Wilderness of Spring

by Edgar Pangborn

  _Chapter Seven_

  If the present alone is real, one might as well eat the damn' porridge.On Tuesday morning Reuben did so, admitting at once that the porridgewas good as always, that the fault lay with his own jumpy stomach, hissandy-eyed weariness from a bad night. Ben also seemed depressed, or atleast without the glow and buoyancy he had shown since his last returnfrom Boston. Reuben had intended to offer a few not too classicalflights concerning Aphrodite Anadyomene the sea-born, partly in the hopeof learning whether love totally obliterated the sense of humor. He leftthem unsaid.

  It might be abstraction, not depression, that ailed Ben. Experimentally,while his brother gazed moodily out the window, Reuben stole a sliver ofbacon from his trencher; Ben never noticed. When Reuben replaced it, Bendid observe the action, vaguely startled, smiling and saying: "Thanks."

  "Well, damn," said Reuben. Kate had watched the operation--vacantly andwithout chuckling.

  "Uh? A'n't you hungry, Ru?"

  "Damn again," said Reuben. "I am alway hungry. I own a tapeworm of thesoul." He recaptured the bacon and popped it in his mouth. Ben was stillmerely looking puzzled. "'Twould appear that this morning I am penned upwith mooncalves--even Kate won't laugh. And yet it's a fair day, a redsky last night." Kate turned her back with odd abruptness. And in hisown dark privacy, it seemed to Reuben that he was like one who canbehold the gathering of the crimson banners for Armageddon where otherssee only a flaming translation of natural clouds.

  Something spoke then within him, so vividly that Reuben imagined atfirst he was recalling some remark of Mr. Welland's; but casting back,he felt certain that in their few meetings of the last weeks, the doctorhad said no such thing: _Learning begins now._ Simply his own thought,taking on a verbalized form of uncommon clearness, of imperative power:LEARNING BEGINS NOW.

  Ben had drifted back into his country of dream. Kate was, abnormally,not talking. Having breakfasted early as usual with Mr. Kenny, who hadleft for Boston, Mr. Hibbs was waiting in the schoolroom--perhaps nottoo impatiently, since work could always be done in odd moments on theimmortality of the soul. The kitchen, not oppressed by dining-roomdemands of dignity, was rich with pleasant smells and the warmth of May.Reuben refilled his coffee cup.

  If learning begins (ever) it must somehow begin with premises that willnot betray. All men are mortal; Ben and I are men....

  Death is the conclusion of known life. I am forced to doubt, what onceupon a time I believed, that a knowable life continues in a heaven orhell; therefore I am forced to doubt, what once upon a time I didbelieve, that Ben (or I, or Mother, or honest Jan Dyckman) can continuebeyond the conclusion we call death.

  Knowledge (Mr. Welland said last Saturday) pertains to what can beproven by the carnal senses.

  Faith is belief in a proposition that cannot be established by thecarnal senses--("_My faith is like that of a man on a cloudy day...._")Faith cannot be supported by knowledge, for if proof is found theproposition becomes knowledge and faith is no longer relevant; if it benot found, the proposition comes not within the region of knowledge.

  Hope and desire--(_must you rattle those pots, Kate, at this especialmortal moment?_)--hope and desire may derive partly from knowledge, butcannot possess the force of it, for they are directed to the future,which does not exist. Therefore faith, hope and desire are all in thesame class: to say that once upon a time I had faith in a heaven is nomore than to say that I desired it, or hoped for it, or was told Iought to desire it--all without knowledge.

  They say: "Help thou mine unbelief!" But belief and unbelief are no moreto be helped or hindered than the eyes' perception of a cloud. If theeyes carry out their function and if the cloud be there, I shall see it.Why, so far as belief and unbelief are concerned, will, desire, hope,fear, pain have no part to play at all, let them be cruel as flame orpowerful as time.

  The mind, he understood, would continue proposing premises for all itslife: some false, to be rejected; some (so far as the senses themselvescan be trusted) true; every one of them to be examined in the atmosphereof doubt. Since without faith there is no other atmosphere.

  A few strange years ago I walked on a quicksand, in a fog. Then it neveroccurred to me that the seeming certainties were a quicksand, thevisions of Heaven a fog of fantasy. Am I any more likely to sink orstray, now that I know it? Proposition concluded _pro tem_.

  As for Hell--_Open up, old rat-hole! I may wish to spit._

  "Ben," said Reuben, "do be a good boy and eat your bacon."

  "Mm," said Ben, and smiled, and ate it.

  Kate's unnatural silence was like a crying. Reuben made a private noteto find out, if possible, what ailed her. The dregs of his coffee werestill good for a bit more lingering.

  You could not--in simple nature you could not listen to all thesurrounding voices explaining and re-explaining, accusing, justifying,probing, forever contradicting one another and seldom pausing for ananswer. You could heed only a few. Which ones? How to choose?

  Love will choose some of the few, the nearest and surely the mostimportant (including Kate). (_The most important, why? Query noted, forfuture consideration._) Caution will select a few that must be heard,for reasons of safety and self-defense. And some will be chosen bynative curiosity, which Mr. Welland described last Saturday as one ofthe rarest of all virtues.

  Other voices speak outside the region of individual contact, some ofthem urgent. _Micrographia_; the old voice of Hakluyt if only becauseBen loves it; Scripture, if only because the world is so obsessed withits thunderings; many others--even Ovid. Mr. Welland spoke of thedramatist Shakespeare; Uncle John has one volume of him--_note: find andpercontate, immed._ These voices are not altogether unlike the nearones--more methodical, because the pen, unlike the voice, need not movein dizzy haste to get everything said before someone interrupts; moremethodical and not so much given to hemming and hawing andconversational fluff; but these voices too are engaged in explaining andre-explaining, commanding, blurred sometimes in flurries ofcontradiction. Sometimes (Michael Wigglesworth for example) they sounddownright embarrassed and peevish, when the stubborn universe they speakof is so plainly not as they describe it.

  Since not all voices may be attended, since some of them lie and manymore speak loudly in the absence of knowledge, one must wait, Reubenguessed, for the sudden inner waking, the unsought recognition, themind's clear declaration: This voice--(_Why did you say to me, "Run,boy! Run!"--why?_)--this voice is speaking not merely out of someother's need to assert, but speaking to _me_, and I understand what itsays--some of it....

  If we create the present by living it, then right and wrong areman-made. I will accept the verdicts of others in this matter if theyseem reasonable to me, and just--not otherwise.

  It was once proposed to me on excellent authority that the judgments ofthe Lord are true and righteous altogether. It seems to be necessary tohear much nonsense while waiting for the sound that rings true. I may bedeceived again, many times, but I say it shall not be from any scaredwish to believe.

  _Am I correct, Mr. Welland, in supposing that if doctrines of right andwrong are man-made, learning begins now?_

  * * * * *

  Ben struggled through Tuesday morning's Greek and logic without seriousdiscredit, and picked up only a few minor fresh scratches from thethorns of Latin grammar. He could not quite win clear of a mental shadowthat had haunted him since waking after a dream not plainlyremembered--a foreboding uneasiness something like that of a child whohas wandered into a strange and exciting room: he has not beenspecifically forbidden to enter here, but knows he has not been grantedpermission either; presently someone may arrive and with the coolfinality of adults chivy him back to the nursery where the toys havelost all magic.

