The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  So they went up the wide stairs arm in arm. John thought he might in the morning persuade her to a sensible view; but in this he was wrong. She was inflexibly determined not to surrender the fugitive. Their discussion, begun when they woke, continued at the breakfast table where the boys listened in a trembling silence, frightened to see their mother and father thus at odds, till John saw this at last and for their sakes surrendered.

  ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘I’ll satisfy Mr. Sagurs somehow.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘Since you want Atticus, you shall have him. There’ll be some way to content his master—and not turn law-breaker to do so.’

  ‘I’d break every law there is to keep the poor man.’ she retorted.

  Pat drove John to town. During John’s absences, Elder Pittridge usually attended to his office routine, and he was in the office this morning. John thought to get from him more information than Jenny had been able—or willing—to give; but almost at once Mr. Sagurs appeared. The round little man had a bulldog look about him, hanging stubbornly to his determination to recapture his property.

  ‘I’m not a fool, Mr. Evered,’ he said indignantly, when the preliminaries were over. ‘I know there’s a conspiracy against me here.’

  John said uncomfortably: ‘Your man worked around our garden and made no attempt to escape, so it seemed unnecessary to lock him up. Now I’m told that within the hour of your arrival he disappeared.’

  ‘Some of your insane abolitionists have hidden him!’ Mr. Sagurs said angrily. ‘I tell you, Mr. Evered, this flouting of the sacred rights of the South must stop, and it will, even if the South has to withdraw from the Union to protect herself.’

  ‘I’m not an abolitionist, Mr. Sagurs,’ Evered assured him. ‘I’m a business man. If slave labor is necessary to the successful conduct of business in the South, I would not disturb it; not as an institution. From our point of view up here, slavery is not necessary; but surely this is a difference of opinion which will settle itself.’

  The Savannah man said stubbornly: There can be no honest difference of opinion in this case. I own a piece of property named Atticus. A thief—your Captain Philbrook—steals my property named Atticus, brings him to your town, and hides him away. If Captain Philbrook stole one of your horses and brought it to Savannah, I would be zealous to help you recover your property. I have a right to expect an equal zeal from you.’

  John seized the point, and he suggested: ‘Would you buy that horse from me, Mr. Sagurs; that horse of mine which someone might have stolen and taken to Savannah?’

  ‘If I wanted it, and it was for sale.’

  Then I’ll buy your slave from you. Make me a price. What is he worth?’

  Mr. Sagurs hesitated, his small eyes suddenly shrewd. ‘Suppose I said twenty-five hundred dollars?’

  ‘I know little of slave values, but if that is a fair price, I will pay it.’

  The chubby little man became purple with rage. Then, sir, if you are willing to pay so much, you know where my slave is! Atticus is not for sale at any price. I demand you deliver him to me!’

  John said slowly: ‘I would pay the price to satisfy you, Mr. Sagurs; not because I want the slave. If you accept the money, then Atticus will be free, you can go home content, and the affair is closed. I meant no more than that.’

  Mr. Sagurs hesitated, but John thought uneasily that his eyes had calculation in them. After a moment he bowed. ‘Your pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘Apparently I misunderstood you.’ His color rose again. ‘Nevertheless, Atticus is not for sale and I bid you a very good day!’

  VII

  When the angry little man was gone, John looked at Elder Pittridge with a rueful smile. ‘Jenny won’t give him up,’ he confessed.

  ‘Was it her idea that you might buy the slave?’

  ‘No. I was trying to find some way out.’

  Elder Pittridge nodded. ‘Sagurs is a sly, stubborn little man,’ he said. ‘I’d feel easier if Atticus were sent away up-river, out of his reach, where he couldn’t be found.’

  ‘I’ll suggest that to Jenny when I go home at noon,’ John agreed.

  But before noon, Jenny came to town to find him. He had gone down to the Coffee House and Elder Pittridge sought him there, saying she was in the office and seemed much disturbed. At John’s suggestion, they went back to her together. He had an unadmitted feeling that he might need the other man as an ally at his side.

  Her word at first was quiet enough. ‘John,’ she asked, ‘did you see Mr. Sagurs this morning?’

