Wilderness of Spring

by Edgar Pangborn

  _Chapter One_

  The shadows of westward-rolling cloud obscured the calm of Polaris andthe other stars, and the May moon. Reuben Cory had looked out not longago from John Kenny's window, noticing a ground-mist over the lawn,ghosts of it rising toward his eyes; a feeble thing like the randomsmoke of a fire dying out, but later it might increase, filling all thestill air above the village, above the city in the north, above theharbor and that house in Dorchester where Charity at this moment mightbe watching the sea through her own window of loneliness. John Kenny'svoice had drawn Reuben back to the island of lamplight by the bed, andReuben had resumed his watch there, trying to interpret the sound. Itwas vast labor for John Kenny to speak at all; the effort flushed hissunken cheeks, twisted his lips loosely downward to the side; after suchtoil it was necessary to wipe his mouth, and Mr. Welland had recommendedcooling his face with a damp cloth. Reuben had done this, skilled withmonths of practise; now he sought to analyze in memory the blurredfragment of speech. It had carried the inflection of a question. Theword, most probably, was "long." Certainly within the stricken flesh amind and a self were poignantly awake, needing an answer. The brown eyesretained much alertness. Sometimes, when the old man was asleep--as hewas the greater part of the time--one could imagine that he would wakenaturally, frown, say something half-kind and half-sharp, clearly,looking down the nose.

  Trusting to insight--since thought must move in the atmosphere of doubt,and is often free to claim that this guess is truly a little better thanthat one--Reuben spoke slowly and plainly: "It is a year, Uncle John,since Ben went away." A thought of the ground-mist touched Reuben againas he settled in his chair and reached for the book on the bedsidetable. Doubtless it would increase; men would grope in it cursing; thetower of South Church would dissolve away, shadowing forth some remoteday of demolition, and in the harbor no ships would move.

  Uncle John could still make some motions of his head within a narrowrange, enough to indicate yes or no, agreement or denial, satisfactionor protest. Reuben saw it stir, the waxen chin lowering a fraction of aninch, the gray owl tufts rising the same tiny distance from the dent inthe pillow--a nod. The guess must have been fair. Reuben saw the flushfading, the deep wrinkles around the eyes relaxing after travail. UncleJohn could also move his right leg and arm, and until about a month agohad used the right hand to feed himself. Kate fed him now, or Reuben:the paralysis of his stroke had not advanced, but that right arm seemedtoo weary, too skeletal, and the old man had finally appeared willing tobe delivered from that exertion.

  "Uncle John, I've thought all winter long that Ben might come back thisspring. It is May. The wild flags are out in the marshes. I know wecannot put any trust in a mere hope, but I keep the thought in my mind.I feel certain he is alive, and will come home when he can."

  The eyes watched, with intelligence; as Reuben was aware, nothing inresponse to what he had said was worth the effort of speech; acceptanceof the message was enough. Reuben held a volume of Montaigne near UncleJohn's right hand, so that if it wished the hand could rise and turn thepages, indicating a part to be read. When sleep would not arrive, UncleJohn seemed to enjoy such reading, and Montaigne was his usual choice.At times Erasmus, Locke, Sir Thomas Browne, Virgil--more oftenMontaigne. The blurred eyes lowered, the hand groped among the pages fora while, and tapped the beginning of the essay "Use Makes Perfect," asReuben had almost known it would, and fell away.

  Familiar with the text, Reuben could read without much thought foranything but slowness and clarity in his voice, remembering to keep hisface turned toward the old man. Reuben and Mr. Welland were convincedthat since the stroke of last July, Mr. Kenny's deafness had thickened;he could hear plain speech and hear it well, but it was apparent howclosely his eyes followed the motion of a speaker's lips.

  "'... A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, necessityand such like accidents, but, as to death, we can experiment it butonce, and are all apprentices when we come to it.'" Natural enough,Reuben thought, and perhaps good, that Uncle John should so often wishto hear this essay, in which Montaigne would have it that one must trainfor death as for a voluntary act. Not unnatural anyway, for one whosetask of dying had begun months ago and might continue yet a long time."'... with how great facility do we pass from waking to sleeping, andwith how little concern do we lose the knowledge of light and ofourselves....'"

  Kate would have been distressed by it. She clung, at least outwardly, tothe thought that John Kenny would recover. Reuben supposed that when shewas alone with herself, not sustained by those who loved her enough toreinforce the fantasy, she knew better.

  "'Of this I have daily experience: if I am under the shelter of a warmroom, in a stormy and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can liveabroad, and am afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I amthere myself, I do not wish to be anywhere else....'"

  The eyes watched. It was possible, Reuben felt, that the hidden self waslistening to his voice as much as to the voice of Montaigne: this wouldremain in the region of doubt, a thing not to be known. He read onwithout weariness to the end: "'Whosoever shall so know himself, let himboldly speak it out.'" But Reuben thought: Who under the North Star hathever known himself to the depth? May one not most nearly approach it bygaining a glimpse of the self in the thought of one other?--but thiswill happen only in the rarest moments of the journey.

  John Kenny could sometimes speak with considerable clearness--clearnessat any rate to one who had spent much time in learning to translate thethwarted sounds. He did so now. Kate might have been confused; Reubenfound no difficulty in receiving the message: "If you will, Reuben--atthe proper time--let it be known--with what peace--an infidel can die."