  In the afternoon Ben achieved brief glory, encountering an area of _DeFinibus_ in which Reuben had drilled him so briskly that error wasnearly impossible. After this victory the deadly hour hand, the slightlyless cruel minute hand, appeared to be creeping with better s
peed towardthe beautiful moment of three o'clock, when Mr. Hibbs would snap hisbooks shut, blow from the tops of them a little imaginary dust, and goaway. Ru said once (a dreamy voice coming out of the dark of the bedroomwhen Ben thought he was asleep): "If I live to be old, I shall alwayconsider that the immortality of the soul sets in at three o'clock postmeridian."

  A resolution to go once more into Boston had grown today, less like arational decision than like the climbing of a fever. With the lessonsconcluded, he would not, like a schoolboy, ask permission: he wouldsimply go, as casually as Ru had been strolling over to Mr. Welland'scottage lately; if there should be consequences of disapproval from Mr.Hibbs or Uncle John himself, Ben supposed they would not be serious--inany case he could meet them with a man's calm, surely?

  He tried (from two o'clock on) to lay it out serenely as a plan ofcampaign. One: he must speak with Faith again--briefly, soberly, a manof affairs saying a temporary good-bye. Two: he must interview UncleJohn at the warehouse, in the cool atmosphere of business affairs, andpray for a definite answer, on the grounds that the time of _Artemis'_departure must be quite near. At this point the plan hazed up alittle--Uncle John seldom stayed at the warehouse later than fiveo'clock. Well, Molly could make fair time into the city, and he wouldnot remain long with Faith--he spent some effort here, defining a fewpoignant answers he would make to what she would say. Still, he hadbetter prepare a second line of approach: if Uncle John had already leftfor Roxbury, he would seek out Captain Jenks himself, no less, beatdown the devils of fear and self-consciousness so to put the matterplainly to the iron mountain and get an answer. After all, Jenks wasn'tso bad. Honest and human. In fantasy Ben saw a gleam of ruggedfriendliness (respect?) in the little blue eyes....

  Better have a third line. If Uncle John had left and Jenks could not bereached, lost in liquor or otherwise unavailable, then he could--oh,hell, ask around at the wharf anyway, find out when _Artemis_ wasexpected to sail, since it seemed that Uncle John was unwilling to tellhim. Tom Ball ought to know. Maybe he would run into Daniel Shawn again,and could, at the very least, learn whether Shawn was to sail as mate.On Sunday, Uncle John had been immune to approach, shut up in his studythe better part of the day; yesterday evening he had displayed animpossible mood, his manner testy and faraway, his foot tormenting him.But with a plan of campaign you could always accomplish something.Couldn't you?...

  He found it infuriating that as three o'clock drew very near the wholething seemed more and more like a fever. His breath was difficult; helooked into damp palms and thought: What the devil am I contemplating?Running away? _From what?_ Good God, not from Uncle John Kenny, the soulof generosity! _From what?..._ He watched the inexorable dwindling ofthe pie-slice made by the hour-hand and the minute-hand as ten minutesof three became five minutes of three. At three minutes of three he feltdownright sick, and then jumped like a fool when the dry uncomprehendedmonologue of Mr. Hibbs ended with a quite familiar snap of a closedvolume. He sat still, demoralized, watching Mr. Hibbs stride away;waited for inner quiet and was again grotesquely startled when Reuben,in one of those warm moods which Ben nowadays found almost as strange ashis moods of withdrawal, came behind his desk and leaned over to lockthin arms under Ben's chin and murmur: "What's the matter, Mooncalf?"

  "Nothing, Ru--nothing. I think I'll go into Boston."

  "Oh." Reuben broke the contact; Ben had found it vaguely comforting aswell as disturbing. Reuben came around the desk, and re-establishednearness by placing his hands over Ben's, hands thinner and smaller, butharder, sometimes even stronger. "Would you," said Reuben presently,"care to take a creeping crawling student of medicine into yourconfidence, not that the ancient creature wishes to intrude, but----?"

  It was not always possible to look directly at Reuben. He saw too much,or if he did not, his quiet intentness made it seem that he did. Thefaces of others were apt to make it plain enough that they were not somuch concerned with you as with themselves; Reuben (who surely thoughtabout himself as much as anyone) somehow could put that preoccupationaside, and make you believe that nothing mattered to him at the momentexcept that jumble of thought and image and desire which you had grownaccustomed to calling your Self. And it was, Ben thought, no illusion:the boy did search, and he did care for what he found. Ben fumbled foran evasion: "Student of medicine for sure?"

  This proved to be no evasion after all, for Reuben smiled, and used thequestion itself as a part of the effort to illuminate the self of BenCory. "Yes, truly, and I wish you could find the same kind of certainty,Ben, because it's good. Why, I almost think, Ben, that anything couldhappen to me now--anything, no matter what--and though I might be hurtas much as I would have been, say a year ago, I could defend myselfagainst my trouble, whatever it was: I could go and study another pageof Vesalius' Anatomy. Or the books you bought for me. They wouldn'tfade, I think. They wouldn't betray me.... Find something like that,Ben. Suppose you did change your mind about it after a while, at leastyou'd have it for now."

  "But when I search myself I don't find it. I only...."

  "Only what?" Reuben tightened his hands, relentless.

  "I only wish--oh, I wish to God Uncle John would allow me to sail with_Artemis_."

  Reuben let go his hands, and perched on Mr. Hibbs' sacred desk, swinginghis feet, drooping a little, boyish and old, perhaps no longersearching. "You put it to him a few days ago, did you not?"

  "Mm--he wouldn't say ay or no."

  "You know Uncle John would find it difficult to disappoint thee."

  "I am not a child."

  "No," said Reuben, and with nothing in his voice to contradict the word."What about this afternoon, that is what's left of it?"

  "I thought I might see Uncle John at the warehouse. Ride home with himmaybe."

  "Ay, might be easier--he's a rather different man there at the office."

  "It--seems not wrong to you, that I wish to sail?"

  Reuben was long silent, drooping, looking into his empty hands. "Ben--'dI ever recount to thee the story of the woodcutter's stupid son whotamed a lion?"

  "Woodcutter's son--I don't think so. Is it from Aesop?"

  "No. Well, that's nearly the whole tale already. He found it as a cub.They grew up together, played together, the lion learning not tounsheath his claws, the woodcutter's son trying to roar like a lion, but'tis said he made only some poor squeaking sounds that carried no greatdistance. They were yet friends when the lion was full grown, but thenthe poor brute in some manner sickened, fretted, vanishing at whiles andreturning unwillingly, until at length the woodcutter's stupid son didarrive at one moment of wisdom, and took his friend into the forest andsaid to him, 'Go thy way.'"

  "I am no lion."

  "Marry come up, I am a shade more learned than that woodcutter's son.Ben, I'm only trying to say I don't think anyone should try to possessyou, as I suppose Uncle John does, as maybe I've done--but if you wishto sail, if it's your decision and your heart in it, d'you think I'dimpede you? Supposing I could?"

  "No, I don't think you would."

  "And I will not," said Reuben, and jumped off the desk. "I'm for Mr.Welland's, by the back fields. Best change thy jacket, Ben--that onebeareth the slight saffron memory of an egg which hath gone before. I'llsaddle Molly for thee, meanwhile."

