The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  Your letters reach me pretty well now and I am sorry to hear Mother is still afflicted. I am in hopes she will be better come spring. The war will be over some day and I can come home. I wish this cussed rebellion could be ended and the South whipped into the true way of thinking. My own plans afterward are not sure. If I remain in the army I can be surgeon, and have an income maybe better than building up a new practice, or I may bring my wife home to Bangor to see you all and maybe to try there. Tell Mother not to be discouraged. We are all sick with this war, but it will end sometime.

  Father, I have seen Mat and Tom. They were wounded in the fighting in East Tennessee and captured, and Tom sent word to me through one of our surgeons who took care of them. A piece of shell tore Mat’s leg, but the leg was saved. Tom got another ball through him, but it didn’t hit anything vital.

  They are both tough ones, you know, and they will get well.

  I got leave to take care of them for a week, and they gave their parole till they are exchanged. I think I could get permission for them to come home when they can travel, as we are not exchanging prisoners because the Rebs just go back to fight us some more. If Mother would like to see them, they could come home, probably in June, if I vouch for them. You can tell me what you think about this.

  Dan looked at his mother, but she lay with closed eyes, making no sign, so he read on. The rest of Will’s letter, he thought, had been written in such a way that it might be read aloud to her without disturbing her. It was full of Will’s slow wit, and Dan smiled now and then as he read, and hoped she was amused.

  Then at the last Will had written:

  Let me know how Mother would take it if they came home. If they have to go to prison it will be hard. The prisons are crowded and bad. But if I stand back of them they can go home and maybe stay till the war is over.

  Dan read this, too, and he finished and waited for her to speak, hoping to find relenting in her; but almost at once, as though his silence were a question, she said in her low tones:

  ‘I told you and Will to kill them if you had the chance. Why doesn’t Will do it?’ He shook his head wearily, and she said: ‘Let them wait to come home till I am dead.’ Her husky voice had that inflexible note which had always given her least word the force of a command.

  Yet he ventured one word more. ‘It might be their wives and children could come, too—and Will’s wife. We could all have a real reunion.’

  She turned her head, her eyes opening, meeting his, searching his; and after a moment she said remotely: ‘I’m glad you’ve never married, Dan.’ Before he could speak, she went on: ‘When a son marries, his father and mother lose him, as we lost Tom and Mat, forever. The boy who was a child in their house becomes a master in his own, meeting problems about which he can’t even talk to them. A daughter can come to her mother, if marriage troubles her—though my mother ran away with a British Lieutenant when I was a baby and died in a bawdy house somewhere, I suppose—but a son, once married, is gone into a world of his own.’ And she asked: ‘Why haven’t you married, like your brothers, Dan? Was it because you love me?’

  There was a pleading hope in her words, but resentment at her unchanging anger toward Tom and Mat prevented his hearing this; and also, the question in her eyes demanded truth from him. He heard himself saying:

  ‘I’m going to be married soon, mother.’

  When he saw her lips twist with pain, he wished to recall the words, but it was too late. She said wearily, her eyes closing:

  ‘I thought you loved me?’

  ‘I do, mother.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Her voice was low and cold. ‘Who are you going to marry?’

  ‘Beth Pawl.’

  She looked at him again, with a sharp movement; and a flame came into her eyes. ‘Beth? Meg’s daughter?’ He did not speak, wincing under her tone; and she began to laugh in a dreadful way. ‘John always loved Meg, too,’ she murmured. ‘He left me for her—as you now leave me for her daughter. Like father, like son!’ Then she said evenly: ‘Aren’t you afraid Beth is your father’s daughter, Dan?’

  He rose as though he had been struck. He stood above her, a giant above her frail enfeebled helplessness; and he wished to crush her, stamp upon her, expel from her small withered body what spark of malicious life remained. He turned sharply toward the door.

  But she called to him then, her voice for once rising. ‘Dan! Dan, don’t go!’ He hesitated, and she began to cry, shaking weakly with terrible racking sobs, so that he came reluctantly back to her; and she wailed: ‘Oh Dan, Dan, my dear! Why do I? What makes me? Oh please, Dan, Dan, Dan!’

