The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘There’ll be men making bids today that won’t even remember they were here, tomorrow,’ John predicted; and the Colonel chuckled and said:

  ‘Yes, and men with not a dollar to their names bidding thousands.’

  General Veazie had come up behind them unseen, and he heard this and said: ‘You’re right, there, Colonel. Henry Head will tease the bids out of them.’ And he chuckled and said: ‘Hear about the time I had with Henry here awhile back? He auctioned the last four Williams privileges up at the Falls. Wadleigh and I both wanted them, and Wadleigh bid me up to twenty-seven thousand, and then Henry kept bidding till he ran me up to forty. Then I found out it was Henry bid me up, that Wadleigh stopped at twenty-six thousand; so I paid Williams twenty- seven thousand and told him that was as far as I’d go and he sued. We went to court over at Augusta, and the court ruled that Williams couldn’t collect unless Henry had been bidding for him.

  ‘Well, court let out and I knew Williams would head for Bangor to find Henry and tell him what to say. He’d hired an express team, so I did the same. Saw Williams three-four times on the road when he changed horses—or when I did. It was nip and tuck all the way, and neck and neck when we got here, but Williams had to go to John Bright’s to find out where Henry lived, so I got to Henry’s house before he did—and by the time Williams got there, I’d persuaded Henry to admit that he faked the bids and wasn’t acting for Williams at all.’

  The Colonel chuckled. ‘That must have cost you something, Sam.’

  General Veazie looked shocked and grieved. ‘Why, it saved me thirteen thousand,’ he assented. ‘But Colonel!’ His tone was full of pained reproach. ‘Colonel, I hope you wouldn’t go to say I’d bribe a man—or that Henry Head would take a bribe—now would you, Colonel?’ They laughed together, and then the General exclaimed in a lower tone: ‘Whoa! Here comes Rufe Dwinel, looking like an egg-stealing dog that’s been fed an eggshell full of pepper! I’m getting out of his way. Look out for yourselves!’

  He moved into the crowd and Dwinel joined them, his nostrils dilated with angry disgust. The Colonel asked: ‘Well, Rufe, what do you think of this show?’

  Dwinel looked at the half-drunken throng. They’ll be no better than pigs in an hour,’ he predicted. ‘Ready for the sweat cure—and if it kills them, good riddance!’

  ‘They’11 be ready to buy—after Henry Head works on them awhile.’

  ‘Henry on top of a bellyful of champagne is enough to make a fool of any man,’ Dwinel assented.

  John asked: ‘Are you buying anything, Mr. Dwinel?’

  ‘No. I never buy at auction. The bidding gets into your blood. You’ll always go one step higher than you meant.’

  Colonel Black nodded. ‘Right!’ he agreed. ‘But Rufe—if we can catch some of the men who do buy today after they’ve sobered off, we might do ourselves some good. A lot of them will be glad to take a small loss and get out, to save a bigger one.’

  ‘I doubt whether there’ll be many sales,’ Dwinel said, half to himself. ‘Even a drunk man knows times are going to be bad.’

  A big man in woods garb, with a mug of champagne in his hand and the contents of another splashed over his chin and his garments, lurched up to them and encircled Mr. Dwinel’s neck with his arm. ‘Rufe, you little old son of a bitch, have a drink with me!’ he cried, and held the cup to Dwinel’s mouth. Dwinel slapped it aside and it fell, spilling across the floor, and the man lugubriously protested: ‘Now what did you want to do that for?’

  Dwinel said precisely: ‘Begone! Shrink back to your original nothingness, you bastard, and swear that you never were!’

  The man, a head the taller, nevertheless mumbled apologies and backed away; and Colonel Black chuckled and said: ‘You burned that gentleman to a crisp, Rufe. I thought he might jump you!’ He added, surveying the eddying crowd: ‘If a fight starts here it will be as bad as Old Town on a pay night.’

  ‘It will be hell!’ Dwinel agreed. He grinned faintly and added: ‘They say hell is worse than Old Town and not as bad as Sunkhaze, but this may top all three before it’s done!’