  When Ben rejoined him in the stable, Reuben had nothing more to say,except the light random murmuring that Molly enjoyed. Ben led her outinto the yard--not in sight of Mr. Hibbs' window. Reuben said again,unnecessarily: "I'll go by the fields, you by the road."

  As Reuben held the bridle, Ben was bewildered at his reluctance to sethis foot in the stirrup. "Ru, what ails thee? It's not as if we weresaying a good-bye."

  "No. Why, man, if you sail, I also--well, I hope it turns out as youwish. I believe Uncle John heeds what you say, more than you suppose.Why the knife, little Benjamin?"

  "Oh, I might be in the city after dark. I rather missed it that othernight, coming home."

  "Well, tuck it under your britches, can't you?--so to lo
ok less like abloody cutthroat and more like my little brother?"

  "Very well.... Ru, I don't know how to say this--lately I've beensome-way troubled about thee."

  "Oh, why, why? Have I two heads?--but don't answer that."

  "As if we no longer understood each other--my fault, I think."

  "It is not. It is not even true." Reuben still held the bridle, his facestiff and white and smiling. "No cause for trouble about me. I am one ofthe fortunate, didn't you know?"

  "I don't understand."

  "I own a shield. I walk in the woods. I read the _Anatomy_ of Vesalius,and the books you bought for me. And I told you, Ben--they do not fade."

  "Ay, there's that. Still, if I live to be a thousand I don't supposeI'll ever understand you."

  "Must you, Ben?"

  "I try."

  "I have never understood another, and yet I think about them as much asyou do."

  "But--oh, I _don't_ know how to say it--I don't think I meant that kindof understanding. There's more than one kind...."

  "Ben, you'd best hurry a little if you're to have any time with UncleJohn at the office."

  "Yes," said Ben unhappily, and was in the saddle looking down, more thanever reluctant to be going away. "I'll tell you after supper, what hesays. Ru, what was that?--you started to say that if I sail, then youalso--?"

  Ben had spoken softly, in his confusion. He supposed Reuben had notheard, for he did not answer, and that was a discourtesy Ben had neverknown him to employ. Ben saw him rub his hand along Molly's fat neck."Be a good horse," said Reuben, and was gone, walking quickly around thestable, the shortest way to the back fields.

  * * * * *

  The cottage with the green shutters sat comfortably under the dignity oftwin elms--like its owner mild, and quiet, and rather old, carrying ageas an elm does with rugged awkwardness, with many scars, without pompand circumstance.

  Reuben had learned the inside of the cottage--simple, on the same starkplan as the house in Deerfield, with two main downstairs rooms and agarret, but where the Deerfield house had owned a small lean-to off thekitchen, Mr. Welland had a larger annex, more solidly built, which hecalled the surgery. It was also his reception room for patients, hislibrary, his study, his room of contemplation. The gray striped lady,Goody Snively, who kept the cottage rather constantly supplied withkittens (often yellow), lived here in a box of her own beside thewood-box at the fireplace. Very few patients ever came to Mr. Wellandhere at the cottage, so few that he did not try to keep precise hoursfor them, but it was understood that he would ordinarily be at home inthe late hours of the afternoon. Most of his work was done in visitsthat often took him a considerable distance to outlying farms. A smallstable stood separate from the cottage, home of the brown mare Meg, whocarried Mr. Welland on his labors in all weathers, all times of day ornight. He claimed that Meg was a better diagnostician of the purse thanhimself, being always restless outside the houses of wealthy patients,who were invariably the slowest to pay his charges. That puzzled Reuben."You'll learn," said Mr. Welland. "Your great-uncle is one of perhapsfive exceptions to the rule that I can remember."

  Mr. Welland kept no servant, and no one came in to clean or cook forhim. He took most of his meals at the ordinary down the street; messageswere left for him there more often than at the cottage. In the cottagehe maintained a monastic neatness--no dust, no clutter, very fewpossessions and those necessary, functional and in good order. "It's notdifficult," he had explained on Reuben's first visit, "but a servant orwoman-by-the-day would make it so, and by the way, Reuben, my house isnever locked, this door from hall to surgery never closed except when Ihave a patient with me. I like simplicity, seeing it leaves one free toconsider complexity--especially that of persons who a'n't so smart asyou and me. Don't trouble to knock, I don't like it. I hate knocking. Ifit's loud I jump out of my skin, if it's soft I blame it on the mice.""Mice, with that cat?" "Mice is a general term, boy. Mice includeseverything that bothers by day or goes thump in the night. If a doorsqueaks I blame it on the mice for a week before I oil it. Everyoneneeds a devil, Reuben, and mice have served me bravely in that capacityfor lo, these many years. Pull up a chair and be at ease."

  On this Tuesday afternoon Reuben entered without knocking, an actionthat still caused him some shy discomfort, and spoke Mr. Welland's nameunanswered. The door to the surgery stood open; also the stable door, asReuben noticed through the window; the doctor was away, and this newloneliness an unexpected blow. "I am most unreasonable," said Reuben toGoody Snively, who rubbed his leg, and purred, and exercised a cat'sprivilege of trotting ahead and sitting down in front of his feet as hewas about to go into the surgery. Reuben hooked her on his shoulder; shesang casually and damply in his ear as he went to the doctor'sbookshelves and took down the Vesalius.

  "_This is a man----_" well, certainly, but also not a man. A man ismotion and thought; a man is foolishness, courage, love, pain. Reubenturned the pages at the desk, rather blindly trying to force them intosome clearness, and he wondered if there had been any truth at all inwhat he had said to Ben less than half an hour ago. Vesalius had notfaded--that much was true. The mist is in the observer.

  Not only now, he thought, but always, in every observation, whether madeat a favorable time or not. If I were happy, that also could deceive, arosy mist no easier to penetrate than a gray one. If I were calm,neither sad nor happy--still a mist, of accepted thoughts that may befalse as fog over quicksand. "But don't you see, Goody Snively?--we knowone thing: we know the fog is there. And that, by the way, is my tenderthigh and not a tree trunk. If you regard me as a tree, I may bark."Goody Snively retired--shocked, maybe.

  The drawing before his face was lost to him a while, the room also, in atrance not of thought but of stillness avoiding thought. Then, as thebody itself will usually shatter such a refuge with its own cantankerousinsistence, Reuben's nose itched, his hands upholding his cheekbonesgrew sweaty and cramped. He gave it up and wandered aboutdisconsolately. He knelt by the box to which Goody Snively had returned.Her latest kittens were quite new, their open eyes not focusing, theirlegs uncertain. He lifted the black-and-brindle one of the four and heldit against his cheek, liking the harmlessly wild kitten smell; it mewedin small wrath, and Goody Snively began to look stern, so he replaced itat the consolation of the nipple and strolled away. He leaned in theopen doorway of the front room, the room where Mr. Welland slept.Curious, but somehow not inappropriate, that this room like the rest ofthe house should be bare of ornament. Monastic was the word, but it helda sense of comfort too. A plain narrow bed, made up with sharpprecision. One armchair, much worn in the seat; beside that an unpaintedtable, bearing a Betty lamp, a pitcher and a basin, nothing else. Twopairs of shoes--so the doctor owned three altogether--lined up at theside of the bed like little soldiers. Reuben thought of his own fiveexpensive pairs, of the days in Deerfield when he had not always ownedtwo pairs, of time and change and human virtue, of the froth of brightembroidery Kate had stitched at the buttonholes of the fine maroonwaistcoat he now wore, and shut his eyes, wondering if that enameledsnuffbox was the doctor's only luxury.