  She wept like a child, twisting weakly on her side, burying her face, crying thinly: ‘Oh, why don’t I die? Why can’t I die? I always loved you, Dan!’ In despair he knelt beside her, his arm across her shaking shoulders, forgetting everything except that she was racked and broken and dying, squeezed to death in a red-hot vise of pain.

  IX

  For an hour they clung together, mother and son, and she put on a sweetness he had almost forgotten, begging his forgiveness, swearing to him that she loved them all. She told him to write Will that if Tom and Mat could come home in June they would be welcomed here, and she bade Dan bring Beth to see her.

  ‘I’ll give you my blessing, Dan,’ she promised. ‘You shall see! I’ll be sweet to her, and love her because she loves you.’

  But also, she gave Dan that day another errand to do. ‘This is to be a special secret between you and me, son,’ she said, her tone full of promises. ‘And especially from your father. It’s a matter of business, and I should have attended to it long ago.’ And she explained: ‘There’s a man—you know him—a lawyer, Mr. Levi Spree. Bring him to see me, Dan, tomorrow morning, after your father has gone.’

  Dan knew Levi Spree by evil reputation, and her injunction disturbed him; but he would not risk changing her from this sweetly affectionate mood, so he promised to do what she asked. Levi Spree seemed surprised at the summons, but he obeyed it, coming with Dan to the house. While she talked with the lawyer she sent Dan away, smilingly dismissing him. Mr. Spree was with her for an hour. Dan was glad to see him leave, but Mr. Spree came again that afternoon with Mr. Lebbeus, the publisher of the Star, and two other men; and Jenny sent Dan away again and was alone with them.

  Dan wished to confide this matter to his father, but his mother had his promise and he kept it; and after that day Mr. Spree did not come to the house again.

  In mid-April, when the world was waking to the touch of spring, Jenny drifted at last into a merciful unconsciousness. Dan and his father were alone with her for long hours before the end, sitting gravely, watching her faint breathing fail and cease at last, and she was gone.

  7

  JOHN thought to have Jenny’s

  funeral quietly at home, but her friends dissuaded him. There were so many who wished to do her honor that the house could not accommodate them; when the hour came, not only was the church, where till she became ill she had always been a regular attendant, crowded to the doors, but scores of people, unable to find seats, waited outside to follow her casket to the grave.

  The pulpit of the church was vacant at the time, the place of the Reverend Edward Gilman not having been filled; and the Reverend Johnson of the Hammond Street Church conducted the services. He was a graduate of Yale Theological Seminary, and had served in a small Illinois town and in the Bowdoin Street Church in Boston till 1861 when he was called to the Bangor pulpit. At that time Jenny was already ill, seldom appearing in public, so he knew her good works only by report; but he spoke eloquently today of her long life of service to her neighbors and to the community, in church affairs, in the fight for temperance, in the organization of the Children’s Home, as a leader in the abolitionist cause, and as a generous contributor to the Soldiers’ Rest now soon to be established. He referred, too, to her many private benefactions.

  ‘The sum of them will never be known,’ he said, ‘since she moved always quietly and without
ostentation in her generous ways; but certainly multitudes have had cause to call her blessed.’

  The cortège which proceeded from the church to the cemetery was a long one. Dan, riding with his father, wished Tom and Mat and Will could have been here to see, and to feel a fine pride in this tribute which Jenny’s neighbors and friends thus mutely offered her. The carriages moved slowly, and behind them came many humble folk on foot, mechanics and workmen with their wives and their children, all decked in their sober best, each gratefully cherishing the memory of some much- needed benefaction. This long procession, and the people in it, were visual evidence of the place which Jenny had earned in the hearts of Bangor folk.

  At the grave, the brief service of committal kept them not long; but Dan, looking around him, seeing everywhere the evidences of spontaneous and genuine grief, forgot all the things in his mother’s life which he had hated and resented, and remembered only that she had once been beautiful and tender, and that she had loved him always as he now loved her. One moment at the graveside moved him profoundly. Eight little girls from the Children’s Home sang together the hymn called Bangor, from which seventy years before old Parson Noble had borrowed a name for the newly incorporated town. There was something poignant and profoundly moving in the moment when their thin, clear voices rose.