  Reuben knew that the light convulsion of the distracted lips thereafterwas a smile, in itself a major achievement. He smiled in response andset Montaigne aside. "I'll read from _Religio Medici_--shall I, sir?"The eyes pondered; the right hand moved gently back and forth, whichmeant: "Yes, read at random or as you wish."

  Reuben read, seeking out words he desired because he had known them atother hours and in another voice, but not unmindful of his listener'spreoccupations so far as a boy of sixteen could hope to guess at them:"'Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself: forwe censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancylaudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seemto quadrate and consent with us....

  "'... It is an act within the power of charity, to translate a passionout of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if notindivisible, at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I desirenot to share or participate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, bymaking them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine ownreason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot intreatwithout myself, and within the circle of another....

  "'... I love my friend before myself, and yet methinks I do not love himenough: some few months hence my multiplied affection will make mebelieve I have not loved him at all....'

  "Elsewhere in the essay," said Reuben, and closed the book, "I think SirThomas was somewhat entranced by his own music at the cost of reason."The eyes watched, probably with kindness; Reuben searched for the motionof another smile and decided, but doubtfully, that he had seen it. Theeyes grew less alert; soon the old man might fall asleep. "I once askedMr. Welland how good a doctor Sir Thomas Browne is thought to have been.He didn't know. But he hath told me, sir, how in the time since SirThomas wrote, less than a hundred years, the art is much advanced. Ican't but think it must go further in another hundred, as more of theunknown yields to inquiry." The eyes were patient, interested, kind; anddrowsier. At length they closed, Mr. Kenny's face settling into thetranquil imitation of death, his breathing shallow, not uncomfortable.Reuben returned to the window. The mist had grown to a veil over allthings.

  Light from this window penetrated the whiteness as far as a budde
d mapleon the lawn. Whorls of thicker vapor passed through the light, smalldisturbances in the ocean of mist that would now be over all thevillage, perhaps over all the coast as far as the Cape and out beyond.As in the larger ocean, life groped about on the bottom in a purposefulblindness.

  On a May night a year ago, when Reuben and Gideon Hibbs and Mr. Kennyhad searched the water front, such a mist had hung low on the sullenwater of the harbor. That mist too had grown after a while, a white tiderising over the warehouses and idle docks, blotting vision, smotheringand diffusing the nervous beams of lanterns and the sounds of frightenedvoices wiry in the throat. Every plank bore a slime of dampness; thecordage of sleeping ships was dripping with a whisper of slow tears.Night transformed the water front to a labyrinth dreary, foul andperilous. Seldom any freshly illuminated face looked back at you bravelythere at night, unless it might be that of a drunken man too sodden tobe afraid. The smooth fogbound water of the bay had possessed no voicethat night except at the piling of the wharfs where, fumbling andmuttering secretly, it encountered the transitory obstruction of theworks of man.

  _Where are you? Where are you?..._

  Constable Derry had lent the searchers a sturdy man from the SelectWatch. It was that man who discovered the floating corpse, its armcaught in a tangle of rope that had most unreasonably been knocked orthrown off a dock not far from Mr. Kenny's, and he identified the brokenold man as a watchman hired by that wharf's owner Mr. Harkness. Wakedand summoned in the saddest hours of the night, little Mr. Harknessdanced up and down on the dock in rage. "She was _here_!" he fumed. "Ipaid forty-six pounds for her, and that only last week." "This man,sir----" "Yes yes, my watchman, poor devil. I tell you she was _here_!Went aboard of her myself." Tactfully Mr. Derry's man extracted theinformation that Mr. Harkness was referring to a sloop, a swift rangycraft of twenty tons--gone, but by Mr. Harkness not forgotten.

  Reuben had taken no part in this inquisition. Until that hour it hadbeen possible to imagine that Ben had ridden away somewhere--say intothe countryside, to think, cool off his disappointment; he could even bewaiting for them at Roxbury. Hibbs and Uncle John seemed still able tocling to something like that, to suppose that the poor dripping ruin onthe dock, its head crushed in the back, had nothing to do with Ben andthat devil Shawn. Reuben could do so no longer. _Where are you?_ Thequestion could be directed nowhere except into the rolling fog and thedark.

  The following day, after dragging out the remainder of a crazedsleepless night, Reuben felt it merely as the confirmation of somethingknown, when he learned that a stevedore had brought Mr. Derry thedecisive scrap of truth. This man had been near Harkness' wharf a littleafter sunset when a well-dressed youth and an older man in a green coathad come by, the boy leading a brown mare. The man was talking a spate,and cheerfully, about some good luck. "No great thing, a fishingventure, but I'm content, I say it's the smile of fortune on me, nowthat's no lie, so come aboard a few minutes anyway and drink to it." Hechattered much more the roustabout could not remember, and the boy saidvery little, but presently offered him a shilling to mind the horse,saying he would be gone not more than half an hour. Then the two hadgone out on Harkness' wharf or maybe the one beyond it. The stevedorehad been puzzled by that boy, who seemed downcast and confused; mighthave been weeping not long before; drunk, the stevedore thought atfirst, but he smelled no liquor when the shilling changed hands. It hadgrown quite dark by then, the lamps of Ship Street lighted but notsufficient to make the strangers' faces plain; the stevedore would knowthe man in the green coat again, he thought, but maybe not theboy--handsome though, his lip a bit in need of a shave, and very young."When they was going the man in the green coat winked at me,Constable--you know, meaning-like, like as if he meant to say it was aboy's troubles and we was all young once and took things hard...." Morethan the half-hour had passed; the stevedore found a hitching post forthe mare and went in search, finding nothing at Harkness' wharf except alumber-barge, although he thought he remembered noticing a small sloopmoored there during the day. He took the mare to a public stable andreturned to search further, but learned nothing and gave it up indisgust until the morning brought him the news of the watchman's murder.

