by John Barth
“ ’Twas Roxie Russecks I heard it from,” Mary said, “as honest a gossip as ever spread the news, and she had it from Sir Harry not five minutes after it happened. Henrietta heard the shot all the way from the mill and ran outside to see whence it came—for all Sir Harry wallops her just for showing her face at the window. But when she saw folks running to her father’s tavern-shop she had perforce to fetch her mother to get the news, and the Indian was gone in a trail o’ blood when Roxie got there…”
“The shot!” Ebenezer broke in. “Did you say Miss Bromly shot him?”
Mary raised a fat forefinger. “I said the poor salvage was wounded and gone, with his own sweet blood to mark his path: that’s all I said.”
“But who else—”
“When Roxie got to the tavern,” she pressed on, “there was blood on the ground, blood on the gallery, blood all over the floor. The men were fair sobered, ye may wager, but too shamed to look her in the eye; as for Harry, that was braying like a jackass at his prank, she could get no sense from him at all. ‘I’Christ, i’Christ!’ was all he’d say. ‘Did ye see the fool a-hopping and a-croaking like a new-gelt frog?’ Then off he’d bray and say no more.”
“Miss Bromly!” Ebenezer demanded. “I must know what happened to Miss Bromly! Was’t she that shot the poor wretch?”
“ ’Twas the Church Creek Virgin,” Mary said tersely. “The truth is, she had reckoned from the first that if Sir Harry himself did not try for her maidenhead one day or another, he’d send some drunken lecher to try it for him; hence the pistol, always charged and ready to fire. ’Twas in her coat whene’er she set foot down the stairway, and while she slept, she kept it hid beneath her pallet, whence she could snatch it at the first step on the stairs. The trouble was, even a drunken salvage is still a salvage to the core; Billy Rumbly crept upstairs with no more noise than a Wiwash hunter stalking game, and the first she knew of her danger was when he laid his knife against her throat!”
McEvoy clucked his tongue. “How did she manage to fetch the pistol?”
“There’s the rub of’t.” Mary smiled. “The walls were broached beyond defense, and naught was left to her but to open the gates, surrender the castle, and take vengeance against the invader whilst he plundered.”
“Ah God!” cried Ebenezer. “D’you mean the poor girl lost her honor after all?”
“Not yet, though every man thought so, as I did when I heard the tale from Roxie, and wondered how Billy Rumbly was not unstarched by the rum. But ye forget, Mr. Cooke, what we know now: he is Mattassin’s brother, and by your own statement shares my Charley’s one defect: he carries his manhood not under breeches but in his fancy, where rum is more a virtue than a burthen.” Mary shivered again. “Nay, now I think on’t, ’tis all in what ye mean by the word: no brother o’ Charley’s could ever take her in the usual way, and belike she hath her maidenhead yet; but I know well he was at her honor from the first instant, and since she was obliged to let him fetch her to the pallet, ye may be sure her precious honor was well tattered by the time she got there. Then, of course, she snatched out her pistol and aimed to murther him. Howbeit, her shot was low, from what I gather; it cut him inside the thigh and sent him packing like a wounded rabbit. E’en then Sir Harry couldn’t end his wretched game: he must chase after poor Billy Rumbly all the way outside and hollow ‘Ye wasn’t man enough, damn ye, Bill! Try her again in a fortnight!’ “
“But Miss Bromly…” said the poet.
“That’s the end o’ my tale,” Mary said firmly, “till Harvey tells his part of’t: when Roxie learned the nature of her husband’s prank she flew upstairs to look after Miss Bromly and found her lying like a lass well-ravished upon the pallet, with the pistol still a-smoking in her hand. And for all her erstwhile lordly airs, she ran to Roxie like a child to its mother, weeping and a-hollowing enough for two, and declared that albeit she was virgin as ever, the salvage had taken a host of liberties with her person, insomuch that she was like to perish of shame. ’Tis not surprising Roxie disbelieved her—as did I when I heard of’t anon—and said, ‘Now, now, Miss Bromly, what’s done is done, and feigning shan’t undo it; thou’rt no virgin now, if in sooth ye were before, but I’m convinced thou’rt no trollop either. Come live with me and my daughter at the mill,’ she said, ‘and we’ll teach ye how a woman can have sport at no cost whate’er to her purse, her pride, or her precious reputation.’ ”
“Ah, Mary,” cautioned their host, who must have been reading her lips, “don’t tell tales, now.”
