She spoke at last to the children. ‘That’s enough now, boys. You’ll wear Uncle Line out.’ There was a quiet compulsion in her tones to which all of them except Mat yielded without debate. The older youngsters drew off to savor the treasures he had brought, and he rose and brushed himself off and picked Mat up and, carrying the chubby baby, came toward where she and John sat. She told Dan to go bid Mrs. McGaw, who had succeeded Mrs. Hollis in charge of the household, bring out some birch beer and cookies. ‘All of you go along,’ she directed. ‘Take Mat, too.’ They trooped away without protest, and Elder Pittridge watched them go.
‘They obey you like so many soldiers,’ he said approvingly.
She nodded. ‘They know they must,’ she assured him. Her voice was even softer now than it had been, yet there was a calm and certain strength in her low-spoken words. ‘I’m the disciplinarian,’ she explained, smiling. ‘John here spoils them terribly.’ Her eyes met John’s in tender amusement. ‘But they know that if they don’t do as I say, there’s a little switch behind the woodshed door.’ She added: ‘They’re devoted to you, Line.’
He chuckled. ‘And I to them,’ he agreed. ‘They’re fine youngsters.’
‘You like children, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
John said: ‘Jenny and I often think it’s a pity you’re not married, Line, with children of your own.’ And Jenny added:
‘We’ve hoped that you and Meg might make a go of it. We’re so fond of both of you.’
‘Meg ought to be married,’ Elder Pittridge agreed. ‘She’s a fine woman. I can’t understand why she never has.’
‘I can’t understand why you never have,’ Jenny gently amended. ‘Why, Line?’
He hesitated, said then reluctantly: ‘Well, I was married, once. No one here knows it, but I married a girl in Albany. But—I was at odds with the world, in those days, drinking heavily. My wife left me, went back to her own people. She was quite right to do so.’ He added: ‘And when later I—came of age, mentally and spiritually—and returned to find her, she was dead.’
‘I never knew that,’ Jenny said in quiet sympathy. Mrs. McGaw brought the big tray, laden with ginger cookies and birch beer in a stone jug, and set it on the table Pat had built of birch poles and pine slabs to stand here on the lawn; and when the glasses were filled and Mrs. McGaw was gone, Jenny asked: ‘But—do you never think of marrying again?’
‘No,’ Elder Pittridge said. ‘No, I’ll not marry again. Not even—if she would have me—Meg.’ And he added: ‘You see, my life has some dark spots in it. I’ve cleaned house as well as I can—but there are things that once done can’t be undone. I know too well my own deficiencies to think myself worthy of any woman whom I would want to marry.’
John nodded understanding, but Jenny protested: ‘Yet, Line, I think—next to John-you’re the best man I know.’
III
John was tremendously proud of his sons. It was true, as Jenny told Elder Pittridge that day, that he seldom punished them. She often laughed at him for this, and once she said: ‘When you say it hurts you worse than it does them, you really mean it, don’t you, John?’
‘I’m afraid I do,’ he admitted. ‘I never could understand how you can bear to whip them.’
‘I don’t enjoy it, of course,’ she assured him. ‘But I know it’s for their own good, John. There are some things for which a switching is the only answer.’ She added, smiling frankly: ‘And it makes me feel better, too, when they’ve been particularly—devilish—to really let go. I work off a lot of bad temper on them, John. You ought to be glad, darling. If it weren’t them it would be you.’
He smiled. ‘I’d a sight rather it was me,’ he said. ‘But of course I suppose they do need it now and then.’
She came to touch his shoulder. ‘There, darling, don’t worry about it! One of us has to do it—and since I’m here alone with them so much when you’re away, it’s a good thing it’s me.’ She perched on his knee, said teasingly: ‘Wouldn’t you hate it if every time you came home I told you that Dan needed a whipping, and that maybe Will needed two, and Tommy three, and that you had to do it?’
He laughed. ‘I’d never come home,’ he confessed, ‘if I knew that sort of job was waiting for me!’