  That, for nearly three months, had been the sum of knowledge....

  Soft-voiced in the room behind him, not moving now with the bounce andease of a year ago, Kate Dobson was saying: "Do you go and sleep now,Master Reuben. I'll bide with him the rest of the night."

  "Did you sleep enough yourself?"

  "Well enough. Ah, the doctor!" she said, and smiled at his finger tipspressed on her fat wrist. The message from her elderly heart was slowand sound. Once or twice Reuben had detected a fluttering in it; tonighthe found nothing out of the way except that variability of pace whichMr. Welland described as not unnatural. Kate accepted this sort of thingas a game to be played with the tenderness of maternal indulgence. Yetagain it might be that when she was alone with herself, thinking perhapsof Reuben Cory in the here-and-now and not so much of thetwelve-year-old boy who once collapsed in her arms at the end of a longjourney, she knew better.

  Reuben's hand sought the sampler that hung by the door in line with Mr.Kenny's vision, touching the truth of the dark leaves, the fine-stitchedperfection of the slanting letters: _Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamusamori._ Kate had not been able to finish it until after the old man wasstruck down. Mr. Kenny could see it there, had held it, groped at itwith the right hand, smiled in his distorted fashion, mumbling blurredsounds of pleasure and thanks. It seemed to Reuben that for this laborof years she ought to have received his elaborate courtly declamationmingled with airy nonsense and a pat on the rump; she never would. Shewas not wholly satisfied with the sampler even now: she said some of theivy leaves were too big in contrast to the letters. _Omnia vincitamor_--but love is a wider region than was spoken of in the Eclogues.Reuben wandered downstairs with no desire to sleep, and closed the frontdoor behind him and walked out alone into the mist....

  Remembering Deerfield. Mist lay there sometimes in the early mornings ofthe end of winter or the beginning of spring, over the low ground by theriver, or within the palisade, until a strengthening sun dissolved itaway from the brave small houses, the training field, the littledooryard gardens; and Mother liked gray mornings, but Jesse Plum saidthey worsened the Pain in his Back, and Father looked on them mildly asno worse, no better than others-because, said Joseph Cory, every day wasa new-minted shilling to be spent as reasonably as one might....

  Remembering--one sometimes winces at the scar of a minor wound--a housewhere the judgments of the Lord were true and righteous altogether.

  Remembering a narrow gray face advancing in the snow:--If I had diedthen, who would walk in this fog in this year's May? Mm-yas--amight-have-been universe for each event that might have been. Should Ireach out to that maple, the cosmos will wag one way; another if I donot. Notice, gentlemen, the astonishing power of Reuben Cory!Philosophy, I vow Mr. Hibbs would enjoy it in all solemnity, bless theman, but likely it'll slip my mind before I see him again. A boy ties astring to a pulled milk-tooth and keeps it a while in his pocket, thensomehow loses it....

  Remembering a midsummer evening--July, the windless heat a burden offever; lightning, too distant to be heard, startling the black sky overCambridge or some farther place in the northwest--and the coming of amessenger on a lathered horse to Mr. Kenny's house. Good news comesoften quietly, arriving like dawn; bad news like a rabid beast leapingfor the throat. That horseman was merely gentle Sam Tench, the clerk whohad labored so long and dustily in Mr. Kenny's countinghouse that heseemed like an outgrowth of his three-legged stool, but scrambling downfrom a sweaty horse and panting his news on the doorstep, he was Fate,if you like, since the word he bore came direct from Her Majesty'sfrigate _Dread_, newly arrived at Boston for provisions and sundryerrands of state and war.

  On a morning in early July, in open waters west of the Bermudas, the_Dread_ had picked up one Pieter Van Anda, single survivor of the sloop_Schouven_ out of Amsterda
m, who had clung all night to the smashedfragment of a mast. The _Schouven_ had been attacked by a fast ketchflying no flag, boarded, plundered, her captain and most of her crewbutchered in a rapid engagement where no quarter was given--but later,before the sloop was set afire, the mad captain of the ketch hadharangued, even pleaded with the three who still lived, to throw intheir lot with him, for he was bound to the other side of the world assoon as he could acquire two or three other vessels as good as his own,and was in need of good men. The sloop was worthless except for herprovisions and so must be burned, but would they not go with him? Oneconsented; the other and Van Anda, then expecting nothing worse thanbeing set adrift, would not; they were thrown into the sea. This, thetall, sweet-voiced, black-haired captain told them--they being crushedagainst the rail of the sloop by four men who seemed not mad but merelyrabble of the baser sort, pirates--this was an evil thing he did and heknew it, but the end he served was beyond their understanding, and couldhe allow them to bear witness to his acts before the time was ripe?Perhaps the sea would be kind, at any rate he must do as his inner voicecommanded and could do no other. As he told them this, he rubbed acopper coin, and his blue eyes spread into black, burning into them."And since I cannot be trusting you now, Mother of God, the time's pastfor any change of heart, and so God keep you, gentlemen"--and the sea(said Van Anda) in its most furious mood was surely kinder than such aman.