  ‘Yes, he came here,’ he assented.

  Her lips suddenly were white. ‘Then you told him where Atticus was!’ she said accusingly.

  He shook his head. ‘Of course not. What happened, Jenny?’

  ‘He came to the house—with Constable Piper. They went directly to the barn. I didn’t see them till they came out, leading Atticus away.’ And she repeated in a stony accusation: ‘You told Mr. Sagurs where he was.’

  John said quietly: ‘No, Jenny. You’re mistaken. Line was here when I talked with him.’ He wondered why he thus called a witness to prove to her he told the truth. ‘I tried to buy Atticus—offered twenty-five hundred for him—but I told Mr. Sagurs nothing.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Twenty-five hundred dollars? John, you’re a fool! When you offered him so much, Mr. Sagurs would know you could lay your hands on Atticus. Probably he led you on to tell him the truth.’ John looked appealingly at Elder Pittridge; but before the other man could speak, she said in even, icy tones: ‘You betrayed me, John; betrayed not this poor negro who trusted us, but me. I promised him he’d be safe. You’ve sent him back to be whipped to death. You betrayed my word—and me! And I can never forgive you, John. I never will.’

  And while John stood silent in the face of her cold rage, she turned quietly toward the door, opened it and so was gone.

  After a moment, Elder Pittridge touched John’s arm reassuringly. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’ll feel differently in a little while, by the time she gets home.’

  John nodded doubtfully. ‘Yes, of course, I’m sure she will,’ he agreed.

  10

  JOHN was frankly relieved that

  Atticus was gone; and he thought—or hoped—that Jenny’s anger would be quick to pass, as her angers had passed before now. After all, his only crime had been that of being too transparent, of permitting Mr. Sagurs to guess the truth. He went home at noon prepared to make his peace with her. The boys met him at the door in a high excitement to tell him that Atticus was gone, and they all trooped in together to the big living room where Jenny was. John went to kiss her, and she gave him a cool cheek, and Dan—eight years old now and a tall, solid youngster—chattered by his father’s side, telling him what had happened.

  ‘And Mr. Sagurs just came into the stable—I was there with Pat—and shouted: “Atticus, you damn black rascal, come down out of there!”’ Jenny said calmly: ‘Dan! I shall wash out your mouth with soap, to clean your lips of that word!’

  But Dan hardly heard. His tongue raced on. ‘And he did, father. He came running downstairs from the mow and yelling: “Bless Gawd! Bless Gawd! Ise gwine back tuh Savannah Gawguh! Too cold for old Atticus up heah!” And he went down on his knees and held on to Mr. Sagurs’ hand, and Mr. Sagurs said: “I’ll warm you, you lying, runaway niggahl” Only he didn’t sound really mad, and Atticus kept laughing and saying: “Yas suh! Yas suh! You sholy will. Bless Gawd!” ’

  John chuckled and looked at Jenny. ‘Well, I guess Atticus was really glad to go, then,’ he said; but she looked at him with bleak eyes and did not smile. Instead she said simply:

  ‘Come, Dan!’

  Dan pleaded: ‘But mother, I was just telling father what they said!’ She did not repeat her command, turned to the stairs; and Dan followed her, still protesting wretchedly. John and the others watched them go. When they came down a little later Dan was pale and nauseated by the evil taste of the suds, and his dinner had no appeal for him.
He sat subdued and miserable through the meal; and Jenny’s unforgiving silence put a repressive hand upon them all.

  Nor did she relent thereafter. She made John remember, every hour of every day, his crime; and when he tried cajolery, tried tendernesses, tried to persuade her to smile again, she said evenly:

  ‘I told you I’d never forgive you, John, and I never will.’