Mary replied that Mr. Cooke she knew to be a perfect gentleman, and since McEvoy knew none of the parties involved, she saw no harm in quoting Mrs. Russecks’s speech. “Ye know full well she’s my dearest friend as well as yours, Harvey, and I love Henrietta like a daughter. These gentlemen have heard already what a beast Sir Harry is; ’twere as well they knew this much more to go with’t—that Roxie and Henrietta have the spirit and wit to pull the wool o’er the great swine’s eyes at every turn.”
The trapper was still not entirely pacified, but Ebenezer, though the mixed metaphor made him wince, acknowledged the unknown women’s right to their peccadilloes, in order to bring Mary back to her story.
“Aye, Miss Bromly,” Mary sighed, “that Roxie tells me I might persuade now to learn my trade.”
Ebenezer could not restrain his bitterness. “Is that your notion of a grand and charitable woman, that takes a poor girl in to make a whore of her? Unhappy Miss Bromly! Methinks your Mrs. Russecks is no better than her husband!”
“Gently, gently, Mr. Cooke,” Mary said calmly. “Ye forget ’tis not to Sir Harry’s mill I’m bound to fetch her, but to the house of her English husband, Mr. Rumbly …”
“I’God!”
“Let me finish, now. The girl was that distracted by her rape, or whate’er ye choose to call it, she commenced to gibber like a bedlamite. Her name was not Meg Bromly at all, she declared, but Anna Cooke o’ Cooke’s Point, the sister o’ the Laureate Poet, and the salvage that attacked her was no salvage at all, but her childhood tutor—”
“Marry, I see it!” cried the poet. “She hath been Anna’s friend and mine since we were children in Plumtree Street; some business hath brought her to Maryland, and she had planned to call on me at Malden until she heard of my disgrace and Father’s wrath. Aye, ’tis clear! She durst not go near the infamous place, but took lodgings in Church Creek while she made enquiries about me. I’faith, another lost soul upon my conscience! Poor, poor Miss Bromly; how Anna would fly to aid you if she knew!”
As a matter of fact, Ebenezer’s feelings were mixed: he was unspeakably relieved to think that the Church Creek Virgin had not been his sister, but distressed at the same time, not only because it had been his sister’s friend but also because this fact rendered Anna lost as ever. Now he blanched, for a new thought struck him.
“Nay, ’tis worse yet! Why would Miss Bromly be in Maryland at all, if not as Anna’s companion? Aye, ’sheart, they traveled together—what could be more likely?—and when they heard how things fared at Malden, or when my father caught up with Anna and made her stay with him, Miss Bromly took it upon herself to seek me out. That’s it, I’m certain: either Joan Toast made no mention of me, or they disbelieved her! ’Sheart, ’sheart, miserable girl! How many more will be brought low on my account? And now, whether ’tis that she seeks pity by desperate subterfuge or that the shock of rape hath deranged her, she calls herself by her best friend’s name, and thinks ’tis Henry Burlingame hath undone her!”
“ ’Tis a fact she sometimes calls her husband Henry,” Mary allowed. “Roxie said as much.”
“Stay, now,” McEvoy said. “Ye left the wench in her loft-room, a-babbling to the Russecks woman, and now she’s wife to the wight that leaped her, and that she pistoled! Ye’ve o’er-skipped some piece o’ the tale, lass, have ye not?”
“That I have, sir,” Mary nodded, “for ’tis Harvey’s to tell. When the girl had done a-gibbering she fell a-swoon in
Roxie’s arms and was fetched senseless to Henrietta’s chamber in the millhouse. For three days Roxie nursed her like an ailing child, and on the fourth she disappeared. No man hath laid eyes on her from that day to this save Harvey here …”
11
The Tale of Billy Rumbly Is Concluded by an Eye-Witness to His Englishing. Mary Mungummory Poses the Question, Does Essential Savagery Lurk Beneath the Skin of Civilization, or Does Essential Civilization Lurk Beneath the Skin of Savagery?—but Does Not Answer It
MARY FINISHED SPEAKING and looked expectantly at Harvey Russecks, as did Ebenezer and John McEvoy. But because her last remark had been delivered in a voice lower than that with which she had told the story and had been directed specifically to McEvoy, the trapper missed it and smiled vacantly back at them.
“Tell ’em, Harvey,” she prompted. “What happened whilst the Church Creek Virgin was a-swoon at Roxie’s, and the rest of it?”