  The ketch carried two small guns--six-pounder falconets, Van Andathought--handled with great skill or great luck, for the first shot,delivered with no warning as the ketch glided to windward of her,sliced off the _Schouven's_ mast and left her in a welter of confusionwhile the ketch's boat shot across the gap and the pirates boarded herlike starved rats. The _Schouven_ carried only seven hands; it was soonover. An infernal vessel, Van Anda said--the airs had been light thatevening, the _Schouven_ making not much more than steerage way, yet theketch ran down on her out of the eye of the late sun as if the Devilhimself had lent her a capful of wind. Clinging to that fragment of themast, Van Anda had seen her for a while, speeding southward, in thelight of sunset and of the burning sloop. A beautiful, wild, unnaturalthing, her bowsprit low-slung, her figurehead a white maiden, her name_Diana_.

  The _Dread's_ lookout had seen the fire, too, from several leagues'distance, and the frigate hurried off her course to inquire about it.The blazing sloop filled and sank during the night; it was dawn, thebreeze still fitful and contrary, when Van Anda was found. His storytold, the frigate beat to southward a while in the wrath of vengeance.In the evening a fore-and-aft mizzen was sighted, far south, and foundagain in the morning. At that sunrise the _Diana_--if it wasshe--cracked on all sail and by evening was hull down, though the_Dread_ was bearing all canvas, a mastiff groaning in pursuit of agreyhound. The _Dread_ found empty sea next morning and was obliged toput about for Boston.

  John Kenny asked: "Did this Dutchman speak of others?"

  "He spoke of a big red-haired man jabbering to himself in French, and afat, short man they called Tom, and--and a gray-haired man with a brokennose and a great purple patch covering all the left side of his face.Sir, I asked myself, could that be anyone but Matthew Ledyard that wascarpenter of the _Artemis_? No one of the_Schouven_went aboard the ketchexcept that one man who agreed to join them. Some must have remainedaboard the--_Diana_. My God, sir, I had thought Ledyard loyal as any mancould be----"

  "The devil with Ledyard. He described no others?"

  "No others."

  "Did he say if any of them was young?"

  "Sir, sir, I asked him that, and he said--he said no." Then neither SamTench nor Reuben was quick enough to catch the old man, who fell like abroken spar and struck his head against the doorframe, and for more thana month thereafter could not speak at all.

  Reuben walked in the mist, remembering. No stars; the May moon, notvisible, lent a faint pallor to the enfolding vapor, or he imagined it,so that he walked in a darkness not complete. He could have followedthis path through the back fields, he supposed, if he were wholly blind.He moved slowly, pausing many times, though not in need to assurehimself of direction, remembering.

  The war went on of course, in its far-off way; it always had. It seemswe snatched ourselves a helping of glory at some place called Ramillies;but that was very long ago, two years ago, 1706. Throughout the fightingweather of last year, one heard, my lord Marlborough had put in the timein the Low Countries doing nothing in particular....

  A certain order had been established at the house in Roxbury by the endof the summer months of confusion. Four friends--Reuben was well awareof it--had built a sort of wall of defense around a youth who waslegally not yet a man and an old man who could scarcely move or speak:Amadeus Welland, William Heath the captain of the sloop _Hebe_, SamTench, and Gideon Hibbs. Reuben was formally apprenticed to the doctor;Harvard, by Reuben's wish, vetoed. On a morning when, according to hisown tortured speech, his mind was very clear, John Kenny wrote out in awild but readable scrawl his desire that Welland, Heath, Tench and Hibbsbe appointed trustees for his affairs while he remained disabled; thecourt allowed it, giving Tench a limited power of attorney. Thewarehouse and wharf were mortgaged, and rented to Mr. Riggs of Salem,the most merciful of Kenny's creditors.

  Reuben discovered with no surprise that it was quite simple to get alongwithout five pairs of shoes; also to tend the garden and scythe the lawnat odd moments without the aid of Rob Grimes. Hibbs too had been obligedto find employment with another family at Roxbury whose son and heirrequired cramming, but he continued to live at Kenny's house, insistingon paying for his room and board, nagging Reuben to continue hisGreek--was not Hippocrates a Greek?--and trying to drive a little moregeneral learning into the boy, but underhandedly as it were, under thepretense that he was merely keeping up with his own studies at theborders of philosophy. The sloop _Hebe_, unmortgaged, ran her smallprofitable errands between Boston and Newport like a dog who will go onherding sheep or guarding the house into the shadows of old age, noteven asking for a pat on the head. Even Rob Grimes strolled overoccasionally, pecking peevishly at odd jobs and refusing pay for it; heceased perhaps only because Kate was singularly short and cold with him.

  It seemed to Reuben that by spending a lifetime in contemplation ofhuman love and loyalty, you might learn one or two things about people,but not their limits. One could simply note: under certain conditions,certain members of the human race--most, maybe--are capable of supremegoodness. The Preacher Ecclesiastes was old, weary, holding some unrealscale of value; disappointed, like enough, because these bewilderedpassion-ridden beings fell so far short of his private image of thegodlike. You could not watch Amadeus Welland making grave monkey facesunder his wig for the hilarious comfort of a sick child, and say thatall is vanity. That was no fair example, because Amadeus was not asother men; so consider--well, Kate Dobson, who called herself common andstupid, and would be spending uncalculated kindness to the day she died.

