The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘Son—Will wrote me that you saw Mat at Gettysburg.’

  ‘Yes, he helped me to town after I was hurt—maybe saved my life.’

  ‘I didn’t tell your mother about that,’ John confessed. ‘You’d better not. She never mentions him or Tom, but I’m sure her bitterness toward them is as strong as ever. Don’t say you saw him.’

  Dan nodded in reluctant agreement, and they climbed the stairs.

  They talked not long that night. Dan now and then saw Jenny’s face set hard when some stark pinch of pain gripped her, and he saw perspiration on her brow, but her voice was steady enough. It was pitched even lower than he remembered, in a sort of husky whisper. She had many questions, first about himself and Will, and then about the war; and Dan told her that the North would surely win, that after the invasion which ended at Gettysburg the South would never be able to make an equal effort. He had to repeat this in a dozen different forms, to reassure her again and again; but also he had to tell her about the battles he had seen, had to describe scenes of dreadful conflict, and the clash of fighting men, and the havoc of the cannon. She seemed to him to have a morbid appetite for the ugliest detail, urging him with many questions. Once or twice John tried to interfere, but she ignored him, pressed Dan more and more.

  She wished not so much to hear the results of each battle as to be told how the Confederates had suffered, asking again and again when Dan described some bloody field: ‘Were there many Rebels dead? And many wounded? Did your surgeons take care of the Rebels the same as our men?’ Half a dozen times he thought she was about to ask whether he had seen Tom or Mat; and at last, when they had talked long and she was weary and he and John prepared to leave her, she did so in straightforward terms, demanding: ‘Did you ever see your brothers, Dan?’

  He had decided what to say, and he answered her, steadying himself on his crutches while he felt his father’s eyes upon him. ‘Mat’s a Lieutenant and Tom a Captain in a Georgia regiment,’ he said.

  ‘Are they still alive?’ she insisted.

  ‘They were, the last I heard.’ He added: ‘One man told me Tom was shot through the body at Fredericksburg, but that he was recovering.’

  She said in low tones: ‘I hope he dies.’ She lay still for a long moment, her face becoming set and stony white, and Dan thought he could feel as though they tore his own flesh the talons of pain which ripped at her. Then she whispered almost soundlessly: ‘Good night, Dan. Come to me when you wake. I’m glad you’re home.’

  IV

  After Dan’s homecoming, Jenny never left her bed, and John told him her suffering seemed stricter all the time; but she was hungry for Dan’s company, kept him much by her side. To be with her was an ordeal which he dreaded, yet because she welcomed him he gave her long hours. John was grateful to him.

  ‘I know it’s hard on you, son, he said, ‘but she hates to be alone.’ He added ruefully: ‘Why, this winter past, she’s even been glad to have me for company. Often I’ve sat with her all day, and sometimes half the night. It doesn’t seem to make her any happier when I’m with her—I wish it did-but she will never let me go unless I must. Now it’s you she wants most.’

  ‘I’ll take your place,’ Dan agreed. ‘Give you some rest. You’re pretty tired yourself, father.’

  So he was much with her, leaving her only when he could no longer endure the horror of this long watch beside a shrivelling hulk of mortifying flesh which retained no animating qualities except an unbreakable will to live and a capacity for ascending mountainous peaks of pain. To look at her was like looking at a sun-dried cadaver which had escaped the burial parties on some Southern battlefield; yet at the same time she was so much alive that Dan could not easily accept the fact that there was nothing to be done for her.

  His father told him that not only Doctor Mason but Doctor Brown and Doctor Laughton had seen her regularly, till she refused to let them come again; and Dan went to question them. Doctor Mason he had known always, as the wise and kindly man who brought healing to him and to his brothers when childhood ills beset them; but with the others he was not so well acquainted. Doctor Brown was a Bowdoin man, and like Will he had read medicine with Doctor Mason; but he had supplemented this by three courses of lectures in the Medical Department at Harvard University and had worked at the Tremont Street Medical School in Boston before going abroad for further study. He had practiced for a while in St. Louis, returning to Bangor at the outbreak of the war. Doctor Laughton was an older man who had come to Bangor from Foxcroft in 1849, and who had a wide reputation as a surgeon.