  Yet outwardly, before the world, she was as she had always been. When the Governor of Georgia sent a demand that Captain Philbrook and John himself be surrendered for trial under the laws of that state, Jenny’s loyal indignation was obviously sincere. The demand was of course refused, but it was not forgotten. Colonel Black had enemies, and they struck at him through John. Twice someone took advantage of the hours of darkness to paint the words ‘Nigger lover’ on John’s office door; and for a while small boys jeered him in the streets. There were abolitionists in Bangor, increasingly vocal all the time—Jenny had always been among them-but there were others, leading citizens of the city, who either out of respect for the rights of the Southern States, or because as good business men they wished to keep things as they were, or because they perceived in the dispute an increasing possibility of bloody conflict, would have preferred to leave slavery untouched; and they blamed John for harboring the fugitive.

  Jenny, as though to defy this adverse opinion, engaged a young negress to come to the house one day a week and do the washing. The girl’s name was Mattie Hanson, and she was black as night, with an infectious chuckle and a plump comeliness. She had been born—of free parents—in Cambridge, and had worked in the family of a professor there who interested himself in teaching her to speak with some precision. She proved herself an excellent washerwoman, relieving Mrs. McGaw and Ruth Tierney of that part of the household tasks, and Jenny kept her on.

  But though in these public ways she ranged herself on John’s side, and although when the children were with them, after the first few days, she played a part for their benefit, when she and John were alone she was unrelenting. At night she lay frigidly beside him, and if he took her in his arms, hoping to win her to surrender both herself and her anger, though she submitted to his embrace it was with an aloof and maddening docility.

  John began to be sure that her feeling had gone beyond mere wrath, that it was an obsession from which she would have been glad to escape if she could; and one morning at breakfast he tried clumsily to make her smile, teasing her affectionately about a single gray hair which he declared he could see above her brow, calling on the boys to corroborate him. They clustered laughingly around her; and Mat climbed on her knees, and John parted her hair with his fingers, bidding them look and see for themselves, till in a sudden angry violence, as though she had been tried beyond enduring, she struck him. She hit him in the body, so hard he gasped for breath, and she stood up, spilling Mat to the floor, facing them all.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she said in low, clicking tones. ‘Don’t touch me at all, ever, any of you!’

  And she fled up the stairs, leaving them abashed and unhappy together. Three-year-old Mat, still on the floor where he had fallen when she rose so abruptly, began to whimper in a tentative way, as though not sure whether he should cry or not. John—still looking at the door through which Jenny had disappeared—heard Dan comfort the youngster and assure him that he was all right; and John himself turned to say a smiling word to them before he drove unhappily away to town.

  He was by Jenny’s persisting anger more bewildered than anything else. It seemed to him incredible that she should—as she seemed bent on doing—wreck their life together because of Atticus. He went home to dinner that day, hoping to find her softened; but she’ sat stonily silent while he talked and laughed with the boys.

  Normally, he would not have come home again that day till late afternoon; but Colonel Black summoned him to Ellsworth, and he returned early to get his bag. When he came up the drive, before he reached the door, he heard Mat screaming somewhere, heard Dan crying out in desperate pleading: ‘Stop, mother! Please!’ There was panic in Dan’s voice, too; and John plunged into the house. He saw Will at the rear end of the hall, huddling fearfully in a corner there, and he himself ran swiftly up the stairs. He came to the open bedroom door.

  An instant glance photographed that scene forever on his memory. Little Mat, naked, his small soft body crisscrossed with red welted lines, was writhing and twisting on the bed and screaming in a shrill, dry, terrible way. His cries had an inhuman quality. Beside the bed, her back toward him, Jenny was fighting to free herself from Dan’s tight clutch on her arm. The boy held fast with both hands, gripping her arm just above the elbow. In that hand she held a birch switch with the leaves off but with all the little twigs left on, so that it was like a cat-o’-nine-tails, or some similar instrument of torture. She flung Dan to and fro, trying with her other hand to tear his fingers away; and he was sobbing and pleading with her. Please, mother! Please, mother, stop!’

  Then Jenny saw John in the door and suddenly was completely passive, and Dan released her and ran to cling to his father, and Mat, his small body contorting in torment on the bed, emitted a succession of flat, toneless screams.

  John, his arm around Dan, went to the bed and sat down beside Mat there, touching him quietly, comforting him, till his screams died in sobs. Jenny stood by the window, her back to them, looking out, rubbing her arm where Dan’s tight grip had bruised the flesh. She said without turning: ‘You’re home early, John.’