  The Preacher's namesake was loyal too. Through all vicissitudes heremained a beat-up yellow tomcat, charging not a farthing for theprivilege of scratching him under his evil chin....

  The same human race included that devil Shawn, the bronze butchers whofell upon Deerfield, a smiling murderer with one eye. Of course.

  Sometimes also Reuben speculated: If they--Heath, or Hibbs, or Tench, oreven dear Kate--if ever they knew that I am a monster, a _lususnaturae_, a two-headed calf, a moral leper so outlandish and beyond hopeof forgiveness that, were my nature known, even the children in thestreet would be a bit afraid to throw dead cats and dung--what then?Would there then be any part of this earth where Amadeus and I might go,and not be hated, driven, feared, utterly condemned?... The thought cameonly in the darkest hours; seldom if ever when he was with Mr. Welland,the world excluded, the ugly pockmarked face an unfathomable essay inthe beautiful, the moment blazing or peaceful as sun on summer grass.Here in the mist, the fear touched him as an almost trivial thing, anarrow missing the mark, a fire burning somewhere else, a lesson glimpse
dfurther on in the book. _Blessed be the mask--and yet I hate it, willever hate it, wearing it only because I wish to live, remembering it wasnot worn in the time that some have named the Golden Age._

  If I am a monster--who seem to myself a young man not incapable of theearthly virtues, who love the sun and rain as well as any man and wouldnever willingly do a dishonest thing or hurt anyone, who need andrejoice like any man in all the harmless glory of the senses--then whomade me a monster? If I am evil, who set the standard whereby men andwomen are to be judged? Let Mr. Cotton Mather tell me God did so andwill punish the transgressor: I am not interested, nor is Amadeus, whodoth believe in God after his own fashion.

  Reuben knew he was near the beech tree. He put out his hand to find theamiable tower of it and leaned against it in the mist, remembering. Istood here last year, having made certain discoveries. A goodday--April, I think. Ben rode home smiling. A long time ago.

  It was never possible to hold away for any long stretch of minutes theknowledge that Ben was gone. One schooled the mind to repeat thatlesson, though it might whimper and snarl miserably in repeating it: _Heis probably lost._ Then, the lesson driven home once more, he turnedusually to Vesalius, or _Micrographia_, or _Neurologia Universalis_(Ben's gift!), or the collected works of Ambroise Pare, or the _SeverallSurgical Treatises_ of Richard Wiseman, because Mr. Welland said it wastime for him to acquire a small preliminary hint of the enigmas of knifeand suture.

  "But _why_ do so many die after trifling minor surgery? Don't we allsuffer small cuts and bruises repeatedly and take no harm by it?"

  "We don't know. Doctors despise surgery; send 'em to the filthy barbersurgeons, and they die. I no longer send anyone to the barbers, Reuben.If surgery can't be avoided I stumble through it myself, trying tofollow the methods you'll read in that book of Pare's, with these grimlittle tools--that's splendid steel, by the way, I care for 'em like anold housewife--and I've lost very few under the knife, but I can't tellyou why. Why, maybe they're so bemused by the wig that they stay aliveso to have another look at it...."

  At other times it was scarcely possible to drive the lesson home at all.Then in partial retreat from the unbearable he permitted the dream ofBen's return--telling over this complex year as it might be told to him,polishing those whimsical or naughty inventions that used to be rewardedby the startled stare of his gray eyes and his rocketing laughter.Reuben knew such fantasy to be a drug, but yielded in times of need."You see, Ben, not to put too sharp a point on it when likely it wasdull----" No no! Not that way, seeing he may have truly loved her. "Yousee, Ben, doubtless because their fortunes went down with ours, CaptainJenks being lost or presumed lost--why, she married. Some ancientDecember blossom"--revise!--"some man named Hoskison, a merchant ofSalem where she now liveth, but her mother and Charity dwell with themother's brother at Dorchester, the said Charity being a most sweetmaid, little Benjamin, and greatly changed, who hath not forgottenthee."

  And so she is, he thought, strolling sure-footed away from the beech inthe deep quiet of the mist--so she is; and he wondered in passingwhether any self ever lived that was not divided by contrary hungers.Occasionally with Charity--when she sat close by him, or pushed at hischest with friendly impatience, or rubbed her cheek on his shoulder inher impulsive way that was half child, half woman--occasionally Reubencould be reminded of those needs the world allows. Never enough, hethought; never complete; never the sure and hearty answer that Ben, forexample, would have known.

  And never, in fact, quite free from a sense of the pressure of theworld, of the command to conform and be like all others; and since toyield to that nagging, to conform and be like others at whateversacrifice, is to lose oneself in the meanest of all vanities begotten offear, it is not acceptable to the lonely.

  Charity came often to Roxbury, lending Kate a hand in the kitchen aswell as the sickroom. She did so even more often after the move toDorchester, for her uncle allowed her to ride about a good deal--muchmore, some said, than was at all fitting, safe or decent for a younggirl. She was calmer at fourteen, not so much given to fits of temper,at least not at Roxbury. Reuben seldom saw her in her mother's company,since Madam Jenks at Dorchester had submerged in a stately retirement,letting it be known that she was not long for this world, the which wasmerely a place of trial for the life to come, and blessed reunion withOne Who Was Gone and, though the best of men, had never quite understoodthe palpitations of her heart, and was even given at times to profanethoughts and actions, for the which he doubtless repented in the end,and was taken to the Lord, a good provider with all his faults, andsometimes fluttered in her chest so that she could scarcely breathe atall, but were in no sense connected with her overweight, which wasslight and for that matter incomprehensible since she ate like a verysparrow, and suffered also from insomnia and risings from the stomach.