  Doctor Mason, to whom Dan naturally turned first, said honestly that Jenny could not hope to be better. ‘I could give her drugs to ease her pain,’ he said. ‘But she won’t have them. You know how brave she is, Dan.’

  ‘Can’t anyone do anything to cure her?’ Dan pleaded.

  The old man shook his head. ‘Your father asked me the same question,’ he explained. ‘So I called in Doctor Brown and Doctor Laughton. Doctor Brown knows as much about women’s ailments as anyone, and Doctor Laughton has performed some of the great operations in surgery. You can talk to them, but you’ll find that they agree with me that beyond easing her pain—which she will not permit—there is nothing we can do.’ Dan was not satisfied till he had seen the others for himself. He came back to Doctor Mason afterward, beaten; and he asked the older man in straightforward words: Then you mean she’s just going to die?’

  The Doctor nodded honestly. ‘Yes, Dan.’

  ‘How long will it be?’ Dan whispered.

  Doctor Mason shook his head. That’s as God wills, Dan. She’s very brave, you know, and her resolution will keep her body alive where another would go quickly.’

  ‘I can’t bear to see her suffer so,’ Dan confessed. ‘Isn’t there something we could give her without her knowing it?’

  The old man said gravely: ‘She has the right to decide that, Dan. Her mind is clear. But she wants to go on as she has, till the end.’

  ‘Will you come and talk to her about it?’

  ‘If she wants me.’

  So Dan tried to persuade Jenny to send for Doctor Mason, but she would not. Yet she was ready enough to see others, and she had many visitors, the Elders of her church, and the women with whom for so many years she had worked for the public good. Aunt Meg came often, and at first Beth came too, till Jenny forbade this. She sent that word through Dan. ‘Tell Aunt Meg Beth’s too young and pretty to see me the way I am now,’ she said; and thereafter Beth stayed away.

  Once or twice Jenny insisted that the Sewing Circle of which she had so long been a leading member meet with her, and they did so; and she took a continuing interest in the Children’s Home, and members of the Board of Managers called several times to discuss with her the sudden increase in the number of children—orphaned by the war—who must be cared for, and to get her advice on the selection of an assistant to the Matron. Also, after Dan came home she conceived a new design, and during that fall and winter she urged it on all those who called upon her; a project to establish a ‘Rest’ to receive sick and disabled soldiers. To this plan she gave much time and thought, and during the winter the project assumed a definite shape. She herself made a substantial contribution to the funds that were raised for the purpose; and it was in connection with this project for a Soldiers’ Rest that she did at last see a physician, Doctor Morison, who had been a surgeon attached to the Second Maine Regiment. She proposed to him to take charge of the new hospital, and offered to compensate him in advance for any loss of practice or of income he might suffer from doing so. She kept Dan with her for that interview. Doctor Morison thanked her, but he said:

  ‘I’ve put myself at the disposal of wounded soldiers since I came home, Mrs. Evered; and so has every other doctor in town. We’ll continue to do so.’

  She said, smiling thinly: ‘You make it hard for a woman to help as much as she wishes to. Then this, Doctor. There will be times when you could ease pain, or bring comfort, by some expend
iture beyond your pocketbook. I will put a sum of money in your hands to be spent at your discretion, whenever you think wise. Will you let me do that?’

  ‘Of course,’ he assented eagerly. ‘And a fine thing, too!’

  When afterward Dan took him to the door, the Doctor said: ‘You’ve a grand woman for a mother, Dan. I’ve been practicing in Bangor for a good many years; and every doctor in town knows how often she has quietly done just such things as this, to make life a little easier for afflicted folk.’

  ‘I know,’ Dan agreed. ‘She’s done a lot of good,’ He said in a husky voice: ‘It seems awful to me that she can’t be kept from suffering so. Can’t you give her opium or something?’

  But Doctor Morison said quickly: Tm not her physician, Dan. Doctor Mason can do as much for her as anyone.’