  The preliminaries and the banquet passed, however, amicably enough. Cooks and caterers—and the viands they served—had all been imported from New York; and the press of men around the tables was awed into a respectful silence by the strange aspect of some of the confections; so when the actual auction began, they were orderly enough. Henry Head and Nehemiah Pillsbury—Head and Pillsbury, General Commission Merchants and Auctioneers, with an office in Market Square, opposite the Kenduskeag Bank—were in charge of the auction, and Mr. Head with a warming tongue whetted the appetite of the crowd.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, when his hammering gavel brought silence, ‘I don’t need to tell you why we’re here today, nor how fortunate you are to have this opportunity. You all know what Maine pine is worth. Every pine tree near a usable watercourse—providing it contains a thousand feet of sound lumber—is worth at least three dollars on the stump. I may say that private sales in advance of this auction have been at the average rate of four-fifty a thousand for stumpage; but call it three dollars. An acre of land with four three-dollar trees on it is worth twelve dollars; but many an acre has more than four. So timber land is the best possible buy. Even if you don’t want to lumber off your tract, it’s a good investment. Thrifty timber grows faster than the interest on your money.

  ‘I want to say that I deplore as much as anyone the frauds that have in the past no doubt been committed; the swindles and deceptions as a result of which many reckless and improvident individuals have bought worthless land. But in many cases, rising values have rescued even such individuals from the consequences of their folly. Timber lands have not yet reached their fair and proper value. Although there is not this year that rage for speculation and for empty-headed gambling in lands which prevailed last year, yet our sound business men—like General Veazie yonder, and Mr. Dwinel—are still serenely confident of the future; and every day purchases are quietly being made by those who recognize an opportunity when they see it.

  ‘We are selling off here today not only timber lands but mill and factory privileges. For the best of them, I warn you that you will be bidding against General Veazie. He won’t make any bids himself—he’s too smart for that—but his agents are among you, and if you hear some spirited bidding you may know the General wants that piece! I hope you won’t let him have the choice lots too cheaply! Make the General pay through the nose. He can afford it!’

  Laughter ran through the crowd, and John asked: ‘Is he evening scores with the General?’

  ‘No, just prodding these addled fools. I doubt if Sam wants anything that’s up today.’

  Mr. Head went on: ‘Now, I want to give you just a few figures and then we’ll begin. In case you don’t know it—those of you who might hesitate to buy a mill privilege because it’s outside your field—and it costs about twelve to sixteen hundred dollars to put up a saw and lath mill—and a mill like that rents for a thousand to twelve hundred a year. That’s—I’m no good at figures, but I know a bargain when I see one!—that’s say eighty per cent on your money. The sixteen mills that are already working rent for over nineteen thousand dollars—and there’ll be sixty-seven sawmills, lath and shingle mills in operation by the end of August.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, my first offering—and if the first bidder is your next- door neighbor, who never bought a mill privilege in his life, and you wonder what he’s doing here, he’s probably bidding for General Veazie—will be . . .’

  John stayed for an hour or two to watch what followed. He saw Pat Tierney in the crowd, and wondered whether Pat would make a bid. John liked the shrewd Irishman, and during the winter he had seen him many times and talked with him, advising him to realize on his speculations. Pat had taken his advice, vowing that he had all the money he and Ruth and their children would ever need. But watching Pat now, John saw a slow flush of excitement darken the other’s countenance; and he was not surprised when Pat at
last, after some lively bidding, bought in a factory site.

  The enthusiasm grew, and before the auction had been long in progress Mr. Head was pulling bids from all around the room. When John and the Colonel at last departed together, the Colonel said, in a puzzled wonder, grinning at his own words:

  ‘Well, by God, John, I think they’re all crazy—but maybe I’m wrong!’

  IV

  It would be some weeks before the results of the sale were calculated; but a month after the auction the Whig and Courier printed complete figures. Before the public sale, permits had been sold to the amount of a hundred and forty thousand dollars, factory and mill sites to a total of sixty thousand dollars more. The auction doubled that figure, bringing total sales just over the four hundred thousand mark. This result, in the state of the money market, astonished everyone; and it gave a last spurt of new life to the speculative craze which had begun to die, persuading even the more conservative to enter at last the gambling field. Pat Tierney confessed to John one day that he was again extended the limit of his resources.

  ‘When Ned Richardson starts buying, that’s good enough for me,’ he said. ‘And they say he has.’