She smiled and kissed his cheek, tumbling his hair. ‘Never fear. I’ll not put it off on you. I can handle them, John.’
Sometimes if he were at home when disturbances arose he wished to defend the boys against her stern justice; but she warned him not to interfere. Usually, though she was firm with him about this, she was full of understanding too; but their discussions on this and on other points were not always amicable. For the last few months of each of her pregnancies, Jenny was easily aroused to a blind, unreckoning anger when she might pour out a torrent of bitter, burning words. John learned at these times to walk softly and to avoid every possible offense. He recognized the fact that these rages were the result not of anything he had done but of the physical and nervous strain which child-bearing imposed on her; and he knew, too, that after the baby was born she would be again all tenderness and ardor. She was never able to nurse her babies long, and when she turned to his arms there could be a frightening hunger in her. Sometimes in their hours together she abandoned herself so recklessly that he was alarmed for her; or she might utter low, strangely feline sounds and beat at him with her fists till he pinioned her hands. He came to realize that she was in many ways two women, two distinct and separate individuals; and sometimes when they sat side by side in church together and he saw her so sedate and decorous, absorbed in the minister’s every word, he remembered hours in which she had been otherwise, and had to hide a smile.
The occasional storms which swept through their lives, violent though they might be, seemed to him for a long time to leave no lasting trace. He knew—and came to be fondly amused by the knowledge—that sometimes she told him small lies; but that, he thought, was a part of the secret woman whom he alone would ever see. For the rest, for the woman the world knew, he held her dear and proudly as he held his sons.
IV
Until they had been eight years married, their differences were always quickly forgotten, as sunshine follows showers; but after Mat was born this was not so completely true. Scars, more and more frequently reopened, did not so quickly heal. They had still their rapturous, or their contentingly calm and peaceful hours; but there were long and longer intervals when Jenny might speak to John as she spoke to the boys, in calm and level tones which had the force of commands. She expected to be obeyed, and she was. John sometimes smiled at her tones, at her plain assumption of authority; but he did not contest it, content if she were content, happy only if she were happy too. He could be firm if the occasion seemed to demand it, and on these occasions his was apt to be the determining voice; but unless he must, he did not oppose her.
When at last circumstances produced a permanent rift between them, it was rather accident than any deliberate act on his part which made the trouble. In addition to his activities on Colonel Black’s behalf, John managed the property which Jenny had inherited from Isaiah. Among Isaiah’s assets had been shares in a score or so of vessels which were kept busy from the time the river opened till it closed, every year, in the lumber trade. The profits which they showed were so steady and so substantial that John, when he sold the Poster lands, extended Jenny’s interest in this direction. Three or four vessels he bought outright; and in others he acquired for her a controlling share.
One of these vessels was the schooner Old Town, Captain Dan Phil- brook. In June, 1844, she returned from a voyage to Savannah. She made up Bangor River in the late afternoon, and that evening Captain Philbrook came to the house to see John.
John and Jenny heard together his report—which was a confession too. ‘You see, it’s this way, Mr. Evered,’ he said. ‘After we got rid of our ice in Savannah there was some work needed to be done on the schooner. We’d had a rough time going down, got knocked around some. I hired
a shipwright named Sagurs, James Sagurs. They told me he was a good man, Mr. Evered. Well, sir, he had some colored men do the work for him, slaves he owned.’ John saw Jenny’s lips tighten a little as she listened. ‘There was one of them named Atticus, a smart darky; and the men liked him.’ He rubbed his mouth in a deep embarrassment. ‘I wouldn’t wonder if they filled him full of tall yarns, Mr. Evered, about the way things are up here. Fact, I know they did. He told me so.
‘But anyways, we got fixed up and sailed, and maybe some of them helped him get aboard and kept him hid, because when we were seven days on our way home, the mate found him, about half-starved, down in the hold one day.’
Jenny made a low, compassionate sound, and John asked gravely: ‘What did you do with him?’