“Aye, that’s true,” Harvey laughed, not yet conceiving exactly what she said. Ebenezer concluded that the older man’s mind must have been wandering, for he had caught up the earlier remark about Mrs. Russecks at once. “ ’Twas when I went out on the trap line in the morning—ice all over the marsh, don’t ye know, and muskrats frozen in the snares—I spied a campfire down the line and walked over to’t to thaw my finger-joints; there lay this salvage with the bloody breeches, his head all shaved and his body cold as death. ’Twas my first thought he was dead, and another two hours had proved me right; but I felt some life in his veins beat yet and resolved to fetch him here and do what I could for him. The wound I found no great matter, for all the blood; I washed and bound it, and forced some hot broth on the fellow directly he could open his mouth. B’m’faith, what a stout wretch he proved! As nigh as the very latch-string to death’s doorway, and an hour later he had his senses again, if not his strength. When I’d won his trust he told me his tale as best he grasped it, and inasmuch as I’d heard o’ the Church Creek Virgin and knew my brother’s humor besides, it wanted small philosophy to guess the rest.
“I told him he’d been the butt of a low prank (the which he saw plainly when I explained it) and offered to ask for the five pounds sterling Harry had robbed him of; he thanked me kindly, in the plainest English I e’er heard salvage speak, and declared the whole of’t was mine for rescuing him, if I could get it. Now ye dare not refuse a salvage’s gift, lest he think thou’rt insulting him, and so I declared I’d take two shillings for my trouble and deliver the rest to him. All the while we spoke he had been casting his eyes about the room, and anon he asked me, Would I sell him my house? and Would five pounds purchase it? I replied ’twas not worth it by half, but I’d no mind to sell, and as he showed such eagerness to live in an English cabin I told him of an old one I owned near Tobacco Stick Bay, not far from Church Creek, that was falling to ruin for lack o’ tenants, and declared he could live in’t without rent if he’d trouble himself to repair it. Ye might think that an odd piece o’ charity on such short acquaintance, but this half-breed had an air about him—I’ve not the words for’t, sirs. ’Twas as if… d’ye know those stories o’ kings and princes that prowl the streets in Scotch cloth? Or Old Nick posing as a mortal man to bargain for souls? He was uncommon quick in his mind, was this salvage, and gave me to feel that had he been reared English from the cradle he’d have been another Cromwell, or what ye will. ’Tis no mystery to me Miss Bromly took him for her tutor in disguise; with a fortnight’s practice he could pass for a don of Oxford, I am sure of’t, and two years hence for a sunburnt Aristotle! There’s many a man I have no use for, gentlemen, and it struck me from the first this salvage would play me false if need be, to gain his ends; but he had that power of attraction—how doth a man speak of it? Will-ye, nill-ye, ye felt that if his purpose and yours weren’t one, ye had your own shortsightedness to blame for’t, and if he sold ye short, ’twas that your stuff was the stuff o’ pawns and not o’ heroes. To this hour he hath done me no injury, but that day I was driven to forgive him in advance, in my heart, for aught he might do me!”
“Ah,” Ebenezer said.
“In any case, he slept here that night, and next morning I found him gone. My first thought was, he had set out to revenge himself on my brother—” The trapper blushed, but his eyes narrowed. “God forgive me or not, as’t please Him: I made no move to warn Harry of his danger, but went out to my line o’ traps as usual. There was a frost that morning, I remember, and over by Raccoon Creek, on a stretch o’ high ground betwixt the fresh marsh and the salt, I commenced to see bear tracks along the path, and even a bear stool so fresh ’twas not e’en froze, but lay a-steaming in the path. Not long after, near the end o’ the line, I saw moccasin-prints with the bear tracks, and inasmuch as they were not half an hour old, I took the trouble to follow ’em out.
“Anon the trail led me to a little stand o’ hardwoods, and I could hear Mr. Bear a-grumbling up ahead. I had no weapon on me save my skinning-knife, and so I crept toward the sound as quiet as I could manage. ’Twas no great trick to find him, he was growling so; I came on a little clearing and there he was, a fat black rascal that hadn’t bedded down for the winter. He was a male, not quite full-grown—on his hind legs he would’ve stood as high as your shoulder—and he was worrying a rotten piece o’ log to get the grubs on’t. I’d just commenced to wonder where the salvage had got to, when a hand came down on my shoulder, and there stood Billy Rumbly himself, looking wise and cheerful as ye please. He led me farther down wind and out of earshot and told me he meant to kill the bear unless I laid a claim on’t.