  V

  These various interludes when Jenny was engaged with her friends or with matters of business—she had long since taken full charge of her own affairs, and attended to them even now—gave Dan an occasional respite from his close attendance upon her; and when he was free, he was always apt to turn to Aunt Meg and to Beth. Judge Saladine’s old house on Essex Street was like a haven. It was a frame structure, built narrow and high so that it might more easily be heated, with a small, seldom-used parlor on one side of the front hall, a sitting room and dining room connected by folding doors and with a wide fireplace in each room on the other. The outside was shingled and painted brown, so that Meg sometimes laughed at the dark and gloomy appearance it presented; and the windows were small, and even in summer the rooms were never bright. But there was something warmly comfortable about them. The very chairs had learned to shape themselves hospitably to their users. The woodwork was painted white and the wallpaper was bright and cheerful; and except on the warmest days Aunt Meg liked to have at least a small fire burning.

  Dan sometimes thought that Meg and Beth would have given any house a fine and friendly atmosphere. They were both so jolly and gentle that to be with them was like a healing. Beth was seventeen, and she thought of herself as a young woman; but Dan was ten years older than she, and to him she seemed more a child than ever, while in her young and vivid presence he felt like an old man. His two years of service had been like ten, or twenty, packed with more hardship and suffering and tragedy and death than is compassed in the span of a hundred normal lives; while she was in the first ripeness of life, unscarred and unwearied. He felt old enough to be her father.

  When he was with Beth, too, since she was so complete and perfect in every way, he could never forget his mutilation; and there were dark hours when he thought it set him apart from the company of normal men and women. Aunt Meg and Beth may have guessed this; for it was they who put on foot a series of experiments, calling in old Ezra Hooker, the bootmaker, to help, which by a process of trial and error produced at last a boot that Dan could wear.

  They kept this a secret between them till the boot was done and while Dan learned to walk without his crutches. When he came to their house he would put on the boot, and Beth, kneeling at his feet, secured the straps which held it in place; and it was with Meg to steady him on one side and Beth on the other, that he took his first steps. They laughed together at his awkwardness, finding in this laughter relief from unbearable pity and sorrow. At first the boot had a tendency to turn sidewise on his leg, with ludicrous results; and when this happened, they were all hilarious together.

  Once, when Beth was helping him put on the boot, shaping the padding in the empty foot of it, adjusting it on his leg, he said, looking down at her wonderingly: ‘It’s too bad for you to do that.’

  ‘Why?’ she protested. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it—make you sort of sick?’

  Her eyes met his for a silent moment, as though there were much she wished to say; but she only shook her head and told him quietly: ‘No, it doesn’t bother me.’

  He could not fail to see that she loved him. He knew she had always loved him; but this was a warmer, more mature affection in her now. She showed it in so many ways: in the gladness with which she met him always; in her merry laughter—a laughter full of tenderness—at his first efforts to walk; in her intent solicitude to be sure the boot was properly adjusted on his foot; in the way her hand tightened on his arm when while she was supporting him he stumbled; in her quick-caught breath when he winced with pain; in the way she watched his face while she tightened the straps around his leg; in the way her eyes widened and filled with tears the first time he walked unassisted toward her across the wide room; in her very tones when she spoke to him. Meg saw it, too. Once he said to her:

  ‘I hate having Beth handle this—stump of mine. No matter what she says, it must be hard for her.’

  Meg smiled and shook her head. ‘No, Dan. Women are not easily distressed by the things that upset a man. Specially—’ She hesitated, did not go on except to say: ‘No, Dan, be sure Beth’s happy helping you.’

  He knew what was in her mind, knew what it was she did not say; and as summer passed he came at last frankly to acknowledge to himself that Beth meant the world to him. But there was, must always be, a gulf between them; for she was young and he was old, an old, crippled fragment of a man.

  VI

  In their long hours alone together Jenny talked to Dan. Even sitting close beside her bed he had sometimes to lean closer to hear her, she spoke in such low, dry, faintly husky tones; and sometimes in mid-sentence pain gripped her so that her breath caught and she lay rigid, staring upward at the ceiling, no movement in her anywhere. She never cried out nor uttered any least complaint, never spoke of the agonies she endured; but he came to recognize these moments, to share them with her so that he was racked as she was. When surges of pain shook and battered her she made no sound, but after a while, minutes, half an hour, she would speak again, perhaps taking up what she had been saying and continuing, perhaps abandoning it to turn to other thoughts.

  Once, soon after he came home, she asked, lying with closed eyes: ‘Dan, did Will really have to amputate your foot?’ Her tone was eloquent of the fierce anger at Will of which she might be capable if he had erred.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Dan said. ‘The bones were all shot to pieces, you know, and the whole foot was—dying. He did well to save this much of my leg.’