  Opening them--but still holding away thought, or letting his eyes alonethink for him--Reuben observed that one pair of Mr. Welland's shoesbore the marks of dried mud. The man must have changed in haste with notime to take care of them, or had forgotten. Reuben recalled noticing ona kitchen shelf a few cleaning rags and a jar of neatsfoot oil. Hecarried the yellowed shoes out there, refreshed the fading hearth-fireand sat by it to polish them. The crackle of new wood and the noise ofhis cleaning covered the light sounds of Mr. Welland returning andputting up Meg in the stable. Reuben was aware of it as the doctoropened the door, but the task was not quite done; he did not want toabandon it, or even to rise respectfully: work started ought to befinished, and as for the trivia of politeness, Amadeus Welland wouldn'tcare.

  "What's this, Reuben?"

  "It was something to do, sir. I couldn't bring my mind properly to thes
tudy, some-way. Besides, if this mud stays here too long it'll spoilthe leather."

  "Ay, but--thou, scrubbing _my_ shoes? It's kind, Reuben, but I don'tfind it fitting."

  "Sir, _I_ do."

  "Eh?" Reuben could not answer, nor look up when after a silence thedoctor drew a chair to the hearth and sat there spreading his hands tothe warmth. Yet he was not disturbed, nor worried--if Mr. Welland wasannoyed, that would pass. It occurred to Reuben as his fingers(remembering Deerfield) worked the oil into the leather, that he had infact never felt less troubled about his own behavior and how it mightappear to another. It was simple, satisfying and natural that you shouldscrub mud from the shoes of someone you loved, taking it for grantedthat if the occasion ever happened to suggest it he would do the samefor you. "Each time you have come here," said Mr. Welland at last, "youhave been in some degree different, and also the same. Each time I mustbecome acquainted with you again, and each time, I suppose, a littlebetter, since I change too if only by learning."

  "You remarked that living is a journey."

  "Oh," said Welland, and sighed, "I fear that was little better than asimile after all, for what is the thing that travels and cannot itselfremain wholly constant? All is change; all things flow; and what's more,I'd no idea those dem'd shoes had so much virtue left in 'em." Reubencould look up then and smile. "Well, Reuben, being in Boston yesterday,I called at thy great-uncle's office and spoke to him concerning thineapprenticeship. He is not averse to it, not at all, but would have theecontinue for Harvard, and perhaps not be formally bound immediate, butlater, if it is still thy wish in a year or so.... Pleased, my dear?"

  "I--am. I would--I would...."

  "What, Reuben?"

  "I would study, and--serve, if I may, whether formally bound or not. Ithink that is what I was trying to say. It won't fade, Mr. Welland. Iwas never so certain of any other thing.... I ought to have spoken of itto Uncle John, but rather feared to because he hath had so much todistress him lately, the death of Mr. Dyckman, the loss of the _Iris_."

  "The _Iris_? I heard about Mr. Dyckman of course, everyone has."

  "A ship, that should have brought him a great return, taken by piratesoff Virginia. Ben is worried about his affairs, knowing more of themthan I do. That's one reason why he hath so set his heart on sailing andearning his own way."

  "So?"

  "Yes. Mr. Welland, you and Uncle John--you are both very kind. I willnot disappoint you. I can work."

  "Not exactly kindness. On my part at least, let us callit--mm-yas--recognition, and no more of it for the present,because--well, because the subject is complex and I must presently beoff again, almost to Dorchester, damn the luck. There was a message forme at the ordinary. I've only time to snatch a bit of rest for me andMeg, and a quick meal, and a--I think, a change of shoes.... He neverspoke of the _Iris_--well, he and I are not well acquainted. Certainlyhe hath a marvel in that ketch _Artemis_. He was good enough to take meaboard for a few minutes. I'm no sailor, but even I can see she's nocommon sort."

  "Was Shawn there? A black-haired Irishman with a green coat?"

  "Why, no, I noticed no such man, but there were many about."

  "You would have noticed and remembered him."

  "Mm? Mr. Kenny introduced me to two or three there at the wharf--CaptainJenks, and the mate, who was here, there and everywhere with scant timefor landsmen."

  "The mate? What was his name?"

  "Why, Hanson, I think--don't you know him? We exchanged some little talkabout New Haven, where he comes from, seeing I lived a year there once.Everyone was in a whirl of last-minute business. I felt in the way.Never knew there were so many different ropes to trip over."

  Reuben set the shoes aside. "Last-minute business?"

  "Why, yes." The doctor glanced down, puzzled. "What's the matter,Reuben? What did I say to disturb thee?"

  "Did Uncle John say when _Artemis_ was to sail?"

  "Why, today. You didn't know?"

  "No, I--pray tell me about it."

  "Well--he said she ought to have sailed that day, yesterday, but theywere waiting on some cargo from Gloucester, salt fish I believe, thathadn't come, and Captain Jenks all of a growl about it. They left itthat they would wait till today, and if it still had not come she'd sailand--let me think--put in at Sherburne on Nantucket, and find what theislanders might offer to fill her hold. To my ignorant eye she alreadylooked low in the water, but Captain Jenks was swearing she'd ridesweeter for another twenty ton, and a dirty shame--not his exactwords--she should sail light."

  "And then New York, from Sherburne?"

  "Why, no, Reuben--Barbados, thy great-uncle said."

  "Ah!... Thunder!--she may be gone before he's at the office. Ben hopedto sail, Mr. Welland. His heart was set on it. He was all one ache forit. He left for Boston only an hour ago, with no notion that _Artemis_was to sail today, only hoping to persuade Uncle John to let him signon. I felt, sir, as if I was saying good-bye. He felt it too."

  "I'm confused. Isn't he for Harvard in the autumn, with thee?"

  "Yes, but he hoped to make a quick voyage to New York and return. It washis idea she should go there, and damn it, the proposal was mostsensible. Uncle John might at least have considered it. Now he'll beheartbroken. Maybe I _was_ saying good-bye to him, and not in the way Ithought. He won't be the same when he comes home, not after this."

  "Surely, Reuben, you're making too much of it."

  "I know him, Mr. Welland. Certainly Uncle John meant it for the best,but it won't do. You can cross Ben, disappoint him, be harsh with him,but damnation, you can't deceive him, never mind if it may be for hisown good--he won't bear it." And yet even as he spoke Reuben knew thathis own strongest feeling was unwelcome, unreasonable relief: Ben wouldnot sail, not yet.

  "Mm-yas, I begin to see.... Reuben, why do you speak as if he weresomehow your charge? He's the older. He must find his own way."

  "That's true, sir. I even tried to tell him so this afternoon. To tellhim that I had been--oh, too much my brother's keeper, and was sorry forit. I think he understood."

  "Then let it be. If he's hurt and angry about this, it will pass. You'veonly to stand by and be a friend to him until it does. Don't make itmore important than it is. I'm sure that after the first day or so, Benwill not."

  "I hope so." Reuben hugged his knees, watching the fire. "I hope so, andI'll do as you say. And still I feel as if I had said good-bye to him."