“ ‘Why, Billy,’ says I, ‘ ’tis not likely I’ll take on a bear with a skinning-knife so long as I’m sober, and I’d urge no fellow man to try such tricks.’ For I saw he had no weapons on him save his two hands. But he only smiled and declared he’d show me a trick he’d learnt from some western salvages, that were said to use it as a test o’ courage when two men quarreled o’er some squaw’s favors. I judged ’twould be worth the watching, nor was I mistaken—nay, i’Christ, ’twas the oddest piece o’ hunting I’ll behold in my life!
“The first thing he did was find two straight saplings, one no thicker than your thumb and the other twice as thick, and snapped ’em off low in a certain way so that the break was a hand’s-breadth long. I offered him my knife to point ’em, but he declared ’twas a breach o’ the rules to use a knife or any weapon thrown from the hands, and made the best of’t by peeling back splinters from the break. One sapling he made a rough spear from by stripping off the branches, and the other he broke off short for a kind of dagger; then we crept to the clearing, where Mr. Bear was scratching his back against a tree, and for all the frost had scarce commenced to melt, Billy fetched off all his clothes, picked up his sticks, and stepped into the clearing dressed in naught but the rag-strip bandage on his thigh.”
Ebenezer observed that Mary had set her jaw and closed her eyes.
“The bear left off scratching and watched him make some salvage sort o’ prayer. But when Billy moved toward him he ambled off round the edge of the clearing. Billy set out at a run, hollowing some gibberish or other, but instead o’ turning on him or running down the path, the bear made for a stout young oak near the middle o’ the clearing and commenced to climb. I stepped out and called ‘Bad luck, Billy,’ for I never doubted the chase was done; but the bear was scarce off the ground ere Billy was climbing after him, pole in hand and dagger ’twixt his teeth, and never a care how the rough bark flayed him as he climbed! At the first branches, twice your height, the bear stopped to look down, and grumbled and waved his forepaw. Billy shinnied up close and poked as best as he could without a proper purchase, but he got no more than a growl for his pains. I offered to fetch him a longer pole, and learned ’twas a breach o’ his murtherous rules to take help from any wight soever or change weapons once ye’ve touched the bear—I’ll own I felt then, and feel yet, he was hatching these customs as he went along, but he followed ’em like Holy Orders.
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br /> “In lieu of changing weapons, he changed his plan o’ battle and commenced to jab at the bear’s face, taking care the brute didn’t catch the pole in his teeth or strike it out o’ his hand. I guessed ’twas his object to drive the bear farther up the trunk and gain the branches for himself, where he could do more damage with his spear, but instead the animal moved around the trunk to protect his face, and hung his great hindquarters over Billy’s head. Yet so far from giving o’er the bout or scrambling away, Billy seemed as pleased as if ’twas just what he’d designed: he gave a whoop and thrust his pole as far as ever, where I need not mention! The bear gave a squeal and tried to get at the spear with his forepaws, but Billy thrust deeper; he climbed a little distance up the trunk and was undone the more by slipping back, and at length he fell, with such a hollowing as ye never heard. In that same instant Billy was on him; he drove the short stake in his throat and sprang away ere I myself had grasped the fact that the bear was down.
“By the time I found a tree o’ my own to hide behind, the bear was on his feet and thrashing after the pole, that stuck out behind. All the while, Billy stood empty-handed in plain view, not three yards off, and goaded the bear to attack him; when he did, Billy led him five times round the oak tree, and the poor brute fell down dead.”
“Marry!” said McEvoy. “ ’Tis as brave a trick as I’ve heard of!”
“And as gory,” Ebenezer added, speaking loudly for the trapper’s benefit. “ ’Tis a wondrous tale, Mr. Russecks, and yet—you must pardon my rudeness—I cannot but wonder what this feat hath to do with my poor friend Miss Bromly.”
“Nay, friend, there’s naught to pardon,” Harvey replied. “I wondered the same myself, the while I watched, why it was he had set out half mended to match his strength with a bear’s, when all the evening past he had talked o’ naught save the laws and customs o’ the English. He had been that eager and quick a scholar, ye’d have thought he was training for a place in Court—but look at him now, astride o’ his kill to drink the hot blood ere the beast’s fair dead! The very type and essence of the salvage!