  ‘I must go to Ellsworth tonight,’ he explained in an empty voice. ‘Colonel Black sent for me.’ He picked Mat up and went toward the door, and Dan followed him. He carried Mat to the room the two youngest boys shared, down the hall; and then, gentle as any woman, he eased the baby and quieted him and bathed him and put him at last to bed, while Dan tried to tell him what had happened.

  But John did not listen, his own thoughts in a dark confusion, until Dan cried at last in a boyish passion:

  ‘And I hate her! I hate her! I wish she’d just die!’

  John looked at him then in a grave concern. He said strongly: ‘No, you don’t, Dan. Never think such things, much less say them. Your mother was upset, that’s all.’

  He quieted Dan as he had quieted Mat, till the youngster, gulping down stale sobs, began to be at peace; and he said again: ‘Don’t ever think so of mother, Dan. Remember it’s our job—yours and mine and your brothers’—to love her and take care of her always.’ Mat was asleep, and he said in a low tone: ‘Now you go find the others, Dan. Mother and I want to have a little talk. But everything’s all right, son. Everything is fine.’

  They left Mat, walked along the hall together. Through the open door they saw Jenny still standing by the window in the big room. John touched Dan’s shoulder reassuringly. Then he went in and behind him closed the door.

  II

  When John found himself alone with Jenny, he was for a moment half- afraid, wishing Dan were here, wishing anyone were here. She must have heard him come in, but she had not turned, had not acknowledged his presence in any way. He hesitated, watching her; and she seemed so small and lonely there that he forgot everything in a fine tenderness. He crossed to stand beside her, not looking at her; and he put his arm lightly around her shoulders, still without speaking, both of them looking out of the window toward the gardens where there was a mass of bloom.

  But after a moment she freed herself, turning away from him, turning back into the room, moving to and fro, chafing with her hand that spot on her arm where Dan’s desperate grip had bruised the flesh. John watched her, wondering what to say. That cruel birch switch lay where she had dropped it, by the foot of the bed. She picked it up and took it to the closet and put it carefully away there.

  In the action there was something hard and determined which roused a slow anger in John. He went to the closet, took the switch, broke it into many little bits and stuffed the bits down behind the birch logs in the fireplace. When he stood erect again after doing this, Jenny sp
oke at last.

  ‘John,’ she said evenly, T will not permit you to interfere between me and the children.’

  He felt his color rise. ‘I think you must be insane,’ he protested.

  Mat’s small garments lay here and there on the bed and the floor. She picked them up, bundled them together, went to the door and threw them out into the hall. She held the door open, asked: ‘Are you going to Ellsworth now?’

  He shook his head. ‘What happened, Jenny? What had Mat done?’

  ‘Does that matter? He deserved to be punished.’

  ‘He didn’t deserve to be—flogged like an animal!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be self-righteous, John.’ She closed the door again. ‘You can be so tiresome.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Tm just trying to understand you. What did he do, Jenny?’

  ‘That is entirely my business,’ she assured him. ‘Mat has always been unruly. I will not spare the rod and spoil the child.’

  ‘Do you know you whipped him so hard that you broke the skin in several places?’

  ‘He deserved it.’

  John made an impatient gesture. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! He’s just a baby!’ He said reproachfully: ‘I suppose you’re still angry at me about Atticus and took it out on Mat. You mustn’t do that, Jenny.’

  ‘Will you prevent me, John?’ Her tone was almost sweet.

  He said miserably: ‘I don’t understand you. You can be so wonderful to all of us. You are, most of the time. But—you can be so cruel, too.’

  ‘Cruel, darling?’ She smiled a little. ‘It’s true you don’t understand me, John.’ Her voice hardened. ‘So—if you’re wise—don’t try to tell me what I must—or must not—do.’

  He was between anger and bewilderment. ‘You can make me so damned miserable, Jenny.’ He tried to smile, tried to appease her. ‘I love you, you know. Nothing can ever change that. And that means you can hurt me more than I can be hurt by anyone else in the world. But—when you want to hurt me—please don’t do it through the boys.’