don’t fool me a minute. Oh, I’ve seen you watching Jenny like a cat watches a mouse hole, as if you’d like to eat her alive!’ His rage fed on itself and he banged his hand feebly on the table. ‘I won’t have it, you hear me! You can’t pull the wool over my eyes.’ Jenny spoke in his ear. ‘What did Mr. Eaton want, Isaiah?’

  ‘Wanted to know would I sell,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘Did he make you an offer?’

  A curious expression, at once shamefaced and sly, came across the old man’s sunken countenance. ‘What if he did?’ he demanded. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘How much did he offer you?’

  He tried to whip up his wrath again. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he repeated. ‘Eph as good as stole my money, and you helped him. Oh, I’m onto the both of you! But you can’t fool me. You don’t fool me a minute.’ She insisted, her lips close to his ear: ‘What did he offer to pay?’

  ‘Well, he said he’d give me a thousand-dollar profit,’ Isaiah confessed. ‘But that don’t have a thing to do with it! It’s thieving all the same!’ Jenny laughed quickly, her triumphant eyes flashing for a moment to Ephraim’s. ‘You gave Ephraim the money to use,’ she told Isaiah, ‘and he bought some property in your name, and it was a good buy, because you’ve already made a profit on it. Shame on you, calling names! I’d think you’d be proud of Ephraim for being clever, instead of carrying on like this, so crazy.’

  He cackled harshly. ‘Now I’m crazy! Is that it?’ His eyes narrowed. He challenged Ephraim. ‘Well, and I suppose you’d take his offer?’ he exclaimed. ‘You’d take it and think you were smart?’ Eph nodded a strong assent, too relieved at this lucky outcome of his venture to think clearly; and Isaiah slapped his desk again. ‘There!’ he cried. He pointed his finger accusingly at Ephraim. ‘There, Jenny! He’s the crazy one! Not me! Just because he sees a profit, he’s ready to sell and get out. Answer me one thing! Would this Eaton pay me six thousand if the bond wa’n’t worth more? No sir! I’ll take charge of this dicker from now on. I’ll show you how business is done, young fellow my lad!’

  Jenny asked curiously: ‘What are you going to do, Isaiah?’

  ‘Do? Why, what would any sensible man do? I don’t aim to sell anything till I have some idea what it’s worth. I’m going to find out what that land is worth. That’s what I’m going to do!’

  II

  It was to investigate the value of this township of pine that Isaiah and Eph made the long trip up the West Branch in late July. Isaiah had proposed to send Mr. Gillies; but the Scot was already in the wilderness, cruising for Rufus Dwinel. The half dozen other men whom Isaiah might have been willing to trust were likewise engaged; for the speculation in timber lands had set on foot an intensive exploration of the north country, and every competent man had been sent up-river in June.

  When he could find no trustworthy agent, Isaiah announced his intention of going himself, with woodsmen who knew a sound pine when they saw one, to make his own survey; and he said Ephraim should come along.

  ‘It’s time you learned what a pine on the stump looks like,’ he told his son. ‘Maybe you made a lucky buy this time, but you’ll never get far in the lumber business without you know trees.’

  Ephraim did not want to go. He had always been uneasy on the water. Even that trip on the Bangor to Castinc and to Belfast had awakened fears alive in him ever since his boyhood; and he demurred as long as he dared, till Isaiah said in a sudden explosion of rage:

  ‘No more talk out of you! I don’t aim to leave you here with Jenny all the time I’m gone. Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs! I don’t allow to be made a fool of by the two of you. You’ll come, and no more talk about it.’

  Ephraim was as unwilling to stay behind with Jenny as to risk the perils of the river; but he still tried for a while to persuade Isaiah to give up the expedition, to send some trusted agent. His own fears translated themselves into concern for Isaiah; and he told Jenny she should persuade the old man not to go. ‘We’ll be sleeping in a tent,’ he said, ‘and the black flies and mosquitoes and things will eat him alive, and he’ll get cold and wet. He’ll get sick again, sure.’

  ‘It’s done him good, just thinking about it,’ she insisted. They were all there at table, she and Ephraim talking together—as they often did—in tones so low that Isaiah’s deaf ears caught not even the murmur of their voices. ‘It will do him good to go.’ And she added quietly: ‘If he does get sick again, Ephraim, he’ll not live through it. So-take good care of him.’ He did not answer her. The thought of Isaiah’s death was always in his mind. She had put it there, and she kept it alive in a dozen ways. She was a madness in him now, a hot wind which blew through every part of him, giving him no peace nor respite. She watched the torment in his eyes with a faint, slow smile.

  In the end it was settled that he and Isaiah would go together, travelling up-river by stages as far as possible, proceeding thereafter by canoe. The last Monday in July was set for their departure day.

  III

  During the interval of preparation, Ephraim spent as little time as possible at the house. There was in him a sense of impending crisis, and nameless fears plucked always at his sleeve. On the Saturday before they were to depart, he heard talk at the Coffee House of a man in Augusta who had killed his wife and who would be brought to trial presently. The man’s name was Joe Hager, and it was remembered that Tim Hager, Jenny’s father, had come from the Kennebec valley, from Norridgewock; and there was some speculation as to whether he and this Joe Hager were related. Ephraim listened to the talk, taking no part in it; but the brandy he had drunk began to burn in his veins and he called for another measure. Toward the end of his college years, after he came under the influence of John Evered, he had been sober enough; but during these months at home his passion for Jenny, just as it had driven him to Ruth’s arms, led him to drink more and more.

  Ordinarily he could drink intemperately without apparent effect; but tonight, for the first time in his life, he realized suddenly that his senses were becoming seriously confused. He welcomed this relief from his perplexities and courted it; and before he went home he had drank more than he could carry,
in a futile attempt to drown thoughts he could not endure.

  The house was, save for a night light in the hall, dark when he reached it; and in the upper hall the doors into Jenny’s room and into Isaiah’s were closed. He wished to go in to see Isaiah, to make sure that he was all right. He blamed himself for leaving the old man alone in the house here, at the mercy of this woman in whose veins flowed the blood of murderers. But when he heard Isaiah’s heavy snoring that was always so incredibly loud for such a small old man, it reassured him. He passed Jenny’s door with sidelong glances, and in his own room his fear of her became a drunken fear for his own safety, so that he secured his door, pushing a table and two chairs against it to keep her from coming in.

  Yet even after these precautions, and despite the liquor in him, he could not sleep. He lay at once shivering and perspiring, between an ague of terror and a fever for her which threatened to consume him altogether.

  IV

  They would start at early dawn on Monday morning; and after supper Sunday evening, Isaiah, stimulated by his coming adventure, sat long with them in the big room, full of gleeful anticipations. When at last he was weary, Jenny went with him upstairs. Ephraim, left alone below, turned into the office to put all in order there. He was some time at this. He might have finished more quickly, but without admitting it to himself he delayed. There had been many evenings when Jenny, having put Isaiah to bed, came down again to sit awhile with him; and secretly and despite his resolutions he hoped she would come tonight.

  But for a while she did not, and at last he was ready to go upstairs. He snuffed the candle in the office, and went into the big room. The two whale-oil lamps, glittering with crystal prisms, were lighted on the black marble mantel there. He had extinguished one when he heard a sound in the hallway; the creak of a tread in the stairs.

  He stood still, watching the door, knowing that Jenny was coming down; and his lips were parched and dry.