‘Why, we couldn’t well put him back,’ Captain Philbrook pointed out. ‘So we fed him up and put him to work and brought him along. He’s a good worker, and the men like him. He’s about the cheerfullest man I ever saw, white or black.’ He added appealingly: ‘It’d make you choke, Mr. Evered, to see how glad he is to get away.’ He chuckled. ‘Only, he’s damned near froze,’ he confessed. ‘Wears all the clothes he can walk around in, even a day like this’—the day was for the season warm and fine—‘and still shivers all the time.’
‘He’s aboard now?’ John asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Captain Philbrook admitted. ‘Matter of fact, I locked him up. I ‘lowed I’d better keep hold of him till I knew what you wanted me to do.’ He added: ‘He begged me not to send him back to Savannah. He says his master will cut him to ribbons for running away.’
Jenny spoke quietly. ‘We’ll never send him back. He’s here and he shall stay.’
For a moment no one answered her, but then John said gravely: ‘We can’t steal another man’s property, Jenny. The poor devil’s a fugitive. No doubt his master has guessed that he stowed away aboard our schooner. Probably he’ll come after him.’
‘We’ll hide him,’ she declared. ‘We’ll not give him up, to be whipped to death for the crime of wanting to be free.’
‘He’s not free aboard the schooner,’ John reminded her.
‘Then let him come ashore!’ Jenny insisted, and she spoke to Captain Philbrook. ‘Bring him here, Captain. I’ll put him to work on my flower beds and lawn.’ Her garden was her pride, and her roses were famous. She had Bourbons and Bengals and Noisettes as well as spreading beds of verbenas and petunias, and dahlias in their season. John White, whose business was the laying out of gardens and grounds, had bought a consignment of prize-winners at the Grand Dahlia Show of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the year before; and Jenny had the pick of his purchases. Bangor folk out for a drive were apt to come this way simply in order to see the fine display. ‘I need someone on the garden all the time,’ she declared. ‘Pat and I between us can’t keep up with the weeds.’
John insisted: ‘But it’s our obligation as good citizens to hold him for his master, Jenny.’
Jenny’s voice did not rise, but John heard the harder note in it. ‘We have a duty to humanity, too,’ she said in her low tones.
‘It may mean trouble,’ John warned her. ‘Mr. Sagurs can probably attach the schooner for damages.’
‘The schooner is mine, John,’ she retorted, with no change in expression. ‘I think sometimes you forget that. If I choose to risk its loss . . .’ Captain Philbrook watched them in disturbed astonishment. He had never seen Jenny thus aroused before, and he thought it was as though on a still, calm day at sea the surface suddenly were broken by many swirls as schooling fish are driven by some monster into panic flight. He rose uneasily, wishing to escape.
‘Well, you can let me know,’ he said, and took himself away.
V
When the Captain was gone, John still tried to convince Jenny; but he could not move her, and since she insisted, that night under cover of the dark he brought the negro ashore. Pat Tierney was waiting at an unused wharf above the town when a small boat from the schooner landed them; and he drove John and the negro out to the house. The slave was hushed and silent on the way, but at the house when Jenny met them he went on his knees to her in prayerful gratitude. Jenny protested and made him rise, and she led him to tell his story, questioning him with a gentle friendliness while John looked on.
The slave spoke well enough so that he could easily be understood, and when Jenny commented on this, Atticus said readily: ‘Yas’m, I uz a house boy, time I c’d walk, tekking kecr of dc chillun, and breshing flies and helping my mammy in de kitchen. I been wid de white folks mostly all my days.’
He walked with a shuffling limp and his cheek was scarred. Jenny asked him about these hurts. ‘Did your master abuse you, beat you?’
Atticus said strongly: ‘No, ma’am!’ He put a rhetorical question. ‘Whut he want tuh cripple me up for? He c’d sell me any time for fifteen hun’cd dollahs. I’m a good cahpentuh, ma’am. Mistuh Saguhs was too srnaht tuh lay me up so’s I couldn’ wo’k.’ He chuckled. ‘No, ma’am, dis laig o’ mine, mule kicked me in de knee when I uz a young one.’