  Some day, Reuben thought--oh, some day perhaps that other world ought tobe explored, if only for the sake of the slow, strange enterprise oftrying to learn a little about the human race. Amadeus would probablysay that it ought.

  Never with Charity of course. Reuben was aware that Charity, very much awoman this last year, did not regard him as a potentially aggressivemale, but as a friend who could be trusted to listen with kindness,share a moment of mirth, speak with intelligence about the fantasticpictures she still liked to draw, and even take her part against thoserestrictions of a woman's world that chafed her to rage. Besides, therewas that day in November, soon after the move to Dorchester, whenCharity Jenks threw her snarled-up sewing all the way across Kenny'slibrary and flung herself crying into Reuben's arms, to speak of asorrow until then unknown to him. A servant of theirs, a French-bornslave Clarissa, had been sold to New York when the household was brokenup, seeing there was no place for her at Dorchester--and that girl, saidCharity, had been her real mother for years and years, and was the onlyfriend she would ever have. "You have me," said Reuben, and was startledto watch her considering that, sniffling, accepting it and seemingremarkably comforted. A few minutes later she was speaking, for thefirst time freely and shamelessly--about Ben. And then of the house atDorchester, which was near the shore. She had found a place wheretumbled rocks made three walls excluding the land, the fourth side opento the sea--you could look out for miles on a clear day, and couldhardly fail to see any of the ships that came into Boston out of thesouth; she'd draw him a picture. She did so; and then this spring, abouta month ago, Reuben had seen that lookout for himself, making a harmlessconspiracy of the secret approach to it, since otherwise tongues wouldhave wagged and clattered. It had seemed to him, in the fair sun of thatspring afternoon, beyond reach of a thunderous high tide but not beyondthe reach of the spray, that Charity was almost happy, though not in thesame way or to the same degree that he had been happy himself for somemoments, even hours, in the past year....

  Well, it would be no simple or pleasant thing, to tell Ben about Faith'smarriage. Do it quickly, lightly, ready to go along with whatever moodtook Ben at the news. Then later, maybe, the wedding could be describedin--_in harrumphitatis Reubencoribus_. "I did endeavor, little Benjamin,to place my spirit in such posture as to snap up any unconsideredmorsels of hymeneal sanctity that might be flipped my way when the goodand just Eliphalet Hoskison re-entered that holy state in manly prideand a gingery-yallery weskit"--Revise! Leave out most of Hoskison; toHell with Eliphalet Hoskison and the ivory buttons on thathemi-spherical weskit!--"but my chaste resolution, sir, was overruled,and barely indeed could I repress the cachinnations of a lewd nature andsubsume the concupiscent, when my perspiring attention was led astray byobservation of a touching yet not wholly tragical prodigy--prodigaltragedy--of nature. Nay rather, in these latter years I have come toregard it as a pastoral or even, mm-yas, a comical-historical-pastoralinterlude, the which I will elucidate if you perpend. The dominie whowedded those twain was not, little Benjamin, a tall man, and on the tophe was bald as a baby's bottom--for this I can summon witnesses if needarise. Now as he stood before us in the ultimate or perhaps
thepenultimate prayer, it was required of him to lower that benevolentdenuded skull, and I did behold, advancing unto the pinkish radiancethereof, a small fly. A fly, sir, buffeted by the gathering winds ofOctober and, I think, lonely. He circled the dull glow thrice, I saw it,and thrice flew away, and yet once more returned--drawn, do you see, tothe services in spite of original and later sin--and circled a last timeresisting the call, unrepentant, naughty in mortal pride and unredeemed,but in the end lit softly upon the holy ground. There did he scrub hisforelegs, Benjamin, and listen, taking thereafter a few sprightly stepstoward a certain silvery fringe, the which must have indicated to him:'Thus far and no farther!' Strait is the gate and few that enter,mm-yas. Frustrated and remote indeed from a state of grace, he did flirthis saucy wings, and listen, and scrub his middle legs, and bravelyattempt another region of the fringe where he was again baffled and castdown. _Fiat justitia, ruat caelum!_ I watched him returning to thecenter, broken (as I thought) in spirit, not one of the elect yetloathing his sins and mourning after the pardon of them, but there mostdelicately--O Ben, Ben, as a fellow sinner I foresaw this and my bowelsyearned for him--there most delicately did he lay down a mild brownmemento of his presence as a representative of the secular arm. Thereathe shuddered but the act was done, _ad majorem lignocapitis humanigloriam_. He listened then as it were with an absent mind. He cocked hisred head at me as we listened, and I knew then, Benjamin, I knew fromthe shameless manner of his conversation that mercy and salvation hadpassed him by. He sampled the pink surface with an heretical tongue andthought little of it. Lost even to the sense of decorum, he r'ared upbehind and scrubbed his ultimate legs--furtively, however, youunderstand, like any other boy in church. And then at last (in fact atvery long last) he rose up and buzzed away--relieved but not saved, notsaved at all, by the resonance of an Amen."

  Later. Mm-yas--much later, if at all....