  She questioned him in low, curiously avid tones. ‘Did it hurt, Dan? How did he do it?’

  ‘Why, Mrs. Hollenger and Miss Julia helped him—only mostly Miss Julia just held my hand. I had to lie still, of course.’

  ‘Did it hurt awfully?’

  He remembered that moment when the saw bit into the bone, and his flesh crawled at the thought, but he said: ‘Not as much as you’d think.’ ‘How did he do it?’ she insisted, and when he did not speak she opened her eyes, turned her head, looked at him. ‘Tell me, Dan. I want to know.’ So he described the mechanics of the operation as Will had described it to him, and she made him repeat over and over all he knew. He thought she derived a dark satisfaction from contemplating the pictures his words evoked, as though to think of his suffering somehow eased her own. More than once on other days she came back to the matter, asking him new, searching questions. It seemed to him strange and moving that though she relished this ugly topic she would never admit her own agonies, never speak of them.

  Sometimes to be with her was terrible, but there were other hours when he yearned over her, wishing in every way to ease her long ordeal. There was so often in her a humble sadness, when she spoke in retrospect, spoke of her life and his. Thus once, her head a little turned so that her inflamed and weary eyes rested on his countenance, she murmured: ‘You always loved John more than me, Dan, all four of you, even when you were babies.’ He uttered some quick denial, but she said softly: ‘Sh-h-h-h, Dan! I’ve always known. And you were right, too!’ She nodded, almost archly, to emphasize her words. ‘Yes, you were right to love him, Dan! He’s much better worth loving than I.’ And she said with a sort of prescience: ‘If you had loved me best,
I would have ruined all of you. I’ve ruined everyone who ever loved me, Dan, everyone but John. It was loving him that saved you.’

  Dan thought honestly enough that this might be true. Certainly their shared love for their father was a bond between him and his brothers. She may have read his thoughts, for she said accusingly: ‘But if you had loved me, I might have been different, Dan. When you were all little, I tried so hard to be. But you always loved him best. Maybe that’s why I began to hate him!’ And she confessed: ‘I do hate him, you know; but I used to love him, too. I loved him as hard as I could, Dan, because I thought loving him hard would make me a good woman.’ And she murmured: ‘Loving him has made you good, Dan. You’re good even to me. You don’t hate me, the way the others do. They hate me, you know, all but you and John. If he had ever hated me, I’d be happier, I think. He had reason to hate me, long ago; but he wouldn’t. He never would.’

  At first, when she spoke thus Dan tried to protest, defending her against herself; but he found that this might anger her and he understood in the end that in thus accusing herself she found a sort of solace, a strange comforting. So he learned to sit silent, neither assenting nor denying, sometimes for hours on end while she spoke like one in the confessional, drawing aside the curtain which hid the past, letting him see, even though dimly, things he would rather not have seen at all. Thus once she said:

  ‘Do you remember Mattie Hanson, Dan? The negro girl? She used to do our washing when you were a little boy. I hired her to swear that your father had made love to her, and then I hired her to go away, because I knew she couldn’t stick to that lie if she were questioned. I thought people would believe it, but John was a good man and no one did believe it, and when I saw that, I went to court and testified for him, and everyone thought I was noble and brave.’ There was an ironic amusement in her tones. ‘People are so willing to think well of a pretty woman, Dan! Everybody thinks I’m nice and generous and wise, and so full of religion; but really I’m just plain bad! I wonder if lots of people are as bad as I am in their thoughts, but just don’t do the bad things they want to do? Is it worse to do awful things than to think them and wish you dared do them? As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ She was silent, and she lay long rigid in a catalepsy of pain endured; and as he watched her, sweat dripped from his brow, and after an interminable time she asked: ‘Do you remember the day I bit your arm till it bled, when you were a little baby? But of course you were too young. But you do remember the time I whipped Mat? I loved doing that, Dan. I used to love to whip all of you, and when I did, I had to be careful not to just beat you to ribbons, till you died!’ Then she whispered: ‘I killed a man once, Dan, in a way.’ Her head moved suddenly from side to side in a lost woe. ‘But I mustn’t tell you that. I mustn’t tell you that . . .’