  John found that men who had been most thoroughly persuaded that the land boom was a bubble apt to burst at any time were now the firmest converts. Speculation flared up in a new vigor—like the last flame of a dying fire. He had long since sold all Isaiah’s holdings. That township on which Ephraim had bought the bond netted a paper profit of almost eighty thousand dollars, although two instalments of twenty-two thousand each were still to be paid. John was half-convinced by the new burst of enthusiasm after the Stillwater sale, but caution restrained him from making any purchases; and he watched as an outsider the last blossoming of the great boom.

  V

  Through the late summer of 1836 the weakness of some of the eight banks in Bangor, and the financial pressure which resulted when a million dollars of Government money was withdrawn from the state banks, gave warning enough of coming difficulties; but Jenny and John were happy in their own concerns. John sold the house Isaiah had built, for delivery January 1; and they went often to watch the new house, now almost ready, take shape and form. So long as the frame was still exposed, their friends had been apt to drive out to inspect it, and to laugh at the massive timbers; but Jenny told John:

  ‘They don’t bother me. It’s the way I want it; strong and secure, to last forever, with our rooftree at the top—just as you’re at the head of our family. Will you ever forget the afternoon the thundershower caught us here, John?’

  ‘I’ll never forget any minute I’ve spent with you,’ he promised her.

  They liked to take the baby everywhere they went pleasuring together, and as the new house took shape they explored it room by room, over and over, Dan in John’s arms and crowing with delight, Jenny happy with them both.

  The upper floors were finished first, and Jenny proposed that they move the furniture of their bedroom and Dan’s small crib, and establish themselves there, returning to the Main Street house for the day and for their meals while the workmen finished the lower floor. John humored her—she was to have a second baby in February—in this as he did in all things; and on a fine sunny November day, with a great fire burning on the hearth of the big southwest corner room which would be theirs to welcome them, they made the move. The furniture was shifted during the day; and after supper, with Dan in Jenny’s arms, they rode out of town. John drove himself, for young Tierney, Pat’s cousin, had gone ahead to light the fire for them and to bring the carriage home. He would return for them in the morning, to fetch them back to Main Street for breakfast. ‘Home for breakfast,’ John said, giving instructions when the young man met them at the house, but Jenny as the carriage moved away corrected him.

  ‘This is our home now, John,’ she reminded him happily; and she said: ‘I feel like a bride!’ He opened the door for her to go in with Dan, but she said: ‘No, you must carry me across the threshold, John. Carry both of us! All three of us!’

  So he laughed and lifted her in his arms as Dan was in hers; and Dan crowed and gurgled delightedly, and John bore them in. Young Tierney had left candles burning in the lower hall, set on the floor—since the hall was still empty of furniture—and John carried his wife and his son up the wide stair to their room where the fine fire waited. He set Jenny on her feet there and stood watching while she began to take off Dan’s wraps and prepare him for bed; and the flames danced a gleeful dance to welcome them. John went downstairs presently to snuff the candles in the hall; and from below he heard a sudden shrill cry of pain from Dan, and then his screams of anguish and Jenny’s quick, excited comforting.

  He raced up the stairs, his heart thrusting at his ribs in sharp terror. Jenny stood in front of the fire with Dan in her arms, soothing him while he wept and clung to her; and John caught them both and asked in a deep alarm:

  ‘What happened, Jenny? What’s the matter? What makes him cry so?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ she declared. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, John. A pin sticking into him, maybe. I took his little dress off and he just suddenly began to scream.’ She tried to hush the baby. ‘Danny, Danny, there, it’s all right now!’

  But as she spoke John saw in the firelight a mark on Dan’s small, soft arm; and he leaned to look at it. Jenny in a guilty alarm tried to hide it from him, but he drew her hand away. Small spots of crimson showed on the baby’s skin, and drops of red blood formed a circular pattern there. He cried incredulously:

  ‘He’s hurt, Jenny! He’s bleeding.’ And then in sudden, astonished understanding: ‘Why, Jenny, you bit him!’

  Danny still screamed and would not be consoled. John took him from her arms, and she clung to him and wept over her small son’s grief and hurt and pain. ‘I couldn’t help it, John,’ she sobbed. ‘I was so happy, being here at last with you both, with both my menfolks, in our fine new home; and he was so sweet and soft and warm. I just couldn’t help it!’ And she wailed: ‘Oh, Danny, Danny, darling, I didn’t mean to hurt you so!’