  He walked in the mist, no longer remembering but in the here-and-now,coming at length to the cottage, where he would have tapped on thewindow, but Amadeus Welland came to him across the lawn out of the mist."I slept a while but was restless. A turn around the garden--sends meoff sometimes. Is it one of his bad nights, Reuben?"

  "Nay, not bad, in fact I thought him rather cheerful, as far as one canguess. I read to him, his usual Montaigne, and then a little from the_Religio_ because he seemed to be listening and enjoying it. When Katerelieved me I think he was not far from sleep. Ah, how long, Amadeus?"

  "No one could possibly say. I once knew the apoplexy to leave a womanquite motionless and yet alive for six years. Others go in a fewmoments, a few weeks. And there are remissions, don't forget. It's nomere word of comfort to say that he might recover his speech, even theuse of his left side, or partial use. I've seen that happen. Or it mightbe that when he falls asleep tonight, or some night, he won't wake."

  "He said once--if I rightly understood the words, but he was excited,trying too hard to speak, and so they were difficult--he said he couldnot die until Ben comes home."

  "Well.... The mere thought of it might do much to keep him in this worlda while. Nobody understands the power of the mind over the flesh--orought I to say, over the rest of the flesh? Or the power of flesh overthe mind. We don't know, we don't know."

  "I know it is May, and a misty night."

  "Yes, and thou art here."

  "And I think I enjoy the misty nights, Amadeus, mm, even the nights whenthe moon's down as much as the others, and I've wondered why, and Ithink I know the reason. I enjoy them because I know that, while othersare sometimes afraid of the dark, I am not. I can tell you, I can tellyou surely, I'm not afraid of anything in nature. Am I speakingnonsense, I wonder? Why, before a lion my flesh would cringe and squeak,I don't doubt it, but somewhere, Amadeus, somewhere in here there's apart of me would hold calm and yield nothing even to the thought of mineown death."

  "Have I not alway known that, in thee?"

  "You have?"

  "Yes."

  "So again I learn something.... I'm tired."

  "Come in then and rest."

  "Yes, that's my wish," said Reuben, but he knelt and took Welland'shands and rested his forehead in the warmth of them.

  "Art thou in need of me?"

  "You've taught me how tomorrow is another region, so let it be--I'm notpart of it tonight. I shall be forever in need of you."

  "But there will be years...."

  "When you die before me, a thing I do accept because I must, I shall bein need of you still, and will bear the need, and laugh sometimes, andwork as you've taught me, and grow old--I swear I'm not afraid. I toldmy brother once I would sail with him to the Spice Islands. Where dochildren go, Amadeus?"

  * * * * *

  "Matthew, you may call me an old fart, you that's no bloody lambyourself, but I can remember when I was a boy in Gloucester. More andmore I remember it, the decent way of living there and the littlehouses--no easterly ever shook them houses, Matthew, tight to the groundthe way they was, they a'n't got the wit to build no such way in Boston.Good, that it was. Eh, I remember that low-tide smell in my mother'skitchen, year 'round, call it a stink if you like, not me, you might sayI was born to it. That was a good life--if a man could live Godfearing,not go whoring after strange inventions, listening at the Devil in hisleft ear."

  "Oh, 'vast preaching, Joey, I got no heart for it."

  "I a'n't preaching. Oons, I was only crowding thirteen when I first wenton my father's sloop. We was to the Banks, good luck all the way, homewith cod to the gun'ls. Weight of one more fish scale would've sunk her,my father said, and said it was me brung him the good luck. Me! That's afuttering laugh, that is, all the same he said it. I'll trouble you forthat bottle.... Dried-up scarecrow, five good teeth in my head, you gotto remember I was young one time.... I can't think how I ever come tolisten at that man, and me a watchman, all done with the sea orshould've been. Now don't betray me, Matthew Ledyard. Don't never let itout I said such a thing. I got no wish to die at _his_ hand, and farfrom home."

  "You look young now--being it's that dark a man can't see his fingers."

  "Now that's not comical, Matthew, that's not kind.... Matthew."

  "Yah?"

  "Moon'll be up in an hour.... What if we don't go back to the ketch?"

  "You fool, he means to clear out of here on the morning ebb."

  "I know that."

  "Well? Orders was to row back no later 'n moonrise. It was a favor, toleave us stay on the beach this long so to stretch our legs and catch anap off shipboard--knows we got a bottle too. He wants them water kegsno later 'n moonrise and the fruit too, though I can't say that's goodfor nothing but to make a great slosh into a man's belly, let 'em say itkeeps off scurvy if they like, I won't eat the bloody muck and never hadno scurvy.... Joey Mills, don't be more of a damn fool than you canavoid."

  "A man could hide on this island. He'd maroon us--willingly."

  "And him breaking his heart for a year because he's short-handed?"

  "But Matthew, he's jumpy here as the Devil in a gale of wind. He's gotno love for the Bahamas. Call him mad, but he means all he says. Couldhe get him another vessel good as _Artemis_--ha! _Diana_--and enoughhands for safety, he'd be off and away after his daft dreams to theother side of the world. He'd hunt for us here, yah, but not long."

  "Long enough to find your gandy-shank back'ard end sticking out of abush and sink a hook in it. And we'd live on what? Fruit and clams?"

  "I seen goat tracks back there a piece this afternoon."