  ‘Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound!

  Mine ears, attend the cry—

  Ye living men, come view the ground

  Where you must shortly lie!’

  After the service, as the clods began to fall, Dan and his father moved together toward their carriage; but there were many who spoke a comforting word to them upon the way. Mrs. Smith, the Matron of the Home, thanked them for letting the little girls sing.

  ‘They so wanted to,’ she explained. ‘Of course, only a few of them knew Mrs. Evered, she’d been ill so long; but we always spoke of her in our daily prayers.’

  George Thatcher and Mrs. Thatcher were among their oldest friends. Mr. Thatcher said to them that the Reverend Johnson’s eulogy had been eloquent and moving, and Mrs. Thatcher added: ‘But of course he did her less than justice. He did not know her as we did, Mr. Evered. Yet I suppose he did as well as, without knowing her whole life, anyone could have done.’

  Mrs. McGaw’s daughter had come from Brewer for the funeral and she pressed John’s hand and told him: ‘What she did for us, time and again, no one will ever know, Mr. Evered, and there’s many can say the same.’

  Dan, standing beside his father, seeing all around them these humble folk watching and wishing to come near to add their word, knew this was true. But if these dozens and scores were silent, there were others who did speak to them before they left the cemetery. Elijah Hamlin brought a message of condolence from the Vice-President himself, and Doctor Mori- son told John: ‘You know, Mr. Evered, her benefactions will live after her, through the fund she put into my hands to help our wounded soldiers.’ Doctor Mason stayed with them a moment, his hand on Dan’s shoulder; and Dan heard him muttering under his breath: ‘A fine woman. A damned noble woman!’ General Veazie blew his nose and told John: ‘She was always on the right side, John, Bangor will miss her, now she’s gone.’ Chief Justice Appleton spoke in quiet tribute; and Doctor Laughton, and Joe Littlefield; and Rufus Dwinel, who had always a gift for the right word at the right time, said to Dan: ‘Sir, if I had ever met another woman to match your mother I would not have remained a bachelor.’ Mr. Hardy, the painter, who had made that portrait of Jenny when she was young, stopped them for a moment. ‘I knew Mrs. Evered before you did, John,’ he said. ‘And I admired her and esteemed her as we all did. I’ve always been sorry I did her less than justice in that likeness long ago.’ Dan wondered what he meant by that. The portrait had always seemed to him beautiful.

  There were others; and when at last Dan and his father stepped into the carriage they were warmed and comforted by many strong and friendly assurances. They stayed for supper with Aunt Meg and Beth, and these four sat in quiet talk awhile; and afterward Dan and his father walked out Main Street to the big, strangely empty house together. They spoke little, and then of unrelated things, each with his own thoughts. Only, when they said good night, John told his son:

  ‘She left a fine memory behind her, Dan.’

  Dan nodded. It was true. He thought there was not another woman in Bangor whose death would have caused more widespread and genuine sorrow; and he remembered the ways in which he himself had sometimes thought of her with a rueful shame. Surely these others were right and he was wrong.

  II

  Jenny was buried on a Monday. John decided to spend the next day at home with Dan, and they were quiet together there till while they were at dinner the knocker sounded. Dan went to the door and found a small boy who pressed a wrapped newspaper into his hand.

  ‘For Mr. Evered,’ he said. ‘Compliments of Mr. Lebbeus.’ And he turned and ran as though afraid he would be pursued.

  Dan looked at the paper curiously, returning with it to the dining room. ‘From Mr. Lebbeus, father,’ he said. While his father removed the wrapper, Dan remembered that Mr. Lebbeus had come with Mr. Spree to see his mother, on that day not long ago; and a shapeless terror turned him cold.