‘But that scar on your cheek?’
‘I got dat from Big Pete, time he tried tuh git Nancy away f’om me.’ He shook his head respectfully. ‘Mistuh Saguhs tuk a blacksnake whip an’ licked dc knife wo’k out 0’ Big Pete for dat. Pete was no use tuh hisself or anybody else only for a field hand!’
‘Is Nancy your wife?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘It must be terrible for you to leave her?’
The slave chuckled. ‘No, ma’am. I got along fine wid Mistuh Saguhs, but Nancy was in mah wool all dc time. Da’s why I stowed away on de schooner boat.’
John suggested: ‘Then you wouldn’t mind going back—if Mr. Sagurs would get rid of Nancy?’
But before the negro could speak, Jenny said in quiet indignation: ‘Shame, John! The poor man is free. Do you suppose he wants to be a slave again? If he went back, he would be whipped to death.’
‘Yas’m,’ Atticus said hurriedly, ‘I sholy would.’ But then he asked in a doubtful tone: ‘De only thing, is it dis cold heah all de time?’
‘A lot colder,’ John told him. ‘Cold enough to freeze the river over three or four feet deep with ice!’
‘M-m-m!’ The negro made a rueful sound. ‘Mighty cold for black folks. Y’all going tuh keep me heah?’
‘Always,’ Jenny told him. ‘You’ll never be a slave again.’
‘Who my white folks gwine tuh be? Who gwine tek keer of me?’
‘We are,’ Jenny promised him. ‘You’ll live here and work for me.’ And when John tried to speak, she said quickly: ‘I’ll have Pat show you. There’s a nice room for you in the shed.’
When Atticus was gone, John said insistently: ‘There’ll be trouble about this, Jenny. I think you’re making a mistake.’ He urged with a smile: ‘After all, he only came to get away from his wife. You heard him say so.’
‘I heard, yes,’ she said evenly. ‘I think men often consider it amusing to speak so of their wives.’
Then without a word, white with anger, she went quietly from the room and up the stairs.
VI
John felt sure that Mr. Sagurs would make the trip to Bangor to claim his property; but before this happened he himself had to go to Augusta on business. He told Jenny she must summon him home if Mr. Sagurs appeared, but he had had no word from her when he met Sam Smith in the State House corridors one day arid heard from him that the Southerner was in Bangor.
‘And he’s bound to make trouble, John,’ he said. ‘He’s a chubby little man; but that kind can be the meanest and the stubbornest when they want to.’ He added: ‘Every one in town knew the negro had been working for Mrs. Evered, taking care of her garden; but as soon as this Mr. Sagurs hit town, he disappeared. So Mr. Sagurs went to Judge Ware and swore out a warrant for the negro as a fugitive and gave it to Dave Piper to serve, but Piper couldn’t find the negro, so he returned the warrant. Then Sagurs put a notice in the Whig and Cour
ier that he’d pay a fifty-dollar reward for his slave; and he’s staying at the Bangor House, waiting for news.’
John was concerned, afraid Jenny would commit some dangerous imprudence, and he decided to hurry home. Since there would not be a stage till tomorrow, he took an express team for the trip back to Bangor. It was well past midnight when he reached home; and he had to call under Jenny’s window to wake her so that she would let him in. There was a wary reserve in her kiss, as though she had put herself on guard; and she asked quietly:
‘What brought you home at such a time of night, John?’
‘Why, I met Sam Smith,’ he said frankly. ‘He told me that Savannah man is here to get Atticus. Has he made you any trouble?’
‘He sent Constable Piper with a warrant, but Line had warned me that he was in town, so Pat hid Atticus in the woods. He’s living in the haymow now.’ She laughed a little. ‘Mr. Sagurs is cooling his heels at the Bangor House, but he’ll soon get tired of that and go home.’ And she said, smiling, linking her arm in his, warm and sweet in her thin gown: ‘Let’s not talk any more about it tonight, John. Come to bed, darling. I’ve missed you. I’m ever so glad you’re home.’
The Strange Woman Page 37