  "I suggest that much of living consists of saying good-bye. I suggestthat a man says good-bye to his wife when they fall asleep in the samebed, the morrow's morn being a new region in the journey that can't beknown till they meet there together. If they do. At certain times we aremore aware of saying good-bye, that's all. As presently I must h'ist mycreaky bones out of this comfort, change to those good shoes, and saygood-bye to thee for a while. By the way, if study should come hard thisevening, let it go. Thou dost look, as a matter of fact, very tired."

  "Nay, I--maybe I am.... Dorchester, you said? Might I not go with you?You said a while ago that soon I could go with you on your rounds."

  Reuben heard Mr. Welland catch his breath. "Not this one!" As often inbothered moments, Mr. Welland took snuff. "The message at the ordinarywas--fi-_choo_-shoo!--garbled as usual, but having dissected out thefleck or two of not-so-golden truth from the rubbish, I have some reasonto fear smallpox. That's in confidence, Doctor." He poked Reuben'sshoulder, smiling a little but also stern. "Not a word to anyone. Ifit's true we'll all know it shortly, but if not there's no reason to setpeople's hearts a-squirming. Lord God, it comes, and comes again, andagain, and we live like sheep on the side of Vesuvius, never knowing.Reuben, I sometimes think--and you'll have bad moments of thinking ittoo--that all we doctors do is no whit better than what the Inj'ans do,howling and screaming and beating drums around a sick man's hut to scareaway the demons. Do you know that in all history no epidemic hath everbeen overcome, nor even much lightened? It strikes, runs its course, andwe stand helpless, making motions in th
e air. And yet one would thinkthat if contagion could somehow be prevented--but where doth it breed?We don't know. What _is_ contagion? We don't know. Why should a thinglike the black plague have struck at England as it did some thirty yearsago, and then after blazing and slaying for a time, simply fade away,for no reason men can see? Don't know, don't know. Sir Thomas Sydenham,a great venerator of Hippocrates by the way, was much concerned withepidemiology; I remain skeptical as to his conclusions. Galen, the greatGalen to whom they say we must all bow down--Galen evades; I would havethee most cautious, Reuben, with regard to all the doctrines of Galen.If at Harvard they give you Galen as a final authority, be polite, butread in private the works of Sydenham--and even Paracelsus for thatmatter.... I'll tell thee an almost comical thing: I have livedfifty-three years, have read much and pondered, have spoke with a goodlynumber of learned and thoughtful men, and I have never, never satisfiedmyself as to a proper definition of good health."

  "May it be, that state wherein flesh and spirit (the two indivisible, Ithink) are free to act as fully as the condition of a social being willallow?"

  "Reuben...." The doctor was leaning forward in his chair, frowningintently, hands clasped before him. "Reuben, you did not give me that onthe spur of the moment."

  "Why, no, sir. I was fretting at that question the other night--only Icame to it from the other side, wondering, what is disease? I wished abroader definition than any I found in the books, and so searched alittle, but I don't know that it satisfies me altogether."

  "I think--mm-yas--I think I will accept it until such time as you giveme a better.... It takes no account of theology of course. But then, Icannot entertain the thought of a punishing God. Nor even a personal Godperhaps. If personal, then in some way well beyond man's imagination. Itoften amazes me, that others can find such great comfort in the notionof a punishing God. Yet they do."

  "It saves them from thought."

  "Eh? How's that?"

  "I think it saves them, sir, from the pains and trials of thought."

  "Keep thy sharpness, Reuben. Thou hast already a summer heart and willnot lose it. Keep that thorn in the tongue. Hide it almost always, butuse it at need, never mind if others wince or even hate thee for it. SirWilliam Harvey was an angry man, too much perhaps, yet without the thornin his tongue I dare say no one would ever have heeded him. I have nonemyself." Mr. Welland bent down, short of breath, to fumble at his shoes."In anger I am--mm-yas--most ineffectual, a poor thing. I flush andmumble, lose all command of my thoughts. Anger requires a coolness I donot possess." He groped for the shoes Reuben had cleaned, and slippedhis feet into them, and sighed. "Ah, that's better--my most comfortablepair. Thou art both cool and warm." Mr. Welland's fingers fussedawkwardly at the shoelaces; Reuben would have helped him, but had beenunreasonably shaken by the words and did not trust his face. "I supposethat is one reason why I love thee."

  Reuben thought: He is speaking only as convention allows; I must notmake it mean what it cannot. He said rather clumsily: "Mr. Welland, ifI'm to be a doctor, some time I shall be obliged to attend smallpoxcases, whether or not I have the disease and the immunity it brings."

  "But not now!" said Mr. Welland sharply. "Well--they say it's worse forthe young--and mine own observation--thou art still growing. I will notsee--I will not allow--no, not now!" he said, and having laced the shoesafter a fashion, he rose and went to the door. "I must go."

  Still at the hearth, watching the fire because his vision needed arefuge, Reuben asked: "Sir, may I detain you for one question more?"

  "Of course."

  "Mr. Welland, I am fifteen. I have a man's body--came to the change twoyears ago, nor am I ignorant of its meaning. Why have I never desiredwomen?"

  The fire murmured in peace; Reuben held out his hand to it, watching theaureole of light around the fingers cleanly defined. Eventually Mr.Welland spoke. "Never ask that of anyone else. I am glad, I suppose,that you asked me. Never ask it of anyone else."

  "I never could," said Reuben to the fire. "It would never occur to me."

  "Especially not of a priest."

  "I have no need for any sort of priest," said Reuben Cory.

  "I know. I say that because a priest is commonly the most earnest innourishing and supporting men's hate for whatever is unlike themselves.I have never understood why it should be so--Jesus, if I rightlyremember, did not assert that there was only one path of virtue.Well--the desire of women may come to thee at a later time."

  "It came to Ben before he was fourteen."

  "And in France, I believe, they still burn at the stake the oneswho--never mind--my wits are wandering. Thou may'st have wondered too,why I live so like a monk? Why I have never married?"

  "Mr. Welland, I don't think I've ever wondered much, about your life,because--oh, because you're as you are, because I don't seem to have anywish that you should be in any way different."

  "What art thou saying now?"

  "Is that strange?" Reuben was able then to rise and go to him, seeinghis crinkled hands hanging motionless, his face that most would havefound supremely ugly, lowered, eyes downcast, hidden. "Is it strange?"

  "To me, yes. Since no one ever said the like to me. Reuben, thou artstill growing--many more changes--let them come to pass--heavens, whatelse can anyone do? But remember: whatever thou art, that is good. Ihave no fantastic heart's image of thee, Reuben. I love thy self,whatever it is and will become. Now let me only kiss thy forehead, once,and I must go."

  * * * * *

  The garden was empty but for the daffodils, and the violets by thefence, and, near the empty stone seat, a hyacinth that had opened blueeyes for the sacrament of May. In the house itself Ben imagined too muchquiet.

  His uneasiness had not lessened but grown. His hands had been shakingwhen he hitched Molly; now they wobbled again when it was necessary tolift the knocker, but they lifted it, and let it fall, and Ben winced atthe outrageous clamor his ears made of it in the silent street. Foolishof course, a green boy's idiocy, to stand here shivering and hopingeveryone had gone away. No sound of footsteps within. Ben made vagueresolves to try the knocker once more and then hurry for the warehouse.He was not late, however; it was still short of four o'clock, so UncleJohn would not have left. No sound of steps, but the door opened, andClarissa at sight of him looked unmistakably astonished.

  "May I have a word with Mistress Faith, or"--Ben gulped, and appliedfinishing touches to half a dozen plans in the time it took Clarissa toglance down in slight embarrassment at the soft slippers she waswearing, and up to his face again--"or with Captain Jenks, if he...."

  "Why, I'm sorry, sir. They're all away. They left within thehalf-hour."

  "All away?" Ben thought: This is--relief? _Relief?_

  "Yes, sir. Madam Jenks and the girls might be returning within an houror two--or, I think, you might find them at the docks. They all left inthe coach."

  "Oh.... The--docks?" _I must stop this parrot-babbling._

  "Yes, sir." That answer had been slow in coming; when it did her voicehad subtly changed, softened. "The Captain is sailing today, Mr. Coree.Did you not know it?"

  "The--_Artemis_--is sailing?"

  Not relief. Something dull, heavy, unreal, as if friendly trustworthyMolly had swung her rump about and let him have her heels; presently,when he could scramble up from the ground, the pain would start. He feltprepared--maybe this was the pain beginning--quite prepared to besavagely angry with the little brown slave if he discovered that she wasamused at his ignorance of the sailing. Let her laugh, just once, ormerely smile, with that cool superior wisdom----

  She did not. He had known all along that she would do nothing of thesort; had known also that he would not have been angry if she had,seeing it was no fault of hers that part of the world had fallen down.

  The look in her brown face--widening of brown eyes, slight parting offriendly lips--not pity, surely? Why should the slave pity him? YetBen's mother had worn that look at times--when Ru cut his finger
tryingto prove he could whittle with the knife in his left hand; when, on acertain evening, Father had spoken of the French butchery atSchenectady.... "Sir, you must have ridden hard--I see your horse isa-sweat. Will you not come in and rest a moment?"

  "_Artemis_, sailing today.... I dare say I have no occasion now to--togo----"

  "Sir, come inside. I'll fetch you a drop of brandy, isn't it? I thinkyou rode too hard, and the day that warm it might be June." She touchedhis arm lightly, almost commandingly. Ben stepped into the cool entry,and she closed the door. "Come into the parlor. I won't be a moment. Dosit down, sir, and be at ease."

  Ben sat down, his eyes avoiding the stern, badly stitched sampler onthe wall, seeking instead the graceful model of a full-rigged ship onthe mantel. He had been about to get up for a better look at that model,he recalled, when Charity and Sultan ambushed him. Clarissa spread openthe drapes at the window, startling him; he had thought that in hernoiseless slippers she had already left the room. He said clumsily: "Iremember you did that when I was here before."

  On her way out of the room she looked down at him--not smiling, he wassure, though the light shone strong behind her face and he could not seeher very well. "Yes," she said thoughtfully, and was gone, and Benturned to the model, finding in this better light the name painted onthe side: HERA. Then this was she that went down off the Cape in a fog,seven years ago--not a man lost.

  Uncle John's telling of the story had never given Ben much realizingsense of the smothering terror of fog at sea. He had it now, in thedelicate presence of the _Hera's_ image. Wet smoke pressing on theeyeballs of men seeking to live; no guide, no refuge, no gleam ofdirection anywhere, only merciless whiteness concealing fangs. Awhiteness like snow, a silence like the silence of snow that mufflesfootsteps in a winter night.

  No wind: fog flows in where the wind is not. Under the fog, no weakeningof the rolling invisible currents that could drag man's creation intothe snag teeth of a reef or against the crushing mass of a dead hulk."_Stove in her la'board side, filled in twenty minutes...._"

  Fog....

  They would have prayed, the men of the _Hera_, and perhaps Captain Jenkswith them if he had time for it. When they came safe ashore, not a manlost--but first the long blind groping, in one boat and one damnedlittle dory, never knowing what might answer the next weary thrust ofthe oars--why, safe ashore they would have praised God for hearingthem--the same God who strangely failed to hear a myriad others prayingin extremity--and with some leftover gratitude to Peter Jenks as God'sinstrument. "_Ben, hear me. I say God is far away, no whit concernedwith man...._"

  "Sir, will you not look up?" There was a trace of most gentle laughterin that. Ben wondered when she had come in her silence, how long she hadbeen standing there with the brandy glass on a little tray.

  "Oh, I'm sorry. I was far off indeed."

  "I know."

  "Thank you--this is very kind.... You are from one of the Frenchislands, are you not?"

  "Guadeloupe."

  A sip of the brandy warmed him a little. It was old, and smooth, theglass fantastically lovely--probably the best in the house, and probablyEnglish or continental, since nothing of the kind was made in thecolonies; Uncle John's house had nothing to match it. "This must seem acold foreign place to you."

  "Oh, I have been more than eight years in Boston, sir. It used to be, Imust think in French and translate before I spoke--I do not do that now.Perhaps I do not look as old as I am."

  "I had thought you was near my age."

  "I am twenty-seven, Mr. Coree. I know it to the very day, becauseMonsieur Lafourche--of Lyons, who later settled at Guadeloupe--usedoften to say that I was born but two days after his other--after hisdaughter. He wished me bred up as maid and companion to her. I hadlessons with the same teachers when we were little girls, even thereading and writing. I cannot read English with any comfort. She, thelittle Mademoiselle, she died at sixteen of a consumption. I think mypresence hurt him with reminders of her." Clarissa's voice waspassionless, cool and distant; Ben noticed his hands were no longershaking. "Monsieur Lafourche his fortune was much impaired in the warof--of your King William's time. Then in 'ninety-eight, between thewars, he sold his plantation at Guadeloupe and returned to France, andso was obliged to let me go, to a merchant of Boston, who later sold mehere. Where," she said mildly and remotely, "I have received muchkindness."

  Anger moved in Ben, severe but directionless, formless, thwarted,without an object and seeking one. One _could_ not be angry with UncleJohn. He must have meant it for the best--somehow, somehow. "Where--doyou know where _Artemis_ is bound for?"

  "Barbados, sir."

  "I see.... Clarissa, I cannot think of you as a slave."

  She moved into the light at the window, looking out; presently said withneutral calm: "But I am a slave."

  The anger moved blindly, a flooded river seeking any low spot, anyoutlet at all. "Don't you know there's talk in these times that slaveryitself is wrong? Why, Judge Samuel Sewall hath said it, written it too,and maybe not many will agree with him, but--but before God, I do," Bensaid, wondering at the wiry clang of his own voice.

  "One hears of it," she said gently, "but I think there will alway beslavery."

  "Oh, why?"

  "Perhaps because no one is ever wholly free."

  "Oh, don't put me off with philosophy! I understand you, but--that wasnot--well, my brother, and my Uncle John too--I have heard my Uncle Johnsay he would never own a slave, for that the thing itself is wrong. Andlater I talked of it with my brother, he was most passionate, he said itwas vile and contemptible that any man should pretend to possess thelife of another, or be privileged to command it and drive it where hemay please. My brother is strangely wise--younger but a better scholarthan I, much wiser. Somehow I can't ever do anything without firstwondering, how would he do it, what would he think of it? I lean on himtoo much--well, I suppose it's because we went through much together,and I love him so, and we--I don't know--I'm confused."

  "I am not so sure," she said, speaking into the light. "I think you haveyour own wisdom, Mr. Cory. Perhaps, if he be the quicker scholar, it isonly that your brother can speak his thoughts more easily."

  "No," said Ben, and sighed shortly. "No, he's truly wise. I have alwayknown it, am even pleased it should be so. He hath chosen a mostdifficult life work, medicine. I have alway known he would go where Icannot."

  "You wished to sail with _Artemis_, did you not?"

  "I did so."

  "Mistress Faith spoke of it a few days ago, when I was dressing herhair, and charged me hold it in confidence because, she said, she wasnot sure you were ready to discuss it with the Captain."

  It never occurred to Ben that there might be something strange in hislack of interest as to what else Faith Jenks had said about him. "Yes, Iwished to sail, and it seems to me--I don't know why I never saw itbefore--it seems to me the best reason I could have for learning mygreat-uncle's trade and making myself of some account in it, would bethat then I could aid my brother. It must be difficult to be a doctor.No one seems to grant them much respect. Mr. Welland of Roxbury is avery learned man, Reuben tells me, and yet I never heard of anyonedeferring to him. He lives more or less in poverty."

  "And still," said Clarissa, to the light--"and still, perhaps evenwisdom is not everything."

  "Nay, I'm sure it's not," Ben said, and wondered whether it was wisdomhe was searching for in the brandy glass, where half of the beautifulamber sparkled as yet untouched. He saw her then, with a more nakedvision, as she stood in the light and shadow slight as a child andwholly a woman, in her feminine grace no longer alien. He rose with nothought for the action and entered the same sunlight. "Clarissa, thereis more here than I should drink. Will you not share it?"

  Her eyes held him, not once lowering to look at the glass, her hand notmoving to take or reject it. She was not shocked, he saw; not afraid ofhim, perhaps not afraid of the brandy glass. It might be that she wasonly considering what to do, like Reuben considering a po
sition on thechessboard; but then he understood it was nothing like that. Nudged byhis own heart, Ben said: "I assure you, no red comb will pop."

  She stepped back, staring rather wildly. Her hand flew up to her mouth,but that was no defense, for mischief and delight were brimming over,uncontrollable. As Ben himself began to chuckle, she gave way to itcompletely, throwing back her head, pointing at him helplessly, thelaugh going up and up in a golden rocket. "_Oh, le peigne, le peigne, lebon Dieu me garde!_ Whoo!" Clarissa wailed, and slapped her thigh, andswayed toward him--sobering completely as Ben's arm went around herwaist, but not drawing away, studying him a while with a dark and newsweet gravity, then at last taking the brandy glass, turning it about sothat when she raised it the small mark left by his lips was covered byher own as she drained it. The glass dropped to the floor from herdrooping hand; Ben felt she would not have cared if the lovely thing hadbroken, or perhaps she wished it to break, but it did not. "_Une heure,fugitive et immortelle, une heure et alors----_"

  "I have no French." Ben's fingers lost themselves in her darksweet-smelling hair. "My dear, what art thou saying?--tell me."

  "Ah, little or nothing," Clarissa mumbled. She unfastened his shirt, herfingers swift and petulant, until she could rub her cheek over his bareskin; her mouth groped for his nipple and clung lightly a second withsoft pressure of her teeth. "One hour, I think I said, one hour and thennothing more, because you will go away, because one hour given by chanceis all we may have, _mais ton sourire_--but your smile I shall yet see,as I saw it first when you gave it to my little Charity there at thewharf, and I could look into you and know you, and my loins hurt me andmy empty flesh, and my silly heart cried out I love you, I love you."Her hand sought for his wrist and clutched it hard. She spoke in abreathless tone like anger: "Come to my room!"

  It was small, and bleak, and very clean, a room under the eaves with noteven a bed but a pallet on the floor, a chair, a few hooks on the wallfor her few garments. As he followed her half blindly, Ben had receiveda dim impression of passing, on the second floor, the open doorway ofsome luxurious room. It didn't matter. In her room she turned to him,suddenly grave but no less urgent. A small laugh came and passed like abreeze, impatient, as she helped him with his clothes and her own, herhands a bridge of warmth between them.

  Slowness he felt then in the upward reaching of her mouth to find hislips. She was embracing him, a small column of urgent softness, andslipping down, kneeling, falling away--a slow and graceful falling untilshe lay on the pallet at his feet, no longer looking at him but knowinghe would come to her.

  There were the fears, shy, ridiculous but now amusingly so, not evenshameful when with another faint gust of laughter Clarissa helped himagain. Time thereafter was measured in roaring heartbeats, in thegrotesque innocent throes where Ben at last discovered a strength thatwas his own, a sureness and a rightness. Some part of him could stillobserve at the very crests of the waves. He could see, perhaps pity, herrich mouth squared down as in suffering, her brown dear face suddenlydrenched in tears and twisting from side to side, and yet know thatnothing of this could be held back, nor softened, nor in any way denied,and that pain was of no importance whatever until the cup should bedrained.

  He was aware of most of the words she spoke--random and wild, fantasticor pitiable, they all owned a rightness in the moment and were a part ofthe climbing waves. "O God, hurt me! Set thy mark on me, Benjamin,Benjamin. I want thy seed. _A moi!_ Now! Now! Benjamin--thy brightmouth--_ainsi je vais, je vais avec toi jusqu'a la fin de la terre._"

  Out of limitless quiet, his face on her satin shoulder, Ben asked: "HaveI hurt thee?"

  "No. Yes...." And again with the faintest moth-wing touch of laughter:"No...."

  He drew away from her; presently sat up and saw her lying still, withwet cheeks and closed eyes, near and defenseless, wholly quiet. Shesaid: "I will not yet open my eyes." And she did not, even when--timidlythis time and bewildered at his own impulse--Ben curved his hand overthe golden round of her breast where fading sunlight lay across it.

  "Clarissa, forgive me."

  She looked at him then, pools of darkness opening, filling withamazement, then sorrow, then showing him such a remote and ruminativeblankness that Ben was frightened as a child, for it seemed to him thatwhat his own voice had said was monstrous, and nothing said now orlater could redeem it. She stood, unconcerned at her nakedness, lookingdown at him he knew, the abyss between self and self widening. At lengthshe asked with much coolness: "What does that mean?"

  "Clarissa, I did never intend"----_Oh, close my mouth, anything I saymakes it worse, and I go on spilling words_--"We were swept away--Inever intended--I've--sinned--betrayed----"

  He managed to stop the noise. She was silent; he could not even hear herbreathing. Forced by the silence to look up at last, he found as he hadknown he would the high blaze of contempt. "Sin? Betrayal?..." Then--hehad known this too and feared it more than anything else--contempt andanger were gone, closed away altogether by a mask impenetrable andcruelly polite. The mask said gently: "Shall I help you with yourclothes, Mr. Cory?"

  He thought with a resentment that could accomplish nothing: Nay, Ididn't deserve that.

  The mask softened a little; a brittle thing quivering, but because itwas so greatly needed it would not break. She caught her breath andsaid: "Oh, I am sorry! Forgive me too--if you can." She caught up herclothes in a clumsy armful and ran barefoot out of the room.