  John tore the wrapper and unfolded that day’s issue of the Star. On the front page, two columns wide, conspicuously displayed but without any comment, there was this:

  MRS. EVERED’S WILL

  I, Jenny Hager Poster Evered, of Bangor in the County of Penobscot and State of Maine, being of sound and disposing mind, declare this to be my last will and testament.

  I give and bequeath as follows:

  1. To my husband, John Evered, the silver-headed cane in the locked pine box in the attic of my house, which was the property of Ephraim Poster, once my lover, son of my first husband and friend of said John Evered, whose place John Evered took in my affections, and whose word he foolishly scorned when he married me.

  2. To my oldest son, Daniel Evered, the painting of me made by Mr. Hardy, so that he may forget my aspect in my later years.

  3. To my second son, William Evered, the sum of one dollar, to remind him that he refused to grant the last request I ever made of him, my injunction to destroy his traitorous and rebellious younger brothers if they ever came into his hands.

  4. To my sons Thomas and Matthew, who betrayed me and their country, nothing, with the assurance that I hated them till I died.

  5. To Levi Spree five thousand dollars in full payment of all claims he may ever make against my estate.

  6. To Andrew Lebbeus five thousand dollars in full payment for the publication of this my last will and testament in the Star.

  7. All the rest and residue of my estate, including the house in which during my lifetime I permitted my husband and my sons to live, and including all other real estate, and all my ownership of vessels in whole or in part, and all moneys in hand and debts collectible, and all other property, real and personal, of whatever description, I give and bequeath to my daughter Molly, who was born on the night of the flood of 1846, in the bawdy house then and now kept by Lena Tempest, and who was acknowledged during the first hours of her life by her father, Elder Lincoln Pittridge, who had become my lover a year before; said Molly being still an inmate of said bawdy house; and out of this bequest I ask but do not require that said Molly set aside a sufficient sum of money for the erection of a monument to my memory whenever the good people of Bangor, whose esteem I have always valued, may so direct.

  8. I appoint Levi Spree as executor of this my last will and testament, and I require of him no bond. I direct that he cause the publication of this my will in a prominent position in the Bangor Star as soon as possible after my funeral.

  In Witness Whereof, and in the presence of the undersigned witnesses, I have set my hand and seal.

  JENNY HAGER POSTER EVERED

  III

  John, and Dan, standing at his father’s shoulder, read this together; and Dan’s hand rested on the older man’s arm
, his fingers tightening there. For a long time, long enough to read Jenny’s will three or four times over, neither of them moved. Then Dan returned to his chair and sat down, and automatically they addressed themselves to their unfinished dinner. They ate slowly, as if to go on in accustomed ways were a duty that must be done.

  When at last they were finished, for a moment more they sat quietly, their eyes meeting. Then John said:

  ‘Dan, we must go to town, after all.’

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ Dan agreed. ‘We’ll walk. The fresh air will do us good.’

  So they set out together, the tall man and his taller son. From the front door they turned down the drive, and Dan thought more of his father than of the house they had left. He thought more of his father than of himself, full of a great tenderness for the man beside him, wishing to find the just word that would ease the other’s pain.

  They came to the road and John paused and turned to look back at the big house, and Dan stopped too, looking from the house to his father. John said in a low tone:

  ‘It’s been our home since you were born, Dan. The only home you’ve ever known.’

  Dan read the thought in his father’s mind and he gripped the other’s arm. ‘Father,’ he said. ‘For me—and for the others—home wasn’t just that house. Home for us was wherever you were. It will always be.’

  So John’s head lifted and his eyes met Dan’s and he smiled in a quick, boyish way, deeply happy and proud.

  They looked back no more, moving down toward Main Street, taking the way toward town. The day was fine and they spoke of this, and they spoke of the far-off progress of the war, and of what General Grant was likely to accomplish this summer, and of the last letter from Will. He had written from camp near Culpeper on the twenty-second of March, saying that the General was to arrive there next day and establish his headquarters. It was cold, he said, with six inches of snow on the ground. He had not when he wrote received Dan’s letter saying that Jenny was willing for Tom and Mat to come home, and they spoke of this now, and John said: