The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘Poor Cap’n Obed was a little old man in a coonskin cap,’ she said. ‘Just old enough so that he knew he would soon be too old to go to sea, and in the back of his mind there was always that thought, so he tried to be very strong and commanding, as much to reassure himself as to impress us, I know. The mate was Mr. Brock, and he thought I was nice.’ Her glance flashed teasingly at John. ‘He insisted on teaching me to steer, and he made fun of old Cap’n Obed, showing off to me, just as little boys do when a new little girl is watching them.’ John, remembering that it was Mr. Brock’s recklessness which had brought the Mary Ann to disaster and five men to their ends, hoped Jenny would never guess this. ‘And old Willie, the cook, was always grumbling, but he was so patient and he worked so hard. Then there was a boy, almost a grown man, with a big Adam’s apple. They called him Squid. Cap’n Obed said that was because if he wasn’t watched he did everything backward, in some wrong, thumbhanded way. He was always making mistakes, and they were always shouting at him.’ Evered had not noticed this, and he thought how wonderful Jenny was to have seen in each of these men an individual. To him they had lumped themselves together; they were simply Captain, mate, cook and hands. ‘And there was another man named Arthur; such a gentle, smiling man. He had a pet kitten in the forecastle. He showed it to me, the second day, before the storm. The poor man didn’t even know what his last name was! People had always called him Arthur. But Cap’n Obed said he could do anything on the Mary Ann better than men with all their wits. The schooner was his home. He lived on her always, and Cap’n Obed took care of him and sent his pay to his mother. She was a widow woman in Cushing.’

  She went on to tell of the disaster, describing its slow onset, and how John and the others strove to save the schooner, and how one man and then another came to death till only she and John were left alive, and how they fought to live, and did.

  ‘John was like ten men,’ she said. ‘Like a giant, too great and strong for anything to beat and conquer. Do you blame me for loving him?’ The older woman smiled fondly, and Jenny confessed: ‘Perhaps we should have waited a longer while before being married. My husband died only last summer, you know. But I needed John too much to wait.’ She looked at Evered, held his eyes with a long glance, smiling tenderly. ‘I think I would still have died, afterward, if he had not been always by my side,’ she said.

  ‘John is a good man,’ the little old woman agreed.

  Jenny said soberly: ‘When we were safe in the haystack that night, keeping each other warm, I remembered the men who had died, and it seemed somehow as though they died for us, as though John and I were meant to live.’

  John’s mother nodded. ‘Aye, it seemed to be meant, certainly.’

  Snow lay deep that winter all around, so they stayed much indoors. Men and beasts were all under the same roof, and through the shed they could come to the barn, where two horses stamped in their stalls, and six cows stood in the tie-up, and the oxen were housed in a lean-to, and the old sow had a pen of her own at the end of the barn floor, and the chickens and the geese here were sheltered too. The bam was warmed by the warmth from these creatures, and sun on fine days shone through the windows and through cracks in the walls, the sun rays alive with dancing dust motes. Once John and Jenny came there together and she wished to climb up into the mow. Above the tie-up, the hay had all been fed to the ruminant kind in their places below; but on the other side of the barn, the level of the hay was still high above the floor. John put up the long ladder made of tapering spruce poles with bits of board nailed across, leaning it against the beams of the barn frame and steadying it for Jenny to climb; and looking up at her as she ascended he whistled in teasing admiration and she cried laughingly:

  ‘Shame, sir! Shut your eyes!’ Then, when she was in the mow and he would have followed her, she protested: ‘No, I don’t want you up here! Don’t come near me!’ And she pushed the top of the ladder outward, delightedly defending the fortress of the mow against his assaults, thrusting the ladder beyond the balancing point so that it toppled and he had to drop to the floor. He set it in place again, his blood quickening in laughter, and tried once more to ascend; and she caught up the wooden- tined hay fork and thrust the head of the ladder out again so that when he came level with her they were six feet apart, the ladder precariously poised, held away from the beam against which it should have rested by the thrust of the fork; and he tried to treat with her, bargaining for permission to enter the stronghold she defended, and they parleyed laughingly till he treacherously caught the fork to twitch it out of her hands while she was off guard. But she thrust hard, thrust the ladder off balance; and though he held to the fork, the ladder tilted backward so that he had to slide hastily to the floor a dozen feet below while the ladder came down with a thump upon the beams across the way.

  He shouted laughing threats, and she defied him. He set the ladder in a new place, at the end of the mow; and when she scrambled through the deep and yielding hay to meet him there, he suddenly snatched the ladder away and ran with it to the other end of the mow. Through the hay she could not move so swiftly, and before she reached the spot he had climbed high enough to catch hold on the barn post so that she could not push him away. She tried to tear his arm from the post it encircled, and bit at his hand; and he shouted in laughing pain and cuffed her, and she beat at his face with her small clenched fists, her eyes blazing, her teeth set, pounding at him hard. One fist struck him blindingly in the eye so that darkness was ablaze with flashing lights; and he fought his way around the ladder, straddling the beam, trying to catch her wrists, and she beat at him in a silent fury, no longer laughing now. He caught one hand and then the other, and she tugged to be free; and he launched himself at her, his weight carrying her backward upon the hay, and she writhed and twisted under him, fighting him still and with a silent, stubborn violence, till he pinned her at last, his legs pressing hers, his hands holding her crossed hands on her breast, and when she tried to bite his hands he thrust her own hands into her mouth and they lay a moment passive, their eyes meeting in the sunned darkness of the mow.

  Then the red flames in her eyes died in laughter and she cried teasingly: ‘Oh, John, you’re going to have a black eye!’

  ‘You little-wildcat!’ he whispered. ‘What a fighter you are!’

  ‘Did I hit you some good ones, darling?’

  ‘I saw stars!’

  ‘Poor John! Here, I’ll cure it!’

  So she kissed his bruised eye, and it was healed, and she was forgiven, and they romped and burrowed in the hay, at first like children and then like secret lovers, and she reminded him of that night in the haystack when they were both congealed with cold.

  ‘But I’m not cold now,’ she said, and laughed huskily, and demanded; ‘Are we pagans, John? Are we scandalous and terrible?’

  ‘You’re worse! You’re a wildcat, scratching and biting and snarling!’ She laughed softly. ‘I didn’t mean really to hurt you!’ She added, half to herself: ‘Yet I think hurt goes with love. Don’t you ever want to just pound and beat me, John? The way I did you? Wouldn’t you love to?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Really? Well, I guess I’m different. I liked hitting you!’ She laughed and kissed his eye again. ‘I think I’d even like it if you hit me. But I didn’t mean to hurt you! It’s just because I love you so much I can’t bear it!’

  ‘I can stand it. I can stand anything except your not loving me.’

  She said, after a moment: ‘John—may I tell you something—strange and beautiful to me? I never knew what it was, before you.’ He dipped her close in a quick delight, and she said: ‘I know now I was never married to Isaiah at all.’

  V

  When they came in from the barn that day, Mrs. Evered looked up over her spectacles and saw John’s eye and said in quick concern:

  ‘Why, son, what happened to you?’

  John laughed, his arm around Jenny’s waist. ‘I had a little trouble with this wife of mine,’ he
explained. ‘But she’s learned her lesson now!’

  The older woman smiled, and her eyes returned to her knitting again. ‘You children!’ she protested. ‘Playing like puppies in the hay! Bathe it in cold water, John, and rub it with butter. That will keep the swelling down.’

  They were happy for four days in John’s mother’s house; and when they set out on the return journey to Boston, Jenny said: ‘She’s wonderful, John. No wonder you’re such a fine man!’

  ‘I think if I were ever hurt, I could always come back to mother and be healed.’

  ‘I feel the same way about her,’ she agreed. ‘I hardly remember my own mother at all. John—when our babies come, help me to be like her, will you? Help me to be a fine mother to them.’

  6

  THE ice went out of the river

  that year on the seventeenth of April; but there were in Boston so many speculators eager to try their luck in the great gamble at Bangor that the first packets to sail were filled to overflowing, and not till early May were Jenny and John able to get accommodations. When they had their first sight of the city, Jenny exclaimed over the many new stores and houses and wharves which even from the water she could see under construction. ‘If we’d stayed away much longer I wouldn’t know the place,’ she declared.

  He said, echoing Colonel Black’s opinion, that it was a mushroom growth based on speculation. ‘And it can’t last,’ he assured her. ‘Money’s tighter all the time. That’s partly because people are afraid of war over the French claims, but we’re exporting gold besides.’

  She smiled, holding fast to his arm with both hands as the packet worked toward the wharf. ‘Women don’t understand all those things, John. You’ll have to manage my business for me.’ She looked up at him in serene devotion. ‘You’ll have to manage all my life for me, John.’ Then, discovering familiar faces on the nearing wharf, she began to point them out to him. She had left Mrs. Hollis in charge of the house, and had written to announce the day of their homecoming and to ask that the house be made ready for them; and she wondered who would be here to meet them now and suddenly discovered Pat Tierney himself, in his old livery as coachman and grinning broadly as he touched his hat to her. ‘There’s Pat!’ she cried. ‘See—just beside the gangway, John? Pat Tierney. He used to drive our carriages—till he got rich speculating in lands and quit the job—but I believe he’s come to meet us now!’ and when presently they stepped ashore and Pat met them, her first word was:

  ‘Oh, Pat, I’m glad to see you!’ And then: Tat, what’s happened? Pat—don’t tell me you’ve lost your money?’

  He chuckled proudly. ‘Lord love you, no, ma’am! I’m a rich man- richer than money could make me, to be sure. But—can’t a rich man be proud to wear your livery, ma’am? And is there anything money can buy better than the chance to be your servant?’

  She laughed delightedly and told John: ‘He always says the nicest thing, the Irish tongue of him!’

  Pat made his duties to John. ‘Mr. Evered, sir to you!’ He led them to where the horses waited, and they drove up the street, crowded with teams and carriages and men, and deep with muddy pot holes, with a few odd lengths of plank thrown down here and there to serve as sidewalks; and John thought there was an overtone of hectic excitement in every voice they heard in the throngs through which the horses picked their way, men moving absently aside to let them pass. But when they turned out Main Street and began to escape from the revolving, aimless-moving crowds, Jenny asked:

  ‘Honestly, Pat—why did you come to meet us today?’

  ‘To please myself, to be sure. I’ve a cousin of mine from the old country to tend your horses now, and if he does not satisfy, you’ve only to speak to me. But it was in my mind to fetch you home today my own self.’ ‘Well, you were sweet!’ she said, and she asked: How’s Mrs. Hollis?’ ‘Why, poorly, ma’am,’ Pat confessed. ‘You’ll see for yourself, so it’s as well to know beforehand. She’s cruel thin, and sickly to be sure.’ He added in a low, sober tone: ‘Eh, yes, she’s not for long, I’m thinking. Mostly she keeps her bed, but nothing would do her but she’d make all ready at the house for you, and she’ll be up and smiling to greet you at the door.’

  ‘Oh!’ Jenny’s breath caught on the word, and her hand touched her throat in a sore distress. ‘What’s the matter with her, Pat?’

  ‘I’d not know,’ Pat admitted. He swung the horses into the drive. ‘But you can soon see for yourself, for here we are, to be sure.’

  The door swung wide to greet them, and Evered saw in the doorway a smiling, pretty girl curiously like Jenny in many outward ways; and behind her an older woman in garments too big for her, haggard and weary but with merry, brimming eyes. Jenny ran to greet them both, hugging Mrs. Hollis, making him known to them.

  ‘This is Mrs. Hollis, and this is Ruth Green, John,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you how they always took care of me.’

  Pat behind her spoke strongly: ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, not Ruth Green but Mrs. Tierney now.’ She turned to see him chuckling with pride and delight, and cried out in surprise, and Ruth blushed happily, and Jenny kissed her again and told them both:

  ‘I’m so glad! You’re a lucky man, Pat. Ruth was always dreaming about you. She cried for hours the time the men broke your leg.’

  ‘Aye, she had her dreams and I had mine,’ he agreed. ‘But the money fever made me blind awhile, till I got well of it and could see the sweet one right under my nose all the time.’

  Jenny took Ruth’s arm. ‘Come and tell me all about it,’ she commanded, and she went off upstairs with Ruth and Mrs. Hollis, Pat summoning that cousin of his from the stables to help with their bags, and to go presently to fetch their trunks. John was left alone belowstairs, to inspect this house that would be at first their home. He stood for a long time before that likeness of Jenny which Mr. Hardy had painted, wondering at her perfectly recaptured beauty. The painter had even known how to fix in pigment the lucid purity of expression which was her outstanding attribute. John remembered fleetingly what Ephraim had said of this portrait, but it held for his eyes nothing sinister at all.

  Jenny presently returned to him. ‘Welcome home, John!’ she said. She looked around the room with shadowed eyes. ‘We’ll live here till we can build for ourselves. I don’t want to live here always.’ She came to link her hand through his arm. ‘I want to forget all of my life before I met you. I didn’t really live till I met you, darling, after all.’

  He said doubtfully that it would be a long time before he could afford to build a house; but she touched her finger to his lips to silence him. ‘Please,’ she protested, ‘don’t ever say “I” and “you” and “mine” and “yours”! I’m yours, John, all of me, and everything that’s mine is yours too. I’ll never be able to give you all I want to give you; but I’ll give you myself and everything I have and only wish there were more to give.’

  He kissed her, and in his arms she said: ‘I’m so glad about Pat and Ruth, aren’t you? He knows all about Ephraim, but before the baby came he asked her to marry him. The baby’s a boy and they’ve named it Pat, and Pat’s as proud of it as if it were his own—and proud of Ruth too.’

  ‘He’s a good man.’

  She nodded. ‘But John, I’m distressed about Mrs. Hollis. I put her to bed in the guest room next ours. She used to be so plump and cheerful. It’s terrible to see her now. Ruth and I undressed her, and she’s thin as a picked bird. She’s cheerful enough; but poor thing, she says her feet keep going to sleep all the time.’ She added ruefully: ‘Ruth says the doctor can do nothing for her.

  But then she cried: ‘There! I mustn’t make sad our homecoming! Come see your office, John. It was Isaiah’s but now it will be yours. You’re going to be a busy man, taking care of all Colonel Black’s affairs—and mine.’

  II

  John plunged in fact into an intense activity. Colonel Black, to keep in touch with the booming market for wild lands, spent several days every week at the Bangor House. The hote
l was crowded, already succeeding the Exchange Coffee House as the centre of the speculative activities of the city; and the public rooms were full all day and most of the night of men who packed together in groups that forever formed and dissolved again; and the air was heavy with the steady talk of profits—always of profits—in the thousands of transactions that went on from day to day. Through May and into June—when the steamboat Bangor on her first trip brought three hundred more potential buyers—there were constant bidders for Bingham land. Colonel Black dealt with them, and John was always by his side.

  The city itself was suffering from growing pains. Street lights had been put up at the busiest corners; there was talk of building sidewalks; and new construction—stores and business blocks and houses—was everywhere under way. Bangor was full of new enterprises. Freeman Duren came in one day to sell Colonel Black and John copies of the first city directory. He was a man of intelligence and cultivation, and with a bookish bent—though without any creative talent—which would lead him to produce such works as a Bibliography of Maine, and a brief History of Penobscot County, and to serve as secretary of the Bangor Historical Society when it was founded years later. He had come to Bangor in the August preceding, a young man of twenty; and he set himself up as a bookseller and with a boundless energy undertook at once to prepare this directory of the young city which was growing by the hundreds during each week of the summer months. When he came in today he proudly displayed the small volume.

  ‘Everything you want to know about Bangor is right here,’ he declared.

  ‘A history of the town, the names of all city and county and state officers, a list of banks, advertisements from the principal merchants, stage routes and the hours at which the stages leave, city ordinances, and the name and business of every man in Bangor, fourteen hundred of them. Anything you want to know, gentlemen, is in this book!’

  John and the Colonel each bought a copy, and the bookseller filled in their names in the labels pasted on the cover.