  She had forgotten her slippers. Ben knew--this was the worst knowledgeof all--that he could not search for her in the empty house. If he foundher somewhere, a hurt and shrinking brown slave, he would not be findingher at all. The slippers were very small, soft, gray, a little run overat the edges. Ben dressed clumsily. He took up one of the slippers andtucked it under his shirt, but then it seemed to him that he could noteven do that. He put back the mute and harmless thing beside itscompanion, and left the house. As he unhitched Molly and set his foot inthe stirrup it occurred to him, in a misery now grown dull and almostimpersonal, that perhaps it takes more than a successful act ofintercourse at seventeen, to make a man.

  * * * * *

  "I say overside is the only place. A devil's name, what do you want of apisstail boy on such an errand?"

  "Watch that tongue, Judah. Watch it, man, against the day therations'll run short and I'll be a-mind to cut it off and ram it downyour gullet for amusement and nourishment, now that's no lie."

  "I said nothing, only spoke m' futtering mind."

  "Good. You may do it again. You may speak up plain and tell me who'scaptain of this bloody sloop."

  "You are, Mister Shawn. I'm only saying, a God-damn boy is no use here.Are you soft on the pup?"

  "You could say one thing too much one day."

  "Dead in hell or alive in hell with one eye, what's the difference?Comes to that, though, betwix' you and me, maybe I won't be the one thatdies. Be you going below--sir?"

  "I am in a moment. You too."

  "Leaving only Joey and Manuel on deck, and Joey scared of a tiller hedon't know yet, and the God-damn night blacker 'n a witch's box?"

  "What's to be scared of, you fool?"

  "I a'n't scared of nothing, never was. Piss on 'em all. What've I gotleft any man could take from me? You want Joey to pile up the tub onNoddle's Island it's no beshitten difference to me and you know it."

  "Noddle's is it? You're daft. We're miles south of it, and clear ofDorchester Neck too, and nothing to watch but a sweet wide-open sea.Steady as she goes, Joey Mills! Why, Judah, man, I can feel and smellthe sea and the land in the dark, the way they lie."

  "I'll ever recall how Quelch give you a rope's end once for that samemad Irish brag. Nobody can feel land in the dark."

  "Mother of God, what I put up with from you! Peace on it, Judah.... Keepyour eye sharp for riding lights, Manuel--any lights. You won't see 'em,and yet you might. Close 'em just once, any more 'n you need to blink,and you'll hear old Shawn speak in a manner unkind.
That's my boy,Manuel--steady as she goes! O the fair night, and we better off withouta moon!... Well, Judah, well--say I brought the boy on impulse, thoughit's not that entirely. I never planned it, that I did not, but didn't Ifind him, the poor puzzled thing, hiding in the doorway where I wasa-mind to hide me own self for a last look at _Artemis_ going down thebay? And didn't I learn the way he'd set his own heart on going withher, and Kenny played him false too, with promises and then a choppingand a changing? God damn the old fart, I could puke to think of the wayI all but licked the boots of him for a berth on her, and then to beshoved aside, shoved aside! We'll learn how far they'll be shoving oldShawn aside! Why, Ben's heart was set on her, so it was, he was thatfull of it you wouldn't know the thing he'd do, to be sailing onher--wisha, he shall!"

  "If he was that hot for it why'd you bother to drug him?"

  "This fishy tub will not have been his notion of going to sea."

  "What are you laughing at now?"

  "You wouldn't know. There's a sailor in that boy, Judah. There's anexplorer in that boy."

  "Ah! Still beating that dead horse."

  "Steady as she goes, Judah! You know how much you can say to me--don'texceed! Ah, at that I might've persuaded him, seeing how sweet he comeaboard of us here for a gossip with old Shawn, and was telling some ofhis boy's troubles but not all, not all, and believing everything oldShawn was a-mind to tell him over the little drinks, and the fish stink,why, he wasn't minding it, and the lantern light winking on the prettyface of him----"

  "Shit, you're drunk."

  "Drunk on sea water, Judah, you with your leather heart, you wouldn'tknow. He might'a' come along of his own will, now that's no lie. He washalfway so minded. He did believe I'd been given command, for a quickfishing trip to the Banks and so home--I think he did. But there'd havebeen much to explain later, and the devil with all explaining, the dropof opium didn't go amiss and will do him no hurt.... Judah, you fool,don't you know he saw you there at the Lion--and you that clumsy, andgiving him your dead-window look, the way you might as well have writtena letter to their Select Watch, that you might."

  "What if he did? The others is bought and paid for."

  "You'll run me no such errand again, Judah--nor wouldn't've then, hadnot my voice told me there was need. Mother of God, to think I may havemisheard, and a man died for nothing! But it can't be so."

  "Voice?"

  "You wouldn't know. How many times did you strike?"

  "I don't know."

  "I do. Thirteen. And he didn't die till morning. He lived to speak."

  "He's dead enough now, and never spoke of me. He never saw me nor Tom.Tom got the rag on his eyes and I came at him from behind. Thirteen, wasit?"

  "It was. Judah, I think you've never been as close to your Maker as yoube this moment. You bungled that thing. He suffered, and no need, andnow it seems there was no profit in the thing at all."

  "Easy, Shawn! We'll take _Artemis_ the easier and him not there."

  "True enough. All the same I'm trying--while you're here so near therail and a weak puky thing too--I'm trying to recall if you had any partin persuading me to it."

  "You're mad, Shawn. You know I never...."

  "I think you hadn't. God help you if ever I'm receiving differentinstruction!... Come below, Judah. I'll show you something. I'lldiscover if there's any juice in that leather heart at all. Mind thehatch, you clumsy son of a bitch! And go in front--I'm not so greenyou'll ever find yourself behind me with a rag over me eyes.... Hath hebeen quiet, Dummy? Shake your head for ay or no. Dummy's a good man,Dummy is. Mind if I'm touching your hump for luck, Dummy? And thatheadshake is ay?--good enough. Look here, Judas----"

  "Judah."

  "Touchy, man? Look here, and look well. Nay, drink first, there'ssomething left here, and don't cut your stupid eye at me! I'm drinkingfirst from the same bottle, am I not? I say, drink it!... Now look here:this is the mortal image and presentment of a man, Judah. O the quietsleep! Look on this chin, rounded like a woman's and firm with all thefair power of a god! But you can't see, you haven't the eye to see orthe mind to know. Look on this hand, how firm already, and will it notbe all the nobler when its wondrous jointure is acquainted with therope, and the leap of a tiller and the burning of salt and wind? This isa man. This is the man who'll go with me, and be my friend, and stand byme in the new world when the rest of you are stinking carrion. And yetit hurts me a little, that I should be taking him away from his brotherwho loved him.... Go back on deck, Judah. Your one eye sees nothing. Goback on deck. Well, lively, man! I'm following.... Come for'd. We musthave a feather under the bow."

  "You're drunk and raving. I've no mind to go for'd unless you make it anorder, Shawn, and take care how you do it."

  "Then bide here aft, seeing I care nothing what you think or do, andyour one eye blinder than the one that's gone.... Any lights, Manuel?"

  "No, sir."

  "That's well enough. She'll be far ahead. Belike we sha'n't see her tilla certain day when we're standing on and off outside Sherburne. We'llsee her then, Manuel, boy, but she won't see us until the time I choose.And Tom Ball and French Jack aboard her, they'll know the time I choose,they'll see us come out of the north long before the others do, I don'tcare who's aloft. Good men, those, Manuel. Can you hear the water,Manuel? What does it say, Manuel?"

  "I don't know, Mr. Shawn."

  "But I know. It saith, there be many islands."

  PART THREE