  Her tears drowned John’s anger. He comforted her and Dan too, till they were both—through hiccoughing sobs—able to smile again. But a faint far terror was that night his bedfellow. He could dimly understand how in a sudden tender impulse Jenny might do to Dan what she had done. The impulses to love and to hurt, as he well knew, were in her strangely commingled.

  But he could not forget, as in the past he had forgotten other things, that when he asked her what had happened, she had lied to him. It was the first time he had known her to lie.

  9

  WHEN the panic of 1837 put

  an end to the dying boom in Maine lands, the heaviest losses in Bangor fell upon those conservative business men who had resisted the popular enthusiasm until the very end, only to yield at last to the intoxication that followed the Stillwater sale. But others whom the boom had earlier enriched were also ruined now, and Pat Tierney found himself a poor man again. He said cheerfully: ‘Well, I was never meant to be a millionaire to be sure,’ and went back to his old job as coachman for John and Jenny. Employment in town was slack, and public meetings were held to relieve the distress among the poorer folk. Specie payments were suspended by the Bangor banks and there was even a shortage of bills. Bankruptcies and assignments came thick and fast; and Bangor, which had ridden high during the early thirties—it was said that more men had made fortunes there in those years than in any other city in the country—now suffered the worst of the depression.

  Between 1835 and 1840, the amount of pine that came down-river fell off fifty per cent, and pine was Bangor’s life blood, so the city suffered; but then as though the abortive excitement which accompanied the bloodless Aroostook War stirred pulses and awoke latent energies, a new activity began. The lumber industry assumed an increasingly substantial character; and though the rapid growth of the early thirties did not continue, yet the town held now its gains.

  II

  For John
and Jenny, the six or seven years during which their four sons were born were, except for an occasional stormy hour, serene and happy ones. There were fifteen months between Dan, the first baby, and Will. Tommy was born in April, 1839, and Mat two years and seven months later. They lived an intensive family life, Jenny absorbed in her children and yet finding time for her many outside interests, John as proud of the boys as he was intent upon his business affairs. Once, while Dan was still very young and Will was a baby, they went to spend a week with John’s mother at Freeport; once or twice they left the children in good hands and took a trip to Boston and New York; and at first they paid regular visits to Colonel and Mrs. Black at Ellsworth.

  But for the most part—though John had frequently to be away, over on the Kennebec Million, or up the Penobscot, or off to the eastward locating camps for the winter’s lumbering—Jenny preferred to stay at home. They lived simply, taking little part in purely social affairs, and their most intimate friends were Meg Saladine and Elder Pittridge. These four, sometimes with the children and sometimes without, did many things together. The boys liked Elder Pittridge and it delighted him to plan for them small surprises. When he came to the house, his pockets were sure to hide small, delightful surprises for them. If John were to be away from home, he always told Elder Pittridge to look out for Jenny and the children. ‘Keep an eye on them,’ he might say. ‘I’m a lot easier in my mind, when I’m away, Line, knowing that you’re going to drop in every few days.’

  One summer afternoon when Mat was at the toddling age, John and Jenny were sitting on the lawn in front of the house, the boys playing together on the slope below them, when Elder Pittridge came up the driveway; and the children ran to meet him. He pretended to try to escape, loping away across the lawn at an awkward gait so that John laughed and said: ‘Line runs like a scared moose!’ and Jenny smiled with him. Then Line affected to stumble and fall, and the boys leaped on him, Dan first and then the others, Mat the last of all, digging into his pockets like dogs at so many rat holes, shrill with glee at what they found. They crawled and clambered over him while he sprawled on his back in pretended helplessness; and Jenny watched them happily; and John found himself looking from them to her with a proud affection. She was in her early thirties, but age had not yet touched her except that where a few years before she had been slender she now seemed thin, and where she had seemed soft and yielding she was now taut and firm. Her dark hair was as rich as ever, her eye as warm, and when she smiled, those faint inverted crescent dimples on her cheekbones still made her seem halfway to tears. Only her mouth had changed, losing its youthful fullness, drawing into a finer line.