  "Luff, you bloody beggar! You're stern-heavy. Got your old arse spreadto a following wind, let 'er freshen and down you go by the head. Tellyou what he'd do. He'd say to that fat swine Tom Ball: 'Down!' he'd say,and down would Ball go on all fours and come rooting up the whole islandfor you like the hog he is."

  "You sure to God hate that man, don't you?"

  "Two gods he has, his belly and his other purse. Why wouldn't I? Wasn'tit Ball mostly that set me against the Old Man? Be
gun it the day afterwe come into Boston last year, and now I know that him and Shawn was oldfriends reunited and Shawn had set him up to it, but then I thought Ballwas an honest cod. Sought me out, he did--come to my house, drank upwith me, praised the wife's cooking, things like that. And begundropping little things in my ear to turn me against the Old Man. Oneevening he told me Cap'n Jenks laughed behind my back about my--my face,my mark. Lies, all lies, but it wasn't till it was far too late that Iknowed it must be all lies, and Shawn set him up to it so to win me overto his God-damned venture. I could run a knife in Shawn, but that TomBall, he ought to be tried out in one of French Jack's kettles--slow,for the lard.... Suppose we don't go back to the ketch. Suppose westayed alive, and sometime an honest ship took us off. You think there'sany place in the world for us now? Boston? Gloucester? Can we goanywhere and not be hanged? Gi' me that bottle back."

  "I was thinking of Virginia."

  "Virginia, he says. Her Majesty's law don't reach there, ha? Why, wordof _Artemis_ will have gone all up and down the coast for a year."

  "Maybe. Suppose.... If we got to go back to the ketch, suppose wemight--do something?... Matthew, it come to me, that man Shawn made onebig mistake in his bloody life."

  "Keeping the Old Man alive?"

  "Ay, that, but that a'n't what I meant. Sure, only a madman would havelet Jenks live. Tell you something about that too, something I seen theother day when I was into the cabin to carry out slops. But the bigmistake Shawn made was when he stole that boy. I'm old. I watch, I seethings. They say you can't kill a witch but with a silver bullet. I tellyou plain, if anyone ever does for Shawn, it won't be one of us."

  "Why, that boy couldn't harm----"

  "I know. Gentle as a May morning, and that's all you see. I see more.A'n't Shawn tried to break him for a year now? Make him over intosomething the Devil himself wouldn't own? Has he done it?--tell me that.A'n't I heard 'em talk together, devil and angel? I say, Matthew, sometime, maybe soon, it'll come to life and death between them two, and I'mprophesying: it won't be Ben Cory that dies."

  "It could be."

  "I want you should take that back. Ben a'n't for dying."

  "He a'n't even full-growed.... Ah, Christ, count him in then, and whatcould he and the two of us do, three against French Jack, and Ball, andMarsh, and Shawn himself?--not to say nothing of poor Dummy, that don'tknow nothing except the devil is kind to him? I'm a stout man. Break mein half with one hand, Dummy could, grinning like a dog the while hedone it."

  "Ben is kind to him."

  "Ah? You think----?"

  "I--don't know. But hark 'ee to this, Matthew: could somebody steal thekey to that leg-chain and turn the Old Man loose----"

  "God Almighty, who'll bell the cat? Don't the key hang on a cord at thedevil's neck, and is it ever off him?... What was it you seen in thecabin, Joey?"

  "Ah.... Only him, the Old Man, that ha'n't touched a drop the whole yearlong, and that devil keeping it ever at his hand--only him, not payingme no heed at all, I could've been a breath of wind in the cabin--onlyhim, Matthew, lowering himself to his heels, slow, and then grabbing thetable and pushing himself up, clean off the boards, chain and all, anddown again, slow. Against the day, Matthew, against the day. Did _he_ever go within four foot of the end of that chain? Could three men, fourmen, ever hold the Old Man, if somebody was to steal the key?"

  "He'd be match for three or four, grant you that. When it was over, youhe'd only see hanged with time to pray, but he'd snap my neck with hisown hands. I fit out them irons myself, Joey. I wouldn't wonder but I'llwear the like in Hell, if there be justice. Forty years honest, that'sme. Nay, Lord, ha'n't I been in irons myself, my life long, with thispurple face? Forty years honest, and Chips for seventeen of 'em--nineand more on the old _Hera_, seven on the _Iris_, eight months on the_Artemis_. I'm not counting this last year, she's the _Diana_, he'llbreak her heart like mine. Forty years honest--oh, I was in angeralready at the Old Man for slights and curses a good sailor would'veignored, so I listened to Tom Ball, Shawn's pet hog, and then to Shawnhimself, his singing tongue--listened in my anger and said I'd do it,and I did it. You think God forgives such a thing? I killed Hanson, shothim dead, never harmed me. You God might forgive, not me. I wish I wasdead."

  "Nay, Matthew, you old sod----"

  "I mean it. I don't see why God didn't strike me down a year ago. Ia'n't sunk yet, but the tiller's gone. Wa'n't Shawn broke it, it was me.I should've thought--why, should've hove to, but Christ, I let herbroach, and the sea come over me, the tiller's gone, it's clean brokeoff. Anything in that bottle?... Sometimes it's on me to march into thatcabin, say: 'Here, _sir_--that neck, you been wanting it.' He'd take it.With him loose, we might win back the ketch, grant you that. Then youfor Copp's Hill and my neck cracked a mite sooner. Don't forget it."

  "All the same, Matthew, it won't be the Old Man that does for Shawn.Nay, it won't be the Old Man."